She beamed upon her husband. Narcisse laughed with pure pleasure.
“Well, I am compel’ to say you ah co’ect. I am continually makin’ some discove’ies. ‘Necessity’s the motheh of inventions.’ Now thass anotheh thing I ’ave notiz—about that month of Octobeh: it always come befo’ you think it’s comin’. I ’ave notiz that about eve’y month. Now, to-day we ah the twennieth Octobeh! Is it not so?” He lighted his cigarette. “You ah compel’ to co’obo’ate me.”
LIGHTING SHIP.
Yes, the tide was coming in. The Richlings’ bark was still on the sands, but every now and then a wave of promise glided under her. She might float, now, any day. Meantime, as has no doubt been guessed, she was held on an even keel by loans from the Doctor.
“Why you don’t advertise in papers?” asked Ristofalo.
“Advertise? Oh, I didn’t think it would be of any use. I advertised a whole week, last summer.”
“You put advertisement in wrong time and keep it out wrong time,” said the Italian.
“I have a place in prospect, now, without advertising,” said Richling, with an elated look.
It was just here that a new mistake of Richling’s emerged. He had come into contact with two or three men of that wretched sort that indulge the strange vanity of keeping others waiting upon them by promises of employment. He believed them, liked them heartily because they said nothing about references, and gratefully distended himself with their husks, until Ristofalo opened his eyes by saying, when one of these men had disappointed Richling the third time:—
“Business man don’t promise but once.”
“You lookin’ for book-keeper’s place?” asked the Italian at another time. “Why don’t dress like a book-keeper?”
“On borrowed money?” asked Richling, evidently looking upon that question as a poser.
“Yes.”
“Oh, no,” said Richling, with a smile of superiority; but the other one smiled too, and shook his head.
“Borrow mo’, if you don’t.”
Richling’s heart flinched at the word. He had thought he was giving his true reason; but he was not. A foolish notion had floated, like a grain of dust, into the over-delicate wheels of his thought,—that men would employ him the more readily if he looked needy. His hat was unbrushed, his shoes unpolished; he had let his beard come out, thin and untrimmed; his necktie was faded. He looked battered. When the Italian’s gentle warning showed him this additional mistake on top of all his others he was dismayed at himself; and when he sat down in his room and counted the cost of an accountant’s uniform, so to speak, the remains of Dr. Sevier’s last loan to him was too small for it. Thereupon he committed one error more,—but it was the last. He sunk his standard, and began again to look for service among industries that could offer employment only to manual labor. He crossed the river and stirred about among the dry-docks and ship-carpenters’ yards of the suburb Algiers. But he could neither hew spars, nor paint, nor splice ropes. He watched a man half a day calking a boat; then he offered himself for the same work, did it fairly, and earned half a day’s wages. But then the boat was done, and there was no other calking at the moment along the whole harbor front, except some that was being done on a ship by her own sailors.
“John,” said Mary, dropping into her lap the sewing that hardly paid for her candle, “isn’t it hard to realizethat it isn’t twelve months since your hardships commenced? Theycan’tlast much longer, darling.”
“I know that,” said John. “And I know I’ll find a place presently, and then we’ll wake up to the fact that this was actually less than a year of trouble in a lifetime of love.”
“Yes,” rejoined Mary, “I know your patience will be rewarded.”
“But what I want is work now, Mary. The bread of idleness is gettingtoobitter. But never mind; I’m going to work to-morrow;—never mind where. It’s all right. You’ll see.”
She smiled, and looked into his eyes again with a confession of unreserved trust. The next day he reached the—what shall we say?—big end of his last mistake. What it was came out a few mornings after, when he called at Number 5 Carondelet street.
“The Doctah is not in pwesently,” said Narcisse. “He ve’y hawdly comes in so soon as that. He’s living home again, once mo’, now. He’s ve’y un’estless. I tole ’im yistiddy, ‘Doctah, I know juz ’ow you feel, seh; ’tis the same way with myseff. You ought to git ma’ied!’”
“Did he say he would?” asked Richling.
“Well, you know, Mistoo Itchlin, so the povvub says, ‘Silent give consense.’ He juz look at me—nevvah said a word—ha! he couldn’! You not lookin’ ve’y well, Mistoo Itchlin. I suppose ’tis that waum weatheh.”
“I suppose it is; at least, partly,” said Richling, and added nothing more, but looked along and across the ceiling, and down at a skeleton in a corner, that was offering to shake hands with him. He was at a loss how to talk to Narcisse. Both Mary and he had grown a little ashamed of their covert sarcasms, and yet to leavethem out was bread without yeast, meat without salt, as far as their own powers of speech were concerned.
“I thought, the other day,” he began again, with an effort, “when it blew up cool, that the warm weather was over.”
“It seem to be finishin’ ad the end, I think,” responded the Creole. “I think, like you, that we ’ave ’ad too waum weatheh. Me, I like that weatheh to be cole, me. I halways weigh the mose in cole weatheh. I gain flesh, in fact. But so soon ’tis summeh somethin’ become of it. I dunno if ’tis the fault of my close, but I reduct in summeh. Speakin’ of close, Mistoo Itchlin,—egscuse me if ’tis a fair question,—w’at was yo’ objec’ in buyin’ that tawpaulin hat an’ jacket lass week ad that sto’ on the levee? You din know I saw you, but I juz ’appen to see you, in fact.” (The color rose in Richling’s face, and Narcisse pressed on without allowing an answer.) “Well, thass none o’ my biziness, of co’se, but I think you lookin’ ve’y bad, Mistoo Itchlin”— He stopped very short and stepped with dignified alacrity to his desk, for Dr. Sevier’s step was on the stair.
The Doctor shook hands with Richling and sank into the chair at his desk. “Anything turned up yet, Richling?”
“Doctor,” began Richling, drawing his chair near and speaking low.
“Good-mawnin’, Doctah,” said Narcisse, showing himself with a graceful flourish.
The Doctor nodded, then turned again to Richling. “You were saying”—
“I ’ope you well, seh,” insisted the Creole, and as the Doctor glanced toward him impatiently, repeated the sentiment, “’Ope you well, seh.”
