"My cousin Honoré,--well, you kin jus' say 'e bitray' 'is 'ole fam'ly."
"How so?" asked Doctor Keene, with a handkerchief over his face to shield his eyes from the sun.
"Well,--ce't'nly 'e did! Di'n' 'e gave dat money to Aurora De Grapion?--one 'undred five t'ousan' dolla'? Jis' as if to say, 'Yeh's de money my h-uncle stole from you' 'usban'.' Hah! w'en I will swear on a stack of Bible' as 'igh as yo' head, dat Agricole win dat 'abitation fair!--If I see it? No, sir; I don't 'ave to see it! I'll swear to it! Hah!"
"And have she and her daughter actually got the money?"
"She--an'--heh--daughtah--ac--shilly--got-'at-money-sir! W'at? Dey livin' in de rue Royale in mag-niffycen' style on top de drug-sto' of Proffis-or Frowenfel'."
"But how, over Frowenfeld's, when Frowenfeld's is a one-story--"
"My dear frien'! Proffis-or Frowenfel' ismoove!You rickleck dat big new t'ree-story buildin' w'at jus' finished in de rue Royale, a lill mo' farther up town from his old shop? Well, we open darea big sto'!An' listen! You think Honoré di'n' bitrayed' 'is family? Madame Nancanou an' heh daughtah livin' upstair an' rissy-ving de finess soci'ty in de Province!--an'me?--downstair' meckin' pill! You call dat justice?"
But Doctor Keene, without waiting for this question, had asked one:
"Does Frowenfeld board with them?"
"Psh-sh-sh! Board! Dey woon board de Marquis of Casa Calvo! I don't b'lieve dey would board Honoré Grandissime! All de king' an' queen' in de worl' couldn' board dare! No, sir!--'Owever, you know, I think dey are splendid ladies. Me an' my wife, we know them well. An' Honoré--I think my cousin Honoré's a splendid gen'leman, too." After a moment's pause he resumed, with a happy sigh, "Well, I don' care, I'm married. A man w'at's married, 'e don' care.
"But I di'n' t'ink Honoré could ever do lak dat odder t'ing."
"Do he and Joe Frowenfeld visit there?"
"Doctah Keene," demanded Raoul, ignoring the question, "I hask you now, plain, don' you find dat mighty disgressful to do dat way, lak Honoré?"
"What way?"
"W'at? You dunno? You don' yeh 'ow 'e gone partner' wid a nigga?"
"What do you mean?"
Doctor Keene drew the handkerchief off his face and half lifted his feeble head.
"Yesseh! 'e gone partner' wid dat quadroon w'at call 'imself Honoré Grandissime, seh!"
The doctor dropped his head again and laid the handkerchief back on his face.
"What do the family say to that?"
"But w'atcandey say? It save dem from ruin! At de sem time, me, I think it is a disgress. Not dat he h-use de money, but it is dat name w'at 'e give de h-establishmen'--Grandissime Frères! H-only for 'is money we would 'ave catch' dat quadroon gen'leman an' put some tar and fedder. Grandissime Frères! Agricole don' spik to my cousin Honoré no mo'. But I t'ink dass wrong. W'at you t'ink, Doctah?"
That evening, at candle-light, Raoul got the right arm of his slender, laughing wife about his neck; but Doctor Keene tarried all night in suburb St. Jean. He hardly felt the moral courage to face the results of the last five months. Let us understand them better ourselves.
It was indeed a fierce storm that had passed over the head of Honoré Grandissime. Taken up and carried by it, as it seemed to him, without volition, he had felt himself thrown here and there, wrenched, torn, gasping for moral breath, speaking the right word as if in delirium, doing the right deed as if by helpless instinct, and seeing himself in every case, at every turn, tricked by circumstance out of every vestige of merit. So it seemed to him. The long contemplated restitution was accomplished. On the morning when Aurora and Clotilde had expected to be turned shelterless into the open air, they had called upon him in his private office and presented the account of which he had put them in possession the evening before. He had honored it on the spot. To the two ladies who felt their own hearts stirred almost to tears of gratitude, he was--as he sat before them calm, unmoved, handling keen-edged facts with the easy rapidity of one accustomed to use them, smiling courteously and collectedly, parrying their expressions of appreciation--to them, we say, at least to one of them, he was "the prince of gentlemen." But, at the same time, there was within him, unseen, a surge of emotions, leaping, lashing, whirling, yet ever hurrying onward along the hidden, rugged bed of his honest intention.
