Dr. Sevier

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT

Dr. Sevier was daily overtasked. His campaigns against the evils of our disordered flesh had even kept him from what his fellow-citizens thought was only his share of attention to public affairs.

“Why,” he cried to a committee that came soliciting his coöperation, “here’s one little unprofessional call that I’ve been trying every day for two weeks to make – and ought to have made – and must make; and I haven’t got a step toward it yet. Oh, no, gentlemen!” He waved their request away.

He was very tired. The afternoon was growing late. He dismissed his jaded horse toward home, walked down to Canal street, and took that yellow Bayou-Road omnibus whose big blue star painted on its corpulent side showed that quadroons, etc., were allowed a share of its accommodation, and went rumbling and tumbling over the cobble-stones of the French quarter.

By and by he got out, walked a little way southward in the hot, luminous shade of low-roofed tenement cottages that closed their window-shutters noiselessly, in sensitive-plant fashion, at his slow, meditative approach, and slightly and as noiselessly reopened them behind him, showing a pair of wary eyes within. Presently he recognized just ahead of him, standing out on the sidewalk, the little house that had been described to him by Mary.

In a door-way that opened upon two low wooden sidewalk steps stood Mrs. Riley, clad in a crisp black and white calico, a heavy, fat babe poised easily in one arm. The Doctor turned directly toward the narrow alley, merely touching his hat to her as he pushed its small green door inward, and disappeared, while she lifted her chin at the silent liberty and dropped her eyelids.

Dr. Sevier went down the cramped, ill-paved passage very slowly and softly. Regarding himself objectively, he would have said the deep shade of his thoughts was due partly, at least, to his fatigue. But that would hardly have accounted for a certain faint glow of indignation that came into them. In truth, he began distinctly to resent this state of affairs in the life of John and Mary Richling. An ill-defined anger beat about in his brain in search of some tangible shortcoming of theirs upon which to thrust the blame of their helplessness. “Criminal helplessness,” he called it, mutteringly. He tried to define the idea – or the idea tried to define itself – that they had somehow been recreant to their social caste, by getting down into the condition and estate of what one may call the alien poor. Carondelet street had in some way specially vexed him to-day, and now here was this. It was bad enough, he thought, for men to slip into riches through dark back windows; but here was a brace of youngsters who had glided into poverty, and taken a place to which they had no right to stoop. Treachery, – that was the name for it. And now he must be expected, – the Doctor quite forgot that nobody had asked him to do it, – he must be expected to come fishing them out of their hole, like a rag-picker at a trash barrel.

– “Bringing me into this wretched alley!” he silently thought. His foot slipped on a mossy brick. Oh, no doubt they thought they were punishing some negligent friend or friends by letting themselves down into this sort of thing. Never mind! He recalled the tender, confiding, friendly way in which he had talked to John, sitting on the edge of his hospital bed. He wished, now, he had every word back he had uttered. They might hide away to the full content of their poverty-pride. Poverty-pride: he had invented the term; it was the opposite pole to purse-pride – and just as mean, – no, meaner. There! Must he yet slip down? He muttered an angry word. Well, well, this was making himself a little the cheapest he had ever let himself be made. And probably this was what they wanted! Misery’s revenge. Umhum! They sit down in sour darkness, eh! and make relief seek them. It wouldn’t be the first time he had caught the poor taking savage comfort in the blush which their poverty was supposed to bring to the cheek of better-kept kinsfolk. True, he didn’t know this was the case with the Richlings. But wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? And have they a dog, that will presently hurl himself down this alley at one’s legs? He hopes so. He would so like to kick him clean over the twelve-foot close plank fence that crowded his right shoulder. Never mind! His anger became solemn.

The alley opened into a small, narrow yard, paved with ashes from the gas-works. At the bottom of the yard a rough shed spanned its breadth, and a woman was there, busily bending over a row of wash-tubs.

