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CHAPTER VI.
I RETURNED at the top of my speed to the village where I had left
the mules, had the animals saddled immediately, and succeeded in
getting back to Fondi a little before sunset.
While ascending the stairs of our hotel, I suffered under the
most painful uncertainty as to how I should best communicate the
news of my discovery to Alfred. If I could not succeed in
preparing him properly for my tidings, the results, with such an
organization as his, might be fatal. On opening the door of his
room, I felt by no means sure of myself; and when I confronted
him, his manner of receiving me took me so much by surprise that,
for a moment or two, I lost my self-possession altogether.
Every trace of the lethargy in which he was sunk when I had last
seen him had disappeared. His eyes were bright, his cheeks deeply
flushed. As I entered, he started up, and refused my offered
hand.
"You have not treated me like a friend," he said, passionately;
"you had no right to continue the search unless I searched with
you--you had no right to leave me here alone. I was wrong to
trust you; you are no better than all the rest of them."
I had by this time recovered a little from my first astonishment,
and was able to reply before he could say anything more. It was
quite useless, in his present state, to reason with him or to
defend myself. I determined to risk everything, and break my news
to him at once.
"You will treat me more justly, Monkton, when you know that I
have been doing you good service during my absence," I said.
"Unless I am greatly mistaken, the object for which we have left
Naples may be nearer attainment by both of us than--"
The flush left his cheeks almost in an instant. Some expression
in my face, or some tone in my voice, of which I was not
conscious, had revealed to his nervously-quickened perception
more than I had intended that he should know at first. His eyes
fixed themselves intently on mine; his hand grasped my arm; and
he said to me in an eager whisper:
"Tell me the truth at once. Have you found him?"
It was too late to hesitate. I answered in the affirmative.
"Buried or unburied?"
His voice rose abruptly as he put the question, and his
unoccupied hand fastened on my other arm.
"Unburied."
I had hardly uttered the word before the blood flew back into his
cheeks; his eyes flashed again as they looked into mine, and he
burst into a fit of triumphant laughter, which shocked and
startled me inexpressibly.
"What did I tell you? What do you say to the old prophecy now?"
he cried, dropping his hold on my arms, and pacing backward and
forward in the room. "Own you were wrong. Own it, as all Naples
shall own it, when once I have got him safe in his coffin!"
His laughter grew more and mere violent. I tried to quiet him in
vain. His servant and the landlord of the inn entered the room,
but they only added fuel to the fire, and I made them go out
again. As I shut the door on them, I observed lying on a table
near at hand the packet of letters from Miss Elmslie, which my
unhappy friend preserved with such care, and read and re-read
with such unfailing devotion. Looking toward me just when I
passed by the table, the letters caught his eye. The new hope for
the future, in connection with the writer of them, which my news
was already awakening in his heart, seemed to overwhelm him in an
instant at sight of the treasured memorials that reminded him of
his betrothed wife. His laughter ceased, his face changed, he ran
to the table, caught the letters up in his hand, looked from them
to me for one moment with an altered expression which went to my
heart, then sank down on his knees at the table, laid his face on
the letters, and burst into tears. I let the new emotion have its
way uninterruptedly, and quitted the room without saying a word.
When I returned after a lapse of some little time, I found him
sitting quietly in his chair, reading one of the letters from the
pack et which rested on his knee.
His look was kindness itself; his gesture almost womanly in its
gentleness as he rose to meet me, and anxiously held out his
hand.
He was quite calm enough now to hear in detail all that I had to
tell him. I suppressed nothing but the particulars of the state
in which I had found the corpse. I assumed no right of direction
as to the share he was to take in our future proceedings, with
the exception of insisting beforehand that he should leave the
absolute superintendence of the removal of the body to me, and
that he should be satisfied with a sight of M. Foulon's paper,
after receiving my assurance that the remains placed in the
coffin were really and truly the remains of which we had been in
search.
"Your nerves are not so strong as mine," I said, by way of
apology for my apparent dictation, "and for that reason I must
beg leave to assume the leadership in all that we have now to do,
until I see the leaden coffin soldered down and safe in your
possession. After that I shall resign all my functions to you."
