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“Why, in there,” said Richling, softly, as they hurried in, “we’ll be hid from the whole world, and the whole world from us.”
The wife’s answer was only the upward glance of her blue eyes into his, and a faint smile.
The place was all it had been described to be, and more, – except in one particular.
“And my husband tells me” – The owner of said husband stood beside him, one foot a little in advance of the other, her folded parasol hanging down the front of her skirt from her gloved hands, her eyes just returning to the landlady’s from an excursion around the ceiling, and her whole appearance as fresh as the pink flowers that nestled between her brow and the rim of its precious covering. She smiled as she began her speech, but not enough to spoil what she honestly believed to be a very business-like air and manner. John had quietly dropped out of the negotiations, and she felt herself put upon her mettle as his agent. “And my husband tells me the price of this front room is ten dollars a month.”
“Munse?”
The respondent was a very white, corpulent woman, who constantly panted for breath, and was everywhere sinking down into chairs, with her limp, unfortified skirt dropping between her knees, and her hands pressed on them exhaustedly.
“Munse?” She turned from husband to wife, and back again, a glance of alarmed inquiry.
Mary tried her hand at French.
“Yes; oui, madame. Ten dollah the month —le mois.”
Intelligence suddenly returned. Madame made a beautiful, silent O with her mouth and two others with her eyes.
“Ah non! By munse? No, madame. Ah-h! impossybl’! By wick, yes; ten dollah de wick! Ah!”
She touched her bosom with the wide-spread fingers of one hand and threw them toward her hearers.
The room-hunters got away, yet not so quickly but they heard behind and above them her scornful laugh, addressed to the walls of the empty room.
A day or two later they secured an apartment, cheap, and – morally – decent; but otherwise – ah!
CHAPTER VII.
DISAPPEARANCE
It was the year of a presidential campaign. The party that afterward rose to overwhelming power was, for the first time, able to put its candidate fairly abreast of his competitors. The South was all afire. Rising up or sitting down, coming or going, week-day or Sabbath-day, eating or drinking, marrying or burying, the talk was all of slavery, abolition, and a disrupted country.
Dr. Sevier became totally absorbed in the issue. He was too unconventional a thinker ever to find himself in harmony with all the declarations of any party, and yet it was a necessity of his nature to be in the mêlée. He had his own array of facts, his own peculiar deductions; his own special charges of iniquity against this party and of criminal forbearance against that; his own startling political economy; his own theory of rights; his own interpretations of the Constitution; his own threats and warnings; his own exhortations, and his own prophecies, of which one cannot say all have come true. But he poured them forth from the mighty heart of one who loved his country, and sat down with a sense of duty fulfilled and wiped his pale forehead while the band played a polka.
It hardly need be added that he proposed to dispense with politicians, or that, when “the boys” presently counted him into their party team for campaign haranguing, he let them clap the harness upon him and splashed along in the mud with an intention as pure as snow.
“Hurrah for” —
Whom it is no matter now. It was not Fremont. Buchanan won the race. Out went the lights, down came the platforms, rockets ceased to burst; it was of no use longer to “Wait for the wagon”; “Old Dan Tucker” got “out of the way,” small boys were no longer fellow-citizens, dissolution was postponed, and men began to have an eye single to the getting of money.
A mercantile friend of Dr. Sevier had a vacant clerkship which it was necessary to fill. A bright recollection flashed across the Doctor’s memory.
“Narcisse!”
“Yesseh!”
“Go to Number 4 °Custom-house street and inquire for Mr. Fledgeling; or, if he isn’t in, for Mrs. Fledge – humph! Richling, I mean; I” —
Narcisse laughed aloud.
“Ha-ha-ha! daz de way, sometime’! My hant she got a honcl’ – he says, once ’pon a time” —
“Never mind! Go at once!”
“All a-ight, seh!”
“Give him this card” —
“Yesseh!”
“These people” —
“Yesseh!”
“Well, wait till you get your errand, can’t you? These” —
“Yesseh!”
“These people want to see him.”
“All a-ight, seh!”
Narcisse threw open and jerked off a worsted jacket, took his coat down from a peg, transferred a snowy handkerchief from the breast-pocket of the jacket to that of the coat, felt in his pantaloons to be sure that he had his match-case and cigarettes, changed his shoes, got his hat from a high nail by a little leap, and put it on a head as handsome as Apollo’s.
“Doctah Seveeah,” he said, “in fact, I fine that a ve’y gen’lemany young man, that Mistoo Itchlin, weely, Doctah.”
The Doctor murmured to himself from the letter he was writing.
“Well, au ’evoi’, Doctah; I’m goin’.”
Out in the corridor he turned and jerked his chin up and curled his lip, brought a match and cigarette together in the lee of his hollowed hand, took one first, fond draw, and went down the stairs as if they were on fire.
