Part 56 (1/2)

listen! You think Honore di'n' bitrayed' 'is family? Madame Nancanou an'

heh daughtah livin' upstair an' rissy-ving de finess soci'ty in de Province!--an' _me?_--downstair' meckin' pill! You call dat justice?”

But Doctor Keene, without waiting for this question, had asked one:

”Does Frowenfeld board with them?”

”Psh-sh-s.h.!.+ Board! Dey woon board de Marquis of Casa Calvo! I don't b'lieve dey would board Honore Grandissime! All de king' an' queen' in de worl' couldn' board dare! No, sir!--'Owever, you know, I think dey are splendid ladies. Me an' my wife, we know them well. An' Honore--I think my cousin Honore's a splendid gen'leman, too.” After a moment's pause he resumed, with a happy sigh, ”Well, I don' care, I'm married. A man w'at's married, 'e don' care.

”But I di'n' t'ink Honore could ever do lak dat odder t'ing.”

”Do he and Joe Frowenfeld visit there?”

”Doctah Keene,” demanded Raoul, ignoring the question, ”I hask you now, plain, don' you find dat mighty disgressful to do dat way, lak Honore?”

”What way?”

”W'at? You dunno? You don' yeh 'ow 'e gone partner' wid a n.i.g.g.a?”

”What do you mean?”

Doctor Keene drew the handkerchief off his face and half lifted his feeble head.

”Yesseh! 'e gone partner' wid dat quadroon w'at call 'imself Honore Grandissime, seh!”

The doctor dropped his head again and laid the handkerchief back on his face.

”What do the family say to that?”

”But w'at _can_ dey say? It save dem from ruin! At de sem time, me, I think it is a disgress. Not dat he h-use de money, but it is dat name w'at 'e give de h-establishmen'--Grandissime Freres! H-only for 'is money we would 'ave catch' dat quadroon gen'leman an' put some tar and fedder. Grandissime Freres! Agricole don' spik to my cousin Honore no mo'. But I t'ink da.s.s wrong. W'at you t'ink, Doctah?”

That evening, at candle-light, Raoul got the right arm of his slender, laughing wife about his neck; but Doctor Keene tarried all night in suburb St. Jean. He hardly felt the moral courage to face the results of the last five months. Let us understand them better ourselves.

CHAPTER XLVIII

AN INDIGNANT FAMILY AND A SMASHED SHOP

It was indeed a fierce storm that had pa.s.sed over the head of Honore Grandissime. Taken up and carried by it, as it seemed to him, without volition, he had felt himself thrown here and there, wrenched, torn, gasping for moral breath, speaking the right word as if in delirium, doing the right deed as if by helpless instinct, and seeing himself in every case, at every turn, tricked by circ.u.mstance out of every vestige of merit. So it seemed to him. The long contemplated rest.i.tution was accomplished. On the morning when Aurora and Clotilde had expected to be turned shelterless into the open air, they had called upon him in his private office and presented the account of which he had put them in possession the evening before. He had honored it on the spot. To the two ladies who felt their own hearts stirred almost to tears of grat.i.tude, he was--as he sat before them calm, unmoved, handling keen-edged facts with the easy rapidity of one accustomed to use them, smiling courteously and collectedly, parrying their expressions of appreciation--to them, we say, at least to one of them, he was ”the prince of gentlemen.” But, at the same time, there was within him, unseen, a surge of emotions, leaping, las.h.i.+ng, whirling, yet ever hurrying onward along the hidden, rugged bed of his honest intention.

The other rest.i.tution, which even twenty-four hours earlier might have seemed a pure self-sacrifice, became a self-rescue. The f.m.c. was the elder brother. A remark of Honore made the night they watched in the corridor by Doctor Keene's door, about the younger's ”right to exist,”

was but the echo of a conversation they had once had together in Europe. There they had practised a familiarity of intercourse which Louisiana would not have endured, and once, when speaking upon the subject of their common fatherhood, the f.m.c., p.r.o.ne to melancholy speech, had said:

”You are the lawful son of Numa Grandissime; I had no right to be born.”

But Honore quickly answered:

”By the laws of men, it may be; but by the law of G.o.d's justice, you are the lawful son, and it is I who should not have been born.”

But, returned to Louisiana, accepting with the amiable, old-fas.h.i.+oned philosophy of conservatism the sins of the community, he had forgotten the unchampioned rights of his pa.s.sive half-brother. Contact with Frowenfeld had robbed him of his pleasant mental drowsiness, and the oft-encountered apparition of the dark sharer of his name had become a slow-stepping, silent embodiment of reproach. The turn of events had brought him face to face with the problem of rest.i.tution, and he had solved it. But where had he come out? He had come out the beneficiary of this rest.i.tution, extricated from bankruptcy by an agreement which gave the f.m.c. only a public recognition of kins.h.i.+p which had always been his due. Bitter cup of humiliation!