NEW LIGHT UPON DARK PLACES
When the long, wakeful night was over, and the doctor gone, Frowenfeld
seated himself to record his usual observations of the weather; but his
mind was elsewhere--here, there, yonder. There are understandings that
expand, not imperceptibly hour by hour, but as certain flowers do, by
little explosive ruptures, with periods of quiescence between. After
this night of experiences it was natural that Frowenfeld should find the
circumference of his perceptions consciously enlarged. The daylight
shone, not into his shop alone, but into his heart as well. The face of
Aurora, which had been the dawn to him before, was now a perfect
sunrise, while in pleasant timeliness had come in this Apollo of a
Honoré Grandissime. The young immigrant was dazzled. He felt a longing
to rise up and run forward in this flood of beams. He was unconscious of
fatigue, or nearly so--would, have been wholly so but for the return by
and by of that same dim shadow, or shadows, still rising and darting
across every motion of the fancy that grouped again the actors in last
night's scenes; not such shadows as naturally go with sunlight to make
it seem brighter, but a something which qualified the light's perfection
and the air's freshness.
Wherefore, resolved: that he would compound his life, from this time
forward, by a new formula: books, so much; observation, so much; social
intercourse, so much; love--as to that, time enough for that in the
future (if he was in love with anybody, he certainly did not know it);
of love, therefore, amount not yet necessary to state, but probably
(when it should be introduced), in the generous proportion in which
physicians prescribe _aqua_. Resolved, in other words, without ceasing
to be Frowenfeld the studious, to begin at once the perusal of this
newly found book, the Community of New Orleans. True, he knew he should
find it a difficult task--not only that much of it was in a strange
tongue, but that it was a volume whose displaced leaves would have to be
lifted tenderly, blown free of much dust, re-arranged, some torn
fragments laid together again with much painstaking, and even the
purport of some pages guessed out. Obviously, the place to commence at
was that brightly illuminated title-page, the ladies Nancanou.
As the sun rose and diffused its beams in an atmosphere whose
temperature had just been recorded as 50° F., the apothecary stepped
half out of his shop-door to face the bracing air that came blowing upon
his tired forehead from the north. As he did so, he said to himself:
"How are these two Honoré Grandissimes related to each other, and why
should one be thought capable of attempting the life of Agricola?"
The answer was on its way to him.
There is left to our eyes but a poor vestige of the picturesque view
presented to those who looked down the rue Royale before the garish day
that changed the rue Enghien into Ingine street, and dropped the 'e'
from Royale. It was a long, narrowing perspective of arcades, lattices,
balconies, _zaguans_, dormer windows, and blue sky--of low, tiled roofs,
red and wrinkled, huddled down into their own shadows; of canvas awnings
with fluttering borders, and of grimy lamp-posts twenty feet in height,
each reaching out a gaunt iron arm over the narrow street and dangling a
lamp from its end. The human life which dotted the view displayed a
variety of tints and costumes such as a painter would be glad to take
just as he found them: the gayly feathered Indian, the slashed and
tinselled Mexican, the leather-breeched raftsmen, the blue-or
yellow-turbaned _négresse_, the sugar-planter in white flannel and
moccasins, the average townsman in the last suit of clothes of the
lately deceased century, and now and then a fashionable man in that
costume whose union of tight-buttoned martial severity, swathed throat,
and effeminate superabundance of fine linen seemed to offer a sort of
state's evidence against the pompous tyrannies and frivolities of
the times.
The _marchande des calas_ was out. She came toward Joseph's shop,
singing in a high-pitched nasal tone this new song:
"Dé'tit zozos--yé té assis--
Dé'tit zozos--si la barrier.
Dé'tit zozos, qui zabotté;
Qui ça yé di' mo pas conné.
"Manzeur-poulet vini simin,
Croupé si yé et croqué yé;
Personn' pli' 'tend' yé zabotté--
Dé'tit zozos si la barrier."
"You lak dat song?" she asked, with a chuckle, as she let down from her
turbaned head a flat Indian basket of warm rice cakes.
