All this time Madeline was dwelling with White in a familiar corner of
Bohemia--a quarter of the world which is fast disappearing before the
brand-new dwellings of artistic gentility--and which, when it finally
disappears (as seems inevitable), will take something with it that even
respectability can never quite replace.
The dwellers in Bohemia, now rapidly disappearing like the dear old
quarter itself, had many faults and not a few vices, but these were all
forgotten in the presence of natural charm and irresistible _bonhomie_.
They wore great beards, drank beer, and smoked great pipes; their
clothes were seedy and eccentric, their manners rough and merry, their
tastes the very reverse of refined; they had very little money, but that
little they freely shared among one another; they loved late hours,
wild talk, song-singing, and the social glass; they still regarded the
theatre as an educational institution, and talked with pagan enthusiasm
of the old gods of the stage. They were neither very clever nor very
wise, and they have left no literary monuments to keep their memories
fresh; but they enjoyed life, and in their own rough way respected the
literary craft to which they belonged. For them Bohemia was a pleasant
place.
Here Marmaduke White was born, and bred, and was, in due season, to die.
All attempts to coax him to cleaner and cosier quarters were unavailing.
Although one by one his fellow-Bohemians fell away, corrupted by the
heresy of respectability and clean linen; although those who were born
in the same quarter with him listened to the new commercial culte and
became prosperous men of business; although Jones the novelist drove his
brougham and frequented genteel parties, while Brown the painter wore
fine raiment, sold his pictures for splendid prices, and put up at a
fashionable club, White still remained as he had been--impecunious,
irresponsible, generally out-at-elbow. It was his constant complaint
that the old landmarks were fast changing. ‘If I live long enough,’ he
said, ‘I shall stand on the ruins of the last chop-house and see the
last night-house turned into a temperance hotel. The downfall of Bohemia
dates from the day when Thackeray became famous, smoked cigars, and
built that nice house at Kensington. It is the apotheosis of the Snob.
Even at the Garrick, where one used to meet all the talent, the Snob
is rampant. There is not a _foyer_ of the old kind in all London. The
literary man has become a commercial gent the artist is a spiritualised
bagman--even the actor wears fine clothes and goes to swell
garden-parties. _Sic transit gloria Bohemio!_ I begin to feel like a man
who has endured beyond his due time; a sort of Wandering Jew, the old
clothes-man of an extinct existence and a perished creed. I should not
so much care if people were much better for the change--but they are
not. Fellows are valued now, not for what they are, but for what they
earn. The very journals are grown brazen-fronted and rave of Mammon. A
great book is a book that makes a great deal of money; a great artist
is one who earns a great sum. At my time of life I can’t, set up as a
swell, I like my glass of good beer, and my pipe, and my shirt sleeves.
When I die my epitaph will be “Et ille in Bohemia fuit”--and I suppose I
shall be the last of the race.’
Now the good man, though he had the perennial heart of a boy, was not
young. Time, which had dealt gently with his disposition, had thinned
his once flowing hair, made his limbs feeble, and set many a crowsfoot
under his kindly eyes. Nor where the habits of the Bohemia he still
inhabited favourable to longevity. The small hours always found him up,
at work or play, and he saw little of the early sunshine. He was
always behindhand with his work, always working against time; feeding
irregularly, and at unreasonable hours; drinking, alas! more than was
good for him, and even consuming that nicotine which would destroy even
a Promethean liver. He had saved nothing, so that rest was denied him;
and indeed he could not have rested, for he loved labour, in the old,
reckless, perfunctory, Bohemian way. His old friends had gradually
drifted away from him, died and been buried, or passed up to those
shining social heights where dress suits and white linen are provided
for aspiring pilgrims. Even managers of theatres, grown genteel too,
pitied him. ‘Poor White,’ they would say; ‘he is such a Bohemian!’ So
that his occupation partly failed him Good old blank-verse plays were no
longer in demand. Brand-new adaptors, fresh from picking the pockets of
French authors in Parisian forays, splashed him with the wheels of their
triumphal chariots; gorgeous Jew _entrepreneurs_ shook their heads at
him. ‘Vat ve vant now, my boy, is realism; plenty of swell clothes, and
upholstery, and last cackle; the public don’t vant poetry, and as for
blank verse, it ventilates de theatre. They’ll stand Shakespeare now and
then, especially when Eugene Aram does it, because it’s genteel; but
all de rest of de drama comsh from France.’ In his anxiety to suit the
market he too tried pocket-picking, but he lacked the deft rapidity and
supreme impudence of the dramatic thief by profession. He took too much
trouble with work of this kind, and the public found it old-fashioned.
