Dr. Sevier

In a generous and innocent way Reisen grew a little jealous of his accountant, and threw himself into his business as he had not done before since he was young, and in the ardor of his emulation ignored utterly a state of health that was no better because of his great length and breadth.

“Toctor Tseweer!” he said, as the physician appeared one day in his office. “Vell, now, I yoost pet finfty tawllars tat iss Mississ Reisen sendts for you tat I’m sick! Ven udt iss not such a dting!” He laughed immoderately. “Ovver I’m gladt you come, Toctor, ennahow, for you pin yoost in time to see ever’ting runnin’. I vish you yoost come undt see udt!” He grinned in his old, broad way; but his face was anxious, and his bared arms were lean. He laid his hand on the Doctor’s arm, and then jerked it away, and tried to blow off the floury print of his fingers. “Come!” He beckoned. “Come; I show you somedting putiful. Toctor, I vizh you come!”

The Doctor yielded. Richling had to be called upon at last to explain the hidden parts and processes.

“It’s yoost like putt’n’ te shpirudt into teh potty,” said the laughing German. “Now, tat prate kot life in udt yoost teh same like your own selluf, Toctor. Tot prate kot yoost so much sense ass Reisen kot. Ovver, Toctor – Toctor” – the Doctor was giving his attention to Richling, who was explaining something – “Toctor, toandt you come here uxpectin’ to see nopoty sick, less-n udt iss Mr. Richlun.” He caught Richling’s face roughly between his hands, and then gave his back a caressing thwack. “Toctor, vot you dtink? Ve goin’ teh run prate-cawts mit copponic-essut kass. Tispense mit hawses!” He laughed long but softly, and smote Richling again as the three walked across the bakery yard abreast.

“Well?” said Dr. Sevier to Richling, in a low tone, “always working toward the one happy end.”

Richling had only time to answer with his eyes, when the baker, always clinging close to them, said, “Yes; if I toandt look oudt yet, he pe rich pefore Reisen.”

The Doctor looked steadily at Richling, stood still, and said, “Don’t hurry.”

But Richling swung playfully half around on his heel, dropped his glance, and jerked his head sidewise, as one who neither resented the advice nor took it. A minute later he drew from his breast-pocket a small, thick letter stripped of its envelope, and handed it to the Doctor, who put it into his pocket, neither of them speaking. The action showed practice. Reisen winked one eye laboriously at the Doctor and chuckled.

“See here, Reisen,” said the Doctor, “I want you to pack your trunk, take the late boat, and go to Biloxi or Pascagoula, and spend a month fishing and sailing.”

The baker pushed his fingers up under his hat, scratched his head, smiled widely, and pointed at Richling.

“Sendt him.”

The Doctor went and sat down with Reisen, and used every form of inducement that could be brought to bear; but the German had but one answer: Richling, Richling, not he. The Doctor left a prescription, which the baker took until he found it was making him sleep while Richling was at work, whereupon he amiably threw it out of his window.

It was no surprise to Dr. Sevier that Richling came to him a few days later with a face all trouble.

“How are you, Richling? How’s Reisen?”

“Doctor,” said Richling, “I’m afraid Mr. Reisen is” – Their eyes met.

“Insane,” said the Doctor.

“Yes.”

“Does his wife know whether he has ever had such symptoms before – in his life?”

“She says he hasn’t.”

“I suppose you know his pecuniary condition perfectly; has he money?”

“Plenty.”

“He’ll not consent to go away anywhere, I suppose, will he?”

“Not an inch.”

“There’s but one sensible and proper course, Richling; he must be taken at once, by force if necessary, to a first-class insane hospital.”

“Why, Doctor, why? Can’t we treat him better at home?”

The Doctor gave his head its well-known swing of impatience. “If you want to be criminally in error try that!”

“I don’t want to be in error at all,” retorted Richling.

“Then don’t lose twelve hours that you can save, but send him off as soon as process of court will let you.”

“Will you come at once and see him?” asked Richling, rising up.

“Yes, I’ll be there nearly as soon as you will. Stop; you had better ride with me; I have something special to say.” As the carriage started off, the Doctor leaned back in its cushions, folded his arms, and took a long, meditative breath. Richling glanced at him and said: —

“We’re both thinking of the same person.”

“Yes,” replied the Doctor; “and the same day, too, I suppose: the first day I ever saw her; the only other time that we ever got into this carriage together. Hmm! hmm! With what a fearful speed time flies!”

