The Grandissimes Part 22

"I riffer you to my cousin Honore," said Innerarity.

"Have you any knowledge of this business?"

"I 'ave.'

"Can you keep shop in the forenoon or afternoon indifferently, as I may require?"

"Eh? Forenoon--afternoon?" was the reply.

"Can you paint sometimes in the morning and keep shop in the evening?"

"Yes, seh."

Minor details were arranged on the spot. Raoul dismissed the black boy, took off his coat and fell to work decanting something, with the understanding that his salary, a microscopic one, should begin from date if his cousin should recommend him.

"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he called from under the counter, later in the day, "you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe of a n.i.g.g.ah?"

"Certainly not."

"Ah, my soul! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupe!"

We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else.

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 gla.s.s 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 ca.s.sette_, 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 a.s.surance 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 canva.s.sing 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 a.s.sete 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sed from one object to another. Something reminded her of Frowenfeld, and, with mingled defiance at her inherited enemies and amus.e.m.e.nt 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 gla.s.s, dropped the letter with a slight start of consternation and advanced quickly toward her. For an instant her embarra.s.sment 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.