NOW I LAY ME—
Time may drag slowly, but it never drags backward. So the summer wore on, Richling following his physician’s directions; keeping to his work only—out of public excitements and all overstrain; and to every day, as he bade it good-by, his eager heart, lightened each time by that much, said, “When you come around again, next year, Mary and I will meet you hand in hand.” This washisexcitement, and he seemed to flourish on it.
But day by day, week by week, the excitements of the times rose. Dr. Sevier was deeply stirred, and ever on the alert, looking out upon every quarter of the political sky, listening to the rising thunder, watching the gathering storm. There could hardly have been any one more completely engrossed by it. If there was, it was his book-keeper. It wasn’t so much the Constitution that enlisted Narcisse’s concern; nor yet the Union, which seemed to him safe enough; much less did the desire to see the enforcement of the laws consume him. Nor was it altogether the “’oman candles” and the “’ockets”; but the rhetoric.
Ah, the “’eto’ic”! He bathed, he paddled, dove, splashed, in a surf of it.
“Doctah,”—shaking his finely turned shoulders into his coat and lifting his hat toward his head,—“I had the honah, and at the same time the pleasu’, to yeh you make a shawt speech lass evening. I was p’oud to yehyo’ bunning eloquence, Doctah,—if you’ll allow. Yesseh. Eve’ybody said ’twas the moze bilious effo’t of the o’-casion.”
Dr. Sevier actually looked up and smiled, and thanked the happy young man for the compliment.
“Yesseh,” continued his admirer, “I nevveh flatteh. I give me’-it where the me’-it lies. Well, seh, we juz make the welkin ’ing faw joy when you finally stop’ at the en’. Pehchance you heard my voice among that sea of head’? But I doubt—in ’such a vas’ up’ising—so many imposing pageant’, in fact,—and those ’ocket’ exploding in the staw-y heaven’, as they say. I think I like that exp’ession I saw on the noozpapeh, wheh it says: ‘Long biffo the appointed owwa, thousan’ of flashing tawches and tas’eful t’anspa’encies with divuz devices whose blazing effulgence turn’ day into night.’ Thass a ve’y talented style, in fact. Well,au ’evoi’, Doctah. I’m going ad the—an’ thass anotheh thing I like—’tis faw the ladies to ’ing bells that way on the balconies. Because Mr. Bell and Eve’et is namebell, and so is thebellsname’ juz the same way, and so they ’ing thebellsto signify. I had to elucidate that to my hant. Well,au ’evoi’, Doctah.”
The Doctor raised his eyes from his letter-writing. The young man had turned, and was actually going out without another word. What perversity moved the physician no one will ever know; but he sternly called:—
“Narcisse?”
The Creole wheeled about on the threshold.
“Yesseh?”
The Doctor held him with a firm, grave eye, and slowly said:—
“I suppose before you return you will go to the post office.” He said nothing more,—only that, just in hisjocose way,—and dropped his eyes again upon his pen. Narcisse gave him one long black look, and silently went out.
But a sweet complacency could not stay long away from the young man’s breast. The world was too beautiful; the white, hot sky above was in such fine harmony with his puffed lawn shirt-bosom and his white linen pantaloons, bulging at the thighs and tapering at the ankles, and at the corner of Canal and Royal streets he met so many members of the Yancey Guards and Southern Guards and Chalmette Guards and Union Guards and Lane Dragoons and Breckenridge Guards and Douglas Rangers and Everett Knights, and had the pleasant trouble of stepping aside and yielding the pavement to the far-spreading crinoline. Oh, life was one scintillating cluster breast-pin of ecstasies! And there was another thing,—General William Walker’s filibusters! Royal street, St. Charles, the rotunda of the St. Charles Hotel, were full of them.
It made Dr. Sevier both sad and fierce to see what hold their lawless enterprise took upon the youth of the city. Not that any great number were drawn into the movement, least of all Narcisse; but it captivated their interest and sympathy, and heightened the general unrest, when calmness was what every thoughtful man saw to be the country’s greatest need.
An incident to illustrate the Doctor’s state of mind.
It occurred one evening in the St. Charles rotunda. He saw some citizens of high standing preparing to drink at the bar with a group of broad-hatted men, whose bronzed foreheads and general out-of-door mien hinted rather ostentatiously of Honduras and Ruatan Island. As he passed close to them one of the citizens faced him blandly, and unexpectedly took his hand, but quickly letit go again. The rest only glanced at the Doctor, and drew nearer to the bar.
“I trust you’re not unwell, Doctor,” said the sociable one, with something of a smile, and something of a frown, at the tall physician’s gloomy brow.
“I am well, sir.”
“I—didn’t know,” said the man again, throwing an aggressive resentment into his tone; “you seemed preoccupied.”
“I was,” replied the Doctor, returning his glance with so keen an eye that the man smiled again, appeasingly. “I was thinking how barely skin-deep civilization is.”
The man ha-ha’d artificially, stepping backward as he said, “That’s so!” He looked after the departing Doctor an instant and then joined his companions.
Richling had a touch of this contagion. He looked from Garibaldi to Walker and back again, and could not see any enormous difference between them. He said as much to one of the bakery’s customers, a restaurateur with a well-oiled tongue, who had praised him for his intrepidity in the rescue of the medal-peddler, which, it seems, he had witnessed. With this praise still upon his lips the caterer walked with Richling to the restaurant door, and detained him there to enlarge upon the subject of Spanish-American misrule, and the golden rewards that must naturally fall to those who should supplant it with stable government. Richling listened and replied and replied again and listened; and presently the restaurateur startled him with an offer to secure him a captain’s commission under Walker. He laughed incredulously; but the restaurateur, very much in earnest, talked on; and by littles, but rapidly, Richling admitted the value of the various considerations urged. Two or three months of rapid adventure; complete physical renovation—of course—naturalsequence; the plaudits of a grateful people; maybe fortune also, but at least a certainty of finding the road to it,—all this to meet Mary with next fall.
“I’m in a great hurry just now,” said Richling; “but I’ll talk about this thing with you again to-morrow or next day,” and so left.
The restaurateur turned to his head-waiter, stuck his tongue in his cheek, and pulled down the lower lid of an eye with his forefinger. He meant to say he had been lying for the pure fun of it.
When Dr. Sevier came that afternoon to see Reisen—of whom there was now but little left, and that little unable to leave the bed—Richling took occasion to raise the subject that had entangled his fancy. He was careful to say nothing of himself or the restaurateur, or anything, indeed, but a timid generality or two. But the Doctor responded with a clear, sudden energy that, when he was gone, left Richling feeling painfully blank, and yet unable to find anything to resent except the Doctor’s superfluous—as he thought, quite superfluous—mention of the island of Cozumel.
