Babylon. Volume 3

Forton nodded.

They turned to the pictures, and Chattawauga Lake having been duly produced, Colin found himself at a moment’s notice turned into a sort of amateur auctioneer, receiving informal bids one after another from the representatives of almost all the best picture firms in the whole of England.

He had soon got rid of Chattawauga Lake, and before an hour and a half was over, the agents had almost made a clean sweep of the entire studio. Even the Babylonian Woe was bought up at a fair price by one enthusiastic person, on the ground that it had been immensely enhanced in value by being mentioned, although unfavourably, in a note of Truman’s. The great critic had simply made Hiram Winthrop’s fortune; people were prepared to buy anything he might paint now, on the strength of Truman’s recommendation.

As soon as Colin had got rid of the more pressing purchasers, he left Forton in charge of the studio, and ran back hastily to Audouin’s hotel. Would the good news be in time to save the dying man’s life? that was the question. Colin wondered what he could make of it, and turned over the matter anxiously in his own mind, as he went back to Minna, Gwen, and Hiram.

CHAPTER XLVI. AUDOUIN SINKS OR SWIMS

Colin entered the little salon once more with bated breath and eager anxiety. ‘Is he alive yet, Minna?’ he asked in a low tone, as she came to meet him, pale and timid.

‘Alive, Colin, but hardly more. The fever’s very serious, and Miss Russell says he’s wandering in his mind terribly.’

‘What’s he saying, Minna? Did Miss Russell tell you?’

‘Oh, yes, poor girl; she’s crying her eyes out. She says, Colin, he’s muttering that he has ruined Mr. Winthrop, and that he wished he was dead, and then they’d both be happy.’ Colin went in without another word to the sick-room, and stood awhile by the bedside, listening anxiously to poor Audouin’s incoherent mutterings. As he caught a word or two of his troubled thoughts, he made up his mind at once as to what he must do. Taking Hiram by the arm, he drew him quietly without a word into the salon. ‘Winthrop,’ he said, ‘I have something to explain to you. You must listen to it now, though it sounds irrelevant, because it’s really a matter of life and death to Mr. Audouin. I’ve just sold your Chattawauga Lake for seven thousand five hundred lire.

Hiram started in surprise for a moment, and then made a gesture of impatience. ‘What does that matter, my dear fellow,’ he cried, ‘when Mr. Audouin’s just dying?’

‘It matters a great deal,’ Colin answered; ‘and if you’ll wait and hear, you’ll see it may be the means of saving his life for you.’

Hiram sat down and listened with blanched face to Colin’s story. Then Colin began at the beginning and told him all he knew: how Audouin had lost heart entirely at Hiram’s want of success; how he had made a will, practically in Hiram’s favour; and how he had gone out quite deliberately upon the Campagna, and caught the perniciosa, on purpose to kill himself for Hiram’s benefit. At this point Hiram interrupted him for a moment. His lips were deadly pale, and he trembled violently, but he said in his usual calm voice, ‘You do him an injustice there, Churchill. He didn’t do it on purpose. I know him better than you do. Whatever he did, he did half unconsciously by way of meeting fate half way only. Mr. Audouin is quite incapable of breaking his promise.’

Colin heard him and nodded acquiescence. It was no time, indeed, for discussing the abstract points of Audouin’s character. Then he went on with his story, telling Hiram how the picture-dealers had come to him that morning, how he had sold Chattawauga Lake and several other of his pieces for excellent prices, and how the influx had been wholly due to a single paragraph in Truman’s ‘For-tuna Melliflua.’ As he spoke he handed Hiram the cutting to read, and Hiram read it rapidly through with an unwonted sense of relief and freedom ‘I don’t know, Churchill,’ he said when he had finished. ‘I can’t feel sure of it. But I think it has come in time to save his life for us.’

They concerted a little scheme shortly between them, and then they went into the sick-room once more, where Audouin was now lying somewhat more quietly with his eyes half open. Hiram held up his head and gave him a dose of the mixture which had been ordered for him at moments of feebleness. It seemed to revive him a little. Then they sat down by the bed together, and began talking to one another in a low tone, so that Audouin could easily overhear them. He was less feverish, for the moment, and seemed quite sensible; so Colin said in a quiet voice, ‘Yes, I sold Chattawauga Lake to old Focacci, who acts as agent, you know, for Magnus of London.’

Audouin evidently overheard the words, and took in their meaning vaguely, for his eye turned towards Colin, and he seemed to listen with some attention.

‘How much did you sell it for?’ asked Hiram. He hated himself for even seeming to be thus talking about his own wretched pecuniary business when Audouin was perhaps dying, but he knew it was the only chance of rousing his best and earliest friend from that fatal torpor.

