NESTING.
A fortnight passed. What with calls on his private skill, and appeals to his public zeal, Dr. Sevier was always loaded like a dromedary. Just now he was much occupied with the affairs of the great American people. For all he was the furthest remove from a mere party contestant or spoilsman, neither his righteous pugnacity nor his human sympathy would allow him to “let politics alone.” Often across this preoccupation there flitted a thought of the Richlings.
At length one day he saw them. He had been called by a patient, lodging near Madame Zénobie’s house. The proximity of the young couple occurred to him at once, but he instantly realized the extreme poverty of the chance that he should see them. To increase the improbability, the short afternoon was near its close,—an hour when people generally were sitting at dinner.
But what a coquette is that same chance! As he was driving up at the sidewalk’s edge before his patient’s door, the Richlings came out of theirs, the husband talking with animation, and the wife, all sunshine, skipping up to his side, and taking his arm with both hands, and attending eagerly to his words.
“Heels!” muttered the Doctor to himself, for the sound of Mrs. Richling’s gaiters betrayed that fact. Heels were an innovation still new enough to rouse the resentment of masculine conservatism. But for themshe would have pleased his sight entirely. Bonnets, for years microscopic, had again become visible, and her girlish face was prettily set in one whose flowers and ribbon, just joyous and no more, were reflected again in the double-skirted silkbarége; while the dark mantilla that drooped away from the broad lace collar, shading, without hiding, her “Parodi” waist, seemed made for that very street of heavy-grated archways, iron-railed balconies, and high lattices. The Doctor even accepted patiently the free northern step, which is commonly so repugnant to the southern eye.
A heightened gladness flashed into the faces of the two young people as they descried the physician.
“Good-afternoon,” they said, advancing.
“Good-evening,” responded the Doctor, and shook hands with each. The meeting was an emphatic pleasure to him. He quite forgot the young man’s lack of credentials.
“Out taking the air?” he asked.
“Looking about,” said the husband.
“Looking up new quarters,” said the wife, knitting her fingers about her husband’s elbow and drawing closer to it.
“Were you not comfortable?”
“Yes; but the rooms are larger than we need.”
“Ah!” said the Doctor; and there the conversation sank. There was no topic suited to so fleeting a moment, and when they had smiled all round again Dr. Sevier lifted his hat. Ah, yes, there was one thing.
“Have you found work?” asked the Doctor of Richling.
The wife glanced up for an instant into her husband’s face, and then down again.
“No,” said Richling, “not yet. If you should hearof anything, Doctor”—He remembered the Doctor’s word about letters, stopped suddenly, and seemed as if he might even withdraw the request; but the Doctor said:—
“I will; I will let you know.” He gave his hand to Richling. It was on his lips to add: “And should you need,” etc.; but there was the wife at the husband’s side. So he said no more. The pair bowed their cheerful thanks; but beside the cheer, or behind it, in the husband’s face, was there not the look of one who feels the odds against him? And yet, while the two men’s hands still held each other, the look vanished, and the young man’s light grasp had such firmness in it that, for this cause also, the Doctor withheld his patronizing utterance. He believed he would himself have resented it had he been in Richling’s place.
The young pair passed on, and that night, as Dr. Sevier sat at his fireside, an uncompanioned widower, he saw again the young wife look quickly up into her husband’s face, and across that face flit and disappear its look of weary dismay, followed by the air of fresh courage with which the young couple had said good-by.
“I wish I had spoken,” he thought to himself; “I wish I had made the offer.”
And again:—
“I hope he didn’t tell her what I said about the letters. Not but I was right, but it’ll only wound her.”
But Richling had told her; he always “told her everything;” she could not possibly have magnified wifehood more, in her way, than he did in his. May be both ways were faulty; but they were extravagantly, youthfully confident that they were not.
Unknown to Dr. Sevier, the Richlings had returnedfrom their search unsuccessful. Finding prices too much alike in Custom-house street they turned into Burgundy. From Burgundy they passed into Du Maine. As they went, notwithstanding disappointments, their mood grew gay and gayer. Everything that met the eye was quaint and droll to them: men, women, things, places,—all were more or less outlandish. The grotesqueness of the African, and especially the French-tongued African, was to Mrs. Richling particularly irresistible. Multiplying upon each and all of these things was the ludicrousness of the pecuniary strait that brought themselves and these things into contact. Everything turned to fun.
Mrs. Richling’s mirthful mood prompted her by and by to begin letting into her inquiries and comments covert double meanings, intended for her husband’s private understanding. Thus they crossed Bourbon street.
About there their mirth reached a climax; it was in a small house, a sad, single-story thing, cowering between two high buildings, its eaves, four or five feet deep, overshadowing its one street door and window.
“Looks like a shade for weak eyes,” said the wife.
They had debated whether they should enter it or not. He thought no, she thought yes; but he would not insist and she would not insist; she wished him to do as he thought best, and he wished her to do as she thought best, and they had made two or three false starts and retreats before they got inside. But they were in there at length, and busily engaged inquiring into the availability of a small, lace-curtained, front room, when Richling took his wife so completely off her guard by addressing her as “Madam,” in the tone and manner of Dr. Sevier, that she laughed in the face of the householder, who had been trying to talk English with a Frenchaccent and a hare-lip, and they fled with haste to the sidewalk and around the corner, where they could smile and smile without being villains.
“We must stop this,” said the wife, blushing. “Wemuststop it. We’re attracting attention.”
And this was true at least as to one ragamuffin, who stood on a neighboring corner staring at them. Yet there is no telling to what higher pitch their humor might have carried them if Mrs. Richling had not been weighted down by the constant necessity of correcting her husband’s statement of their wants. This she could do, because his exactions were all in the direction of her comfort.
“But, John,” she would say each time as they returned to the street and resumed their quest, “those things cost; you can’t afford them, can you?”
“Why, you can’t be comfortable without them,” he would answer.
“But that’s not the question, John. Wemusttake cheaper lodgings, mustn’t we?”
Then John would be silent, and by littles their gayety would rise again.
One landlady was so good-looking, so manifestly and entirely Caucasian, so melodious of voice, and so modest in her account of the rooms she showed, that Mrs. Richling was captivated. The back room on the second floor, overlooking the inner court and numerous low roofs beyond, was suitable and cheap.
