Dr. Sevier

With a little more of the like kindly guile, and some wise and simple reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell. Then came the tank. They had to stand in it with the water up to their knees, and rub its sides with brickbats. Richling fell down twice in the water, to the uproarious delight of the yard; but his companion helped him up, and they both agreed it was the sliminess of the tank’s bottom that was to blame.

“Soon we get through we goin’ to buy drink o’ whisky from jailer,” said Ristofalo; “he keep it for sale. Then, after that, kin hire somebody to go to your house; captain yard think we gittin’ mo’ whisky.”

“Hire?” said Richling. “I haven’t a cent in the world.”

“I got a little – few dimes,” rejoined the other.

“Then why are you here? Why are you in this part of the prison?”

“Oh, ’fraid to spend it. On’y got few dimes. Broke ag’in.”

Richling stopped still with astonishment, brickbat in hand. The Italian met his gaze with an illuminated smile. “Yes,” he said, “took all I had with me to bayou La Fourche. Coming back, slept with some men in boat. One git up in night-time and steal everything. Then was a big fight. Think that what fight was about – about dividing the money. Don’t know sure. One man git killed. Rest run into the swamp and prairie. Officer arrest me for witness. Couldn’t trust me to stay in the city.”

“Do you think the one who was killed was the thief?”

“Don’t know sure,” said the Italian, with the same sweet face, and falling to again with his brickbat, – “hope so!”

“Strange place to confine a witness!” said Richling, holding his hand to his bruised side and slowly straightening his back.

“Oh, yes, good place,” replied the other, scrubbing away; “git him, in short time, so he swear to anything.”

It was far on in the afternoon before the wary Ristofalo ventured to offer all he had in his pocket to a hanger-on of the prison office, to go first to Richling’s house, and then to an acquaintance of his own, with messages looking to the procuring of their release. The messenger chose to go first to Ristofalo’s friend, and afterward to Mrs. Riley’s. It was growing dark when he reached the latter place. Mary was out in the city somewhere, wandering about, aimless and distracted, in search of Richling. The messenger left word with Mrs. Riley. Richling had all along hoped that that good friend, doubtless acquainted with the most approved methods of finding a missing man, would direct Mary to the police station at the earliest practicable hour. But time had shown that she had not done so. No, indeed! Mrs. Riley counted herself too benevolently shrewd for that. While she had made Mary’s suspense of the night less frightful than it might have been, by surmises that Mr. Richling had found some form of night-work, – watching some pile of freight or some unfinished building, – she had come, secretly, to a different conviction, predicated on her own married experiences; and if Mr. Richling had, in a moment of gloom, tipped the bowl a little too high, as her dear lost husband, the best man that ever walked, had often done, and had been locked up at night to be let out in the morning, why, give him a chance! Let him invent his own little fault-hiding romance and come home with it. Mary was frantic. She could not be kept in; but Mrs. Riley, by prolonged effort, convinced her it was best not to call upon Dr. Sevier until she could be sure some disaster had actually occurred, and sent her among the fruiterers and oystermen in vain search for Raphael Ristofalo. Thus it was that the Doctor’s morning messenger to the Richlings, bearing word that if any one were sick he would call without delay, was met by Mrs. Riley only, and by the reassuring statement that both of them were out. The later messenger, from the two men in prison, brought back word of Mary’s absence from the house, of her physical welfare, and Mrs. Riley’s promise that Mary should visit the prison at the earliest hour possible. This would not be till the next morning.

While Mrs. Riley was sending this message, Mary, a great distance away, was emerging from the darkening and silent streets of the river front and moving with timid haste across the broad levee toward the edge of the water at the steam-boat landing. In this season of depleted streams and idle waiting, only an occasional boat lifted its lofty, black, double funnels against the sky here and there, leaving wide stretches of unoccupied wharf-front between. Mary hurried on, clear out to the great wharf’s edge, and looked forth upon the broad, softly moving harbor. The low waters spread out and away, to and around the opposite point, in wide surfaces of glassy purples and wrinkled bronze. Beauty, that joy forever, is sometimes a terror. Was the end of her search somewhere underneath that fearful glory? She clasped her hands, bent down with dry, staring eyes, then turned again and fled homeward. She swerved once toward Dr. Sevier’s quarters, but soon decided to see first if there were any tidings with Mrs. Riley, and so resumed her course. Night overtook her in streets where every footstep before or behind her made her tremble; but at length she crossed the threshold of Mrs. Riley’s little parlor. Mrs. Riley was standing in the door, and retreated a step or two backward as Mary entered with a look of wild inquiry.

