RELEASE.--NARCISSE.
As some children were playing in the street before the Parish Prison
next morning, they suddenly started and scampered toward the prison's
black entrance. A physician's carriage had driven briskly up to it,
ground its wheels against the curb-stone, and halted. If any fresh
crumbs of horror were about to be dropped, the children must be there to
feast on them. Dr. Sevier stepped out, gave Mary his hand and then his
arm, and went in with her. A question or two in the prison office, a
reference to the rolls, and a turnkey led the way through a dark gallery
lighted with dimly burning gas. The stench was suffocating. They stopped
at the inner gate.
"Why didn't you bring him to us?" asked the Doctor, scowling resentfully
at the facetious drawings and legends on the walls, where the dampness
glistened in the sickly light.
The keeper made a low reply as he shot the bolts.
"What?" quickly asked Mary.
"He's not well," said Dr. Sevier.
The gate swung open. They stepped into the yard and across it. The
prisoners paused in a game of ball. Others, who were playing cards,
merely glanced up and went on. The jailer pointed with his bunch of keys
to a cell before him. Mary glided away from the Doctor and darted in.
There was a cry and a wail.
The Doctor followed quickly. Ristofalo passed out as he entered.
Richling lay on a rough gray blanket spread on the pavement with the
Italian's jacket under his head. Mary had thrown herself down beside him
upon her knees, and their arms were around each other's neck.
"Let me see, Mrs. Richling," said the physician, touching her on the
shoulder. She drew back. Richling lifted a hand in welcome. The Doctor
pressed it.
"Mrs. Richling," he said, as they faced each other, he on one knee, she
on both. He gave her a few laconic directions for the sick man's better
comfort. "You must stay here, madam," he said at length; "this man
Ristofalo will be ample protection for you; and I will go at once and
get your husband's discharge." He went out.
In the office he asked for a seat at a desk. As he finished using it he
turned to the keeper and asked, with severe face:--
"What do you do with sick prisoners here, anyway?"
The keeper smiled.
"Why, if they gits right sick, the hospital wagon comes and takes 'em to
the Charity Hospital."
"Umhum!" replied the Doctor, unpleasantly,--"in the same wagon they use
for a case of scarlet fever or small-pox, eh?"
The keeper, with a little resentment in his laugh, stated that he would
be eternally lost if he knew.
"_I_ know," remarked the Doctor. "But when a man is only a little
sick,--according to your judgment,--like that one in there now, he is
treated here, eh?"
The keeper swelled with a little official pride. His tone was boastful.
"We has a complete dispenisary in the prison," he said.
"Yes? Who's your druggist?" Dr. Sevier was in his worst inquisitorial
mood.
"One of the prisoners," said the keeper.
The Doctor looked at him steadily. The man, in the blackness of his
ignorance, was visibly proud of this bit of economy and convenience.
"How long has he held this position?" asked the physician.
"Oh, a right smart while. He was sentenced for murder, but he's waiting
for a new trial."
"And he has full charge of all the drugs?" asked the Doctor, with a
cheerful smile.
"Yes, sir." The keeper was flattered.
"Poisons and all, I suppose, eh?" pursued the Doctor.
"Everything."
The Doctor looked steadily and silently upon the officer, and tore and
folded and tore again into small bits the prescription he had written. A
moment later the door of his carriage shut with a smart clap and its
wheels rattled away. There was a general laugh in the office, heavily
spiced with maledictions.
"I say, Cap', what d'you reckon he'd 'a' said if he'd 'a' seen the
women's department?"
* * *
In those days recorders had the power to release prisoners sentenced by
them when in their judgment new information justified such action. Yet
Dr. Sevier had a hard day's work to procure Richling's liberty. The sun
was declining once more when a hack drove up to Mrs. Riley's door with
John and Mary in it, and Mrs. Riley was restrained from laughing and
crying only by the presence of the great Dr. Sevier and a romantic
Italian stranger by the captivating name of Ristofalo. Richling, with
repeated avowals of his ability to walk alone, was helped into the house
between these two illustrious visitors, Mary hurrying in ahead, and Mrs.
Riley shutting the street door with some resentment of manner toward
the staring children who gathered without. Was there anything surprising
in the fact that eminent persons should call at her house?
