WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Three days Mary's letter lay unanswered. About dusk of the third, as
Richling was hurrying across the yard of the bakery on some errand
connected with the establishment, a light touch was laid upon his
shoulder; a peculiar touch, which he recognized in an instant. He turned
in the gloom and exclaimed, in a whisper:--
"Why, Ristofalo!"
"Howdy?" said Raphael, in his usual voice.
"Why, how did you get out?" asked Richling. "Have you escaped?"
"No. Just come out for little air. Captain of the prison and me. Not
captain, exactly; one of the keepers. Goin' back some time to-night." He
stood there in his old-fashioned way, gently smiling, and looking as
immovable as a piece of granite. "Have you heard from wife lately?"
"Yes," said Richling. "But--why--I don't understand. You and the jailer
out together?"
"Yes, takin' a little stroll 'round. He's out there in the street. You
can see him on door-step 'cross yonder. Pretty drunk, eh?" The Italian's
smile broadened for a moment, then came back to its usual self again. "I
jus' lef' Kate at home. Thought I'd come see you a little while."
"Return calls?" suggested Richling.
"Yes, return call. Your wife well?"
"Yes. But--why, this is the drollest"-- He stopped short, for the
Italian's gravity indicated his opinion that there had been enough
amusement shown. "Yes, she's well, thank you. By-the-by, what do you
think of my letting her come out here now and begin life over again?
Doesn't it seem to you it's high time, if we're ever going to do it at
all?"
"What you think?" asked Ristofalo.
"Well, now, you answer my question first."
"No, you answer me first."
"I can't. I haven't decided. I've been three days thinking about it. It
may seem like a small matter to hesitate so long over"--Richling paused
for his hearer to dissent.
"Yes," said Ristofalo, "pretty small." His smile remained the same. "She
ask you? Reckon you put her up to it, eh?"
"I don't see why you should reckon that," said Richling, with resentful
coldness.
"I dunno," said the Italian; "thought so--that's the way fellows do
sometimes." There was a pause. Then he resumed: "I wouldn't let her come
yet. Wait."
"For what?"
"See which way the cat goin' to jump."
Richling laughed unpleasantly.
"What do you mean by that?" he inquired.
"We goin' to have war," said Raphael Ristofalo.
"Ho! ho! ho! Why, Ristofalo, you were never more mistaken in your life!"
"I dunno," replied the Italian, sticking in his tracks, "think it pretty
certain. I read all the papers every day; nothin' else to do in parish
prison. Think we see war nex' winter."
"Ristofalo, a man of your sort can hardly conceive the amount of
bluster this country can stand without coming to blows. We Americans are
not like you Italians."
"No," responded Ristofalo, "not much like." His smile changed
peculiarly. "Wasn't for Kate, I go to Italia now."
"Kate and the parish prison," said Richling.
"Oh!"--the old smile returned,--"I get out that place any time I want."
"And you'd join Garibaldi, I suppose?" The news had just come of
Garibaldi in Sicily.
"Yes," responded the Italian. There was a twinkle deep in his eyes as he
added: "I know Garibaldi."
"Indeed!"
"Yes. Sailed under him when he was ship-cap'n. He knows me."
"And I dare say he'd remember you," said Richling, with enthusiasm.
"He remember me," said the quieter man. "Well,--must go. Good-e'nin'.
Better tell yo' wife wait a while."
"I--don't know. I'll see. Ristofalo"--
"What?"
"I want to quit this business."
"Better not quit. Stick to one thing."
"But you never did that. You never did one thing twice in succession."
"There's heap o' diff'ence."
"I don't see it. What is it?"
But the Italian only smiled and shrugged, and began to move away. In a
moment he said:--
"You see, Mr. Richlin', you sen' for yo' wife, you can't risk change o'
business. You change business, you can't risk sen' for yo' wife. Well,
good-night."
Richling was left to his thoughts. Naturally they were of the man whom
he still saw, in his imagination, picking his jailer up off the
door-step and going back to prison. Who could say that this man might
not any day make just such a lion's leap into the world's arena as
Garibaldi had made, and startle the nations as Garibaldi had done? What
was that red-shirted scourge of tyrants that this man might not be?
Sailor, soldier, hero, patriot, prisoner! See Garibaldi: despising the
restraints of law; careless of the simplest conventionalities that go to
make up an honest gentleman; doing both right and wrong--like a lion;
everything in him leonine. All this was in Ristofalo's reach. It was all
beyond Richling's. Which was best, the capability or the incapability?
It was a question he would have liked to ask Mary.
Well, at any rate, he had strength now for one thing--"one pretty small
thing." He would answer her letter. He answered it, and wrote: "Don't
come; wait a little while." He put aside all those sweet lovers'
pictures that had been floating before his eyes by night and day, and
bade her stay until the summer, with its risks to health, should have
passed, and she could leave her mother well and strong.
It was only a day or two afterward that he fell sick. It was provoking
to have such a cold and not know how he caught it, and to have it in
such fine weather. He was in bed some days, and was robbed of much sleep
by a cough. Mrs. Reisen found occasion to tell Dr. Sevier of Mary's
desire, as communicated to her by "Mr. Richlin'," and of the advice she
had given him.
"And he didn't send for her, I suppose."
"No, sir."
"Well, Mrs. Reisen, I wish you had kept your advice to yourself." The
Doctor went to Richling's bedside.
"Richling, why don't you send for your wife?"
The patient floundered in the bed and drew himself up on his pillow.
"O Doctor, just listen!" He smiled incredulously. "Bring that little
woman and her baby down here just as the hot season is beginning?" He
thought a moment, and then continued: "I'm afraid, Doctor, you're
prescribing for homesickness. Pray don't tell me that's my ailment."
"No, it's not. You have a bad cough, that you must take care of; but
still, the other is one of the counts in your case, and you know how
quickly Mary and--the little girl would cure it."
Richling smiled again.
"I can't do that, Doctor; when I go to Mary, or send for her, on account
of homesickness, it must be hers, not mine."
"Well, Mrs. Reisen," said the Doctor, outside the street door, "I hope
you'll remember my request."
"I'll tdo udt, Dtoctor," was the reply, so humbly spoken that he
repented half his harshness.
"I suppose you've often heard that 'you can't make a silk purse of a
sow's ear,' haven't you?" he asked.
"Yes; I pin right often heeard udt." She spoke as though she was not
wedded to any inflexible opinion concerning the proposition.
"Well, Mrs. Reisen, as a man once said to me, 'neither can you make a
sow's ear out of a silk purse.'"
"Vell, to be cettaintly!" said the poor woman, drawing not the shadow of
an inference; "how kin you?"
"Mr. Richling tells me he will write to Mrs. Richling to prepare to come
down in the fall."
"Vell," exclaimed the delighted Mrs. Reisen, in her husband's best
manner, "t'at's te etsectly I atwised him!" And, as the Doctor drove
away, she rubbed her mighty hands around each other in restored
complacency. Two or three days later she had the additional pleasure of
seeing Richling up and about his work again. It was upon her motherly
urging that he indulged himself, one calm, warm afternoon, in a walk in
the upper part of the city.