 CHAPTER XIII. I had spent near a week at the Villa de Angeles. John's manner to me was most tender and affectionate, but he showed no wish to refer to the tragedy of his wife's death, and the sad events which had preceded it, or to attempt to explain in any way his own conduct in the past. Nor did I ever lead the conversation to these topics, for I felt that even if there were no other reason, his great weakness rendered it inadvisable to introduce such subjects at present, or even to lead him to speak at all, more than was actually necessary. I was content to minister to him in quiet, and infinitely happy in his restored affection. He seemed desirous of banishing from his mind all thoughts of the last few months, but spoke much of the years before he had gone to Oxford, and of happy days which we had spent together in our childhood at worth maltreverse. His weakness was extreme, but he complained of no particular malady, except a short cough which troubled him at night. I had spoken to him of his health, for I could see that his state was such as to inspire anxiety, and begged that he should allow me to see if there was an English doctor at Naples who could visit him. This he would not assent to, saying that he was quite content with the care of an Italian doctor who visited him almost daily, and that he hoped to be able, under my escort, to return within a very short time to England. I shall never be much better, dear Sophie, he said one day. The doctor tells me that I am suffering from some sort of consumption, and that I must not expect to live long. That I yearn to see worth once more, and to feel again the west winds blowing in the evening across from Portland, and smell the time on the dorset downs. In a few days I hope perhaps to be a little stronger, and I then wish to show you a discovery which I have made in Naples. After that you may order them to harness the horses, and carry me back to worth maltreverse. I endeavored to ascertain from Signore Baraveli, the doctor, something as to the actual state of his patient. But my knowledge of Italian was so slight that I could neither make him understand what I would be at, nor comprehend in turn what he replied, so that this attempt was relinquished. From my brother himself I gathered that he had begun to feel his health much impaired, as far back as the early spring. But though his strength had since then gradually failed him, he had not been confined to the house until a month passed. He spent the day and often the night reclining on his sofa and speaking little. He had apparently lost the taste for the violin which had once absorbed so much of his attention. Indeed I think the bodily strength necessary for its performance had probably now failed him. The strativarius instrument lay near his couch in its case, but I only saw the ladder open on one occasion, I think, and was deeply thankful that John no longer took the same delight as here to four in the practice of this art. Not only because the mere sound of his violin was now fraught to me with such bitter memories, but also because I felt sure that its performance had in some way, which I could not explain, a deleterious effect upon himself. He exhibited that absence of vitality which is so often noticeable in those who have not long to live, and on some days lay in a state of semi-lethargy from which it was difficult to rouse him. But at other times he suffered from a distressing restlessness which forbade him to sit still even for a few minutes, and which was more painful to watch than his lethargic stupor. The Italian boy of whom I have already spoken exhibited an untiring devotion to his master, which won my heart. His name was Raphael Carantanuto, and he often sang to us in the evening, accompanying himself on the mandolin. At nights, too, when John could not sleep, Raphael would read for hours until at last his master dozed off. He was well educated, and though I could not understand the subject he read, I often sat by and listened, being charmed with his evident attachment to my brother and with the melodious intonation of a sweet voice. My brother was nervous apparently in some respects, and would never be left alone even for a few minutes. But in the intervals when Raphael was with him I had ample opportunity to examine and appreciate the beauties of the Villa de Angeles. It was built, as I have said, on some rocks jutting out into the sea, just before coming to the Capa de Posalipo, as you proceed from Naples. The earlier foundations were, I believe, originally Roman, and upon them a modern villa had been constructed in the eighteenth century, and to this again John had made important additions in the past two years. Looking down upon the sea from the windows of the villa, one could on calm days easily discern the remains of Roman peers and moles lying below the surface of the transparent water, and the tufa rock on which the house was built was burrowed with those unintelligible excavations of a classic date so common in the neighborhood. These subterraneous rooms and passages, while they aroused my curiosity, seemed at the time so gloomy and repellent that I never explored them. But on one sunny morning as I walked at the foot of the rocks by the sea I ventured into one of the larger of these chambers, and saw that it had at the far end an opening leading apparently into an inner room. I had walking with me an old Italian female servant who took a motherly interest in my proceedings, and who, relying principally upon a very slight knowledge of English, had constituted herself my bodyguard. Encouraged by her presence I penetrated this inner room, and found that it again opened in turn into another, and so on, until we had passed through no less than four chambers. They were all lighted after a fashion through vent holes, which somewhere or other reached the outer air, but the fourth room opened into a fifth which was unlighted. My companion, who had been showing signs of alarm and an evident reluctance to proceed further, now stopped abruptly and begged me to return. It may have been that her fear communicated itself to me also. For unattempting to cross the threshold and explore the darkness of the fifth cell, I was seized by an unreasoning panic and by the feeling of undefined horror experienced in a nightmare. I hesitated for an instant, but my fear became suddenly more intense, and springing back I followed my companion, who had set out to run back to the outer air. We never paused until we stood panting in the full sunlight by the sea. As soon as the maid had found her breath, she begged me never to go there again, explaining in broken English that the caves were known in the neighborhood as the Cells of Isis and were reputed to be haunted by demons. This episode, trifling as it may appear, had so great an effect upon me that I never again ventured onto the lower walk which ran at the foot of the rocks by the sea. In the house above my brother had built a large hall after the ancient Roman style, and this, with a dining room in many other chambers, were decorated in the fashion of those discovered at Pompeii. They had been furnished with the utmost luxury, and the beauty of the paintings, furniture, carpets, and hangings was enhanced by statues in bronze and marble. The villa indeed and its fittings were of a kind to which I was little used, and at the same time of such beauty that I never ceased to regard all as a creation of an enchanter's wand, or as the drop scene to some drama which might suddenly be raised and disappear from my sight. The house in short, together with its furniture, was, I believe, intended to be a reproduction of an ancient Roman villa, and had something about it repellent to my rustic and insular ideas. In the contemplation of his perfection, I experienced a curious mental sensation which I can only compare to the physical oppression produced on some persons by the heavy, incloing perfume of a bouquet of gardenias or other too highly scented exotics. In my brother's room was a medieval reproduction in Mellow alabaster of a classic group of a dolphin encircling a cupid. It was, I think, the fairest work of art I ever saw, but it jarred upon my sense of propriety that close by it should hang in ivory crucifix. I would rather, I think, have seen all things material and pagan entirely, with every view of the future life shut out, than have found a medley of things sacred and profane where the emblems of our highest hopes and aspirations were placed in insulting indifference, side by side with the embodied forms of sensuality. Here, in this scene of magical beauty, it seemed to me for a moment that the years had rolled back, that Christianity had still to fight with a living paganism, and that the battle was not yet won. It was the same all through the house, and there were many other matters which filled me with regret, mingled with vague and apprehensive surmises which I shall not hear repeat. At one end of the house was a small library, but it contained few works except Latin and Greek classics. I had gone thither one day to look for a book that John had asked for, when in turning out some drawers I found a number of letters written from worth by my lost constants to her husband. The shock of being brought suddenly face to face with a handwriting that evoked memories at once so dear and sad was in itself a sharp one, but its bitterness was immeasurably increased by the discovery that not one of these envelopes had ever been opened. While that dear heart, now at rest, was pouring forth her love and sorrow to the ears that should have been above all others ready to receive them, her letters as they arrived were flung uncared for, unread, even unopened, into any haphazard receptacle. The days passed one by one at the Villa de Angeles, with but little incident, nor did my brother's health either visibly improve or decline. Though the weather was still more than usually warm, a grateful breeze came morning and evening from the sea and tempered the heat so much as to render it always supportable. John would sometimes in the evening sit propped up with cushions on the trellis balcony looking towards bailla and watch the fishermen setting their nets. We could hear the melody of their deep-voiced songs carried up on the night air. It was here, Sophie, my brother said as we sat one evening looking on a scene like this. It was here that the great Epicurapoleo built himself a famous house and called it by two Greek words meaning a truce to care from which our name of Pulsalipo is derived. It was his sans souci and here he cast aside his vexations, but they were lighter than mine. Pulsalipo has brought no cessation of care to me. I do not think I shall find any truce this side of the grave, and beyond who knows. This was the first time John had spoken in this strain, and he seemed stirred to an unusual activity as though his own words had suddenly reminded him how frail was his state. He called Raphael to him and dispatched him on an errand to Naples. The next morning he sent for me earlier than usual and begged that a carriage might be ready by six in the evening as he desired to drive into the city. I tried at first to dissuade him from his project, urging him to consider his weak state of health. He replied that he felt somewhat stronger and had something that he particularly wished me to see in Naples. This done it would be better to return at once to England. He could, he thought, bear the journey if we travelled by very short stages. CHAPTER XIV Shortly after six o'clock in the evening we left the villa to Angelus. The day had been, as usual, cloudlessly serene. But a gentle sea breeze, of which I have spoken, rose in the afternoon, and brought with it a refreshing coolness. We had arranged a sort of couch in the land-ow with many cushions for my brother, and he mounted into the carriage with more ease than I had expected. I sat beside him, with Raphael facing me on the opposite seat. We drove down the hill of Posalipo through the Islex trees and tamarisk bushes that then skirted the sea, and so into the town. John spoke little except to remark that the carriage was an easy