CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
Come, Death, these are thy victims, and the axe
Waits those who claimed the chariot.--Thus we count
Our treasures in the dark, and when the light
Breaks on the cheated eye, we find the coin
Was skulls--
. . . . . .
Yet the while
Fate links strange contrasts, and the scaffold's gloom
Is neighboured by the altar.--ANONYMOUS.
When Crauford's guilt and imprisonment became known; when inquiry
developed, day after day, some new maze in the mighty and intricate
machinery of his sublime dishonesty; when houses of the most reputed
wealth and profuse splendour, whose affairs Crauford had transacted,
were discovered to have been for years utterly undermined and
beggared, and only supported by the extraordinary genius of the
individual by whose extraordinary guilt, now no longer concealed, they
were suddenly and irretrievably destroyed; when it was ascertained
that, for nearly the fifth part of a century, a system of villany had
been carried on throughout Europe, in a thousand different relations,
without a single breath of suspicion, and yet which a single breath of
suspicion could at once have arrested and exposed; when it was proved
that a man whose luxury had exceeded the pomp of princes, and whose
wealth was supposed more inexhaustible than the enchanted purse of
Fortunatus, had for eighteen years been a penniless pensioner upon the
prosperity of others; when the long scroll of this almost incredible
fraud was slowly, piece by piece, unrolled before the terrified
curiosity of his public, an invading army at the Temple gates could
scarcely have excited such universal consternation and dismay.
The mob, always the first to execute justice, in their own inimitable
way took vengeance upon Crauford by burning the house no longer his,
and the houses of his partners, who were the worst and most innocent
sufferers for his crime. No epithet of horror and hatred was too
severe for the offender; and serious apprehension for the safety of
Newgate, his present habitation, was generally expressed. The more
saintly members of that sect to which the hypocrite had ostensibly
belonged, held up their hands, and declared that the fall of the
Pharisee was a judgment of Providence. Nor did they think it worth
while to make, for a moment, the trifling inquiry how far the judgment
of Providence was also implicated in the destruction of the numerous
and innocent families he had ruined!
But, whether from that admiration for genius, common to the vulgar,
which forgets all crime in the cleverness of committing it, or from
that sagacious disposition peculiar to the English, which makes a hero
of any person eminently wicked, no sooner did Crauford's trial come on
than the tide of popular feeling experienced a sudden revulsion. It
became, in an instant, the fashion to admire and to pity a gentleman
so talented and so unfortunate. Likenesses of Mr. Crauford appeared
in every print-shop in town; the papers discovered that he was the
very fac-simile of the great King of Prussia. The laureate made an
ode upon him, which was set to music; and the public learned, with
tears of compassionate regret at so romantic a circumstance, that
pigeon-pies were sent daily to his prison, made by the delicate hands
of one of his former mistresses. Some sensation, also, was excited by
the circumstance of his poor wife (who soon afterwards died of a
broken heart) coming to him in prison, and being with difficulty torn
away; but then, conjugal affection is so very commonplace, and there
was something so engrossingly pathetic in the anecdote of the pigeon-
pies!
It must be confessed that Crauford displayed singular address and
ability upon his trial; and fighting every inch of ground, even to the
last, when so strong a phalanx of circumstances appeared against him
that no hope of a favourable verdict could for a moment have supported
him, he concluded the trial with a speech delivered by himself, so
impressive, so powerful, so dignified, yet so impassioned, that the
whole audience, hot as they were, dissolved into tears.
Sentence was passed,--Death! But such was the infatuation of the
people that every one expected that a pardon, for crime more
complicated and extensive than half the "Newgate Calendar" could
equal, would of course be obtained. Persons of the highest rank
interested themselves in his behalf; and up to the night before his
execution, expectations, almost amounting to certainty, were
entertained by the criminal, his friends, and the public. On that
night was conveyed to Crauford the positive and peremptory assurance
that there was no hope. Let us now enter his cell, and be the sole
witnesses of his solitude.
