第70章

"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 Idecided 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, Ifelt 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.