_ CHAPTER XLVII. 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. _