_ CHAPTER XXXVIII. TESTS OF FRIENDSHIP
Frowenfeld turned away from the closing door, caught his head between his hands and tried to comprehend the new wildness of the tumult within. Honore Grandissime avowedly in love with one of them--_which one_? Doctor Keene visibly in love with one of them--_which one_? And he! What meant this bounding joy that, like one gorgeous moth among innumerable bats, flashed to and fro among the wild distresses and dismays swarming in and out of his distempered imagination? He did not answer the question; he only knew the confusion in his brain was dreadful. Both hands could not hold back the throbbing of his temples; the table did not steady the trembling of his hands; his thoughts went hither and thither, heedless of his call. Sit down as he might, rise up, pace the room, stand, lean his forehead against the wall--nothing could quiet the fearful disorder, until at length he recalled Honore's neglected advice and resolutely lay down and sought sleep; and, long before he had hoped to secure it, it came.
In the distant Grandissime mansion, Agricola Fusilier was casting about for ways and means to rid himself of the heaviest heart that ever had throbbed in his bosom. He had risen at sunrise from slumber worse than sleeplessness, in which his dreams had anticipated the duel of to-morrow with Sylvestre. He was trying to get the unwonted quaking out of his hands and the memory of the night's heart-dissolving phantasms from before his inner vision. To do this he had resort to a very familiar, we may say time-honored, prescription--rum. He did not use it after the voudou fashion; the voudous pour it on the ground--Agricola was an anti-voudou. It finally had its effect. By eleven o'clock he seemed, outwardly at least, to be at peace with everything in Louisiana that he considered Louisianian, properly so-called; as to all else he was ready for war, as in peace one should be. While in this mood, and performing at a sideboard the solemn rite of _las onze_, news incidentally reached him, by the mouth of his busy second, Hippolyte, of Frowenfeld's trouble, and despite 'Polyte's protestations against the principal in a pending "affair" appearing on the street, he ordered the carriage and hurried to the apothecary's.
* * * * *
When Frowenfeld awoke, the fingers of his clock were passing the meridan. His fever was gone, his brain was calm, his strength in good measure had returned. There had been dreams in his sleep, too; he had seen Clotilde standing at the foot of his bed. He lay now, for a moment, lost in retrospection.
"There can be no doubt about it," said he, as he rose up, looking back mentally at something in the past.
The sound of carriage-wheels attracted his attention by ceasing before his street door. A moment later the voice of Agricola was heard in the shop greeting Raoul. As the old man lifted the head of his staff to tap on the inner door, Frowenfeld opened it.
"Fusilier to the rescue!" said the great Louisianian, with a grasp of the apothecary's hand and a gaze of brooding admiration.
Joseph gave him a chair, but with magnificent humility he insisted on not taking it until "Professor Frowenfeld" had himself sat down.
The apothecary was very solemn. It seemed to him as if in this little back room his dead good name was lying in state, and these visitors were coming in to take their last look. From time to time he longed for more light, wondering why the gravity of his misadventure should seem so great.
"H-m-h-y dear Professor!" began the old man. Pages of print could not comprise all the meanings of his smile and accent; benevolence, affection, assumed knowledge of the facts, disdain of results, remembrance of his own youth, charity for pranks, patronage--these were but a few. He spoke very slowly and deeply and with this smile of a hundred meanings. "Why did you not send for me, Joseph? Sir, whenever you have occasion to make a list of the friends who will stand by you, _right or wrong_--h-write the name of Citizen Agricola Fusilier at the top! Write it large and repeat it at the bottom! You understand me, Joseph?--and, mark me,--right or wrong!"
"Not wrong," said Frowenfeld, "at least not in defence of wrong; I could not do that; but, I assure you, in this matter I have done--"
"No worse than any one else would have done under the circumstances, my dear boy!--Nay, nay, do not interrupt me; I understand you, I understand you. H-do you imagine there is anything strange to me in this--at my age?"
"But I am--"
"--all right, sir! that is _what_ you are. And you are under the wing of Agricola Fusilier, the old eagle; that is _where_ you are. And you are one of my brood; that is _who_ you are. Professor, listen to your old father. _The--man--makes--the--crime!_ The wisdom of mankind never brought forth a maxim of more gigantic beauty. If the different grades of race and society did not have corresponding moral and civil liberties, varying in degree as they vary--h-why! _this_ community, at least, would go to pieces! See here! Professor Frowenfeld is charged with misdemeanor. Very well, who is he? Foreigner or native? Foreigner by sentiment and intention, or only by accident of birth? Of our mental fibre--our aspirations--our delights--our indignations? I answer for you, Joseph, yes!--yes! What then? H-why, then the decision! Reached how? By apologetic reasonings? By instinct, sir! h-h-that guide of the nobly proud! And what is the decision? Not guilty. Professor Frowenfeld, _absolvo te!_"
It was in vain that the apothecary repeatedly tried to interrupt this speech. "Citizen Fusilier, do you know me no better?"--"Citizen Fusilier, if you will but listen!"--such were the fragments of his efforts to explain. The old man was not so confident as he pretended to be that Frowenfeld was that complete proselyte which alone satisfies a Creole; but he saw him in a predicament and cast to him this life-buoy, which if a man should refuse, he would deserve to drown.
