LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING
When Honoré 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 Honoré found his chamber
door locked. Doctor Keene called twice, within the following two days,
upon Honoré at his counting-room; but on both occasions Honoré'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, Honoré knocked at
the door.
"Well, come in!" said the fretful invalid. "Why, Honoré,--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:
"Honoré, 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, Honoré."
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 scrape 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 Américain 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 Honoré's direction, toward the rue Dauphine, entered it,
passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned into this toward the river
again and entered the rue Condé. 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 spaciousness in the closely
built parts of the town were all of the one, general, Spanish-American
plan. Honoré 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
spacious 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 brass 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 mass of fig-trees that stood in the
paved court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool and
cavernous.
"You don't call this a hiding place, do you--in his own bedchamber?" the
doctor whispered.
"It is necessary, now, only to keep out of sight," softly answered
Honoré. "Agricole and some others ransacked this house one night last
March--the day I announced the new firm; but of course, then, he was
not here."
They entered, and the figure of Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c., came into
view in the centre of the farther room, reclining in an attitude of
extreme languor on a low couch, whither he had come from the high bed
near by, as the impression of his form among its pillows showed. He
turned upon the two visitors his slow, melancholy eyes, and, without an
attempt to rise or speak, indicated, by a feeble motion of the hand, an
invitation to be seated.
"Good morning," said Doctor Keene, selecting a light chair and drawing
it close to the side of the couch.
The patient before him was emaciated. The limp and bloodless hand, which
had not responded to the doctor's friendly pressure but sank idly back
upon the edge of the couch, was cool and moist, and its nails
slightly blue.
"Lie still," said the doctor, reassuringly, as the rentier began to lift
the one knee and slippered foot which was drawn up on the couch and the
hand which hung out of sight across a large, linen-covered cushion.
By pleasant talk that seemed all chat, the physician soon acquainted
himself with the case before him. It was a very plain one. By and by he
rubbed his face and red curls and suddenly said:
"You will not take my prescription."
The f.m.c. did not say yes or no.
"Still,"--the doctor turned sideways in his chair, as was his wont, and,
as he spoke, allowed the corners of his mouth to take that little
satirical downward pull which his friends disliked, "I'll do my duty.
I'll give Honoré the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescription
to you is, Get up and get out. Never mind the risk of rough handling;
they can but kill you, and you will die anyhow if you stay here." He
rose. "I'll send you a chalybeate tonic; or--I will leave it at
Frowenfeld's to-morrow morning, and you can call there and get it. It
will give you an object for going out."
The two visitors presently said adieu and retired together. Reaching the
bottom of the stairs in the carriage "corridor," they turned in a
direction opposite to the entrance and took chairs in a cool nook of the
paved court, at a small table where the hospitality of Clemence had
placed glasses of lemonade.
"No," said the doctor, as they sat down, "there is, as yet, no incurable
organic derangement; a little heart trouble easily removed; still
your--your patient--"
"My half-brother," said Honoré.
"Your patient," said Doctor Keene, "is an emphatic 'yes' to the question
the girls sometimes ask us doctors--Does love ever kill?' It will kill
him _soon_, if you do not get him to rouse up. There is absolutely
nothing the matter with him but his unrequited love."
"Fortunately, the most of us," said Honoré, with something of the
doctor's smile, "do not love hard enough to be killed by it."
"Very few." The doctor paused, and his blue eyes, distended in reverie,
gazed upon the glass which he was slowly turning around with his
attenuated fingers as it stood on the board, while he added: "However,
one _may_ love as hopelessly and harder than that man upstairs, and
yet not die."
"There is comfort in that--to those who must live," said Honoré with
gentle gravity.
"Yes," said the other, still toying with his glass.
He slowly lifted his glance, and the eyes of the two men met and
remained steadfastly fixed each upon each.
"You've got it bad," said Doctor Keene, mechanically.
"And you?" retorted the Creole.
"It isn't going to kill me."
"It has not killed me. And," added M. Grandissime, as they passed
through the carriage-way toward the street, "while I keep in mind the
numberless other sorrows of life, the burials of wives and sons and
daughters, the agonies and desolations, I shall never die of love,
my-de'-seh, for very shame's sake."
This was much sentiment to risk within Doctor Keene's reach; but he took
no advantage of it.
"Honoré," said he, as they joined hands on the banquette beside the
doctor's gig, to say good-day, "if you think there's a chance for you,
why stickle upon such fine-drawn points as I reckon you are making? Why,
sir, as I understand it, this is the only weak spot your action has
shown; you have taken an inoculation of Quixotic conscience from our
transcendental apothecary and perpetrated a lot of heroic behavior that
would have done honor to four-and-twenty Brutuses; and now that you have
a chance to do something easy and human, you shiver and shrink at the
'looks o' the thing.' Why, what do you care--"
"Hush!" said Honoré; "do you suppose I have not temptation enough
already?"
He began to move away.
"Honoré," said the doctor, following him a step, "I couldn't have made a
mistake--It's the little Monk,--it's Aurora, isn't it?"
Honoré nodded, then faced his friend more directly, with a sudden new
thought.
"But, Doctor, why not take your own advice? I know not how you are
prevented; you have as good a right as Frowenfeld."
"It wouldn't be honest," said the doctor; "it wouldn't be the straight
up and down manly thing."
"Why not?"
The doctor stepped into his gig--
"Not till I feel all right _here_." (In his chest.)