“Richling, my friend,” – the Doctor had never used that term before, – “what does your Italian money-maker say to the idea?”
Richling gave an Italian shrug and his own pained laugh.
“Exactly! Why, Mr. Richling, you’re on an island now, – an island in mid-ocean. Both of you!” He waved his hands toward the two without lifting his head from the back of the easy-chair, where he had dropped it.
“What do you mean, Doctor?”
“Mean? Isn’t my meaning plain enough? I mean you’re too independent. You know very well, Richling, that you’ve started out in life with some fanciful feud against the ‘world.’ What it is I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s not the sort that religion requires. You’ve told this world – you remember you said it to me once – that if it will go one road you’ll go another. You’ve forgotten that, mean and stupid and bad as your fellow-creatures are, they’re your brothers and sisters, and that they have claims on you as such, and that you have claims on them as such. – Cozumel! You’re there now! Has a friend no rights? I don’t know your immediate relatives, and I say nothing about them” —
John gave a slight start, and Mary looked at him suddenly.
“But here am I,” continued the speaker. “Is it just to me for you to hide away here in want that forces you and your wife – I beg your pardon, madam – into mortifying occupations, when one word to me – a trivial obligation, not worthy to be called an obligation, contracted with me – would remove that necessity, and tide you over the emergency of the hour?”
Richling was already answering, not by words only, but by his confident smile: —
“Yes, sir; yes, it is just: ask Mary.”
“Yes, Doctor,” interposed the wife. “We went over” —
“We went over it together,” said John. “We weighed it well. It is just, – not to ask aid as long as there’s hope without it.”
The Doctor responded with the quiet air of one who is sure of his position: —
“Yes, I see. But, of course – I know without asking – you left the question of health out of your reckoning. Now, Richling, put the whole world, if you choose, in a selfish attitude” —
“No, no,” said Richling and his wife. “Ah, no!” But the Doctor persisted.
“ – a purely selfish attitude. Wouldn’t it, nevertheless, rather help a well man or woman than a sick one? Wouldn’t it pay better?”
“Yes, but” —
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “But you’re taking the most desperate risks against health and life.” He leaned forward in his chair, jerked in his legs, and threw out his long white hands. “You’re committing slow suicide.”
“Doctor,” began Mary; but her husband had the floor.
“Doctor,” he said, “can you put yourself in our place? Wouldn’t you rather die than beg? Wouldn’t you?”
The Doctor rose to his feet as straight as a lance.
“It isn’t what you’d rather, sir! You haven’t your choice! You haven’t your choice at all, sir! When God gets ready for you to die he’ll let you know, sir! And you’ve no right to trifle with his mercy in the meanwhile. I’m not a man to teach men to whine after each other for aid; but every principle has its limitations, Mr. Richling. You say you went over the whole subject. Yes; well, didn’t you strike the fact that suicide is an affront to civilization and humanity?”
“Why, Doctor!” cried the other two, rising also. “We’re not going to commit suicide.”
“No,” retorted he, “you’re not. That’s what I came here to tell you. I’m here to prevent it.”
“Doctor,” exclaimed Mary, the big tears standing in her eyes, and the Doctor melting before them like wax, “it’s not so bad as it looks. I wash – some – because it pays so much better than sewing. I find I’m stronger than any one would believe. I’m stronger than I ever was before in my life. I am, indeed. I don’t wash much. And it’s only for the present. We’ll all be laughing at this, some time, together.” She began a small part of the laugh then and there.
“You’ll do it no more,” the Doctor replied. He drew out his pocket-book. “Mr. Richling, will you please send me through the mail, or bring me, your note for fifty dollars, – at your leisure, you know, – payable on demand?” He rummaged an instant in the pocket-book, and extended his hand with a folded bank-note between his thumb and finger. But Richling compressed his lips and shook his head, and the two men stood silently confronting each other. Mary laid her hand upon her husband’s shoulder and leaned against him, with her eyes on the Doctor’s face.
“Come, Richling,” – the Doctor smiled, – “your friend Ristofalo did not treat you in this way.”
“I never treated Ristofalo so,” replied Richling, with a smile tinged with bitterness. It was against himself that he felt bitter; but the Doctor took it differently, and Richling, seeing this, hurried to correct the impression.
