Mad Monkton

.pdf

Скачиваний:

Добавлен:

06.09.2026

Размер:

1 Мб

Скачать

☆

<<< < Предыдущая 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910 / 1010

Mad Monkton

“My beloved pupil,” the old priest wrote, “seemed to rally a little the ﬁ rst 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 cofﬁ ns visible within them, ran down each side of the vault. The nails and silver ornaments ﬂ ashed 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 ﬁ rst like a long dark tunnel. “That is only an empty niche,” said the priest, following me. “If

WILKIE COLLINS

the body of Mr. Stephen Monkton had been brought to Wincot, his cofﬁ n 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 ﬁ rst except by gesture. Before I

Mad Monkton

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.