Dr. Sevier

CHAPTER IV.

CONVALESCENCE AND ACQUAINTANCE

A man’s clothing is his defence; but with a woman all dress is adornment. Nature decrees it; adornment is her instinctive delight. And, above all, the adorning of a bride; it brings out so charmingly the meaning of the thing. Therein centres the gay consent of all mankind and womankind to an innocent, sweet apostasy from the ranks of both. The value of living – which is loving; the sacredest wonders of life; all that is fairest and of best delight in thought, in feeling, yea, in substance, – all are apprehended under the floral crown and hymeneal veil. So, when at length one day Mrs. Richling said, “Madame Zénobie, don’t you think I might sit up?” it would have been absurd to doubt the quadroon’s willingness to assist her in dressing. True, here was neither wreath nor veil, but here was very young wifehood, and its re-attiring would be like a proclamation of victory over the malady that had striven to put two hearts asunder. Her willingness could hardly be doubted, though she smiled irresponsibly, and said: —

“If you thing” – She spread her eyes and elbows suddenly in the manner of a crab, with palms turned upward and thumbs outstretched – “Well!” – and so dropped them.

“You don’t want wait till de doctah comin’?” she asked.

“I don’t think he’s coming; it’s after his time.”

“Yass?”

The woman was silent a moment, and then threw up one hand again, with the forefinger lifted alertly forward.

“I make a lill fi’ biffo.”

She made a fire. Then she helped the convalescent to put on a few loose drapings. She made no concealment of the enjoyment it gave her, though her words were few, and generally were answers to questions; and when at length she brought from the wardrobe, pretending not to notice her mistake, a loose and much too ample robe of woollen and silken stuffs to go over all, she moved as though she trod on holy ground, and distinctly felt, herself, the thrill with which the convalescent, her young eyes beaming their assent, let her arms into the big sleeves, and drew about her small form the soft folds of her husband’s morning-gown.

“He goin’ to fine that droll,” said the quadroon.

The wife’s face confessed her pleasure.

“It’s as much mine as his,” she said.

“Is you mek dat?” asked the nurse, as she drew its silken cord about the convalescent’s waist.

“Yes. Don’t draw it tight; leave it loose – so; but you can tie the knot tight. That will do; there!” She smiled broadly. “Don’t tie me in as if you were tying me in forever.”

Madame Zénobie understood perfectly, and, smiling in response, did tie it as if she were tying her in forever.

Half an hour or so later the quadroon, being – it may have been by chance – at the street door, ushered in a person who simply bowed in silence.

But as he put one foot on the stair he paused, and, bending a severe gaze upon her, asked: —

“Why do you smile?”

She folded her hands limply on her bosom, and drawing a cheek and shoulder toward each other, replied: —

“Nuttin’” —

The questioner’s severity darkened.

“Why do you smile at nothing?”

She laid the tips of her fingers upon her lips to compose them.

“You din come in you’ carridge. She goin’ to thing ’tis Miché Reechin.” The smile forced its way through her fingers. The visitor turned in quiet disdain and went upstairs, she following.

At the top he let her pass. She led the way and, softly pushing open the chamber-door, entered noiselessly, turned, and, as the other stepped across the threshold, nestled her hands one on the other at her waist, shrank inward with a sweet smile, and waved one palm toward the huge, blue-hung mahogany four-poster, – empty.

The visitor gave a slight double nod and moved on across the carpet. Before a small coal fire, in a grate too wide for it, stood a broad, cushioned rocking-chair, with the corner of a pillow showing over its top. The visitor went on around it. The girlish form lay in it, with eyes closed, very still; but his professional glance quickly detected the false pretence of slumber. A slippered foot was still slightly reached out beyond the bright colors of the long gown, and toward the brazen edge of the hearth-pan, as though the owner had been touching her tiptoe against it to keep the chair in gentle motion. One cheek was on the pillow; down the other curled a few light strands of hair that had escaped from her brow.

Thus for an instant. Then a smile began to wreath about the corner of her lips; she faintly stirred, opened her eyes – and lo! Dr. Sevier, motionless, tranquil, and grave.

