“Well, madam,” replied the physician, with unusual tenderness of tone, and looking at Richling while he spoke, “of course you’ll do as you think best.”
“Oh! my poor Reisen!” exclaimed the wife, wringing her hands.
“Yes,” said the physician, rising and looking out of the window, “I am afraid it will be ruin to Reisen.”
“No, it won’t be such a thing,” said Mrs. Reisen, turning this way and that in her chair as the physician moved from place to place. “Mr. Richlin’,”—turning to him,—“Mr. Richlin’ and me kin run the business yust so good as Reisen.” She shifted her distressed gaze back and forth from Richling to the Doctor. The latter turned to Richling:—
“I’ll have to leave this matter to you.”
Richling nodded.
“Where is Reisen?” asked the Doctor. “In his own room, upstairs?” The three passed through an inner door.
MIRAGE.
“This spoils some of your arrangements, doesn’t it?” asked Dr. Sevier of Richling, stepping again into his carriage. He had already said the kind things, concerning Reisen, that physicians commonly say when they have little hope. “Were you not counting on an early visit to Milwaukee?”
Richling laughed.
“That illusion has been just a little beyond reach for months.” He helped the Doctor shut his carriage-door.
“But now, of course—” said the physician.
“Of course it’s out of the question,” replied Richling; and the Doctor drove away, with the young man’s face in his mind bearing an expression of simple emphasis that pleased him much.
Late at night Richling, in his dingy little office, unlocked a drawer, drew out a plump package of letters, and began to read their pages,—transcripts of his wife’s heart, pages upon pages, hundreds of precious lines, dates crowding closely one upon another. Often he smiled as his eyes ran to and fro, or drew a soft sigh as he turned the page, and looked behind to see if any one had stolen in and was reading over his shoulder. Sometimes his smile broadened; he lifted his glance from the sheet and fixed it in pleasant revery on the blank wall before him. Often the lines were entirely taken up with mere utterances of affection. Now and then they were all about little Alice, who hadfretted all the night before, her gums being swollen and tender on the upper left side near the front; or who had fallen violently in love with the house-dog, by whom, in turn, the sentiment was reciprocated; or whose eyes were really getting bluer and bluer, and her cheeks fatter and fatter, and who seemed to fear nothing that had existence. And the reader of the lines would rest one elbow on the desk, shut his eyes in one hand, and see the fair young head of the mother drooping tenderly over that smaller head in her bosom. Sometimes the tone of the lines was hopefully grave, discussing in the old tentative, interrogative key the future and its possibilities. Some pages were given to reminiscences,—recollections of all the droll things and all the good and glad things of the rugged past. Every here and there, but especially where the lines drew toward the signature, the words of longing multiplied, but always full of sunshine; and just at the end of each letter love spurned its restraints, and rose and overflowed with sweet confessions.
Sometimes these re-read letters did Richling good; not always. Maybe he read them too often. It was only the very next time that the Doctor’s carriage stood before the bakery that the departing physician turned before he reëntered the vehicle, and—whatever Richling had been saying to him—said abruptly:—
“Richling, are you falling out of love with your work?”
“Why do you ask me that?” asked the young man, coloring.
“Because I no longer see that joy of deliverance with which you entered upon this humble calling. It seems to have passed like a lost perfume, Richling. Have you let your toil become a task once more?”
Richling dropped his eyes and pushed the ground with the toe of his boot.
“I didn’t want you to find that out, Doctor.”
“I was afraid, from the first, it would be so,” said the physician.
“I don’t see why you were.”
“Well, I saw that the zeal with which you first laid hold of your work was not entirely natural. It was good, but it was partly artificial,—the more credit to you on that account. But I saw that by and by you would have to keep it up mainly by your sense of necessity and duty. ‘That’ll be the pinch,’ I said; and now I see it’s come. For a long time you idealized the work; but at last its real dulness has begun to overcome you, and you’re discontented—and with a discontentment that you can’t justify, can you?”
“But I feel myself growing smaller again.”
“No wonder. Why, Richling, it’s the discontent makes that.”
“Oh, no! The discontent makes me long to expand. I never had so much ambition before. But what can I do here? Why, Doctor, I ought to be—I might be”—
The physician laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“Stop, Richling. Drop those phrases and give us a healthy ‘I am,’ and ‘I must,’ and ‘I will.’ Don’t—don’tbe like so many! You’re not of the many. Richling, in the first illness in which I ever attended your wife, she watched her chance and asked me privately—implored me—not to let her die, for your sake. I don’t suppose that tortures could have wrung from her, even if she realized it,—which I doubt,—the true reason. But don’t you feel it? It was because your moral nature needs her so badly. Stop—let me finish. You need Mary back here now to hold you square to your course by the tremendous power of her timid little ‘Don’t you think?’ and ‘Doesn’t it seem?’”
“Doctor,” replied Richling, with a smile of expostulation, “you touch one’s pride.”
“Certainly I do. You’re willing enough to say that you love her and long for her, but not that your moral manhood needs her. And yet isn’t it true?”
“It sha’n’t be true,” said Richling, swinging a playful fist. “‘Forewarned is forearmed;’ I’ll not allow it. I’m man enough for that.” He laughed, with a touch of pique.
“Richling,”—the Doctor laid a finger against his companion’s shoulder, preparing at the same time to leave him,—“don’t be misled. A man who doesn’t need a wife isn’t fit to have one.”
“Why, Doctor,” replied Richling, with sincere amiability, “you’re the man of all men I should have picked out to prove the contrary.”
“No, Richling, no. I wasn’t fit, and God took her.”
In accordance with Dr. Sevier’s request Richling essayed to lift the mind of the baker’s wife, in the matter of her husband’s affliction, to that plane of conviction where facts, and not feelings, should become her motive; and when he had talked until his head reeled, as though he had been blowing a fire, and she would not blaze for all his blowing—would be governed only by a stupid sentimentality; and when at length she suddenly flashed up in silly anger and accused him of interested motives; and when he had demanded instant retraction or release from her employment; and when she humbly and affectionately apologized, and was still as deep as ever in hopeless, clinging sentimentalisms, repeating the dictums of her simple and ignorant German neighbors and intimates, and calling them in to argue with him, the feeling that the Doctor’s exhortation had for the moment driven away came back with more force than ever, and he couldonly turn again to his ovens and account-books with a feeling of annihilation.
