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CHAPTER XXV
“SAY NOT GOOD NIGHT, BUT IN SOME BRIGHTER CLIME BID ME GOOD MORNING!”
THAT hostile meeting between Vane and his enemy never took place.
For the grey breaking of the morrow’s dawn, creeping into the baronet’s chamber in the Hotel Mirabeau found him unable to rise from his bed, racked with the burning agonies of inflammation and tortured with the hideous deathlike images of fever.
Diana was always prompt and business-like; it was not her fashion to lose either her time or her wits upon pressing occasions, and before sunrise the best doctor in Paris had pronounced on her brother’s case, and the necessary telegram was flashing its electric way to Whitehall.
But notwithstanding his sister’s promptitude, Vivian did not mend. The short winter day yielded to twilight, the continual roll of the passing carriages culminated into a roar, lights sparkled down the frosty streets, gauzy mists enveloped the tops of the columns, and hid the slanting roofs of the Tuileries, and Miss Diana, alarmed and desolated, sat at the bedside where her brother lay tossing to and fro in the oppressive pain of delirium, and heard him murmur brokenly of his devotion to Adelheid, his cruel disappointment, and his bitter distrust of Vane.
Later still the clever physician expressed his desire for a consultation upon the case with two other professional celebrities whom he named, and subsequently himself drove off to summon them. They arrived, and with gruesome solemnity went through their scientific antics over the unconscious baronet, while Adelheid was singing forlornly at the Opera,
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Vane lorgnetting her from a stage box, and the whole house commenting upon her evident indisposition, and indulging itself between the scenes with sympathetic gossip about the sudden illness of “that poor Sir Vivian.”
For of course all Paris was familiar with the news by dinner-time, the greater part of the gay garrulous capital had heard it at lunch, and indeed to the smallest and selectest coterie it had arrived with the early Burgundy and café au lait.” Quite hopeless they tell me!” says Lady Croakwell with a despondent flirt of her painted fan, – “inflammation of both lungs you know, – and pleurisy set in this afternoon!”
“Such a handsome athletic man too” sighs a fair friend languishing over her jewelled vinaigrette, ”the best looking creature in Paris! ‘Tis always the way!”
“Mais dis-moi, ma chère,” chirps Madame de Clairevue, from the next box, – “how did it all happen? – they are telling such stories you know, I always like to get au fond de ces choses!” “Oh, easily accounted for, I should say,” observes a lounging gentleman from behind Madame’s chair, ”such a confounded storm last night, any fellow walking home in that, after dining –” “Ah that is very well no doubt,” interrupts the little French lady pouncing smartly down on the suggestive lounger, ”but you will not persuade me there was nothing unusual in the affair! No, no, – more will come out by and by you will see!” “C’est bien dit! nous verrons, nous autres!” echoes the fashionable chorus with many sapient smiles and confident glances. “To-morrow, more will be known about it!” Then the drop rises again, opera glasses are resumed; and a timely hush falls upon the chatterers.
Next day the carriages pause for a minute in their course along the frosty streets, and draw up at the doors of the Hotel Mirabeau, footmen alight there, cards are sent in, and all manner of kind inquiries made. The physicians are still in attendance; the bulletins are unfavourable. “Dear! dear! – so exceedingly grieved!
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such an unfortunate occurrence! – poor Miss Brabazon, – in the middle of the season too! If anything should happen to the baronet – (note this common mode of alluding to the possibility of Death) – do you suppose Fräulein Stern would throw up her engagement at the Opera, my dear. They say you know, she is to be married to him before long. At least I heard Major McNoawl tell Mrs. Evesdropper so, a night or two ago.”
And so on.
Morning and evening too, comes Tristan, exceedingly wan and miserable despite his philosophy, petitioning always for admission to Vivian’s room; but the doctors are inexorable as the judges of Tartarus, and the Rhadamanthian decree must not be relaxed for even the most importunate of friends. The patient must remain in absolute seclusion – in perfect quiet.
Where he lies there is indeed an ominous gloom and stillness. The muslin curtains are drawn before the windows, strange odours of drugs and cataplasms pervade the air, grave gentlemen of the Faculty move stealthily round the bed, exchanging many an intelligent nod and whispered observation pregnant with intense significance, and here in the corner anxious Miss Di, with moist eyes and silenced bangles, sits and watches the restless moaning figure in the bed, and furtively prays for Divine help and consolation.
