John gave a slight start, and Mary looked at him suddenly.
“But here am I,” continued the speaker. “Is it just to me for you to hide away here in want that forces you and your wife—I beg your pardon, madam—into mortifying occupations, when one word to me—a trivial obligation, not worthy to be called an obligation, contracted with me—would remove that necessity, and tide you over the emergency of the hour?”
Richling was already answering, not by words only, but by his confident smile:—
“Yes, sir; yes, it is just: ask Mary.”
“Yes, Doctor,” interposed the wife. “We went over”—
“We went over it together,” said John. “We weighed it well. Itisjust,—not to ask aid as long as there’s hope without it.”
The Doctor responded with the quiet air of one who is sure of his position:—
“Yes, I see. But, of course—I know without asking—you left the question of health out of your reckoning.Now, Richling, put the whole world, if you choose, in a selfish attitude”—
“No, no,” said Richling and his wife. “Ah, no!” But the Doctor persisted.
“—a purely selfish attitude. Wouldn’t it, nevertheless, rather help a well man or woman than a sick one? Wouldn’t it pay better?”
“Yes, but”—
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “But you’re taking the most desperate risks against health and life.” He leaned forward in his chair, jerked in his legs, and threw out his long white hands. “You’re committing slow suicide.”
“Doctor,” began Mary; but her husband had the floor.
“Doctor,” he said, “can you put yourself in our place? Wouldn’t you rather die than beg?Wouldn’tyou?”
The Doctor rose to his feet as straight as a lance.
“It isn’t what you’d rather, sir! You haven’t your choice! You haven’t your choice at all, sir! When God gets ready for you to die he’ll let you know, sir! And you’ve no right to trifle with his mercy in the meanwhile. I’m not a man to teach men to whine after each other for aid; but every principle has its limitations, Mr. Richling. You say you went over the whole subject. Yes; well, didn’t you strike the fact that suicide is an affront to civilization and humanity?”
“Why, Doctor!” cried the other two, rising also. “We’re not going to commit suicide.”
“No,” retorted he, “you’re not. That’s what I came here to tell you. I’m here to prevent it.”
“Doctor,” exclaimed Mary, the big tears standing in her eyes, and the Doctor melting before them like wax, “it’s not so bad as it looks. I wash—some—because itpays so much better than sewing. I find I’m stronger than any one would believe. I’m stronger than I ever was before in my life. I am, indeed. Idon’twashmuch. And it’s only for the present. We’ll all be laughing at this, some time, together.” She began a small part of the laugh then and there.
“You’ll do it no more,” the Doctor replied. He drew out his pocket-book. “Mr. Richling, will you please send me through the mail, or bring me, your note for fifty dollars,—at your leisure, you know,—payable on demand?” He rummaged an instant in the pocket-book, and extended his hand with a folded bank-note between his thumb and finger. But Richling compressed his lips and shook his head, and the two men stood silently confronting each other. Mary laid her hand upon her husband’s shoulder and leaned against him, with her eyes on the Doctor’s face.
“Come, Richling,”—the Doctor smiled,—“your friend Ristofalo did not treat you in this way.”
“I never treated Ristofalo so,” replied Richling, with a smile tinged with bitterness. It was against himself that he felt bitter; but the Doctor took it differently, and Richling, seeing this, hurried to correct the impression.
“I mean I lent him no such amount as that.”
“It was just one-fiftieth of that,” said Mary.
“But you gave liberally, without upbraiding,” said the Doctor.
“Oh, no, Doctor! no!” exclaimed she, lifting the hand that lay on her husband’s near shoulder and reaching it over to the farther one. “Oh! a thousand times no! John never meant that. Did you, John?”
“How could I?” said John. “No!” Yet there was confession in his look. He had not meant it, but he had felt it.
Dr. Sevier sat down, motioned them into their seats, drew the arm-chair close to theirs. Then he spoke. He spoke long, and as he had not spoken anywhere but at the bedside scarce ever in his life before. The young husband and wife forgot that he had ever said a grating word. A soft love-warmth began to fill them through and through. They seemed to listen to the gentle voice of an older and wiser brother. A hand of Mary sank unconsciously upon a hand of John. They smiled and assented, and smiled, and assented, and Mary’s eyes brimmed up with tears, and John could hardly keep his down. The Doctor made the whole case so plain and his propositions so irresistibly logical that the pair looked from his eyes to each other’s and laughed. “Cozumel!” They did not utter the name; they only thought of it both at one moment. It never passed their lips again. Their visitor brought them to an arrangement. The fifty dollars were to be placed to John’s credit on the books kept by Narcisse, as a deposit from Richling, and to be drawn against by him in such littles as necessity might demand. It was to be “secured”—they all three smiled at that word—by Richling’s note payable on demand. The Doctor left a prescription for the refractory chills.
As he crossed Canal street, walking in slow meditation homeward at the hour of dusk, a tall man standing against a wall, tin cup in hand,—a full-fledged mendicant of the steam-boiler explosion, tin-proclamation type,—asked his alms. He passed by, but faltered, stopped, let his hand down into his pocket, and looked around to see if his pernicious example was observed. None saw him. He felt—he saw himself—a drivelling sentimentalist. But weak, and dazed, sore wounded of the archers, he turned and dropped a dime into the beggar’s cup.
Richling was too restless with the joy of relief to sit or stand. He trumped up an errand around the corner, and hardly got back before he contrived another. He went out to the bakery for some crackers—fresh baked—for Mary; listened to a long story across the baker’s counter, and when he got back to his door found he had left the crackers at the bakery. He went back for them and returned, the blood about his heart still running and leaping and praising God.
“The sun at midnight!” he exclaimed, knitting Mary’s hands in his. “You’re very tired. Go to bed. Me? I can’t yet. I’m too restless.”
He spent more than an hour chatting with Mrs. Riley, and had never found her so “nice” a person before; so easy comes human fellowship when we have had a stroke of fortune. When he went again to his room there was Mary kneeling by the bedside, with her head slipped under the snowy mosquito net, all in fine linen, white as the moonlight, frilled and broidered, a remnant of her wedding glory gleaming through the long, heavy wefts of her unbound hair.
“Why, Mary”—
There was no answer.
“Mary?” he said again, laying his hand upon her head.
The head was slowly lifted. She smiled an infant’s smile, and dropped her cheek again upon the bedside. She had fallen asleep at the foot of the Throne.