“Where am I? What am I?” Silence was the only answer. The separation that had once been so sharp a pain had ceased to cut, and was bearing down upon him now with that dull, grinding weight that does the damage in us.
Presently came another development: the lack of money, that did no harm while it was merely kept in the mind, settled down upon the heart.
“It may be a bad thing to love, but it’s a good thing to have,” he said, one day, to the little rector, as this friend stood by him at a corner of the high desk where Richling was posting his ledger.
“But not to seek,” said the rector.
Richling posted an item and shook his head doubtingly.
“That depends, I should say, on how much one seeks it, and how much of it he seeks.”
“No,” insisted the clergyman. Richling bent a look of inquiry upon him, and he added:—
“The principle is bad, and you know it, Richling. ‘Seek ye first’—you know the text, and the assurance that follows with it—‘all these things shall be added’”—
“Oh, yes; but still”—
“‘But still!’” exclaimed the little preacher; “why must everybody say ‘but still’? Don’t you see that that ‘but still’ is the refusal of Christians to practise Christianity?”
Richling looked, but said nothing; and his friend hoped the word had taken effect. But Richling was too deeply bitten to be cured by one or two good sayings. After a moment he said:—
“I used to wonder to see nearly everybody strugglingto be rich, but I don’t now. I don’t justify it, but I understand it. It’s flight from oblivion. It’s the natural longing to be seen and felt.”
“Why isn’t it enough to be felt?” asked the other. “Here, you make bread and sell it. A thousand people eat it from your hand every day. Isn’t that something?”
“Yes; but it’s all the bread. The bread’s everything; I’m nothing. I’m not asked to do or to be. I may exist or not; there will be bread all the same. I see my remark pains you, but I can’t help it. You’ve never tried the thing. You’ve never encountered the mild contempt that people in ease pay to those who pursue the ‘industries.’ You’ve never suffered the condescension of rank to the ranks. You don’t know the smart of being only an arithmetical quantity in a world of achievements and possessions.”
“No,” said the preacher, “maybe I haven’t. But I should say you are just the sort of man that ought to come through all that unsoured and unhurt. Richling,”—he put on a lighter mood,—“you’ve got a moral indigestion. You’ve accustomed yourself to the highest motives, and now these new notions are not the highest, and you know and feel it. They don’t nourish you. They don’t make you happy. Where are your old sentiments? What’s become of them?”
“Ah!” said Richling, “I got them from my wife. And the supply’s nearly run out.”
“Get it renewed!” said the little man, quickly, putting on his hat and extending a farewell hand. “Excuse me for saying so. I didn’t intend it; I dropped in to ask you again the name of that Italian whom you visit at the prison,—the man I promised you I’d go and talk to. Yes—Ristofalo; that’s it. Good-by.”
That night Richling wrote to his wife. What he wrote goes not down here; but he felt as he wrote that his mood was not the right one, and when Mary got the letter she answered by first mail:—
“Will you not let me come to you? Is it not surely best? Say but the word, and I’ll come. It will be the steamer to Chicago, railroad to Cairo, and a St. Louis boat to New Orleans. Alice will be both company and protection, and no burden at all. O my beloved husband! I am just ungracious enough to think, some days, that these times of separation are the hardest of all. When we were suffering sickness and hunger together—well, we weretogether. Darling, if you’ll just say come, I’ll come in aninstant. Oh, how gladly! Surely, with what you tell me you’ve saved, and with your place so secure to you, can’t we venture to begin again? Alice and I can live with you in the bakery. O my husband! if you but say the word, a little time—a few days will bring us into your arms. And yet, do not yield to my impatience; I trust your wisdom, and know that what you decide will be best. Mother has been very feeble lately, as I have told you; but she seems to be improving, and now I see what I’ve half suspected for a long time, and ought to have seen sooner, that my husband—my dear, dear husband—needs me most; and I’m coming—I’mcoming, John, if you’ll only say come.Your lovingMary.”
“Will you not let me come to you? Is it not surely best? Say but the word, and I’ll come. It will be the steamer to Chicago, railroad to Cairo, and a St. Louis boat to New Orleans. Alice will be both company and protection, and no burden at all. O my beloved husband! I am just ungracious enough to think, some days, that these times of separation are the hardest of all. When we were suffering sickness and hunger together—well, we weretogether. Darling, if you’ll just say come, I’ll come in aninstant. Oh, how gladly! Surely, with what you tell me you’ve saved, and with your place so secure to you, can’t we venture to begin again? Alice and I can live with you in the bakery. O my husband! if you but say the word, a little time—a few days will bring us into your arms. And yet, do not yield to my impatience; I trust your wisdom, and know that what you decide will be best. Mother has been very feeble lately, as I have told you; but she seems to be improving, and now I see what I’ve half suspected for a long time, and ought to have seen sooner, that my husband—my dear, dear husband—needs me most; and I’m coming—I’mcoming, John, if you’ll only say come.Your lovingMary.”
RISTOFALO AND THE RECTOR.
Be Richling’s feelings what they might, the Star Bakery shone in the retail firmament of the commercial heavens with new and growing brilliancy. There was scarcely time to talk even with the tough little rector who hovers on the borders of this history, and he might have become quite an alien had not Richling’s earnest request made him one day a visitor, as we have seen him express his intention of being, in the foul corridors of the parish prison, and presently the occupant of a broken chair in the apartment apportioned to Raphael Ristofalo and two other prisoners. “Easy little tasks you cut out for your friends,” said the rector to Richling when next they met. “I got preachedto—not to say edified. I’ll share my edification with you!” He told his experience.
