A crown of shame, volume 1 (of 3)

It was the close of the hot season in San Diego, and the thunderous clouds that hung over the island rendered the atmosphere still more oppressive. Liz, the Doctor’s daughter, stood at the open door of their leaf-thatched bungalow, gazing out into the starless night, and wondering when the rain would come, to relieve the intense heat and disseminate the sickness that was so rapidly thinning the population. The stillness was so unbroken that one might almost be said to feel it. Not a breath of air stirred the light feathery branches of the bamboo, not even the chirp of a solitary insect could be distinguished from their covert in the long grass, nor a note from the songsters that crowded the surrounding woods. The trailing creepers that hung like a gorgeous eastern canopy of crimson and purple and orange from the roof of the verandah, brushed their blossoms against her face, as she thrust it into the night, but they brought no sense of refreshment with them. Liz felt stifled for want of air, as she withdrew from the verandah, and re-entered the bungalow, with a deep-drawn sigh. But the sigh was for others. She was not a woman to make otherwise than lightly of her own pain or inconvenience. To witness suffering or distress, and be unable to relieve it, that was the great drawback of life to Elizabeth Fellows. She was not a girl, and the existence she led had tended to make her older than her age. She was five-and-twenty, and ever since she was a little child she had been motherless, and brought up to depend upon herself, and to minister to others rather than be ministered to. Her father, Dr Fellows, was generally considered to be a reserved, morose, and rather disagreeable man: but Liz knew otherwise. She was his only child, and ever since she could remember they two had lived together, and alone, and he had been both mother and father to her. He was not lively and talkative, even to Liz--but she had always felt that he was unhappy, though something in his manner had forbidden her inquiring the cause of his reticence and melancholy. But he had never said an unkind word to her. Gravely and affectionately he had brought his daughter up to help him in his work, and Liz, who possessed an active, clever brain and a large amount of courage, had taken an immense interest in the science of medicine and surgery, and knew almost as much about it as himself. Dr Fellows left all the simple cases in his daughter’s hands, and for a long time past she had been almost worshipped amongst the negro population of San Diego, as a species of white angel who came to their women and their children with healing in her hands. And both the Doctor and his daughter had had plenty of work to do during the last few months. Fever was reigning paramount in San Diego. Both Europeans and natives had been falling around them like rotten sheep; and with the epidemic had come a murrain on the rice-fields and sugar-cane plantations, so that the people had to contend with starvation as well as disease; and awful rumours of mutiny and insurrection had commenced to make the residents and planters feel alarmed. Inside the Doctor’s cottage were grouped some score of negresses, most of them with infants in their arms. Their work was over for the day, and this was the hour when they came to Liz to have their bottles refilled with medicines, and to show her what progress their wailing little ones had made.

As she stepped back amongst them, her face assumed an expression of pity and sympathy for their distress, that did indeed make her look like an angel of goodness. She was not a beautiful woman--far from it--but it is not, as a rule, the most beautiful faces that are the most comforting to look upon in a time of difficulty or danger.

Liz had a tall, well-developed figure, which her plain print dress showed off to perfection. Her skin was clear, and soft, and white, and her abundant fair hair was tucked smoothly away behind her ears, and twisted into a knot at the back of her head. Her grey eyes beamed with a tender, kindly light, that had no power to conceal her feelings, and her firm, well-shaped mouth showed firmness and decision. In fact, she was a typical English woman, with rather a majestic bearing about her, as if she knew her power and rejoiced in it. But, above all, she was a woman to love and trust in,--one who would never tell a lie nor betray a friend, and yet who, once convinced that her own trust had been betrayed, would stamp the image of the offender from her heart, if she died under the process. As the negresses caught sight of her again, they were startled to see the tears upon her cheeks, hardly believing they were shed for them.

‘Missy feeling ill?’ ‘Missy like a little wine?’ ‘I go calling Massa to see Missy?’

‘No! No! What are you talking about? I am as well as possible!’ cried Liz, hastily brushing her tears away. ‘I was only thinking.’

‘Ah, Missy,’ said one poor mother, regarding an attenuated morsel of humanity which lay just breathing and no more across her lap, ‘I thinkin’ my little Sambo never run about again!’

‘Don’t lose heart, Chrissie,’ replied Liz, in her grave, sweet voice, as she knelt down and laid her hand on the baby’s forehead. ‘He is very weak, poor little fellow, but so long as he can eat, there is hope for him. I will change his medicine, and perhaps we shall have the rain by to-morrow. A few cool nights would set him up again.’

‘Ah! Missy very good to say so, but we shall have plenty more weeks hot weather yet. Poor little Sambo under ground before the rain sets in.’

‘And my poor girl can’t stand no ways!’ cried another; ‘and Rosa’s boy die this afternoon.’

‘Oh, what can I do--what can I do for you all?’ exclaimed Liz, with her hands to her head.

