CHAPTER LVI.
Q. Eliz.--Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?
K. Rich.--Ay, if the devil tempt thee to do good.
Q. Eliz.--Shall I forget myself to be myself?--SHAKSPEARE.
It wanted one hour to midnight, as Crauford walked slowly to the
lonely and humble street where he had appointed his meeting with
Glendower. It was a stormy and fearful night. The day had been
uncommonly sultry, and, as it died away, thick masses of cloud came
labouring along the air, which lay heavy and breathless, as if under a
spell,--as if in those dense and haggard vapours the rider of the
storm sat, like an incubus, upon the atmosphere beneath, and paralyzed
the motion and wholesomeness of the sleeping winds. And about the
hour of twilight, or rather when twilight should have been, instead of
its quiet star, from one obscure corner of the heavens flashed a
solitary gleam of lightning, lingered a moment,--
"And ere a man had power to say, Behold!
The jaws of darkness did devour it up."
But then, as if awakened from a torpor by a signal universally
acknowledged, from the courts and quarters of heaven, came, blaze
after blaze, and peal upon peal, the light and voices of the Elements
when they walk abroad. The rain fell not: all was dry and arid; the
mood of Nature seemed not gentle enough for tears; and the lightning,
livid and forked, flashed from the sullen clouds with a deadly
fierceness, made trebly perilous by the panting drought and stagnation
of the air. The streets were empty and silent, as if the huge city
had been doomed and delivered to the wrath of the tempest; and ever
and anon the lightnings paused upon the housetops, shook and quivered
as if meditating their stroke, and then, baffled as it were, by some
superior and guardian agency, vanished into their gloomy tents, and
made their next descent from some opposite corner of the skies.
It was a remarkable instance of the force with which a cherished
object occupies the thoughts, and of the all-sufficiency of the human
mind to itself, the slowness and unconsciousness of danger with which
Crauford, a man luxurious as well as naturally timid, moved amidst the
angry fires of heaven and brooded, undisturbed and sullenly serene,
over the project at his heart.
"A rare night for our meeting," thought he; "I suppose he will not
fail me. Now let me con over my task. I must not tell him all yet.
Such babes must be led into error before they can walk: just a little
inkling will suffice, a glimpse into the arcana of my scheme. Well,
it is indeed fortunate that I met him, for verily I am surrounded with
danger, and a very little delay in the assistance I am forced to seek
might exalt me to a higher elevation than the peerage."
Such was the meditation of this man, as with a slow, shufling walk,
characteristic of his mind, he proceeded to the appointed spot.
A cessation of unusual length in the series of the lightnings, and the
consequent darkness, against which the dull and scanty lamps vainly
struggled, prevented Crauford and another figure approaching from the
opposite quarter seeing each other till they almost touched. Crauford
stopped abruptly.
"Is it you?" said he.
"It is a man who has outlived fortune!" answered Glendower, in the
exaggerated and metaphorical language which the thoughts of men who
imagine warmly, and are excited powerfully, so often assume.
"Then," rejoined Crauford, "you are the more suited for my purpose. A
little urging of necessity behind is a marvellous whetter of the
appetite to danger before, he! he!" And as he said this, his low
chuckling laugh jarringly enough contrasted with the character of the
night and his companion.
Glendower replied not: a pause ensued; and the lightning which,
spreading on a sudden from east to west, hung over the city a burning
and ghastly canopy, showed the face of each to the other, working and
almost haggard as it was with the conception of dark thoughts, and
rendered wan and unearthly by the spectral light in which it was
beheld. "It is an awful night," said Glendower.
"True," answered Crauford, "a very awful night; but we are all safe
under the care of Providence. Jesus! what a flash! Think you it is a
favourable opportunity for our conversation?"
"Why not?" said Glendower; "what have the thunders and wrath of Heaven
to do with us?"
"H-e-m! h-e-m! God sees all things," rejoined Crauford, "and avenges
Himself on the guilty by His storms!"
