handed her–or rather placed upon the seat near which she stood, what she would not receive–a folded and sealed document, seized her hand, kissed it and hurried away. She sank down upon the seat, weak and pale, and rose to go, leaving the document behind. The mariner picked it up; it was directed to _M. Honore Grandissime, Nouvelle Orleans, Etats Unis, Amerique_. She turned suddenly, as if remembering, or possibly reconsidering, and received it from him.
“It looked like a last will and testament,” the seaman used to say, in telling the story.
The next morning, being at the water’s edge and seeing a number of persons gathering about something not far away, he sauntered down toward it to see how small a thing was required to draw a crowd of these Frenchmen. It was the drowned body of the f.m.c.
Did the brig-master never see the woman again? He always waited for this question to be asked him, in order to state the more impressively that he did. His brig became a regular Bordeaux packet, and he saw the Madame twice or thrice, apparently living at great ease, but solitary, in the rue–. He was free to relate that he tried to scrape acquaintance with her, but failed ignominiously.
The rents of Number 19 rue Bienville and of numerous other places, including the new drug-store in the rue Royale, were collected regularly by H. Grandissime, successor to Grandissime Freres. Rumor said, and tradition repeats, that neither for the advancement of a friendless people, nor even for the repair of the properties’ wear and tear, did one dollar of it ever remain in New Orleans; but that once a year Honore, “as instructed,” remitted to Madame–say Madame Inconnue–of Bordeaux, the equivalent, in francs, of fifty thousand dollars. It is averred he did this without interruption for twenty years. “Let us see: fifty times twenty–one million dollars. That is only a _part_ of the _pecuniary_ loss which this sort of thing costs Louisiana.”
But we have wandered.
CHAPTER LX
“ALL RIGHT”
The sun is once more setting upon the Place d’Armes. Once more the shadows of cathedral and town-hall lie athwart the pleasant grounds where again the city’s fashion and beauty sit about in the sedate Spanish way, or stand or slowly move in and out among the old willows and along the white walks. Children are again playing on the sward; some, you may observe, are in black, for Agricola. You see, too, a more peaceful river, a nearer-seeming and greener opposite shore, and many other evidences of the drowsy summer’s unwillingness to leave the embrace of this seductive land; the dreamy quietude of birds; the spreading, folding, re-expanding and slow pulsating of the all-prevailing fan (how like the unfolding of an angel’s wing is ofttimes the broadening of that little instrument!); the oft-drawn handkerchief; the pale, cool colors of summer costume; the swallow, circling and twittering overhead or darting across the sight; the languid movement of foot and hand; the reeking flanks and foaming bits of horses; the ear-piercing note of the cicada; the dancing butterfly; the dog, dropping upon the grass and looking up to his master with roping jaw and lolling tongue; the air sweetened with the merchandise of the flower _marchandes_.
On the levee road, bridles and saddles, whips, gigs, and carriages,–what a merry coming and going! We look, perforce, toward the old bench where, six months ago, sat Joseph Frowenfeld. There is somebody there–a small, thin, weary-looking man, who leans his bared head slightly back against the tree, his thin fingers knit together in his lap, and his chapeau-bras pressed under his arm. You note his extreme neatness of dress, the bright, unhealthy restlessness of his eye, and–as a beam from the sun strikes them–the fineness of his short red curls. It is Doctor Keene.
He lifts his head and looks forward. Honore and Frowenfeld are walking arm-in-arm under the furthermost row of willows. Honore is speaking. How gracefully, in correspondence with his words, his free arm or hand–sometimes his head or even his lithe form–moves in quiet gesture, while the grave, receptive apothecary takes into his meditative mind, as into a large, cool cistern, the valued rain-fall of his friend’s communications. They are near enough for the little doctor easily to call them; but he is silent. The unhappy feel so far away from the happy. Yet–“Take care!” comes suddenly to his lips, and is almost spoken; for the two, about to cross toward the Place d’Armes at the very spot where Aurora had once made her narrow escape, draw suddenly back, while the black driver of a volante reins up the horse he bestrides, and the animal himself swerves and stops.
The two friends, though startled apart, hasten with lifted hats to the side of the volante, profoundly convinced that one, at least, of its two occupants is heartily sorry that they were not rolled in the dust. Ah, ah! with what a wicked, ill-stifled merriment those two ethereal women bend forward in the faintly perfumed clouds of their ravishing summer-evening garb, to express their equivocal mortification and regret.
“Oh! I’m so sawry, oh! Almoze runned o’–ah, ha, ha, ha!”
Aurora could keep the laugh back no longer.