At Canal street he fell in with two noble fellows of his own circle, and the three went around by way of Exchange alley to get a glass of soda at McCloskey’s old down-town stand. His two friends were out of employment at the moment, – making him, consequently, the interesting figure in the trio as he inveighed against his master.
“Ah, phooh!” he said, indicating the end of his speech by dropping the stump of his cigarette into the sand on the floor and softly spitting upon it, – “le Shylock de la rue Carondelet!” – and then in English, not to lose the admiration of the Irish waiter: —
“He don’t want to haugment me! I din hass ’im, because the ’lection. But you juz wait till dat firce of Jannawerry!”
The waiter swathed the zinc counter, and inquired why Narcisse did not make his demands at the present moment.
“W’y I don’t hass ’im now? Because w’en I hass ’im he know’ he’s got to do it! You thing I’m goin’ to kill myseff workin’?”
Nobody said yes, and by and by he found himself alive in the house of Madame Zénobie. The furniture was being sold at auction, and the house was crowded with all sorts and colors of men and women. A huge sideboard was up for sale as he entered, and the crier was crying: —
“Faw-ty-fi’ dollah! faw-ty-fi’ dollah, ladies an’ gentymen! On’y faw-ty-fi’ dollah fo’ thad magniffyzan sidebode! Quarante-cinque piastres, seulement, messieurs! Les knobs vaut bien cette prix! Gentymen, de knobs is worse de money! Ladies, if you don’ stop dat talkin’, I will not sell one thing mo’! Et quarante cinque piastres– faw-ty-fi’ dollah” —
“Fifty!” cried Narcisse, who had not owned that much at one time since his father was a constable; realizing which fact, he slipped away upstairs and found Madame Zénobie half crazed at the slaughter of her assets.
She sat in a chair against the wall of the room the Richlings had occupied, a spectacle of agitated dejection. Here and there about the apartment, either motionless in chairs, or moving noiselessly about, and pulling and pushing softly this piece of furniture and that, were numerous vulture-like persons of either sex, waiting the up-coming of the auctioneer. Narcisse approached her briskly.
“Well, Madame Zénobie!” – he spoke in French – “is it you who lives here? Don’t you remember me? What! No? You don’t remember how I used to steal figs from you?”
The vultures slowly turned their heads. Madame Zénobie looked at him in a dazed way.
No, she did not remember. So many had robbed her – all her life.
“But you don’t look at me, Madame Zénobie. Don’t you remember, for example, once pulling a little boy – as little as that– out of your fig-tree, and taking the half of a shingle, split lengthwise, in your hand, and his head under your arm, – swearing you would do it if you died for it, – and bending him across your knee,” – he began a vigorous but graceful movement of the right arm, which few members of our fallen race could fail to recognize, – “and you don’t remember me, my old friend?”
She looked up into the handsome face with a faint smile of affirmation. He laughed with delight.
“The shingle was that wide. Ah! Madame Zénobie, you did it well!” He softly smote the memorable spot, first with one hand and then with the other, shrinking forward spasmodically with each contact, and throwing utter woe into his countenance. The general company smiled. He suddenly put on great seriousness.
“Madame Zénobie, I hope your furniture is selling well?” He still spoke in French.
She cast her eyes upward pleadingly, caught her breath, threw the back of her hand against her temple, and dashed it again to her lap, shaking her head.
Narcisse was sorry.
“I have been doing what I could for you, downstairs, – running up the prices of things. I wish I could stay to do more, for the sake of old times. I came to see Mr. Richling, Madame Zénobie; is he in? Dr. Sevier wants him.”
Richling? Why, the Richlings did not live there! The Doctor must know it. Why should she be made responsible for this mistake? It was his oversight. They had moved long ago. Dr. Sevier had seen them looking for apartments. Where did they live now? Ah, me! she could not tell. Did Mr. Richling owe the Doctor something?
“Owe? Certainly not. The Doctor – on the contrary” —
Ah! well, indeed, she didn’t know where they lived, it is true; but the fact was, Mr. Richling happened to be there just then! —à-ç’t’eure! He had come to get a few trifles left by his madame.
Narcisse made instant search. Richling was not on the upper floor. He stepped to the landing and looked down. There he went!
“Mistoo ’Itchlin!”
Richling failed to hear. Sharper ears might have served him better. He passed out by the street door. Narcisse stopped the auction by the noise he made coming downstairs after him. He had some trouble with the front door, – lost time there, but got out.
Richling was turning a corner. Narcisse ran there and looked; looked up – looked down – looked into every store and shop on either side of the way clear back to Canal street; crossed it, went back to the Doctor’s office, and reported. If he omitted such details as having seen and then lost sight of the man he sought, it may have been in part from the Doctor’s indisposition to give him speaking license. The conclusion was simple: the Richlings could not be found.
The months of winter passed. No sign of them.
