Dr. Sevier Part 22

"Yes'day," replied the other, still laughing.

"And how are you going to provide for the future?" Richling asked, smiling down into the face of the shorter man. The Italian tossed the future away with the back of his hand.

"I got nothin' do with that." His words were low, but very distinct.

Thereupon Richling laughed, leaning his cheek against the post.

"Must provide for the present," said Raphael Ristofalo. Richling dropped his eyes in thought. The present! He had never been able to see that it was the present which must be provided against, until, while he was training his guns upon the future, the most primitive wants of the present burst upon him right and left like whooping savages.

"Can you lend me dollar?" asked the Italian. "Give you back dollar an'

quarter to-morrow."

Richling gave a start and let go the post. "Why, Mr. Risto--falo, I--I--, the fact is, I"--he shook his head--"I haven't much money."

"Dollar will start me," said the Italian, whose feet had not moved an inch since he touched Richling's shoulder. "Be aw righ' to-morrow."

"You can't invest one dollar by itself," said the incredulous Richling.

"Yes. Return her to-morrow."

Richling swung his head from side to side as an expression of disrelish.

"I haven't been employed for some time."

"I goin' t'employ myself," said Ristofalo.

Richling laughed again. There was a faint betrayal of distress in his voice as it fell upon the cunning ear of the Italian; but he laughed too, very gently and innocently, and stood in his tracks.

"I wouldn't like to refuse a dollar to a man who needs it," said Richling. He took his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair.

"I've seen the time when it was much easier to lend than it is just now." He thrust his hand down into his pocket and stood gazing at the sidewalk.

The Italian glanced at Richling askance, and with one sweep of the eye from the softened crown of his hat to the slender, white bursted slit in the outer side of either well-polished shoe, took in the beauty of his face and a full understanding of his condition. His hair, somewhat dry, had fallen upon his forehead. His fine, smooth skin was darkened by the exposure of his daily wanderings. His cheek-bones, a trifle high, a.s.serted their place above the softly concave cheeks. His mouth was closed and the lips were slightly compressed; the chin small, gracefully turned, not weak,--not strong. His eyes were abstracted, deep, pensive.

His dress told much. The fine plaits of his shirt had sprung apart and been neatly sewed together again. His coat was a little faulty in the set of the collar, as if the person who had taken the garment apart and turned the goods had not put it together again with practised skill. It was without spot and the b.u.t.tons were new. The edges of his shirt-cuffs had been trimmed with the scissors. Face and vesture alike revealed to the sharp eye of the Italian the woe underneath. "He has a wife,"

thought Ristofalo.

Richling looked up with a smile. "How can you be so sure you will make, and not lose?"

"I never fail." There was not the least shade of boasting in the man's manner. Richling handed out his dollar. It was given without patronage and taken with simple thanks.

"Where goin' to meet to-morrow morning?" asked Ristofalo. "Here?"

"Oh! I forgot," said Richling. "Yes, I suppose so; and then you'll tell me how you invested it, will you?"

"Yes, but you couldn't do it."

"Why not?"

Raphael Ristofalo laughed. "Oh! fifty reason'."

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW HE DID IT.

Ristofalo and Richling had hardly separated, when it occurred to the latter that the Italian had first touched him from behind. Had Ristofalo recognized him with his back turned, or had he seen him earlier and followed him? The facts were these: about an hour before the time when Richling omitted to apply for employment in the ill-smelling store in Tchoupitoulas street, Mr. Raphael Ristofalo halted in front of the same place,--which appeared small and slovenly among its more pretentious neighbors,--and stepped just inside the door to where stood a single barrel of apples,--a fruit only the earliest varieties of which were beginning to appear in market. These were very small, round, and smooth, and with a rather wan blush confessed to more than one of the senses that they had seen better days. He began to pick them up and throw them down--one, two, three, four, seven, ten; about half of them were entirely sound.

"How many barrel' like this?"

"No got-a no more; da.s.s all," said the dealer. He was a Sicilian. "Lame duck," he added. "Oal de rest gone."

