CHAPTER LII
LOVE LIES A-BLEEDING
When Honore Grandissime heard that Doctor Keene had returned to the cityin a very feeble state of health, he rose at once from the desk where hewas sitting and went to see him; but it was on that morning when thedoctor was sitting and talking with Joseph, and Honore found his chamberdoor locked. Doctor Keene called twice, within the following two days,upon Honore at his counting-room; but on both occasions Honore's chairwas empty. So it was several days before they met. But one hot morningin the latter part of August,--the August days were hotter before thecypress forest was cut down between the city and the lake than they arenow,--as Doctor Keene stood in the middle of his room breathingdistressedly after a sad fit of coughing, and looking toward one of hiswindows whose closed sash he longed to see opened, Honore knocked atthe door.
"Well, come in!" said the fretful invalid. "Why, Honore,--well, itserves you right for stopping to knock. Sit down."
Each took a hasty, scrutinizing glance at the other; and, after a pause,Doctor Keene said:
"Honore, you are pretty badly stove."
M. Grandissime smiled.
"Do you think so, Doctor? I will be more complimentary to you; you mightlook 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 whowant a skilful and advanced physician and do not mind killing him; Ishould advise you not to do it."
"You mean" (the incorrigible little doctor smiled cynically) "if Ishould ask your advice. I am going to get well, Honore."
His visitor shrugged.
"So much the better. I do confess I am tempted to make use of you inyour official capacity, right now. Do you feel strong enough to go withme 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 onhis 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 slightpreparation for the street.
"Excitement continues. Just as I came along, a private difficultybetween a Creole and an Americain drew instantly half the streettogether to take sides strictly according to belongings and withoutasking a question. My-de'-seh, we are having, as Frowenfeld says, a warof human acids and alkalies."
They descended and drove away. At the first corner the lad who droveturned, by Honore's direction, toward the rue Dauphine, entered it,passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned into this toward the riveragain and entered the rue Conde. The route was circuitous. They stoppedat the carriage-door of a large brick house. The wicket was opened byClemence. 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 closelybuilt parts of the town were all of the one, general, Spanish-Americanplan. Honore led the doctor through the cool, high, tessellatedcarriage-hall, on one side of which were the drawing-rooms, closed anddarkened. They turned at the bottom, ascended a broad, iron-railedstaircase to the floor above, and halted before the open half of aglazed double door with a clumsy iron latch. It was the entrance to twospacious chambers, which were thrown into one by folded doors.
The doctor made a low, indrawn whistle and raised his eyebrows--therooms were so sumptuously furnished; immovable largeness and heaviness,lofty sobriety, abundance of finely wrought brass mounting, motionlessrichness of upholstery, much silent twinkle of pendulous crystal, a softsemi-obscurity--such were the characteristics. The long windows of thefarther apartment could be seen to open over the street, and the airfrom behind, coming in over a green mass of fig-trees that stood in thepaved court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool andcavernous.
"You don't call this a hiding place, do you--in his own bedchamber?" thedoctor whispered.
"It is necessary, now, only to keep out of sight," softly answeredHonore. "Agricole and some others ransacked this house one night lastMarch--the day I announced the new firm; but of course, then, he wasnot here."
They entered, and the figure of Honore Grandissime, f.m.c., came intoview in the centre of the farther room, reclining in an attitude ofextreme languor on a low couch, whither he had come from the high bednear by, as the impression of his form among its pillows showed. Heturned upon the two visitors his slow, melancholy eyes, and, without anattempt to rise or speak, indicated, by a feeble motion of the hand, aninvitation to be seated.
"Good morning," said Doctor Keene, selecting a light chair and drawingit close to the side of the couch.
The patient before him was emaciated. The limp and bloodless hand, whichhad not responded to the doctor's friendly pressure but sank idly backupon the edge of the couch, was cool and moist, and its nailsslightly blue.
"Lie still," said the doctor, reassuringly, as the rentier began to liftthe one knee and slippered foot which was drawn up on the couch and thehand which hung out of sight across a large, linen-covered cushion.
By pleasant talk that seemed all chat, the physician soon acquaintedhimself with the case before him. It was a very plain one. By and by herubbed 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 littlesatirical downward pull which his friends disliked, "I'll do my duty.I'll give Honore the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescriptionto 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." Herose. "I'll send you a chalybeate tonic; or--I will leave it atFrowenfeld's to-morrow morning, and you can call there and get it. Itwill give you an object for going out."
The two visitors presently said adieu and retired together. Reaching thebottom of the stairs in the carriage "corridor," they turned in adirection opposite to the entrance and took chairs in a cool nook of thepaved court, at a small table where the hospitality of Clemence hadplaced glasses of lemonade.
"No," said the doctor, as they sat down, "there is, as yet, no incurableorganic derangement; a little heart trouble easily removed; stillyour--your patient--"
"My half-brother," said Honore.
"Your patient," said Doctor Keene, "is an emphatic 'yes' to the questionthe girls sometimes ask us doctors--Does love ever kill?' It will killhim _soon_, if you do not get him to rouse up. There is absolutelynothing the matter with him but his unrequited love."
"Fortunately, the most of us," said Honore, with something of thedoctor'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 hisattenuated fingers as it stood on the board, while he added: "However,one _may_ love as hopelessly and harder than that man upstairs, andyet not die."
"There is comfort in that--to those who must live," said Honore withgentle gravity.
"Yes," said the other, still toying with his glass.
He slowly lifted his glance, and the eyes of the two men met andremained 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 passedthrough the carriage-way toward the street, "while I keep in mind thenumberless other sorrows of life, the burials of wives and sons anddaughters, 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 tookno advantage of it.
"Honore," said he, as they joined hands on the banquette beside thedoctor'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 hasshown; you have taken an inoculation of Quixotic conscience from ourtranscendental apothecary and perpetrated a lot of heroic behavior thatwould have done honor to four-and-twenty Brutuses; and now that you havea chance to do something easy and human, you shiver and shrink at the'looks o' the thing.' Why, what do you care--"
"Hush!" said Honore; "do you suppose I have not temptation enoughalready?"
He began to move away.
"Honore," said the doctor, following him a step, "I couldn't have made amistake--It's the little Monk,--it's Aurora, isn't it?"
Honore nodded, then faced his friend more directly, with a sudden newthought.
"But, Doctor, why not take your own advice? I know not how you areprevented; you have as good a right as Frowenfeld."
"It wouldn't be honest," said the doctor; "it wouldn't be the straightup and down manly thing."
"Why not?"
The doctor stepped into his gig--
"Not till I feel all right _here_." (In his chest.)
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