The Grandissimes Part 60

"A silent one," said the apothecary

"So silent as to be none of my business?"

"No."

"Well, who is it, then?"

"It is Mademoiselle Nancanou."

"Your partner in business?"

"Yes."

"Well, Joseph Frowenfeld,--"

The insinuation conveyed in the doctor's manner was very trying, but Joseph merely reddened.

"Purely business, I suppose," presently said the doctor, with a ghastly ironical smile. "Does the arrangem'--" his utterance failed him--"does it end there?"

"It ends there."

"And you don't see that it ought either not to have begun, or else ought not to have ended there?"

Frowenfeld blushed angrily. The doctor asked:

"And who takes care of Aurora's money?"

"Herself."

"Exclusively?"

They both smiled more good-naturedly.

"Exclusively."

"She's a c.o.o.n;" and the little doctor rose up and crawled away, ostensibly to see another friend, but really to drag himself into his bedchamber and lock himself in. The next day--the yellow fever was bad again--he resumed the practice of his profession.

"'Twill be a sort of decent suicide without the element of pusillanimity," he thought to himself.

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 sc.r.a.pe 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, pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ciousness 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 s.p.a.cious 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 bra.s.s 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 ma.s.s of fig-trees that stood in the paved court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool and cavernous.