Dr. Sevier Part 28

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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sented, and smiled, and a.s.sented, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d.

"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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sertion 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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."