“Yes,” said the sweet proprietress, turning to Richling, who hung in doubt whether it was quite good enough, “yesseh, I think you be pretty well in that room yeh.[1]Yesseh, I’m shoe you beverriewell; yesseh.”
“Can we get them at once?”
“Yes? At once? Yes? Oh, yes?”
No downward inflections from her.
“Well,”—the wife looked at the husband; he nodded,—“well, we’ll take it.”
“Yes?” responded the landlady; “well?” leaning against a bedpost and smiling with infantile diffidence, “you dunt want no ref’ence?”
“No,” said John, generously, “oh, no; we can trust each other that far, eh?”
“Oh, yes?” replied the sweet creature; then suddenly changing countenance, as though she remembered something. “But daz de troub’—de room not goin’ be vacate for t’ree mont’.”
She stretched forth her open palms and smiled, with one arm still around the bedpost.
“Why,” exclaimed Mrs. Richling, the very statue of astonishment, “you said just now we could have it at once!”
“Dis room?Oh, no; noddisroom.”
“I don’t see how I could have misunderstood you.”
The landlady lifted her shoulders, smiled, and clasped her hands across each other under her throat. Then throwing them apart she said brightly:—
“No, I say at Madame La Rose. Me, my room is all fill’. At Madame La Rose, I say, I think you be pritty well. I’m shoe you be verrie well at Madame La Rose. I’m sorry. But you kin paz yondeh—’tiz juz ad the cawneh? And I am shoe I think you be pritty well at Madame La Rose.”
She kept up the repetition, though Mrs. Richling, incensed, had turned her back, and Richling was saying good-day.
“She did say the room was vacant!” exclaimed the little wife, as they reached the sidewalk. But the nextmoment there came a quick twinkle from her eye, and, waving her husband to go on without her, she said, “You kin paz yondeh; at Madame La Rose I am shoe you be pritty sick.” Thereupon she took his arm,—making everybody stare and smile to see a lady and gentleman arm in arm by daylight,—and they went merrily on their way.
The last place they stopped at was in Royal street. The entrance was bad. It was narrow even for those two. The walls were stained by dampness, and the smell of a totally undrained soil came up through the floor. The stairs ascended a few steps, came too near a low ceiling, and shot forward into cavernous gloom to find a second rising place farther on. But the rooms, when reached, were a tolerably pleasant disappointment, and the proprietress a person of reassuring amiability.
She bestirred herself in an obliging way that was the most charming thing yet encountered. She gratified the young people every moment afresh with her readiness to understand or guess their English queries and remarks, hung her head archly when she had to explain away little objections, delivered her No sirs with gravity and her Yes sirs with bright eagerness, shook her head slowly with each negative announcement, and accompanied her affirmations with a gracious bow and a smile full of rice powder.
She rendered everything so agreeable, indeed, that it almost seemed impolite to inquire narrowly into matters, and when the question of price had to come up it was really difficult to bring it forward, and Richling quite lost sight of the economic rules to which he had silently acceded in theRue Du Maine.
“And you will carpet the floor?” he asked, hovering off of the main issue.
“Put coppit? Ah! cettainlee!” she replied, with a lovely bow and a wave of the hand toward Mrs. Richling, whom she had already given the same assurance.
“Yes,” responded the little wife, with a captivated smile, and nodded to her husband.
“We want to get the decentest thing that is cheap,” he said, as the three stood close together in the middle of the room.
The landlady flushed.
“No, no, John,” said the wife, quickly, “don’t you know what we said?” Then, turning to the proprietress, she hurried to add, “We want the cheapest thing that is decent.”
But the landlady had not waited for the correction.
“Dissent! You want somesindissent!” She moved a step backward on the floor, scoured and smeared with brick-dust, her ire rising visibly at every heart-throb, and pointing her outward-turned open hand energetically downward, added:—
“’Tis yeh!” She breathed hard. “Mais, no; you don’twantsomesin dissent. No!” She leaned forward interrogatively: “You want somesin tchip?” She threw both elbows to the one side, cast her spread hands off in the same direction, drew the cheek on that side down into the collar-bone, raised her eyebrows, and pushed her upper lip with her lower, scornfully.
At that moment her ear caught the words of the wife’s apologetic amendment. They gave her fresh wrath and new opportunity. For her new foe was a woman, and a woman trying to speak in defence of the husband against whose arm she clung.
“Ah-h-h!” Her chin went up; her eyes shot lightning; she folded her arms fiercely, and drew herself to herbest height; and, as Richling’s eyes shot back in rising indignation, cried:—
“Ziss pless? ’Tis not ze pless! Zis pless—is diss’nt pless! I am diss’nt woman, me! Fo w’at you come in yeh?”
“My dear madam! My husband”—
“Dass you’ uzban’?” pointing at him.
“Yes!” cried the two Richlings at once.
The woman folded her arms again, turned half-aside, and, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, simply remarked, with an ecstatic smile:—
“Humph!” and left the pair, red with exasperation, to find the street again through the darkening cave of the stair-way.
It was still early the next morning, when Richling entered his wife’s apartment with an air of brisk occupation. She was pinning her brooch at the bureau glass.
“Mary,” he exclaimed, “put something on and come see what I’ve found! The queerest, most romantic old thing in the city; the most comfortable—and the cheapest! Here, is this the wardrobe key? To save time I’ll get your bonnet.”
“No, no, no!” cried the laughing wife, confronting him with sparkling eyes, and throwing herself before the wardrobe; “I can’t let you touch my bonnet!”
There is a limit, it seems, even to a wife’s subserviency.
However, in a very short time afterward, by the feminine measure, they were out in the street, and people were again smiling at the pretty pair to see her arm in his, and she actuallykeeping step. ’Twas very funny.
As they went John described his discovery: A pair of huge, solid green gates immediately on the sidewalk, in the dull façade of a tall, red brick building with oldcarved vinework on its window and door frames. Hinges a yard long on the gates; over the gates a semi-circular grating of iron bars an inch in diameter; in one of these gates a wicket, and on the wicket a heavy, battered, highly burnished brass knocker. A short-legged, big-bodied, and very black slave to usher one through the wicket into a large, wide, paved corridor, where from the middle joist overhead hung a great iron lantern. Big double doors at the far end, standing open, flanked with diamond-paned side-lights of colored glass, and with an arch at the same, fan-shaped, above. Beyond these doors and showing through them, a flagged court, bordered all around by a narrow, raised parterre under pomegranate and fruit-laden orange, and over-towered by vine-covered and latticed walls, from whose ragged eaves vagabond weeds laughed down upon the flowers of the parterre below, robbed of late and early suns. Stairs old fashioned, broad; rooms, their choice of two; one looking down into the court, the other into the street; furniture faded, capacious; ceilings high; windows, each opening upon its own separate small balcony, where, instead of balustrades, was graceful iron scroll-work, centered by some long-dead owner’s monogram two feet in length; and on the balcony next the division wall, close to another on the adjoining property, a quarter circle of iron-work set like a blind-bridle, and armed with hideous prongs for house-breakers to get impaled on.