So it came to pass that from one reason and another, whether because he
was physically tired out or intellectually weary of a race in which he
was unevenly handicapped, White began to show signs of failing health.
Once or twice he took to his bed with some trifling ailment, and on each
occasion so weak were his bodily powers that he found it hard work to
get up again. He himself attached no importance to those indications
of weakness; he was as cheerful to outward seeming, as sanguine, and as
full of magnificent ‘subjects,’ as ever. He still sketched out tragedies
which no one would produce on such pert subjects as ‘Semiramis,’ ‘Julian
the Apostate,’ and ‘Boadicea,’ and infinitely laboured comedies full
of the spirit of the Restoration. His style was still that of the last
decadence, when Lalor Shiel was a genius and Sheridan Knowles a prophet.
He still clung to the superstition which placed Bulwer Lytton in the
pantheon of tinsel divinities. But the game was all over. _Et ille in
Bohemia fuit_, that was all.
One night, or rather early one morning, he came home to the old studio
in St. John’s Wood, evidently under the influence of violent fever. He
had caught cold, he thought, at the wings of the Duchess’s Theatre,
and, though he had tried the panacea of hot whisky and water, applied in
allopathic doses, it had only seemed to make him worse. He went to bed,
and the next day he was unable to rise.
When Madeline went to his bedside she was shocked at his appearance.
He looked haggard and old, the great veins on his temple were blue and
swollen, and he gasped like one who could hardly get his breath. The
ghost of his old smile came to his face as he reached out his trembling
hands, which were hot as fire.
‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear,’ he said cheerily, but in a strange, faint
voice. ‘I’m not quite myself, but I shall be all right presently. I
think it’s the effect of Burnard’s jokes. He was at the “Harum-Scarum”
last night, so I’m afraid I partook too freely of pun-salad, which is
worse than the nightmare-producing lobster.’
He tried to laugh, but the laugh died away into a moan, and he sank back
upon his pillow.
Later on in the day the symptoms became so alarming that a physician
was sent for. He made light of the patient’s condition, but wrote him a
prescription, and ordered him to be kept as quiet as possible.
Within the next twenty-four hours the symptoms became manifestly those
of low or gastric fever. Madeline wrote a hurried line for Forster, who
came almost immediately, accompanied by the celebrated Dr. Tain, well
known for his kindness to literary men. The good doctor looked somewhat
grave, but expressed his opinion that the case would yield to treatment.
From that time forward Madeline scarcely left her guardian’s bedside,
ministering to him with infinite tenderness and care. The fever ran its
course for fourteen days, during several of which White was more or less
insensible. On the morning of the fourteenth day he opened his eyes, saw
Madeline seated by his bedside, and smiled brightly.
‘Are you there, my dear?’ he asked. ‘I was dreaming about you. I thought
you were a little girl again, and I--dear me, how weak I feel! Have I
been very ill?’
‘Very ill,’ answered Madeline. ‘But do not talk; the doctor says you
must not. Let me bring your beef-tea.’
The doctor had ordered him to have beef-tea in liberal portions every
hour: it was the only way, he said, to combat the fever.
‘I think I shall soon be all right,’ said White, presently. ‘I must take
more care of myself for the future, though. I’m getting quite an old
fellow, and must go to bed at ten.
When Dr. Tain entered, White looked up and nodded cheerfully.
‘Here I am, you see! _Pallida Mors_ won’t have me this time, after all,
and I was thinking that I could eat a mutton chop, well peppered.’
The doctor replied cheerfully, and patted White gently on the shoulder;
but Madeline, catching the expression of his face as he turned away, was
somewhat troubled.
‘Keep him quiet,’ he whispered to her at the door.
‘I’ll look in again in the afternoon.’
From this intimation it became clear that the doctor was uneasy.
Scarcely had he gone when the patient exhibited great restlessness and
difficulty of breathing; and when the doctor returned in the afternoon
he found him rambling incoherently.
