Dr. Sevier

“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.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS

The house stands there to-day. A small, pinched, frame, ground-floor-and-attic, double tenement, with its roof sloping toward St. Mary street and overhanging its two door-steps that jut out on the sidewalk. There the Doctor’s carriage stopped, and in its front room he found Mary in bed again, as ill as ever. A humble German woman, living in the adjoining half of the house, was attending to the invalid’s wants, and had kept her daughter from the public school to send her to the apothecary with the Doctor’s prescription.

“It is the poor who help the poor,” thought the physician.

“Is this your home?” he asked the woman softly, as he sat down by the patient’s pillow. He looked about upon the small, cheaply furnished room, full of the neat makeshifts of cramped housewifery.

“It’s mine,” whispered Mary. Even as she lay there in peril of her life, and flattened out as though Juggernaut had rolled over her, her eyes shone with happiness and scintillated as the Doctor exclaimed in undertone: —

“Yours!” He laid his hand upon her forehead. “Where is Mr. Richling?”

“At the office.” Her eyes danced with delight. She would have begun, then and there, to tell him all that had happened, – “had taken care of herself all along,” she said, “until they began to move. In moving, had been obliged to overwork – hardly fixed yet” —

But the Doctor gently checked her and bade her be quiet.

“I will,” was the faint reply; “I will; but – just one thing, Doctor, please let me say.”

“Well?”

“John” —

“Yes, yes; I know; he’d be here, only you wouldn’t let him stay away from his work.”

She smiled assent, and he smiled in return.

“‘Business is business,’” he said.

She turned a quick, sparkling glance of affirmation, as if she had lately had some trouble to maintain that ancient truism. She was going to speak again, but the Doctor waved his hand downward soothingly toward the restless form and uplifted eyes.

“All right,” she whispered, and closed them.

The next day she was worse. The physician found himself, to use his words, “only the tardy attendant of offended nature.” When he dropped his finger-ends gently upon her temple she tremblingly grasped his hand.

“You’ll save me?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied; “we’ll do that – the Lord helping us.”

A glad light shone from her face as he uttered the latter clause. Whereat he made haste to add: —

“I don’t pray, but I’m sure you do.”