"I want words to thank you for your kindness," he answered. "No
brother could have borne with me more affectionately, or helped
me more patiently than you."
He stopped and grew thoughtful, then occupied himself in tying up
slowly and carefully the packet of Miss Elmslie's letters, and
then looked suddenly toward the vacant wall behind me with that
strange expression the meaning of which I knew so well. Since we
had left Naples I had purposely avoided exciting him by talking
on the useless and shocking subject of the apparition by which he
believed himself to be perpetually followed. Just now, however,
he seemed so calm and collected--so little likely to be violently
agitated by any allusion to the dangerous topic, that I ventured
to speak out boldly.
"Does the phantom still appear to you," I asked, "as it appeared
at Naples?"
He looked at me and smiled.
"Did I not tell you that it followed me everywhere?" His eyes
wandered back again to the vacant space, and he went on speaking
in that direction as if he had been continuing the conversation
with some third person in the room. "We shall part," he said,
slowly and softly, when the empty place is filled in Wincot
vault. Then I shall stand with Ada before the altar in the Abbey
chapel, and when my eyes meet hers they will see the tortured
face no more."
Saying this, he leaned his head on his hand, sighed, and began
repeating softly to himself the lines of the old prophecy:
When in Wincot vault a place Waits for one of Monkton's race--
When that one forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky,
Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his
birth-- That shall he a certain sign Of the end of Monktons line.
Dwindling ever faster, faster, Dwindling to the last-left master;
From mortal ken, from light of day, Monkton's race shall pass
away."
Fancying that he pronounced the last lines a little incoherently,
I tried to make him change the subject. He took no notice of what
I said, and went on talking to himself.
"Monkton's race shall pass away," he repeated, "but not with
me. The fatality hangs over my head no longer. I shall bury
the unburied dead; I shall fill the vacant place in Wincot vault;
and then--then the new life, the life with Ada!" That name seemed
to recall him to himself. He drew his traveling desk toward him,
placed the packet of letters in it, and then took out a sheet of
paper. "I am going to write to Ada," he said, turning to me, "and
tell her the good news. Her happiness, when she knows it, will be
even greater than mine."
Worn out by the events of the day, I left him writing and went to
bed. I was, however, either too anxious or too tired to sleep. In
this waking condition, my mind naturally occupied itself with the
discovery at the convent and with the events to which that
discovery would in all probability lead. As I thought on the
future, a depression for which I could not account weighed on my
spirits. There was not the slightest reason for the vaguely
melancholy forebodings that oppressed me. The remains, to the
finding of which my unhappy friend attached so much importance,
had been traced; they would certainly be placed at his disposal
in a few days; he might take them to England by the first
merchant vessel that sailed from Naples; and, the gratification
of his strange caprice thus accomplished, there was at least some
reason to hope that his mind might recover its tone, and that the
new life he would lead at Wincot might result in making him a
happy man. Such considerations as these were, in themselves,
certainly not calculated to exert any melancholy influence over
me; and yet, all through the night, the same inconceivable,
unaccountable depression weighed heavily on my spirits--heavily
through the hours of darkness--heavily, even when I walked out to
breathe the first freshness of the early morning air.
With the day came the all-engrossing business of opening
negotiations with the authorities.
Only those who have had to deal with Italian officials can
imagine how our patience was tried by every one with whom we came
in contact. We were bandied about from one authority to the
other, were stared at, cross-questioned, mystified--not in the
least because the case presented any special difficulties or
intricacies, but because it was absolutely necessary that every
civil dignitary to whom we applied should assert his own
importance by leading us to our object in the most roundabout
manner possible. After our first day's experience of official
life in Italy, I left the absurd formalities, which we had no
choice but to perform, to be accomplished by Alfred alone, and
applied myself to the really serious question of how the remains
in the convent outhouse were to be safely removed.
The best plan that suggested itself to me was to write to a
friend in Rome, where I knew that it was a custom to embalm the
bodies of high dignitaries of the Church, and where, I
consequently inferred, such chemical assistance as was needed in
our emergency might be obtained. I simply stated in my letter
that the removal of the body was imperative, then described the
condition in which I had found it, and engaged that no expense on
our part should be spared if the right person or persons could be
found to help us. Here, again, more difficulties interposed
themselves, and more useless formalities were to be gone through,
but in the end patience, perseverance, and money triumphed, and
two men came expressly from Rome to undertake the duties we
required of them.
