"We goin" to have war," said Raphael Ristofalo.
"Ho! ho! ho! Why, Ristofalo, you were never more mistaken in your life!"
"I dunno," replied the Italian, sticking in his tracks, "think it pretty certain. I read all the papers every day; nothin" else to do in parish prison. Think we see war nex" winter."
"Ristofalo, a man of your sort can hardly conceive the amount of bl.u.s.ter this country can stand without coming to blows. We Americans are not like you Italians."
"No," responded Ristofalo, "not much like." His smile changed peculiarly. "Wasn"t for Kate, I go to Italia now."
"Kate and the parish prison," said Richling.
"Oh!"--the old smile returned,--"I get out that place any time I want."
"And you"d join Garibaldi, I suppose?" The news had just come of Garibaldi in Sicily.
"Yes," responded the Italian. There was a twinkle deep in his eyes as he added: "I know Garibaldi."
"Indeed!"
"Yes. Sailed under him when he was ship-cap"n. He knows me."
"And I dare say he"d remember you," said Richling, with enthusiasm.
"He remember me," said the quieter man. "Well,--must go. Good-e"nin".
Better tell yo" wife wait a while."
"I--don"t know. I"ll see. Ristofalo"--
"What?"
"I want to quit this business."
"Better not quit. Stick to one thing."
"But you never did that. You never did one thing twice in succession."
"There"s heap o" diff"ence."
"I don"t see it. What is it?"
But the Italian only smiled and shrugged, and began to move away. In a moment he said:--
"You see, Mr. Richlin", you sen" for yo" wife, you can"t risk change o"
business. You change business, you can"t risk sen" for yo" wife. Well, good-night."
Richling was left to his thoughts. Naturally they were of the man whom he still saw, in his imagination, picking his jailer up off the door-step and going back to prison. Who could say that this man might not any day make just such a lion"s leap into the world"s arena as Garibaldi had made, and startle the nations as Garibaldi had done? What was that red-shirted scourge of tyrants that this man might not be?
Sailor, soldier, hero, patriot, prisoner! See Garibaldi: despising the restraints of law; careless of the simplest conventionalities that go to make up an honest gentleman; doing both right and wrong--like a lion; everything in him leonine. All this was in Ristofalo"s reach. It was all beyond Richling"s. Which was best, the capability or the incapability?
It was a question he would have liked to ask Mary.
Well, at any rate, he had strength now for one thing--"one pretty small thing." He would answer her letter. He answered it, and wrote: "Don"t come; wait a little while." He put aside all those sweet lovers"
pictures that had been floating before his eyes by night and day, and bade her stay until the summer, with its risks to health, should have pa.s.sed, and she could leave her mother well and strong.
It was only a day or two afterward that he fell sick. It was provoking to have such a cold and not know how he caught it, and to have it in such fine weather. He was in bed some days, and was robbed of much sleep by a cough. Mrs. Reisen found occasion to tell Dr. Sevier of Mary"s desire, as communicated to her by "Mr. Richlin"," and of the advice she had given him.
"And he didn"t send for her, I suppose."
"No, sir."
"Well, Mrs. Reisen, I wish you had kept your advice to yourself." The Doctor went to Richling"s bedside.
"Richling, why don"t you send for your wife?"
The patient floundered in the bed and drew himself up on his pillow.
"O Doctor, just listen!" He smiled incredulously. "Bring that little woman and her baby down here just as the hot season is beginning?" He thought a moment, and then continued: "I"m afraid, Doctor, you"re prescribing for homesickness. Pray don"t tell me that"s my ailment."
"No, it"s not. You have a bad cough, that you must take care of; but still, the other is one of the counts in your case, and you know how quickly Mary and--the little girl would cure it."
Richling smiled again.
"I can"t do that, Doctor; when I go to Mary, or send for her, on account of homesickness, it must be hers, not mine."
"Well, Mrs. Reisen," said the Doctor, outside the street door, "I hope you"ll remember my request."
"I"ll tdo udt, Dtoctor," was the reply, so humbly spoken that he repented half his harshness.
"I suppose you"ve often heard that "you can"t make a silk purse of a sow"s ear," haven"t you?" he asked.
"Yes; I pin right often heeard udt." She spoke as though she was not wedded to any inflexible opinion concerning the proposition.
"Well, Mrs. Reisen, as a man once said to me, "neither can you make a sow"s ear out of a silk purse.""
"Vell, to be cettaintly!" said the poor woman, drawing not the shadow of an inference; "how kin you?"
"Mr. Richling tells me he will write to Mrs. Richling to prepare to come down in the fall."
"Vell," exclaimed the delighted Mrs. Reisen, in her husband"s best manner, "t"at"s te etsectly I atwised him!" And, as the Doctor drove away, she rubbed her mighty hands around each other in restored complacency. Two or three days later she had the additional pleasure of seeing Richling up and about his work again. It was upon her motherly urging that he indulged himself, one calm, warm afternoon, in a walk in the upper part of the city.
CHAPTER XLV.
NARCISSE WITH NEWS.
It was very beautiful to see the summer set in. Trees everywhere. You looked down a street, and, unless it were one of the two broad avenues where the only street-cars ran, it was pretty sure to be so overarched with boughs that, down in the distance, there was left but a narrow streak of vivid blue sky in the middle. Well-nigh every house had its garden, as every garden its countless flowers. The dark orange began to show its growing weight of fruitfulness, and was hiding in its th.o.r.n.y interior the nestlings of yonder mocking-bird, silently foraging down in the sunny gra.s.s. The yielding branches of the privet were bowed down with their plumy panicles, and swayed heavily from side to side, drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so m.u.f.fled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool ma.s.ses of the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance forerun the sight.
Every breath of air was a new perfume. Roses, an innumerable host, ran a fairy riot about all grounds, and clambered from the lowest door-step to the highest roof. The oleander, wrapped in one great garment of red blossoms, nodded in the sun, and stirred and winked in the faint stirrings of the air The pale banana slowly fanned herself with her own broad leaf. High up against the intense sky, its hard, burnished foliage glittering in the sunlight, the magnolia spread its dark boughs, adorned with their queenly white flowers. Not a bird nor an insect seemed unmated. The little wren stood and sung to his sitting wife his loud, ecstatic song, made all of her own name,--Matilda, Urilda, Lucinda, Belinda, Adaline, Madaline, Caroline, or Melinda, as the case might be,--singing as though every bone of his tiny body were a golden flute.