At that same hour, in an upper chamber of a large, distant house, there knelt another form, with bared, bowed head, but in the garb in which it had come in from the street. Praying? This white thing overtaken by sleep here was not more silent. Yet—yes, praying. But, all the while, the prayer kept running to a little tune, andthe words repeating themselves again and again; “Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice—with hair so brown—so brown—so brown? Sweet Alice, with hair so brown?” And God bent his ear and listened.
BORROWER TURNED LENDER.
It was only a day or two later that the Richlings, one afternoon, having been out for a sunset walk, were just reaching Mrs. Riley’s door-step again, when they were aware of a young man approaching from the opposite direction with the intention of accosting them. They brought their conversation to a murmurous close.
For it was not what a mere acquaintance could have joined them in, albeit its subject was the old one of meat and raiment. Their talk had been light enough on their starting out, notwithstanding John had earned nothing that day. But it had toned down, or, we might say up, to a sober, though not a sombre, quality. John had in some way evolved the assertion that even the life of the body alone is much more than food and clothing and shelter; so much more, that only a divine provision can sustain it; so much more, that the fact is, when it fails, it generally fails with meat and raiment within easy reach.
Mary devoured his words. His spiritual vision had been a little clouded of late, and now, to see it clear— She closed her eyes for bliss.
“Why, John,” she said, “you make it plainer than any preacher I ever heard.”
This, very naturally, silenced John. And Mary, hoping to start him again, said:—
“Heaven provides. And yet I’m sure you’re right inseeking our food and raiment?” She looked up inquiringly.
“Yes; like the fowls, the provision is madeforus through us. The mistake is in making those things theendof our search.”
“Why, certainly!” exclaimed Mary, softly. She took fresh hold in her husband’s arm; the young man was drawing near.
“It’s Narcisse!” murmured John. The Creole pressed suddenly forward with a joyous smile, seized Richling’s hand, and, lifting his hat to Mary as John presented him, brought his heels together and bowed from the hips.
“I wuz juz coming at yo’ ’ouse, Mistoo Itchlin. Yesseh. I wuz juz sitting in my ’oom afteh dinneh, envelop’ in my’obe de chambre, when all at once I says to myseff, ’Faw distwaction I will go and see Mistoo Itchlin!’”
“Will you walk in?” said the pair.
Mrs. Riley, standing in the door of her parlor, made way by descending to the sidewalk. Her calico was white, with a small purple figure, and was highly starched and beautifully ironed. Purple ribbons were at her waist and throat. As she reached the ground Mary introduced Narcisse. She smiled winningly, and when she said, with a courtesy: “Proud to know ye, sur,” Narcisse was struck with the sweetness of her tone. But she swept away with a dramatic tread.
“Will you walk in?” Mary repeated; and Narcisse responded:—
“If you will pummit me yo’ attention a few moment’.” He bowed again and made way for Mary to precede him.
“Mistoo Itchlin,” he continued, going in, “in fact you don’t give Misses Witchlin my last name with absolute co’ectness.”
“Did I not? Why, I hope you’ll pardon”—
“Oh, I’m glad of it. I don’ feel lak a pusson is my fwen’ whilst they don’t call me Nahcisse.” He directed his remark particularly to Mary.
“Indeed?” responded she. “But, at the same time, Mr. Richling would have”— She had turned to John, who sat waiting to catch her eye with such intense amusement betrayed in his own that she saved herself from laughter and disgrace only by instant silence.
“Yesseh,” said Narcisse to Richling, “’tis the tooth.”
He cast his eye around upon the prevailing hair-cloth and varnish.
“Misses Witchlin, I muz tell you I like yo’ tas’e in that pawlah.”
“It’s Mrs. Riley’s taste,” said Mary.
“’Tis a beaucheouz tas’e,” insisted the Creole, contemplatively, gazing at the Pope’s vestments tricked out with blue, scarlet, and gilt spangles. “Well, Mistoo Itchlin, since some time I’ve been stipulating me to do myseff that honoh, seh, to come at yo’ ’ouse; well, ad the end I am yeh. I think you fine yoseff not ve’y well those days. Is that nod the case, Mistoo Itchlin?”
“Oh, I’m well enough!” Richling ended with a laugh, somewhat explosively. Mary looked at him with forced gravity as he suppressed it. He had to draw his nose slowly through his thumb and two fingers before he could quite command himself. Mary relieved him by responding:—
“No, Mr. Richling hasn’t been well for some time.”
Narcisse responded triumphantly:—
“It stwuck me—so soon I pe’ceive you—that you ’ave the ai’ of a valedictudina’y. Thass a ve’y fawtunate that you ah ’esiding in a ’ealthsome pawt of the city, in fact.”
Both John and Mary laughed and demurred.
“You don’t think?” asked the smiling visitor. “Me, I dunno,—I fine one thing. If a man don’t die fum one thing, yet, still, he’ll die fum something. I ’ave study that out, Mistoo Itchlin. ‘To be, aw to not be, thaz the queztion,’ in fact. I don’t ca’e if you live one place aw if you live anotheh place, ’tis all the same,—you’ve got to pay to live!”
The Richlings laughed again, and would have been glad to laugh more; but each, without knowing it of the other, was reflecting with some mortification upon the fact that, had they been talking French, Narcisse would have bitten his tongue off before any of his laughter should have been at their expense.
“Indeed you have got to pay to live,” said John, stepping to the window and drawing up its painted paper shade. “Yes, and”—
“Ah!” exclaimed Mary, with gentle disapprobation. She met her husband’s eye with a smile of protest. “John,” she said, “Mr. ——” she couldn’t think of the name.
“Nahcisse,” said the Creole.
“Will think,” she continued, her amusement climbing into her eyes in spite of her, “you’re in earnest.”
“Well, I am, partly. Narcisse knows, as well as we do that there are two sides to the question.” He resumed his seat. “I reckon”—
“Yes,” said Narcisse, “and what you muz look out faw, ’tis to git on the soff side.”
They all laughed.
“I was going to say,” said Richling, “the world takes us as we come, ‘sight-unseen.’ Some of us pay expenses, some don’t.”
“Ah!” rejoined Narcisse, looking up at the whitewashedceiling, “those egspenze’!” He raised his hand and dropped it. “Ifineit sodiffycul’to defeat those egspenze’! In fact, Mistoo Itchlin, such ah the state of my financial emba’assment that I do not go out at all. I stay in, in fact. I stay at my ’ouse—to light’ those egspenze’!”
They were all agreed that expenses could be lightened thus.
“And by making believe you don’t want things,” said Mary.
“Ah!” exclaimed Narcisse, “I nevvah kin do that!” and Richling gave a laugh that was not without sympathy. “But I muz tell you, Mistoo Itchlin, I am aztonizh atyou.”
