about five months after alfred monkton came of age i left college, and resolved to amuse and instruct myself a little by traveling abroad.
at the time when i quitted england young monkton was still leading his secluded life at the abbey, and was, in the opinion of everybody, sinking rapidly, if he had not already succumbed, under the hereditary curse of his family. as to the elmslies, report said that ada had benefited by her sojourn abroad, and that mother and daughter were on their way back to england to resume their old relations with the heir of wincot. before they returned i was away on my travels, and wandered half over europe, hardly ever planning whither i should shape my course beforehand. chance, which thus led me everywhere, led me at last to naples. there i met with an old school friend, who was one of the attaches at the english embassy, and there began the extraordinary events in connection with alfred monkton which form the main interest of the story i am now relating.
i was idling away the time one morning with my friend the attache in the garden of the villa reale, when we were passed by a young man, walking alone, who exchanged bows with my friend.
i thought i recognized the dark, eager eyes, the colorless cheeks, the strangely-vigilant, anxious expression which i remembered in past times as characteristic of alfred monkton’s face, and was about to question my friend on the subject, when he gave me unasked the information of which i was in search.
“that is alfred monkton,” said he; “he comes from your part of england. you ought to know him.”
“i do know a little of him,” i answered; “he was engaged to miss elmslie when i was last in the neighborhood of wincot. is he married to her yet?”
“no, and he never ought to be. he has gone the way of the rest of the family — or, in plainer words, he has gone mad.”
“mad! but i ought not to be surprised at hearing that, after the reports about him in england.”
“i speak from no reports; i speak from what he has said and done before me, and before hundreds of other people. surely you must have heard of it?”
“never. i have been out of the way of news from naples or england for months past.”
“then i have a very extraordinary story to tell you. you know, of course, that alfred had an uncle, stephen monkton. well, some time ago this uncle fought a duel in the roman states with a frenchman, who shot him dead. the seconds and the frenchman (who was unhurt) took to flight in different directions, as it is supposed. we heard nothing here of the details of the duel till a month after it happened, when one of the french journals published an account of it, taken from the papers left by monkton’s second, who died at paris of consumption. these papers stated the manner in which the duel was fought, and how it terminated, but nothing more. the surviving second and the frenchman have never been traced from that time to this. all that anybody knows, therefore, of the duel is that stephen monkton was shot; an event which nobody can regret, for a greater scoundrel never existed. the exact place where he died, and what was done with the body are still mysteries not to be penetrated.”
“but what has all this to do with alfred?”
“wait a moment, and you will hear. soon after the news of his uncle’s death reached england, what do you think alfred did? he actually put off his marriage with miss elmslie, which was then about to be celebrated, to come out here in search of the burial-place of his wretched scamp of an uncle; and no power on earth will now induce him to return to england and to miss elmslie until he has found the body, and can take it back with him, to be buried with all the other dead monktons in the vault under wincot abbey chapel. he has squandered his money, pestered the police, and exposed himself to the ridicule of the men and the indignation of the women for the last three months in trying to achieve his insane purpose, and is now as far from it as ever. he will not assign to anybody the smallest motive for his conduct. you can’t laugh him out of it or reason him out of it. when we met him just now, i happen to know that he was on his way to the office of the police minister, to send out fresh agents to search and inquire through the roman states for the place where his uncle was shot. and, mind, all this time he professes to be passionately in love with miss elmslie, and to be miserable at his separation from her. just think of that! and then think of his self-imposed absence from her here, to hunt after the remains of a wretch who was a disgrace to the family, and whom he never saw but once or twice in his life. of all the ‘mad monktons,’ as they used to call them in england, alfred is the maddest. he is actually our principal excitement in this dull opera season; though, for my own part, when i think of the poor girl in england, i am a great deal more ready to despise him than to laugh at him.”
“you know the elmslies then?”
“intimately. the other day my mother wrote to me from england, after having seen ada. this escapade of monkton’s has outraged all her friends. they have been entreating her to break off the match, which it seems she could do if she liked. even her mother, sordid and selfish as she is, has been obliged at last, in common decency, to side with the rest of the family; but the good, faithful girl won’t give monkton up. she humors his insanity; declares he gave her a good reason in secret for going away; says she could always make him happy when they were together in the old abbey, and can make him still happier when they are married; in short, she loves him dearly, and will therefore believe in him to the last. nothing shakes her. she has made up her mind to throw away her life on him, and she will do it.”
“i hope not. mad as his conduct looks to us, he may have some sensible reason for it that we cannot imagine. does his mind seem at all disordered when he talks on ordinary topics?”
“not in the least. when you can get him to say anything, which is not often, he talks like a sensible, well-educated man. keep silence about his precious errand here, and you would fancy him the gentlest and most temperate of human beings; but touch the subject of his vagabond of an uncle, and the monkton madness comes out directly. the other night a lady asked him, jestingly of course, whether he had ever seen his uncle’s ghost. he scowled at her like a perfect fiend, and said that he and his uncle would answer her question together some day, if they came from hell to do it. we laughed at his words, but the lady fainted at his looks, and we had a scene of hysterics and hartshorn in consequence. any other man would have been kicked out of the room for nearly frightening a pretty woman to death in that way; but ‘mad monkton,’ as we have christened him, is a privileged lunatic in neapolitan society, because he is english, good-looking, and worth thirty thousand a year. he goes out everywhere under the impression that he may meet with somebody who has been let into the secret of the place where the mysterious duel was fought. if you are introduced to him he is sure to ask you whether you know anything about it; but beware of following up the subject after you have answered him, unless you want to make sure that he is out of his senses. in that case, only talk of his uncle, and the result will rather more than satisfy you.”