“I mean I lent him no such amount as that.”
“It was just one-fiftieth of that,” said Mary.
“But you gave liberally, without upbraiding,” said the Doctor.
“Oh, no, Doctor! no!” exclaimed she, lifting the hand that lay on her husband’s near shoulder and reaching it over to the farther one. “Oh! a thousand times no! John never meant that. Did you, John?”
“How could I?” said John. “No!” Yet there was confession in his look. He had not meant it, but he had felt it.
Dr. Sevier sat down, motioned them into their seats, drew the arm-chair close to theirs. Then he spoke. He spoke long, and as he had not spoken anywhere but at the bedside scarce ever in his life before. The young husband and wife forgot that he had ever said a grating word. A soft love-warmth began to fill them through and through. They seemed to listen to the gentle voice of an older and wiser brother. A hand of Mary sank unconsciously upon a hand of John. They smiled and assented, and smiled, and assented, and Mary’s eyes brimmed up with tears, and John could hardly keep his down. The Doctor made the whole case so plain and his propositions so irresistibly logical that the pair looked from his eyes to each other’s and laughed. “Cozumel!” They did not utter the name; they only thought of it both at one moment. It never passed their lips again. Their visitor brought them to an arrangement. The fifty dollars were to be placed to John’s credit on the books kept by Narcisse, as a deposit from Richling, and to be drawn against by him in such littles as necessity might demand. It was to be “secured” – they all three smiled at that word – by Richling’s note payable on demand. The Doctor left a prescription for the refractory chills.
As he crossed Canal street, walking in slow meditation homeward at the hour of dusk, a tall man standing against a wall, tin cup in hand, – a full-fledged mendicant of the steam-boiler explosion, tin-proclamation type, – asked his alms. He passed by, but faltered, stopped, let his hand down into his pocket, and looked around to see if his pernicious example was observed. None saw him. He felt – he saw himself – a drivelling sentimentalist. But weak, and dazed, sore wounded of the archers, he turned and dropped a dime into the beggar’s cup.
Richling was too restless with the joy of relief to sit or stand. He trumped up an errand around the corner, and hardly got back before he contrived another. He went out to the bakery for some crackers – fresh baked – for Mary; listened to a long story across the baker’s counter, and when he got back to his door found he had left the crackers at the bakery. He went back for them and returned, the blood about his heart still running and leaping and praising God.
“The sun at midnight!” he exclaimed, knitting Mary’s hands in his. “You’re very tired. Go to bed. Me? I can’t yet. I’m too restless.”
He spent more than an hour chatting with Mrs. Riley, and had never found her so “nice” a person before; so easy comes human fellowship when we have had a stroke of fortune. When he went again to his room there was Mary kneeling by the bedside, with her head slipped under the snowy mosquito net, all in fine linen, white as the moonlight, frilled and broidered, a remnant of her wedding glory gleaming through the long, heavy wefts of her unbound hair.
“Why, Mary” —
There was no answer.
“Mary?” he said again, laying his hand upon her head.
The head was slowly lifted. She smiled an infant’s smile, and dropped her cheek again upon the bedside. She had fallen asleep at the foot of the Throne.
At that same hour, in an upper chamber of a large, distant house, there knelt another form, with bared, bowed head, but in the garb in which it had come in from the street. Praying? This white thing overtaken by sleep here was not more silent. Yet – yes, praying. But, all the while, the prayer kept running to a little tune, and the words repeating themselves again and again; “Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice – with hair so brown – so brown – so brown? Sweet Alice, with hair so brown?” And God bent his ear and listened.
CHAPTER XXII.
BORROWER TURNED LENDER
It was only a day or two later that the Richlings, one afternoon, having been out for a sunset walk, were just reaching Mrs. Riley’s door-step again, when they were aware of a young man approaching from the opposite direction with the intention of accosting them. They brought their conversation to a murmurous close.
For it was not what a mere acquaintance could have joined them in, albeit its subject was the old one of meat and raiment. Their talk had been light enough on their starting out, notwithstanding John had earned nothing that day. But it had toned down, or, we might say up, to a sober, though not a sombre, quality. John had in some way evolved the assertion that even the life of the body alone is much more than food and clothing and shelter; so much more, that only a divine provision can sustain it; so much more, that the fact is, when it fails, it generally fails with meat and raiment within easy reach.
