Dr. Sevier

“If she aint,” responded the other, putting a peeled snuff-stick into her cheek, “then her husband’s got the brass buttons, and they knows that. Look at ’er a-smi-i-ilin’!”

“What you reckon makes her look so wore out?” asked the first. And the other replied promptly, with unbounded loathing, “Dayncin’,” and sent her emphasis out of the window in liquid form without disturbing her intervening companion.

During the delay caused by the rain Mary had found time to refit her borrowed costume. Her dress was a stout, close-fitting homespun of mixed cotton and wool, woven in a neat plaid of walnut-brown, oak-red, and the pale olive dye of the hickory. Her hat was a simple round thing of woven pine straw, with a slightly drooping brim, its native brown gloss undisturbed, and the low crown wrapped about with a wreath of wild grasses plaited together with a bit of yellow cord. Alice wore a much-washed pink calico frock and a hood of the same stuff.

“Some officer’s wife,” said two very sweet and lady-like persons, of unequal age and equal good taste in dress, as their eyes took an inventory of her apparel. They wore bonnets that were quite handsome, and had real false flowers and silk ribbons on them.

“Yes, she’s been to camp somewhere to see him.”

“Beautiful child she’s got,” said one, as Alice began softly to smite her mother’s shoulder for private attention, and to whisper gravely as Mary bent down.

Two or three soldiers took their feet off the seats, and one of them, at the amiably murmured request of the conductor, put his shoes on.

“The car in front is your car,” said the conductor to another man, in especially dirty gray uniform.

“You kin hev it,” said the soldier, throwing his palm open with an air of happy extravagance, and a group of gray-headed “citizens,” just behind, exploded a loud country laugh.

“D’ I onderstaynd you to lafe at me, saw?” drawled the soldier, turning back with a pretence of heavy gloom on his uncombed brow.

“Laughin’ at yo’ friend yondeh,” said one of the citizens, grinning and waving his hand after the departing conductor.

“’Caze if you lafe at me again, saw,” – the frown deepened, – “I’ll thess go ’ight straight out iss caw.”3

The laugh that followed this dreadful threat was loud and general, the victims laughing loudest of all, and the soldier smiling about benignly, and slowly scratching his elbows. Even the two ladies smiled. Alice’s face remained impassive. She looked twice into her mother’s to see if there was no smile there. But the mother smiled at her, took off her hood and smoothed back the fine gold, then put the hood on again, and tied its strings under the upstretched chin.

Presently Alice pulled softly at the hollow of her mother’s elbow.

“Mamma – mamma!” she whispered. Mary bowed her ear. The child gazed solemnly across the car at another stranger, then pulled the mother’s arm again, “That man over there – winked at me.”

And thereupon another man, sitting sidewise on the seat in front, and looking back at Alice, tittered softly, and said to Mary, with a raw drawl: —

“She’s a-beginnin’ young.”

“She means some one on the other side,” said Mary, quite pleasantly, and the man had sense enough to hush.

The jest and the laugh ran to and fro everywhere. It seemed very strange to Mary to find it so. There were two or three convalescent wounded men in the car, going home on leave, and they appeared never to weary of the threadbare joke of calling their wounds “furloughs.” There was one little slip of a fellow – he could hardly have been seventeen – wounded in the hand, whom they kept teazed to the point of exasperation by urging him to confess that he had shot himself for a furlough, and of whom they said, later, when he had got off at a flag station, that he was the bravest soldier in his company. No one on the train seemed to feel that he had got all that was coming to him until the conductor had exchanged a jest with him. The land laughed. On the right hand and on the left it dimpled and wrinkled in gentle depressions and ridges, and rolled away in fields of young corn and cotton. The train skipped and clattered along at a happy-go-lucky, twelve-miles-an-hour gait, over trestles and stock-pits, through flowery cuts and along slender, rain-washed embankments where dewberries were ripening, and whence cattle ran down and galloped off across the meadows on this side and that, tails up and heads down, throwing their horns about, making light of the screaming destruction, in their dumb way, as the people made light of the war. At stations where the train stopped – and it stopped on the faintest excuse – a long line of heads and gray shoulders was thrust out of the windows of the soldiers’ car, in front, with all manner of masculine head-coverings, even bloody handkerchiefs; and woe to the negro or negress or “citizen” who, by any conspicuous demerit or excellence of dress, form, stature, speech, or bearing, drew the fire of that line! No human power of face or tongue could stand the incessant volley of stale quips and mouldy jokes, affirmative, interrogative, and exclamatory, that fell about their victim.