It is unnecessary that I should shock the reader by entering into
any detail in this part of my narrative. When I have said that
the progress of decay was so far suspended by chemical means as
to allow of the remains being placed in the coffin, and to insure
their being transported to England with perfect safety and
convenience, I have said enough. After ten days had been wasted
in useless delays and difficulties, I had the satisfaction of
seeing the convent outhouse empty at last; passed through a final
ceremony of snuff-taking, or rather, of snuff-giving, with the
old Capuchin, and ordered the traveling carriages to be ready at
the inn door. Hardly a month had elapsed since our departure ere
we entered Naples successful in the achievement of a design which
had been ridiculed as wildly impracticable by every friend of
ours who had heard of it.
The first object to be accomplished on our return was to obtain
the means of carrying the coffin to England--by sea, as a matter
of course. All inquiries after a merchant vessel on the point of
sailing for any British port led to the most unsatisfactory
results. There was only one way of insuring the immediate
transportation of the remains to England, and that was to hire a
vessel. Impatient to return, and resolved not to lose sight of
the coffin till he had seen it placed in Wincot vault, Monkton
decided immediately on hiring the first ship that could be
obtained. The vessel in port which we were informed could soonest
be got ready for sea was a Sicilian brig, and this vessel my
friend accordingly engaged. The best dock-yard artisans tha t
could be got were set to work, and the smartest captain and crew
to be picked up on an emergency in Naples were chosen to navigate
the brig.
Monkton, after again expressing in the warmest terms his
gratitude for the services I had rendered him, disclaimed any
intention of asking me to accompany him on the voyage to England.
Greatly to his surprise and delight, however, I offered of my own
accord to take passage in the brig. The strange coincidences I
had witnessed, the extraordinary discovery I had hit on since our
first meeting in Naples, had made his one great interest in life
my one great interest for the time being as well. I shared none
of his delusions, poor fellow; but it is hardly an exaggeration
to say that my eagerness to follow our remarkable adventure to
its end was as great as his anxiety to see the coffin laid in
Wincot vault. Curiosity influenced me, I am afraid, almost as
strongly as friendship, when I offered myself as the companion of
his voyage home.
We set sail for England on a calm and lovely afternoon.
For the first time since I had known him, Monkton seemed to be in
high spirits. He talked and jested on all sorts of subjects, and
laughed at me for allowing my cheerfulness to be affected by the
dread of seasickness. I had really no such fear; it was my excuse
to my friend for a return of that unaccountable depression under
which I had suffered at Fondi. Everything was in our favor;
everybody on board the brig was in good spirits. The captain was
delighted with the vessel; the crew, Italians and Maltese, were
in high glee at the prospect of making a short voyage on high
wages in a well-provisioned ship. I alone felt heavy at heart.
There was no valid reason that I could assign to myself for the
melancholy that oppressed me, and yet I struggled against it in
vain.
Late on our first night at sea, I made a discovery which was by
no means calculated to restore my spirits to their usual
equilibrium. Monkton was in the cabin, on the floor of which had
been placed the packing-case containing the coffin, and I was on
deck. The wind had fallen almost to a calm, and I was lazily
watching the sails of the brig as they flapped from time to time
against the masts, when the captain approached, and, drawing me
out of hearing of the man at the helm, whispered in my ear:
"There's something wrong among the men forward. Did you observe
how suddenly they all became silent just before sunset?"
I had observed it, and told him so.
"There's a Maltese boy on board," pursued the captain, "who is a
smart enough lad, but a bad one to deal with. I have found out
that he has been telling the men there is a dead body inside that
packing-case of your friend's in the cabin."
My heart sank as he spoke. Knowing the superstitious
irrationality of sailors--of foreign sailors especially--I had
taken care to spread a report on board the brig, before the
coffin was shipped, that the packing-case contained a valuable
marble statue which Mr. Monkton prized highly, and was unwilling
to trust out of his own sight. How could this Maltese boy have
discovered that the pretended statue was a human corpse? As I
pondered over the question, my suspicions fixed themselves on
Monkton's servant, who spoke Italian fluently, and whom I knew to
be an incorrigible gossip. The man denied it when I charged him
with betraying us, but I have never believed his denial to this
day.
