CHAPTER XXVI.
THE TROUGH OF THE SEA.
Narcisse, on receiving his scolding from Richling, had gone to his home in Casa Calvo street, a much greater sufferer than he had appeared to be. While he was confronting his abaser there had been a momentary comfort in the contrast between Richling’s ill-behavior and his own self-control. It had stayed his spirit and turned the edge of Richling’s sharp denunciations. But, as he moved off the field, he found himself, at every step, more deeply wounded than even he had supposed. He began to suffocate with chagrin, and hurried his steps in sheer distress. He did not experience that dull, vacant acceptance of universal scorn which an unresentful coward feels. His pangs were all the more poignant because he knew his own courage.
In his home he went so straight up to the withered little old lady, in the dingiest of flimsy black, who was his aunt, and kissed her so passionately, that she asked at once what was the matter. He recounted the facts, shedding tears of mortification. Her feeling, by the time he had finished the account, was a more unmixed wrath than his, and, harmless as she was, and wrapped up in her dear, pretty nephew as she was, she yet demanded to know why such a man shouldn’t be called out upon the field of honor.
“Ah!” cried Narcisse, shrinkingly. She had touched the core of the tumor. One gets a public tongue-lashing from a man concerning money borrowed; well, how is one going to challenge him without first handing back the borrowed money? It was a scalding thought! The rotten joists beneath the bare scrubbed-to-death floor quaked under Narcisse’s to-and-fro stride.
“—And then, anyhow!”—he stopped and extended both hands, speaking, of course, in French,—“anyhow, he is the favored friend of Dr. Sevier. If I hurt him—I lose my situation! If he hurts me—I lose my situation!”
He dried his eyes. His aunt saw the insurmountability of the difficulty, and they drowned feeling in an affectionate glass of green-orangeade.
“But never mind!” Narcisse set his glass down and drew out his tobacco. He laughed spasmodically as he rolled his cigarette. “You shall see. The game is not finished yet.”
Yet Richling passed the next day and night without assassination, and on the second morning afterward, as on the first, went out in quest of employment. He and Mary had eaten bread, and it had gone into their life without a remainder either in larder or purse. Richling was all aimless.
“I do wish I had the art of finding work,” said he. He smiled. “I’ll get it,” he added, breaking their last crust in two. “I have the science already. Why, look you, Mary, the quiet, amiable, imperturbable, dignified, diurnal, inexorable haunting of men of influence will get you whatever you want.”