Crauford was, as we have seen, a man in some respects of great moral
courage, of extraordinary daring in the formation of schemes, of
unwavering resolution in supporting them, and of a temper which rather
rejoiced in, than shunned, the braving of a distant danger for the
sake of an adequate reward. But this courage was supported and fed
solely by the self-persuasion of consummate genius, and his profound
confidence both in his good fortune and the inexhaustibility of his
resources. Physically he was a coward! immediate peril to be
confronted by the person, not the mind, had ever appalled him like a
child. He had never dared to back a spirited horse. He had been
known to remain for days in an obscure ale-house in the country, to
which a shower had accidentally driven him, because it had been idly
reported that a wild beast had escaped from a caravan and been seen in
the vicinity of the inn. No dog had ever been allowed in his
household lest it might go mad. In a word, Crauford was one to whom
life and sensual enjoyments were everything,--the supreme blessings,
the only blessings.
As long as he had the hope, and it was a sanguine hope, of saving
life, nothing had disturbed his mind from its serenity. His gayety
had never forsaken him; and his cheerfulness and fortitude had been
the theme of every one admitted to his presence. But when this hope
was abruptly and finally closed; when Death, immediate and
unavoidable,--Death, the extinction of existence, the cessation of
sense,--stood bare and hideous before him, his genius seemed at once
to abandon him to his fate, and the inherent weakness of his nature to
gush over every prop and barrier of his art.
No hope!" muttered he, in a voice of the keenest anguish, "no hope;
merciful God! none, none? What, I, I, who have shamed kings in
luxury,--I to die on the gibbet, among the reeking, gaping, swinish
crowd with whom--O God, that I were one of them even! that I were the
most loathsome beggar that ever crept forth to taint the air with
sores! that I were a toad immured in a stone, sweltering in the
atmosphere of its own venom! a snail crawling on these very walls, and
tracking his painful path in slime!--anything, anything, but death!
And such death! The gallows, the scaffold, the halter, the fingers of
the hangman paddling round the neck where the softest caresses have
clung and sated. To die, die, die! What, I whose pulse now beats so
strongly! whose blood keeps so warm and vigorous a motion! in the very
prime of enjoyment and manhood; all life's million paths of pleasure
before me,--to die, to swing to the winds, to hang,--ay, ay--to hang!
to be cut down, distorted and hideous; to be thrust into the earth
with worms; to rot, or--or--or hell! is there a hell?--better that
even than annihilation!"
"Fool! fool!--damnable fool that I was" (and in his sudden rage he
clenched his own flesh till the nails met in it); "had I but got to
France one day sooner! Why don't you save me, save me, you whom I
have banqueted and feasted, and lent money to! one word from you might
have saved me; I will not die! I don't deserve it! I am innocent! I
tell you, Not guilty, my lord,--not guilty! Have you no heart, no
consciences? Murder! murder! murder!" and the wretched man sank upon
the ground, and tried with his hands to grasp the stone floor, as if
to cling to it from some imaginary violence.
Turn we from him to the cell in which another criminal awaits also the
awful coming of his latest morrow.
Pale, motionless, silent, with his face bending over his bosom and
hands clasped tightly upon his knees, Wolfe sat in his dungeon, and
collected his spirit against the approaching consummation of his
turbulent and stormy fate. His bitterest punishment had been already
past; mysterious Chance, or rather the Power above chance, had denied
to him the haughty triumph of self-applause. No sophistry, now, could
compare his doom to that of Sidney, or his deed to the act of the
avenging Brutus.
Murder--causeless, objectless, universally execrated--rested, and
would rest (till oblivion wrapped it) upon his name. It had appeared,
too, upon his trial, that he had, in the information he had received,
been the mere tool of a spy in the ministers' pay; and that, for weeks
before his intended deed, his design had been known, and his
conspiracy only not bared to the public eye because political craft
awaited a riper opportunity for the disclosure. He had not then
merely been the blind dupe of his own passions, but, more humbling
still, an instrument in the hands of the very men whom his hatred was
sworn to destroy. Not a wreck, not a straw, of the vain glory for
which he had forfeited life and risked his soul, could he hug to a
sinking heart, and say, "This is my support."
