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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.

“I shall have to leave you,” said the Doctor.

“Certainly, sir,” replied the other; “by all means!” The willingness was slightly overdone and the benevolence of tone was mixed with complacency. “By all means,” he said again; “this is one of those cases where it is only a proper grace in the higher to yield place to the lower.” He waited for a response, but the Doctor merely frowned into space and called for his boots. The visitor resumed: —

“I have a good deal of feeling, sir, for the unlettered and the vulgar. They have their station, but they have also – though doubtless in smaller capacity than we – their pleasures and pains.”

Seeing the Doctor ready to go, he began to rise.

“I may not be gone long,” said the physician, rather coldly; “if you choose to wait” —

“I thank you; n-no-o” – The visitor stopped between a sitting and a rising posture.

“Here are books,” said the Doctor, “and the evening papers, – ‘Picayune,’ ‘Delta,’ ‘True Delta.’” It seemed for a moment as though the gentleman might sink into his seat again. “And there’s the ‘New York Herald.’”

“No, sir!” said the visitor quickly, rising and smoothing himself out; “nothing from that quarter, if you please.” Yet he smiled. The Doctor did not notice that, while so smiling, he took his card from the table. There was something familiar in the stranger’s face which the Doctor was trying to make out. They left the house together. Outside the street door the physician made apologetic allusion to their interrupted interview.

“Shall I see you at my office to-morrow? I would be happy” —

The stranger had raised his hat. He smiled again, as pleasantly as he could, which was not delightful, and said, after a moment’s hesitation: —

“ – Possibly.”

CHAPTER XI.
A PANTOMIME

It chanced one evening about this time – the vernal equinox had just passed – that from some small cause Richling, who was generally detained at the desk until a late hour, was home early. The air was soft and warm, and he stood out a little beyond his small front door-step, lifting his head to inhale the universal fragrance, and looking in every moment, through the unlighted front room, toward a part of the diminutive house where a mild rattle of domestic movements could be heard, and whence he had, a little before, been adroitly requested to absent himself. He moved restlessly on his feet, blowing a soft tune.

Presently he placed a foot on the step and a hand on the door-post, and gave a low, urgent call.

A distant response indicated that his term of suspense was nearly over. He turned about again once or twice, and a moment later Mary appeared in the door, came down upon the sidewalk, looked up into the moonlit sky and down the empty, silent street, then turned and sat down, throwing her wrists across each other in her lap, and lifting her eyes to her husband’s with a smile that confessed her fatigue.

The moon was regal. It cast its deep contrasts of clear-cut light and shadow among the thin, wooden, unarchitectural forms and weed-grown vacancies of the half-settled neighborhood, investing the matter-of-fact with mystery, and giving an unexpected charm to the unpicturesque. It was – as Richling said, taking his place beside his wife – midspring in March. As he spoke he noticed she had brought with her the odor of flowers. They were pinned at her throat.

“Where did you get them?” he asked, touching them with his fingers.

Her face lighted up.

“Guess.”

How could he guess? As far as he knew neither she nor he had made an acquaintance in the neighborhood. He shook his head, and she replied: —

“The butcher.”

“You’re a queer girl,” he said, when they had laughed.

“Why?”

“You let these common people take to you so.”

She smiled, with a faint air of concern.

“You don’t dislike it, do you?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” he said, indifferently, and spoke of other things.

And thus they sat, like so many thousands and thousands of young pairs in this wide, free America, offering the least possible interest to the great human army round about them, but sharing, or believing they shared, in the fruitful possibilities of this land of limitless bounty, fondling their hopes and recounting the petty minutiæ of their daily experiences. Their converse was mainly in the form of questions from Mary and answers from John.

“And did he say that he would?” etc. “And didn’t you insist that he should?” etc. “I don’t understand how he could require you to,” etc., etc. Looking at everything from John’s side, as if there never could be any other, until at last John himself laughed softly when she asked why he couldn’t take part of some outdoor man’s work, and give him part of his own desk-work in exchange, and why he couldn’t say plainly that his work was too sedentary.

Then she proposed a walk in the moonlight, and insisted she was not tired; she wanted it on her own account. And so, when Richling had gone into the house and returned with some white worsted gauze for her head and neck and locked the door, they were ready to start.

They were tarrying a moment to arrange this wrapping when they found it necessary to move aside from where they stood in order to let two persons pass on the sidewalk.

These were a man and woman, who had at least reached middle age. The woman wore a neatly fitting calico gown; the man, a short pilot-coat. His pantaloons were very tight and pale. A new soft hat was pushed forward from the left rear corner of his closely cropped head, with the front of the brim turned down over his right eye. At each step he settled down with a little jerk alternately on this hip and that, at the same time faintly dropping the corresponding shoulder. They passed. John and Mary looked at each other with a nod of mirthful approval. Why? Because the strangers walked silently hand-in-hand.

It was a magical night. Even the part of town where they were, so devoid of character by day, had become all at once romantic with phantasmal lights and glooms, echoes and silences. Along the edge of a wide chimney-top on one blank, new hulk of a house, that nothing else could have made poetical, a mocking-bird hopped and ran back and forth, singing as if he must sing or die. The mere names of the streets they traversed suddenly became sweet food for the fancy. Down at the first corner below they turned into one that had been an old country road, and was still named Felicity.

