34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
— Macbeth.
The requisites of a successful villain are manifold. The
toughened conscience, the ready wit, the sage experience, the
mind tutored, like Iago, in all qualities of human dealing, —
all these, in some reasonable measure, Vinal had; but he
miserably lacked the vulgar, but no less needful requisite of
a sound bodily fibre to support the workings of his brain.
His mind was a good lever with a feeble fulcrum; a gun
mounted on a tottering rampart. When every breath of
emotion that touches the fine-strung organism quivers along
the electric chord to the brain, kindling there strange perturbations,
then philosophy must lower her tone, and stoicism
itself must soon confess that its only resource is to avoid the
enemy with whom it cannot cope. Vinal was but ill fitted
to act the part he had undertaken. The excitements of
villany were too much for him. Peace of mind was as needful
to him as food and drink. He had been battling all his
life against what he imagined to be a defect of his mental
forces, but which had, in the main, no deeper root than in the
sensitiveness of his bodily constitution. In prudence and
common sense, he was bound to seek asylum in that blissful
serenity, that benignant calm, said to be the unfailing attendant
on piety and good works. Never did Nature give a
sharper hint than she gave to Vinal to eschew evil courses,
and leaving rascality to tougher nerves, to tread the placid
paths of virtue and discretion. Vinal saw fit to disregard
the hint, and the consequences became somewhat grievous.
While his intrigue was in progress, his nerves had given
him no great trouble. Hate and jealousy absorbed him.
He was steadfast in his purpose to get rid of his rival. But
now that the mine was laid, and the match lighted, a change
began to come upon him. It was his maiden felony; his
first début in the distinct character of a scoundrel; and,
though his conscience was none of the liveliest, it sufficed to
visit him with some qualms. Anxieties, doubts, fears, began
to prey upon him; sleep failed him; his nerves were set
more and more on edge; in short, body and mind, mutually
acting on each other, were fast bringing him to a state quite
adverse to the maxims of his philosophy.
When a sophomore in college, his favorite reading had
been Foster's Essay on Decision of Character, and he had
aspired to realize in his own person the type of character
therein set forth; the man of steel, who, in his firm march
towards his ends, knows neither doubts, nor waverings, nor
relentings. Of this ideal he was now falling lamentably
short; and as, at two o'clock in the morning, he rose from his
restless bed, and paced his chamber to and fro, vainly upbraiding
his weakness, and struggling to reason down the
rebellious vibration of his nerves, he was any thing but the
inexorable hero of his boyish fancy.
“The thing is done,” — so he communed with himself, —
“it was deliberately done, and well done. That hound is
chained and muzzled, or will be so soon. For a time, at
least, he is out of my path. But is he? What if he should
escape the trap? What if those men to whom I have sent
him are less an abomination in the eyes of the government
than there is reason to think them? No doubt he will be
compromised; no doubt he will get into difficulty; but if he
should get out again! if, within a year from this he should
come home to charge me with trapanning him! Pshaw! he
could prove nothing. He would be thought malicious if he
accused me. But he may suspect!” and this idea sufficed to
fill his excited mind with fresh agitation. For three nights
he had been without sleep; and now his irritable system was
wrought almost to the point of fever.
“Half measures are nothing! The nail must be driven
home and clinched! I must make sure of him.” And early
in the morning he went to find Speyer.
Speyer was not to be found. In his eagerness, he went
again and again to seek him, though he knew that there was
risk in doing so. At length he succeeded; and in spite of
his resolute and long-practised self-control, his confederate
saw at a glance, in his shining eye, flushed cheek, and the
nervous compression of his lips, that he was under a great,
though a painfully repressed excitement.
“Well, monsieur, do you hear any thing from your
friend?”
“No, it is not time to hear.”
“You will have to wait a long while before the time
comes.”
“Your letters were very well so far as they go; but the
thing should be done thoroughly. What I wish you to do is
this. Write to him a letter, implicating him in your revolutionary
plot. He will be under suspicion. Every letter sent
to him will be stopped and opened by the police.”
“If that is done, I will warrant you quit of him; at least
for some years to come.”
“They will imprison him,” said Vinal, nervously, “but
that will be the whole, — his life will be in no danger.”
“His life!” returned Speyer, glancing sidelong at his
visitor; “don't be troubled on that score. They won't kill
him.”
“Then write the letter,” said Vinal, laying a rouleau of
gold on the table, “and write it in such a way that it shall
spring the trap on him, and keep him caged till doomsday.”
The letter was written. Vinal read it, re-read it, sealed
it, and with a quivering hand thrust it into the post office.