Frowenfeld tried again to begin.
"Mr. Fusilier--"
"Citizen Fusilier!"
"Citizen, candor demands that I undeceive--"
"Candor demands--h-my dear Professor, let me tell you exactly what she demands. She demands that in here--within this apartment--we understand each other. That demand is met."
"But--" Frowenfeld frowned impatiently.
"That demand, Joseph, is fully met! I understand the whole matter like an eye-witness! Now there is another demand to be met, the demand of friendship! In here, candor; outside, friendship; in here, one of our brethren has been adventurous and unfortunate; outside"--the old man smiled a smile of benevolent mendacity--"outside, nothing has happened."
Frowenfeld insisted savagely on speaking; but Agricola raised his voice, and gray hairs prevailed.
"At least, what _has_ happened? The most ordinary thing in the world; Professor Frowenfeld lost his footing on a slippery gunwale, fell, cut his head upon a protruding spike, and went into the house of Palmyre to bathe his wound; but finding it worse than he had at first supposed it, immediately hurried out again and came to his store. He left his hat where it had fallen, too muddy to be worth recovery. Hippolyte Brahmin-Mandarin and others, passing at the time, thought he had met with violence in the house of the hair-dresser, and drew some natural inferences, but have since been better informed; and the public will please understand that Professor Frowenfeld is a white man, a gentleman, and a Louisianian, ready to vindicate his honor, and that Citizen Agricola Fusilier is his friend!"
The old man looked around with the air of a bull on a hill-top.
Frowenfeld, vexed beyond degree, restrained himself only for the sake of an object in view, and contented himself with repeating for the fourth or fifth time,--
"I cannot accept any such deliverance."
"Professor Frowenfeld, friendship--society--demands it; our circle must be protected in all its members. You have nothing to do with it. You will leave it with me, Joseph."
"No, no," said Frowenfeld, "I thank you, but--"
"Ah! my dear boy, thank me not; I cannot help these impulses; I belong to a warm-hearted race. But"--he drew back in his chair sidewise and made great pretence of frowning--"you decline the offices of that precious possession, a Creole friend?"
"I only decline to be shielded by a fiction."
"Ah-h!" said Agricola, further nettling his victim by a gaze of stagy admiration. "'_Sans peur et sans reproche_'--and yet you disappoint me. Is it for naught, that I have sallied forth from home, drawing the curtains of my carriage to shield me from the gazing crowd? It was to rescue my friend--my vicar--my coadjutor--my son--from the laughs and finger-points of the vulgar mass. H-I might as well have stayed at home--or better, for my peculiar position to-day rather requires me to keep in--"
"No, citizen," said Frowenfeld, laying his hand upon Agricola's arm, "I trust it is not in vain that you have come out. There _is_ a man in trouble whom only you can deliver."
The old man began to swell with complacency.
"H-why, really--"
"_He_, Citizen, is truly of your kind--"
"He must be delivered, Professor Frowenfeld--"
"He is a native Louisianian, not only by accident of birth but by sentiment and intention," said Frowenfeld.
The old man smiled a benign delight, but the apothecary now had the upper hand, and would not hear him speak.
"His aspirations," continued the speaker, "his indignations--mount with his people's. His pulse beats with yours, sir. He is a part of your circle. He is one of your caste."
Agricola could not be silent.
"Ha-a-a-ah! Joseph, h-h-you make my blood tingle! Speak to the point; who--"
"I believe him, moreover, Citizen Fusilier, innocent of the charge laid--"
"H-innocent? H-of course he is innocent, sir! We will _make_ him inno--"
"Ah! Citizen, he is already under sentence of death!"
"_What?_ A Creole under sentence!" Agricola swore a heathen oath, set his knees apart and grasped his staff by the middle. "Sir, we will liberate him if we have to overturn the government!"
Frowenfeld shook his head.
"You have got to overturn something stronger than government."
"And pray what--"
"A conventionality," said Frowenfeld, holding the old man's eye.
"Ha, ha! my b-hoy, h-you are right. But we will overturn--eh?"
"I say I fear your engagements will prevent. I hear you take part to-morrow morning in--"
Agricola suddenly stiffened.
"Professor Frowenfeld, it strikes me, sir, you are taking something of a liberty."