Leaving the sick room, he went into the studio, where Forster, whose
attentions had been unremitting, was impatiently waiting.
‘My fears are realised,’ said the physician, gravely.
‘Peritonitis has supervened.’
Before long it became manifest that White was sinking; as the hours
progressed he grew weaker and weaker, until the end seemed likely to
come in stupor. With despairing love and pity, but almost with dry eyes,
Madeline sat by the bedside; and as she gazed upon the wild, worn face,
watched the thin, white hand laying outside the coverlet, and heard the
quiet, monotonous breathing, she already seemed to feel the shadow of
death upon her life. As one standing safe on some dark river’s shore
watches the struggles of an almost spent drowning man, and forgets
everything in the intense dread and horror of the contemplation, so she
watched the sick bed; unable to weep, unable to pray (for, indeed,
her hopes and fears seldom at any time took the shape of prayer), but
feeling always as if with the slow ebb of her guardian’s life her life
was ebbing too. For White, she felt, was her only friend in this hard
world, the only being who knew the full extent of her own sorrow, the
only kind soul for whom she cared to live. In all her gentle theatrical
ambition her thought had been of him; how she could bring comfort to his
heart, see the pride and pleasure kindle on his face, make his old age
pleasant, and walk by his side the dark descent to the grave. And now,
if he left her, what remained?
In these hours of sorrow the frequent presence of Forster was a secret
source of irritation to the troubled girl. His very devotion troubled
her, for she seemed to read in it, not merely friendly kindness and
affection, but an ever-encroaching assumption of a higher sympathy. He
was a good man, a true friend, she knew, but she would have loved him
far better if he had loved her less, and her mind was quite made up--if
her dear guardian died, no living man, friend or husband, should ever
take his place.
The shadow came nearer, and it became clear at last that White was
drifting away beyond all human hope. He suffered little or no pain,
but momentarily grew weaker. At last one morning he seemed to rally a
little, and spoke clearly and collectedly on his approaching end.
‘I am going to leave you, my dear,’ he said softly, while she held his
hand fondly in her own. ‘I wanted to live a little longer, just to see a
dear girl at the top of the tree, but I suppose it is all for the best.
Well, I want you to promise me one thing before I go.’
‘Do not talk so,’ cried Madeline, kissing the hot hand and sobbing
wildly. ‘You will get well! We will be so happy together.’
‘Don’t cry, Madeline! I’m not afraid to die, and after all I’m an old
fogey, and the world has left me far behind. I used to think I should
live to regenerate the drama. Ah, well! that dream is over. I shan’t
even finish “Semiramis,” the best thing I ever wrote; but you’ll give
the first two acts and the scenario to Eugene Aram when I am gone.’
He paused, and Madeline cried between her sobs--
‘If you die, I shall die too! You are my only friend.’
‘You mustn’t talk like that, my dear. You have a great future before
you, and perhaps--who knows?--I shall be able to see it from afar off.
If the dead can watch over those they love, I shall still take care of
you--ah, yes!--and if there’s a heaven as the preachers say, I shall
meet poor Fred your father there, and we shall both look down and bless
you.’
‘I have no father but you! You are all the world to me! You will not
die!’
But White continued quietly, as if pursuing his own thoughts--
‘And while dear Forster lives you will not be without a friend; many
a time has he lightened my load, and I wish you’d let him help you to
carry yours. If you would promise me to become his wife, I should be
very happy.’
‘I cannot! You know I cannot!’
As she uttered the words, he became conscious of a movement in the room,
and looking round saw Forster standing at the foot of the bed.
‘Is that you, Forster?’ asked White, faintly. ‘Come here, I wish to
speak to you;’ and he added when Forster had passed round and stood
looking down sadly upon him.
‘You’ll be kind to Madeline, old fellow, after----’
And he turned his face on the pillow to hide his tears. Forster did not
reply in words, but with tears glistening on his own cheeks laid his
hand softly on the sick man’s shoulder. Presently White looked round,
and, fixing his great dim eyes on Madeline’s face, whispered--
‘My dear! Will you go--only a little while? I wish to speak to Forster.’
She bent over the bed and kissed him tenderly on the forehead; then with
a sob as if her heart was breaking she left the room.