However, and after all, that which for the most part kept the public mind heated was, as we have said, the political campaign. Popular feeling grew tremulous with it as the landscape did under the burning sun. It was a very hot summer. Not a good one for feeble folk; and one early dawn poor Reisen suddenly felt all his reason come back to him, opened his eyes, and lo! he had crossed the river in the night, and was on the other side.
Dr. Sevier’s experienced horse halted of his own will to let a procession pass. In the carriage at its head the physician saw the little rector, sitting beside a man of German ecclesiastical appearance. Behind it followed a majestic hearse, drawn by black-plumed and caparisonedhorses,—four of them. Then came a long line of red-shirted firemen; for he in the hearse had been an “exempt.” Then a further line of big-handed, white-gloved men in beavers and regalias; for he had been also a Freemason and an Odd-fellow. Then another column, of emotionless-visaged German women, all in bunchy black gowns, walking out of time to the solemn roll and pulse of the muffled drums, and the brazen peals of the funeral march. A few carriages closed the long line. In the first of them the waiting Doctor marked, with a sudden understanding of all, the pale face of John Richling, and by his side the widow who had been forty years a wife,—weary and red with weeping. The Doctor took off his hat.
RISE UP, MY LOVE, MY FAIR ONE.
The summer at length was past, and the burning heat was over and gone. The days were refreshed with the balm of a waning October. There had been no fever. True, the nights were still aglare with torches, and the street echoes kept awake by trumpet notes and huzzas, by the tramp of feet and the delicate hint of the bell-ringing; and men on the stump and off it; in the “wigwams;” along the sidewalks, as they came forth, wiping their mouths, from the free-lunch counters, and on the curb-stones and “flags” of Carondelet street, were saying things to make a patriot’s heart ache. But contrariwise, in that same Carondelet street, and hence in all the streets of the big, scattered town, the most prosperous commercial year—they measure from September to September—that had ever risen upon New Orleans had closed its distended record, and no one knew or dreamed that, for nearly a quarter of a century to come, the proud city would never see the equal of that golden year just gone. And so, away yonder among the great lakes on the northern border of the anxious but hopeful country, Mary was calling, calling, like an unseen bird piping across the fields for its mate, to know if she and the one little nestling might not come to hers.
And at length, after two or three unexpected contingencies had caused delays of one week after another, allin a silent tremor of joy, John wrote the word—“Come!”
He was on his way to put it into the post-office, in Royal street. At the newspaper offices, in Camp street, he had to go out into the middle of the way to get around the crowd that surrounded the bulletin-boards, and that scuffled for copies of the latest issue. The day of days was passing; the returns of election were coming in. In front of the “Picayune” office he ran square against a small man, who had just pulled himself and the most of his clothing out of the press with the last news crumpled in the hand that he still held above his head.
“Hello, Richling, this is pretty exciting, isn’t it?” It was the little clergyman. “Come on, I’ll go your way; let’s get out of this.”
He took Richling’s arm, and they went on down the street, the rector reading aloud as they walked, and shopkeepers and salesmen at their doors catching what they could of his words as the two passed.
“It’s dreadful! dreadful!” said the little man, thrusting the paper into his pocket in a wad.
“Hi! Mistoo Itchlin,” quoth Narcisse, passing them like an arrow, on his way to the paper offices.
“He’s happy,” said Richling.
“Well, then, he’s the only happy man I know of in New Orleans to-day,” said the little rector, jerking his head and drawing a sigh through his teeth.
“No,” said Richling, “I’m another. You see this letter.” He showed it with the direction turned down. “I’m going now to mail it. When my wife gets it she starts.”
The preacher glanced quickly into his face. Richling met his gaze with eyes that danced with suppressed joy. The two friends attracted no attention from those whomthey passed or who passed them; the newsboys were scampering here and there, everybody buying from them, and the walls of Common street ringing with their shouted proffers of the “full account” of the election.
“Richling, don’t do it.”
“Why not?” Richling showed only amusement.
“For several reasons,” replied the other. “In the first place, look at your business!”
“Never so good as to-day.”
“True. And it entirely absorbs you. What time would you have at your fireside, or even at your family table? None. It’s—well you know what it is—it’s a bakery, you know. You couldn’t expect to lodgeyourwife and little girl in a bakery in Benjamin street; you know you couldn’t. Now,you—you don’t mind it—or, I mean, you can stand it. Those things never need damage a gentleman. But with your wife it would be different. You smile, but—why, you know she couldn’t go there. And if you put her anywhere where a lady ought to be, in New Orleans, she would be—well, don’t you see she would be about as far away as if she were in Milwaukee? Richling, I don’t know how it looks to you for me to be so meddlesome, and I believe you think I’m making a very poor argument; but you see this is only one point and the smallest. Now”—
Richling raised his thin hand, and said pleasantly:—
“It’s no use. You can’t understand; it wouldn’t be possible to explain; for you simply don’t know Mary.”
“But there are some things I do know. Just think; she’s with her mother where she is. Imagine her falling ill here,—as you’ve told me she used to do,—and you with that bakery on your hands.”
Richling looked grave.
“Oh no,” continued the little man. “You’ve been sobrave and patient, you and your wife, both,—do be so a little bit longer! Live close; save your money; go on rising in value in your business; and after a little you’ll rise clear out of the sphere you’re now in. You’ll command your own time; you’ll build your own little home; and life and happiness and usefulness will be fairly and broadly open before you.” Richling gave heed with a troubled face, and let his companion draw him into the shadow of that “St. Charles” from the foot of whose stair-way he had once been dragged away as a vagrant.
“See, Richling! Every few weeks you may read in some paper of how a man on some ferry-boat jumps for the wharf before the boat has touched it, falls into the water, and— Make sure! Be brave a little longer—only a little longer! Wait till you’re sure!”
“I’m sure enough!”
“Oh, no, you’re not! Wait till this political broil is over. They say Lincoln is elected. If so, the South is not going to submit to it. Nobody can tell what the consequences are to be. Suppose we should have war? I don’t think we shall, but suppose we should? There would be a general upheaval, commercial stagnation, industrial collapse, shrinkage everywhere! Wait till it’s over. It may not be two weeks hence; it can hardly be more than ninety days at the outside. If it should the North would be ruined, and you may be sure they are not going to allowthat. Then, when all starts fair again, bring your wife and baby. I’ll tell you what to do, Richling!”
“Will you?” responded the listener, with an amiable laugh that the little man tried to echo.
“Yes. Ask Dr. Sevier! He’s right here in the nextstreet. He was on your side last time; maybe he’ll be so now.”
“Done!” said Richling. They went. The rector said he would do an errand in Canal street, while Richling should go up and see the physician.
Dr. Sevier was in.
