_ CHAPTER LII. LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING
When Honore Grandissime heard that Doctor Keene had returned to the city in a very feeble state of health, he rose at once from the desk where he was sitting and went to see him; but it was on that morning when the doctor was sitting and talking with Joseph, and Honore found his chamber door locked. Doctor Keene called twice, within the following two days, upon Honore at his counting-room; but on both occasions Honore's chair was empty. So it was several days before they met. But one hot morning in the latter part of August,--the August days were hotter before the cypress forest was cut down between the city and the lake than they are now,--as Doctor Keene stood in the middle of his room breathing distressedly after a sad fit of coughing, and looking toward one of his windows whose closed sash he longed to see opened, Honore knocked at the door.
"Well, come in!" said the fretful invalid. "Why, Honore,--well, it serves you right for stopping to knock. Sit down."
Each took a hasty, scrutinizing glance at the other; and, after a pause, Doctor Keene said:
"Honore, you are pretty badly stove."
M. Grandissime smiled.
"Do you think so, Doctor? I will be more complimentary to you; you might look more sick."
"Oh, I have resumed my trade," replied Doctor Keene.
"So I have heard; but, Charlie, that is all in favor of the people who want a skilful and advanced physician and do not mind killing him; I should advise you not to do it."
"You mean" (the incorrigible little doctor smiled cynically) "if I should ask your advice. I am going to get well, Honore."
His visitor shrugged.
"So much the better. I do confess I am tempted to make use of you in your official capacity, right now. Do you feel strong enough to go with me in your gig a little way?"
"A professional call?"
"Yes, and a difficult case; also a confidential one."
"Ah! confidential!" said the little man, in his painful, husky irony. "You want to get me into the sort of scrape I got our 'professor' into, eh?"
"Possibly a worse one," replied the amiable Creole.
"And I must be mum, eh?"
"I would prefer."
"Shall I need any instruments? No?"--with a shade of disappointment on his face.
He pulled a bell-rope and ordered his gig to the street door.
"How are affairs about town?" he asked, as he made some slight preparation for the street.
"Excitement continues. Just as I came along, a private difficulty between a Creole and an Americain drew instantly half the street together to take sides strictly according to belongings and without asking a question. My-de'-seh, we are having, as Frowenfeld says, a war of human acids and alkalies."
They descended and drove away. At the first corner the lad who drove turned, by Honore's direction, toward the rue Dauphine, entered it, passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned into this toward the river again and entered the rue Conde. The route was circuitous. They stopped at the carriage-door of a large brick house. The wicket was opened by Clemence. They alighted without driving in.
"Hey, old witch," said the doctor, with mock severity; "not hung yet?"
The houses of any pretension to comfortable spaciousness in the closely built parts of the town were all of the one, general, Spanish-American plan. Honore led the doctor through the cool, high, tessellated carriage-hall, on one side of which were the drawing-rooms, closed and darkened. They turned at the bottom, ascended a broad, iron-railed staircase to the floor above, and halted before the open half of a glazed double door with a clumsy iron latch. It was the entrance to two spacious chambers, which were thrown into one by folded doors.
The doctor made a low, indrawn whistle and raised his eyebrows--the rooms were so sumptuously furnished; immovable largeness and heaviness, lofty sobriety, abundance of finely wrought brass mounting, motionless richness of upholstery, much silent twinkle of pendulous crystal, a soft semi-obscurity--such were the characteristics. The long windows of the farther apartment could be seen to open over the street, and the air from behind, coming in over a green mass of fig-trees that stood in the paved court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool and cavernous.
"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 attitude 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, reassuringly, 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 cushion.
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 glasses 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 glass 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 glass.
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 passed 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 shiver and shrink at the 'looks o' the thing.' Why, what do you care--"
"Hush!" 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.) _