THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT.
Dr. Sevier was daily overtasked. His campaigns against the evils of our
disordered flesh had even kept him from what his fellow-citizens thought
was only his share of attention to public affairs.
"Why," he cried to a committee that came soliciting his cooeperation,
"here's one little unprofessional call that I've been trying every day
for two weeks to make--and ought to have made--and must make; and I
haven't got a step toward it yet. Oh, no, gentlemen!" He waved their
request away.
He was very tired. The afternoon was growing late. He dismissed his
jaded horse toward home, walked down to Canal street, and took that
yellow Bayou-Road omnibus whose big blue star painted on its corpulent
side showed that quadroons, etc., were allowed a share of its
accommodation, and went rumbling and tumbling over the cobble-stones
of the French quarter.
By and by he got out, walked a little way southward in the hot, luminous
shade of low-roofed tenement cottages that closed their window-shutters
noiselessly, in sensitive-plant fashion, at his slow, meditative
approach, and slightly and as noiselessly reopened them behind him,
showing a pair of wary eyes within. Presently he recognized just ahead
of him, standing out on the sidewalk, the little house that had been
described to him by Mary.
In a door-way that opened upon two low wooden sidewalk steps stood Mrs.
Riley, clad in a crisp black and white calico, a heavy, fat babe poised
easily in one arm. The Doctor turned directly toward the narrow alley,
merely touching his hat to her as he pushed its small green door inward,
and disappeared, while she lifted her chin at the silent liberty and
dropped her eyelids.
Dr. Sevier went down the cramped, ill-paved passage very slowly and
softly. Regarding himself objectively, he would have said the deep shade
of his thoughts was due partly, at least, to his fatigue. But that would
hardly have accounted for a certain faint glow of indignation that came
into them. In truth, he began distinctly to resent this state of affairs
in the life of John and Mary Richling. An ill-defined anger beat about
in his brain in search of some tangible shortcoming of theirs upon which
to thrust the blame of their helplessness. "Criminal helplessness," he
called it, mutteringly. He tried to define the idea--or the idea tried
to define itself--that they had somehow been recreant to their social
caste, by getting down into the condition and estate of what one may
call the alien poor. Carondelet street had in some way specially vexed
him to-day, and now here was this. It was bad enough, he thought, for
men to slip into riches through dark back windows; but here was a brace
of youngsters who had glided into poverty, and taken a place to which
they had no right to stoop. Treachery,--that was the name for it. And
now he must be expected,--the Doctor quite forgot that nobody had asked
him to do it,--he must be expected to come fishing them out of their
hole, like a rag-picker at a trash barrel.
--"Bringing me into this wretched alley!" he silently thought. His foot
slipped on a mossy brick. Oh, no doubt they thought they were punishing
some negligent friend or friends by letting themselves down into this
sort of thing. Never mind! He recalled the tender, confiding, friendly
way in which he had talked to John, sitting on the edge of his hospital
bed. He wished, now, he had every word back he had uttered. They might
hide away to the full content of their poverty-pride. Poverty-pride: he
had invented the term; it was the opposite pole to purse-pride--and just
as mean,--no, meaner. There! Must he yet slip down? He muttered an angry
word. Well, well, this was making himself a little the cheapest he had
ever let himself be made. And probably this was what they wanted!
Misery's revenge. Umhum! They sit down in sour darkness, eh! and make
relief seek them. It wouldn't be the first time he had caught the poor
taking savage comfort in the blush which their poverty was supposed to
bring to the cheek of better-kept kinsfolk. True, he didn't know this
was the case with the Richlings. But wasn't it? Wasn't it? And have they
a dog, that will presently hurl himself down this alley at one's legs?
He hopes so. He would so like to kick him clean over the twelve-foot
close plank fence that crowded his right shoulder. Never mind! His anger
became solemn.
The alley opened into a small, narrow yard, paved with ashes from the
gas-works. At the bottom of the yard a rough shed spanned its breadth,
and a woman was there, busily bending over a row of wash-tubs.