“An’ righd yeh befo’ haivry _boddie_! Ah, ha, ha! ‘Sieur Grandissime, ’tis _me-e-e_ w’ad know ‘ow dad is bad, ha, ha, ha! Oh! I assu’ you, gen’lemen, id is hawful!”
And so on.
By and by Honore seemed urging them to do something, the thought of which made them laugh, yet was entertained as not entirely absurd. It may have been that to which they presently seemed to consent; they alighted from the volante, dismissed it, and walked each at a partner’s side down the grassy avenue of the levee. It was as Clotilde with one hand swept her light robes into perfect adjustment for the walk, and turned to take the first step with Frowenfeld, that she raised her eyes for the merest instant to his, and there passed between them an exchange of glance which made the heart of the little doctor suddenly burn like a ball of fire.
“Now we’re all right,” he murmured bitterly to himself, as, without having seen him, she took the arm of the apothecary, and they moved away.
Yes, if his irony was meant for this pair, he divined correctly. Their hearts had found utterance across the lips, and the future stood waiting for them on the threshold of a new existence, to usher them into a perpetual copartnership in all its joys and sorrows, its disappointments, its imperishable hopes, its aims, its conflicts, its rewards; and the true–the great–the everlasting God of love was with them. Yes, it had been “all right,” now, for nearly twenty-four hours–an age of bliss. And now, as they walked beneath the willows where so many lovers had walked before them, they had whole histories to tell of the tremors, the dismays, the misconstructions and longings through which their hearts had come to this bliss; how at such a time, thus and so; and after such and such a meeting, so and so; no part of which was heard by alien ears, except a fragment of Clotilde’s speech caught by a small boy in unintentioned ambush.
“–Evva sinze de firze nighd w’en I big-in to nurze you wid de fivver.”
She was telling him, with that new, sweet boldness so wonderful to a lately accepted lover, how long she had loved him.
Later on they parted at the _porte-cochere_. Honore and Aurora had got there before them, and were passing on up the stairs. Clotilde, catching, a moment before, a glimpse of her face, had seen that there was something wrong; weather-wise as to its indications she perceived an impending shower of tears. A faint shade of anxiety rested an instant on her own face. Frowenfeld could not go in. They paused a little within the obscurity of the corridor, and just to reassure themselves that everything _was_ “all right,” they–
God be praised for love’s young dream!
The slippered feet of the happy girl, as she slowly mounted the stair alone, overburdened with the weight of her blissful reverie, made no sound. As she turned its mid-angle she remembered Aurora. She could guess pretty well the source of her trouble; Honore was trying to treat that hand-clasping at the bedside of Agricola as a binding compact; “which, of course, was not fair.” She supposed they would have gone into the front drawing-room; she would go into the back. But she miscalculated; as she silently entered the door she saw Aurora standing a little way beyond her, close before Honore, her eyes cast down, and the trembling fan hanging from her two hands like a broken pinion. He seemed to be reiterating, in a tender undertone, some question intended to bring her to a decision. She lifted up her eyes toward his with a mute, frightened glance.
The intruder, with an involuntary murmur of apology, drew back; but, as she turned, she was suddenly and unspeakably saddened to see Aurora drop her glance, and, with a solemn slowness whose momentous significance was not to be mistaken, silently shake her head.
“Alas!” cried the tender heart of Clotilde. “Alas! M. Grandissime!”
CHAPTER LXI
“NO!”
If M. Grandissime had believed that he was prepared for the supreme bitterness of that moment, he had sadly erred. He could not speak. He extended his hand in a dumb farewell, when, all unsanctioned by his will, the voice of despair escaped him in a low groan. At the same moment, a tinkling sound drew near, and the room, which had grown dark with the fall of night, began to brighten with the softly widening light of an evening lamp, as a servant approached to place it in the front drawing-room.
Aurora gave her hand and withdrew it. In the act the two somewhat changed position, and the rays of the lamp, as the maid passed the door, falling upon Aurora’s face, betrayed the again upturned eyes.
“‘Sieur Grandissime–“
They fell.
The lover paused.
“You thing I’m crool.”
She was the statue of meekness.
“Hope has been cruel to me,” replied M. Grandissime, “not you; that I cannot say. Adieu.”
He was turning.
“‘Sieur Grandissime–“
She seemed to tremble.
He stood still.
“‘Sieur Grandissime,”–her voice was very tender,–“wad you’ horry?”
There was a great silence.
“‘Sieur Grandissime, you know–teg a chair.”
He hesitated a moment and then both sat down. The servant repassed the door; yet when Aurora broke the silence, she spoke in English–having such hazardous things to say. It would conceal possible stammerings.
“‘Sieur Grandissime–you know dad riz’n I–“
She slightly opened her fan, looking down upon it, and was still.