When there was time for greetings she gave her hand to Dr. Sevier and
asked him how he found himself. To Ristofalo she bowed majestically. She
noticed that he was handsome and muscular.
At different hours the next day the same two visitors called. Also the
second day after. And the third. And frequently afterward.
* * *
Ristofalo regained his financial feet almost, as one might say, at a
single hand-spring. He amused Mary and John and Mrs. Riley almost beyond
limit with his simple story of how he did it.
"Ye'd better hurry and be getting up out o' that sick bed, Mr.
Richlin'," said the widow, in Ristofalo's absence, "or that I-talian
rascal'll be making himself entirely too agree'ble to yer lady here. Ha!
ha! It's _she_ that he's a-comin' here to see."
Mrs. Riley laughed again, and pointed at Mary and tossed her head, not
knowing that Mary went through it all over again as soon as Mrs. Riley
was out of the room, to the immense delight of John.
"And now, madam," said Dr. Sevier to Mary, by and by, "let it be
understood once more that even independence may be carried to a vicious
extreme, and that"--he turned to Richling, by whose bed he stood--"you
and your wife will not do it again. You've had a narrow escape. Is it
understood?"
"We'll try to be moderate," replied the invalid, playfully.
"I don't believe you," said the Doctor.
And his scepticism was wise. He continued to watch them, and at length
enjoyed the sight of John up and out again with color in his cheeks and
the old courage--nay, a new and a better courage--in his eyes.
Said the Doctor on his last visit, "Take good care of your husband, my
child." He held the little wife's hand a moment, and gazed out of Mrs.
Riley's front door upon the western sky. Then he transferred his gaze to
John, who stood, with his knee in a chair, just behind her. He looked at
the convalescent with solemn steadfastness. The husband smiled broadly.
"I know what you mean. I'll try to deserve her."
The Doctor looked again into the west.
"Good-by."
Mary tried playfully to retort, but John restrained her, and when she
contrived to utter something absurdly complimentary of her husband he
was her only hearer.
They went back into the house, talking of other matters. Something
turned the conversation upon Mrs. Riley, and from that subject it seemed
to pass naturally to Ristofalo. Mary, laughing and talking softly as
they entered their room, called to John's recollection the Italian's
account of how he had once bought a tarpaulin hat and a cottonade shirt
of the pattern called a "jumper," and had worked as a deck-hand in
loading and unloading steam-boats. It was so amusingly sensible to put
on the proper badge for the kind of work sought. Richling mused. Many a
dollar he might have earned the past summer, had he been as ingeniously
wise, he thought.
"Ristofalo is coming here this evening," said he, taking a seat in the
alley window.
Mary looked at him with sidelong merriment. The Italian was coming to
see Mrs. Riley.
"Why, John," whispered Mary, standing beside him, "she's nearly ten
years older than he is!"
But John quoted the old saying about a man's age being what he feels,
and a woman's what she looks.
"Why,--but--dear, it is scarcely a fortnight since she declared nothing
could ever induce"--
"Let her alone," said John, indulgently. "Hasn't she said half-a-dozen
times that it isn't good for woman to be alone? A widow's a woman--and
you never disputed it."
"O John," laughed Mary, "for shame! You know I didn't mean that. You
know I never could mean that."
And when John would have maintained his ground she besought him not to
jest in that direction, with eyes so ready for tears that he desisted.
"I only meant to be generous to Mrs. Riley," he said.
"I know it," said Mary, caressingly; "you're always on the generous side
of everything."
She rested her hand fondly on his arm, and he took it into his own.
One evening the pair were out for that sunset walk which their young
blood so relished, and which often led them, as it did this time, across
the wide, open commons behind the town, where the unsettled streets were
turf-grown, and toppling wooden lamp-posts threatened to fall into the
wide, cattle-trodden ditches.
"Fall is coming," said Mary.
"Let it come!" exclaimed John; "it's hung back long enough."