The Doctor knocked on a door near at hand, then waited a moment, and,
getting no response, turned away toward the shed and the deep, wet,
burring sound of a wash-board. The woman bending over it did not hear
his footfall. Presently he stopped. She had just straightened up,
lifting a piece of the washing to the height of her head, and letting it
down with a swash and slap upon the board. It was a woman's garment,
but certainly not hers. For she was small and slight. Her hair was
hidden under a towel. Her skirts were shortened to a pair of dainty
ankles by an extra under-fold at the neat, round waist. Her feet were
thrust into a pair of sabots. She paused a moment in her work, and,
lifting with both smoothly rounded arms, bared nearly to the shoulder, a
large apron from her waist, wiped the perspiration from her forehead. It
was Mary.
The red blood came up into the Doctor's pale, thin face. This was too
outrageous. This was insult! He stirred as if to move forward. He would
confront her. Yes, just as she was. He would speak. He would speak
bluntly. He would chide sternly. He had the right. The only friend in
the world from whom she had not escaped beyond reach,--he would speak
the friendly, angry word that would stop this shocking--
But, truly, deeply incensed as he was, and felt it his right to be,
hurt, wrung, exasperated, he did not advance. She had reached down and
taken from the wash-bench the lump of yellow soap that lay there, and
was soaping the garment on the board before her, turning it this way and
that. As she did this she began, all to herself and for her own ear,
softly, with unconscious richness and tenderness of voice, to sing. And
what was her song?
"Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?"
Down drooped the listener's head. Remember? Ah, memory!--The old,
heart-rending memory! Sweet Alice!
"Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown?"
Yes, yes; so brown!--so brown!
"She wept with delight when you gave her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your frown."
Ah! but the frown is gone! There is a look of supplication now. Sing no
more! Oh, sing no more! Yes, surely, she will stop there!
No. The voice rises gently--just a little--into the higher key, soft and
clear as the note of a distant bird, and all unaware of a listener. Oh!
in mercy's name--
"In the old church-yard in the valley, Ben Bolt,
In a corner obscure and alone,
They have fitted a slab of granite so gray,
And sweet Alice lies under the stone."
The little toiling figure bent once more across the wash-board and began
to rub. He turned, the first dew of many a long year welling from each
eye, and stole away, out of the little yard and down the dark, slippery
alley, to the street.
Mrs. Riley still stood on the door-sill, holding the child.
"Good-evening, madam!"
"Sur, to you." She bowed with dignity.
"Is Mrs. Richling in?"
There was a shadow of triumph in her faint smile.
"She is."
"I should like to see her."
Mrs. Riley hoisted her chin. "I dunno if she's a-seein' comp'ny to-day."
The voice was amiably important. "Wont ye walk in? Take a seat and sit
down, sur, and I'll go and infarm the laydie."
"Thank you," said the Doctor, but continued to stand.
Mrs. Riley started and stopped again.
"Ye forgot to give me yer kyaird, sur." She drew her chin in again
austerely.
"Just say Dr. Sevier."
"Certainly, sur; yes, that'll be sufficiend. And dispinse with the
kyaird." She went majestically.
The Doctor, left alone, cast his uninterested glance around the smart
little bare-floored parlor, upon its new, jig-sawed, gray hair-cloth
furniture, and up upon a picture of the Pope. When Mrs. Riley, in a
moment, returned he stood looking out the door.
"Mrs. Richling consints to see ye, sur. She'll be in turreckly. Take a
seat and sit down." She readjusted the infant on her arm and lifted and
swung a hair-cloth arm-chair toward him without visible exertion.
"There's no use o' having chayers if ye don't sit on um," she added
affably.
The Doctor sat down, and Mrs. Riley occupied the exact centre of the
small, wide-eared, brittle-looking sofa, where she filled in the silent
moments that followed by pulling down the skirts of the infant's
apparel, oppressed with the necessity of keeping up a conversation and
with the want of subject-matter. The child stared at the Doctor, and
suddenly plunged toward him with a loud and very watery coo.
"Ah-h!" said Mrs. Riley, in ostentatious rebuke. "Mike!" she cried,
laughingly, as the action was repeated. "Ye rowdy, air ye go-un to fight
the gintleman?"
She laughed sincerely, and the Doctor could but notice how neat and
good-looking she was. He condescended to crook his finger at the babe.