Richling called attention to the word painted on a board. He merely pointed to it in playful silence, and then let his hand sink and rest on hers as it lay in his elbow. They were walking under the low boughs of a line of fig-trees that overhung a high garden wall. Then some gay thought took him; but when his downward glance met the eyes uplifted to meet his they were grave, and there came an instantaneous tenderness into the exchange of looks that would have been worse than uninteresting to you or me. But the next moment she brightened up, pressed herself close to him, and caught step. They had not owned each other long enough to have settled into sedate possession, though they sometimes thought they had done so. There was still a tingling ecstasy in one another’s touch and glance that prevented them from quite behaving themselves when under the moon.

For instance, now, they began, though in cautious undertone, to sing. Some person approached them, and they hushed. When the stranger had passed, Mary began again another song, alone: —

“Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?”

“Hush!” said John, softly.

She looked up with an air of mirthful inquiry, and he added: —

“That was the name of Dr. Sevier’s wife.”

“But he doesn’t hear me singing.”

“No; but it seems as if he did.”

And they sang no more.

They entered a broad, open avenue, with a treeless, grassy way in the middle, up which came a very large and lumbering street-car, with smokers’ benches on the roof, and drawn by tandem horses.

“Here we turn down,” said Richling, “into the way of the Naiads.” (That was the street’s name.) “They’re not trying to get me away.”

He looked down playfully. She was clinging to him with more energy than she knew.

“I’d better hold you tight,” she answered. Both laughed. The nonsense of those we love is better than the finest wit on earth. They walked on in their bliss. Shall we follow? Fie!

They passed down across three or four of a group of parallel streets named for the nine muses. At Thalia they took the left, went one square, and turned up by another street toward home.

Their conversation had flagged. Silence was enough. The great earth was beneath their feet, firm and solid; the illimitable distances of the heavens stretched above their heads and before their eyes. Here was Mary at John’s side, and John at hers; John her property and she his, and time flowing softly, shiningly on. Yea, even more. If one might believe the names of the streets, there were Naiads on the left and Dryads on the right; a little farther on, Hercules; yonder corner the dark trysting-place of Bacchus and Melpomene; and here, just in advance, the corner where Terpsichore crossed the path of Apollo.

They came now along a high, open fence that ran the entire length of a square. Above it a dense rank of bitter orange-trees overhung the sidewalk, their dark mass of foliage glittering in the moonlight. Within lay a deep, old-fashioned garden. Its white shell-walks gleamed in many directions. A sweet breath came from its parterres of mingled hyacinths and jonquils that hid themselves every moment in black shadows of lagustrums and laurestines. Here, in severe order, a pair of palms, prim as mediæval queens, stood over against each other; and in the midst of the garden, rising high against the sky, appeared the pillared veranda and immense, four-sided roof of an old French colonial villa, as it stands unchanged to-day.

The two loiterers slackened their pace to admire the scene. There was much light shining from the house. Mary could hear voices, and, in a moment, words. The host was speeding his parting guests.

“The omnibus will put you out only one block from the hotel,” some one said.

Dr. Sevier, returning home from a visit to a friend in Polymnia street, had scarcely got well seated in the omnibus before he witnessed from its window a singular dumb show. He had handed his money up to the driver as they crossed Euterpe street, had received the change and deposited his fare as they passed Terpsichore, and was just sitting down when the only other passenger in the vehicle said, half-rising: —

“Hello! there’s going to be a shooting scrape!”

A rather elderly man and woman on the sidewalk, both of them extremely well dressed, and seemingly on the eve of hailing the omnibus, suddenly transferred their attention to a younger couple a few steps from them, who appeared to have met them entirely by accident. The elderly lady threw out her arms toward the younger man with an expression on her face of intensest mental suffering. She seemed to cry out; but the deafening rattle of the omnibus, as it approached them, intercepted the sound. All four of the persons seemed, in various ways, to experience the most violent feelings. The young man more than once moved as if about to start forward, yet did not advance; his companion, a small, very shapely woman, clung to him excitedly and pleadingly. The older man shook a stout cane at the younger, talking furiously as he did so. He held the elderly lady to him with his arm thrown about her, while she now cast her hands upward, now covered her face with them, now wrung them, clasped them, or extended one of them in seeming accusation against the younger person of her own sex. In a moment the omnibus was opposite the group. The Doctor laid his hand on his fellow-passenger’s arm.

“Don’t get out. There will be no shooting.”

The young man on the sidewalk suddenly started forward, with his companion still on his farther arm, and with his eyes steadily fixed on those of the elder and taller man, a clenched fist lifted defensively, and with a tense, defiant air walked hurriedly and silently by within easy sweep of the uplifted staff. At the moment when the slight distance between the two men began to increase, the cane rose higher, but stopped short in its descent and pointed after the receding figure.

“I command you to leave this town, sir!”

Dr. Sevier looked. He looked with all his might, drawing his knee under him on the cushion and leaning out. The young man had passed. He still moved on, turning back as he went a face full of the fear that men show when they are afraid of their own violence; and, as the omnibus clattered away, he crossed the street at the upper corner and disappeared in the shadows.

“That’s a very strange thing,” said the other passenger to Dr. Sevier, as they resumed the corner seats by the door.

“It certainly is!” replied the Doctor, and averted his face. For when the group and he were nearest together and the moon shone brightly upon the four, he saw, beyond all question, that the older man was his visitor of a few evenings before and that the younger pair were John and Mary Richling.