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"Well," I said, "one can't break one's thigh for nothing." "It is not his thigh. It is something else." "What?" She shook her head, to indicate her inability to answer. Here I must explain that, on the morning after the accident, I had taken a hansom to the Devonshire Mansion with the intention of paying a professional visit to Alresca.
If Alresca was dying, he was not dying of love. As Alexis had remarked, it was a lovely summer night, and after quitting the Devonshire I stood idly on the pavement, and gazed about me in simple enjoyment of the scene. The finest trees in Hyde Park towered darkly in front of me, and above them was spread the star-strewn sky, with a gibbous moon just showing over the housetops to the left.
During the first day or two I had thought that I understood it, and I had despised the sayings of Rosetta Rosa in the carriage, and the misgivings with which my original examination of Alresca had inspired me. And then I gradually perceived that, after all, the misgivings had been justified. The man's thigh made due progress; but the man, slowly failing, lost interest in the struggle for life.
I set off instantly for the hotel, and just as I was going I met my Anglo-Belgian lawyer, who presented to me a large envelope addressed to myself in the handwriting of Alresca, and marked "private." The lawyer, who had been engaged in the sorting and examination of an enormous quantity of miscellaneous papers left by Alresca, informed me that he only discovered the package that very afternoon.
I had, however, to solve it for the Belgian authorities, and I did so by giving a certificate that Alresca had died of "failure of the heart's action." A convenient phrase, whose convenience imposes perhaps oftener than may be imagined on persons of an unsuspecting turn of mind!
"I will sing 'Elsa's Dream. But who will accompany? You know I simply can't play to my own singing." I gathered together all my courage. "I'm an awful player," I said, "but I know the whole score of 'Lohengrin." "How clever of you!" Rosa laughed. "I'm sure you play beautifully." Alresca rewarded me with a look, and, trembling, I sat down to the piano. I was despicably nervous.
It was as if he fought against an influence, and then gradually yielded to the sweetness of it. I observed him closely for was he not my patient? and I guessed that a struggle was passing within him. I thought of what he had just been saying to me, and I feared lest the strong will should be scarcely so strong as it had deemed itself. "You have dined?" asked Alresca. "I have eaten," she said.
People were pointing to Sir Cyril in our box. As for him, he seemed to be the only unmoved person in the audience. "That's never occurred before in my time," he said. "Alresca was not mistaken. Something has happened. I must go." But he did not go. And I perceived that, though the calm of his demeanor was unimpaired, this unprecedented calamity had completely robbed him of his power of initiative.
It seemed a long way, but suddenly we stepped into twilight. There was a flight of steps which we descended, and at the foot of the steps a mutilated commissionaire, ornamented with medals, on guard. "Where is Monsieur Alresca?" Sir Cyril demanded. "Behind the back-cloth, where he fell, sir," answered the commissionaire, saluting.
This man that I had seen was not a man, but a malign and jealous spirit using his spectral influences to crush the mortals bold enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. The death of Alresca, the unaccountable appearances in the cathedral, in the train, on the steamer everything was explained.
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