_ CHAPTER XX. A VERY NATURAL MISTAKE
MR. Raoul Innerarity proved a treasure. The fact became patent in a few hours. To a student of the community he was a key, a lamp, a lexicon, a microscope, a tabulated statement, a book of heraldry, a city directory, a glass of wine, a Book of Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, a diving bell, a Creole _veritas_. Before the day had had time to cool, his continual stream of words had done more to elucidate the mysteries in which his employer had begun to be befogged than half a year of the apothecary's slow and scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how to carve a strange fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drew forward in panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier, Zephyr Grandissime and the lady of the _lettre de cachet_, Demosthenes De Grapion and the _fille a l'hopital_, Georges De Grapion and the _fille a la cassette_, Numa Grandissime, father of the two Honores, young Nancanou and old Agricola,--the way he made them
"Knit hands and beat the ground
In a light, fantastic round,"
would have shamed the skilled volubility of Sheharazade.
"Look!" said the story-teller, summing up; "you take hanny 'istory of France an' see the hage of my familie. Pipple talk about de Boulignys, de Sauves, de Grandpres, de Lemoynes, de St. Maxents,--bla-a-a! De Grandissimes is as hole as de dev'! What? De mose of de Creole families is not so hold as plenty of my yallah kinfolks!"
The apothecary found very soon that a little salt improved M. Raoul's statements.
But here he was, a perfect treasure, and Frowenfeld, fleeing before his illimitable talking power in order to digest in seclusion the ancestral episodes of the Grandissimes and De Grapions, laid pleasant plans for the immediate future. To-morrow morning he would leave the shop in Raoul's care and call on M. Honore Grandissime to advise with him concerning the retention of the born artist as a drug-clerk. To-morrow evening he would pluck courage and force his large but bashful feet up to the doorstep of Number 19 rue Bienville. And the next evening he would go and see what might be the matter with Doctor Keene, who had looked ill on last parting with the evening group that lounged in Frowenfeld's door, some three days before. The intermediate hours were to be devoted, of course, to the prescription desk and his "dead stock."
And yet after this order of movement had been thus compactly planned, there all the more seemed still to be that abroad which, now on this side, and now on that, was urging him in a nervous whisper to make haste. There had escaped into the air, it seemed, and was gliding about, the expectation of a crisis.
Such a feeling would have been natural enough to the tenants of Number 19 rue Bienville, now spending the tenth of the eighteen days of grace allowed them in which to save their little fortress. For Palmyre's assurance that the candle burning would certainly cause the rent-money to be forthcoming in time was to Clotilde unknown, and to Aurora it was poor stuff to make peace of mind of. But there was a degree of impracticability in these ladies, which, if it was unfortunate, was, nevertheless, a part of their Creole beauty, and made the absence of any really brilliant outlook what the galaxy makes a moonless sky. Perhaps they had not been as diligent as they might have been in canvassing all possible ways and means for meeting the pecuniary emergency so fast bearing down upon them. From a Creole standpoint, they were not bad managers. They could dress delightfully on an incredibly small outlay; could wear a well-to-do smile over an inward sigh of stifled hunger; could tell the parents of their one or two scholars to consult their convenience, and then come home to a table that would make any kind soul weep; but as to estimating the velocity of bills-payable in their orbits, such trained sagacity was not theirs. Their economy knew how to avoid what the Creole-African apothegm calls _commerce Man Lizon--qui assete pou' trois picaillons et vend' pou' ein escalin_ (bought for three picayunes and sold for two); but it was an economy that made their very hound a Spartan; for, had that economy been half as wise as it was heroic, his one meal a day would not always have been the cook's leavings of cold rice and the lickings of the gumbo plates.
On the morning fixed by Joseph Frowenfeld for calling on M. Grandissime, on the banquette of the rue Toulouse, directly in front of an old Spanish archway and opposite a blacksmith's shop,--this blacksmith's shop stood between a jeweller's store and a large, balconied and dormer-windowed wine-warehouse--Aurore Nancanou, closely veiled, had halted in a hesitating way and was inquiring of a gigantic negro cartman the whereabouts of the counting-room of M. Honore Grandissime.
