From the moment of my avowal to Rosa it seemed that the evil spirit of
the dead Lord Clarenceux had assumed an ineffable dominion over me. I
cannot properly describe it; I cannot describe it all. I may only say
that I felt I had suddenly become the subject of a tyrant who would
punish me if I persisted in any course of conduct to which he
objected. I knew what fear was--the most terrible of all fears--the
fear of that which we cannot understand. The inmost and central throne
of my soul was commanded by this implacable ghost, this ghost which
did not speak, but which conveyed its ideas by means of a single
glance, a single sneer.
It was strange that I should be aware at once what was required of me,
and the reasons for these requirements. Till that night I had never
guessed the nature of the thing which for so many weeks had been
warning me; I had not even guessed that I was being warned; I had
taken for a man that which was not a man. Yet now, in an instant of
time, all was clear down to the smallest details. From the primal hour
when a liking for Rosa had arisen in my breast, the ghost of Lord
Clarenceux, always hovering uneasily near to its former love, had
showed itself to me.
The figure opposite the Devonshire Mansion--that was the first
warning. With regard to the second appearance, in the cathedral of
Bruges, I surmised that that only indirectly affected myself.
Primarily it was the celebration of a fiendish triumph over one who
had preceded me in daring to love Rosetta Rosa, but doubtless also it
was meant in a subsidiary degree as a second warning to the youth who
followed in Alresca's footsteps. Then there were the two appearances
during my journey from London to Paris with Rosa's jewels--in the
train and on the steamer. Matters by that time had become more
serious. I was genuinely in love, and the ghost's anger was quickened.
The train was wrecked and the steamer might have been sunk, and I
could not help thinking that the ghost, in some ineffectual way, had
been instrumental in both these disasters. The engine-driver, who said
he was "dazed," and the steersman, who attributed his mistake at the
wheel to the interference of some unknown outsider--were not these
things an indication that my dreadful suspicion was well grounded? And
if so, to what frightful malignity did they not point! Here was a
spirit, which in order to appease the pangs of a supernatural
jealousy, was ready to use its immaterial powers to destroy scores of
people against whom it could not possibly have any grudge. The most
fanatical anarchism is not worse than this.
Those attempts had failed. But now the aspect of affairs was changed.
The ghost of Lord Clarenceux had more power over me now--I felt that
acutely; and I explained it by the fact that I was in the near
neighborhood of Rosa. It was only when she was near that the jealous
hate of this spectre exercised its full efficacy.