“Sometimes,” said the yearning husband, and apologized by a laugh. The Doctor grunted, looked out of the carriage window, and, suddenly turning, asked: —

“Do you know that Reisen instructed his wife about six months ago, in the event of his death or disability, to place all her interests in your hands, and to be guided by your advice in everything?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Richling, “he can’t do that! He should have asked my consent.”

“I suppose he knew he wouldn’t get it. He’s a cunning simpleton.”

“But, Doctor, if you knew this” – Richling ceased.

“Six months ago. Why didn’t I tell you?” said the physician. “I thought I would, Richling, though Reisen bade me not, when he told me; I made no promise. But time, that you think goes slow, was too fast for me.”

“I shall refuse to serve,” said Richling, soliloquizing aloud. “Don’t you see, Doctor, the delicacy of the position?”

“Yes, I do; but you don’t. Don’t you see it would be just as delicate a matter for you to refuse?”

Richling pondered, and presently said, quite slowly: —

“It will look like coming down out of the tree to catch the apples as they fall,” he said. “Why,” he added with impatience, “it lays me wide open to suspicion and slander.”

“Does it?” asked the Doctor, heartlessly. “There’s nothing remarkable in that. Did any one ever occupy a responsible position without those conditions?”

“But, you know, I have made some unscrupulous enemies by defending Reisen’s interests.”

“Um-hmm; what did you defend them for?”

Richling was about to make a reply; but the Doctor wanted none. “Richling,” he said, “the most of men have burrows. They never let anything decoy them so far from those burrows but they can pop into them at a moment’s notice. Do you take my meaning?”

“Oh, yes!” said Richling, pleasantly; “no trouble to understand you this time. I’ll not run into any burrow just now. I’ll face my duty and think of Mary.”

He laughed.

“Excellent pastime,” responded Dr. Sevier.

They rode on in silence.

“As to” – began Richling again, – “as to such matters as these, once a man confronts the question candidly, there is really no room, that I can see, for a man to choose: a man, at least, who is always guided by conscience.”

“If there were such a man,” responded the Doctor.

“True,” said John.

“But for common stuff, such as you and I are made of, it must sometimes be terrible.”

“I dare say,” said Richling. “It sometimes requires cold blood to choose aright.”

“As cold as granite,” replied the other.

They arrived at the bakery.

“O Doctor,” said Mrs. Reisen, proffering her hand as he entered the house, “my poor hussband iss crazy!” She dropped into a chair and burst into tears. She was a large woman, with a round, red face and triple chin, but with a more intelligent look and a better command of English than Reisen. “Doctor, I want you to cure him ass quick ass possible.”

“Well, madam, of course; but will you do what I say?”

“I will, certain shure. I do it yust like you tellin’ me.”

The Doctor gave her such good advice as became a courageous physician.

A look of dismay came upon her. Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, no, Doctor!” She began to shake her head. “I’ll never do tha-at; oh, no; I’ll never send my poor hussband to the crazy-house! Oh, no, sir; I’ll do not such a thing!” There was some resentment in her emotion. Her nether lip went up like a crying babe’s, and she breathed through her nostrils audibly.

“Oh, yes, I know!” said the poor creature, turning her face away from the Doctor’s kind attempts to explain, and lifting it incredulously as she talked to the wall, – “I know all about it. I’m not a-goin’ to put no sich a disgrace on my poor hussband; no, indeed!” She faced around suddenly and threw out her hand to Richling, who leaned against a door twisting a bit of string between his thumbs. “Why, he wouldn’t go, nohow, even if I gave my consents. You caynt coax him out of his room yet. Oh, no, Doctor! It’s my duty to keep him wid me an’ try to cure him first a little while here at home. That aint no trouble to me; I don’t never mind no trouble if I can be any help to my hussband.” She addressed the wall again.

“Well, madam,” replied the physician, with unusual tenderness of tone, and looking at Richling while he spoke, “of course you’ll do as you think best.”

“Oh! my poor Reisen!” exclaimed the wife, wringing her hands.

“Yes,” said the physician, rising and looking out of the window, “I am afraid it will be ruin to Reisen.”

