A Strange, Sad Comedy/Chapter 10
COLONEL CORBIN could not kick his friend Romaine as he had done poor Bridge—but he would have dearly liked to at that moment.
Mr. Romaine, after glaring at Madame de Fonblanque, without the slightest greeting, turned to the Colonel.
"Corbin," he said, "you always were and always will be the most unsophisticated, impractical creature God ever made. The idea of your taking up with this brazen adventuress and bringing her to my house!"
"Hear me, sir," responded the Colonel; "if you utter another disparaging word respecting this lady, I will forget your age and infirmities, and give you the most genteel walloping you ever had in your life."
"It will be the first time you ever forgot my age and infirmities," coolly answered Mr. Romaine; and then turning to Madame de Fonblanque, he said:
"What do you want of me?"
"You know very well what I want of you."
"You will never get it."
"I shall try, nevertheless. I wish to see you in private."
"Madam," said the Colonel, "if you desire the protection of my presence, you shall have it. I have not the slightest regard for this—person—who so maligned you; and you see that physically I am still worth a good deal."
"You are worth a good deal in every way," replied Madame de Fonblanque warmly. "Still, I will see Mr. Romaine alone; and when the interview is over I will again throw myself upon your protection."
Mr. Romaine turned and led the way to his library, Madame de Fonblanque following him. He closed the door, and stood waiting for her to speak. He was in the greatest rage of his life, but he did not in the least lose his self-possession.
"Well?" he said, his face blazing with the intensity of his anger.
"One hundred thousand francs," responded Madame de Fonblanque, sweetly.
They were standing in the middle of the floor, the soft light of the fire and of a great lamp on the table falling upon them.
"You have raised your price since we last met."
"Yes. I reckoned up the interest and added it. Besides, I really think a woman who was disappointed in being made your wife needs a hundred thousand francs to console her for your loss. Now, most men would not be worth more than thirty or forty thousand."
Madame de Fonblanque spoke quite cheerfully and even gaily. She tapped her pocket gracefully.
"Here I have those letters of yours. They never leave me—particularly the one proposing marriage, and the half dozen in which you call me your dearest Athanaise and reproach me bitterly for not loving you enough. Just imagine the hurricane of amusement they would cause if read out in court with proper elocutionary effect."
Madame de Fonblanque laughed, and Mr. Romaine positively blushed.
"What an infernal, infernal ass I was!"
"Yes, I thought so, too," responded the pretty and sprightly Frenchwoman—"I have often noticed that people who can make fools of others, invariably, at some time in their lives, make fools of themselves."
"I did," answered Mr. Romaine, sententiously. "But I tell you, once for all, not a penny will I pay."
"Ah, my dear M. Romaine, that is not for you to say. These breach-of-promise cases sometimes turn out very badly for the gentlemen. I can so easily prove my position, my respectability—the way you pursued me from London to Brighton, from Brighton to Folkestone, from Folkestone to Eastbourne—and these invaluable and delightful letters. It will be a cause célèbre—that you may depend upon. And what a figure you will cut! The New York papers will have a column a day—the London papers two columns. By the way, I hear you have leased a fine house at Prince's Gate for the season. You will have to give up that lease, my friend—you will not dare to show your face in London this season, M. Romaine."
All this time Madame de Fonblanque had been laughing, as if it were a very good joke; but she now became serious.
"There is a tragic side to it," she continued, going closer to Mr. Romaine, and looking at him in a threatening way. "I know all about that visit to Dr. Chambers. No matter how I found it out—I know he passed sentence of death on you; and while this good, amiable Chessingham is doctoring you for all sorts of imaginary aches and pains, you have one constant ache and pain that he does not suspect, because you have so carefully concealed it from him—and the slightest annoyance or chagrin may be fatal to you. I know that you have tried to persuade the good Chessingham that you have every disease in the calendar of diseases—except the one that is killing you."
Mr. Romaine walked rather unsteadily to a chair and sat down, burying his face in his hands. Madame de Fonblanque, after a moment, felt an impulse of pity toward him. She went and touched him lightly.
"You called me a brazen adventuress just now—and I acknowledge that I am not engaged in a very high business, trying to make you pay me for not keeping your word. But I feel sorry for you now. I dislike to witness your unhappiness. Say you will pay me, and let me go."
"Never," answered Mr. Romaine, looking up, with an unquenchable determination in his eyes.
