The Grandissimes Part 57

M. Grandissime's meeting with his kinsmen was a stormy one. Aurora and Clotilde heard the strife begin, increase, subside, rise again and decrease. They heard men stride heavily to and fro, they heard hands smite together, palms fall upon tables and fists upon desks, heard half-understood statement and unintelligible counter-statement and derisive laughter; and, in the midst of all, like the voice of a man who rules himself, the clear-noted, unimpa.s.sioned speech of Honore, sounding so loftily beautiful in the ear of Aurora that when Clotilde looked at her, sitting motionless with her rapt eyes lifted up, those eyes came down to her own with a sparkle of enthusiasm, and she softly said:

"It sounds like St. Gabriel!" and then blushed.

Clotilde answered with a happy, meaning look, which intensified the blush, and then leaning affectionately forward and holding the maman's eyes with her own, she said:

"You have my consent."

"Saucy!" said Aurora. "Wait till I get my own."

Some of his kinsmen Honore pacified; some he silenced. He invited all to withdraw their lands and moneys from his charge, and some accepted the invitation. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that "all or nothing"

att.i.tude which, as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana.

You may see their grandchildren, to-day, anywhere within the angle of the old rues Esplanade and Rampart, holding up their heads in unspeakable poverty, their n.o.bility kept green by unflinching self-respect, and their poetic and pathetic pride revelling in ancestral, perennial rebellion against common sense.

"That is Agricola," whispered Aurora, with lifted head and eyes dilated and askance, as one deep-chested voice roared above all others.

Agricola stormed.

"Uncle," Aurora by and by heard Honore say, "shall I leave my own counting-room?"

At that moment Joseph Frowenfeld entered, pausing with one hand on the outer rail. No one noticed him but Honore, who was watching for him, and who, by a silent motion, directed him into the private office.

"H-whe shake its dust from our feet!" said Agricola, gathering some young retainers by a sweep of his glance and going out down the stair in the arched way, unmoved by the fragrance of warm bread. On the banquette he harangued his followers.

He said that in such times as these every lover of liberty should go armed; that the age of trickery had come; that by trickery Louisianians had been sold, like cattle, to a nation of parvenues, to be dragged before juries for a.s.serting the human right of free trade or ridding the earth of sneaks in the pay of the government; that laws, so-called, had been forged into thumbscrews, and a Congress which had bound itself to give them all the rights of American citizens--sorry boon!--was preparing to slip their birthright acres from under their feet, and leave them hanging, a bait to the vultures of the Americain immigration.

Yes; the age of trickery! Its apostles, he said, were even then at work among their fellow-citizens, warping, distorting, blasting, corrupting, poisoning the n.o.ble, unsuspecting, confiding Creole mind. For months the devilish work had been allowed, by a patient, peace-loving people, to go on. But shall it go on forever? (Cries of "No!" "No!") The smell of white blood comes on the south breeze. Dessalines and Christophe had recommenced their h.e.l.lish work. Virginia, too, trembles for the safety of her fair mothers and daughters. We know not what is being plotted in the canebrakes of Louisiana. But we know that in the face of these things the prelates of trickery are sitting in Was.h.i.+ngton allowing throats to go unthrottled that talked tenderly about the "negro slave;"

we know worse: we know that mixed blood has asked for equal rights from a son of the Louisiana n.o.blesse, and that those sacred rights have been treacherously, pusillanimously surrendered into its possession. Why did we not rise yesterday, when the public heart was stirred? The forbearance of this people would be absurd if it were not saintly. But the time has, come when Louisiana must protect herself! If there is one here who will not strike for his lands, his rights and the purity of his race, let him speak! (Cries of "We will rise now!" "Give us a leader!"

"Lead the way!")

"Kinsmen, friends," continued Agricola, "meet me at nightfall before the house of this too-long-spared mulatto. Come armed. Bring a few feet of stout rope. By morning the gentlemen of color will know their places better than they do to-day; h-whe shall understand each other! H-whe shall set the negrophiles to meditating."

He waved them away.

With a huzza the acc.u.mulated crowd moved off. Chance carried them up the rue Royale; they sang a song; they came to Frowenfeld's. It was an Americain establishment; that was against it. It was a gossiping place of Americain evening loungers; that was against it. It was a sorcerer's den--(we are on an ascending scale); its proprietor had refused employment to some there present, had refused credit to others, was an impudent condemner of the most approved Creole sins, had been beaten over the head only the day before; all these were against it. But, worse still, the building was owned by the f.m.c., and unluckiest of all, Raoul stood in the door and some of his kinsmen in the crowd stopped to have a word with him. The crowd stopped. A nameless fellow in the throng--he was still singing--said: "Here's the place," and dropped two bricks through the gla.s.s of the show-window. Raoul, with a cry of retaliative rage, drew and lifted a pistol; but a kinsman jerked it from him and three others quickly pinioned him and bore him off struggling, pleased to get him away unhurt. In ten minutes, Frowenfeld's was a broken-windowed, open-doored house, full of unrecognizable rubbish that had escaped the torch only through a chance rumor that the Governor's police were coming, and the consequent stampede of the mob.

