CHAPTER XII
THE PHILOSOPHE
The apothecary felt an inward nervous start as there advanced into thelight of his hanging lamp and toward the spot where he had halted, justoutside the counter, a woman of the quadroon caste, of superb statureand poise, severely handsome features, clear, tawny skin and large,passionate black eyes.
"_Bon soi', Miche_." [Monsieur.] A rather hard, yet not repellent smileshowed her faultless teeth.
Frowenfeld bowed.
"_Mo vien c'erc'er la bourse de Madame_."
She spoke the best French at her command, but it was not understood.
The apothecary could only shake his head.
"_La bourse_" she repeated, softly smiling, but with a scintillation ofthe eyes in resentment of his scrutiny. "_La bourse_" she reiterated.
"Purse?"
"_Oui, Miche_."
"You are sent for it?"
"_Oui, Miche_."
He drew it from his breast pocket and marked the sudden glisten of hereyes, reflecting the glisten of the gold in the silken mesh.
"_Oui, c'est ca_," said she, putting her hand out eagerly.
"I am afraid to give you this to-night," said Joseph.
"_Oui_," ventured she, dubiously, the lightning playing deep back in hereyes.
"You might be robbed," said Frowenfeld. "It is very dangerous for you tobe out alone. It will not be long, now, until gun-fire." (Eight o'clockP.M.--the gun to warn slaves to be in-doors, under pain of arrest andimprisonment.)
The object of this solicitude shook her head with a smile at itsgratuitousness. The smile showed determination also.
"_Mo pas compren_'," she said.
"Tell the lady to send for it to-morrow."
She smiled helplessly and somewhat vexedly, shrugged and again shook herhead. As she did so she heard footsteps and voices in the door ather back.
"_C'est ca_" she said again with a hurried attempt at extremeamiability; "Dat it; _oui_;" and lifting her hand with some rapiditymade a sudden eager reach for the purse, but failed.
"No!" said Frowenfeld, indignantly.
"Hello!" said Charlie Keene amusedly, as he approached from the door.
The woman turned, and in one or two rapid sentences in the Creoledialect offered her explanation.
"Give her the purse, Joe; I will answer for its being all right."
Frowenfeld handed it to her. She started to pass through the door in therue Royale by which Doctor Keene had entered; but on seeing on itsthreshold Agricola frowning upon her, she turned quickly with evidenttrepidation, and hurried out into the darkness of the other street.
Agricola entered. Doctor Keene looked about the shop.
"I tell you, Agricole, you didn't have it with you; Frowenfeld, youhaven't seen a big knotted walking-stick?"
Frowenfeld was sure no walking-stick had been left there.
"Oh, yes, Frowenfeld," said Doctor Keene, with a little laugh, as thethree sat down, "I'd a'most as soon trust that woman as if shewas white."
The apothecary said nothing.
"How free," said Agricola, beginning with a meditative gaze at the skywithout, and ending with a philosopher's smile upon his twocompanions,--"how free we people are from prejudice against the negro!"
"The white people," said Frowenfeld, half abstractedly, halfinquiringly.
"H-my young friend, when we say, 'we people,' we _always_ mean we whitepeople. The non-mention of color always implies pure white; and whateveris not pure white is to all intents and purposes pure black. When I saythe 'whole community,' I mean the whole white portion; when I speak ofthe 'undivided public sentiment,' I mean the sentiment of the whitepopulation. What else could I mean? Could you suppose, sir, theexpression which you may have heard me use--'my downtroddencountry'--includes blacks and mulattoes? What is that up yonder in thesky? The moon. The new moon, or the old moon, or the moon in her thirdquarter, but always the moon! Which part of it? Why, the shiningpart--the white part, always and only! Not that there is a prejudiceagainst the negro. By no means. Wherever he can be of any service in astrictly menial capacity we kindly and generously tolerate hispresence."
Was the immigrant growing wise, or weak, that he remained silent?
Agricola rose as he concluded and said he would go home. Doctor Keenegave him his hand lazily, without rising.
"Frowenfeld," he said, with a smile and in an undertone, as Agricola'sfootsteps died away, "don't you know who that woman is?"
