Dr. Sevier

“Can you tell me when the proprietor will be in?”

The writer’s eyes rose, and dropped again upon his writing.

“What do you want with him?”

“He asked me to wait here for him.”

“Better wait, then.”

Just then in came the merchant. Richling rose, and he uttered a rude exclamation: —

“I forgot you completely! Where did you say you kept books at, last?”

“I’ve not kept anybody’s books yet, but I can do it.”

The merchant’s response was cold and prompt. He did not look at Richling, but took a sample vial of molasses from a dirty mantel-piece and lifted it between his eyes and the light, saying: —

“You can’t do any such thing. I don’t want you.”

“Sir,” said Richling, so sharply that the merchant looked round, “if you don’t want me I don’t want you; but you mustn’t attempt to tell me that what I say is not true!” He had stepped forward as he began to speak, but he stopped before half his words were uttered, and saw his folly. Even while his voice still trembled with passion and his head was up, he colored with mortification. That feeling grew no less when his offender simply looked at him, and the man at the desk did not raise his eyes. It rather increased when he noticed that both of them were young – as young as he.

“I don’t doubt your truthfulness,” said the merchant, marking the effect of his forbearance; “but you ought to know you can’t come in and take charge of a large set of books in the midst of a busy season, when you’ve never kept books before.”

“I don’t know it at all.”

“Well, I do,” said the merchant, still more coldly than before. “There are my books,” he added, warming, and pointed to three great canvassed and black-initialled volumes standing in a low iron safe, “left only yesterday in such a snarl, by a fellow who had ‘never kept books, but knew how,’ that I shall have to open another set! After this I shall have a book-keeper who has kept books.”

He turned away.

Some weeks afterward Richling recalled vividly a thought that had struck him only faintly at this time: that, beneath much superficial severity and energy, there was in this establishment a certain looseness of management. It may have been this half-recognized thought that gave him courage, now, to say, advancing another step: —

“One word, if you please.”

“It’s no use, my friend.”

“It may be.”

“How?”

“Get an experienced book-keeper for your new set of books” —

“You can bet your bottom dollar!” said the merchant, turning again and running his hands down into his lower pockets. “And even he’ll have as much as he can do” —

“That is just what I wanted you to say,” interrupted Richling, trying hard to smile; “then you can let me straighten up the old set.”

“Give a new hand the work of an expert!”

The merchant almost laughed out. He shook his head and was about to say more, when Richling persisted: —

“If I don’t do the work to your satisfaction don’t pay me a cent.”

“I never make that sort of an arrangement; no, sir!”

Unfortunately it had not been Richling’s habit to show this pertinacity, else life might have been easier to him as a problem; but these two young men, his equals in age, were casting amused doubts upon his ability to make good his professions. The case was peculiar. He reached a hand out toward the books.

“Let me look over them for one day; if I don’t convince you the next morning in five minutes that I can straighten them I’ll leave them without a word.”

The merchant looked down an instant, and then turned to the man at the desk.

“What do you think of that, Sam?”

Sam set his elbows upon the desk, took the small end of his pen-holder in his hands and teeth, and, looking up, said: —

“I don’t know; you might – try him.”

“What did you say your name was?” asked the other, again facing Richling. “Ah, yes! Who are your references, Mr. Richmond?”

“Sir?” Richling leaned slightly forward and turned his ear.

“I say, who knows you?”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody! Where are you from?”

“Milwaukee.”

The merchant tossed out his arm impatiently.

“Oh, I can’t do that kind o’ business.”

He turned abruptly, went to his desk, and, sitting down half-hidden by it, took up an open letter.

“I bought that coffee, Sam,” he said, rising again and moving farther away.

“Um-hum,” said Sam; and all was still.

Richling stood expecting every instant to turn on the next and go. Yet he went not. Under the dusty front windows of the counting-room the street was roaring below. Just beyond a glass partition at his back a great windlass far up under the roof was rumbling with the descent of goods from a hatchway at the end of its tense rope. Salesmen were calling, trucks were trundling, shipping clerks and porters were replying. One brawny fellow he saw, through the glass, take a herring from a broken box, and stop to feed it to a sleek, brindled mouser. Even the cat was valued; but he – he stood there absolutely zero. He saw it. He saw it as he never had seen it before in his life. This truth smote him like a javelin: that all this world wants is a man’s permission to do without him. Right then it was that he thought he swallowed all his pride; whereas he only tasted its bitter brine as like a wave it took him up and lifted him forward bodily. He strode up to the desk beyond which stood the merchant, with the letter still in his hand, and said: —

“I’ve not gone yet! I may have to be turned off by you, but not in this manner!”