The other restitution, which even twenty-four hours earlier might have seemed a pure self-sacrifice, became a self-rescue. The f.m.c. was the elder brother. A remark of Honoré made the night they watched in the corridor by Doctor Keene's door, about the younger's "right to exist," was but the echo of a conversation they had once had together in Europe. There they had practised a familiarity of intercourse which Louisiana would not have endured, and once, when speaking upon the subject of their common fatherhood, the f.m.c., prone to melancholy speech, had said:
"You are the lawful son of Numa Grandissime; I had no right to be born."
But Honoré quickly answered:
"By the laws of men, it may be; but by the law of God's justice, you are the lawful son, and it is I who should not have been born."
But, returned to Louisiana, accepting with the amiable, old-fashioned philosophy of conservatism the sins of the community, he had forgotten the unchampioned rights of his passive half-brother. Contact with Frowenfeld had robbed him of his pleasant mental drowsiness, and the oft-encountered apparition of the dark sharer of his name had become a slow-stepping, silent embodiment of reproach. The turn of events had brought him face to face with the problem of restitution, and he had solved it. But where had he come out? He had come out the beneficiary of this restitution, extricated from bankruptcy by an agreement which gave the f.m.c. only a public recognition of kinship which had always been his due. Bitter cup of humiliation!
Such was the stress within. Then there was the storm without. The Grandissimes were in a high state of excitement. The news had reached them all that Honoré had met the question of titles by selling one of their largest estates. It was received with wincing frowns, indrawn breath, and lifted feet, but without protest, and presently with a smile of returning confidence.
"Honoré knew; Honoré was informed; they had all authorized Honoré; and Honoré, though he might have his odd ways and notions, picked up during that unfortunate stay abroad, might safely be trusted to stand by the interests of his people."
After the first shock some of them even raised a laugh:
"Ha, ha, ha! Honoré would show those Yankees!"
They went to his counting-room and elsewhere, in search of him, to smite their hands into the hands of their far-seeing young champion. But, as we have seen, they did not find him; none dreamed of looking for him in an enemy's camp (19 Bienville) or on the lonely suburban commons, talking to himself in the ghostly twilight; and the next morning, while Aurora and Clotilde were seated before him in his private office, looking first at the face and then at the back of two mighty drafts of equal amount on Philadelphia, the cry of treason flew forth to these astounded Grandissimes, followed by the word that the sacred fire was gone out in the Grandissime temple (counting-room), that Delilahs in duplicate were carrying off the holy treasures, and that the uncircumcised and unclean--even an f.m.c.--was about to be inducted into the Grandissime priesthood.
Aurora and Clotilde were still there, when the various members of the family began to arrive and display their outlines in impatient shadow-play upon the glass door of the private office; now one, and now another, dallied with the doorknob and by and by obtruded their lifted hats and urgent, anxious faces half into the apartment; but Honoré would only glance toward them, and with a smile equally courteous, authoritative and fleeting, say:
"Good-morning, Camille" (or Charlie--or Agamemnon, as the case might be); "I will see you later; let me trouble you to close the door."
To add yet another strain, the two ladies, like frightened, rescued children, would cling to their deliverer. They wished him to become the custodian and investor of their wealth. Ah, woman! who is a tempter like thee? But Honoré said no, and showed them the danger of such a course.
"Suppose I should die suddenly. You might have trouble with my executors."
The two beauties assented pensively; but in Aurora's bosom a great throb secretly responded that as for her, in that case, she should have no use for money--in a nunnery.
"Would not Monsieur at least consent to be their financial adviser?"
He hemmed, commenced a sentence twice, and finally said:
"You will need an agent; some one to take full charge of your affairs; some person on whose sagacity and integrity you can place the fullest dependence."
"Who, for instance?" asked Aurora.
"I should say, without hesitation, Professor Frowenfeld, the apothecary. You know his trouble of yesterday is quite cleared up. You had not heard? Yes. He is not what we call an enterprising man, but--so much the better. Take him all in all, I would choose him above all others; if you--"
Aurora interrupted him. There was an ill-concealed wildness in her eye and a slight tremor in her voice, as she spoke, which she had not expected to betray. The quick, though quiet eye of Honoré Grandissime saw it, and it thrilled him through.
