FROWENFELD AT THE GRANDISSIME MANSION
One afternoon--it seems to have been some time in June, and consequently
earlier than Doctor Keene's return--the Grandissimes were set all
a-tremble with vexation by the discovery that another of their number
had, to use Agricola's expression, "gone over to the enemy,"--a phrase
first applied by him to Honoré.
"What do you intend to convey by that term?" Frowenfeld had asked on
that earlier occasion.
"Gone over to the enemy means, my son, gone over to the enemy!" replied
Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Américains in matters of business
and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a
race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest
prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert,
imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a
listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most
time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning with? N-a-hay! but
Honoré has positively sat down and eaten with them! What?--and h-walked
out into the stre-heet with them, arm in arm! It implies in his case an
act--two separate and distinct acts--so base that--that--I simply do not
understand them! _H-you_ know, Professor Frowenfeld, what he has done!
You know how ignominiously he has surrendered the key of a moral
position which for the honor of the Grandissime-Fusilier name we have
felt it necessary to hold against our hereditary enemies!
And--you--know--" here Agricola actually dropped all artificiality and
spoke from the depths of his feelings, without figure--"h-h-he has
joined himself in business h-with a man of negro blood! What can we do?
What can we say? It is Honoré Grandissime. We can only say, 'Farewell!
He is gone over to the enemy.'"
The new cause of exasperation was the defection of Raoul Innerarity.
Raoul had, somewhat from a distance, contemplated such part as he could
understand of Joseph Frowenfeld's character with ever-broadening
admiration. We know how devoted he became to the interests and fame of
"Frowenfeld's." It was in April he had married. Not to divide his
generous heart he took rooms opposite the drug-store, resolved that
"Frowenfeld's" should be not only the latest closed but the earliest
opened of all the pharmacies in New Orleans.
This, it is true, was allowable. Not many weeks afterward his bride fell
suddenly and seriously ill. The overflowing souls of Aurora and Clotilde
could not be so near to trouble and not know it, and before Raoul was
nearly enough recovered from the shock of this peril to remember that he
was a Grandissime, these last two of the De Grapions had hastened across
the street to the small, white-walled sick-room and filled it as full of
universal human love as the cup of a magnolia is full of perfume. Madame
Innerarity recovered. A warm affection was all she and her husband could
pay such ministration in, and this they paid bountifully; the four
became friends. The little madame found herself drawn most toward
Clotilde; to her she opened her heart--and her wardrobe, and showed her
all her beautiful new underclothing. Raoul found Clotilde to be, for
him, rather--what shall we say?--starry; starrily inaccessible; but
Aurora was emphatically after his liking; he was delighted with Aurora.
He told her in confidence that "Profess-or Frowenfel'" was the best man
in the world; but she boldly said, taking pains to speak with a
tear-and-a-half of genuine gratitude,--"Egcep' Monsieur Honoré
Grandissime," and he assented, at first with hesitation and then with
ardor. The four formed a group of their own; and it is not certain that
this was not the very first specimen ever produced in the Crescent City
of that social variety of New Orleans life now distinguished as
Uptown Creoles.
Almost the first thing acquired by Raoul in the camp of the enemy was a
certain Aurorean audacity; and on the afternoon to which we allude,
having told Frowenfeld a rousing fib to the effect that the
multitudinous inmates of the maternal Grandissime mansion had insisted
on his bringing his esteemed employer to see them, he and his bride had
the hardihood to present him on the front veranda.
The straightforward Frowenfeld was much pleased with his reception. It
was not possible for such as he to guess the ire with which his presence
was secretly regarded. New Orleans, let us say once more, was small, and
the apothecary of the rue Royale locally famed; and what with curiosity
and that innate politeness which it is the Creole's boast that he cannot
mortify, the veranda, about the top of the great front stair, was well
crowded with people of both sexes and all ages. It would be most
pleasant to tarry once more in description of this gathering of nobility
and beauty; to recount the points of Creole loveliness in midsummer
dress; to tell in particular of one and another eye-kindling face,
form, manner, wit; to define the subtle qualities of Creole air and sky
and scene, or the yet more delicate graces that characterize the music
of Creole voice and speech and the light of Creole eyes; to set forth
the gracious, unaccentuated dignity of the matrons and the ravishing
archness of their daughters. To Frowenfeld the experience seemed all
unreal. Nor was this unreality removed by conversation on grave
subjects; for few among either the maturer or the younger beauty could
do aught but listen to his foreign tongue like unearthly strangers in
the old fairy tales. They came, however, in the course of their talk to
the subject of love and marriage. It is not certain that they entered
deeper into the great question than a comparison of its attendant
Anglo-American and Franco-American conventionalities; but sure it is
that somehow--let those young souls divine the method who can--every
unearthly stranger on that veranda contrived to understand Frowenfeld's
English. Suddenly the conversation began to move over the ground of
inter-marriage between hostile families. Then what eyes and ears! A
certain suspicion had already found lodgement in the universal
Grandissime breast, and every one knew in a moment that, to all intents
and purposes, they were about to argue the case of Honoré and Aurora.
