NESTING.
A fortnight passed. 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 Zenobie'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 passed 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 passed 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 ragamuffin, 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?"
No downward inflections from her.
"Well,"--the wife looked at the husband; he nodded,--"well, we'll take
it."
"Yes?" responded the landlady; "well?" leaning against a bedpost and
smiling with infantile diffidence, "you dunt want no ref'ence?"
"No," said John, generously, "oh, no; we can trust each other that far,
eh?"
"Oh, yes?" replied the sweet creature; then suddenly changing
countenance, as though she remembered something. "But daz de troub'--de
room not goin' be vacate for t'ree mont'."
She stretched forth her open palms and smiled, with one arm still around
the bedpost.
"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Richling, the very statue of astonishment, "you
said just now we could have it at once!"
"Dis room? _Oh_, no; nod _dis_ room."
"I don't see how I could have misunderstood you."
The landlady lifted her shoulders, smiled, and clasped her hands across
each other under her throat. Then throwing them apart she said
brightly:--
"No, I say at Madame La Rose. Me, my room is all fill'. At Madame La
Rose, I say, I think you be pritty well. I'm shoe you be verrie well
at Madame La Rose. I'm sorry. But you kin paz yondeh--'tiz juz ad the
cawneh? And I am shoe I think you be pritty well at Madame La Rose."
She kept up the repetition, though Mrs. Richling, incensed, had turned
her back, and Richling was saying good-day.
"She did say the room was vacant!" exclaimed the little wife, as they
reached the sidewalk. But the next moment there came a quick twinkle
from her eye, and, waving her husband to go on without her, she said,
"You kin paz yondeh; at Madame La Rose I am shoe you be pritty sick."
Thereupon she took his arm,--making everybody stare and smile to see a
lady and gentleman arm in arm by daylight,--and they went merrily on
their way.
The last place they stopped at was in Royal street. The entrance
was bad. It was narrow even for those two. The walls were stained by
dampness, and the smell of a totally undrained soil came up through the
floor. The stairs ascended a few steps, came too near a low ceiling, and
shot forward into cavernous gloom to find a second rising place
farther on. But the rooms, when reached, were a tolerably pleasant
disappointment, and the proprietress a person of reassuring amiability.
She bestirred herself in an obliging way that was the most charming
thing yet encountered. She gratified the young people every moment
afresh with her readiness to understand or guess their English queries
and remarks, hung her head archly when she had to explain away little
objections, delivered her No sirs with gravity and her Yes sirs with
bright eagerness, shook her head slowly with each negative announcement,
and accompanied her affirmations with a gracious bow and a smile full of
rice powder.
She rendered everything so agreeable, indeed, that it almost seemed
impolite to inquire narrowly into matters, and when the question of
price had to come up it was really difficult to bring it forward, and
Richling quite lost sight of the economic rules to which he had silently
acceded in the _Rue Du Maine_.
"And you will carpet the floor?" he asked, hovering off of the main
issue.
"Put coppit? Ah! cettainlee!" she replied, with a lovely bow and a wave
of the hand toward Mrs. Richling, whom she had already given the same
assurance.
"Yes," responded the little wife, with a captivated smile, and nodded to
her husband.
"We want to get the decentest thing that is cheap," he said, as the
three stood close together in the middle of the room.
The landlady flushed.
"No, no, John," said the wife, quickly, "don't you know what we said?"
Then, turning to the proprietress, she hurried to add, "We want the
cheapest thing that is decent."
But the landlady had not waited for the correction.
"_Dis_sent! You want somesin _dis_sent!" She moved a step backward on
the floor, scoured and smeared with brick-dust, her ire rising visibly
at every heart-throb, and pointing her outward-turned open hand
energetically downward, added:--
"'Tis yeh!" She breathed hard. "_Mais_, no; you don't _want_ somesin
dissent. No!" She leaned forward interrogatively: "You want somesin
tchip?" She threw both elbows to the one side, cast her spread hands
off in the same direction, drew the cheek on that side down into the
collar-bone, raised her eyebrows, and pushed her upper lip with her
lower, scornfully.
At that moment her ear caught the words of the wife's apologetic
amendment. They gave her fresh wrath and new opportunity. For her new
foe was a woman, and a woman trying to speak in defence of the husband
against whose arm she clung.
"Ah-h-h!" Her chin went up; her eyes shot lightning; she folded her arms
fiercely, and drew herself to her best height; and, as Richling's eyes
shot back in rising indignation, cried:--
"Ziss pless? 'Tis not ze pless! Zis pless--is diss'nt pless! I am
diss'nt woman, me! Fo w'at you come in yeh?"
