Montague had already bustled away in all the flurry of mingled hope and rage; but though the singular personnel of the stranger who had accosted him was vividly impressed upon his recollection, he failed to discover among the crowd even the slightest resemblance to him.
After a fruitless search, in which he enlisted the services of several of the by-standers, who aided all the more zealously, as they believed he had been robbed, he at length, out of breath and baffled, gave over the attempt.
“Ah, my friend, it won’t do,” said Barton, with the faint voice and bewildered, ghastly look of one who had been stunned by some mortal shock; “there is no use in contending; whatever it is, the dreadful association between me and it, is now established—I shall never escape—never!”
“Nonsense, nonsense, my dear Barton; don’t talk so,” said Montague with something at once of irritation and dismay; “you must not, I say; we’ll jockey the scoundrel yet; never mind, I say—never mind.”
It was, however, but labour lost to endeavour henceforward to inspire Barton with one ray of hope; he became desponding.
This intangible, and, as it seemed, utterly inadequate influence was fast destroying his energies of intellect, character, and health. His first object was now to return to Ireland, there, as he believed, and now almost hoped, speedily to die.
To Ireland accordingly he came and one of the first faces he saw upon the shore, was again that of his implacable and dreaded attendant. Barton seemed at last to have lost not only all enjoyment and every hope in existence, but all independence of will besides. He now submitted himself passively to the management of the friends most nearly interested in his welfare.
With the apathy of entire despair, he implicitly assented to whatever measures they suggested and advised; and as a last resource, it was determined to remove him to a house of Lady L——’s, in the neighbourhood of Clontarf, where, with the advice of his medical attendant, who persisted in his opinion that the whole train of consequences resulted merely from some nervous derangement, it was resolved that he was to confine himself, strictly to the house, and to make use only of those apartments which commanded a view of an enclosed yard, the gates of which were to be kept jealously locked.
Those precautions would certainly secure him against the casual appearance of any living form, that his excited imagination might possibly confound with the spectre which, as it was contended, his fancy recognised in every figure that bore even a distant or general resemblance to the peculiarities with which his fancy had at first invested it.
A month or six weeks’ absolute seclusion under these conditions, it was hoped might, by interrupting the series of these terrible impressions, gradually dispel the predisposing apprehensions, and the associations which had confirmed the supposed disease, and rendered recovery hopeless.