"Ay; but those are the storms of the heart! I tell you that even the
innocent may have that within to which the loudest tempests without
are peace! But guilt, you say; what have we to do with guilt?"
Crauford hesitated, and, avoiding any reply to this question, drew
Glendower's arm within his own, and in a low half-whispered tone
said,--
"Glendower, survey mankind; look with a passionless and unprejudiced
eye upon the scene which moves around us: what do you see anywhere but
the same re-acted and eternal law of Nature,--all, all preying upon
each other? Or if there be a solitary individual who refrains, he is
as a man without a common badge, without a marriage garment, and the
rest trample him under foot! Glendower, you are such a man! Now
hearken, I will deceive you not; I honour you too much to beguile you,
even to your own good. I own to you, fairly and at once, that in the
scheme I shall unfold to you, there may be something repugnant, to the
factitious and theoretical principles of education,--something hostile
to the prejudices, though not to the reasonings, of the mind; but--"
"Hold!" said Glendower, abruptly, pausing and fixing his bold and
searching eye upon the tempter; "hold! there will be no need of
argument or refinement in this case: tell me at once your scheme, and
at once I will accept or reject it!"
"Gently," said Crauford; "to all deeds of contract there is a
preamble. Listen to me yet further: when I have ceased, I will listen
to you. It is in vain that you place man in cities; it is in vain
that you fetter him with laws; it is in vain that you pour into his
mind the light of an imperfect morality, of a glimmering wisdom, of an
ineffectual religion: in all places he is the same,--the same savage
and crafty being, who makes the passions which rule himself the tools
of his conquest over others! There is in all creation but one evident
law,--self-preservation! Split it as you like into hairbreadths and
atoms, it is still fundamentally and essentially unaltered.
Glendower, that self-preservation is our bond now. Of myself I do not
at present speak; I refer only to you: self-preservation commands you
to place implicit confidence in me; it impels you to abjure indigence,
by accepting the proposal I am about to make to you."
"You, as yet, speak enigmas," said Glendower; "but they are
sufficiently clear to tell me their sense is not such as I have heard
you utter."
"You are right. Truth is not always safe,--safe either to others, or
to ourselves! But I dare open to you now my real heart: look in it; I
dare to say that you will behold charity, benevolence, piety to God,
love and friendship at this moment to yourself; but I own, also, that
you will behold there a determination--which to me seems courage--not
to be the only idle being in the world, where all are busy; or, worse
still, to be the only one engaged in a perilous and uncertain game,
and yet shunning to employ all the arts of which he is master. I will
own to you that, long since, had I been foolishly inert, I should have
been, at this moment, more penniless and destitute than yourself. I
live happy, respected, wealthy! I enjoy in their widest range the
blessings of life. I dispense those blessings to others. Look round
the world: whose name stands fairer than mine? whose hand relieves
more of human distresses? whose tongue preaches purer doctrines?
None, Glendower, none. I offer to you means not dissimilar to those I
have chosen, fortunes not unequal to those I possess. Nothing but the
most unjustifiable fastidiousness will make you hesitate to accept my
offer."
"You cannot expect that I have met you this night with a resolution to
be unjustifiably fastidious," said Glendower, with a hollow and cold
smile.
Crauford did not immediately answer, for he was considering whether it
was yet the time for disclosing the important secret. While he was
deliberating, the sullen clouds began to break from their suspense. A
double darkness gathered around, and a few large drops fell on the
ground in token of a more general discharge about to follow from the
floodgates of heaven. The two men moved onward, and took shelter
under an old arch. Crauford first broke silence. "Hist!" said he,
hist! do you hear anything?"
"Yes! I heard the winds and the rain, and the shaking houses, and the
plashing pavements, and the reeking housetops,--nothing more."