It was a sinister place, the prison apartment. The hand of Kate Ristofalo had removed some of its unsightly conditions and disguised others; but the bounds of the room, walls, ceiling, windows, floor, still displayed, with official unconcern, the grime and decay that is commonly thought good enough for men charged, rightly or wrongly, with crime.
The clergyman’s chair was in the centre of the floor. Ristofalo sat facing him a little way off on the right. A youth of nineteen sat tipped against the wall on the left, and a long-limbed, big-boned, red-shirted young Irishman occupied a poplar table, hanging one of his legs across acorner of it and letting the other down to the floor. Ristofalo remarked, in the form of polite acknowledgment, that the rector had preached to the assembled inmates of the prison on the Sunday previous.
“Did I say anything that you thought was true?” asked the minister.
The Italian smiled in the gentle manner that never failed him.
“Didn’t listen much,” he said. He drew from a pocket of his black velveteen pantaloons a small crumpled tract. It may have been a favorite one with the clergyman, for the youth against the wall produced its counterpart, and the man on the edge of the table lay back on his elbow, and, with an indolent stretch of the opposite arm and both legs, drew a third one from a tin cup that rested on a greasy shelf behind him. The Irishman held his between his fingers and smirked a little toward the floor. Ristofalo extended his toward the visitor, and touched the caption with one finger: “Mercy offered.”
“Well,” asked the rector, pleasantly, “what’s the matter with that?”
“Is no use yeh. Wrong place—this prison.”
“Um-hm,” said the tract-distributor, glancing down at the leaf and smoothing it on his knee while he took time to think. “Well, why shouldn’t mercy be offered here?”
“No,” replied Ristofalo, still smiling; “ought offer justice first.”
“Mr. Preacher,” asked the young Irishman, bringing both legs to the front, and swinging them under the table, “d’ye vote?”
“Yes; I vote.”
“D’ye call yerself a cidizen—with a cidizen’s rights an’ djuties?”
“I do.”
“That’s right.” There was a deep sea of insolence in the smooth-faced, red-eyed smile that accompanied the commendation. “And how manny times have ye bean in this prison?”
“I don’t know; eight or ten times. That rather beats you, doesn’t it?”
Ristofalo smiled, the youth uttered a high rasping cackle, and the Irishman laughed the heartiest of all.
“A little,” he said; “a little. But nivver mind. Ye say ye’ve bin here eight or tin times; yes. Well, now, will I tell ye what I’d do afore and iver I’d kim back here ag’in,—if I was you now? Will I tell ye?”
“Well, yes,” replied the visitor, amiably; “I’d like to know.”
“Well, surr, I’d go to the mair of this city and to the judge of the criminal coort, and to the gov’ner of the Sta-ate, and to the ligislatur, if needs be, and I’d say, ‘Gintlemin, I can’t go back to that prison! There is more crimes a-being committed by the people outside ag’in the fellies in theyre than—than—than the—the fellies in theyre has committed ag’in the people! I’m ashamed to preach theyre! I’m afeered to do ud!’” The speaker slipped off the table, upon his feet. “‘There’s murrder a-goun’ on in theyre! There’s more murrder a-bein’ done in theyre nor there is outside! Justice is a-bein’ murdered theyre ivery hour of day and night!’”
He brandished his fist with the last words, but dropped it at a glance from Ristofalo, and began to pace the floor along his side of the room, looking with a heavy-browed smile back and forth from one fellow-captive to the other. He waited till the visitor was about to speak, and then interrupted, pointing at him suddenly:—
“Ye’re a Prodez’n preacher! I’ll bet ye fifty dollars ye have a rich cherch! Full of leadin’ cidizens!”
“You’re correct.”
“Well, I’d go an’—an’—an’ I’d say, ‘Dawn’t ye nivver ax me to go into that place ag’in a-pallaverin’ about mercy, until ye gid ud chaynged from the hell on earth it is to a house of justice, wheyre min gits the sintences that the coorts decrees!’Idon’t complain in here.Hedon’t complain,” pointing to Ristofalo; “ye’ll nivver hear a complaint from him. But go look in that yaird!” He threw up both hands with a grimace of disgust—“Aw!”—and ceased again, but continued his walk, looked at his fellows, and resumed:—
“Ilistened to yer sermon. I heerd ye talkin’ about the souls of uz. Do ye think ye kin make anny of thim min believe ye cayre for the souls of us whin ye do nahthing for thebodiesthat’s before yer eyes tlothed in rrags and stairved, and made to sleep on beds of brick and stone, and to receive a hundred abuses a day that was nivver intended to be a pairt ofannybody’s sintince—and manny of’m not tried yit, an’ nivver a-goun’ to have annythin’ proved ag’in ’m? Howcanye come offerin’ uz merrcy? For ye don’t come out o’ the tloister, like a poor Cat’lic priest or Sister. Ye come rright out o’ the hairt o’ the community that’s a-committin’ more crimes ag’in uz in here than all of us together has iver committed outside. Aw!—Bring us a better airticle of yer own justice ferst—I doan’t cayre howcroolit is, so ut’sjustice—an’thinpreach about God’s mercy. I’ll listen to ye.”
Ristofalo had kept his eyes for the most of the time on the floor, smiling sometimes more and sometimes less. Now, however, he raised them and nodded to the clergyman. He approved all that had been said. The Irishman wentand sat again on the table and swung his legs. The visitor was not allowed to answer before, and must answer now. He would have been more comfortable at the rectory.
“My friend,” he began, “suppose, now, I should say that you are pretty nearly correct in everything you’ve said?”
The prisoner, who, with hands grasping the table’s edge on either side of him, was looking down at his swinging brogans, simply lifted his lurid eyes without raising his head, and nodded. “It would be right,” he seemed to intimate, “but nothing great.”
“And suppose I should say that I’m glad I’ve heard it, and that I even intend to make good use of it?”
His hearer lifted his head, better pleased, but not without some betrayal of the distrust which a lower nature feels toward the condescensions of a higher. The preacher went on:—
“Would you try to believe what I have to add to that?”