“No, it won’t be such a thing,” said Mrs. Reisen, turning this way and that in her chair as the physician moved from place to place. “Mr. Richlin’,” – turning to him, – “Mr. Richlin’ and me kin run the business yust so good as Reisen.” She shifted her distressed gaze back and forth from Richling to the Doctor. The latter turned to Richling: —

“I’ll have to leave this matter to you.”

Richling nodded.

“Where is Reisen?” asked the Doctor. “In his own room, upstairs?” The three passed through an inner door.

CHAPTER XLI.

MIRAGE

“This spoils some of your arrangements, doesn’t it?” asked Dr. Sevier of Richling, stepping again into his carriage. He had already said the kind things, concerning Reisen, that physicians commonly say when they have little hope. “Were you not counting on an early visit to Milwaukee?”

Richling laughed.

“That illusion has been just a little beyond reach for months.” He helped the Doctor shut his carriage-door.

“But now, of course – ” said the physician.

“Of course it’s out of the question,” replied Richling; and the Doctor drove away, with the young man’s face in his mind bearing an expression of simple emphasis that pleased him much.

Late at night Richling, in his dingy little office, unlocked a drawer, drew out a plump package of letters, and began to read their pages, – transcripts of his wife’s heart, pages upon pages, hundreds of precious lines, dates crowding closely one upon another. Often he smiled as his eyes ran to and fro, or drew a soft sigh as he turned the page, and looked behind to see if any one had stolen in and was reading over his shoulder. Sometimes his smile broadened; he lifted his glance from the sheet and fixed it in pleasant revery on the blank wall before him. Often the lines were entirely taken up with mere utterances of affection. Now and then they were all about little Alice, who had fretted all the night before, her gums being swollen and tender on the upper left side near the front; or who had fallen violently in love with the house-dog, by whom, in turn, the sentiment was reciprocated; or whose eyes were really getting bluer and bluer, and her cheeks fatter and fatter, and who seemed to fear nothing that had existence. And the reader of the lines would rest one elbow on the desk, shut his eyes in one hand, and see the fair young head of the mother drooping tenderly over that smaller head in her bosom. Sometimes the tone of the lines was hopefully grave, discussing in the old tentative, interrogative key the future and its possibilities. Some pages were given to reminiscences, – recollections of all the droll things and all the good and glad things of the rugged past. Every here and there, but especially where the lines drew toward the signature, the words of longing multiplied, but always full of sunshine; and just at the end of each letter love spurned its restraints, and rose and overflowed with sweet confessions.

Sometimes these re-read letters did Richling good; not always. Maybe he read them too often. It was only the very next time that the Doctor’s carriage stood before the bakery that the departing physician turned before he reëntered the vehicle, and – whatever Richling had been saying to him – said abruptly: —

“Richling, are you falling out of love with your work?”

“Why do you ask me that?” asked the young man, coloring.

“Because I no longer see that joy of deliverance with which you entered upon this humble calling. It seems to have passed like a lost perfume, Richling. Have you let your toil become a task once more?”

Richling dropped his eyes and pushed the ground with the toe of his boot.

“I didn’t want you to find that out, Doctor.”

“I was afraid, from the first, it would be so,” said the physician.

“I don’t see why you were.”

“Well, I saw that the zeal with which you first laid hold of your work was not entirely natural. It was good, but it was partly artificial, – the more credit to you on that account. But I saw that by and by you would have to keep it up mainly by your sense of necessity and duty. ‘That’ll be the pinch,’ I said; and now I see it’s come. For a long time you idealized the work; but at last its real dulness has begun to overcome you, and you’re discontented – and with a discontentment that you can’t justify, can you?”

“But I feel myself growing smaller again.”

“No wonder. Why, Richling, it’s the discontent makes that.”

“Oh, no! The discontent makes me long to expand. I never had so much ambition before. But what can I do here? Why, Doctor, I ought to be – I might be” —

The physician laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Stop, Richling. Drop those phrases and give us a healthy ‘I am,’ and ‘I must,’ and ‘I will.’ Don’t —don’t be like so many! You’re not of the many. Richling, in the first illness in which I ever attended your wife, she watched her chance and asked me privately – implored me – not to let her die, for your sake. I don’t suppose that tortures could have wrung from her, even if she realized it, – which I doubt, – the true reason. But don’t you feel it? It was because your moral nature needs her so badly. Stop – let me finish. You need Mary back here now to hold you square to your course by the tremendous power of her timid little ‘Don’t you think?’ and ‘Doesn’t it seem?’”

