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CHAPTER XII.
“SHE’S ALL THE WORLD.”

Excellent neighborhood, St. Mary street, and Prytania was even better. Everybody was very retired though, it seemed. Almost every house standing in the midst of its shady garden, – sunny gardens are a newer fashion of the town, – a bell-knob on the gate-post, and the gate locked. But the Richlings cared nothing for this; not even what they should have cared. Nor was there any unpleasantness in another fact.

“Do you let this window stand wide this way when you are at work here, all day?” asked the husband. The opening alluded to was on Prytania street, and looked across the way to where the asylumed widows of “St Anna’s” could glance down into it over their poor little window-gardens.

“Why, yes, dear!” Mary looked up from her little cane rocker with that thoughtful contraction at the outer corners of her eyes and that illuminated smile that between them made half her beauty. And then, somewhat more gravely and persuasively: “Don’t you suppose they like it? They must like it. I think we can do that much for them. Would you rather I’d shut it?”

For answer John laid his hand on her head and gazed into her eyes.

“Take care,” she whispered; “they’ll see you.”

He let his arm drop in amused despair.

“Why, what’s the window open for? And, anyhow, they’re all abed and asleep these two hours.”

They did like it, those aged widows. It fed their hearts’ hunger to see the pretty unknown passing and repassing that open window in the performance of her morning duties, or sitting down near it with her needle, still crooning her soft morning song, – poor, almost as poor as they, in this world’s glitter; but rich in hope and courage, and rich beyond all count in the content of one who finds herself queen of ever so little a house, where love is.

“Love is enough!” said the widows.

And certainly she made it seem so. The open window brought, now and then, a moisture to the aged eyes, yet they liked it open.

But, without warning one day, there was a change. It was the day after Dr. Sevier had noticed that queer street quarrel. The window was not closed, but it sent out no more light. The song was not heard, and many small, faint signs gave indication that anxiety had come to be a guest in the little house. At evening the wife was seen in her front door and about its steps, watching in a new, restless way for her husband’s coming; and when he came it could be seen, all the way from those upper windows, where one or two faces appeared now and then, that he was troubled and care-worn. There were two more days like this one; but at the end of the fourth the wife read good tidings in her husband’s countenance. He handed her a newspaper, and pointed to a list of departing passengers.

“They’re gone!” she exclaimed.

He nodded, and laid off his hat. She cast her arms about his neck, and buried her head in his bosom. You could almost have seen Anxiety flying out at the window. By morning the widows knew of a certainty that the cloud had melted away.

In the counting-room one evening, as Richling said good-night with noticeable alacrity, one of his employers, sitting with his legs crossed over the top of a desk, said to his partner: —

“Richling works for his wages.”

“That’s all,” replied the other; “he don’t see his interests in ours any more than a tinsmith would, who comes to mend the roof.”

The first one took a meditative puff or two from his cigar, tipped off its ashes, and responded: —

“Common fault. He completely overlooks his immense indebtedness to the world at large, and his dependence on it. He’s a good fellow, and bright; but he actually thinks that he and the world are starting even.”

“His wife’s his world,” said the other, and opened the Bills Payable book. Who will say it is not well to sail in an ocean of love? But the Richlings were becalmed in theirs, and, not knowing it, were satisfied.

Day in, day out, the little wife sat at her window, and drove her needle. Omnibuses rumbled by; an occasional wagon or cart set the dust a-flying; the street venders passed, crying the praises of their goods and wares; the blue sky grew more and more intense as weeks piled up upon weeks; but the empty repetitions, and the isolation, and, worst of all, the escape of time, – she smiled at all, and sewed on and crooned on, in the sufficient thought that John would come, each time, when only hours enough had passed away forever.

Once she saw Dr. Sevier’s carriage. She bowed brightly, but he – what could it mean? – he lifted his hat with such austere gravity. Dr. Sevier was angry. He had no definite charge to make, but that did not lessen his displeasure. After long, unpleasant wondering, and long trusting to see Richling some day on the street, he had at length driven by this way purposely to see if they had indeed left town, as they had been so imperiously commanded to do.

This incident, trivial as it was, roused Mary to thought; and all the rest of the day the thought worked with energy to dislodge the frame of mind that she had acquired from her husband.

When John came home that night and pressed her to his bosom she was silent. And when he held her off a little and looked into her eyes, and she tried to better her smile, those eyes stood full to the lashes and she looked down.

“What’s the matter?” asked he, quickly.

“Nothing!” She looked up again, with a little laugh.

He took a chair and drew her down upon his lap.

“What’s the matter with my girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“How, – you don’t know?”

“Why, I simply don’t. I can’t make out what it is. If I could I’d tell you; but I don’t know at all.” After they had sat silent a few moments: —

“I wonder” – she began.

“You wonder what?” asked he, in a rallying tone.

“I wonder if there’s such a thing as being too contented.”

Richling began to hum, with a playful manner: —

“‘And she’s all the world to me.’

Is that being too” —

“Stop!” said Mary. “That’s it.” She laid her hand upon his shoulder. “You’ve said it. That’s what I ought not to be!”

