Part 2 (1/2)

What shall I do? Compa.s.sion and curiosity are strong. The man whose heart can be rent so sorely ought not to be allowed to linger here with his despair. He is gazing, as I did, upon the lake. I mark his profile-clear-cut and symmetrical; I catch the l.u.s.tre of large eyes.

The face, as I can see it, seems very still and placid. I may be mistaken; he may merely be a wanderer like myself; perhaps he heard the three strange cries, and has also come to seek the cause. I feel impelled to speak to him.

I pa.s.s from the path by the church to the east side of the mausoleum, and so come toward him, the moon full upon his features. Great heaven!

how pale his face is!

”Good-evening, sir. I thought myself alone here, and wondered that no other travellers had found their way to this lovely spot. Charming, is it not?”

For a moment he says nothing, but his eyes are full upon me. At last he replies:

”It is charming, as you say, Mr. Reginald Westcar.”

”You know me?” I exclaim, in astonishment.

”Pardon me, I can scarcely claim a personal acquaintance. But yours is the only English name entered to-day in the Livre des etrangers.”

”You are staying at the Hotel de la Concorde, then?”

An inclination of the head is all the answer vouchsafed.

”May I ask,” I continue, ”whether you heard just now a very strange cry repeated three times?”

A pause. The l.u.s.trous eyes seem to search me through and through-I can hardly bear their gaze. Then he replies.

”I fancy I heard the echoes of some such sounds as you describe.”

The _echoes_! Is this, then, the man who gave utterance to those cries of woe! is it possible? The face seems so pa.s.sionless; but the pallor of those features bears witness to some terrible agony within.

”I thought some one must be in distress,” I rejoin, hastily; ”and I hurried back to see if I could be of any service.”

”Very good of you,” he answers, coldly; ”but surely such a place as this is not unaccustomed to the voice of sorrow.”

”No doubt. My impulse was a mistaken one.”

”But kindly meant. You will not sleep less soundly for acting on that impulse, Reginald Westcar.”

He rises as he speaks. He throws his cloak round him, and stands motionless. I take the hint. My mysterious countryman wishes to be alone. Some one that he has loved and lost lies buried here.

”Good-night, sir,” I say, as I move in the direction of the little chapel at the gate. ”Neither of us will sleep the less soundly for thinking of the perfect repose that reigns around this place.”

”What do you mean?” he asks.

”The dead,” I reply, as I stretch my hand toward the graves. ”Do you not remember the lines in 'King Lear'?

”'After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.'”

”But _you_ have never died, Reginald Westcar. You know nothing of the sleep of death.”

For the third time he speaks my name almost familiarly, and-I know not why-a shudder pa.s.ses through me. I have no time, in my turn, to ask him what he means; for he strides silently away into the shadow of the church, and I, with a strange sense of oppression upon me, returned to my hotel.

The events which I have just related pa.s.sed in vivid recollection through my mind as I travelled northward one cold November day in the year 185-. About six months previously I had taken my degree at Oxford, and had since been enjoying a trip upon the continent; and on my return to London I found a letter awaiting me from my lawyers, informing me somewhat to my astonishment, that I had succeeded to a small estate in c.u.mberland. I must tell you exactly how this came about. My mother was a Miss Ringwood, and she was the youngest of three children: the eldest was Aldina, the second was Geoffrey, and the third (my mother) Alice.