CHAPTER XXXVI.
WHAT NAME?
Richling in Dr. Sevier’s library, one evening in early May, gave him great amusement by an account of the Ristofalo-Riley wedding. He had attended it only the night before. The Doctor had received an invitation, but had pleaded previous engagements.
“But I am glad you went,” he said to Richling; “however, go on with your account.”
“Oh! I was glad to go. And I’m certainly glad I went.”
Richling proceeded with the recital. The Doctor smiled. It was very droll, – the description of persons and costumes. Richling was quite another than his usual restrained self this evening. Oddly enough, too, for this was but his second visit; the confinement of his work was almost like an imprisonment, it was so constant. The Doctor had never seen him in just such a glow. He even mimicked the brogue of two or three Irish gentlemen, and the soft, outlandish swing in the English of one or two Sicilians. He did it all so well that, when he gave an instance of some of the broad Hibernian repartee he had heard, the Doctor actually laughed audibly. One of his young-lady cousins on some pretext opened a door, and stole a glance within to see what could have produced a thing so extraordinary.
“Come in, Laura; come in! Tell Bess to come in.”
The Doctor introduced Richling with due ceremony Richling could not, of course, after this accession of numbers, go on being funny. The mistake was trivial, but all saw it. Still the meeting was pleasant. The girls were very intelligent and vivacious. Richling found a certain refreshment in their graceful manners, like what we sometimes feel in catching the scent of some long-forgotten perfume. They had not been told all his history, but had heard enough to make them curious to see and speak to him. They were evidently pleased with him, and Dr. Sevier, observing this, betrayed an air that was much like triumph. But after a while they went as they had come.
“Doctor,” said Richling, smiling until Dr. Sevier wondered silently what possessed the fellow, “excuse me for bringing this here. But I find it so impossible to get to your office” – He moved nearer the Doctor’s table and put his hand into his bosom.
“What’s that?” asked the Doctor, frowning heavily. Richling smiled still broader than before.
“This is a statement,” he said.
“Of what?”
“Of the various loans you have made me, with interest to date.”
“Yes?” said the Doctor, frigidly.
“And here,” persisted the happy man, straightening out a leg as he had done the first time they ever met, and drawing a roll of notes from his pocket, “is the total amount.”
“Yes?” The Doctor regarded them with cold contempt. “That’s all very pleasant for you, I suppose, Richling, – shows you’re the right kind of man, I suppose, and so on. I know that already, however. Now just put all that back into your pocket; the sight of it isn’t pleasant. You certainly don’t imagine I’m going to take it, do you?”
“You promised to take it when you lent it.”
“Humph! Well, I didn’t say when.”
“As soon as I could pay it,” said Richling.
“I don’t remember,” replied the Doctor, picking up a newspaper. “I release myself from that promise.”
“I don’t release you,” persisted Richling; “neither does Mary.”
The Doctor was quiet awhile before he answered. He crossed his knees, a moment after folded his arms, and presently said: —
“Foolish pride, Richling.”
“We know that,” replied Richling; “we don’t deny that that feeling creeps in. But we’d never do anything that’s right if we waited for an unmixed motive, would we?”
“Then you think my motive – in refusing it – is mixed, probably.”
“Ho-o-oh!” laughed Richling. The gladness within him would break through. “Why, Doctor, nothing could be more different. It doesn’t seem to me as though you ever had a mixed motive.”
The Doctor did not answer. He seemed to think the same thing.
“We know very well, Doctor, that if we should accept this kindness we might do it in a spirit of proper and commendable – a – humble-mindedness. But it isn’t mere pride that makes us insist.”
“No?” asked the Doctor, cruelly. “What is it else?”
“Why, I hardly know what to call it, except that it’s a conviction that – well, that to pay is best; that it’s the nearest to justice we can get, and that” – he spoke faster – “that it’s simply duty to choose justice when we can and mercy when we must. There, I’ve hit it out!” He laughed again. “Don’t you see, Doctor? Justice when we may – mercy when we must! It’s your own principles!”
The Doctor looked straight at the mantel-piece as he asked: —
“Where did you get that idea?”
