He reclined, propped up with pillows, in a large easy-chair; it was the one position in which he could still breathe with freedom. The ashy shades of death were on his wasted face. In the eyes alone, as they slowly turned on me, there still glimmered the waning light of life. One of his arms hung down over the chair; the other was clasped round his child, sitting on his knee. The boy looked at me wonderingly, as I stood by his father. Romayne signed to me to stoop, so that I might hear him.
“Penrose?” he asked, faintly whispering. “Dear Arthur! Not dying, like me?”
I quieted that anxiety. For a moment there was even the shadow of a smile on his face, as I told him of the effort that Penrose had vainly made to be the companion of my journey. He asked me, by another gesture, to bend my ear to him once more.
“My last grateful blessing to Penrose. And to you. May I not say it? You have saved Arthur”—his eyes turned toward Stella—“you have been her best friend.” He paused to recover his feeble breath; looking round the large room, without a creature in it but ourselves. Once more the melancholy shadow of a smile passed over his face—and vanished. I listened, nearer to him still.
“Christ took a child on His knee. The priests call themselves ministers of Christ. They have left me, because of this child, here on my knee. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Winterfield, Death is a great teacher. I know how I have erred—what I have lost. Wife and child. How poor and barren all the rest of it looks now!”
He was silent for a while. Was he thinking? No: he seemed to be listening—and yet there was no sound in the room. Stella, anxiously watching him, saw the listening expression as I did. Her face showed anxiety, but no surprise.
“Does it torture you still?” she asked.
“No,” he said; “I have never heard it plainly, since I left Rome. It has grown fainter and fainter from that time. It is not a Voice now. It is hardly a whisper: my repentance is accepted, my release is coming.—Where is Winterfield?”
She pointed to me.
“I spoke of Rome just now. What did Rome remind me of?” He slowly recovered the lost recollection. “Tell Winterfield,” he whispered to Stella, “what the Nuncio said when he knew that I was going to die. The great man reckoned up the dignities that might have been mine if I had lived. From my place here in the Embassy—”