“Why, in there,” said Richling, softly, as they hurried in, “we’ll be hid from the whole world, and the whole world from us.”
The wife’s answer was only the upward glance of her blue eyes into his, and a faint smile.
The place was all it had been described to be, and more,—except in one particular.
“And my husband tells me”—The owner of saidhusband stood beside him, one foot a little in advance of the other, her folded parasol hanging down the front of her skirt from her gloved hands, her eyes just returning to the landlady’s from an excursion around the ceiling, and her whole appearance as fresh as the pink flowers that nestled between her brow and the rim of its precious covering. She smiled as she began her speech, but not enough to spoil what she honestly believed to be a very business-like air and manner. John had quietly dropped out of the negotiations, and she felt herself put upon her mettle as his agent. “And my husband tells me the price of this front room is ten dollars a month.”
“Munse?”
The respondent was a very white, corpulent woman, who constantly panted for breath, and was everywhere sinking down into chairs, with her limp, unfortified skirt dropping between her knees, and her hands pressed on them exhaustedly.
“Munse?” She turned from husband to wife, and back again, a glance of alarmed inquiry.
Mary tried her hand at French.
“Yes;oui, madame. Ten dollah the month—le mois.”
Intelligence suddenly returned. Madame made a beautiful, silent O with her mouth and two others with her eyes.
“Ahnon! By munse? No, madame. Ah-h! impossybl’! Bywick, yes; ten dollah de wick! Ah!”
She touched her bosom with the wide-spread fingers of one hand and threw them toward her hearers.
The room-hunters got away, yet not so quickly but they heard behind and above them her scornful laugh, addressed to the walls of the empty room.
A day or two later they secured an apartment, cheap, and—morally—decent; but otherwise—ah!
DISAPPEARANCE.
It was the year of a presidential campaign. The party that afterward rose to overwhelming power was, for the first time, able to put its candidate fairly abreast of his competitors. The South was all afire. Rising up or sitting down, coming or going, week-day or Sabbath-day, eating or drinking, marrying or burying, the talk was all of slavery, abolition, and a disrupted country.
Dr. Sevier became totally absorbed in the issue. He was too unconventional a thinker ever to find himself in harmony with all the declarations of any party, and yet it was a necessity of his nature to be in themêlée. He had his own array of facts, his own peculiar deductions; his own special charges of iniquity against this party and of criminal forbearance against that; his own startling political economy; his own theory of rights; his own interpretations of the Constitution; his own threats and warnings; his own exhortations, and his own prophecies, of which one cannot say all have come true. But he poured them forth from the mighty heart of one who loved his country, and sat down with a sense of duty fulfilled and wiped his pale forehead while the band played a polka.
It hardly need be added that he proposed to dispense with politicians, or that, when “the boys” presently counted him into their party team for campaign haranguing, he let them clap the harness upon him and splashed along in the mud with an intention as pure as snow.
“Hurrah for”—
Whom it is no matter now. It was not Fremont. Buchanan won the race. Out went the lights, down came the platforms, rockets ceased to burst; it was of no use longer to “Wait for the wagon”; “Old Dan Tucker” got “out of the way,” small boys were no longer fellow-citizens, dissolution was postponed, and men began to have an eye single to the getting of money.
A mercantile friend of Dr. Sevier had a vacant clerkship which it was necessary to fill. A bright recollection flashed across the Doctor’s memory.
“Narcisse!”
“Yesseh!”
“Go to Number 40 Custom-house street and inquire for Mr. Fledgeling; or, if he isn’t in, for Mrs. Fledge—humph! Richling, I mean; I”—
Narcisse laughed aloud.
“Ha-ha-ha! daz de way, sometime’! My hant she got a honcl’—he says, once ’pon a time”—
“Never mind! Go at once!”
“All a-ight, seh!”
“Give him this card”—
“Yesseh!”
“These people”—
“Yesseh!”
“Well, wait till you get your errand, can’t you? These”—
“Yesseh!”
“These people want to see him.”
“All a-ight, seh!”
Narcisse threw open and jerked off a worsted jacket, took his coat down from a peg, transferred a snowy handkerchief from the breast-pocket of the jacket to that of the coat, felt in his pantaloons to be sure that he hadhis match-case and cigarettes, changed his shoes, got his hat from a high nail by a little leap, and put it on a head as handsome as Apollo’s.
“Doctah Seveeah,” he said, “in fact, I fine that a ve’y gen’lemany young man, that Mistoo Itchlin, weely, Doctah.”
The Doctor murmured to himself from the letter he was writing.
“Well,au ’evoi’, Doctah; I’m goin’.”
Out in the corridor he turned and jerked his chin up and curled his lip, brought a match and cigarette together in the lee of his hollowed hand, took one first, fond draw, and went down the stairs as if they were on fire.
At Canal street he fell in with two noble fellows of his own circle, and the three went around by way of Exchange alley to get a glass of soda at McCloskey’s old down-town stand. His two friends were out of employment at the moment,—making him, consequently, the interesting figure in the trio as he inveighed against his master.
“Ah, phooh!” he said, indicating the end of his speech by dropping the stump of his cigarette into the sand on the floor and softly spitting upon it,—“leShylockde la rueCarondelet!”—and then in English, not to lose the admiration of the Irish waiter:—
“He don’t want to haugment me! I din hass ’im, because the ’lection. But you juz wait till dat firce of Jannawerry!”
The waiter swathed the zinc counter, and inquired why Narcisse did not make his demands at the present moment.
“W’y I don’t hass ’im now? Because w’en I hass ’im he know’ he’s got todoit! You thing I’m goin’ to kill myseff workin’?”
