"Ah!" said Mrs. Riley, with a disappointed lift of the head, "ye"re after eating breakfast already! And the plates all tleared off. Well, ye air smairt! I knowed Mr. Richlin"s taste for jumbalie"--
Mary smote her hands together. "And he"s just this instant gone! John!
John! Why, he"s hardly"-- She vanished through the door, glided down the alley, leaned out the gate, looking this way and that, tripped down to this corner and looked--"Oh! oh!"--no John there--back and up to the other corner--"Oh! which way did John go?" There was none to answer.
Hours pa.s.sed; the shadows shortened and shrunk under their objects, crawled around stealthily behind them as the sun swung through the south, and presently began to steal away eastward, long and slender.
This was the day that Dr. Sevier dined out, as hereinbefore set forth.
The sun set. Carondelet street was deserted. You could hear your own footstep on its flags. In St. Charles street the drinking-saloons and gamblers" drawing-rooms, and the barber-shops, and the show-cases full of shirt-bosoms and walking-canes, were lighted up. The smell of lemons and mint grew finer than ever. Wide Ca.n.a.l street, out under the darkling crimson sky, was resplendent with countless many-colored lamps. From the river the air came softly, cool and sweet. The telescope man set up his skyward-pointing cylinder hard by the dark statue of Henry Clay; the confectioneries were ablaze and full of beautiful life, and every little while a great, empty cotton-dray or two went thundering homeward over the stony pavements until the earth shook, and speech for the moment was drowned. The St. Charles, such a glittering ma.s.s in winter nights, stood out high and dark under the summer stars, with no glow except just in its midst, in the rotunda; and even the rotunda was well-nigh deserted The clerk at his counter saw a young man enter the great door opposite, and quietly marked him as he drew near.
Let us not draw the stranger"s portrait. If that were a pleasant task the clerk would not have watched him. What caught and kept that functionary"s eye was that, whatever else might be revealed by the stranger"s aspect,--weariness, sickness, hardship, pain,--the confession was written all over him, on his face, on his garb, from his hat"s crown to his shoe"s sole, Penniless! Penniless! Only when he had come quite up to the counter the clerk did not see him at all.
"Is Dr. Sevier in?"
"Gone out to dine," said the clerk, looking over the inquirer"s head as if occupied with all the world"s affairs except the subject in hand.
"Do you know when he will be back?"
"Ten o"clock."
The visitor repeated the hour murmurously and looked something dismayed.
He tarried.
"Hem!--I will leave my card, if you please."
The clerk shoved a little box of cards toward him, from which a pencil dangled by a string. The penniless wrote his name and handed it in. Then he moved away, went down the tortuous granite stair, and waited in the obscurity of the dimly lighted porch below. The card was to meet the contingency of the Doctor"s coming in by some other entrance. He would watch for him here.
By and by--he was very weary--he sat down on the stairs. But a porter, with a huge trunk on his back, told him very distinctly that he was in the way there, and he rose and stood aside. Soon he looked for another resting-place. He must get off of his feet somewhere, if only for a few moments. He moved back into the deep gloom of the stair-way shadow, and sank down upon the pavement. In a moment he was fast asleep.
He dreamed that he, too, was dining out. Laughter and merry-making were on every side. The dishes of steaming viands were grotesque in bulk.
There were mountains of fruit and torrents of wine. Strange people of no ident.i.ty spoke in senseless vaporings that pa.s.sed for side-splitting wit, and friends whom he had not seen since childhood appeared in ludicrously altered forms and announced impossible events. Every one ate like a Cossack. One of the party, champing like a boar, pushed him angrily, and when he, eating like the rest, would have turned fiercely on the aggressor, he awoke.
A man standing over him struck him smartly with his foot.
"Get up out o" this! Get up! get up!"
The sleeper bounded to his feet. The man who had waked him grasped him by the lapel of his coat.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed the awakened man, throwing the other off violently.
"I"ll show you!" replied the other, returning with a rush; but he was thrown off again, this time with a blow of the fist.
"You scoundrel!" cried the penniless man, in a rage; "if you touch me again I"ll kill you!"
They leaped together. The one who had proposed to show what he meant was knocked flat upon the stones. The crowd that had run into the porch made room for him to fall. A leather helmet rolled from his head, and the silver crescent of the police flashed on his breast. The police were not uniformed in those days.