one. As we were passing through one of the principal streets he bent over to me and said, You must not be alarmed if I show you today a strange sight. Some women might perhaps be frightened at what we are going to see. But my poor sister has known already so much of trouble that a light thing like this will not affect her. In spite of his incomiums upon my supposed courage I felt alarmed and agitated by his words. There was a vagueness in them which frightened me, and bred that indefinite apprehension, which is often infinitely more terrifying than the actual object which inspires it. To my inquiries he would give no further response than to say that he had whilst at Posalipo made some investigations in Naples leading to a strange discovery which he was anxious to communicate to me. After traversing a considerable distance we had penetrated apparently into the heart of the town. The streets grew narrower and more densely thronged, the houses were more dirty and tumbled down, and the appearance of the people themselves suggested that we had reached some of the lower quarters of the city. Here we passed through a further network of small streets, of the name of which I took no note, and found ourselves at last in a very dark and narrow lane called the Via del Giardino. Although my brother had so far as I had observed, given no orders to the coachman, the latter seemed to have no difficulty in finding his way, driving rapidly in the Neapolitan fashion and proceeding direct as to a place with which he was already familiar. In the Via del Giardino the houses were of great height, and overhung the street so as to nearly touch one another. It seemed that this quarter had been formally inhabited, if not by the aristocracy, at least by a class very much superior to that which now lived there, and many of the houses were large and dignified, though long since parceled out into smaller tenements. It was before such a house that we at last brought up. Here must have been at one time a house or palace of some person of distinction, having a long and fine façade adorned with delicate palasters and much floored ornamentation of the Renaissance period. The ground floor was divided into a series of small shops, and its upper stories were evidently peopled by sordid families of the lowest class. Before one of these little shops now closed and having its windows carefully blocked with boards, our carriage stopped. Raphael alighted and taking a key from his pocket unlocked the door, and assisted John to leave the carriage. I followed, and directly we had crossed the threshold, the boy locked the door behind us, and I heard the carriage drive away. We found ourselves in a narrow and dark passage, and as soon as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom I perceived there was at the end of it a low staircase leading to some upper room, and on the right a door which opened into the closed shop. My brother moved slowly along the passage and began to ascend the stairs. He lent with one hand on Raphael's arm, taking hold of the balusters with the other. But I could see that to mount the stairs cost him considerable effort, and he paused frequently to cough and get his breath again. So we reached a landing at the top, and found ourselves in a small chamber or magazine directly over the shop. It was quite empty except for a few broken chairs, and appeared to be a small loft formed by dividing what had once been a high room into two storeys, of which the shop formed the lower. A long window which had no doubt once formed one of several in the walls of this large room, was now divided across its width by the flooring, and with its upper part served to light the loft while its lower panes opened into the shop. The ceiling was, in consequence of these alterations, comparatively low, but though much mutilated retained evident traces of having been at one time richly decorated, with the raised moldings and pendants common in the sixteenth century. At one end of the loft was a species of coved and elaborately carved dado, of which the former use was not obvious, but the large original room had without doubt been divided in length as well as in height, as the lath and plaster walls at either end of the loft had evidently been no part of the ancient structure. My brother sat down in one of the old chairs, and seemed to be collecting his strength before speaking. My anxiety was momentarily increasing, and it was a great relief when he began talking in the low voice as one that had much to say and wished to husband his strength. I do not know whether you will recollect my having told you of something Mr. Gaskell once said about the music of Graziani's Aria Pagetta Suite. It had always, he used to say, a curious effect upon his imagination, and the melody of the Gargilarda especially called up to his thoughts, in some strange way, a picture of a certain hall where people were dancing. He even went so far as to describe the general appearance of the room itself, and of the persons who were dancing there. Yes, I answered. I remember you telling me of this. And indeed my memory had in times past, so often rehearsed Mr. Gaskell's description that, although I had not recently thought of it, its chief features immediately returned to my mind. He described it, my brother continued, as a long hall with an arcade of arches running down one side of the fantastic gothic of the Renaissance. At the end was a gallery or balcony for the musicians, which on its front carried a coat of arms. I remembered this perfectly and told John so, adding that the shield bore a cherub's head fanning three lilies on a golden field. It is strange, John went on, that the description of a scene which our friend thought a mere effort of his own imagination has impressed itself so deeply on both our minds. But the picture which he drew was more than a fancy, for we are at this minute in the very hall of his dream. I could not gather what my brother meant, and thought his reason was failing him, but he continued, this miserable floor on which we stand has, of course, been afterwards built in, but you see above you the old ceiling, and here at the end was the musician's gallery, with the shield upon its front. He pointed to the carved and whitewashed dado which had hitherto so puzzled me. I stepped up to it, and although the lath and plaster partition wall was now built around it, it was clear that its curved outline might very easily, as John said, have formed part of the front of a coved gallery. I looked closer at the relief work which had adorned it. Though the edges were all rubbed off and the mouldings in some cases entirely removed, I could trace without difficulty a shield in the midst. Any more narrow inspection revealed underneath the whitewash which had partly peeled away, enough remnants of color to show that it had certainly been once painted gold and borne a cherub's head with three lullies. That is the shield of the old Neapolitan house of Dalmukh Valley, my brother continued. They bore a cherub's head fanning three lullies on a shield. It was in the balcony behind this shield, long since blocked up as you see, that the magician sat that ball-knite of which gaskill dreamt. From it they looked down on the hall below where dancing was going forth, and I will now take you downstairs that you may see if the description tallies. So saying he raised himself, and descending the stairs with much less difficulty than he had shown in mounting them, flung opened the door, which I had seen in the passage, and ushered us into the shop on the ground floor. The evening light had now faded so much that we could scarcely see even in the passage, and the shop having its windows barricaded with shutters was in complete darkness. Raphael, however, struck a match, and lit three half-burnt candles in a tarnished sconce upon the wall. The shop had evidently been lately in the occupation of a wine cellar, and there were still several empty wooden wine-butts and some broken flasks on shelves. In one corner I noticed that the earth which formed the floor had been turned up with spades. There was a small heap of mould, and a large flat stone was thus exposed below the surface. This stone had an iron ring attached to it, and seemed to cover the aperture of a well, or perhaps a vault. At the back of the shop and furthest from the street were two lofty arches separated by a column in the middle, from which the outside casing had been stripped. To these arches John pointed and said, That is a part of the arcade which once ran down the whole length of the hall. Only these two arches are now left, and the fine marbles which doubtless coated the outside of this dividing pillar had been stripped off. On a summer's night about one hundred years ago dancing was going on in this hall. There were a dozen couples dancing a wild step, such as is never seen now. The tune that the musicians were playing in the gallery above was taken from the Arapagi to Sweet, a Graziani. Gaskell has often told me that when he played it, the music brought with it to his mind a sense of some impending catastrophe, which culminated at the end of the first movement of the Gagliarda. It was just at that moment, Sophie, that an Englishman who was dancing here was stabbed in the back and fouly murdered. I had scarcely heard all that John had said, and had certainly not been able to take in its import, but without waiting to hear if I should say anything, he moved across to the uncovered stone with the ring in it, exerting a strength which I should have believed entirely impossible in his weak condition. He applied to the stone a lever which lay ready at hand. Raphael at the same time seized the ring, and so they were able between them to move the covering to one side, sufficiently to allow access to a small staircase which thus appeared to view. The stair was a winding one, and once led no doubt to some vaults below the ground floor. Raphael descended first, taking in his hand the sconce of three candles, which he held above his head, so as to fling a light down the steps. John went next, and then I followed, trying to support my brother if possible with my hand. The stairs were very dry, and on the walls there was none of the damp or mold, which fancy usually associates with a subterraneous vault. I do not know what it was I expected to see, but I had an uneasy feeling that I was on the brink of some evil and distressing discovery. After we had descended about twenty steps, we could see the entry to some vault or underground room, and it was just at the foot of the stairs that I saw something lying, as the light from the candles fell upon it from above. At first I thought it was a heap of dust or refuse, but on looking closer it seemed rather a bundle of rags. As my eyes penetrated the gloom I saw there was about it some tattered cloth of a faded green tint, and almost at the same minute I seemed to trace under the clothes the lines or dimensions of a human figure. For a moment I imagined it was some poor man lying face downwards and bent up against the wall. The idea of a man or of a dead body being there shocked me violently, and I cried to my brother, Tell me, what is it? At that instant the light from Raphael's candles fell in a somewhat different direction. It lighted up the white bowl of a human skull, and I saw that what I had taken for a man's form was instead that of a cloth skeleton. I turned faint and sick for an instant, and should have fallen had it not been for John, who put his arm about me and sustained me with an unexpected strength. God help us, I exclaimed. Let us go. I cannot bear this. There are foul vapours here. Let us get back to the outer air. He took me by the arm, and, pointing at the huddled heap, said, Do you know whose bones those are? That is Adrian Temple. After it was all over they flung his body down the steps, dressed in the clothes he wore. At that name, uttered in so ill-omined a place, I felt a fresh access of terror. It seemed as though the soul of that wicked man must be still hovering over his unburied remains, and boating evil to us all. A chill crept over me. The light, the walls, my