Bitter indeed were Squire Courtenay's feelings and reflections when the two old men had left, and, his son having been ordered off to his chamber, he found himself once more alone. The dusk of the evening came on, but the squire did not seem to care for food, and, in truth, his melancholy thoughts had taken all appetite away. At last he went to the window, which looked out over a fine park and a long reach of valuable property, and he began to think: What good will all these farms do this boy, if the tenants upon them only hate him, and curse him? Perhaps, with all this property, he may come to some bad end, and bring disgrace upon his family and himself. And then the squire's own heart began to smite him, and he thought: Am not I to blame for not having looked more closely after him, and for not having corrected him whenever he went wrong? I must do something at once. I must send him away from this place, where almost every one lets him do as he likes, until he learns how to control himself, at least so far as not to do injustice to others.
Meanwhile the young squire's punishment had begun. When left to the solitude of his room, after having heard the whole of Leonard Dobbin's account of Jacob's death, a great horror took possession of his mind. Many were the efforts the young lad made to shake off the gloomy thoughts which came trooping into his mind; but every thought seemed to have a hundred hooks by which it clung to the memory, so that once in the mind, it could not be got rid of again. At length the young squire lay down upon his bed, trembling as if he had the ague, and realizing how true are the words, that "our sin will find us out," and that "the way of transgressors is hard."
At last, to his great relief, the handle of his door was turned, and old Aggie made her appearance.
"O Aggie, Aggie," cried James Courtenay, "come here. I'm fit to die, with the horrid thoughts I have, and with the dreadful things I see. Jim Meyers said I murdered Jacob Dobbin; and I believe I have, though I didn't intend to do it. I wish I had never gone that way; I wish I had never seen that rose; I wish there had never been a rose in the world.—O dear, my poor head, my poor head! I think 'twill burst;" and James Courtenay put his two hands upon the two sides of his head, as though he wanted to keep them from splitting asunder.
Aggie saw that there was no use in speaking while James Courtenay's head was in such a state as this. All she could do was to help him into bed, and give him something to drink,—food he put from him, but drink he asked for again and again. Water was all he craved, but Aggie was at last obliged to give over, and say she was afraid to give him any more.
James Courtenay's state was speedily made known to his father, and in a few minutes, from old Aggie's conversation with him, the groom was on his way to a neighbouring town to hasten the family physician. The latter soon arrived, and, after a few minutes with James Courtenay, pronounced him to be in brain fever—the end of which, of course, no man could foresee.
And a fearful fever indeed it was. Day after day passed in wild delirium. The burden of all the poor sufferer's cries and thoughts was, that he was a murderer. He used to call himself Cain, and to try to tear the murderer's mark out of his forehead. Sometimes he rolled himself in the sheet, and thought that he was dressed in a funeral cloak attending Jacob Dobbin's funeral, and all the while knowing that he had caused his death. At times the poor patient would attempt to spring from his bed; and now he fancied that he was being whipped with the thorny branches of rose trees; and now that he was being put in prison for stealing from a poor man's garden. At one time he thought all the tenants on the estate were hunting him off it with hounds, while he was fleeing from them on his gray pony as fast as her legs could carry her; and the next moment his pony was entangled hopelessly in the branches of little Dobbin's rose tree, and the dogs were on him, and the huntsmen were halloing, and he was about to be devoured. All these were the terrible ravings of fever; and very awful it was to see the young squire with his hair all shaved off, and vinegar rags over his head, tossing his arms about, and endeavouring at times to burst from his nurses, and leap out upon the floor. The one prevailing thought in all the sick boy's ravings was Jacob Dobbin's rose bush. Jacob, or his rose bush in some form or other, occupied a prominent part in every vision.
Ah, how terrible are the lashings of conscience! how terrible the effects of sin! For what a small gratification did this unhappy youth bring so much misery upon himself! And is it not often thus? The apostle says, "What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?" And what fruit of pleasure had James Courtenay from his plunder of Jacob Dobbin's rose? Where was that rose? It had long since faded; its leaves were mingled with the dust upon which it had been thrown; yet for the sake of the transient enjoyment of possessing that flower a few days before abundance would have made their appearance in his own garden, he had brought upon himself all this woe. Poor, very poor indeed, are the pleasures of sin; and when they have been enjoyed, they are like the ashes of a fire that has burned out. Compare James Courtenay's present troubles,—his torture of mind, his pain of body, his risk of losing his life, and the almost momentary enjoyment which he had in plundering his poor neighbour of his moss-rose,—and see how Satan cheats in his promises of enjoyment from sin.
Dear young reader! let not Satan persuade you that there is any profit in sin—momentary pleasure there may indeed be, but it is soon gone, and then come sorrow and distress. Sin is a sweet cup with bitter dregs, and he who drinks the little sweet that there is, must drink the dregs also. Moments of sin may cause years of sorrow.