“Yes, I’d try,” replied the Irishman, looking facetiously from the youth to Ristofalo. But this time the Italian was grave, and turned his glance expectantly upon the minister, who presently replied:—
“Well, neither my church nor the community has sent me here at all.”
The Irishman broke into a laugh.
“Did God send ye?” He looked again to his comrades, with an expanded grin. The youth giggled. The clergyman met the attack with serenity, waited a moment and then responded:—
“Well, in one sense, I don’t mind saying—yes.”
“Well,” said the Irishman, still full of mirth, andswinging his legs with fresh vigor, “he’d aht to ’a’ sint ye to the ligislatur.”
“I’m in hopes he will,” said the little rector; “but”—checking the Irishman’s renewed laughter—“tell me why should other men’s injustice in here stop me from preaching God’s mercy?”
“Because it’s pairtyourinjustice! Yedocome from yer cherch, an’ yedocome from the community, an’ ye can’t deny ud, an’ ye’d ahtn’t to be comin’ in here with yer sweet tahk and yer eyes tight shut to the crimes that’s bein’ committed ag’in uz for want of an outcry against ’em by you preachers an’ prayers an’ thract-disthributors.” The speaker ceased and nodded fiercely. Then a new thought occurred to him, and he began again abruptly:—
“Look ut here! Ye said in yer serrmon that as to Him”—he pointed through the broken ceiling—“we’re all criminals alike, didn’t ye?”
“I did,” responded the preacher, in a low tone.
“Yes,” said Ristofalo; and the boy echoed the same word.
“Well, thin, what rights has some to be out an’ some to be in?”
“Only one right that I know of,” responded the little man; “still that is a good one.”
“And that is—?” prompted the Irishman.
“Society’s right to protect itself.”
“Yes,” said the prisoner, “to protect itself. Thin what right has it to keep a prison like this, where every man an’ woman as goes out of ud goes out a blacker devil, and cunninger devil, and a more dangerous devil, nor when he came in? Is that anny protection? Why shouldn’t such a prison tumble down upon the heads of thim as built it? Say.”
“I expect you’ll have to ask somebody else,” said the rector. He rose.
“Ye’re not a-goun’!” exclaimed the Irishman, in broad affectation of surprise.
“Yes.”
“Ah! come, now! Ye’re not goun’ to be beat that a-way by a wild Mick o’ the woods?” He held himself ready for a laugh.
“No, I’m coming back,” said the smiling clergyman, and the laugh came.
“That’s right! But”—as if the thought was a sudden one—“I’ll be dead by thin, willn’t I? Of coorse I will.”
“Yes?” rejoined the clergyman. “How’s that?”
The Irishman turned to the Italian.
“Mr. Ristofalo, we’re a-goin to the pinitintiary, aint we?”
Ristofalo nodded.
“Of coorse we air! Ah! Mr. Preechur, that’s the place!”
“Worse than this?”
“Worse? Oh, no! It’s better. This is slow death, but that’s quick and short—and sure. If it don’t git ye in five year’, ye’re an allygatur. This place? It’s heaven to ud!”
SHALL SHE COME OR STAY?
Richling read Mary’s letter through three times without a smile. The feeling that he had prompted the missive—that it was partly his—stood between him and a tumult of gladness. And yet when he closed his eyes he could see Mary, all buoyancy and laughter, spurning his claim to each and every stroke of the pen. It was all hers, all!
As he was slowly folding the sheet Mrs. Reisen came in upon him. It was one of those excessively warm spring evenings that sometimes make New Orleans fear it will have no May. The baker’s wife stood with her immense red hands thrust into the pockets of an expansive pinafore, and her three double chins glistening with perspiration. She bade her manager a pleasant good-evening.
Richling inquired how she had left her husband.
“Kviet, Mr. Richlin’, kviet. Mr. Richlin’, I pelief Reisen kittin petter. If he don’t gittin’ better, how come he’ss every day a little more kvieter, and sit’ still and don’t say nutting to nobody?”
“Mrs. Reisen, my wife is asking me to send for her”—Richling gave the folded letter a little shake as he held it by one corner—“to come down here and live again.”
“Now, Mr. Richlin’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I will shwear!” She dropped into a seat.“Right in de bekinning o’ summer time! Vell, vell, vell! And you told me Mrs. Richling is a sentsible voman! Vell, I don’t belief dat I efer see a young voman w’at aint de pickest kind o’ fool apowt her hussbandt. Vell, vell!—And she comin’ down heah ’n’ choost kittin’ all your money shpent, ’n’ den her mudter kittin’ vorse ’n’ she got ’o go pack akin!”
“Why, Mrs. Reisen,” exclaimed Richling, warmly. “you speak as if you didn’t want her to come.” He contrived to smile as he finished.
“Vell,—of—course!Youdon’t vant her to come, do you?”
Richling forced a laugh.
“Seems to me ’twould be natural if I did, Mrs. Reisen. Didn’t the preacher say, when we were married, ‘Let no man put asunder’?”
“Oh, now, Mr. Richlin’, dere aindt nopotty a-koin’ to put you under!—’less-n it’s your vife. Vot she want to come down for? Don’t I takin’ koot care you?” There was a tear in her eye as she went out.
An hour or so later the little rector dropped in.
“Richling, I came to see if I did any damage the last time I was here. My own words worried me.”
“You were afraid,” responded Richling, “that I would understand you to recommend me to send for my wife.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t understand you so.”
“Well, my mind’s relieved.”
“Mine isn’t,” said Richling. He laid down his pen and gathered his fingers around one knee. “Why shouldn’t I send for her?”
“You will, some day.”
“But I mean now.”
The clergyman shook his head pleasantly.
“I don’t think that’s what you mean.”
“Well, let that pass. I know what I do mean. I mean to get out of this business. I’ve lived long enough with these savages.” A wave of his hand indicated the wholepersonnelof the bread business.