"My dear madam! My husband"--
"Dass you' uzban'?" pointing at him.
"Yes!" cried the two Richlings at once.
The woman folded her arms again, turned half-aside, and, lifting her
eyes to the ceiling, simply remarked, with an ecstatic smile:--
"Humph!" and left the pair, red with exasperation, to find the street
again through the darkening cave of the stair-way.
* * *
It was still early the next morning, when Richling entered his wife's
apartment with an air of brisk occupation. She was pinning her brooch at
the bureau glass.
"Mary," he exclaimed, "put something on and come see what I've
found! The queerest, most romantic old thing in the city; the most
comfortable--and the cheapest! Here, is this the wardrobe key? To save
time I'll get your bonnet."
"No, no, no!" cried the laughing wife, confronting him with sparkling
eyes, and throwing herself before the wardrobe; "I can't let you touch
my bonnet!"
There is a limit, it seems, even to a wife's subserviency.
However, in a very short time afterward, by the feminine measure, they
were out in the street, and people were again smiling at the pretty pair
to see her arm in his, and she actually _keeping step_. 'Twas very
funny.
As they went John described his discovery: A pair of huge, solid green
gates immediately on the sidewalk, in the dull facade of a tall, red
brick building with old carved vinework on its window and door frames.
Hinges a yard long on the gates; over the gates a semi-circular grating
of iron bars an inch in diameter; in one of these gates a wicket, and
on the wicket a heavy, battered, highly burnished brass knocker. A
short-legged, big-bodied, and very black slave to usher one through the
wicket into a large, wide, paved corridor, where from the middle joist
overhead hung a great iron lantern. Big double doors at the far end,
standing open, flanked with diamond-paned side-lights of colored glass,
and with an arch at the same, fan-shaped, above. Beyond these doors and
showing through them, a flagged court, bordered all around by a narrow,
raised parterre under pomegranate and fruit-laden orange, and
over-towered by vine-covered and latticed walls, from whose ragged
eaves vagabond weeds laughed down upon the flowers of the parterre below,
robbed of late and early suns. Stairs old fashioned, broad; rooms, their
choice of two; one looking down into the court, the other into the
street; furniture faded, capacious; ceilings high; windows, each opening
upon its own separate small balcony, where, instead of balustrades, was
graceful iron scroll-work, centered by some long-dead owner's monogram
two feet in length; and on the balcony next the division wall, close to
another on the adjoining property, a quarter circle of iron-work set
like a blind-bridle, and armed with hideous prongs for house-breakers to
get impaled on.
"Why, in there," said Richling, softly, as they hurried in, "we'll be
hid from the whole world, and the whole world from us."
The wife's answer was only the upward glance of her blue eyes into his,
and a faint smile.
The place was all it had been described to be, and more,--except in one
particular.
"And my husband tells me"--The owner of said husband stood beside him,
one foot a little in advance of the other, her folded parasol hanging
down the front of her skirt from her gloved hands, her eyes just
returning to the landlady's from an excursion around the ceiling, and
her whole appearance as fresh as the pink flowers that nestled between
her brow and the rim of its precious covering. She smiled as she began
her speech, but not enough to spoil what she honestly believed to be a
very business-like air and manner. John had quietly dropped out of the
negotiations, and she felt herself put upon her mettle as his agent.
"And my husband tells me the price of this front room is ten dollars a
month."
"Munse?"
The respondent was a very white, corpulent woman, who constantly panted
for breath, and was everywhere sinking down into chairs, with her limp,
unfortified skirt dropping between her knees, and her hands pressed on
them exhaustedly.
"Munse?" She turned from husband to wife, and back again, a glance of
alarmed inquiry.
Mary tried her hand at French.
"Yes; _oui, madame_. Ten dollah the month--_le mois_."
Intelligence suddenly returned. Madame made a beautiful, silent O with
her mouth and two others with her eyes.
"Ah _non_! By munse? No, madame. Ah-h! impossybl'! By _wick_, yes; ten
dollah de wick! Ah!"
She touched her bosom with the wide-spread fingers of one hand and threw
them toward her hearers.
The room-hunters got away, yet not so quickly but they heard behind and
above them her scornful laugh, addressed to the walls of the empty room.
A day or two later they secured an apartment, cheap,
and--morally--decent; but otherwise--ah!