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CHAPTER II.
ABOUT five months after Alfred Monkton came of age I left
college, and resolved to amuse and instruct myself a little by
traveling abroad.
At the time when I quitted England young Monkton was still
leading his secluded life at the Abbey, and was, in the opinion
of everybody, sinking rapidly, if he had not already succumbed,
under the hereditary curse of his family. As to the Elmslies,
report said that Ada had benefited by her sojourn abroad, and
that mother and daughter were on their way back to England to
resume their old relations with the heir of Wincot. Before they
returned I was away on my travels, and wandered half over Europe,
hardly ever planning whither I should shape my course beforehand.
Chance, which thus led me everywhere, led me at last to Naples.
There I met with an old school friend, who was one of the
attaches at the English embassy, and there began the
extraordinary events in connection with Alfred Monkton which form
the main interest of the story I am now relating.
I was idling away the time one morning with my friend the
attache in the garden of the Villa Reale, when we were passed
by a young man, walking alone, who exchanged bows with my friend.
I thought I recognized the dark, eager eyes, the colorless
cheeks, the strangely-vigilant, anxious expression which I
remembered in past times as characteristic of Alfred Monkton's
face, and was about to question my friend on the subject, when he
gave me unasked the information of which I was in search.
"That is Alfred Monkton," said he; "he comes from your part of
England. You ought to know him."
"I do know a little of him," I answered; "he was engaged to Miss
Elmslie when I was last in the neighborhood of Wincot. Is he
married to her yet?"
"No, and he never ought to be. He has gone the way of the rest of
the family--or, in plainer words, he has gone mad."
"Mad! But I ought not to be surprised at hearing that, after the
reports about him in England."
"I speak from no reports; I speak from what he has said and done
before me, and before hundreds of other people. Surely you must
have heard of it?"
"Never. I have been out of the way of news from Naples or England
for months past."
"Then I have a very extraordinary story to tell you. You know, of
course, that Alfred had an uncle, Stephen Monkton. Well, some
time ago this uncle fought a duel in the Roman States with a
Frenchman, who shot him dead. The seconds and the Frenchman (who
was unhurt) took to flight in different directions, as it is
supposed. We heard nothing here of the details of the duel till a
month after it happened, when one of the French journals
published an account of it, taken from the papers left by
Monkton's second, who died at Paris of consumption. These papers
stated the manner in which the duel was fought, and how it
terminated, but nothing more. The surviving second and the
Frenchman have never been traced from that time to this. All that
anybody knows, therefore, of the duel is that Stephen Monkton was
shot; an event which nobody can regret, for a greater scoundrel
never existed. The exact place where he died, and what was done
with the body are still mysteries not to be penetrated."
"But what has all this to do with Alfred?"
"Wait a moment, and you will hear. Soon after the news of his
uncle's death reached England, what do you think Alfred did? He
actually put off his marriage with Miss Elmslie, which was then
about to be celebrated, to come out here in search of the
burial-place of his wretched scamp of an uncle; and no power on
earth will now induce him to return to England and to Miss
Elmslie until he has found the body, and can take it back with
him, to be buried with all the other dead Monktons in the vault
under Wincot Abbey Chapel. He has squandered his money, pestered
the police, and exposed himself to the ridicule of the men and
the indignation of the women for the last three months in trying
to achieve his insane purpose, and is now as far from it as ever.
He will not assign to anybody the smallest motive for his
conduct. You can't laugh him out of it or reason him out of it.
When we met him just now, I happen to know that he was on his way
to the office of the police minister, to send out fresh agents to
search and inquire through the Roman States for the place where
his uncle was shot. And, mind, all this time he professes to be
passionately in love with Miss Elmslie, and to be miserable at
his separation from her. Just think of that! And then think of
his self-imposed absence from her here, to hunt after the remains
of a wretch who was a disgrace to the family, and whom he never
saw but once or twice in his life. Of all the 'Mad Monktons,' as
they used to call them in England, Alfred is the maddest. He is
actually our principal excitement in this dull opera season;
though, for my own part, when I think of the poor girl in
England, I am a great deal more ready to despise him than to
laugh at him."
"You know the Elmslies then?"
"Intimately. The other day my mother wrote to me from England,
after having seen Ada. This escapade of Monkton's has outraged
all her friends. They have been entreating her to break off the
match, which it seems she could do if she liked. Even her mother,
sordid and selfish as she is, has been obliged at last, in common
decency, to side with the rest of the family; but the good,
faithful girl won't give Monkton up. She humors his insanity;
declares he gave her a good reason in secret for going away; says
she could always make him happy when they were together in the
old Abbey, and can make him still happier when they are married;
in short, she loves him dearly, and will therefore believe in him
to the last. Nothing shakes her. She has made up her mind to
throw away her life on him, and she will do it."
"I hope not. Mad as his conduct looks to us, he may have some
sensible reason for it that we cannot imagine. Does his mind seem
at all disordered when he talks on ordinary topics?"
"Not in the least. When you can get him to say anything, which is
not often, he talks like a sensible, well-educated man. Keep
silence about his precious errand here, and you would fancy him
the gentlest and most temperate of human beings; but touch the
subject of his vagabond of an uncle, and the Monkton madness comes out directly. The other night a lady asked him, jestingly
of course, whether he had ever seen his uncle's ghost. He scowled
at her like a perfect fiend, and said that he and his uncle would
answer her question together some day, if they came from hell to
do it. We laughed at his words, but the lady fainted at his
looks, and we had a scene of hysterics and hartshorn in
consequence. Any other man would have been kicked out of the room
for nearly frightening a pretty woman to death in that way; but
'Mad Monkton,' as we have christened him, is a privileged lunatic
in Neapolitan society, because he is English, good-looking, and
worth thirty thousand a year. He goes out everywhere under the
impression that he may meet with somebody who has been let into
the secret of the place where the mysterious duel was fought. If
you are introduced to him he is sure to ask you whether you know
anything about it; but beware of following up the subject after
you have answered him, unless you want to make sure that he is
out of his senses. In that case, only talk of his uncle, and the
result will rather more than satisfy you."