“I would try not to mind their savageness, Richling,” said the little preacher, slowly. “The best of us are only savages hid under a harness. If we’re not, we’ve somehow made a loss.” Richling looked at him with amused astonishment, but he persisted. “I’m in earnest! We’ve had something refined out of us that we shouldn’t have parted with. Now, there’s Mrs. Reisen. I like her. She’s a good woman. If the savage can stand you, why can’t you stand the savage?”
“Yes, true enough. Yet—well, I must get out of this, anyway.”
The little man clapped him on the shoulder.
“Climbout. See here, you Milwaukee man,”—he pushed Richling playfully,—“what areyoudoing with these Southern notions of ours about the ‘yoke of menial service,’ anyhow?”
“I was not born in Milwaukee,” said Richling.
“And you’ll not die with these notions, either,” retorted the other. “Look here, I am going. Good-by. You’ve got to get rid of them, you know, before your wife comes. I’m glad you are not going to send for her now.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Oh, you don’t know what you’d do,” said Richling.
The little preacher eyed him steadily for a moment, and then slowly returned to where he still sat holding his knee.
They had a long talk in very quiet tones. At the end the rector asked:—
“Didn’t you once meet Dr. Sevier’s two nieces—at his house?”
“Yes,” said Richling.
“Do you remember the one named Laura?—the dark, flashing one?”
“Yes.”
“Well,—oh, pshaw! I could tell you something funny, but I don’t care to do it.”
What he did not care to tell was, that she had promised him five years before to be his wife any day when he should say the word. In all that time, and this very night, one letter, one line almost, and he could have ended his waiting; but he was not seeking his own happiness.
They smiled together. “Well, good-by again. Don’t think I’m always going to persecute you with my solicitude.”
“I’m not worth it,” said Richling, slipping slowly down from his high stool and letting the little man out into the street.
A little way down the street some one coming out of a dark alley just in time to confront the clergyman extended a hand in salutation.
“Good-evenin’, Mr. Blank.”
He took the hand. It belonged to a girl of eighteen, bareheaded and barefooted, holding in the other hand a small oil-can. Her eyes looked steadily into his.
“You don’t know me,” she said, pleasantly.
“Why, yes, now I remember you. You’re Maggie.”
“Yes,” replied the girl. “Don’t you recollect—in the mission-school? Don’t you recollect you married me and Larry? That’s two years ago.” She almost laughed out with pleasure.
“And where’s Larry?”
“Why, don’t you recollect? He’s on the sloop-o’-warPreble.” Then she added more gravely: “I aint seen him in twenty months. But I know he’s all right. I aint a-scared aboutthat—only if he’s alive and well; yes, sir. Well, good-evenin’, sir. Yes, sir; I think I’ll come to the mission nex’ Sunday—and I’ll bring the baby, will I? All right, sir. Well, so long, sir. Take care of yourself, sir.”
What a word that was! It echoed in his ear all the way home: “Take care ofyourself.” What boast is there for the civilization that refines away the unconscious heroism of the unfriended poor?
He was glad he had not told Richling all his little secret. But Richling found it out later from Dr. Sevier.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Three days Mary’s letter lay unanswered. About dusk of the third, as Richling was hurrying across the yard of the bakery on some errand connected with the establishment, a light touch was laid upon his shoulder; a peculiar touch, which he recognized in an instant. He turned in the gloom and exclaimed, in a whisper:—
“Why, Ristofalo!”
“Howdy?” said Raphael, in his usual voice.
“Why, how did you get out?” asked Richling. “Have you escaped?”
“No. Just come out for little air. Captain of the prison and me. Not captain, exactly; one of the keepers. Goin’ back some time to-night.” He stood there in his old-fashioned way, gently smiling, and looking as immovable as a piece of granite. “Have you heard from wife lately?”
“Yes,” said Richling. “But—why—I don’t understand. You and the jailer out together?”
“Yes, takin’ a little stroll ’round. He’s out there in the street. You can see him on door-step ’cross yonder. Pretty drunk, eh?” The Italian’s smile broadened for a moment, then came back to its usual self again. “I jus’ lef’ Kate at home. Thought I’d come see you a little while.”
“Return calls?” suggested Richling.
“Yes, return call. Your wife well?”
“Yes. But—why, this is the drollest”— He stopped short, for the Italian’s gravity indicated his opinion that there had been enough amusement shown. “Yes, she’s well, thank you. By-the-by, what do you think of my letting her come out here now and begin life over again? Doesn’t it seem to you it’s high time, if we’re ever going to do it at all?”
“What you think?” asked Ristofalo.
“Well, now, you answer my question first.”
“No, you answer me first.”
“I can’t. I haven’t decided. I’ve been three days thinking about it. It may seem like a small matter to hesitate so long over”—Richling paused for his hearer to dissent.
“Yes,” said Ristofalo, “pretty small.” His smile remained the same. “She ask you? Reckon you put her up to it, eh?”
“I don’t see why you should reckon that,” said Richling, with resentful coldness.
“I dunno,” said the Italian; “thought so—that’s the way fellows do sometimes.” There was a pause. Then he resumed: “I wouldn’t let her come yet. Wait.”
“For what?”
“See which way the cat goin’ to jump.”
Richling laughed unpleasantly.
“What do you mean by that?” he inquired.
“We goin’ to have war,” said Raphael Ristofalo.
“Ho! ho! ho! Why, Ristofalo, you were never more mistaken in your life!”
“I dunno,” replied the Italian, sticking in his tracks, “think it pretty certain. I read all the papers every day; nothin’ else to do in parish prison. Think we see war nex’ winter.”
“Ristofalo, a man of your sort can hardly conceivethe amount of bluster this country can stand without coming to blows. We Americans are not like you Italians.”
“No,” responded Ristofalo, “not much like.” His smile changed peculiarly. “Wasn’t for Kate, I go to Italia now.”
“Kate and the parish prison,” said Richling.
“Oh!”—the old smile returned,—“I get out that place any time I want.”
“And you’d join Garibaldi, I suppose?” The news had just come of Garibaldi in Sicily.
“Yes,” responded the Italian. There was a twinkle deep in his eyes as he added: “I know Garibaldi.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. Sailed under him when he was ship-cap’n. He knows me.”
