Dr. Sevier Part 43

"We can't separate."

Dr. Sevier smote the desk and sprang to his feet:--

"Sir, you've got to do it! If you continue in this way, you'll die.

You'll die, Mr. Richling--both of you! You'll die! Are you going to let Mary die just because she's brave enough to do it?" He sat down again and busied himself, nervously placing pens on the pen-rack, the stopper in the inkstand, and the like.

Many thoughts ran through Richling's mind in the ensuing silence.

His eyes were on the floor. Visions of parting; of the great emptiness that would be left behind; the pangs and yearnings that must follow,--crowded one upon another. One torturing realization kept ever in the front,--that the Doctor had a well-earned right to advise, and that, if his advice was to be rejected, one must show good and sufficient cause for rejecting it, both in present resources and in expectations. The truth leaped upon him and bore him down as it never had done before,--the truth which he had heard this very Dr. Sevier proclaim,--that debt is bondage. For a moment he rebelled against it; but shame soon displaced mutiny, and he accepted this part, also, of his lot. At length he rose.

"Well?" said Dr. Sevier.

"May I ask Mary?"

"You will do what you please, Mr. Richling." And then, in a kinder voice, the Doctor added, "Yes; ask her."

They moved together to the office door. The Doctor opened it, and they said good-by, Richling trying to drop a word of grat.i.tude, and the Doctor hurriedly ignoring it.

The next half hour or more was spent by the physician in receiving, hearing, and dismissing patients and their messengers. By and by no others came. The only audible sound was that of the Doctor's paper-knife as it parted the leaves of a pamphlet. He was thinking over the late interview with Richling, and knew that, if this silence were not soon interrupted from without, he would have to encounter his book-keeper, who had not spoken since Richling had left. Presently the issue came.

"Dr. Seveeah,"--Narcisse came forward, hat in hand,--"I dunno 'ow 'tis, but Mistoo Itchlin always wemine me of that povvub, 'Ully to bed, ully to 'ise, make a pusson to be 'ealthy an' wealthy an' wise.'"

"I don't know how it is, either," grumbled the Doctor.

"I believe tha.s.s not the povvub I was thinking. I am acquainting myseff with those povvubs; but I'm somewhat gween in that light, in fact. Well, Doctah, I'm goin' ad the--shoemakeh. I burs' my shoe yistiddy. I was juz"--

"Very well, go."

"Yesseh; and from the shoemakeh I'll go"--

The Doctor glanced darkly over the top of the pamphlet.

"--Ad the bank; yesseh," said Narcisse, and went.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

AT LAST.

Mary, cooking supper, uttered a soft exclamation of pleasure and relief as she heard John's step under the alley window and then at the door.

She turned, with an iron spoon in one hand and a candlestick in the other, from the little old stove with two pot-holes, where she had been stirring some mess in a tin pan.

"Why, you're"--she reached for a kiss--"real late!"

"I could not come any sooner." He dropped into a chair at the table.

"Busy?"

"No; no work to-day."

Mary lifted the pan from the stove, whisked it to the table, and blew her fingers.

"Same subject continued," she said laughingly, pointing with her spoon to the warmed-over food.

Richling smiled and nodded, and then flattened his elbows out on the table and hid his face in them.

This was the first time he had ever lingered away from his wife when he need not have done so. It was the Doctor's proposition that had kept him back. All day long it had filled his thoughts. He felt its wisdom. Its sheer practical value had pierced remorselessly into the deepest convictions of his mind. But his heart could not receive it.

"Well," said Mary, brightly, as she sat down at the table, "maybe you'll have better luck to-morrow. Don't you think you may?"

"I don't know," said John, straightening up and tossing back his hair.

He pushed a plate up to the pan, supplied and pa.s.sed it. Then he helped himself and fell to eating.

"Have you seen Dr. Sevier to-day?" asked Mary, cautiously, seeing her husband pause and fall into distraction.

He pushed his plate away and rose. She met him in the middle of the room. He extended both hands, took hers, and gazed upon her. How could he tell? Would she cry and lament, and spurn the proposition, and fall upon him with a hundred kisses? Ah, if she would! But he saw that Doctor Sevier, at least, was confident she would not; that she would have, instead, what the wife so often has in such cases, the strongest love, it may be, but also the strongest wisdom for that particular sort of issue. Which would she do? Would she go, or would she not?

He tried to withdraw his hands, but she looked beseechingly into his eyes and knit her fingers into his. The question stuck upon his lips and would not be uttered. And why should it be? Was it not cowardice to leave the decision to her? Should not he decide? Oh! if she would only rebel! But would she? Would not her utmost be to give good reasons in her gentle, inquiring way why he should not require her to leave him?

And were there any such? No! no! He had racked his brain to find so much as one, all day long.

"John," said Mary, "Dr. Sevier's been talking to you?"

"Yes."

"And he wants you to send me back home for a while?"

"How do you know?" asked John, with a start.

"I can read it in your face." She loosed one hand and laid it upon his brow.

"What--what do you think about it, Mary?"

Mary, looking into his eyes with the face of one who pleads for mercy, whispered, "He's right," then buried her face in his bosom and wept like a babe.

"I felt it six months ago," she said later, sitting on her husband's knee and holding his folded hands tightly in hers.

"Why didn't you say so?" asked John.

"I was too selfish," was her reply.

When, on the second day afterward, they entered the Doctor's office Richling was bright with that new hope which always rises up beside a new experiment, and Mary looked well and happy. The Doctor wrote them a letter of introduction to the steam-boat agent.

"You're taking a very sensible course," he said, smoothing the blotting-paper heavily over the letter. "Of course, you think it's hard.

It is hard. But distance needn't separate you."

"It can't," said Richling.