“Why, Mary, what on earth” – His face flamed up “John, I’m willing to be more than all the rest of the world to you. I always must be that. I’m going to be that forever. And you” – she kissed him passionately – “you’re all the world to me! But I’ve no right to be all the world to you. And you mustn’t allow it. It’s making it too small!”

“Mary, what are you saying?”

“Don’t, John. Don’t speak that way. I’m not saying anything. I’m only trying to say something, I don’t know what.”

“Neither do I,” was the mock-rueful answer.

“I only know,” replied Mary, the vision of Dr. Sevier’s carriage passing before her abstracted eyes, and of the Doctor’s pale face bowing austerely within it, “that if you don’t take any part or interest in the outside world it’ll take none in you; do you think it will?”

“And who cares if it doesn’t?” cried John, clasping her to his bosom.

“I do,” she replied. “Yes, I do. I’ve no right to steal you from the rest of the world, or from the place in it that you ought to fill. John” —

“That’s my name.”

“Why can’t I do something to help you?”

John lifted his head unnecessarily.

“No!”

“Well, then, let’s think of something we can do, without just waiting for the wind to blow us along, – I mean,” she added appeasingly, “I mean without waiting to be employed by others.”

“Oh, yes; but that takes capital!”

“Yes, I know; but why don’t you think up something, – some new enterprise or something, – and get somebody with capital to go in with you?”

He shook his head.

“You’re out of your depth. And that wouldn’t make so much difference, but you’re out of mine. It isn’t enough to think of something; you must know how to do it. And what do I know how to do? Nothing! Nothing that’s worth doing!”

“I know one thing you could do.”

“What’s that?”

“You could be a professor in a college.”

John smiled bitterly.

“Without antecedents?” he asked.

Their eyes met; hers dropped, and both voices were silent. Mary drew a soft sigh. She thought their talk had been unprofitable. But it had not. John laid hold of work from that day on in a better and wiser spirit.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE BOUGH BREAKS

By some trivial chance, she hardly knew what, Mary found herself one day conversing at her own door with the woman whom she and her husband had once smiled at for walking the moonlit street with her hand in willing and undisguised captivity. She was a large and strong, but extremely neat, well-spoken, and good-looking Irish woman, who might have seemed at ease but for a faintly betrayed ambition.

She praised with rather ornate English the good appearance and convenient smallness of Mary’s house; said her own was the same size. That person with whom she sometimes passed “of a Sundeh” – yes, and moonlight evenings – that was her husband. He was “ferst ingineeur” on a steam-boat. There was a little, just discernible waggle in her head as she stated things. It gave her decided character.

“Ah! engineer,” said Mary.

“Ferst ingineeur,” repeated the woman; “you know there bees ferst ingineeurs, an’ secon’ ingineeurs, an’ therd ingineeurs. Yes.” She unconsciously fanned herself with a dust-pan that she had just bought from a tin peddler.

She lived only some two or three hundred yards away, around the corner, in a tidy little cottage snuggled in among larger houses in Coliseum street. She had had children, but she had lost them; and Mary’s sympathy when she told her of them – the girl and two boys – won the woman as much as the little lady’s pretty manners had dazed her. It was not long before she began to drop in upon Mary in the hour of twilight, and sit through it without speaking often, or making herself especially interesting in any way, but finding it pleasant, notwithstanding.

“John,” said Mary, – her husband had come in unexpectedly, – “our neighbor, Mrs. Riley.”

John’s bow was rather formal, and Mrs. Riley soon rose and said good-evening.

“John,” said the wife again, laying her hands on his shoulders as she tiptoed to kiss him, “what troubles you?” Then she attempted a rallying manner: “Don’t my friends suit you?”

He hesitated only an instant, and said: —

“Oh, yes, that’s all right!”

“Well, then, I don’t see why you look so.”

“I’ve finished the task I was to do.”

“What! you haven’t” —

“I’m out of employment.”

They went and sat down on the little hair-cloth sofa that Mrs. Riley had just left.

“I thought they said they would have other work for you.”

“They said they might have; but it seems they haven’t.”

“And it’s just in the opening of summer, too,” said Mary; “why, what right” —

“Oh!” – a despairing gesture and averted gaze – “they’ve a perfect right if they think best. I asked them that myself at first – not too politely, either; but I soon saw I was wrong.”

They sat without speaking until it had grown quite dark. Then John said, with a long breath, as he rose: —

“It passes my comprehension.”

“What passes it?” asked Mary, detaining him by one hand.

“The reason why we are so pursued by misfortunes.”

“But, John,” she said, still holding him, “is it misfortune? When I know so well that you deserve to succeed, I think maybe it’s good fortune in disguise, after all. Don’t you think it’s possible? You remember how it was last time, when A., B., & Co. failed. Maybe the best of all is to come now!” She beamed with courage. “Why, John, it seems to me I’d just go in the very best of spirits, the first thing to-morrow, and tell Dr. Sevier you are looking for work. Don’t you think it might” —

“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.