"For which I ask pardon," exclaimed Frowenfeld. "Then I may not expect--"
The old man melted again.
"But who is this person in mortal peril?"
Frowenfeld hesitated.
"Citizen Fusilier," he said, looking first down at the floor and then up into the inquirer's face, "on my assurance that he is not only a native Creole, but a Grandissime--"
"It is not possible!" exclaimed Agricola.
"--a Grandissime of the purest blood, will you pledge me your aid to liberate him from his danger, 'right or wrong'?"
"_Will_ I? H-why, certainly! Who is he?"
"Citizen--it is Sylves--"
Agricola sprang up with a thundering oath.
The apothecary put out a pacifying hand, but it was spurned.
"Let me go! How dare you, sir? How dare you, sir?" bellowed Agricola.
He started toward the door, cursing furiously and keeping his eye fixed on Frowenfeld with a look of rage not unmixed with terror.
"Citizen Fusilier," said the apothecary, following him with one palm uplifted, as if that would ward off his abuse, "don't go! I adjure you, don't go! Remember your pledge, Citizen Fusilier!"
Agricola did not pause a moment; but when he had swung the door violently open the way was still obstructed. The painter of "Louisiana refusing to enter the Union" stood before him, his head elevated loftily, one foot set forward and his arm extended like a tragedian's.
"Stan' bag-sah!"
"Let me pass! Let me pass, or I will kill you!"
Mr. Innerarity smote his bosom and tossed his hand aloft.
"Kill me-firse an' pass aftah!"
"Citizen Fusilier," said Frowenfeld, "I beg you to hear me."
"Go away! Go away!"
The old man drew back from the door and stood in the corner against the book-shelves as if all the horrors of the last night's dreams had taken bodily shape in the person of the apothecary. He trembled and stammered:
"Ke--keep off! Keep off! My God! Raoul, he has insulted me!" He made a miserable show of drawing a weapon. "No man may insult me and live! If you are a man, Professor Frowenfeld, you will defend yourself!"
Frowenfeld lost his temper, but his hasty reply was drowned by Raoul's vehement speech.
"'Tis not de trute!" cried Raoul. "He try to save you from hell-'n'-damnation w'en 'e h-ought to give you a good cuss'n!"--and in the ecstasy of his anger burst into tears.
Frowenfeld, in an agony of annoyance, waved him away and he disappeared, shutting the door.
Agricola, moved far more from within than from without, had sunk into a chair under the shelves. His head was bowed, a heavy grizzled lock fell down upon his dark, frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his staff, the other his knee, and both trembled violently. As Frowenfeld, with every demonstration of beseeching kindness, began to speak, he lifted his eyes and said, piteously:
"Stop! Stop!"
"Citizen Fusilier, it is you who must stop. Stop before God Almighty stops you, I beg you. I do not presume to rebuke you. I _know_ you want a clear record. I know it better to-day than I ever did before. Citizen Fusilier, I honor your intentions--"
Agricola roused a little and looked up with a miserable attempt at his habitual patronizing smile.
"H-my dear boy, I overlook"--but he met in
Frowenfeld's eyes a spirit so superior to his dissimulation that the smile quite broke down and gave way to another of deprecatory and apologetic distress. He reached up an arm.
"I could easily convince you, Professor, of your error"--his eyes quailed and dropped to the floor--"but I--your arm, my dear Joseph; age is creeping upon me." He rose to his feet. "I am feeling really indisposed to-day--not at all bright; my solicitude for you, my dear b--"
He took two or three steps forward, tottered, clung to the apothecary, moved another step or two, and grasping the edge of the table stumbled into a chair which Frowenfeld thrust under him. He folded his arms on the edge of the board and rested his forehead on them, while Frowenfeld sat down quickly on the opposite side, drew paper and pen across the table and wrote.
"Are you writing something, Professor?" asked the old man, without stirring. His staff tumbled to the floor. The apothecary's answer was a low, preoccupied one. Two or three times over he wrote and rejected what he had written.
Presently he pushed back his chair, came around the table, laid the writing he had made before the bowed head, sat down again and waited.
After a long time the old man looked up, trying in vain to conceal his anguish under a smile.
"I have a sad headache."
He cast his eyes over the table and took mechanically the pen which Frowenfeld extended toward him.
"What can I do for you, Professor? Sign something? There is nothing I would not do for Professor Frowenfeld. What have you written, eh?"
He felt helplessly for his spectacles.
Frowenfeld read:
"_Mr. Sylvestre Grandissime: I spoke in haste_."
He felt himself tremble as he read. Agricola fumbled with the pen, lifted his eyes with one more effort at the old look, said, "My dear boy, I do this purely to please you," and to Frowenfeld's delight and astonishment wrote:
"_Your affectionate uncle, Agricola Fusilier_." _