"'Sieur Grandissime, I take the risk; I wish you to take care of my money."
"But, Maman," said Clotilde, turning with a timid look to her mother, "If Monsieur Grandissime would rather not--"
Aurora, feeling alarmed at what she had said, rose up. Clotilde and Honoré did the same, and he said:
"With Professor Frowenfeld in charge of your affairs, I shall feel them not entirely removed from my care also. We are very good friends."
Clotilde looked at her mother. The three exchanged glances. The ladies signified their assent and turned to go, but M. Grandissime stopped them.
"By your leave, I will send for him. If you will be seated again--"
They thanked him and resumed their seats; he excused himself, passed into the counting-room, and sent a messenger for the apothecary.
M. Grandissime's meeting with his kinsmen was a stormy one. Aurora and Clotilde heard the strife begin, increase, subside, rise again and decrease. They heard men stride heavily to and fro, they heard hands smite together, palms fall upon tables and fists upon desks, heard half-understood statement and unintelligible counter-statement and derisive laughter; and, in the midst of all, like the voice of a man who rules himself, the clear-noted, unimpassioned speech of Honoré, sounding so loftily beautiful in the ear of Aurora that when Clotilde looked at her, sitting motionless with her rapt eyes lifted up, those eyes came down to her own with a sparkle of enthusiasm, and she softly said:
"It sounds like St. Gabriel!" and then blushed.
Clotilde answered with a happy, meaning look, which intensified the blush, and then leaning affectionately forward and holding the maman's eyes with her own, she said:
"You have my consent."
"Saucy!" said Aurora. "Wait till I get my own."
Some of his kinsmen Honoré pacified; some he silenced. He invited all to withdraw their lands and moneys from his charge, and some accepted the invitation. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that "all or nothing" attitude which, as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana. You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within the angle of the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their heads in unspeakable poverty, their nobility kept green by unflinching self-respect, and their poetic and pathetic pride revelling in ancestral, perennial rebellion against common sense.
"That is Agricola," whispered Aurora, with lifted head and eyes dilated and askance, as one deep-chested voice roared above all others.
Agricola stormed.
"Uncle," Aurora by and by heard Honoré say, "shall I leave my own counting-room?"
At that moment Joseph Frowenfeld entered, pausing with one hand on the outer rail. No one noticed him but Honoré, who was watching for him, and who, by a silent motion, directed him into the private office.
"H-whe shake its dust from our feet!" said Agricola, gathering some young retainers by a sweep of his glance and going out down the stair in the arched way, unmoved by the fragrance of warm bread. On the banquette he harangued his followers.
He said that in such times as these every lover of liberty should go armed; that the age of trickery had come; that by trickery Louisianians had been sold, like cattle, to a nation of parvenues, to be dragged before juries for asserting the human right of free trade or ridding the earth of sneaks in the pay of the government; that laws, so-called, had been forged into thumbscrews, and a Congress which had bound itself to give them all the rights of American citizens--sorry boon!--was preparing to slip their birthright acres from under their feet, and leave them hanging, a bait to the vultures of the Américain immigration. Yes; the age of trickery! Its apostles, he said, were even then at work among their fellow-citizens, warping, distorting, blasting, corrupting, poisoning the noble, unsuspecting, confiding Creole mind. For months the devilish work had been allowed, by a patient, peace-loving people, to go on. But shall it go on forever? (Cries of "No!" "No!") The smell of white blood comes on the south breeze. Dessalines and Christophe had recommenced their hellish work. Virginia, too, trembles for the safety of her fair mothers and daughters. We know not what is being plotted in the canebrakes of Louisiana. But we know that in the face of these things the prelates of trickery are sitting in Washington allowing throats to go unthrottled that talked tenderly about the "negro slave;" we know worse: we know that mixed blood has asked for equal rights from a son of the Louisiana noblesse, and that those sacred rights have been treacherously, pusillanimously surrendered into its possession. Why did we not rise yesterday, when the public heart was stirred? The forbearance of this people would be absurd if it were not saintly. But the time has, come when Louisiana must protect herself! If there is one here who will not strike for his lands, his rights and the purity of his race, let him speak! (Cries of "We will rise now!" "Give us a leader!" "Lead the way!")