The Doctor said he was, and turned once more toRichling. Narcisse bowed away backward and went to his desk, filled to the eyes with fierce satisfaction. He had made himself felt. Richling drew his chair nearer and spoke low:—
“If I don’t get work within a day or two I shall have to come to you for money.”
“That’s all right, Richling.” The Doctor spoke aloud; Richling answered low.
“Oh, no, Doctor, it’s all wrong! Indeed, I can’t do it any more unless you will let me earn the money.”
“My dear sir, I would most gladly do it; but I have nothing that you can do.”
“Yes, you have, Doctor.”
“What is it?”
“Why, it’s this: you have a slave boy driving your carriage.”
“Well?”
“Give him some other work, and let me do that.”
Dr. Sevier started in his seat. “Richling, I can’t do that. I should ruin you. If you drive my carriage”—
“Just for a time, Doctor, till I find something else.”
“No! no! If you drive my carriage in New Orleans you’ll never do anything else.”
“Why, Doctor, there are men standing in the front ranks to-day, who”—
“Yes, yes,” replied the Doctor, impatiently, “I know,—who began with menial labor; but—I can’t explain it to you, Richling, but you’re not of the same sort; that’s all. I say it without praise or blame; you must have work adapted to your abilities.”
“My abilities!” softly echoed Richling. Tears sprang to his eyes. He held out his open palms,—“Doctor, look there.” They were lacerated. He started to rise, but the Doctor prevented him.
“Let me go,” said Richling, pleadingly, and with averted face. “Let me go. I’m sorry I showed them. It was mean and foolish and weak. Let me go.”
But Dr. Sevier kept a hand on him, and he did not resist. The Doctor took one of the hands and examined it. “Why, Richling, you’ve been handling freight!”
“There was nothing else.”
“Oh, bah!”
“Let me go,” whispered Richling. But the Doctor held him.
“You didn’t do this on the steam-boat landing, did you, Richling?”
The young man nodded. The Doctor dropped the hand and looked upon its owner with set lips and steady severity. When he spoke he said:—
“Among the negro and green Irish deck-hands, and under the oaths and blows of steam-boat mates! Why, Richling!” He turned half away in his rotary chair with an air of patience worn out.
“You thought I had more sense,” said Richling.
The Doctor put his elbows upon his desk and slowly drew his face upward through his hands. “Mr. Richling, what is the matter with you?” They gazed at each other a long moment, and then Dr. Sevier continued: “Your trouble isn’t want of sense. I know that very well, Richling.” His voice was low and became kind. “But you don’t get the use of the sense you have. It isn’t available.” He bent forward: “Some men, Richling, carry their folly on the surface and their good sense at the bottom,”—he jerked his thumb backward toward the distant Narcisse, and added, with a stealthy frown,—“like that little fool in yonder. He’s got plenty of sense, but he doesn’t load any of it on deck. Some men carry their sense on top and their folly down below”—
Richling smiled broadly through his dejection, and touched his own chest. “Like this big fool here,” he said.
“Exactly,” said Dr. Sevier. “Now you’ve developed a defect of the memory. Your few merchantable qualities have been so long out of the market, and you’ve suffered such humiliation under the pressure of adversity, that you’ve—you’ve done a very bad thing.”
“Say a dozen,” responded Richling, with bitter humor. But the Doctor swung his head in resentment of the levity.
“One’s enough. You’ve allowed yourself to forget your true value.”
“I’m worth whatever I’ll bring.”
The Doctor tossed his head in impatient disdain.
“Pshaw! You’ll never bring what you’re worth any more than some men are worth what they bring. You don’t know how. You never will know.”
“Well, Doctor, I do know that I’m worth more than I ever was before. I’ve learned a thousand things in the last twelvemonth. If I can only get a chance to prove it!” Richling turned red and struck his knee with his fist.
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Sevier; “that’s your sense, on top. And then you go—in a fit of the merest impatience, as I do suspect—and offer yourself as a deck-hand and as a carriage-driver. That’s your folly, at the bottom. What ought to be done to such a man?” He gave a low, harsh laugh. Richling dropped his eyes. A silence followed.
“You say all you want is a chance,” resumed the Doctor.
“Yes,” quickly answered Richling, looking up.
“I’m going to give it to you.” They looked into eachother’s eyes. The Doctor nodded. “Yes, sir.” He nodded again.
“Where did you come from, Richling,—when you came to New Orleans,—you and your wife? Milwaukee?”
“Yes.”
“Do your relatives know of your present condition?”
“No.”
“Is your wife’s mother comfortably situated?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll tell you what you must do.”
“The only thing I can’t do,” said Richling.
“Yes, you can. You must. You must send Mrs. Richling back to her mother.”
Richling shook his head.
“Well,” said the Doctor, warmly, “I say you must. I will lend you the passage-money.”
Richling’s eye kindled an instant at the Doctor’s compulsory tone, but he said, gently:—
“Why, Doctor, Mary will never consent to leave me.”
“Of course she will not. But you must make her do it! That’s what you must do. And when that’s done then you must start out and go systematically from door to door,—of business houses, I mean,—offering yourself for work befitting your station—ahem!—station, I say—and qualifications. I will lend you money to live on until you find permanent employment. Now, now, don’t get alarmed! I’m not going to help you any more than I absolutely must!”
“But, Doctor, how can you expect”— But the Doctor interrupted.
“Come, now, none of that! You and your wife are brave; I must say that for you. She has the courage of a gladiator. You can do this if you will.”
“Doctor,” said Richling, “you are the best of friends; but, you know, the fact is, Mary and I—well, we’re still lovers.”
“Oh!” The Doctor turned away his head with fresh impatience. Richling bit his lip, but went on:—
“We can bear anything on earth together; but we have sworn to stay together through better and worse”—
“Oh, pf-f-f-f!” said the doctor, closing his eyes and swinging his head away again.
“—And we’re going to do it,” concluded Richling.
“But you can’t do it!” cried the Doctor, so loudly that Narcisse stood up on the rungs of his stool and peered.
“We can’t separate.”