Presently the doctors glide away to hold sedate council elsewhere and when they are fairly closeted downstairs, a little feeble tap flutters upon the outer panels of the bed-room door, it opens noiselessly, and Adelheid stands on the threshold.
“Let me come in meine Königinn,” she pleads, in a tremulous whisper, “you need some rest, I will stay here with him.”
And at the sound of her voice – so faint and low a sound it is too! – the invalid turns uneasily and murmurs.
It is Adelheid who is there – yes – he knows it. He is thirsty, will she give him the lemonade?
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Her arms are round him the next minute, she stoops, tenderly she raises him from the pillow and holds a glass to his lips. Oh prurient Paris! Oh Propriety of the Period! Oh perverse and precious prudery! what would you think of this, were any of your representatives here to witness such nefarious goings-on? But Diana, happily for the well-being of the sick room, is a strong-minded woman, unafflicted with the jaundiced follies of most modern ladies. Honi soit qui mal y pense, and may we number many Diana Brabazons among the women of the coming generation. She goes softly out of the room, and for an hour Adelheid remains alone with the patient, tending him with ready hands and sweet silent ways, deftly smoothing his pillow, cooling his forehead with perfumed water, leaving wherever she moves so gently and quietly, some trace of her presence in graceful ordering and womanly arrangement. And all the time Vivian watches her with great wistful eyes, longing for strength or for courage to speak what is in his heart, yearning to fold her but once in his hungry arms – but once, and then, tranquil and content – to die.
But the words he fain would utter are still unsaid when Diana returns, and observes to herself as she glances round the metamorphosed chamber, and marks the brightened light of reviving consciousness in the patients face; “They refuse women at Apothecaries’ Hall, they deny them the right to study medicine, they oust them from the hospital wards and lecture rooms – and yet God makes them more than half doctors by nature! Bah!”
Worthy Miss Di, fret not thyself because of evil-doers, for despite the antique witticisms of Messrs. Mortimer Collins and Company, the good time is surely coming, and already the cry of ”Land Ahead!” is passed from mouth to mouth on board the belated ship.
Again the night comes creeping hazily up the squares, once more the lamplighters come forth on their errands and go their appointed rounds. Mesdames ring for their maids and prepare to dress, mesdemoiselles sit
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down in the nursery to milk and tartines, messieurs saunter languidly home from their masculine haunts, jalousies are closed and tapers lighted. But this second day has brought no dawn of hope to Miss Diana, no prospect of convalescence to the weary patient in the darkened silent chamber of the Hotel Mirabeau, the fever indeed has vanished, and with it for a time, the delirium too is passed, but there is no abatement of that burning agony in the chest that tortures the whole miserable body and distracted brain; the real crisis of the disorder is yet to come.
It comes at last towards the close of the sixth night. Diana has been watching by the bedside seven hours; nothing will persuade her to employ a hired nurse, or even a Sœur Angélique. “I am strong and well,” she has told the physicians with her usual gusto of emphasis,” and he is my Only Brother! I am Not Going to leave him to Strangers when he is ill! And I know all the necessities of a sick-room by Heart!”
So messieurs the doctors have said no more on the subject; they know the baronet cannot survive even under the most highly educated professional surveillance, and they think it best therefore to let Miss Di have own her own way, since after all she really seems to understand the thing very tolerably. So during the week, she and Adelheid have taken alternate turns at nursing, and perhaps could Mr. Bouverie or Mr. Scourfield have seen them – “restless dissatisfied ladies” as they are – so deftly and so readily occupied with the tender ministrations which all members of parliament and of society admit to be peculiarly the vocation of women and angels, the sight might possibly have done those autocratic gentlemen some useful service.
“Send for me,” the principal physician had said to Miss Diana as he retired on this last night, ”if any alarming change should take place before the morning breaks. Otherwise I shall be here again as early as possible.”
“Somewhere about twelve o’clock, Vivian fell into a deep slumber which
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lasted several hours, and his sister, anxiously noting his heavy respiration and weary pallid face as he lay thus undisturbed and restful for the first time since his illness, fondly persuaded herself that at length the victory was gained, and her dear one would wake on the morrow restored once more to life and hope.