"What does it mean?"
She laughed again--more than the questioner could see occasion for.
"Dat mean--two lill birds; dey was sittin' on de fence an' gabblin'
togeddah, you know, lak you see two young gals sometime', an' you can't
mek out w'at dey sayin', even ef dey know demself? H-ya! Chicken-hawk
come 'long dat road an' jes' set down an' munch 'em, an' nobody can't no
mo' hea' deir lill gabblin' on de fence, you know."
Here she laughed again.
Joseph looked at her with severe suspicion, but she found refuge in
benevolence.
"Honey, you ought to be asleep dis werry minit; look lak folks been
a-worr'in' you. I's gwine to pick out de werry bes' _calas_ I's got
for you."
As she delivered them she courtesied, first to Joseph and then, lower
and with hushed gravity, to a person who passed into the shop behind
him, bowing and murmuring politely as he passed. She followed the
new-comer with her eyes, hastily accepted the price of the cakes,
whispered, "Dat's my mawstah," lifted her basket to her head and went
away. Her master was Frowenfeld's landlord.
Frowenfeld entered after him, calas in hand, and with a grave
"Good-morning, sir."
"--m'sieu'," responded the landlord, with a low bow.
Frowenfeld waited in silence.
The landlord hesitated, looked around him, seemed about to speak,
smiled, and said, in his soft, solemn voice, feeling his way word by
word through the unfamiliar language:
"Ah lag to teg you apar'."
"See me alone?"
The landlord recognized his error by a fleeting smile.
"Alone," said he.
"Shall we go into my room?"
"_S'il vous plait, m'sieu'_."
Frowenfeld's breakfast, furnished by contract from a neighboring
kitchen, stood on the table. It was a frugal one, but more comfortable
than formerly, and included coffee, that subject of just pride in Creole
cookery. Joseph deposited his _calas_ with these things and made haste
to produce a chair, which his visitor, as usual, declined.
"Idd you' bregfuz, m'sieu'."
"I can do that afterward," said Frowenfeld; but the landlord insisted
and turned away from him to look up at the books on the wall, precisely
as that other of the same name had done a few weeks before.
Frowenfeld, as he broke his loaf, noticed this, and, as the landlord
turned his face to speak, wondered that he had not before seen the
common likeness.
"Dez stog," said the sombre man.
"What, sir? Oh!--dead stock? But how can the materials of an education
be dead stock?"
The landlord shrugged. He would not argue the point. One American trait
which the Creole is never entirely ready to encounter is this gratuitous
Yankee way of going straight to the root of things.
"Dead stock in a mercantile sense, you mean," continued the apothecary;
"but are men right in measuring such things only by their present
market value?"
The landlord had no reply. It was little to him, his manner intimated;
his contemplation dwelt on deeper flaws in human right and wrong;
yet--but it was needless to discuss it. However, he did speak.
"Ah was elevade in Pariz."
"Educated in Paris," exclaimed Joseph, admiringly. "Then you certainly
cannot find your education dead stock."
The grave, not amused, smile which was the landlord's only rejoinder,
though perfectly courteous, intimated that his tenant was sailing over
depths of the question that he was little aware of. But the smile in a
moment gave way for the look of one who was engrossed with
another subject.
"M'sieu'," he began; but just then Joseph made an apologetic gesture and
went forward to wait upon an inquirer after "Godfrey's Cordial;" for
that comforter was known to be obtainable at "Frowenfeld's." The
business of the American drug-store was daily increasing. When
Frowenfeld returned his landlord stood ready to address him, with the
air of having decided to make short of a matter.
"M'sieu' ----"
"Have a seat, sir," urged the apothecary.
His visitor again declined, with his uniform melancholy grace. He drew
close to Frowenfeld.
"Ah wand you mague me one _ouangan_," he said.
Joseph shook his head. He remembered Doctor Keene's expressed suspicion
concerning the assault of the night before.
"I do not understand you, sir; what is that?"