"Very well, then," answered Madame de Fonblanque, quietly; "you know I am a very determined woman. I came here to see for myself what your condition is. I shall go away to instruct my lawyers to bring suit against you immediately. I may not get one hundred thousand francs in money—but I will get a hundred thousand francs' worth of revenge."
"It seems to me," presently said Mr. Romaine, with a cynical smile on his face, "your revenge will be two-edged."
"So is nearly all revenge. It's a very ignoble thing to avenge one's self—few people can do it without sharing in the ignominy. But I weighed the matter well before I made up my mind. French newspapers take but little notice of what goes on outside of Paris. I have influence enough to silence those that would say anything about it—and I care not a sou for anybody or anything in this country or England. I shall go back to Paris and say it was another Madame de Fonblanque."
Madame de Fonblanque, following Mr. Romaine's example, seated herself, and opened the long, rich cloak of fur she wore. She was certainly very handsome, particularly when the heat of the room brought a slight flush to her clear cheeks.
"It is strange to me that a woman of your education and standing should engage in this scheme of yours," after a while said Mr. Romaine.
"One hundred thousand francs," responded Madame de Fonblanque.
"You might have married well a dozen times if you had played your cards right," he continued.
"One hundred thousand francs," again said Madame de Fonblanque.
"What are your plans of campaign, may I ask?"
"To get one hundred thousand francs from you."
"That ridiculous old blunderbuss, Corbin! I suppose he has invited you to take up your quarters at Corbin Hall, indefinitely, without knowing any more about you than he does of the man in the moon."
"He has—the dear, innocent old gentleman—and I shall stay until I get my one hundred thousand francs. But he shall not regret it. I know how to appreciate kindness. I have met with so little. The man I loved—my husband—squandered my dot, which I gave him, and it is on account of my rash fondness for one man that it is now absolutely necessary for me to have some money from another; and I intend to make every effort to get a hundred thousand francs from you."
Mr. Romaine remained silent for a few minutes, considering a coup. Then his usual sly smile appeared upon his countenance. When he spoke his voice had more than its usual velvety softness.
"Your efforts, Madame de Fonblanque, will not be necessary; for I hereby declare to you my perfect willingness to marry you, and I shall put it in writing."
It was now Madame de Fonblanque's turn to be disconcerted. She fell back in her chair and gazed dumbly at Mr. Romaine. Marry him! And as she had laughed while Mr. Romaine had suffered, now he laughed wickedly while she literally cowered at the prospect presented to her.
"And as regards my sudden and speedy death, which you seem to anticipate, it could not benefit you"—he leaned over and said something to her in a low tone, which caused Madame de Fonblanque to start—"so that you will have the satisfaction of enjoying my money—such as I may choose to give you—as long as I live. But I warn you—I am not an easy man to live with, nor would the circumstances of our marriage render me more so. Ask Chessingham if I am easy to live with, and he will tell you that I am not, even at my best. It would not surprise me, in case our marriage took place, if you were to wish yourself free again. You say you desire revenge. So would I—and I would take it."
Madame de Fonblanque grew steadily paler as Mr. Romaine spoke. She knew well enough the purgatory he was offering her. To marry him! Such an idea had never dawned upon her. The conviction of his insincerity had caused her coyness in the first instance which had stimulated Mr. Romaine so much. It had really looked, in the beginning, as if he would not succeed in the least in making a fool of this pretty French widow. But he had finally succeeded at the cost of making a fool of himself. However, it was now his turn to score—because it was plain that Madame de Fonblanque was anything but enraptured at the notion of marrying him.
She caught sight of Mr. Romaine's black eyes dancing in enjoyment of her predicament. She rose and drew her fur cloak around her.
"I will think it over, Mr. Romaine," she said, calmly.
"Pray do," responded Mr. Romaine; "and I will write you a letter to-morrow morning, making a specific offer to fulfil my promise, which will make those cherished letters of yours worth considerably less than the paper they are written on—and what a honeymoon we will have!"
At this, Madame de Fonblanque positively shuddered, but she held her head up bravely as Mr. Romaine opened the door politely for her, and they discovered Colonel Corbin stalking up and down the hall alone.
"Corbin," said Mr. Romaine, blandly, "Madame de Fonblanque and I have reached a perfectly satisfactory agreement."