Nobody said yes, and by and by he found himself alivein the house of Madame Zénobie. The furniture was being sold at auction, and the house was crowded with all sorts and colors of men and women. A huge sideboard was up for sale as he entered, and the crier was crying:—
“Faw-ty-fi’ dollah! faw-ty-fi’ dollah, ladies an’ gentymen! On’y faw-ty-fi’ dollah fo’ thad magniffyzan sidebode!Quarante-cinque piastres, seulement, messieurs! Lesknobsvaut bien cette prix! Gentymen, de knobs is worse de money! Ladies, if you don’ stop dat talkin’, I will not sell one thing mo’!Et quarante cinque piastres—faw-ty-fi’ dollah”—
“Fifty!” cried Narcisse, who had not owned that much at one time since his father was a constable; realizing which fact, he slipped away upstairs and found Madame Zénobie half crazed at the slaughter of her assets.
She sat in a chair against the wall of the room the Richlings had occupied, a spectacle of agitated dejection. Here and there about the apartment, either motionless in chairs, or moving noiselessly about, and pulling and pushing softly this piece of furniture and that, were numerous vulture-like persons of either sex, waiting the up-coming of the auctioneer. Narcisse approached her briskly.
“Well, Madame Zénobie!”—he spoke in French—“is it you who lives here? Don’t you remember me? What! No? You don’t remember how I used to steal figs from you?”
The vultures slowly turned their heads. Madame Zénobie looked at him in a dazed way.
No, she did not remember. So many had robbed her—all her life.
“But you don’t look at me, Madame Zénobie. Don’t you remember, for example, once pulling a little boy—as little asthat—out of your fig-tree, and taking the half ofa shingle, split lengthwise, in your hand, and his head under your arm,—swearing you would do it if you died for it,—and bending him across your knee,”—he began a vigorous but graceful movement of the right arm, which few members of our fallen race could fail to recognize,—“and you don’t remember me, my old friend?”
She looked up into the handsome face with a faint smile of affirmation. He laughed with delight.
“The shingle wasthatwide. Ah! Madame Zénobie, you did it well!” He softly smote the memorable spot, first with one hand and then with the other, shrinking forward spasmodically with each contact, and throwing utter woe into his countenance. The general company smiled. He suddenly put on great seriousness.
“Madame Zénobie, I hope your furniture is selling well?” He still spoke in French.
She cast her eyes upward pleadingly, caught her breath, threw the back of her hand against her temple, and dashed it again to her lap, shaking her head.
Narcisse was sorry.
“I have been doing what I could for you, downstairs,—running up the prices of things. I wish I could stay to do more, for the sake of old times. I came to see Mr. Richling, Madame Zénobie; is he in? Dr. Sevier wants him.”
Richling? Why, the Richlings did not live there! The Doctor must know it. Why should she be made responsible for this mistake? It was his oversight. They had moved long ago. Dr. Sevier had seen them looking for apartments. Where did they live now? Ah, me!shecould not tell. Did Mr. Richling owe the Doctor something?
“Owe? Certainly not. The Doctor—on the contrary”—
Ah! well, indeed, she didn’t know where they lived, it is true; but the fact was, Mr. Richling happened to be there just then!—à-ç’t’eure! He had come to get a few trifles left by his madame.
Narcisse made instant search. Richling was not on the upper floor. He stepped to the landing and looked down. There he went!
“Mistoo ’Itchlin!”
Richling failed to hear. Sharper ears might have served him better. He passed out by the street door. Narcisse stopped the auction by the noise he made coming downstairs after him. He had some trouble with the front door,—lost time there, but got out.
Richling was turning a corner. Narcisse ran there and looked; looked up—looked down—looked into every store and shop on either side of the way clear back to Canal street; crossed it, went back to the Doctor’s office, and reported. If he omitted such details as having seen and then lost sight of the man he sought, it may have been in part from the Doctor’s indisposition to give him speaking license. The conclusion was simple: the Richlings could not be found.
The months of winter passed. No sign of them.
“They’ve gone back home,” the Doctor often said to himself. How much better that was than to stay where they had made a mistake in venturing, and become the nurslings of patronizing strangers! He gave his admiration free play, now that they were quite gone. True courage that Richling had—courage to retreat when retreat is best! And his wife—ah! what a reminder of—hush, memory!
“Yes, they must have gone home!” The Doctor spokevery positively, because, after all, he was haunted by doubt.
One spring morning he uttered a soft exclamation as he glanced at his office-slate. The first notice on it read:—
Please call as soon as you can at number 292 St. Mary street, corner of Prytania. Lower corner—opposite the asylum.John Richling.
Please call as soon as you can at number 292 St. Mary street, corner of Prytania. Lower corner—opposite the asylum.John Richling.
The place was far up in the newer part of the American quarter. The signature had the appearance as if the writer had begun to write some other name, and had changed it to Richling.
A QUESTION OF BOOK-KEEPING.
A day or two after Narcisse had gone looking for Richling at the house of Madame Zénobie, he might have found him, had he known where to search, in Tchoupitoulas street.
Whoever remembers that thoroughfare as it was in those days, when the commodious “cotton-float” had not quite yet come into use, and Poydras and other streets did not so vie with Tchoupitoulas in importance as they do now, will recall a scene of commercial hurly-burly that inspired much pardonable vanity in the breast of the utilitarian citizen. Drays, drays, drays! Not the light New York things; but big, heavy, solid affairs, many of them drawn by two tall mules harnessed tandem. Drays by threes and by dozens, drays in opposing phalanxes, drays in long processions, drays with all imaginable kinds of burden; cotton in bales, piled as high as the omnibuses; leaf tobacco in huge hogsheads; cases of linens and silks; stacks of raw-hides; crates of cabbages; bales of prints and of hay; interlocked heaps of blue and red ploughs; bags of coffee, and spices, and corn; bales of bagging; barrels, casks, and tierces; whisky, pork, onions, oats, bacon, garlic, molasses, and other delicacies; rice, sugar,—what was there not? Wines of France and Spain in pipes, in baskets, in hampers, in octaves; queensware from England; cheeses, like cart-wheels, from Switzerland; almonds, lemons, raisins, olives, boxes of citron,casks of chains; specie from Vera Cruz; cries of drivers, cracking of whips, rumble of wheels, tremble of earth, frequent gorge and stoppage. It seemed an idle tale to say that any one could be lacking bread and raiment. “We are a great city,” said the patient foot-passengers, waiting long on street corners for opportunity to cross the way.