“I have no right to ask the reason,” said M. Grandissime. “It is yours–not mine.”
Her head went lower.
“Well, you know,”–she drooped it meditatively to one side, with her eyes on the floor,–“’tis bick-ause–’tis bick-ause I thing in a few days I’m goin’ to die.”
M. Grandissime said never a word. He was not alarmed.
She looked up suddenly and took a quick breath, as if to resume, but her eyes fell before his, and she said, in a tone of half-soliloquy:
“I ‘ave so mudge troub’ wit dad hawt.”
She lifted one little hand feebly to the cardiac region, and sighed softly, with a dying languor.
M. Grandissime gave no response. A vehicle rumbled by in the street below, and passed away. At the bottom of the room, where a gilded Mars was driving into battle, a soft note told the half-hour. The lady spoke again.
“Id mague”–she sighed once more–“so strange,–sometime’ I thing I’m git’n’ crezzy.”
Still he to whom these fearful disclosures were being made remained as silent and motionless as an Indian captive, and, after another pause, with its painful accompaniment of small sounds, the fair speaker resumed with more energy, as befitting the approach to an incredible climax:
“Some day’, ‘Sieur Grandissime,–id mague me fo’gid my hage! I thing I’m young!”
She lifted her eyes with the evident determination to meet his own squarely, but it was too much; they fell as before; yet she went on speaking:
“An’ w’en someboddie git’n’ ti’ed livin’ wid ‘imsev an’ big’n’ to fill ole, an’ wan’ someboddie to teg de care of ‘im an’ wan’ me to gid marri’d wid ‘im–I thing ‘e’s in love to me.” Her fingers kept up a little shuffling with the fan. “I thing I’m crezzy. I thing I muz be go’n’ to die torecklie.” She looked up to the ceiling with large eyes, and then again at the fan in her lap, which continued its spreading and shutting. “An’ daz de riz’n, ‘Sieur Grandissime.” She waited until it was certain he was about to answer, and then interrupted him nervously: “You know, ‘Sieur Grandissime, id woon be righd! Id woon be de juztiz to _you!_ An’ you de bez man I evva know in my life, ‘Sieur Grandissime!” Her hands shook. “A man w’at nevva wan’ to gid marri’d wid noboddie in ‘is life, and now trine to gid marri’d juz only to rip-ose de soul of ‘is oncl’–“
M. Grandissime uttered an exclamation of protest, and she ceased.
“I asked you,” continued he, with low-toned emphasis, “for the single and only reason that I want you for my wife.”
“Yez,” she quickly replied; “daz all. Daz wad I thing. An’ I thing daz de rad weh to say, ‘Sieur Grandissime. Bick-ause, you know, you an’ me is too hole to talg aboud dad _lovin’_, you know. An’ you godd dad grade _rizpeg_ fo’ me, an’ me I godd dad ‘ighez rispeg fo’ you; bud–” she clutched the fan and her face sank lower still–“bud–” she swallowed–shook her head–“bud–” She bit her lip; she could not go on.
“Aurora,” said her lover, bending forward and taking one of her hands. “I _do_ love you with all my soul.”
She made a poor attempt to withdraw her hand, abandoned the effort, and looked up savagely through a pair of overflowing eyes, demanding:
“_Mais_, fo’ w’y you di’ n’ wan’ to sesso?”
M. Grandissime smiled argumentatively.
“I have said so a hundred times, in every way but in words.”
She lifted her head proudly, and bowed like a queen.
“_Mais_, you see ‘Sieur Grandissime, you bin meg one mizteg.”
“Bud ’tis corrected in time,” exclaimed he, with suppressed but eager joyousness.
“‘Sieur Grandissime,” she said, with a tremendous solemnity, “I’m verrie sawrie; _mais_–you spogue too lade.”
“No, no!” he cried, “the correction comes in time. Say that, lady; say that!”
His ardent gaze beat hers once more down; but she shook her head. He ignored the motion.
“And you will correct your answer; ah! say that, too!” he insisted, covering the captive hand with both his own, and leaning forward from his seat.
“_Mais_, ‘Sieur Grandissime, you know, dad is so verrie unegspeg’.”
“Oh! unexpected!”
“_Mais_, I was thing all dad time id was Clotilde wad you–“
She turned her face away and buried her mouth in her handkerchief.
“Ah!” he cried, “mock me no more, Aurore Nancanou!”
He rose erect and held the hand firmly which she strove to draw away:
“Say the word, sweet lady; say the word!”
She turned upon him suddenly, rose to her feet, was speechless an instant while her eyes flashed into his, and crying out:
“No!” burst into tears, laughed through them, and let him clasp her to his bosom.