A biscuit and a glass of wine-and-water was usually the temperate supper
of the brothers. They generally took it in the library, and read till
they felt disposed to retire for the night. This evening Alfred, who had
risen from the table for a book which he happened to be some little time
in selecting, observed on his return, but without a suspicion at the
moment as to the cause, that the water which Willoughby was pouring into
his glass looked less clear than usual. He remarked upon the
circumstance and advised his brother to put it away and have some fresh
brought up.
"It seems very good," said Willoughby, adding wine and taking off the
whole at one draught, though in general he sipped it from time to time
during perhaps an hour of either reading or conversation.
Alfred accustomed to his brother's love of opposition in trifles was not
at all surprised. He sighed, however, for he always considered this
infirmity of temper a symptom of the incipient malady he dreaded; so
simply saying,
"There is quite a sediment in the goblet you see," he read on, but still
without an apprehension. It had somehow never once entered into his
calculations, amid all his vague fears, that a mode and occasion so
public as the present would have been chosen.
"Put away your book, Alfred," said Willoughby, a few moments after.
Alfred looked up and saw that his brother was pale in the extreme, and
with a ghastliness of expression quite alarming.
"I have the idea more strongly impressed upon my mind than ever this
evening that I shall not live long!" said Willoughby in a voice changed
and hoarse; "and that when I do die," he continued, "it will be
suddenly, very suddenly: let our good-night then be also a farewell; we
know not what may happen before morning."
"Do not make me miserable by such melancholy forebodings," said Alfred,
"surely--there is, there can be no cause for such! Willoughby!
Willoughby! you do look ill!" And the thought crossed his mind, that had
he not secured the poison he should now be really alarmed.
"It is only a presentiment," said Willoughby, affecting a ghastly smile;
"yet, lest it should be verified, indulge me in my childishness, and
before I go to bed take leave of me, and--forgive, say you forgive every
pettish word, every wilful act, of which I have ever been guilty towards
you, my kind, my excellent, my too amiable brother."
"Forgive! dear Willoughby! surely I have all that is kind and noble in
intention to thank you for, nothing to forgive--unless indeed," and he
paused in silent alarm. "Oh, Willoughby," he added, gazing at the
working of his countenance, "I fear--I fear some terrible purpose! speak
to me! tell me I am wrong--you have no such thought--no you would
not--you press my hand, what does that mean? Speak, Willoughby! Is it to
reassure me?--oh, my poor mother--think of her!--think of me, how much,
how truly I love you, never should I know happiness again, if--oh
misery--those eyes--he does not know me!" Willoughby attempted to speak;
the words were not only indistinctly uttered, but evidently without
purpose in their arrangement; while unable longer to maintain the
struggle against bodily suffering, with the wildness of delirium in his
looks and gestures, he sank on a sofa writhing in agonies which partook
of the nature of convulsions.
The now terrified Alfred, calling aloud for help, hastily loosed his
brother's stock and undid the buttons of his waistcoat; within which,
while so employed, his eye was unavoidably drawn from its close
connexion with the frightful circumstances of the moment, by a piece of
crushed paper, on which the word "_Poison_," in the conspicuous
characters already described, was nevertheless strikingly visible.
Alfred snatched up this fatal witness; it was a part of what he had seen
in the morning, and had but too evidently been thrust into the bosom as
a place of concealment after its contents had been emptied into the
goblet; nay, it had still a considerable portion of the powder lurking
in its folds. The terrible conviction that his precaution had been too
late, and that his brother had assuredly swallowed the _poison_, flashed
at once upon Alfred, fearfully strengthened by the appearance of
Willoughby laying on the sofa, his eyeballs rolling beneath their closed
lids, except when they started wildly open for a second and closed
again. He still attempted to speak, but now nearly without the power of
articulation, saving that the name of Alfred was more than once
distinguishable amid a low rapid murmur, which however soon faded into
whispers, then subsided into a mere movement of the lips without sound,
and then ceased altogether. By this time the poor sufferer had become
quite insensible, and no one had yet answered Alfred's continued calls
for help. He now ran to the bell, then to the door, giving orders to the
servants, who at length appeared, to fly for the nearest medical aid,
adding incoherent directions about bringing antidotes for _poison_, and
even naming arsenic in particular; yet at the same moment, without any
direct consciousness of what he was doing, his fingers with a sort of
instinctive movement were thrusting within the breast of his own
waistcoat, the fatal scrap of paper he had found in his brother's bosom;
for all the while that with the aid of servants he was vainly
endeavouring to render assistance to Willoughby, confused notions were
floating through his mind of the dreadful addition, that in case of the
worst, it would be to his poor mother's grief to know that Willoughby
had committed the awful crime of putting a period to his own existence;
and mingled with these, were thoughts still more disjointed of Christian
rites refused to persons guilty of suicide: so that altogether Alfred
was actuated, without any power of defining his motives, by a vague
sense, that some sort of necessity existed for suppressing the proofs of
his brother having wilfully taken the _poison_. He was of course quite
incapable at such a moment of a process of reasoning by which to decide
what other supposition it would be either probable or desirable should
be formed.
Messengers had been despatched in every direction; yet before any
medical man arrived, the convulsions had subsided, and death,
accompanied by the most ghastly appearances, taken place.
At length the bustle of an arrival was heard; instead, however, of the
expected doctor, Geoffery Arden entered the room.