The merchant looked around at him with a smile of surprise, mixed with amusement and commendation, but said nothing. Richling held out his open hand.

“I don’t ask you to trust me. Don’t trust me. Try me!”

He looked distressed. He was not begging, but he seemed to feel as though he were.

The merchant dropped his eyes again upon the letter, and in that attitude asked: —

“What do you say, Sam?”

“He can’t hurt anything,” said Sam.

The merchant looked suddenly at Richling.

“You’re not from Milwaukee. You’re a Southern man.”

Richling changed color.

“I said Milwaukee.”

“Well,” said the merchant, “I hardly know. Come and see me further about it to-morrow morning. I haven’t time to talk now.”

“Take a seat,” he said, the next morning, and drew up a chair sociably before the returned applicant. “Now, suppose I was to give you those books, all in confusion as they are, what would you do first of all?”

Mary fortunately had asked the same question the night before, and her husband was entirely ready with an answer which they had studied out in bed.

“I should send your deposit-book to bank to be balanced, and, without waiting for it, I should begin to take a trial-balance off the books. If I didn’t get one pretty soon, I’d drop that for the time being, and turn in and render the accounts of everybody on the books, asking them to examine and report.”

“All right,” said the merchant, carelessly; “we’ll try you.”

“Sir?” Richling bent his ear.

“All right; we’ll try you! I don’t care much about recommendations. I generally most always make up my opinion about a man from looking at him. I’m that sort of a man.”

He smiled with inordinate complacency.

So, week by week, as has been said already, the winter passed, – Richling on one side of the town, hidden away in his work, and Dr. Sevier on the other, very positive that the “young pair” must have returned to Milwaukee.

At length the big books were readjusted in all their hundreds of pages, were balanced, and closed. Much satisfaction was expressed; but another man had meantime taken charge of the new books, – one who influenced business, and Richling had nothing to do but put on his hat.

However, the house cheerfully recommended him to a neighboring firm, which also had disordered books to be righted; and so more weeks passed. Happy weeks! Happy days! Ah, the joy of them! John bringing home money, and Mary saving it!

“But, John, it seems such a pity not to have stayed with A, B, & Co.; doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think they’ll last much longer.”

And when he brought word that A, B, & Co. had gone into a thousand pieces Mary was convinced that she had a very far-seeing husband.

By and by, at Richling’s earnest and restless desire, they moved their lodgings again. And thus we return by a circuit to the morning when Dr. Sevier, taking up his slate, read the summons that bade him call at the corner of St. Mary and Prytania streets.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS

The house stands there to-day. A small, pinched, frame, ground-floor-and-attic, double tenement, with its roof sloping toward St. Mary street and overhanging its two door-steps that jut out on the sidewalk. There the Doctor’s carriage stopped, and in its front room he found Mary in bed again, as ill as ever. A humble German woman, living in the adjoining half of the house, was attending to the invalid’s wants, and had kept her daughter from the public school to send her to the apothecary with the Doctor’s prescription.

“It is the poor who help the poor,” thought the physician.

“Is this your home?” he asked the woman softly, as he sat down by the patient’s pillow. He looked about upon the small, cheaply furnished room, full of the neat makeshifts of cramped housewifery.

“It’s mine,” whispered Mary. Even as she lay there in peril of her life, and flattened out as though Juggernaut had rolled over her, her eyes shone with happiness and scintillated as the Doctor exclaimed in undertone: —

“Yours!” He laid his hand upon her forehead. “Where is Mr. Richling?”

“At the office.” Her eyes danced with delight. She would have begun, then and there, to tell him all that had happened, – “had taken care of herself all along,” she said, “until they began to move. In moving, had been obliged to overwork – hardly fixed yet” —

But the Doctor gently checked her and bade her be quiet.

“I will,” was the faint reply; “I will; but – just one thing, Doctor, please let me say.”

“Well?”

“John” —

“Yes, yes; I know; he’d be here, only you wouldn’t let him stay away from his work.”

She smiled assent, and he smiled in return.

“‘Business is business,’” he said.

