“Better not quit. Stick to one thing.”
“But you never did that. You never did one thing twice in succession.”
“There’s heap o’ diff’ence.”
“I don’t see it. What is it?”
But the Italian only smiled and shrugged, and began to move away. In a moment he said:—
“You see, Mr. Richlin’, you sen’ for yo’ wife, you can’t risk change o’ business. You change business, you can’t risk sen’ for yo’ wife. Well, good-night.”
Richling was left to his thoughts. Naturally they were of the man whom he still saw, in his imagination, picking his jailer up off the door-step and going back to prison. Who could say that this man might not any day make just such a lion’s leap into the world’s arena as Garibaldi had made, and startle the nations as Garibaldi had done? What was that red-shirted scourge of tyrants that this man might not be? Sailor, soldier, hero, patriot, prisoner! See Garibaldi: despising the restraints of law; careless of the simplest conventionalities that go to make up an honest gentleman; doing both right and wrong—like a lion; everything in him leonine. All this was in Ristofalo’s reach. It was all beyond Richling’s. Which was best, the capability or the incapability? It was a question he would have liked to ask Mary.
Well, at any rate, he had strength now for one thing—“one pretty small thing.” He would answer her letter. He answered it, and wrote: “Don’t come; wait a little while.” He put aside all those sweet lovers’ pictures that had been floating before his eyes by night and day, and bade her stay until the summer, with its risks to health, should have passed, and she could leave her mother well and strong.
It was only a day or two afterward that he fell sick. It was provoking to have such a cold and not know how he caught it, and to have it in such fine weather. He was in bed some days, and was robbed of much sleep by a cough. Mrs. Reisen found occasion to tell Dr. Sevier of Mary’s desire, as communicated to her by “Mr. Richlin’,” and of the advice she had given him.
“And he didn’t send for her, I suppose.”