“I don’t know; partly from nowhere, and” —
“Partly from Mary,” interrupted the Doctor. He put out his long white palm. “It’s all right. Give me the money.” Richling counted it into his hand. He rolled it up and stuffed it into his portemonnaie.
“You like to part with your hard earnings, do you, Richling?”
“Earnings can’t be hard,” was the reply; “it’s borrowings that are hard.”
The Doctor assented.
“And, of course,” said Richling, “I enjoy paying old debts.” He stood and leaned his head in his hand with his elbow on the mantel. “But, even aside from that, I’m happy.”
“I see you are!” remarked the physician, emphatically, catching the arms of his chair and drawing his feet closer in. “You’ve been smiling worse than a boy with a love-letter.”
“I’ve been hoping you’d ask me what’s the matter.”
“Well, then, Richling, what is the matter?”
“Mary has a daughter.”
“What!” cried the Doctor, springing up with a radiant face, and grasping Richling’s hand in both his own.
Richling laughed aloud, nodded, laughed again, and gave either eye a quick, energetic wipe with all his fingers.
“Doctor,” he said, as the physician sank back into his chair, “we want to name” – he hesitated, stood on one foot and leaned again against the shelf – “we want to call her by the name of – if we may” —
The Doctor looked up as if with alarm, and John said, timidly, – “Alice!”
Dr. Sevier’s eyes – what was the matter? His mouth quivered. He nodded and whispered huskily: —
“All right.”
After a long pause Richling expressed the opinion that he had better be going, and the Doctor did not indicate any difference of conviction. At the door the Doctor asked: —
“If the fever should break out this summer, Richling, will you go away?”
“No.”
CHAPTER XXXVII.
PESTILENCE
On the twentieth of June, 1858, an incident occurred in New Orleans which challenged special attention from the medical profession. Before the month closed there was a second, similar to the first. The press did not give such matters to the public in those days; it would only make the public – the advertising public – angry. Times have changed since – faced clear about: but at that period Dr. Sevier, who hated a secret only less than a falsehood, was right in speaking as he did.
“Now you’ll see,” he said, pointing downward aslant, “the whole community stick its head in the sand!” He sent for Richling.
“I give you fair warning,” he said. “It’s coming.”
“Don’t cases occur sometimes in an isolated way without – anything further?” asked Richling, with a promptness which showed he had already been considering the matter.
“Yes.”
“And might not this” —
“Richling, I give you fair warning.”
“Have you sent your cousins away, Doctor?”
“They go to-morrow.” After a silence the Doctor added: “I tell you now, because this is the time to decide what you will do. If you are not prepared to take all the risks and stay them through, you had better go at once.”
“What proportion of those who are taken sick of it die?” asked Richling.
“The proportion varies in different seasons; say about one in seven or eight. But your chances would be hardly so good, for you’re not strong, Richling, nor well either.”
Richling stood and swung his hat against his knee.
“I really don’t see, Doctor, that I have any choice at all. I couldn’t go to Mary – when she has but just come through a mother’s pains and dangers – and say, ‘I’ve thrown away seven good chances of life to run away from one bad one.’ Why, to say nothing else, Reisen can’t spare me.” He smiled with boyish vanity.
“O Richling, that’s silly!”
“I – I know it,” exclaimed the other, quickly; “I see it is. If he could spare me, of course he wouldn’t be paying me a salary.” But the Doctor silenced him by a gesture.
“The question is not whether he can spare you, at all. It’s simply, can you spare him?”
“Without violating any pledge, you mean,” added Richling.
“Of course,” assented the physician.
“Well, I can’t spare him, Doctor. He has given me a hold on life, and no one chance in seven, or six, or five is going to shake me loose. Why, I tell you I couldn’t look Mary in the face!”
“Have your own way,” responded the Doctor. “There are some things in your favor. You frail fellows often pull through easier than the big, full-blooded ones.”
“Oh, it’s Mary’s way too, I feel certain!” retorted Richling, gayly, “and I venture to say” – he coughed and smiled again – “it’s yours.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” replied the unsmiling Doctor, reaching for a pen and writing a prescription. “Here; get that and take it according to direction. It’s for that cold.”
