That vulgar reminiscence seemed to be the signal for which Matilda was waiting. "Charles Whitney," she said, "you and I have brought up our children to take their proper place in our aristocracy of wealth and birth and breeding. And I know you're not going to undo what we've done, and done well."
"That's your 'bossy' tone, Mattie," he drawled, his desire to talk getting a fresh excuse for indulging itself. "I guess this is a good time to let you into a secret. You've thought you ran me ever since we were engaged. That delusion of yours nearly lost you the chance to lead these thirty years of wedded bliss with me. If you hadn't happened to make me jealous and afraid the one man I used to envy in those days would get you—I laughed the other day when he was appointed postmaster at Indianapolis—However, I did marry you, and did let you imagine you wore the pants. It seemed to amuse you, and it certainly amused me—though not in the same way. Now I want you to look back and think hard. You can't remember a single time that what you bossed me to do was ever done. I was always fond of playing tricks and pulling secret wires, and I did a lot of it in making you think you were bossing me when you were really being bossed."
It was all Mrs. Whitney could do to keep her mind on how sick he was, and how imperative it was not to get him out of humor. "I never meant to try to influence you, Charles," she said, "except as anyone tries to help those about one. And certainly you've been the one that has put us all in our present position. That's why it distressed me for you even to talk of undoing your work."
Whitney smiled satirically, mysteriously. "I'll do what I think best," was all he replied. And presently he added, "though I don't feel like doing anything. It seems to me I don't care what happens, or whether I live—or—don't. I'll go to Saint X. I'm just about strong enough to stand the trip—and have Schulze come out to Point Helen this evening."
"Why not save your strength and have him come here?" urged Matilda.
"He wouldn't," replied her husband. "Last time I saw him he looked me over and said: 'Champagne. If you don't stop it you won't live. Don't come here again unless you cut out that poison.' But I never could resist champagne. So I told myself he was an old crank, and found a great doctor I could hire to agree with me. No use to send for Schulze to come all this distance. I might even have to go to his office if I was at Saint X. He won't go to see anybody who's able to move about. 'As they want me, let 'em come to me, just as I'd go to them if I wanted them,' he says. 'The air they get on the way is part of the cure.' Besides, he and I had a quarrel. He was talking his nonsense against religion, and I said something, and he implied I wasn't as straight in business as I should be—quoted something about 'He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent,' and one thing led to another, and finally he said, with that ugly jeer of his: 'You pious bandits are lucky to have a forgiving God to go to. Now we poor devils have only our self-respect, and it never forgives anything.'" Whitney laughed, reflected, laughed again. "Yes, I must see Schulze. Maybe—Anyhow, I'm going to Saint X—going home, or as near home as anything my money has left me."
He drowsed off. She sat watching him—the great beak, the bulging forehead, the thin, cruel lips; and everywhere in the garden of artificial flowers which formed the surface of her nature, hiding its reality even from herself, there appeared the poisonous snakes of hateful thoughts to shoot their fangs and hiss at him. She shrank and shuddered; yet—"It's altogether his own fault that I feel this way toward him as he lies dying," she said to herself, resorting to human nature's unfailing, universally sought comforter in all trying circumstances—self-excuse. "He always was cold and hard. He has become a monster. And even in his best days he wasn't worthy to have such a woman as I am. And now he is thinking of cheating me—and will do it—unless God prevents him."
He drowsed on, more asleep than awake, not even rousing when they put him to bed. He did not go to Saint X that day. But he did go later—went to lie in state in the corridor of the splendid hall he had given Tecumseh; to be gaped at by thousands who could not see that they were viewing a few pounds of molded clay, so busy were their imaginations with the vast fortune it was supposed he left; to be preached over, the sermon by Dr. Hargrave, who believed in him—and so, in estimating the man as distinguished from what the system he lived under had made of him, perhaps came nearer the truth than those who talked only of the facts of his public career—his piracy, his bushwhacking, his gambling with the marked cards and loaded dice of "high finance"; to be buried in the old Cedar Grove Cemetery, with an imposing monument presently over him, before it fresh flowers every day for a year—the Marchioness of St. Berthè contracted with a florist to attend to that.
* * * * *
Four days after the funeral Janet sent a servant down to Adelaide and to Mrs. Ranger with notes begging them to come to Point Helen for lunch. "We are lonely and so dreary," she wrote Adelaide. "We want you—need you." Only one answer was possible, and at half-past twelve they set out in Mrs. Ranger's carriage. As they drove away from the Villa d'Orsay Mrs. Ranger said: "When does Mrs. Dorsey allow to come home?"