An instant apprehension seized John and Mary. Theyknewtheir ill-concealed amusement would betray them, and now they were to be called to account. But no.
“Yesseh,” continued Narcisse, “you ’ave the gweatez o’casion to be the subjec’ of congwatulation, Mistoo Itchlin, to ’ave the poweh toaccum’late money in those hawd time’ like the pwesen’!”
The Richlings cried out with relief and amused surprise.
“Why, you couldn’t make a greater mistake!”
“Mistaken! Hah! W’en I ged that memo’andum f’om Dr. Seveeah to paz that fifty dollah at yo’ cwedit, it burz f’om me, that egsclamation! ’Acchilly! ’ow that Mistoo Itchlin deserve the ’espect to save a lill quantity of money like that!”
The laughter of John and Mary did not impede his rhapsody, nor their protestations shake his convictions.
“Why,” said Richling, lolling back, “the Doctor has simply omitted to have you make the entry of”—
But he had no right to interfere with the Doctor’s accounts. However, Narcisse was not listening.
“You’ compel’ to be witch some day, Mistoo Itchlin, ad that wate of p’ogwess; I am convince of that. I can deteg that indisputably in yo’ physio’nomie. Me—Ican’tsave a cent! Mistoo Itchlin, you would be aztonizh to know ’ow bad I want some money, in fact; exceb that I amtoopwoud to dizclose you that state of my condition!”
He paused and looked from John to Mary, and from Mary to John again.
“Why, I’ll declare,” said Richling, sincerely, dropping forward with his chin on his hand, “I’m sorry to hear”—
But Narcisse interrupted.
“Diffyculty with me—I am not willing to baw’.”
Mary drew a long breath and glanced at her husband. He changed his attitude and, looking upon the floor, said, “Yes, yes.” He slowly marked the bare floor with the edge of his shoe-sole. “And yet there are times when duty actually”—
“I believe you, Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, quickly forestalling Mary’s attempt to speak. “Ah, Mistoo Itchlin!ifI had baw’d money ligue the huncle of my hant!” He waved his hand to the ceiling and looked up through that obstruction, as it were, to the witnessing sky. “But Ihadethat—to baw’! I tell you ’ow ’tis with me, Mistoo Itchlin; I nevvah would consen’ to baw’ money on’y if I pay a big inte’es’ on it. An’ I’m compel’ to tell you one thing, Mistoo Itchlin, in fact: I nevvah would leave money with Doctah Seveeah to invez faw me—no!”
Richling gave a little start, and cast his eyes an instant toward his wife. She spoke.
“We’d rather you wouldn’t say that to us, Mister ——”There was a commanding smile at one corner of her lips. “You don’t know what a friend”—
Narcisse had already apologized by two or three gestures to each of his hearers.
“Misses Itchlin—Mistoo Itchlin,”—he shook his head and smiled skeptically,—“you think you kin admiah Doctah Seveeah mo’ than me? ’Tis uzeless to attempt. ‘With all ’is fault I love ’im still.’”
Richling and his wife both spoke at once.
“But John and I,” exclaimed Mary, electrically, “love him, faults and all!”
She looked from husband to visitor, and from visitor to husband, and laughed and laughed, pushing her small feet back and forth alternately and softly clapping her hands. Narcisse felt her in the centre of his heart. He laughed. John laughed.
“What I mean, Mistoo Itchlin,” resumed Narcisse, preferring to avoid Mary’s aroused eye,—“what I mean—Doctah Seveeah don’t un’stan’ that kine of business co’ectly. Still, ad the same time, if I was you I know I would ’ate faw my money not to be makin’ me some inte’es’. I tell you what I would do with you, Mistoo Itchlin, in fact: I kin baw’ that fifty dollah f’om you myseff.”
Richling repressed a smile. “Thank you! But I don’t care to invest it.”
“Pay you ten pe’ cent. a month.”
“But we can’t spare it,” said Richling, smiling toward Mary. “We may need part of it ourselves.”
“I tell you, ’eally, Mistoo Itchlin, I nevveh baw’ money; but it juz ’appen I kin use that juz at the pwesent.”
“Why, John,” said Mary, “I think you might as well say plainly that the money is borrowed money.”
“That’s what it is,” responded Richling, and rose to spread the street-door wider open, for the daylight was fading.
“Well, I ’ope you’ll egscuse that libbetty,” said Narcisse, rising a little more tardily, and slower. “I muz baw’ fawty dollah—some place. Give you good secu’ty—give you my note, Mistoo Itchlin, in fact; muz baw fawty—aw thutty-five.”
“Why, I’m very sorry,” responded Richling, really ashamed that he could not hold his face straight. “I hope you understand”—
“Mistoo Itchlin, ’tis baw’d money. If you had a necessity faw it you would use it. If a fwend ’ave a necessity—’tis anotheh thing—you don’t feel that libbetty—you ah ’ight—I honoh you”—
“Idon’tfeel the same liberty.”
“Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, with noble generosity, throwing himself a half step forward, “if it was yoze you’d baw’ it to me in a minnit!” He smiled with benign delight. “Well, madame,—I bid you good evening, Misses Itchlin. The bes’ of fwen’s muz pawt, you know.” He turned again to Richling with a face all beauty and a form all grace. “I was juz sitting—mistfully—all at once I says to myseff, ‘Faw distwaction I’ll go an’ see Mistoo Itchlin.’ I don’tknow’ow I juz ’appen’!— Well,au ’evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin.”
Richling followed him out upon the door-step. There Narcisse intimated that even twenty dollars for a few days would supply a stern want. And when Richling was compelled again to refuse, Narcisse solicited his company as far as the next corner. There the Creole covered him with shame by forcing him to refuse the loan of ten dollars, and then of five.
It was a full hour before Richling rejoined his wife.Mrs. Riley had stepped off to some neighbor’s door with Mike on her arm. Mary was on the sidewalk.
“John,” she said, in a low voice, and with a long anxious look.
“What?”
“Hedidn’ttake the only dollar of your own in the world?”
“Mary, what could I do? It seemed a crime to give, and a crime not to give. He cried like a child; said it was all a sham about his dinner and hisrobe de chambre. An aunt, two little cousins, an aged uncle at home—and not a cent in the house! What could I do? He says he’ll return it in three days.”
“And”—Mary laughed distressfully—“you believed him?” She looked at him with an air of tender, painful admiration, half way between a laugh and a cry.
“Come, sit down,” he said, sinking upon the little wooden buttress at one side of the door-step.
Tears sprang into her eyes. She shook her head.