This seemed to exasperate the so-called rowdy. He planted his pink feet
on his mother's thigh and gave a mighty lunge and whoop.
"He's go-un to be a wicked bruiser," said proud Mrs. Riley. "He"--the
pronoun stood, this time, for her husband--"he never sah the child. He
was kilt with an explosion before the child was barn."
She held the infant on her strong arm as he struggled to throw himself,
with wide-stretched jaws, upon her bosom; and might have been devoured
by the wicked bruiser had not his attention been diverted by the
entrance of Mary, who came in at last, all in fragrant white, with
apologies for keeping the Doctor waiting.
He looked down into her uplifted eyes. What a riddle is woman! Had he
not just seen this one in sabots? Did she not certainly know, through
Mrs. Riley, that he must have seen her so? Were not her skirts but just
now hitched up with an under-tuck, and fastened with a string? Had she
not just laid off, in hot haste, a suds-bespattered apron and the
garments of toil beneath it? Had not a towel been but now unbound from
the hair shining here under his glance in luxuriant brown coils? This
brightness of eye, that seemed all exhilaration, was it not trepidation
instead? And this rosiness, so like redundant vigor, was it not the
flush of her hot task? He fancied he saw--in truth he may have seen--a
defiance in the eyes as he glanced upon, and tardily dropped, the little
water-soaked hand with a bow.
Mary turned to present Mrs. Riley, who bowed and said, trying to hold
herself with majesty while Mike drew her head into his mouth: "Sur,"
then turned with great ceremony to Mary, and adding, "I'll withdrah,"
withdrew with the head and step of a duchess.
"How is your husband, madam?"
"John?--is not well at all, Doctor; though he would say he was if he
were here. He doesn't shake off his chills. He is out, though, looking
for work. He'd go as long as he could stand."
She smiled; she almost laughed; but half an eye could see it was only to
avoid the other thing.
"Where does he go?"
"Everywhere!" She laughed this time audibly.
"If he went everywhere I should see him," said Dr. Sevier.
"Ah! naturally," responded Mary, playfully. "But he does go wherever he
thinks there's work to be found. He doesn't wander clear out among the
plantations, of course, where everybody has slaves, and there's no work
but slaves' work. And he says it's useless to think of a clerkship this
time of year. It must be, isn't it?"
The Doctor made no answer.
There was a footstep in the alley.
"He's coming now," said Mary,--"that's he. He must have got work to-day.
He has an acquaintance, an Italian, who promised to have something for
him to do very soon. Doctor,"--she began to put together the split
fractions of a palm-leaf fan, smiling diffidently at it the while,--"I
can't see how it is any discredit to a man not to have a _knack_ for
making money?"
She lifted her peculiar look of radiant inquiry.
"It is not, madam."
Mary laughed for joy. The light of her face seemed to spread clear into
her locks.
"Well, I knew you'd say so! John blames himself; he can make money, you
know, Doctor, but he blames himself because he hasn't that natural gift
for it that Mr. Ristofalo has. Why, Mr. Ristofalo is simply wonderful!"
She smiled upon her fan in amused reminiscence. "John is always wishing
he had his gift."
"My dear madam, don't covet it! At least don't exchange it for anything
else."
The Doctor was still in this mood of disapprobation when John entered.
The radiancy of the young husband's greeting hid for a moment, but only
so long, the marks of illness and adversity. Mary followed him with her
smiling eyes as the two men shook hands, and John drew a chair near to
her and sat down with a sigh of mingled pleasure and fatigue.
She told him of whom she and their visitor had just been speaking.
"Raphael Ristofalo!" said John, kindling afresh. "Yes; I've been with
him all day. It humiliates me to think of him."
Dr. Sevier responded quietly:--
"You've no right to let it humiliate you, sir."
Mary turned to John with dancing eyes, but he passed the utterance as a
mere compliment, and said, through his smiles:--
"Just see how it is to-day. I have been overseeing the unloading of a
little schooner from Ruatan island loaded with bananas, cocoanuts, and
pine-apples. I've made two dollars; he has made a hundred."
Richling went on eagerly to tell about the plain, lustreless man whose
one homely gift had fascinated him. The Doctor was entertained. The
narrator sparkled and glowed as he told of Ristofalo's appearance, and
reproduced his speeches and manner.