“Doctor,” replied Richling, with a smile of expostulation, “you touch one’s pride.”

“Certainly I do. You’re willing enough to say that you love her and long for her, but not that your moral manhood needs her. And yet isn’t it true?”

“It sha’n’t be true,” said Richling, swinging a playful fist. “‘Forewarned is forearmed;’ I’ll not allow it. I’m man enough for that.” He laughed, with a touch of pique.

“Richling,” – the Doctor laid a finger against his companion’s shoulder, preparing at the same time to leave him, – “don’t be misled. A man who doesn’t need a wife isn’t fit to have one.”

“Why, Doctor,” replied Richling, with sincere amiability, “you’re the man of all men I should have picked out to prove the contrary.”

“No, Richling, no. I wasn’t fit, and God took her.”

In accordance with Dr. Sevier’s request Richling essayed to lift the mind of the baker’s wife, in the matter of her husband’s affliction, to that plane of conviction where facts, and not feelings, should become her motive; and when he had talked until his head reeled, as though he had been blowing a fire, and she would not blaze for all his blowing – would be governed only by a stupid sentimentality; and when at length she suddenly flashed up in silly anger and accused him of interested motives; and when he had demanded instant retraction or release from her employment; and when she humbly and affectionately apologized, and was still as deep as ever in hopeless, clinging sentimentalisms, repeating the dictums of her simple and ignorant German neighbors and intimates, and calling them in to argue with him, the feeling that the Doctor’s exhortation had for the moment driven away came back with more force than ever, and he could only turn again to his ovens and account-books with a feeling of annihilation.

“Where am I? What am I?” Silence was the only answer. The separation that had once been so sharp a pain had ceased to cut, and was bearing down upon him now with that dull, grinding weight that does the damage in us.

Presently came another development: the lack of money, that did no harm while it was merely kept in the mind, settled down upon the heart.

“It may be a bad thing to love, but it’s a good thing to have,” he said, one day, to the little rector, as this friend stood by him at a corner of the high desk where Richling was posting his ledger.

“But not to seek,” said the rector.

Richling posted an item and shook his head doubtingly.

“That depends, I should say, on how much one seeks it, and how much of it he seeks.”

“No,” insisted the clergyman. Richling bent a look of inquiry upon him, and he added: —

“The principle is bad, and you know it, Richling. ‘Seek ye first’ – you know the text, and the assurance that follows with it – ‘all these things shall be added’” —

“Oh, yes; but still” —

“‘But still!’” exclaimed the little preacher; “why must everybody say ‘but still’? Don’t you see that that ‘but still’ is the refusal of Christians to practise Christianity?”

Richling looked, but said nothing; and his friend hoped the word had taken effect. But Richling was too deeply bitten to be cured by one or two good sayings. After a moment he said: —

“I used to wonder to see nearly everybody struggling to be rich, but I don’t now. I don’t justify it, but I understand it. It’s flight from oblivion. It’s the natural longing to be seen and felt.”

“Why isn’t it enough to be felt?” asked the other. “Here, you make bread and sell it. A thousand people eat it from your hand every day. Isn’t that something?”

“Yes; but it’s all the bread. The bread’s everything; I’m nothing. I’m not asked to do or to be. I may exist or not; there will be bread all the same. I see my remark pains you, but I can’t help it. You’ve never tried the thing. You’ve never encountered the mild contempt that people in ease pay to those who pursue the ‘industries.’ You’ve never suffered the condescension of rank to the ranks. You don’t know the smart of being only an arithmetical quantity in a world of achievements and possessions.”

“No,” said the preacher, “maybe I haven’t. But I should say you are just the sort of man that ought to come through all that unsoured and unhurt. Richling,” – he put on a lighter mood, – “you’ve got a moral indigestion. You’ve accustomed yourself to the highest motives, and now these new notions are not the highest, and you know and feel it. They don’t nourish you. They don’t make you happy. Where are your old sentiments? What’s become of them?”

“Ah!” said Richling, “I got them from my wife. And the supply’s nearly run out.”

“Get it renewed!” said the little man, quickly, putting on his hat and extending a farewell hand. “Excuse me for saying so. I didn’t intend it; I dropped in to ask you again the name of that Italian whom you visit at the prison, – the man I promised you I’d go and talk to. Yes – Ristofalo; that’s it. Good-by.”

