Dr. Sevier

“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 to Richling. 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 each other’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.

CHAPTER XXXI.

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 the table, “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 explaining to 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.”

CHAPTER XXXII.

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, brightening again. “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 speaker had trusted 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 his breakfast; 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 it me. 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 escaped from, not to,” 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.