The Grandissimes

by George Washington Cable

  CHAPTER XX

  A VERY NATURAL MISTAKE

  MR. Raoul Innerarity proved a treasure. The fact became patent in a fewhours. To a student of the community he was a key, a lamp, a lexicon, amicroscope, a tabulated statement, a book of heraldry, a city directory,a glass of wine, a Book of Days, a pair of wings, a comic almanac, adiving bell, a Creole _veritas_. Before the day had had time to cool,his continual stream of words had done more to elucidate the mysteriesin which his employer had begun to be befogged than half a year of theapothecary's slow and scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how tocarve a strange fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drewforward in panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier,Zephyr Grandissime and the lady of the _lettre de cachet_, DemosthenesDe Grapion and the _fille a l'hopital_, Georges De Grapion and the_fille a la cassette_, Numa Grandissime, father of the two Honores,young Nancanou and old Agricola,--the way he made them

  "Knit hands and beat the ground In a light, fantastic round,"

  would have shamed the skilled volubility of Sheharazade.

  "Look!" said the story-teller, summing up; "you take hanny 'istory ofFrance an' see the hage of my familie. Pipple talk about de Boulignys,de Sauves, de Grandpres, de Lemoynes, de St. Maxents,--bla-a-a! DeGrandissimes is as hole as de dev'! What? De mose of de Creole familiesis not so hold as plenty of my yallah kinfolks!"

  The apothecary found very soon that a little salt improved M. Raoul'sstatements.

  But here he was, a perfect treasure, and Frowenfeld, fleeing before hisillimitable talking power in order to digest in seclusion the ancestralepisodes of the Grandissimes and De Grapions, laid pleasant plans forthe immediate future. To-morrow morning he would leave the shop inRaoul's care and call on M. Honore Grandissime to advise with himconcerning the retention of the born artist as a drug-clerk. To-morrowevening he would pluck courage and force his large but bashful feet upto the doorstep of Number 19 rue Bienville. And the next evening hewould go and see what might be the matter with Doctor Keene, who hadlooked ill on last parting with the evening group that lounged inFrowenfeld's door, some three days before. The intermediate hours wereto be devoted, of course, to the prescription desk and his "dead stock."

  And yet after this order of movement had been thus compactly planned,there all the more seemed still to be that abroad which, now on thisside, and now on that, was urging him in a nervous whisper to makehaste. There had escaped into the air, it seemed, and was glidingabout, the expectation of a crisis.

  Such a feeling would have been natural enough to the tenants of Number19 rue Bienville, now spending the tenth of the eighteen days of graceallowed them in which to save their little fortress. For Palmyre'sassurance that the candle burning would certainly cause the rent-moneyto be forthcoming in time was to Clotilde unknown, and to Aurora it waspoor stuff to make peace of mind of. But there was a degree ofimpracticability in these ladies, which, if it was unfortunate, was,nevertheless, a part of their Creole beauty, and made the absence of anyreally brilliant outlook what the galaxy makes a moonless sky. Perhapsthey had not been as diligent as they might have been in canvassing allpossible ways and means for meeting the pecuniary emergency so fastbearing down upon them. From a Creole standpoint, they were not badmanagers. They could dress delightfully on an incredibly small outlay;could wear a well-to-do smile over an inward sigh of stifled hunger;could tell the parents of their one or two scholars to consult theirconvenience, and then come home to a table that would make any kind soulweep; but as to estimating the velocity of bills-payable in theirorbits, such trained sagacity was not theirs. Their economy knew how toavoid what the Creole-African apothegm calls _commerce Man Lizon--quiassete pou' trois picaillons et vend' pou' ein escalin_ (bought forthree picayunes and sold for two); but it was an economy that madetheir very hound a Spartan; for, had that economy been half as wise asit was heroic, his one meal a day would not always have been the cook'sleavings of cold rice and the lickings of the gumbo plates.

  On the morning fixed by Joseph Frowenfeld for calling on M. Grandissime,on the banquette of the rue Toulouse, directly in front of an oldSpanish archway and opposite a blacksmith's shop,--this blacksmith'sshop stood between a jeweller's store and a large, balconied anddormer-windowed wine-warehouse--Aurore Nancanou, closely veiled, hadhalted in a hesitating way and was inquiring of a gigantic negro cartmanthe whereabouts of the counting-room of M. Honore Grandissime.