Dr. Sevier smote the desk and sprang to his feet:—
“Sir, you’ve got to do it! If you continue in this way, you’ll die. You’ll die, Mr. Richling—both of you! You’ll die! Are you going to let Mary die just because she’s brave enough to do it?” He sat down again and busied himself, nervously placing pens on the pen-rack, the stopper in the inkstand, and the like.
Many thoughts ran through Richling’s mind in the ensuing silence. His eyes were on the floor. Visions of parting; of the great emptiness that would be left behind; the pangs and yearnings that must follow,—crowded one upon another. One torturing realization kept ever in the front,—that the Doctor had a well-earned right to advise, and that, if his advice was to be rejected, one must show good and sufficient cause for rejecting it, both in present resources and in expectations. The truth leaped upon him and bore him down as it never had done before,—the truth which he had heard this very Dr. Sevier proclaim,—that debt is bondage. For a moment he rebelled against it; but shame soon displaced mutiny,and he accepted this part, also, of his lot. At length he rose.
“Well?” said Dr. Sevier.
“May I ask Mary?”
“You will do what you please, Mr. Richling.” And then, in a kinder voice, the Doctor added, “Yes; ask her.”
They moved together to the office door. The Doctor opened it, and they said good-by, Richling trying to drop a word of gratitude, and the Doctor hurriedly ignoring it.
The next half hour or more was spent by the physician in receiving, hearing, and dismissing patients and their messengers. By and by no others came. The only audible sound was that of the Doctor’s paper-knife as it parted the leaves of a pamphlet. He was thinking over the late interview with Richling, and knew that, if this silence were not soon interrupted from without, he would have to encounter his book-keeper, who had not spoken since Richling had left. Presently the issue came.
“Dr. Seveeah,”—Narcisse came forward, hat in hand,—“I dunno ’ow ’tis, but Mistoo Itchlin always wemine me of that povvub, ‘Ully to bed, ully to ’ise, make a pusson to be ’ealthy an’ wealthy an’ wise.’”
“I don’t know how it is, either,” grumbled the Doctor.
“I believe thass not the povvub I was thinking. I am acquainting myseff with those povvubs; but I’m somewhat gween in that light, in fact. Well, Doctah, I’m goin’ ad the—shoemakeh. I burs’ my shoe yistiddy. I was juz”—
“Very well, go.”
“Yesseh; and from the shoemakeh I’ll go”—
The Doctor glanced darkly over the top of the pamphlet.
“—Ad the bank; yesseh,” said Narcisse, and went.
AT LAST.
Mary, cooking supper, uttered a soft exclamation of pleasure and relief as she heard John’s step under the alley window and then at the door. She turned, with an iron spoon in one hand and a candlestick in the other, from the little old stove with two pot-holes, where she had been stirring some mess in a tin pan.
“Why, you’re”—she reached for a kiss—“real late!”
“I could not come any sooner.” He dropped into a chair at the table.
“Busy?”
“No; no work to-day.”
Mary lifted the pan from the stove, whisked it to the table, and blew her fingers.
“Same subject continued,” she said laughingly, pointing with her spoon to the warmed-over food.
Richling smiled and nodded, and then flattened his elbows out on the table and hid his face in them.
This was the first time he had ever lingered away from his wife when he need not have done so. It was the Doctor’s proposition that had kept him back. All day long it had filled his thoughts. He felt its wisdom. Its sheer practical value had pierced remorselessly into the deepest convictions of his mind. But his heart could not receive it.
“Well,” said Mary, brightly, as she sat down at thetable, “maybe you’ll have better luck to-morrow. Don’t you think you may?”
“I don’t know,” said John, straightening up and tossing back his hair. He pushed a plate up to the pan, supplied and passed it. Then he helped himself and fell to eating.
“Have you seen Dr. Sevier to-day?” asked Mary, cautiously, seeing her husband pause and fall into distraction.
He pushed his plate away and rose. She met him in the middle of the room. He extended both hands, took hers, and gazed upon her. How could he tell? Would she cry and lament, and spurn the proposition, and fall upon him with a hundred kisses? Ah, if she would! But he saw that Doctor Sevier, at least, was confident she would not; that she would have, instead, what the wife so often has in such cases, the strongest love, it may be, but also the strongest wisdom for that particular sort of issue. Which would she do? Would she go, or would she not?
He tried to withdraw his hands, but she looked beseechingly into his eyes and knit her fingers into his. The question stuck upon his lips and would not be uttered. And why should it be? Was it not cowardice to leave the decision to her? Should not he decide? Oh! if she would only rebel! But would she? Would not her utmost be to give good reasons in her gentle, inquiring way why he should not require her to leave him? And were there any such? No! no! He had racked his brain to find so much as one, all day long.
“John,” said Mary, “Dr. Sevier’s been talking to you?”
“Yes.”
“And he wants you to send me back home for a while?”
“How do you know?” asked John, with a start.
“I can read it in your face.” She loosed one hand and laid it upon his brow.
“What—what do you think about it, Mary?”
Mary, looking into his eyes with the face of one who pleads for mercy, whispered, “He’s right,” then buried her face in his bosom and wept like a babe.
“I felt it six months ago,” she said later, sitting on her husband’s knee and holding his folded hands tightly in hers.
“Why didn’t you say so?” asked John.
“I was too selfish,” was her reply.
When, on the second day afterward, they entered the Doctor’s office Richling was bright with that new hope which always rises up beside a new experiment, and Mary looked well and happy. The Doctor wrote them a letter of introduction to the steam-boat agent.
“You’re taking a very sensible course,” he said, smoothing the blotting-paper heavily over the letter. “Of course, you think it’s hard. It is hard. But distance needn’t separate you.”
“It can’t,” said Richling.
“Time,” continued the Doctor,—“maybe a few months,—will bring you together again, prepared for a long life of secure union; and then, when you look back upon this, you’ll be proud of your courage and good sense. And you’ll be”— He enclosed the note, directed the envelope, and, pausing with it still in his hand, turned toward the pair. They rose up. His rare, sick-room smile hovered about his mouth, and he said:—
“You’ll be all the happier—all three of you.”
