Babylon. Volume 3

CHAPTER XLV. HOVERING

Acute Roman fever is a very serious matter. For seven days Audouin lay in extreme danger, hovering between life and death, with the crisis always approaching but never actually arriving. Every day, when the English doctor came to see him, Audouin asked feebly from his pillow, ‘Am I getting worse?’ and the doctor, who fancied he was a nervous man, answered cheerfully, ‘Well, no, not worse; about the same again this morning, though I’m afraid I can’t exactly say you’re any better. Audouin turned round wearily with a sigh, and thought to himself, ‘How hard a thing it is to die, after all, even when you really want to.’

Colin Churchill came to see him as soon as ever he heard of his illness, and sitting in the easy-chair by the sick man’s bedside, he said to him in a reproachful tone, ‘Mr. Audouin, you don’t play fair. You’ve broken the spirit of the agreement. Our compact was, no suicide. Now, I’m sure you’ve been recklessly exposing yourself out upon the Campagna, or else why should you have got this fever so very suddenly?’

Audouin smiled a faint smile from the bed, and answered half incoherently, ‘Chapter of accidents. Put your trust in bad luck, and verily you will not be disappointed. But I’m afraid it’s a terribly long and tedious piece of work, this dying.’

‘If you weren’t so ill,’ Colin answered gravely and sternly, ‘I think I should have to be very angry with you. You haven’t stood by the spirit of the contract. As it is, we must do our best to defeat your endeavours, and bring you back to life again.’

Audouin moved restlessly in the bed. ‘You must do your worst, I recognise,’ he said; ‘but I don’t think you’ll get the better of the fever for all that: she’s a goddess, you know, and had her temple once upon the brow of the Palatine. Many have prayed to her to avoid them; it must be a novelty for her to hear a prayer for her good company. Perhaps she may be merciful to her only willing votary. But she’s long about it; she might have got through by this time. Anyhow, you mustn’t be too hard upon me, Churchill.’

As for Hiram, Audouin’s illness came upon him like a final thunderclap. Everything had gone ill with him lately; he had reached almost the blackest abyss of despondency already; and if Audouin were to die now, he felt that his cup of bitterness would be overflowing. Besides, though he knew nothing, of course, of Audouin’s interview with Colin Churchill, he had a grave suspicion in his own mind that his friend had egged himself into an illness by brooding over Truman’s visit and Hiram’s own proposals for returning to America. Of course all that was laid aside now, at least for the present. Whatever came, he must stop and nurse Audouin; and he nursed him with all the tender care and delicacy of a woman.

Gwen came round often, too, and sat watching in the sick-room for hours together. The colonel objected to it seriously – so very extraordinary, you know; indeed, really quite compromising; but Gwen was not to be kept away by the colonel’s scruples and prejudices; so she watched and waited in her own good time, taking turns with Hiram in day and night nursing. It was all perfect misery to Audouin; the more he wanted to die for Gwen’s and Hiram’s convenience, the more utterly determined they both seemed to be to keep him living somehow at all hazards.

On the seventh day, the crisis came, and Audouin began to sink rapidly. Gwen and Hiram were both by his bedside, and Colin Churchill and Minna were waiting anxiously in the little salon alongside. When the doctor came, he stopped longer than usual; and as he passed out, Colin asked him what news this morning of the poor patient. The doctor twirled his watch-chain quietly. ‘Well,’ he said, in his calm professional manner, ‘I should say it was probable he would get through the night; but I doubt if he’ll live over Sunday.’

‘Then there’s no hope, you think?’ Minna asked with tears in her eyes.

‘Well, I couldn’t exactly say that,’ the doctor answered. ‘A medical man always hopes to the last moment, especially in acute diseases. The critical point’s hardly reached yet. Oh yes, he might recover; he might recover, certainly; but it isn’t likely.’