brother and Raphael all swam round, and I sank swooning on the stairs. When I returned fully to my senses, we were in the land-out again, making our way back to the villa at the Angelus. CHAPTER 15 THE NEXT MORNING My health and strength were entirely restored to me, but my brother on the contrary seemed weak and exhausted from his efforts of the previous night. Our return journey to the villa de Angelus had passed in complete silence. I had been too much perturbed to question him on the many points relating to the strange events as to which I was still completely in the dark, and he, on his side, had shown no desire to afford me any further information. When I saw him the next morning, he exhibited signs of great weakness, and in response to an effort on my part to obtain some explanation of the discovery of Adrian Temple's body, avoided an immediate reply, promising to tell me all he knew after our return to Werth Maltrevers. I pondered over the last terrifying episode very frequently in my own mind, and as I thought more deeply of it all, it seemed to me that the outlines of some evil history were piece by piece developing themselves that I had almost within my grasp the clue that would make all plain, and that had eluded me so long. In that dim story, Adrian Temple, the music of the gagliata, my brother's fatal passion for the violin, all seemed to have some mysterious connection, and to have conspired in working John's mental and physical ruin. Even the Stradivarius violin bore a part in the tragedy, becoming, as it were, an actively malignant spirit, though I could not explain how, and was yet entirely unaware of the manner in which it had come into my brother's possession. I found that John was still resolved on an immediate return to England. His weakness, it is true, led me to entertain doubts as to how he would support so long a journey. But at the same time I did not feel justified in using any strong efforts to dissuade him from his purpose. I reflected that the more wholesome air and associations of England would certainly re-invigorate both body and mind, and that any extra strain brought about by the journey would soon be repaired by the comforts and watchful care with which we could surround him at Worth Maltrevers. So the first week in October saw us once more with our faces set towards England. A very comfortable swinging-bed or hammock had been arranged for John in the travelling carriage, and we determined to avoid fatigue as much as possible by dividing our journey into very short stages. My brother seemed to have no intention of giving up the bill of the Angelus. It was left complete with its luxurious furniture, and with all his servants under the care of an Italian Maggiore du Homo, I felt that as John's state of health forbade his entertaining any hope of an immediate return feather, it would have been much better to close entirely his Italian house. But his great weakness made it impossible for him to undertake the effort such a course would involve, and even if my own ignorance of the Italian tongue had not stood in the way, I was far too eager to get my invalid back to Worth to feel inclined to import any further delay, while I should myself adjust matters which were after all comparatively trifling. As Parnam was now ready to discharge his usual duties of valet, and as my brother seemed quite content that he should do so, Raphael was, of course, to be left behind. The boy had quite won my heart by his sweet manners, combined with his evident affection to his master, and in making him understand that he was now to leave us, I offered him a present of a few pounds as a token of my esteem. He refused, however, to touch this money, and shed tears when he learned that he was to be left in Italy, and begged with many protestations of devotion that he might be allowed to accompany us to England. My heart was not proof against his entreaties, supported by so many signs of attachment, and it was agreed, therefore, that he should at least attend us as far as worth maltrevers. John showed no surprise at the boy being with us. Indeed, I never thought it necessary to explain that I had originally purposed to leave him behind. Our journey, though necessarily prolonged by the shortness of its stages, was safely accomplished. John bore it as well as I could have hoped, and though his body showed no signs of increased vigor, his mind, I think, improved in tone, at any rate for a time. From the evening on which he had shown me the terrible discovery on the Via dell Giardino, he seemed to have laid aside something of his care and depression. He now exhibited little trace of the moroseness and selfishness which had of late so marred his character, and though he naturally felt severely at times the fatigue of travel, yet we had no longer to dread any relapse into that state of lethargy or stupor which had so often baffled every effort to counteract it at Posilipo. Some feeling of superstitious aversion had prompted me to give orders that the strativarius violin should be left behind at Posilipo, but before parting my brother asked for it, and insisted that it should be brought with him, though I had never heard him play a note on it for many weeks. He took an interest in all the petty episodes of travel, and certainly appeared to derive more entertainment from the journey than was to have been anticipated in his feeble state of health. To the incidents of the evening spent in the Via dell Giardino, he made no illusion of any kind, nor did I for my part wish to renew memories of so unpleasant a nature. His only reference occurred one Sunday evening as we were passing a small graveyard near Genoa. The scene apparently turned his thoughts to that subject, and he told me that he had taken measures before leaving Naples to ensure that the remains of Adrian Temple should be decently interred in the cemetery of Santa Bibiana. His words set me thinking again, and unsatisfied curiosity prompted me strongly to inquire of him how he had convinced himself that the skeleton at the foot of the stairs was indeed that of Adrian Temple. But I restrained myself, partly from a reliance on his promise that he would one day explain the whole story to me, and partly being very reluctant to mar the enjoyment of the peaceful scenes through which we were passing, by the introduction of any subject so jarring and painful as those to which I have eluded. We reached London at last, and here we stopped a few days to make some necessary arrangements before going down to worth maltravers. I had urged upon John during the journey that immediately on his arrival in London he should obtain the best English medical advice as to his own help, though he at first demurred, saying that nothing more was to be done, and that he was perfectly satisfied with the medicine given him by Dr. Beravelli, which he continued to take. Yet by constant entreaty I prevailed upon him to exceed to so reasonable a request. Dr. Frobisher, considered at that time the first living authority on diseases of the brain and nerves, saw him on the morning after our arrival. He was good enough to speak with me at some length after seeing my brother, and to give me many hints and recipes, whereby I might be better enabled to nurse the invalid. Sir John's condition, he said, was such as to excite serious anxiety. There was indeed no brain mischief of any kind to be discovered, but his lungs were in a state of advanced disease, and there were signs of grave heart infection. Yet he did not bid me to despair, but said that with careful nursing life might certainly be prolonged and even some measure of health in time restored. He asked me more than once if I knew of any trouble or worry that preyed upon Sir John's mind. Were there financial difficulties? Had he been subjected to any mental shock? Had he received any severe fright? To all this I could only reply in the negative. At the same time I told Dr. Frobisher as much of John's history as I considered pertinent to the question. He shook his head gravely and recommended that Sir John should remain for the present in London under his own constant supervision. To this, of course, my brother would by no means consent. He was eager to proceed at once to his own house, saying that if necessary we could return again to London for Christmas. It was therefore agreed that we should go down to Worth Maltravers at the end of the week. Parnam had already left us for Worth in order that he might have everything ready against his master's return, and when we arrived we found all in perfect order for our reception. A small morning-room next to the library, with a pleasant south aspect, and opening on to the terrace, had been prepared for my brother's use so that he might avoid the fatigue of mounting stairs, which Dr. Frobisher considered very prejudicial in his present condition. We had also purchased in London a chair fitted with wheels, which enabled him to be moved, or, if he were feeling equal to the exertion, to move himself without difficulty, from room to room. His health, I think, improved. Very gradually it is true, but still sufficiently to inspire me with hope that he might yet be spared to us. Of the state of his mind or thoughts I knew little, but I could see that he was at times a prey to nervous anxiety. This showed itself in the harassed look which his pale face often wore, and in his marked dislike to being left alone. He derived, I think, a certain pleasure from the quietude and monotony of his life at Worth, and perhaps also from the consciousness that he had about him loving and devoted hearts. I say hearts, for every servant at Worth was attached to him, remembering the great consideration and courtesy of his earlier years, and grieving to see his youthful and once vigorous frame reduced to so sad a straight. Books he never read himself, and even the charm of Raphael's reading seemed to have lost its power, though he never tired of hearing the boy sing, and liked to have him sit by his chair even when his eyes were shut, and he was apparently asleep. His general health seemed to me to change but little, either for better or worse. Dr. Frobisher had led me to expect some such a sequel. I had not concealed from him that I had, at times, entertained suspicions as to my brother's sanity, but he had assured me that they were totally unfounded, that Sir John's brain was as clear as his own. At the same time he confessed that he could not account for the exhausted vitality of his patient, a condition which he would under ordinary circumstances have attributed to excessive study or severe trouble. He had urged upon me the pressing necessity for complete rest, and for much sleep. My brother never even incidentally referred to his wife, his child, or to Mrs. Temple, who constantly wrote to me from Royston, sending kind messages to John, and asking how he did. These messages I never dared to give him, fearing to agitate him or retard his recovery by diverting his thoughts into channels which must necessarily be of a painful character, that he should never even mention her name or that of Lady Maltrevers led me to wonder sometimes if one of those curious freaks of memory which occasionally accompanied a severe illness had not entirely blotted out from his mind the recollection of his marriage and of his wife's death. He was unable to consider any affairs of business, and the management of the estate remained as it had done for the last two years in the hands of our excellent agent Mr. Baker. But one evening in the early part of December he sent Raphael about nine o'clock, saying he wished to speak to me. I went to his room and without any warning he began at once. You never show me my boy now, Sophie. He must be grown a big child, and I should like to see him. Much startled by so unexpected a remark I replied that the child was at Royston under the care of Mrs. Temple, but that I knew that if it pleased him to see Edward she would be glad to bring him down to worth. He seemed gratified with this idea and begged me to ask her to do so, desiring that his respect should be at the same time conveyed to her. I almost ventured at that