Then they arose from the table and went back to their cab.
And Alick ordered the cabman to drive to the street where the school-house in which Everage served was situated, and he dropped the usher.
I declare that up to this day Clarence Everage had entertained no idea of gaining his ends by evil means.
But the story that he had heard from Alexander was a startling and curious and interesting one; and he could not help brooding over it and speculating upon it. Lord Killcrichtoun had a wife and child! The fact at first view seemed very fatal to Everage’s hopes of ever succeeding to the title; but upon closer consideration it was not so. Lord Killcrichtoun was hopelessly estranged from his wife; but he was not divorced from her, nor free to marry again. He had but one child, his son and heir; and if anything should happen to this child, Lord Killcrichtoun, in his peculiar circumstances, could not hope for other legal offspring, and Everage would be quite secure in his position as heir presumptive of the barony.
And Alexander really looked paler, thinner, and more cadaverous than ever! Truly in much worse health than before! Clearly not long for this world! And if anything should happen to the child before his father’s death, Everage would not long be kept out of his inheritance!
If anything should happen to the child! Dangerous, speculation! In monarchies it is treason even to imagine the death of the sovereign. And it is so with much good reason, since such imaginings often realize themselves.
It could not be treason; but it was treachery in Clarence Everage even to imagine the removal of the little child that stood between him and the inheritance of Killcrichtoun. It was not only wrong but perilous for him to do so. But it seemed as if he could not help it. Day and night he brooded over the idea, with a morbid intensity akin to monomania. And there was his poverty, and the pale faces of his poor wife and little girls, to goad him on. And there was that painful computation of pounds, shillings and pence, that agonized straining of his soul to make his meagre wages meet their merest wants. And now the cruel extravagance into which his pride and sensitiveness had betrayed him in paying for that lunch at Véry’s had almost ruined him for this quarter. There was now no possible way in which he could make the two ends meet for the time.
And he knew, as only the experienced in such matters can know, and he dreaded as only the proud and sensitive can dread, the troubles that must follow—the degrading squabbles with his landlady, the humiliating apologies to the butcher and the baker—nay, the sight of his wife’s shabby dress and his little daughters’ all but bare feet.
And he thought how different all this would be were he the heir of Killcrichtoun, as he should be but for Alexander Lyon’s son.
He thus “imagined” the death of the child and the advantages that must accrue to himself in that event. But would he have “compassed” the death of the child for any such advantage?