CHAPTER LVII.
Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tanquam faciem honesti video:
quae, si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores (ut ait Plato) excitaret
sapientia.--TULLY.
["Son Marcus, you seethe form and as it were the face of Virtue: that
Wisdom, which if it could be perceived by the eyes, would (as Plato
saith) kindle absolute and marvellous affection."]
It was almost dawn when Glendower returned to his home. Fearful of
disturbing his wife, he stole with mute steps to the damp and rugged
chamber, where the last son of a princely line, and the legitimate
owner of lands and halls which ducal rank might have envied, held his
miserable asylum. The first faint streaks of coming light broke
through the shutterless and shattered windows, and he saw that she
reclined in a deep sleep upon the chair beside their child's couch.
She would not go to bed herself till Glendower returned, and she had
sat up, watching and praying, and listening for his footsteps, till,
in the utter exhaustion of debility and sickness, sleep had fallen
upon her. Glendower bent over her.
"Sleep," said he, "sleep on! The wicked do not come to thee now.
Thou art in a world that has no fellowship with this,--a world from
which even happiness is not banished! Nor woe nor pain, nor memory of
the past nor despair of all before thee, make the characters of thy
present state! Thou forestallest the forgetfulness of the grave, and
thy heart concentrates all earth's comfort in one word,--'Oblivion!
'Beautiful, how beautiful thou art even yet! that smile, that
momentary blush, years have not conquered them. They are as when, my
young bride, thou didst lean first upon my bosom, and dream that
sorrow was no more! And I have brought thee unto this! These green
walls make thy bridal chamber, yon fragments of bread thy bridal
board. Well! it is no matter! thou art on thy way to a land where all
things, even a breaking heart, are at rest. I weep not; wherefore
should I weep? Tears are not for the dead, but their survivors. I
would rather see thee drop inch by inch into the grave, and smile as I
beheld it, than save thee for an inheritance of sin. What is there in
this little and sordid life that we should strive to hold it? What in
this dreadful dream that we should fear to wake?"
And Glendower knelt beside his wife, and, despite his words, tears
flowed fast and gushingly down his cheeks; and wearied as he was, he
watched upon her slumbers, till they fell from the eyes to which his
presence was more joyous than the day.
It was a beautiful thing, even in sorrow, to see that couple, whom
want could not debase, nor misfortune, which makes even generosity
selfish, divorce! All that Fate had stripped from the poetry and
graces of life, had not shaken one leaf from the romance of their
green and unwithered affections! They were the very type of love in
its holiest and most enduring shape: their hearts had grown together;
their being had flowed through caves and deserts, and reflected the
storms of an angry Heaven; but its waters had indissolubly mingled
into one! Young, gifted, noble, and devoted, they were worthy victims
of this blighting and bitter world! Their garden was turned into a
wilderness; but, like our first parents, it was hand in hand that
they took their solitary way! Evil beset them, but they swerved not;
the rains and the winds fell upon their unsheltered beads, but they
were not bowed; and through the mazes and briers of this weary life,
their bleeding footsteps strayed not, for they had a clew! The mind
seemed, as it were, to become visible and external as the frame
decayed, and to cover the body with something of its own invulnerable
power; so that whatever should have attacked the mortal and frail
part, fell upon that which, imperishable and divine, resisted and
subdued it!
It was unfortunate for Glendower that he never again met Wolfe: for
neither fanaticism of political faith, nor sternness of natural
temper, subdued in the republican the real benevolence and generosity
which redeemed and elevated his character; nor could any impulse of
party zeal have induced him, like Crauford, systematically to take
advantage of poverty in order to tempt to participation in his
schemes. From a more evil companion Glendower had not yet escaped:
Crauford, by some means or other, found out his abode, and lost no
time in availing himself of the discovery. In order fully to
comprehend his unwearied persecution of Glendower, it must constantly
be remembered that to this persecution he was bound by a necessity
which, urgent, dark, and implicating life itself, rendered him callous
to every obstacle and unsusceptible of all remorse. With the
exquisite tact which he possessed, he never openly recurred to his
former proposal of fraud: he contented himself with endeavouring to
persuade Glendower to accept pecuniary assistance, but in vain. The
veil once torn from his character no craft could restore. Through all
his pretences and sevenfold hypocrisy Glendower penetrated at once
into his real motives: he was not to be duped by assurances of
friendship which he knew the very dissimilarities between their
natures rendered impossible. He had seen at the first, despite all
allegations to the contrary, that in the fraud Crauford had proposed,
that person could by no means be an uninfluenced and cold adviser. In
after conversations, Crauford, driven by the awful interest he had in
success from his usual consummateness of duplicity, betrayed in
various important minutiae how deeply he was implicated in the crime
for which he had argued; and not even the visible and progressive
decay of his wife and child could force the stern mind of Glendower
into accepting those wages of iniquity which he knew well were only
offered as an earnest or a snare.