“Let’s go inside.” And in there she told him sincerely, “No, no, no; she didn’t think he had done wrong”—when he knew he had.
WEAR AND TEAR.
The arrangement for Dr. Sevier to place the loan of fifty dollars on his own books at Richling’s credit naturally brought Narcisse into relation with it.
It was a case of love at first sight. From the moment the record of Richling’s “little quantity” slid from the pen to the page, Narcisse had felt himself betrothed to it by destiny, and hourly supplicated the awful fates to frown not upon the amorous hopes of him unaugmented. Richling descended upon him once or twice and tore away from his embrace small fractions of the coveted treasure, choosing, through a diffidence which he mistook for a sort of virtue, the time of day when he would not see Dr. Sevier; and at the third visitation took the entire golden fleece away with him rather than encounter again the always more or less successful courtship of the scorner of loans.
A faithful suitor, however, was not thus easily shaken off. Narcisse became a frequent visitor at the Richlings’, where he never mentioned money; that part was left to moments of accidental meeting with Richling in the street, which suddenly began to occur at singularly short intervals.
Mary labored honestly and arduously to dislike him—to hold a repellent attitude toward him. But he was too much for her. It was easy enough when he was absent; but one look at his handsome face, so rife with animalinnocence, and despite herself she was ready to reward his displays of sentiment and erudition with laughter that, mean what it might, always pleased and flattered him.
“Can you help liking him?” she would ask John. “I can’t, to save my life!”
Had the treasure been earnings, Richling said—and believed—he could firmly have repelled Narcisse’s importunities. But coldly to withhold an occasional modest heave-offering of that which was the free bounty of another to him was more than he could do.
“But,” said Mary, straightening his cravat, “you intend to pay up, and he—you don’t think I’m uncharitable, do you?”
“I’d rather give my last cent than think you so,” replied John. “Still,”—laying the matter before her with both open hands,—“if you say plainly not to give him another cent I’ll do as you say. The money’s no more mine than yours.”
“Well, you can have all my share,” said Mary, pleasantly.
So the weeks passed and the hoard dwindled.
“What has it got down to, now?” asked John, frowningly, on more than one morning as he was preparing to go out. And Mary, who had been made treasurer, could count it at a glance without taking it out of her purse.
One evening, when Narcisse called, he found no one at home but Mrs. Riley. The infant Mike had been stuffed with rice and milk and laid away to slumber. The Richlings would hardly be back in less than an hour.
“I’m so’y,” said Narcisse, with a baffled frown, as he sat down and Mrs. Riley took her seat opposite. “I came to ’epay ’em some moneys which he made me the loan—juz in a fwenly way. And I came to ’epay ’im.The sum-total, in fact—I suppose he nevva mentioned you about that, eh?”
“No, sir; but, still, if”—
“No, and so I can’t pay it to you. I’m so’y. Because I know he woon like it, I know, if he fine that you know he’s been bawing money to me. Well, Misses Wiley, in fact, thass ave’yfine gen’leman and lady—that Mistoo and Misses Itchlin, in fact?”
“Well, now, Mr. Narcisse, ye’r about right? She’s just too good to live—and he’s not much better—ha! ha!” She checked her jesting mood. “Yes, sur, they’re very peaceable, quiet people. They’re just simply ferst tlass.”
“’Tis t’ue,” rejoined the Creole, fanning himself with his straw hat and looking at the Pope. “And they handsome and genial, as the lite’ati say on the noozpapeh. Seem like they almoze wedded to each otheh.”
“Well, now, sir, that’s the trooth!” She threw her open hand down with emphasis.
“And isn’t that as man and wife should be?”
“Yo’ mighty co’ect, Misses Wiley!” Narcisse gave his pretty head a little shake from side to side as he spoke.
“Ah! Mr. Narcisse,”—she pointed at herself,—“haven’t I been a wife? The husband and wife—they’d aht to jist be each other’s guairdjian angels! Hairt to hairt sur; sperit to sperit. All the rist is nawthing, Mister Narcisse.” She waved her hands. “Min is different from women, sur.” She looked about on the ceiling. Her foot noiselessly patted the floor.
“Yes,” said Narcisse, “and thass the cause that they dwess them dif’ent. To show the dif’ence, you know.”
“Ah! no. It’s not the mortial frame, sur; it’s the sperit. The sperit of man is not the sperit of woman. The sperit of woman is not the sperit of man. Each oneneeds the other, sur. They needs each other, sur, to purify and strinthen and enlairge each other’s speritu’l life. Ah, sur! Doo not I feel those things, sur?” She touched her heart with one backward-pointed finger, “Idoo. It isn’t good for min to be alone—much liss for women. Do not misunderstand me, sur; I speak as a widder, sur—and who always will be—ah! yes, I will—ha! ha! ha!” She hushed her laugh as if this were going too far, tossed her head, and continued smiling.
So they talked on. Narcisse did not stay an hour, but there was little of the hour left when he rose to go. They had passed a pleasant time. The Creole, it is true, tried and failed to take the helm of conversation. Mrs. Riley held it. But she steered well. She was still expatiating on the “strinthenin’” spiritual value of the marriage relation when she, too, stood up.
“And that’s what Mr. and Madam Richlin’s a-doin’ all the time. And they do ut to perfiction, sur—jist to perfiction!”
“I doubt it not, Misses Wiley. Well, Misses Wiley, I bid youau ’evoi’. I dunno if you’ll pummit me, but I am compel to tell you, Misses Wiley, I nevva yeh anybody in my life with such a educated and talented conve’sation like yo’seff. Misses Wiley, at what univussity did you gwaduate?”
“Well, reely, Mister—eh”—she fanned herself with broad sweeps of her purple bordered palm-leaf—“reely, sur, if I don’t furgit the name I—I—I’ll be switched! Ha! ha! ha!”
Narcisse joined in the laugh.
“Thaz the way, sometime,” he said, and then with sudden gravity: “And, by-the-by, Misses Wiley, speakin’ of Mistoo Itchlin,—if you could baw’ me two dollahs an’ a ’alf juz till tomaw mawnin—till I kin sen’ it youfum the office— Because that money I’ve got faw Mistoo Itchlin is in the shape of a check, and anyhow I’m c’owding me a little to pay that whole sum-total to Mistoo Itchlin. I kin sen’ it you firs’ thing my bank open tomaw mawnin.”
Do you think he didn’t get it?
“What has it got down to now?” John asked again, a few mornings after Narcisse’s last visit. Mary told him. He stepped a little way aside, averting his face, dropped his forehead into his hand, and returned.