"Sir," replied the Colonel, glowering with wrath, "it must also be made satisfactory to me. When I bring a lady to a house, she is under my protection; and when she has the term 'brazen adventuress' applied to her, simply because she has come to demand a mere act of justice—and I know this to be a fact, because she has so informed me—I must insist upon an apology from the person applying that term."
"Very well, then," said Mr. Romaine, debonair and smiling. "I apologize. Madame de Fonblanque is not a brazen adventuress—she is merely a lady of great enterprise and assurance, and I wish you joy of her acquaintance."
In Madame de Fonblanque's breast there sprang up that desire that is never wholly smothered in any human being—to appear well in the presence of a person she respected. She did sincerely respect Colonel Corbin, who had befriended her on that risky expedition, and it cut her to the heart to be insulted before him. Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned to him with trembling lips.
"Do not mind what he says. He hates me because he has injured me, and keeps me out of money that he ought to pay me."
"I do not mind him in the least, madam," replied the Colonel, suavely. "Mr. Romaine knows perfectly well my opinion of him. He keeps you out of money he owes you, and insists upon forcing on my granddaughter money that she does not want, and which will involve her in endless trouble. I think that is quite characteristic of Romaine. Let us now leave this inhospitable house."
Madame de Fonblanque took the arm the Colonel offered her, and walked out of the hall without noticing Mr. Romaine's courteous bow.
The proposition made to Madame de Fonblanque was truly startling. Almost anything on earth was better than marrying him—and what he had whispered to her proved that she could not profit one penny by his death. She would gladly have foregone that offer on paper for some other letters she had in which he flatly refused to keep his word, and which she had held over him in terrorem. She could not determine in a moment what to do, but she was convinced that she could not see Mr. Romaine again, and the matter would have to be settled by correspondence. And then she felt the sooner she got away from this place where she had been checkmated the better. When they were traveling fast through the murky night toward Corbin Hall, she broached the subject at once of her return in the morning. The Colonel declared it depended upon the weather, which puzzled Madame de Fonblanque very much until it was explained to her that it was a question of weather whether the boat came or not. Sometimes, in that climate, the river froze over, and then the river steamers stopped running until there was a thaw—for ice-boats were unknown in that region. It was very cold, and getting colder, and the Colonel was of the opinion that a freeze was upon them, and no boat could get down the river that night.
When they got to Corbin Hall, Madame de Fonblanque was extremely nervous about the greeting she would get from the Colonel's womenkind—but it was as cordial and unsuspicious as his had been. The Colonel explained that Madame de Fonblanque had business with Mr. Romaine, who had treated her like—Mr. Romaine; and Letty, as soon as she found somebody with a community of prejudice against the master of Shrewsbury, felt much drawn toward her. There was no doubt that Madame de Fonblanque was a lady; and in the innocent and unworldly lives of the ladies at Corbin Hall, the desperate shifts and devices to get money of people with adventurous tendencies were altogether unknown and unsuspected. Besides, people from a foreign country were very great novelties to them; and Letty seated herself, after tea, to hear all about that marvelous world beyond the sea. The Colonel still talked about his visit to Europe in 1835, and Paris in the days of the Citizen King, and imagined that everything had remained unchanged since then. Madame de Fonblanque was a stout Monarchist, as most French people of dubious antecedents profess to be, and gave out with much tact that, although only the widow of a poor officer in the Lancers, she was on intimate terms with all the Faubourg St. Germains. As she frankly admitted her modest means, there was no hint of braggadocio in anything she said in her fluent French-English. She had great curiosity about Mr. Romaine, and was well up in all his adventures since he had been in America. She spoke of him so coolly and critically that it never dawned upon her listeners that the difficulties between them were not of the usual business kind.
"As for the English mees," she said, calmly, "I would say to her, 'Go home, my pretty demoiselle; don't waste your time on that—that aged crocodile.' The English, you know, have no sentiment. They call us unfeeling because French parents select a suitable man for an innocent young daughter to marry, and bid her feel for him all the tenderness possible. But those calculating English meeses would marry old Scaramouch himself if he had money enough."
The Colonel did not like to hear his favorite nation abused, and rather squirmed under this; but he reflected that Madame de Fonblanque's remarks were due, no doubt, to the traditional jealousy between the French and the English.
Madame de Fonblanque gave the straightest possible account of herself, including the desertion of her maid the day before.