“And I dare say he’d remember you,” said Richling, with enthusiasm.
“He remember me,” said the quieter man. “Well,—must go. Good-e’nin’. Better tell yo’ wife wait a while.”
“I—don’t know. I’ll see. Ristofalo”—
“What?”
“I want to quit this business.”
“Better not quit. Stick to one thing.”
“But you never did that. You never did one thing twice in succession.”
“There’s heap o’ diff’ence.”
“I don’t see it. What is it?”
But the Italian only smiled and shrugged, and began to move away. In a moment he said:—
“You see, Mr. Richlin’, you sen’ for yo’ wife, you can’t risk change o’ business. You change business, you can’t risk sen’ for yo’ wife. Well, good-night.”
Richling was left to his thoughts. Naturally they wereof the man whom he still saw, in his imagination, picking his jailer up off the door-step and going back to prison. Who could say that this man might not any day make just such a lion’s leap into the world’s arena as Garibaldi had made, and startle the nations as Garibaldi had done? What was that red-shirted scourge of tyrants that this man might not be? Sailor, soldier, hero, patriot, prisoner! See Garibaldi: despising the restraints of law; careless of the simplest conventionalities that go to make up an honest gentleman; doing both right and wrong—like a lion; everything in him leonine. All this was in Ristofalo’s reach. It was all beyond Richling’s. Which was best, the capability or the incapability? It was a question he would have liked to ask Mary.
Well, at any rate, he had strength now for one thing—“one pretty small thing.” He would answer her letter. He answered it, and wrote: “Don’t come; wait a little while.” He put aside all those sweet lovers’ pictures that had been floating before his eyes by night and day, and bade her stay until the summer, with its risks to health, should have passed, and she could leave her mother well and strong.
It was only a day or two afterward that he fell sick. It was provoking to have such a cold and not know how he caught it, and to have it in such fine weather. He was in bed some days, and was robbed of much sleep by a cough. Mrs. Reisen found occasion to tell Dr. Sevier of Mary’s desire, as communicated to her by “Mr. Richlin’,” and of the advice she had given him.
“And he didn’t send for her, I suppose.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, Mrs. Reisen, I wish you had kept your advice to yourself.” The Doctor went to Richling’s bedside.
“Richling, why don’t you send for your wife?”
The patient floundered in the bed and drew himself up on his pillow.
“O Doctor, just listen!” He smiled incredulously. “Bring that little woman and her baby down here just as the hot season is beginning?” He thought a moment, and then continued: “I’m afraid, Doctor, you’re prescribing for homesickness. Pray don’t tell me that’s my ailment.”
“No, it’s not. You have a bad cough, that you must take care of; but still, the other is one of the counts in your case, and you know how quickly Mary and—the little girl would cure it.”
Richling smiled again.
“I can’t do that, Doctor; when I go to Mary, or send for her, on account of homesickness, it must be hers, not mine.”
“Well, Mrs. Reisen,” said the Doctor, outside the street door, “I hope you’ll remember my request.”
“I’ll tdo udt, Dtoctor,” was the reply, so humbly spoken that he repented half his harshness.
“I suppose you’ve often heard that ‘you can’t make a silk purse of a sow’s ear,’ haven’t you?” he asked.
“Yes; I pin right often heeard udt.” She spoke as though she was not wedded to any inflexible opinion concerning the proposition.
“Well, Mrs. Reisen, as a man once said to me, ‘neither can you make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.’”
“Vell, to be cettaintly!” said the poor woman, drawing not the shadow of an inference; “how kin you?”
“Mr. Richling tells me he will write to Mrs. Richling to prepare to come down in the fall.”
“Vell,” exclaimed the delighted Mrs. Reisen, in her husband’s best manner, “t’at’s te etsectly I atwised him!” And, as the Doctor drove away, she rubbed hermighty hands around each other in restored complacency. Two or three days later she had the additional pleasure of seeing Richling up and about his work again. It was upon her motherly urging that he indulged himself, one calm, warm afternoon, in a walk in the upper part of the city.
NARCISSE WITH NEWS.
It was very beautiful to see the summer set in. Trees everywhere. You looked down a street, and, unless it were one of the two broad avenues where the only street-cars ran, it was pretty sure to be so overarched with boughs that, down in the distance, there was left but a narrow streak of vivid blue sky in the middle. Well-nigh every house had its garden, as every garden its countless flowers. The dark orange began to show its growing weight of fruitfulness, and was hiding in its thorny interior the nestlings of yonder mocking-bird, silently foraging down in the sunny grass. The yielding branches of the privet were bowed down with their plumy panicles, and swayed heavily from side to side, drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so muffled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance forerun the sight. Every breath of air was a new perfume. Roses, an innumerable host, ran a fairy riot about all grounds, and clambered from the lowest door-step to the highest roof. The oleander, wrapped in one great garment of red blossoms, nodded in the sun, and stirred and winked in the faint stirrings of the airThe pale banana slowly fanned herself with her own broad leaf. High up against the intense sky, its hard, burnished foliage glittering in the sunlight, the magnolia spread its dark boughs, adorned with their queenly white flowers. Not a bird nor an insect seemed unmated. The little wren stood and sung to his sitting wife his loud, ecstatic song, made all of her own name,—Matilda, Urilda, Lucinda, Belinda, Adaline, Madaline, Caroline, or Melinda, as the case might be,—singing as though every bone of his tiny body were a golden flute. The hummingbirds hung on invisible wings, and twittered with delight as they feasted on woodbine and honeysuckle. The pigeon on the roof-tree cooed and wheeled about his mate, and swelled his throat, and tremulously bowed and walked with a smiting step, and arched his purpling neck, and wheeled and bowed and wheeled again. Pairs of butterflies rose in straight upward flight, fluttered about each other in amorous strife, and drifted away in the upper air. And out of every garden came the voices of little children at play,—the blessedest sound on earth.
“O Mary, Mary! why should two lovers live apart on this beautiful earth? Autumn is no time for mating. Who can tell what autumn will bring?”
