第71章

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 Iwould 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, Iheard 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.