There is a royalty in extreme suffering, when the mind falls not with
the fortunes, which no hardihood of vice can violate unabashed. Often
and often, humble and defeated through all his dissimulation, was
Crauford driven from the presence of the man whom it was his bitterest
punishment to fear most when most he affected to despise; and as
often, re-collecting his powers and fortifying himself in his
experience of human frailty when sufficiently tried, did he return to
his attempts. He waylaid the door and watched the paths of his
intended prey. He knew that the mind which even best repels
temptation first urged hath seldom power to resist the same
suggestion, if daily--dropping, unwearying--presenting itself in every
form, obtruded in every hour, losing its horror by custom, and finding
in the rebellious bosom itself its smoothest vizard and most alluring
excuse. And it was, indeed, a mighty and perilous trial to Glendower,
when rushing from the presence of his wife and child, when fainting
under accumulated evils, when almost delirious with sickening and
heated thought, to hear at each prompting of the wrung and excited
nature, each heave of the black fountain that in no mortal breast is
utterly exhausted, one smooth, soft, persuasive voice forever
whispering, "Relief!"--relief, certain, utter, instantaneous! the
voice of one pledged never to relax an effort or spare a pang, by a
danger to himself, a danger of shame and death,--the voice of one who
never spoke but in friendship and compassion, profound in craft, and a
very sage in the disguises with which language invests deeds. But
VIRTUE has resources buried in itself, which we know not till the
invading hour calls them from their retreats. Surrounded by hosts
without, and when Nature itself, turned traitor, is its most deadly
enemy within, it assumes a new and a superhuman power, which is
greater than Nature itself. Whatever be its creed, whatever be its
sect, from whatever segment of the globe its orisons arise, Virtue is
God's empire, and from His throne of thrones He will defend it.
Though cast into the distant earth, and struggling on the dim arena of
a human heart, all things above are spectators of its conflict or
enlisted in its cause. The angels have their charge over it; the
banners of archangels are on its side; and from sphere to sphere,
through the illimitable ether, and round the impenetrable darkness at
the feet of God, its triumph is hymned by harps which are strung to
the glories of the Creator!
One evening, when Crauford had joined Glendower in his solitary
wanderings, the dissembler renewed his attacks.
"But why not," said he, "accept from my friendship what to my
benevolence you would deny? I couple with my offers, my prayers
rather, no conditions. How then do you, can you, reconcile it to your
conscience, to suffer your wife and child to perish before your eyes?"
"Man, man," said Glendower, "tempt me no more: let them die! At
present the worst is death: what you offer me is dishonour."
"Heavens, how uncharitable is this! Can you call the mere act of
accepting money from one who loves you dishonour?"
"It is in vain that you varnish your designs," said Glendower,
stopping and fixing his eyes upon him. "Do you not think that cunning
ever betrays itself? In a thousand words, in a thousand looks which
have escaped you, but not me, I know that, if there be one being on
this earth whom you hate and would injure, that being is myself. Nay,
start not: listen to me patiently. I have sworn that it is the last
opportunity you shall have. I will not subject myself to farther
temptation: I am now sane; but there are things which may drive me
mad, and in madness you might conquer. You hate me it is out of the
nature of earthly things that you should not. But even were it
otherwise, do you think that I could believe you would come from your
voluptuous home to these miserable retreats; that, among the lairs of
beggary and theft, you would lie in wait to allure me to forsake
poverty, without a stronger motive than love for one who affects it
not for you? I know you: I have read your heart; I have penetrated
into that stronger motive; it is your own safety. In the system of
atrocity you proposed to me, you are the principal. You have already
bared to me enough of the extent to which that system reaches to
convince me that a single miscreant, however ingenious, cannot,
unassisted, support it with impunity. You want help: I am he in whom
you have dared to believe that you could find it. You are detected;
now be undeceived!"
"Is it so?" said Crauford; and as he saw that it was no longer
possible to feign, the poison of his heart broke forth in its full
venom. The fiend rose from the reptile, and stood exposed in its
natural shape. Returning Glendower's stern but lofty gaze with an eye
to which all evil passions lent their unholy fire, he repeated, "Is it
so? then you are more penetrating than I thought; but it is
indifferent to me. It was for your sake, not mine, most righteous
man, that I wished you might have a disguise to satisfy the modesty of
your punctilios. It is all one to Richard Crauford whether you go
blindfold or with open eyes into his snare. Go you must, and shall.