“Why, Richling!” He rose to receive him. “How are you?” He cast his eye over his visitor with professional scrutiny. “What bringsyouhere?”
“To tell you that I’ve written for Mary,” said Richling, sinking wearily into a chair.
“Have you mailed the letter?”
“I’m taking it to the post-office now.”
The Doctor threw one leg energetically over the other, and picked up the same paper-knife that he had handled when, two years and a half before, he had sat thus, talking to Mary and John on the eve of their separation.
“Richling, I’ll tell you. I’ve been thinking about this thing for some time, and I’ve decided to make you a proposal. I look at you and at Mary and at the times—the condition of the country—the probable future—everything. I know you, physically and mentally, better than anybody else does. I can say the same of Mary. So, of course, I don’t make this proposal impulsively, and I don’t want it rejected.
“Richling, I’ll lend you two thousand to twenty-five hundred dollars, payable at your convenience, if you will just go to your room, pack up, go home, and take from six to twelve months’ holiday with your wife and child.”
The listener opened his mouth in blank astonishment.
“Why, Doctor, you’re jesting! You can’t suppose”—
“I don’t suppose anything. I simply want you to do it.”
“Well, I simply can’t!”
“Did you ever regret taking my advice, Richling?”
“No, never. But this—why, it’s utterly impossible! Me leave the results of four years’ struggle to go holidaying? I can’t understand you, Doctor.”
“’Twould take weeks to explain.”
“It’s idle to think of it,” said Richling, half to himself.
“Go home and think of it twenty-four hours,” said the Doctor.
“It is useless, Doctor.”
“Very good, then; send for Mary. Mail your letter.”
“You don’t mean it!” said Richling.
“Yes, I do. Send for Mary; and tell her I advised it.” He turned quickly away to his desk, for Richling’s eyes had filled with tears; but turned again and rose as Richling rose. They joined hands.
“Yes, Richling, send for her. It’s the right thing to do—if you will not do the other. You know I want you to be happy.”
“Doctor, one word. In your opinion is there going to be war?”
“I don’t know. But if there is it’s time for husband and wife and child to draw close together. Good-day.”
And so the letter went.
A BUNDLE OF HOPES.
Richling insisted, in the face of much scepticism on the part of the baker’s widow, that he felt better, was better, and would go on getting better, now that the weather was cool once more.
“Well, I hope you vill, Mr. Richlin’, dtat’s a fect. ’Specially ven yo’ vife comin’. DoughIcould a-tooken care ye choost tso koot as vot she couldt.”
“But maybe you couldn’t take care of her as well as I can,” said the happy Richling.
“Oh, tdat’s a tdifferendt. A voman kin tek care herself.”
Visiting the French market on one of these glad mornings, as his business often required him to do, he fell in with Narcisse, just withdrawing from the celebrated coffee-stand of Rose Nicaud. Richling stopped in the moving crowd and exchanged salutations very willingly; for here was one more chance to hear himself tell the fact of Mary’s expected coming.
“So’y, Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, whipping away the pastry crumbs from his lap with a handkerchief and wiping his mouth, “not to encounteh you a lill biffo’, to join in pahtaking the cup what cheeahs at the same time whilce it invigo’ates; to-wit, the coffee-cup—as the maxim say. I dunno by what fawmule she makes that coffee, but ’tis astonishin’ how ’tis good, in fact. I dunno if you’ll billieve me, but I feel almost I could pahtakeanotheh cup—? ’Tis the tooth.” He gave Richling time to make any handsome offer that might spontaneously suggest itself, but seeing that the response was only an over-gay expression of face, he added, “But I conclude no. In fact, Mistoo Itchlin, thass a thing I have discovud,—that too much coffee millytates ag’inst the chi’og’aphy; and thus I abstain. Well, seh, ole Abe is elected.”
“Yes,” rejoined Richling, “and there’s no telling what the result will be.”
“You co’ect, Mistoo Itchlin.” Narcisse tried to look troubled.
“I’ve got a bit of private news that I don’t think you’ve heard,” said Richling. And the Creole rejoined promptly:—
“Well, IthoughtI saw something on yo’ thoughts—if you’ll excuse my tautology. Thass a ve’y diffycult to p’event sometime’. But, Mistoo Itchlin, I trus’ ’tis not you ’ave allowed somebody to swin’le you?—confiding them too indiscweetly, in fact?” He took a pretty attitude, his eyes reposing in Richling’s.
Richling laughed outright.
“No, nothing of that kind. No, I”—
“Well, I’m ve’y glad,” interrupted Narcisse.
“Oh, no, ’tisn’t trouble at all! I’ve sent for Mrs. Richling. We’re going to resume housekeeping.”
Narcisse gave a glad start, took his hat off, passed it to his left hand, extended his right, bowed from the middle with princely grace, and, with joy breaking all over his face, said:—
“Mistoo Itchlin, in fact,—shake!”
They shook.
“Yesseh—an’ many ’appy ’eturn! I dunno if you kin billieve that, Mistoo Itchlin; but I was juz about to’ead that in yo’ physio’nomie! Yesseh. But, Mistoo Itchlin, when shall the happy o’casion take effect?”
“Pretty soon. Not as soon as I thought, for I got a despatch yesterday, saying her mother is very ill, and of course I telegraphed her to stay till her mother is at least convalescent. But I think that will be soon. Her mother has had these attacks before. I have good hopes that before long Mrs. Richling will actually be here.”
Richling began to move away down the crowded market-house, but Narcisse said:—
“Thass yo’ di’ection? ’Tis the same, mine. We may accompany togetheh—if you’ll allow yo’ ’umble suvvant?”
“Come along! You do me honor!” Richling laid his hand on Narcisse’s shoulder and they went at a gait quickened by the happy husband’s elation. Narcisse was very proud of the touch, and, as they began to traverse the vegetable market, took the most populous arcade.
“Mistoo Itchlin,” he began again, “I muz congwatulateyou! You know I always admiah yo’ lady to excess. But appopo of that news, I might infawm you some intelligens consunning myseff.”
“Good!” exclaimed Richling. “For it’s good news, isn’t it?”
“Yesseh,—as you may say,—yes. Faw in fact, Mistoo Itchlin, I ’ave ass Dr. Seveeah to haugment me.”
“Hurrah!” cried Richling. He coughed and laughed and moved aside to a pillar and coughed, until people looked at him, and lifted his eyes, tired but smiling, and, paying his compliments to the paroxysm in one or two ill-wishes, wiped his eyes at last, and said:—
“And the Doctor augmented you?”
“Well, no, I can’t say that—not p’ecisely.”
“Why, what did he do?”
“Well, he ’efuse’ me, in fact.”
“Why—but that isn’t good news, then.”
Narcisse gave his head a bright, argumentative twitch.