The husband smiled. Mary colored down to the throat and looked up on the wall, where Harvey was explainingto his king the circulation of the blood. There was quite a pause, neither side caring to utter the first adieu.
“If a physician could call any hour his own,” presently said the Doctor, “I should say I would come down to the boat and see you off. But I might fail in that. Good-by!”
“Good-by, Doctor!”—a little tremor in the voice,—“take care of John.”
The tall man looked down into the upturned blue eyes.
“Good-by!” He stooped toward her forehead, but she lifted her lips and he kissed them. So they parted.
The farewell with Mrs. Riley was mainly characterized by a generous and sincere exchange of compliments and promises of remembrance. Some tears rose up; a few ran over.
At the steam-boat wharf there were only the pair themselves to cling one moment to each other and then wave that mute farewell that looks through watery eyes and sticks in the choking throat. Who ever knows what good-by means?
“Doctor,” said Richling, when he came to accept those terms in the Doctor’s proposition which applied more exclusively to himself,—“no, Doctor, not that way, please.” He put aside the money proffered him. “This is what I want to do: I will come to your house every morning and get enough to eat to sustain me through the day, and will continue to do so till I find work.”
“Very well,” said the Doctor.
The arrangement went into effect. They never met at dinner; but almost every morning the Doctor, going into the breakfast-room, met Richling just risen from his earlier and hastier meal.
“Well? Anything yet?”
“Nothing yet.”
And, unless there was some word from Mary, nothing more would be said. So went the month of November.
But at length, one day toward the close of the Doctor’s office hours, he noticed the sound of an agile foot springing up his stairs three steps at a stride, and Richling entered, panting and radiant.
“Doctor, at last! At last!”
“At last, what?”
“I’ve found employment! I have, indeed! One line from you, and the place is mine! A good place, Doctor, and one that I can fill. The very thing for me! Adapted to my abilities!” He laughed so that he coughed, was still, and laughed again. “Just a line, if you please, Doctor.”
A RISING STAR.
It had been many a day since Dr. Sevier had felt such pleasure as thrilled him when Richling, half beside himself with delight, ran in upon him with the news that he had found employment. Narcisse, too, was glad. He slipped down from his stool and came near enough to contribute his congratulatory smiles, though he did not venture to speak. Richling nodded him a happy how-d’ye-do, and the Creole replied by a wave of the hand.
In the Doctor’s manner, on the other hand, there was a decided lack of response that made Richling check his spirits and resume more slowly,—
“Do you know a man named Reisen?”
“No,” said the Doctor.
“Why, he says he knows you.”
“That may be.”
“He says you treated his wife one night when she was very ill”—
“What name?”
“Reisen.”
The Doctor reflected a moment.
“I believe I recollect him. Is he away up on Benjamin street, close to the river, among the cotton-presses?”
“Yes. Thalia street they call it now. He says”—
“Does he keep a large bakery?” interrupted the Doctor.
“The ‘Star Bakery,’” said Richling, brighteningagain. “He says he knows you, and that, if you will give me just one line of recommendation, he will put me in charge of his accounts and give me a trial. And a trial’s all I want, Doctor. I’m not the least fearful of the result.”
“Richling,” said Dr. Sevier, slowly picking up his paper-folder and shaking it argumentatively, “where are the letters I advised you to send for?”
Richling sat perfectly still, taking a long, slow breath through his nostrils, his eyes fixed emptily on his questioner. He was thinking, away down at the bottom of his heart,—and the Doctor knew it,—that this was the unkindest question, and the most cold-blooded, that he had ever heard. The Doctor shook his paper-folder again.
“You see, now, as to the bare fact, I don’t know you.”
Richling’s jaw dropped with astonishment. His eye lighted up resentfully. But the speaker went on:—
“I esteem you highly. I believe in you. I would trust you, Richling,”—his listener remembered how the speakerhadtrusted him, and was melted,—“but as to recommending you, why, that is like going upon the witness-stand, as it were, and I cannot say that I know anything.”
Richling’s face suddenly flashed full of light. He touched the Doctor’s hand.
“That’s it! That’s the very thing, sir! Write that!”
The Doctor hesitated. Richling sat gazing at him, afraid to move an eye lest he should lose an advantage. The Doctor turned to his desk and wrote.
On the next morning Richling did not come for hisbreakfast; and, not many days after, Dr. Sevier received through the mail the following letter:—
New Orleans, December 2, 1857.Dear Doctor,—I’ve got the place. I’m Reisen’s book-keeper. I’m earning my living. And I like the work. Bread, the word bread, that has so long been terrible to me, is now the sweetest word in the language. For eighteen months it was a prayer; now it’s a proclamation.I’ve not only got the place, but I’m going to keep it. I find I have new powers; and the first and best of them is the power to throw myself into my work and make itme. It’s not a task; it’s a mission. Its being bread, I suppose, makes it easier to seem so; but it should be so if it was pork and garlic, or rags and raw-hides.My maxim a year ago, though I didn’t know it then, was to do what I liked. Now it’s to like what I do. I understand it now. And I understand now, too, that a man who expects to retain employment must yield a profit. He must be worth more than he costs. I thank God for the discipline of the last year and a half. I thank him that I did not fall where, in my cowardice, I so often prayed to fall, into the hands of foolish benefactors. You wouldn’t believe this of me, I know; but it’s true. I have been taught what life is; I never would have learned it any other way.And still another thing: I have been taught to know what the poor suffer. I know their feelings, their temptations, their hardships, their sad mistakes, and the frightful mistakes and oversights the rich make concerning them, and the ways to give them true and helpful help. And now, if God ever gives me competency, whether he gives me abundance or not, I know what he intends me to do. I was once, in fact and in sentiment, a brother to the rich; but I know that now he has trained me to be a brother to the poor. Don’t think I am going to be foolish. I remember that I’m brother to the rich too; but I’ll be the other as well. How wisely has God—what am I saying? Poor fools that we humans are! We can hardly venture to praise God’s wisdom to-day when we think we see it, lest it turn out to be only our own folly to-morrow.But I find I’m only writing to myself, Doctor, not to you; so I stop. Mary is well, and sends you much love.Yours faithfully,John Richling.