"Tell about the apples and eggs," said the delighted Mary.
He did so, sitting on the front edge of his chair-seat, and sprawling
his legs now in front and now behind him as he swung now around to his
wife and now to the Doctor. Mary laughed softly at every period, and
watched the Doctor, to see his slight smile at each detail of the story.
Richling enjoyed telling it; he had worked; his earnings were in his
pocket; gladness was easy.
"Why, I'm learning more from Raphael Ristofalo than I ever learned from
my school-masters: I'm learning the art of livelihood."
He ran on from Ristofalo to the men among whom he had been mingling all
day. He mimicked the strange, long swing of their Sicilian speech; told
of their swarthy faces and black beards, their rich instinct for color
in costume; their fierce conversation and violent gestures; the energy
of their movements when they worked, and the profoundness of their
repose when they rested; the picturesqueness and grotesqueness of the
negroes, too; the huge, flat, round baskets of fruit which the black men
carried on their heads, and which the Sicilians bore on their shoulders
or the nape of the neck. The "captain" of the schooner was a central
figure.
"Doctor," asked Richling, suddenly, "do you know anything about the
island of Cozumel?"
"Aha!" thought Mary. So there was something besides the day's earning
that elated him.
She had suspected it. She looked at her husband with an expression of
the most alert pleasure. The Doctor noticed it.
"No," he said, in reply to Richling's question.
"It stands out in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Yucatan," began
Richling.
"Yes, I know that."
"Well, Mary, I've almost promised the schooner captain that we'll go
there. He wants to get up a colony."
Mary started.
"Why, John!" She betrayed a look of dismay, glanced at their visitor,
tried to say "Have you?" approvingly, and blushed.
The Doctor made no kind of response.
"Now, don't conclude," said John to Mary, coloring too, but smiling. He
turned to the physician. "It's a wonderful spot, Doctor."
But the Doctor was still silent, and Richling turned.
"Just to think, Mary, of a place where you can raise all the products of
two zones; where health is almost perfect; where the yellow fever has
never been; and where there is such beauty as can be only in the tropics
and a tropical sea. Why, Doctor, I can't understand why Europeans or
Americans haven't settled it long ago."
"I suppose we can find out before we go, can't we?" said Mary, looking
timorously back and forth between John and the Doctor.
"The reason is," replied John, "it's so little known. Just one island
away out by itself. Three crops of fruit a year. One acre planted in
bananas feeds fifty men. All the capital a man need have is an axe to
cut down the finest cabinet and dye-woods in the world. The thermometer
never goes above ninety nor below forty. You can hire all the labor you
want at a few cents a day."
Mary's diligent eye detected a cloud on the Doctor's face. But John,
though nettled, pushed on the more rapidly.
"A man can make--easily!--a thousand dollars the first year, and live on
two hundred and fifty. It's the place for a poor man."
He looked a little defiant.
"Of course," said Mary, "I know you wouldn't come to an opinion"--she
smiled with the same restless glance--"until you had made all the
inquiries necessary. It mu--must--be a delightful place. Doctor?"
Her eyes shone blue as the sky.
"I wouldn't send a convict to such a place," said Dr. Sevier.
Richling flamed up.
"Don't you think," he began to say with visible restraint and a faint,
ugly twist of the head,--"don't you think it's a better place for a poor
man than a great, heartless town?"
"This isn't a heartless town," said the Doctor.
"He doesn't mean it as you do, Doctor," interposed Mary, with alarm.
"John, you ought to explain."
"Than a great town," said Richling, "where a man of honest intentions
and real desire to live and be useful and independent; who wants to earn
his daily bread at any honorable cost, and who can't do it because the
town doesn't want his services, and will not have them--can
go"-- He ceased, with his sentence all tangled.
"No!" the Doctor was saying meanwhile. "No! No! No!"
"Here I go, day after day," persisted Richling, extending his arm and
pointing indefinitely through the window.
"No, no, you don't, John," cried Mary, with an effort at gayety; "you
don't go by the window, John; you go by the door." She pulled his arm
down tenderly.