Before he could respond she descried the name upon a staircase within the archway, and, thanking the cartman as she would have thanked a prince, hastened to ascend. An inspiring smell of warm rusks, coming from a bakery in the paved court below, rushed through the archway and up the stair and accompanied her into the cemetery-like silence of the counting-room. There were in the department some fourteen clerks. It was a den of Grandissimes. More than half of them were men beyond middle life, and some were yet older. One or two were so handsome, under their noble silvery locks, that almost any woman--Clotilde, for instance,--would have thought, "No doubt that one, or that one, is the head of the house." Aurora approached the railing which shut in the silent toilers and directed her eyes to the farthest corner of the room. There sat there at a large desk a thin, sickly-looking man with very sore eyes and two pairs of spectacles, plying a quill with a privileged loudness.
"H-h-m-m!" said she, very softly.
A young man laid down his rule and stepped to the rail with a silent bow. His face showed a jaded look. Night revelry, rather than care or years, had wrinkled it; but his bow was high-bred.
"Madame,"--in an undertone.
"Monsieur, it is M. Grandissime whom I wish to see," she said in French.
But the young man responded in English.
"You har one tenant, ent it?"
"Yes, seh."
"Zen eet ees M. De Brahmin zat you 'ave to see."
"No, seh; M. Grandissime."
"M. Grandissime nevva see one tenant."
"I muz see M. Grandissime."
Aurora lifted her veil and laid it up on her bonnet.
The clerk immediately crossed the floor to the distant desk. The quill of the sore-eyed man scratched louder--scratch, scratch--as though it were trying to scratch under the door of Number 19 rue Bienville--for a moment, and then ceased. The clerk, with one hand behind him and one touching the desk, murmured a few words, to which the other, after glancing under his arm at Aurora, gave a short, low reply and resumed his pen. The clerk returned, came through a gateway in the railing, led the way into a rich inner room, and turning with another courtly bow, handed her a cushioned armchair and retired.
"After eighteen years," thought Aurora, as she found herself alone. It had been eighteen years since any representative of the De Grapion line had met a Grandissime face to face, so far as she knew; even that representative was only her deceased husband, a mere connection by marriage. How many years it was since her grandfather, Georges De Grapion, captain of dragoons, had had his fatal meeting with a Mandarin de Grandissime, she did not remember. There, opposite her on the wall, was the portrait of a young man in a corslet who might have been M. Mandarin himself. She felt the blood of her race growing warmer in her veins. "Insolent tribe," she said, without speaking, "we have no more men left to fight you; but now wait. See what a woman can do."
These thoughts ran through her mind as her eye passed from one object to another. Something reminded her of Frowenfeld, and, with mingled defiance at her inherited enemies and amusement at the apothecary, she indulged in a quiet smile. The smile was still there as her glance in its gradual sweep reached a small mirror.
She almost leaped from her seat.
Not because that mirror revealed a recess which she had not previously noticed; not because behind a costly desk therein sat a youngish man, reading a letter; not because he might have been observing her, for it was altogether likely that, to avoid premature interruption, he had avoided looking up; nor because this was evidently Honore Grandissime; but because Honore Grandissime, if this were he, was the same person whom she had seen only with his back turned in the pharmacy--the rider whose horse ten days ago had knocked her down, the Lieutenant of Dragoons who had unmasked and to whom she had unmasked at the ball! Fly! But where? How? It was too late; she had not even time to lower her veil. M. Grandissime looked up at the glass, dropped the letter with a slight start of consternation and advanced quickly toward her. For an instant her embarrassment showed itself in a mantling blush and a distressful yearning to escape; but the next moment she rose, all a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as the inborn witchery of her eyes would allow.
He spoke in Parisian French:
"Please be seated, madame."
She sank down.
"Do you wish to see me?"
"No, sir."
She did not see her way out of this falsehood, but--she couldn't say yes.
Silence followed.
"Whom do--"
"I wish to see M. Honore Grandissime."
"That is my name, madame."
"Ah!"--with an angelic smile; she had collected her wits now, and was ready for war. "You are not one of his clerks?"
M. Grandissime smiled softly, while he said to himself: "You little honey-bee, you want to sting me, eh?" and then he answered her question.
"No, madame; I am the gentleman you are looking for."
"The gentleman she was look--" her pride resented the fact. "Me!"--thought she--"I am the lady whom, I have not a doubt, you have been longing to meet ever since the ball;" but her look was unmoved gravity. She touched her handkerchief to her lips and handed him the rent notice.
"I received that from your office the Monday before last."
There was a slight emphasis in the announcement of the time; it was the day of the run-over.
