CHAPTER XV.
THE CRADLE FALLS
In the rear of the great commercial centre of New Orleans, on that part of Common street where it suddenly widens out, broad, unpaved, and dusty, rises the huge dull-brown structure of brick, famed, well-nigh as far as the city is known, as the Charity Hospital.
Twenty-five years ago, when the emigrant ships used to unload their swarms of homeless and friendless strangers into the streets of New Orleans to fall a prey to yellow-fever or cholera, that solemn pile sheltered thousands on thousands of desolate and plague-stricken Irish and Germans, receiving them unquestioned, until at times the very floors were covered with the sick and dying, and the sawing and hammering in the coffin-shop across the inner court ceased not day or night. Sombre monument at once of charity and sin! For, while its comfort and succor cost the houseless wanderer nothing, it lived and grew, and lives and grows still, upon the licensed vices of the people, – drinking, harlotry, and gambling.
The Charity Hospital of St. Charles – such is its true name – is, however, no mere plague-house. Whether it ought to be, let doctors decide. How good or necessary such modern innovations as “ridge ventilation,” “movable bases,” the “pavilion plan,” “trained nurses,” etc., may be, let the Auxiliary Sanitary Association say. There it stands as of old, innocent of all sins that may be involved in any of these changes, rising story over story, up and up: here a ward for poisonous fevers, and there a ward for acute surgical cases; here a story full of simple ailments, and there a ward specially set aside for women.
In 1857 this last was Dr. Sevier’s ward. Here, at his stated hour one summer morning in that year, he tarried a moment, yonder by that window, just where you enter the ward and before you come to the beds. He had fallen into discourse with some of the more inquiring minds among the train of students that accompanied him, and waited there to finish and cool down to a physician’s proper temperature. The question was public sanitation.
He was telling a tall Arkansan, with high-combed hair, self-conscious gloves, and very broad, clean-shaven lower jaw, how the peculiar formation of delta lands, by which they drain away from the larger watercourses, instead of into them, had made the swamp there in the rear of the town, for more than a century, “the common dumping-ground and cesspool of the city, sir!”
Some of the students nodded convincedly to the speaker; some looked askance at the Arkansan, who put one forearm meditatively under his coat-tail; some looked through the window over the regions alluded to, and some only changed their pose and looked around for a mirror.
The Doctor spoke on. Several of his hearers were really interested in the then unusual subject, and listened intelligently as he pointed across the low plain at hundreds of acres of land that were nothing but a morass, partly filled in with the foulest refuse of a semi-tropical city, and beyond it where still lay the swamp, half cleared of its forest and festering in the sun – “every drop of its waters, and every inch of its mire,” said the Doctor, “saturated with the poisonous drainage of the town!”
“I happen,” interjected a young city student; but the others bent their ear to the Doctor, who continued: —
“Why, sir, were these regions compactly built on, like similar areas in cities confined to narrow sites, the mortality, with the climate we have, would be frightful.”
“I happen to know,” essayed the city student; but the Arkansan had made an interrogatory answer to the Doctor, that led him to add: —
“Why, yes; you see the houses here on these lands are little, flimsy, single ground-story affairs, loosely thrown together, and freely exposed to sun and air.”
“I hap – ,” said the city student.
“And yet,” exclaimed the Doctor, “Malaria is king!”
He paused an instant for his hearers to take in the figure.
“Doctor, I happen to” —
Some one’s fist from behind caused the speaker to turn angrily, and the Doctor resumed: —
“Go into any of those streets off yonder, – Trémé, Prieur, Marais. Why, there are often ponds under the houses! The floors of bedrooms are within a foot or two of these ponds! The bricks of the surrounding pavements are often covered with a fine, dark moss! Water seeps up through the sidewalks! That’s his realm, sir! Here and there among the residents – every here and there – you’ll see his sallow, quaking subjects dragging about their work or into and out of their beds, until a fear of a fatal ending drives them in here. Congestion? Yes, sometimes congestion pulls them under suddenly, and they’re gone before they know it. Sometimes their vitality wanes slowly, until Malaria beckons in Consumption.”