“If I should take the fever,” said Richling, coming out of a revery, “Mary will want to come to me.”
“Well, she mustn’t come a step!” exclaimed the Doctor.
“You’ll forbid it, will you not, Doctor? Pledge me!”
“I do better, sir; I pledge myself.”
So the July suns rose up and moved across the beautiful blue sky; the moon went through all her majestic changes; on thirty-one successive midnights the Star Bakery sent abroad its grateful odors of bread, and as the last night passed into the first twinkling hour of morning the month chronicled one hundred and thirty-one deaths from yellow fever. The city shuddered because it knew, and because it did not know, what was in store. People began to fly by hundreds, and then by thousands. Many were overtaken and stricken down as they fled. Still men plied their vocations, children played in the streets, and the days came and went, fair, blue tremulous with sunshine, or cool and gray and sweet with summer rain. How strange it was for nature to be so beautiful and so unmoved! By and by one could not look down a street, on this hand or on that, but he saw a funeral. Doctors’ gigs began to be hailed on the streets and to refuse to stop, and houses were pointed out that had just become the scenes of strange and harrowing episodes.
“Do you see that bakery, – the ‘Star Bakery’? Five funerals from that place – and another goes this afternoon.”
Before this was said August had completed its record of eleven hundred deaths, and September had begun the long list that was to add twenty-two hundred more. Reisen had been the first one ill in the establishment. He had been losing friends, – one every few days; and he thought it only plain duty, let fear or prudence say what they might, to visit them at their bedsides and follow them to their tombs. It was not only the outer man of Reisen, but the heart as well, that was elephantine. He had at length come home from one of these funerals with pains in his back and limbs, and the various familiar accompaniments.
“I feel right clumsy,” he said, as he lifted his great feet and lowered them into the mustard foot-bath.
“Doctor Sevier,” said Richling, as he and the physician paused half way between the sick-chambers of Reisen and his wife, “I hope you’ll not think it foolhardy for me to expose myself by nursing these people” —
“No,” replied the veteran, in a tone of indifference, and passed on; the tincture of self-approval that had “mixed” with Richling’s motives went away to nothing.
Both Reisen and his wife recovered. But an apple-cheeked brother of the baker, still in a green cap and coat that he had come in from Germany, was struck from the first with that mortal terror which is so often an evil symptom of the disease, and died, on the fifth day after his attack, in raging delirium. Ten of the workmen, bakers and others, followed him. Richling alone, of all in the establishment, while the sick lay scattered through the town on uncounted thousands of beds, and the month of October passed by, bringing death to eleven hundred more, escaped untouched of the scourge.
“I can’t understand it,” he said.
“Demand an immediate explanation,” said Dr. Sevier, with sombre irony.
How did others fare? Ristofalo had, time and again, sailed with the fever, nursed it, slept with it. It passed him by again. Little Mike took it, lay two or three days very still in his mother’s strong arms, and recovered. Madame Ristofalo had had it in “fifty-three.” She became a heroic nurse to many, and saved life after life among the poor.
The trials of those days enriched John Richling in the acquaintanceship and esteem of Sister Jane’s little lisping rector. And, by the way, none of those with whom Dr. Sevier dined on that darkest night of Richling’s life became victims. The rector had never encountered the disease before, but when Sister Jane and the banker, and the banker’s family and friends, and thousands of others, fled, he ran toward it, David-like, swordless and armorless. He and Richling were nearly of equal age. Three times, four times, and again, they met at dying-beds. They became fond of each other.
Another brave nurse was Narcisse. Dr. Sevier, it is true, could not get rid of the conviction for years afterward that one victim would have lived had not Narcisse talked him to death. But in general, where there was some one near to prevent his telling all his discoveries and inventions, he did good service, and accompanied it with very chivalric emotions.