New Orleans, December 2, 1857.
Dear Doctor,—I’ve got the place. I’m Reisen’s book-keeper. I’m earning my living. And I like the work. Bread, the word bread, that has so long been terrible to me, is now the sweetest word in the language. For eighteen months it was a prayer; now it’s a proclamation.
I’ve not only got the place, but I’m going to keep it. I find I have new powers; and the first and best of them is the power to throw myself into my work and make itme. It’s not a task; it’s a mission. Its being bread, I suppose, makes it easier to seem so; but it should be so if it was pork and garlic, or rags and raw-hides.
My maxim a year ago, though I didn’t know it then, was to do what I liked. Now it’s to like what I do. I understand it now. And I understand now, too, that a man who expects to retain employment must yield a profit. He must be worth more than he costs. I thank God for the discipline of the last year and a half. I thank him that I did not fall where, in my cowardice, I so often prayed to fall, into the hands of foolish benefactors. You wouldn’t believe this of me, I know; but it’s true. I have been taught what life is; I never would have learned it any other way.
And still another thing: I have been taught to know what the poor suffer. I know their feelings, their temptations, their hardships, their sad mistakes, and the frightful mistakes and oversights the rich make concerning them, and the ways to give them true and helpful help. And now, if God ever gives me competency, whether he gives me abundance or not, I know what he intends me to do. I was once, in fact and in sentiment, a brother to the rich; but I know that now he has trained me to be a brother to the poor. Don’t think I am going to be foolish. I remember that I’m brother to the rich too; but I’ll be the other as well. How wisely has God—what am I saying? Poor fools that we humans are! We can hardly venture to praise God’s wisdom to-day when we think we see it, lest it turn out to be only our own folly to-morrow.
But I find I’m only writing to myself, Doctor, not to you; so I stop. Mary is well, and sends you much love.Yours faithfully,John Richling.
“Very little about Mary,” murmured Dr. Sevier. Yet he was rather pleased than otherwise with the letter. He thrust it into his breast-pocket. In the evening, at his fireside, he drew it out again and re-read it.
“Talks as if he had got into an impregnable castle,” thought the Doctor, as he gazed into the fire. “Book-keeper to a baker,” he muttered, slowly folding the sheet again. It somehow vexed him to see Richling so happy in so low a station. But—“It’s the joy of what he has escapedfrom, notto,” he presently remembered.
A fortnight or more elapsed. A distant relative of Dr. Sevier, a man of his own years and profession, was his guest for two nights and a day as he passed through the city, eastward, from an all-summer’s study of fevers in Mexico. They were sitting at evening on opposite sides of the library fire, conversing in the leisurely ease of those to whom life is not a novelty.
“And so you think of having Laura and Bess come out from Charleston, and keep house for you this winter? Their mother wrote me to that effect.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Sevier. “Society here will be a great delight to them. They will shine. And time will be less monotonous for me. It may suit me, or it may not.”
“I dare say it may,” responded the kinsman, whereas in truth he was very doubtful about it.
He added something, a moment later, about retiring for the night, and his host had just said, “Eh?” when a slave, in a five-year-old dress-coat, brought in the card of a person whose name was as well known in New Orleans in those days as St. Patrick’s steeple or the statue of Jackson in the old Place d’Armes. Dr. Sevier turned it over and looked for a moment ponderingly upon the domestic.
The relative rose.
“You needn’t go,” said Dr. Sevier; but he said “he had intended,” etc., and went to his chamber.
The visitor entered. He was a dark, slender, iron gray man, of finely cut, regular features, and seeming to be much more deeply wrinkled than on scrutiny he proved to be. One quickly saw that he was full of reposing energy. He gave the feeling of your being very near some weapon, of dreadful efficiency, ready for instant use whenever needed. His clothing fitted him neatly; his long, gray mustache was the only thing that hung loosely about him; his boots were fine. If he had told a child that all his muscles and sinews were wrapped with fine steel wire the child would have believed him, and continued to sit on his knee all the same. It is said, by those who still survive him, that in dreadful places and moments the flash of his fist was as quick, as irresistible, and as all-sufficient, as lightning, yet that years would sometimes pass without its ever being lifted.
Dr. Sevier lifted his slender length out of his easy-chair, and bowed with severe gravity.
“Good-evening, sir,” he said, and silently thought, “Now, what can Smith Izard possibly want with me?”
It may have been perfectly natural that this man’s presence shed off all idea of medical consultation; but why should it instantly bring to the Doctor’s mind, as an answer to his question, another man as different from this one as water from fire?
The detective returned the Doctor’s salutation, and they became seated. Then the visitor craved permission to ask a confidential question or two for information which he was seeking in his official capacity. His manners were a little old-fashioned, but perfect of their kind. The Doctor consented. The man put his hand into his breast-pocket, and drew out a daguerreotype case, touched itsspring, and as it opened in his palm extended it to the Doctor. The Doctor took it with evident reluctance. It contained the picture of a youth who was just reaching manhood. The detective spoke:—
“They say he ought to look older than that now.”
“He does,” said Dr. Sevier.
“Do you know his name?” inquired the detective.
“No.”
“What name do you know him by?”
“John Richling.”
“Wasn’t he sent down by Recorder Munroe, last summer, for assault, etc.?”
“Yes. I got him out the next day. He never should have been put in.”
To the Doctor’s surprise the detective rose to go.
“I’m much obliged to you, Doctor.”
“Is that all you wanted to ask me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Izard, who is this young man? What has he done?”
“I don’t know, sir. I have a letter from a lawyer in Kentucky who says he represents this young man’s two sisters living there,—half-sisters, rather,—stating that his father and mother are both dead,—died within three days of each other.”
“What name?”
“He didn’t give the name. He sent this daguerreotype, with instructions to trace up the young man, if possible. He said there was reason to believe he was in New Orleans. He said, if I found him, just to see him privately, tell him the news, and invite him to come back home. But he said if the young fellow had got into any kind of trouble that might somehow reflect on the family, you know, like getting arrested for something or other, youknow, or some such thing, then I was just to drop the thing quietly, and say nothing about it to him or anybody else.”
