第46章

Elmslie's will, left the future of Ada's life entirely at her mother's disposal.The consequence was the immediate ratification of the marriage engagement to which my father had so steadily refused his consent.As soon as the fact was publicly announced, some of Mrs.Elmslie's more intimate friends, who were acquainted with the reports affecting the Monkton family, ventured to mingle with their formal congratulations one or two significant references to the late Mrs.Monkton and some searching inquiries as to the disposition of her son.

Mrs.Elmslie always met these polite hints with one bold form of answer.She first admitted the existence of these reports about the Monktons which her friends were unwilling to specify distinctly, and then declared that they were infamous calumnies.

The hereditary taint had died out of the family generations back.

Alfred was the best, the kindest, the sanest of human beings.He loved study and retirement; Ada sympathized with his tastes, and had made her choice unbiased; if any more hints were dropped about sacrificing her by her marriage, those hints would be viewed as so many insults to her mother, whose affection for her it was monstrous to call in question.This way of talking silenced people, but did not convince them.They began to suspect, what was indeed the actual truth, that Mrs.Elmslie was a selfish, worldly, grasping woman, who wanted to get her daughter well married, and cared nothing for consequences as long as she saw Ada mistress of the greatest establishment in the whole county.

It seemed, however, as if there was some fatality at work to prevent the attainment of Mrs.Elmslie's great object in life.

Hardly was one obstacle to the ill-omened marriage removed by my father's death before another succeeded it in the shape of anxieties and difficulties caused by the delicate state of Ada's health.Doctors were consulted in all directions, and the result of their advice was that the marriage must be deferred, and that Miss Elmslie must leave England for a certain time, to reside in a warmer climate--the south of France, if I remember rightly.

Thus it happened that just before Alfred came of age Ada and her mother departed for the Continent, and the union of the two young people was understood to be indefinitely postponed.Some curiosity was felt in the neighborhood as to what Alfred Monkton would do under these circumstances.Would he follow his lady-love? would he go yachting? would he throw open the doors of the old Abbey at last, and endeavor to forget the absence of Ada and the postponement of his marriage in a round of gayeties? He did none of these things.He simply remained at Wincot, living as suspiciously strange and solitary a life as his father had lived before him.Literally, there was now no companion for him at the Abbey but the old priest--the Monktons, I should have mentioned before, were Roman Catholics--who had held the office of tutor to Alfred from his earliest years.He came of age, and there was not even so much as a private dinner-party at Wincot to celebrate the event.Families in the neighborhood determined to forget the offense which his father's reserve had given them, and invited him to their houses.The invitations were politely declined.

Civil visitors called resolutely at the Abbey, and were as resolutely bowed away from the doors as soon as they had left their cards.Under this combination of sinister and aggravating circumstances people in all directions took to shaking their heads mysteriously when the name of Mr.Alfred Monkton was mentioned, hinting at the family calamity, and wondering peevishly or sadly, as their tempers inclined them, what he could possibly do to occupy himself month after month in the lonely old house.

The right answer to this question was not easy to find.It was quite useless, for ex ample, to apply to the priest for it.He was a very quiet, polite old gentleman; his replies were always excessively ready and civil, and appeared at the time to convey an immense quantity of information; but when they came to be reflected on, it was universally observed that nothing tangible could ever be got out of them.The housekeeper, a weird old woman, with a very abrupt and repelling manner, was too fierce and taciturn to be safely approached.The few indoor servants had all been long enough in the family to have learned to hold their tongues in public as a regular habit.It was only from the farm-servants who supplied the table at the Abbey that any information could be obtained, and vague enough it was when they came to communicate it.

Some of them had observed the "young master" walking about the library with heaps of dusty papers in his hands.Others had heard odd noises in the uninhabited parts of the Abbey, had looked up, and had seen him forcing open the old windows, as if to let light and air into the rooms supposed to have been shut close for years and years, or had discovered him standing on the perilous summit of one of the crumbling turrets, never ascended before within their memories, and popularly considered to be inhabited by the ghosts of the monks who had once possessed the building.The result of these observations and discoveries, when they were communicated to others, was of course to impress every one with a firm belief that "poor young Monkton was going the way that the rest of the family had gone before him," which opinion always appeared to be immensely strengthened in the popular mind by a conviction--founded on no particle of evidence--that the priest was at the bottom of all the mischief.

Thus far I have spoken from hearsay evidence mostly.What I have next to tell will be the result of my own personal experience.