“Yesseh. ’Tis t’ue he ’efuse’; but ad the same time—I dunno—I thing he wasn’ so mad about it as he make out. An’ you know thass one thing, Mistoo Itchlin, whilce they got life they got hope; and hence I ente’tain the same.”
They had reached that flagged area without covering or inclosure, before the third of the three old market-houses, where those dealers in the entire miscellanies of a housewife’s equipment, excepting only stoves and furniture, spread their wares and fabrics in the open weather before the Bazar market rose to give them refuge. He grew suddenly fierce.
“But any’ow I don’t care! I had the spunk to ass ’im, an’ he din ’ave the spunk to dischawge me! All he can do; ’tis to shake the fis’ of impatience.” He was looking into his companion’s face, as they walked, with an eye distended with defiance.
“Look out!” exclaimed Richling, reaching a hurried hand to draw him aside. Narcisse swerved just in time to avoid stepping into a pile of crockery, but in so doing went full into the arms of a stately female figure dressed in the crispest French calico and embarrassed with numerous small packages of dry goods. The bundles flew hither and yon. Narcisse tried to catch the largest as he saw it going, but only sent it farther than it would have gone, and as it struck the ground it burst like a pomegranate. But the contents were white: little thin, square-folded fractions of barred jaconet and white flannel; rolls of slender white lutestring ribbon; very narrow papers of tiny white pearl buttons, minute white worsted socks,spools of white floss, cards of safety-pins, pieces of white castile soap, etc.
“Mille pardons, madame!” exclaimed Narcisse; “I make you a thousan’ poddons, madam!”
He was ill-prepared for the majestic wrath that flashed from the eyes and radiated from the whole dilating, and subsiding, and reëxpanding, and rising, and stiffening form of Kate Ristofalo!
“Officerr,” she panted,—for instantly there was a crowd, and a man with the silver-crescent badge was switching the assemblage on the legs with his cane to make room,—“Officerr,” she gasped, levelling her tremulous finger at Narcisse, “arrist that man!”
“Mrs. Ristofalo!” exclaimed Richling, “don’t do that! It was all an accident! Why, don’t you see it’s Narcisse,—my friend?”
“Yer frind rised his hand to sthrike me, sur, he did! Yer frind rised his hand to sthrike me, he did!” And up she went and down she went, shortening and lengthening, swelling and decreasing. “Yes, yes, I know yer frind; indeed I do! I paid two dollars and a half fur his acquaintans nigh upon three years agone, sur. Yer frind!” And still she went up and down, enlarging, diminishing, heaving her breath and waving her chin around, and saying, in broken utterances,—while a hackman on her right held his whip in her auditor’s face, crying, “Carriage, sir? Carriage, sir?”—
“Why didn’—he rin agin—a man, sur! I—I—oh! I wish Mr. Ristofalah war heer!—to teach um how—to walk!—Yer frind, sur—ixposing me!” She pointed to Narcisse and the policeman gathering up the scattered lot of tiny things. Her eyes filled with tears, but still shot lightning. “If he’s hurrted me, he’s got ’o suffer fur ud, Mr. Richlin’!” And she expanded again.
“Carriage, sir, carriage?” continued the man with the whip.
“Yes!” said Richling and Mrs. Ristofalo in a breath. She took his arm, the hackman seized the bundles from the policeman, threw open his hack door, laid the bundles on the front seat, and let down the folding steps. The crowd dwindled away to a few urchins.
“Officerr,” said Mrs. Ristofalo, her foot on the step and composure once more in her voice, “ye needn’t arrist um. I could of done ud, sur,” she added to Narcisse himself, “but I’m too much of a laydy, sur!” And she sank together and stretched herself up once more, entered the vehicle, and sat with a perpendicular back, her arms folded on her still heaving bosom, and her head high.
As to her ability to have that arrest made, Kate Ristofalo was in error. Narcisse smiled to himself; for he was conscious of one advantage that overtopped all the sacredness of female helplessness, public right, or any other thing whatsoever. It lay in the simple fact that he was acquainted with the policeman. He bowed blandly to the officer, stepped backward, touching his hat, and walked away, the policeman imitating each movement with the promptness and faithfulness of a mirror.
“Aren’t ye goin’ to get in, Mr. Richlin’?” asked Mrs. Ristofalo. She smiled first and then looked alarmed.
“I—I can’t very well—if you’ll excuse me, ma’am.”
“Ah, Mr. Richlin’!”—she pouted girlishly. “Gettin’ proud!” She gave her head a series of movements, as to say she might be angry if she would, but she wouldn’t. “Ye won’t know uz when Mrs. Richlin’ comes.”
Richling laughed, but she gave a smiling toss to indicate that it was a serious matter.
“Come,” she insisted, patting the seat beside her with honeyed persuasiveness, “come and tell me all about ud.Mr. Ristofalah nivver goes into peticklers, an’ so I har’ly know anny more than jist she’s a-comin’. Come, git in an’ tell me about Mrs. Richlin’—that is, if ye like the subject—and I don’t believe ye do.” She lifted her finger, shook it roguishly close to her own face, and looked at him sidewise. “Ah, nivver mind, sur! that’s rright! Furgit yer old frinds—maybe ye wudden’t do ud if ye knewn everythin’. But that’s rright; that’s the way with min.” She suddenly changed to subdued earnestness, turned the catch of the door, and, as the door swung open, said: “Come, if ud’s only fur a bit o’ the way—if ud’s only fur a ming-ute. I’ve got somethin’ to tell ye.”
“I must get out at Washington Market,” said Richling, as he got in. The hack hurried down Old Levee street.
“And now,” said she, merriment dancing in her eyes, her folded arms tightening upon her bosom, and her lips struggling against their own smile, “I’m just a good mind not to tell ye at ahll!”
Her humor was contagious and Richling was ready to catch it. His own eye twinkled.
“Well, Mrs. Ristofalo, of course, if you feel any embarrassment”—
“Ye villain!” she cried, with delighted indignation, “I didn’t mean nawthing aboutthat, an’ ye knew ud! Here, git out o’ this carridge!” But she made no effort to eject him.
“Mary and I are interested in all your hopes,” said Richling, smiling softly upon the damaged bundle which he was making into a tight package again on his knee. “You’ll tell me your good news if it’s only that I may tell her, will you not?”
“Iwill. And it’s joost this,—Mr. Richlin’,—that if there be’s a war Mr. Ristofalah’s to be lit out o’ prison.”
“I’m very glad!” cried Richling, but stopped short,for Mrs. Ristofalo’s growing dignity indicated that there was more to be told.
