"I believe the Doctor thinks I"m a fool."
"That"s nothing," said the little wife; "that"s only because you married me."
The poker stopped rattling between the grate-bars; the husband looked at the wife. Her eyes, though turned partly away, betrayed their mischief.
There was a deadly pause; then a rush to the a.s.sault, a shower of Cupid"s arrows, a quick surrender.
But we refrain. Since ever the world began it is Love"s real, not his sham, battles that are worth the telling.
CHAPTER VI.
NESTING.
A fortnight pa.s.sed. What with calls on his private skill, and appeals to his public zeal, Dr. Sevier was always loaded like a dromedary.
Just now he was much occupied with the affairs of the great American people. For all he was the furthest remove from a mere party contestant or spoilsman, neither his righteous pugnacity nor his human sympathy would allow him to "let politics alone." Often across this preoccupation there flitted a thought of the Richlings.
At length one day he saw them. He had been called by a patient, lodging near Madame Zen.o.bie"s house. The proximity of the young couple occurred to him at once, but he instantly realized the extreme poverty of the chance that he should see them. To increase the improbability, the short afternoon was near its close,--an hour when people generally were sitting at dinner.
But what a coquette is that same chance! As he was driving up at the sidewalk"s edge before his patient"s door, the Richlings came out of theirs, the husband talking with animation, and the wife, all sunshine, skipping up to his side, and taking his arm with both hands, and attending eagerly to his words.
"Heels!" muttered the Doctor to himself, for the sound of Mrs.
Richling"s gaiters betrayed that fact. Heels were an innovation still new enough to rouse the resentment of masculine conservatism. But for them she would have pleased his sight entirely. Bonnets, for years microscopic, had again become visible, and her girlish face was prettily set in one whose flowers and ribbon, just joyous and no more, were reflected again in the double-skirted silk _barege_; while the dark mantilla that drooped away from the broad lace collar, shading, without hiding, her "Parodi" waist, seemed made for that very street of heavy-grated archways, iron-railed balconies, and high lattices. The Doctor even accepted patiently the free northern step, which is commonly so repugnant to the southern eye.
A heightened gladness flashed into the faces of the two young people as they descried the physician.
"Good-afternoon," they said, advancing.
"Good-evening," responded the Doctor, and shook hands with each. The meeting was an emphatic pleasure to him. He quite forgot the young man"s lack of credentials.
"Out taking the air?" he asked.
"Looking about," said the husband.
"Looking up new quarters," said the wife, knitting her fingers about her husband"s elbow and drawing closer to it.
"Were you not comfortable?"
"Yes; but the rooms are larger than we need."
"Ah!" said the Doctor; and there the conversation sank. There was no topic suited to so fleeting a moment, and when they had smiled all round again Dr. Sevier lifted his hat. Ah, yes, there was one thing.
"Have you found work?" asked the Doctor of Richling.
The wife glanced up for an instant into her husband"s face, and then down again.
"No," said Richling, "not yet. If you should hear of anything, Doctor"--He remembered the Doctor"s word about letters, stopped suddenly, and seemed as if he might even withdraw the request; but the Doctor said:--
"I will; I will let you know." He gave his hand to Richling. It was on his lips to add: "And should you need," etc.; but there was the wife at the husband"s side. So he said no more. The pair bowed their cheerful thanks; but beside the cheer, or behind it, in the husband"s face, was there not the look of one who feels the odds against him? And yet, while the two men"s hands still held each other, the look vanished, and the young man"s light grasp had such firmness in it that, for this cause also, the Doctor withheld his patronizing utterance. He believed he would himself have resented it had he been in Richling"s place.
The young pair pa.s.sed on, and that night, as Dr. Sevier sat at his fireside, an uncompanioned widower, he saw again the young wife look quickly up into her husband"s face, and across that face flit and disappear its look of weary dismay, followed by the air of fresh courage with which the young couple had said good-by.
"I wish I had spoken," he thought to himself; "I wish I had made the offer."
And again:--
"I hope he didn"t tell her what I said about the letters. Not but I was right, but it"ll only wound her."
But Richling had told her; he always "told her everything;" she could not possibly have magnified wifehood more, in her way, than he did in his. May be both ways were faulty; but they were extravagantly, youthfully confident that they were not.
Unknown to Dr. Sevier, the Richlings had returned from their search unsuccessful. Finding prices too much alike in Custom-house street they turned into Burgundy. From Burgundy they pa.s.sed into Du Maine. As they went, notwithstanding disappointments, their mood grew gay and gayer.
Everything that met the eye was quaint and droll to them: men, women, things, places,--all were more or less outlandish. The grotesqueness of the African, and especially the French-tongued African, was to Mrs.
Richling particularly irresistible. Multiplying upon each and all of these things was the ludicrousness of the pecuniary strait that brought themselves and these things into contact. Everything turned to fun.
Mrs. Richling"s mirthful mood prompted her by and by to begin letting into her inquiries and comments covert double meanings, intended for her husband"s private understanding. Thus they crossed Bourbon street.
About there their mirth reached a climax; it was in a small house, a sad, single-story thing, cowering between two high buildings, its eaves, four or five feet deep, overshadowing its one street door and window.
"Looks like a shade for weak eyes," said the wife.
They had debated whether they should enter it or not. He thought no, she thought yes; but he would not insist and she would not insist; she wished him to do as he thought best, and he wished her to do as she thought best, and they had made two or three false starts and retreats before they got inside. But they were in there at length, and busily engaged inquiring into the availability of a small, lace-curtained, front room, when Richling took his wife so completely off her guard by addressing her as "Madam," in the tone and manner of Dr. Sevier, that she laughed in the face of the householder, who had been trying to talk English with a French accent and a hare-lip, and they fled with haste to the sidewalk and around the corner, where they could smile and smile without being villains.
"We must stop this," said the wife, blushing. "We _must_ stop it. We"re attracting attention."
And this was true at least as to one ragam.u.f.fin, who stood on a neighboring corner staring at them. Yet there is no telling to what higher pitch their humor might have carried them if Mrs. Richling had not been weighted down by the constant necessity of correcting her husband"s statement of their wants. This she could do, because his exactions were all in the direction of her comfort.
"But, John," she would say each time as they returned to the street and resumed their quest, "those things cost; you can"t afford them, can you?"
"Why, you can"t be comfortable without them," he would answer.
"But that"s not the question, John. We _must_ take cheaper lodgings, mustn"t we?"
Then John would be silent, and by littles their gayety would rise again.
One landlady was so good-looking, so manifestly and entirely Caucasian, so melodious of voice, and so modest in her account of the rooms she showed, that Mrs. Richling was captivated. The back room on the second floor, overlooking the inner court and numerous low roofs beyond, was suitable and cheap.
"Yes," said the sweet proprietress, turning to Richling, who hung in doubt whether it was quite good enough, "yesseh, I think you be pretty well in that room yeh.[1] Yesseh, I"m shoe you be _verrie_ well; yesseh."
[1] "Yeh"--_ye_, as in _yearn_.
"Can we get them at once?"
"Yes? At once? Yes? Oh, yes?"