Dr. Sevier

“I’ve been there.”

“Have you? What did he say?”

“He wasn’t in.”

There was another neighbor, with whom John and Mary did not get acquainted. Not that it was more his fault than theirs; it may have been less. Unfortunately for the Richlings there was in their dwelling no toddling, self-appointed child commissioner to find his way in unwatched moments to the play-ground of some other toddler, and so plant the good seed of neighbor acquaintanceship.

This neighbor passed four times a day. A man of fortune, aged a hale sixty or so, who came and stood on the corner, and sometimes even rested a foot on Mary’s door-step, waiting for the Prytania omnibus, and who, on his returns, got down from the omnibus step a little gingerly, went by Mary’s house, and presently shut himself inside a very ornamental iron gate, a short way up St. Mary street. A child would have made him acquainted. Even as it was, they did not escape his silent notice. It was pleasant for him, from whose life the early dew had been dried away by a well-risen sun, to recall its former freshness by glimpses of this pair of young beginners. It was like having a bird’s nest under his window.

John, stepping backward from his door one day, saying a last word to his wife, who stood on the threshold, pushed against this neighbor as he was moving with somewhat cumbersome haste to catch the stage, turned quickly, and raised his hat.

“Pardon!”

The other uncovered his bald head and circlet of white, silken locks, and hurried on to the conveyance.

“President of one of the banks down-town,” whispered John.

That is the nearest they ever came to being acquainted. And even this accident might not have occurred had not the man of snowy locks been glancing at Mary as he passed instead of at his omnibus.

As he sat at home that evening he remarked: —

“Very pretty little woman that, my dear, that lives in the little house at the corner; who is she?”

The lady responded, without lifting her eyes from the newspaper in which she was interested; she did not know. The husband mused and twirled his penknife between a finger and thumb.

“They seem to be starting at the bottom,” he observed.

“Yes?”

“Yes; much the same as we did.”

“I haven’t noticed them particularly.”

“They’re worth noticing,” said the banker.

He threw one fat knee over the other, and laid his head on the back of his easy-chair.

The lady’s eyes were still on her paper, but she asked: —

“Would you like me to go and see them?”

“No, no – unless you wish.”

She dropped the paper into her lap with a smile and a sigh.

“Don’t propose it. I have so much going to do” – She paused, removed her glasses, and fell to straightening the fringe of the lamp-mat. “Of course, if you think they’re in need of a friend; but from your description” —

“No,” he answered, quickly, “not at all. They’ve friends, no doubt. Everything about them has a neat, happy look. That’s what attracted my notice. They’ve got friends, you may depend.” He ceased, took up a pamphlet, and adjusted his glasses. “I think I saw a sofa going in there to-day as I came to dinner. A little expansion, I suppose.”

“It was going out,” said the only son, looking up from a story-book.

But the banker was reading. He heard nothing, and the word was not repeated. He did not divine that a little becalmed and befogged bark, with only two lovers in her, too proud to cry “Help!” had drifted just yonder upon the rocks, and, spar by spar and plank by plank, was dropping into the smooth, unmerciful sea.

Before the sofa went there had gone, little by little, some smaller valuables.

“You see,” said Mary to her husband, with the bright hurry of a wife bent upon something high-handed, “we both have to have furniture; we must have it; and I don’t have to have jewelry. Don’t you see?”

“No, I” —

“Now, John!” There could be but one end to the debate; she had determined that. The first piece was a bracelet. “No, I wouldn’t pawn it,” she said. “Better sell it outright at once.”

But Richling could not but cling to hope and to the adornments that had so often clasped her wrists and throat or pinned the folds upon her bosom. Piece by piece he pawned them, always looking out ahead with strained vision for the improbable, the incredible, to rise to his relief.

“Is nothing going to happen, Mary?”

Yes; nothing happened – except in the pawn-shop.

So, all the sooner, the sofa had to go.

“It’s no use talking about borrowing,” they both said. Then the bureau went. Then the table. Then, one by one, the chairs. Very slyly it was all done, too. Neighbors mustn’t know. “Who lives there?” is a question not asked concerning houses as small as theirs; and a young man, in a well-fitting suit of only too heavy goods, removing his winter hat to wipe the standing drops from his forehead; and a little blush-rose woman at his side, in a mist of cool muslin and the cunningest of millinery, – these, who always paused a moment, with a lost look, in the vestibule of the sepulchral-looking little church on the corner of Prytania and Josephine streets, till the sexton ushered them in, and who as often contrived, with no end of ingenuity, despite the little woman’s fresh beauty, to get away after service unaccosted by the elders, – who could imagine that these were from so deep a nook in poverty’s vale?

