NOW I LAY ME--
Time may drag slowly, but it never drags backward. So the summer wore
on, Richling following his physician's directions; keeping to his work
only--out of public excitements and all overstrain; and to every day, as
he bade it good-by, his eager heart, lightened each time by that much,
said, "When you come around again, next year, Mary and I will meet you
hand in hand." This was _his_ excitement, and he seemed to flourish on
it.
But day by day, week by week, the excitements of the times rose. Dr.
Sevier was deeply stirred, and ever on the alert, looking out upon every
quarter of the political sky, listening to the rising thunder, watching
the gathering storm. There could hardly have been any one more
completely engrossed by it. If there was, it was his book-keeper. It
wasn't so much the Constitution that enlisted Narcisse's concern; nor
yet the Union, which seemed to him safe enough; much less did the desire
to see the enforcement of the laws consume him. Nor was it altogether
the "'oman candles" and the "'ockets"; but the rhetoric.
Ah, the "'eto'ic"! He bathed, he paddled, dove, splashed, in a surf of
it.
"Doctah,"--shaking his finely turned shoulders into his coat and lifting
his hat toward his head,--"I had the honah, and at the same time the
pleasu', to yeh you make a shawt speech lass evening. I was p'oud to
yeh yo' bunning eloquence, Doctah,--if you'll allow. Yesseh. Eve'ybody
said 'twas the moze bilious effo't of the o'-casion."
Dr. Sevier actually looked up and smiled, and thanked the happy young
man for the compliment.
"Yesseh," continued his admirer, "I nevveh flatteh. I give me'-it where
the me'-it lies. Well, seh, we juz make the welkin 'ing faw joy when you
finally stop' at the en'. Pehchance you heard my voice among that sea of
head'? But I doubt--in 'such a vas' up'ising--so many imposing pageant',
in fact,--and those 'ocket' exploding in the staw-y heaven', as they
say. I think I like that exp'ession I saw on the noozpapeh, wheh it
says: 'Long biffo the appointed owwa, thousan' of flashing tawches and
tas'eful t'anspa'encies with divuz devices whose blazing effulgence
turn' day into night.' Thass a ve'y talented style, in fact. Well, _au
'evoi'_, Doctah. I'm going ad the--an' thass anotheh thing I like--'tis
faw the ladies to 'ing bells that way on the balconies. Because Mr. Bell
and Eve'et is name _bell_, and so is the _bells_ name' juz the same way,
and so they 'ing the _bells_ to signify. I had to elucidate that to my
hant. Well, _au 'evoi'_, Doctah."
The Doctor raised his eyes from his letter-writing. The young man had
turned, and was actually going out without another word. What perversity
moved the physician no one will ever know; but he sternly called:--
"Narcisse?"
The Creole wheeled about on the threshold.
"Yesseh?"
The Doctor held him with a firm, grave eye, and slowly said:--
"I suppose before you return you will go to the post office." He said
nothing more,--only that, just in his jocose way,--and dropped his eyes
again upon his pen. Narcisse gave him one long black look, and silently
went out.
But a sweet complacency could not stay long away from the young man's
breast. The world was too beautiful; the white, hot sky above was in
such fine harmony with his puffed lawn shirt-bosom and his white linen
pantaloons, bulging at the thighs and tapering at the ankles, and at the
corner of Canal and Royal streets he met so many members of the Yancey
Guards and Southern Guards and Chalmette Guards and Union Guards and
Lane Dragoons and Breckenridge Guards and Douglas Rangers and Everett
Knights, and had the pleasant trouble of stepping aside and yielding the
pavement to the far-spreading crinoline. Oh, life was one scintillating
cluster breast-pin of ecstasies! And there was another thing,--General
William Walker's filibusters! Royal street, St. Charles, the rotunda of
the St. Charles Hotel, were full of them.
It made Dr. Sevier both sad and fierce to see what hold their lawless
enterprise took upon the youth of the city. Not that any great number
were drawn into the movement, least of all Narcisse; but it captivated
their interest and sympathy, and heightened the general unrest, when
calmness was what every thoughtful man saw to be the country's greatest
need.
