CHAPTER XLIV
It has been necessary in an earlier chapter to notice the strange freaks madness will sometimes play. It was then the object to show how strong affections of the mind will recall an erring judgment to its true balance; but, the action of the counterpoise growing weaker by time, the disease returns, and reason again kicks the beam. Such was the old dowager's case: the death of her son recalled her to herself; but a few days produced relapse, and she was as foolish as ever. Nevertheless, as Polonius remarks of Hamlet,
“There is method in his madness;”
so in the dowager's case there was method—not of a sane intention, as the old courtier implies of the Danish Prince, but of insane birth—begot of a chivalrous feeling on an enfeebled mind.
To make this clearly understood it is necessary to call attention to one other peculiarity of madness,—that, while it makes those under its influence liable to say and enact all sorts of nonsense on some subjects, it never impairs their powers of observation on those which chance to come within the reach of the un-diseased portion of the mind; and moreover, they are quite as capable of arriving at just conclusions upon what they so see and hear, as the most reasonable person, and, perhaps, in proportion as the reasoning power is limited within a smaller compass, so the capability of observation becomes stronger by being concentrated.
Such was the case with the old dowager, who, while Furlong was “doing devotion” to Augusta, and appeared the pink of faithful swains, saw very clearly that Furlong did not like it a bit, and would gladly be off his bargain. Yea, while the people in their sober senses on the same plane with the parties were taken in, the old lunatic, even from the toppling height of her own mad chimney-pot, could look down and see that Furlong would not marry Augusta if he could help it.
It was even so. Furlong had acted under the influence of terror when poor Augusta, shoved into his bedroom through the devilment of that rascally imp, Ratty, and found there, through the evil destiny of Andy, was flung into his arms by her enraged father, and accepted as his wife. The immediate hurry of the election had delayed the marriage—the duel and its consequences further interrupted “the happy event”—and O'Grady's death caused a further postponement. It was delicately hinted to Furlong, that when matters had gone so far as to the wedding-dresses being ready, that the sooner the contracting parties under such circumstances were married, the better. But Furlong, with that affectation of propriety which belongs to his time-serving tribe, pleaded the “regard to appearances”—“so soon after the ever-to-be-deplored event,”—and other such specious excuses, which were but covers to his own rascality, and used but to postpone the “wedding-day.” The truth was, the moment Furlong had no longer the terrors of O'Grady's pistol before his eyes, he had resolved never to take so bad a match as that with Augusta appeared to be—indeed was, as far as regarded money; though Furlong should only have been too glad to be permitted to mix his plebeian blood with the daughter of a man of high family, whose crippled circumstances and consequent truckling conduct had reduced him to the wretched necessity of making such a cur as Furlong the inmate of his house. But so it was.
The family began at last to suspect the real state of the case, and all were surprised except the old dowager; she had expected what was coming, and had prepared herself for it. All her pistol practice was with a view to call Furlong to the “last arbitrament” for this slight to her house. Gusty was too young, she considered, for the duty; therefore she, in her fantastic way of looking at the matter, looked upon herself as the head of the family, and, as such, determined to resent the affront put upon it.