At one spot, in a lovely natural grove, where the air was spiced with the gentle pungency of the young hickory foliage, the train paused a moment to let off a man in fine gray cloth, whose yellow stripes and one golden star on the coat-collar indicated a major of cavalry. It seemed as though pandemonium had opened. Mules braying, negroes yodling, axes ringing, teamsters singing, men shouting and howling, and all at nothing; mess-fires smoking all about in the same hap-hazard, but roomy, disorder in which the trees of the grove had grown; the railroad side lined with a motley crowd of jolly fellows in spurs, and the atmosphere between them and the line of heads in the car-windows murky with the interchange of compliments that flew back and forth from the “web-foots”4 to the “critter company,” and from the “critter company” to the “web-foots.” As the train moved off, “I say, boys,” drawled a lank, coatless giant on the roadside, with but one suspender and one spur, “tha-at’s right! Gen’l Beerygyard told you to strike fo’ yo’ homes, an’ I see you’ a-doin’ it ez fass as you kin git thah.” And the “citizens” in the rear car-windows giggled even at that; while the “web-foots” he-hawed their derision, and the train went on, as one might say, with its hands in its pockets, whooping and whistling over the fields – after the cows; for the day was declining.

Mary was awed. As she had been forewarned to do, she tried not to seem unaccustomed to, or out of harmony with, all this exuberance. But there was something so brave in it, coming from a people who were playing a losing game with their lives and fortunes for their stakes; something so gallant in it, laughing and gibing in the sight of blood, and smell of fire, and shortness of food and raiment, that she feared she had betrayed a stranger’s wonder and admiration every time the train stopped, and the idlers of the station platform lingered about her window and silently paid their ungraceful but complimentary tribute of simulated casual glances.

For, with all this jest, it was very plain there was but little joy. It was not gladness; it was bravery. It was the humor of an invincible spirit – the gayety of defiance. She could easily see the grim earnestness beneath the jocund temper, and beneath the unrepining smile the privation and the apprehension. What joy there was, was a martial joy. The people were confident of victory at last, – a victorious end, whatever might lie between, and of even what lay between they would confess no fear. Richmond was safe, Memphis safer, New Orleans safest. Yea, notwithstanding Porter and Farragut were pelting away at Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Indeed, if the rumor be true, if Farragut’s ships had passed those forts, leaving Porter behind, then the Yankee sea-serpent was cut in two, and there was an end of him in that direction. Ha! ha!

“Is to-day the twenty-sixth?” asked Mary, at last, of one of the ladies in real ribbons, leaning over toward her.

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was the younger one who replied. As she did so she came over and sat by Mary.

“I judge, from what I heard your little girl asking you, that you are going beyond Jackson.”

“I’m going to New Orleans.”

“Do you live there?” The lady’s interest seemed genuine and kind.

“Yes. I am going to join my husband there.”

Mary saw by the reflection in the lady’s face that a sudden gladness must have overspread her own.

“He’ll be mighty glad, I’m sure,” said the pleasant stranger, patting Alice’s cheek, and looking, with a pretty fellow-feeling, first into the child’s face and then into Mary’s.

“Yes, he will,” said Mary, looking down upon the curling locks at her elbow with a mother’s happiness.

“Is he in the army?” asked the lady.

Mary’s face fell.

“His health is bad,” she replied.

“I know some nice people down in New Orleans,” said the lady again.

“We haven’t many acquaintances,” rejoined Mary, with a timidity that was almost trepidation. Her eyes dropped, and she began softly to smooth Alice’s collar and hair.

“I didn’t know,” said the lady, “but you might know some of them. For instance, there’s Dr. Sevier.”

Mary gave a start and smiled.

“Why, is he your friend too?” she asked. She looked up into the lady’s quiet, brown eyes and down again into her own lap, where her hands had suddenly knit together, and then again into the lady’s face. “We have no friend like Dr. Sevier.”

“Mother,” called the lady softly, and beckoned. The senior lady leaned toward her. “Mother, this lady is from New Orleans and is an intimate friend of Dr. Sevier.”

The mother was pleased.

“What might one call your name?” she asked, taking a seat behind Mary and continuing to show her pleasure.