“Why, Doctor,” said the city student, ruffling with pride of his town, “there are plenty of cities as bad as this. I happen to know, for instance” —
Dr. Sevier turned away in quiet contempt.
“It will not improve our town to dirty others, or to clean them, either.”
He moved down the ward, while two or three members among the moving train, who never happened to know anything, nudged each other joyfully.
The group stretched out and came along, the Doctor first and the young men after, some of one sort, some of another, – the dull, the frivolous, the earnest, the kind, the cold, – following slowly, pausing, questioning, discoursing, advancing, moving from each clean, slender bed to the next, on this side and on that, down and up the long sanded aisles, among the poor, sick women.
Among these, too, there was variety. Some were stupid and ungracious, hardened and dulled with long penury as some in this world are hardened and dulled with long riches. Some were as fat as beggars; some were old and shrivelled; some were shrivelled and young; some were bold; some were frightened; and here and there was one almost fair.
Down at the far end of one aisle was a bed whose occupant lay watching the distant, slowly approaching group with eyes of unspeakable dread. There was not a word or motion, only the steadfast gaze. Gradually the throng drew near. The faces of the students could be distinguished. This one was coarse; that one was gentle; another was sleepy; another trivial and silly; another heavy and sour; another tender and gracious. Presently the tones of the Doctor’s voice could be heard, soft, clear, and without that trumpet quality that it had beyond the sick-room. How slowly, yet how surely, they came! The patient’s eyes turned away toward the ceiling; they could not bear the slowness of the encounter. They closed; the lips moved in prayer. The group came to the bed that was only the fourth away; then to the third; then to the second. There they pause some minutes. Now the Doctor approaches the very next bed. Suddenly he notices this patient. She is a small woman, young, fair to see, and, with closed eyes and motionless form, is suffering an agony of consternation. One startled look, a suppressed exclamation, two steps forward, – the patient’s eyes slowly open. Ah, me! It is Mary Richling.
“Good-morning, madam,” said the physician, with a cold and distant bow; and to the students, “We’ll pass right along to the other side,” and they moved into the next aisle.
“I am a little pressed for time this morning,” he presently remarked, as the students showed some unwillingness to be hurried. As soon as he could he parted with them and returned to the ward alone.
As he moved again down among the sick, straight along this time, turning neither to right nor left, one of the Sisters of Charity – the hospital and its so-called nurses are under their oversight – touched his arm. He stopped impatiently.
“Well, Sister” – (bowing his ear).
“I – I – the – the” – His frown had scared away her power of speech.
“Well, what is it, Sister?”
“The – the last patient down on this side” —
He was further displeased. “I’ll attend to the patients, Sister,” he said; and then, more kindly, “I’m going there now. No, you stay here, if you please.” And he left her behind.
He came and stood by the bed. The patient gazed on him.
“Mrs. Richling,” he softly began, and had to cease.
She did not speak or move; she tried to smile, but her eyes filled, her lips quivered.
“My dear madam,” exclaimed the physician, in a low voice, “what brought you here?”
The answer was inarticulate, but he saw it on the moving lips.
“Want,” said Mary.
“But your husband?” He stooped to catch the husky answer.
“Home.”
“Home?” He could not understand. “Not gone to – back – up the river?”
She slowly shook her head: “No, home. In Prieur street.”
Still her words were riddles. He could not see how she had come to this. He stood silent, not knowing how to utter his thought. At length he opened his lips to speak, hesitated an instant, and then asked: —
“Mrs. Richling, tell me plainly, has your husband gone wrong?”
Her eyes looked up a moment, upon him, big and staring, and suddenly she spoke: —
“O Doctor! My husband go wrong? John go wrong?” The eyelids closed down, the head rocked slowly from side to side on the flat hospital pillow, and the first two tears he had ever seen her shed welled from the long lashes and slipped down her cheeks.
“My poor child!” said the Doctor, taking her hand in his. “No, no! God forgive me! He hasn’t gone wrong; he’s not going wrong. You’ll tell me all about it when you’re stronger.”
The Doctor had her removed to one of the private rooms of the pay-ward, and charged the Sisters to take special care of her. “Above all things,” he murmured, with a beetling frown, “tell that thick-headed nurse not to let her know that this is at anybody’s expense. Ah, yes; and when her husband comes, tell him to see me at my office as soon as he possibly can.”