Ah, dreaming Miss Di!
Presently he turns, and languidly opens his eyes on his sister’s face. She bends forward and kisses him, murmuring in eager, gentle tones a word or two of loving inquiry.
“You are better now, Darling Vi?”
“Yes, dearest, l am better. The pain is going I think.”
He lays his hand upon his side and smiles.
“Can you take your medicine now, Vi?”
“Is that it? Well give it me – it does no good nevertheless. Ah! this hasty, impetuous Brabazon blood of ours, see what it has done! And the penalty will fall on you Di dear, I am afraid.”
After a pause he touches her hand softly and whispers,
“Should you think it very strange if I asked to see Adelheid? I can speak now, and I have something to say to her – something to thank her for, Di.”
She looks at him a moment with pain in her gray, gleaming eyes, and then slowly answers,
“Why not wait till the morning, Vi? You will he stronger then. This is night you know, now.”
Vivian shakes his bead. ”Perhaps, dear, I may not be able to speak in the morning. I should like to use the time I have. You understand?”
Alas! yes, she understands. It is coming then now? – that terrible separation, that awful parting of body ond spirit, that mysterious drifting out of the soul into the waste of Infinity. Actuated by a curious impulse she raises the blind and glances out and up into the night
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Somehow Diana feels glad that it is calm and clear there – no storm, no wind, – the airy path stretches away open and serene to Heaven.
“I will call her, Vi,” says the poor Amazon, with a throbbing heart, and misty, burning eyes. And she goes sadly out of the room to creep back again in five minutes followed by Adelheid, who, not waiting to dress as most women would have done on receiving such a summons, comes gliding into Vivian’s chamber with bare white feet that seem to gleam as she moves, a silken shawl flung hastily over her linen nightgowns and her wonderful hair of gold rippling down to her waist, over throat and shoulders and shapely virgin bosom. With an effort Vivian lifts himself on his elbow and beckons to his sister.
“Let us be alone, Di,” he whispers, “to-morrow perhaps she will tell you what I said to her.”
Di retires, just lingering as she passes, to murmur a hasty word in Adelheid’s ear; the door is dosed, and Vivian is alone with his beloved.
With a gesture of reverent tenderness, unutterably pathetic, yet strangely full of dignity, he takes her hand between both his own, and tells her in slow, sorrowful tones,
“Adelheid, I want to say to you to-night – while there is time to say it – something which a week ago I determined you should never know. But now it is better you should hear it, and I think I shall be the happier in some far-off planet to-morrow, for the knowledge that my spirit has no secret kept from you. . . O my love! I have loved you so long – so long – and now I must go without you into Eternity!”
He bent towards her and his face fell upon her breast, where she knelt at the bedside, listening in mute amaze and sorrow. In few and simple words he tells her the story of his discovery; but even now his generous lips endeavour to conceal the bitter anguish which it cost him, lest perchance the full recital of such grief should wound her tender heart.
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“And now,” he adds, sinking back upon his cushions and gazing earnestly into the sweet, dreamlike eyes that are to him as the eyes of his guardian angel, “they repeat no stories, my Sweet, where I am going. Tell me then, for you must know – who is this Tristan Le Rodeur, with whom I leave my Darling?”
The shining angel eyes dissolve in mist, the beautiful pale face quivers, and with passionate tears that fall like rain, she pours forth the story of her own forlorn childhood and of Tristan’s romantic birth, the interwoven chronicle of two human lives so strangely sundered and at last more marvellously united.
He lies looking upon her as she speaks, but there is no gleam of wonder in his stedfast gaze. The petty surprises of Life are nothing to a spirit that finds itself so near the presence of Death. When we know that in a few hours we shall have solved the Master Secret, and penetrated the core of the one most tremendous Mystery of all – think you we shall have any care or interest for all the riddles of all the Sphinxes of Time? In our sleep we are never surprised, even at the rarest or the most awful event our dreaming imagination depicts, and of all things under that fixed star we call our sun, Sleep alone resembles Death.
“It is better than I thought,” said Vivian in a tired voice.” But if you can, Sweet, make an end of this secrecy. Promise me at least, to tell my sister so much as concerns yourself; for no good can come of hiding the truth. With all my life behind me, Adelheid, I tell you that.