“Richling.”

The mother and daughter looked at each other. They had never heard the name before.

Yet only a little while later the mother was saying to Mary, – they were expecting at any moment to hear the whistle for the terminus of the route, the central Mississippi town of Canton: —

“My dear child, no! I couldn’t sleep to-night if I thought you was all alone in one o’ them old hotels in Canton. No, you must come home with us. We’re barely two mile’ from town, and we’ll have the carriage ready for you bright and early in the morning, and our coachman will put you on the cars just as nice – Trouble?” She laughed at the idea. “No; I tell you what would trouble me, – that is, if we’d allow it; that’d be for you to stop in one o’ them hotels all alone, child, and like’ as not some careless servant not wake you in time for the cars to-morrow.” At this word she saw capitulation in Mary’s eyes. “Come, now, my child, we’re not going to take no for an answer.”

Nor did they.

But what was the result? The next morning, when Mary and Alice stood ready for the carriage, and it was high time they were gone, the carriage was not ready; the horses had got astray in the night. And while the black coachman was on one horse, which he had found and caught, and was scouring the neighboring fields and lanes and meadows in search of the other, there came out from townward upon the still, country air the long whistle of the departing train; and then the distant rattle and roar of its far southern journey began, and then its warning notes to the scattering colts and cattle.

“Look away!” – it seemed to sing – “Look away!” – the notes fading, failing, on the ear, – “away – away – away down south in Dixie,” – the last train that left for New Orleans until the war was over.

CHAPTER LVI.

FIRE AND SWORD

The year the war began dates also, for New Orleans, the advent of two better things: street-cars and the fire-alarm telegraph. The frantic incoherence of the old alarum gave way to the few solemn, numbered strokes that called to duty in the face of hot danger, like the electric voice of a calm commander. The same new system also silenced, once for all, the old nine-o’clock gun. For there were not only taps to signify each new fire-district, – one for the first, two for the second, three, four, five, six seven, eight, and nine, – but there was also one lone toll at mid-day for the hungry mechanic, and nine at the evening hour when the tired workman called his children in from the street and turned to his couch, and the slave must show cause in a master’s handwriting why he or she was not under that master’s roof.

And then there was one signal more. Fire is a dreadful thing, and all the alarm signals were for fire except this one. Yet the profoundest wish of every good man and tender women in New Orleans, when this pleasing novelty of electro-magnetic warnings was first published for the common edification, was that mid-day or midnight, midsummer or midwinter, let come what might of danger or loss or distress, that one particular signal might not sound. Twelve taps. Anything but that.

Dr. Sevier and Richling had that wish together. They had many wishes that were greatly at variance the one’s from the other’s. The Doctor had struggled for the Union until the very smoke of war began to rise into the sky; but then he “went with the South.” He was the only one in New Orleans who knew – whatever some others may have suspected – that Richling’s heart was on the other side. Had Richling’s bodily strength remained, so that he could have been a possible factor, however small, in the strife, it is hard to say whether they could have been together day by day and night by night, as they came to be when the Doctor took the failing man into his own home, and have lived in amity, as they did. But there is this to be counted; they were both, though from different directions, for peace, and their gentle forbearance toward each other taught them a moderation of sentiment concerning the whole great issue. And, as I say, they both together held the one longing hope that, whatever war should bring of final gladness or lamentation, the steeples of New Orleans might never toll – twelve.

But one bright Thursday April morning, as Richling was sitting, half dressed, by an open window of his room in Dr. Sevier’s house, leaning on the arm of his soft chair and looking out at the passers on the street, among whom he had begun to notice some singular evidences of excitement, there came from a slender Gothic church-spire that was highest of all in the city, just beyond a few roofs in front of him, the clear, sudden, brazen peal of its one great bell.

“Fire,” thought Richling; and yet, he knew not why, wondered where Dr. Sevier might be. He had not seen him that morning. A high official had sent for him at sunrise and he had not returned.

“Clang,” went the bell again, and the softer ding – dang – dong of others, struck at the same instant, came floating in from various distances. And then it clanged again – and again – and again – the loud one near, the soft ones, one by one, after it – six, seven, eight, nine – ah! stop there! stop there! But still the alarm pealed on; ten – alas! alas! – eleven – oh, oh, the women and children! – twelve! And then the fainter, final asseverations of the more distant bells – twelve! twelve! twelve! – and a hundred and seventy thousand souls knew by that sign that the foe had passed the forts. New Orleans had fallen.