"I thought, with my trusty Suzanne, I could face anything. I did not imagine I could go anywhere in this part of America that I would not find hotels, railroads, telegraph offices—"
"There is one tavern in the county, and that a very poor one, six miles away—and not a line of telegraph wire or railway nearer than two counties off," explained Letty, smiling.
Madame de Fonblanque clapped her hands. "How delicious! I shall tell this in France. It is like some of our retired places in the provinces, where the government has erected telegraph lines, but the people do not know exactly what they are meant for! And when that wretched Suzanne left me, I asked at once for the French consul—but I found there was none in town. All of my adventures here have been novel—and as I have met with such very great kindness, I shall always regard them as amusing."
She showed no disposition to trespass on the hospitality so generously offered her, and looked out of the window anxiously when they rose to go to their rooms. But it had begun snowing early in the evening, and the ground was now perfectly white.
"No boat to-morrow, madam," said the Colonel. "You will, I am sure, be forced to content yourself at Corbin Hall for some days yet."
"I content myself perfectly," replied Madame de Fonblanque, with ready grace; "but one must be careful not to take advantage of so much generosity as yours."
When she was alone in the same old-fashioned bedroom that Farebrother had occupied, enjoying, as he had done, the sparkling wood fire, she reflected gratefully upon the goodness of these refined and simple-minded people—but she also reflected with much bitterness upon the extremely slim prospect of her getting any money from Mr. Romaine. She had fully counted upon his dread of ridicule, his fear of publicity, to induce him to hand over a considerable sum of money; but she had not in the least counted upon what she considered his truly diabolical offer to come up to his word. To marry Mr. Romaine! She could have brought herself to it, reflecting that he could not live forever; but those few words he whispered to her showed her that it was out of her power to get any money at his death. She believed what he told her—it was so thoroughly characteristic of him—and she would by no means risk the horrors of marrying this embodied whim with that probability hanging over her. She turned it over and over in her mind, wearily, until past midnight, when she tossed to and fro until the gray dawn shone upon the snow-covered world.
But Mr. Romaine suffered from more than sleeplessness that night. The Chessinghams guessed from the accounts given by the servants of the strange visitor that Madame de Fonblanque had turned up miraculously with Colonel Corbin, and after a short interview with Mr. Romaine had disappeared. They knew all about the old report that Mr. Romaine had been very marked in his attentions at one time to the pretty widow, and Chessingham shrewdly guessed very near the truth concerning her visit, which truth convulsed him with laughter.
"It is the most absurd thing," he said to his wife and Ethel Maywood, in their own sitting room that night. "No doubt the old fellow has some entanglement with her, and finding widows a little more difficult to impose upon than guileless maidens, he 's been trapped in some way."
"And serves him right," said Mrs. Chessingham, with energy. "I know he's kind to us, Reggie—but—was there ever such another man as Mr. Romaine, do you think?"
"The Lord be praised, no," answered Chessingham. "And he is not only mentally and morally different from any man I ever saw, but physically, too. I swear, after having been his doctor for two years, I don't know his constitution yet. He will describe to me the most contradictory symptoms. He will profess to take a prescription and apparently it will have just the opposite effect from that intended. Sometimes I have asked myself if he has not, all the time, some disease that he rigorously conceals from me, and he simply uses these subterfuges to deceive me."
"Anything is possible with Mr. Romaine," said Ethel quietly. "And yet—he is the most generous of men. Our own father was not half so free with his money to us as Mr. Romaine is. And he seems to shrink from the least acknowledgment of it. How many men, do you think, would allow a doctor to carry his wife and sister-in-law around with him as he does, and do everything for us, as if we were the most valued friends and guests?"
"Oh, Romaine is n't a bad man, so much as a perverse one," replied Chessingham, lightly, "and he is a tremendously interesting one."
At that very moment, Mr. Romaine was in the condition that any man but himself would have called for a doctor—but not for worlds would he have allowed Chessingham to see him then. He understood his own case perfectly—and the one human being near him that was in his confidence was Bridge.
The evening was a very unhappy one for Mr. Romaine—the more so that what the great specialist he had consulted had predicted was actually happening. Being disturbed in mind, he was becoming ill in body. How on earth had that cruel French woman found out about Dr. Chambers? So Mr. Romaine thought, sitting in his library chair, suffering acutely. Dr. Chessingham offered to come in and read to him, to play écarté with him—but it occurred to Mr. Romaine that perhaps a visit to the Chessinghams' part of the house might divert his spirits and take his mind off the torturing subject of Madame de Fonblanque. He took Bridge's arm and tottered off to the Chessinghams' sitting-room. But the instant he entered the door his indomitable spirit asserted itself. He stood upright, walked steadily, and even forced a smile to his lips. Mrs. Chessingham and Ethel were at their everlasting fancy work, of which Mr. Romaine had never seen a completed specimen. Ethel rose and placed a chair for him—which, as he was old and infirm and needed it, nettled him extremely.
