III
Anthony spent an hour walking about the waterfront, but somehow its interest did not hold. He felt that he'd like to rest, to be quiet; a chair at an inn took an unaccountable place in his thoughts, a chair at a window in which he saw himself sitting, quiet in the knowledge that some bits of savory cooking were going forward for his especial benefit.
"And the Black Horse is so far away," he thought, the few blocks between himself and the old tavern taking on the magnitude of leagues. "Perhaps it would be better if I took lodgings at a place nearer to the center of things." Then the urge behind the thought showed itself, though Anthony, poor youth, was unaware of it. "The Half Moon is well located," he said. "And it should be an excellent house, for well-conditioned people seem to patronize it."
As he proceeded, facing north, the possibilities of the Half Moon grew in his mind. He saw a snug corner, with the light of many candles falling upon a bountifully spread table. It was night, and it had turned cold; a cheerful fire snapped in the grate. There was a glass of mulled ale before him, with a comforting vapor arising from it, and across the rim of the glass he saw a pair of eyes. They were the most liquid eyes he'd ever seen—brown, he thought—brown, and deep—as deep as a pool brimming with early sunlight.
In Water Street, near to Mulberry, was a low stone house with a wide door and two flag steps that led down to it. In a window, paned with small squares of glass, there hung great bunches of herbs, gray and dried, and roots that stretched crookedly about as though in search of moisture. Anthony instantly descended the two steps, bowed his head so that he might avoid scraping the nap of his beaver against the fan-light, and went in. The place was large and low-ceilinged, and heavy with medicinal smells. From hooks in the walls hung more bundles of herbs and roots; shelves were stored with little packets of bark; in bottles and jars were the seeds and flowers of many virtuous plants. A little active old man, with horn-rimmed spectacles, came forward; he rubbed the bald top of his head with one hand and surveyed his visitor with mild attention.
"What can I serve you with, sir?" said he.
Anthony bent over the oaken counter and presented his face for inspection.
"Look at me," said he.
The little man ceased from rubbing his head.
"I am not a doctor of physic," stated he, regretfully, "and, so I cannot pronounce upon a complaint with authority. But," and his face was screwed into an expression of much sagacity, "as you look like a normal youth, I would venture that the thing you suffer is the plague. It still visits hereabout, and we've had great misgivings of it all summer through. If you feel your vitals at all grasped by this ailment, I entreat you, sir, to keep from gunpowder and ardent spirits." And, as Anthony nodded and smiled, the little apothecary went on, earnestly: "The spirits, I grant you, have a place in materia medica, as a glowing, forceful agent; they contain the life principle of the subject from which they are drawn, and to be fortified in time of need with the life principle of anything whatsoever may be considered an advantage. But the gunpowder, sir, I cannot grant you. What serves it to rattle away with a fowling-piece at the bedside of a disabled person? You make a noise, and a stink, and nothing more."
"What," said Anthony, "makes you think I have the plague?"
"You do not look," said the little man, "like one with a complaint of long duration. As you are sick, I take it that it is with something that has seized you suddenly. And so it must be the plague. I would, if my advice were sought, recommend camphor—a very white substance, unctuous, pellucid, bitterly aromatic, with a grateful coolness, and a fragrance not unlike rosemary. This may be inhaled upon suitable occasions; I have known many persons to carry little bags of it slung under their noses in time of great fright, or small quantities may be taken, dissolved in spirits of wine."
"I am not ill," said Anthony, as he seated himself upon the edge of the counter. "I have never been so, not even in the days when I'd tramp, barefooted, away beyond Schuylkill, into the woods and fields, to search out worm-wood, Jerusalem oak and adder's-violet. It may be," he mused, "that I'd then met with broken bones or drowning in the streams, but I was carefully looked after by one who was my good friend. Though, indeed, friends slip from one," and Anthony pulled a deep sigh. "Even those who we thought would remember the longest sometimes have memories short enough."
