CHAPTER III
"AND WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"
We say matters took a turn; or, better, that Frowenfeld's interest inaffairs received a new life. This had its beginning in Doctor Keene'smaking himself specially entertaining in an old-family-history way, witha view to keeping his patient within doors for a safe period. He hadconceived 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 learnedits moves to gratify his father, and the doctor--the truth is, thedoctor had never quite learned them; but he was one of those men whocannot easily consent to acknowledge a mere affection for one, least ofall one of their own sex. It may safely be supposed, then, that theboard often displayed an arrangement of pieces that would havebewildered Morphy himself.
"By the by, Frowenfeld," he said one evening, after the one preliminarymove with which he invariably opened his game, "you haven't made theacquaintance of your pretty neighbors next door."
Frowenfeld knew of no specially pretty neighbors next door on eitherside--had noticed no ladies.
"Well, I will take you in to see them some time." The doctor laughed alittle, rubbing his face and his thin, red curls with one hand, ashe 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 isNancanou. They are, without exception, the finest women--the brightest,the best, and the bravest--that I know in New Orleans." The doctorresumed a cigar which lay against the edge of the chess-board, found itextinguished, and proceeded to relight it. "Best blood of the province;good as the Grandissimes. Blood is a great thing here, in certain oddways," he went on. "Very curious sometimes." He stooped to the floorwhere his coat had fallen, and took his handkerchief from abreast-pocket. "At a grand mask ball about two months ago, where I had abewilderingly fine time with those ladies, the proudest old turkey inthe theater was an old fellow whose Indian blood shows in his verybehavior, and yet--ha, ha! I saw that same old man, at a quadroon ball afew years ago, walk up to the handsomest, best dressed man in thehouse, a man with a skin whiter than his own,--a perfect gentleman as tolooks 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 ballsare not given to quadroon _males_, my friend. He was lucky to get outalive, and that was about all he did.
"They are right!" the doctor persisted, in response to Frowenfeld'spuzzled look. "The people here have got to be particular. However, thatis not what we were talking about. Quadroon balls are not to bementioned in connection. Those ladies--" He addressed himself to theresuscitation of his cigar. "Singular people in this country," heresumed; but his cigar would not revive. He was a poor story-teller. ToFrowenfeld--as it would have been to any one, except a Creole or themost thoroughly Creoleized Americain--his narrative, when it was done,was little more than a thick mist of strange names, places and events;yet there shone a light of romance upon it that filled it with color andpopulated it with phantoms. Frowenfeld's interest rose--was allured intothis mist--and there was left befogged. As a physician, Doctor Keenethus accomplished his end,--the mental diversion of his latepatient,--for in the midst of the mist Frowenfeld encountered andgrappled a problem of human life in Creole type, the possiblecorrelations of whose quantities we shall presently find him revolvingin a studious and sympathetic mind, as the poet of to-day ponders the
"Flower in the crannied wall."
The quantities in that problem were the ancestral--the maternal--rootsof those two rival and hostile families whose descendants--some brave,others fair--we find unwittingly thrown together at the ball, and withwhom we are shortly to have the honor of an unmasked acquaintance.