An incident to illustrate the Doctor's state of mind.
It occurred one evening in the St. Charles rotunda. He saw some
citizens of high standing preparing to drink at the bar with a group of
broad-hatted men, whose bronzed foreheads and general out-of-door mien
hinted rather ostentatiously of Honduras and Ruatan Island. As he passed
close to them one of the citizens faced him blandly, and unexpectedly
took his hand, but quickly let it go again. The rest only glanced at
the Doctor, and drew nearer to the bar.
"I trust you're not unwell, Doctor," said the sociable one, with
something of a smile, and something of a frown, at the tall physician's
gloomy brow.
"I am well, sir."
"I--didn't know," said the man again, throwing an aggressive resentment
into his tone; "you seemed preoccupied."
"I was," replied the Doctor, returning his glance with so keen an eye
that the man smiled again, appeasingly. "I was thinking how barely
skin-deep civilization is."
The man ha-ha'd artificially, stepping backward as he said, "That's so!"
He looked after the departing Doctor an instant and then joined his
companions.
Richling had a touch of this contagion. He looked from Garibaldi to
Walker and back again, and could not see any enormous difference between
them. He said as much to one of the bakery's customers, a restaurateur
with a well-oiled tongue, who had praised him for his intrepidity in the
rescue of the medal-peddler, which, it seems, he had witnessed. With
this praise still upon his lips the caterer walked with Richling to the
restaurant door, and detained him there to enlarge upon the subject of
Spanish-American misrule, and the golden rewards that must naturally
fall to those who should supplant it with stable government. Richling
listened and replied and replied again and listened; and presently the
restaurateur startled him with an offer to secure him a captain's
commission under Walker. He laughed incredulously; but the restaurateur,
very much in earnest, talked on; and by littles, but rapidly, Richling
admitted the value of the various considerations urged. Two or three
months of rapid adventure; complete physical renovation--of
course--natural sequence; the plaudits of a grateful people; maybe
fortune also, but at least a certainty of finding the road to it,--all
this to meet Mary with next fall.
"I'm in a great hurry just now," said Richling; "but I'll talk about
this thing with you again to-morrow or next day," and so left.
The restaurateur turned to his head-waiter, stuck his tongue in his
cheek, and pulled down the lower lid of an eye with his forefinger. He
meant to say he had been lying for the pure fun of it.
When Dr. Sevier came that afternoon to see Reisen--of whom there was now
but little left, and that little unable to leave the bed--Richling took
occasion to raise the subject that had entangled his fancy. He was
careful to say nothing of himself or the restaurateur, or anything,
indeed, but a timid generality or two. But the Doctor responded with a
clear, sudden energy that, when he was gone, left Richling feeling
painfully blank, and yet unable to find anything to resent except the
Doctor's superfluous--as he thought, quite superfluous--mention of the
island of Cozumel.
However, and after all, that which for the most part kept the public
mind heated was, as we have said, the political campaign. Popular
feeling grew tremulous with it as the landscape did under the burning
sun. It was a very hot summer. Not a good one for feeble folk; and one
early dawn poor Reisen suddenly felt all his reason come back to him,
opened his eyes, and lo! he had crossed the river in the night, and was
on the other side.
Dr. Sevier's experienced horse halted of his own will to let a
procession pass. In the carriage at its head the physician saw the
little rector, sitting beside a man of German ecclesiastical appearance.
Behind it followed a majestic hearse, drawn by black-plumed and
caparisoned horses,--four of them. Then came a long line of red-shirted
firemen; for he in the hearse had been an "exempt." Then a further line
of big-handed, white-gloved men in beavers and regalias; for he had
been also a Freemason and an Odd-fellow. Then another column, of
emotionless-visaged German women, all in bunchy black gowns, walking out
of time to the solemn roll and pulse of the muffled drums, and the
brazen peals of the funeral march. A few carriages closed the long
line. In the first of them the waiting Doctor marked, with a sudden
understanding of all, the pale face of John Richling, and by his side
the widow who had been forty years a wife,--weary and red with weeping.
The Doctor took off his hat.