“And doesn’t that seem a strange way to manage a matter like that,—to put it into the hands of a detective?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Mr. Izard. “We’re used to strange things, and this isn’t so very strange. No, it’s very common. I suppose he knew that if he gave it to me it would be attended to in a quiet and innocent sort o’ way. Some people hate mighty bad to get talked about. Nobody’s seen that picture but you and one ’aid,’ and just as soon as he saw it he said, ‘Why, that’s the chap that Dr. Sevier took out of the Parish Prison last September.’ And there won’t anybody else see it.”
“Don’t you intend to see Richling?” asked the Doctor, following the detective toward the door.
“I don’t see as it would be any use,” said the detective, “seeing he’s been sent down, and so on. I’ll write to the lawyer and state the facts, and wait for orders.”
“But do you know how slight the blame was that got him into trouble here?”
“Yes. The ’aid’ who saw the picture told me all about that. It was a shame. I’ll say so. I’ll give all the particulars. But I tell you, I just guess—they’ll drop him.”
“I dare say,” said Dr. Sevier.
“Well, Doctor,” said Mr. Izard, “hope I haven’t annoyed you.”
“No,” replied the Doctor.
But he had; and the annoyance had not ceased to be felt when, a few mornings afterward, Narcisse suddenly doubled—trebled it by saying:—
“Doctah Seveeah,”—it was a cold day and the youngCreole stood a moment with his back to the office fire, to which he had just given an energetic and prolonged poking,—“a man was yeh, to see you, name’ Bison. ’F want’ to see you about Mistoo Itchlin.”
The Doctor looked up with a start, and Narcisse continued:—
“Mistoo Itchlin is wuckin’ in ’is employment. I think ’e’s please’ with ’im.”
“Then why does he come to see me about him?” asked the Doctor, so sharply that Narcisse shrugged as he replied:—
“Reely, I cann’ tell you; but thass one thing, Doctah, I dunno if you ’ave notiz: the worl’ halways take a gweat deal of welfa’e in a man w’en ’e’s ’ising. I do that myseff. Some’ow I cann’ ’e’p it.” This bold speech was too much for him. He looked down at his symmetrical legs and went back to his desk.
The Doctor was far from reassured. After a silence he called out:—
“Did he say he would come back?” A knock at the door arrested the answer, and a huge, wide, broad-faced German entered diffidently. The Doctor recognized Reisen. The visitor took off his flour-dusted hat and bowed with great deference.
“Toc-tor,” he softly drawled, “I yoost taught I trop in on you to say a verte to you apowt teh chung yentleman vot you hef rickomendet to me.”
“I didn’t recommend him to you, sir. I wrote you distinctly that I did not feel at liberty to recommend him.”
“Tat iss teh troot, Toctor Tseweer; tat iss teh ectsectly troot. Shtill I taught I’ll yoost trop in on you to say a verte to you,—Toctor,—apowt Mister”— He hung his large head at one side to remember.
“Richling,” said the Doctor, impatiently.
“Yes, sir. Apowt Mister Richlun. I heff a tifficuldy to rigolict naymps. I yoost taught I voot trop in und trop a verte to you apowt Mr. Richlun, vot maypy you titn’t herr udt before, yet.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, with ill-concealed contempt. “Well, speak it out, Mr. Reisen; time is precious.”
The German smiled and made a silly gesture of assent.
“Yes, udt is brecious. Shtill I taught I voot take enough time to yoost trop in undt say to you tat I heffent het Mr. Richlun in my etsteplitchmendt a veek undtil I finte owdt someting apowt him, tot, uf you het a-knowdt ud, voot hef mate your letter maypy a little tifferendt written, yet.”
Now, at length, Dr. Sevier’s annoyance was turned to dismay. He waited in silence for Reisen to unfold his enigma, but already his resentment against Richling was gathering itself for a spring. To the baker, however, he betrayed only a cold hostility.
“I kept a copy of my letter to you, Mr. Reisen, and there isn’t a word in it which need have misled you, sir.”
The baker waved his hand amicably.
“Sure, Tocter Tseweer, I toandt hef nutting to gomblain akinst teh vertes of tat letter. You voss mighty puttickly. Ovver, shtill, I hef sumpting to tell you vot ef you het a-knowdt udt pefore you writed tose vertes, alreatty, t’ey voot a little tifferendt pin.”
“Well, sir, why don’t you tell it?”
Reisen smiled. “Tat iss teh ectsectly vot I am coing to too. I yoost taught I’ll trop in undt tell you, Toctor, tat I heffent het Mr. Richlun in my etsteplitchmendt a veek undtil I findte owdt tat he’s a—berfect—tressure.”
Doctor Sevier started half up from his chair, droppedinto it again, wheeled half away, and back again with the blood surging into his face and exclaimed:—
“Why, what do you mean by such drivelling nonsense, sir? You’ve given me a positive fright!” He frowned the blacker as the baker smiled from ear to ear.
“Vy, Toctor, I hope you ugscooce me! I yoost taught you voot like to herr udt. Undt Missis Reisen sayce, ‘Reisen, you yoost co undt tell um.’ I taught udt voot pe blessant to you to know tatt you hett sendt me teh fynust pissness mayn I effer het apowdt me. Undt uff he iss onnust he iss a berfect tressure, undt uff he aint a berfect tressure,”—he smiled anew and tendered his capacious hat to his listener,—“you yoost kin take tiss, Toctor, undt kip udt undt vare udt! Toctor, I vish you a merrah Chris’mus!”
BEES, WASPS, AND BUTTERFLIES.
The merry day went by. The new year, 1858, set in. Everything gathered momentum. There was a panic and a crash. The brother-in-law of sister Jane—he whom Dr. Sevier met at that quiet dinner-party—struck an impediment, stumbled, staggered, fell under the feet of the racers, and crawled away minus not money and credit only, but all his philosophy about helping the poor, maimed in spirit, his pride swollen with bruises, his heart and his speech soured beyond all sweetening.
