_ CHAPTER XLV. NARCISSE WITH NEWS
It was very beautiful to see the summer set in. Trees everywhere. You looked down a street, and, unless it were one of the two broad avenues where the only street-cars ran, it was pretty sure to be so overarched with boughs that, down in the distance, there was left but a narrow streak of vivid blue sky in the middle. Well-nigh every house had its garden, as every garden its countless flowers. The dark orange began to show its growing weight of fruitfulness, and was hiding in its thorny interior the nestlings of yonder mocking-bird, silently foraging down in the sunny grass. The yielding branches of the privet were bowed down with their plumy panicles, and swayed heavily from side to side, drunk with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so muffled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance forerun the sight. Every breath of air was a new perfume. Roses, an innumerable host, ran a fairy riot about all grounds, and clambered from the lowest door-step to the highest roof. The oleander, wrapped in one great garment of red blossoms, nodded in the sun, and stirred and winked in the faint stirrings of the air The pale banana slowly fanned herself with her own broad leaf. High up against the intense sky, its hard, burnished foliage glittering in the sunlight, the magnolia spread its dark boughs, adorned with their queenly white flowers. Not a bird nor an insect seemed unmated. The little wren stood and sung to his sitting wife his loud, ecstatic song, made all of her own name,--Matilda, Urilda, Lucinda, Belinda, Adaline, Madaline, Caroline, or Melinda, as the case might be,--singing as though every bone of his tiny body were a golden flute. The hummingbirds hung on invisible wings, and twittered with delight as they feasted on woodbine and honeysuckle. The pigeon on the roof-tree cooed and wheeled about his mate, and swelled his throat, and tremulously bowed and walked with a smiting step, and arched his purpling neck, and wheeled and bowed and wheeled again. Pairs of butterflies rose in straight upward flight, fluttered about each other in amorous strife, and drifted away in the upper air. And out of every garden came the voices of little children at play,--the blessedest sound on earth.
"O Mary, Mary! why should two lovers live apart on this beautiful earth? Autumn is no time for mating. Who can tell what autumn will bring?"
The revery was interrupted.
"Mistoo Itchlin, 'ow you enjoyin' yo' 'ealth in that beaucheouz weatheh juz at the pwesent? Me, I'm well. Yes, I'm always well, in fact. At the same time nevvatheless, I fine myseff slightly sad. I s'pose 'tis natu'al--a man what love the 'itings of Lawd By'on as much as me. You know, of co'se, the melancholic intelligens?"
"No," said Richling; "has any one"--
"Lady By'on, seh. Yesseh. 'In the mids' of life'--you know where we ah, Mistoo Itchlin, I su-pose?"
"Is Lady Byron dead?"
"Yesseh." Narcisse bowed solemnly. "Gone, Mistoo Itchlin. Since the seventeenth of last; yesseh. 'Kig the bucket,' as the povvub say." He showed an extra band of black drawn neatly around his new straw hat. "I thought it but p'opeh to put some moaning--as a species of twibute." He restored the hat to his head. "You like the tas'e of that, Mistoo Itchlin?"
Richling could but confess the whole thing was delicious.
"Yo humble servan', seh," responded the smiling Creole, with a flattered bow. Then, assuming a gravity becoming the historian, he said:--
"In fact, 'tis a gweat mistake, that statement that Lawd By'on evva qua'led with his lady, Mistoo Itchlin. But I s'pose you know 'tis but a slandeh of the pwess. Yesseh. As, faw instance, thass anotheh slandeh of the pwess that the delegates qua'led ad the Chawleston convention. They only pwetend to qua'l; so, by that way, to mizguide those A_bol_ish-nists. Mistoo Itchlin, I am p'ojecting to 'ite some obitua' 'emawks about that Lady By'on, but I scass know w'etheh to 'ite them in the poetic style aw in the p'osaic. Which would you conclude, Mistoo Itchlin?"
Richling reflected with downcast eyes.
"It seems to me," he said, when he had passed his hand across his mouth in apparent meditation and looked up,--"seems to me I'd conclude both, without delay."
"Yes? But accawding to what fawmule, Mistoo Itchlin? 'Ay, 'tis theh is the 'ub,' in fact, as Lawd By'on say. Is it to migs the two style' that you advise?"
"That's the favorite method," replied Richling.
"Well, I dunno 'ow 'tis, Mistoo Itchlin, but I fine the moze facil'ty in the poetic. 'Tis t'ue, in the poetic you got to look out concehning the _'ime_. You got to keep the eye skin' faw it, in fact. But in the p'osaic, on the cont'a-ay, 'tis juz the opposite; you got to keep the eye skin' faw the _sense_. Yesseh. Now, if you migs the two style'--well--'ow's that, Mistoo Itchlin, if you migs them? Seem' to me I dunno."
"Why, don't you see?" asked Richling. "If you mix them, you avoid both necessities. You sail triumphantly between Scylla and Charybdis without so much as skinning your eye."
Narcisse looked at him a moment with a slightly searching glance, dropped his eyes upon his own beautiful feet, and said, in a meditative tone:--
"I believe you co'ect." But his smile was gone, and Richling saw he had ventured too far.
"I wish my wife were here," said Richling; "she might give you better advice than I."
"Yes," replied Narcisse, "I believe you co'ect ag'in, Mistoo Itchlin. 'Tis but since yeste'd'y that I jus appen to hea' Dr. Seveeah d'op a saying 'esembling to that. Yesseh, she's a v'ey 'emawkable, Mistoo Itchlin."
"Is that what Dr. Sevier said?" Richling began to fear an ambush.
"No, seh. What the Doctah say--'twas me'ly to 'emawk in his jocose way--you know the Doctah's lill callous, jocose way, Mistoo Itchlin."
He waved either hand outward gladsomely.
"Yes," said Richling, "I've seen specimens of it."
"Yesseh. He was ve'y complimenta'y, in fact, the Doctah. 'Tis the trooth. He says, 'She'll make a man of Witchlin if anythin' can.' Juz in his jocose way, you know."
The Creole's smile had returned in concentrated sweetness. He stood silent, his face beaming with what seemed his confidence that Richling would be delighted. Richling recalled the physician's saying concerning this very same little tale-bearer,--that he carried his nonsense on top and his good sense underneath.
"Dr. Sevier said that, did he?" asked Richling, after a time.
"'Tis the vehbatim, seh. Convussing to yo' 'eve'end fwend. You can ask him; he will co'obo'ate me in fact. Well, Mistoo Itchlin, it supp'ise me you not tickle at that. Me, I may say, I wish _I_ had a wife to make a man out of _me_."
"I wish you had," said Richling. But Narcisse smiled on.
"Well, _au 'evoi'_." He paused an instant with an earnest face. "Pehchance I'll meet you this evening, Mistoo Itchlin? Faw doubtless, like myseff, you will assist at the gweat a-ally faw the Union, the Const'ution, and the enfo'cemen' of the law. Dr. Seveeah will addwess."
"I don't know that I care to hear him," replied Richling.
"Goin' to be a gwan' out-po'-ing, Mistoo Itchlin. Citizens of Noo 'Leans without the leas' 'espec' faw fawmeh polly-tickle diff'ence. Also fiah-works. 'Come one, come all,' as says the gweat Scott--includin' yo'seff, Mistoo Itchlin. No? Well, _au 'evoi'_, Mistoo Itchlin." _