She turned a quick, sparkling glance of affirmation, as if she had lately had some trouble to maintain that ancient truism. She was going to speak again, but the Doctor waved his hand downward soothingly toward the restless form and uplifted eyes.

“All right,” she whispered, and closed them.

The next day she was worse. The physician found himself, to use his words, “only the tardy attendant of offended nature.” When he dropped his finger-ends gently upon her temple she tremblingly grasped his hand.

“You’ll save me?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied; “we’ll do that – the Lord helping us.”

A glad light shone from her face as he uttered the latter clause. Whereat he made haste to add: —

“I don’t pray, but I’m sure you do.”

She silently pressed the hand she still held.

On Sunday he found Richling at the bedside. Mary had improved considerably in two or three days. She lay quite still as they talked, only shifting her glance softly from one to the other as one and then the other spoke. The Doctor heard with interest Richling’s full account of all that had occurred since he had met them last together. Mary’s eyes filled with merriment when John told the droller part of their experiences in the hard quarters from which they had only lately removed. But the Doctor did not so much as smile. Richling finished, and the physician was silent.

“Oh, we’re getting along,” said Richling, stroking the small, weak hand that lay near him on the coverlet. But still the Doctor kept silence.

“Of course,” said Richling, very quietly, looking at his wife, “we mustn’t be surprised at a backset now and then. But we’re getting on.”

Mary turned her eyes toward the Doctor. Was he not going to assent at all? She seemed about to speak. He bent his ear, and she said, with a quiet smile: —

“‘When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.’”

The physician gave only a heavy-eyed “Humph!” and a faint look of amusement.

“What did she say?” said Richling; the words had escaped his ear. The Doctor repeated it, and Richling, too, smiled.

Yet it was a good speech, – why not? But the patient also smiled, and turned her eyes toward the wall with a disconcerted look, as if the smile might end in tears. For herein lay the very difficulty that always brought the Doctor’s carriage to the door, – the cradle would not rock.

For a few days more that carriage continued to appear, and then ceased. Richling dropped in one morning at Number 3½ Carondelet, and settled his bill with Narcisse.

The young Creole was much pleased to be at length brought into actual contact with a man of his own years, who, without visible effort, had made an impression on Dr. Sevier.

Until the money had been paid and the bill receipted nothing more than a formal business phrase or two passed between them. But as Narcisse delivered the receipted bill, with an elaborate gesture of courtesy, and Richling began to fold it for his pocket, the Creole remarked: —

“I ’ope you will excuse the ’an’-a-’iting.”

Richling reopened the paper; the penmanship was beautiful.

“Do you ever write better than this?” he asked. “Why, I wish I could write half as well!”

“No; I do not fine that well a-’itten. I cannot see ’ow that is, – I nevva ’ite to the satizfagtion of my abil’ty soon in the mawnin’s. I am dest’oying my chi’og’aphy at that desk yeh.”

“Indeed?” said Richling; “why, I should think” —

“Yesseh, ’tis the tooth. But consunning the chi’og’aphy, Mistoo Itchlin, I ’ave descovvud one thing to a maul cettainty, and that is, if I ’ave something to ’ite to a young lady, I always dizguise my chi’og’aphy. Ha-ah! I ’ave learn that! You will be aztonizh’ to see in ’ow many diffe’n’ fawm’ I can make my ’an’-a-’iting to appeah. That paz thoo my fam’ly, in fact, Mistoo Itchlin. My hant, she’s got a honcle w’at use’ to be cluck in a bank, w’at could make the si’natu’e of the pwesiden’, as well as of the cashieh, with that so absolute puffegtion, that they tu’n ’im out of the bank! Yesseh. In fact, I thing you ought to know ’ow to ’ite a ve’y fine ’an’, Mistoo Itchlin.”

“N-not very,” said Richling; “my hand is large and legible, but not well adapted for – book-keeping; it’s too heavy.”

