A Strange, Sad Comedy/Chapter 12
IT was only four miles to Shrewsbury, and Dodson did not spare the horses, but it took them an hour to make it, and it was ten o'clock before they drew up to the door. Madame de Fonblanque had remained perfectly silent during the drive. But the Colonel, remembering that he must, of necessity, soon go the perilous way that Mr. Romaine was now traversing, was all remorse. He reproached himself for his estrangement from Mr. Romaine, and remembered only their boyhood together, when they had been really fond of one another.
As the carriage crunched along the drive across the lawn, the house door opened, and Mrs. Chessingham appeared. The Colonel assisted Madame de Fonblanque up the steps, and in the full glare of the light Mrs. Chessingham saw the woman that had made such a commotion the night before. She was struck by the dignity of Madame de Fonblanque's bearing, and could imagine how even so fastidious a person as Mr. Romaine might be fascinated by her.
"He has been asking for you for the last half hour," she said, helping Madame de Fonblanque off with her wraps, and escorting her to the door of Mr. Romaine's library.
Mr. Chessingham came out with a troubled face, and, closing the door behind him, was presented to Madame de Fonblanque.
"Do you think he is dying?" she asked.
"Undoubtedly. And he knows it himself, and is perfectly prepared, but when I ventured to hint as much to him, he told me he thought Carlsbad was the place for him, and he was going there next summer."
A faint smile appeared upon the faces of all three. Majestic death was at hand, but Mr. Romaine had to have his quip with the Destroyer before going upon the great journey.
"And I frankly admit," said Chessingham, worried almost beyond bearing, "that Mr. Romaine has never yet told me what ailed him, and I do not know any more than you do what he is dying of. I suspect, of course—but it may be one of a half dozen things, any one of which would be equally fatal. He will not let me know his pulse, temperature, or anything, and his perversity about his symptoms is simply phenomenal. He will not even be undressed and go to bed. If you will believe me, he had his evening clothes put on him, and there he sits, dying."
Madame de Fonblanque, without another word, advanced and opened the door for herself, shutting it carefully after her.
There, indeed, sat Mr. Romaine in his easy chair, with his feet in exquisite dancing pumps, stretched out to the fire. His face was ghastly white—but as it was always white, it did not make a great deal of difference. His eyes, though, were quite unchanged—in fact, they seemed to glow with an added fire and brilliance. Still, he was plainly dying.
"I came as soon as you sent for me," said Madame de Fonblanque, gently. "I want to say now, that if you think I bear you any anger for anything you have said or done to me, you are mistaken. I forget it all as I look at you."
"Did you think I sent for you to ask your forgiveness?" asked Mr. Romaine, faintly, but fluently.
"I can think of no other reason."
"Then you must be a very unimaginative person. I sent for you to punish you as you deserve. It won't make life any pleasanter for you to know that you helped me out of it. I have had, for some years, as you know, an affection which the doctors told me any agitation or distress might make fatal. I might have lived for years—but your presence here last night was my death blow. I don't care a rush about living,—in fact, I would rather die than suffer as I do now,—but I would have lived possibly ten years longer, but for you."
"Pray do not say that," cried Madame de Fonblanque, turning pale. "Think what a painful thought to follow one through life."
"That 's why I tell you."
"Pray, pray withdraw it," cried Madame de Fonblanque, in tears. "I implore you."
"You would not withdraw your demand for one hundred thousand francs. If you had—if you had shown me the slightest mercy, there is a way by which I might have rewarded you. I could have borrowed a good deal of money upon some few pictures I have in Europe. But forced under the hammer, they will not bring, with this Virginia land, more than enough to pay my debts and a few legacies." He stopped a moment, out of breath, and the silence was only broken by Madame de Fonblanque's faint sobs.
"Nobody has ever yet relied upon my generosity without experiencing it. But everybody that has ever fought me, I have made to rue it," he continued.
Madame de Fonblanque sank kneeling by his chair, and wept nervously.
"Will you—forgive me? You must."
"Rubbish!"
"And are you not afraid to go into that other world with a fellow creature crying after you from this for forgiveness?"
"Not a bit. I never knew what fear was. Pain, instead of making me fear death, has rendered me totally indifferent to it. I am astonished at myself now, that I feel so little apprehension."
Madame de Fonblanque got up from her knees. Living or dying, he was unlike other men.
"Now," said he, "I want you to make me a promise. Dying people's requests are sacred, you know. Perhaps if you oblige me in this instance, I may oblige you later on. Will you promise?"
"Yes," answered Madame de Fonblanque, unable to say no.
"I desire that you remain alone with me until I am dead. It is coming now. I feel it."
Madame de Fonblanque remained silent with horror. A frightful paroxysm of pain came on, and after standing the sight of him writhing for a few moments, she fled shrieking from the room.
An instant later she returned with Chessingham. Mr. Romaine had then recovered from his spasm of pain, and greeted her sarcastically.
"You have broken your promise," he said.
Chessingham came up to him anxiously. He proposed a dozen alleviations of the pain, but Mr. Romaine would not agree to any.