The revery was interrupted.
“Mistoo Itchlin, ’ow you enjoyin’ yo’ ’ealth in that beaucheouz weatheh juz at the pwesent? Me, I’m well. Yes, I’m always well, in fact. At the same time nevvatheless, I fine myseff slightly sad. I s’pose ’tis natu’al—a man what love the ’itings of Lawd By’on as much as me. You know, of co’se, the melancholic intelligens?”
“No,” said Richling; “has any one”—
“Lady By’on, seh. Yesseh. ‘In the mids’ of life’—you know where we ah, Mistoo Itchlin, I su-pose?”
“Is Lady Byron dead?”
“Yesseh.” Narcisse bowed solemnly. “Gone, Mistoo Itchlin. Since the seventeenth of last; yesseh. ‘Kig the bucket,’ as the povvub say.” He showed an extra band of black drawn neatly around his new straw hat. “I thought it but p’opeh to put some moaning—as a species of twibute.” He restored the hat to his head. “You like the tas’e of that, Mistoo Itchlin?”
Richling could but confess the whole thing was delicious.
“Yo humble servan’, seh,” responded the smiling Creole, with a flattered bow. Then, assuming a gravity becoming the historian, he said:—
“In fact, ’tis a gweat mistake, that statement that Lawd By’on evva qua’led with his lady, Mistoo Itchlin. But I s’pose you know ’tis but a slandeh of the pwess. Yesseh. As, faw instance, thass anotheh slandeh of the pwess that the delegates qua’led ad the Chawleston convention. They only pwetend to qua’l; so, by that way, to mizguide those Abolish-nists. Mistoo Itchlin, I am p’ojecting to ’ite some obitua’ ’emawks about that Lady By’on, but I scass know w’etheh to ’ite them in the poetic style aw in the p’osaic. Which would you conclude, Mistoo Itchlin?”
Richling reflected with downcast eyes.
“It seems to me,” he said, when he had passed his hand across his mouth in apparent meditation and looked up,—“seems to me I’d conclude both, without delay.”
“Yes? But accawding to what fawmule, Mistoo Itchlin? ’Ay, ’tis theh is the ’ub,’ in fact, as Lawd By’on say. Is it to migs the two style’ that you advise?”
“That’s the favorite method,” replied Richling.
“Well, I dunno ’ow ’tis, Mistoo Itchlin, but I fine the moze facil’ty in the poetic. ’Tis t’ue, in the poetic yougot to look out concehning the’ime. You got to keep the eye skin’ faw it, in fact. But in the p’osaic, on the cont’a-ay, ’tis juz the opposite; you got to keep the eye skin’ faw thesense. Yesseh. Now, if you migs the two style’—well—’ow’s that, Mistoo Itchlin, if you migs them? Seem’ to me I dunno.”
“Why, don’t you see?” asked Richling. “If you mix them, you avoid both necessities. You sail triumphantly between Scylla and Charybdis without so much as skinning your eye.”
Narcisse looked at him a moment with a slightly searching glance, dropped his eyes upon his own beautiful feet, and said, in a meditative tone:—
“I believe you co’ect.” But his smile was gone, and Richling saw he had ventured too far.
“I wish my wife were here,” said Richling; “she might give you better advice than I.”
“Yes,” replied Narcisse, “I believe you co’ect ag’in, Mistoo Itchlin. ’Tis but since yeste’d’y that I jus appen to hea’ Dr. Seveeah d’op a saying ’esembling to that. Yesseh, she’s a v’ey ’emawkable, Mistoo Itchlin.”
“Is that what Dr. Sevier said?” Richling began to fear an ambush.
“No, seh. What the Doctah say—’twas me’ly to ’emawk in his jocose way—you know the Doctah’s lill callous, jocose way, Mistoo Itchlin.”
He waved either hand outward gladsomely.
“Yes,” said Richling, “I’ve seen specimens of it.”
“Yesseh. He was ve’y complimenta’y, in fact, the Doctah. ’Tis the trooth. He says, ‘She’ll make a man of Witchlin if anythin’ can.’ Juz in his jocose way, you know.”
The Creole’s smile had returned in concentrated sweetness. He stood silent, his face beaming with whatseemed his confidence that Richling would be delighted. Richling recalled the physician’s saying concerning this very same little tale-bearer,—that he carried his nonsense on top and his good sense underneath.
“Dr. Sevier said that, did he?” asked Richling, after a time.
“’Tis the vehbatim, seh. Convussing to yo’ ’eve’end fwend. You can ask him; he will co’obo’ate me in fact. Well, Mistoo Itchlin, it supp’ise me you not tickle at that. Me, I may say, I wishIhad a wife to make a man out ofme.”
“I wish you had,” said Richling. But Narcisse smiled on.
“Well,au ’evoi’.” He paused an instant with an earnest face. “Pehchance I’ll meet you this evening, Mistoo Itchlin? Faw doubtless, like myseff, you will assist at the gweat a-ally faw the Union, the Const’ution, and the enfo’cemen’ of the law. Dr. Seveeah will addwess.”
“I don’t know that I care to hear him,” replied Richling.
“Goin’ to be a gwan’ out-po’-ing, Mistoo Itchlin. Citizens of Noo ’Leans without the leas’ ’espec’ faw fawmeh polly-tickle diff’ence. Also fiah-works. ‘Come one, come all,’ as says the gweat Scott—includin’ yo’seff, Mistoo Itchlin. No? Well,au ’evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin.”
A PRISON MEMENTO.
The political pot began to seethe. Many yet will remember how its smoke went up. The summer—summer of 1860—grew fervent. Its breath became hot and dry. All observation—all thought—turned upon the fierce campaign. Discussion dropped as to whether Heenan would ever get that champion’s belt, which even the little rector believed he had fairly won in the international prize-ring. The news brought by each succeeding European steamer of Garibaldi’s splendid triumphs in the cause of a new Italy, the fierce rattle of partisan warfare in Mexico, that seemed almost within hearing, so nearly was New Orleans concerned in some of its movements,—all things became secondary and trivial beside the developments of a political canvass in which the long-foreseen, long-dreaded issues between two parts of the nation were at length to be made final. The conventions had met, the nominations were complete, and the clans of four parties and fractions of parties were “meeting,” and “rallying,” and “uprising,” and “outpouring.”
