[Ill.u.s.tration: Oct 14 1864 17 Confederate Prisoners escaped Through this hole]
But we move too fast. Let us go back into the war for a moment longer.
Mary pursued her calling. The most of it she succeeded in doing in a very sunshiny way. She carried with her, and left behind her, cheer, courage, hope. Yet she had a widow"s heart, and whenever she took a widow"s hand in hers, and oftentimes, alone or against her sleeping child"s bedside, she had a widow"s tears. But this work, or these works,--she made each particular ministration seem as if it were the only one,--these works, that she might never have had the opportunity to perform had her nest-mate never been taken from her, seemed to keep John near. Almost, sometimes, he seemed to walk at her side in her errands of mercy, or to spread above her the arms of benediction. And so even the bitter was sweet, and she came to believe that never before had widow such blessed commutation.
One day, a short, slight Confederate prisoner, newly brought in, and hobbling about the place where he was confined, with a vile bullet-hole in his foot, came up to her and said:--
"Allow me, madam,--did that man call you by your right name, just now?"
Mary looked at him. She had never seen him before.
"Yes, sir," she said.
She could see the gentleman, under much rags and dirt.
"Are you Mrs. John Richling?"
A look of dismay came into his face as he asked the grave question.
"Yes, sir," replied Mary.
His voice dropped, and he asked, with subdued haste:--
"Ith it pothible you"re in mourning for him?"
She nodded.
It was the little rector. He had somehow got it into his head that preachers ought to fight, and this was one of the results. Mary went away quickly, and told Dr. Sevier. The Doctor went to the commanding general. It was a great humiliation to do so, he thought. There was none worse, those days, in the eyes of the people. He craved and got the little man"s release on parole. A fortnight later, as Dr. Sevier was sitting at the breakfast table, with the little rector at its opposite end, he all at once rose to his full attenuated height, with a frown and then a smile, and, tumbling the chair backward behind him, exclaimed:--
"Why, Laura!"--for it was that one of his two gay young nieces who stood in the door-way. The banker"s wife followed in just behind, and was presently saying, with the prettiest heartiness, that Dr. Sevier looked no older than the day they met the Florida general at dinner years before. She had just come in from the Confederacy, smuggling her son of eighteen back to the city, to save him from the conscript officers, and Laura had come with her. And when the clergyman got his crutches into his armpits and stood on one foot, and he and Laura both blushed as they shook hands, the Doctor knew that she had come to nurse her wounded lover. That she might do this without embarra.s.sment, they got married, and were thereupon as vexed with themselves as they could be under the circ.u.mstances that they had not done it four or five years before. Of course there was no parade; but Dr. Sevier gave a neat little dinner.
Mary and Laura were its designers; Madame Zen.o.bie was the master-builder and made the gumbo. One word about the war, whose smoke was over all the land, would have spoiled the broth. But no such word was spoken.
It happened that the company was almost the same as that which had sat down in brighter days to that other dinner, which the banker"s wife recalled with so much pleasure. She and her husband and son were guests; also that Sister Jane, of whom they had talked, a woman of real goodness and rather unrelieved sweetness; also her sister and bankrupted brother-in-law. The brother-in-law mentioned several persons who, he said, once used to be very cordial to him and his wife, but now did not remember them; and his wife chid him, with the air of a fellow-martyr; but they could not spoil the tender gladness of the occasion.
"Well, Doctor," said the banker"s wife, looking quite the old lady now, "I suppose your lonely days are over, now that Laura and her husband are to keep house for you."
"Yes," said the Doctor.
But the very thought of it made him more lonely than ever.
"It"s a very pleasant and sensible arrangement," said the lady, looking very practical and confidential; "Laura has told me all about it. It"s just the thing for them and for you."
"I think so, ma"am," replied Dr. Sevier, and tried to make his statement good.
"I"m sure of it," said the lady, very sweetly and gayly, and made a faint time-to-go beckon with a fan to her husband, to whom, in the farther drawing-room, Laura and Mary stood talking, each with an arm about the other"s waist.
CHAPTER LXI
PEACE.
It came with tears. But, ah! it lifted such an awful load from the hearts even of those who loved the lost cause. Husbands s.n.a.t.c.hed their wives once more to their bosoms, and the dear, brave, swarthy, rough-bearded, gray-jacketed boys were caught again in the wild arms of mothers and sisters. Everywhere there was glad, tearful kissing.