On one of these corners paused Richling. He had not found employment, but you could not read that in his face; as well as he knew himself, he had come forward into the world prepared amiably and patiently to be, to do, to suffer anything, provided it was not wrong or ignominious. He did not see that even this is not enough in this rough world; nothing had yet taught him that one must often gently suffer rudeness and wrong. As to what constitutes ignominy he had a very young man’s—and, shall we add? a very American—idea. He could not have believed, had he been told, how many establishments he had passed by, omitting to apply in them for employment. He little dreamed he had been too select. He had entered not into any house of the Samaritans, to use a figure; much less, to speak literally, had he gone to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Mary, hiding away in uncomfortable quarters a short stone’s throw from Madame Zénobie’s, little imagined that, in her broad irony about his not hunting for employment, there was really a tiny seed of truth. She felt sure that two or three persons who had seemed about to employ him had failed to do so because they detected the defect in his hearing, and in one or two cases she was right.
Other persons paused on the same corner where Richling stood, under the same momentary embarrassment. One man, especially busy-looking, drew very near him. And then and there occurred this simple accident,—thatat last he came in contact with the man who had work to give him. This person good-humoredly offered an impatient comment on their enforced delay. Richling answered in sympathetic spirit, and the first speaker responded with a question:—
“Stranger in the city?”
“Yes.”
“Buying goods for up-country?”
It was a pleasant feature of New Orleans life that sociability to strangers on the street was not the exclusive prerogative of gamblers’ decoys.
“No; I’m looking for employment.”
“Aha!” said the man, and moved away a little. But in a moment Richling, becoming aware that his questioner was glancing all over him with critical scrutiny, turned, and the man spoke.
“D’you keep books?”
Just then a way opened among the vehicles; and the man, young and muscular, darted into it, and Richling followed.
“Icankeep books,” he said, as they reached the farther curb-stone.
The man seized him by the arm.
“D’you see that pile of codfish and herring where that tall man is at work yonder with a marking-pot and brush? Well, just beyond there is a boarding-house, and then a hardware store; you can hear them throwing down sheets of iron. Here; you can see the sign. See? Well, the next is my store. Go in there—upstairs into the office—and wait till I come.”
Richling bowed and went. In the office he sat down and waited what seemed a very long time. Could he have misunderstood? For the man did not come. There was a person sitting at a desk on the farther side of the office,writing, who had not lifted his head from first to last, Richling said:—
“Can you tell me when the proprietor will be in?”
The writer’s eyes rose, and dropped again upon his writing.
“What do you want with him?”
“He asked me to wait here for him.”
“Better wait, then.”
Just then in came the merchant. Richling rose, and he uttered a rude exclamation:—
“Iforgot you completely! Where did you say you kept books at, last?”
“I’ve not kept anybody’s books yet, but I can do it.”
The merchant’s response was cold and prompt. He did not look at Richling, but took a sample vial of molasses from a dirty mantel-piece and lifted it between his eyes and the light, saying:—
“You can’t do any such thing. I don’t want you.”
“Sir,” said Richling, so sharply that the merchant looked round, “if you don’t want me I don’t want you; but you mustn’t attempt to tell me that what I say is not true!” He had stepped forward as he began to speak, but he stopped before half his words were uttered, and saw his folly. Even while his voice still trembled with passion and his head was up, he colored with mortification. That feeling grew no less when his offender simply looked at him, and the man at the desk did not raise his eyes. It rather increased when he noticed that both of them were young—as young as he.
“I don’t doubt your truthfulness,” said the merchant, marking the effect of his forbearance; “but you ought to know you can’t come in and take charge of a large set of books in the midst of a busy season, when you’ve never kept books before.”
“I don’t know it at all.”
“Well, I do,” said the merchant, still more coldly than before. “There are my books,” he added, warming, and pointed to three great canvassed and black-initialled volumes standing in a low iron safe, “left only yesterday in such a snarl, by a fellow who had ‘never kept books, but knew how,’ that I shall have to open another set! After this I shall have a book-keeper who has kept books.”
He turned away.
Some weeks afterward Richling recalled vividly a thought that had struck him only faintly at this time: that, beneath much superficial severity and energy, there was in this establishment a certain looseness of management. It may have been this half-recognized thought that gave him courage, now, to say, advancing another step:—
“One word, if you please.”
“It’s no use, my friend.”
“It may be.”
“How?”
“Get an experienced book-keeper for your new set of books”—
“You can bet your bottom dollar!” said the merchant, turning again and running his hands down into his lower pockets. “And even he’ll have as much as he can do”—
“That is just what I wanted you to say,” interrupted Richling, trying hard to smile; “then you can let me straighten up the old set.”
“Give a new hand the work of an expert!”
The merchant almost laughed out. He shook his head and was about to say more, when Richling persisted:—
“If I don’t do the work to your satisfaction don’t pay me a cent.”
“I never make that sort of an arrangement; no, sir!”
Unfortunately it had not been Richling’s habit to show this pertinacity, else life might have been easier to him as a problem; but these two young men, his equals in age, were casting amused doubts upon his ability to make good his professions. The case was peculiar. He reached a hand out toward the books.
“Let me look over them for one day; if I don’t convince you the next morning in five minutes that I can straighten them I’ll leave them without a word.”
The merchant looked down an instant, and then turned to the man at the desk.
“What do you think of that, Sam?”
Sam set his elbows upon the desk, took the small end of his pen-holder in his hands and teeth, and, looking up, said:—
“I don’t know; you might—try him.”
“What did you say your name was?” asked the other, again facing Richling. “Ah, yes! Who are your references, Mr. Richmond?”
“Sir?” Richling leaned slightly forward and turned his ear.
“I say, who knows you?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody! Where are you from?”
“Milwaukee.”
The merchant tossed out his arm impatiently.
“Oh, I can’t do that kind o’ business.”
He turned abruptly, went to his desk, and, sitting down half-hidden by it, took up an open letter.
“I bought that coffee, Sam,” he said, rising again and moving farther away.
“Um-hum,” said Sam; and all was still.
