"The same age, the same stature, the same features. Alice was a shade paler in her style of beauty, just a shade. Her hair was darker; but otherwise her whole effect was a trifle quieter, even, than Mary"s. She was beautiful,--outside and in. Like Mary, she had a certain richness of character--but of a different sort. I suppose I would not notice the difference if they were not so much alike. She didn"t stay with me long."
"Did you lose her--here?" asked Richling, hardly knowing how to break the silence that fell, and yet lead the speaker on.
"No. In Virginia." The Doctor was quiet a moment, and then resumed:--
"I looked at your wife when she was last in my office, Richling; she had a little timid, beseeching light in her eyes that is not usual with her--and a moisture, too; and--it seemed to me as though Alice had come back. For my wife lived by my moods. Her spirits rose or fell just as my whim, conscious or unconscious, gave out light or took on shadow." The Doctor was still again, and Richling only indicated his wish to hear more by shifting himself on his elbow.
"Do you remember, Richling, when the girl you had been bowing down to and worshipping, all at once, in a single wedding day, was transformed into your adorer?"
"Yes, indeed," responded the convalescent, with beaming face. "Wasn"t it wonderful? I couldn"t credit my senses. But how did you--was it the same"--
"It"s the same, Richling, with every man who has really secured a woman"s heart with her hand. It was very strange and sweet to me. Alice would have been a spoiled child if her parents could have spoiled her; and when I was courting her she was the veriest little empress that ever walked over a man."
"I can hardly imagine," said Richling, with subdued amus.e.m.e.nt, looking at the long, slender form before him. The Doctor smiled very sweetly.
"Yes." Then, after another meditative pause: "But from the moment I became her husband she lived in continual trepidation. She so magnified me in her timid fancy that she was always looking tremulously to me to see what should be her feeling. She even couldn"t help being afraid of me. I hate for any one to be afraid of me."
"Do you, Doctor?" said Richling, with surprise and evident introspection.
"Yes."
Richling felt his own fear changing to love.
"When I married," continued Dr. Sevier, "I had thought Alice was one that would go with me hand in hand through life, dividing its cares and doubling its joys, as they say; I guiding her and she guiding me. But if I had let her, she would have fallen into me as a planet might fall into the sun. I didn"t want to be the sun to her. I didn"t want her to shine only when I shone on her, and be dark when I was dark. No man ought to want such a thing. Yet she made life a delight to me; only she wanted that development which a better training, or even a harder training, might have given her; that subserving of the emotions to the"--he waved his hand--"I can"t philosophize about her. We loved one another with our might, and she"s in heaven."
Richling felt an inward start. The Doctor interrupted his intended speech.
"Our short experience together, Richling, is the one great light place in my life; and to me, to-day, sere as I am, the sweet--the sweetest sound--on G.o.d"s green earth"--the corners of his mouth quivered--"is the name of Alice. Take care of Mary, Richling; she"s a priceless treasure.
Don"t leave the making and sustaining of the home sunshine all to her, any more than you"d like her to leave it all to you."
"I"ll not, Doctor; I"ll not." Richling pressed the Doctor"s hand fervently; but the Doctor drew it away with a certain energy, and rose, saying:--
"Yes, you can sit up to-morrow."
The day that Richling went back to his malarious home in Prieur street Dr. Sevier happened to meet him just beyond the hospital gate. Richling waved his hand. He looked weak and tremulous. "Homeward bound," he said, gayly.
The physician reached forward in his carriage and bade his driver stop.
"Well, be careful of yourself; I"m coming to see you in a day or two."
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 cooperation, "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 Ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sage 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 n.o.body 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 ap.r.o.n 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?
"Oh, don"t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?"
Down drooped the listener"s head. Remember? Ah, memory!--The old, heart-rending memory! Sweet Alice!
"Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown?"
Yes, yes; so brown!--so brown!
"She wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with fear at your frown."
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--
"In the old church-yard in the valley, Ben Bolt, In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of granite so gray, And sweet Alice lies under the stone."
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?"