“O Doctor!” The blood surged into her face and down upon her neck. She put her hands over her eyes, and her face into the pillow. “O Doctor!” – rising to a sitting posture, – “I thought, of course, it was my husband.”

The Doctor replied while she was speaking: —

“My carriage broke down.” He drew a chair toward the fireplace, and asked, with his face toward the dying fire: —

“How are you feeling to-day, madam, – stronger?”

“Yes; I can almost say I’m well.” The blush was still on her face as he turned to receive her answer, but she smiled with a bright courageousness that secretly amused and pleased him. “I thank you, Doctor, for my recovery; I certainly should thank you.” Her face lighted up with that soft radiance which was its best quality, and her smile became half introspective as her eyes dropped from his, and followed her outstretched hand as it rearranged the farther edges of the dressing-gown one upon another.

“If you will take better care of yourself hereafter, madam,” responded the Doctor, thumping and brushing from his knee some specks of mud that he may have got when his carriage broke down, “I will thank you. But” – brush – brush – “I – doubt it.”

“Do you think you should?” she asked, leaning forward from the back of the great chair and letting her wrists drop over the front of its broad arms.

“I do,” said the Doctor, kindly. “Why shouldn’t I? This present attack was by your own fault.” While he spoke he was looking into her eyes, contracted at their corners by her slight smile. The face was one of those that show not merely that the world is all unknown to them, but that it always will be so. It beamed with inquisitive intelligence, and yet had the innocence almost of infancy. The Doctor made a discovery; that it was this that made her beautiful. “She is beautiful,” he insisted to himself when his critical faculty dissented.

“You needn’t doubt me, Doctor. I’ll try my best to take care. Why, of course I will, – for John’s sake.” She looked up into his face from the tassel she was twisting around her finger, touching the floor with her slippers’ toe and faintly rocking.

“Yes, there’s a chance there,” replied the grave man, seemingly not overmuch pleased; “I dare say everything you do or leave undone is for his sake.”

The little wife betrayed for a moment a pained perplexity, and then exclaimed: —

“Well, of course!” and waited his answer with bright eyes.

“I have known women to think of their own sakes,” was the response.

She laughed, and with unprecedented sparkle replied: —

“Why, whatever’s his sake is my sake. I don’t see the difference. Yes, I see, of course, how there might be a difference; but I don’t see how a woman” – She ceased, still smiling, and, dropping her eyes to her hands, slowly stroked one wrist and palm with the tassel of her husband’s robe.

The Doctor rose, turned his back to the mantel-piece, and looked down upon her. He thought of the great, wide world: its thorny ways, its deserts, its bitter waters, its unrighteousness, its self-seeking greeds, its weaknesses, its under and over reaching, its unfaithfulness; and then again of this – child, thrust all at once a thousand miles into it, with never – so far as he could see – an implement, a weapon, a sense of danger, or a refuge; well pleased with herself, as it seemed, lifted up into the bliss of self-obliterating wifehood, and resting in her husband with such an assurance of safety and happiness as a saint might pray for grace to show to Heaven itself. He stood silent, feeling too grim to speak, and presently Mrs. Richling looked up with a sudden liveliness of eye and a smile that was half apology and half persistence.

“Yes, Doctor, I’m going to take care of myself.”

“Mrs. Richling, is your father a man of fortune?”

“My father is not living,” said she, gravely. “He died two years ago. He was the pastor of a small church. No, sir; he had nothing but his small salary, except that for some years he taught a few scholars. He taught me.” She brightened up again. “I never had any other teacher.”

The Doctor folded his hands behind him and gazed abstractedly through the upper sash of the large French windows. The street-door was heard to open.

“There’s John,” said the convalescent, quickly, and the next moment her husband entered. A tired look vanished from his face as he saw the Doctor. He hurried to grasp his hand, then turned and kissed his wife. The physician took up his hat.

“Doctor,” said the wife, holding the hand he gave her, and looking up playfully, with her cheek against the chair-back, “you surely didn’t suspect me of being a rich girl, did you?”

“Not at all, madam.” His emphasis was so pronounced that the husband laughed.

“There’s one comfort in the opposite condition, Doctor,” said the young man.

“Yes?”

“Why, yes; you see, it requires no explanation.”