"The little imp won't say where he picked up this notion of his
about the dead body," continued the captain. "It's not my place
to pry into secrets; but I advise you to call the crew aft, and
contradict the boy, whether he speaks the truth or not. The men
are a parcel of fools who believe in ghosts, and all the rest of
it. Some of them say they would never have signed our articles if
they had known they were going to sail with a dead man; others
only grumble; but I'm afraid we shall have some trouble with them
all, in case of rough weather, unless the boy is contradicted by
you or the other gentleman. The men say that if either you or
your friend tell them on your words of honor that the Maltese is
a liar, they will hand him up to be rope's-ended accordingly; but
that if you won't, they have made up their minds to believe the
boy."
Here the captain paused and awaited my answer. I could give him
none. I felt hopeless under our desperate emergency. To get the
boy punished by giving my word of honor to support a direct
falsehood was not to be thought of even for a moment. What other
means of extrication from this miserable dilemma remained? None
that I could think of. I thanked the captain for his attention to
our interests, told him I would take time to consider what course
I should pursue, and begged that he would say nothing to my
friend about the discovery he had made. He promised to be silent,
sulkily enough, and walked away from me.
We had expected the breeze to spring up with the morning, but no
breeze came. As it wore on toward noon the atmosphere became
insufferably sultry, and the sea looked as smooth as glass. I saw
the captain's eye turn often and anxiously to windward. Far away
in that direction, and alone in the blue heaven, I observed a
little black cloud, and asked if it would bring us any wind.
"More than we want," the captain replied, shortly; and then, to
my astonishment, ordered the crew aloft to take in sail. The
execution of this maneuver showed but too plainly the temper of
the men; they did their work sulkily and slowly, grumbling and
murmuring among themselves. The captain's manner, as he urged
them on with oaths and threats, convinced me we were in danger. I
looked again to windward. The one little cloud had enlarged to a
great bank of murky vapor, and the sea at the horizon had changed
in color.
"The squall will be on us before we know where we are," said the
captain. "Go below; you will be only in the way here."
I descended to the cabin, and prepared Monkton for what was
coming. He was still questioning me about what I had observed on
deck when the storm burst on us. We felt the little brig strain
for an instant as if she would part in two, then she seemed to be
swinging round with us, then to be quite still for a moment,
trembling in every timber. Last came a shock which hurled us from
our seats, a deafening crash, and a flood of water pouring into
the cabin. We clambered, half drowned, to the deck. The brig had,
in the nautical phrase, "broached to," and she now lay on her
beam-ends.
Before I could make out anything distinctly in the horrible
confusion except the one tremendous certainty that we were
entirely at the mercy of the sea, I heard a voice from the fore
part of the ship which stilled the clamoring and shouting of the
rest of the crew in an instant. The words were in Italian, but I
understood their fatal meaning only too easily. We had sprung a
leak, and the sea was pouring into the ship's hold like the race
of a mill-stream. The captain did not lose his presence of mind
in this fresh emergency. He called for his ax to cut away the
foremast, and, ordering some of the crew to help him, directed
the others to rig out the pumps.
The words had hardly passed his lips before the men broke into
open mutiny. With a savage look at me, their ringleader declared
that the passengers might do as they pleased, but that he and his
messmates were determined to take to the boat, and leave the
accursed ship, and the dead man in her, to go to the bottom
together. As he spoke there was a shout among the sailors, and I
observed some of them pointing derisively behind me. Looking
round, I saw Monkton, who had hitherto kept close at my side,
making his way back to the cabin. I followed him directly, but
the water and confusion on deck, and the impossibility, from the
position of the brig, of moving the feet without the slow
assistance of the hands, so impeded my progress that it was
impossible for me to overtake him. When I had got below he was
crouched upon the coffin, with the water on the cabin floor
whirling and splashing about him as the ship heaved and plunged.
I saw a warning brightness in his eyes, a warning flush on his
cheek, as I approached and said to him:
"There is nothing left for it, Alfred, but to bow to our
misfortune, and do the best we can to save our lives."
