“Not many, I fear, sir: perhaps until daybreak.”
“My day breaks about twelve o’clock, p.m.,” said Saville, as drily as his gasps would let him. “Very well;—give me the cordial;—don’t let me go to sleep—I don’t want to be cheated out of a minute. So, so—! I am better. You may withdraw, doctor. Let my spaniel come up. Bustle, Bustle!—poor fellow! poor fellow! Lie down, sir! be quiet! And now, Godolphin, a few words in farewell. I always liked you greatly; you know you were my protege, and you have turned out well. You have not been led away by the vulgar passions of politics, and place, and power. You have had power over power itself; you have not office, but you have fashion. You have made the greatest match in England; very prudently not marrying Constance Vernon, very prudently marrying Lady Erpingham. You are at the head and front of society; you have excellent taste, and spend your wealth properly. All this must make your conscience clear—a wonderful consolation! Always keep a sound conscience; it is a great blessing on one’s death-bed—it is a great blessing to me in this hour, for I have played my part decently—eh?—I have enjoyed life, as much as so dull a possession can be enjoyed; I have loved, gamed, drunk, but I have never lost my character as a gentleman: thank Heaven, I have no remorse of that sort! Follow my example to the last and you will die as easily. I have left you my correspondence and my journal; you may publish them if you like; if not, burn them. They are full of amusing anecdotes; but I don’t care for fame, as you well know—especially posthumous fame. Do as you please then, with my literary remains. Take care of my dog—‘tis a good creature; and let me be quietly buried. No bad taste—no ostentation—no epitaph. I am very glad I die before the d—d Revolution that must come; I don’t want to take wine with the Member for Holborn Bars. I am a type of a system; I expire before the system; my death is the herald of its fall.”
With these expressions—not continuously uttered, but at short intervals—Saville turned away his face: his breathing became thick: he fell into the slumber he had deprecated; and, after about an hour’s silence, died away as insensibly as an infant. Sic transit glories mundi!
The first living countenance beside the death-bed on which Godolphin’s eye fell was that of Fanny Millinger; she (who had been much with Saville during his latter days, for her talk amused him, and her good-nature made her willing to amuse any one) had been, at his request, summoned also with Godolphin at the sudden turn of his disease. She was at the theatre at the time, and had only just arrived when the deceased had fallen into his last sleep. There, silent and shocked, she stood by the bed, opposite Godolphin. She had not stayed to change her stage-dress; and the tinsel and mock jewels glittered on the revolted eye of her quondam lover. What a type of the life just extinguished! What a satire on its mountebank artificialities!
Some little time after, she joined Godolphin in the desolate apartment below. She put her hand in his, and her tears—for she wept easily—flowed fast down her cheeks, washing away the lavish rouge which imperfectly masked the wrinkles that Time had lately begun to sow on a surface Godolphin had remembered so fair and smooth.
“Poor Saville!” said she, falteringly; “he died without a pang. Ah! he had the best temper possible.”
Godolphin sat by the writing-table of the deceased, shading his brow with the hand which the actress left disengaged.
“Fanny,” said he, bitterly, after a pause, “the world is indeed a stage. It has lost a consummate actor, though in a small part.”
The saying was wrung from Godolphin—and was not said unkindly, though it seemed so—for he too had tears in his eyes.
“Ah,” said she, “the play-house has indeed taught us, in our youth, many things which the real world could not teach us better.”