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It is enough to say that at intervals almost every form of madness appeared in the family, monomania being the most frequent manifestation of the affliction among them. I have these particulars, and one or two yet to be related, from my father. At the period of my youth but three of the Monktons were left at the Abbey Mr. and Mrs. Monkton and their only child Alfred, heir to the property.
And then think of his self-imposed absence from her here, to hunt after the remains of a wretch who was a disgrace to the family, and whom he never saw but once or twice in his life. Of all the 'Mad Monktons, as they used to call them in England, Alfred is the maddest.
THE Monktons of Wincot Abbey bore a sad character for want of sociability in our county. They never went to other people's houses, and, excepting my father, and a lady and her daughter living near them, never received anybody under their own roof. Proud as they all certainly were, it was not pride, but dread, which kept them thus apart from their neighbors.
There is a frightful story of a crime committed in past times by two of the Monktons, near relatives, from which the first appearance of the insanity was always supposed to date, but it is needless for me to shock any one by repeating it.
In all essential points except that of wealth, the Elmslies were nearly the equals of the Monktons, and want of money in a bride was of no consequence to the heir of Wincot. Alfred, it was well known, would succeed to thirty thousand a year on his father's death.
She first admitted the existence of these reports about the Monktons which her friends were unwilling to specify distinctly, and then declared that they were infamous calumnies. The hereditary taint had died out of the family generations back. Alfred was the best, the kindest, the sanest of human beings.
He actually put off his marriage with Miss Elmslie, which was then about to be celebrated, to come out here in search of the burial-place of his wretched scamp of an uncle; and no power on earth will now induce him to return to England and to Miss Elmslie until he has found the body, and can take it back with him, to be buried with all the other dead Monktons in the vault under Wincot Abbey Chapel.
Saying this, he leaned his head on his hand, sighed, and began repeating softly to himself the lines of the old prophecy: When in Wincot vault a place Waits for one of Monkton's race When that one forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky, Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his birth That shall be a certain sign Of the end of Monktons line.
Literally, there was now no companion for him at the Abbey but the old priest the Monktons, I should have mentioned before, were Roman Catholics who had held the office of tutor to Alfred from his earliest years. He came of age, and there was not even so much as a private dinner-party at Wincot to celebrate the event.
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