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!”