Richling stood expecting every instant to turn on the next and go. Yet he went not. Under the dusty frontwindows of the counting-room the street was roaring below. Just beyond a glass partition at his back a great windlass far up under the roof was rumbling with the descent of goods from a hatchway at the end of its tense rope. Salesmen were calling, trucks were trundling, shipping clerks and porters were replying. One brawny fellow he saw, through the glass, take a herring from a broken box, and stop to feed it to a sleek, brindled mouser. Even the cat was valued; but he—he stood there absolutely zero. He saw it. He saw it as he never had seen it before in his life. This truth smote him like a javelin: that all this world wants is a man’s permission to do without him. Right then it was that he thought he swallowed all his pride; whereas he only tasted its bitter brine as like a wave it took him up and lifted him forward bodily. He strode up to the desk beyond which stood the merchant, with the letter still in his hand, and said:—
“I’ve not gone yet! I may have to be turned off by you, but not in this manner!”
The merchant looked around at him with a smile of surprise, mixed with amusement and commendation, but said nothing. Richling held out his open hand.
“I don’t ask you to trust me. Don’t trust me. Try me!”
He looked distressed. He was not begging, but he seemed to feel as though he were.
The merchant dropped his eyes again upon the letter, and in that attitude asked:—
“What do you say, Sam?”
“He can’t hurt anything,” said Sam.
The merchant looked suddenly at Richling.
“You’re not from Milwaukee. You’re a Southern man.”
Richling changed color.
“I said Milwaukee.”
“Well,” said the merchant, “I hardly know. Come and see me further about it to-morrow morning. I haven’t time to talk now.”
“Take a seat,” he said, the next morning, and drew up a chair sociably before the returned applicant. “Now, suppose I was to give you those books, all in confusion as they are, what would you do first of all?”
Mary fortunately had asked the same question the night before, and her husband was entirely ready with an answer which they had studied out in bed.
“I should send your deposit-book to bank to be balanced, and, without waiting for it, I should begin to take a trial-balance off the books. If I didn’t get one pretty soon, I’d drop that for the time being, and turn in and render the accounts of everybody on the books, asking them to examine and report.”
“All right,” said the merchant, carelessly; “we’ll try you.”
“Sir?” Richling bent his ear.
“All right; we’ll try you!I don’t care much about recommendations. I generally most always make up my opinion about a man from looking at him. I’m that sort of a man.”
He smiled with inordinate complacency.
So, week by week, as has been said already, the winter passed,—Richling on one side of the town, hidden away in his work, and Dr. Sevier on the other, very positive that the “young pair” must have returned to Milwaukee.
At length the big books were readjusted in all their hundreds of pages, were balanced, and closed. Much satisfaction was expressed; but another man had meantimetaken charge of the new books,—one who influenced business, and Richling had nothing to do but put on his hat.
However, the house cheerfully recommended him to a neighboring firm, which also had disordered books to be righted; and so more weeks passed. Happy weeks! Happy days! Ah, the joy of them! John bringing home money, and Mary saving it!
“But, John, it seems such a pity not to have stayed with A, B, & Co.; doesn’t it?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think they’ll last much longer.”
And when he brought word that A, B, & Co. had gone into a thousand pieces Mary was convinced that she had a very far-seeing husband.
By and by, at Richling’s earnest and restless desire, they moved their lodgings again. And thus we return by a circuit to the morning when Dr. Sevier, taking up his slate, read the summons that bade him call at the corner of St. Mary and Prytania streets.
WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.
The house stands there to-day. A small, pinched, frame, ground-floor-and-attic, double tenement, with its roof sloping toward St. Mary street and overhanging its two door-steps that jut out on the sidewalk. There the Doctor’s carriage stopped, and in its front room he found Mary in bed again, as ill as ever. A humble German woman, living in the adjoining half of the house, was attending to the invalid’s wants, and had kept her daughter from the public school to send her to the apothecary with the Doctor’s prescription.
“It is the poor who help the poor,” thought the physician.
“Is this your home?” he asked the woman softly, as he sat down by the patient’s pillow. He looked about upon the small, cheaply furnished room, full of the neat makeshifts of cramped housewifery.
“It’s mine,” whispered Mary. Even as she lay there in peril of her life, and flattened out as though Juggernaut had rolled over her, her eyes shone with happiness and scintillated as the Doctor exclaimed in undertone:—
“Yours!” He laid his hand upon her forehead. “Where is Mr. Richling?”
“At the office.” Her eyes danced with delight. She would have begun, then and there, to tell him all that had happened,—“had taken care of herself all along,” she said, “until they began to move. In moving, had beenobligedto overwork—hardlyfixedyet”—
But the Doctor gently checked her and bade her be quiet.
“I will,” was the faint reply; “I will; but—just one thing, Doctor, please let me say.”
“Well?”
“John”—
“Yes, yes; I know; he’d be here, only you wouldn’t let him stay away from his work.”
She smiled assent, and he smiled in return.
“‘Business is business,’” he said.
She turned a quick, sparkling glance of affirmation, as if she had lately had some trouble to maintain that ancient truism. She was going to speak again, but the Doctor waved his hand downward soothingly toward the restless form and uplifted eyes.
“All right,” she whispered, and closed them.
The next day she was worse. The physician found himself, to use his words, “only the tardy attendant of offended nature.” When he dropped his finger-ends gently upon her temple she tremblingly grasped his hand.
“You’ll save me?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he replied; “we’ll do that—the Lord helping us.”
A glad light shone from her face as he uttered the latter clause. Whereat he made haste to add:—
“I don’t pray, but I’m sure you do.”
She silently pressed the hand she still held.
On Sunday he found Richling at the bedside. Mary had improved considerably in two or three days. She lay quite still as they talked, only shifting her glance softly from one to the other as one and then the other spoke. The Doctor heard with interest Richling’s full account of all that had occurred since he had met them last together. Mary’s eyes filled with merriment whenJohn told the droller part of their experiences in the hard quarters from which they had only lately removed. But the Doctor did not so much as smile. Richling finished, and the physician was silent.
“Oh, we’re getting along,” said Richling, stroking the small, weak hand that lay near him on the coverlet. But still the Doctor kept silence.
“Of course,” said Richling, very quietly, looking at his wife, “we mustn’t be surprised at a backset now and then. But we’re getting on.”
Mary turned her eyes toward the Doctor. Was he not going to assent at all? She seemed about to speak. He bent his ear, and she said, with a quiet smile:—
“‘When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.’”
The physician gave only a heavy-eyed “Humph!” and a faint look of amusement.
“What did she say?” said Richling; the words had escaped his ear. The Doctor repeated it, and Richling, too, smiled.