As he was leaving the hospital gate he had an afterthought. “I might have left a note.” He paused, with his foot on the carriage-step. “I suppose they’ll tell him,” – and so he got in and drove off, looking at his watch.
On his second visit, although he came in with a quietly inspiring manner, he had also, secretly, the feeling of a culprit. But, midway of the room, when the young head on the pillow turned its face toward him, his heart rose. For the patient smiled. As he drew nearer she slid out her feeble hand. “I’m glad I came here,” she murmured.
“Yes,” he replied; “this room is much better than the open ward.”
“I didn’t mean this room,” she said. “I meant the whole hospital.”
“The whole hospital!” He raised his eyebrows, as to a child.
“Ah! Doctor,” she responded, her eyes kindling, though moist.
“What, my child?”
She smiled upward to his bent face.
“The poor – mustn’t be ashamed of the poor, must they?”
The Doctor only stroked her brow, and presently turned and addressed his professional inquiries to the nurse. He went away. Just outside the door he asked the nurse: —
“Hasn’t her husband been here?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “but she was asleep, and he only stood there at the door and looked in a bit. He trembled,” the unintelligent woman added, for the Doctor seemed waiting to hear more, – “he trembled all over; and that’s all he did, excepting his saying her name over to himself like, over and over, and wiping of his eyes.”
“And nobody told him anything?”
“Oh, not a word, sir!” came the eager answer.
“You didn’t tell him to come and see me?”
The woman gave a start, looked dismayed, and began: —
“N-no, sir; you didn’t tell” —
“Um – hum,” growled the Doctor. He took out a card and wrote on it. “Now see if you can remember to give him that.”
CHAPTER XVI.
MANY WATERS
As the day faded away it began to rain. The next morning the water was coming down in torrents. Richling, looking out from a door in Prieur street, found scant room for one foot on the inner edge of the sidewalk; all the rest was under water. By noon the sidewalks were completely covered in miles of streets. By two in the afternoon the flood was coming into many of the houses. By three it was up at the door-sill on which he stood. There it stopped.
He could do nothing but stand and look. Skiffs, canoes, hastily improvised rafts, were moving in every direction, carrying the unsightly chattels of the poor out of their overflowed cottages to higher ground. Barrels, boxes, planks, hen-coops, bridge lumber, piles of straw that waltzed solemnly as they went, cord-wood, old shingles, door-steps, floated here and there in melancholy confusion; and down upon all still drizzled the slackening rain. At length it ceased.
Richling still stood in the door-way, the picture of mute helplessness. Yes, there was one other thing he could do; he could laugh. It would have been hard to avoid it sometimes, there were such ludicrous sights, – such slips and sprawls into the water; so there he stood in that peculiar isolation that deaf people content themselves with, now looking the picture of anxious waiting, now indulging a low, deaf man’s chuckle when something made the rowdies and slatterns of the street roar.
Presently he noticed, at a distance up the way, a young man in a canoe, passing, much to their good-natured chagrin, a party of three in a skiff, who had engaged him in a trial of speed. From both boats a shower of hilarious French was issuing. At the nearest corner the skiff party turned into another street and disappeared, throwing their lingual fireworks to the last. The canoe came straight on with the speed of a fish. Its dexterous occupant was no other than Narcisse.
There was a grace in his movement that kept Richling’s eyes on him, when he would rather have withdrawn into the house. Down went the paddle always on the same side, noiselessly, in front; on darted the canoe; backward stretched the submerged paddle and came out of the water edgewise at full reach behind, with an almost imperceptible swerving motion that kept the slender craft true to its course. No rocking; no rush of water before or behind; only the one constant glassy ripple gliding on either side as silently as a beam of light. Suddenly, without any apparent change of movement in the sinewy wrists, the narrow shell swept around in a quarter circle, and Narcisse sat face to face with Richling.
Each smiled brightly at the other. The handsome Creole’s face was aglow with the pure delight of existence.
