The Grandissimes Part 61

"You don't call this a hiding place, do you--in his own bedchamber?" the doctor whispered.

"It is necessary, now, only to keep out of sight," softly answered Honore. "Agricole and some others ransacked this house one night last March--the day I announced the new firm; but of course, then, he was not here."

They entered, and the figure of Honore Grandissime, f.m.c., came into view in the centre of the farther room, reclining in an att.i.tude of extreme languor on a low couch, whither he had come from the high bed near by, as the impression of his form among its pillows showed. He turned upon the two visitors his slow, melancholy eyes, and, without an attempt to rise or speak, indicated, by a feeble motion of the hand, an invitation to be seated.

"Good morning," said Doctor Keene, selecting a light chair and drawing it close to the side of the couch.

The patient before him was emaciated. The limp and bloodless hand, which had not responded to the doctor's friendly pressure but sank idly back upon the edge of the couch, was cool and moist, and its nails slightly blue.

"Lie still," said the doctor, rea.s.suringly, as the rentier began to lift the one knee and slippered foot which was drawn up on the couch and the hand which hung out of sight across a large, linen-covered cus.h.i.+on.

By pleasant talk that seemed all chat, the physician soon acquainted himself with the case before him. It was a very plain one. By and by he rubbed his face and red curls and suddenly said:

"You will not take my prescription."

The f.m.c. did not say yes or no.

"Still,"--the doctor turned sideways in his chair, as was his wont, and, as he spoke, allowed the corners of his mouth to take that little satirical downward pull which his friends disliked, "I'll do my duty.

I'll give Honore the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescription to you is, Get up and get out. Never mind the risk of rough handling; they can but kill you, and you will die anyhow if you stay here." He rose. "I'll send you a chalybeate tonic; or--I will leave it at Frowenfeld's to-morrow morning, and you can call there and get it. It will give you an object for going out."

The two visitors presently said adieu and retired together. Reaching the bottom of the stairs in the carriage "corridor," they turned in a direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in a cool nook of the paved court, at a small table where the hospitality of Clemence had placed gla.s.ses of lemonade.

"No," said the doctor, as they sat down, "there is, as yet, no incurable organic derangement; a little heart trouble easily removed; still your--your patient--"

"My half-brother," said Honore.

"Your patient," said Doctor Keene, "is an emphatic 'yes' to the question the girls sometimes ask us doctors--Does love ever kill?' It will kill him _soon_, if you do not get him to rouse up. There is absolutely nothing the matter with him but his unrequited love."

"Fortunately, the most of us," said Honore, with something of the doctor's smile, "do not love hard enough to be killed by it."

"Very few." The doctor paused, and his blue eyes, distended in reverie, gazed upon the gla.s.s which he was slowly turning around with his attenuated fingers as it stood on the board, while he added: "However, one _may_ love as hopelessly and harder than that man upstairs, and yet not die."

"There is comfort in that--to those who must live," said Honore with gentle gravity.

"Yes," said the other, still toying with his gla.s.s.

He slowly lifted his glance, and the eyes of the two men met and remained steadfastly fixed each upon each.

"You've got it bad," said Doctor Keene, mechanically.

"And you?" retorted the Creole.

"It isn't going to kill me."

"It has not killed me. And," added M. Grandissime, as they pa.s.sed through the carriage-way toward the street, "while I keep in mind the numberless other sorrows of life, the burials of wives and sons and daughters, the agonies and desolations, I shall never die of love, my-de'-seh, for very shame's sake."

This was much sentiment to risk within Doctor Keene's reach; but he took no advantage of it.

"Honore," said he, as they joined hands on the banquette beside the doctor's gig, to say good-day, "if you think there's a chance for you, why stickle upon such fine-drawn points as I reckon you are making? Why, sir, as I understand it, this is the only weak spot your action has shown; you have taken an inoculation of Quixotic conscience from our transcendental apothecary and perpetrated a lot of heroic behavior that would have done honor to four-and-twenty Brutuses; and now that you have a chance to do something easy and human, you s.h.i.+ver and shrink at the 'looks o' the thing.' Why, what do you care--"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Honore; "do you suppose I have not temptation enough already?"

He began to move away.

"Honore," said the doctor, following him a step, "I couldn't have made a mistake--It's the little Monk,--it's Aurora, isn't it?"

Honore nodded, then faced his friend more directly, with a sudden new thought.

"But, Doctor, why not take your own advice? I know not how you are prevented; you have as good a right as Frowenfeld."

"It wouldn't be honest," said the doctor; "it wouldn't be the straight up and down manly thing."

"Why not?"

The doctor stepped into his gig--

"Not till I feel all right _here_." (In his chest.)

CHAPTER LIII

FROWENFELD AT THE GRANDISSIME MANSION

One afternoon--it seems to have been some time in June, and consequently earlier than Doctor Keene's return--the Grandissimes were set all a-tremble with vexation by the discovery that another of their number had, to use Agricola's expression, "gone over to the enemy,"--a phrase first applied by him to Honore.

"What do you intend to convey by that term?" Frowenfeld had asked on that earlier occasion.

"Gone over to the enemy means, my son, gone over to the enemy!" replied Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Americains in matters of business and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert, imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but Honore has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?--and h-walked out into the stre-heet with them, arm in arm! It implies in his case an act--two separate and distinct acts--so base that--that--I simply do not understand them! _H-you_ know, Professor Frowenfeld, what he has done!

