By then, Margaret had been tirelessly by her side since Friday and seemed so exhausted that I felt it my duty to offer my assistance. And so it was that I spent that day and night by Mrs. Stanley’s door, alerting Margaret whenever Mrs. Stanley, waking from her sleep, cried out, in a weak voice, for those medicines that would relieve her pain.
That Monday morning I reluctantly took my leave but promised to return within the hour, as I thought to solicit a few days off from the warehouse, a request that did not sit well with Mr. Ellison. Ruddy-skinned, and somewhat obese, he had been eating an apple when I entered his office and barely seemed to care about some “old lady in her last throes.” Perhaps a spirit of independence, entirely new, had been aroused in me by my days in New Orleans, but I found myself telling Mr. Ellison that, indeed, whether he believed me or not, and whether he wanted me to or not, I would be taking time off, and that no job, however important it may seem to those who rank profits over human life, could keep me there.
“Good. Then go and take your Welsh arse out of here. And don’t come back,” he told me bluntly.
SUDDENLY WITHOUT EMPLOYMENT, I RETURNED to Mrs. Stanley’s house and spent the next three days helping in what ways I could.
I have seen death come in many forms in my years, but never has a person appeared so serene before the mysterious prospect awaiting her as did dear Frances. What death is I then did not know: If it enters as a change of light, a slight mist, or a dim sound in the air, I still cannot say, nor will I know until my own time comes. But back then, being so young and never having witnessed the process so closely, I was filled with more fear than pity and an excruciating sense of helplessness. Quietly I sat beside the broad bed in which she rested, in wonderment over how someone I had only known for some few months seemed so important to my well-being. From the salted air of a ship in the mid-Atlantic I had gone into a death room in New Orleans: How strange did that fact seem to me.
When the hour arrived, Margaret and I gathered by her side. When she recognized me, her pupils widened, and she began to whisper.
“Ah, my boy, oh, the pleasant times we’ve had,” she said. “When I am in the sweet peace… please, do not forget my husband; look after him.” Then: “Oh, God bless you, my boy.”
I was holding her hand in my own when that faint pulse stopped beating; her eyes were opened tranquilly wide and fixed upon that distant place.
AT FIRST, I THOUGHT that the funeral arrangements would fall to me, for Mr. Stanley himself, somewhere upriver, had not yet heard of this tragic event, and, in any case, he was at least a week or so away. But it happened that Mr. Stanley’s older brother, Captain John Stanley, had arrived by brig from Havana the previous evening, and coming to that house the next morning, to pay his sister-in-law what he thought would be an ordinary visit, he was grieved to hear the sad news. Looming over me as I explained the situation, he seemed bemused by my presence in that house.
“Who are you, anyway?” he asked me, without so much as a syllable of condolence in his voice. I explained my friendship with his brother and the story of our days, but to this he was indifferent. Yet in my confused and forlorn state, it relieved me to learn that he, of a more forceful personality than my own, had determined to take care of the funeral arrangements himself. Shortly we shook hands, and he saw me out the door.
Three days later, as I was sitting in my attic room in Mrs. Williams’s boardinghouse, bleakly pondering my future, I received a note from Margaret: Mrs. Stanley had been embalmed and shipped upriver in a leaden casket to St. Louis: Mr. Stanley himself, located in Memphis and informed of his wife’s death by telegram, would go there for the funeral.
MY SUBSEQUENT DAYS WERE DEVOTED to a search for work among the other merchant warehouses in the district, but my last employer, Mr. Ellison, had launched a campaign against me and besmirched my name by accusations of indolence. But as I made my way up and down that strip, speaking with one merchant and the other, I learned that there were no jobs available, even if he had not resorted to such chicanery. I even tracked down Mr. Richardson, whom I had counted as a friend, but he was reduced in circumstances on account of his age, and now, as a lowly clerk himself, could be of no help to me. For a period, I mainly lolled around Mrs. Williams’s house reading books — I even managed to finish my Gibbon.
Still, my fortunes changed again. During a dinner at Mrs. Williams’s boardinghouse, I heard about a certain elderly captain on a frigate called the Dido who had fallen ill from drinking the Mississippi river water. He needed an assistant, a sailor told me, willing to contend with the unpleasant nature of a bilious dysentery; I signed on, meeting the poor man as he lay in his bunk: an old fellow, he had the bearded face of a patriarch, his skin saffron-colored, his features haggard and drawn. And yet, worn down as he seemed, he was coming out of the yellow fever; and though my olfactory senses were at first offended by, as Shakespeare would have put it, a “bottom that hath no bottom,” I had dutifully set out to restore to cleanliness both his person and the conditions in his cabin. I was on this frigate for a month, the first three weeks of which had been anxiety-provoking, as he, a pious and kindly man, had seemed perpetually close to death.
But one day he was well enough to take the sea air, and as he stood on the poop deck, tottering beside me — I had to hold him up — the fresh breezes seemed to make him feel better.
At the end of that month, when he was fully himself again and had no further need of me, this captain, having ascertained from my demeanor that I was in a lowly state of mind, sought to counsel me. “You have spoken of your friend Mr. Stanley and of his many kindnesses to you. Should you not,” he asked me, “put your life of petty odd jobs behind you and seek him out? If you have been discouraged, think of me: In one moment I was lying about in a filthy state; the next I was on the deck of my frigate taking in the sea air on a bright and sunny day. Take me at my word — seek out your friend and see what will happen. Go to St. Louis.”
AFOOT IN THE CITY AGAIN, I returned to Mr. Stanley’s house on St. Charles Avenue to inquire as to his whereabouts, but no one was at home, Margaret having departed. Back at Mrs. Williams’s, where all my possessions were stored, I had hoped to find some piece of correspondence from Mr. Stanley awaiting me, and, thankfully, a note from him had arrived: It was addressed from the Planters House Hotel in St. Louis and dated November 11, 1859. This is how I recall it:
Dear Master Rowlands,
I have been told of your unflinching kindness during my late wife’s sufferings, may God bless her soul. I have also become aware of certain audacities regarding your tenure with your new employers. Rest assured, stalwart young man, that upon my return to New Orleans I will attend to the resolution of your current discomforts. When that will be I do not know, as we are settling many matters of estate in St. Louis.
With best wishes,