‘Seven thousand five hundred lire,’ answered Colin.

‘How much is that in our money?’

‘In English money, three hundred pounds sterling,’ Colin replied, distinctly.

There was a little rustling in the bed, an attempt to sit up feebly, and then Audouin asked in a parched voice, ‘How many dollars?’ ‘Hush, hush, Mr. Audouin,’ Colin said gently, pretending to check him, but feeling in his own heart that their little ruse had almost succeeded already. ‘You mustn’t excite yourself on any account.’

Audouin was silent for a moment; then he said again, in a somewhat stronger and more decided manner, ‘How many dollars, I say: how many dollars?’

‘Five into seven thousand five hundred’ Hiram reckoned with a slight shudder, ‘makes fifteen hundred, doesn’t it, Churchill? Yes, fifteen hundred. Fifteen hundred dollars, Mr. Audouin.’

Audouin fell back upon the pillow, for he had raised his head slightly once more, and seemed for a while to be dozing quietly. At lust he asked again, ‘Who to, did you say?’

‘Focacci of the Piazza di Spagna, agent for Magnus and Hickson of London.’

This time, Audouin lay a long while ruminating in his fevered head over that last important disclosure. He seemed to take it in faintly bit by bit, for after another long pause he asked even more deliberately, ‘How did Magnus and Rickson ever come to hear of you, Hiram?’

Colin thought the time had now come to tell him briefly the good news in its entirety, if it was to keep him from dying of disappointment. ‘Truman has written very favourably about Winthrop’s abilities as a landscape painter,’ he said gently, ‘in his “Fortuna Melliflua,” and a great many London dealers have sent telegrams to buy up all his pictures. I have been round to the studio this morning, and sold almost all of them at high prices.

Truman has spoken so well of them that there can be very little doubt Winthrop’s fortune is fairly made in real earnest.’

They watched Audouin carefully as Colin spoke, for they feared the excitement might perhaps have been too much for him: it was a risky card to play, but they played it in all good intention. Audouin listened quite intelligently to the end, and then he suddenly burst out crying. For some minutes he cried silently, without even a sob to break the deathlike stillness. The tears seemed to do him good, too; for as he cried, Gwen, hanging over him eagerly, noticed that little beads of moisture were beginning to form faintly upon his parched forehead. In their concentrated anxiety for Audouin’s life, neither she nor Hiram had yet found time adequately to realise their own good fortune; they could only think of its effect upon the crisis of that terrible fever.

Audouin cried on without a word for ten minutes, and then he asked once more, in a weak voice, ‘What did Truman say? Have you got “Fortuna?”’

Colin took out the paragraph once more and read it all over, omitting only the Babylonian Woe, which he feared might have the effect of distressing Audouin. When he had finished, Audouin smiled, and answered, smiling faintly, with a touch of his wonted self, ‘Then, like Wolfe, I shall die happy;’ and after a moment he added, in a feebly theatrical fashion, ‘They run. Who run? The Philistines, to buy his pictures. Then I die happy.’

‘No, no, Mr. Audouin,’ Gwen cried passionately, lifting his white hand to her lips and kissing it fervidly. ‘You mustn’t die. For our sakes, you must try to live and share all our happiness.’

Audouin shook his head slowly. ‘No, no,’ he said; ‘the fever has got too strong a hold upon me. I shall never, never recover.’

‘You must, Mr. Audouin,’ Colin Churchill said resolutely. ‘If you go and die after all, I shall never forgive you. You’ve got nothing to die for now, and you mustn’t think of going at last and doing anything so wicked and foolish.’

Audouin smiled again, and turning over on his side, began to doze off in a feverish sleep. He slept so long and so soundly that Gwen was frightened, and insisted upon sending for the doctor. When the doctor came, it was growing dark, and Audouin lay still and peaceful like a child in the cradle. The doctor felt his pulse without awakening him. ‘Why,’ he cried in surprise, ‘he seems to have been very much excited, but his pulse is decidedly fuller and slower than it was this morning. Something unexpected must have occurred to make an improvement in his condition. I think the crisis is over, and he’ll get round again in time with good nursing.’ Gwen and the hired nurse sat up all that night with him.

CHAPTER XLVII. ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

Audouin’s recovery was slow, of course; but, he did recover; and as soon as he was safely out of all danger, Gwen and Hiram, now fairly on the road to fortune, proposed that they should forthwith marry. The colonel had almost given up active opposition by this time; he knew that that girl’s temper was absolutely ungovernable; and besides, they said the shock-headed Yankee fellow was beginning to make quite a decent livelihood out of his painting business. So the colonel merely answered when Gwen mentioned to him the date she had fixed upon, ‘You’ll go your own way, I suppose, Miss, whatever I choose to say to you about it,’ and threw no further obstacles in the way of the ceremony.