The remorse of gratitude embittered his cup still further. On
Mordaunt's person had been discovered a memorandum of the money
anonymously inclosed to Wolfe on the day of the murder; and it was
couched in words of esteem which melted the fierce heart of the
republican into the only tears he had shed since childhood. From that
time, a sullen, silent spirit fell upon him. He spoke to none,--
heeded none; he made no defence on trial, no complaint of severity, no
appeal from judgment. The iron had entered into his soul; but it
supported, while it tortured. Even now as we gaze upon his inflexible
and dark countenance, no transitory emotion; no natural spasm of
sudden fear for the catastrophe of the morrow; no intense and working
passions, struggling into calm; no sign of internal hurricanes, rising
as it were from the hidden depths, agitate the surface, or betray the
secrets of the unfathomable world within. The mute lip; the rigid
brow; the downcast eye; a heavy and dread stillness, brooding over
every feature,--these are all we behold.
Is it that thought sleeps, locked in the torpor of a senseless and
rayless dream; or that an evil incubus weighs upon it, crushing its
risings, but deadening not its pangs? Does Memory fly to the green
fields and happy home of his childhood, or the lonely studies of his
daring and restless youth, or his earliest homage to that Spirit of
Freedom which shone bright and still and pure upon the solitary
chamber of him who sang of heaven [Milton]; or (dwelling on its last
and most fearful object) rolls it only through one tumultuous and
convulsive channel,--Despair? Whatever be within the silent and deep
heart, pride, or courage, or callousness, or that stubborn firmness,
which, once principle, has grown habit, cover all as with a pall; and
the strung nerves and the hard endurance of the human flesh sustain
what the immortal mind perhaps quails beneath, in its dark retreat,
but once dreamed that it would exult to bear.
The fatal hour had come! and, through the long dim passages of the
prison, four criminals were led forth to execution. The first was
Crauford's associate, Bradley. This man prayed fervently; and, though
he was trembling and pale, his mien and aspect bore something of the
calmness of resignation.
It has been said that there is no friendship among the wicked. I have
examined this maxim closely, and believe it, like most popular
proverbs,--false. In wickedness there is peril, and mutual terror is
the strongest of ties. At all events, the wicked can, not unoften,
excite an attachment in their followers denied to virtue. Habitually
courteous, caressing, and familiar, Crauford had, despite his own
suspicions of Bradley, really touched the heart of one whom weakness
and want, not nature, had gained to vice; and it was not till
Crauford's guilt was by other witnesses undeniably proved that Bradley
could be tempted to make any confession tending to implicate him.
He now crept close to his former partner, and frequently clasped his
hand, and besought him to take courage and to pray. But Crauford's
eye was glassy and dim, and his veins seemed filled with water: so
numbed and cold and white was his cheek. Fear, in him, had passed its
paroxysms, and was now insensibility; it was only when they urged him
to pray that a sort of benighted consciousness strayed over his
countenance and his ashen lips muttered something which none heard.
After him came the Creole, who had been Wolfe's accomplice. On the
night of the murder, he had taken advantage of the general loneliness
and the confusion of the few present, and fled. He was found,
however, fast asleep in a garret, before morning, by the officers of
justice; and, on trial, he had confessed all. This man was in a rapid
consumption. The delay of another week would have given to Nature the
termination of his life. He, like Bradley, seemed earnest and
absorbed in prayer.
Last came Wolfe, his tall, gaunt frame worn by confinement and
internal conflict into a gigantic skeleton; his countenance, too, had
undergone a withering change; his grizzled hair seemed now to have
acquired only the one hoary hue of age; and, though you might trace in
his air and eye the sternness, you could no longer detect the fire, of
former days. Calm, as on the preceding night, no emotion broke over
his dark but not defying features. He rejected, though not
irreverently, all aid from the benevolent priest, and seemed to seek
in the pride of his own heart a substitute for the resignation of
Religion.
"Miserable man!" at last said the good clergyman, in whom zeal
overcame kindness, "have you at this awful hour no prayer upon your
lips?"