That night Richling wrote to his wife. What he wrote goes not down here; but he felt as he wrote that his mood was not the right one, and when Mary got the letter she answered by first mail: —

“Will you not let me come to you? Is it not surely best? Say but the word, and I’ll come. It will be the steamer to Chicago, railroad to Cairo, and a St. Louis boat to New Orleans. Alice will be both company and protection, and no burden at all. O my beloved husband! I am just ungracious enough to think, some days, that these times of separation are the hardest of all. When we were suffering sickness and hunger together – well, we were together. Darling, if you’ll just say come, I’ll come in an instant. Oh, how gladly! Surely, with what you tell me you’ve saved, and with your place so secure to you, can’t we venture to begin again? Alice and I can live with you in the bakery. O my husband! if you but say the word, a little time – a few days will bring us into your arms. And yet, do not yield to my impatience; I trust your wisdom, and know that what you decide will be best. Mother has been very feeble lately, as I have told you; but she seems to be improving, and now I see what I’ve half suspected for a long time, and ought to have seen sooner, that my husband – my dear, dear husband – needs me most; and I’m coming – I’m coming, John, if you’ll only say come.

Your lovingMary.”

CHAPTER XLII.

RISTOFALO AND THE RECTOR

Be Richling’s feelings what they might, the Star Bakery shone in the retail firmament of the commercial heavens with new and growing brilliancy. There was scarcely time to talk even with the tough little rector who hovers on the borders of this history, and he might have become quite an alien had not Richling’s earnest request made him one day a visitor, as we have seen him express his intention of being, in the foul corridors of the parish prison, and presently the occupant of a broken chair in the apartment apportioned to Raphael Ristofalo and two other prisoners. “Easy little tasks you cut out for your friends,” said the rector to Richling when next they met. “I got preached to– not to say edified. I’ll share my edification with you!” He told his experience.

It was a sinister place, the prison apartment. The hand of Kate Ristofalo had removed some of its unsightly conditions and disguised others; but the bounds of the room, walls, ceiling, windows, floor, still displayed, with official unconcern, the grime and decay that is commonly thought good enough for men charged, rightly or wrongly, with crime.

The clergyman’s chair was in the centre of the floor. Ristofalo sat facing him a little way off on the right. A youth of nineteen sat tipped against the wall on the left, and a long-limbed, big-boned, red-shirted young Irishman occupied a poplar table, hanging one of his legs across a corner of it and letting the other down to the floor. Ristofalo remarked, in the form of polite acknowledgment, that the rector had preached to the assembled inmates of the prison on the Sunday previous.

“Did I say anything that you thought was true?” asked the minister.

The Italian smiled in the gentle manner that never failed him.

“Didn’t listen much,” he said. He drew from a pocket of his black velveteen pantaloons a small crumpled tract. It may have been a favorite one with the clergyman, for the youth against the wall produced its counterpart, and the man on the edge of the table lay back on his elbow, and, with an indolent stretch of the opposite arm and both legs, drew a third one from a tin cup that rested on a greasy shelf behind him. The Irishman held his between his fingers and smirked a little toward the floor. Ristofalo extended his toward the visitor, and touched the caption with one finger: “Mercy offered.”

“Well,” asked the rector, pleasantly, “what’s the matter with that?”

“Is no use yeh. Wrong place – this prison.”

“Um-hm,” said the tract-distributor, glancing down at the leaf and smoothing it on his knee while he took time to think. “Well, why shouldn’t mercy be offered here?”

“No,” replied Ristofalo, still smiling; “ought offer justice first.”

“Mr. Preacher,” asked the young Irishman, bringing both legs to the front, and swinging them under the table, “d’ye vote?”

“Yes; I vote.”

“D’ye call yerself a cidizen – with a cidizen’s rights an’ djuties?”

“I do.”

“That’s right.” There was a deep sea of insolence in the smooth-faced, red-eyed smile that accompanied the commendation. “And how manny times have ye bean in this prison?”

“I don’t know; eight or ten times. That rather beats you, doesn’t it?”

Ristofalo smiled, the youth uttered a high rasping cackle, and the Irishman laughed the heartiest of all.

“A little,” he said; “a little. But nivver mind. Ye say ye’ve bin here eight or tin times; yes. Well, now, will I tell ye what I’d do afore and iver I’d kim back here ag’in, – if I was you now? Will I tell ye?”