IX
MAME’S friendship with “the mystery man” continued to grow. That was a name his fellow guests had given him. His comings and goings were indeed mysterious. Nobody knew where he took his meals. Nobody knew what his circumstances were. All the time he had been at Fotheringay House, which was quite a number of years, his name had never been seen in a playbill. But there was a legend that he had once had an engagement with Bancroft at the old Prince of Wales.
He was always dressed immaculately, he was the soul of courtesy, his talk was urbane, and to Mame at any rate, it seemed highly informed. But there was no concealing from her keen eyes that the old boy was thin as a rail. In fact she would hardly have been surprised if some bright morning a wind from the east had blown him away altogether. As for his clothes, in spite of the wonderful air with which he wore them, and good as they had been, they were almost threadbare and literally shone with age.
Mame gathered from one of the tabbies, who in the process of time began to thaw a little, that Mr. Falkland Vavasour was a distant connection of the landlady’s. This fact was held to explain why he wasallowed to live at Fotheringay House while invariably taking his meals at his club. At least it was generally understood that it was at his club that he took his meals. But wherever he may have taken them, even if the food was more delicate than at Fotheringay House, it could hardly have been more abundant. Week by week the old man grew thinner and thinner. His step on the drawing room carpet grew lighter and more feeble. Even his wonderful voice lost something of its timbre. Yet amid all these signs of decay, he retained that alert, sprightly man-of-the-worldliness which Mame found so curiously fascinating.
One morning, soon after breakfast, when she had been nearly five weeks at Fotheringay House, she sat in a corner of the dismal drawing room adding up her accounts and gloomily wondering whether the time had not come to look for “board and residence” that would cost less. Suddenly there came a rude shock. Mrs. Toogood entered in a state of agitation. Mr. Falkland Vavasour had just been found dead in his bed.
A doctor had already been sent for. But until he arrived the cause of Mr. Falkland Vavasour’s death must remain, like the old man himself, a mystery. The landlady as well as her p.g.’s were quite at a loss to account for the tragic occurrence. Miss Glendower, the most conversational of the tabbies, opined that it must be sheer old age. Dear Mr. Falkland Vavasour must certainly be very old.
Miss Du Rance agreed that he must be. For was he not playing the junior lead at the Liverpool Rotunda when the news came of President Lincoln’s assassination?
“What year was that?” asked Miss Glendower.
“’Sixty-five.” Mame gave that outstanding date in history with pride and with promptitude. Before starting east she had fortified a memory naturally good by a correspondence course; therefore she could trust it.
Miss Glendower had no doubt at all that old age was the cause of death. But Mame was visited suddenly by a grim suspicion. It might be old age. Or it might not— Before giving an opinion she would await the doctor’s verdict.
In a few minutes came the doctor. He was received by Mrs. Toogood, who led him slowly up two flights of stairs to the room of Mr. Falkland Vavasour. Overmastered by curiosity, and with an ever-deepening agitation fixing itself upon her—Mame had really liked this kindly and charming old man—she followed a small procession up the stairs.
She stood on the threshold of the room while the doctor bent over the bed. First he took one frail and shrunken hand and then he took the other.
“I’ve never heard him complain of any kind of illness,” she heard the landlady say in a low voice. “He never gave one the slightest reason to suspect there was anything wrong.”
“How long has he lived here?” the doctor asked.
“He has occupied this room for more than twenty years.”
“An actor, I think you said?”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Falkland Vavasour, quite a celebrated actor.”
“I don’t seem to remember the name. No doubt he belongs to a bygone generation.”
“He was a very distinguished man.”
“Where did he get his meals?”
“His meals?” The voice of the landlady grew a little vague. “Of late years he always took his meals out.”
“Can you tell me where?”
“At one of his smart clubs in the West End, I believe.”
“Which one in particular did he frequent? Can you tell me?”
Mrs. Toogood, unfortunately, could not. But she understood that he had been a member of several.
“Do I understand you to say, ma’am,” said the doctor, gently releasing the hand of the old man, “that Mr. Falkland Vavasour never took any food in this house?”
“When he came here first,” said the landlady, “he was usually in to all his meals. Then he gave up having dinner in the evening because of his digestion. After that he took to having his luncheon out. And for the last year, for some reason or other—he wasalways a bit faddy and peculiar in his ways—he used to go out for his breakfast. But as he had been here so long and he was a sort of connexion of my late husband’s—I don’t quite know what the relationship was but my husband was always proud of him—I allowed him to keep on his room.”
“It was duly paid for, I presume?”
“Always, punctually, until about three weeks ago. When he got behind it seemed to trouble him a good deal, but I told him not to worry.”
“Well, I am sorry to have to tell you that there will have to be a post mortem. Mr. Falkland Vavasour has all the appearance of having died of starvation.”
Mame waited to hear no more. She was deeply grieved. And she was rather shocked. Yet she was not so shocked as she would have been had not her swift mind leaped forward to the doctor’s verdict, even before the worthy man had arrived to give it. Yes, the grisly truth was plain for any who had eyes to see. Grand seigneur to the end, too proud to eat a crust he could not pay for, his only means of livelihood vanished long ago, he had passed out as he had lived, a prince among four-flushers.
Upstairs, in the privacy of her dismal room, Mame wept. Something had gone from Fotheringay House, something that could never return. Among all the millions of people seething around, this dear old man had been her only friend.
Shivering on the edge of her bed in that chill attic,she felt horribly lonely now. Nostalgia came upon her, a longing for home. She did not understand these people. A powerful craving for the hearty, simple folks she knew and loved crept over her while she fought to control her tears.