“I’m sure ye air, Mr. Richlin’; and I’m sure ye’ll be glad—a heap gladder nor I am—that in that case he’s to be Captain Ristofalah.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, sur.” The wife laid her palm against her floating ribs and breathed a sigh. “I don’t like ud, Mr. Richlin’. No, sur. I don’t like tytles.” She got her fan from under her handkerchief and set it a-going. “I nivver liked the idee of bein’ a tytled man’s wife. No, sur.” She shook her head, elevating it as she shook it. “It creates too much invy, Mr. Richlin’. Well, good-by.” The carriage was stopping at the Washington Market. “Now, don’t ye mintion it to a livin’ soul, Mr. Richlin’!”
Richling said “No.”
“No, sur; fur there be’s manny a slip ’tuxt the cup an’ the lip, ye know; an’ there may be no war, after all, and we may all be disapp’inted. But he’s bound to be tleared if he’s tried, and don’t ye see—I—I don’t want um to be a captain, anyhow, don’t ye see?”
Richling saw, and they parted.
Thus everybody hoped. Dr. Sevier, wifeless, childless, had his hopes too, nevertheless. Hopes for the hospital and his many patients in it and out of it; hopes for his town and his State; hopes for Richling and Mary; and hopes with fears, and fears with hopes, for the great sisterhood of States. Richling had one hope more. After some weeks had passed Dr. Sevier ventured once more to say:—
“Richling, go home. Go to your wife. I must tell you you’re no ordinary sick man. Your life is in danger.”
“Will I be out of danger if I go home?” asked Richling.
Dr. Sevier made no answer.
“Do you still think we may have war?” asked Richling again.
“I know we shall.”
“And will the soldiers come back,” asked the young man, smilingly, “when they find their lives in danger?”
“Now, Richling, that’s another thing entirely; that’s the battle-field.”
“Isn’t it all thesamething, Doctor? Isn’t it all a battle-field?”
The Doctor turned impatiently, disdaining to reply. But in a moment he retorted:—
“We take wounded men off the field.”
“They don’t take themselves off,” said Richling, smiling.
“Well,” rejoined the Doctor, rising and striding toward a window, “a good general may order a retreat.”
“Yes, but—maybe I oughtn’t to say what I was thinking”—
“Oh, say it.”
“Well, then, he don’t let his surgeon order it. Doctor,” continued Richling, smiling apologetically as his friend confronted him, “you know, as you say, better than any one else, all that Mary and I have gone through—nearly all—and how we’ve gone through it. Now, if my life should end here shortly, what would the whole thing mean? It would mean nothing. Doctor; it would be meaningless. No, sir; this isn’t the end. Mary and I”—his voice trembled an instant and then was firm again—“are designed for a long life. I argue from the simple fitness of things,—this is not the end.”
Dr. Sevier turned his face quickly toward the window, and so remained.
FALL IN!
There came a sound of drums. Twice on such a day, once the day before, thrice the next day, till by and by it was the common thing. High-stepping childhood, with laths and broom-handles at shoulder, was not fated, as in the insipid days of peace, to find, on running to the corner, its high hopes mocked by a wagon of empty barrels rumbling over the cobble-stones. No; it was the Washington Artillery, or the Crescent Rifles, or the Orleans Battalion, or, best of all, the blue-jacketed, white-leggined, red-breeched, and red-fezzed Zouaves; or, better than the best, it was all of them together, their captains stepping backward, sword in both hands, calling “Gauche! gauche!” (“Left! left!”) “Guide right!”—“Portez armes!” and facing around again, throwing their shining blades stiffly to belt and epaulette, and glancing askance from under their abundant plumes to the crowded balconies above. Yea, and the drum-majors before, and the brilliant-petticoatedvivandièresbehind!
What pomp! what giddy rounds! Pennons, cock-feathers, clattering steeds, pealing salvos, banners, columns, ladies’ favors, balls, concerts, toasts, the Free Gift Lottery—don’t you recollect?—and this uniform and that uniform, brother a captain, father a colonel, uncle a major, the little rector a chaplain, Captain Ristofalo of the Tiger Rifles; the levee covered with munitions of war, steam-boats unloading troops, troops, troops,from Opelousas, Attakapas, Texas; and a supper to this company, a flag to that battalion, farewell sermon to the Washington Artillery, tears and a kiss to a spurred and sashed lover, hurried weddings,—no end of them,—a sword to such a one, addresses by such and such, serenades to Miss and to Mademoiselle.
Soon it will have been a quarter of a century ago!
And yet—do you not hear them now, coming down the broad, granite-paved, moonlit street, the light that was made for lovers glancing on bayonet and sword soon to be red with brothers’ blood, their brave young hearts already lifted up with the triumph of battles to come, and the trumpets waking the midnight stillness with the gay notes of the Cracovienne?—
“Again, again, the pealing drum,The clashing horn, they come, they come,And lofty deeds and daring highBlend with their notes of victory.”
Ah! the laughter; the music; the bravado; the dancing; the songs! “Voilà l’Zouzou!” “Dixie!” “Aux armes, vos citoyens!” “The Bonnie Blue Flag!”—it wasn’t bonnie very long. Later the maidens at home learned to sing a little song,—it is among the missing now,—a part of it ran:—
“Sleeping on grassy couches;Pillowed on hillocks damp;Of martial fame how little we knowTill brothers are in the camp.”
By and by they began to depart. How many they were! How many, many! We had too lightly let them go. And when all were gone, and they of Carondelet street and its tributaries, massed in that old gray, brittle-shankedregiment, the Confederate Guards, were having their daily dress parade in Coliseum place, and only they and the Foreign Legion remained; when sister Jane made lint, and flour was high, and the sounds of commerce were quite hushed, and in the custom-house gun-carriages were a-making, and in the foundries big guns were being cast, and the cotton gun-boats and the rams were building, and at the rotting wharves the masts of a few empty ships stood like dead trees in a blasted wilderness, and poor soldiers’ wives crowded around the “Free Market,” and grass began to spring up in the streets,—they were many still, while far away; but some marched no more, and others marched on bleeding feet, in rags; and it was very, very hard for some of us to hold the voice steady and sing on through the chorus of the little song:—
“Brave boys are they!Gone at their country’s call.And yet—and yet—we cannot forgetThat many brave boys must fall.”
Oh! Shiloh, Shiloh!
But before the gloom had settled down upon us it was a gay dream.
“Mistoo Itchlin, in fact ’ow you ligue my uniefawm? You think it suit my style? They got about two poun’ of gole lace on that uniefawm. Yesseh. Me, the h-only thing—I don’ ligue those epaulette’. So soon ev’ybody see that on me, ’tis ‘Lieut’nan’!’ in thiz place, an’ ‘Lieut’nan’!’ in that place. My de’seh, you’d thing I’m a majo’-gen’l, in fact. Well, of co’se, I don’ ligue that.”