moment to recall his lost wife to his thoughts by saying that his child resembled her strongly, for your likeness at that time and even now, my dear Edward, to your poor mother was very marked. But my courage failed me, and his talk soon reverted to an earlier period, comparing the mildness of the month to that of the first winter which we spent at Eaton. His thoughts, however, must I fancy have returned for a moment to the days when he first met your mother, for he suddenly asked, Where is Gaskell? Why does he never come to see me? This brought quite a new idea to my mind. I fancied it might do my brother much good to have by him so sensible and true a friend as I knew Mr. Gaskell to be. The latter's address had fortunately not slipped from my memory, and I put all scruples aside and wrote by the next mail to him, setting forth my brother's sad condition, saying that I had heard John mention his name and begging him on my own account to be so good as to help us if possible, and come to us in this hour of trial. Though he was so far off as Westmoreland, Mr. Gaskell's generosity brought him at once to our aid, and within a week he was installed at Fort Worth Maltraverse, sleeping in the library, where we had arranged a bed at his own desire so that he might be near his sick friend. His presence was of the utmost assistance to us all. He treated John at once with the tenderness of a woman and the firmness of a clever and strong man. They sat constantly together in the mornings, and Mr. Gaskell told me John had not shown with him the same reluctance to talk freely of his married life as he had discovered with me. The tenor of his communications I cannot guess, nor did I ever ask. But I knew that Mr. Gaskell was much affected by them. John even amused himself now at times by having Mr. Baker into his rooms of a morning that the management of the estate might be discussed with his friend, and he also expressed his wish to see the family's solicitor as he desired to draw his will. Thinking that any diversion of this nature could not but be beneficial to him, we sent to Dorster for our solicitor, Mr. Jeffries, who together with his clerk spent three nights at Worth, and drew up a testament for my brother. So time went on, and the year was drawing to a close. It was Christmas Eve, and I had gone to bed shortly after twelve o'clock, having an hour earlier bid good night to John and Mr. Gaskell. The long habit of watching with or being in charge of an invalid at night had made my ears extraordinarily quick to apprehend even the slightest murmur. It must have been, I think, near three in the morning when I found myself awake and conscious of some unusual sound. It was low and far off, but I knew instantly what it was, and felt a choking sensation of fear and horror as if an icy hand had gripped my throat on recognizing the air of the gagliata. It was being played on the violin and a long way off, but I knew that tune too well to permit of my having any doubt on the subject. Any trouble or fear becomes, as you will someday learn, my dear nephew, immensely intensified and exaggerated at night. It is so, I suppose, because our nerves are in an excited condition and our brain not sufficiently awake to give a due account of our foolish imaginations. I have myself many times lain awake wrestling in thought with difficulties which in the hours of darkness seemed insurmountable, but with a dawn resolved themselves into merely trivial inconveniences. So on this night, as I sat up in bed looking into the dark with the sound of that melody in my ears, it seemed as if something too terrible for words had happened, as though the evil spirit which we had hoped was exercised had returned with other sevenfold more wicked than himself and taken up his abode again with my lost brother. The memory of another night rushed to my mind when Constance had called me from my bed at Royston, and we had stolen together down the moonlit passages with the lilt of that wicked music vibrating on the still summer air. Poor Constance, she was in her grave now, yet her troubles, at least, were over. But here, as by some bitter irony, instead of carol or sweet symphony it was the gagliarda that woke me from my sleep on Christmas morning. I flung my dressing gown about me, and hurried through the corridor and down the stairs which led to the lower story in my brother's room. As I opened my bedroom door, the violin ceased suddenly in the middle of a bar. Its last sound was not a musical note, but rather a horrible screen, such as I pray I may never hear again. It was a sound such as a wounded beast might utter. There is a picture I have seen of Blake's showing the soul of a strong wicked man leaving his body at death. The spirit is flying out through the window with awful staring eyes, aghast at the desolation into which it is going. If in the agony of dissolution such a lost soul could utter a cry, it would, I think, sound like the wail which I heard from the violin that night. Instantly all was in absolute stillness. The passages were silent and ghostly in the faint light of my candle. But as I reached the bottom of the stairs I heard the sound of other footsteps. And Mr. Gaskell met me. He was fully dressed and had evidently not been to bed. He took me kindly by the hand and said, I feared you might be alarmed by the sound of music. John has been walking in his sleep. He had taken out his violin and was playing on it in a trance. Just as I reached him something in it gave way and the discord caused by the slackened strings roused him at once. He is awake now and has returned to bed. Control your alarm for his sake and your own. It is better that he should not know you have been awakened. He pressed my hand and spoke a few more reassuring words, and I went back to my room still much agitated and yet feeling half ashamed for having shown so much anxiety with so little reason. That Christmas morning was one of the most beautiful that I ever remember. It seemed as though Summer was so loath to leave our sunny dorset coast that she came back on this day to bid us adieu before her final departure. I had risen early and had partaken of the sacrament at our little church. Dr. Butler had recently introduced this early service, and though any alteration of time-honored customs in such matters might not otherwise have met with my approval, I was glad to avail myself of the privilege on this occasion, as I wished in any case to spend the later morning with my brother. The singular beauty of the early hours and the tranquilizing effect of the solemn service brought back serenity to my mind and effectually banished from it all memories of the preceding night. Mr. Gaskell met me in the hall on my return, and after greeting me kindly with the established compliments of the day, inquired after my help and hoped that the disturbance of my slumber on the previous night had not affected me injuriously. He had good news for me. John seemed decidedly better, was already dressed, and desired, as it was Christmas morning, that we would take our breakfast with him in his room. To this, as you may imagine, I readily assented. Our breakfast party passed off with much content, and even with some quiet humor. John sitting in his easy chair at the head of the table and wishing us the compliments of the season, I found laid in my place a letter from Mrs. Temple greeting us all, for she knew Mr. Gaskell was at work, and saying that she hoped to bring little Edward to us at the new year. My brother seemed much pleased at the prospect of seeing his son, and though perhaps it was only imagination, I fancied he was particularly gratified that Mrs. Temple herself was to pay us a visit. She had not been to worth since the death of Lady Maltrevers. Before we had finished breakfast, the son beat on the pains with an unusual strength and brightness. His rays cheered us all, and it was so warm that John first opened the windows, and then wheeled his chair on to the walk outside. Mr. Gaskell brought him a hat and mufflers, and we sat with him on the terrace, basking in the sun. The sea was still, and glassy as a mirror, and the channel lay stretched before us like a floor of moving gold. A rose or two still hung against the house, and the sun's rays reflected from the red sandstone gave us a December morning more mild and genial than many June days that I have known in the North. We sat for some minutes without speaking, immersed in our reflections and in the exquisite beauty of the scene. The stillness was broken by the bells of the parish church ringing for the morning service. There were two of them, and their sound familiar to us from childhood seemed like the voices of old friends. John looked at me and said with a sigh, I should like to go to church. It is long since I was there. You and I have always been on Christmas morning, Sophie, and Constance would have wished it had she been with us. His words, so unexpected and tender, filled my eyes with tears, not tears of grief, but of deep thankfulness to see my loved one turning once more to the old ways. It was the first time I had heard him speak of Constance and that sweet name with the infinite pathos of her death and of the spectacle of my brother's weakness, so overcame me that I could not speak. I only pressed his hand and nodded. Mr. Gaskell, who had turned away for a minute, said he thought John would take no harm in attending the morning service provided the church were warm. On this point I could reassure him, having found it properly heated even in the early morning. Mr. Gaskell was to push John's chair, and I ran off to put on my cloak, with my heart full of profound thankfulness for the signs of returning grace so mercifully boutsafe to our dear sufferer on this happy day. I was ready dressed and had just entered the library when Mr. Gaskell stepped hurriedly through the window from the terrace. John has fainted, he said, run for some smelling salts and call Parnam. There was a scene of hurried alarm giving place ere long to a terrified despair. Parnam mounted a horse and set off at a wild gallop to Swanage to fetch Dr. Bruton. But an hour before he returned we knew the worst. My brother was beyond the aid of the physician. His direct life had reached a sudden term. I have now, dear Edward, completed the brief narrative of some of the facts attending the latter years of your father's life. The motive which has induced me to commit them to writing has been a double one. I am anxious to give a fact as far as may be to the desire expressed most strongly to Mr. Gaskell by your father that you should be put in possession of these facts on your coming of age. And for my part I think it better that you should thus hear the plain truth from me lest you should be at the mercy of haphazard reports which might at any time reach you from ignorant or interested sources. Some of the circumstances were so remarkable that it is scarcely possible to suppose that they were not known and most probably frequently discussed in so large an establishment as that of worth-maltravers. I even have reason to believe that exaggerated and absurd stories were current at the time of Sir John's death, and I should be grieved to think that such foolish tales might by any chance reach your ear without your having any sure means of discovering where the truth lay. God knows how grievous it has been to me to sit down on paper some of the facts that I have here narrated. You, as a dutiful son, will reverence the name even of a father whom you never knew, but you must remember that his sister did more. She loved him with a single hearted devotion, and it still grieves her to the quick to write anything which may seem to detract from his memory. Only, above all things, let us speak the truth. Much of what I have told you needs I feel further explanation, but this I cannot give, for I do not understand the circumstances. Mr. Gaskell, your guardian, will, I believe, add to this account a few notes of his own which may tend to elucidate some points as he is in possession of certain facts of which I am still ignorant. All LibreBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreBox.org. I