"Kinsmen, friends," continued Agricola, "meet me at nightfall before the house of this too-long-spared mulatto. Come armed. Bring a few feet of stout rope. By morning the gentlemen of color will know their places better than they do to-day; h-whe shall understand each other! H-whe shall set the negrophiles to meditating."
He waved them away.
With a huzza the accumulated crowd moved off. Chance carried them up the rue Royale; they sang a song; they came to Frowenfeld's. It was an Américain establishment; that was against it. It was a gossiping place of Américain evening loungers; that was against it. It was a sorcerer's den--(we are on an ascending scale); its proprietor had refused employment to some there present, had refused credit to others, was an impudent condemner of the most approved Creole sins, had been beaten over the head only the day before; all these were against it. But, worse still, the building was owned by the f.m.c., and unluckiest of all, Raoul stood in the door and some of his kinsmen in the crowd stopped to have a word with him. The crowd stopped. A nameless fellow in the throng--he was still singing--said: "Here's the place," and dropped two bricks through the glass of the show-window. Raoul, with a cry of retaliative rage, drew and lifted a pistol; but a kinsman jerked it from him and three others quickly pinioned him and bore him off struggling, pleased to get him away unhurt. In ten minutes, Frowenfeld's was a broken-windowed, open-doored house, full of unrecognizable rubbish that had escaped the torch only through a chance rumor that the Governor's police were coming, and the consequent stampede of the mob.
Joseph was sitting in M. Grandissime's private office, in council with him and the ladies, and Aurora was just saying:
"Well, anny'ow, 'Sieur Frowenfel', ad laz you consen'!" and gathering her veil from her lap, when Raoul burst in, all sweat and rage.
"'Sieur Frowenfel', we ruin'! Ow pharmacie knock all in pieces! My pigshoe is los'!"
He dropped into a chair and burst into tears.
Shall we never learn to withhold our tears until we are sure of our trouble? Raoul little knew the joy in store for him. 'Polyte, it transpired the next day, had rushed in after the first volley of missiles, and while others were gleefully making off with jars of asafoetida and decanters of distilled water, lifted in his arms and bore away unharmed "Louisiana" firmly refusing to the last to enter the Union. It may not be premature to add that about four weeks later Honoré Grandissime, upon Raoul's announcement that he was "betrothed," purchased this painting and presented it to a club ofnatural connoisseurs.
The accident of the ladies Nancanou making their new home over Frowenfeld's drug-store occurred in the following rather amusing way. It chanced that the building was about completed at the time that the apothecary's stock in trade was destroyed; Frowenfeld leased the lower floor. Honoré Grandissime f.m.c. was the owner. He being concealed from his enemies, Joseph treated with that person's inadequately remunerated employé. In those days, as still in the old French Quarter, it was not uncommon for persons, even of wealth, to make their homes over stores, and buildings were constructed with a view to their partition in this way. Hence, in Chartres and Decatur streets, to-day--and in the cross-streets between--so many store-buildings with balconies, dormer windows, and sometimes even belvideres. This new building caught the eye and fancy of Aurora and Clotilde. The apartments for the store were entirely isolated. Through a largeporte-cochère, opening upon the banquette immediately beside and abreast of the store-front, one entered a high, covered carriage-way with a tessellated pavement and green plastered walls, and reached,--just where this way (corridor, the Creoles always called it) opened into a sunny court surrounded with narrow parterres,--a broad stairway leading to a hall over the "corridor" and to the drawing-rooms over the store. They liked it! Aurora would find out at once what sort of an establishment was likely to be opened below, and if that proved unexceptionable she would lease the upper part without more ado.
Next day she said:
"Clotilde, thou beautiful, I have signed the lease!"
"Then the store below is to be occupied by a--what?"
"Guess!"
"Ah!"
"Guess a pharmacien!"
Clotilde's lips parted, she was going to smile, when her thought changed and she blushed offendedly.
"Not--"
"'Sieur Frowenf--ah, ha, ha, ha!--ha, ha, ha!"
Clotilde burst into tears.
Still they moved in--it was written in the bond; and so did the apothecary; and probably two sensible young lovers never before nor since behaved with such abject fear of each other--for a time. Later, and after much oft-repeated good advice given to each separately and to both together, Honoré Grandissime persuaded them that Clotilde could make excellent use of a portion of her means by reenforcing Frowenfeld's very slender stock and well filling his rather empty-looking store, and so they signed regular articles of copartnership, blushing frightfully.