Many were the wrecks. But over their débris, Mercury and Venus—the busy season and the gay season—ran lightly, hand in hand. Men getting money and women squandering it. Whole nights in the ball-room. Gold pouring in at the hopper and out at the spout,—Carondelet street emptying like a yellow river into Canal street. Thousands for vanity; thousands for pride; thousands for influence and for station; thousands for hidden sins; a slender fraction for the wants of the body; a slenderer for the cravings of the soul. Lazarus paid to stay away from the gate. John the Baptist, in raiment of broadcloth, a circlet of white linen about his neck, and his meat strawberries and ice-cream. The lower classes mentioned mincingly; awkward silences or visible wincings at allusions to death, and converse on eternal things banished as if it were the smell of cabbage. So looked the gay world, at least, to Dr. Sevier.
He saw more of it than had been his wont for many seasons. The two young-lady cousins whom he had brought and installed in his home thirsted for that gorgeous, nocturnal moth life in which no thirst is truly slaked, and dragged him with them into the iridescent, gas-lighted spider-web of society.
“Now, you know you like it!” they said.
“A little of it, yes. But I don’t see how you can like it, who virtually live in it and upon it. Why, I would as soon try to live upon cake and candy!”
“Well, we can live very nicely upon cake and candy,” retorted they.
“Why, girls, it’s no more life than spice is food. What lofty motive—what earnest, worthy object”—
But they drowned his homily in a carol, and ran away arm in arm to dress for another ball. One of them stopped in the door with an air of mock bravado:—
“What do we care for lofty motives or worthy objects?”
A smile escaped from him as she vanished. His condemnation was flavored with charity. “It’s their mating season,” he silently thought, and, not knowing he did it, sighed.
“There come Dr. Sevier and his two pretty cousins,” was the ball-room whisper. “Beautiful girls—rich widower without children—great catch!Passé, how? Well, maybe so; not as much as he makes himself out, though.” “Passé, yes,” said a merciless belle to a blade of her own years; “a man of strong sense ispasséat any age.” Sister Jane’s name was mentioned in the same connection, but that illusion quickly passed. The cousins denied indignantly that he had any matrimonial intention. Somebody dissipated the rumor by a syllogism: “A manhunting a second wife always looks like a fool; the Doctor doesn’t look a bit like a fool, ergo”—
He grew very weary of the giddy rout, standing in it like a rock in a whirlpool. He did rejoice in the Carnival, but only because it was the end.
“Pretty? yes, as pretty as a bonfire,” he said. “I can’t enjoy much fiddling while Rome is burning.”
“But Rome isn’t always burning,” said the cousins.
“Yes, it is! Yes, it is!”
The wickeder of the two cousins breathed a penitential sigh, dropped her bare, jewelled arms out of her cloak, and said:—
“Now tell us once more about Mary Richling.” He had bored them to death with Mary.
Lent was a relief to all three. One day, as the Doctor was walking along the street, a large hand grasped his elbow and gently arrested his steps. He turned.
“Well, Reisen, is that you?”
The baker answered with his wide smile. “Yes, Toctor, tat iss me, sure. You titn’t tink udt iss Mr. Richlun, tit you?”
“No. How is Richling?”
“Vell, Mr. Richlun kitten along so-o-o-so-o-o. He iss not ferra shtrong; ovver he vurks like a shteam-inchyine.”
“I haven’t seen him for many a day,” said Dr. Sevier.
The baker distended his eyes, bent his enormous digestive apparatus forward, raised his eyebrows, and hung his arms free from his sides. “He toandt kit a minudt to shpare in teh tswendy-four hourss. Sumptimes he sayss, ‘Mr. Reisen, I can’t shtop to talk mit you.’ Sindts Mr. Richlun pin py my etsteplitchmendt, I tell you teh troot, Toctor Tseweer, I am yoost meckin’ monneh haynd ofer fist!” He swung his chest forward again, drew in his lower regions, revolved his fists around eachother for a moment, and then let them fall open at his sides, with the added assurance, “Now you kott teh ectsectly troot.”
The Doctor started away, but the baker detained him by a touch:—
“You toandt kott enna verte to sendt to Mr. Richlun, Toctor!”
“Yes. Tell him to come and pass an hour with me some evening in my library.”
The German lifted his hand in delight.
“Vy, tot’s yoost teh dting! Mr. Richlun alvayss pin sayin’, ‘I vish he aysk me come undt see um;’ undt I sayss, ‘You holdt shtill, yet, Mr. Richlun; teh next time I see um I make um aysk you.’ Vell, now, titn’t I tunned udt?” He was happy.
“Well, ask him,” said the Doctor, and got away.
“No fool is an utter fool,” pondered the Doctor, as he went. Two friends had been kept long apart by the fear of each, lest he should seem to be setting up claims based on the past. It required a simpleton to bring them together.
TOWARD THE ZENITH.
“Richling, I am glad to see you!”
Dr. Sevier had risen from his luxurious chair beside a table, the soft downward beams of whose lamp partly showed, and partly hid, the rich appointments of his library. He grasped Richling’s hand, and with an extensive stride drew forward another chair on its smooth-running casters.
Then inquiries were exchanged as to the health of one and the other. The Doctor, with his professional eye, noticed, as the light fell full upon his visitor’s buoyant face, how thin and pale he had grown. He rose again, and stepping beyond Richling with a remark, in part complimentary and in part critical, upon the balmy April evening, let down the sash of a window where the smell of honeysuckles was floating in.
“Have you heard from your wife lately?” he asked, as he resumed his seat.
“Yesterday,” said Richling. “Yes, she’s very well, been well ever since she left us. She always sends love to you.”
“Hum,” responded the physician. He fixed his eyes on the mantel and asked abstractedly, “How do you bear the separation?”
“Oh!” Richling laughed, “not very heroically. It’s a great strain on a man’s philosophy.”
“Work is the only antidote,” said the Doctor, not moving his eyes.
“Yes, so I find it,” answered the other. “It’s bearable enough while one is working like mad; but sooner or later one must sit down to meals, or lie down to rest, you know”—
“Then it hurts,” said the Doctor.