“Yes, it does,” said the physician; “it is just as binding on people to show good cause why they are poor as it is to show good cause why they’re rich. Good-day, madam.” The two men went out together. His word would have been good-by, but for the fear of fresh acknowledgments.

CHAPTER V.

HARD QUESTIONS

Dr. Sevier had a simple abhorrence of the expression of personal sentiment in words. Nothing else seemed to him so utterly hollow as the attempt to indicate by speech a regard or affection which was not already demonstrated in behavior. So far did he keep himself aloof from insincerity that he had barely room enough left to be candid.

“I need not see your wife any more,” he said, as he went down the stairs with the young husband at his elbow; and the young man had learned him well enough not to oppress him with formal thanks, whatever might have been said or omitted upstairs.

Madame Zénobie contrived to be near enough, as they reached the lower floor, to come in for a share of the meagre adieu. She gave her hand with a dainty grace and a bow that might have been imported from Paris.

Dr. Sevier paused on the front step, half turned toward the open door where the husband still tarried. That was not speech; it was scarcely action; but the young man understood it and was silent. In truth, the Doctor himself felt a pang in this sort of farewell. A physician’s way through the world is paved, I have heard one say, with these broken bits of other’s lives, of all colors and all degrees of beauty. In his reminiscences, when he can do no better, he gathers them up, and, turning them over and over in the darkened chamber of his retrospection, sees patterns of delight lit up by the softened rays of bygone time. But even this renews the pain of separation, and Dr. Sevier felt, right here at this door-step, that, if this was to be the last of the Richlings, he would feel the twinge of parting every time they came up again in his memory.

He looked at the house opposite, – where there was really nothing to look at, – and at a woman who happened to be passing, and who was only like a thousand others with whom he had nothing to do.

“Richling,” he said, “what brings you to New Orleans, any way?”

Richling leaned his cheek against the door-post.

“Simply seeking my fortune, Doctor.”

“Do you think it is here?”

“I’m pretty sure it is; the world owes me a living.”

The Doctor looked up.

“When did you get the world in your debt?”

Richling lifted his head pleasantly, and let one foot down a step.

“It owes me a chance to earn a living, doesn’t it?”

“I dare say,” replied the other; “that’s what it generally owes.”

“That’s all I ask of it,” said Richling; “if it will let us alone we’ll let it alone.”

“You’ve no right to allow either,” said the physician. “No, sir; no,” he insisted, as the young man looked incredulous. There was a pause. “Have you any capital?” asked the Doctor.

“Capital! No,” – with a low laugh.

“But surely you have something to” —

“Oh, yes, – a little!”

The Doctor marked the southern “Oh.” There is no “O” in Milwaukee.

“You don’t find as many vacancies as you expected to see, I suppose – h-m-m?”

There was an under-glow of feeling in the young man’s tone as he replied: —

“I was misinformed.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, staring down-street, “you’ll find something. What can you do?”

“Do? Oh, I’m willing to do anything!”

Dr. Sevier turned his gaze slowly, with a shade of disappointment in it. Richling rallied to his defences.

“I think I could make a good book-keeper, or correspondent, or cashier, or any such” —

The Doctor interrupted, with the back of his head toward his listener, looking this time up the street, riverward: —

“Yes; – or a shoe, – or a barrel, – h-m-m?”

Richling bent forward with the frown of defective hearing, and the physician raised his voice: —

“Or a cart-wheel – or a coat?”

“I can make a living,” rejoined the other, with a needlessly resentful-heroic manner, that was lost, or seemed to be, on the physician.

“Richling,” – the Doctor suddenly faced around and fixed a kindly severe glance on him, – “why didn’t you bring letters?”

“Why,” – the young man stopped, looked at his feet, and distinctly blushed. “I think,” he stammered – “it seems to me” – he looked up with a faltering eye – “don’t you think – I think a man ought to be able to recommend himself.”

The Doctor’s gaze remained so fixed that the self-recommended man could not endure it silently.

“I think so,” he said, looking down again and swinging his foot. Suddenly he brightened. “Doctor, isn’t this your carriage coming?”

“Yes; I told the boy to drive by here when it was mended, and he might find me.” The vehicle drew up and stopped. “Still, Richling,” the physician continued, as he stepped toward it, “you had better get a letter or two, yet; you might need them.”