There was one person who guessed it: Mrs. Riley, who was not asked to walk in any more when she called at the twilight hour. She partly saw and partly guessed the truth, and offered what each one of the pair had been secretly hoping somebody, anybody, would offer – a loan. But when it actually confronted them it was sweetly declined.

“Wasn’t it kind?” said Mary; and John said emphatically, “Yes.” Very soon it was their turn to be kind to Mrs. Riley. They attended her husband’s funeral. He had been killed by an explosion. Mrs. Riley beat upon the bier with her fists, and wailed in a far-reaching voice: —

“O Mike, Mike! Me jew’l, me jew’l! Why didn’t ye wait to see the babe that’s unborn?”

And Mary wept. And when she and John reëntered their denuded house she fell upon his neck with fresh tears, and kissed him again and again, and could utter no word, but knew he understood. Poverty was so much better than sorrow! She held him fast, and he her, while he tenderly hushed her, lest a grief, the very opposite of Mrs. Riley’s, should overtake her.

CHAPTER XIV.

HARD SPEECHES AND HIGH TEMPER

Dr. Sevier found occasion, one morning, to speak at some length, and very harshly, to his book-keeper. He had hardly ceased when John Richling came briskly in.

“Doctor,” he said, with great buoyancy, “how do you do?”

The physician slightly frowned.

“Good-morning, Mr. Richling.”

Richling was tamed in an instant; but, to avoid too great a contrast of manner, he retained a semblance of sprightliness, as he said: —

“This is the first time I have had this pleasure since you were last at our house, Doctor.”

“Did you not see me one evening, some time ago, in the omnibus?” asked Dr. Sevier.

“Why, no,” replied the other, with returning pleasure; “was I in the same omnibus?”

“You were on the sidewalk.”

“No-o,” said Richling, pondering. “I’ve seen you in your carriage several times, but you” —

“I didn’t see you.”

Richling was stung. The conversation failed. He recommenced it in a tone pitched intentionally too low for the alert ear of Narcisse.

“Doctor, I’ve simply called to say to you that I’m out of work and looking for employment again.”

“Um – hum,” said the Doctor, with a cold fulness of voice that hurt Richling afresh. “You’ll find it hard to get anything this time of year,” he continued, with no attempt at undertone; “it’s very hard for anybody to get anything these days, even when well recommended.”

Richling smiled an instant. The Doctor did not, but turned partly away to his desk, and added, as if the smile had displeased him: —

“Well, maybe you’ll not find it so.”

Richling turned fiery red.

“Whether I do or not,” he said, rising, “my affairs sha’n’t trouble anybody. Good-morning!”

He started out.

“How’s Mrs. Richling?” asked the Doctor.

“She’s well,” responded Richling, putting on his hat and disappearing in the corridor. Each footstep could be heard as he went down the stairs.

“He’s a fool!” muttered the physician.

He looked up angrily, for Narcisse stood before him.

“Well, Doctah,” said the Creole, hurriedly arranging his coat-collar, and drawing his handkerchief, “I’m goin’ ad the poss-office.”

“See here, sir!” exclaimed the Doctor, bringing his fist down upon the arm of his chair, “every time you’ve gone out of this office for the last six months you’ve told me you were going to the post-office; now don’t you ever tell me that again!”

The young man bowed with injured dignity and responded: —

“All a-ight, seh.”

He overtook Richling just outside the street entrance. Richling had halted there, bereft of intention, almost of outward sense, and choking with bitterness. It seemed to him as if in an instant all his misfortunes, disappointments, and humiliations, that never before had seemed so many or so great, had been gathered up into the knowledge of that hard man upstairs, and, with one unmerciful downward wrench, had received his seal of approval. Indignation, wrath, self-hatred, dismay, in undefined confusion, usurped the faculties of sight and hearing and motion.

“Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, “I ’ope you fine you’seff O.K., seh, if you’ll egscuse the slang expwession.”

Richling started to move away, but checked himself.

“I’m well, sir, thank you, sir; yes, sir, I’m very well.”

“I billieve you, seh. You ah lookin’ well.”

