_ CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF BOOK-KEEPING
A day or two after Narcisse had gone looking for Richling at the house of Madame Zenobie, he might have found him, had he known where to search, in Tchoupitoulas street.
Whoever remembers that thoroughfare as it was in those days, when the commodious "cotton-float" had not quite yet come into use, and Poydras and other streets did not so vie with Tchoupitoulas in importance as they do now, will recall a scene of commercial hurly-burly that inspired much pardonable vanity in the breast of the utilitarian citizen. Drays, drays, drays! Not the light New York things; but big, heavy, solid affairs, many of them drawn by two tall mules harnessed tandem. Drays by threes and by dozens, drays in opposing phalanxes, drays in long processions, drays with all imaginable kinds of burden; cotton in bales, piled as high as the omnibuses; leaf tobacco in huge hogsheads; cases of linens and silks; stacks of raw-hides; crates of cabbages; bales of prints and of hay; interlocked heaps of blue and red ploughs; bags of coffee, and spices, and corn; bales of bagging; barrels, casks, and tierces; whisky, pork, onions, oats, bacon, garlic, molasses, and other delicacies; rice, sugar,--what was there not? Wines of France and Spain in pipes, in baskets, in hampers, in octaves; queensware from England; cheeses, like cart-wheels, from Switzerland; almonds, lemons, raisins, olives, boxes of citron, casks of chains; specie from Vera Cruz; cries of drivers, cracking of whips, rumble of wheels, tremble of earth, frequent gorge and stoppage. It seemed an idle tale to say that any one could be lacking bread and raiment. "We are a great city," said the patient foot-passengers, waiting long on street corners for opportunity to cross the way.
On one of these corners paused Richling. He had not found employment, but you could not read that in his face; as well as he knew himself, he had come forward into the world prepared amiably and patiently to be, to do, to suffer anything, provided it was not wrong or ignominious. He did not see that even this is not enough in this rough world; nothing had yet taught him that one must often gently suffer rudeness and wrong. As to what constitutes ignominy he had a very young man's--and, shall we add? a very American--idea. He could not have believed, had he been told, how many establishments he had passed by, omitting to apply in them for employment. He little dreamed he had been too select. He had entered not into any house of the Samaritans, to use a figure; much less, to speak literally, had he gone to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Mary, hiding away in uncomfortable quarters a short stone's throw from Madame Zenobie's, little imagined that, in her broad irony about his not hunting for employment, there was really a tiny seed of truth. She felt sure that two or three persons who had seemed about to employ him had failed to do so because they detected the defect in his hearing, and in one or two cases she was right.
Other persons paused on the same corner where Richling stood, under the same momentary embarrassment. One man, especially busy-looking, drew very near him. And then and there occurred this simple accident,--that at last he came in contact with the man who had work to give him. This person good-humoredly offered an impatient comment on their enforced delay. Richling answered in sympathetic spirit, and the first speaker responded with a question:--
"Stranger in the city?"
"Yes."
"Buying goods for up-country?"
It was a pleasant feature of New Orleans life that sociability to strangers on the street was not the exclusive prerogative of gamblers' decoys.
"No; I'm looking for employment."
"Aha!" said the man, and moved away a little. But in a moment Richling, becoming aware that his questioner was glancing all over him with critical scrutiny, turned, and the man spoke.
"D'you keep books?"
Just then a way opened among the vehicles; and the man, young and muscular, darted into it, and Richling followed.
"I _can_ keep books," he said, as they reached the farther curb-stone.
The man seized him by the arm.
"D'you see that pile of codfish and herring where that tall man is at work yonder with a marking-pot and brush? Well, just beyond there is a boarding-house, and then a hardware store; you can hear them throwing down sheets of iron. Here; you can see the sign. See? Well, the next is my store. Go in there--upstairs into the office--and wait till I come."
Richling bowed and went. In the office he sat down and waited what seemed a very long time. Could he have misunderstood? For the man did not come. There was a person sitting at a desk on the farther side of the office, writing, who had not lifted his head from first to last, Richling said:--
"Can you tell me when the proprietor will be in?"
The writer's eyes rose, and dropped again upon his writing.
"What do you want with him?"
"He asked me to wait here for him."
"Better wait, then."
Just then in came the merchant. Richling rose, and he uttered a rude exclamation:--
"_I_ forgot you completely! Where did you say you kept books at, last?"
"I've not kept anybody's books yet, but I can do it."
The merchant's response was cold and prompt. He did not look at Richling, but took a sample vial of molasses from a dirty mantel-piece and lifted it between his eyes and the light, saying:--
"You can't do any such thing. I don't want you."
"Sir," said Richling, so sharply that the merchant looked round, "if you don't want me I don't want you; but you mustn't attempt to tell me that what I say is not true!" He had stepped forward as he began to speak, but he stopped before half his words were uttered, and saw his folly. Even while his voice still trembled with passion and his head was up, he colored with mortification. That feeling grew no less when his offender simply looked at him, and the man at the desk did not raise his eyes. It rather increased when he noticed that both of them were young--as young as he.
"I don't doubt your truthfulness," said the merchant, marking the effect of his forbearance; "but you ought to know you can't come in and take charge of a large set of books in the midst of a busy season, when you've never kept books before."
"I don't know it at all."
"Well, I do," said the merchant, still more coldly than before. "There are my books," he added, warming, and pointed to three great canvassed and black-initialled volumes standing in a low iron safe, "left only yesterday in such a snarl, by a fellow who had 'never kept books, but knew how,' that I shall have to open another set! After this I shall have a book-keeper who has kept books."