The door of the carriage clapped to. There seemed a touch of vexation in the sound. Richling, too, closed his door, but in the soft way of one in troubled meditation. Was this a proper farewell? The thought came to both men.

“Stop a minute!” said Dr. Sevier to his driver. He leaned out a little at the side of the carriage and looked back. “Never mind; he has gone in.”

The young husband went upstairs slowly and heavily, more slowly and heavily than might be explained by his all-day unsuccessful tramp after employment. His wife still rested in the rocking-chair. He stood against it, and she took his hand and stroked it.

“Tired?” she asked, looking up at him. He gazed into the languishing fire.

“Yes.”

“You’re not discouraged, are you?”

“Discouraged? N-no. And yet,” he said, slowly shaking his head, “I can’t see why I don’t find something to do.”

“It’s because you don’t hunt for it,” said the wife.

He turned upon her with flashing countenance only to meet her laugh, and to have his head pulled down to her lips. He dropped into the seat left by the physician, laid his head back in his knit hands, and crossed his feet under the chair.

“John, I do like Dr. Sevier.”

“Why?” The questioner looked at the ceiling.

“Why, don’t you like him?” asked the wife, and, as John smiled, she added, “You know you like him.”

The husband grasped the poker in both hands, dropped his elbows upon his knees, and began touching the fire, saying slowly: —

“I believe the Doctor thinks I’m a fool.”

“That’s nothing,” said the little wife; “that’s only because you married me.”

The poker stopped rattling between the grate-bars; the husband looked at the wife. Her eyes, though turned partly away, betrayed their mischief. There was a deadly pause; then a rush to the assault, a shower of Cupid’s arrows, a quick surrender.

But we refrain. Since ever the world began it is Love’s real, not his sham, battles that are worth the telling.

CHAPTER VI.

NESTING

A fortnight passed. What with calls on his private skill, and appeals to his public zeal, Dr. Sevier was always loaded like a dromedary. Just now he was much occupied with the affairs of the great American people. For all he was the furthest remove from a mere party contestant or spoilsman, neither his righteous pugnacity nor his human sympathy would allow him to “let politics alone.” Often across this preoccupation there flitted a thought of the Richlings.

At length one day he saw them. He had been called by a patient, lodging near Madame Zénobie’s house. The proximity of the young couple occurred to him at once, but he instantly realized the extreme poverty of the chance that he should see them. To increase the improbability, the short afternoon was near its close, – an hour when people generally were sitting at dinner.

But what a coquette is that same chance! As he was driving up at the sidewalk’s edge before his patient’s door, the Richlings came out of theirs, the husband talking with animation, and the wife, all sunshine, skipping up to his side, and taking his arm with both hands, and attending eagerly to his words.

“Heels!” muttered the Doctor to himself, for the sound of Mrs. Richling’s gaiters betrayed that fact. Heels were an innovation still new enough to rouse the resentment of masculine conservatism. But for them she would have pleased his sight entirely. Bonnets, for years microscopic, had again become visible, and her girlish face was prettily set in one whose flowers and ribbon, just joyous and no more, were reflected again in the double-skirted silk barége; while the dark mantilla that drooped away from the broad lace collar, shading, without hiding, her “Parodi” waist, seemed made for that very street of heavy-grated archways, iron-railed balconies, and high lattices. The Doctor even accepted patiently the free northern step, which is commonly so repugnant to the southern eye.

A heightened gladness flashed into the faces of the two young people as they descried the physician.

“Good-afternoon,” they said, advancing.

“Good-evening,” responded the Doctor, and shook hands with each. The meeting was an emphatic pleasure to him. He quite forgot the young man’s lack of credentials.

“Out taking the air?” he asked.

“Looking about,” said the husband.

“Looking up new quarters,” said the wife, knitting her fingers about her husband’s elbow and drawing closer to it.

“Were you not comfortable?”

“Yes; but the rooms are larger than we need.”

“Ah!” said the Doctor; and there the conversation sank. There was no topic suited to so fleeting a moment, and when they had smiled all round again Dr. Sevier lifted his hat. Ah, yes, there was one thing.