Mary devoured his words. His spiritual vision had been a little clouded of late, and now, to see it clear – She closed her eyes for bliss.
“Why, John,” she said, “you make it plainer than any preacher I ever heard.”
This, very naturally, silenced John. And Mary, hoping to start him again, said: —
“Heaven provides. And yet I’m sure you’re right in seeking our food and raiment?” She looked up inquiringly.
“Yes; like the fowls, the provision is made for us through us. The mistake is in making those things the end of our search.”
“Why, certainly!” exclaimed Mary, softly. She took fresh hold in her husband’s arm; the young man was drawing near.
“It’s Narcisse!” murmured John. The Creole pressed suddenly forward with a joyous smile, seized Richling’s hand, and, lifting his hat to Mary as John presented him, brought his heels together and bowed from the hips.
“I wuz juz coming at yo’ ’ouse, Mistoo Itchlin. Yesseh. I wuz juz sitting in my ’oom afteh dinneh, envelop’ in my ’obe de chambre, when all at once I says to myseff, ’Faw distwaction I will go and see Mistoo Itchlin!’”
“Will you walk in?” said the pair.
Mrs. Riley, standing in the door of her parlor, made way by descending to the sidewalk. Her calico was white, with a small purple figure, and was highly starched and beautifully ironed. Purple ribbons were at her waist and throat. As she reached the ground Mary introduced Narcisse. She smiled winningly, and when she said, with a courtesy: “Proud to know ye, sur,” Narcisse was struck with the sweetness of her tone. But she swept away with a dramatic tread.
“Will you walk in?” Mary repeated; and Narcisse responded: —
“If you will pummit me yo’ attention a few moment’.” He bowed again and made way for Mary to precede him.
“Mistoo Itchlin,” he continued, going in, “in fact you don’t give Misses Witchlin my last name with absolute co’ectness.”
“Did I not? Why, I hope you’ll pardon” —
“Oh, I’m glad of it. I don’ feel lak a pusson is my fwen’ whilst they don’t call me Nahcisse.” He directed his remark particularly to Mary.
“Indeed?” responded she. “But, at the same time, Mr. Richling would have” – She had turned to John, who sat waiting to catch her eye with such intense amusement betrayed in his own that she saved herself from laughter and disgrace only by instant silence.
“Yesseh,” said Narcisse to Richling, “’tis the tooth.”
He cast his eye around upon the prevailing hair-cloth and varnish.
“Misses Witchlin, I muz tell you I like yo’ tas’e in that pawlah.”
“It’s Mrs. Riley’s taste,” said Mary.
“’Tis a beaucheouz tas’e,” insisted the Creole, contemplatively, gazing at the Pope’s vestments tricked out with blue, scarlet, and gilt spangles. “Well, Mistoo Itchlin, since some time I’ve been stipulating me to do myseff that honoh, seh, to come at yo’ ’ouse; well, ad the end I am yeh. I think you fine yoseff not ve’y well those days. Is that nod the case, Mistoo Itchlin?”
“Oh, I’m well enough!” Richling ended with a laugh, somewhat explosively. Mary looked at him with forced gravity as he suppressed it. He had to draw his nose slowly through his thumb and two fingers before he could quite command himself. Mary relieved him by responding: —
“No, Mr. Richling hasn’t been well for some time.”
Narcisse responded triumphantly: —
“It stwuck me – so soon I pe’ceive you – that you ’ave the ai’ of a valedictudina’y. Thass a ve’y fawtunate that you ah ’esiding in a ’ealthsome pawt of the city, in fact.”
Both John and Mary laughed and demurred.
“You don’t think?” asked the smiling visitor. “Me, I dunno, – I fine one thing. If a man don’t die fum one thing, yet, still, he’ll die fum something. I ’ave study that out, Mistoo Itchlin. ‘To be, aw to not be, thaz the queztion,’ in fact. I don’t ca’e if you live one place aw if you live anotheh place, ’tis all the same, – you’ve got to pay to live!”