Yet it was a good speech,—why not? But the patient also smiled, and turned her eyes toward the wall with a disconcerted look, as if the smile might end in tears. For herein lay the very difficulty that always brought the Doctor’s carriage to the door,—the cradle would not rock.
For a few days more that carriage continued to appear, and then ceased. Richling dropped in one morning at Number 3½ Carondelet, and settled his bill with Narcisse.
The young Creole was much pleased to be at length brought into actual contact with a man of his own years, who, without visible effort, had made an impression on Dr. Sevier.
Until the money had been paid and the bill receipted nothing more than a formal business phrase or twopassed between them. But as Narcisse delivered the receipted bill, with an elaborate gesture of courtesy, and Richling began to fold it for his pocket, the Creole remarked:—
“I ’ope you will excuse the ’an’-a-’iting.”
Richling reopened the paper; the penmanship was beautiful.
“Do you ever write better than this?” he asked. “Why, I wish I could write half as well!”
“No; I do not fine that well a-’itten. I cannot see ’ow that is,—I nevva ’ite to the satizfagtion of my abil’ty soon in the mawnin’s. I am dest’oying my chi’og’aphy at that desk yeh.”
“Indeed?” said Richling; “why, I should think”—
“Yesseh, ’tis the tooth. But consunning the chi’og’aphy, Mistoo Itchlin, I ’ave descovvud one thing to a maul cettainty, and that is, if I ’ave something to ’ite to a young lady, I always dizguise my chi’og’aphy. Ha-ah! I ’ave learn that! You will be aztonizh’ to see in ’ow many diffe’n’ fawm’ I can make my ’an’-a-’iting to appeah. That paz thoo my fam’ly, in fact, Mistoo Itchlin. My hant, she’s got a honcle w’at use’ to be cluck in a bank, w’at could make the si’natu’e of the pwesiden’, as well as of the cashieh, with that so absolute puffegtion, that they tu’n ’im out of the bank! Yesseh. In fact, I thing you ought to know ’ow to ’ite a ve’y fine ’an’, Mistoo Itchlin.”
“N-not very,” said Richling; “my hand is large and legible, but not well adapted for—book-keeping; it’s too heavy.”
“You ’ave the ’ight physio’nomie, I am shu’. You will pe’haps believe me with difficulty, Mistoo Itchlin, but I assu’ you I can tell if a man ’as a fine chi’og’aphy aw no, by juz lookin’ upon his liniment. Do you know that Benjamin Fwanklin ’ote a v’ey fine chi’og’aphy, infact? Also, Voltaire. Yesseh. An’ Napoleon Bonaparte. Lawd By’on muz ’ave ’ad a beaucheouz chi’og’aphy. ’Tis impossible not to be, with that face. He is my favo’ite poet, that Lawd By’on. Moze people pwefeh ’im to Shakspere, in fact. Well, you muz go? I am ve’y ’appy to meck yo’ acquaintanze, Mistoo Itchlin, seh. I am so’y Doctah Seveeah is not theh pwesently. The negs time you call, Mistoo Itchlin, you muz not be too much aztonizh to fine me gone from yeh. Yesseh. He’s got to haugment me ad the en’ of that month, an’ we ’ave to-day the fifteenth Mawch. Do you smoke, Mistoo Itchlin?” He extended a package of cigarettes. Richling accepted one. “I smoke lawgely in that weatheh,” striking a match on his thigh. “I feel ve’y sultwy to-day. Well,”—he seized the visitor’s hand,—“au’ evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin.” And Narcisse returned to his desk happy in the conviction that Richling had gone away dazzled.
GENTLES AND COMMONS.
Dr. Sevier sat in the great easy-chair under the drop-light of his library table trying to read a book. But his thought was not on the page. He expired a long breath of annoyance, and lifted his glance backward from the bottom of the page to its top.
Why must his mind keep going back to that little cottage in St. Mary street? What good reason was there? Would they thank him for his solicitude? Indeed! He almost smiled his contempt of the supposition. Why, when on one or two occasions he had betrayed a least little bit of kindly interest,—what? Up had gone their youthful vivacity like an umbrella. Oh, yes!—like all young folks—theiraffairs were intensely private. Once or twice he had shaken his head at the scantiness of all their provisions for life. Well? They simply and unconsciously stole a hold upon one another’s hand or arm, as much as to say, “To love is enough.” When, gentlemen of the jury, it isn’t enough!
“Pshaw!” The word escaped him audibly. He drew partly up from his half recline, and turned back a leaf of the book to try once more to make out the sense of it.
But there was Mary, and there was her husband. Especially Mary. Her image came distinctly between his eyes and the page. There she was, just as on his last visit,—a superfluous one—no charge,—sitting and plying her needle, unaware of his approach, gently movingher rocking-chair, and softly singing, “Flow on, thou shining river,”—the song his own wife used to sing. “O child, child! do you think it’s always going to be ‘shining’?” They shouldn’t be so contented. Was pride under that cloak? Oh, no, no! But even if the content was genuine, it wasn’t good. Why, they oughtn’t to beableto be happy so completely out of their true sphere. It showed insensibility. But, there again,—Richling wasn’t insensible, much less Mary.
The Doctor let his book sink, face downward, upon his knee.
“They’re too big to be playing in the sand.” He took up the book again. “’Tisn’t my business to tell them so.” But before he got the volume fairly before his eyes his professional bell rang, and he tossed the book upon the table.
“Well, why don’t you bring him in?” he asked, in a tone of reproof, of a servant who presented a card; and in a moment the visitor entered.
He was a person of some fifty years of age, with a patrician face, in which it was impossible to tell where benevolence ended and pride began. His dress was of fine cloth, a little antique in cut, and fitting rather loosely on a form something above the medium height, of good width, but bent in the shoulders, and with arms that had been stronger. Years, it might be, or possibly some unflinching struggle with troublesome facts, had given many lines of his face a downward slant. He apologized for the hour of his call, and accepted with thanks the chair offered him.
“You are not a resident of the city?” asked Dr. Sevier.
“I am from Kentucky.” The voice was rich, and thestranger’s general air one of rather conscious social eminence.
“Yes?” said the Doctor, not specially pleased, and looked at him closer. He wore a black satin neck-stock, and dark-blue buttoned gaiters. His hair was dyed brown. A slender frill adorned his shirt-front.