"I go by the alley," said John. Silence followed. The young pair
contrived to force a little laugh, and John made an apologetic move.
"Doctor," he exclaimed, with an air of pleasantry, "the whole town's
asleep!--sound asleep, like a negro in the sunshine! There isn't work
for one man in fifty!" He ended tremulously. Mary looked at him with
dropped face but lifted eyes, handling the fan, whose rent she had made
worse.
"Richling, my friend,"--the Doctor had never used that term
before,--"what does your Italian money-maker say to the idea?"
Richling gave an Italian shrug and his own pained laugh.
"Exactly! Why, Mr. Richling, you're on an island now,--an island in
mid-ocean. Both of you!" He waved his hands toward the two without
lifting his head from the back of the easy-chair, where he had dropped
it.
"What do you mean, Doctor?"
"Mean? Isn't my meaning plain enough? I mean you're too independent.
You know very well, Richling, that you've started out in life with some
fanciful feud against the 'world.' What it is I don't know, but I'm sure
it's not the sort that religion requires. You've told this world--you
remember you said it to me once--that if it will go one road you'll
go another. You've forgotten that, mean and stupid and bad as your
fellow-creatures are, they're your brothers and sisters, and that
they have claims on you as such, and that you have claims on them as
such.--Cozumel! You're there now! Has a friend no rights? I don't know
your immediate relatives, and I say nothing about them"--
John gave a slight start, and Mary looked at him suddenly.
"But here am I," continued the speaker. "Is it just to me for you to
hide away here in want that forces you and your wife--I beg your pardon,
madam--into mortifying occupations, when one word to me--a trivial
obligation, not worthy to be called an obligation, contracted with
me--would remove that necessity, and tide you over the emergency of the
hour?"
Richling was already answering, not by words only, but by his confident
smile:--
"Yes, sir; yes, it is just: ask Mary."
"Yes, Doctor," interposed the wife. "We went over"--
"We went over it together," said John. "We weighed it well. It _is_
just,--not to ask aid as long as there's hope without it."
The Doctor responded with the quiet air of one who is sure of his
position:--
"Yes, I see. But, of course--I know without asking--you left the
question of health out of your reckoning. Now, Richling, put the whole
world, if you choose, in a selfish attitude"--
"No, no," said Richling and his wife. "Ah, no!" But the Doctor
persisted.
"--a purely selfish attitude. Wouldn't it, nevertheless, rather help a
well man or woman than a sick one? Wouldn't it pay better?"
"Yes, but"--
"Yes," said the Doctor. "But you're taking the most desperate risks
against health and life." He leaned forward in his chair, jerked in his
legs, and threw out his long white hands. "You're committing slow
suicide."
"Doctor," began Mary; but her husband had the floor.
"Doctor," he said, "can you put yourself in our place? Wouldn't you
rather die than beg? _Wouldn't_ you?"
The Doctor rose to his feet as straight as a lance.
"It isn't what you'd rather, sir! You haven't your choice! You haven't
your choice at all, sir! When God gets ready for you to die he'll let
you know, sir! And you've no right to trifle with his mercy in the
meanwhile. I'm not a man to teach men to whine after each other for aid;
but every principle has its limitations, Mr. Richling. You say you went
over the whole subject. Yes; well, didn't you strike the fact that
suicide is an affront to civilization and humanity?"
"Why, Doctor!" cried the other two, rising also. "We're not going to
commit suicide."
"No," retorted he, "you're not. That's what I came here to tell you. I'm
here to prevent it."
"Doctor," exclaimed Mary, the big tears standing in her eyes, and the
Doctor melting before them like wax, "it's not so bad as it looks. I
wash--some--because it pays so much better than sewing. I find I'm
stronger than any one would believe. I'm stronger than I ever was before
in my life. I am, indeed. I _don't_ wash _much_. And it's only for the
present. We'll all be laughing at this, some time, together." She began
a small part of the laugh then and there.
"You'll do it no more," the Doctor replied. He drew out his pocket-book.
