Bolingbroke has said that “Man is his own sharper and his
own bubble;” and certainly he who is acutest in duping
others is ever the most ingenious in outwitting himself. The
criminal is always a sophist; and finds in his own reason a
special pleader to twist laws human and divine into a
sanction of his crime. The rogue is so much in the habit of
cheating, that he packs the cards even when playing at
Patience with himself.--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
The only two acquaintances in this populous city whom Glendower
possessed who were aware that in a former time he had known a better
fortune were Wolfe and a person of far higher worldly estimation, of the
name of Crauford. With the former the student had become acquainted by
the favour of chance, which had for a short time made them lodgers in
the same house. Of the particulars of Glendower’s earliest history Wolfe
was utterly ignorant; but the addresses upon some old letters, which
he had accidentally seen, had informed him that Glendower had formerly
borne another name; and it was easy to glean from the student’s
conversation that something of greater distinction and prosperity than
he now enjoyed was coupled with the appellation he had renounced.
Proud, melancholy, austere,--brooding upon thoughts whose very loftiness
received somewhat of additional grandeur from the gloom which encircled
it,--Glendower found, in the ruined hopes and the solitary lot of the
republican, that congeniality which neither Wolfe’s habits nor the
excess of his political fervour might have afforded to a nature which
philosophy had rendered moderate and early circumstances refined.
Crauford was far better acquainted than Wolfe with the reverses
Glendower had undergone. Many years ago he had known and indeed
travelled with him upon the Continent; since then they had not met till
about six months prior to the time in which Glendower is presented to
the reader. It was in an obscure street of the city that Crauford had
then encountered Glendower, whose haunts were so little frequented by
the higher orders of society that Crauford was the first, and the only
one of his former acquaintance with whom for years he had been brought
into contact. That person recognized him at once, accosted him, followed
him home, and three days afterwards surprised him with a visit. Of
manners which, in their dissimulation, extended far beyond the ordinary
ease and breeding of the world, Crauford readily appeared not to notice
the altered circumstances of his old acquaintance; and, by a tone
of conversation artfully respectful, he endeavoured to remove from
Glendower’s mind that soreness which his knowledge of human nature told
him his visit was calculated to create.
There is a certain species of pride which contradicts the ordinary
symptoms of the feeling, and appears most elevated when it would be
reasonable to expect it should be most depressed. Of this sort was
Glendower’s. When he received the guest who had known him in his former
prosperity, some natural sentiment of emotion called, it is true, to his
pale cheek a momentary flush, as he looked round his humble apartment,
and the evident signs of poverty it contained; but his address was calm
and self-possessed, and whatever mortification he might have felt, no
intonation of his voice, no tell-tale embarrassment of manner, revealed
it. Encouraged by this air, even while he was secretly vexed by it,
and perfectly unable to do justice to the dignity of mind which gave
something of majesty rather than humiliation to misfortune, Crauford
resolved to repeat his visit, and by intervals, gradually lessening,
renewed it, till acquaintance seemed, though little tinctured, at least
on Glendower’s side, by friendship, to assume the semblance of intimacy.
It was true, however, that he had something to struggle against in
Glendower’s manner, which certainly grew colder in proportion to the
repetition of the visits; and at length Glendower said, with an ease and
quiet which abashed for a moment an effrontery of mind and manner which
was almost parallel, “Believe me, Mr. Crauford, I feel fully sensible of
your attentions; but as circumstances at present are such as to render
an intercourse between us little congenial to the habits and sentiments
of either, you will probably understand and forgive my motives in
wishing no longer to receive civilities which, however I may feel them,
I am unable to return.”
Crauford coloured and hesitated before he replied. “Forgive me then,”
said he, “for my fault. I did venture to hope that no circumstances
would break off an acquaintance to me so valuable. Forgive me if I
did imagine that an intercourse between mind and mind could be equally
carried on, whether the mere body were lodged in a palace or a hovel;”
and then suddenly changing his tone into that of affectionate warmth,
Crauford continued, “My dear Glendower, my dear friend, I would say, if
I durst, is not your pride rather to blame here? Believe me, in my turn,
I fully comprehend and bow to it; but it wounds me beyond expression.
Were you in your proper station, a station much higher than my own,
I would come to you at once, and proffer my friendship: as it is, I
cannot; but your pride wrongs me, Glendower,--indeed it does.”
And Crauford turned away, apparently in the bitterness of wounded
feeling.
Glendower was touched: and his nature, as kind as it was proud,
immediately smote him for conduct certainly ungracious and perhaps
ungrateful. He held out his hand to Crauford; with the most respectful
warmth that personage seized and pressed it: and from that time
Crauford’s visits appeared to receive a license which, if not perfectly
welcome, was at least never again questioned.
“I shall have this man now,” muttered Crauford, between his ground
teeth, as he left the house, and took his way to his counting-house.
There, cool, bland, fawning, and weaving in his close and dark mind
various speculations of guilt and craft, he sat among his bills and
gold, like the very gnome and personification of that Mammon of gain to
which he was the most supple though concealed adherent.