The Doctor knocked on a door near at hand, then waited a moment, and, getting no response, turned away toward the shed and the deep, wet, burring sound of a wash-board. The woman bending over it did not hear his footfall. Presently he stopped. She had just straightened up, lifting a piece of the washing to the height of her head, and letting it down with a swash and slap upon the board. It was a woman’s garment, but certainly not hers. For she was small and slight. Her hair was hidden under a towel. Her skirts were shortened to a pair of dainty ankles by an extra under-fold at the neat, round waist. Her feet were thrust into a pair of sabots. She paused a moment in her work, and, lifting with both smoothly rounded arms, bared nearly to the shoulder, a large apron from her waist, wiped the perspiration from her forehead. It was Mary.

The red blood came up into the Doctor’s pale, thin face. This was too outrageous. This was insult! He stirred as if to move forward. He would confront her. Yes, just as she was. He would speak. He would speak bluntly. He would chide sternly. He had the right. The only friend in the world from whom she had not escaped beyond reach, – he would speak the friendly, angry word that would stop this shocking —

But, truly, deeply incensed as he was, and felt it his right to be, hurt, wrung, exasperated, he did not advance. She had reached down and taken from the wash-bench the lump of yellow soap that lay there, and was soaping the garment on the board before her, turning it this way and that. As she did this she began, all to herself and for her own ear, softly, with unconscious richness and tenderness of voice, to sing. And what was her song?

Down drooped the listener’s head. Remember? Ah, memory! – The old, heart-rending memory! Sweet Alice!

Yes, yes; so brown! – so brown!

Ah! but the frown is gone! There is a look of supplication now. Sing no more! Oh, sing no more! Yes, surely, she will stop there!

No. The voice rises gently – just a little – into the higher key, soft and clear as the note of a distant bird, and all unaware of a listener. Oh! in mercy’s name —

The little toiling figure bent once more across the wash-board and began to rub. He turned, the first dew of many a long year welling from each eye, and stole away, out of the little yard and down the dark, slippery alley, to the street.

Mrs. Riley still stood on the door-sill, holding the child.

“Good-evening, madam!”

“Sur, to you.” She bowed with dignity.

“Is Mrs. Richling in?”

There was a shadow of triumph in her faint smile.

“She is.”

“I should like to see her.”

Mrs. Riley hoisted her chin. “I dunno if she’s a-seein’ comp’ny to-day.” The voice was amiably important. “Wont ye walk in? Take a seat and sit down, sur, and I’ll go and infarm the laydie.”

“Thank you,” said the Doctor, but continued to stand.

Mrs. Riley started and stopped again.

“Ye forgot to give me yer kyaird, sur.” She drew her chin in again austerely.

“Just say Dr. Sevier.”

“Certainly, sur; yes, that’ll be sufficiend. And dispinse with the kyaird.” She went majestically.

The Doctor, left alone, cast his uninterested glance around the smart little bare-floored parlor, upon its new, jig-sawed, gray hair-cloth furniture, and up upon a picture of the Pope. When Mrs. Riley, in a moment, returned he stood looking out the door.

“Mrs. Richling consints to see ye, sur. She’ll be in turreckly. Take a seat and sit down.” She readjusted the infant on her arm and lifted and swung a hair-cloth arm-chair toward him without visible exertion. “There’s no use o’ having chayers if ye don’t sit on um,” she added affably.

The Doctor sat down, and Mrs. Riley occupied the exact centre of the small, wide-eared, brittle-looking sofa, where she filled in the silent moments that followed by pulling down the skirts of the infant’s apparel, oppressed with the necessity of keeping up a conversation and with the want of subject-matter. The child stared at the Doctor, and suddenly plunged toward him with a loud and very watery coo.

“Ah-h!” said Mrs. Riley, in ostentatious rebuke. “Mike!” she cried, laughingly, as the action was repeated. “Ye rowdy, air ye go-un to fight the gintleman?”

She laughed sincerely, and the Doctor could but notice how neat and good-looking she was. He condescended to crook his finger at the babe. This seemed to exasperate the so-called rowdy. He planted his pink feet on his mother’s thigh and gave a mighty lunge and whoop.

“He’s go-un to be a wicked bruiser,” said proud Mrs. Riley. “He” – the pronoun stood, this time, for her husband – “he never sah the child. He was kilt with an explosion before the child was barn.”

