Page 47 of Calling on the Matchmaker
“Because you want me all for yourself.”
“I’m not falling in line to worship you the way all the other women do.”
“Is that a fact?”
“’Tis a fact.”
He slid her a sideways glance, one with brows cocked that said he knew her defenses against him were crumbling.
But the truth was, even if she lowered her resistance to him once in a while, she was still planning to dissolve their match after Enya was found and her parents weren’t so overwhelmed with their runaway daughter. As much as Finola was beginning to like Riley, her place was in the convent, where her life would be regimented and all her guilt would finally go away.
A call from the tenement across the street drew his attention. Several men, including the doctor, were exiting the building and now crossing toward Riley.
He tipped up the brim of his hat, stopped the cart, and waited for them.
Their expressions were grave as they approached. Finola had seen that look before during her visits. And it usually meant someone had died.
The doctor was the first to reach Riley. He glanced around as though he was afraid of anyone else hearing and lowered his voice. “I regret to inform you, we have our first death from cholera in the city.” The doctor nodded toward the tenement across the street.
Cholera. At the dreaded word, Riley tensed.
He hopped down, helped Finola off the wagon, and together they followed the doctor into the dingy tenement, which was asfilthy and run-down as the one they’d just been in. The stench of feces, however, was worse.
As the doctor and other men covered their noses with handkerchiefs, she did the same, although it only helped a little.
They descended into the lower level, darker and more dismal than the apartments on the upper levels. And dank. The chill in the air rivaled the stench.
Finola had been too young in the early 1830s to remember the cholera epidemic in St. Louis when hundreds had died. But she’d heard the reports of the recent cholera outbreaks in Europe, killing thousands upon thousands of people so quickly that the healthy couldn’t keep up with the burials and were dumping bodies into mass graves and rivers.
With so many immigrants coming into St. Louis, she’d suspected it would only be a matter of time before the unstoppable disease came to the city, especially because the immigrants were talking about how cholera had devastated New Orleans and Vicksburg.
Now, as she peeked into the room and took in the pale, almost blue, lifeless form with sunken eyes, stiff limbs, and skin that was abnormally wrinkled, she couldn’t keep from trembling. Another man lay listlessly on the floor nearby the corpse, and he was vomiting violently into a basin.
Aye, she’d heard the tales. First came the vomiting, then the bowel discharges and abdominal pain, until the skin became blue and wrinkled. After intense suffering, the person often died within a day, sometimes sooner.
No one knew how the “Blue Death” spread, but most believed it was passed in the very air they breathed, especially the putrid fumes emitted from rotting matter.
Finola pressed her handkerchief closer to her mouth and nose, praying she would keep from inhaling the dangerous vapors. They stayed inside only a moment longer before retreating to the street.
Once outside, she gulped in breaths of air. Even if it, too, was rank with the stench of sewage and coal smoke and flesh from the nearby slaughterhouses, it was better than what was inside the tenement.
For a short while, Riley conversed with the doctor and the other men about ways to contain the disease so they wouldn’t have an outbreak. Already several families were sick in the Kerry Patch. And there were likely other cases they didn’t know about.
As she and Riley went on their way, the gravity of what they’d witnessed overshadowed everything else, and they rode in silence. Riley finally spoke. “There’s much to be done in the tenements to prevent the spread.”
“Aye, to be sure. We’ll visit every day and do what we can.” She didn’t realize she’d included Riley in her plans until after the words emerged.
He nodded as though it was natural for them to make plans to work together to stop the spread of the illness. “Will the Sisters of Charity be willing to help more often?”
“Of that I have no doubt.”
She believed, as the Sisters did, that God’s people couldn’t hide or cower when it came time to assist those in need—the sick, the hungry, the destitute. No matter the risk to themselves, the Sisters were always the first to serve. She wanted to follow their example.
“You were good with the immigrants today.” Riley’s voice held admiration.
“So were you.”
“Then you agree that we make a great team?”