“I don’t see—I don’t see, Mary—I”—
“Darling,” she replied, reaching and capturing both his hands, “who does see? The richthinkthey see; but do they, John? Now,dothey?”
The frown did not go quite off his face, but he took her head between his hands and kissed her temple.
“You’re always trying to lift me,” he said.
“Don’t you lift me?” she replied, looking up between his hands and smiling.
“Do I?”
“You know you do. Don’t you remember the day we took that walk, and you said that after all it never is we who provide?” She looked at the button of his coat, which she twirled in her fingers. “That word lifted me.”
“But suppose I can’t practice the trust I preach?” he said.
“You do trust, though. You have trusted.”
“Past tense,” said John. He lifted her hands slowly away from him, and moved toward the door of their chamber. He could not help looking back at the eyes that followed him, and then he could not bear their look. “I—I suppose a man mustn’t trust too much,” he said.
“Can he?” asked Mary, leaning against a table.
“Oh, yes, he can,” replied John; but his tone lacked conviction.
“If it’s the right kind?”
Her eyes were full of tears.
“I’m afraid mine’s not the right kind, then,” said John, and passed out into and down the street.
But what a mind he took with him—what torture of questions! Was he being lifted or pulled down? His tastes,—were they rising or sinking? Were little negligences of dress and bearing and in-door attitude creeping into his habits? Was he losing his discriminative sense of quantity, time, distance? Did he talk of small achievements, small gains, and small truths, as though they were great? Had he learned to carp at the rich, and to make honesty the excuse for all penury? Had he these various poverty-marks? He looked at himself outside and inside, and feared to answer. One thing he knew,—that he was having great wrestlings.
He turned his thoughts to Ristofalo. This was a common habit with him. Not only in thought, but in person, he hovered with a positive infatuation about this man of perpetual success.
Lately the Italian had gone out of town, into the country of La Fourche, to buy standing crops of oranges. Richling fed his hope on the possibilities that might follow Ristofalo’s return. His friend would want him to superintend the gathering and shipment of those crops—when they should be ripe—away yonder in November. Frantic thought! A man and his wife could starve to death twenty times before then.
Mrs. Riley’s high esteem for John and Mary had risen from the date of the Doctor’s visit, and the good woman thought it but right somewhat to increase the figures of their room-rent to others more in keeping withsuch high gentility. How fast the little hoard melted away!
And the summer continued on,—the long, beautiful, glaring, implacable summer; its heat quaking on the low roofs; its fig-trees dropping their shrivelled and blackened leaves and writhing their weird, bare branches under the scorching sun; the long-drawn, frying note of its cicada throbbing through the mid-day heat from the depths of the becalmed oak; its universal pall of dust on the myriad red, sleep-heavy blossoms of the oleander and the white tulips of the lofty magnolia; its twinkling pomegranates hanging their apples of scarlet and gold over the garden wall; its little chameleons darting along the hot fence-tops; its far-stretching, empty streets; its wide hush of idleness; its solitary vultures sailing in the upper blue; its grateful clouds; its hot north winds, its cool south winds; its gasping twilight calms; its gorgeous nights,—the long, long summer lingered on into September.
One evening, as the sun was sinking below the broad, flat land, its burning disk reddened by a low golden haze of suspended dust, Richling passed slowly toward his home, coming from a lower part of the town by way of the quadroon quarter. He was paying little notice, or none, to his whereabouts, wending his way mechanically, in the dejected reverie of weary disappointment, and with voiceless inward screamings and groanings under the weight of those thoughts which had lately taken up their stay in his dismayed mind. But all at once his attention was challenged by a strange, offensive odor. He looked up and around, saw nothing, turned a corner, and found himself at the intersection of Trémé and St. Anne streets, just behind the great central prison of New Orleans.
The “Parish Prison” was then only about twenty-five years old; but it had made haste to become offensive toevery sense and sentiment of reasonable man. It had been built in the Spanish style,—a massive, dark, grim, huge, four-sided block, the fissure-like windows of its cells looking down into the four public streets which ran immediately under its walls. Dilapidation had followed hard behind ill-building contractors. Down its frowning masonry ran grimy streaks of leakage over peeling stucco and mould-covered brick. Weeds bloomed high aloft in the broken gutters under the scant and ragged eaves. Here and there the pale, debauched face of a prisoner peered shamelessly down through shattered glass or rusted grating; and everywhere in the still atmosphere floated the stifling smell of the unseen loathsomeness within.
Richling paused. As he looked up he noticed a bat dart out from a long crevice under the eaves. Two others followed. Then three—a dozen—a hundred—a thousand—millions. All along the two sides of the prison in view they poured forth in a horrid black torrent,—myriads upon myriads. They filled the air. They came and came. Richling stood and gazed; and still they streamed out in gibbering waves, until the wonder was that anything but a witch’s dream could contain them.
The approach of another passer roused him, and he started on. The step gained upon him—closed up with him; and at the moment when he expected to see the person go by, a hand was laid gently on his shoulder.
“Mistoo Itchlin, I ’ope you well, seh!”
BROUGHT TO BAY.
One may take his choice between the two, but there is no escaping both in this life: the creditor—the borrower. Either, but never neither. Narcisse caught step with Richling, and they walked side by side.
“How I learned to mawch, I billong with a fiah comp’ny,” said the Creole. “We mawch eve’y yeah on the fou’th of Mawch.” He laughed heartily. “Thass a ’ime!—Mawch on the fou’th of Mawch! Thass poetwy, in fact, as you maysayin a jestingway—ha! ha! ha!”
“Yes, and it’s truth, besides,” responded the drearier man.
“Yes!” exclaimed Narcisse, delighted at the unusual coincidence, “at the same time ’tis the tooth! In fact, why should I tell a lie about such a thing likethat? ’Twould be useless. Pe’haps you may ’ave notiz, Mistoo Itchlin, thad the noozpapehs opine us fiahmen to be the gau’dians of the city.”
“Yes,” responded Richling. “I think Dr. Sevier calls you the Mamelukes, doesn’t he? But that’s much the same, I suppose.”
“Same thing,” replied the Creole. “We combad the fiah fiend. You fine that building ve’y pitto’esque, Mistoo Itchlin?” He jerked his thumb toward the prison, that was still pouring forth its clouds of impish wings. “Yes? ’Tis the same with me. But I tell youone thing, Mistoo Itchlin, I assu’ you, and you will believe me, I would ’atheh be lock’outside of that building than to be lock’inside of the same. ’Cause—you know why? ’Tis ve’y ’umid in that building. An thass a thing w’at I believe, Mistoo Itchlin; I believe w’en a building is v’ey ’umid it is not ve’y ’ealthsome. What is yo’ opinion consunning that, Mistoo Itchlin?”