a day or two after this conversation with my friend the attache, i met monkton at an evening party.
the moment he heard my name mentioned, his face flushed up; he drew me away into a corner, and referring to his cool reception of my advance years ago toward making his acquaintance, asked my pardon for what he termed his inexcusable ingratitude with an earnestness and an agitation which utterly astonished me. his next proceeding was to question me, as my friend had said he would, about the place of the mysterious duel.
an extraordinary change came over him while he interrogated me on this point. instead of looking into my face as they had looked hitherto, his eyes wandered away, and fixed themselves intensely, almost fiercely, either on the perfectly empty wall at our side, or on the vacant space between the wall and ourselves, it was impossible to say which. i had come to naples from spain by sea, and briefly told him so, as the best way of satisfying him that i could not assist his inquiries. he pursued them no further; and, mindful of my friend’s warning, i took care to lead the conversation to general topics. he looked back at me directly, and, as long as we stood in our corner, his eyes never wandered away again to the empty wall or the vacant space at our side.
though more ready to listen than to speak, his conversation, when he did talk, had no trace of anything the least like insanity about it. he had evidently read, not generally only, but deeply as well, and could apply his reading with singular felicity to the illustration of almost any subject under discussion, neither obtruding his knowledge absurdly, nor concealing it affectedly. his manner was in itself a standing protest against such a nickname as “mad monkton.” he was so shy, so quiet, so composed and gentle in all his actions, that at times i should have been almost inclined to call him effeminate. we had a long talk together on the first evening of our meeting; we often saw each other afterward, and never lost a single opportunity of bettering our acquaintance. i felt that he had taken a liking to me, and, in spite of what i had heard about his behavior to miss elmslie, in spite of the suspicions which the history of his family and his own conduct had arrayed against him, i began to like “mad monkton” as much as he liked me. we took many a quiet ride together in the country, and sailed often along the shores of the bay on either side. but for two eccentricities in his conduct, which i could not at all understand, i should soon have felt as much at my ease in his society as if he had been my own brother.
the first of these eccentricities consisted in the reappearance on several occasions of the odd expression in his eyes which i had first seen when he asked me whether i knew anything about the duel. no matter what we were talking about, or where we happened to be, there were times when he would suddenly look away from my face, now on one side of me, now on the other, but always where there was nothing to see, and always with the same intensity and fierceness in his eyes. this looked so like madness — or hypochondria at the least — that i felt afraid to ask him about it, and always pretended not to observe him.
the second peculiarity in his conduct was that he never referred, while in my company, to the reports about his errand at naples, and never once spoke of miss elmslie, or of his life at wincot abbey. this not only astonished me, but amazed those who had noticed our intimacy, and who had made sure that i must be the depositary of all his secrets. but the time was near at hand when this mystery, and some other mysteries of which i had no suspicion at that period, were all to be revealed.
i met him one night at a large ball, given by a russian nobleman, whose name i could not pronounce then, and cannot remember now. i had wandered away from reception-room, ballroom, and cardroom, to a small apartment at one extremity of the palace, which was half conservatory, half boudoir, and which had been prettily illuminated for the occasion with chinese lanterns. nobody was in the room when i got there. the view over the mediterranean, bathed in the bright softness of italian moonlight, was so lovely that i remained for a long time at the window, looking out, and listening to the dance-music which faintly reached me from the ballroom. my thoughts were far away with the relations i had left in england, when i was startled out of them by hearing my name softly pronounced.
i looked round directly, and saw monkton standing in the room. a livid paleness overspread his face, and his eyes were turned away from me with the same extraordinary expression in them to which i have already alluded.
“do you mind leaving the ball early to-night?” he asked, still not looking at me.
“not at all,” said i. “can i do anything for you? are you ill?”
“no — at least nothing to speak of. will you come to my rooms?”
“at once, if you like.”
“no, not at once. i must go home directly; but don’t you come to me for half an hour yet. you have not been at my rooms before, i know, but you will easily find them out; they are close by. there is a card with my address. i must speak to you to-night; my life depends on it. pray come! for god’s sake, come when the half hour is up!”
i promised to be punctual, and he left me directly.
most people will be easily able to imagine the state of nervous impatience and vague expectation in which i passed the allotted period of delay, after hearing such words as those monkton had spoken to me. before the half hour had quite expired i began to make my way out through the ballroom.
at the head of the staircase my friend, the attache, met me.
“what! going away already?” said he.
“yes; and on a very curious expedition. i am going to monkton’s rooms, by his own invitation.”
“you don’t mean it! upon my honor, you’re a bold fellow to trust yourself alone with ‘mad monkton’ when the moon is at the full.”
“he is ill, poor fellow. besides, i don’t think him half as mad as you do.”
“we won’t dispute about that; but mark my words, he has not asked you to go where no visitor has ever been admitted before without a special purpose. i predict that you will see or hear something to-night which you will remember for the rest of your life.”
we parted. when i knocked at the courtyard gate of the house where monkton lived, my friend’s last words on the palace staircase recurred to me, and, though i had laughed at him when he spoke them, i began to suspect even then that his prediction would be fulfilled.
