Part 7 (1/2)
”Yes; _oui, madame_. Ten dollah the month--_le mois_.”
Intelligence suddenly returned. Madame made a beautiful, silent O with her mouth and two others with her eyes.
”Ah _non_! By munse? No, madame. Ah-h! impossybl'! By _wick_, yes; ten dollah de wick! Ah!”
She touched her bosom with the wide-spread fingers of one hand and threw them toward her hearers.
The room-hunters got away, yet not so quickly but they heard behind and above them her scornful laugh, addressed to the walls of the empty room.
A day or two later they secured an apartment, cheap, and--morally--decent; but otherwise--ah!
CHAPTER VII.
DISAPPEARANCE.
It was the year of a presidential campaign. The party that afterward rose to overwhelming power was, for the first time, able to put its candidate fairly abreast of his compet.i.tors. The South was all afire.
Rising up or sitting down, coming or going, week-day or Sabbath-day, eating or drinking, marrying or burying, the talk was all of slavery, abolition, and a disrupted country.
Dr. Sevier became totally absorbed in the issue. He was too unconventional a thinker ever to find himself in harmony with all the declarations of any party, and yet it was a necessity of his nature to be in the _melee_. He had his own array of facts, his own peculiar deductions; his own special charges of iniquity against this party and of criminal forbearance against that; his own startling political economy; his own theory of rights; his own interpretations of the Const.i.tution; his own threats and warnings; his own exhortations, and his own prophecies, of which one cannot say all have come true. But he poured them forth from the mighty heart of one who loved his country, and sat down with a sense of duty fulfilled and wiped his pale forehead while the band played a polka.
It hardly need be added that he proposed to dispense with politicians, or that, when ”the boys” presently counted him into their party team for campaign haranguing, he let them clap the harness upon him and splashed along in the mud with an intention as pure as snow.
”Hurrah for”--
Whom it is no matter now. It was not Fremont. Buchanan won the race. Out went the lights, down came the platforms, rockets ceased to burst; it was of no use longer to ”Wait for the wagon”; ”Old Dan Tucker” got ”out of the way,” small boys were no longer fellow-citizens, dissolution was postponed, and men began to have an eye single to the getting of money.
A mercantile friend of Dr. Sevier had a vacant clerks.h.i.+p which it was necessary to fill. A bright recollection flashed across the Doctor's memory.
”Narcisse!”
”Yesseh!”
”Go to Number 40 Custom-house street and inquire for Mr. Fledgeling; or, if he isn't in, for Mrs. Fledge--humph! Richling, I mean; I”--
Narcisse laughed aloud.
”Ha-ha-ha! daz de way, sometime'! My hant she got a honcl'--he says, once 'pon a time”--
”Never mind! Go at once!”
”All a-ight, seh!”
”Give him this card”--
”Yesseh!”
”These people”--
”Yesseh!”