Honore Grandissime, stopping with the rent-notice only half unfolded, saw the advisability of calling up all the resources of his sagacity and wit in order to answer wisely; and as they answered his call a brighter nobility so overspread face and person that Aurora inwardly exclaimed at it even while she exulted in her thrust.
"Monday before last?"
She slightly bowed.
"A serious misfortune befell me that day," said M. Grandissime.
"Ah?" replied the lady, raising her brows with polite distress, "but you have entirely recovered, I suppose."
"It was I, madame, who that evening caused you a mortification for which I fear you will accept no apology."
"On the contrary," said Aurora, with an air of generous protestation, "it is I who should apologize; I fear I injured your horse."
M. Grandissime only smiled, and opening the rent-notice dropped his glance upon it while he said in a preoccupied tone:
"My horse is very well, I thank you."
But as he read the paper, his face assumed a serious air and he seemed to take an unnecessary length of time to reach the bottom of it.
"He is trying to think how he will get rid of me," thought Aurora; "he is making up some pretext with which to dismiss me, and when the tenth of March comes we shall be put into the street."
M. Grandissime extended the letter toward her, but she did not lift her hands.
"I beg to assure you, madame, I could never have permitted this notice to reach you from my office; I am not the Honore Grandissime for whom this is signed."
Aurora smiled in a way to signify clearly that that was just the subterfuge she had been anticipating. Had she been at home she would have thrown herself, face downward, upon the bed; but she only smiled meditatively upward at the picture of an East Indian harbor and made an unnecessary rearrangement of her handkerchief under her folded hands.
"There are, you know,"--began Honore, with a smile which changed the meaning to "You know very well there are"--"two Honore Grandissimes. This one who sent you this letter is a man of color--"
"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, with a sudden malicious sparkle.
"If you will entrust this paper to me," said Honore, quietly, "I will see him and do now engage that you shall have no further trouble about it. Of course, I do not mean that I will pay it, myself; I dare not offer to take such a liberty."
Then he felt that a warm impulse had carried him a step too far.
Aurora rose up with a refusal as firm as it was silent. She neither smiled nor scintillated now, but wore an expression of amiable practicality as she presently said, receiving back the rent-notice as she spoke:
"I thank you, sir, but it might seem strange to him to find his notice in the hands of a person who can claim no interest in the matter. I shall have to attend to it myself."
"Ah! little enchantress," thought her grave-faced listener, as he gave attention, "this, after all--ball and all--is the mood in which you look your very, very best"--a fact which nobody knew better than the enchantress herself.
He walked beside her toward the open door leading back into the counting-room, and the dozen or more clerks, who, each by some ingenuity of his own, managed to secure a glimpse of them, could not fail to feel that they had never before seen quite so fair a couple. But she dropped her veil, bowed M. Grandissime a polite "No farther," and passed out.
M. Grandissime walked once up and down his private office, gave the door a soft push with his foot and lighted a cigar.
The clerk who had before acted as usher came in and handed him a slip of paper with a name written on it. M. Grandissime folded it twice, gazed out the window, and finally nodded. The clerk disappeared, and Joseph Frowenfeld paused an instant in the door and then advanced, with a buoyant good-morning.
"Good-morning," responded M. Grandissime.
He smiled and extended his hand, yet there was a mechanical and preoccupied air that was not what Joseph felt justified in expecting.
"How can I serve you, Mr. Frhowenfeld?" asked the merchant, glancing through into the counting-room. His coldness was almost all in Joseph's imagination, but to the apothecary it seemed such that he was nearly induced to walk away without answering. However, he replied:
"A young man whom I have employed refers to you to recommend him."
"Yes, sir? Prhay, who is that?"
"Your cousin, I believe, Mr. Raoul Innerarity."
M. Grandissime gave a low, short laugh, and took two steps toward his desk.
"Rhaoul? Oh yes, I rhecommend Rhaoul to you. As an assistant in yo' sto'?--the best man you could find."
"Thank you, sir," said Joseph, coldly. "Good-morning!" he added turning to go.
"Mr. Frhowenfeld," said the other, "do you evva rhide?"
"I used to ride," replied the apothecary, turning, hat in hand, and wondering what such a question could mean.
"If I send a saddle-hoss to yo' do' on day aftah to-morrhow evening at fo' o'clock, will you rhide out with me for-h about a hour-h and a half--just for a little pleasu'e?"
Joseph was yet more astonished than before. He hesitated, accepted the invitation, and once more said good-morning. _