Dr. Sevier Part 61

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 b.u.t.terflies 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, a.s.suming 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, tha.s.s 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 sca.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sist 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."

CHAPTER XLVI.

A PRISON MEMENTO.

The political pot began to seethe. Many yet will remember how its smoke went up. The summer--summer of 1860--grew fervent. Its breath became hot and dry. All observation--all thought--turned upon the fierce campaign.

Discussion dropped as to whether Heenan would ever get that champion's belt, which even the little rector believed he had fairly won in the international prize-ring. The news brought by each succeeding European steamer of Garibaldi's splendid triumphs in the cause of a new Italy, the fierce rattle of partisan warfare in Mexico, that seemed almost within hearing, so nearly was New Orleans concerned in some of its movements,--all things became secondary and trivial beside the developments of a political canva.s.s in which the long-foreseen, long-dreaded issues between two parts of the nation were at length to be made final. The conventions had met, the nominations were complete, and the clans of four parties and fractions of parties were "meeting," and "rallying," and "uprising," and "outpouring."

All life was strung to one high pitch. This contest was everything,--nay, everybody,--men, women, and children. They were all for the Const.i.tution; they were all for the Union; and each, even Richling, for the enforcement of--his own ideas. On every bosom, "no matteh the s.e.x," and no matter the age, hung one of those little round, ribbanded medals, with a presidential candidate on one side and his vice-presidential man Friday on the other. Needless to say that Ristofalo's Kate, instructed by her husband, imported the earliest and many a later invoice of them, and distributing her peddlers at choice thronging-places, "everlastin'ly," as she laughingly and confidentially informed Dr. Sevier, "raked in the sponjewlicks." They were exposed for sale on little stalls on populous sidewalks and places of much entry and exit.

The post-office in those days was still on Royal street, in the old Merchants' Exchange. The small hand-holes of the box-delivery were in the wide tessellated pa.s.sage that still runs through the building from Royal street to Exchange alley. A keeper of one of these little stalls established himself against a pillar just where men turned into and out of Royal street, out of or into this pa.s.sage. One day, in this place, just as Richling turned from a delivery window to tear the envelope of a letter bearing the Milwaukee stamp, his attention was arrested by a man running by him toward Exchange alley, pale as death, and followed by a crowd that suddenly broke into a cry, a howl, a roar: "Hang him! Hang him!"

"Come!" said a small, strong man, seizing Richling's arm and turning him in the common direction. If the word was lost on Richling's defective hearing, not so the touch; for the speaker was Ristofalo. The two friends ran with all their speed through the pa.s.sage and out into the alley. A few rods away the chased wretch had been overtaken, and was made to face his pursuers. When Richling and Ristofalo reached him there was already a rope about his neck.

The Italian's leap, as he closed in upon the group around the victim, was like a tiger's. The men he touched did not fall; they were rather hurled, driving backward those whom they were hurled against. A man levelled a revolver at him; Richling struck it a blow that sent it over twenty men's heads. A long knife flashed in Ristofalo's right hand. He stood holding the rope in his left, stooping slightly forward, and darting his eyes about as if selecting a victim for his weapon. A stranger touched Richling from behind, spoke a hurried word in Italian, and handed him a huge dirk. But in that same moment the affair was over.

There stood Ristofalo, gentle, self-contained, with just a perceptible smile turned upon the crowd, no knife in his hand, and beside him the slender, sinewy, form, and keen gray eye of Smith Izard.

The detective was addressing the crowd. While he was speaking, half a score of police came from as many directions. When he had finished, he waved his slender hand at the ma.s.s of heads.

"Stand back. Go about your business." And they began to go. He laid a hand upon the rescued stranger and addressed the police.

"Take this rope off. Take this man to the station and keep him until it's safe to let him go."

The explanation by which he had so quickly pacified the mob was a simple one. The rescued man was a seller of campaign medals. That morning, in opening a fresh supply of his little stock, he had failed to perceive that, among a lot of "Breckenridge and Lane" medals, there had crept in one of Lincoln. That was the sum of his offence. The mistake had occurred in the Northern factory. Of course, if he did not intend to sell Lincoln medals, there was no crime.