"Not always, sir," replied the Doctor; "not if they"re sick, for instance." The ladies bowed briskly and applauded with their eyes. "And not always if they"re well," he added. His last words softened off almost into soliloquy.
The banker spoke forcibly:--
"Yes, there are two quite distinct kinds of poverty. One is an accident of the moment; the other is an inner condition of the individual"--
"Of course it is," said sister Jane"s brother-in-law, who felt it a little to have been contradicted on the side of kindness by the hard-spoken Doctor. "Certainly! it"s a deficiency of inner resources or character, and what to do with it is no simple question."
"That"s what I was about to say," resumed the banker; "at least, when the poverty is of that sort. And what discourages kind people is that that"s the sort we commonly see. It"s a relief to meet the other, Doctor, just as it"s a relief to a physician to encounter a case of simple surgery."
"And--and," said the brother-in-law, "what is your rule about plain almsgiving to the difficult sort?"
"My rule," replied the banker, "is, don"t do it. Debt is slavery, and there is an ugly kink in human nature that disposes it to be content with slavery. No, sir; gift-making and gift-taking are twins of a bad blood." The speaker turned to Dr. Sevier for approval; but, though the Doctor could not gainsay the fraction of a point, he was silent. A lady near the hostess stirred softly both under and above the board. In her private chamber she would have yawned. Yet the banker spoke again:--
"Help the old, I say. You are pretty safe there. Help the sick. But as for the young and strong,--now, no man could be any poorer than I was at twenty-one,--I say be cautious how you smooth that hard road which is the finest discipline the young can possibly get."
"If it isn"t _too_ hard," chirped the son of the host.
"Too hard? Well, yes, if it isn"t too hard. Still I say, hands off; you needn"t turn your back, however." Here the speaker again singled out Dr.
Sevier. "Watch the young man out of one corner of your eye; but make him swim!"
"Ah-h!" said the ladies.
"No, no," continued the banker; "I don"t say let him drown; but I take it, Doctor, that your alms, for instance, are no alms if they put the poor fellow into your debt and at your back."
"To whom do you refer?" asked Dr. Sevier. Whereat there was a burst of laughter, which was renewed when the banker charged the physician with helping so many persons, "on the sly," that he couldn"t tell which one was alluded to unless the name were given.
"Doctor," said the hostess, seeing it was high time the conversation should take a new direction, "they tell me you have closed your house and taken rooms at the St. Charles."
"For the summer," said the physician.
As, later, he walked toward that hotel, he went resolving to look up the Richlings again without delay. The banker"s words rang in his ears like an overdose of quinine: "Watch the young man out of one corner of your eye. Make him swim. I don"t say let him drown."
"Well, I do watch him," thought the Doctor. "I"ve only lost sight of him once in a while." But the thought seemed to find an echo against his conscience, and when it floated back it was: "I"ve only _caught_ sight of him once in a while." The banker"s words came up again: "Don"t put the poor fellow into your debt and at your back." "Just what you"ve done," said conscience. "How do you know he isn"t drowned?" He would see to it.
While he was still on his way to the hotel he fell in with an acquaintance, a Judge Somebody or other, lately from Washington City.
He, also, lodged at the St. Charles. They went together. As they approached the majestic porch of the edifice they noticed some confusion at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the rotunda; cabmen and boys were running to a common point, where, in the midst of a small, compact crowd, two or three pairs of arms were being alternately thrown aloft and brought down. Presently the ma.s.s took a rapid movement up St.
Charles street.
The judge gave his conjecture: "Some poor devil resisting arrest."
Before he and the Doctor parted for the night they went to the clerk"s counter.
"No letters for you, Judge; mail failed. Here is a card for you, Doctor."
The Doctor received it. It had been furnished, blank, by the clerk to its writer.
[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN RICHLING.]
At the door of his own room, with one hand on the unturned k.n.o.b and one holding the card, the Doctor stopped and reflected. The card gave no indication of urgency. Did it? It was hard to tell. He didn"t want to look foolish; morning would be time enough; he would go early next morning.
But at daybreak he was summoned post-haste to the bedside of a lady who had stayed all summer in New Orleans so as not to be out of this good doctor"s reach at this juncture. She counted him a dear friend, and in similar trials had always required close and continual attention. It was the same now.
