"Do you say they have caught her?" Frowenfeld"s question was sudden and excited; but the next moment he had controlled himself.
"H-h-my son, I did not say it was a "her"!"
"Was it not Clemence? Have they caught her?"
"H-yes--"
The apothecary turned to Raoul.
"Go tell Honore Grandissime."
"But, Professor Frowenfeld--" began Agricola.
Frowenfeld turned to repeat his instruction, but Raoul was already leaving the store.
Agricola straightened up angrily.
"Pro-hofessor Frowenfeld, by what right do you interfere?"
"No matter," said the apothecary, turning half-way and pouring the tonic into a vial.
"Sir," thundered the old lion, "h-I demand of you to answer! How dare you insinuate that my kinsmen may deal otherwise than justly?"
"Will they treat her exactly as if she were white, and had threatened the life of a slave?" asked Frowenfeld from behind the desk at the end of the counter.
The old man concentrated all the indignation of his nature in the reply.
"No-ho, sir!"
As he spoke, a shadow approaching from the door caused him to turn. The tall, dark, finely clad form of the f.m.c, in its old soft-stepping dignity and its sad emaciation, came silently toward the spot where he stood.
Frowenfeld saw this, and hurried forward inside the counter with the preparation in his hand.
"Professor Frowenfeld," said Agricola, pointing with his ugly staff, "I demand of you, as a keeper of a white man"s pharmacy, to turn that negro out."
"Citizen Fusilier!" exclaimed the apothecary; "Mister Grandis--"
He felt as though no price would be too dear at that moment to pay for the presence of the other Honore. He had to go clear to the end of the counter and come down the outside again to reach the two men. They did not wait for him. Agricola turned upon the f.m.c.
"Take off your hat!"
A sudden activity seized every one connected with the establishment as the quadroon let his thin right hand slowly into his bosom, and answered in French, in his soft, low voice:
"I wear my hat on my head."
Frowenfeld was hurrying toward them; others stepped forward, and from two or three there came half-uttered exclamations of protest; but unfortunately nothing had been done or said to provoke any one to rush upon them, when Agricola suddenly advanced a step and struck the f.m.c.
on the head with his staff. Then the general outcry and forward rush came too late; the two crashed together and fell, Agricola above, the f.m.c. below, and a long knife lifted up from underneath sank to its hilt, once--twice--thrice,--in the old man"s back.
The two men rose, one in the arms of his friends, the other upon his own feet. While every one"s attention was directed toward the wounded man, his antagonist restored his dagger to its sheath, took up his hat and walked away unmolested. When Frowenfeld, with Agricola still in his arms, looked around for the quadroon, he was gone.
Doctor Keene, sent for instantly, was soon at Agricola"s side.
"Take him upstairs; he can"t be moved any further."
Frowenfeld turned and began to instruct some one to run upstairs and ask permission, but the little doctor stopped him.
"Joe, for shame! you don"t know those women better than that? Take the old man right up!"
CHAPTER LVII
VOUDOU CURED
"Honore," said Agricola, faintly, "where is Honore!"
"He has been sent for," said Doctor Keene and the two ladies in a breath.
Raoul, bearing the word concerning Clemence, and the later messenger summoning him to Agricola"s bedside, reached Honore within a minute of each other. His instructions were quickly given, for Raoul to take his horse and ride down to the family mansion, to break gently to his mother the news of Agricola"s disaster, and to say to his kinsmen with imperative emphasis, not to touch the _marchande des calas_ till he should come. Then he hurried to the rue Royale.
But when Raoul arrived at the mansion he saw at a glance that the news had outrun him. The family carriage was already coming round the bottom of the front stairs for three Mesdames Grandissime and Madame Martinez.
The children on all sides had dropped their play, and stood about, hushed and staring. The servants moved with quiet rapidity. In the hall he was stopped by two beautiful girls.
"Raoul! Oh, Raoul, how is he now? Oh! Raoul, if you could only stop them! They have taken old Clemence down into the swamp--as soon as they heard about Agricole--Oh, Raoul, surely that would be cruel! She nursed me--and me--when we were babies!"
"Where is Agamemnon?"
"Gone to the city."
"What did he say about it?"
"He said they were doing wrong, that he did not approve their action, and that they would get themselves into trouble: that he washed his hands of it."
"Ah-h-h!" exclaimed Raoul, "wash his hands! Oh, yes, wash his hands?
Suppose we all wash our hands? But where is Valentine? Where is Charlie Mandarin?"
"Ah! Valentine is gone with Agamemnon, saying the same thing, and Charlie Mandarin is down in the swamp, the worst of all of them!"
"But why did you let Agamemnon and Valentine go off that way, you?"
"Ah! listen to Raoul! What can a woman do?"
"What can a woman--Well, even if I was a woman, I would do something!"
He hurried from the house, leaped into the saddle and galloped across the fields toward the forest.
Some rods within the edge of the swamp, which, at this season, was quite dry in many places, on a spot where the fallen dead bodies of trees overlay one another and a dense growth of willows and vines and dwarf palmetto shut out the light of the open fields, the younger and some of the harsher senior members of the Grandissime family were sitting or standing about, in an irregular circle whose centre was a big and singularly misshapen water-willow. At the base of this tree sat Clemence, motionless and silent, a wan, sickly color in her face, and that vacant look in her large, white-balled, brown-veined eyes, with which hope-forsaken cowardice waits for death. Somewhat apart from the rest, on an old cypress stump, half-stood, half-sat, in whispered consultation, Jean-Baptiste Grandissime and Charlie Mandarin.