“Do you think there was any struggle, my dear Dick?” Lionel looked at his guide with anguish.
“No, my lord; there seems to have been no wrench, no painful parting from life. What you witnessed, that evening when the world abandoned him, must have been the only agony he ever knew.”
“Yes, his was a sad life. He loved no one.”
“My dear Lord Somerville, what is much worse still, no one loved him. The inadequacy of this little man to his environment made his existence pitiful.”
They looked round the room. The doors, window frames and shutters were all of mahogany. The bed, in the shape of a gondola, also of mahogany, was supported by two gilded swans’ heads, and garlands in gilt ornamented the sides of the bed. In one corner of the room was a mahogany pedestal on which stood a silver candelabra; in another corner, a small chiffonier was placed; and on the dressing-table stood a silver bowl containing a bouquet of faded roses.
“What a strange idea of his,” Lionel whispered; “this is quite a woman’s bedroom, and a copy of Madame Récamier’s room in Paris.” Tears gathered in his eyes. “And this is all he could invent to surround himself with; but I daresay it all went together with his taste for the old minuetto.”
“Let us be off, my lord. His silly little tale is told, and this atmosphere is unhealthy.”
They left the bedside, closed the mahogany shutters and went out of the room.
“We shall have to give notice at the Crematorium,” said Lionel, when they were once more in the balmy air and sunshine.
“If you like I will go, my lord. Do not trouble yourself.”
It was pleasant to breathe again the fragrance of trees and flowers. Piccadilly seemed full of life and happiness after that scene in the death chamber. It was altogether so artificial that Lionel could feel no sorrow for the loss of his little friend, and by the time they had reached Park Lane he had almost banished from his memory the mahogany room and the little corpse lying there.
“I do not think I shall mention this to Gwendolen,” said Lord Somerville.
“I should not, my lord. Why should you mention the death of what you are not quite sure ever existed? The little _dilettante_ was an optical delusion of Society’s over-heated brain. When the brain fever was cured, the delusion went; and no one now could remember the existence of the little mannikin.”