The Richlings laughed again, and would have been glad to laugh more; but each, without knowing it of the other, was reflecting with some mortification upon the fact that, had they been talking French, Narcisse would have bitten his tongue off before any of his laughter should have been at their expense.
“Indeed you have got to pay to live,” said John, stepping to the window and drawing up its painted paper shade. “Yes, and” —
“Ah!” exclaimed Mary, with gentle disapprobation. She met her husband’s eye with a smile of protest. “John,” she said, “Mr. – ” she couldn’t think of the name.
“Nahcisse,” said the Creole.
“Will think,” she continued, her amusement climbing into her eyes in spite of her, “you’re in earnest.”
“Well, I am, partly. Narcisse knows, as well as we do that there are two sides to the question.” He resumed his seat. “I reckon” —
“Yes,” said Narcisse, “and what you muz look out faw, ’tis to git on the soff side.”
They all laughed.
“I was going to say,” said Richling, “the world takes us as we come, ‘sight-unseen.’ Some of us pay expenses, some don’t.”
“Ah!” rejoined Narcisse, looking up at the whitewashed ceiling, “those egspenze’!” He raised his hand and dropped it. “I fine it so diffycul’ to defeat those egspenze’! In fact, Mistoo Itchlin, such ah the state of my financial emba’assment that I do not go out at all. I stay in, in fact. I stay at my ’ouse – to light’ those egspenze’!”
They were all agreed that expenses could be lightened thus.
“And by making believe you don’t want things,” said Mary.
“Ah!” exclaimed Narcisse, “I nevvah kin do that!” and Richling gave a laugh that was not without sympathy. “But I muz tell you, Mistoo Itchlin, I am aztonizh at you.”
An instant apprehension seized John and Mary. They knew their ill-concealed amusement would betray them, and now they were to be called to account. But no.
“Yesseh,” continued Narcisse, “you ’ave the gweatez o’casion to be the subjec’ of congwatulation, Mistoo Itchlin, to ’ave the poweh to accum’late money in those hawd time’ like the pwesen’!”
The Richlings cried out with relief and amused surprise.
“Why, you couldn’t make a greater mistake!”
“Mistaken! Hah! W’en I ged that memo’andum f’om Dr. Seveeah to paz that fifty dollah at yo’ cwedit, it burz f’om me, that egsclamation! ’Acchilly! ’ow that Mistoo Itchlin deserve the ’espect to save a lill quantity of money like that!”
The laughter of John and Mary did not impede his rhapsody, nor their protestations shake his convictions.
“Why,” said Richling, lolling back, “the Doctor has simply omitted to have you make the entry of” —
But he had no right to interfere with the Doctor’s accounts. However, Narcisse was not listening.
“You’ compel’ to be witch some day, Mistoo Itchlin, ad that wate of p’ogwess; I am convince of that. I can deteg that indisputably in yo’ physio’nomie. Me – I can’t save a cent! Mistoo Itchlin, you would be aztonizh to know ’ow bad I want some money, in fact; exceb that I am too pwoud to dizclose you that state of my condition!”
He paused and looked from John to Mary, and from Mary to John again.
“Why, I’ll declare,” said Richling, sincerely, dropping forward with his chin on his hand, “I’m sorry to hear” —
But Narcisse interrupted.
“Diffyculty with me – I am not willing to baw’.”
Mary drew a long breath and glanced at her husband. He changed his attitude and, looking upon the floor, said, “Yes, yes.” He slowly marked the bare floor with the edge of his shoe-sole. “And yet there are times when duty actually” —
“I believe you, Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, quickly forestalling Mary’s attempt to speak. “Ah, Mistoo Itchlin! if I had baw’d money ligue the huncle of my hant!” He waved his hand to the ceiling and looked up through that obstruction, as it were, to the witnessing sky. “But I hade that – to baw’! I tell you ’ow ’tis with me, Mistoo Itchlin; I nevvah would consen’ to baw’ money on’y if I pay a big inte’es’ on it. An’ I’m compel’ to tell you one thing, Mistoo Itchlin, in fact: I nevvah would leave money with Doctah Seveeah to invez faw me – no!”
Richling gave a little start, and cast his eyes an instant toward his wife. She spoke.