“Well, Mistoo Itchlin, ’ow you enjoyin’ that watah? As fah as myseff am concerned, ‘I am afloat, I am afloat on the fee-us ’olling tide.’ I don’t think you fine that stweet pwetty dusty to-day, Mistoo Itchlin?”
Richling laughed.
“It don’t inflame my eyes to-day,” he said.
“You muz egscuse my i’ony, Mistoo Itchlin; I can’t ’ep that sometime’. It come natu’al to me, in fact. I was on’y speaking i’oniously juz now in calling allusion to that dust; because, of co’se, theh is no dust to-day, because the g’ound is all covvud with watah, in fact. Some people don’t understand that figgah of i’ony.”
“I don’t understand as much about it myself as I’d like to,” said Richling.
“Me, I’m ve’y fon’ of it,” responded the Creole. “I was making seve’al i’onies ad those fwen’ of mine juz now. We was ’unning a ’ace. An’ thass anotheh thing I am fon’ of. I would ’ather ’un a ’ace than to wuck faw a livin’. Ha! ha! ha! I should thing so! Anybody would, in fact. But thass the way with me – always making some i’onies.” He stopped with a sudden change of countenance, and resumed gravely: “Mistoo Itchlin, looks to me like you’ lookin’ ve’y salad.” He fanned himself with his hat. “I dunno ’ow ’tis with you, Mistoo Itchlin, but I fine myseff ve’y oppwessive thiz evening.”
“I don’t find you so,” said Richling, smiling broadly.
And he did not. The young Creole’s burning face and resplendent wit were a sunset glow in the darkness of this day of overpowering adversity. His presence even supplied, for a moment, what seemed a gleam of hope. Why wasn’t there here an opportunity to visit the hospital? He need not tell Narcisse the object of his visit.
“Do you think,” asked Richling, persuasively, crouching down upon one of his heels, “that I could sit in that thing without turning it over?”
“In that pee-ogue?” Narcisse smiled the smile of the proficient as he waved his paddle across the canoe. “Mistoo Itchlin,” – the smile passed off, – “I dunno if you’ll billiv me, but at the same time I muz tell you the tooth?” —
He paused inquiringly.
“Certainly,” said Richling, with evident disappointment.
“Well, it’s juz a poss’bil’ty that you’ll wefwain fum spillin’ out fum yeh till the negs cawneh. Thass the manneh of those who ah not acquainted with the pee-ogue. ‘Lost to sight, to memo’y deah’ – if you’ll egscuse the maxim. Thass Chawles Dickens mague use of that egspwession.”
Richling answered with a gay shake of the head. “I’ll keep out of it.” If Narcisse detected his mortified chagrin, he did not seem to. It was hard; the day’s last hope was blown out like a candle in the wind. Richling dared not risk the wetting of his suit of clothes; they were his sole letter of recommendation and capital in trade.
“Well, au ’evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin.” He turned and moved off – dip, glide, and away.
Dr. Sevier stamped his wet feet on the pavement of the hospital porch. It was afternoon of the day following that of the rain. The water still covering the streets about the hospital had not prevented his carriage from splashing through it on his double daily round. A narrow and unsteady plank spanned the immersed sidewalk. Three times, going and coming, he had crossed it safely, and this fourth time he had made half the distance well enough; but, hearing distant cheers and laughter, he looked up street; when – splatter! – and the cheers were redoubled.
“Pretty thing to laugh at!” he muttered. Two or three bystanders, leaning on their umbrellas in the lodge at the gate and in the porch, where he stood stamping, turned their backs and smoothed their mouths.
“Hah!” said the tall Doctor, stamping harder. Stamp! – stamp! He shook his leg. – “Bah!” He stamped the other long, slender, wet foot and looked down at it, turning one side and then the other. – “F-fah!” – The first one again. – “Pshaw!“ – The other. – Stamp! – stamp! – ”Right—into it! – up to my ankles!” He looked around with a slight scowl at one man, who seemed taken with a sudden softening of the spine and knees, and who turned his back quickly and fell against another, who, also with his back turned, was leaning tremulously against a pillar.
But the object of mirth did not tarry. He went as he was to Mary’s room, and found her much better – as, indeed, he had done at every visit. He sat by her bed and listened to her story.