have read what Miss Maltruffers has written, and have but little to add to it. I can give no explanation that will tally with all the facts or meet all the difficulties involved in her narrative. The most obvious solution of some points would be, of course, to suppose that Sir John Maltruffers was insane, but to anyone who knew him as intimately as I did such an hypothesis is untenable, nor if admitted would it explain some of the strangest incidents. Moreover it was strongly negatived by Dr. Frobisher from whose verdict, in such matters, there was at the time no appeal, by Dr. Dobie and by Dr. Bruton, who had known Sir John from his infancy. It is possible that towards the close of his life he suffered occasionally from hallucination, though I could not positively affirm even so much, but this was only when his health had been completely undermined by causes which are very difficult to analyze. When I first knew him at Oxford he was a strong man physically, as well as mentally, open-hearted, and of a merry and genial temperament. At the same time he was like most cultured persons and especially musicians, highly strong and excitable, but at a certain point in his career his very nature seemed to change. He became reserved, secretive, and Saturnine. On this moral metamorphosis followed an equally startling physical change. His robust health began to fail him, and although there was no definite malady which doctors could combat, he went gradually from bad to worse until the end came. The commencement of this extraordinary change coincided, I believe, almost exactly with his discovery of the Stradivarius violin, and whether this was, after all, a mere coincidence or something more it is not easy to say. Until a very short time before his death neither Miss Maltrevers nor I had any idea how that instrument had come into his possession, or I think something might perhaps have been done to save him. Though towards the end of his life he spoke freely to his sister of the finding of the violin, he only told her half the story, for he concealed from her entirely that there was anything else in the hidden cupboard at Oxford. But as a matter of fact he had found there also two manuscript books containing an elaborate diary of some years of a man's life. That man was Adrian Temple, and I believe that in the perusal of this diary must be sought the origin of John Maltrevers' ruin. The manuscript was beautifully written in a clear but cramped 18th century hand, and gave the idea of a man writing with deliberation and wishing to transcribe his impressions with accuracy for further reference. The style was excellent, and the minute details given were often of high antiquarian interest, but the record throughout was marred by gross license. Adrian Temple's life had undoubtedly so definite an influence on Sir John's that a brief outline of it, as gathered from his diaries, is necessary for the understanding of what followed. Temple went up to Oxford in 1737. He was 17 years old, without parents, brothers, or sisters, and he possessed the Royston Estates in Derbyshire, which were then as now a most valuable property. With the year 1738 his diaries began, and though then little more than a boy, he had tasted every illicit pleasure that Oxford had to offer. His temptations were no doubt great, for besides being wealthy he was handsome, and had probably never known any proper control as both his parents had died when he was still very young. But in spite of other failings he was a brilliant scholar, and on taking his degree was made at once a fellow of St. John's. He took up his abode in that college, in a fine set of rooms, looking on to the gardens, and from this period seems to have used Royston but little, living always either at Oxford or on the continent. He formed at this time the acquaintance of one Jocelyn, whom he engaged his companion and Ammonunces. Jocelyn was a man of talent, but of irregular life, and was no doubt an accomplice in many of Temple's excesses. In 1743 they both undertook the so called Grand Tour, and though it was not his first visit it was then probably that Temple first felt the fascination of Pagan Italy, a fascination which increased with every year of his after life. On his return from foreign travel he found himself among the stirring events of 1745. He was an ardent supporter of the pretender, and made no attempt to conceal his views. Jacobite tendencies were indeed generally prevalent in the college at the time, and had this been the sum of his offending it is probable that little notice would have been taken by the college authorities. But his notoriously wild life told against the young man, and certain dark suspicions were not easily passed over. After the fiasco of the rebellion, Dr. Holmes, then president of the college, seems to have made a scapegoat of Temple. He was deprived of his fellowship, and though not formally expelled, such pressure was put upon him as resulted in his leaving St. John's and removing to Magdalen Hall. There his great wealth evidently secured him consideration, and he was given the best rooms in the hall, that very set looking on to New College Lane, which Sir John Maltrevers afterwards occupied. In the first half of the eighteenth century the romance of the Middle Ages, though dying, was not dead, and the occult sciences still found followers among the Oxford Towers. From his early years Temple's mind seems to have been set strongly towards mysticism of all kinds, and he and Jocelyn were versed in the jargon of the alchemist and astrologer, and practiced according to the ancient rules. It was his reputation as a necromancer, and the story's current of illicit rites performed in the garden rooms at St. John's, that contributed largely to his being dismissed from that college. He had also become acquainted with Francis Dashwood, the notorious Lord lay dispenser, and many a winter's night saw him riding through the misty tames meadows to the door of the sham Franciscan Abbey. In his diaries were more notices than one of the Franciscans, and the nameless orgies of Medmenam. He was devoted to music. It was a rare enough accomplishment then, and a rarer thing still to find a wealthy landowner performing on the violin, yet so he did, though he kept his passion very much to himself, as fiddling was thought lightly of in those days. His musical skill was altogether exceptional, and he was the first possessor of the Stradivarius violin which afterwards fell so unfortunately into St. John's hands. This violin, Temple bought in the autumn of 1738 on the occasion of a first visit to Italy. In that year died the non-agenarian Antonius Stradivarius, the greatest violin maker the world has ever seen. After Stradivarius's death, the stock of fiddles in his shop was sold by auction. Temple happened to be traveling in Cremona at the time with a tutor, and at the auction he bought that very instrument which we afterwards had cost in no so well. An alt in his diary gave its cost at four Louis, and said that a curious history attached to it, though it was of his golden period and probably the finest instrument he ever made, Stradivarius would never sell it, and it had hung for more than thirty years in his shop. It was said that from some whim as he lay dying he had given orders that it should be burnt, but if that were so the instructions were neglected, and after his death it came under the hammer. Adrian Temple from the first recognized the great value of the instrument. His notes show that he only used it on certain special occasions, and it was no doubt for its better protection that he devised the hidden cupboard where Sir John eventually found it. The later years of Temple's life were spent for the most part in Italy. On the scoglio di Venere near Naples he built the Villa di Angelis, and there henceforth passed all except the hottest months of the year. Shortly after the completion of the Villa, Jocelyn left him suddenly and became a Cartusian monk. A caustic note in his diary hinted that even this foul parasite was shocked into the austereest form of religion by something he had seen going forward. At Naples Temple's dark life became still darker, he dallyed it is true with neoplatonism, and boast that he, like platonists, had twice passed the circle of the new and enjoyed the fruition of the deity. But the ideals of even that easy doctrine grew in his evil life still more miserably debased. More than once in the manuscript he made mention by name of the gagliata of Graziani, as having been played at pagan mysteries which these enthusiasts revived at Naples, and the air had evidently impressed itself deeply on his memory. The last entry in his diary is made on the 16th of December, 1752. He was then in Oxford for a few days, but shortly afterwards returned to Naples. The accident of his having just completed a second volume induced him, no doubt, to leave it behind him in the secret cupboard. It is probable that he commenced a third, but if so it was never found. In reading the manuscript I was struck with the author's clear and easy style, and found the interest of the narrative increase rather than diminish. At the same time its study was inexpressibly painful to me. Nothing could have supported me in my determination to thoroughly master it, but the conviction that if I was to be of any real assistance to my poor friend Maltopers I must know as far as possible every circumstance connected with his malady. As it was I felt myself breathing an atmosphere of moral contagion during the perusal of the manuscript, and certain passages have since returned at times to haunt me in spite of all efforts to dislodge them from my memory. When I came to Worth at Miss Maltoffer's urgent invitation I found my friend Sir John terribly altered. It was not only that he was ill and physically weak, but he had entirely lost the manner of youth, which though indefinable is yet so appreciable and draw so sharp a distinction between the first period of life and middle age. But the most striking feature of his illness was the extraordinary power of his complexion, which made his face resemble a subtle counterfeit of white wax rather than that of a living man. He welcomed me undemonstratively, but with evidence and serity, and there was an entire absence of the constraint which often accompanies the meeting again of friends whose cordial relations have suffered interruption. From the time of my arrival at Worth until his death we were constantly together. Indeed I was much struck by the almost childish dislike which he showed to be left alone even for a few moments. As night approached this feeling became intensified. Parnam slept always in his master's room, but if anything called the servant away even for a minute he would send for Carotinuto or myself to be with him until his return. His nerves were weak. He started violently at any unexpected noise, and above all he dreaded being in the dark. When night fell he had additional lamps brought into his room, and even when he composed himself to sleep insisted on a strong light being kept by his bedside. I had often read in books of people wearing a hunted expression and had laughed at the phrase as conventional and unmeaning, but when I came to Worth I knew its truth, for if any face ever wore a hunted I had almost written a haunted look. It was the white face of Sir John Maltravers. His air seemed that of a man who was constantly expecting the arrival of some evil tidings, and at times reminded me painfully of the guilty expectation of a felon who knows that a warrant is issued for his arrest. During my visit he spoke to me frequently about his past life, and instead of showing any reluctance to discuss the subject, seemed glad of the opportunity of disburning his mind. I gathered from him that the reading of Adrian Temple's memoirs had made a deep impression on his mind, which was no doubt intensified by the vision which he thought he saw in his rooms at Oxford, and by the discovery of the portrait at Royston. Of those singular phenomena I have no explanation to offer. The romantic element in his disposition rendered him peculiarly