“My opinion?” said Richling, with a smile. “My opinion is that the Parish Prison would not be a good place to raise a family.”
Narcisse laughed.
“I thing yo’opinion is co’ect,” he said, flatteringly; then growing instantly serious, he added, “Yesseh, I think you’ about a-’ight, Mistoo Itchlin; faw even if ’twas not too ’umid, ’twould be too confining, in fact,—speshly faw child’en. I dunno; but thass my opinion. If you ah p’oceeding at yo’ residence, Mistoo Itchlin, I’ll juzcontinue my p’omenade in yo’ society—if not intooding”—
Richling smiled candidly. “Your company’s worth all it costs, Narcisse. Excuse me; I always forget your last name—and your first is so appropriate.” Itwasworth all it cost, though Richling could ill afford the purchase. The young Latin’s sweet, abysmal ignorance, his infantile amiability, his artless ambition, and heathenish innocence started the natural gladness of Richling’s blood to effervescing anew every time they met, and, through the sheer impossibility of confiding any of his troubles to the Creole, made him think them smaller and lighter than they had just before appeared. The very light of Narcisse’s countenance and beauty of his form—his smooth, low forehead, his thick, abundant locks, his faintly up-tipped nose and expanded nostrils, his sweet, weak mouth with its impending smile, his beautiful chinand bird’s throat, his almond eyes, his full, round arm, and strong thigh—had their emphatic value.
So now, Richling, a moment earlier borne down by the dreadful shadow of the Parish Prison, left it behind him as he walked and laughed and chatted with his borrower. He felt very free with Narcisse, for the reason that would have made a wiser person constrained,—lack of respect for him.
“Mistoo Itchlin, you know,” said the Creole, “I like you to call me Nahcisse. But at the same time my las’ name is Savillot.” He pronounced it Sav-veel-yo. “Thass a somewot Spanish name. That double l got a twist in it.”
“Oh, call it Papilio!” laughed Richling.
“Papillon!” exclaimed Narcisse, with delight. “The buttehfly! All a-’ight; you kin juz style me that! ’Cause thass my natu’e, Mistoo Itchlin; I gatheh honey eve’y day fum eve’y opening floweh, as the bahd of A-von wemawk.”
So they went on.
Ad infinitum?Ah, no! The end was just as plainly in view to both from the beginning as it was when, at length, the two stepping across the street gutter at the last corner between Richling and home, Narcisse laid his open hand in his companion’s elbow, and stopped, saying, as Richling turned and halted with a sudden frown of unwillingness:—
“I tell you ’ow ’tis with me, Mistoo Itchlin, I’ve p’oject that manneh myseff; in weading a book—w’en I see a beaucheouz idee, I juz take a pencil”—he drew one from his pocket—“check! I check it. So w’en I wead the same book again, then I take notiz I’ve check that idee and I look to see what I check it faw. ’Ow you like that invention, eh?”
“Very simple,” said Richling, with an unpleasant look of expectancy.
“Mistoo Itchlin,” resumed the other, “do you not fine me impooving in my p’onouncement of yo’ lang-widge? I fine I don’t use such bad land-widge like biffo. I am shue you muz’ ’ave notiz since some time I always soun’ that awer in yo’ name. Mistoo Itchlin, will you ’ave that kin’ness to baw me two-an-a-’alf till the lass of that month?”
Richling looked at him a moment in silence, and then broke into a short, grim laugh.
“It’s all gone. There’s no more honey in this flower.” He set his jaw as he ceased speaking. There was a warm red place on either cheek.
“Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, with sudden, quavering fervor, “you kin len’ me two dollahs! I gi’e you my honah the moze sacwed of a gen’leman, Mistoo Itchlin, I nevvah hass you ag’in so long I live!” He extended a pacifying hand. “One moment, Mistoo Itchlin,—one moment,—I implo’ you, seh! I assu’ you, Mistoo Itchlin, I pay you eve’y cent in the worl’ on the laz of that month? Mistoo Itchlin, I am in indignan’ circumstan’s. Mistoo Itchlin, if you know the distwess—Mistoo Itchlin, if you know—’ow bad I ’ate to baw!” The tears stood in his eyes. “It nea’lykillme to b—” Utterance failed him.
“My friend,” began Richling.
“Mistoo Itchlin,” exclaimed Narcisse, dashing away the tears and striking his hand on his heart, “Iamyo’ fwend, seh!”
Richling smiled scornfully. “Well, my good friend, if you had ever kept a single promise made to me I need not have gone since yesterday without a morsel of food.”
Narcisse tried to respond.
“Hush!” said Richling, and Narcisse bowed while Richling spoke on. “I haven’t a cent to buy bread with to carry home. And whose fault is it? Is it my fault—or is it yours?”
“Mistoo Itchlin, seh”—
“Hush!” cried Richling, again; “if you try to speak before I finish I’ll thrash you right here in the street!”
Narcisse folded his arms. Richling flushed and flashed with the mortifying knowledge that his companion’s behavior was better than his own.
“If you want to borrow more money of me find me a chance to earn it!” He glanced so suddenly at two or three street lads, who were the only on-lookers, that they shrank back a step.
“Mistoo Itchlin,” began Narcisse, once more, in a tone of polite dismay, “you aztonizh me. I assu’ you, Mistoo Itchlin”—
Richling lifted his finger and shook it. “Don’t you tell me that, sir! I will not be an object of astonishment to you! Not to you, sir! Not to you!” He paused, trembling, his anger and his shame rising together.
Narcisse stood for a moment, silent, undaunted, the picture of amazed friendship and injured dignity, then raised his hat with the solemnity of affronted patience and said:—
“Mistoo Itchlin, seein’ as ’tis you, a puffic gen’leman, ’oo is not goin’ to ’efuse that satisfagtion w’at a gen’leman, always a-’eady to give a gen’leman,—I bid you—faw the pwesen’—good-evenin’, seh!” He walked away.
Richling stood in his tracks dumfounded, crushed. His eyes followed the receding form of the borrower until it disappeared around a distant corner, while the eye of his mind looked in upon himself and beheld, with a shamethat overwhelmed anger, the folly and the puerility of his outburst. The nervous strain of twenty-four hours’ fast, without which he might not have slipped at all, only sharpened his self-condemnation. He turned and walked to his house, and all the misery that had oppressed him before he had seen the prison, and all that had come with that sight, and all this new shame, sank down upon his heart at once. “I am not a man! I am not a whole man!” he suddenly moaned to himself. “Something is wanting—oh! what is it?”—he lifted his eyes to the sky,—“what is it?”—when in truth, there was little wanting just then besides food.
