After a few days, however, Willoughby, like one who had run at full speed as long as his strength would permit, flagged; his efforts were first less sustained, then his gaiety became confined to wild bursts of noisy mirth, while at length whole hours, with a seeming unconsciousness of the lapse of time, were passed in gloomy abstraction. The bursts of seeming mirth, however, were always assumed when servants or strangers were present; the gloom and abstraction given way to only when alone with his brother.
Willoughby had always felt, and often expressed, great horror of persons being opened after death: to this subject he now recurred with a frequency, and clung to it with a pertinacity quite extraordinary; adding the most solemn injunctions to Alfred to be the protector of his remains whenever he should die.
"You will then be master here," he would say; "every thing will then be yours; my very body I bequeath to you--I make it your property: do not, Alfred, I conjure you, suffer the defenceless corse of your poor brother to be mangled. It would be hard indeed," he would sometimes subjoin, with a wild ironical laugh, "if a man could not find rest even in the grave."
On occasions like these Alfred would sit beside him, and endeavour to sooth him by every kind and rational argument he could devise; not unfrequently Willoughby would appear entirely deaf to all that could be urged; while at other times, he would take Alfred's hand, thank him with gentle kindliness of manner, and hope that he might yet be as truly happy as he deserved to be; joining with this latter expression an earnest and expressive solemnity which almost seemed a blending of prophecy with the prayer of affection. He often talked of having a foreboding that he should die young.
"But why, my dear brother," Alfred would reply, "give way to such thoughts? Why should you die young? You have no ailment, no care, no sorrow----"
"It may be a silly fancy, yet I am possessed with the idea:"--this much Willoughby said with well-acted carelessness. "My only anxiety in dying," he added, with a suddenly altered tone, and an inquiring look of the most mournful tenderness, "is for you, Alfred; I fear you will feel it severely; but do not!--do not! Why should any one be miserable?--I shall not be missed, except by you: no selfish happiness, I know, will enable you entirely to forget me. My mother is kind, very kind; but you were always her favourite--and that in time will reconcile her--"