Colin and Minna sat down once more in the empty salon, and looked at one another long, without speaking. At last there came a knock at the door. Colin answered ‘Enter,’ and a servant entered. ‘A card for Signor Vintrop,’ he said, handing it to Colin. ‘The bringer says he must see him on important business immediately.’

Colin cast a careless glance at the card. It was that of a well-known Roman picture-dealer, agent for one of the largest firms of fine art auctioneers in London. ‘How very ill-timed,’ he said to Minna, handing her the card. At any other moment, Hiram would have been delighted; but it’s quite impossible to trouble him with this at such a crisis.

‘Does he want to buy some of Mr. Winthrop’s pictures, do you think, Colin?’ Minna asked anxiously.

‘I’m sure he does; but it can’t be helped now. Tell the gentleman that Mr. Winthrop can’t see him now, if you please, Antonio. He’s watching by the side of the American signor who is dying.’

Antonio bowed and went out. In a minute he returned once more. ‘The person can’t wait,’ he said; ‘the affair is urgent. He wishes to give Signor Vintrop an important commission. He wishes to buy pictures, many pictures, immediately. He has come from the studio, hearing that Signor Vintrop was at the hotel, and he wishes particularly to speak with him instantaneously.’

Colin looked at Minna and shook his head.

‘This is very annoying, really, Minna,’ he said with a sigh. ‘At any other time, it would have been a perfect godsend; but now – one can’t drag him away from poor Audouin’s bedside. Tell the gentleman, Antonio,’ he went on in Italian, ‘that Mr. Winthrop can’t possibly see him. It is most absolutely and decidedly impossible.’

Antonio went away, and for half an hour more Colin and Minna conversed together in an undertone without further interruption. Then a knock came again, and Antonio entered with a second card. It bore the name of another famous Roman picture-dealer, the agent for the rival London firm. ‘He says he must see Signor Vintrop without delay,’ Antonio reported, ‘upon important business of the strictest urgency.’

Colin hesitated a moment. ‘This is really very remarkable, Minna,’ he said slowly, turning over the card in great perplexity. ‘Why on earth should the two principal picture-dealers in Rome want to see Hiram Winthrop so very particularly on the same morning?’

‘I can’t imagine,’ Minna answered, looking at the card curiously. ‘Don’t you think, Colin, you’d better see the man and ask him what’s the meaning of it?’

Colin nodded assent, and went to the door to speak to the dealer. As he did so, a second servant stepped up with yet another card, that of a Manchester picture-agent in person.

‘What do you want to see Mr. Winthrop for in such a hurry?’ Colin asked the Italian dealer. ‘How is it you all wish to buy his pictures the same morning? He’s been in Rome a good many years now, but nobody ever seemed in any great haste to become a purchaser.’

‘I cannot tell you, signor,’ the dealer answered blandly; ‘but I have my instructions from London. I have a telegram direct from a most illustrious firm, requesting me to buy up the landscapes, and especially the American landscapes, of Signor Vintrop.’

‘And if Mr. Winthrop’s too ill himself to come and show me his studio,’ the Manchester agent put in, in English, ‘perhaps, sir, you might step round yourself and arrange matters with me on his behalf.’

Colin hesitated a moment. It was an awkward predicament. He didn’t like to go away selling pictures when Audouin was actually dying; and yet, knowing what he knew, and taking into consideration Audouin’s particular mental constitution, he saw in it a possible chance of saving his life indirectly. Something or other had occurred, that was clear, to make a sudden demand arise for Hiram’s pictures. If the demand was a genuine one, and if he could sell them for good prices, the effect upon Audouin might be truly magical. The man was really dying, not of fever, of that Colin felt certain, but of hopeless chagrin and disappointment. If he could only learn that Hiram’s landscapes were meeting with due appreciation after all, he might perhaps even now recover.

Colin went back to Minna for a few minutes’ whispered conversation; and then, having learned from Gwen (without telling her his plans) that Audouin was no worse, and that he would probably go on without serious change for some hours, he hurried off to the studio between the two intending purchasers.