Richard Crauford was of a new but not unimportant family. His father had
entered into commerce, and left a flourishing firm and a name of great
respectability in his profession to his son. That son was a man whom
many and opposite qualities rendered a character of very singular and
uncommon stamp. Fond of the laborious acquisition of money, he was
equally attached to the ostentatious pageantries of expense. Profoundly
skilled in the calculating business of his profession, he was devoted
equally to the luxuries of pleasure; but the pleasure was suited well
to the mind which pursued it. The divine intoxication of that love where
the delicacies and purities of affection consecrate the humanity of
passion was to him a thing of which not even his youngest imagination
had ever dreamed. The social concomitants of the wine-cup (which have
for the lenient an excuse, for the austere a temptation), the generous
expanding of the heart, the increased yearning to kindly affection, the
lavish spirit throwing off its exuberance in the thousand lights and
emanations of wit,--these, which have rendered the molten grape, despite
of its excesses, not unworthy of the praises of immortal hymns,
and taken harshness from the judgment of those averse to its
enjoyment,--these never presented an inducement to the stony temperament
and dormant heart of Richard Crauford.
He looked upon the essences of things internal as the common eye upon
outward nature, and loved the many shapes of evil as the latter does the
varieties of earth, not for their graces, but their utility. His
loves, coarse and low, fed their rank fires from an unmingled and gross
depravity. His devotion to wine was either solitary and unseen--for he
loved safety better than mirth--or in company with those whose station
flattered his vanity, not whose fellowship ripened his crude and nipped
affections. Even the recklessness of vice in him had the character of
prudence; and in the most rapid and turbulent stream of his excesses,
one might detect the rocky and unmoved heart of the calculator at the
bottom.
Cool, sagacious, profound in dissimulation, and not only observant of,
but deducing sage consequences from, those human inconsistencies and
frailties by which it was his aim to profit, he cloaked his deeper vices
with a masterly hypocrisy; and for those too dear to forego and too
difficult to conceal he obtained pardon by the intercession of virtues
it cost him nothing to assume. Regular in his attendance at worship;
professing rigidness of faith beyond the tenets of the orthodox church;
subscribing to the public charities, where the common eye knoweth what
the private hand giveth; methodically constant to the forms of business;
primitively scrupulous in the proprieties of speech; hospitable, at
least to his superiors, and, being naturally smooth, both of temper and
address, popular with his inferiors,--it was no marvel that one part
of the world forgave to a man rich and young the irregularities of
dissipation, that another forgot real immorality in favour of affected
religion, or that the remainder allowed the most unexceptionable
excellence of words to atone for the unobtrusive errors of a conduct
which did not prejudice them.
“It is true,” said his friends, “that he loves women too much: but he is
young; he will marry and amend.”
Mr. Crauford did marry; and, strange as it may seem, for love,--at least
for that brute-like love, of which alone he was capable. After a few
years of ill-usage on his side, and endurance on his wife’s, they
parted. Tired of her person, and profiting by her gentleness of temper,
he sent her to an obscure corner of the country, to starve upon the
miserable pittance which was all he allowed her from his superfluities.
Even then--such is the effect of the showy proprieties of form and
word--Mr. Crauford sank not in the estimation of the world.
“It was easy to see,” said the spectators of his domestic drama, “that
a man in temper so mild, in his business so honourable, so civil of
speech, so attentive to the stocks and the sermon, could not have
been the party to blame. One never knew the rights of matrimonial
disagreements, nor could sufficiently estimate the provoking disparities
of temper. Certainly Mrs. Crauford never did look in good humour, and
had not the open countenance of her husband; and certainly the very
excesses of Mr. Crauford betokened a generous warmth of heart, which the
sullenness of his conjugal partner might easily chill and revolt.”
And thus, unquestioned and unblamed, Mr. Crauford walked onward in
his beaten way; and, secretly laughing at the toleration of the crowd,
continued at his luxurious villa the orgies of a passionless yet brutal
sensuality.
So far might the character of Richard Crauford find parallels in
hypocrisy and its success. Dive we now deeper into his soul. Possessed
of talents which, though of a secondary rank, were in that rank
consummate, Mr. Crauford could not be a villain by intuition or the
irregular bias of his nature: he was a villain upon a grander scale; he
was a villain upon system. Having little learning and less knowledge,
out of his profession his reflection expended itself upon apparently
obvious deductions from the great and mysterious book of life. He saw
vice prosperous in externals, and from this sight his conclusion was
drawn. “Vice,” said he, “is not an obstacle to success; and if so, it
is at least a pleasanter road to it than your narrow and thorny ways of
virtue.” But there are certain vices which require the mask of virtue,
and Crauford thought it easier to wear the mask than to school his soul
to the reality. So to the villain he added the hypocrite. He found the
success equalled his hopes, for he had both craft and genius; nor was he
naturally without the minor amiabilities, which to the ignorance of the
herd seem more valuable than coin of a more important amount. Blinded
as we are by prejudice, we not only mistake but prefer decencies to
moralities; and, like the inhabitants of Cos, when offered the choice of
two statues of the same goddess, we choose, not that which is the most
beautiful, but that which is the most dressed.
