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; dass all," said the dealer. He was a Sicilian. "Lame
duck," he added. "Oael 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 passed, looked in, seemed to
hesitate, went on, turned, and passed 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 class 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 partition. Into one of these went
Mr. Raphael Ristofalo, the two boys, and the apples. Whose assistance 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."
"No. No apples to-day. But there's regiment soldiers at lower landing;
whole steam-boat load; going to sail this evenin' to Florida. They'll
eat whole barrel hard-boil' eggs."--And they did. When they sailed, the
Italian's pocket was stuffed with small silver.
Richling received his dollar and fifty cents. As he did so, "I would
give, if I had it, a hundred dollars for half your art," he said,
laughing unevenly. He was beaten, surpassed, humbled. Still he said,
"Come, don't you want this again? You needn't pay me for the use of it."
But the Italian refused. He had outgrown his patron. A week afterward
Richling saw him at the Picayune Tier, superintending the unloading of a
small schooner-load of bananas. He had bought the cargo, and was
reselling to small fruiterers.
"Make fifty dolla' to-day," said the Italian, marking his tally-board
with a piece of chalk.
Richling clapped him joyfully on the shoulder, but turned around with
inward distress and hurried away. He had not found work.
Events followed of which we have already taken knowledge. Mary, we have
seen, fell sick and was taken to the hospital.
"I shall go mad!" Richling would moan, with his dishevelled brows
between his hands, and then start to his feet, exclaiming, "I must not!
I must not! I must keep my senses!" And so to the commercial regions or
to the hospital.
Dr. Sevier, as we know, left word that Richling should call and see him;
but when he called, a servant--very curtly, it seemed to him--said the
Doctor was not well and didn't want to see anybody. This was enough for
a young man who _hadn't_ his senses. The more he needed a helping hand
the more unreasonably shy he became of those who might help him.
"Will nobody come and find us?" Yet he would not cry "Whoop!" and how,
then, was anybody to come?
Mary returned to the house again (ah! what joys there are in the vale of
tribulation!), and grew strong,--stronger, she averred, than ever she
had been.
"And now you'll _not_ be cast down, _will_ you?" she said, sliding into
her husband's lap. She was in an uncommonly playful mood.
"Not a bit of it," said John. "Every dog has his day. I'll come to the
top. You'll see."
"Don't I know that?" she responded, "Look here, now," she exclaimed,
starting to her feet and facing him, "_I'll_ recommend you to anybody.
_I've_ got confidence in you!" Richling thought she had never looked
quite so pretty as at that moment. He leaped from his chair with a
laughing ejaculation, caught and swung her an instant from her feet, and
landed her again before she could cry out. If, in retort, she smote him
so sturdily that she had to retreat backward to rearrange her shaken
coil of hair, it need not go down on the record; such things will
happen. The scuffle and suppressed laughter were detected even in Mrs.
Riley's room.
"Ah!" sighed the widow to herself, "wasn't it Kate Riley that used to
get the sweet, haird knocks!" Her grief was mellowing.
Richling went out on the old search, which the advancing summer made
more nearly futile each day than the day before.
Stop. What sound was that?
"Richling! Richling!"
Richling, walking in a commercial street, turned. A member of the firm
that had last employed him beckoned him to halt.
"What are you doing now, Richling? Still acting deputy assistant city
surveyor _pro tem._?"
"Yes."
"Well, see here! Why haven't you been in the store to see us lately? Did
I seem a little preoccupied the last time you called?"
"I"--Richling dropped his eyes with an embarrassed smile--"_I was_
afraid I was in the way--or should be."
"Well and suppose you were? A man that's looking for work must put
himself in the way. But come with me. I think I may be able to give you
a lift."
"How's that?" asked Richling, as they started off abreast.
"There's a house around the corner here that will give you some
work,--temporary anyhow, and may be permanent."
So Richling was at work again, hidden away from Dr. Sevier between
journal and ledger. His employers asked for references. Richling looked
dismayed for a moment, then said, "I'll bring somebody to recommend me,"
went away, and came back with Mary.
"All the recommendation I've got," said he, with timid elation. There
was a laugh all round.
"Well, madam, if you say he's all right, we don't doubt he is!"