The little apothecary rubbed his bald head and stared; then incredulity, amazement, conviction followed each other across his face. He put a hand upon Anthony's arm.
"It is not Anthony Stevens!" denied he. "Do not tell me it is Anthony Stevens; for if you do I shall not believe you."
"Who was it told you that false valerian could be found in the swamps near the second ford?" asked the young man. "What boy was it who could find more wax-myrtle than his teacher? Who was it once slept all the way home on a bag of bear's-bed in the bottom of the wagon because he thought if bears could——"
"Anthony!" The little apothecary had him by the hand. "Anthony!" The mild old eyes took in the strapping frame, so different from that of the boy he had once known—the well-poised head, the purposeful eyes and chin. "Yes, it's you. I know you when you laugh. Nothing could change that."
"Christopher," said Anthony, and his big paw squeezed the thin one tightly, and his eyes beamed, "you have not changed at all. You are not fatter; you have no more hair upon your head; you are just the same human, interested man you were, years and years ago."
"As for being human," said Christopher Dent, "why not, since I have around me in their natural concentrated forms all the organic elements upon which humanity is founded? Age is not a hard thing to check when one breathes constantly those fragrances which regulate the action of the system. I could do with more hair upon my head," a little ruefully; "but," with immediate cheeriness, "we'll let that pass, for what signifies hair? It is but a horny growth, meant to protect the skull, which is the casket of the brain, in those times when the world had not yet reached the point of hats."
He then invited Anthony into a little room, a sort of laboratory, at the back of the shop, in which were a brick furnace, a still in operation, crucibles, mortars, jars of various colored liquids, and bladders filled with powders.
"Sit down," said old Christopher, as he took some dusty, sheep-covered books from a stool. "Sit down and tell me how it has been with you these many years."
Anthony sat down; and the little apothecary sat near him, a shaft of noonday light from a window dazzling upon the crown of his head.
"I have seen your uncle, of course, many times since," said he. "But in what talk I've had with him he never mentioned you."
"I suppose," said Anthony, "he had nothing to tell. There was a difference between my father and him—nothing serious, but still a difference—at the time of the separation of their interests. I don't think a half-dozen letters passed between them afterwards, I know they never saw each other again."
The old apothecary clicked his tongue pityingly.
"Such wretched states of mind people permit themselves to get into," said he. "There was no reason why, if your mother desired to go back to her native land, that your father should not sell out his interest and take her away."
"I think, from the little I've heard my father say,—for he seldom mentioned it,—my uncle understood and agreed to all that. But what he disliked was the sudden curtailing of the firm's operations because of the moneys that had gone out of it."
Old Christopher nodded.
"Yes, yes; Charles is like that. He thinks in a large way. I've fancied sometimes that the eyes of his mind are so fashioned that they cannot see anything under a given size. But," coming back to the subject with a sudden brightening of manner, "what of yourself? What have you been doing? Tell me everything about it. I'm sure it's of interest, for you were always full of that." The old man laughed, and the sound had a clear ring, surprisingly like that of a boy. "It once would have taken a dozen to keep track of you."
Anthony told him the story of his transplanting; of the ship that had taken them, and all their household effects, down the Delaware, and up the Mississippi; of New Orleans and the pirate Spaniards who held its customs and dwarfed the port; of the quaint old streets; of the mingling of races; the color and strangeness of life there; of the mission-school, where the good padres had taken him in hand much to his advantage; of his father's losses in business, caused by the tricky methods of the port authorities, and then of his death. His mother had lived a year longer; then she, too, had died.
"The money, then," said Christopher, "is gone."
"All of my father's—yes," replied Anthony, "They stripped him to the bones. But there is still the interest in Rufus Stevens' Sons, left me by my grandfather; that had never been disturbed. The income from it made my mother comfortable while she lived."
"And when she had gone,—fine, proud, beautiful creature,—what then?"