A living light shot then for a moment over Wolfe's eye and brow. "I
have!" said he; and raising his clasped hands to Heaven, he continued
in the memorable words of Sidney, "Lord, defend Thy own cause, and
defend those who defend it! Stir up such as are faint; direct those
that are willing; confirm those that waver; give wisdom and integrity
to all: order all things so as may most redound to Thine own glory!
"I had once hoped," added Wolfe, sinking in his tone, "I had once
hoped that I might with justice have continued that holy prayer;
["Grant that I may die glorifying Thee for all Thy mercies, and that
at the last Thou hast permitted me to be singled out as a witness of
Thy truth, and even by the confession of my opposers for that OLD
CAUSE in which I was from my youth engaged, and for which Thou hast
often and wonderfully declared Thyself."--ALGERNON SIDNEY.] but--" he
ceased abruptly; the glow passed from his countenance, his lip
quivered, and the tears stood in his eyes; and that was the only
weakness he betrayed, and those were his last words.
Crauford continued, even while the rope was put round him, mute and
unconscious of everything. It was said that his pulse (that of an
uncommonly strong and healthy man on the previous day) had become so
low and faint that, an hour before his execution, it could not be
felt. He and the Creole were the only ones who struggled; Wolfe died,
seemingly, without a pang.
From these feverish and fearful scenes, the mind turns, with a feeling
of grateful relief, to contemplate the happiness of one whose candid
and high nature, and warm affections, Fortune, long befriending, had
at length blessed.
It was on an evening in the earliest flush of returning spring that
Lord Ulswater, with his beautiful bride, entered his magnificent
domains. It had been his wish and order, in consequence of his
brother's untimely death, that no public rejoicings should be made on
his marriage: but the good old steward could not persuade himself
entirely to enforce obedience to the first order of his new master;
and as the carriage drove into the park-gates, crowds on crowds were
assembled to welcome and to gaze.
No sooner had they caught a glimpse of their young lord, whose
affability and handsome person had endeared him to all who remembered
his early days, and of the half-blushing, half-smiling countenance
beside him, than their enthusiasm could be no longer restrained. The
whole scene rang with shouts of joy; and through an air filled with
blessings, and amidst an avenue of happy faces, the bridal pair
arrived at their home.
"Ah! Clarence (for so I must still call you)," said Flora, her
beautiful eyes streaming with delicious tears, "let us never leave
these kind hearts; let us live amongst them, and strive to repay and
deserve the blessings which they shower upon us! Is not Benevolence,
dearest, better than Ambition?"
"Can it not rather, my own Flora, be Ambition itself?"
CONCLUSION.
So rest you, merry gentlemen.--Monsieur Thomas.
The Author has now only to take his leave of the less important
characters whom he has assembled together; and then, all due courtesy
to his numerous guests being performed, to retire himself to repose.
First, then, for Mr. Morris Brown: In the second year of Lord
Ulswater's marriage, the worthy broker paid Mrs. Minden's nephew a
visit, in which he persuaded that gentleman to accept, "as presents,"
two admirable fire screens, the property of the late Lady Waddilove:
the same may be now seen in the housekeeper's room at Borodaile Park
by any person willing to satisfy his curiosity and--the housekeeper.
Of all further particulars respecting Mr. Morris Brown, history is
silent.
In the obituary for 1792, we find the following paragraph:
"Died at his house in Putney, aged seventy-three, Sir Nicholas
Copperas, Knt., a gentleman well known on the Exchange for his
facetious humour. Several of his bons-mots are still recorded in the
Common Council. When residing many years ago in the suburbs of
London, this worthy gentleman was accustomed to go from his own house
to the Exchange in a coach called 'the Swallow,' that passed his door
just at breakfast-time; upon which occasion he was wont wittily to
observe to his accomplished spouse, 'And now, Mrs. Copperas, having
swallowed in the roll, I will e'en roll in the Swallow!' His whole
property is left to Adolphus Copperas, Esq., banker."
