A great longing8 to visit the home of her childhood seized my mother, and my father felt it was a great thing that she should have the desire to go, as he really feared for her mind and health. So when all possible danger of contagion9 was considered over, he took her and the three children who were left up to Abbeville to the farm called Badwell, where she was born, and where her beloved mother lay in the family burying-ground with the pasteur of the desert, Jean Louis Gibert, her father. My father left them there and returned to his work. In a few days the beautiful little Louise was taken ill and died, and was laid by her grandmother in the God’s acre! I cannot bear to think of my mother’s suffering at this time. The tragedy of it! The child named at last for her mother, on this much-longed-for visit to her mother’s home. Now her three beautiful, strong children were gone, leaving only the delicate Ben and the delicate and tiny seven-months’ child,{96} Adèle. It seems like the crushing out of some dainty, happy creature, a beautiful, full, happy life drained of its joy, leaving only stern, exacting10 duty!
I know my dear father suffered terribly at this time, too, but he never spoke11 to me of it. He never found it possible to put his deeper feelings into words. I think he and my mother were a great comfort to each other in their grief, and I think it was this summer that my father had the desperate illness of which my mother has told me, and I believe it was his return from the jaws12 of death which made her first feel life held a future for her.
They were in the same isolated, remote summer house, The Meadows. Papa came home from his harvest work on the plantation13 much exhausted14, went at once to bed, and when mamma followed him at midnight she knew he was desperately15 ill—a burning, consuming fever, and his rapid whispered speech showed him delirious16. She called the servants, wrote a note to Doctor Sparkman, asking him to come at once, telling him how suddenly papa had been taken, put a man on horseback and sent him off in the night, telling him to go from place to place until he found the doctor. Then{97} she proceeded to do what she could for the patient to reduce the awful fever. Cloths wrung17 out in water fresh from the spring on head and face and hands was all she could do to cool it, as there was no ice. Then she had a tub of hot water brought and with the help of Hynes, the house-servant, put his feet to the knees in that, covering him with blankets to produce steam. Mercifully this quieted him and the jabbering18 ceased and he slept. Daylight came, no doctor, no sound came to her listening ear of horse-hoofs. The heavy sleep as of one drugged lasted until she was frightened, but she feared to wake him. She looked after the children, having Hynes, who was very faithful and intelligent, to sit by papa and fan him. She gave the children their breakfast and tried to eat, herself, for she knew she would need all her strength. Dinner-time came, evening, night. Oh, the long hours, how they dragged! She thought of her desperate, passionate grief for her children, feeling she could not bear it. Had God heard her rebellious19 murmurings, and was he going to show her now how blessed she had then been, having her husband left to her! How unutterably worse this grief would be! How hopeless, indeed, would life be without him!{98}
And so the hours wore on, but she was not idle; she thought of everybody and did everything for the comfort of the house. Just at midnight the dogs began to bark. She went on the piazza20 and heard wheels approaching. She had kept the dinner-table laid with flowers and silver and candles, all bright and cheery. As soon as she heard wheels she ordered the servants to bring in dinner, and when the doctor entered and said, “How is Colonel Allston?” she said, “Doctor, sit down and dine first, and then I will take you in to see him.” He sat down, and she went to the sick-room, where things were unchanged, the same drugged sleep and heavy breathing. As soon as the doctor had finished, he came and listened to her accurate account of all the symptoms. Then the fight began. I do not know what he gave or what he did, but he remained doing all that his skill and science suggested, for thirty-six hours, and then he felt for the first time that there was hope, and left to see after his other patients. He told my mother that he had been with a desperately ill patient on Santee, thirty miles south of his home, for twenty-four hours; when he returned to his home he found mamma’s note and the servant, and without going into the house, though{99} he was famished21 for food after a thirty-mile drive, he had had a fresh horse put in and came right on. Then he said: “Oh, Mrs. Allston, if every one thought of the doctor as you do, the life of a country doctor would be a different thing, and fewer of them would become dependent on stimulants22. I was exhausted, but expected to see and prescribe for the patient before having food. When I saw that delicious dinner of roast duck and vegetables I was completely surprised, but I blessed you and felt how much clearer my brain, how much better my condition to prescribe for the patient, and how much better chance it gave him for life, though, I confess, when I first saw Colonel Allston I did not feel there was any chance of saving him.” I tell all this just as my mother told it to me. It shows what a woman she was. My father recovered slowly, and it was the last summer they spent at The Meadows, the distance from all help in illness being too great.