“Not come?” cried the wife.

“Mrs. Richlin’,” said the widow, hurriedly, “yer husband’s alive and found.”

Mary seized her frantically by the shoulders, crying with high-pitched voice: —

“Where is he? – where is he?”

“Ya can’t see um till marning, Mrs. Richlin’.”

“Where is he?” cried Mary, louder than before.

“Me dear,” said Mrs. Riley, “ye kin easy git him out in the marning.”

“Mrs. Riley,” said Mary, holding her with her eye, “is my husband in prison? – O Lord God! O God! my God!”

Mrs. Riley wept. She clasped the moaning, sobbing wife to her bosom, and with streaming eyes said: —

“Mrs. Richlin’, me dear, Mrs. Richlin’, me dear, what wad I give to have my husband this night where your husband is!”

CHAPTER XXIX.

RELEASE. – NARCISSE

As some children were playing in the street before the Parish Prison next morning, they suddenly started and scampered toward the prison’s black entrance. A physician’s carriage had driven briskly up to it, ground its wheels against the curb-stone, and halted. If any fresh crumbs of horror were about to be dropped, the children must be there to feast on them. Dr. Sevier stepped out, gave Mary his hand and then his arm, and went in with her. A question or two in the prison office, a reference to the rolls, and a turnkey led the way through a dark gallery lighted with dimly burning gas. The stench was suffocating. They stopped at the inner gate.

“Why didn’t you bring him to us?” asked the Doctor, scowling resentfully at the facetious drawings and legends on the walls, where the dampness glistened in the sickly light.

The keeper made a low reply as he shot the bolts.

“What?” quickly asked Mary.

“He’s not well,” said Dr. Sevier.

The gate swung open. They stepped into the yard and across it. The prisoners paused in a game of ball. Others, who were playing cards, merely glanced up and went on. The jailer pointed with his bunch of keys to a cell before him. Mary glided away from the Doctor and darted in. There was a cry and a wail.

The Doctor followed quickly. Ristofalo passed out as he entered. Richling lay on a rough gray blanket spread on the pavement with the Italian’s jacket under his head. Mary had thrown herself down beside him upon her knees, and their arms were around each other’s neck.

“Let me see, Mrs. Richling,” said the physician, touching her on the shoulder. She drew back. Richling lifted a hand in welcome. The Doctor pressed it.

“Mrs. Richling,” he said, as they faced each other, he on one knee, she on both. He gave her a few laconic directions for the sick man’s better comfort. “You must stay here, madam,” he said at length; “this man Ristofalo will be ample protection for you; and I will go at once and get your husband’s discharge.” He went out.

In the office he asked for a seat at a desk. As he finished using it he turned to the keeper and asked, with severe face: —

“What do you do with sick prisoners here, anyway?”

The keeper smiled.

“Why, if they gits right sick, the hospital wagon comes and takes ’em to the Charity Hospital.”

“Umhum!” replied the Doctor, unpleasantly, – “in the same wagon they use for a case of scarlet fever or small-pox, eh?”

The keeper, with a little resentment in his laugh, stated that he would be eternally lost if he knew.

“I know,” remarked the Doctor. “But when a man is only a little sick, – according to your judgment, – like that one in there now, he is treated here, eh?”

The keeper swelled with a little official pride. His tone was boastful.

“We has a complete dispenisary in the prison,” he said.

“Yes? Who’s your druggist?” Dr. Sevier was in his worst inquisitorial mood.

“One of the prisoners,” said the keeper.

The Doctor looked at him steadily. The man, in the blackness of his ignorance, was visibly proud of this bit of economy and convenience.

“How long has he held this position?” asked the physician.

“Oh, a right smart while. He was sentenced for murder, but he’s waiting for a new trial.”

“And he has full charge of all the drugs?” asked the Doctor, with a cheerful smile.

“Yes, sir.” The keeper was flattered.

“Poisons and all, I suppose, eh?” pursued the Doctor.

“Everything.”

The Doctor looked steadily and silently upon the officer, and tore and folded and tore again into small bits the prescription he had written. A moment later the door of his carriage shut with a smart clap and its wheels rattled away. There was a general laugh in the office, heavily spiced with maledictions.