  Before he could respond she descried the name upon a staircase withinthe archway, and, thanking the cartman as she would have thanked aprince, hastened to ascend. An inspiring smell of warm rusks, comingfrom a bakery in the paved court below, rushed through the archway andup the stair and accompanied her into the cemetery-like silence of thecounting-room. There were in the department some fourteen clerks. It wasa den of Grandissimes. More than half of them were men beyond middlelife, and some were yet older. One or two were so handsome, under theirnoble silvery locks, that almost any woman--Clotilde, forinstance,--would have thought, "No doubt that one, or that one, is thehead of the house." Aurora approached the railing which shut in thesilent toilers and directed her eyes to the farthest corner of theroom. There sat there at a large desk a thin, sickly-looking man withvery sore eyes and two pairs of spectacles, plying a quill with aprivileged loudness.

  "H-h-m-m!" said she, very softly.

  A young man laid down his rule and stepped to the rail with a silentbow. His face showed a jaded look. Night revelry, rather than care oryears, had wrinkled it; but his bow was high-bred.

  "Madame,"--in an undertone.

  "Monsieur, it is M. Grandissime whom I wish to see," she said in French.

  But the young man responded in English.

  "You har one tenant, ent it?"

  "Yes, seh."

  "Zen eet ees M. De Brahmin zat you 'ave to see."

  "No, seh; M. Grandissime."

  "M. Grandissime nevva see one tenant."

  "I muz see M. Grandissime."

  Aurora lifted her veil and laid it up on her bonnet.

  The clerk immediately crossed the floor to the distant desk. The quillof the sore-eyed man scratched louder--scratch, scratch--as though itwere trying to scratch under the door of Number 19 rue Bienville--for amoment, and then ceased. The clerk, with one hand behind him and onetouching the desk, murmured a few words, to which the other, afterglancing under his arm at Aurora, gave a short, low reply and resumedhis pen. The clerk returned, came through a gateway in the railing, ledthe way into a rich inner room, and turning with another courtly bow,handed her a cushioned armchair and retired.

  "After eighteen years," thought Aurora, as she found herself alone. Ithad been eighteen years since any representative of the De Grapion linehad met a Grandissime face to face, so far as she knew; even thatrepresentative was only her deceased husband, a mere connection bymarriage. How many years it was since her grandfather, Georges DeGrapion, captain of dragoons, had had his fatal meeting with a Mandarinde Grandissime, she did not remember. There, opposite her on the wall,was the portrait of a young man in a corslet who might have been M.Mandarin himself. She felt the blood of her race growing warmer in herveins. "Insolent tribe," she said, without speaking, "we have no moremen left to fight you; but now wait. See what a woman can do."

  These thoughts ran through her mind as her eye passed from one object toanother. Something reminded her of Frowenfeld, and, with mingleddefiance at her inherited enemies and amusement at the apothecary, sheindulged in a quiet smile. The smile was still there as her glance inits gradual sweep reached a small mirror.

  She almost leaped from her seat.

  Not because that mirror revealed a recess which she had not previouslynoticed; not because behind a costly desk therein sat a youngish man,reading a letter; not because he might have been observing her, for itwas altogether likely that, to avoid premature interruption, he hadavoided looking up; nor because this was evidently Honore Grandissime;but because Honore Grandissime, if this were he, was the same personwho
m she had seen only with his back turned in the pharmacy--the riderwhose horse ten days ago had knocked her down, the Lieutenant ofDragoons who had unmasked and to whom she had unmasked at the ball! Fly!But where? How? It was too late; she had not even time to lower herveil. M. Grandissime looked up at the glass, dropped the letter with aslight start of consternation and advanced quickly toward her. For aninstant her embarrassment showed itself in a mantling blush and adistressful yearning to escape; but the next moment she rose, alla-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as theinborn witchery of her eyes would allow.

  He spoke in Parisian French:

  "Please be seated, madame."

  She sank down.

  "Do you wish to see me?"

  "No, sir."

  She did not see her way out of this falsehood, but--she couldn't sayyes.

  Silence followed.

  "Whom do--"

  "I wish to see M. Honore Grandissime."

  "That is my name, madame."

  "Ah!"--with an angelic smile; she had collected her wits now, and wasready for war. "You are not one of his clerks?"

  M. Grandissime smiled softly, while he said to himself: "You littlehoney-bee, you want to sting me, eh?" and then he answered her question.

  "No, madame; I am the gentleman you are looking for."

  "The gentleman she was look--" her pride resented the fact."Me!"--thought she--"I am the lady whom, I have not a doubt, you havebeen longing to meet ever since the ball;" but her look was unmovedgravity. She touched her handkerchief to her lips and handed him therent notice.

  "I received that from your office the Monday before last."

  There was a slight emphasis in the announcement of the time; it was theday of the run-over.