Richling dressed himself hurriedly and went out. Everywhere drums were beating to arms. Couriers and aides-de-camp were galloping here and there. Men in uniform were hurrying on foot to this and that rendezvous. Crowds of the idle and poor were streaming out toward the levee. Carriages and cabs rattled frantically from place to place; men ran out-of-doors and leaped into them and leaped out of them and sprang up stair-ways; hundreds of all manner of vehicles, fit and unfit to carry passengers and goods, crowded toward the railroad depots and steam-boat landings; women ran into the streets wringing their hands and holding their brows; and children stood in the door-ways and gate-ways and trembled and called and cried.

Richling took the new Dauphine street-car. Far down in the Third district, where there was a silence like that of a village lane, he approached a little cottage painted with Venetian red, setting in its garden of oranges, pomegranates, and bananas, and marigolds, and coxcombs behind its white paling fence and green gate.

The gate was open. In it stood a tall, strong woman, good-looking, rosy, and neatly dressed. That she was tall you could prove by the gate, and that she was strong, by the graceful muscularity with which she held two infants, – pretty, swarthy little fellows, with joyous black eyes, and evidently of one age and parentage, – each in the hollow of a fine, round arm. There was just a hint of emotional disorder in her shining hair and a trace of tears about her eyes. As the visitor drew near, a fresh show of distressed exaltation was visible in the slight play of her form.

“Ah! Mr. Richlin’,” she cried, the moment he came within hearing, “‘the dispot’s heels is on our shores!’” Tears filled her eyes again. Mike, the bruiser, in his sixth year, who had been leaning backward against her knees and covering his legs with her skirts, ran forward and clasped the visitor’s lower limbs with the nerve and intention of a wrestler. Kate followed with the cherubs. They were Raphael’s.

“Yes, it’s terrible,” said Richling.

“Ah! no, Mr. Richlin’,” replied Kate, lifting her head proudly as she returned with him toward the gate, “it’s outrageouz; but it’s not terrible. At least it’s not for me, Mr. Richlin’. I’m only Mrs. Captain Ristofalah; and whin I see the collonels’ and gin’r’ls’ ladies a-prancin’ around in their carridges I feel my humility; but it’s my djuty to be brave, sur! An’ I’ll help to fight thim, sur, if the min can’t do ud. Mr. Richlin’, my husband is the intimit frind of Gin’r’l Garrybaldy, sur! I’ll help to burrin the cittee, sur! – rather nor give ud up to thim vandjals! Come in, Mr. Richlin’; come in.” She led the way up the narrow shell-walk. “Come ’n, sur, it may be the last time ye’ do ud before the flames is leppin’ from the roof! Ah! I knowed ye’d come. I was a-lookin’ for ye. I knowed ye’d prove yerself that frind in need that he’s the frind indeed! Take a seat an’ sit down.” She faced about on the vine-covered porch, and dropped into a rocking-chair, her eyes still at the point of overflow. “But ah! Mr. Richlin’, where’s all thim flatterers that fawned around uz in the days of tytled prosperity?”

Richling said nothing; he had not seen any throngs of that sort.

“Gone, sur! and it’s a relief; it’s a relief, Mr. Richlin’!” She marshalled the twins on her lap, Carlo commanding the right, Francisco the left.

“You mustn’t expect too much of them,” said Richling, drawing Mike between his knees, “in such a time of alarm and confusion as this.” And Kate responded generously: —

“Well, I suppose you’re right, sur.”

“I’ve come down,” resumed the visitor, letting Mike count off “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,” on the buttons of his coat, “to give you any help I can in getting ready to leave town. For you mustn’t think of staying. It isn’t possible to be anything short of dreadful to stay in a city occupied by hostile troops. It’s almost certain the Confederates will try to hold the city, and there may be a bombardment. The city may be taken and retaken half-a-dozen times before the war is over.”

“Mr. Richlin’,” said Kate, with a majestic lifting of the hand, “I’ll nivver rin away from the Yanks.”

“No, but you must go away from them. You mustn’t put yourself in such a position that you can’t go to your husband if he needs you, Mrs. Ristofalo; don’t get separated from him.”