A day or two after this conversation with my friend the
attache, I met Monkton at an evening party.
The moment he heard my name mentioned, his face flushed up; he
drew me away into a corner, and referring to his cool reception
of my advance years ago toward making his acquaintance, asked my
pardon for what he termed his inexcusable ingratitude with an
earnestness and an agitation which utterly astonished me. His
next proceeding was to question me, as my friend had said he
would, about the place of the mysterious duel.
An extraordinary change came over him while he interrogated me on
this point. Instead of looking into my face as they had looked
hitherto, his eyes wandered away, and fixed themselves intensely,
almost fiercely, either on the perfectly empty wall at our side,
or on the vacant space between the wall and ourselves, it was
impossible to say which. I had come to Naples from Spain by sea,
and briefly told him so, as the best way of satisfying him that I
could not assist his inquiries. He pursued them no further; and,
mindful of my friend's warning, I took care to lead the
conversation to general topics. He looked back at me directly,
and, as long as we stood in our corner, his eyes never wandered
away again to the empty wall or the vacant space at our side.
Though more ready to listen than to speak, his conversation, when
he did talk, had no trace of anything the least like insanity
about it. He had evidently read, not generally only, but deeply
as well, and could apply his reading with singular felicity to
the illustration of almost any subject under discussion, neither
obtruding his knowledge absurdly, nor concealing it affectedly.
His manner was in itself a standing protest against such a
nickname as "Mad Monkton." He was so shy, so quiet, so composed
and gentle in all his actions, that at times I should have been
almost inclined to call him effeminate. We had a long talk
together on the first evening of our meeting; we often saw each
other afterward, and never lost a single opportunity of bettering
our acquaintance. I felt that he had taken a liking to me, and,
in spite of what I had heard about his behavior to Miss Elmslie,
in spite of the suspicions which the history of his family and
his own conduct had arrayed against him, I began to like "Mad
Monkton" as much as he liked me. We took many a quiet ride
together in the country, and sailed often along the shores of the
Bay on either side. But for two eccentricities in his conduct,
which I could not at all understand, I should soon have felt as
much at my ease in his society as if he had been my own brother.
The first of these eccentricities consisted in the reappearance
on several occasions of the odd expression in his eyes which I
had first seen when he asked me whether I knew anything about the
duel. No matter what we were talking about, or where we happened
to be, there were times when he would suddenly look away from my
face, now on one side of me, now on the other, but always where
there was nothing to see, and always with the same intensity and
fierceness in his eyes. This looked so like madness--or
hypochondria at the least--that I felt afraid to ask him about
it, and always pretended not to observe him.
The second peculiarity in his conduct was that he never referred,
while in my company, to the reports about his errand at Naples,
and never once spoke of Miss Elmslie, or of his life at Wincot
Abbey. This not only astonished me, but amazed those who had
noticed our intimacy, and who had made sure that I must be the
depositary of all his secrets. But the time was near at hand when
this mystery, and some other mysteries of which I had no
suspicion at that period, were all to be revealed.
I met him one night at a large ball, given by a Russian nobleman,
whose name I could not pronounce then, and cannot remember now. I
had wandered away from reception-room, ballroom, and cardroom, to
a small apartment at one extremity of the palace, which was half
conservatory, half boudoir, and which had been prettily
illuminated for the occasion with Chinese lanterns. Nobody was in
the room when I got there. The view over the Mediterranean,
bathed in the bright softness of Italian moonlight, was so lovely
that I remained for a long time at the window, looking out, and
listening to the dance-music which faintly reached me from the
ballroom. My thoughts were far away with the relations I had left
in England, when I was startled out of them by hearing my name
softly pronounced.
I looked round directly, and saw Monkton standing in the room. A
livid paleness overspread his face, and his eyes were turned away
from me with the same extraordinary expression in them to which I
have already alluded.
"Do you mind leaving the ball early to-night?" he asked, still
not looking at me.
"Not at all," said I. "Can I do anything for you? Are you ill?"
"No--at least nothing to speak of. Will you come to my rooms?"
"At once, if you like."
"No, not at once. I must go home directly; but don't you come
to me for half an hour yet. You have not been at my rooms before,
I know, but you will easily find them out; they are close by.
There is a card with my address. I must speak to you to-night;
my life depends on it. Pray come! for God's sake, come when the
half hour is up!"
I promised to be punctual, and he left me directly.
Most people will be easily able to imagine the state of nervous
impatience and vague expectation in which I passed the allotted
period of delay, after hearing such words as those Monkton had
spoken to me. Before the half hour had quite expired I began to
make my way out through the ballroom.
At the head of the staircase my friend, the attache, met me.
"What! going away already?" Said he.
"Yes; and on a very curious expedition. I am going to Monkton's
rooms, by his own invitation."
"You don't mean it! Upon my honor, you're a bold fellow to trust
yourself alone with 'Mad Monkton' when the moon is at the full."
"He is ill, poor fellow. Besides, I don't think him half as mad
as you do."
"We won't dispute about that; but mark my words, he has not asked
you to go where no visitor has ever been admitted before without
a special purpose. I predict that you will see or hear something
to-night which you will remember for the rest of your life."
We parted. When I knocked at the courtyard gate of the house
where Monkton lived, my friend's last words on the palace
staircase recurred to me, and, though I had laughed at him when
he spoke them, I began to suspect even then that his prediction
would be fulfilled.
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