“Yesseh,” he said, with a strutting attitude that somehow retained a sort of modesty, “I ’ad the gweatess success. Hah! a nuss is a nuss those time’. Only some time’ ’e’s not. ’Tis accawding to the povvub, – what is that povvub, now, ag’in?” The proverb did not answer his call, and he waved it away. “Yesseh, eve’ybody wanting me at once – couldn’ supply the deman’.”
Richling listened to him with new pleasure and rising esteem.
“You make me envy you,” he exclaimed, honestly.
“Well, I s’pose you may say so, Mistoo Itchlin, faw I nevva nuss a sing-le one w’at din paid me ten dollahs a night. Of co’se! ‘Consistency, thou awt a jew’l.’ It’s juz as the povvub says, ‘All work an’ no pay keep Jack a small boy.’ An’ yet,” he hurriedly added, remembering his indebtedness to his auditor, “’tis aztonizhin’ ’ow ’tis expensive to live. I haven’ got a picayune of that money pwesently! I’m aztonizh’ myseff!”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
“I MUST BE CRUEL ONLY TO BE KIND.”
The plague grew sated and feeble. One morning frost sent a flight of icy arrows into the town, and it vanished. The swarthy girls and lads that sauntered homeward behind their mothers’ cows across the wide suburban stretches of marshy commons heard again the deep, unbroken, cataract roar of the reawakened city.
We call the sea cruel, seeing its waters dimple and smile where yesterday they dashed in pieces the ship that was black with men, women, and children. But what shall we say of those billows of human life, of which we are ourselves a part, that surge over the graves of its own dead with dances and laughter and many a coquetry, with panting chase for gain and preference, and pious regrets and tender condolences for the thousands that died yesterday – and need not have died?
Such were the questions Dr. Sevier asked himself as he laid down the newspaper full of congratulations upon the return of trade’s and fashion’s boisterous flow, and praises of the deeds of benevolence and mercy that had abounded throughout the days of anguish.
Certain currents in these human rapids had driven Richling and the Doctor wide apart. But at last, one day, Richling entered the office with a cheerfulness of countenance something overdone, and indicative to the Doctor’s eye of inward trepidation.
“Doctor,” he said hurriedly, “preparing to leave the office? It was the only moment I could command” —
“Good-morning, Richling.”
“I’ve been trying every day for a week to get down here,” said Richling, drawing out a paper. “Doctor” – with his eyes on the paper, which he had begun to unfold.
“Richling” – It was the Doctor’s hardest voice. Richling looked up at him as a child looks at a thundercloud. The Doctor pointed to the document: —
“Is that a subscription paper?”
“Yes.”
“You needn’t unfold it, Richling.” The Doctor made a little pushing motion at it with his open hand. “From whom does it come?”
Richling gave a name. He had not changed color when the Doctor looked black, but now he did; for Dr. Sevier smiled. It was terrible.
“Not the little preacher that lisps?” asked the physician.
“He lisps sometimes,” said Richling, with resentful subsidence of tone and with dropped eyes, preparing to return the paper to his pocket.
“Wait,” said the Doctor, more gravely, arresting the movement with his index finger. “What is it for?”
“It’s for the aid of an asylum overcrowded with orphans in consequence of the late epidemic.” There was still a tightness in Richling’s throat, a faint bitterness in his tone, a spark of indignation in his eye. But these the Doctor ignored. He reached out his hand, took the folded paper gently from Richling, crossed his knees, and, resting his elbows on them and shaking the paper in a prefatory way, spoke: —
“Richling, in old times we used to go into monasteries; now we subscribe to orphan asylums. Nine months ago I warned this community that if it didn’t take the necessary precautions against the foul contagion that has since swept over us it would pay for its wicked folly in the lives of thousands and the increase of fatherless and helpless children. I didn’t know it would come this year, but I knew it might come any year. Richling, we deserved it!”
Richling had never seen his friend in so forbidding an aspect. He had come to him boyishly elated with the fancied excellence and goodness and beauty of the task he had assumed, and a perfect confidence that his noble benefactor would look upon him with pride and upon the scheme with generous favor. When he had offered to present the paper to Dr. Sevier he had not understood the little rector’s marked alacrity in accepting his service. Now it was plain enough. He was well-nigh dumfounded. The responses that came from him came mechanically, and in the manner of one who wards off unmerited buffetings from one whose unkindness may not be resented.