“And so you’re a lieutenant?”
“Third! Of the Chasseurs-á-Pied! Coon he’p ’t, in fact; the fellehs elected me. Goin’ at Pensacola tomaw. Dr. Seveeahcontinue my sala’y whilce I’m gone.no matteh the len’th. Me, I don’ care, so long the sala’ycontinue, if that waugh las’ ten yeah! You ah pe’haps goin’ ad the ball to-nighd, Mistoo Itchlin? I dunno ’ow ’tis—I suppose you’ll be aztonizh’ w’en I infawm you—that ball wemine me of that battle of Wattaloo! Did you evva yeh those line’ of Lawd By’on,—
‘Theh was a soun’ of wibalwy by night,W’en—’Ush-’ark!—A deep saun’ stwike’—?
Thaz by Lawd By’on. Yesseh. Well”—
The Creole lifted his right hand energetically, laid its inner edge against the brass buttons of hisképi, and then waved it gracefully abroad:—
“Au ’evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin. I leave you to defen’ the city.”
“To-morrow,” in those days of unreadiness and disconnection, glided just beyond reach continually. When at times its realization was at length grasped, it was away over on the far side of a fortnight or farther. However, the to-morrow for Narcisse came at last.
A quiet order for attention runs down the column. Attention it is. Another order follows, higher-keyed, longer drawn out, and with one sharp “clack!” the sword-bayoneted rifles go to the shoulders of as fine a battalion as any in the land of Dixie.
“En avant!”—Narcisse’s heart stands still for joy—“Marche!”
The bugle rings, the drums beat; “tramp, tramp,” in quick succession, go the short-stepping, nimble Creole feet, and the old walls of the Rue Chartres ring again with the pealing huzza, as they rang in the days of Villeré and Lafrénière, and in the days of the young Galvez, and in the days of Jackson.
The old Ponchartrain cars move off, packed. Down at the “Old Lake End” the steamer for Mobile receives the burden. The gong clangs in her engine-room, the walking-beam silently stirs, there is a hiss of water underneath, the gang-plank is in, the wet hawser-ends whip through the hawse-holes,—she moves; clang goes the gong again—she glides—or is it the crowded wharf that is gliding?—No.—Snatch the kisses! snatch them! Adieu! Adieu! She’s off, huzza—she’s off!
Now she stands away. See the mass of gay colors—red, gold, blue, yellow, with glitter of steel and flutter of flags, a black veil of smoke sweeping over. Wave, mothers and daughters, wives, sisters, sweethearts—wave, wave; you little know the future!
And now she is a little thing, her white wake following her afar across the green waters, the call of the bugle floating softly back. And now she is a speck. And now a little smoky stain against the eastern blue is all,—and now she is gone. Gone! Gone!
Farewell, soldier boys! Light-hearted, little-forecasting, brave, merry boys! God accept you, our offering of first fruits! See that mother—that wife—take them away; it is too much. Comfort them, father, brother; tell them their tears may be for naught.
“And yet—and yet—we cannot forgetThat many brave boys must fall.”
Never so glad a day had risen upon the head of Narcisse. For the first time in his life he moved beyond the corporate limits of his native town.
“‘Ezcape fum the aunt, thou sluggud!’” “Au ’evoi’” to his aunt and the uncle of his aunt. “Au ’evoi’!Au ’evoi’!”—desk, pen, book—work, care,thought, restraint—all sinking, sinking beneath the receding horizon of Lake Ponchartrain, and the wide world and a soldier’s life before him.
Farewell, Byronic youth! You are not of so frail a stuff as you have seemed. You shall thirst by day and hunger by night. You shall keep vigil on the sands of the Gulf and on the banks of the Potomac. You shall grow brown, but prettier. You shall shiver in loathsome tatters, yet keep your grace, your courtesy, your joyousness. You shall ditch and lie down in ditches, and shall sing your saucy songs of defiance in the face of the foe, so blackened with powder and dust and smoke that your mother in heaven would not know her child. And you shall borrow to your heart’s content chickens, hogs, rails, milk, buttermilk, sweet potatoes, what not; and shall learn the American songs, and by the camp-fire of Shenandoah valley sing “The years creep slowly by, Lorena” to messmates with shaded eyes, and “Her bright smile haunts me still.” Ah, boy! there’s an old woman still living in the Rue Casa Calvo—your bright smile haunts her still. And there shall be blood on your sword, and blood—twice—thrice—on your brow. Your captain shall die in your arms; and you shall lead charge after charge, and shall step up from rank to rank; and all at once, one day, just in the final onset, with the cheer on your lips, and your red sword waving high, with but one lightning stroke of agony, down, down you shall go in the death of your dearest choice.
BLUE BONNETS OVER THE BORDER.
One morning, about the 1st of June, 1861, in the city of New York, two men of the mercantile class came from a cross street into Broadway, near what was then the upper region of its wholesale stores. They paused on the corner, near the edge of the sidewalk.
“Even when the States were seceding,” said one of them, “I couldn’t make up my mind that they really meant to break up the Union.”
He had rosy cheeks, a retreating chin, and amiable, inquiring eyes. The other had a narrower face, alert eyes, thin nostrils, and a generally aggressive look. He did not reply at once, but, after a quick glance down the great thoroughfare and another one up it, said, while his eyes still ran here and there:—
“Wonderful street, this Broadway!”
He straightened up to his fullest height and looked again, now down the way, now up, his eye kindling with the electric contagion of the scene. His senses were all awake. They took in, with a spirit of welcome, all the vast movement: the uproar, the feeling of unbounded multitude, the commercial splendor, the miles of towering buildings; the long, writhing, grinding mass of coming and going vehicles, the rush of innumerable feet, and the countless forms and faces hurrying, dancing, gliding by, as though all the world’s mankind, and womankind, and childhood must pass that way before night.
“How many people, do you suppose, go by this corner in a single hour?” asked the man with the retreating chin. But again he got no answer. He might as well not have yielded the topic of conversation as he had done; so he resumed it. “No, I didn’t believe it,” he said. “Why, look at the Southern vote of last November—look at New Orleans. The way it went there, I shouldn’t have supposed twenty-five per cent. of the people would be in favor of secession. Would you?”
But his companion, instead of looking at New Orleans, took note of two women who had come to a halt within a yard of them and seemed to be waiting, as he and his companion were, for an opportunity to cross the street. The two new-comers were very different in appearance, the one from the other. The older and larger was much beyond middle life, red, fat, and dressed in black stuff, good as to fabric, but uncommonly bad as to fit. The other was young and pretty, refined, tastefully dressed, and only the more interesting for the look of permanent anxiety that asserted itself with distinctness about the corners of her eyes and mouth. She held by the hand a rosy, chubby little child, that seemed about three years old, and might be a girl or might be a boy, so far as could be discerned by masculine eyes. The man did not see this fifth member of their group until the elder woman caught it under the arms in her large hands, and, lifting it above her shoulder, said, looking far up the street:—
“O paypy, paypy, choost look de fla-ags! One, two, dtree,—a tuzzent, a hundut, a dtowsant fla-ags!”