But he is up in an instant and his adversary is down--backward, on his elbows. Then the penniless man is up again; they close and struggle, the night-watchman"s club falls across his enemy"s head blow upon blow, while the sufferer grasps him desperately, with both hands, by the throat. They tug, they snuffle, they reel to and fro in the yielding crowd; the blows grow fainter, fainter; the grip is terrible; when suddenly there is a violent rupture of the crowd, it closes again, and then there are two against one, and up sparkling St. Charles street, the street of all streets for flagrant, unmolested, well-dressed crime, moves a sight so exhilarating that a score of street lads follow behind and a dozen trip along in front with frequent backward glances: two officers of justice walking in grim silence abreast, and between them a limp, torn, hatless, b.l.o.o.d.y figure, partly walking, partly lifted, partly dragged, past the theatres, past the lawyers" rookeries of Commercial place, the tenpin alleys, the chop-houses, the bunko shows, and shooting-galleries, on, across Poydras street into the dim openness beyond, where glimmer the lamps of Lafayette square and the white marble of the munic.i.p.al hall, and just on the farther side of this, with a sudden wheel to the right into Hevia street, a few strides there, a turn to the left, stumbling across a stone step and wooden sill into a narrow, lighted hall, and turning and entering an apartment here again at the right. The door is shut; the name is written down; the charge is made: Vagrancy, a.s.saulting an officer, resisting arrest. An inner door is opened.
"What have you got in number nine?" asks the captain in charge.
"Chuck full," replies the turnkey.
"Well, number seven?" These were the numbers of cells.
"The rats"ll eat him up in number seven."
"How about number ten?"
"Two drunk-and-disorderlies, one petty larceny, and one embezzlement and breach of trust."
"Put him in there."
And this explains what the watchman in Marais street could not understand,--why Mary Richling"s window shone all night long.
CHAPTER XXVII.
OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN.
Round goes the wheel forever. Another sun rose up, not a moment hurried or belated by the myriads of life-and-death issues that cover the earth and wait in ecstasies of hope or dread the pa.s.sage of time. Punctually at ten Justice-in-the-rough takes its seat in the Recorder"s Court, and a moment of silent preparation at the desks follows the loud announcement that its session has begun. The perky clerks and smirking pettifoggers move apart on tiptoe, those to their respective stations, these to their privileged seats facing the high dais. The lounging police slip down from their reclining att.i.tudes on the heel-sc.r.a.ped and whittled window-sills. The hum of voices among the forlorn humanity that half fills the gradually rising, greasy benches behind, allotted to witnesses and prisoners" friends, is hushed. In a little square, railed s.p.a.ce, here at the left, the reporters tip their chairs against the hair-greased wall, and sharpen their pencils. A few tardy visitors, familiar with the place, tiptoe in through the grimy doors, ducking and winking, and softly lifting and placing their chairs, with a mock-timorous upward glance toward the long, ungainly personage who, under a faded and tattered crimson canopy, fills the august bench of magistracy with its high oaken back. On the right, behind a rude wooden paling that rises from the floor to the smoke-stained ceiling, are the peering, bloated faces of the night"s prisoners.
The recorder utters a name. The clerk down in front of him calls it aloud. A door in the palings opens, and one of the captives comes forth and stands before the rail. The arresting officer mounts to the witness-stand and confronts him. The oath is rattled and turned out like dice from a box, and the accusing testimony is heard. It may be that counsel rises and cross-examines, if there are witnesses for the defence. Strange and far-fetched questions, from beginners at the law or from old blunderers, provoke now laughter, and now the peremptory protestations of the court against the waste of time. Yet, in general, a few minutes suffices for the whole trial of a case.
"You are sure she picked the handsaw up by the handle, are you?" says the questioner, frowning with the importance of the point.
"Yes."
"And that she coughed as she did so?"
"Well, you see, she kind o""--
"Yes, or no!"
"No."
"That"s all." He waves the prisoner down with an air of mighty triumph, turns to the recorder, "trusts it is not necessary to,"
etc., and the accused pa.s.ses this way or that, according to the fate decreed,--discharged, sentenced to fine and imprisonment, or committed for trial before the courts of the State.
"Order in court!" There is too much talking. Another comes and stands before the rail, and goes his way. Another, and another; now a ragged boy, now a half-sobered crone, now a battered ruffian, and now a painted girl of the street, and at length one who starts when his name is called, as though something had exploded.
"John Richling!"
He came.