“I say, Cap’, what d’you reckon he’d ’a’ said if he’d ’a’ seen the women’s department?”

In those days recorders had the power to release prisoners sentenced by them when in their judgment new information justified such action. Yet Dr. Sevier had a hard day’s work to procure Richling’s liberty. The sun was declining once more when a hack drove up to Mrs. Riley’s door with John and Mary in it, and Mrs. Riley was restrained from laughing and crying only by the presence of the great Dr. Sevier and a romantic Italian stranger by the captivating name of Ristofalo. Richling, with repeated avowals of his ability to walk alone, was helped into the house between these two illustrious visitors, Mary hurrying in ahead, and Mrs. Riley shutting the street door with some resentment of manner toward the staring children who gathered without. Was there anything surprising in the fact that eminent persons should call at her house?

When there was time for greetings she gave her hand to Dr. Sevier and asked him how he found himself. To Ristofalo she bowed majestically. She noticed that he was handsome and muscular.

At different hours the next day the same two visitors called. Also the second day after. And the third. And frequently afterward.

Ristofalo regained his financial feet almost, as one might say, at a single hand-spring. He amused Mary and John and Mrs. Riley almost beyond limit with his simple story of how he did it.

“Ye’d better hurry and be getting up out o’ that sick bed, Mr. Richlin’,” said the widow, in Ristofalo’s absence, “or that I-talian rascal’ll be making himself entirely too agree’ble to yer lady here. Ha! ha! It’s she that he’s a-comin’ here to see.”

Mrs. Riley laughed again, and pointed at Mary and tossed her head, not knowing that Mary went through it all over again as soon as Mrs. Riley was out of the room, to the immense delight of John.

“And now, madam,” said Dr. Sevier to Mary, by and by, “let it be understood once more that even independence may be carried to a vicious extreme, and that” – he turned to Richling, by whose bed he stood – “you and your wife will not do it again. You’ve had a narrow escape. Is it understood?”

“We’ll try to be moderate,” replied the invalid, playfully.

“I don’t believe you,” said the Doctor.

And his scepticism was wise. He continued to watch them, and at length enjoyed the sight of John up and out again with color in his cheeks and the old courage – nay, a new and a better courage – in his eyes.

Said the Doctor on his last visit, “Take good care of your husband, my child.” He held the little wife’s hand a moment, and gazed out of Mrs. Riley’s front door upon the western sky. Then he transferred his gaze to John, who stood, with his knee in a chair, just behind her. He looked at the convalescent with solemn steadfastness. The husband smiled broadly.

“I know what you mean. I’ll try to deserve her.”

The Doctor looked again into the west.

“Good-by.”

Mary tried playfully to retort, but John restrained her, and when she contrived to utter something absurdly complimentary of her husband he was her only hearer.

They went back into the house, talking of other matters. Something turned the conversation upon Mrs. Riley, and from that subject it seemed to pass naturally to Ristofalo. Mary, laughing and talking softly as they entered their room, called to John’s recollection the Italian’s account of how he had once bought a tarpaulin hat and a cottonade shirt of the pattern called a “jumper,” and had worked as a deck-hand in loading and unloading steam-boats. It was so amusingly sensible to put on the proper badge for the kind of work sought. Richling mused. Many a dollar he might have earned the past summer, had he been as ingeniously wise, he thought.

“Ristofalo is coming here this evening,” said he, taking a seat in the alley window.

Mary looked at him with sidelong merriment. The Italian was coming to see Mrs. Riley.

“Why, John,” whispered Mary, standing beside him, “she’s nearly ten years older than he is!”

But John quoted the old saying about a man’s age being what he feels, and a woman’s what she looks.

“Why, – but – dear, it is scarcely a fortnight since she declared nothing could ever induce” —

“Let her alone,” said John, indulgently. “Hasn’t she said half-a-dozen times that it isn’t good for woman to be alone? A widow’s a woman – and you never disputed it.”

“O John,” laughed Mary, “for shame! You know I didn’t mean that. You know I never could mean that.”

And when John would have maintained his ground she besought him not to jest in that direction, with eyes so ready for tears that he desisted.

“I only meant to be generous to Mrs. Riley,” he said.

“I know it,” said Mary, caressingly; “you’re always on the generous side of everything.”

She rested her hand fondly on his arm, and he took it into his own.

