"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 att.i.tude"--
"No, no," said Richling and his wife. "Ah, no!" But the Doctor persisted.
"--a purely selfish att.i.tude. 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."
"Doctor," began Mary; but her husband had the floor.
"Doctor," he said, "can you put yourself in our place? Wouldn"t you rather die than beg? _Wouldn"t_ you?"