susceptible to the fascination of that mysticism which breathed through Temple's narrative. He told me that almost from the first time he read it he was filled with a longing to visit the places and to revive the strange life of which it spoke. This inclination he kept at first in check, but by degrees it gathered strength enough to master him. There is no doubt in my mind that the music of the Gagliata of Graziana helped materially in this process of mental degradation. It is curious that Michael Praetorius in the Sintagma Musicum should speak of the Galiard generally as an invention of the devil full of shameful and licentious gestures and immodest movements. And the singular melody of the Gagliata in the Aureopiguita Suite certainly exercised from the first a strange influence over me. I shall not do more than touch on the question here, because I see Miss Maltrevers has spoken of it at length, and will only say that though since the day of Sir John's death I have never heard a note of it, the air is still fresh in my mind and has at times presented itself to me unexpectedly and always with an unwholesome effect. This I have found happened generally in times of physical depression, and the same air no doubt exerted a similar influence on Sir John, which is impressionable nature rendered from the first more deleterious to him. I say this advisedly because I am sure that if some music is good for man and elevates him, other melodies are equally bad and innervating. An experience far wider than any we yet possess is necessary to enable us to say how far this influence is capable of extension. How far, that is, the mind may be directed on the one hand to ascetic abnegation by the systematic use of certain music, or on the other to elicit and dangerous pleasures by melodies of an opposite tendency. But this much is, I think, certain that after a comparatively advanced standard of culture has once been attained, music is the readiest, if not the only key which admits to the yet narrower circle of the highest imaginative thought. On the occasion for travel afforded him by his honeymoon, an impulse which he could not at the time explain, but which after events have convinced me was the haunting suggestion of the gagliata, drove him to visit the scenes mentioned so often in Temple's diary. He had always been an excellent scholar and a classic of more than ordinary ability. Rome and southern Italy filled him with a strange delight. His education enabled him to appreciate to the full what he saw. He peopled the stage with the figures of the original actors and tried to assimilate his thought to theirs. He began reading classical literature widely, no longer from the scholarly but the literary standpoint. In Rome he spent much time in the librarian's shop and there met with copies of the numerous authors of the later empire and of those Alexandrine philosophers which are rarely seen in England. In these he found a new delight and fresh food for his mysticism. Such study, if carried to any extent, is probably dangerous to the English character and certainly was to a man of Maltrever's romantic sympathies. This reading produced in time so real an effect upon his mind that if he did not definitely abandon Christianity, as I fear he did, he at least adulterated it with other doctrines till it became to him neoplatonism. That most seductive of philosophies which has enthralled so many minds from Proclus and Julian to Augustine and the Renaissance found an easy convert in John Maltrever's. Its passionate longing for the vague and undefined good, its tolerance of aesthetic impressions, the pleasant superstitions of its dynamic pantheism, all touched responsive chords in his nature. His mind, he told me, became filled with a majorless yearning for the old culture of pagan philosophy and as the past became clearer and more real so the present grew dimmer and his thoughts were gradually winged entirely from all the natural objects of affection and interest which should otherwise have occupied them. To what a terrible extent this process went on, Miss Maltrever's narrative shows. Soon after reaching Naples he visited the Villa di Angelis, which temple had built on the ruins of a sea-house of Pomponius. The latter building had in its turn become dismantled and ruinous, and Sir John found no difficulty in buying the site outright. He afterwards rebuilt it on an elaborate scale, endeavouring to reproduce in its equipment the luxury of the later empire. I had occasion to visit the house more than once in my capacity of executor, and found it full of priceless works of art which, though neither so difficult to procure at that time nor so costly as they would be now, were yet sufficiently valuable to have necessitated an unjustifiable outlay. The situation of the building fostered his infatuation for the past. It lay between the Bay of Naples and the Bay of Bia, and from its windows commanded the same exquisite view which had charmed Cicero and Luculus, Severus, and the Antonines. Hard buy stood Bia, the princely seaside resort of the empire. That most luxurious and wanton of all cities of antiquity survived the cataclysms of ages and only lost its civic continuity and became the ruined village of today in the sack of the fifteenth century. But a continuity of wickedness is not so easily broken, and those who know the spot best say that it is still instinct with memories of a shameful past. For miles along that haunted coast the foot cannot be put down except on the ruins of some splendid villa, and overall there broods a spirit of corruption and debasement actually sensible and oppressive. Of the dawns and sunsets of the noonday sun tempered by the sea breeze and the shade of scented groves, those who have been there know the charm, and to those who have not no words can describe it. But there are malefic vapours rising from the corpse of a past, not altogether buried, and most cultivated Englishmen who tarry their long feel their influence as did John Maltrevers. Like so many deceptorists of the Neoplatonic school, he did not practice the abnegation enjoined by the very cult he professed to follow. Though his nature was far too refined, I believe ever to sink into the sensualism revealed in temples' diaries, yet it was through the gratification of corporeal taste that he endeavored to achieve the divine ecstasis, and there were constantly lavish and sumptuous entertainments at the villa at which strange guests were present. In such a nightmare of a life it was not to be expected that any mind would find repose, and Maltrevers certainly found none. All those cares which usually occupy men's minds, all thoughts of wife, child, and home, were, it is true, abandoned. But a wild unrest had hold of him, and never suffered him to be at ease. Though he never told me as much, yet I believe he was under the impression that the form which he had seen at Oxford and Royston had reappeared to him on more than one subsequent occasion. It must have been, I fancy, with a vague hope of laying this specter that he now set himself with eagerness to discover where, or how, temple had died. He remembered that Royston tradition said he had succumbed at Naples in the plague of 1752, but an idea seized him that this was not the case. Indeed, I have suspect his fancy unconsciously pictured that evil man as still alive. The methods by which he eventually discovered the skeleton, or learned the episodes which preceded temple's death I do not know. He promised to tell me some day at length, but a sudden death prevented his ever doing so. The facts as he narrated them, and as I have little doubt they actually occurred, were these. Adrian Temple, after Jocelyn's departure, had made a confidant of one Palamedi Domace Calvi, a sign of a splendid Parthenopian family of that name. Palamedi had a palace in the heart of Naples, and was temple's equal in age, and also in his great wealth. The two men became boon companions, associated in all kinds of wickedness and excess. At length Palamedi married a beautiful girl named Olympia Aldobrandini, who was also of the noblest lineage, but the intimacy between him and Temple was not interrupted. About a year subsequent to this marriage, dancing was going on after a splendid banquet in the great hall of the Palazzo Dome Cavalli. Adrian, who was a favored guest, called to the musicians in the gallery to play the Ari Piguita Suite, and danced it with Olympia, the wife of his host. The gagliarda was reached, but never finished, for near the end of the second movement Palamedi from behind drove a stiletto into his friend's heart. He had found out that day that Adrian had not spared even Olympia's honour. I have endeavored to condense into a connected story the facts learned piecemeal from Sir John in conversation. To a certain extent they supplied, if not an explanation, at least an account of the change that had come over my friend. But only to a certain extent. There the explanation broke down, and I was left baffled. I could imagine that a life of unwholesome surroundings and disordered studies might in time produce such a loss of mental tone as would lead, in turn, to moral achillesia, sensual excess and physical ruin. But in Sir John's case the cause was not adequate. He had, so far as I know, never wholly given the reins to sensuality, and the change was too abrupt and the breakdown of body and mind too complete to be accounted for by such events as those of which he had spoken. I had, too, an uneasy feeling, which grew upon me the more I saw of him, that while he spoke freely enough on certain topics, and obviously meant to give a complete history of his past life, there was in reality something in the background which he always kept from my view. He was, it seemed, like a young man asked by an indulgent father to disclose his debts in order that they may be discharged, who although he knows his parents' leniency, and that any debt not now disclosed will be afterwards, but await upon his own neck, yet hesitates for very shame to tell the full amount, and keep some items back. So poor Sir John kept something back from me his friend, whose only aim was to afford him consolation and relief, and whose compassion would have made me listen without rebuke to the narration of the Blackest Crimes. I cannot say how much this conviction grieved me. I would most willingly have given my all, my very life, to save my friend and Miss Maltraver's brother, but my efforts were paralyzed by the feeling that I did not know what I had to combat, that some evil influence was at work on him which continually evaded my grasp. Once or twice it seemed as though he were within an ace of telling me all. Once or twice I believe he had definitely made up his mind to do so, but then the mood changed, or more probably his courage failed him. It was on one of these occasions that he asked me somewhat suddenly whether I thought that a man could buy any conscious act committed in the flesh, take away from himself all possibility of repentance and ultimate salvation. Though I trust a sincere Christian, I am nothing of a theologian, and the question touching on a topic which had not occurred to my mind since childhood, and which seemed to savor rather a medieval romance than a practical religion, took me for a moment to back. I hesitated for an instant, and then replied that the means of salvation offered man were undoubtedly so sufficient as to remove from one truly penitent the guilt of any crime however dark. My hesitation had been but momentary, but Sir John seemed to have noticed it, and seal his lips to any confession if he had indeed intended to make any by changing the subject abruptly. This question naturally gave me food for serious reflection and anxiety. It was the first occasion on which he appeared to me to be undoubtedly suffering from definite hallucination, and I was aware that any illusions connected with religion are generally most difficult to remove. At the same time anything of this sort was the more remarkable in Sir John's case as he had so far as I knew for a considerable time entirely abandoned a Christian belief. Unable to elicit any further