He passed in at the narrow gate and up the slippery alley. Nearly at its end was the one window of the room he called home. Just under it—it was somewhat above his head—he stopped and listened. A step within was moving busily here and there, now fainter and now plainer; and a voice, the sweetest on earth to him, was singing to itself in its soft, habitual way.
He started round to the door with a firmer tread. It stood open. He halted on the threshold. There was a small table in the middle of the room, and there was food on it. A petty reward of his wife’s labor had brought it there.
“Mary,” he said, holding her off a little, “don’t kiss me yet.”
She looked at him with consternation. He sat down, drew her upon his lap, and told her, in plain, quiet voice, the whole matter.
“Don’t look so, Mary.”
“How?” she asked, in a husky voice and with flashing eye.
“Don’t breathe so short and set your lips. I never saw you look so, Mary, darling!”
She tried to smile, but her eyes filled.
“If you had been with me,” said John, musingly, “it wouldn’t have happened.”
“If—if”— Mary sat up as straight as a dart, the corners of her mouth twitching so that she could scarcely shape a word,—“if—if I’d been there, I’d have made youwhiphim!” She flouted her handkerchief out of her pocket, buried her face in his neck, and sobbed like a child.
“Oh!” exclaimed the tearful John, holding her away by both shoulders, tossing back his hair and laughing as she laughed,—“Oh! you women! You’re all of a sort! You want us men to carry your hymn-books and your iniquities, too!”
She laughed again.
“Well, of course!”
And they rose and drew up to the board.
THE DOCTOR DINES OUT.
On the third day after these incidents, again at the sunset hour, but in a very different part of the town, Dr. Sevier sat down, a guest, at dinner. There were flowers; there was painted and monogrammed china; there was Bohemian glass; there was silver of cunning work with linings of gold, and damasked linen, and oak of fantastic carving. There were ladies in summer silks and elaborate coiffures; the hostess, small, slender, gentle, alert; another, dark, flashing, Roman, tall; another, ripe but not drooping, who had been beautiful, now, for thirty years; and one or two others. There were jewels; there were sweet odors. And there were, also, some good masculine heads: Dr. Sevier’s, for instance; and the chief guest’s,—an iron-gray, with hard lines in the face, and a scar on the near cheek,—a colonel of the regular army passing through from Florida; and one crown, bald, pink, and shining, encircled by a silken fringe of very white hair: it was the banker who lived in St. Mary street. His wife was opposite. And there was much high-bred grace. There were tall windows thrown wide to make the blaze of gas bearable, and two tall mulattoes in the middle distance bringing in and bearing out viands too sumptuous for any but a French nomenclature.
It was what you would call a quiet affair; quite out of season, and difficult to furnish with even this little handful of guests; but it was a proper and necessary attentionto the colonel; conversation not too dull, nor yet too bright for ease, but passing gracefully from one agreeable topic to another without earnestness, a restless virtue, or frivolity, which also goes against serenity. Now it touched upon the prospects of young A. B. in the demise of his uncle; now upon the probable seriousness of C. D. in his attentions to E. F.; now upon G.’s amusing mishaps during a late tour in Switzerland, which had—“how unfortunately!”—got into the papers. Now it was concerning the admirable pulpit manners and easily pardoned vocal defects of a certain new rector. Now it turned upon Stephen A. Douglas’s last speech; passed to the questionable merits of a new-fangled punch; and now, assuming a slightly explanatory form from the gentlemen to the ladies, showed why there was no need whatever to fear a financial crisis—which came soon afterward.
The colonel inquired after an old gentleman whom he had known in earlier days in Kentucky.
“It’s many a year since I met him,” he said. “The proudest man I ever saw. I understand he was down here last season.”
“He was,” replied the host, in a voice of native kindness, and with a smile on his high-fed face. “He was; but only for a short time. He went back to his estate. That is his world. He’s there now.”
“It used to be considered one of the finest places in the State,” said the colonel.
“It is still,” rejoined the host. “Doctor, you know him?”
“I think not,” said Dr. Sevier; but somehow he recalled the old gentleman in button gaiters, who had called on him one evening to consult him about his sick wife.
“A good man,” said the colonel, looking amused;“and a superb gentleman. Is he as great a partisan of the church as he used to be?”
“Greater! Favors an established church of America.”
The ladies were much amused. The host’s son, a young fellow with sprouting side-whiskers, said he thought he could be quite happy with one of the finest plantations in Kentucky, and let the church go its own gait.
“Humph!” said the father; “I doubt if there’s ever a happy breath drawn on the place.”
“Why, how is that?” asked the colonel, in a cautious tone.
“Hadn’t he heard?” The host was surprised, but spoke low. “Hadn’t he heard about the trouble with their only son? Why, he went abroad and never came back!”
Every one listened.
“It’s a terrible thing,” said the hostess to the ladies nearest her; “no one ever dares ask the family what the trouble is,—they have such odd, exclusive ideas about their matters being nobody’s business. All that can be known is that they look upon him as worse than dead and gone forever.”
“And who will get the estate?” asked the banker.
“The two girls. They’re both married.”
“They’re very much like their father,” said the hostess, smiling with gentle significance.
“Very much,” echoed the host, with less delicacy. “Their mother is one of those women who stand in terror of their husband’s will. Now, if he were to die and leave her with a will of her own she would hardly know what to do with it—I mean with her will—or the property either.”
The hostess protested softly against so harsh a speech, and the son, after one or two failures, got in his remark:—
“Maybe the prodigal would come back and be taken in.”
But nobody gave this conjecture much attention. The host was still talking of the lady without a will.
“Isn’t she an invalid?” Dr. Sevier had asked.
“Yes; the trip down here last season was on her account,—for change of scene. Her health is wretched.”
“I’m distressed that I didn’t call on her,” said the hostess; “but they went away suddenly. My dear, I wonder if they really did encounter the young man here?”
“Pshaw!” said the husband, softly, smiling and shaking his head, and turned the conversation.
In time it settled down with something like earnestness for a few minutes upon a subject which the rich find it easy to discuss without the least risk of undue warmth. It was about the time when one of the graciously murmuring mulattoes was replenishing the glasses, that remark in some way found utterance to this effect,—that the company present could congratulate themselves on living in a community where there was no poor class.
“Poverty, of course, we see; but there is no misery, or nearly none,” said the ambitious son of the host.