“They’ve gone back home,” the Doctor often said to himself. How much better that was than to stay where they had made a mistake in venturing, and become the nurslings of patronizing strangers! He gave his admiration free play, now that they were quite gone. True courage that Richling had – courage to retreat when retreat is best! And his wife – ah! what a reminder of – hush, memory!
“Yes, they must have gone home!” The Doctor spoke very positively, because, after all, he was haunted by doubt.
One spring morning he uttered a soft exclamation as he glanced at his office-slate. The first notice on it read: —
Please call as soon as you can at number 292 St. Mary street, corner of Prytania. Lower corner – opposite the asylum.
John Richling.
The place was far up in the newer part of the American quarter. The signature had the appearance as if the writer had begun to write some other name, and had changed it to Richling.
CHAPTER VIII.
A QUESTION OF BOOK-KEEPING
A day or two after Narcisse had gone looking for Richling at the house of Madame Zénobie, he might have found him, had he known where to search, in Tchoupitoulas street.
Whoever remembers that thoroughfare as it was in those days, when the commodious “cotton-float” had not quite yet come into use, and Poydras and other streets did not so vie with Tchoupitoulas in importance as they do now, will recall a scene of commercial hurly-burly that inspired much pardonable vanity in the breast of the utilitarian citizen. Drays, drays, drays! Not the light New York things; but big, heavy, solid affairs, many of them drawn by two tall mules harnessed tandem. Drays by threes and by dozens, drays in opposing phalanxes, drays in long processions, drays with all imaginable kinds of burden; cotton in bales, piled as high as the omnibuses; leaf tobacco in huge hogsheads; cases of linens and silks; stacks of raw-hides; crates of cabbages; bales of prints and of hay; interlocked heaps of blue and red ploughs; bags of coffee, and spices, and corn; bales of bagging; barrels, casks, and tierces; whisky, pork, onions, oats, bacon, garlic, molasses, and other delicacies; rice, sugar, – what was there not? Wines of France and Spain in pipes, in baskets, in hampers, in octaves; queensware from England; cheeses, like cart-wheels, from Switzerland; almonds, lemons, raisins, olives, boxes of citron, casks of chains; specie from Vera Cruz; cries of drivers, cracking of whips, rumble of wheels, tremble of earth, frequent gorge and stoppage. It seemed an idle tale to say that any one could be lacking bread and raiment. “We are a great city,” said the patient foot-passengers, waiting long on street corners for opportunity to cross the way.
On one of these corners paused Richling. He had not found employment, but you could not read that in his face; as well as he knew himself, he had come forward into the world prepared amiably and patiently to be, to do, to suffer anything, provided it was not wrong or ignominious. He did not see that even this is not enough in this rough world; nothing had yet taught him that one must often gently suffer rudeness and wrong. As to what constitutes ignominy he had a very young man’s – and, shall we add? a very American – idea. He could not have believed, had he been told, how many establishments he had passed by, omitting to apply in them for employment. He little dreamed he had been too select. He had entered not into any house of the Samaritans, to use a figure; much less, to speak literally, had he gone to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Mary, hiding away in uncomfortable quarters a short stone’s throw from Madame Zénobie’s, little imagined that, in her broad irony about his not hunting for employment, there was really a tiny seed of truth. She felt sure that two or three persons who had seemed about to employ him had failed to do so because they detected the defect in his hearing, and in one or two cases she was right.
Other persons paused on the same corner where Richling stood, under the same momentary embarrassment. One man, especially busy-looking, drew very near him. And then and there occurred this simple accident, – that at last he came in contact with the man who had work to give him. This person good-humoredly offered an impatient comment on their enforced delay. Richling answered in sympathetic spirit, and the first speaker responded with a question: —
“Stranger in the city?”
“Yes.”
“Buying goods for up-country?”
It was a pleasant feature of New Orleans life that sociability to strangers on the street was not the exclusive prerogative of gamblers’ decoys.
“No; I’m looking for employment.”
“Aha!” said the man, and moved away a little. But in a moment Richling, becoming aware that his questioner was glancing all over him with critical scrutiny, turned, and the man spoke.
“D’you keep books?”
Just then a way opened among the vehicles; and the man, young and muscular, darted into it, and Richling followed.
“I can keep books,” he said, as they reached the farther curb-stone.
The man seized him by the arm.
“D’you see that pile of codfish and herring where that tall man is at work yonder with a marking-pot and brush? Well, just beyond there is a boarding-house, and then a hardware store; you can hear them throwing down sheets of iron. Here; you can see the sign. See? Well, the next is my store. Go in there – upstairs into the office – and wait till I come.”
Richling bowed and went. In the office he sat down and waited what seemed a very long time. Could he have misunderstood? For the man did not come. There was a person sitting at a desk on the farther side of the office, writing, who had not lifted his head from first to last, Richling said: —
“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.