Dr. Sevier scrawled and sent to the Richlings a line, saying that, if either of them was sick, he would come at their call. When the messenger returned with word from Mrs. Riley that both of them were out, the Doctor"s mind was much relieved. So a day and a night pa.s.sed in which he did not close his eyes.
The next morning, as he stood in his office, hat in hand, and a finger pointing to a prescription on his desk, which he was directing Narcisse to give to some one who would call for it, there came a sudden hurried pounding of feminine feet on the stairs, a whiff of robes in the corridor, and Mary Richling rushed into his presence all tears and cries.
"O Doctor!--O Doctor! O G.o.d, my husband! my husband! O Doctor, my husband is in the Parish Prison!" She sank to the floor.
The Doctor raised her up. Narcisse hurried forward with his hands full of restoratives.
"Take away those things," said the Doctor, resentfully. "Here!--Mrs.
Richling, take Narcisse"s arm and go down and get into my carriage. I must write a short note, excusing myself from an appointment, and then I will join you."
Mary stood alone, turned, and pa.s.sed out of the office beside the young Creole, but without taking his proffered arm. Did she suspect him of having something to do with this dreadful affair?
"Missez Witchlin," said he, as soon as they were out in the corridor, "I dunno if you goin" to billiv me, but I boun" to tell you that nodwithstanning that yo" "uzban" is displease" with me, an"
nodwithstanning "e"s in that calaboose, I h"always fine "im a puffic gen"leman--that Mistoo Itchlin,--an" I"ll sweah "e _is_ a gen"leman!"
She lifted her anguished eyes and looked into his beautiful face. Could she trust him? His little forehead was as hard as a goat"s, but his eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears, and his chin quivered. As they reached the head of the stairs he again offered his arm, and she took it, moaning softly, as they descended:--
"O John! O John! O my husband, my husband!"
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE TROUGH OF THE SEA.
Narcisse, on receiving his scolding from Richling, had gone to his home in Casa Calvo street, a much greater sufferer than he had appeared to be. While he was confronting his abaser there had been a momentary comfort in the contrast between Richling"s ill-behavior and his own self-control. It had stayed his spirit and turned the edge of Richling"s sharp denunciations. But, as he moved off the field, he found himself, at every step, more deeply wounded than even he had supposed. He began to suffocate with chagrin, and hurried his steps in sheer distress. He did not experience that dull, vacant acceptance of universal scorn which an unresentful coward feels. His pangs were all the more poignant because he knew his own courage.
In his home he went so straight up to the withered little old lady, in the dingiest of flimsy black, who was his aunt, and kissed her so pa.s.sionately, that she asked at once what was the matter. He recounted the facts, shedding tears of mortification. Her feeling, by the time he had finished the account, was a more unmixed wrath than his, and, harmless as she was, and wrapped up in her dear, pretty nephew as she was, she yet demanded to know why such a man shouldn"t be called out upon the field of honor.
"Ah!" cried Narcisse, shrinkingly. She had touched the core of the tumor. One gets a public tongue-lashing from a man concerning money borrowed; well, how is one going to challenge him without first handing back the borrowed money? It was a scalding thought! The rotten joists beneath the bare scrubbed-to-death floor quaked under Narcisse"s to-and-fro stride.
"--And then, anyhow!"--he stopped and extended both hands, speaking, of course, in French,--"anyhow, he is the favored friend of Dr. Sevier. If I hurt him--I lose my situation! If he hurts me--I lose my situation!"
He dried his eyes. His aunt saw the insurmountability of the difficulty, and they drowned feeling in an affectionate gla.s.s of green-orangeade.
"But never mind!" Narcisse set his gla.s.s down and drew out his tobacco.
He laughed spasmodically as he rolled his cigarette. "You shall see. The game is not finished yet."
Yet Richling pa.s.sed the next day and night without a.s.sa.s.sination, and on the second morning afterward, as on the first, went out in quest of employment. He and Mary had eaten bread, and it had gone into their life without a remainder either in larder or purse. Richling was all aimless.
"I do wish I had the _art_ of finding work," said he. He smiled. "I"ll get it," he added, breaking their last crust in two. "I have the science already. Why, look you, Mary, the quiet, amiable, imperturbable, dignified, diurnal, inexorable haunting of men of influence will get you whatever you want."
"Well, why don"t you do it, dear? Is there any harm in it? I don"t see any harm in it. Why don"t you do that very thing?"