Part 12
The Colonel was openly charmed to see him; so was Miss Jemima, and Letty’s face turned such a rosy red that it told a little story of its own. Farebrother explained that he was on his way home from the South on a professional trip, and had written that he would stop over two or three days at Corbin Hall. His letters had not been received--the mails being conducted upon a happy-go-lucky schedule in that part of the world--and on finding the river closed by ice when he left the railway twenty-five miles away, he had hired horses and had driven the distance that day in spite of the storm.
It was certainly good to see him--he was so cheerful, so manly, so full of fresh and breezy life. When he, as it were, was dragged into the library by the Colonel, Madame de Fonblanque was not present--she had gone to her room for a little rest before supper. In a little while the Colonel began to tell about her--and once started on a theme, he could not resist airing his opinion of “Romaine’s utter want of courtesy and consideration for a woman.”
Farebrother’s countenance was a study during all this. When the Colonel had left the room, he turned to Letty and said, half laughing as he spoke, “Is it possible that Colonel Corbin picked up Madame de Fonblanque at the river landing and brought her here to stay until she chooses to quit?”
“Of course,” answered Letty, tartly. “What else was there left to do?”
A great part of Farebrother’s enjoyment of his Corbin Hall friends consisted in their simplicity and the number of hearty laughs they afforded him.
“I declare, Miss Corbin,” he exclaimed, after indulging himself in a masculine ha-ha, “it’s a great thing to know a place where one can get a new sensation. It can always be had in Virginia. You are certainly the simplest people about some things and the shrewdest about others I ever saw.”
“Thank you,” answered Letty, smiling, “but, please, as I am not quite a woman of the world yet--tell me what is the matter with Madame de Fonblanque?”
“Nothing on earth that I know of. But there is room for suspicion in everybody’s mind who knows the world. What is her mysterious business with Mr. Romaine? Likely as not, blackmail.”
Letty jumped as Farebrother said this; for at that moment the door opened and Madame de Fonblanque entered.
Within ten minutes after her introduction to Farebrother, Letty saw a subtile change in her. She exchanged her charming candor and frank personal conversation for the guarded manner of a woman who knows a good deal about this wicked world, and she conversed upon the safest and most general subjects. When the Colonel returned they all went in to supper, which boasted seven different kinds of bread, served by Dad Davy with his grandest flourishes. But the Colonel’s delightful assumption that Madame de Fonblanque would be their guest for at least a month, and would probably return in the autumn, “when the climate of old Virginia, madam, is truly glorious and life-giving,” did not meet with the same enthusiastic acceptance from Madame de Fonblanque as it had done at dinner.
The truth was, with Farebrother’s keen eyes upon her, and his polite but guarded manner toward her, she was dealing with a different person from the innocent old Colonel and the unsuspicious Letty. The conversation turned upon Mr. Romaine. The Colonel glowered darkly, and growled below his breath that Romaine, with age and eccentricities, was becoming intolerable. Madame de Fonblanque shrugged her shoulders.
“I hope none of you will be so unhappy as to have business transactions with Mr. Romaine. You will certainly find him a very difficult person.” She said Farebrother seemed to be the only friend that Mr. Romaine had at the table.
“There’s really a great deal that is engaging and even admirable about him,” he said. “He is a man of great natural astuteness, and if he took a stand he would be apt to know his ground well, so that he could hold it.”
Madame de Fonblanque flashed a look at Farebrother, which he met with a cool smile. She knew that he suspected her, and he knew that she knew he suspected her. Her surroundings were entirely novel to her; her hosts were like the old provincial gentry in the remote corners of France, and such people are always much alike, and easy to hoodwink. She was grateful to them for their kindness, and had no thought of deceiving them any more than was necessary. But Farebrother was a type of man that she knew all about; well learned in the ways of the world, superlatively honest, but fully able to protect himself against scamps of either sex. She wondered if he had not heard some talk about the affair between Mr. Romaine and herself--and at that very moment, she was almost overcome by chagrin and disappointment. She was desperately in need of money, despite her fur cloak and her expensive finery, and she had felt from the moment Mr. Romaine spoke that there was not the slightest chance of her getting any money from him. She wanted to write to England and consult her lawyer there before taking any further steps, and it had occurred to her, as the most convenient arrangement, to await his reply at Corbin Hall. And besides, what a rage it would put Mr. Romaine in! But if this robust and slightly bold person, with his cheerful manner and his alert blue eyes, were to be there, Madame de Fonblanque would rather be somewhere else.
The Colonel was much puzzled because Madame de Fonblanque and Farebrother were not hail-fellow-well-met, and felt very much as if Farebrother were guilty of a want of chivalry--but still, there was nothing to take hold of, for he was perfectly courteous to her. But she had nothing more to say about her intimacy with the old royalist families, and when Farebrother boldly avowed himself a firm believer in the French republic, Madame de Fonblanque did not sigh and say, “Ah, if you had ancestors who died for Louis and Charles and Louis Philippe, you would not love the republic,” as she had done when Letty advanced the same view. In short, Madame de Fonblanque had met her match.
As soon as supper was over she excused herself and went to her room for an hour or two. She really felt depressed and unequal to keeping up the strain any longer at that time. The Colonel tramped down to the stable in the snow, to see that Tom Battercake had made the horses comfortable for the night; and Miss Jemima always remained an hour in the dining-room after every meal, in close confabulation with the cook. Letty and Farebrother went alone to the library.