Frowenfeld became a visitor, Honoré not; once Honoré had seen the ladies' moneys satisfactorily invested, he kept aloof. It is pleasant here to remark that neither Aurora nor Clotilde made any waste of their sudden acquisitions; they furnished their rooms with much beauty at moderate cost, and theirsalonwith artistic, not extravagant, elegance, and, for the sake of greater propriety, employed a decayed lady as housekeeper; but, being discreet in all other directions, they agreed upon one bold outlay--a volante.
Almost any afternoon you might have seen this vehicle on the Terre aux Boeuf, or Bayou, or Tchoupitoulas Road; and because of the brilliant beauty of its occupants it became known from all other volantes as the "meteor."
Frowenfeld's visits were not infrequent; he insisted on Clotdlde's knowing just what was being done with her money. Without indulging ourselves in the pleasure of contemplating his continued mental unfolding, we may say that his growth became more rapid in this season of universal expansion; love had entered into his still compacted soul like a cupid into a rose, and was crowding it wide open. However, as yet, it had not made him brave. Aurora used to slip out of the drawing-room, and in some secluded nook of the hall throw up her clasped hands and go through all the motions of screaming merriment.
"The little fool!"--it was of her own daughter she whispered this complimentary remark--"the little fool is afraid of the fish!"
"You!" she said to Clotilde, one evening after Joseph had gone, "you call yourself a Creole girl!"
But she expected too much. Nothing so terrorizes a blushing girl as a blushing man. And then--though they did sometimes digress--Clotilde and her partner met to talk "business" in a purely literal sense.
Aurora, after a time, had taken her money into her own keeping.
"You mighd gid robb' ag'in, you know, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," she said.
But when he mentioned Clotilde's fortune as subject to the same contingency, Aurora replied:
"Ah! bud Clotilde mighd gid robb'!"
But for all the exuberance of Aurora's spirits, there was a cloud in her sky. Indeed, we know it is only when clouds are in the sky that we get the rosiest tints; and so it was with Aurora. One night, when she had heard the wicket in theporte-cochèreshut behind three evening callers, one of whom she had rejected a week before, another of whom she expected to dispose of similarly, and the last of whom was Joseph Frowenfeld, she began such a merry raillery at Clotilde and such a hilarious ridicule of the "Professor" that Clotilde would have wept again had not Aurora, all at once, in the midst of a laugh, dropped her face in her hands and run from the room in tears. It is one of the penalties we pay for being joyous, that nobody thinks us capable of care or the victim of trouble until, in some moment of extraordinary expansion, our bubble of gayety bursts. Aurora had been crying of nights. Even that same night, Clotilde awoke, opened her eyes and beheld her mother risen from the pillow and sitting upright in the bed beside her; the moon, shining brightly through the mosquito-bar revealed with distinctness her head slightly drooped, her face again in her hands and the dark folds of her hair falling about her shoulders, half-concealing the richly embroidered bosom of her snowy gown, and coiling in continuous abundance about her waist and on the slight summer covering of the bed. Before her on the sheet lay a white paper. Clotilde did not try to decipher the writing on it; she knew, at sight, the slip that had fallen from the statement of account on the evening of the ninth of March. Aurora withdrew her hands from her face--Clotilde shut her eyes; she heard Aurora put the paper in her bosom.
"Clotilde," she said, very softly.
"Maman," the daughter replied, opening her eyes, reached up her arms and drew the dear head down.
"Clotilde, once upon a time I woke this way, and, while you were asleep, left the bed and made a vow to Monsieur Danny. Oh! it was a sin! but I cannot do those things now; I have been frightened ever since. I shall never do so any more. I shall never commit another sin as long as I live!"
Their lips met fervently.
"My sweet sweet," whispered Clotilde, "you looked so beautiful sitting up with the moonlight all around you!"
"Clotilde, my beautiful daughter," said Aurora, pushing her bedmate from her and pretending to repress a smile, "I tell you now, because you don't know, and it is my duty as your mother to tell you--the meanest wickedness a woman can do in all this bad, bad world is to look ugly in bed!"
Clotilde answered nothing, and Aurora dropped her outstretched arms, turned away with an involuntary, tremulous sigh, and after two or three hours of patient wakefulness, fell asleep.
But at daybreak next morning, he that wrote the paper had not closed his eyes.
