Dr. Sevier Part 31

"And that's what Mr. and Madam Richlin's a-doin' all the time. And they do ut to perfiction, sur--jist to perfiction!"

"I doubt it not, Misses Wiley. Well, Misses Wiley, I bid you _au 'evoi'_. I dunno if you'll pummit me, but I am compel to tell you, Misses Wiley, I nevva yeh anybody in my life with such a educated and talented conve'sation like yo'seff. Misses Wiley, at what univussity did you gwaduate?"

"Well, reely, Mister--eh"--she fanned herself with broad sweeps of her purple bordered palm-leaf--"reely, sur, if I don't furgit the name I--I--I'll be switched! Ha! ha! ha!"

Narcisse joined in the laugh.

"Thaz the way, sometime," he said, and then with sudden gravity: "And, by-the-by, Misses Wiley, speakin' of Mistoo Itchlin,--if you could baw'

me two dollahs an' a 'alf juz till tomaw mawnin--till I kin sen' it you fum the office-- Because that money I've got faw Mistoo Itchlin is in the shape of a check, and anyhow I'm c'owding me a little to pay that whole sum-total to Mistoo Itchlin. I kin sen' it you firs' thing my bank open tomaw mawnin."

Do you think he didn't get it?

"What has it got down to now?" John asked again, a few mornings after Narcisse's last visit. Mary told him. He stepped a little way aside, averting his face, dropped his forehead into his hand, and returned.

"I don't see--I don't see, Mary--I"--

"Darling," she replied, reaching and capturing both his hands, "who does see? The rich _think_ they see; but do they, John? Now, _do_ they?"

The frown did not go quite off his face, but he took her head between his hands and kissed her temple.

"You're always trying to lift me," he said.

"Don't you lift me?" she replied, looking up between his hands and smiling.

"Do I?"

"You know you do. Don't you remember the day we took that walk, and you said that after all it never is we who provide?" She looked at the b.u.t.ton of his coat, which she twirled in her fingers. "That word lifted me."

"But suppose I can't practice the trust I preach?" he said.

"You do trust, though. You have trusted."

"Past tense," said John. He lifted her hands slowly away from him, and moved toward the door of their chamber. He could not help looking back at the eyes that followed him, and then he could not bear their look.

"I--I suppose a man mustn't trust too much," he said.

"Can he?" asked Mary, leaning against a table.

"Oh, yes, he can," replied John; but his tone lacked conviction.

"If it's the right kind?"

Her eyes were full of tears.

"I'm afraid mine's not the right kind, then," said John, and pa.s.sed out into and down the street.

But what a mind he took with him--what torture of questions! Was he being lifted or pulled down? His tastes,--were they rising or sinking?

Were little negligences of dress and bearing and in-door att.i.tude creeping into his habits? Was he losing his discriminative sense of quant.i.ty, time, distance? Did he talk of small achievements, small gains, and small truths, as though they were great? Had he learned to carp at the rich, and to make honesty the excuse for all penury? Had he these various poverty-marks? He looked at himself outside and inside, and feared to answer. One thing he knew,--that he was having great wrestlings.

He turned his thoughts to Ristofalo. This was a common habit with him.

Not only in thought, but in person, he hovered with a positive infatuation about this man of perpetual success.

Lately the Italian had gone out of town, into the country of La Fourche, to buy standing crops of oranges. Richling fed his hope on the possibilities that might follow Ristofalo's return. His friend would want him to superintend the gathering and shipment of those crops--when they should be ripe--away yonder in November. Frantic thought! A man and his wife could starve to death twenty times before then.

Mrs. Riley's high esteem for John and Mary had risen from the date of the Doctor's visit, and the good woman thought it but right somewhat to increase the figures of their room-rent to others more in keeping with such high gentility. How fast the little h.o.a.rd melted away!

And the summer continued on,--the long, beautiful, glaring, implacable summer; its heat quaking on the low roofs; its fig-trees dropping their shrivelled and blackened leaves and writhing their weird, bare branches under the scorching sun; the long-drawn, frying note of its cicada throbbing through the mid-day heat from the depths of the becalmed oak; its universal pall of dust on the myriad red, sleep-heavy blossoms of the oleander and the white tulips of the lofty magnolia; its twinkling pomegranates hanging their apples of scarlet and gold over the garden wall; its little chameleons darting along the hot fence-tops; its far-stretching, empty streets; its wide hush of idleness; its solitary vultures sailing in the upper blue; its grateful clouds; its hot north winds, its cool south winds; its gasping twilight calms; its gorgeous nights,--the long, long summer lingered on into September.