Narcisse thrust his hands into his pockets, and turned upon the outer sides of his feet, the embodiment of sweet temper. Richling found him a wonderful relief at the moment. He quit gnawing his lip and winking into vacancy, and felt a malicious good-humor run into all his veins.

“I dunno ’ow ’tis, Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, “but I muz tell you the tooth; you always ’ave to me the appe’ance ligue the chile of p’ospe’ity.”

“Eh?” said Richling, hollowing his hand at his ear, – “child of” —

“P’ospe’ity?”

“Yes – yes,” replied the deaf man vaguely, “I – have a relative of that name.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the Creole, “thass good faw luck! Mistoo Itchlin, look’ like you a lil mo’ hawd to yeh – but egscuse me. I s’pose you muz be advancing in business, Mistoo Itchlin. I say I s’pose you muz be gittin’ along!”

“I? Yes; yes, I must.”

He started.

“I’m ’appy to yeh it!” said Narcisse.

His innocent kindness was a rebuke. Richling began to offer a cordial parting salutation, but Narcisse said: —

“You goin’ that way? Well, I kin go that way.”

They went.

“I was goin’ ad the poss-office, but” – he waved his hand and curled his lip. “Mistoo Itchlin, in fact, if you yeh of something suitable to me I would like to yeh it. I am not satisfied with that pless yondeh with Doctah Seveeah. I was compel this mawnin’, biffo you came in, to ’epoove ’im faw ’is ’oodness. He called me a jackass, in fact. I woon allow that. I ’ad to ’epoove ’im. ‘Doctah Seveeah,’ says I, ‘don’t you call me a jackass ag’in!’ An’ ’e din call it me ag’in. No, seh. But ’e din like to ’ush up. Thass the rizz’n ’e was a lil miscutteous to you. Me, I am always polite. As they say, ‘A nod is juz as good as a kick f’om a bline hoss.’ You are fon’ of maxim, Mistoo Itchlin? Me, I’m ve’y fon’ of them. But they’s got one maxim what you may ’ave ’eard – I do not fine that maxim always come t’ue. ’Ave you evva yeah that maxim, ‘A fool faw luck’? That don’t always come t’ue. I ’ave discove’d that.”

“No,” responded Richling, with a parting smile, “that doesn’t always come true.”

Dr. Sevier denounced the world at large, and the American nation in particular, for two days. Within himself, for twenty-four hours, he grumly blamed Richling for their rupture; then for twenty-four hours reproached himself, and, on the morning of the third day knocked at the door, corner of St. Mary and Prytania.

No one answered. He knocked again. A woman in bare feet showed herself at the corresponding door-way in the farther half of the house.

“Nobody don’t live there no more, sir,” she said.

“Where have they gone?”

“Well, reely, I couldn’t tell you, sir. Because, reely, I don’t know nothing about it. I haint but jest lately moved in here myself, and I don’t know nothing about nobody around here scarcely at all.”

The Doctor shut himself again in his carriage and let himself be whisked away, in great vacuity of mind.

“They can’t blame anybody but themselves,” was, by-and-by, his rallying thought. “Still” – he said to himself after another vacant interval, and said no more. The thought that whether they could blame others or not did not cover all the ground, rested heavily on him.

CHAPTER XV.

THE CRADLE FALLS

In the rear of the great commercial centre of New Orleans, on that part of Common street where it suddenly widens out, broad, unpaved, and dusty, rises the huge dull-brown structure of brick, famed, well-nigh as far as the city is known, as the Charity Hospital.

Twenty-five years ago, when the emigrant ships used to unload their swarms of homeless and friendless strangers into the streets of New Orleans to fall a prey to yellow-fever or cholera, that solemn pile sheltered thousands on thousands of desolate and plague-stricken Irish and Germans, receiving them unquestioned, until at times the very floors were covered with the sick and dying, and the sawing and hammering in the coffin-shop across the inner court ceased not day or night. Sombre monument at once of charity and sin! For, while its comfort and succor cost the houseless wanderer nothing, it lived and grew, and lives and grows still, upon the licensed vices of the people, – drinking, harlotry, and gambling.