Evidently the child did not know her well. The little face remained without a smile, the lips sealed, the shoulders drawn up, and the legs pointing straight to the spot whence they had been lifted. She set it down again.
“We’re not going to get by here,” said the less talkativeman. “They must be expecting some troops to pass here. Don’t you see the windows full of women and children?”
“Let’s wait and look at them,” responded the other, and his companion did not dissent.
“Well, sir,” said the more communicative one, after a moment’s contemplation, “I never expected to see this!” He indicated by a gesture the stupendous life of Broadway beginning slowly to roll back upon itself like an obstructed river. It was obviously gathering in a general pause to concentrate its attention upon something of leading interest about to appear to view. “We’re in earnest at last, and we can see, now, that the South was in the deadest kind of earnest from the word go.”
“They can’t be any more in earnest than we are, now,” said the more decided speaker.
“I had great hopes of the peace convention,” said the rosier man.
“I never had a bit,” responded the other.
“The suspense was awful—waiting to know what Lincoln would do when he came in,” said he of the poor chin. “My wife was in the South visiting her relatives; and we kept putting off her return, hoping for a quieter state of affairs—hoping and putting off—till first thing you knew the lines closed down and she had the hardest kind of a job to get through.”
“I never had a doubt as to what Lincoln would do,” said the man with sharp eyes; but while he spoke he covertly rubbed his companion’s elbow with his own, and by his glance toward the younger of the two women gave him to understand that, though her face was partly turned away, the very pretty ear, with no ear-ring in the hole pierced for it, was listening. And the readier speaker rejoined in a suppressed voice:—
“That’s the little lady I travelled in the same car with all the way from Chicago.”
“No times for ladies to be travelling alone,” muttered the other.
“She hoped to take a steam-ship for New Orleans, to join her husband there.”
“Some rebel fellow, I suppose.”
“No, a Union man, she says.”
“Oh, of course!” said the sharp-eyed one, sceptically. “Well, she’s missed it. The last steamer’s gone and may get back or may not.” He looked at her again, narrowly, from behind his companion’s shoulder. She was stooping slightly toward the child, rearranging some tie under its lifted chin and answering its questions in what seemed a chastened voice. He murmured to his fellow, “How do you know she isn’t a spy?”
The other one turned upon him a look of pure amusement, but, seeing the set lips and earnest eye of his companion, said softly, with a faint, scouting hiss and smile:—
“She’s a perfect lady—a perfect one.”
“Her friend isn’t,” said the aggressive man.
“Here they come,” observed the other aloud, looking up the street. There was a general turning of attention and concentration of the street’s population toward the edge of either sidewalk. A force of police was clearing back into the by-streets a dense tangle of drays, wagons, carriages, and white-topped omnibuses, and far up the way could be seen the fluttering and tossing of handkerchiefs, and in the midst a solid mass of blue with a sheen of bayonets above, and every now and then a brazen reflection from in front, where the martial band marched before. It was not playing. The ear caught distantly, instead of its notes, the warlike thunder of the drum corps.
The sharper man nudged his companion mysteriously.
“Listen,” he whispered. Neither they nor the other pair had materially changed their relative positions. The older woman was speaking.
“’Twas te fun’est dting! You pe lookin’ for te Noo ’Leants shteamer, undt me lookin’ for te Hambourg shteamer, undt coompt right so togeder undt never vouldn’t ’a’ knowedt udt yet, ovver te mayne exdt me, ‘Misses Reisen, vot iss your name?’ undt you headt udt. Undt te minudt you shpeak, udt choost come to me like a flash o’ lightenin’—‘Udt iss Misses Richlin’!’” The speaker’s companion gave her such attention as one may give in a crowd to words that have been heard two or three times already within the hour.
“Yes, Alice,” she said, once or twice to the little one, who pulled softly at her skirt asking confidential questions. But the baker’s widow went on with her story, enjoying it for its own sake.
“You know, Mr. Richlin’ he told me finfty dtimes, ‘Misses Reisen, doant kif up te pissness!’ Ovver I see te mutcheenery proke undt te foundtries all makin’ guns undt kennons, undt I choost says, ‘I kot plenteh moneh—I tdtink I kfit undt go home.’ Ovver I sayss to de Doctor, ‘Dte oneh dting—vot Mr. Richlin’ ko-in to tdo?’ Undt Dr. Tseweer he sayss, ‘How menneh pa’ls flour you kot shtowed away?’ Undt I sayss, ‘Tsoo hundut finfty.’ Undt he sayss, ‘Misses Reisen, Mr. Richlin’ done made you rich; you choost kif um dtat flour; udt be wort’ tweny-fife tollahs te pa’l, yet.’ Undt sayss I, ‘Doctor, you’ right, undt I dtank you for te goodt idea; I kif Mr. Richlin’ innahow one pa’l.’ Undt I done-d it. Ovver I sayss, ‘Doctor, dtat’s not like a rigler sellery, yet.’ Undt dten he sayss, ‘You know,minepookkeeper he gone to te vor, undt I need’”—
A crash of brazen music burst upon the ear and drowned the voice. The throng of the sidewalk pushed hard upon its edge.
“Let me hold the little girl up,” ventured the milder man, and set her gently upon his shoulder, as amidst a confusion of outcries and flutter of hats and handkerchiefs the broad, dense column came on with measured tread, its stars and stripes waving in the breeze and its backward-slanting thicket of bayoneted arms glittering in the morning sun. All at once there arose from the great column, in harmony with the pealing music, the hoarse roar of the soldiers’ own voices singing in time to the rhythm of their tread. And a thrill runs through the people, and they answer with mad huzzas and frantic wavings and smiles, half of wild ardor and half of wild pain; and the keen-eyed man here by Mary lets the tears roll down his cheeks unhindered as he swings his hat and cries “Hurrah! hurrah!” while on tramps the mighty column, singing from its thousand thirsty throats the song of John Brown’s Body.
Yea, so, soldiers of the Union,—though that little mother there weeps but does not wave, as the sharp-eyed man notes well through his tears,—yet even so, yea, all the more, go—“go marching on,” saviors of the Union; your cause is just. Lo, now, since nigh twenty-five years have passed, we of the South can say it!
“And yet—and yet, we cannot forget”—
and we would not.
A PASS THROUGH THE LINES.