“You can’t think that only those died who were to blame?” he asked, helplessly; and the Doctor’s answer came back instantly: —
“Ho, no! look at the hundreds of little graves! No, sir. If only those who were to blame had been stricken, I should think the Judgment wasn’t far off. Talk of God’s mercy in times of health! There’s no greater evidence of it than to see him, in these awful visitations, refusing still to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty! Richling, only Infinite Mercy joined to Infinite Power, with infinite command of the future, could so forbear!”
Richling could not answer. The Doctor unfolded the paper and began to read: “‘God, in his mysterious providence’ – O sir!”
“What!” demanded Richling.
“O sir, what a foul, false charge! There’s nothing mysterious about it. We’ve trampled the book of Nature’s laws in the mire of our streets, and dragged her penalties down upon our heads! Why, Richling,” – he shifted his attitude, and laid the edge of one hand upon the paper that lay in the other, with the air of commencing a demonstration, – “you’re a Bible man, eh? Well, yes, I think you are; but I want you never to forget that the book of Nature has its commandments, too; and the man who sins against them is a sinner. There’s no dispensation of mercy in that Scripture to Jew or Gentile, though the God of Mercy wrote it with his own finger. A community has got to know those laws and keep them, or take the consequences – and take them here and now – on this globe —presently!”
“You mean, then,” said Richling, extending his hand for the return of the paper, “that those whose negligence filled the asylums should be the ones to subscribe.”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor, “yes!” drew back his hand with the paper still in it, turned to his desk, opened the list, and wrote. Richling’s eyes followed the pen; his heart came slowly up into his throat.
“Why, Doc – Doctor, that’s more than any one else has” —
“They have probably made some mistake,” said Dr. Sevier, rubbing the blotting-paper with his finger. “Richling, do you think it’s your mission to be a philanthropist?”
“Isn’t it everybody’s mission?” replied Richling.
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“But you ask a question,” said Richling, smiling down upon the subscription-paper as he folded it, “that nobody would like to answer.”
“Very well, then, you needn’t answer. But, Richling,” – he pointed his long finger to the pocket of Richling’s coat, where the subscription-list had disappeared, – “this sort of work – whether you distinctly propose to be a philanthropist or not – is right, of course. It’s good. But it’s the mere alphabet of beneficence. Richling, whenever philanthropy takes the guise of philanthropy, look out. Confine your philanthropy – you can’t do it entirely, but as much as you can – confine your philanthropy to the motive. It’s the temptation of philanthropists to set aside the natural constitution of society wherever it seems out of order, and substitute some philanthropic machinery in its place. It’s all wrong, Richling. Do as a good doctor would. Help nature.”
Richling looked down askance, pushed his fingers through his hair perplexedly, drew a deep breath, lifted his eyes to the Doctor’s again, smiled incredulously, and rubbed his brow.
“You don’t see it?” asked the physician, in a tone of surprise.
“O Doctor,” – throwing up a despairing hand, – “we’re miles apart. I don’t see how any work could be nobler. It looks to me” – But Dr. Sevier interrupted.
“ – From an emotional stand-point, Richling. Richling,” – he changed his attitude again, – “if you want to be a philanthropist, be cold-blooded.”
Richling laughed outright, but not heartily.
“Well!” said his friend, with a shrug, as if he dismissed the whole matter. But when Richling moved, as if to rise, he restrained him. “Stop! I know you’re in a hurry, but you may tell Reisen to blame me.”
“It’s not Reisen so much as it’s the work,” replied Richling, but settled down again in his seat.
“Richling, human benevolence – public benevolence – in its beginning was a mere nun on the battle-field, binding up wounds and wiping the damp from dying brows. But since then it has had time and opportunity to become strong, bold, masculine, potential. Once it had only the knowledge and power to alleviate evil consequences; now it has both the knowledge and the power to deal with evil causes. Now, I say to you, leave this emotional A B C of human charity to nuns and mite societies. It’s a good work; let them do it. Give them money, if you can.”