The Charity Hospital of St. Charles – such is its true name – is, however, no mere plague-house. Whether it ought to be, let doctors decide. How good or necessary such modern innovations as “ridge ventilation,” “movable bases,” the “pavilion plan,” “trained nurses,” etc., may be, let the Auxiliary Sanitary Association say. There it stands as of old, innocent of all sins that may be involved in any of these changes, rising story over story, up and up: here a ward for poisonous fevers, and there a ward for acute surgical cases; here a story full of simple ailments, and there a ward specially set aside for women.

In 1857 this last was Dr. Sevier’s ward. Here, at his stated hour one summer morning in that year, he tarried a moment, yonder by that window, just where you enter the ward and before you come to the beds. He had fallen into discourse with some of the more inquiring minds among the train of students that accompanied him, and waited there to finish and cool down to a physician’s proper temperature. The question was public sanitation.

He was telling a tall Arkansan, with high-combed hair, self-conscious gloves, and very broad, clean-shaven lower jaw, how the peculiar formation of delta lands, by which they drain away from the larger watercourses, instead of into them, had made the swamp there in the rear of the town, for more than a century, “the common dumping-ground and cesspool of the city, sir!”

Some of the students nodded convincedly to the speaker; some looked askance at the Arkansan, who put one forearm meditatively under his coat-tail; some looked through the window over the regions alluded to, and some only changed their pose and looked around for a mirror.

The Doctor spoke on. Several of his hearers were really interested in the then unusual subject, and listened intelligently as he pointed across the low plain at hundreds of acres of land that were nothing but a morass, partly filled in with the foulest refuse of a semi-tropical city, and beyond it where still lay the swamp, half cleared of its forest and festering in the sun – “every drop of its waters, and every inch of its mire,” said the Doctor, “saturated with the poisonous drainage of the town!”

“I happen,” interjected a young city student; but the others bent their ear to the Doctor, who continued: —

“Why, sir, were these regions compactly built on, like similar areas in cities confined to narrow sites, the mortality, with the climate we have, would be frightful.”

“I happen to know,” essayed the city student; but the Arkansan had made an interrogatory answer to the Doctor, that led him to add: —

“Why, yes; you see the houses here on these lands are little, flimsy, single ground-story affairs, loosely thrown together, and freely exposed to sun and air.”

“I hap – ,” said the city student.

“And yet,” exclaimed the Doctor, “Malaria is king!”

He paused an instant for his hearers to take in the figure.

“Doctor, I happen to” —

Some one’s fist from behind caused the speaker to turn angrily, and the Doctor resumed: —

“Go into any of those streets off yonder, – Trémé, Prieur, Marais. Why, there are often ponds under the houses! The floors of bedrooms are within a foot or two of these ponds! The bricks of the surrounding pavements are often covered with a fine, dark moss! Water seeps up through the sidewalks! That’s his realm, sir! Here and there among the residents – every here and there – you’ll see his sallow, quaking subjects dragging about their work or into and out of their beds, until a fear of a fatal ending drives them in here. Congestion? Yes, sometimes congestion pulls them under suddenly, and they’re gone before they know it. Sometimes their vitality wanes slowly, until Malaria beckons in Consumption.”

“Why, Doctor,” said the city student, ruffling with pride of his town, “there are plenty of cities as bad as this. I happen to know, for instance” —

Dr. Sevier turned away in quiet contempt.

“It will not improve our town to dirty others, or to clean them, either.”

He moved down the ward, while two or three members among the moving train, who never happened to know anything, nudged each other joyfully.

The group stretched out and came along, the Doctor first and the young men after, some of one sort, some of another, – the dull, the frivolous, the earnest, the kind, the cold, – following slowly, pausing, questioning, discoursing, advancing, moving from each clean, slender bed to the next, on this side and on that, down and up the long sanded aisles, among the poor, sick women.

Among these, too, there was variety. Some were stupid and ungracious, hardened and dulled with long penury as some in this world are hardened and dulled with long riches. Some were as fat as beggars; some were old and shrivelled; some were shrivelled and young; some were bold; some were frightened; and here and there was one almost fair.