Everywhere? Alas for the silent lips that remained unkissed, and the arms that remained empty! And alas for those to whom peace came too suddenly and too soon! Poor Narcisse!
His salary still continues. So does his aunt.
The Ristofalos came back all together. How delighted Mrs. Colonel Ristofalo--I say Mrs. _Colonel_ Ristofalo--was to see Mary! And how impossible it was, when they sat down together for a long talk, to avoid every moment coming back to the one subject of "him."
"Yes, ye see, there bees thim as is _called_ col-o-nels, whin in fact they bees only _liftinent_ col-o-nels. Yes. But it"s not so wid him. And he"s no different from the plain Raphael Ristofalah of eight year ago--the same perfict gintleman that he was when he sold b"iled eggs!"
And the colonel"s "lady" smiled a gay triumph that gave Mary a new affection for her.
Sister Jane bowed to the rod of an inscrutable Providence. She could not understand how the Confederacy could fail, and justice still be justice; so, without understanding, she left it all to Heaven, and clung to her faith. Her brother-in-law never recovered his fortunes nor his sweetness. He could not bend his neck to the conqueror"s yoke; he went in search of liberty to Brazil--or was it Honduras? Little matter which, now, for he died there, both he and his wife, just as their faces were turning again homeward, and it was dawning upon them once more that there is no land like Dixie in all the wide world over.
The little rector--thanks, he says, to the skill of Dr.
Sevier!--recovered perfectly the use of his mangled foot, so that he even loves long walks. I was out walking with him one sunset hour in the autumn of--if I remember aright--1870, when whom should we spy but our good Kate Ristofalo, out driving in her family carriage? The cherubs were beside her,--strong, handsome boys. Mike held the reins; he was but thirteen, but he looked full three years better than that, and had evidently employed the best tailor in St. Charles street to fit his rather noticeable clothes. His mother had changed her mind about his being a bruiser, though there isn"t a doubt he had a Derringer in one or another of his pockets. No, she was proposing to make him a doctor--"a surgeon," she said; "and thin, if there bees another war"-- She was for making every edge cut.
She did us the honor to stop the carriage, and drive up to the curb-stone for a little chat. Her spirits were up, for Colonel Ristofalo had just been made a city councilman by a rousing majority.
We expressed our regret not to see Raphael himself in the family group enjoying the exquisite air.
"Ha, ha! He ride out for pleasure?"--And then, with sudden gravity,--"Aw, naw, sur! He"s too busy. Much use ut is to be married to a public man! Ah! surs, I"m mighty tired of ut, now I tell ye!" Yet she laughed again, without betraying much fatigue. "And how"s Dr. Sevier?"
"He"s well," said the clergyman.
"And Mrs. Richling?"
"She"s well, too."
Kate looked at the little rector out of the corners of her roguish Irish eyes, a killing look, and said:--
"Ye"re sure the both o" thim bees well?"
"Yes, quite well," replied he, ignoring the inane effort at jest. She nodded a blithe good-day, and rolled on toward the lake, happy as the harvest weather, and with a kind heart for all the world. We walked on, and after the walk I dined with the rector. Dr. Sevier"s place was vacant, and we talked of him. The prettiest piece of furniture in the dining-room was an extremely handsome child"s high chair that remained, unused, against the wall. It was Alice"s, and Alice was an almost daily visitor. It had come in almost simultaneously with Laura"s marriage, and more and more frequently, as time had pa.s.sed, the waiter had set it up to the table, at the Doctor"s right hand, and lifted Goldenhair into it, until by and by she had totally outgrown it. But she had not grown out of the place of favor at the table. In these later days she had become quite a school-girl, and the Doctor, in his place at the table, would often sit with a faint, continuous smile on his face that no one could bring there but her, to hear her prattle about Madame Locquet, and the various girls at Madame Locquet"s school.
"It"s actually pathetic," said Laura, as we sat sipping our coffee after the meal, "to see how he idolizes that child." Alice had just left the room.
"Why don"t he idolize the child"s"--began her husband, in undertone, and did not have to finish to make us understand.
"He does," murmured the smiling wife.
"Then why shouldn"t he tell her so?"
"My dear!" objected the wife, very softly and prettily.