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. Honoré Grandissime f.m.c. was the owner. He being concealed from
his enemies, Joseph treated with that person's inadequately remunerated
employé. 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 partition 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-cochère_, 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, Honoré 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 copartnership, blushing frightfully.
Frowenfeld became a visitor, Honoré not; once Honoré 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 fish!"
"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 blushing girl as a
blushing 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'!"
But for all the exuberance of Aurora's spirits, there was a cloud in her
sky. Indeed, we know it is only when clouds are in the sky that we get
the rosiest tints; and so it was with Aurora. One night, when she had
heard the wicket in the _porte-cochère_ shut behind three evening
callers, one of whom she had rejected a week before, another of whom she
expected to dispose of similarly, and the last of whom was Joseph
Frowenfeld, she began such a merry raillery at Clotilde and such a
hilarious ridicule of the "Professor" that Clotilde would have wept
again had not Aurora, all at once, in the midst of a laugh, dropped her
face in her hands and run from the room in tears. It is one of the
penalties we pay for being joyous, that nobody thinks us capable of care
or the victim of trouble until, in some moment of extraordinary
expansion, our bubble of gayety bursts. Aurora had been crying of
nights. Even that same night, Clotilde awoke, opened her eyes and beheld
her mother risen from the pillow and sitting upright in the bed beside
her; the moon, shining brightly through the mosquito-bar revealed with
distinctness her head slightly drooped, her face again in her hands and
the dark folds of her hair falling about her shoulders, half-concealing
the richly embroidered bosom of her snowy gown, and coiling in
continuous abundance about her waist and on the slight summer covering
of the bed. Before her on the sheet lay a white paper. Clotilde did not
try to decipher the writing on it; she knew, at sight, the slip that had
fallen from the statement of account on the evening of the ninth of
March. Aurora withdrew her hands from her face--Clotilde shut her eyes;
she heard Aurora put the paper in her bosom.
"Clotilde," she said, very softly.
"Maman," the daughter replied, opening her eyes, reached up her arms and
drew the dear head down.
"Clotilde, once upon a time I woke this way, and, while you were asleep,
left the bed and made a vow to Monsieur Danny. Oh! it was a sin! but I
cannot do those things now; I have been frightened ever since. I shall
never do so any more. I shall never commit another sin as long as
I live!"
Their lips met fervently.
"My sweet sweet," whispered Clotilde, "you looked so beautiful sitting
up with the moonlight all around you!"
"Clotilde, my beautiful daughter," said Aurora, pushing her bedmate from
her and pretending to repress a smile, "I tell you now, because you
don't know, and it is my duty as your mother to tell you--the meanest
wickedness a woman can do in all this bad, bad world is to look ugly
in bed!"
Clotilde answered nothing, and Aurora dropped her outstretched arms,
turned away with an involuntary, tremulous sigh, and after two or three
hours of patient wakefulness, fell asleep.
But at daybreak next morning, he that wrote the paper had not closed his
eyes.