information from him, and being thus thrown entirely upon my own resources, I determined that I would read through again the whole of Temple's Diaries. The task was a very distasteful one, as I have already explained, but I hoped that a second reading might perhaps throw some light on the dark misgivings that was troubling Sir John. I read the manuscript again with the closest attention. Nothing, however, of any importance seemed to have escaped me on the former occasions, and I had reached nearly the end of the second volume when a comparatively slight matter arrested my attention. I have said that the pages were all carefully numbered, and the events of each day recorded separately. Even where Temple had found nothing of moment to notice on a given day, he had still inserted the date with the word nil written against it. But as I sat one evening in the library at Worth after Sir John had gone to bed, and was finally glancing through the days of the months in Temple's Diary to make sure that all were complete, I found one day missing. It was towards the end of the second volume, and the day was the 23rd of October in the year 1752. A glance at the numbering of the pages revealed the fact that three leaves had been entirely removed, and that the pages numbered 349 to 354 were not to be found. Again I ran through the Diaries to see whether there were any leaves removed in other places, but found no other single page missing. All was complete, except at this one place, the manuscript beautifully written with scarcely an error or erasure throughout. A closer examination showed that these leaves had been cut out close to the back, and the cut edges of the paper appeared too fresh to admit of this being done a century ago. A very short reflection convinced me, in fact, that the excision was not likely to have been Temple's, and that it must have been made by Sir John. My first intention was to ask him at once what the lost pages had contained, and why they had been cut out. The matter might be a mere triviality which he could explain in a moment, but on softly opening his bedroom door I found him sleeping, and Parnam, whom the strong light always burnt in the room, rendered more wakeful, informed me that his master had been in a deep sleep for more than an hour. I knew how sorely his wasted energies needed such repose, and stepped back to the library without awakening him. A few minutes before I had been feeling sleepy at the conclusion of my task, but now all wish for sleep was suddenly banished, and a painful wakefulness took its place. I was under a species of mental excitement which reminded me of my feeling some years before at Oxford on the first occasion of our ever playing the gagliarda together, and an idea struck me with a force of intuition that in these three lost leaves lay the secrets of my friend's ruin. I turned to the context to see whether there was anything in the entries preceding or following the lacuna that would afford a clue to the missing passage. The record of the few days immediately preceding the 23rd of October was short and contained nothing of any moment whatever. Adrian and Jocelyn were alone together at the Villa de Angeles. The entry on the 22nd was very unimportant and apparently quite complete, ending at the bottom of page 348. Of the 23rd there was, as I have said, no record at all, and the entry for the 24th began at the top of page 355. This last memorandum was also brief, and written when the author was annoyed by Jocelyn leaving him. The defection of his companion had been apparently entirely unexpected. There was at least no previous hint of any such intention. Temple wrote that Jocelyn had left the Villa de Angeles that day and taken up his abode with the Carthusians of San Martino. No reason for such an extraordinary change was given, but there was a hint that Jocelyn had professed himself shocked at something that had happened. The entry concluded with a few bitter remarks, quote, so farewell to my holy anchorette, and if I cannot speed him with a leprosy as one Elisha did his servant, yet at least he went out from my presence with a face as white as snow, unquote. I had read this sentence more than once before without its attracting other than a passing attention. The curious expression that Jocelyn had gone out from his presence with a face as white as snow had hitherto seemed to me to mean nothing more than that the two men had parted in violent anger and that Temple had abused or bullied his companion. But as I sat alone that night in the library the words seemed to assume an entirely new force, and a strange suspicion began to creep over me. I have said that one of the most remarkable features of Sir John's illness was his deadly powder. Though I had now spent some time at Worth and had been daily struck by this lack of color, I had never before remembered in this connection that a strange paleness had also been an attribute of Adrian Temple, and was indeed very clearly marked in the picture painted of him by Betoni. In Sir John's account, moreover, of the vision which he thought he had seen in his rooms at Oxford, he had always spoken of the white and waxen face of his spectral visitant. The family tradition of Royston said that Temple had lost his color in some deadly magical experiment, and a conviction now flashed upon me that Jocelyn's face, as white as snow, could refer only to this same unnatural pallor and that he too had been smitten with it as with the mark of the beast. In a drawer of my dispatch box I kept by me all the letters which the late Lady Maltrevers had written home during her ill-fated honeymoon. Miss Maltrevers had placed them in my hands in order that I might be acquainted with every fact that could at all elucidate the progress of Sir John's malady. I remembered that in one of these letters mention was made of a sharp attack of fever in Naples and of her noticing in him for the first time this singular pallor. I found the letter again without difficulty and read it with a new light. Every line breathed of surprise and alarm. Lady Maltrevers feared that her husband was very seriously ill. On the Wednesday, two days before she wrote, he had suffered all day from a strange restlessness which had increased after they had retired in the evening. He could not sleep and had dressed again, saying he would walk a little in the night air to compose himself. He had not returned till near six in the morning, and then seemed so exhausted that he had since been confined to his bed. He was terribly pale, and the doctors feared he had been attacked by some strange fever. The date of the letter was the 25th of October, fixing the night of the 23rd as the time of Sir John's first attack. The coincidence of the date with that of the day missing in Temple's diary was significant, but it was not needed now to convince me that Sir John's ruin was due to something that occurred on that fatal night at Naples. The question that Dr. Frobisher had asked Miss Maltrevers when he was first called to see her brother in London returned to my memory with an overwhelming force. Had Sir John been subjected to any mental shock? Had he received any severe fright? I knew now that the question should have been answered in the affirmative, for I felt as certain as if Sir John had told me himself that he had received a violent shock, probably some terrible fright, on the night of the 23rd of October. What the nature of that shock could have been my imagination was powerless to conceive. Only I knew that whatever Sir John had done or seen, Adrian Temple and Jocelyn had done or seen also a century before and at the same place. That horror which had blanched the face of all three men for life had fallen perhaps with a less overwhelming force on Temple's seasoned wickedness, but had driven the worthless Jocelyn to the cloister and was driving Sir John to the grave. These thoughts as they passed through my mind filled me with a vague alarm. The lateness of the hour, the stillness and the subdued light made the library in which I sat seem so vast and lonely that I began to feel the same dread of being alone that I had observed so often in my friend. Though only a door separated me from his bedroom and I could hear his deep and regular breathing, I felt as though I must go in and awaken him, or parnam, to keep me company and save me from my own reflections. By a strong effort I restrained myself and sat down to think the matter over and endeavour to frame some hypothesis that might explain the mystery. But it was all to no purpose. I merely wearied myself without being able to arrive at even a plausible conjecture, except that it seemed as though the strange coincidence of date might point to some ghastly charm or incantation which could only be carried out on one certain night of the year. It must have been near morning when, quite exhausted, I fell into an uneasy slumber in the armchair where I sat. My sleep, however brief, was peopled with a succession of fantastic visions, in which I continually saw Sir John, not ill and wasted as now, but vigorous and handsome as I had known him at Oxford, standing beside a glowing brazier and reciting words I could not understand, while another man with a sneering white face sat in a corner playing the air of the gagliarda on a violin. Parnam woke me and my chair at seven o'clock. His master, he said, was still sleeping easily. I made up my mind that as soon as he awoke I would inquire of Sir John as to the pages missing from the diary. But though my expectation and excitement were at a high pitch, I was forced to restrain my curiosity, for Sir John's slumber continued late into the day. Dr. Bruton called in the morning and said that this sleep was what the patient's condition most required, and was a distinctly favorable symptom. He was on no account to be disturbed. Sir John did not leave his bed, but continued dozing all day till the evening. When at last he shook off his drowsiness the hour was already so late that in spite of my anxiety I hesitated to talk with him about the diaries, lest I should unduly excite him before the night. As the evening advanced he became very uneasy, and rose more than once from his bed. This restlessness following on the repose of the day ought perhaps to have made me anxious, for I have since observed that when death is very near and that prehensive unrest often sets in, both with men and animals, it seems as if they dreaded to resign themselves to sleep, lest as they slumber the last enemy should seize them, unawares. They try to fling off the bed clothes, they sometimes must leave their beds and walk, so it was with poor John Maltrovers on his last Christmas Eve. I had sat with him grieving for his disquiet until he seemed to grow more tranquil, and at length fell asleep. I was sleeping that night in his room instead of partying, and tired with sitting up through the previous night I flung myself dressed as I was upon the bed. I had scarcely dozed off, I think, before the sound of his violin awoke me. I found he had risen from his bed, had taken his favorite instrument, and was playing in his sleep. The air was the gagliarda of the Arapageta Suite, which I had not heard since we had played it last together at Oxford, and it brought back with it a crowd of far-off memories and infinite regrets. I cursed the sleepiness which had overcome me at my watchman's post, and allowed Sir John to play once more that melody which had always been fraught with such evil for him. And I was about to wake him gently when he was startled from sleep by a strange accident, as I want towards him the violin seemed entirely to collapse in his hands, and as a matter of fact the belly then gave way and broke under the strain of the strings. As the string slackened the last note became an unearthly discord. If I were superstitious I should say that some evil spirit then went out of the violin and broke in his parting throws the wooden tabernacle which had so long sheltered him. It was the last time the instrument was ever used, and that hideous chord was the last that Mount Evers ever played. I had feared that the shock of waking thus suddenly