Part 2 (2/2)
During what lapse of time--whether moments or days--this lasted, Joseph could not then know; but at last these things faded away, and there came to him a positive knowledge that he was on a sick-bed, where unless something could be done for him he should be dead in an hour. Then a spoon touched his lips, and a taste of brandy and water went all through him; and when he fell into sweet slumber and awoke, and found the teaspoon ready at his lips again, he had to lift a little the two hands lying before him on the coverlet to know that they were his--they were so wasted and yellow. He turned his eyes, and through the white gauze of the mosquito-bar saw, for an instant, a strange and beautiful young face; but the lids fell over his eyes, and when he raised them again the blue-turbaned black nurse was tucking the covering about his feet.
”Sister!”
No answer.
”Where is my mother?”
The negress shook her head.
He was too weak to speak again, but asked with his eyes so persistently, and so pleadingly, that by and by she gave him an audible answer. He tried hard to understand it, but could not, it being in these words:
”_Li pa' oule vini 'ci--li pas capabe_.”
Thrice a day, for three days more, came a little man with a large head surrounded by short, red curls and with small freckles in a fine skin, and sat down by the bed with a word of good cheer and the air of a commander. At length they had something like an extended conversation.
”So you concluded not to die, eh? Yes, I'm the doctor--Doctor Keene. A young lady? What young lady? No, sir, there has been no young lady here.
You're mistaken. Vagary of your fever. There has been no one here but this black girl and me. No, my dear fellow, your father and mother can't see you yet; you don't want them to catch the fever, do you? Good-bye.
Do as your nurse tells you, and next week you may raise your head and shoulders a little; but if you don't mind her you'll have a backset, and the devil himself wouldn't engage to cure you.”
The patient had been sitting up a little at a time for several days, when at length the doctor came to pay a final call, ”as a matter of form;” but, after a few pleasantries, he drew his chair up gravely, and, in a tender tone--need we say it? He had come to tell Joseph that his father, mother, sisters, all, were gone on a second--a longer--voyage, to sh.o.r.es where there could be no disappointments and no fevers, forever.
”And, Frowenfeld,” he said, at the end of their long and painful talk, ”if there is any blame attached to not letting you go with them, I think I can take part of it; but if you ever want a friend,--one who is courteous to strangers and ill-mannered only to those he likes,--you can call for Charlie Keene. I'll drop in to see you, anyhow, from time to time, till you get stronger. I have taken a heap of trouble to keep you alive, and if you should relapse now and give us the slip, it would be a deal of good physic wasted; so keep in the house.”
The polite neighbors who lifted their c.o.c.ked hats to Joseph, as he spent a slow convalescence just within his open door, were not bound to know how or when he might have suffered. There were no ”Howards” or ”Y.M.C.A.'s” in those days; no ”Peabody Reliefs.” Even had the neighbors chosen to take cognizance of those bereavements, they were not so unusual as to fix upon him any extraordinary interests an object of sight; and he was beginning most distressfully to realize that ”great solitude” which the philosopher attributes to towns, when matters took a decided turn.
CHAPTER III
”AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?”
We say matters took a turn; or, better, that Frowenfeld's interest in affairs received a new life. This had its beginning in Doctor Keene's making himself specially entertaining in an old-family-history way, with a view to keeping his patient within doors for a safe period. He had conceived a great liking for Frowenfeld, and often, of an afternoon, would drift in to challenge him to a game of chess--a game, by the way, for which neither of them cared a farthing. The immigrant had learned its moves to gratify his father, and the doctor--the truth is, the doctor had never quite learned them; but he was one of those men who cannot easily consent to acknowledge a mere affection for one, least of all one of their own s.e.x. It may safely be supposed, then, that the board often displayed an arrangement of pieces that would have bewildered Morphy himself.
”By the by, Frowenfeld,” he said one evening, after the one preliminary move with which he invariably opened his game, ”you haven't made the acquaintance of your pretty neighbors next door.”
Frowenfeld knew of no specially pretty neighbors next door on either side--had noticed no ladies.
”Well, I will take you in to see them some time.” The doctor laughed a little, rubbing his face and his thin, red curls with one hand, as he laughed.
The convalescent wondered what there could be to laugh at.
”Who are they?” he inquired.
”Their name is De Grapion--oh, De Grapion, says I! their name is Nancanou. They are, without exception, the finest women--the brightest, the best, and the bravest--that I know in New Orleans.” The doctor resumed a cigar which lay against the edge of the chess-board, found it extinguished, and proceeded to relight it. ”Best blood of the province; good as the Grandissimes. Blood is a great thing here, in certain odd ways,” he went on. ”Very curious sometimes.” He stooped to the floor where his coat had fallen, and took his handkerchief from a breast-pocket. ”At a grand mask ball about two months ago, where I had a bewilderingly fine time with those ladies, the proudest old turkey in the theater was an old fellow whose Indian blood shows in his very behavior, and yet--ha, ha! I saw that same old man, at a quadroon ball a few years ago, walk up to the handsomest, best dressed man in the house, a man with a skin whiter than his own,--a perfect gentleman as to looks and manners,--and without a word slap him in the face.”
”You laugh?” asked Frowenfeld.
”Laugh? Why shouldn't I? The fellow had no business there. Those b.a.l.l.s are not given to quadroon _males_, my friend. He was lucky to get out alive, and that was about all he did.
<script>