"No."
"Well, I'll tell you."
He told him.
* * * * *
On that lonely plantation at the Cannes Brulees, where Aurore Nancanou'schildhood had been passed without brothers or sisters, there had beengiven her, according to the well-known custom of plantation life, alittle quadroon slave-maid as her constant and only playmate. This maidbegan early to show herself in many ways remarkable. While yet a childshe grew tall, lithe, agile; her eyes were large and black, and rolledand sparkled if she but turned to answer to her name. Her pale yellowforehead, low and shapely, with the jet hair above it, the heavilypencilled eyebrows and long lashes below, the faint red tinge thatblushed with a kind of cold passion through the clear yellow skin of thecheek, the fulness of the red, voluptuous lips and the roundness of herperfect neck, gave her, even at fourteen, a barbaric and magneticbeauty, that startled the beholder like an unexpected drawing out of ajewelled sword. Such a type could have sprung only from high Latinancestry on the one side and--we might venture--Jaloff African on theother. To these charms of person she added mental acuteness,conversational adroitness, concealed cunning, and noiseless but visiblestrength of will; and to these, that rarest of gifts in one of hertincture, the purity of true womanhood.
At fourteen a necessity which had been parleyed with for two years ormore became imperative, and Aurore's maid was taken from her.Explanation is almost superfluous. Aurore was to become a lady and herplaymate a lady's maid; but not _her_ maid, because the maid had become,of the two, the ruling spirit. It was a question of grave debate in themind of M. De Grapion what disposition to make of her.
About this time the Grandissimes and De Grapions, through certainefforts of Honore's father (since dead) were making some feeblepretences of mutual good feeling, and one of those Kentuckian dealers incorn and tobacco whose flatboat fleets were always drifting down theMississippi, becoming one day M. De Grapion's transient guest,accidentally mentioned a wish of Agricola Fusilier. Agricola, itappeared, had commissioned him to buy the most beautiful lady's maidthat in his extended journeyings he might be able to find; he wanted tomake her a gift to his niece, Honore's sister. The Kentuckian saw thedemand met in Aurore's playmate. M. De Grapion would not sell her.(Trade with a Grandissime? Let them suspect he needed money?) No; but hewould ask Agricola to accept the services of the waiting-maid for, say,ten years. The Kentuckian accepted the proposition on the spot and itwas by and by carried out. She was never recalled to the Cannes Brulees,but in subsequent years received her freedom from her master, and in NewOrleans became Palmyre la Philosophe, as they say in the corrupt Frenchof the old Creoles, or Palmyre Philosophe, noted for her taste and skillas a hair-dresser, for the efficiency of her spells and the sagacity ofher divinations, but most of all for the chaste austerity with which shepractised the less baleful rites of the voudous.
"That's the woman," said Doctor Keene, rising to go, as he concludedthe narrative,--"that's she, Palmyre Philosophe. Now you get a view ofthe vastness of Agricole's generosity; he tolerates her even though shedoes not present herself in the 'strictly menial capacity.' Reasonwhy--_he's afraid of her_."
Time passed, if that may be called time which we have to measure with aclock. The apothecary of the rue Royale found better ways ofmeasurement. As quietly as a spider he was spinning information intoknowledge and knowledge into what is supposed to be wisdom; whether itwas or not we shall see. His unidentified merchant friend who hadadjured him to become acclimated as "they all did" had also exhor
ted himto study the human mass of which he had become a unit; but whether thatstudy, if pursued, was sweetening and ripening, or whether it wascorrupting him, that friend did not come to see; it was the busy time ofyear. Certainly so young a solitary, coming among a people whoseconventionalities were so at variance with his own door-yard ethics, wasin sad danger of being unduly--as we might say--Timonized. Hisacquaintances continued to be few in number.
During this fermenting period he chronicled much wet and some coldweather. This may in part account for the uneventfulness of its passage;events do not happen rapidly among the Creoles in bad weather. However,trade was good.
But the weather cleared; and when it was getting well on into theCreole spring and approaching the spring of the almanacs, something didoccur that extended Frowenfeld's acquaintance without Doctor Keene'sassistance.