“Have you found work?” asked the Doctor of Richling.

The wife glanced up for an instant into her husband’s face, and then down again.

“No,” said Richling, “not yet. If you should hear of anything, Doctor” – He remembered the Doctor’s word about letters, stopped suddenly, and seemed as if he might even withdraw the request; but the Doctor said: —

“I will; I will let you know.” He gave his hand to Richling. It was on his lips to add: “And should you need,” etc.; but there was the wife at the husband’s side. So he said no more. The pair bowed their cheerful thanks; but beside the cheer, or behind it, in the husband’s face, was there not the look of one who feels the odds against him? And yet, while the two men’s hands still held each other, the look vanished, and the young man’s light grasp had such firmness in it that, for this cause also, the Doctor withheld his patronizing utterance. He believed he would himself have resented it had he been in Richling’s place.

The young pair passed on, and that night, as Dr. Sevier sat at his fireside, an uncompanioned widower, he saw again the young wife look quickly up into her husband’s face, and across that face flit and disappear its look of weary dismay, followed by the air of fresh courage with which the young couple had said good-by.

“I wish I had spoken,” he thought to himself; “I wish I had made the offer.”

And again: —

“I hope he didn’t tell her what I said about the letters. Not but I was right, but it’ll only wound her.”

But Richling had told her; he always “told her everything;” she could not possibly have magnified wifehood more, in her way, than he did in his. May be both ways were faulty; but they were extravagantly, youthfully confident that they were not.

Unknown to Dr. Sevier, the Richlings had returned from their search unsuccessful. Finding prices too much alike in Custom-house street they turned into Burgundy. From Burgundy they passed into Du Maine. As they went, notwithstanding disappointments, their mood grew gay and gayer. Everything that met the eye was quaint and droll to them: men, women, things, places, – all were more or less outlandish. The grotesqueness of the African, and especially the French-tongued African, was to Mrs. Richling particularly irresistible. Multiplying upon each and all of these things was the ludicrousness of the pecuniary strait that brought themselves and these things into contact. Everything turned to fun.

Mrs. Richling’s mirthful mood prompted her by and by to begin letting into her inquiries and comments covert double meanings, intended for her husband’s private understanding. Thus they crossed Bourbon street.

About there their mirth reached a climax; it was in a small house, a sad, single-story thing, cowering between two high buildings, its eaves, four or five feet deep, overshadowing its one street door and window.

“Looks like a shade for weak eyes,” said the wife.

They had debated whether they should enter it or not. He thought no, she thought yes; but he would not insist and she would not insist; she wished him to do as he thought best, and he wished her to do as she thought best, and they had made two or three false starts and retreats before they got inside. But they were in there at length, and busily engaged inquiring into the availability of a small, lace-curtained, front room, when Richling took his wife so completely off her guard by addressing her as “Madam,” in the tone and manner of Dr. Sevier, that she laughed in the face of the householder, who had been trying to talk English with a French accent and a hare-lip, and they fled with haste to the sidewalk and around the corner, where they could smile and smile without being villains.

“We must stop this,” said the wife, blushing. “We must stop it. We’re attracting attention.”

And this was true at least as to one ragamuffin, who stood on a neighboring corner staring at them. Yet there is no telling to what higher pitch their humor might have carried them if Mrs. Richling had not been weighted down by the constant necessity of correcting her husband’s statement of their wants. This she could do, because his exactions were all in the direction of her comfort.

“But, John,” she would say each time as they returned to the street and resumed their quest, “those things cost; you can’t afford them, can you?”

“Why, you can’t be comfortable without them,” he would answer.

“But that’s not the question, John. We must take cheaper lodgings, mustn’t we?”

Then John would be silent, and by littles their gayety would rise again.

One landlady was so good-looking, so manifestly and entirely Caucasian, so melodious of voice, and so modest in her account of the rooms she showed, that Mrs. Richling was captivated. The back room on the second floor, overlooking the inner court and numerous low roofs beyond, was suitable and cheap.

“Yes,” said the sweet proprietress, turning to Richling, who hung in doubt whether it was quite good enough, “yesseh, I think you be pretty well in that room yeh.1 Yesseh, I’m shoe you be verrie well; yesseh.”