"Patience! And do not interrupt me with questions. I am giving away a
secret which carries with it my--my reputation. Long before my
marriage I had known Lord Clarenceux. He knew many women; I was one of
them. That affair ended. I married Sullivan.
"I happened to be in Vienna at the time Lord Clarenceux was taken with
brain fever. I was performing at a music-hall on the Prater. There was
a great rage then for English singers in Vienna. I knew he was alone.
I remembered certain things that had passed between us, and I went to
him. I helped to nurse him. He was engaged to Rosa, but Rosa was far
away, and could not come immediately. He grew worse. The doctors said
one day that he must die. That night I was by his bedside. He got
suddenly up out of bed. I could not stop him: he had the strength of
delirium. He went into his dressing-room, and dressed himself fully,
even to his hat, without any assistance.
"'Where are you going?' I said to him.
"'I am going to her,' he said. 'These cursed doctors say I shall die.
But I sha'n't. I want her. Why hasn't she come? I must go and find
her.' "Then he fell across the bed exhausted. He was dying. I had rung for
help, but no one had come, and I ran out of the room to call on the
landing. When I came back he was sitting up in bed, all dressed, and
still with his hat on. It was the last flicker of his strength. His
eyes glittered. He began to speak. How he stared at me! I shall never
forget it!
"'I am dying!' he said hoarsely. 'They were right, after all. I shall
lose her. I would sell my soul to keep her, yet death takes me from
her. She is young and beautiful, and will live many years. But I have
loved her, and where I have loved let others beware. I shall never be
far from her, and if another man should dare to cast eyes on her I
will curse him. The heat of my jealousy shall blast his very soul. He,
too, shall die. Rosa was mine in life, and she shall be mine in death.
My spirit will watch over her, for no man ever loved a woman as I
loved Rosa.' Those were his very words, Carl. Soon afterwards he
died."
She recited Clarenceux's last phrases with such genuine emotion that I
could almost hear Clarenceux himself saying them. I felt sure that she
had remembered them precisely, and that Clarenceux would, indeed, have
employed just such terms.
"And you believe," I murmured, after a long pause, during which I
fitted the remarkable narration in with my experiences, and found that
it tallied--"you believe that Lord Clarenceux could keep his word
after death?"