She went into the next chamber, a small room overlooking the garden,
and, sitting at the window, looked out through streaming tears. Many
minutes passed, and at last, anxious and impatient, she rose to return
to her post. As she did so, Forster appeared at the door and beckoned.
‘Will you come now?’ he whispered. ‘He is asking for you.’
She stepped softly in, and approached the bedside. With a smile of
ineffable love and tenderness the dying man turned his face up to hers
and, reaching out his tremulous hands, gave one to her, the other to
Forster; then he said in a voice so indistinct that they had to stoop
their heads to catch the word--
‘I have spoken to Forster... he will take care of of you, my dear... a
good fellow... always my best friend, God bless him... now I can go in
peace.’
Then feebly but firmly he drew the two hands together and joined them;
that of Madeline lay in that of Forster, with the fingers of the
dying man encircling both; and she did not draw hers away for fear of
disturbing her dear guardian’s last moments. In this position he closed
his eyes, and seemed to doze. A little while after the breath fluttered,
the feeble frame trembled, and the gentle spirit was gone for ever.
What followed was to Madeline a dark and painful dream. Ever wild and
impressionable in her grief as well as her joyful impulses, she yielded
to such a storm of grief as threatened for a time to overthrow her
reason. During this time of sorrow Madame de Berny watched her with
maternal tenderness, and the touch of her tender ministration brought a
certain comfort.
But when the first wild shock was over, the brave disposition of the
girl asserted itself, and, hushing the tumult of her pain, she went
with Madame de Berny to see the place which Forster had chosen for his
friend’s last resting-place, It was a pretty spot, in a green corner of
the cemetery at Hampstead, with green boughs all round, flowers on every
side, and the spires of the great city in the distance; and standing
here, near the place chosen for the grave, Madeline could hear the
chimes of London sounding faint and far away.
When the day of the funeral came, she went as chief mourner, for
her soul revolted at the cruel custom which keeps our womankind from
following the dead. She stood by the side of the grave, heard the solemn
words of blessing, and saw the coffin lowered to its place; and she
raised her weeping face to the bright skies, praying and believing that
her guardian’s spirit had gone _there_.
Near her that day stood a motley crowd of artistic Bohemians, bearded
men for the most part, shabby of apparel, but full of honest grief; some
of them, with true tears in their eyes, came softly up to speak a few
words of sympathy to the mourning girl; and she loved the rough fellows
for their resemblance to him who had passed away.
Then Madeline went back to the home that was home no longer, and thought
day and night of the beloved dead.
*****
It was many weeks after these sad events that Forster came one day to
St. John’s Wood, and found Madeline still sitting in the shadow of her
great grief; but she had found one sweet comfort in looking over her
guardian’s papers and placing them in order with her loving hand, for
she remembered one lifelong dream of the poor Bohemian--to see his
beloved plays arranged together and published in book form; and she
thought to herself that the world should know what a beautiful genius it
had lost, when it saw the creatures of his imagination gathered together
for the first time.
When Forster came they talked for some time of the proposed publication.
An old friend of White, eminent as a critic and a dramatic poet, was to
revise the work, and prepare it with a short biography, and at the end
of the book were to be printed a few last memorials, and some obituary
verses by members of the Bohemian Club, to which White had belonged.
Presently, however, Forster changed the subject, and spoke of the wish
which was still nearest his heart. Then, when Madeline turned away as if
shocked and pained, he took her hand and said earnestly--
‘It was _his_ wish, do not forget that. He knew I loved you, and he
joined our hands together.’
‘No, no!’ said Madeline. ‘Do not speak of it--he knew it was
impossible--he could not wish it.’
‘Madeline, he _did_ wish it, with all his heart. Listen to me, my
darling! That day before he joined our hands together he asked to speak
to me alone--do you remember?
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what he wished to say?’
Madeline shook her head sadly.
‘He wished to tell me something concerning yourself. “Forster,” he said,
“I tell you these things because I trust you before God, because I think
that it is best that you should know, and because I feel you will never
love my darling less.” Then, Madeline, he told me why you refused to
marry me, why you had said you would never marry any living man.’
Pale as death, Madeline turned her face away.
‘He told you that!’ she murmured, shivering as if chilled.
‘He told me everything, my darling; and now, knowing everything, knowing
your great sorrow, and knowing and loving you a thousandfold, I ask you
again to become my wife.’