There was always some flutter among Frowenfeld's employés when he was asked for, and this time it was the more pronounced because he was sought by a housemaid from the upper floor. It was hard for these two or three young Ariels to keep their Creole feet to the ground when it was presently revealed to their sharp ears that the "prof-fis-or" was requested to come upstairs.
The new store was an extremely neat, bright, and well-ordered establishment; yet to ascend into the drawing-rooms seemed to the apothecary like going from the hold of one of those smart old packet-ships of his day into the cabin. Aurora came forward, with the slippers of a Cinderella twinkling at the edge of her robe. It seemed unfit that the floor under them should not be clouds.
"Proffis-or Frowenfel', good-day! Teg a cha'." She laughed. It was the pure joy of existence. "You's well? You lookin' verrie well! Halways bizzie? You fine dad agriz wid you' healt', 'Sieur Frowenfel'? Yes? Ha, ha, ha!" She suddenly leaned toward him across the arm of her chair, with an earnest face. "'Sieur Frowenfel', Palmyre wand see you. You don' wan' come ad 'er 'ouse, eh?--an' you don' wan' her to come ad yo' bureau. You know, 'Sieur Frowenfel', she drez the hair of Clotilde an' mieself. So w'en she tell me dad, I juz say, 'Palmyre, I will sen' for Proffis-or Frowenfel' to come yeh; but I don' thing 'e comin'.' You know, I din' wan' you to 'ave dad troub'; but Clotilde--ha, ha, ha! Clotilde is sudge a foolish--she nevva thing of dad troub' to you--she say she thing you was too kine-'arted to call dad troub'--ha, ha, ha! So anny'ow we sen' for you, eh!"
Frowenfeld said he was glad they had done so, whereupon Aurora rose lightly, saying:
"I go an' sen' her." She started away, but turned back to add: "You know, 'Sieur Frowenfel', she say she cann' truz nobody bud y'u." She ended with a low, melodious laugh, bending her joyous eyes upon the apothecary with her head dropped to one side in a way to move a heart of flint.
She turned and passed through a door, and by the same way Palmyre entered. The philosophe came forward noiselessly and with a subdued expression, different from any Frowenfeld had ever before seen. At the first sight of her a thrill of disrelish ran through him of which he was instantly ashamed; as she came nearer he met her with a deferential bow and the silent tender of a chair. She sat down, and, after a moment's pause, handed him a sealed letter.
He turned it over twice, recognized the handwriting, felt the disrelish return, and said:
"This is addressed to yourself."
She bowed.
"Do you know who wrote it?" he asked.
She bowed again.
"Oui, Miché."
"You wish me to open it? I cannot read French."
She seemed to have some explanation to offer, but could not command the necessary English; however, with the aid of Frowenfeld's limited guessing powers, she made him understand that the bearer of the letter to her had brought word from the writer that it was written in English purposely that M. Frowenfeld--the only person he was willing should see it--might read it. Frowenfeld broke the seal and ran his eye over the writing, but remained silent.
The woman stirred, as if to say "Well?" But he hesitated.
"Palmyre," he suddenly said, with a slight, dissuasive smile, "it would be a profanation for me to read this."
She bowed to signify that she caught his meaning, then raised her elbows with an expression of dubiety, and said:
"'E hask you--"
"Yes," murmured the apothecary. He shook his head as if to protest to himself, and read in a low but audible voice:
"Star of my soul, I approach to die. It is not for me possible to live without Palmyre. Long time have I so done, but now, cut off from to see thee, by imprisonment, as it may be called, love is starving to death. Oh, have pity on the faithful heart which, since ten years, change not, but forget heaven and earth for you. Now in the peril of the life, hidden away, that absence from the sight of you make his seclusion the more worse than death. Halas! I pine! Not other ten years of despair can I commence. Accept this love. If so I will live for you, but if to the contraire, I must die for you. Is there anything at all what I will not give or even do if Palmyre will be my wife? Ah, no, far otherwise, there is nothing!" ...
Frowenfeld looked over the top of the letter. Palmyre sat with her eyes cast down, slowly shaking her head. He returned his glance to the page, coloring somewhat with annoyance at being made a proposing medium.