"You know."
The landlord offered a heavy, persuading smile.
"An unguent? Is that what you mean--an ointment?"
"M'sieu'," said the applicant, with a not-to-be-deceived expression,
"_vous êtes astrologue--magicien--"
"God forbid!"
The landlord was grossly incredulous.
"You godd one 'P'tit Albert.'"
He dropped his forefinger upon an iron-clasped book on the table, whose
title much use had effaced.
"That is the Bible. I do not know what the Tee Albare is!"
Frowenfeld darted an aroused glance into the ever-courteous eyes of his
visitor, who said without a motion:
"You di'n't gave Agricola Fusilier _une ouangan, la nuit passé_?"
"Sir?"
"Ee was yeh?--laz nighd?"
"Mr. Fusilier was here last night--yes. He had been attacked by an
assassin and slightly wounded. He was accompanied by his nephew, who, I
suppose, is your cousin: he has the same name."
Frowenfeld, hoping he had changed the subject, concluded with a
propitiatory smile, which, however, was not reflected.
"Ma bruzzah," said the visitor.
"Your brother!"
"Ma whide bruzzah; ah ham nod whide, m'sieu'."
Joseph said nothing. He was too much awed to speak; the ejaculation
that started toward his lips turned back and rushed into his heart, and
it was the quadroon who, after a moment, broke the silence:
"Ah ham de holdez son of Numa Grandissime."
"Yes--yes," said Frowenfeld, as if he would wave away something
terrible.
"Nod sell me--_ouangan_?" asked the landlord, again.
"Sir," exclaimed Frowenfeld, taking a step backward, "pardon me if I
offend you; that mixture of blood which draws upon you the scorn of this
community is to me nothing--nothing! And every invidious distinction
made against you on that account I despise! But, sir, whatever may be
either your private wrongs, or the wrongs you suffer in common with your
class, if you have it in your mind to employ any manner of secret art
against the interests or person of any one--"
The landlord was making silent protestations, and his tenant, lost in a
wilderness of indignant emotions, stopped.
"M'sieu'," began the quadroon, but ceased and stood with an expression
of annoyance every moment deepening on his face, until he finally shook
his head slowly, and said with a baffled smile: "Ah can nod
spig Engliss."
"Write it," said Frowenfeld, lifting forward a chair.
The landlord, for the first time in their acquaintance, accepted a
seat, bowing low as he did so, with a demonstration of profound
gratitude that just perceptibly heightened his even dignity. Paper,
quills, and ink were handed down from a shelf and Joseph retired
into the shop.
Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c. (these initials could hardly have come into
use until some months later, but the convenience covers the sin of the
slight anachronism), Honoré Grandissime, free man of color, entered from
the rear room so silently that Joseph was first made aware of his
presence by feeling him at his elbow. He handed the apothecary--but a
few words in time, lest we misjudge.
* * * * *
The father of the two Honorés was that Numa Grandissime--that mere
child--whom the Grand Marquis, to the great chagrin of the De Grapions,
had so early cadetted. The commission seems not to have been thrown
away. While the province was still in first hands, Numa's was a shining
name in the annals of Kerlerec's unsatisfactory Indian wars; and in 1768
(when the colonists, ill-informed, inflammable, and long ill-governed,
resisted the transfer of Louisiana to Spain), at a time of life when
most young men absorb all the political extravagances of their day, he
had stood by the side of law and government, though the popular cry was
a frenzied one for "liberty." Moreover, he had held back his whole
chafing and stamping tribe from a precipice of disaster, and had secured
valuable recognition of their office-holding capacities from that
really good governor and princely Irishman whose one act of summary
vengeance upon a few insurgent office-coveters has branded him in
history as Cruel O'Reilly. But the experience of those days turned Numa
gray, and withal he was not satisfied with their outcome. In the midst
of the struggle he had weakened in one manly resolve--against his will
he married. The lady was a Fusilier, Agricola's sister, a person of rare
intelligence and beauty, whom, from early childhood, the secret counsels
of his seniors had assigned to him. Despite this, he had said he would
never marry; he made, he said, no pretensions to severe
conscientiousness, or to being better than others, but--as between his
Maker and himself--he had forfeited the right to wed, they all knew how.