All life was strung to one high pitch. This contest was everything,—nay, everybody,—men, women, and children. They were all for the Constitution; they were all for the Union; and each, even Richling, for the enforcement of—his own ideas. On every bosom, “no matteh the sex,” and no matter the age, hung one ofthose little round, ribbanded medals, with a presidential candidate on one side and his vice-presidential man Friday on the other. Needless to say that Ristofalo’s Kate, instructed by her husband, imported the earliest and many a later invoice of them, and distributing her peddlers at choice thronging-places, “everlastin’ly,” as she laughingly and confidentially informed Dr. Sevier, “raked in the sponjewlicks.” They were exposed for sale on little stalls on populous sidewalks and places of much entry and exit.
The post-office in those days was still on Royal street, in the old Merchants’ Exchange. The small hand-holes of the box-delivery were in the wide tessellated passage that still runs through the building from Royal street to Exchange alley. A keeper of one of these little stalls established himself against a pillar just where men turned into and out of Royal street, out of or into this passage. One day, in this place, just as Richling turned from a delivery window to tear the envelope of a letter bearing the Milwaukee stamp, his attention was arrested by a man running by him toward Exchange alley, pale as death, and followed by a crowd that suddenly broke into a cry, a howl, a roar: “Hang him! Hang him!”
“Come!” said a small, strong man, seizing Richling’s arm and turning him in the common direction. If the word was lost on Richling’s defective hearing, not so the touch; for the speaker was Ristofalo. The two friends ran with all their speed through the passage and out into the alley. A few rods away the chased wretch had been overtaken, and was made to face his pursuers. When Richling and Ristofalo reached him there was already a rope about his neck.
The Italian’s leap, as he closed in upon the group around the victim, was like a tiger’s. The men hetouched did not fall; they were rather hurled, driving backward those whom they were hurled against. A man levelled a revolver at him; Richling struck it a blow that sent it over twenty men’s heads. A long knife flashed in Ristofalo’s right hand. He stood holding the rope in his left, stooping slightly forward, and darting his eyes about as if selecting a victim for his weapon. A stranger touched Richling from behind, spoke a hurried word in Italian, and handed him a huge dirk. But in that same moment the affair was over. There stood Ristofalo, gentle, self-contained, with just a perceptible smile turned upon the crowd, no knife in his hand, and beside him the slender, sinewy, form, and keen gray eye of Smith Izard.
The detective was addressing the crowd. While he was speaking, half a score of police came from as many directions. When he had finished, he waved his slender hand at the mass of heads.
“Stand back. Go about your business.” And they began to go. He laid a hand upon the rescued stranger and addressed the police.
“Take this rope off. Take this man to the station and keep him until it’s safe to let him go.”
The explanation by which he had so quickly pacified the mob was a simple one. The rescued man was a seller of campaign medals. That morning, in opening a fresh supply of his little stock, he had failed to perceive that, among a lot of “Breckenridge and Lane” medals, there had crept in one of Lincoln. That was the sum of his offence. The mistake had occurred in the Northern factory. Of course, if he did not intend to sell Lincoln medals, there was no crime.
“Don’t I tell you?” said the Italian to Richling, as they were walking away together. “Bound to have war; is already begin-n.”
“It began with me the day I got married,” said Richling.
Ristofalo waited some time, and then asked:—
“How?”
“I shouldn’t have said so,” replied Richling; “I can’t explain.”
“Thass all right,” said the other. And, a little later: “Smith Izard call’ you by name. How he know yo’ name?”
“I can’t imagine!”
The Italian waved his hand.
“Thass all right, too; nothin’ to me.” Then, after another pause: “Think you saved my life to-day.”
“The honors are easy,” said Richling.
He went to bed again for two or three days. He liked it little when Dr. Sevier attributed the illness to a few moments’ violent exertion and excitement.
“It was bravely done, at any rate, Richling,” said the Doctor.
“Thatit was!” said Kate Ristofalo, who had happened to call to see the sick man at the same hour. “Doctor, ye’r mighty right! Ha!”
Mrs. Reisen expressed a like opinion, and the two kind women met the two men’s obvious wish by leaving the room.
“Doctor,” said Richling at once, “the last time you said it was love-sickness; this time you say it’s excitement; at the bottom it isn’t either. Will you please tell me what it really is? What is this thing that puts me here on my back this way?”
“Richling,” replied the Doctor, slowly, “if I tell you the honest truth, it began in that prison.”
The patient knit his hands under his head and lay motionless and silent.
“Yes,” he said, after a time. And by and by again: “Yes; I feared as much. And can it be that myphysicalmanhood is going to fail me at such a time as this?” He drew a long breath and turned restively in the bed.
“We’ll try to keep it from doing that,” replied the physician. “I’ve told you this, Richling, old fellow to impress upon you the necessity of keeping out of all this hubbub,—this night-marching and mass-meeting and exciting nonsense.”
“And am I always—always to be blown back—blown back this way?” said Richling, half to himself, half to his friend.
“There, now,” responded the Doctor, “just stop talking entirely. No, no; not always blown back. A sick man always thinks the present moment is the whole boundless future. Get well. And to that end possess your soul in patience. No newspapers. Read your Bible. It will calm you. I’ve been trying it myself.” His tone was full of cheer, but it was also so motherly and the touch so gentle with which he put back the sick man’s locks—as if they had been a lad’s—that Richling turned away his face with chagrin.
“Come!” said the Doctor, more sturdily, laying his hand on the patient’s shoulder. “You’ll not lie here more than a day or two. Before you know it summer will be gone, and you’ll be sending for Mary.”
Richling turned again, put out a parting hand, and smiled with new courage.