She held the infant on her strong arm as he struggled to throw himself, with wide-stretched jaws, upon her bosom; and might have been devoured by the wicked bruiser had not his attention been diverted by the entrance of Mary, who came in at last, all in fragrant white, with apologies for keeping the Doctor waiting.

He looked down into her uplifted eyes. What a riddle is woman! Had he not just seen this one in sabots? Did she not certainly know, through Mrs. Riley, that he must have seen her so? Were not her skirts but just now hitched up with an under-tuck, and fastened with a string? Had she not just laid off, in hot haste, a suds-bespattered apron and the garments of toil beneath it? Had not a towel been but now unbound from the hair shining here under his glance in luxuriant brown coils? This brightness of eye, that seemed all exhilaration, was it not trepidation instead? And this rosiness, so like redundant vigor, was it not the flush of her hot task? He fancied he saw – in truth he may have seen – a defiance in the eyes as he glanced upon, and tardily dropped, the little water-soaked hand with a bow.

Mary turned to present Mrs. Riley, who bowed and said, trying to hold herself with majesty while Mike drew her head into his mouth: “Sur,” then turned with great ceremony to Mary, and adding, “I’ll withdrah,” withdrew with the head and step of a duchess.

“How is your husband, madam?”

“John? – is not well at all, Doctor; though he would say he was if he were here. He doesn’t shake off his chills. He is out, though, looking for work. He’d go as long as he could stand.”

She smiled; she almost laughed; but half an eye could see it was only to avoid the other thing.

“Where does he go?”

“Everywhere!” She laughed this time audibly.

“If he went everywhere I should see him,” said Dr. Sevier.

“Ah! naturally,” responded Mary, playfully. “But he does go wherever he thinks there’s work to be found. He doesn’t wander clear out among the plantations, of course, where everybody has slaves, and there’s no work but slaves’ work. And he says it’s useless to think of a clerkship this time of year. It must be, isn’t it?”

The Doctor made no answer.

There was a footstep in the alley.

“He’s coming now,” said Mary, – “that’s he. He must have got work to-day. He has an acquaintance, an Italian, who promised to have something for him to do very soon. Doctor,” – she began to put together the split fractions of a palm-leaf fan, smiling diffidently at it the while, – “I can’t see how it is any discredit to a man not to have a knack for making money?”

She lifted her peculiar look of radiant inquiry.

“It is not, madam.”

Mary laughed for joy. The light of her face seemed to spread clear into her locks.

“Well, I knew you’d say so! John blames himself; he can make money, you know, Doctor, but he blames himself because he hasn’t that natural gift for it that Mr. Ristofalo has. Why, Mr. Ristofalo is simply wonderful!” She smiled upon her fan in amused reminiscence. “John is always wishing he had his gift.”

“My dear madam, don’t covet it! At least don’t exchange it for anything else.”

The Doctor was still in this mood of disapprobation when John entered. The radiancy of the young husband’s greeting hid for a moment, but only so long, the marks of illness and adversity. Mary followed him with her smiling eyes as the two men shook hands, and John drew a chair near to her and sat down with a sigh of mingled pleasure and fatigue.

She told him of whom she and their visitor had just been speaking.

“Raphael Ristofalo!” said John, kindling afresh. “Yes; I’ve been with him all day. It humiliates me to think of him.”

Dr. Sevier responded quietly: —

“You’ve no right to let it humiliate you, sir.”

Mary turned to John with dancing eyes, but he passed the utterance as a mere compliment, and said, through his smiles: —

“Just see how it is to-day. I have been overseeing the unloading of a little schooner from Ruatan island loaded with bananas, cocoanuts, and pine-apples. I’ve made two dollars; he has made a hundred.”

Richling went on eagerly to tell about the plain, lustreless man whose one homely gift had fascinated him. The Doctor was entertained. The narrator sparkled and glowed as he told of Ristofalo’s appearance, and reproduced his speeches and manner.

“Tell about the apples and eggs,” said the delighted Mary.

He did so, sitting on the front edge of his chair-seat, and sprawling his legs now in front and now behind him as he swung now around to his wife and now to the Doctor. Mary laughed softly at every period, and watched the Doctor, to see his slight smile at each detail of the story. Richling enjoyed telling it; he had worked; his earnings were in his pocket; gladness was easy.