But the Fusiliers had become very angry and Numa, finding strife about
to ensue just when without unity he could not bring an undivided clan
through the torrent of the revolution, had "nobly sacrificed a little
sentimental feeling," as his family defined it, by breaking faith with
the mother of the man now standing at Joseph Frowenfeld's elbow, and who
was then a little toddling boy. It was necessary to save the party--nay,
that was a slip; we should say, to save the family; this is not a
parable. Yet Numa loved his wife. She bore him a boy and a girl, twins;
and as her son grew in physical, intellectual, and moral symmetry, he
indulged the hope that--the ambition and pride of all the various
Grandissimes now centering in this lawful son, and all strife being
lulled--he should yet see this Honoré right the wrongs which he had not
quite dared to uproot. And Honoré inherited the hope and began to make
it an intention and aim even before his departure (with his half-brother
the other Honoré) for school in Paris, at the early age of fifteen. Numa
soon after died, and Honoré, after various fortunes in Paris, London,
and elsewhere, in the care, or at least company, of a pious uncle in
holy orders, returned to the ancestral mansion. The father's will--by
the law they might have set it aside, but that was not their way--left
the darker Honoré the bulk of his fortune, the younger a competency. The
latter--instead of taking office, as an ancient Grandissime should have
done--to the dismay and mortification of his kindred, established
himself in a prosperous commercial business. The elder bought houses and
became a _rentier_.
* * * * *
The landlord handed the apothecary the following writing:
MR. JOSEPH FROWENFELD:
Think not that anybody is to be either poisoned by me nor yet
to be made a sufferer by the exercise of anything by me of
the character of what is generally known as grigri, otherwise
magique. This, sir, I do beg your permission to offer my
assurance to you of the same. Ah, no! it is not for that! I
am the victim of another entirely and a far differente and
dissimilar passion, _i.e._, Love. Esteemed sir, speaking or
writing to you as unto the only man of exclusively white
blood whom I believe is in Louisiana willing to do my dumb,
suffering race the real justice, I love Palmyre la Philosophe
with a madness which is by the human lips or tongues not
possible to be exclaimed (as, I may add, that I have in the
same like manner since exactley nine years and seven months
and some days). Alas! heavens! I can't help it in the least
particles at all! What, what shall I do, for ah! it is
pitiful! She loves me not at all, but, on the other hand, is
(if I suspicion not wrongfully) wrapped up head and ears in
devotion of one who does not love her, either, so cold and
incapable of appreciation is he. I allude to Honoré
Grandissime.
Ah! well do I remember the day when we returned--he and
me--from the France. She was there when we landed on that
levee, she was among that throng of kindreds and domestiques,
she shind like the evening star as she stood there (it was
the first time I saw her, but she was known to him when at
fifteen he left his home, but I resided not under my own
white father's roof--not at all--far from that). She cried
out "A la fin to vini!" and leap herself with both
resplendant arm around his neck and kist him twice on the one
cheek and the other, and her resplendant eyes shining with a
so great beauty.
If you will give me a _poudre d'amour_ such as I doubt not
your great knowledge enable you to make of a power that
cannot to be resist, while still at the same time of a
harmless character toward the life or the health of such that
I shall succeed in its use to gain the affections of that
emperice of my soul, I hesitate not to give you such price as
it may please you to nominate up as high as to $l,000--nay,
more. Sir, will you do that?
I have the honor to remain, sir,
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
H. Grandissime.
Frowenfeld slowly transferred his gaze from the paper to his landlord's
face. Dejection and hope struggled with each other in the gaze that was
returned; but when Joseph said, with a countenance full of pity, "I have
no power to help you," the disappointed lover merely looked fixedly for
a moment in the direction of the street, then lifted his hat toward his
head, bowed, and departed.