"Mr. Richling, will you please send me through the mail, or bring me,
your note for fifty dollars,--at your leisure, you know,--payable on
demand?" He rummaged an instant in the pocket-book, and extended his
hand with a folded bank-note between his thumb and finger. But Richling
compressed his lips and shook his head, and the two men stood silently
confronting each other. Mary laid her hand upon her husband's shoulder
and leaned against him, with her eyes on the Doctor's face.
"Come, Richling,"--the Doctor smiled,--"your friend Ristofalo did not
treat you in this way."
"I never treated Ristofalo so," replied Richling, with a smile tinged
with bitterness. It was against himself that he felt bitter; but the
Doctor took it differently, and Richling, seeing this, hurried to
correct the impression.
"I mean I lent him no such amount as that."
"It was just one-fiftieth of that," said Mary.
"But you gave liberally, without upbraiding," said the Doctor.
"Oh, no, Doctor! no!" exclaimed she, lifting the hand that lay on her
husband's near shoulder and reaching it over to the farther one. "Oh! a
thousand times no! John never meant that. Did you, John?"
"How could I?" said John. "No!" Yet there was confession in his look. He
had not meant it, but he had felt it.
Dr. Sevier sat down, motioned them into their seats, drew the arm-chair
close to theirs. Then he spoke. He spoke long, and as he had not spoken
anywhere but at the bedside scarce ever in his life before. The young
husband and wife forgot that he had ever said a grating word. A soft
love-warmth began to fill them through and through. They seemed to
listen to the gentle voice of an older and wiser brother. A hand of Mary
sank unconsciously upon a hand of John. They smiled and assented, and
smiled, and assented, and Mary's eyes brimmed up with tears, and John
could hardly keep his down. The Doctor made the whole case so plain and
his propositions so irresistibly logical that the pair looked from his
eyes to each other's and laughed. "Cozumel!" They did not utter the
name; they only thought of it both at one moment. It never passed their
lips again. Their visitor brought them to an arrangement. The fifty
dollars were to be placed to John's credit on the books kept by
Narcisse, as a deposit from Richling, and to be drawn against by him in
such littles as necessity might demand. It was to be "secured"--they all
three smiled at that word--by Richling's note payable on demand. The
Doctor left a prescription for the refractory chills.
As he crossed Canal street, walking in slow meditation homeward at the
hour of dusk, a tall man standing against a wall, tin cup in hand,--a
full-fledged mendicant of the steam-boiler explosion, tin-proclamation
type,--asked his alms. He passed by, but faltered, stopped, let his hand
down into his pocket, and looked around to see if his pernicious example
was observed. None saw him. He felt--he saw himself--a drivelling
sentimentalist. But weak, and dazed, sore wounded of the archers, he
turned and dropped a dime into the beggar's cup.
Richling was too restless with the joy of relief to sit or stand. He
trumped up an errand around the corner, and hardly got back before he
contrived another. He went out to the bakery for some crackers--fresh
baked--for Mary; listened to a long story across the baker's counter,
and when he got back to his door found he had left the crackers at the
bakery. He went back for them and returned, the blood about his heart
still running and leaping and praising God.
"The sun at midnight!" he exclaimed, knitting Mary's hands in his.
"You're very tired. Go to bed. Me? I can't yet. I'm too restless."
He spent more than an hour chatting with Mrs. Riley, and had never found
her so "nice" a person before; so easy comes human fellowship when we
have had a stroke of fortune. When he went again to his room there was
Mary kneeling by the bedside, with her head slipped under the snowy
mosquito net, all in fine linen, white as the moonlight, frilled and
broidered, a remnant of her wedding glory gleaming through the long,
heavy wefts of her unbound hair.
"Why, Mary"--
There was no answer.
"Mary?" he said again, laying his hand upon her head.
The head was slowly lifted. She smiled an infant's smile, and dropped
her cheek again upon the bedside. She had fallen asleep at the foot of
the Throne.
At that same hour, in an upper chamber of a large, distant house, there
knelt another form, with bared, bowed head, but in the garb in which it
had come in from the street. Praying? This white thing overtaken by
sleep here was not more silent. Yet--yes, praying. But, all the while,
the prayer kept running to a little tune, and the words repeating
themselves again and again; "Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice--with
hair so brown--so brown--so brown? Sweet Alice, with hair so brown?" And
God bent his ear and listened.