"Pray, my dear Miss Maywood, don't trouble yourself. I do not yet require the kind coddling you would bestow upon me."
Ethel, being an amiable and patient creature, took this with a smile.
"I am looking forward with great pleasure," said Mr. Romaine, after having seated himself in a straight-backed chair, while he yearned for an easy one, "to the season in London. I have had my eye on that house in Prince's Gate for several years, and, of course, feel pleased to have it. Being an old-fashioned man, I have kept pretty closely to the localities which were modish when I was a young attaché some years since—such as Belgravia, Grosvenor, and Lowndes Squares, and all those places. But there is something very attractive about the new Kensington—and I have intended for some years to take a house in that part of town for a season—and this one particularly struck my fancy."
"It is very handsome—but very expensive," said Mrs. Chessingham.
"Most handsome things are expensive, dear madam, but this house is reasonable, considering its charm, and I hope that you as well as your sister will enjoy some of its pleasures with me."
Both young women smiled—it would be nice to have the run of the house at Prince's Gate—and after going through with a winter in the country, and in Virginia, too, they thought they had earned it.
"Heretofore," continued Mr. Romaine, stroking his white mustache with his delicate hand, "while I have been fond of entertaining, it has always been of a sedate kind—chiefly dinners. But last year I was beguiled into promising my young friend, Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc, a ball, if I could get a house with a ball-room—and a few days ago I received a very pretty reminder of my promise, in the shape of a photograph and a letter."
"Better and better," thought Ethel—"to be invited to a ball given to please Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc!" But Gladys spoke up with her usual simplicity and straightforwardness.
"I hardly think, being now married to a medical man with his way to make in the world, that I shall be asked to many swell balls—and perhaps it is better that I should not go."
"But, Gladys, we went once to swell balls," said Ethel, reproachfully.
"Oh, yes," answered Gladys, "but that was over and done with when I married my husband—and he is well worth the sacrifice. Reggie himself is of good family, as you know, but he is on that account too proud to associate with people upon terms of condescension—so, when we were married, we agreed to be very careful about giving and accepting invitations."
"The social prejudices of you English are peculiar," remarked Mr. Romaine. "It is from you that we Virginia people inherit that profound respect for land. I found, early in life, when I first went to England and when Americans were scarce there, that it was more in my favor to be a landholder and a slave-owner than if I had been worth millions. The landed people in all countries are united by a powerful bond, which does not seem to exist with other forms of property. But because agriculture is perhaps the first and the most absorbing and conservative of all industrial callings, the people who own land are naturally bound together and appreciative of each other."
While Mr. Romaine was giving this little disquisition, he suffered furious pain, but the only indication he gave of it was a furtive wiping of his brow.
"And the hold of the land upon one is peculiar. I could never bring myself to part with an acre of it which I had either bought or inherited. Of course, during my practical expatriation for many years, my landed property here has suffered. I have often wondered at myself for holding on to it, when I could have invested the money in an English estate which really would have been much more profitable—but I could never divest myself of the feeling that the land would yet draw me back to it. However," he continued, quite gaily, "it is now so depreciated, and the new system is so impossible for the old masters to adopt, that I can't sell it, and I can't live on it—so I shall be compelled to buy an estate in England in the country, for a town house, even the Prince's Gate one, is only endurable for five months in the year."
Ethel's eyes glistened—a town house at Prince's Gate—an estate in the country! Might she not, after all, be Mrs. Romaine? And Mr. Romaine's position was so much better than that of any other American she knew; the others were all striving for recognition, but Mr. Romaine had had an assured place in English society for a generation. He had not only dandled Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc, who was a duke's daughter, on his knee, but he had danced, at a court ball, with the Queen herself, when she was a youthful matron, and he was a slim young diplomat. And in a flash of imagination, Ethel saw herself becomingly attired in widow's weeds and leaving, by the hands of a footman in mourning livery, black-bordered cards, bearing the inscription, "Mrs. Romaine."