Having thus explained how it happened that our heroine was found at
Geneva in the forlorn state described, we must now return to Alfred. He
followed the apparition of Caroline, saw her couch lifted from the boat
to a kind of carriage which was in waiting on the shore, landed himself
immediately, and though incapable of plan or purpose, pursued the
carriage. It stopped at a villa at a little distance. He saw Caroline
lifted out, and carried into the house. Impelled by an uncontrollable
impulse, and too much agitated to think of forms, he entered the hall
with the servants, of whom he made some incoherent inquiries. They
seemed scarcely to comprehend him. A person passed hastily in almost at
the moment and entered a sitting-room which opened into the hall, and
into which the couch with the invalid had just been carried.
"It is the doctor, sir," said a servant, with a puzzled air, which
seemed to infer, he can probably answer you better than I can.
Alfred followed eagerly to the door of the room, and stood there some
seconds in breathless anxiety. It opened--the _soi-disant_ doctor was
coming out, but drew back, as it were, to make way for our hero; who,
from his evident and pitiable agitation, and his eager inquiries, he
seemed to take for granted, was some one of the lady's near relations
arrived at last, and of course entitled to enter the apartment of the
invalid. Laying apparently asleep on a sofa visible from the door,
Alfred could now discern Caroline: yet, though at the time in no state
of mind for reflection, he so far felt himself unauthorized in his
intrusion as to give an air of hesitation to his manner.
"You can come in, sir," said the doctor, "there is no danger, I am sorry
to say," he added with pompous solemnity, "of waking the patient."
On hearing these alarming words, Alfred rushed to the side of the couch
in so wild a manner, that the doctor, quite aghast, followed, and laying
his hand on his arm, said, "You mistake me, sir: there is no reason to
expect immediate dissolution; my meaning was, that you need not be
apprehensive of interrupting the slumbers of the patient; her state
being unhappily, not natural sleep, but a species of trance, becoming, I
feel it, notwithstanding, my painful duty to say from its prolonged
duration and the daily diminution of bodily strength, every hour more
and more hopeless. From, in fact, the first moment of her sudden seizure
up to the present time, she has not shed one tear, spoken one word; nor,
as we have reason to believe, though in this constant state of apparent
unconsciousness, ever actually slept; for, at any startling or unusual
sound, her eyes have been observed to open, though but for a second."
While the doctor, who was fond of hearing himself talk, had been thus
holding forth, Alfred had stood gazing on the pale unconscious sufferer,
in an agony of grief and compassion.
Pity is itself a gentle, an endearing sentiment; but when claimed by a
being we already love, who shall paint the going forth of the whole
soul, in the blended sympathy! If there is an earthly feeling pure from
self, worthy of heaven, it is this! Had Alfred encountered Caroline in
health, amid scenes of pleasure and of gaiety, himself free from the
disgrace and ruin which now attached to him; nay, with a knowledge that
her seeming want of truth had been but obedience to the tyrannical
commands of a parent; that her heart was still his; that, in short,
every obstacle to their union was removed by the death of poor
Willoughby;--how soon, in such a case, he might have been able to have
separated thoughts of her and of happiness from the heart-rending
remembrance of his brother; at what distant period of time he could, in
short, have sought a paradise on the very shore where that brother had
become a wreck, it is impossible to say. But when instead of all this,
her idea was presented to his mind under circumstances so new, so
terrible, so far removed from selfish joy, which, when mingled with
thoughts of Willoughby, would have seemed almost a sacrilege; then it
was that an overwhelming interest in her fate took possession of his
whole soul unresisted, consisting of fears, not of hopes; and that soul
full of misery, was almost paralysed by the memory and presence of
sorrow. He continued to gaze, till a sense of the most appalling dread,
despite the assurance of the doctor that there was no immediate danger,
crept over his heart, so much did the perfect stillness of the lovely
features resemble that of death. His terror momentarily increased--he
bent--he knelt--he listened in breathless anguish, till the throbbing of
his own pulses might have been heard, but he could catch no sound of
respiration. He looked up with a sort of despairing yet questioning
expression in the doctor's face.
"I by no means," said the authority so appealed to, "apprehend, as I
have already stated, any immediate danger. This species of trance has
continued without intermission, ever since the first rash communication
of the fatal intelligence." Then, fond of hearing himself talk, and
possibly believing that he spoke to a near relative, acquainted of
course with all the circumstances, he continued to exhibit his powers of
oratory thus:
"The shock was, I fear, altogether too much for any sensitive mind; what
with the abrupt mode of communication, and the manner of the gentleman's
death, so terrible--murdered they say, by his own twin brother!"
"No, sir!" exclaimed Alfred, starting up with sudden fierceness, and
grasping the doctor's arm, "he was not murdered by his brother; and
that," he added, with an altered tone and manner, clasping his hands,
and raising his eyes to heaven, "when her spirit awakes in the realms of
the blessed it will know."
The conversation up to this point had been conducted in the mysterious
whispers of a sick room, but Alfred's voice, from excess of excitement,
in the last sentence unconsciously assumed its natural key. As he
concluded his apostrophy to Heaven, his eyes, which had been uplifted in
the fervour of devotional feeling fell again on Caroline. Her's were
wide open, and fixed on him, with an almost wild expression of terror
and bewilderment!
In a moment more, the crimson rash had, for a second, crossed her brow;
the piercing cry escaped her lips, and she had fallen again into that
totally inanimate state, which had characterised her first seizure, and
distinguished it from the sleep-like trance in which she had
subsequently lain.
All was instant confusion and dismay. Alfred, almost wild with terror,
raised the drooping head which had slid from the pillow, supported the
fair cheek against his bosom; and chafed, now the temples, now the
hands, mechanically, endeavouring to obey the directions of the doctor,
while his own hands trembled, till they could scarcely perform the task
assigned them.
The doctor himself, too, seemed much alarmed, and somewhat taken by
surprize; he tried all the means of restoring animation he could think
of, but in vain. At length he began to look very serious indeed. To
Alfred's frantic adjurations, half question, half entreaty, as though
the doctor's words could reverse the decree of fate, he replied
repeatedly, and with decision, that all was over. "There is not now," he
added, "the strength to rally there had been at the time of the first
attack."
A mournful silence followed: all, as with one consent, discontinued
their efforts. The doctor folded his arms. The very attendants stood for
a considerable time quite motionless.
Alfred was kneeling beside the couch, in the attitude he had taken,
while striving to render assistance to her, who was now no more. At
length the nurses, anxious in their officious zeal to perform the duties
they considered their province, drew near, removed the head of Caroline
from his supporting shoulder, and laid it on the centre of the pillow,
then withdrew the hand he still grasped in his, and arranging the
delicate fingers, placed it by her side; while the doctor approaching,
raised our hero, and led him from the room, attempting, as he did so,
the usual common-places of conversation: it was an event which had been
expected for some time. There was so little hope of ultimate recovery,
that it might be considered a happy release; for even had her life been
preserved, her faculties could never have been restored.
As for our hero, he heard him not; all his thoughts, discoloured and
distorted by late events, were desperate. "It was well," he inwardly
ejaculated, "yes, it was well--life was misery--death a refuge--why
should any one desire to live?"
The doctor, the while, led Alfred through the hall, assisted him into
his (the doctor's) carriage, which stood at the door, and begged to know
whither he desired to be driven. The question had to be repeated more
than once before a murmur, from which something like the address was at
length collected, could be drawn from Alfred.