  Honore Grandissime, stopping with the rent-notice only half unfolded,saw the advisability of calling up all the resources of his sagacity andwit in order to answer wisely; and as they answered his call a brighternobility so overspread face and person that Aurora inwardly exclaimed atit even while she exulted in her thrust.

  "Monday before last?"

  She slightly bowed.

  "A serious misfortune befell me that day," said M. Grandissime.

  "Ah?" replied the lady, raising her brows with polite distress, "butyou have entirely recovered, I suppose."

  "It was I, madame, who that evening caused you a mortification for whichI fear you will accept no apology."

  "On the contrary," said Aurora, with an air of generous protestation,"it is I who should apologize; I fear I injured your horse."

  M. Grandissime only smiled, and opening the rent-notice dropped hisglance upon it while he said in a preoccupied tone:

  "My horse is very well, I thank you."

  But as he read the paper, his face assumed a serious air and he seemedto take an unnecessary length of time to reach the bottom of it.

  "He is trying to think how he will get rid of me," thought Aurora; "heis making up some pretext with which to dismiss me, and when the tenthof March comes we shall be put into the street."

  M. Grandissime extended the letter toward her, but she did not lift herhands.

  "I beg to assure you, madame, I could never have permitted this noticeto reach you from my office; I am not the Honore Grandissime for whomthis is signed."

  Aurora smiled in a way to signify clearly that that was just thesubterfuge she had been anticipating. Had she been at home she wouldhave thrown herself, face downward, upon the bed; but she only smiledmeditatively upward at the picture of an East Indian harbor and made anunnecessary rearrangement of her handkerchief under her folded hands.

  "There are, you know,"--began Honore, with a smile which changed themeaning to "You know very well there are"--"two Honore Grandissimes.This one who sent you this letter is a man of color--"

  "Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, with a sudden malicious sparkle.

  "If you will entrust this paper to me," said Honore, quietly, "I willsee him and do now engage that you shall have no further trouble aboutit. Of course, I do not mean that I will pay it, myself; I dare notoffer to take such a liberty."

  Then he felt that a warm impulse had carried him a step too far.

  Aurora rose up with a refusal as firm as it was silent. She neithersmiled nor scintillated now, but wore an expression of amiablepracticality as she presently said, receiving back the rent-notice asshe spoke:

  "I thank you, sir, but it might seem strange to him to find his noticein the hands of a person who can claim no interest in the matter. Ishall have to attend to it myself."

  "Ah! little enchantress," thought her grave-faced listener, as he gaveattention, "this, after all--ball and all--is the mood in which you lookyour very, very best"--a fact which nobody knew better than theenchantress herself.

  He walked beside her toward the open door leading back into thecounting-room, and the dozen or more clerks, who, each by some ingenuityof his own, managed to secure a glimpse of them, could not fail to feelthat they had never before seen quite so fair a couple. But she droppedher veil, bowed M. Grandissime a polite "No farther," and passed out.

  M. Grandissime walked once up and down his private office, gave the doora soft push with his foot and lighted a cigar.

  The clerk who had before acted as usher came in and handed him a slip ofpaper with a name written on it. M. Grandissime folded it twice, gazedout the window, and finally nodded. The clerk disappeared, and JosephFrowenfeld paused an instant in the door and then advanced, with abuoyant good-morning.

  "Good-morning," responded M. Grandissime.

  He smiled and extended his hand, yet there was a mechanical andpreoccupied air that was not what Joseph felt justified in expecting.

  "How can I serve you, Mr. Frhowenfeld?" asked the merchant, glancingthrough into the counting-room. His coldness was almost all in Joseph'simagination, but to the apothecary it seemed such that he was nearlyinduced to walk away without answering. However, he replied:

  "A young man whom I have employed refers to you to recommend him."

  "Yes, sir? Prhay, who is that?"

  "Your cousin, I believe, Mr. Raoul Innerarity."

  M. Grandissime gave a low, short laugh, and took two steps toward hisdesk.

  "Rhaoul? Oh yes, I rhecommend Rhaoul to you. As an assistant in yo'sto'?--the best man you could find."

  "Thank you, sir," said Joseph, coldly. "Good-morning!" he added turningto go.

  "Mr. Frhowenfeld," said the other, "do you evva rhide?"

  "I used to ride," replied the apothecary, turning, hat in hand, andwondering what such a question could mean.

  "If I send a saddle-hoss to yo' do' on day aftah to-morrhow evening atfo' o'clock, will you rhide out with me for-h about a hour-h and ahalf--just for a little pleasu'e?"

  Joseph was yet more astonished than before. He hesitated, accepted theinvitation, and once more said good-morning.