Looking long and anxiously around to certify himself that none was
indeed the witness of their conference, Crauford approached close to
Glendower and laid his hand heavily upon his arm. At that moment a
vivid and lengthened flash of lightning shot through the ruined arch,
and gave to Crauford's countenance a lustre which Glendower almost
started to behold. The face, usually so smooth, calm, bright in
complexion, and almost inexpressive from its extreme composure, now
agitated by the excitement of the moment, and tinged by the ghastly
light of the skies, became literally fearful. The cold blue eye
glared out from its socket; the lips blanched, and, parting in act to
speak, showed the white glistening teeth; and the corners of the
mouth, drawn down in a half sneer, gave to the cheeks, rendered green
and livid by the lightning, a lean and hollow appearance contrary to
their natural shape.
"It is," said Crauford, in a whispered but distinct tone, "a perilous
secret that I am about to disclose to you. I indeed have no concern
in it, but my lords the judges have, and you will not therefore be
surprised if I forestall the ceremonies of their court and require an
oath."
Then, his manner and voice suddenly changing into an earnest and deep
solemnity, as excitement gave him an eloquence more impressive,
because unnatural to his ordinary moments, he continued: "By those
lightnings and commotions above; by the heavens in which they revel in
their terrible sports; by the earth, whose towers they crumble, and
herbs they blight, and creatures they blast into cinders at their
will; by Him whom, whatever be the name He bears, all men in the
living world worship and tremble before; by whatever is sacred in this
great and mysterious universe, and at the peril of whatever can wither
and destroy and curse,--swear to preserve inviolable and forever the
secret I shall whisper in your ear!"
The profound darkness which now, in the pause of the lightning,
wrapped the scene, hid from Crauford all sight of the effect he had
produced, and even the very outline of Glendower's figure; but the
gloom made more distinct the voice which thrilled through it upon
Crauford's ear.
"Promise me that there is not dishonour, nor crime, which is
dishonour, in this confidence, and I swear."
Crauford ground his teeth. He was about to reply impetuously, but he
checked himself. "I am not going," thought he, "to communicate my own
share of this plot, but merely to state that a plot does exist, and
then to point out in what manner he can profit by it; so far,
therefore, there is no guilt in his concealment, and, consequently, no
excuse for him to break his vow."
Rapidly running over this self-argument, he said aloud, "I promise!"
"And," rejoined Glendower, "I swear!"
At the close of this sentence another flash of lightning again made
darkness visible, and Glendower, beholding the countenance of his
companion, again recoiled: for its mingled haggardness and triumph
seemed to his excited imagination the very expression of a fiend!
"Now," said Crauford, relapsing into his usual careless tone, somewhat
enlivened by his sneer, "now, then, you must not interrupt me in my
disclosure by those starts and exclamations which break from your
philosophy like sparks from flint. Hear me throughout."
And, bending down, till his mouth reached Glendower's ear, he
commenced his recital. Artfully hiding his own agency, the master-
spring of the gigantic machinery of fraud, which, too mighty for a
single hand, required an assistant,--throwing into obscurity the sin,
while, knowing the undaunted courage and desperate fortunes of the
man, he did not affect to conceal the danger; expatiating upon the
advantages, the immense and almost inexhaustible resources of wealth
which his scheme suddenly opened upon one in the deepest abyss of
poverty, and slightly sketching, as if to excite vanity, the ingenuity
and genius by which the scheme originated, and could only be
sustained,--Crauford's detail of temptation, in its knowledge of human
nature, in its adaptation of act to principles, in its web-like craft
of self-concealment, and the speciousness of its lure, was indeed a
splendid masterpiece of villanous invention.
But while Glendower listened, and his silence flattered Crauford's
belief of victory, not for one single moment did a weak or yielding
desire creep around his heart. Subtly as the scheme was varnished,
and scarce a tithe of its comprehensive enormity unfolded, the strong
and acute mind of one long accustomed to unravel sophistry and gaze on
the loveliness of truth, saw at once that the scheme proposed was of
the most unmingled treachery and baseness. Sick, chilled, withering
at heart, Glendower leaned against the damp wall; as every word which
the tempter fondly imagined was irresistibly confirming his purpose,
tore away the last prop to which, in the credulity of hope, the
student had clung, and mocked while it crushed the fondness of his
belief.
Crauford ceased, and stretched forth his hand to grasp Glendower's.