Down at the far end of one aisle was a bed whose occupant lay watching the distant, slowly approaching group with eyes of unspeakable dread. There was not a word or motion, only the steadfast gaze. Gradually the throng drew near. The faces of the students could be distinguished. This one was coarse; that one was gentle; another was sleepy; another trivial and silly; another heavy and sour; another tender and gracious. Presently the tones of the Doctor’s voice could be heard, soft, clear, and without that trumpet quality that it had beyond the sick-room. How slowly, yet how surely, they came! The patient’s eyes turned away toward the ceiling; they could not bear the slowness of the encounter. They closed; the lips moved in prayer. The group came to the bed that was only the fourth away; then to the third; then to the second. There they pause some minutes. Now the Doctor approaches the very next bed. Suddenly he notices this patient. She is a small woman, young, fair to see, and, with closed eyes and motionless form, is suffering an agony of consternation. One startled look, a suppressed exclamation, two steps forward, – the patient’s eyes slowly open. Ah, me! It is Mary Richling.

“Good-morning, madam,” said the physician, with a cold and distant bow; and to the students, “We’ll pass right along to the other side,” and they moved into the next aisle.

“I am a little pressed for time this morning,” he presently remarked, as the students showed some unwillingness to be hurried. As soon as he could he parted with them and returned to the ward alone.

As he moved again down among the sick, straight along this time, turning neither to right nor left, one of the Sisters of Charity – the hospital and its so-called nurses are under their oversight – touched his arm. He stopped impatiently.

“Well, Sister” – (bowing his ear).

“I – I – the – the” – His frown had scared away her power of speech.

“Well, what is it, Sister?”

“The – the last patient down on this side” —

He was further displeased. “I’ll attend to the patients, Sister,” he said; and then, more kindly, “I’m going there now. No, you stay here, if you please.” And he left her behind.

He came and stood by the bed. The patient gazed on him.

“Mrs. Richling,” he softly began, and had to cease.

She did not speak or move; she tried to smile, but her eyes filled, her lips quivered.

“My dear madam,” exclaimed the physician, in a low voice, “what brought you here?”

The answer was inarticulate, but he saw it on the moving lips.

“Want,” said Mary.

“But your husband?” He stooped to catch the husky answer.

“Home.”

“Home?” He could not understand. “Not gone to – back – up the river?”

She slowly shook her head: “No, home. In Prieur street.”

Still her words were riddles. He could not see how she had come to this. He stood silent, not knowing how to utter his thought. At length he opened his lips to speak, hesitated an instant, and then asked: —

“Mrs. Richling, tell me plainly, has your husband gone wrong?”

Her eyes looked up a moment, upon him, big and staring, and suddenly she spoke: —

“O Doctor! My husband go wrong? John go wrong?” The eyelids closed down, the head rocked slowly from side to side on the flat hospital pillow, and the first two tears he had ever seen her shed welled from the long lashes and slipped down her cheeks.

“My poor child!” said the Doctor, taking her hand in his. “No, no! God forgive me! He hasn’t gone wrong; he’s not going wrong. You’ll tell me all about it when you’re stronger.”

The Doctor had her removed to one of the private rooms of the pay-ward, and charged the Sisters to take special care of her. “Above all things,” he murmured, with a beetling frown, “tell that thick-headed nurse not to let her know that this is at anybody’s expense. Ah, yes; and when her husband comes, tell him to see me at my office as soon as he possibly can.”

As he was leaving the hospital gate he had an afterthought. “I might have left a note.” He paused, with his foot on the carriage-step. “I suppose they’ll tell him,” – and so he got in and drove off, looking at his watch.

On his second visit, although he came in with a quietly inspiring manner, he had also, secretly, the feeling of a culprit. But, midway of the room, when the young head on the pillow turned its face toward him, his heart rose. For the patient smiled. As he drew nearer she slid out her feeble hand. “I’m glad I came here,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he replied; “this room is much better than the open ward.”

“I didn’t mean this room,” she said. “I meant the whole hospital.”

“The whole hospital!” He raised his eyebrows, as to a child.

“Ah! Doctor,” she responded, her eyes kindling, though moist.

“What, my child?”

She smiled upward to his bent face.

“The poor – mustn’t be ashamed of the poor, must they?”

The Doctor only stroked her brow, and presently turned and addressed his professional inquiries to the nurse. He went away. Just outside the door he asked the nurse: —

“Hasn’t her husband been here?”

“Yes,” was the reply, “but she was asleep, and he only stood there at the door and looked in a bit. He trembled,” the unintelligent woman added, for the Doctor seemed waiting to hear more, – “he trembled all over; and that’s all he did, excepting his saying her name over to himself like, over and over, and wiping of his eyes.”

“And nobody told him anything?”

“Oh, not a word, sir!” came the eager answer.