The conversation became discussion, Frowenfeld, Raoul and Raoul's little
seraph against the whole host, chariots, horse and archery. Ah! such
strokes as the apothecary dealt! And if Raoul and "Madame Raoul" played
parts most closely resembling the blowing of horns and breaking of
pitchers, still they bore themselves gallantly. The engagement was
short; we need not say that nobody surrendered; nobody ever gives up the
ship in parlor or veranda debate: and yet--as is generally the case in
such affairs--truth and justice made some unacknowledged headway. If
anybody on either side came out wounded--this to the credit of the
Creoles as a people--the sufferer had the heroic good manners not to say
so. But the results were more marked than this; indeed, in more than one
or two candid young hearts and impressible minds the wrongs and rights
of sovereign true love began there on the spot to be more generously
conceded and allowed. "My-de'-seh," Honoré had once on a time said to
Frowenfeld, meaning that to prevail in conversational debate one should
never follow up a faltering opponent, "you mus' _crack_ the egg, not
smash it!" And Joseph, on rising to take his leave, could the more
amiably overlook the feebleness of the invitation to call again, since
he rejoiced, for Honoré's sake, in the conviction that the egg
was cracked.
Agricola, the Grandissimes told the apothecary, was ill in his room, and
Madame de Grandissime, his sister--Honoré's mother--begged to be excused
that she might keep him company. The Fusiliers were a very close order;
or one might say they garrisoned the citadel.
But Joseph's rising to go was not immediately upon the close of the
discussion; those courtly people would not let even an unwelcome guest
go with the faintest feeling of disrelish for them. They were casting
about in their minds for some momentary diversion with which to add a
finishing touch to their guest's entertainment, when Clemence appeared
in the front garden walk and was quickly surrounded by bounding
children, alternately begging and demanding a song. Many of even the
younger adults remembered well when she had been "one of the hands on
the place," and a passionate lover of the African dance. In the same
instant half a dozen voices proposed that for Joseph's amusement
Clemence should put her cakes off her head, come up on the veranda and
show a few of her best steps.
"But who will sing?"
"Raoul!"
"Very well; and what shall it be?"
"'Madame Gaba.'"
No, Clemence objected.
"Well, well, stand back--something better than 'Madame Gaba.'"
Raoul began to sing and Clemence instantly to pace and turn, posture,
bow, respond to the song, start, swing, straighten, stamp, wheel, lift
her hand, stoop, twist, walk, whirl, tiptoe with crossed ankles, smite
her palms, march, circle, leap,--an endless improvisation of rhythmic
motion to this modulated responsive chant:
Raoul. "_Mo pas l'aimein ça_."
Clemence. "_Miché Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
He. "_Yé donné vingt cinq sous pou' manzé poulé_."
She. "_Miché Igenne, dit--dit--dit--_"
He. "_Mo pas l'aimein ça!_"
She. "_Miché Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
He. "_Mo pas l'aimein ça!_"
She. "_Miché Igenne, oap! oap! oap!_"
Frowenfeld was not so greatly amused as the ladies thought he should
have been, and was told that this was not a fair indication of what he
would see if there were ten dancers instead of one.
How much less was it an indication of what he would have seen in that
mansion early the next morning, when there was found just outside of
Agricola's bedroom door a fresh egg, not cracked, according to Honoré's
maxim, but smashed, according to the lore of the voudous. Who could have
got in in the night? And did the intruder get in by magic, by outside
lock-picking, or by inside collusion? Later in the morning, the children
playing in the basement found--it had evidently been accidentally
dropped, since the true use of its contents required them to be
scattered in some person's path--a small cloth bag, containing a
quantity of dogs' and cats' hair, cut fine and mixed with salt
and pepper.
"Clemence?"
"Pooh! Clemence. No! But as sure as the sun turns around the
world--Palmyre Philosophe!"