When I rose to go he came with me out into the hotel corridor, despite his wife’s suggestion that there was sure to be a draught there.
He thrust into my hand a note-book. “There,” he said, “take that; it’s a journal I started to keep, and never did. Of course you can read it if you like. In the pocket you will find a check. I want you to get some things for me after I’ve gone; I’ve written down everything. You will do that for me, I know.”
I promised to carry out his instructions to the letter.
“Then that’s all right,” he answered.
At that moment his wife came to the door of their parlor. “I know it must be chilly out in the hall there,” she said.
“Oh, I’m coming,” he responded.
Then he grasped my fingers firmly in his hot hand. “Good-by, old man,” he whispered. “You remember how I used to think the frog that played the trombone was trying to execute a Heine-Schubert song? Well, perhaps it is—I don’t know; but what I do know is that it has played a wedding march, after all. And now good-by. God bless you! Go and see my mother as often as you can.”
He gave my hand a hearty shake, and went back into the parlor, and his wife shut the door after him.
I had intended to go down to the boat and see him off the next morning, but at breakfast I received a letter from his wife saying that he had passed a very restless night, and that she thought it would excite him still more if I saw him again, and begging me, therefore, not to come to the steamer if such had been my intention. And so it was that he sailed away and I never saw him again.
In the note-book I found a check for five hundred dollars, and a list of the things he wished me to get and to pay for. They were for his mother mostly, but one was a seal-ring for myself. And there was with the check a jeweler’s bill, “To articles sent as directed,” which I was also requested to pay.