"The English is very faulty here," he said, without looking up. "He mentions Bras-Coupé." Palmyre started and turned toward him; but he went on without lifting his eyes. "He speaks of your old pride and affection toward him as one who with your aid might have been a leader and deliverer of his people." Frowenfeld looked up. "Do you under--"
"Allez, Miché" said she, leaning forward, her great eyes fixed on the apothecary and her face full of distress. "Mo comprend bien."
"He asks you to let him be to you in the place of Bras-Coupé."
The eyes of the philosophe, probably for the first time since the death of the giant, lost their pride. They gazed upon Frowenfeld almost with piteousness; but she compressed her lips and again slowly shook her head.
"You see," said Frowenfeld, suddenly feeling a new interest, "he understands their wants. He knows their wrongs. He is acquainted with laws and men. He could speak for them. It would not be insurrection--it would be advocacy. He would give his time, his pen, his speech, his means, to get them justice--to get them their rights."
She hushed the over-zealous advocate with a sad and bitter smile and essayed to speak, studied as if for English words, and, suddenly abandoning that attempt, said, with ill-concealed scorn and in the Creole patois:
"The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her chair, her eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She seemed to have lost all knowledge of place or of human presence".
"What is all that? What I want is vengeance!"
"I will finish reading," said Frowenfeld, quickly, not caring to understand the passionate speech.
"Ah, Palmyre! Palmyre! What you love and hope to love you because his heart keep itself free, he is loving another!"
"Qui ci ça, Miché?"
Frowenfeld was loth to repeat. She had understood, as her face showed; but she dared not believe. He made it shorter:
"He means that Honoré Grandissime loves another woman."
"'Tis a lie!" she exclaimed, a better command of English coming with the momentary loss of restraint.
The apothecary thought a moment and then decided to speak.
"I do not think so," he quietly said.
"'Ow you know dat?"
She, too, spoke quietly, but under a fearful strain. She had thrown herself forward, but, as she spoke, forced herself back into her seat.
"He told me so himself."
The tall figure of Palmyre rose slowly and silently from her chair, her eyes lifted up and her lips moving noiselessly. She seemed to have lost all knowledge of place or of human presence. She walked down the drawing-room quite to its curtained windows and there stopped, her face turned away and her hand laid with a visible tension on the back of a chair. She remained so long that Frowenfeld had begun to think of leaving her so, when she turned and came back. Her form was erect, her step firm and nerved, her lips set together and her hands dropped easily at her side; but when she came close up before the apothecary she was trembling. For a moment she seemed speechless, and then, while her eyes gleamed with passion, she said, in a cold, clear tone, and in her native patois:
"Very well: if I cannot love I can have my revenge." She took the letter from him and bowed her thanks, still adding, in the same tongue, "There is now no longer anything to prevent."
The apothecary understood the dark speech. She meant that, with no hope of Honoré's love, there was no restraining motive to withhold her from wreaking what vengeance she could upon Agricola. But he saw the folly of a debate.
"That is all I can do?" asked he.
"Oui, merci, Miché" she said; then she added, in perfect English, "but that is not allIcan do," and then--laughed.
The apothecary had already turned to go, and the laugh was a low one; but it chilled his blood. He was glad to get back to his employments.
We have now recorded some of the events which characterized the five months during which Doctor Keene had been vainly seeking to recover his health in the West Indies.
"Is Mr. Frowenfeld in?" he asked, walking very slowly, and with a cane, into the new drug-store on the morning of his return to the city.
"If Professo' Frowenfel' 's in?" replied a young man in shirt-sleeves, speaking rapidly, slapping a paper package which he had just tied, and sliding it smartly down the counter. "No, seh."
A quick step behind the doctor caused him to turn; Raoul was just entering, with a bright look of business on his face, taking his coat off as he came.
"Docta Keene!Tecka chair. 'Ow you like de noo sto'? See? Fo' counters! T'ree clerk'! De whole interieure paint undre mie h-own direction! If dat is not a beautiful! eh? Look at dat sign."
He pointed to some lettering in harmonious colors near the ceiling at the farther end of the house. The doctor looked and read:
MANDARIN, AG'T, APOTHECARY.
"Why not Frowenfeld?" he asked.
Raoul shrugged.
"'Tis better dis way."
That was his explanation.
"Not the De Brahmin Mandarin who was Honoré's manager?"
"Yes. Honoré was n' able to kip 'im no long-er. Honoré is n' so rich lak befo'."
"And Mandarin is really in charge here?"