Accustomed easily to dupe mankind, Crauford soon grew to despise them;
and from justifying roguery by his own interest, he now justified it by
the folly of others; and as no wretch is so unredeemed as to be without
excuse to himself, Crauford actually persuaded his reason that he was
vicious upon principle, and a rascal on a system of morality. But why
the desire of this man, so consummately worldly and heartless, for an
intimacy with the impoverished and powerless student? This question is
easily answered. In the first place, during Crauford’s acquaintance with
Glendower abroad, the latter had often, though innocently, galled the
vanity and self-pride of the parvenu affecting the aristocrat, and in
poverty the parvenu was anxious to retaliate. But this desire would
probably have passed away after he had satisfied his curiosity, or
gloated his spite, by one or two insights into Glendower’s home,--for
Crauford, though at times a malicious, was not a vindictive, man,--had
it not been for a much more powerful object which afterwards occurred to
him. In an extensive scheme of fraud, which for many years this man had
carried on and which for secrecy and boldness was almost unequalled, it
had of late become necessary to his safety to have a partner, or rather
tool. A man of education, talent, and courage was indispensable, and
Crauford had resolved that Glendower should be that man. With the
supreme confidence in his own powers which long success had given him;
with a sovereign contempt for, or rather disbelief in, human integrity;
and with a thorough conviction that the bribe to him was the bribe with
all, and that none would on any account be poor if they had the offer
to be rich,--Crauford did not bestow a moment’s consideration upon
the difficulty of his task, or conceive that in the nature and mind of
Glendower there could exist any obstacle to his design.
Men addicted to calculation are accustomed to suppose those employed in
the same mental pursuit arrive, or ought to arrive, at the same final
conclusion. Now, looking upon Glendower as a philosopher, Crauford
looked upon him as a man who, however he might conceal his real
opinions, secretly laughed, like Crauford’s self, not only at the
established customs, but at the established moralities of the world.
Ill-acquainted with books, the worthy Richard was, like all men
similarly situated, somewhat infected by the very prejudices he affected
to despise; and he shared the vulgar disposition to doubt the hearts
of those who cultivate the head. Glendower himself had confirmed this
opinion by lauding, though he did not entirely subscribe to, those
moralists who have made an enlightened self-interest the proper measure
of all human conduct; and Crauford, utterly unable to comprehend this
system in its grand, naturally interpreted it in a partial, sense.
Espousing self-interest as his own code, he deemed that in reality
Glendower’s principles did not differ greatly from his; and, as there
is no pleasure to a hypocrite like that of finding a fit opportunity to
unburden some of his real sentiments, Crauford was occasionally wont
to hold some conference and argument with the student, in which his
opinions were not utterly cloaked in their usual disguise; but cautious
even in his candour, he always forbore stating such opinions as his own:
he merely mentioned them as those which a man beholding the villanies
and follies of his kind, might be tempted to form; and thus Glendower,
though not greatly esteeming his acquaintance, looked upon him as one
ignorant in his opinions, but not likely to err in his conduct.
These conversations did, however, it is true, increase Crauford’s
estimate of Glendower’s integrity, but they by no means diminished his
confidence of subduing it. Honour, a deep and pure sense of the divinity
of good, the steady desire of rectitude, and the supporting aid of a
sincere religion,--these he did not deny to his intended tool: he rather
rejoiced that he possessed them. With the profound arrogance, the sense
of immeasurable superiority, which men of no principle invariably feel
for those who have it, Crauford said to himself, “Those very virtues
will be my best dupes; they cannot resist the temptations I shall offer;
but they can resist any offer to betray me afterwards; for no man can
resist hunger: but your fine feelings, your nice honour, your precise
religion,--he! he! he!--these can teach a man very well to resist
a common inducement; they cannot make him submit to be his own
executioner; but they can prevent his turning king’s evidence and being
executioner to another. No, no: it is not to your common rogues that I
may dare trust my secret,--my secret, which is my life! It is precisely
of such a fine, Athenian, moral rogue as I shall make my proud friend
that I am in want. But he has some silly scruples; we must beat them
away: we must not be too rash; and above all, we must leave the best
argument to poverty. Want is your finest orator; a starving wife,
a famished brat,--he! he!--these are your true tempters,--your true
fathers of crime, and fillers of jails and gibbets. Let me see: he
has no money, I know, but what he gets from that bookseller. What
bookseller, by the by? Ah, rare thought! I’ll find out, and cut off that
supply. My lady wife’s cheek will look somewhat thinner next month, I
fancy--he! he! But ‘t is a pity, for she is a glorious creature! Who
knows but I may serve two purposes? However, one at present! business
first, and pleasure afterwards; and, faith, the business is damnably
like that of life and death.”
Muttering such thoughts as these, Crauford took his way one evening to
Glendower’s house.