"I sailed as mate in a Spanish ship, trading with South America and ports on the West Coast; for a year or two I was in the counting-house of Montufars, a trader at New Orleans. Three times I crossed the mountains and desert with fur-buying trains, to California; and, on the same errand, I've navigated the Mississippi and tributaries to places, so they've told me, where white men had not been seen."
"You would do that," said the apothecary, nodding his glittering head, "As a boy you always loved to venture where no one had been before you." He looked at the young man with his manner of mild attention. "And now you've come back to where you were born," he said. "To stay, I hope; to take your place in the business of your grandfather."
Anthony shook his head doubtingly.
"I don't know as to that," he replied. "It's true I have no ties in New Orleans; and I will do as well in one place as another. But my uncle is a man of sharp-cut achievements, and it may be that he'll be content enough if I keep my distance." And, though Anthony laughed at this, his chin went out in a way it had. "If he's of that frame of mind I'll be willing to do so; for I have affairs enough of my own to keep me busy, and a little effort will add to them from time to time."
Here the shop door was heard to open and shut; a brisk step sounded, and a gentleman of immaculate dress entered the rear room.
"I ask your pardon, Mr. Dent," said this personage, seeing Anthony.
"It is no matter," said the apothecary. "Come in, Dr. King. I'm chatting with an old friend; that's all."
Dr. King smiled and nodded to the young man.
"Physicians," said he, "are sometimes more urgent in their ways than most; but then their affairs are of a nature that frequently requires it."
"I can well understand that, sir," said Anthony.
The apothecary gave to Dr. King several small packets done in white paper.
"Marrubrium vulgare," said he. "Cynoglossum officinale."
"Quite right," said Dr. King. "I am glad you have them ready, for I am on my way to visit Mr. Moss now."
"He has a bleeding of the lungs, I am told," said Christopher, with his shining head to one side. "That is a serious condition; and of the two remedies I would venture to maintain that Cynoglossum officinale contains the most virtue." He turned to Anthony. "Hound's-tongue," said he. "Do you remember? The leaves are hoary, with soft down on both sides; the flowers are in clusters—"
"And the fruit," said Anthony, "a depressed achenium."
"Quite right," said the apothecary, pleasure in his face. "Quite right."
Dr. King laughed.
"So," said he, to Anthony, "you, too, have been inducted into the mysteries of Hygeia."
"If his life had not been ordered differently," said Christopher, with regret, "he would have been an excellent apothecary." Then, suddenly: "Why, what am I thinking of? Dr. King, this is a nephew of a very close friend of yours—Mr. Anthony Stevens."
The physician looked at the young man in surprise; then he held out his hand.
"I am glad to see you," said he. "I also knew your father quite well—and your mother. Have you been long in the city?"
"Since yesterday, only," replied Anthony.
"Have you seen your uncle?"
"No. I did visit his counting-house, but he was not there."
There was a moment's pause, and Dr. King seemed about to go.
"As you are freshly arrived," said he; "you may have nothing to occupy your time this evening."
"There is nothing," said Anthony.
"Perhaps," said Dr. King, "you'd care to take supper with me—at six?"
"I should be pleased," said the young man.
"There will be a few people whom you may enjoy meeting. And it may be I'll be able to be of service to you." The speaker nodded to the old apothecary, and shook Anthony's hand again. "Remember, at six. My house is in Front Street just a little way above the booking-place of the Trenton stage."
When the doctor had gone, Christopher Dent said:
"A great friend of your uncle's—a most intimate friend. In fact, I would dare say that, as physician and associate, he knows more of his doings and dealings than any one else."
At once, in that recess at the back of the mind where Anthony's discarded thoughts were kept, the imaginings of Magruder began to squirm and play for light.
"Does he, indeed?" said Anthony.
Of course, Dr. King's saying that he might be of service to him was a well-intentioned politeness; but there were times—and Anthony had seen more than one of them—when a politeness had been turned to a very practical account.