“Why, Doctor, you see, we did nicely for a while. John went on getting the same kind of work, and pleasing everybody, of course, and all he lacked was finding something permanent. Still, we passed through one month after another, and we really began to think the sun was coming out, so to speak.”
“Well, I thought so, too,” put in the Doctor. “I thought if it didn’t you’d let me know.”
“Why, no, Doctor, we couldn’t do that; you couldn’t be taking care of well people.”
“Well,” said the Doctor, dropping that point, “I suppose as the busy season began to wane that mode of livelihood, of course, disappeared.”
“Yes,” – a little one-sided smile, – “and so did our money. And then, of course,” – she slightly lifted and waved her hand.
“You had to live,” said Dr. Sevier, sincerely.
She smiled again, with abstracted eyes. “We thought we’d like to,” she said. “I didn’t mind the loss of the things so much, – except the little table we ate from. You remember that little round table, don’t you?”
The visitor had not the heart to say no. He nodded.
“When that went there was but one thing left that could go.”
“Not your bed?”
“The bedstead; yes.”
“You didn’t sell your bed, Mrs. Richling?”
The tears gushed from her eyes. She made a sign of assent.
“But then,” she resumed, “we made an excellent arrangement with a good woman who had just lost her husband, and wanted to live cheaply, too.”
“What amuses you, madam?”
“Nothing great. But I wish you knew her. She’s funny. Well, so we moved down-town again. Didn’t cost much to move.”
She would smile a little in spite of him.
“And then?” said he, stirring impatiently and leaning forward. “What then?”
“Why, then I worked a little harder than I thought, – pulling trunks around and so on, – and I had this third attack.”
The Doctor straightened himself up, folded his arms, and muttered: —
“Oh! – oh! Why wasn’t I instantly sent for?”
The tears were in her eyes again, but —
“Doctor,” she answered, with her odd little argumentative smile, “how could we? We had nothing to pay with. It wouldn’t have been just.”
“Just!” exclaimed the physician, angrily.
“Doctor,” said the invalid, and looked at him.
“Oh – all right!”
She made no answer but to look at him still more pleadingly.
“Wouldn’t it have been just as fair to let me be generous, madam?” His faint smile was bitter. “For once? Simply for once?”
“We couldn’t make that proposition, could we, Doctor?”
He was checkmated.
“Mrs. Richling,” he said suddenly, clasping the back of his chair as if about to rise, “tell me, – did you or your husband act this way for anything I’ve ever said or done?”
“No, Doctor! no, no; never! But” —
“But kindness should seek – not be sought,” said the physician, starting up.
“No, Doctor, we didn’t look on it so. Of course we didn’t. If there’s any fault it’s all mine. For it was my own proposition to John, that as we had to seek charity we should just be honest and open about it. I said, ‘John, as I need the best attention, and as that can be offered free only in the hospital, why, to the hospital I ought to go.’”
She lay still, and the Doctor pondered. Presently he said: —
“And Mr. Richling – I suppose he looks for work all the time?”
“From daylight to dark!”
“Well, the water is passing off. He’ll be along by and by to see you, no doubt. Tell him to call, first thing to-morrow morning, at my office.” And with that the Doctor went off in his wet boots, committed a series of indiscretions, reached home, and fell ill.
In the wanderings of fever he talked of the Richlings, and in lucid moments inquired for them.
“Yes, yes,” answered the sick Doctor’s physician, “they’re attended to. Yes, all their wants are supplied. Just dismiss them from your mind.” In the eyes of this physician the Doctor’s life was invaluable, and these patients, or pensioners, an unknown and, most likely, an inconsiderable quantity; two sparrows, as it were, worth a farthing. But the sick man lay thinking. He frowned.
“I wish they would go home.”
“I have sent them.”
“You have? Home to Milwaukee?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God!”
He soon began to mend. Yet it was weeks before he could leave the house. When one day he reëntered the hospital, still pale and faint, he was prompt to express to the Mother-Superior the comfort he had felt in his sickness to know that his brother physician had sent those Richlings to their kindred.
The Sister shook her head. He saw the deception in an instant. As best his strength would allow, he hurried to the keeper of the rolls. There was the truth. Home? Yes, – to Prieur street, – discharged only one week before. He drove quickly to his office.