‘And, Gwen,’ Hiram said to her, as they walked together down the path by the Casca-telli at Tivoli a few days before the wedding, ‘we’ll take the Tyrol, if you’d like it, for our wedding tour, darling.’

‘Yes,’ Gwen answered, ‘we will, and we’ll never come back again to Rome, to live I mean, Hiram, but go to Switzerland, or Wales, or Scotland, or America. You must go, you know, where you can find what you most want to paint – your own beautiful delicate landscapes. I always knew that that was what you could do best; and I always told you that there at least you had real genius.’ Hiram’s answer was of a sort that cannot readily be put down in definite language; and yet Gwen understood it perfectly, and only murmured in a low soft tone, ‘Not here, Hiram, not here, there’s a dear good fellow.’

The bushes around were fairly thick and screening, to be sure, but still, in the open air, you know, and in a place overrun with tourists, like Tivoli – well, it was certainly very imprudent.

When Colin Churchill heard that Hiram and Gwen had definitely fixed the day for their own wedding, he put on his hat and went round to the English quarter to call for Minna. They walked together up from the Piazza del Popolo, by the Pincian and Esquiline, towards the straggling vineyards on the Colian Hill. There the young vines were coming into the first fresh leaf, and the air was thick with perfume from the jonquils and lilacs in the neighbouring flower gardens.

‘Minna darling,’ Colin began quietly, and Minna flushed crimson and thrilled through to her inmost marrow at the sound of the words, for Colin had never before called her ‘darling.’ She looked at him full of tender surmise, and her bursting heart stood still for a moment within her bosom, waiting to know whether it was to bound again with joy, or flutter feebly in disappointment. After all, then, Colin Churchill really loved her!

Colin noticed the evident tokens of suspense upon her dark cheek, with the hot blood struggling red through the rich gipsy complexion, and wondered to himself that she should feel so deeply moved by the simple question he was going to ask her. Had they not always loved one another, all their lives long, and was it not a mere question of time and convenience, now, the particular day they fixed upon for their marriage? He could hardly understand the profoundness of her emotion, though he was too practised an observer of the human face not to read it readily in her flushed features: for, after all, it was nothing more than settling the final arrangements for a foregone conclusion.

‘Minna darling,’ he said once more, watching her narrowly all the time, ‘Win-throp and Miss Howard-Russell are going to be married on Thursday fortnight. I was thinking, dearest, that if you could arrange it with your people so soon, it’d be a good plan for us to have our wedding at the same time, for I suppose you don’t think a fortnight too short notice after such a long engagement?’

Minna trembled violently from head to foot as she answered, with a little tremor in her voice, ‘Then Colin, Colin, oh Colin, you really love me!’

Colin caught her small round hand tenderly in his and said, with a tone of genuine surprise, ‘Why, you know perfectly well, my own darling little Minna, I’ve always loved you dearly. All my life long, darling, I’ve always loved you.’

It was well that Colin held the round brown hand tight in his, that moment, for as Minna heard those words – those words that her heart had longed so long to hear, and whose truth she had doubted to herself so often – she uttered a little loud sharp cry, and fell forward, not fainting, but overcome with too sudden joy, so that her head reeled, and she might have dropped unconscious, but that Colin caught her, and pressed her in his arms, and kissed lier, and cried to her in surprise and self-reproach, ‘Why, Minna, Minna, darling Minna, my own heart’s darling, you knew I loved you; you must have known I always loved you.’

Minna’s heart fluttered up and down within her bosom, and heaved and swelled as though it would burst asunder that tight little plain black bodice. (Why do not dressmakers allow something for the natural expansiveness of emotion, I wonder.) It was so sweet to hear Colin say so; and yet even now she could hardly believe her life-long daydream had wrought out at last its own fulfillment. ‘Oh, Colin, Colin,’ she murmured through her tears – for she had found that relief – ‘you never told me so; you never, never told me you loved me.’

‘Told you, Minna!’ Colin cried with another kiss upon the trembling lips (and all this on the open Colian too); ‘told you, Minna darling! Why, who on earth would ever have dreamt of deliberately telling you. But you must have known it; of course you must have known it. Haven’t we been lovers together, darling, from our babyhood upward?’

‘But that was just it, Colin,’ Minna answered, brushing away her tears, and trying to look as if nothing extraordinary at all had happened. ‘We had always known one another, of course, and been very fond of one another, like old companions, and I wasn’t sure, with you, Colin, whether it was love or merely friendship.’

‘And with yourself, Minna?’ Cohn asked, taking her soft wee hand once more between his own two; ‘tell me, darling, which was it, which was it?’