One evening the pair were out for that sunset walk which their young blood so relished, and which often led them, as it did this time, across the wide, open commons behind the town, where the unsettled streets were turf-grown, and toppling wooden lamp-posts threatened to fall into the wide, cattle-trodden ditches.

“Fall is coming,” said Mary.

“Let it come!” exclaimed John; “it’s hung back long enough.”

He looked about with pleasure. On every hand the advancing season was giving promise of heightened activity. The dark, plumy foliage of the china trees was getting a golden edge. The burnished green of the great magnolias was spotted brilliantly with hundreds of bursting cones, red with their pendent seeds. Here and there, as the sauntering pair came again into the region of brick sidewalks, a falling cone would now and then scatter its polished coral over the pavement, to be gathered by little girls for necklaces, or bruised under foot, staining the walk with its fragrant oil. The ligustrums bent low under the dragging weight of their small clustered berries. The oranges were turning. In the wet, choked ditches along the interruptions of pavement, where John followed Mary on narrow plank footways, bloomed thousands of little unrenowned asteroid flowers, blue and yellow, and the small, pink spikes of the water pepper. It wasn’t the fashionable habit in those days, but Mary had John gather big bunches of this pretty floral mob, and filled her room with them – not Mrs. Riley’s parlor – whoop, no! Weeds? Not if Mrs. Riley knew herself.

So ran time apace. The morning skies were gray monotones, and the evening gorgeous reds. The birds had finished their summer singing. Sometimes the alert chirp of the cardinal suddenly smote the ear from some neighboring tree; but he would pass, a flash of crimson, from one garden to the next, and with another chirp or two be gone for days. The nervy, unmusical waking cry of the mocking-bird was often the first daybreak sound. At times a myriad downy seed floated everywhere, now softly upward, now gently downward, and the mellow rays of sunset turned it into a warm, golden snow-fall. By night a soft glow from distant burning prairies showed the hunters were afield; the call of unseen wild fowl was heard overhead, and – finer to the waiting poor man’s ear than all other sounds – came at regular intervals, now from this quarter and now from that, the heavy, rushing blast of the cotton compress, telling that the flood tide of commerce was setting in.

Narcisse surprised the Richlings one evening with a call. They tried very hard to be reserved, but they were too young for that task to be easy. The Creole had evidently come with his mind made up to take unresentfully and override all the unfriendliness they might choose to show. His conversation never ceased, but flitted from subject to subject with the swift waywardness of a humming-bird. It was remarked by Mary, leaning back in one end of Mrs. Riley’s little sofa, that “summer dresses were disappearing, but that the girls looked just as sweet in their darker colors as they had appeared in midsummer white. Had Narcisse noticed? Probably he didn’t care for” —

“Ho! I notiz them an’ they notiz me! An’ thass one thing I ’ave notiz about young ladies: they ah juz like those bird’; in summeh lookin’ cool, in winteh waum. I ’ave notiz that. An’ I’ve notiz anotheh thing which make them juz like those bird’. They halways know if a man is lookin’, an’ they halways make like they don’t see ’im! I would like to ’ite an i’ony about that – a lill i’ony – in the he’oic measuh. You like that he’oic measuh, Mizzez Witchlin’?”

As he rose to go he rolled a cigarette, and folded the end in with the long nail of his little finger.

“Mizzez Witchlin’, if you will allow me to light my ciga’ette fum yo’ lamp – I can’t use my sun-glass at night, because the sun is nod theh. But, the sun shining, I use it. I ’ave adop’ that method since lately.”

“You borrow the sun’s rays,” said Mary, with wicked sweetness.

“Yes; ’tis cheapeh than matches in the longue ’un.”

“You have discovered that, I suppose,” remarked John.

“Me? The sun-glass? No. I believe Ahchimides invend that, in fact. An’ yet, out of ten thousan’ who use the sun-glass only a few can account ’ow tis done. ’Ow did you think that that’s my invention, Mistoo Itchlin? Did you know that I am something of a chimist? I can tu’n litmus papeh ’ed by juz dipping it in SO3HO. Yesseh.”

“Yes,” said Richling, “that’s one thing that I have noticed, that you’re very fertile in devices.”

“Yes,” echoed Mary, “I noticed that, the first time you ever came to see us. I only wish Mr. Richling was half as much so.”

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.”

CHAPTER XXX.

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 realize that it isn’t twelve months since your hardships commenced? They can’t last 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 getting too bitter. 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 leave them out was bread without yeast, meat without salt, as far as their own powers of speech were concerned.