"Save yours," he cried, waving his hand to me, "for you have a
future before you. Mine is gone when this coffin goes to the
bottom. If the ship sinks, I shall know that the fatality is
accomplished, and shall sink with her."
I saw that he was in no state to be reasoned with or persuaded,
and raised myself again to the deck. The men were cutting away
all obstacles so as to launch the longboat placed amidships over
the depressed bulwark of the brig as she lay on her side, and the
captain, after having made a last vain exertion to restore his
authority, was looking on at them in silence. The violence of the
squall seemed already to be spending itself, and I asked whether
there was really no chance for us if we remained by the ship. The
captain answered that there might have been the best chance if
the men had obeyed his orders, but that now there was none.
Knowing that I could place no dependence on the presence of mind
of Monkton's servant, I confided to the captain, in the fewest
and plainest words, the condition of my unhappy friend, and asked
if I might depend on his help. He nodded his head, and we
descended together to the cabin. Even at this day it costs me
pain to write of the terrible necessity to which the strength and
obstinacy of Monkton's delusion reduced us in the last resort. We
were compelled to secure his hands, and drag him by main force to
the deck. The men were on the point of launching the boat, and
refused at first to receive us into it.
"You cowards!" cried the captain, "have we got the dead man with
us this time? Isn't he going to the bottom along with the brig?
Who are you afraid of when we get into the boat?"
This sort of appeal produced the desired effect; the men became
ashamed of themselves, and retracted their refusal.
Just as we pushed off from the sinking ship Alfred made an effort
to break from me, but I held him firm, and he never repeated the
attempt. He sat by me with drooping head, still and silent, while
the sailors rowed away from the vessel; still and silent when,
with one accord, they paused at a little distance off, and we all
waited and watched to see the brig sink; still and silent, even
when that sinking happened, when the laboring hull plunged slowly
into a hollow of the sea--hesitated, as it seemed, for one
moment, rose a little again, then sank to rise no more.
Sank with her dead freight--sank, and snatched forever from our
power the corpse which we had discovered almost by a
miracle--those jealously-preserved remains, on the safe-keeping
of which rested so strangely the hopes and the love-destinies of
two living beings! As the last signs of the ship in the depths of
the waters, I felt Monkton trembling all over as he sat close at my side, and
heard him repeating to himself, sadly, and many times over, the
name of "Ada."
I tried to turn his thoughts to another subject, but it was
useless. He pointed over the sea to where the brig had once been,
and where nothing was left to look at but the rolling waves.
"The empty place will now remain empty forever in Wincot vault."
As he said these words, he fixed his eyes for a moment sadly and
earnestly on my face, then looked away, leaned his cheek on his
hand, and spoke no more.
We were sighted long before nightfall by a trading vessel, were
taken on board, and landed at Cartagena in Spain. Alfred never
held up his head, and never once spoke to me of his own accord
the whole time we were at sea in the merchantman. I observed,
however, with alarm, that he talked often and incoherently to
himself--constantly muttering the lines of the old
prophecy--constantly referring to the fatal place that was empty
in Wincot vault--constantly repeating in broken accents, which it
affected me inexpressibly to hear, the name of the poor girl who
was awaiting his return to England. Nor were these the only
causes for the apprehension that I now felt on his account.
Toward the end of our voyage he began to suffer from alternations
of fever-fits and shivering-fits, which I ignorantly imagined to
be attacks of ague. I was soon undeceived. We had hardly been a
day on shore before he became so much worse that I secured the
best medical assistance Cartagena could afford. For a day or two
the doctors differed, as usual, about the nature of his
complaint, but ere long alarming symptoms displayed themselves.
The medical men declared that his life was in danger, and told me
that his disease was brain fever.
Shocked and grieved as I was, I hardly knew how to act at first
under the fresh responsibility now laid upon me. Ultimately I
decided on writing to the old priest who had been Alfred's tutor,
and who, as I knew, still resided at Wincot Abbey. I told this
gentleman all that had happened, begged him to break my
melancholy news as gently as possible to Miss Elmslie, and
assured him of my resolution to remain with Monkton to the last.