Dr. Sevier differed with him. That was one of the Doctor’s blemishes as a table guest: he would differ with people.
“There is misery,” he said; “maybe not the gaunt squalor and starvation of London or Paris or New York; the climate does not tolerate that,—stamps it out before it can assume dimensions; but there is at least misery of that sort that needs recognition and aid from the well-fed.”
The lady who had been beautiful so many years had somewhat to say; the physician gave attention, and she spoke:—
“If sister Jane were here, she would be perfectly triumphant to hear you speak so, Doctor.” She turned to the hostess, and continued: “Jane is quite an enthusiast, you know; a sort of Dorcas, as husband says, modified and readapted. Yes, she is for helping everybody.”
“Whether help is good for them or not,” said the lady’s husband, a very straight and wiry man with a garrote collar.
“It’s all one,” laughed the lady. “Our new rector told her plainly, the other day, that she was making a great mistake; that she ought to consider whether assistance assists. It was really amusing. Out of the pulpit and off his guard, you know, he lisps a little; and he said she ought to consider whether ‘aththithtanth aththithtth.’”
There was a gay laugh at this, and the lady was called a perfect and cruel mimic.
“‘Aththithtanth aththithtth!’” said two or three to their neighbors, and laughed again.
“What did your sister say to that?” asked the banker, bending forward his white, tonsured head, and smiling down the board.
“She said she didn’t care; that it kept her own heart tender, anyhow. ‘My dear madam,’ said he, ‘your heart wants strengthening more than softening.’ He told her a pound of inner resource was more true help to any poor person than a ton of assistance.”
The banker commended the rector. The hostess, very sweetly, offered her guarantee that Jane took the rebuke in good part.
“She did,” replied the time-honored beauty; “she tried to profit by it. But husband, here, has offered her a wager of a bonnet against a hat that the rector will upset her new schemes. Her idea now is to make work for those whom nobody will employ.”
“Jane,” said the kind-faced host, “really wants to do good for its own sake.”
“I think she’s even a little Romish in her notions,” said Jane’s wiry brother-in-law. “I talked to her as plainly as the rector. I told her, ‘Jane, my dear, all this making of work for the helpless poor is not worth one-fiftieth part of the same amount of effort spent in teaching and training those same poor to make their labor intrinsically marketable.’”
“Yes,” said the hostess; “but while we are philosophizing and offering advice so wisely, Jane is at work—doing the best she knows how. We can’t claim the honor even of making her mistakes.”
“’Tisn’t a question of honors to us, madam,” said Dr. Sevier; “it’s a question of results to the poor.”
The brother-in-law had not finished. He turned to the Doctor.
“Poverty, Doctor, is an inner condition”—
“Sometimes,” interposed the Doctor.
“Yes, generally,” continued the brother-in-law, with some emphasis. “And to give help you must, first of all, ‘inquire within’—within your beneficiary.”
“Not always, sir,” replied the Doctor; “not if they’re sick, for instance.” The ladies bowed briskly and applauded with their eyes. “And not always if they’re well,” he added. His last words softened off almost into soliloquy.
The banker spoke forcibly:—
“Yes, there are two quite distinct kinds of poverty. One is an accident of the moment; the other is an inner condition of the individual”—
“Of course it is,” said sister Jane’s brother-in-law, who felt it a little to have been contradicted on the side of kindness by the hard-spoken Doctor. “Certainly! it’sa deficiency of inner resources or character, and what to do with it is no simple question.”
“That’s what I was about to say,” resumed the banker; “at least, when the poverty is of that sort. And what discourages kind people is that that’s the sort we commonly see. It’s a relief to meet the other, Doctor, just as it’s a relief to a physician to encounter a case of simple surgery.”
“And—and,” said the brother-in-law, “what is your rule about plain almsgiving to the difficult sort?”
“My rule,” replied the banker, “is, don’t do it. Debt is slavery, and there is an ugly kink in human nature that disposes it to be content with slavery. No, sir; gift-making and gift-taking are twins of a bad blood.” The speaker turned to Dr. Sevier for approval; but, though the Doctor could not gainsay the fraction of a point, he was silent. A lady near the hostess stirred softly both under and above the board. In her private chamber she would have yawned. Yet the banker spoke again:—
“Help the old, I say. You are pretty safe there. Help the sick. But as for the young and strong,—now, no man could be any poorer than I was at twenty-one,—I say be cautious how you smooth that hard road which is the finest discipline the young can possibly get.”
“If it isn’ttoohard,” chirped the son of the host.
“Too hard? Well, yes, if it isn’t too hard. Still I say, hands off; you needn’t turn your back, however.” Here the speaker again singled out Dr. Sevier. “Watch the young man out of one corner of your eye; but make him swim!”
“Ah-h!” said the ladies.
“No, no,” continued the banker; “I don’t say let him drown; but I take it, Doctor, that your alms, for instance,are no alms if they put the poor fellow into your debt and at your back.”
“To whom do you refer?” asked Dr. Sevier. Whereat there was a burst of laughter, which was renewed when the banker charged the physician with helping so many persons, “on the sly,” that he couldn’t tell which one was alluded to unless the name were given.
“Doctor,” said the hostess, seeing it was high time the conversation should take a new direction, “they tell me you have closed your house and taken rooms at the St. Charles.”
“For the summer,” said the physician.
As, later, he walked toward that hotel, he went resolving to look up the Richlings again without delay. The banker’s words rang in his ears like an overdose of quinine: “Watch the young man out of one corner of your eye. Make him swim. I don’t say let him drown.”
“Well, I do watch him,” thought the Doctor. “I’ve only lost sight of him once in a while.” But the thought seemed to find an echo against his conscience, and when it floated back it was: “I’ve onlycaughtsight of him once in a while.” The banker’s words came up again: “Don’t put the poor fellow into your debt and at your back.” “Just what you’ve done,” said conscience. “How do you know he isn’t drowned?” He would see to it.
While he was still on his way to the hotel he fell in with an acquaintance, a Judge Somebody or other, lately from Washington City. He, also, lodged at the St. Charles. They went together. As they approached the majestic porch of the edifice they noticed some confusion at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the rotunda; cabmen and boys were running to a common point, where, in the midst of a small, compact crowd, two or threepairs of arms were being alternately thrown aloft and brought down. Presently the mass took a rapid movement up St. Charles street.
The judge gave his conjecture: “Some poor devil resisting arrest.”
Before he and the Doctor parted for the night they went to the clerk’s counter.
“No letters for you, Judge; mail failed. Here is a card for you, Doctor.”
The Doctor received it. It had been furnished, blank, by the clerk to its writer.