“Why, I’m learning more from Raphael Ristofalo than I ever learned from my school-masters: I’m learning the art of livelihood.”

He ran on from Ristofalo to the men among whom he had been mingling all day. He mimicked the strange, long swing of their Sicilian speech; told of their swarthy faces and black beards, their rich instinct for color in costume; their fierce conversation and violent gestures; the energy of their movements when they worked, and the profoundness of their repose when they rested; the picturesqueness and grotesqueness of the negroes, too; the huge, flat, round baskets of fruit which the black men carried on their heads, and which the Sicilians bore on their shoulders or the nape of the neck. The “captain” of the schooner was a central figure.

“Doctor,” asked Richling, suddenly, “do you know anything about the island of Cozumel?”

“Aha!” thought Mary. So there was something besides the day’s earning that elated him.

She had suspected it. She looked at her husband with an expression of the most alert pleasure. The Doctor noticed it.

“No,” he said, in reply to Richling’s question.

“It stands out in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Yucatan,” began Richling.

“Yes, I know that.”

“Well, Mary, I’ve almost promised the schooner captain that we’ll go there. He wants to get up a colony.”

Mary started.

“Why, John!” She betrayed a look of dismay, glanced at their visitor, tried to say “Have you?” approvingly, and blushed.

The Doctor made no kind of response.

“Now, don’t conclude,” said John to Mary, coloring too, but smiling. He turned to the physician. “It’s a wonderful spot, Doctor.”

But the Doctor was still silent, and Richling turned.

“Just to think, Mary, of a place where you can raise all the products of two zones; where health is almost perfect; where the yellow fever has never been; and where there is such beauty as can be only in the tropics and a tropical sea. Why, Doctor, I can’t understand why Europeans or Americans haven’t settled it long ago.”

“I suppose we can find out before we go, can’t we?” said Mary, looking timorously back and forth between John and the Doctor.

“The reason is,” replied John, “it’s so little known. Just one island away out by itself. Three crops of fruit a year. One acre planted in bananas feeds fifty men. All the capital a man need have is an axe to cut down the finest cabinet and dye-woods in the world. The thermometer never goes above ninety nor below forty. You can hire all the labor you want at a few cents a day.”

Mary’s diligent eye detected a cloud on the Doctor’s face. But John, though nettled, pushed on the more rapidly.

“A man can make – easily! – a thousand dollars the first year, and live on two hundred and fifty. It’s the place for a poor man.”

He looked a little defiant.

“Of course,” said Mary, “I know you wouldn’t come to an opinion” – she smiled with the same restless glance – “until you had made all the inquiries necessary. It mu – must – be a delightful place. Doctor?”

Her eyes shone blue as the sky.

“I wouldn’t send a convict to such a place,” said Dr. Sevier.

Richling flamed up.

“Don’t you think,” he began to say with visible restraint and a faint, ugly twist of the head, – “don’t you think it’s a better place for a poor man than a great, heartless town?”

“This isn’t a heartless town,” said the Doctor.

“He doesn’t mean it as you do, Doctor,” interposed Mary, with alarm. “John, you ought to explain.”

“Than a great town,” said Richling, “where a man of honest intentions and real desire to live and be useful and independent; who wants to earn his daily bread at any honorable cost, and who can’t do it because the town doesn’t want his services, and will not have them – can go” – He ceased, with his sentence all tangled.

“No!” the Doctor was saying meanwhile. “No! No! No!”

“Here I go, day after day,” persisted Richling, extending his arm and pointing indefinitely through the window.

“No, no, you don’t, John,” cried Mary, with an effort at gayety; “you don’t go by the window, John; you go by the door.” She pulled his arm down tenderly.

“I go by the alley,” said John. Silence followed. The young pair contrived to force a little laugh, and John made an apologetic move.

“Doctor,” he exclaimed, with an air of pleasantry, “the whole town’s asleep! – sound asleep, like a negro in the sunshine! There isn’t work for one man in fifty!” He ended tremulously. Mary looked at him with dropped face but lifted eyes, handling the fan, whose rent she had made worse.

“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.”