‘Then monsieur will speak to the English clergyman, who dwells there on the hill’ (here she pointed townward), ‘close to the English church. He is a good man, Monsieur Robertson, and monsieur will find——’
‘I will speak to him,’ interrupted Bradley. ‘But I myself am an English clergyman, and shall doubtless perform the last offices, when the time comes.’
The woman looked at him in some astonishment, for his presence was the reverse of clerical, and his struggle in and with the sea had left his attire in most admired disorder, but she remembered the eccentricities of the nation to which he belonged, and her wonder abated. After giving the woman a few more general instructions, Bradley walked slowly and thoughtfully to his hotel.
More than once already his thoughts had turned towards Alma, but he had checked such thoughts and crushed them down in the presence of death; left to himself, however, he could not conquer them, nor restrain a certain feeling of satisfaction in his newly-found freedom. He would write to Alma, as in duty bound, at once, and tell her of all that had happened. And then? It was too late, perhaps, to make full amends, to expect full forgiveness; but it was his duty to give to her in the sight of the world the name he had once given to her secretly and in vain.
But the man’s troubled spirit, sensitive to a degree, shrank from the idea of building up any new happiness on the grave of the poor woman whose corpse he had just quitted. Although he was now a free man legally, he still felt morally bound and fettered. All his wish and prayer was to atone for the evil he had brought on the one being he reverenced and loved. He did not dare, at least as yet, to think of uniting his unworthy life with a life so infinitely more beautiful and pure.
Yes, he would write to her. The question was, where his letter would find her, and how soon?
When he had last heard from her she was at Milan, but that was several weeks ago; and since then, though he had written twice, there had been no response. She was possibly travelling farther southward; in all possibility, to Home.
The next few days passed drearily enough. An examination of some letters recently received by the deceased discovered two facts—first, that she had a sister, living in Oxford, with whom she corresponded; and, second, that her means of subsistence came quarterly from a firm of solicitors in Bedford Bow, London. Next day the sister arrived by steamboat, accompanied by her husband, a small tradesman. Bradley interviewed the pair, and found them decent people, well acquainted with their relative’s real position. The same day he received a communication from the solicitors, notifying that the annuity enjoyed by ‘Mrs. Montmorency’ lapsed with her decease, but that a large sum of money had been settled by the late Lord Ombermere upon the child, the interest of the sum to be used for his maintenance and education, and the gross amount with additions and under certain reservations, to be at his disposal on attaining his majority.
On seeking an interview with the Rev. Mr. Robertson, the minister of the English Church, Bradley soon found that his reputation had preceded him.
‘Do I address the famous Mr. Bradley, who some time ago seceded from the English Church?’ asked the minister, a pale, elderly, clean-shaven man, bearing no little resemblance to a Roman Catholic priest.