He turned away.
Some weeks afterward Richling recalled vividly a thought that had struck him only faintly at this time: that, beneath much superficial severity and energy, there was in this establishment a certain looseness of management. It may have been this half-recognized thought that gave him courage, now, to say, advancing another step:--
"One word, if you please."
"It's no use, my friend."
"It may be."
"How?"
"Get an experienced book-keeper for your new set of books"--
"You can bet your bottom dollar!" said the merchant, turning again and running his hands down into his lower pockets. "And even he'll have as much as he can do"--
"That is just what I wanted you to say," interrupted Richling, trying hard to smile; "then you can let me straighten up the old set."
"Give a new hand the work of an expert!"
The merchant almost laughed out. He shook his head and was about to say more, when Richling persisted:--
"If I don't do the work to your satisfaction don't pay me a cent."
"I never make that sort of an arrangement; no, sir!"
Unfortunately it had not been Richling's habit to show this pertinacity, else life might have been easier to him as a problem; but these two young men, his equals in age, were casting amused doubts upon his ability to make good his professions. The case was peculiar. He reached a hand out toward the books.
"Let me look over them for one day; if I don't convince you the next morning in five minutes that I can straighten them I'll leave them without a word."
The merchant looked down an instant, and then turned to the man at the desk.
"What do you think of that, Sam?"
Sam set his elbows upon the desk, took the small end of his pen-holder in his hands and teeth, and, looking up, said:--
"I don't know; you might--try him."
"What did you say your name was?" asked the other, again facing Richling. "Ah, yes! Who are your references, Mr. Richmond?"
"Sir?" Richling leaned slightly forward and turned his ear.
"I say, who knows you?"
"Nobody."
"Nobody! Where are you from?"
"Milwaukee."
The merchant tossed out his arm impatiently.
"Oh, I can't do that kind o' business."
He turned abruptly, went to his desk, and, sitting down half-hidden by it, took up an open letter.
"I bought that coffee, Sam," he said, rising again and moving farther away.
"Um-hum," said Sam; and all was still.
Richling stood expecting every instant to turn on the next and go. Yet he went not. Under the dusty front windows of the counting-room the street was roaring below. Just beyond a glass partition at his back a great windlass far up under the roof was rumbling with the descent of goods from a hatchway at the end of its tense rope. Salesmen were calling, trucks were trundling, shipping clerks and porters were replying. One brawny fellow he saw, through the glass, take a herring from a broken box, and stop to feed it to a sleek, brindled mouser. Even the cat was valued; but he--he stood there absolutely zero. He saw it. He saw it as he never had seen it before in his life. This truth smote him like a javelin: that all this world wants is a man's permission to do without him. Right then it was that he thought he swallowed all his pride; whereas he only tasted its bitter brine as like a wave it took him up and lifted him forward bodily. He strode up to the desk beyond which stood the merchant, with the letter still in his hand, and said:--
"I've not gone yet! I may have to be turned off by you, but not in this manner!"
The merchant looked around at him with a smile of surprise, mixed with amusement and commendation, but said nothing. Richling held out his open hand.
"I don't ask you to trust me. Don't trust me. Try me!"
He looked distressed. He was not begging, but he seemed to feel as though he were.
The merchant dropped his eyes again upon the letter, and in that attitude asked:--
"What do you say, Sam?"
"He can't hurt anything," said Sam.
The merchant looked suddenly at Richling.
"You're not from Milwaukee. You're a Southern man."
Richling changed color.
"I said Milwaukee."
"Well," said the merchant, "I hardly know. Come and see me further about it to-morrow morning. I haven't time to talk now."
* * *
"Take a seat," he said, the next morning, and drew up a chair sociably before the returned applicant. "Now, suppose I was to give you those books, all in confusion as they are, what would you do first of all?"
Mary fortunately had asked the same question the night before, and her husband was entirely ready with an answer which they had studied out in bed.
"I should send your deposit-book to bank to be balanced, and, without waiting for it, I should begin to take a trial-balance off the books. If I didn't get one pretty soon, I'd drop that for the time being, and turn in and render the accounts of everybody on the books, asking them to examine and report."
"All right," said the merchant, carelessly; "we'll try you."
"Sir?" Richling bent his ear.
"_All right; we'll try you!_ I don't care much about recommendations. I generally most always make up my opinion about a man from looking at him. I'm that sort of a man."
He smiled with inordinate complacency.
So, week by week, as has been said already, the winter passed,--Richling on one side of the town, hidden away in his work, and Dr. Sevier on the other, very positive that the "young pair" must have returned to Milwaukee.
At length the big books were readjusted in all their hundreds of pages, were balanced, and closed. Much satisfaction was expressed; but another man had meantime taken charge of the new books,--one who influenced business, and Richling had nothing to do but put on his hat.
However, the house cheerfully recommended him to a neighboring firm, which also had disordered books to be righted; and so more weeks passed. Happy weeks! Happy days! Ah, the joy of them! John bringing home money, and Mary saving it!
"But, John, it seems such a pity not to have stayed with A, B, & Co.; doesn't it?"
"I don't think so. I don't think they'll last much longer."
And when he brought word that A, B, & Co. had gone into a thousand pieces Mary was convinced that she had a very far-seeing husband.
By and by, at Richling's earnest and restless desire, they moved their lodgings again. And thus we return by a circuit to the morning when Dr. Sevier, taking up his slate, read the summons that bade him call at the corner of St. Mary and Prytania streets. _