Ay, frowns will not awe me. You have desired the truth: you shall
have it. You are right: I hate you,--hate you with a soul whose force
of hatred you cannot dream of. Your pride, your stubbornness, your
coldness of heart, which things that would stir the blood of beggars
cannot warm; your icy and passionless virtue,--I hate, I hate all!
You are right also, most wise inquisitor, in supposing that in the
scheme proposed to you, I am the principal: I am! You were to be the
tool, and shall. I have offered you mild inducements,--pleas to
soothe the technicalities of your conscience: you have rejected them;
be it so. Now choose between my first offer and the gibbet. Ay, the
gibbet! That night on which we made the appointment which shall not
yet be in vain,--on that night you stopped me in the street; you
demanded money; you robbed me; I will swear; I will prove it. Now,
then, tremble, man of morality: dupe of your own strength, you are in
my power; tremble! Yet in my safety is your escape: I am generous. I
repeat my original offer,--wealth, as great as you will demand, or--
the gibbet, the gibbet: do I speak loud enough? do you hear?"
"Poor fool!" said Glendower, laughing scornfully and moving away. But
when Crauford, partly in mockery, partly in menace, placed his hand
upon Glendower's shoulder, as if to stop him, the touch seemed to
change his mood from scorn to fury; turning abruptly round, he seized
the villain's throat with a giant's strength, and cried out, while his
whole countenance worked beneath the tempestuous wrath within, "What
if I squeeze out thy poisonous life from thee this moment!" and then
once more bursting into a withering laughter, as he surveyed the
terror which he had excited, he added, "No, no: thou art too vile!"
and, dashing the hypocrite against the wall of a neighbouring house,
he strode away.
Recovering himself slowly, and trembling with rage and fear, Crauford
gazed round, expecting yet to find he had sported too far with the
passions he had sought to control. When, however, he had fully
satisfied himself that Glendower was gone, all his wrathful and angry
feelings returned with redoubled force. But their most biting torture
was the consciousness of their impotence. For after the first
paroxysm of rage had subsided he saw, too clearly, that his threat
could not be executed without incurring the most imminent danger of
discovery. High as his character stood, it was possible that no
charge against him might excite suspicion, but a word might cause
inquiry, and inquiry would be ruin. Forced, therefore, to stomach his
failure, his indignation, his shame, his hatred, and his vengeance,
his own heart became a punishment almost adequate to his vices.
"But my foe will die," said he, clinching his fist so firmly that the
nails almost brought blood from the palm; "he will starve, famish, and
see them--his wife, his child--perish first! I shall have my triumph,
though I shall not witness it. But now, away to my villa: there, at
least, will be some one whom I can mock and beat and trample, if I
will! Would--would--would that I were that very man, destitute as he
is! His neck, at least, is safe: if he dies, it will not be upon the
gallows, nor among the hootings of the mob! Oh, horror! horror! What
are my villa, my wine, my women, with that black thought ever
following me like a shadow? Who, who while an avalanche is sailing
over him, who would sit down to feast?"
Leaving this man to shun or be overtaken by Fate, we return to
Glendower. It is needless to say that Crauford visited him no more;
and, indeed, shortly afterwards Glendower again changed his home. But
every day and every hour brought new strength to the disease which was
creeping and burning through the veins of the devoted wife; and
Glendower, who saw on earth nothing before them but a jail, from which
as yet they had been miraculously delivered, repined not as he beheld
her approach to a gentler and benigner home. Often he sat, as she was
bending over their child, and gazed upon her cheek with an insane and
fearful joy at the characters which consumption had there engraved;
but when she turned towards him her fond eyes (those deep wells of
love, in which truth lay hid, and which neither languor nor disease
could exhaust), the unnatural hardness of his heart melted away, and
he would rush from the house, to give vent to an agony against which
fortitude and manhood were in vain.
There was no hope for their distress. His wife had, unknown to
Glendower (for she dreaded his pride), written several times to a
relation, who, though distant, was still the nearest in blood which
fate had spared her, but ineffectually; the scions of a large and
illegitimate family, which surrounded him, utterly prevented the
success, and generally interrupted the application, of any claimant on
his riches but themselves. Glendower, whose temper had ever kept him
aloof from all but the commonest acquaintances, knew no human being to
apply to. Utterly unable to avail himself of the mine which his
knowledge and talents should have proved; sick, and despondent at
heart, and debarred by the loftiness of honour, or rather principle
that nothing could quell, from any unlawful means of earning bread,
which to most minds would have been rendered excusable by the urgency
of nature,--Glendower marked the days drag on in dull and protracted
despair, and envied every corpse that he saw borne to the asylum in
which all earth's hopes seemed centred and confined.