“You ’ave the ’ight physio’nomie, I am shu’. You will pe’haps believe me with difficulty, Mistoo Itchlin, but I assu’ you I can tell if a man ’as a fine chi’og’aphy aw no, by juz lookin’ upon his liniment. Do you know that Benjamin Fwanklin ’ote a v’ey fine chi’og’aphy, in fact? Also, Voltaire. Yesseh. An’ Napoleon Bonaparte. Lawd By’on muz ’ave ’ad a beaucheouz chi’og’aphy. ’Tis impossible not to be, with that face. He is my favo’ite poet, that Lawd By’on. Moze people pwefeh ’im to Shakspere, in fact. Well, you muz go? I am ve’y ’appy to meck yo’ acquaintanze, Mistoo Itchlin, seh. I am so’y Doctah Seveeah is not theh pwesently. The negs time you call, Mistoo Itchlin, you muz not be too much aztonizh to fine me gone from yeh. Yesseh. He’s got to haugment me ad the en’ of that month, an’ we ’ave to-day the fifteenth Mawch. Do you smoke, Mistoo Itchlin?” He extended a package of cigarettes. Richling accepted one. “I smoke lawgely in that weatheh,” striking a match on his thigh. “I feel ve’y sultwy to-day. Well,” – he seized the visitor’s hand, – “au’ evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin.” And Narcisse returned to his desk happy in the conviction that Richling had gone away dazzled.

CHAPTER X.

GENTLES AND COMMONS

Dr. Sevier sat in the great easy-chair under the drop-light of his library table trying to read a book. But his thought was not on the page. He expired a long breath of annoyance, and lifted his glance backward from the bottom of the page to its top.

Why must his mind keep going back to that little cottage in St. Mary street? What good reason was there? Would they thank him for his solicitude? Indeed! He almost smiled his contempt of the supposition. Why, when on one or two occasions he had betrayed a least little bit of kindly interest, – what? Up had gone their youthful vivacity like an umbrella. Oh, yes! – like all young folks —their affairs were intensely private. Once or twice he had shaken his head at the scantiness of all their provisions for life. Well? They simply and unconsciously stole a hold upon one another’s hand or arm, as much as to say, “To love is enough.” When, gentlemen of the jury, it isn’t enough!

“Pshaw!” The word escaped him audibly. He drew partly up from his half recline, and turned back a leaf of the book to try once more to make out the sense of it.

But there was Mary, and there was her husband. Especially Mary. Her image came distinctly between his eyes and the page. There she was, just as on his last visit, – a superfluous one – no charge, – sitting and plying her needle, unaware of his approach, gently moving her rocking-chair, and softly singing, “Flow on, thou shining river,” – the song his own wife used to sing. “O child, child! do you think it’s always going to be ‘shining’?” They shouldn’t be so contented. Was pride under that cloak? Oh, no, no! But even if the content was genuine, it wasn’t good. Why, they oughtn’t to be able to be happy so completely out of their true sphere. It showed insensibility. But, there again, – Richling wasn’t insensible, much less Mary.

The Doctor let his book sink, face downward, upon his knee.

“They’re too big to be playing in the sand.” He took up the book again. “’Tisn’t my business to tell them so.” But before he got the volume fairly before his eyes his professional bell rang, and he tossed the book upon the table.

“Well, why don’t you bring him in?” he asked, in a tone of reproof, of a servant who presented a card; and in a moment the visitor entered.

He was a person of some fifty years of age, with a patrician face, in which it was impossible to tell where benevolence ended and pride began. His dress was of fine cloth, a little antique in cut, and fitting rather loosely on a form something above the medium height, of good width, but bent in the shoulders, and with arms that had been stronger. Years, it might be, or possibly some unflinching struggle with troublesome facts, had given many lines of his face a downward slant. He apologized for the hour of his call, and accepted with thanks the chair offered him.

“You are not a resident of the city?” asked Dr. Sevier.

“I am from Kentucky.” The voice was rich, and the stranger’s general air one of rather conscious social eminence.

“Yes?” said the Doctor, not specially pleased, and looked at him closer. He wore a black satin neck-stock, and dark-blue buttoned gaiters. His hair was dyed brown. A slender frill adorned his shirt-front.

“Mrs.” – the visitor began to say, not giving the name, but waving his index-finger toward his card, which Dr. Sevier had laid upon the table, just under the lamp, – “my wife, Doctor, seems to be in a very feeble condition. Her physicians have advised her to try the effects of a change of scene, and I have brought her down to your busy city, sir.”

The Doctor assented. The stranger resumed: —

“Its hurry and energy are a great contrast to the plantation life, sir.”

“They’re very unlike,” the physician admitted.

“This chafing of thousands of competitive designs,” said the visitor, “this great fretwork of cross purposes, is a decided change from the quiet order of our rural life. Hmm! There everything is under the administration of one undisputed will, and is executed by the unquestioning obedience of our happy and contented slave peasantry. I prefer the country. But I thought this was just the change that would arouse and electrify an invalid who has really no tangible complaint.”

