CHAPTER XXXIII
UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL
It was the year 1804. The world was trembling under the tread of thedread Corsican. It was but now that he had tossed away the whole Valleyof the Mississippi, dropping it overboard as a little sand from aballoon, and Christendom in a pale agony of suspense was watching theturn of his eye; yet when a gibbering black fool here on the edge ofcivilization merely swings a pine-knot, the swinging of that pine-knotbecomes to Joseph Frowenfeld, student of man, a matter of greater momentthan the destination of the Boulogne Flotilla. For it now became for themoment the foremost necessity of his life to show, to that minutefraction of the earth's population which our terror misnames "theworld," that a man may leap forth hatless and bleeding from the house ofa New Orleans quadroon into the open street and yet be pure whitewithin. Would it answer to tell the truth? Parts of that truth he waspledged not to tell; and even if he could tell it all it wasincredible--bore all the features of a flimsy lie.
"Mister," repeated the same child who had spoken before, reinforced byanother under the other elbow, "dey got some _blood_ on de back ofyou' hade."
And the other added the suggestion:
"Dey got one drug-sto', yondah."
Frowenfeld groaned again. The knock had been a hard one, the ground andsky went round not a little, but he retained withal a white-hot processof thought that kept before him his hopeless inability to explain. Hewas coffined alive. The world (so-called) would bury him in utterloathing, and write on his headstone the one word--hypocrite. And heshould lie there and helplessly contemplate Honore pushing forward thosepurposes which he had begun to hope he was to have had the honor offurthering. But instead of so doing he would now be the by-word ofthe street.
"Mister," interposed the child once more, spokesman this time for adozen blacks and whites of all sizes trailing along before and behind,"_dey got some blood_ on de back of you' _hade_."
* * * * *
That same morning Clotilde had given a music-scholar her appointedlesson, and at its conclusion had borrowed of her patroness (howpleasant it must have been to have such things to lend!) a little yellowmaid, in order that, with more propriety, she might make a businesscall. It was that matter of the rent--one that had of late occasionedher great secret distress. "It is plain," she had begun to say toherself, unable to comprehend Aurora's peculiar trust in Providence,"that if the money is to be got I must get it." A possibility hadflashed upon her mind; she had nurtured it into a project, had submittedit to her father-confessor in the cathedral, and received hisunqualified approval of it, and was ready this morning to put it intoexecution. A great merit of the plan was its simplicity. It was merelyto find for her heaviest bracelet a purchaser in time, and a pricesufficient, to pay to-morrow's "maturities." See there again!--to her,her little secret was of greater import than the collision of almost anypine-knot with almost any head.
It must not be accepted as evidence either of her unwillingness to sellor of the amount of gold in the bracelet, that it took the total ofClotilde's moral and physical strength to carry it to the shop where shehoped--against hope--to dispose of it.
'Sieur Frowenfeld, M. Innerarity said, was out, but would certainly bein in a few minutes, and she was persuaded to take a chair against thehalf-hidden door at the bottom of the shop with the little borrowed maidcrouched at her feet.
She had twice or thrice felt a regret that she had undertaken to wait,and was about to rise and go, when suddenly she saw before her JosephFrowenfeld, wiping the sweat of anguish from his brow and smeared withblood from his forehead down. She rose quickly and silently, turned sickand blind, and laid her hand upon the back of the chair for support.Frowenfeld stood an instant before her, groaned, and disappeared throughthe door. The little maid, retreating backward against her from thedirection of the street-door, drew to her attention a crowd ofsight-seers which had rushed up to the doors and against which Raoul washurriedly closing the shop.
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