from sleep would have a very prejudicial effect upon the sleepwalker, but this seemed not to be the case. I persuaded him to go back at once to bed, and in a few minutes he fell asleep again. In the morning he seemed for the first time distinctly better. There was indeed something of his old self in his manner. It seemed as though the breaking of the violin had been an actual relief to him, and I believed that on that Christmas morning his better instincts woke, and that his old religious training and the associations of his boyhood then made their last appeal. I was pleased at such a change, however temporary it might prove. He wished to go to church, and I determined that again I would subdue my curiosity and defer the questions I was burning to put till after our return from the morning service. Miss Maltravers had gone indoors to make some preparations. Sir John was in his wheelchair on the terrace, and I was sitting by him in the sun. For a few moments he appeared immersed in silent thought, and then bent over towards me till his head was close to mine and said, Dear William, there is something I must tell you. I feel I cannot even go to church till I have told you all. His manner shocked me beyond expression. I knew that he was going to tell me the secret of the lost pages, but instead of wishing any longer to have my curiosity satisfied, I felt a horrible dread of what he might say next. He took my hand in his and held it tightly as a man who was about to undergo severe physical pain and sought the consolation of a friend's support. Then he went on, You will be shocked at what I am going to tell you, but listen and do not give me up. You must stand by me and comfort me and help me to turn again. He paused for a moment and continued, It was one night in October when Constance and I were at Naples. I took that violin and went by myself to the ruined villa on the Skoglio Divinale. He had been speaking with difficulty. His hand clutched mine convulsively, but still I felt it trembling, and I could see the moisture standing thick on his forehand. At this point the effort seemed too much for him, and he broke off. I cannot go on. I cannot tell you, but you can read it for yourself. In that diary, which I gave you, there are some pages missing. The suspense was becoming intolerable to me, and I broke in. Yes, yes, I know. You cut them out. Tell me where they are. He went on. Yes, I cut them out, lest they should possibly fall into anyone's hands unaware. But before you read them, you must swear, as you hope for salvation, that you will never try to do what is written in them. Swear this to me now, or I never can let you see them. My eagerness was too great to stop now to discuss trifles, and to humor him I swore, as desired. He had been speaking with a continual increasing effort. He cast a hurried and fearful glance round as though he expected to see someone listening, and it was almost in a whisper that he went on. You will find them in. His agitation had become most painful to watch, and as he spoke the last words of a convulsion passed over his face, and speech failing him, he sank back on his pillow. A strange fear took hold of me. For a moment I thought there were others on the terrace beside myself, and turned round, expecting to see Miss Maltrowers returned, but we were still alone. I even fancied that just as Sir John spoke his last words I felt something brush swiftly by me. He put up his hands, beating the air with a most painful gesture, as though he were trying to keep off an antagonist who had gripped him by the throat, and made a final struggle to speak. But the spasm was too strong for him. A dreadful stillness followed, and he was gone. There is little more to add, for Sir John's guilty secret perished with him. Though I was sure from his manner that the missing leaves were concealed somewhere at worth, and though as executor I caused the most diligent search to be made, no trace of them was afterwards found, nor did any circumstance ever transpire to fling further light upon the matter. I must confess that I should have felt the discovery of these pages as a relief, for though I dreaded what I might have had to read, yet I was more anxious, lest being found in a later period, and falling into other hands they should cause a recrudisance of that plague which had blighted Sir John's life, of the nature of the events which took place on that night at Naples I conformed no conjecture. But as certain physical sights of air now proved so revolting as to unhinge the intellect, so I can imagine that the mind may, in a state of extreme tension, conjure up to itself some form of moral evil, so hideous as metaphysically to sear it. And this, I believe, happened in the case of both Adrian Temple and of Sir John Maltraverse. It is difficult to imagine the accessories used to produce the mental excitation in which alone such a presentment of evil could become imaginable. Fancy and legend which have combined to represent as possible appearances of the supernatural agree also in considering them as more likely to occur at certain times and places than at others, and it is possible that the missing pages of the diary contained an account of the time, place, and other conditions chosen by Temple for some deadly experiment. Sir John most probably re-enacted the scene under precisely similar conditions, and the effect on his overwrought imagination was so vivid as to upset the balance of his mind. The time chosen was no doubt the night of the 23rd of October, and I cannot help thinking that the place was one of those evil looking and ruinous sea rooms which had so terrifying an effect on Miss Maltraverse. Temple may have used on that night one of the medieval incantations, or possibly the more ancient invocation of the Isiac Rite with which a man of his knowledge and proclivities would certainly be familiar. The accessories of either are sufficiently hideous to weaken the mind by terror, and so prepare it for a belief in some frightful apparition. But whatever was done I feel sure that the music of the gagliate formed part of the ceremonial. Medieval philosophers and theologians held that evil is in its essence so horrible that the human mind, if it could realize it, must perish at its contemplation. Such realization was by mercy ordinarily withheld, but its possibility was hinted in the legend of the Visio Malefica. The Visio Beatifica was, as is well known, that vision of the deity or realization of the perfect good, which was to form the happiness of heaven and the reward of the sanctified in the next world. Tradition says that this vision was accorded also to some specially-elect spirits, even in this life, as to Enoch, Elijah, Stephen, and Jerome. But there was a converse to the beatific vision in the Visio Malefica or presentation of Absolute Evil, which was to be the chief torture of the damned, and which, like the beatific vision, had been made visible in life to certain desperate men. It visited Esau, as was said, when he found no place for repentance, and Judas whom it drove to suicide. Cain saw it when he murdered his brother, and legend relates that in his case and in that of others it left a physical brand to be borne by the body to the grave. It was supposed that the malefic vision, besides being thus spontaneously presented to typically abandoned men, had actually been purposely called up by some few great adepts and used by them to blast their enemies. But to do so was considered equivalent to a conscious surrender to the powers of evil, as the vision once seen took away all hope of final salvation. Adrian Temple would undoubtedly be cognizant of this legend, and the lost experiment may have been an attempt to call up the malefic vision. It is but a vague conjecture at the best, for the tree of the knowledge of evil bears many sorts of poisonous fruit, and no one can give full account of the extravagances of a wayward fancy. Conjointly with Miss Sophia, Sir John appointed me his executor and guardian of his only son. Two months later we had lit a great fire in the library at Worth. In it, after the servants were gone to bed, we burnt the book containing the Eropageta of Grazioni and the Stradivarius Fiddle, the diaries of Temple I had already destroyed and wished that I could as easily blot out their foul and debasing memories from my mind. I shall probably be blamed by those who would exalt art at the expense of everything else for burning a unique violin. This reproach I am content to bear, though I am not unreasonably superstitious and have no sympathy for that potential pantheism to which Sir John Maltraveur surrendered his intellect, yet I felt so great an aversion to this violin that I would neither suffer it to remain at Worth nor pass into other hands. Miss Sophia was entirely at one with me on this point. It was the same feeling which restrains any except fools or braggarts from wishing to sleep in haunted rooms or to live in houses polluted with the memory of a revolting crime. No sane mind believes in foolish apparitions, but fancy may at times bewitch the best of us. So the Stradivarius was burnt. It was after all perhaps not so serious a matter, for as I have said, the bass bar had given way. There had always been a question whether it was strong enough to resist the strain of modern stringing. Experience showed at last that it was not. With the failure of the bass bar the belly collapsed, and the wood broke across the grain in so extraordinary a manner as to put the fiddle beyond repair except as a curiosity. Its loss, therefore, is not to be so much regretted. Sir Edward has been brought up to think more of a cricket bat than of a violin bowl, but if he wishes at any time to buy a Stradivarius, the fortunes of Worth and Royston, nursed through too long minorities, will certainly justify his doing so. Miss Sophia and I stood by and watched the holocaust. My heart misgave me for a moment when I saw the mellow red varnish blistering off the back, but I put my regret resolutely aside. As the bright flames jumped up and lapped it round, they flung a red glow on the scroll. It was wonderfully wrought and differed, as I think Miss Maltrubbers has already said, from any known example of Stradivarius. As we watched it the scroll took form, and we saw what we had never seen before, that it was cut so that the deep lines in a certain light showed as the profile of a man. It was a wise and little paganish face, with sharp cut features and a bald head. As I looked at it, I knew at once, and a cameo has since confirmed the fact, that it was a head of porphyry. Thus the second label found in the violin was explained, and Sir John's View confirmed, that Stradivarius had made the instrument for some neoplatonist enthusiast who had dedicated it to his master, Porphyryus. A year after Sir John's death, I went with Miss Maltrubbers to Worth Church to see a plain slab of slate which we had placed over her brother's grave. We stood in bright sunlight in the Maltrubbers' chapel, with the monuments of that splendid family about us. Among them were the altar tomb of Sir Esmond, and the effigies of more than one crusader. As I looked on their nightly forms, with their heads resting on their tilting helms, their faces set firm, and their hands joined in prayer, I could not help envying them that full and unwavering faith for which they had fought and died. It seemed to stand out in such sharp contrast with our latter-day siolism and half-believed creeds, and to be flung into higher relief by the dark shadow of John Maltrubbers' ruined life. At our feet was the great brass of one Sir Roger de Maltrubbers. I pointed out the end of the inscription to my companion, Curius animae atque animabus omnium fidelium difuntorium atque nostris animabus cum ex hoc luca transuerimus propitiator deus. Though no Catholic I could not refuse to add a sincere amen, Miss Sophia, who is not ignorant of Latin, read the inscription after me. Ex hoc luca, she said, as though speaking to herself, out of this light alas, alas, for some the light is darkness. End of Mr. Gaskell's Note. End of The Lost Stratobarius by John Mead Faulkner