He felt it not. "You do not speak, my friend," said he; "do you
deliberate, or have you not decided?" Still no answer came.
Surprised, and half alarmed, he turned round, and perceived by a
momentary flash of lightning, that Glendower had risen and was moving
away towards the mouth of the arch.
"Good Heavens! Glendower," cried Crauford, "where are you going?"
"Anywhere," cried Glendower, in a sudden paroxysm of indignant
passion, "anywhere in this great globe of suffering, so that the
agonies of my human flesh and heart are not polluted by the accents of
crime! And such crime! Why, I would rather go forth into the
highways, and win bread by the sharp knife and the death-struggle,
than sink my soul in such mire and filthiness of sin. Fraud! fraud!
treachery! Merciful Father! what can be my state, when these are
supposed to tempt me!"
Astonished and aghast, Crauford remained rooted to the spot.
"Oh!" continued Glendower, and his noble nature was wrung to the
utmost; "Oh, MAN, MAN! that I should have devoted my best and freshest
years to the dream of serving thee! In my boyish enthusiasm, in my
brief day of pleasure and of power, in the intoxication of love, in
the reverse of fortune, in the squalid and obscure chambers of
degradation and poverty, that one hope animated, cheered, sustained me
through all! In temptation did this hand belie, or in sickness did
this brain forego, or in misery did this heart forget, thy great and
advancing cause? In the wide world, is there one being whom I have
injured, even in thought; one being who, in the fellowship of want,
should not have drunk of my cup, or broken with me the last morsel of
my bread?--and now, now, is it come to this?"
And, hiding his face with his hands, he gave way to a violence of
feeling before which the weaker nature of Crauford stood trembling and
abashed. It lasted not long; he raised his head from its drooping
posture, and, as he stood at the entrance of the arch, a prolonged
flash from the inconstant skies shone full upon his form. Tall,
erect, still, the gloomy and ruined walls gave his colourless
countenance and haughty stature in bold and distinct relief; all trace
of the past passion had vanished: perfectly calm and set, his features
borrowed even dignity from their marble paleness, and the marks of
suffering which the last few months had writ in legible characters on
the cheek and brow. Seeking out, with an eye to which the intolerable
lightnings seemed to have lent something of their fire, the cowering
and bended form of his companion, he said,--
"Go home, miserable derider of the virtue you cannot understand; go to
your luxurious and costly home; go and repine that human nature is not
measured by your mangled and crippled laws: amidst men, yet more
fallen than I am, hope to select your victim; amidst prisons, and
hovels, and roofless sheds; amidst rags and destitution, and wretches
made mad by hunger, hope that you may find a villain. I leave you to
that hope, and--to remembrance!"
As Glendower moved away, Crauford recovered himself. Rendered
desperate by the vital necessity of procuring some speedy aid in his
designs, and not yet perfectly persuaded of the fallacy of his former
judgment, he was resolved not to suffer Glendower thus easily to
depart. Smothering his feelings by an effort violent even to his
habitual hypocrisy, he sprang forward, and laid his hand upon
Glendower's shoulder.
"Stay, stay," said he, in a soothing and soft voice; "you have wronged
me greatly. I pardon your warmth,--nay, I honour it; but hereafter
you will repent your judgment of me. At least, do justice to my
intentions. Was I an actor in the scheme proposed to you? what was it
to me? Was I in the smallest degree to be benefited by it? Could I
have any other motive than affection for you? If I erred, it was from
a different view of the question; but is it not the duty of a friend
to find expedients for distress, and to leave to the distressed person
the right of accepting or rejecting them? But let this drop forever:
partake of my fortune; be my adopted brother. Here, I have hundreds
about me at this moment; take them all, and own at least that I meant
you well."
Feeling that Glendower, who at first had vainly endeavoured to shake
off his hand, now turned towards him, though at the moment it was too
dark to see his countenance, the wily speaker continued, "Yes,
Glendower, if by that name I must alone address you, take all I have:
there is no one in this world dearer to me than you are. I am a
lonely and disappointed man, without children or ties. I sought out a
friend who might be my brother in life and my heir in death. I found
you: be that to me!"