"Look here, Chessingham," he said, "the game is up. I am dying, and I might as well own it. I have n't taken a dose of your medicine since I employed you as my doctor. I consulted Chambers on the sly, and studied up my case myself—and I have a whole pharmacopœia that you never saw or heard of. It was rather shabby of me, I acknowledge; but I liked you and thought you were a capital fellow, and I wanted your company, and the only way I could get you was to make you my doctor."
Chessingham said nothing. He could not reproach a dying man, but his stern face spoke volumes.
"And you are one of the most honest fellows in the world. Don't think I disbelieve in honesty. I believe in a great many good things. I even believe in a Great First Cause. I have only followed the natural law: those that have been good to me, I have been good to—and those that have n't been good to me, I have taken the liberty of paying off in this world, for fear that by some hocus-pocus they might sneak out of punishment in the next."
"I want to say one thing to you," said Chessingham. "I never have considered you a bad man. But your virtues are not common virtues, and your faults are not common faults."
"Thank you, my dear fellow. It is true, I never could strike the great vein of common-place in anything."
Then there was a pause. Mr. Romaine, though evidently suffering, yet continued to talk until Madame de Fonblanque whispered to Chessingham:
"I believe he actually enjoys the situation!"
She herself longed to leave, yet hesitated. She thought if she stayed that perhaps at the end Mr. Romaine might grant her some words of forgiveness. She was a superstitious woman, and Mr. Romaine knew it. So, with a white face, she seated herself a little way off, at the side of the fireplace. Bridge came in and out of the room noiselessly, his feet sinking in the thick Turkish carpet. The room was strangely quiet, but the very intensity of the silence gave Mr. Romaine's voice and quivering breath and faint sounds of pain a fearful distinctness. And even in his extremity, the "situation," as Madame de Fonblanque called it, was not without its diversion to him.
"Corbin came with you, of course," Mr. Romaine said to Madame de Fonblanque after a while. He had at last consented to take a little brandy, although steadily refusing any of Chessingham's medicine, and seemed to be revived by it. Then he said to Chessingham:
"Pray, after I am dead, give my regards to Corbin, but don't let him examine my coffin plate. I desire my age put down as fifty-eight, and I won't have one of Corbin's long-winded arguments to prove that I am sixty-nine. Still, Corbin is a good fellow. But if there were many like him, the rascals would soon have a handsome majority everywhere. And I also wish my regards given to Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood, and my apologies for disappointing them regarding the season in London. And also to Letty Corbin," and Mr. Romaine paused, and his face softened.
"Say to Jemima Corbin, if I ever caused her pain I now ask her forgiveness for it."
This surprised both Chessingham and Madame de Fonblanque much, who knew of no reason why Mr. Romaine should send such a message to good Miss Jemima.
It was now about eleven o'clock. Mr. Romaine was evidently going fast, but he still managed to resist being laid on the sofa.
"You will last longer," said Chessingham.
"I don't care to last any longer than I can help," snapped Mr. Romaine, in what Farebrother had called his Romainesque manner.
"My will is in that drawer," he said, with some difficulty. "It will cause a good deal of surprise," and his teeth showed in a ghastly smile between his blue lips, "and also a letter for Madame de Fonblanque."
At the last Mr. Romaine fell into a stupor. Presently he opened his eyes, and looking Chessingham full in the face, said in a pleasant voice, "Good-night."
"Good-night," responded Chessingham; and before the words were out of his mouth Mr. Romaine had ceased to breathe.
Madame de Fonblanque rushed to the door, as she had been on the point of doing every moment she had been in the room. Bridge followed her, and caught her out in the hall.
"Madam," he said, "I wants to say as I heard what Mr. Romaine said to you about your givin' 'im 'is death blow. Mr. Romaine has been a-dyin' for a month—and it s'prised me he lasted so long. I say this because it 's my dooty."
"Thank you," cried Madame de Fonblanque.
Mrs. Chessingham, Colonel Corbin, and Ethel Maywood were all gathered in the hall when Chessingham came out with a solemn face. Ethel was white and trembling, and felt a strange grief at knowing that Mr. Romaine was no more. There were no tears shed. All of them had at some time received kindnesses from Mr. Romaine, but also all of them had experienced the iron hand under the velvet glove. Madame de Fonblanque could not get away from the house fast enough, and so the same carriage that had brought them there landed them at Corbin Hall about one o'clock.
Farebrother, Letty, and Miss Jemima were still up. The fire had been kept going, although the lamp had long since given out. Colonel Corbin's face told the story. A pause fell, as in the hall at Shrewsbury, and in the shadows Miss Jemima wiped two tears from her withered face. They were the only tears shed for Mr. Romaine.
Madame de Fonblanque's nerve quite forsook her. She felt that she must get away from that place, so associated with tragic things, or die. It had suddenly moderated, and a warm rain had set in by midnight that was certain to break up the ice in the river. She begged and implored the Colonel to take her to the landing on the chance of the boat passing. Colonel Corbin could not say no to her pleading—and so, in the dimness of early dawn, she disappeared like a shadow that had come from another world and had gone back to it.