After I had dispatched my letter, and had sent to Gibraltar to
secure the best English medical advice that could be obtained, I
felt that I had done my best, and that nothing remained but to
wait and hope.
Many a sad and anxious hour did I pass by my poor friend's
bedside. Many a time did I doubt whether I had done right in
giving any encouragement to his delusion. The reasons for doing
so which had suggested themselves to me after my first interview
with him seemed, however, on reflection, to be valid reasons
still. The only way of hastening his return to England and to
Miss Elmslie, who was pining for that return, was the way I had
taken. It was not my fault that a disaster which no man could
foresee had overthrown all his projects and all mine. But, now
that the calamity had happened and was irretrievable, how, in the
event of his physical recovery, was his moral malady to be
combated?
When I reflected on the hereditary taint in his mental
organization, on that first childish fright of Stephen Monkton
from which he had never recovered, on the perilously-secluded
life that he had led at the Abbey, and on his firm persuasion of
the reality of the apparition by which he believed himself to be
constantly followed, I confess I despaired of shaking his
superstitious faith in every word and line of the old family
prophecy. If the series of striking coincidences which appeared
to attest its truth had made a strong and lasting impression on
me (and this was assuredly the case), how could I wonder that
they had produced the effect of absolute conviction on his
mind, constituted as it was? If I argued with him, and he
answered me, how could I rejoin? If he said, "The prophecy points
at the last of the family: I am the last of the family. The
prophecy mentions an empty place in Wincot vault; there is such
an empty place there at this moment. On the faith of the prophecy
I told you that Stephen Monkton's body was unburied, and you
found that it was unburied"--if he said this, what use would it
be for me to reply, "These are only strange coincidences after
all?"
The more I thought of the task that lay before me, if he
recovered, the more I felt inclined to despond. The oftener the
English physician who attended on him said to me, "He may get the
better of the fever, but he has a fixed idea, which never leaves
him night or day, which has unsettled his reason, and which will
end in killing him, unless you or some of his friends can remove
it"--the oftener I heard this, the more acutely I felt my own
powerlessness, the more I shrank from every idea that was
connected with the hopeless future.
I had only expected to receive my answer from Wincot in the shape
of a letter. It was consequently a great surprise, as well as a
great relief, to be informed one day that two gentlemen wished to
speak with me, and to find that of these two gentlemen the first
was the old priest, and the second a male relative of Mrs.
Elmslie.
Just before their arrival the fever symptoms had disappeared, and
Alfred had been pronounced out of danger. Both the priest and his
companion were eager to know when the sufferer would be strong
enough to travel. The y had come to Cartagena expressly to take
him home with them, and felt far more hopeful than I did of the
restorative effects of his native air. After all the questions
connected with the first important point of the journey to
England had been asked and answered, I ventured to make some
inquiries after Miss Elmslie. Her relative informed me that she
was suffering both in body and in mind from excess of anxiety on
Alfred's account. They had been obliged to deceive her as to the
dangerous nature of his illness in order to deter her from
accompanying the priest and her relation on their mission to
Spain.
Slowly and imperfectly, as the weeks wore on, Alfred regained
something of his former physical strength, but no alteration
appeared in his illness as it affected his mind.
From the very first day of his advance toward recovery, it had
been discovered that the brain fever had exercised the strangest
influence over his faculties of memory. All recollection of
recent events was gone from him. Everything connected with
Naples, with me, with his journey to Italy, had dropped in some
mysterious manner entirely out of his remembrance. So completely
had all late circumstances passed from his memory that, though he
recognized the old priest and his own servant easily on the first
days of his convalescence, he never recognized me, but regarded
me with such a wistful, doubting expression, that I felt
inexpressibly pained when I approached his bedside. All his
questions were about Miss Elmslie and Wincot Abbey, and all his
talk referred to the period when his father was yet alive.
The doctors augured good rather than ill from this loss of memory
of recent incidents, saying that it would turn out to be
temporary, and that it answered the first great healing purpose
of keeping his mind at ease. I tried to believe them--tried to
feel as sanguine, when the day came for his departure, as the old
friends felt who were taking him home. But the effort was too
much for me. A foreboding that I should never see him again
oppressed my heart, and the tears came into my eyes as I saw the
worn figure of my poor friend half helped, half lifted into the
traveling-carriage, and borne away gently on the road toward
home.