“I see what you mean – I think,” said Richling, slowly, and with a pondering eye.
“I’m glad if you do,” rejoined the Doctor, visibly relieved.
“But that only throws a heavier responsibility upon strong men, if I understand it,” said Richling, half interrogatively.
“Certainly! Upon strong spirits, male or female. Upon spirits that can drive the axe low down into the causes of things, again and again and again, steadily, patiently, until at last some great evil towering above them totters and falls crashing to the earth, to be cut to pieces and burned in the fire. Richling, gather fagots for pastime if you like, though it’s poor fun; but don’t think that’s your mission! Don’t be a fagot-gatherer! What are you smiling at?”
“Your good opinion of me,” answered Richling. “Doctor, I don’t believe I’m fit for anything but a fagot-gatherer. But I’m willing to try.”
“Oh, bah!” The Doctor admired such humility as little as it deserved. “Richling, reduce the number of helpless orphans! Dig out the old roots of calamity! A spoon is not what you want; you want a mattock. Reduce crime and vice! Reduce squalor! Reduce the poor man’s death-rate! Improve his tenements! Improve his hospitals! Carry sanitation into his workshops! Teach the trades! Prepare the poor for possible riches, and the rich for possible poverty! Ah – ah – Richling, I preach well enough, I think, but in practice I have missed it myself! Don’t repeat my error!”
“Oh, but you haven’t missed it!” cried Richling.
“Yes, but I have,” said the Doctor. “Here I am, telling you to let your philanthropy be cold-blooded; why, I’ve always been hot-blooded.”
“I like the hot best,” said Richling, quickly.
“You ought to hate it,” replied his friend. “It’s been the root of all your troubles. Richling, God Almighty is unimpassioned. If he wasn’t he’d be weak. You remember Young’s line: ‘A God all mercy is a God unjust.’ The time has come when beneficence, to be real, must operate scientifically, not emotionally. Emotion is good; but it must follow, not guide. Here! I’ll give you a single instance. Emotion never sells where it can give: that is an old-fashioned, effete benevolence. The new, the cold-blooded, is incomparably better: it never – to individual or to community – gives where it can sell. Your instincts have applied the rule to yourself; apply it to your fellow-man.”
“Ah!” said Richling, promptly, “that’s another thing. It’s not my business to apply it to them.”
“It is your business to apply it to them. You have no right to do less.”
“And what will men say of me? At least – not that, but” —
The Doctor pointed upward. “They will say, ‘I know thee, that thou art an hard man.’” His voice trembled. “But, Richling,” he resumed with fresh firmness, “if you want to lead a long and useful life, – you say you do, – you must take my advice; you must deny yourself for a while; you must shelve these fine notions for a time. I tell you once more, you must endeavor to reëstablish your health as it was before – before they locked you up, you know. When that is done you can commence right there if you choose; I wish you would. Give the public – sell would be better, but it will hardly buy – a prison system less atrocious, less destructive of justice, and less promotive of crime and vice, than the one it has. By-the-by, I suppose you know that Raphael Ristofalo went to prison last night again?”
Richling sprang to his feet. “For what? He hasn’t” —
“Yes, sir; he has discovered the man who robbed him, and has killed him.”
Richling started away, but halted as the Doctor spoke again, rising from his seat and shaking out his legs.
“He’s not suffering any hardship. He’s shrewd, you know, – has made arrangements with the keeper by which he secures very comfortable quarters. The star-chamber, I think they call the room he is in. He’ll suffer very little restraint. Good-day!”
He turned, as Richling left, to get his own hat and gloves. “Yes,” he thought, as he passed slowly downstairs to his carriage, “I have erred.” He was not only teaching, he was learning. To fight evil was not enough. People who wanted help for orphans did not come to him – they sent. They drew back from him as a child shrinks from a soldier. Even Alice, his buried Alice, had wept with delight when he gave her a smile, and trembled with fear at his frown. To fight evil is not enough. Everybody seemed to feel as though that were a war against himself. Oh for some one always to understand – never to fear – the frowning good intention of the lonely man!