The next May, 1845, they again moved to Canaan Seashore, where my mother had spent her first summer of married life. They went early in May and I was born on the 29th of that month. Naturally, I suppose, after all the sorrow and anxiety mamma had had, I was a miserably23 delicate,{100} nervous baby, and I have heard mamma say that for months they were afraid to take me out of the house at all. At the end of that time the house which papa was building on Pawley’s Island, just across the marsh24 and creek25 from Canaan, was finished, and they determined26 to move the household over to the island for the rest of the summer. That was my first outing, and the times I was taken out of the room afterward27 were few and far between, for it seems after going out I never closed my eyes at all that night. I was a poor sleeper28 at any time, but after going out I was no sleeper at all. The floor of my dear mother’s room on the beach is seamed all over by the marks of the rocking-chair in which I was eternally rocked! They had a hard struggle to keep me alive. Both mamma and papa wanted me named for the dear old aunt who had been such a blessing29 to everybody, so I was named Elizabeth Waties, mamma with tender sympathy giving me the name she would have borne had her dream of love materialized. I seemed to be marked for sadness, with deep lines under my eyes, as though I had already wept much, which I certainly had, only with a baby it is not weeping, but crying, with the accompaniment of much noise.{101}
The winter I was two years old, one Sunday mamma had gone with papa in a boat to All Saints’ Church, seven miles away on the Waccamaw. She looked out of the window as she listened to dear, saintly Mr. Glennie’s sermon, and across her vision passed a young man walking in the churchyard, holding by the hand little Ben, who had been allowed to go out when the sermon began. She was much excited, because she could not imagine what stranger could possibly be there. As he passed a second time she recognized her beloved brother Charles, whom she had not seen for several years. One can understand that the rest of Mr. Glennie’s excellent discourse30 was lost to her, and she could scarcely wait for the blessing, to rush out and meet the stranger.
He was in the army, having graduated from West Point in 1829. He told her he was on his way to Florida, and had managed to arrange to spend one day with her, but it could only be one. So when he reached the plantation and found she had gone by water to church so far away, he ordered a boat, and followed her, so as to lose nothing of his time with her. This visit was the greatest joy to my mother. He was her youngest brother and her special favorite. She was dis{102}tressed when he told her where he was going and why. The U. S. post at Tampa, Florida, had proved a very deadly one. One officer after another who had been sent there in command had contracted the terrible malarial31 fever of the country and died soon after getting there. His friend Ramsay had been ordered there, and he found him in despair one day, having just received his orders. He said he had a wife and a mother, both dependent on him, and it was awful to him to be going to certain death when he thought of them and what would become of them. Uncle Charles said at once: “Ramsay, I will take your place; if I apply for the exchange, I can get it, and I have no one dependent upon me, so I have the right to do it.” The exchange had been effected and Uncle Charles was on his way to take the place which West Point for years sang of in their class song, “Benny Havens32, Oh!” as “Tampa’s deadly shore.” Uncle Charles left early the next morning. By the time my next little brother came, a boy born the 31st of the next July, Uncle Charles had accomplished33 his sacrifice and fallen a victim to the fever, so the baby was named Charles Petigru; and everybody always loved him more than any of the other children. He was so beautiful{103} and so sweet and good that we all expected him to die, but he didn’t, but grew up to be a man and always a blessing to all around him.
Mamma’s grief at her brother’s death was great, but she had learned to suffer without rebellion, and as some wise one has written, “there is great peace and strength in an accepted sorrow.” She always felt very proud of the heroism34 and self-sacrifice of Uncle Charles’s death. “No greater love is there than that a man give his life for his friend”; that is not quoted exactly, but it sets a man very high. Now we are living in such a heroic time, with men giving their lives on the battle-field to save one another, every hour, that perhaps it does not seem as grand a thing. But when one thinks of a very young, handsome, popular man deliberately35 giving up a choice army post to take one which meant certain, unheroic, painful, and obscure death, it seems to me very, very heroic and beautiful. After Uncle Charles’s death—I think he was the seventh commanding officer of the Tampa post who died in quick succession—the post was given up. Wonderful to say, now since the science of stamping out disease has reached such a height, Tampa is a health resort! and one wonders what was the cause of that{104} death-dealing miasma36 which made the place so fatal. On our way to the Chicago Exposition, having to be some hours in Atlanta, we visited the military station there, and I met a Captain Ramsay, who told me he was the son of the officer whose life had been saved by my Uncle Charles Petigru’s generous heroism, and seemed quite excited to meet two nieces and three great-nieces of the heroic young lieutenant37 to whom his family owed so much.
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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prostrated
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| v.使俯伏，使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 )；（指疾病、天气等）使某人无能为力 | |
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6
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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fumigation
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| n.烟熏，熏蒸；忿恨 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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contagion
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| n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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12
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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18
jabbering
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| v.急切而含混不清地说( jabber的现在分词 )；急促兴奋地说话；结结巴巴 | |
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rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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piazza
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| n.广场；走廊 | |
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famished
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| adj.饥饿的 | |
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stimulants
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| n.兴奋剂( stimulant的名词复数 )；含兴奋剂的饮料；刺激物；激励物 | |
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miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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sleeper
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| n.睡眠者，卧车，卧铺 | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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malarial
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| 患疟疾的，毒气的 | |
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32
havens
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| n.港口，安全地方( haven的名词复数 )v.港口，安全地方( haven的第三人称单数 ) | |
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33
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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miasma
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| n.毒气；不良气氛 | |
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lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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