One evening, as the sun was sinking below the broad, flat land, its burning disk reddened by a low golden haze of suspended dust, Richling pa.s.sed slowly toward his home, coming from a lower part of the town by way of the quadroon quarter. He was paying little notice, or none, to his whereabouts, wending his way mechanically, in the dejected reverie of weary disappointment, and with voiceless inward screamings and groanings under the weight of those thoughts which had lately taken up their stay in his dismayed mind. But all at once his attention was challenged by a strange, offensive odor. He looked up and around, saw nothing, turned a corner, and found himself at the intersection of Treme and St. Anne streets, just behind the great central prison of New Orleans.

The "Parish Prison" was then only about twenty-five years old; but it had made haste to become offensive to every sense and sentiment of reasonable man. It had been built in the Spanish style,--a ma.s.sive, dark, grim, huge, four-sided block, the fissure-like windows of its cells looking down into the four public streets which ran immediately under its walls. Dilapidation had followed hard behind ill-building contractors. Down its frowning masonry ran grimy streaks of leakage over peeling stucco and mould-covered brick. Weeds bloomed high aloft in the broken gutters under the scant and ragged eaves. Here and there the pale, debauched face of a prisoner peered shamelessly down through shattered gla.s.s or rusted grating; and everywhere in the still atmosphere floated the stifling smell of the unseen loathsomeness within.

Richling paused. As he looked up he noticed a bat dart out from a long crevice under the eaves. Two others followed. Then three--a dozen--a hundred--a thousand--millions. All along the two sides of the prison in view they poured forth in a horrid black torrent,--myriads upon myriads.

They filled the air. They came and came. Richling stood and gazed; and still they streamed out in gibbering waves, until the wonder was that anything but a witch's dream could contain them.

The approach of another pa.s.ser roused him, and he started on. The step gained upon him--closed up with him; and at the moment when he expected to see the person go by, a hand was laid gently on his shoulder.

"Mistoo Itchlin, I 'ope you well, seh!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

BROUGHT TO BAY.

One may take his choice between the two, but there is no escaping both in this life: the creditor--the borrower. Either, but never neither.

Narcisse caught step with Richling, and they walked side by side.

"How I learned to mawch, I billong with a fiah comp'ny," said the Creole. "We mawch eve'y yeah on the fou'th of Mawch." He laughed heartily. "Tha.s.s a 'ime!--Mawch on the fou'th of Mawch! Tha.s.s poetwy, in fact, as you may _say_ in a jesting _way_--ha! ha! ha!"

"Yes, and it's truth, besides," responded the drearier man.

"Yes!" exclaimed Narcisse, delighted at the unusual coincidence, "at the same time 'tis the tooth! In fact, why should I tell a lie about such a thing like _that_? 'Twould be useless. Pe'haps you may 'ave notiz, Mistoo Itchlin, thad the noozpapehs opine us fiahmen to be the gau'dians of the city."

"Yes," responded Richling. "I think Dr. Sevier calls you the Mamelukes, doesn't he? But that's much the same, I suppose."

"Same thing," replied the Creole. "We combad the fiah fiend. You fine that building ve'y pitto'esque, Mistoo Itchlin?" He jerked his thumb toward the prison, that was still pouring forth its clouds of impish wings. "Yes? 'Tis the same with me. But I tell you one thing, Mistoo Itchlin, I a.s.su' you, and you will believe me, I would 'atheh be lock'

_out_side of that building than to be lock' _in_side of the same.

'Cause--you know why? 'Tis ve'y 'umid in that building. An tha.s.s a thing w'at I believe, Mistoo Itchlin; I believe w'en a building is v'ey 'umid it is not ve'y 'ealthsome. What is yo' opinion consunning that, Mistoo Itchlin?"

"My opinion?" said Richling, with a smile. "My opinion is that the Parish Prison would not be a good place to raise a family."

Narcisse laughed.

"I thing yo' _o_pinion is co'ect," he said, flatteringly; then growing instantly serious, he added, "Yesseh, I think you' about a-'ight, Mistoo Itchlin; faw even if 'twas not too 'umid, 'twould be too confining, in fact,--speshly faw child'en. I dunno; but tha.s.s my opinion. If you ah p'oceeding at yo' residence, Mistoo Itchlin, I'll juz _con_tinue my p'omenade in yo' society--if not intooding"--