. . . Stoop lower my Love! my Love! Kiss me once, for the first and the last time – God pity me! the first and last! Kiss me Sweet, – and promise.” . . . .
Pass on in your courses, mighty stars of night, you whose vivid hearts are pregnant alike with the giant secrets of the unfathomable Past and the vast revolving Destinies of all the measureless Future! Pass on, sublimely silent – for this hour a parting soul receives
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its Viaticum. Its last and holiest communion upon earth – the Divine Sacrament of human Love!
Alleluia! “Ich habe gelebt und geliebt,” sings the German poet. Not even Death itself can take from us the love with which we have loved! It is ours for evermore.
There is a little rustle in the chamber, and Miss Diana is here again, with red swollen eyes and white cheeks. “Do you think I ought to send for Dr...?” she asks of Adelheid, resting her hand lightly on the girl’s neck and bending low to ask the question. But Vivian hears and rolls his patient gaze on his sister.
“Let me be at peace now,” he says. “I have not long.”
And Diana adds no more.
Silently they watch him as he lies exhausted on his pillows, the heavy hollow breath coming and going like a wind through the feeble lungs, sharp spasms of the fast approaching end flickering over the faded face like swaying shadows, the colourless lips unclosed, the palsied hands clenched with convulsive rigidity. Adelheid still keeps her place on her knees beside him, her head resting on the cushions and drapery of the bed, and her bright hair scattered about her like sunshine – hair that rests upon the breast of the dying man and sweeps his arm, and touches his cheek with its soft caresses.
The slow hours of night are ebbing fast; it is growing towards the morning now, the dawn of a new day.
“Di, dear, draw up the blind.”
And there outside, is the great roofless sky, and the stars, larger and whiter in the grey of the twilight that is just beginning to break far down in the horizon. How still it is! the city seems dead, no smoke rises from the house chimnies, the frosty air is dear and luminous. It is just before the dawning that the great changes of existence generally occur. Then the angels of Life and Death are busiest, then is most often heard the wailing of the new-born child, the sigh of the ascending
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spirit. For of all hours it is the stillest and purest; and in the hush of the world the Divine Voice speaks to the souls of men.
“Come closer Di – my heart fails me – I cannot bear to leave you yet! Where is Adelheid’s hand – I can hear her sobbing – O how my darling sobs! I feel her tears upon my face. Ah, Sweet, I loved you! I loved you! For that only I am glad to die – because Tristan must have parted us here. Now I may always love you, none can come between us any more. And Tristan – tell him I said he was dear to me – I said if I had lived I would have been his friend – I may be a better one still as it is – who knows? . . . . Lift me a little – so – I want to die with the light upon my face. . . . There is Paris – there are the streets where I shall walk no more – the houses I shall never enter again! How will it look to-day and to-morrow and the next day and in all the days to come when we are no longer together? . . . Ah what a dreary farce it is – this living – what does it mean? shall I find the key to it all in the next world, I wonder? Or are they no nearer there to the great central Mystery of Life than we? . . .”
A spasm chokes his voice, a deathly faintness overpowers him, there is a sound in his ears like the roaring of that mighty limitless sea on the brink of which he stands. Diana, blinded with her grief, leans over him and wipes the foam from the poor quivering lips; but Adelheid’s face is hidden in her hands and streaming hair. Her tears have ceased, and she kneels silent and motionless where she knelt an hour ago, like a marble woman that neither breathes nor hears.
“That was the last. Di,” he says, with a smile, and his voice is the voice of a little child – “good bye, one must not say ‘good night' you know, because it is morning – isn’t it? and the night is over, finished and done with. . . No more of it now for ever. . and. . . ever!” . . . .
Amen! . . . .
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For the generous heart is still, and the wistful light has passed from the patient eyes.
With the dawn of the new Day on his face, Vivian Brabazon has died.
Feebly through the window of Tristan’s bedroom in the Rue Royale, the selfsame day-break looks in upon the sleeping boy and sees him suddenly turn and start as though with the horror of some evil dream.
* * * * *
“She suffers!” he cries, gasping and struggling as he wakes – “ah my God! I know she suffers!”
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