"I am faint and weak," said Glendower, slowly, "and I believe my
senses cannot be clear; but a minute since, and you spoke at length,
and with a terrible distinctness, words which it polluted my very ear
to catch, and now you speak as if you loved me. Will it please you to
solve the riddle?"
"The truth is this," said Crauford: "I knew your pride; I feared you
would not accept a permanent pecuniary aid, even from friendship. I
was driven, therefore, to devise some plan of independence for you. I
could think of no plan but that which I proposed. You speak of it as
wicked: it may be so; but it seemed not wicked to me. I may have
formed a wrong--I own it is a peculiar--system of morals; but it is,
at least, sincere. Judging of my proposal by that system, I saw no
sin in it. I saw, too, much less danger than, in the honesty of my
heart, I spoke of. In a similar distress, I solemnly swear, I myself
would have adopted a similar relief. Nor is this all; the plan
proposed would have placed thousands in your power. Forgive me if I
thought your life, and the lives of those most dear to you, of greater
value than these sums to the persons defrauded, ay, defrauded, if you
will: forgive me if I thought that with these thousands you would
effect far more good to the community than their legitimate owners.
Upon these grounds, and on some others, too tedious now to state, I
justified my proposal to my conscience. Pardon me, I again beseech
you: accept my last proposal; be my partner, my friend, my heir; and
forget a scheme never proposed to you, if I had hoped (what I hope
now) that you would accept the alternative which it is my pride to
offer, and which you are not justified, even by pride, to refuse."
"Great Source of all knowledge!" ejaculated Glendower, scarce audibly,
and to himself. "Supreme and unfathomable God! dost Thou most loathe
or pity Thine abased creatures, walking in their dim reason upon this
little earth, and sanctioning fraud, treachery, crime, upon a
principle borrowed from Thy laws? Oh! when, when will Thy full light
of wisdom travel down to us, and guilt and sorrow, and this world's
evil mysteries, roll away like vapours before the blaze?"
"I do not hear you, my friend," said Crauford. "Speak aloud; you
will, I feel you will, accept my offer, and become my brother!"
"Away!" said Glendower; "I will not."
"He wanders; his brain is touched!" muttered Crauford, and then
resumed aloud, "Glendower, we are both unfit for talk at present; both
unstrung by our late jar. You will meet me again to-morrow, perhaps.
I will accompany you now to your door."
"Not a step: our paths are different."
"Well, well, if you will have it so, be it as you please. I have
offended: you have a right to punish me, and play the churl to-night;
but your address?"
"Yonder," said Glendower, pointing to the heavens. "Come to me a
month hence, and you will find me there!"
"Nay, nay, my friend, your brain is heated; but you leave me? Well,
as I said, your will is mine: at least take some of these paltry notes
in earnest of our bargain; remember when next we meet you will share
all I have."
"You remind me," said Glendower, quietly, "that we have old debts to
settle. When last I saw you, you lent me a certain sum: there it is;
take it; count it; there is but one poor guinea gone. Fear not: even
to the uttermost farthing you shall be repaid."
"Why, why, this is unkind, ungenerous. Stay, stay,--" but, waving his
hand impatiently, Glendower darted away, and passing into another
street, the darkness effectually closed upon his steps.
"Fool! fool! that I am," cried Crauford, stamping vehemently on the
ground; "in what point did my wit fail me, that I could not win one
whom very hunger had driven into my net? But I must yet find him; and
I will; the police shall be set to work: these half confidences may
ruin me. And how deceitful he has proved: to talk more diffidently
than a whining harlot upon virtue, and yet be so stubborn upon trial!
Dastard that I am, too, as well as fool: I felt sunk into the dust by
his voice. But pooh, I must have him yet; your worst villains make
the most noise about the first step. True that I cannot storm, but I
will undermine. But, wretch that I am, I must win him or another
soon, or I perish on a gibbet. Out, base thought!"