And in the next year we discover,--
"Died, on Wednesday last, at her jointure house, Putney, in her sixty-
eighth year, the amiable and elegant Lady Copperas, relict of the late
Sir Nicholas, Knt."
Mr. Trollolop, having exhausted the whole world of metaphysics, died
like Descartes, "in believing he had left nothing unexplained."
Mr. Callythorpe entered the House of Commons at the time of the French
Revolution. He distinguished himself by many votes in favour of Mr.
Pitt, and one speech which ran thus: "Sir, I believe my right
honourable friend who spoke last (Mr. Pitt) designs to ruin the
country: but I will support him through all. Honourable Gentlemen may
laugh; but I'm a true Briton, and will not serve my friend the less
because I scorn to flatter him."
Sir Christopher Findlater lost his life by an accident arising from
the upsetting of his carriage, his good heart not having suffered him
to part with a drunken coachman.
Mr. Glumford turned miser in his old age; and died of want, and an
extravagant son.
Our honest Cole and his wife were always among the most welcome
visitors at Lord Ulswater's. In his extreme old age, the ex-king took
a journey to Scotland, to see the Author of "The Lay of the Last
Minstrel." Nor should we do justice to the chief's critical
discernment if we neglected to record that, from the earliest dawn of
that great luminary of our age, he predicted its meridian splendour.
The eldest son of the gypsy-monarch inherited his father's spirit, and
is yet alive, a general, and G.C.B.
Mr. Harrison married Miss Elizabeth, and succeeded to the Golden
Fleece.
The Duke of Haverfield and Lord Ulswater continued their friendship
through life; and the letters of our dear Flora to her correspondent,
Eleanor, did not cease even with that critical and perilous period to
all maiden correspondents,--Marriage. If we may judge from the
subsequent letters which we have been permitted to see, Eleanor never
repented her brilliant nuptials, nor discovered (as the Duchess of
---- once said from experience) "that Dukes are as intolerable for
husbands as they are delightful for matches."
And Isabel Mordaunt?--Ah! not in these pages shall her history be told
even in epitome. Perhaps for some future narrative, her romantic and
eventful fate may be reserved. Suffice it for the present, that the
childhood of the young heiress passed in the house of Lord Ulswater,
whose proudest boast, through a triumphant and prosperous life, was to
have been her father's friend; and that as she grew up, she inherited
her mother's beauty and gentle heart, and seemed to bear in her deep
eyes and melancholy smile some remembrance of the scenes in which her
infancy had been passed.
But for Him, the husband and the father, whose trials through this
wrong world I have portrayed,--for him let there be neither murmurs at
the blindness of Fate, nor sorrow at the darkness of his doom. Better
that the lofty and bright spirit should pass away before the petty
business of life had bowed it, or the sordid mists of this low earth
breathed a shadow on its lustre! Who would have asked that spirit to
have struggled on for years in the intrigues, the hopes, the objects
of meaner souls? Who would have desired that the heavenward and
impatient heart should have grown insured to the chains and toil of
this enslaved state, or hardened into the callousness of age? Nor
would we claim the vulgar pittance of compassion for a lot which is
exalted above regret! Pity is for our weaknesses: to our weaknesses
only be it given. It is the aliment of love; it is the wages of
ambition; it is the rightful heritage of error! But why should pity
be entertained for the soul which never fell? for the courage which
never quailed? for the majesty never humbled? for the wisdom which,
from the rough things of the common world, raised an empire above
earth and destiny? for the stormy life?--it was a triumph! for the
early death?--it was immortality!
I have stood beside Mordaunt's tomb: his will had directed that he
should sleep not in the vaults of his haughty line; and his last
dwelling is surrounded by a green and pleasant spot. The trees shadow
it like a temple; and a silver though fitful brook wails with a
constant yet not ungrateful dirge at the foot of the hill on which the
tomb is placed. I have stood there in those ardent years when our
wishes know no boundary and our ambition no curb; yet, even then, I
would have changed my wildest vision of romance for that quiet grave,
and the dreams of the distant spirit whose relics reposed beneath it.
THE END.