“We’d rather you wouldn’t say that to us, Mister – ” There was a commanding smile at one corner of her lips. “You don’t know what a friend” —
Narcisse had already apologized by two or three gestures to each of his hearers.
“Misses Itchlin – Mistoo Itchlin,” – he shook his head and smiled skeptically, – “you think you kin admiah Doctah Seveeah mo’ than me? ’Tis uzeless to attempt. ‘With all ’is fault I love ’im still.’”
Richling and his wife both spoke at once.
“But John and I,” exclaimed Mary, electrically, “love him, faults and all!”
She looked from husband to visitor, and from visitor to husband, and laughed and laughed, pushing her small feet back and forth alternately and softly clapping her hands. Narcisse felt her in the centre of his heart. He laughed. John laughed.
“What I mean, Mistoo Itchlin,” resumed Narcisse, preferring to avoid Mary’s aroused eye, – “what I mean – Doctah Seveeah don’t un’stan’ that kine of business co’ectly. Still, ad the same time, if I was you I know I would ’ate faw my money not to be makin’ me some inte’es’. I tell you what I would do with you, Mistoo Itchlin, in fact: I kin baw’ that fifty dollah f’om you myseff.”
Richling repressed a smile. “Thank you! But I don’t care to invest it.”
“Pay you ten pe’ cent. a month.”
“But we can’t spare it,” said Richling, smiling toward Mary. “We may need part of it ourselves.”
“I tell you, ’eally, Mistoo Itchlin, I nevveh baw’ money; but it juz ’appen I kin use that juz at the pwesent.”
“Why, John,” said Mary, “I think you might as well say plainly that the money is borrowed money.”
“That’s what it is,” responded Richling, and rose to spread the street-door wider open, for the daylight was fading.
“Well, I ’ope you’ll egscuse that libbetty,” said Narcisse, rising a little more tardily, and slower. “I muz baw’ fawty dollah – some place. Give you good secu’ty – give you my note, Mistoo Itchlin, in fact; muz baw fawty – aw thutty-five.”
“Why, I’m very sorry,” responded Richling, really ashamed that he could not hold his face straight. “I hope you understand” —
“Mistoo Itchlin, ’tis baw’d money. If you had a necessity faw it you would use it. If a fwend ’ave a necessity – ’tis anotheh thing – you don’t feel that libbetty – you ah ’ight – I honoh you” —
“I don’t feel the same liberty.”
“Mistoo Itchlin,” said Narcisse, with noble generosity, throwing himself a half step forward, “if it was yoze you’d baw’ it to me in a minnit!” He smiled with benign delight. “Well, madame, – I bid you good evening, Misses Itchlin. The bes’ of fwen’s muz pawt, you know.” He turned again to Richling with a face all beauty and a form all grace. “I was juz sitting – mistfully – all at once I says to myseff, ‘Faw distwaction I’ll go an’ see Mistoo Itchlin.’ I don’t know ’ow I juz ’appen’! – Well, au ’evoi’, Mistoo Itchlin.”
Richling followed him out upon the door-step. There Narcisse intimated that even twenty dollars for a few days would supply a stern want. And when Richling was compelled again to refuse, Narcisse solicited his company as far as the next corner. There the Creole covered him with shame by forcing him to refuse the loan of ten dollars, and then of five.
It was a full hour before Richling rejoined his wife. Mrs. Riley had stepped off to some neighbor’s door with Mike on her arm. Mary was on the sidewalk.
“John,” she said, in a low voice, and with a long anxious look.
“What?”
“He didn’t take the only dollar of your own in the world?”
“Mary, what could I do? It seemed a crime to give, and a crime not to give. He cried like a child; said it was all a sham about his dinner and his robe de chambre. An aunt, two little cousins, an aged uncle at home – and not a cent in the house! What could I do? He says he’ll return it in three days.”
“And” – Mary laughed distressfully – “you believed him?” She looked at him with an air of tender, painful admiration, half way between a laugh and a cry.
“Come, sit down,” he said, sinking upon the little wooden buttress at one side of the door-step.
Tears sprang into her eyes. She shook her head.
“Let’s go inside.” And in there she told him sincerely, “No, no, no; she didn’t think he had done wrong” – when he knew he had.