He looked about with pleasure. On every hand the advancing season was
giving promise of heightened activity. The dark, plumy foliage of the
china trees was getting a golden edge. The burnished green of the great
magnolias was spotted brilliantly with hundreds of bursting cones, red
with their pendent seeds. Here and there, as the sauntering pair came
again into the region of brick sidewalks, a falling cone would now and
then scatter its polished coral over the pavement, to be gathered by
little girls for necklaces, or bruised under foot, staining the walk
with its fragrant oil. The ligustrums bent low under the dragging weight
of their small clustered berries. The oranges were turning. In the wet,
choked ditches along the interruptions of pavement, where John followed
Mary on narrow plank footways, bloomed thousands of little unrenowned
asteroid flowers, blue and yellow, and the small, pink spikes of the
water pepper. It wasn't the fashionable habit in those days, but Mary
had John gather big bunches of this pretty floral mob, and filled her
room with them--not Mrs. Riley's parlor--whoop, no! Weeds? Not if Mrs.
Riley knew herself.
So ran time apace. The morning skies were gray monotones, and the
evening gorgeous reds. The birds had finished their summer singing.
Sometimes the alert chirp of the cardinal suddenly smote the ear from
some neighboring tree; but he would pass, a flash of crimson, from one
garden to the next, and with another chirp or two be gone for days. The
nervy, unmusical waking cry of the mocking-bird was often the first
daybreak sound. At times a myriad downy seed floated everywhere, now
softly upward, now gently downward, and the mellow rays of sunset turned
it into a warm, golden snow-fall. By night a soft glow from distant
burning prairies showed the hunters were afield; the call of unseen wild
fowl was heard overhead, and--finer to the waiting poor man's ear than
all other sounds--came at regular intervals, now from this quarter and
now from that, the heavy, rushing blast of the cotton compress, telling
that the flood tide of commerce was setting in.
Narcisse surprised the Richlings one evening with a call. They tried
very hard to be reserved, but they were too young for that task to be
easy. The Creole had evidently come with his mind made up to take
unresentfully and override all the unfriendliness they might choose to
show. His conversation never ceased, but flitted from subject to subject
with the swift waywardness of a humming-bird. It was remarked by Mary,
leaning back in one end of Mrs. Riley's little sofa, that "summer
dresses were disappearing, but that the girls looked just as sweet in
their darker colors as they had appeared in midsummer white. Had
Narcisse noticed? Probably he didn't care for"--
"Ho! I notiz them an' they notiz me! An' thass one thing I 'ave notiz
about young ladies: they ah juz like those bird'; in summeh lookin'
cool, in winteh waum. I 'ave notiz that. An' I've notiz anotheh thing
which make them juz like those bird'. They halways know if a man is
lookin', an' they halways make like they don't see 'im! I would like to
'ite an i'ony about that--a lill i'ony--in the he'oic measuh. You like
that he'oic measuh, Mizzez Witchlin'?"
As he rose to go he rolled a cigarette, and folded the end in with the
long nail of his little finger.
"Mizzez Witchlin', if you will allow me to light my ciga'ette fum yo'
lamp--I can't use my sun-glass at night, because the sun is nod theh.
But, the sun shining, I use it. I 'ave adop' that method since lately."
"You borrow the sun's rays," said Mary, with wicked sweetness.
"Yes; 'tis cheapeh than matches in the longue 'un."
"You have discovered that, I suppose," remarked John.
"Me? The sun-glass? No. I believe Ahchimides invend that, in fact. An'
yet, out of ten thousan' who use the sun-glass only a few can account
'ow tis done. 'Ow did you think that that's my invention, Mistoo
Itchlin? Did you know that I am something of a chimist? I can tu'n
litmus papeh 'ed by juz dipping it in SO_3HO. Yesseh."
"Yes," said Richling, "that's one thing that I have noticed, that you're
very fertile in devices."
"Yes," echoed Mary, "I noticed that, the first time you ever came to see
us. I only wish Mr. Richling was half as much so."
She beamed upon her husband. Narcisse laughed with pure pleasure.
"Well, I am compel' to say you ah co'ect. I am continually makin' some
discove'ies. 'Necessity's the motheh of inventions.' Now thass anotheh
thing I 'ave notiz--about that month of Octobeh: it always come befo'
you think it's comin'. I 'ave notiz that about eve'y month. Now, to-day
we ah the twennieth Octobeh! Is it not so?" He lighted his cigarette.
"You ah compel' to co'obo'ate me."