“Ah! Mr. Richlin’, it’s you as has the right to say so; and I’ll do as you say. Mr. Richlin’, my husband” – her voice trembled – “may be wounded this hour. I’ll go, sur, indeed I will; but, sur, if Captain Raphael Ristofalah wor here, sur, he’d be ad the front, sur, and Kate Ristofalah would be at his galliant side!”

“Well, then, I’m glad he’s not here,” rejoined Richling, “for I’d have to take care of the children.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Kate. “No, sur! I’d take the lion’s whelps with me, sur! Why, that little Mike theyre can han’le the dthrum-sticks to beat the felley in the big hat!” And she laughed again.

They made arrangements for her and the three children to go “out into the confederacy” within two or three days at furthest; as soon as she and her feeble helper could hurry a few matters of business to completion at and about the Picayune Tier. Richling did not get back to the Doctor’s house until night had fallen and the sky was set aglare by seven miles’ length of tortuous harbor front covered with millions’ worth of burning merchandise. The city was being evacuated.

Dr. Sevier and he had but few words. Richling was dejected from weariness, and his friend weary with dejections.

“Where have you been all day?” asked the Doctor, with a touch of irritation.

“Getting Kate Ristofalo ready to leave the city.”

“You shouldn’t have left the house; but it’s no use to tell you anything. Has she gone?”

“No.”

“Well, in the name of common-sense, then, when is she going?”

“In two or three days,” replied Richling, almost in retort.

The Doctor laughed with impatience.

“If you feel responsible for her going get her off by to-morrow afternoon at the furthest.” He dropped his tired head against the back of his chair.

“Why,” said Richling, “I don’t suppose the fleet can fight its way through all opposition and get here short of a week.”

The Doctor laid his long fingers upon his brow and rolled his head from side to side. Then, slowly raising it: —

“Well, Richling!” he said, “there must have been some mistake made when you was put upon the earth.”

Richling’s thin cheek flushed. The Doctor’s face confessed the bitterest resentment.

“Why, the fleet is only eighteen miles from here now.” He ceased, and then added, with sudden kindness of tone, “I want you to do something for me, will you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, go to bed; I’m going. You’ll need every grain of strength you’ve got for to-morrow. I’m afraid then it will not be enough. This is an awful business, Richling.”

They went upstairs together. As they were parting at its top Richling said: —

“You told me a few days ago that if the city should fall, which we didn’t expect” —

“That I’d not leave,” said the Doctor. “No; I shall stay. I haven’t the stamina to take the field, and I can’t be a runaway. Anyhow, I couldn’t take you along. You couldn’t bear the travel, and I wouldn’t go and leave you here, Richling – old fellow!”

He laid his hand gently on the sick man’s shoulder, who made no response, so afraid was he that another word would mar the perfection of the last.

When Richling went out the next morning the whole city was in an ecstasy of rage and terror. Thousands had gathered what they could in their hands, and were flying by every avenue of escape. Thousands ran hither and thither, not knowing where or how to fly. He saw the wife and son of the silver-haired banker rattling and bouncing away toward one of the railway depots in a butcher’s cart. A messenger from Kate by good chance met him with word that she would be ready for the afternoon train of the Jackson Railroad, and asking anew his earliest attention to her interests about the lugger landing.

He hastened to the levee. The huge, writhing river, risen up above the town, was full to the levee’s top, and, as though the enemy’s fleet was that much more than it could bear, was silently running over by a hundred rills into the streets of the stricken city.

As far as the eye could reach, black smoke, white smoke, brown smoke, and red flames rolled and spread, and licked and leaped, from unnumbered piles of cotton bales, and wooden wharves, and ships cut adrift, and steam-boats that blazed like shavings, floating down the harbor as they blazed. He stood for a moment to see a little revenue cutter, – a pretty topsail schooner, – lying at the foot of Canal street, sink before his eyes into the turbid yellow depths of the river, scuttled. Then he hurried on. Huge mobs ran to and fro in the fire and smoke, howling, breaking, and stealing. Women and children hurried back and forth like swarms of giant ants, with buckets and baskets, and dippers and bags, and bonnets, hats, petticoats, anything, – now empty, and now full of rice and sugar and meal and corn and syrup, – and robbed each other, and cursed and fought, and slipped down in pools of molasses, and threw live pigs and coops of chickens into the river, and with one voiceless rush left the broad levee a smoking, crackling desert, when some shells exploded on a burning gunboat, and presently were back again like a flock of evil birds.