The lamps were lighted, but the fire needed a vigorous poking, which Letty proceeded to administer, going down on her knees. Farebrother, who knew better than to interfere, stood by the hearth watching her. When she had got through, he suddenly went up close to her and caught her hands in his.
“Letty,” he said, in a firm and serious voice that she had never heard him use before, “do you know what I came here for?”
In an instant she knew. But the knowledge staggered her. The idea that Farebrother would take the bit between his teeth and break through all her maze of little coquetries like that had never dawned upon her. In another minute he had made his meaning so plain to her that there was no evading it.
For the first time Farebrother saw a frightened look come into her clear eyes. She turned pale, but she made no effort to escape from him. He told her that he loved her well, with the manly force and directness that women like, and Letty stammered some sweet, incoherent answer which revealed that she too knew the exaltation of life’s great fever. All her pretty airs and graces dropped from her in a moment--she stood trembling, and unconsciously returned the clasp of Farebrother’s strong hands, like some weak creature holding desperately to one that is all steadfastness. Farebrother could not recall afterward one word that he had said; he only remembered that he felt as if they two stood alone on some cloud-capped peak, the whole world vanished from their sight, but sunshine above them and all around them.
Two tears dropped from Letty’s eyes, she knew not why, and Farebrother consoled her, for what he did not know--and they drank the wine of life together. But after a while they came from their own heaven down to a real world that was scarcely less beautiful to them.
Almost the first rational question Farebrother asked her was--“And how about that good-looking villain of an Englishman?”
“My cousin Archibald? Why, he never asked me to be Lady Corbin.”
“Thank the Lord.” There was a good deal more sincerity in this thanksgiving than might have been suspected.
“Do you think I would have been dazzled by his title and money?” asked Letty, offended.
“No, because you don’t know anything about either money or titles. You are a very clever girl, my dear, but you are very unsophisticated, so far. I believe, though, he would have to come down here among you quaint Virginia people to find any girl who wouldn’t take him. And the sinner is a deuced fine fellow--that I must admit.”
“I _did_ want the honor and glory of refusing him,” Letty admitted, candidly, “but he never gave me the chance, more’s the pity.”
Farebrother burst into a ringing laugh. Letty’s ideas on the subject of love and courtship had a unique and childish candor which delighted a man who knew as much about this ridiculous old planet as Farebrother.
Their lovemaking was cut short by the Colonel’s and Miss Jemima’s entrance. Colonel Corbin at once engaged Farebrother in a red-hot political discussion. The Colonel was a believer in states’ rights to the point of not believing in a central government at all, and Letty ably assisted him by ready references to the Constitution of the United States. But Farebrother was a match for them both, and argued that Washington, Hamilton, and a great many of the fathers wanted a central government a great deal stronger than their successors of to-day are prepared to accept. The Colonel, though, was rather disgusted to observe that Letty and Farebrother were half laughing while they argued and quarrelled, and that Letty wore a very sweet smile when once or twice the Colonel was unhorsed in the discussion. From politics they fell into talk about Mr. Romaine, and in the midst of it a tap came at the door, and Madame de Fonblanque entered.
“We were again discussing our eccentric friend Romaine, Madame,” said the Colonel, anxious lest Madame de Fonblanque should suppose that her arrival was an interruption. “Mr. Farebrother seems to take a more indulgent view of him than any of us do.”
“For my part,” answered Madame de Fonblanque, with a gesture of aversion, “I do not hesitate to say that I dislike Mr. Romaine very much. I cannot deny that he is a gentleman--”
“Technically, my dear madam--technically--”
“--But I believe, if he were to die to-morrow, he would not leave behind him one heart to ache for him.”
Just then the door opened, and Dad Davy presented a solemn, scared face.
“Marse Colonel,” he said, “dee done sont dat white man, Dodson, f’um Shrewsbury, an’ he say Mr. Romaine mighty sick an’ dee ’feerd he gwine die, and he want Madame Fireblock--or whatever she name--ter come right away. Dee got a kerridge and hosses out d’yar and de white man k’yarn leave ’em.”
A sudden chill and silence fell upon them all at this. Mr. Romaine must indeed be dying if he sent for Madame de Fonblanque.
So terrible and so piteous is death that every one of them, who a moment before had been discussing the dying man with severity, felt that he or she would do much to save him. Even Madame de Fonblanque turned pale.
“Of course, I will go,” she said, “perhaps he wants my forgiveness--or to repair the injury he has done me.”
She went hastily up-stairs, Letty with her, to put on her wraps to go to the house from which only a few hours before she had been ignominiously shown. The Colonel would by no means allow her to go alone, and when she came down, she found him with his great-coat on, and a large pair of “gambadoes” strapped around his legs to protect his trousers, in case he should have to get out on the road in the snow and slush. In a few moments, they were on their way in the bitter night toward Shrewsbury, the Colonel’s saddle horse following the carriage.
Letty and Farebrother and Miss Jemima, sitting in the library, determined to wait until midnight, certainly, for some news of the dying man or the Colonel’s return. In spite of the happiness of the lovers, there was a cloud upon Farebrother and Letty. Not a word was said about Mr. Romaine’s will. All of them were more or less skeptical about it, but still his death was deeply impressive to them. At one o’clock, they were still sitting there, talking gravely, when they heard the returning carriage, and presently the Colonel stalked solemnly in, and Madame de Fonblanque in much agitation with him.
XII
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 haven’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 haven’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 commonplace 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.