“Narcisse, you will find that young Mr. Richling living in Prieur street, somewhere between Conti and St. Louis. I don’t know the house; you’ll have to find it. Tell him I’m in my office again, and to come and see me.”
Narcisse was no such fool as to say he knew the house. He would get the praise of finding it quickly.
“I’ll do my mose awduous, seh,” he said, took down his coat, hung up his jacket, put on his hat, and went straight to the house and knocked. Got no answer. Knocked again, and a third time; but in vain. Went next door and inquired of a pretty girl, who fell in love with him at a glance.
“Yes, but they had moved. She wasn’t jess ezac’ly sure where they had moved to, unless-n it was in that little house yondeh between St. Louis and Toulouse; and if they wasn’t there she didn’t know where they was. People ought to leave words where they’s movin’ at, but they don’t. You’re very welcome,” she added, as he expressed his thanks; and he would have been welcome had he questioned her for an hour. His parting bow and smile stuck in her heart a six-months.
He went to the spot pointed out. As a Creole he was used to seeing very respectable people living in very small and plain houses. This one was not too plain even for his ideas of Richling, though it was but a little one-street-door-and-window affair, with an alley on the left running back into the small yard behind. He knocked. Again no one answered. He looked down the alley and saw, moving about the yard, a large woman, who, he felt certain, could not be Mrs. Richling.
Two little short-skirted, bare-legged girls were playing near him. He spoke to them in French. Did they know where Monsieu’ Itchlin lived? The two children repeated the name, looking inquiringly at each other.
“Non, miché.” – “No, sir, they didn’t know.”
“Qui reste ici?” he asked. “Who lives here?”
“Ici? Madame qui reste là c’est Mizziz Ri-i-i-ly!” said one.
“Yass,” said the other, breaking into English and rubbing a musquito off of her well-tanned shank with the sole of her foot, “tis Mizziz Ri-i-i-ly what live there. She jess move een. She’s got a lill baby. – Oh! you means dat lady what was in de Chatty Hawspill!”
“No, no! A real, nice lady. She nevva saw that Cha’ity Hospi’l.”
The little girls shook their heads. They couldn’t imagine a person who had never seen the Charity Hospital.
“Was there nobody else who had moved into any of these houses about here lately?” He spoke again in French. They shook their heads. Two boys came forward and verified the testimony. Narcisse went back with his report: “Moved, – not found.”
“I fine that ve’y d’oll, Doctah Seveeah,” concluded the unaugmented, hanging up his hat; “some peop’ always ’ard to fine. I h-even notiz that sem thing w’en I go to colic’ some bill. I dunno ’ow’ tis, Doctah, but I assu’ you I kin tell that by a man’s physio’nomie. Nobody teach me that. ’Tis my own ingeenu’ty ’as made me to discoveh that, in fact.”
The Doctor was silent. Presently he drew a piece of paper toward him and, dipping his pen into the ink, began to write: —
“Information wanted of the whereabouts of John Richling” —
“Narcisse,” he called, still writing, “I want you to take an advertisement to the ‘Picayune’ office.”
“With the gweatez of pleazheh, seh.” The clerk began his usual shifting of costume. “Yesseh! I assu’ you, Doctah, that is a p’oposition moze enti’ly to my satizfagtion; faw I am suffe’ing faw a smoke, and deztitute of a ciga’ette! I am aztonizh’ ’ow I did that, to egshauz them unconsciouzly, in fact.” He received the advertisement in an envelope, whipped his shoes a little with his handkerchief, and went out. One would think to hear him thundering down the stairs, that it was twenty-five cents’ worth of ice.
“Hold o – ” The Doctor started from his seat, then turned and paced feebly up and down. Who, besides Richling, might see that notice? What might be its unexpected results? Who was John Richling? A man with a secret at the best; and a secret, in Dr. Sevier’s eyes, was detestable. Might not Richling be a man who had fled from something? “No! no!” The Doctor spoke aloud. He had promised to think nothing ill of him. Let the poor children have their silly secret. He spoke again: “They’ll find out the folly of it by and by.” He let the advertisement go; and it went.