A MORAL FUNGUS.
Spiritual insanity, cupidity, cruelty, and possibly immediate
demoniacal temptation had long been working in and on a mind that had
now ceased almost to distinguish between the real and the unreal. Every
man who bends the energies of an immortal spirit to further the ends
and objects of his lower being, fails so to distinguish; but with the
earl the blindness had wrought outward as well as inwardly, so that he
was even unable, during considerable portions of his life, to tell
whether things took place outside or inside him. Nor did this trouble
him--he was past caring. He would argue that what equally affected him
had an equal right to be by him regarded as existent. He paid no heed
to the different natures of the two kinds of existence, their different
laws, and the different demands they made upon the two consciousnesses;
he had in fact, by a long course of disobedience growing to utter
disuse of conscience, arrived nearly at non-individuality. In regard to
what was outside him he was but a mirror, in regard to what was inside
him a mere vessel of imperfectly interacting forces. And now his
capacities and incapacities together had culminated in a hideous plot,
in which it would be hard to say whether the folly, the crime, or the
cunning predominated: he had made up his mind that, if the daughter of
his brother refused to wed her cousin, and so carry out what he
asserted to have been the declared wish of her father, she should go
after her father, and leave her property to the next heir, so that if
not in one way then in another the law of nature might be fulfilled,
and title and property united without the intervention of a marriage.
As to any evil that therein might be imagined to befall his niece, he
quoted the words of Hamlet--“Since no man has ought of what he leaves,
what is’t to leave betimes?”--she would be no worse than she must have
been when the few years of her natural pilgrimage were of necessity
over: the difference to her was not worth thinking of beside the
difference to the family! At the same time perhaps a scare might serve,
and she would consent to marry Forgue to escape a frightful end!
The moment Donal was gone, he sent Forgue to London, and set himself to
overcome the distrust of him which he could not but see had for some
time been growing in her. With the sweet prejudices of a loving nature
to assist him, he soon prevailed so far that, without much entreaty,
she consented to accompany him to London--for a month or so, he said,
while Davie was gone. The proposal had charms for her: she had been
there with her father when a mere child, and never since. She wrote to
Donal to let him know: how it was that her letter never reached him, it
is hardly needful to inquire.
The earl, in order, he said, to show his recognition of her sweet
compliance, made arrangements for posting it all the way. He would take
her by the road he used to travel himself when he was a young man: she
should judge whether more had not been lost than gained by rapidity!
Whatever shortened any natural process, he said, simply shortened life
itself. Simmons should go before, and find a suitable place for them!
They were hardly gone when Mrs. Brookes received a letter pretendedly
from the clergyman of the parish, in a remote part of the south, where
her mother, now a very old woman, lived, saying she was at the point of
death, and could not die in peace without seeing her daughter. She went
at once.
The scheme was a madman’s, excellently contrived for the instant
object, but with no outlook for immediately resulting perils.
After the first night on the road, he turned across country, and a
little towards home; after the next night, he drove straight back, but
as it was by a different road, Arctura suspected nothing. When they
came within a few hours of the castle, they stopped at a little inn for
tea; there he contrived to give her a certain dose. At the next place
where they stopped, he represented her as his daughter taken suddenly
ill: he must go straight home with her, however late they might be.
Giving an imaginary name to their destination, and keeping on the last
post-boy who knew nothing of the country, he directed him so as
completely to bewilder him, with the result that he set them down at
the castle supposing it a different place, and in a different part of
the country. The thing was after the earl’s own heart; he delighted in
making a fool of a fellow-mortal. He sent him away so as not to enter
the town: it was of importance his return should not be known.
It is a marvel he could effect what followed; but he had the remnants
of great strength, and when under influences he knew too well how to
manage, was for the time almost as powerful as ever: he got his victim
to his room on the stair, and thence through the oak door.