“Mrs.”—the visitor began to say, not giving the name, but waving his index-finger toward his card, which Dr. Sevier had laid upon the table, just under the lamp,—“my wife, Doctor, seems to be in a very feeble condition. Her physicians have advised her to try the effects of a change of scene, and I have brought her down to your busy city, sir.”
The Doctor assented. The stranger resumed:—
“Its hurry and energy are a great contrast to the plantation life, sir.”
“They’re very unlike,” the physician admitted.
“This chafing of thousands of competitive designs,” said the visitor, “this great fretwork of cross purposes, is a decided change from the quiet order of our rural life. Hmm! There everything is under the administration of one undisputed will, and is executed by the unquestioning obedience of our happy and contented slave peasantry. I prefer the country. But I thought this was just the change that would arouse and electrify an invalid who has really no tangible complaint.”
“Has the result been unsatisfactory?”
“Entirely so. I am unexpectedly disappointed.” The speaker’s thought seemed to be that the climate of New Orleans had not responded with that hospitable alacrity which was due so opulent, reasonable, and universally obeyed a guest.
There was a pause here, and Dr. Sevier looked aroundat the book which lay at his elbow. But the visitor did not resume, and the Doctor presently asked:—
“Do you wish me to see your wife?”
“I called to see you alone first,” said the other, “because there might be questions to be asked which were better answered in her absence.”
“Then you think you know the secret of her illness, do you?”
“I do. I think, indeed I may say I know, it is—bereavement.”
The Doctor compressed his lips and bowed.
The stranger drooped his head somewhat, and, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, laid the tips of his thumbs and fingers softly together.
“The truth is, sir, she cannot recover from the loss of our son.”
“An infant?” asked the Doctor. His bell rang again as he put the question.
“No, sir; a young man,—one whom I had thought a person of great promise; just about to enter life.”
“When did he die?”
“He has been dead nearly a year. I”— The speaker ceased as the mulatto waiting-man appeared at the open door, with a large, simple, German face looking easily over his head from behind.
“Toctor,” said the owner of this face, lifting an immense open hand, “Toctor, uf you bleace, Toctor, you vill bleace ugscooce me.”
The Doctor frowned at the servant for permitting the interruption. But the gentleman beside him said:—
“Let him come in, sir; he seems to be in haste, sir, and I am not,—I am not, at all.”
“Come in,” said the physician.
The new-comer stepped into the room. He was about six feet three inches in height, three feet six in breadth, and the same in thickness. Two kindly blue eyes shone softly in an expanse of face that had been clean-shaven every Saturday night for many years, and that ended in a retreating chin and a dewlap. The limp, white shirt-collar just below was without a necktie, and the waist of his pantaloons, which seemed intended to supply this deficiency, did not quite, but only almost reached up to the unoccupied blank. He removed from his respectful head a soft gray hat, whitened here and there with flour.
“Yentlemen,” he said, slowly, “you vill ugscooce me to interruptet you,—yentlemen.”
“Do you wish to see me?” asked Dr. Sevier.
The German made an odd gesture of deferential assent, lifting one open hand a little in front of him to the level of his face, with the wrist bent forward and the fingers pointing down.
“Uf you bleace, Toctor, I toose; undt tat’s te fust time I effertitvanted a toctor. Undt you mus’ ugscooce me, Toctor, to callin’ on you, ovver I vish you come undt see mine”—
To the surprise of all, tears gushed from his eyes.
“Mine poor vife, Toctor!” He turned to one side, pointed his broad hand toward the floor, and smote his forehead.
“I yoost come in fun mine paykery undt comin’ into mine howse, fen—I see someting”—he waved his hand downward again—“someting—layin’ on te—floor—face pleck ans a nigger’s; undt fen I look to see who udt iss,—udt is Mississ Reisen! Toctor, I vish you come right off! I couldn’t shtayndt udt you toandt come right avay!”
“I’ll come,” said the Doctor, without rising; “justwrite your name and address on that little white slate yonder.”
“Toctor,” said the German, extending and dipping his hat, “I’m ferra much a-velcome to you, Toctor; undt tat’s yoost fot te pottekerra by mine corner sayt you vould too. He sayss, ‘Reisen,’ he sayss, ‘you yoost co to Toctor Tsewier.’” He bent his great body over the farther end of the table and slowly worked out his name, street, and number. “Dtere udt iss, Toctor; I put udt town on teh schlate; ovver, I hope you ugscooce te hayndtwriding.”
“Very well. That’s right. That’s all.”
The German lingered. The Doctor gave a bow of dismission.
“That’s all, I say. I’ll be there in a moment. That’s all. Dan, order my carriage!”
“Yentlemen, you vill ugscooce me?”
The German withdrew, returning each gentleman’s bow with a faint wave of the hat.
During this interview the more polished stranger had sat with bowed head, motionless and silent, lifting it only once and for a moment at the German’s emotional outburst. Then the upward and backward turned face was marked with a commiseration partly artificial, but also partly natural. He now looked up at the Doctor.
“I shall have to leave you,” said the Doctor.
“Certainly, sir,” replied the other; “by all means!” The willingness was slightly overdone and the benevolence of tone was mixed with complacency. “By all means,” he said again; “this is one of those cases where it is only a proper grace in the higher to yield place to the lower.” He waited for a response, but the Doctor merely frowned into space and called for his boots. The visitor resumed:—
“I have a good deal of feeling, sir, for the unlettered and the vulgar. They have their station, but they have also—though doubtless in smaller capacity than we—their pleasures and pains.”
Seeing the Doctor ready to go, he began to rise.
“I may not be gone long,” said the physician, rather coldly; “if you choose to wait”—
“I thank you; n-no-o”—The visitor stopped between a sitting and a rising posture.
“Here are books,” said the Doctor, “and the evening papers,—‘Picayune,’ ‘Delta,’ ‘True Delta.’” It seemed for a moment as though the gentleman might sink into his seat again. “And there’s the ‘New York Herald.’”
“No, sir!” said the visitor quickly, rising and smoothing himself out; “nothing from that quarter, if you please.” Yet he smiled. The Doctor did not notice that, while so smiling, he took his card from the table. There was something familiar in the stranger’s face which the Doctor was trying to make out. They left the house together. Outside the street door the physician made apologetic allusion to their interrupted interview.
“Shall I see you at my office to-morrow? I would be happy”—
The stranger had raised his hat. He smiled again, as pleasantly as he could, which was not delightful, and said, after a moment’s hesitation:—
“—Possibly.”