Dr. Sevier

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 its spring, 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, you know, 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 young Creole 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, dropped into 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!”

CHAPTER XXXIII.

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 is passé at 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 man hunting 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 each other 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.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

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 – “death separates 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 haste of 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 turned upon 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 starvation at 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 that must understand 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.

CHAPTER XXXV.

TO SIGH, YET FEEL NO PAIN

Mrs. Riley missed the Richlings, she said, more than tongue could tell. She had easily rented the rooms they left vacant; that was not the trouble. The new tenant was a sallow, gaunt, wind-dried seamstress of sixty, who paid her rent punctually, but who was —

“Mighty poor comp’ny to thim as’s been used to the upper tin, Mr. Ristofalo.”

Still she was a protection. Mrs. Riley had not regarded this as a necessity in former days, but now, somehow, matters seemed different. This seamstress had, moreover, a son of eighteen years, principally skin and bone, who was hoping to be appointed assistant hostler at the fire-engine house of “Volunteer One,” and who meantime hung about Mrs. Riley’s dwelling and loved to relieve her of the care of little Mike. This also was something to be appreciated. Still there was a void.

“Well, Mr. Richlin’!” cried Mrs. Riley, as she opened her parlor door in response to a knock. “Well, I’ll be switched! ha! ha! I didn’t think it was you at all. Take a seat and sit down!”

It was good to see how she enjoyed the visit. Whenever she listened to Richling’s words she rocked in her rocking-chair vigorously, and when she spoke stopped its motion and rested her elbows on its arms.

“And how is Mrs. Richlin’? And so she sent her love to me, did she, now? The blessed angel! Now, ye’re not just a-makin’ that up? No, I know ye wouldn’t do sich a thing as that, Mr. Richlin’. Well, you must give her mine back again. I’ve nobody else on e’rth to give ud to, and never will have.” She lifted her nose with amiable stateliness, as if to imply that Richling might not believe this, but that it was true, nevertheless.

“You may change your mind, Mrs. Riley, some day,” returned Richling, a little archly.

“Ha! ha!” She tossed her head and laughed with good-natured scorn. “Nivver a fear o’ that, Mr. Richlin’!” Her brogue was apt to broaden when pleasure pulled down her dignity. “And, if I did, it wuddent be for the likes of no I-talian Dago, if id’s him ye’re a-dthrivin’ at, – not intinding anny disrespect to your friend, Mr. Richlin’, and indeed I don’t deny he’s a perfect gintleman, – but, indeed, Mr. Richlin’, I’m just after thinkin’ that you and yer lady wouldn’t have no self-respect for Kate Riley if she should be changing her name.”