The Grandissimes
Page 55
CHAPTER LIV
"CAULDRON BUBBLE"
The excitement and alarm produced by the practical threat of voudoucurses upon Agricola was one thing, Creole lethargy was quite another;and when, three mornings later, a full quartette of voudou charms wasfound in the four corners of Agricola's pillow, the great Grandissimefamily were ignorant of how they could have come there. Let us examinethese terrible engines of mischief. In one corner was an acorn drilledthrough with two holes at right angles to each other, a small featherrun through each hole; in the second a joint of cornstalk with a cavityscooped from the middle, the pith left intact at the ends, and the spacefilled with parings from that small callous spot near the knee of thehorse, called the "nail;" in the third corner a bunch of parti-coloredfeathers; something equally meaningless in the fourth. No thread wasused in any of them. All fastening was done with the gum of trees. Itwas no easy task for his kindred to prevent Agricola, beside himselfwith rage and fright, from going straight to Palmyre's house andshooting her down in open day.
"We shall have to watch our house by night," said a gentleman of thehousehold, when they had at length restored the Citizen to a conditionof mind which enabled them to hold him in a chair.
"Watch this house?" cried a chorus. "You don't suppose she comes nearhere, do you? She does it all from a distance. No, no; watch_her_ house."
Did Agricola believe in the supernatural potency of these gimcracks? No,and yes. Not to be foolhardy, he quietly slipped down every day to thelevee, had a slave-boy row him across the river in a skiff, landed,re-embarked, and in the middle of the stream surreptitiously cast apicayune over his shoulder into the river. Monsieur D'Embarras, the impof death thus placated, must have been a sort of spiritual Cheap John.
Several more nights passed. The house of Palmyre, closely watched,revealed nothing. No one came out, no one went in, no light was seen.They should have watched in broad daylight. At last, one midnight,'Polyte Grandissime stepped cautiously up to one of the batten doorswith an auger, and succeeded, without arousing any one, in boring ahole. He discovered a lighted candle standing in a glass of water.
"Nothing but a bedroom light," said one.
"Ah, bah!" whispered the other; "it is to make the spell work strong."
"We will not tell Agricola first; we had better tell Honore," saidSylvestre.
"You forget," said 'Polyte, "that I no longer have any acquaintance withMonsieur Honore Grandissime."
They told Agamemnon; and it would have gone hard with the"_milatraise_" but for the additional fact that suspicion had fastenedupon another person; but now this person in turn had to be identified.It was decided not to report progress to old Agricola, but to wait andseek further developments. Agricola, having lost all ability to sleep inthe mansion, moved into a small cottage in a grove near the house. Butthe very next morning, he turned cold with horror to find on hisdoorstep a small black-coffined doll, with pins run through the heart, aburned-out candle at the head and another at the feet.
"You know it is Palmyre, do you?" asked Agamemnon, seizing the old manas he was going at a headlong pace through the garden gate. "What if Ishould tell you that by watching the Congo dancing-ground at midnightto-night, you will see the real author of this mischief--eh?"
"And why to-night?"
"Because the moon rises at midnight."
There was firing that night in the deserted Congo dancing-grounds underthe ruins of Fort St. Joseph, or, as we would say now, in Congo Square,from three pistols--Agricola's, 'Polyte's, and the weapon of anill-defined, retreating figure answering the description of the personwho had stabbed Agricola the preceding February. "And yet," said'Polyte, "I would have sworn that it was Palmyre doing this work."
Through Raoul these events came to the ear of Frowenfield. It was aboutthe time that Raoul's fishing party, after a few days' mishaps, hadreturned home. Palmyre, on several later dates, had craved furtheraudiences and shown other letters from the hidden f.m.c. She had heardthem calmly, and steadfastly preserved the one attitude of refusal. Butit could not escape Frowenfeld's notice that she encouraged the sendingof additional letters. He easily guessed the courier to be Clemence; andnow, as he came to ponder these revelations of Raoul, he found thatwithin twenty-four hours after every visit of Clemence to the house ofPalmyre, Agricola suffered a visitation.