About the middle of September following the date of the foregoing incident, there occurred in a farmhouse head-quarters on the Indiana shore of the Ohio river the following conversation:—
“You say you wish me to give you a pass through the lines, ma’am. Why do you wish to go through?”
“I want to join my husband in New Orleans.”
“Why, ma’am, you’d much better let New Orleans come through the lines. We shall have possession of it, most likely, within a month.” The speaker smiled very pleasantly, for very pleasant and sweet was the young face before him, despite its lines of mental distress, and very soft and melodious the voice that proceeded from it.
“Do you think so?” replied the applicant, with an unhopeful smile. “My friends have been keeping me at home for months on that idea, but the fact seems as far off now as ever. I should go straight through without stopping, if I had a pass.”
“Ho!” exclaimed the man, softly, with pitying amusement. “Certainly, I understand you would try to do so. But, my dear madam, you would find yourself very much mistaken. Suppose, now, we should let you through our lines. You’d be between two fires. You’d still have to get into the rebel lines. You don’t know what you’re undertaking.”
She smiled wistfully.
“I’m undertaking to get to my husband.”
“Yes, yes,” said the officer, pulling his handkerchief from between two brass buttons of his double-breasted coat and wiping his brow. She did not notice that he made this motion purely as a cover for the searching glance which he suddenly gave her from head to foot. “Yes,” he continued, “but you don’t know what it is, ma’am. After you get through theotherlines, what are you going to dothen? There’s a perfect reign of terror over there. I wouldn’t let a lady relative of mine take such risks for thousands of dollars. I don’t think your husband ought to thank me for giving you a pass. You say he’s a Union man; why don’t he come to you?”
Tears leaped into the applicant’s eyes.
“He’s become too sick to travel,” she said.
“Lately?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought you said you hadn’t heard from him for months.” The officer looked at her with narrowed eyes.
“I said I hadn’t had a letter from him.” The speaker blushed to find her veracity on trial. She bit her lip, and added, with perceptible tremor: “I got one lately from his physician.”
“How did you get it?”
“What, sir?”
“Now, madam, you know what I asked you, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes. Well, I’d like you to answer.”
“I found it, three mornings ago, under the front door of the house where I live with my mother and my little girl.”
“Who put it there?”
“I do not know.”
The officer looked her steadily in the eyes. They were blue. His own dropped.
“You ought to have brought that letter with you, ma’am,” he said, looking up again; “don’t you see how valuable it would be to you?”
“I did bring it,” she replied, with alacrity, rummaged a moment in a skirt-pocket, and brought it out. The officer received it and read the superscription audibly.
“‘Mrs. John H——.’ Are you Mrs. John H——?”
“That is not the envelope it was in,” she replied. “It was not directed at all. I put it into that envelope merely to preserve it. That’s the envelope of a different letter,—a letter from my mother.”
“Are you Mrs. John H——?” asked her questioner again. She had turned partly aside and was looking across the apartment and out through a window. He spoke once more. “Is this your name?”
“What, sir?”
He smiled cynically.
“Please don’t do that again, madam.”
She blushed down into the collar of her dress.
“That is my name, sir.”
The man put the missive to his nose, snuffed it softly, and looked amused, yet displeased.
“Mrs. H——, did you notice just a faint smell of—garlic—about this—?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I have no less than three or four others with the very same odor.” He smiled on. “And so, no doubt, we are both of the same private opinion that the bearer of this letter was—who, Mrs. H——?”
Mrs. H—— frequently by turns raised her eyes honestly to her questioner’s and dropped them to where, inher lap, the fingers of one hand fumbled with a lone wedding-ring on the other, while she said:—
“Do you think, sir, if you were in my place you would like to give the name of the person you thought had risked his life to bring you word that your husband—your wife—was very ill, and needed your presence? Would you like to do it?”
The officer looked severe.
“Don’t you know perfectly well that wasn’t his principal errand inside our lines?”
“No.”
“No!” echoed the man; “and you don’t know perfectly well, I suppose, that he’s been shot at along this line times enough to have turned his hair white? Or that he crossed the river for the third time last night, loaded down with musket-caps for the rebels?”
“No.”
“But you must admit you know a certain person, wherever he may be, or whatever he may be doing, named Raphael Ristofalo?”
“I do not.”
The officer smiled again.
“Yes, I see. That is to say, you don’tadmitit. And you don’t deny it.”
The reply came more slowly:—
“I do not.”
“Well, now, Mrs. H——, I’ve given you a pretty long audience. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. But do you please tell me, first, you affirm on your word of honor that your name is really Mrs. H——; that you are no spy, and have had no voluntary communication with any, and that you are a true and sincere Union woman.”
“I affirm it all.”
“Well, then, come in to-morrow at this hour, and if Iam going to give you a pass at all I’ll give it to you then. Here, here’s your letter.”
As she received the missive she lifted her eyes, suffused, but full of hope, to his, and said:—
“God grant you the heart to do it, sir, and bless you.”
The man laughed. Her eyes fell, she blushed, and, saying not a word, turned toward the door and had reached the threshold when the officer called, with a certain ringing energy:—
“Mrs. Richling!”
She wheeled as if he had struck her, and answered:—
“What, sir!” Then, turning as red as a rose, she said, “O sir, that was cruel!” covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud. It was only as she was in the midst of these last words that she recognized in the officer before her the sharper-visaged of those two men who had stood by her in Broadway.
“Step back here, Mrs. Richling.”
She came.
“Well, madam! I should like to know what we are coming to, when a lady like you—a palpable, undoubted lady—can stoop to such deceptions!”
“Sir,” said Mary, looking at him steadfastly and then shaking her head in solemn asseveration, “all that I have said to you is the truth.”
“Then will you explain how it is that you go by one name in one part of the country, and by another in another part?”
“No,” she said. It was very hard to speak. The twitching of her mouth would hardly let her form a word. “No—no—I can’t—tell you.”
“Very well, ma’am. If you don’t start back to Milwaukee by the next train, and stay there, I shall”—
“Oh, don’t say that, sir! I must go to my husband! Indeed, sir, it’s nothing but a foolish mistake, made years ago, that’s never harmed any one but us. I’ll take all the blame of it if you’ll only give me a pass!”
The officer motioned her to be silent.
“You’ll have to do as I tell you, ma’am. If not, I shall know it; you will be arrested, and I shall give you a sort of pass that you’d be a long time asking for.” He looked at the face mutely confronting him and felt himself relenting. “I dare say this does sound very cruel to you, ma’am; but remember, this is a cruel war. I don’t judge you. If I did, and could harden my heart as I ought to, I’d have you arrested now. But, I say, you’d better take my advice. Good-morning!No, ma’am, I can’t hear you!So, now, that’s enough! Good-morning, madam!”