He had never recognized me, and the doctors had begged that I
would give him, for some time to come, as few opportunities as
possible of doing so. But for this request I should have
accompanied him to England. As it was, nothing better remained
for me to do than to change the scene, and recruit as I best
could my energies of body and mind, depressed of late by much
watching and anxiety. The famous cities of Spain were not new to
me, but I visited them again and revived old impressions of the
Alhambra and Madrid. Once or twice I thought of making a
pilgrimage to the East, but late events had sobered and altered
me. That yearning, unsatisfied feeling which we call
"homesickness" began to prey upon my heart, and I resolved to
return to England.
I went back by way of Paris, having settled with the priest that
he should write to me at my banker's there as soon as he could
after Alfred had returned to Wincot. If I had gone to the East,
the letter would have been forwarded to me. I wrote to prevent
this; and, on my arrival at Paris, stopped at the banker's before
I went to my hotel.
The moment the letter was put into my hands, the black border on
the envelope told me the worst. He was dead.
There was but one consolation--he had died calmly, almost
happily, without once referring to those fatal chances which had
wrought the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy. "My beloved
pupil," the old priest wrote, "seemed to rally a little the first
few days after his return, but he gained no real strength, and
soon suffered a slight relapse of fever. After this he sank
gradually and gently day by day, and so departed from us on the
last dread journey. Miss Elmslie (who knows that I am writing
this) desires me to express her deep and lasting gratitude for
all your kindness to Alfred. She told me when we brought him back
that she had waited for him as his promised wife, and that she
would nurse him now as a wife should; and she never left him. his
face was turned toward her, his hand was clasped in hers when he
died. It will console you to know that he never mentioned events
at Naples, or the shipwreck that followed them, from the day of
his return to the day of his death."
Three days after reading the letter I was at Wincot, and heard
all the details of Alfred's last moments from the priest. I felt
a shock which it would not be very easy for me to analyze or
explain when I heard that he had been buried, at his own desire,
in the fatal Abbey vault.
The priest took me down to see the place--a grim, cold,
subterranean building, with a low roof, supported on heavy Saxon
arches. Narrow niches, with the ends only of coffins visible
within them, ran down each side of the vault. The nails and
silver ornaments flashed here and there as my companion moved
past them with a lamp in his hand. At the lower end of the place
he stopped, pointed to a niche, and said, "He lies there, between
his father and mother." I looked a little further on, and saw
what appeared at first like a long dark tunnel. "That is only an
empty niche," said the priest, following me. "If the body of Mr.
Stephen Monkton had been brought to Wincot, his coffin would have
been placed there."
A chill came over me, and a sense of dread which I am ashamed of
having felt now, but which I could not combat then. The blessed
light of day was pouring down gayly at the other end of the vault
through the open door. I turned my back on the empty niche, and
hurried into the sunlight and the fresh air.
As I walked across the grass glade leading down to the vault, I
heard the rustle of a woman's dress behind me, and turning round,
saw a young lady advancing, clad in deep mourning. Her sweet, sad
face, her manner as she held out her hand, told me who it was in
an instant.
"I heard that you were here," she said, "and I wished--" Her
voice faltered a little. My heart ached as I saw how her lip
trembled, but before I could say anything she recovered herself
and went on: "I wished to take your hand, and thank you for your
brotherly kindness to Alfred; and I wanted to tell you that I am
sure in all you did you acted tenderly and considerately for the
best. Perhaps you may be soon going away from home again, and we
may not meet any more. I shall never, never forget that you were
kind to him when he wanted a friend, and that you have the
greatest claim of any one on earth to be gratefully remembered in
my thoughts as long as I live."
The inexpressible tenderness of her voice, trembling a little all
the while she spoke, the pale beauty of her face, the artless
candor in her sad, quiet eyes, so affected me that I could not
trust myself to answer her at first except by gesture. Before I
recovered my voice she had given me her hand once more and had
left me.
I never saw her again. The chances and changes of life kept us
apart. When I last heard of her, years and years ago, she was
faithful to the memory of the dead, and was Ada Elmslie still for
Alfred Monkton's sake.
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