As he got to the door, he saw a small crowd of artistic folk, mostly agents or dealers, and amongst them he noticed a friend and fellow-student at Maragliano’s, the young Englishman, Arthur Forton. ‘Why, what on earth’s the meaning of this, Forton?’ he asked in fresh amazement. ‘All the world seems to have taken suddenly to besieging Winthrop’s studio.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Forton answered briskly; ‘I thought there was sure to be a run upon his bank after what I saw in Truman’s paper; and I happened to be at Raffaele Pedrocchi’s when a telegram came in from Magnus of London asking him to buy up all Winthrop’s landscapes that he could lay his hands upon at once, and especially authorising him to pay up to something in cypher for Chattawauga Lake or some such heathenish Yankee name or other. So I came round immediately to see Winthrop, and advise him not to let the things go for a mere song, as Magnus is evidently anxious to get them almost at any price.’

Colin listened in profound astonishment. ‘Truman’s paper!’ he cried in surprise. ‘Why, Winthrop positively assured me that Truman told him he ought to go back at once to America.’

‘So he did, no doubt,’ Forton replied carelessly. ‘Indeed, he tells him so in print in Fortuna Melliflua. Here’s the cutting: I cut it out on purpose, so that Winthrop might take care he wasn’t chiselled, as you were, you know, over “Autumn and the Breezes.”’

Colin took the scrap of paper from the little pamphlet from Forton’s hands, and read the whole paragraph through with a thrill of pleasure.

‘And yet from this same entirely damned land of America,’ ran Mr. Truman’s candid and vigorous criticism, ‘some good thing may haply come, even as (cynical Nathaniel to the contrary notwithstanding) some good thing did indubitably come out of Nazareth of Galilee. The other day, walking by chance into a certain small shabby studio, down a side alley from the Street of the Beautiful Ladies at Rome, I unearthed there busily at work upon a Babylonian Woe one Hiram Winthrop, an American artist, who had fled from America and the City of Destruction to come enthusiastically Romeward. He had better far have stopped at home. For this young man Winthrop, a God-sent landscape painter, if ever there was one, has in truth the veritable eye for seeing and painting a bit of overgrown rank waterside vegetation exactly as nature herself originally disposed it, with no nice orthodox and academical graces of arrangement, but simply so – weeds and water – no more than that; just a tangled corner of neglected reeds and waving irises, seen in an aerial perspective which is almost stereoscopic. Strange to say, this American savage from the wild woods can reproduce the wild woods from which he came, in all their native wildness, without the remotest desire to make them look like a Dutch picture of the garden of Eden. Moreover, he positively knows that red things are red, green things green, and white things white; a piece of knowledge truly remarkable in this artificially colour-blind age of dichroic vision (I get my fine words from a scientific treatise on the subject by Professor Stilling of Leipzig, to whose soul may heaven be merciful). There was one picture of his there – Chattawauga Lake I think he called it – which I had it in my mind to buy at the moment, and had even gone so far as to purse up my lips into due form for saying, “How much is it?” (as we price spring chickens at market), but on deeper thought, I refrained deliberately, because I am now a poor man, and I do not want to buy pictures at low rates, being fully of opinion, on good warranty, that the labourer is worthy of his hire. So I left it, more out of political than personal economy, for some wealthier man to buy hereafter. Yet whoever does buy Chattawauga Lake (the name alone is too repellant) will find himself in possession, I do not hesitate to say, of the finest bit of entirely sincere and scrupulous landscape that has ever been painted since Turner’s brush lay finally still upon his broken palette. And young Mr. Hiram Wintlirop himself, I dare predict, will go back to America hereafter and give us other landscapes which will more than suffice to wash out the Babylonian woes whereupon he is at present engaged in sedulously wasting a most decisive and categorical genius.’

Colin took the scrap of paper in his hands, and went with Forton into the disorderly studio.

‘May I take it to show Winthrop and Audouin?’ he asked.

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.