“Has the result been unsatisfactory?”

“Entirely so. I am unexpectedly disappointed.” The speaker’s thought seemed to be that the climate of New Orleans had not responded with that hospitable alacrity which was due so opulent, reasonable, and universally obeyed a guest.

There was a pause here, and Dr. Sevier looked around at the book which lay at his elbow. But the visitor did not resume, and the Doctor presently asked: —

“Do you wish me to see your wife?”

“I called to see you alone first,” said the other, “because there might be questions to be asked which were better answered in her absence.”

“Then you think you know the secret of her illness, do you?”

“I do. I think, indeed I may say I know, it is – bereavement.”

The Doctor compressed his lips and bowed.

The stranger drooped his head somewhat, and, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, laid the tips of his thumbs and fingers softly together.

“The truth is, sir, she cannot recover from the loss of our son.”

“An infant?” asked the Doctor. His bell rang again as he put the question.

“No, sir; a young man, – one whom I had thought a person of great promise; just about to enter life.”

“When did he die?”

“He has been dead nearly a year. I” – The speaker ceased as the mulatto waiting-man appeared at the open door, with a large, simple, German face looking easily over his head from behind.

“Toctor,” said the owner of this face, lifting an immense open hand, “Toctor, uf you bleace, Toctor, you vill bleace ugscooce me.”

The Doctor frowned at the servant for permitting the interruption. But the gentleman beside him said: —

“Let him come in, sir; he seems to be in haste, sir, and I am not, – I am not, at all.”

“Come in,” said the physician.

The new-comer stepped into the room. He was about six feet three inches in height, three feet six in breadth, and the same in thickness. Two kindly blue eyes shone softly in an expanse of face that had been clean-shaven every Saturday night for many years, and that ended in a retreating chin and a dewlap. The limp, white shirt-collar just below was without a necktie, and the waist of his pantaloons, which seemed intended to supply this deficiency, did not quite, but only almost reached up to the unoccupied blank. He removed from his respectful head a soft gray hat, whitened here and there with flour.

“Yentlemen,” he said, slowly, “you vill ugscooce me to interruptet you, – yentlemen.”

“Do you wish to see me?” asked Dr. Sevier.

The German made an odd gesture of deferential assent, lifting one open hand a little in front of him to the level of his face, with the wrist bent forward and the fingers pointing down.

“Uf you bleace, Toctor, I toose; undt tat’s te fust time I effer tit vanted a toctor. Undt you mus’ ugscooce me, Toctor, to callin’ on you, ovver I vish you come undt see mine” —

To the surprise of all, tears gushed from his eyes.

“Mine poor vife, Toctor!” He turned to one side, pointed his broad hand toward the floor, and smote his forehead.

“I yoost come in fun mine paykery undt comin’ into mine howse, fen – I see someting” – he waved his hand downward again – “someting – layin’ on te – floor – face pleck ans a nigger’s; undt fen I look to see who udt iss, —udt is Mississ Reisen! Toctor, I vish you come right off! I couldn’t shtayndt udt you toandt come right avay!”

“I’ll come,” said the Doctor, without rising; “just write your name and address on that little white slate yonder.”

“Toctor,” said the German, extending and dipping his hat, “I’m ferra much a-velcome to you, Toctor; undt tat’s yoost fot te pottekerra by mine corner sayt you vould too. He sayss, ‘Reisen,’ he sayss, ‘you yoost co to Toctor Tsewier.’” He bent his great body over the farther end of the table and slowly worked out his name, street, and number. “Dtere udt iss, Toctor; I put udt town on teh schlate; ovver, I hope you ugscooce te hayndtwriding.”

“Very well. That’s right. That’s all.”

The German lingered. The Doctor gave a bow of dismission.

“That’s all, I say. I’ll be there in a moment. That’s all. Dan, order my carriage!”

“Yentlemen, you vill ugscooce me?”

The German withdrew, returning each gentleman’s bow with a faint wave of the hat.

During this interview the more polished stranger had sat with bowed head, motionless and silent, lifting it only once and for a moment at the German’s emotional outburst. Then the upward and backward turned face was marked with a commiseration partly artificial, but also partly natural. He now looked up at the Doctor.