Joseph was sitting in M. Grandissime's private office, in council with him and the ladies, and Aurora was just saying:

"Well, anny'ow, 'Sieur Frowenfel', ad laz you consen'!" and gathering her veil from her lap, when Raoul burst in, all sweat and rage.

"'Sieur Frowenfel', we ruin'! Ow pharmacie knock all in pieces! My pigshoe is los'!"

He dropped into a chair and burst into tears.

Shall we never learn to withhold our tears until we are sure of our trouble? Raoul little knew the joy in store for him. 'Polyte, it transpired the next day, had rushed in after the first volley of missiles, and while others were gleefully making off with jars of asafoetida and decanters of distilled water, lifted in his arms and bore away unharmed "Louisiana" firmly refusing to the last to enter the Union. It may not be premature to add that about four weeks later Honore Grandissime, upon Raoul's announcement that he was "betrothed,"

purchased this painting and presented it to a club of _natural connoisseurs_.

CHAPTER XLIX

OVER THE NEW STORE

The accident of the ladies Nancanou making their new home over Frowenfeld's drug-store occurred in the following rather amusing way. It chanced that the building was about completed at the time that the apothecary's stock in trade was destroyed; Frowenfeld leased the lower floor. Honore Grandissime f.m.c. was the owner. He being concealed from his enemies, Joseph treated with that person's inadequately remunerated employe. In those days, as still in the old French Quarter, it was not uncommon for persons, even of wealth, to make their homes over stores, and buildings were constructed with a view to their part.i.tion in this way. Hence, in Chartres and Decatur streets, to-day--and in the cross-streets between--so many store-buildings with balconies, dormer windows, and sometimes even belvideres. This new building caught the eye and fancy of Aurora and Clotilde. The apartments for the store were entirely isolated. Through a large _porte-cochere_, opening upon the banquette immediately beside and abreast of the store-front, one entered a high, covered carriage-way with a tessellated pavement and green plastered walls, and reached,--just where this way (corridor, the Creoles always called it) opened into a sunny court surrounded with narrow parterres,--a broad stairway leading to a hall over the "corridor" and to the drawing-rooms over the store. They liked it!

Aurora would find out at once what sort of an establishment was likely to be opened below, and if that proved unexceptionable she would lease the upper part without more ado.

Next day she said:

"Clotilde, thou beautiful, I have signed the lease!"

"Then the store below is to be occupied by a--what?"

"Guess!"

"Ah!"

"Guess a pharmacien!"

Clotilde's lips parted, she was going to smile, when her thought changed and she blushed offendedly.

"Not--"

"'Sieur Frowenf--ah, ha, ha, ha!--_ha, ha, ha_!"

Clotilde burst into tears.

Still they moved in--it was written in the bond; and so did the apothecary; and probably two sensible young lovers never before nor since behaved with such abject fear of each other--for a time. Later, and after much oft-repeated good advice given to each separately and to both together, Honore Grandissime persuaded them that Clotilde could make excellent use of a portion of her means by reenforcing Frowenfeld's very slender stock and well filling his rather empty-looking store, and so they signed regular articles of copartners.h.i.+p, blus.h.i.+ng frightfully.

Frowenfeld became a visitor, Honore not; once Honore had seen the ladies' moneys satisfactorily invested, he kept aloof. It is pleasant here to remark that neither Aurora nor Clotilde made any waste of their sudden acquisitions; they furnished their rooms with much beauty at moderate cost, and their _salon_ with artistic, not extravagant, elegance, and, for the sake of greater propriety, employed a decayed lady as housekeeper; but, being discreet in all other directions, they agreed upon one bold outlay--a volante.

Almost any afternoon you might have seen this vehicle on the Terre aux Boeuf, or Bayou, or Tchoupitoulas Road; and because of the brilliant beauty of its occupants it became known from all other volantes as the "meteor."

Frowenfeld's visits were not infrequent; he insisted on Clotdlde's knowing just what was being done with her money. Without indulging ourselves in the pleasure of contemplating his continued mental unfolding, we may say that his growth became more rapid in this season of universal expansion; love had entered into his still compacted soul like a cupid into a rose, and was crowding it wide open. However, as yet, it had not made him brave. Aurora used to slip out of the drawing-room, and in some secluded nook of the hall throw up her clasped hands and go through all the motions of screaming merriment.

"The little fool!"--it was of her own daughter she whispered this complimentary remark--"the little fool is afraid of the fis.h.!.+"

"You!" she said to Clotilde, one evening after Joseph had gone, "you call yourself a Creole girl!"

But she expected too much. Nothing so terrorizes a blus.h.i.+ng girl as a blus.h.i.+ng man. And then--though they did sometimes digress--Clotilde and her partner met to talk "business" in a purely literal sense.

Aurora, after a time, had taken her money into her own keeping.

"You mighd gid robb' ag'in, you know, 'Sieur Frowenfel'," she said.

But when he mentioned Clotilde's fortune as subject to the same contingency, Aurora replied:

"Ah! bud Clotilde mighd gid robb'!"