You know how ignominiously he has surrendered the key of a moral position which for the honor of the Grandissime-Fusilier name we have felt it necessary to hold against our hereditary enemies!

And--you--know--" here Agricola actually dropped all artificiality and spoke from the depths of his feelings, without figure--"h-h-he has joined himself in business h-with a man of negro blood! What can we do?

What can we say? It is Honore Grandissime. We can only say, 'Farewell!

He is gone over to the enemy.'"

The new cause of exasperation was the defection of Raoul Innerarity.

Raoul had, somewhat from a distance, contemplated such part as he could understand of Joseph Frowenfeld's character with ever-broadening admiration. We know how devoted he became to the interests and fame of "Frowenfeld's." It was in April he had married. Not to divide his generous heart he took rooms opposite the drug-store, resolved that "Frowenfeld's" should be not only the latest closed but the earliest opened of all the pharmacies in New Orleans.

This, it is true, was allowable. Not many weeks afterward his bride fell suddenly and seriously ill. The overflowing souls of Aurora and Clotilde could not be so near to trouble and not know it, and before Raoul was nearly enough recovered from the shock of this peril to remember that he was a Grandissime, these last two of the De Grapions had hastened across the street to the small, white-walled sick-room and filled it as full of universal human love as the cup of a magnolia is full of perfume. Madame Innerarity recovered. A warm affection was all she and her husband could pay such ministration in, and this they paid bountifully; the four became friends. The little madame found herself drawn most toward Clotilde; to her she opened her heart--and her wardrobe, and showed her all her beautiful new underclothing. Raoul found Clotilde to be, for him, rather--what shall we say?--starry; starrily inaccessible; but Aurora was emphatically after his liking; he was delighted with Aurora.

He told her in confidence that "Profess-or Frowenfel'" was the best man in the world; but she boldly said, taking pains to speak with a tear-and-a-half of genuine grat.i.tude,--"Egcep' Monsieur Honore Grandissime," and he a.s.sented, at first with hesitation and then with ardor. The four formed a group of their own; and it is not certain that this was not the very first specimen ever produced in the Crescent City of that social variety of New Orleans life now distinguished as Uptown Creoles.

Almost the first thing acquired by Raoul in the camp of the enemy was a certain Aurorean audacity; and on the afternoon to which we allude, having told Frowenfeld a rousing fib to the effect that the mult.i.tudinous inmates of the maternal Grandissime mansion had insisted on his bringing his esteemed employer to see them, he and his bride had the hardihood to present him on the front veranda.

The straightforward Frowenfeld was much pleased with his reception. It was not possible for such as he to guess the ire with which his presence was secretly regarded. New Orleans, let us say once more, was small, and the apothecary of the rue Royale locally famed; and what with curiosity and that innate politeness which it is the Creole's boast that he cannot mortify, the veranda, about the top of the great front stair, was well crowded with people of both s.e.xes and all ages. It would be most pleasant to tarry once more in description of this gathering of n.o.bility and beauty; to recount the points of Creole loveliness in midsummer dress; to tell in particular of one and another eye-kindling face, form, manner, wit; to define the subtle qualities of Creole air and sky and scene, or the yet more delicate graces that characterize the music of Creole voice and speech and the light of Creole eyes; to set forth the gracious, unaccentuated dignity of the matrons and the ravis.h.i.+ng archness of their daughters. To Frowenfeld the experience seemed all unreal. Nor was this unreality removed by conversation on grave subjects; for few among either the maturer or the younger beauty could do aught but listen to his foreign tongue like unearthly strangers in the old fairy tales. They came, however, in the course of their talk to the subject of love and marriage. It is not certain that they entered deeper into the great question than a comparison of its attendant Anglo-American and Franco-American conventionalities; but sure it is that somehow--let those young souls divine the method who can--every unearthly stranger on that veranda contrived to understand Frowenfeld's English. Suddenly the conversation began to move over the ground of inter-marriage between hostile families. Then what eyes and ears! A certain suspicion had already found lodgement in the universal Grandissime breast, and every one knew in a moment that, to all intents and purposes, they were about to argue the case of Honore and Aurora.

The conversation became discussion, Frowenfeld, Raoul and Raoul's little seraph against the whole host, chariots, horse and archery. Ah! such strokes as the apothecary dealt! And if Raoul and "Madame Raoul" played parts most closely resembling the blowing of horns and breaking of pitchers, still they bore themselves gallantly. The engagement was short; we need not say that n.o.body surrendered; n.o.body ever gives up the s.h.i.+p in parlor or veranda debate: and yet--as is generally the case in such affairs--truth and justice made some unacknowledged headway. If anybody on either side came out wounded--this to the credit of the Creoles as a people--the sufferer had the heroic good manners not to say so. But the results were more marked than this; indeed, in more than one or two candid young hearts and impressible minds the wrongs and rights of sovereign true love began there on the spot to be more generously conceded and allowed. "My-de'-seh," Honore had once on a time said to Frowenfeld, meaning that to prevail in conversational debate one should never follow up a faltering opponent, "you mus' _crack_ the egg, not smash it!" And Joseph, on rising to take his leave, could the more amiably overlook the feebleness of the invitation to call again, since he rejoiced, for Honore's sake, in the conviction that the egg was cracked.

Agricola, the Grandissimes told the apothecary, was ill in his room, and Madame de Grandissime, his sister--Honore's mother--begged to be excused that she might keep him company. The Fusiliers were a very close order; or one might say they garrisoned the citadel.