A Strange, Sad Comedy

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Madame de Fonblanque rushed to the door, as she had been on the point of doing every moment she had been in the room. Bridge followed her, and caught her out in the hall.

“Madam,” he said, “I wants to say as I heard what Mr. Romaine said to you about your givin’ ’im ’is death blow. Mr. Romaine has been a-dyin’ for a month—and it s’prised me he lasted so long. I say this because it’s my dooty.”

“Thank you,” cried Madame de Fonblanque.

Mrs. Chessingham, Colonel Corbin, and Ethel Maywood were all gathered in the hall when Chessingham came out with a solemn face. Ethel was white and trembling, and felt a strange grief at knowing that Mr. Romaine was no more. There were no tears shed. All of them had at some time received kindnesses from Mr. Romaine, but also all of them had experienced the iron hand under the velvet glove. Madame de Fonblanque could not get away from the house fast enough, and so the same carriage that had brought them there landed them at Corbin Hall about one o’clock.

Farebrother, Letty, and Miss Jemima were still up. The fire had been kept going, although the lamp had long since given out. Colonel Corbin’s face told the story. A pause fell, as in the hall at Shrewsbury, and in the shadows Miss Jemima wiped two tears from her withered face. They were the only tears shed for Mr. Romaine.

Madame de Fonblanque’s nerve quite forsook her. She felt that she must get away from that place, so associated with tragic things, or die. It had suddenly moderated, and a warm rain had set in by midnight that was certain to break up the ice in the river. She begged and implored the Colonel to take her to the landing on the chance of the boat passing. Colonel Corbin could not say no to her pleading—and so, in the dimness of early dawn, she disappeared like a shadow that had come from another world and had gone back to it.

XIII

AS soon as the funeral was over came the reading of the will. On the outside was the request, written in Mr. Romaine’s own hand, that it be read by Chessingham, whom he appointed his executor in case he died in America—for in his own country there was scarcely a person with whom Mr. Romaine was upon terms of any close association. The request was also made that Colonel Corbin and Miss Letty Corbin be present when the will was read, and any one else that Chessingham desired.

On the day following the one when Mr. Romaine had been laid in the old burying-ground beside his fathers, Chessingham wrote a note to Colonel and Miss Corbin, inviting their presence upon a certain day at Shrewsbury, and although Mr. Romaine had not mentioned any of his numerous tribes of nephews and nieces, Chessingham scrupulously invited them all. Farebrother, who found it very pleasant lingering at Corbin Hall as Letty’s lover, of course did not accompany the Corbins to Shrewsbury. Like Letty, he would have been pleased to have money “honestly come by,” so to speak; but the idea of having it under the circumstances from Mr. Romaine appeared to him as undesirable as it did to her.