"Oh, yes. Profess-or Frowenfel' all de time at de ole corner, w'ere 'econtinue to keep 'is private room and h-use de ole shop fo' ware'ouse. 'E h-only come yeh w'en Mandarin cann' git 'long widout 'im."
"What does he do there?He'snot rich."
Raoul bent down toward the doctor's chair and whispered the dark secret:
"Studyin'!"
Doctor Keene went out.
Everything seemed changed to the returned wanderer. Poor man! The changes were very slight save in their altered relation to him. To one broken in health, and still more to one with a broken heart, old scenes fall upon the sight in broken rays. A sort of vague alienation seemed to the little doctor to come like a film over the long-familiar vistas of the town where he had once walked in the vigor and complacency of strength and distinction. This was not the same New Orleans. The people he met on the street were more or less familiar to his memory, but many that should have recognized him failed to do so, and others were made to notice him rather by his cough than by his face. Some did not know he had been away. It made him cross.
He had walked slowly down beyond the old Frowenfeld corner and had just crossed the street to avoid the dust of a building which was being torn down to make place for a new one, when he saw coming toward him, unconscious of his proximity, Joseph Frowenfeld.
"Doctor Keene!" said Frowenfeld, with almost the enthusiasm of Raoul.
The doctor was very much quieter.
"Hello, Joe."
They went back to the new drug-store, sat down in a pleasant little rear corner enclosed by a railing and curtains, and talked.
"And did the trip prove of no advantage to you?"
"You see. But never mind me; tell me about Honoré; how does that row with his family progress?"
"It still continues; the most of his people hold ideas of justice and prerogative that run parallel with family and party lines, lines of caste, of custom and the like they have imparted their bad feeling against him to the community at large; very easy to do just now, for the election for President of the States comes on in the fall, and though we in Louisiana have little or nothing to do with it, the people are feverish."
"The country's chill-day," said Doctor Keene; "dumb chill, hot fever."
"The excitement is intense," said Frowenfeld. "It seems we are not to be granted suffrage yet; but the Creoles have a way of casting votes in their mind. For example, they have voted Honoré Grandissime a traitor; they have voted me an encumbrance; I hear one of them casting that vote now."
Some one near the front of the store was talking excitedly with Raoul:
"An'--an'--an' w'at are the consequence? The consequence are that we smash his shop for him an' 'e 'ave to make a noo-start with a Creole partner's money an' put 'is sto' in charge of Creole'! If I know he is yo' frien'? Yesseh! Valuable citizen? An' w'at we care for valuable citizen? Let him be valuable if he want; it keep' him from gettin' the neck broke; but--he mus'-tek-kyeh--'ow--he--talk'! He-mus'-tek-kyeh 'ow he stir the 'ot blood of Louisyanna!"
"He is perfectly right," said the little doctor, in his husky undertone; "neither you nor Honoré is a bit sound, and I shouldn't wonder if they would hang you both, yet; and as for that darkey who has had the impudence to try to make a commercial white gentleman of himself--it may not be I that ought to say it, but--he will get his deserts--sure!"
"There are a great many Americans that think as you do," said Frowenfeld, quietly.
"But," said the little doctor, "what did that fellow mean by your Creole partner? Mandarin is in charge of your store, but he is not your partner, is he? Have you one?"
"A silent one," said the apothecary
"So silent as to be none of my business?"
"No."
"Well, who is it, then?"
"It is Mademoiselle Nancanou."
"Your partner in business?"
"Yes."
"Well, Joseph Frowenfeld,--"
The insinuation conveyed in the doctor's manner was very trying, but Joseph merely reddened.
"Purely business, I suppose," presently said the doctor, with a ghastly ironical smile. "Does the arrangem'--" his utterance failed him--"does it end there?"
"It ends there."
"And you don't see that it ought either not to have begun, or else ought not to have ended there?"
Frowenfeld blushed angrily. The doctor asked:
"And who takes care of Aurora's money?"
"Herself."
"Exclusively?"
They both smiled more good-naturedly.
"Exclusively."
"She's a coon;" and the little doctor rose up and crawled away, ostensibly to see another friend, but really to drag himself into his bedchamber and lock himself in. The next day--the yellow fever was bad again--he resumed the practice of his profession.
"'Twill be a sort of decent suicide without the element of pusillanimity," he thought to himself.