At this moment, the group in the Doctor’s bungalow was augmented by a fresh arrival. This was Rosa, the yellow girl, who rushed in like a whirlwind, with her dead child in her arms. Liz had taken an interest in this girl, but it was one which Rosa strongly resented. Her child was born out of wedlock, and the gentle remonstrances on her conduct which the Doctor’s daughter had urged upon her, had been taken by the uneducated creature as an insult rather than a kindness. Her poor little dead Carlo had been tended as carefully as any of Liz’s other patients, but the bereaved mother chose to think it otherwise, as she burst in upon them.

‘He is dead!’ she cried frantically, as she almost flung the body upon the table. ‘And now, perhaps you will be satisfied, Miss Lizzy. Now you will be glad to think there is one bastard child less on my massa’s plantation, and that I have nothing--nothing left to remind me of my lover who has sailed away to America.’

‘Oh, Rosa! how can you so misjudge me?’ said Liz, as she put one arm round the weeping girl. But Rosa flung it off.

‘It is true!’ she exclaimed fiercely; ‘you said he had better never have been born, and now you have taken no trouble to keep him in this world. I suppose you thought it would be a right punishment for my sin. But I hate you--and the punishment shall come back on your own head! I hope I shall live to see the day when you shall weep as I weep, and have nothing left you but the burden of the shame.’

‘Rosa, you are not yourself! You do not know what you are saying,’ replied Lizzy calmly. ‘It is God Who has taken your baby to Himself, and neither I nor any one could have kept him here. Try and think of it like that, Rosa. Think of little Carlo, happy and well for ever in the gardens of heaven, and you will not speak so wildly and bitterly again.’

‘I shall! I shall!’ cried the girl, in the same tone, as she seized the body again and strained it in her arms; ‘and I shall never feel satisfied, Missy Liz, till you suffer as I have done.’

And with that she rushed out again into the darkness.

Liz leant against the table, and trembled. These were the things that had the power to upset her. To toil for these people early and late; to be at their beck and call whenever they chose to summons her; to lie awake at night thinking of the best means to relieve their trouble, and then to meet with ingratitude and reproaches. It did indeed seem hard! But it did not make her voice less sweet whilst addressing the others. The room in which they were assembled was long and narrow--the only sitting-room in the bungalow--and furnished with severe simplicity. The matted floor, the cane chairs, and plain unvarnished table, all told of a life of labour rather than of luxury, and except for Liz Fellows’ desk and workbox, and a few books which lay scattered about, it contained few traces of occupation. Yet it was the very absence of such things that proved the inmates of the cottage were too busy to think of much beyond their profession. A large cupboard, with a window in it, at the end of the apartment, served as a surgery, and there Liz soon turned to mix the febrifuges and tonics required by her patients. As she did so, she was greeted by a newcomer.

‘Hullo! Miss Fellows, as busy as usual, I suppose, and no time even to bid a poor mariner welcome.’

Liz turned at the sound of the cheery voice, with her welcome ready in her eyes.

‘Oh, Captain Norris! Are you back again already? When did you arrive?’

The stranger’s face fell.

‘_Back again already!_ And I’ve been absent from San Diego for at least six months, and thinking they felt like six years! When did I arrive? Why, this evening! The “Trevelyan” dropped anchor exactly at six o’clock, and directly I could get away, I came up to see you.’

‘It is very good of you, and my father will be delighted to see you. I expect him in every minute. Sit down, Captain Norris, whilst I mix the medicines for these poor women, who are anxious to get to their homes again, and then I will hear all your news.’

She looked so cool and collected as, having dismissed her patients, she drew a chair to the table and sat down beside him, that Captain Norris did not know where to begin. He was a fine handsome young man, with dark eyes and hair; the skipper of a merchant vessel, and every inch a sailor; and he was very much in love with Lizzie Fellows. He carried several neatly tied up parcels in his hands, but he was too nervous to allude to them at once.

‘I am sorry to find you have fever in the island,’ he said, by way of a commencement.

‘Oh, it is terrible--a regular plague!’ replied Lizzie; ‘and though my father has worked early and late amongst the negroes, we have lost patients by the dozen. It is sickening to hear of the numbers of deaths, and to witness the trouble;--enough to break one’s heart.’

‘But you keep well?’ he inquired anxiously.

‘Oh, yes! Nothing ever ails me! I have too much to do, and no time to be ill. But I am very sad, and somewhat disheartened.’

‘Mr Courtney must have experienced a great loss.’

‘Yes! His plantation is sadly thinned, but the deaths have been chiefly amongst the children. Mr Courtney is very good to them, and spares no expense to provide them with comforts. It is no one’s fault. It is the will of God, and we must wait patiently till He removes the scourge. But there is great distress, and even starvation, amongst the native population in other parts of the island, and some degree of insubordination.’