“It’s a lively discipline,” mused Richling.
“Do you think you learn anything by it?” asked the other, turning his eyes slowly upon him. “That’s what it means, you notice.”
“Yes, I do,” replied Richling, smiling; “I learn the very thing I suppose you’re thinking of,—that separation isn’t disruption, and that no pair of true lovers are quite fitted out for marriage until they can bear separation if they must.”
“Yes,” responded the physician; “if they can muster the good sense to see that they’ll not be so apt to marry prematurely. I needn’t tell you I believe in marrying for love; but these needs-must marriages are so ineffably silly. You ‘must’ and you ‘will’ marry, and ‘nobody shall hinder you!’ And you do it! And in three or four or six months”—he drew in his long legs energetically from the hearth-pan—“deathseparates you!—death, sometimes, resulting directly from the turn your haste has given to events! Now, where is your ‘must’ and ‘will’?” He stretched his legs out again, and laid his head on his cushioned chair-back.
“I have made a narrow escape,” said Richling.
“I wasn’t so fortunate,” responded the Doctor, turning solemnly toward his young friend. “Richling, just seven months after I married Alice I buried her. I’m not going into particulars—of course; but the sickness that carried her off was distinctly connected with the hasteof our marriage. Your Bible, Richling, that you lay such store by, is right; we should want things as if we didn’t want them. That isn’t the quotation, exactly, but it’s the idea. I swore I couldn’t and wouldn’t live without her; but, you see, this is the fifteenth year that I have had to do it.”
“I should think it would have unmanned you for life,” said Richling.
“It made a man of me! I’ve never felt young a day since, and yet I’ve never seemed to grow a day older. It brought me all at once to my full manhood. I have never consciously disputed God’s arrangements since. The man who does is only a wayward child.”
“It’s true,” said Richling, with an air of confession, “it’s true;” and they fell into silence.
Presently Richling looked around the room. His eyes brightened rapidly as he beheld the ranks and tiers of good books. He breathed an audible delight. The multitude of volumes rose in the old-fashioned way, in ornate cases of dark wood from floor to ceiling, on this hand, on that, before him, behind; some in gay covers,—green, blue, crimson,—with gilding and embossing; some in the sumptuous leathers of France, Russia, Morocco, Turkey; others in worn attire, battered and venerable, dingy but precious,—the gray heads of the council.
The two men rose and moved about among those silent wits and philosophers, and, from the very embarrassment of the inner riches, fell to talking of letter-press and bindings, with maybe some effort on the part of each to seem the better acquainted with Caxton, the Elzevirs, and other like immortals. They easily passed to a competitive enumeration of the rare books they had seen or not seen here and there in other towns and countries. Richling admitted he had travelled, and the conversation turnedupon noted buildings and famous old nooks in distant cities where both had been. So they moved slowly back to their chairs, and stood by them, still contemplating the books. But as they sank again into their seats the one thought which had fastened itself in the minds of both found fresh expression.
Richling began, smilingly, as if the subject had not been dropped at all,—“I oughtn’t to speak as if I didn’t realize my good fortune, for I do.”
“I believe you do,” said the Doctor, reaching toward the fire-irons.
“Yes. Still, I lose patience with myself to find myself taking Mary’s absence so hard.”
“All hardships are comparative,” said the Doctor.
“Certainly they are,” replied Richling. “I lie sometimes and think of men who have been political prisoners, shut away from wife and children, with war raging outside and no news coming in.”
“Think of the common poor,” exclaimed Dr. Sevier,—“the thousands of sailors’ wives and soldiers’ wives. Where does that thought carry you?”
“It carries me,” responded the other, with a low laugh, “to where I’m always a little ashamed of myself.”
“I didn’t mean it to do that,” said the Doctor; “I can imagine how you miss your wife. I miss her myself.”
“Oh! but she’s here on this earth. She’s alive and well. Any burden is light when I think of that—pardon me, Doctor!”
“Go on, go on. Anything you please about her, Richling.” The Doctor half sat, half lay in his chair, his eyes partly closed. “Go on,” he repeated.
“I was only going to say that long before Mary went away, many a time when she and I were fighting starvationat close quarters, I have looked at her and said to myself, ‘What if I were in Dr. Sevier’s place?’ and it gave me strength to rise up and go on.”
“You were right.”
“I know I was. I often wake now at night and turn and find the place by my side empty, and I can hardly keep from calling her aloud. It wrenches me, but before long I think she’s no such great distance away, since we’re both on the same earth together, and by and by she’ll be here at my side; and so it becomes easy to me once more.” Richling, in the self-occupation of a lover, forgot what pains he might be inflicting. But the Doctor did not wince.
“Yes,” said the physician, “of course you wouldn’t want the separation to be painless; and it promises a reward, you know.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Richling, with an exultant smile and motion of the head, and then dropped his eyes in meditation. The Doctor looked at him steadily.
“Richling, you’ve gathered some terribly hard experiences. But hard experiences are often the foundation-stones of a successful life. You can make them all profitable. You can make them draw you along, so to speak. But you must hold them well in hand, as you would a dangerous team, you know,—coolly and alertly, firmly and patiently,—and never let the reins slack till you’ve driven through the last gate.”
Richling replied, with a pleasant nod, “I believe I shall do it. Did you notice what I wrote you in my letter? I have got the notion strongly that the troubles we have gone through—Mary and I—were only our necessary preparation—not so necessary for her as for me”—
“No,” said Dr. Sevier, and Richling continued, with a smile:—
“To fit us for a long and useful life, and especially a life that will be full of kind and valuable services to the poor. If that isn’t what they were sent for”—he dropped into a tone of reflection—“then I don’t understand them.”
“And suppose you don’t understand,” said the Doctor, with his cold, grim look.
“Oh!” rejoined Richling, in amiable protest; “but a man would like to understand.”
“Like to—yes,” replied the Doctor; “but be careful. The spirit thatmustunderstand is the spirit that can’t trust.” He paused. Presently he said, “Richling!”
Richling answered by an inquiring glance.
“Take better care of your health,” said the physician.
Richling smiled—a young man’s answer—and rose to say good-night.