"How much?" asked Ristofalo, still handling the fruit.

The Sicilian came to the barrel, looked in, and said, with a gesture of indifference:--

"'M--doll' an' 'alf."

Ristofalo offered to take them at a dollar if he might wash and sort them under the dealer's hydrant, which could be heard running in the back yard. The offer would have been rejected with rude scorn but for one thing: it was spoken in Italian. The man looked at him with pleased surprise, and made the concession. The porter of the store, in a red worsted cap, had drawn near. Ristofalo bade him roll the barrel on its chine to the rear and stand it by the hydrant.

"I will come back pretty soon," he said, in Italian, and went away.

By and by he returned, bringing with him two swarthy, heavy-set, little Sicilian lads, each with his inevitable basket and some clean rags. A smile and gesture to the store-keeper, a word to the boys, and in a moment the barrel was upturned, and the pair were washing, wiping, and sorting the sound and unsound apples at the hydrant.

Ristofalo stood a moment in the entrance of the store. The question now was where to get a dollar. Richling pa.s.sed, looked in, seemed to hesitate, went on, turned, and pa.s.sed again, the other way. Ristofalo saw him all the time and recognized him at once, but appeared not to observe him.

"He will do," thought the Italian. "Be back few minute'," he said, glancing behind him.

"Or-r righ'," said the store-keeper, with a hand-wave of good-natured confidence. He recognized Mr. Raphael Ristofalo's species.

The Italian walked up across Poydras street, saw Richling stop and look at the machinery, approached, and touched him on the shoulder.

On parting with him he did not return to the store where he had left the apples. He walked up Tchoupitoulas street about a mile, and where St.

Thomas street branches acutely from it, in a squalid district full of the poorest Irish, stopped at a dirty fruit-stand and spoke in Spanish to its Catalan proprietor. Half an hour later twenty-five cents had changed hands, the Catalan's fruit shelves were bright with small pyramids--sound side foremost--of Ristofalo's second grade of apples, the Sicilian had Richling's dollar, and the Italian was gone with his boys and his better grade of fruit. Also, a grocer had sold some sugar, and a druggist a little paper of some harmless confectioner's dye.

Down behind the French market, in a short, obscure street that runs from Ursulines to Barracks street, and is named in honor of Albert Gallatin, are some old buildings of three or four stories' height, rented, in John Richling's day, to a cla.s.s of persons who got their livelihood by sub-letting the rooms, and parts of rooms, to the wretchedest poor of New Orleans,--organ-grinders, chimney-sweeps, professional beggars, street musicians, lemon-peddlers, rag-pickers, with all the yet dirtier herd that live by hook and crook in the streets or under the wharves; a room with a bed and stove, a room without, a half-room with or without ditto, a quarter-room with or without a blanket or quilt, and with only a chalk-mark on the floor instead of a part.i.tion. Into one of these went Mr. Raphael Ristofalo, the two boys, and the apples. Whose a.s.sistance or indulgence, if any, he secured in there is not recorded; but when, late in the afternoon, the Italian issued thence--the boys, meanwhile, had been coming and going--an unusual luxury had been offered the roustabouts and idlers of the steam-boat landings, and many had bought and eaten freely of the very small, round, shiny, sugary, and artificially crimson roasted apples, with neatly whittled white-pine stems to poise them on as they were lifted to the consumer's watering teeth. When, the next morning Richling laughed at the story, the Italian drew out two dollars and a half, and began to take from it a dollar.

"But you have last night's lodging and so forth yet to pay for."

"No. Made friends with Sicilian luggerman. Slept in his lugger." He showed his brow and cheeks speckled with mosquito-bites. "Ate little hard-tack and coffee with him this morning. Don't want much." He offered the dollar with a quarter added. Richling declined the bonus.

"But why not?"

"Oh, I just couldn't do it," laughed Richling; "that's all."

"Well," said the Italian, "lend me that dollar one day more, I return you dollar and half in its place to-morrow."

The lender had to laugh again. "You can't find an odd barrel of damaged apples every day."