Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed
or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth
best discover virtue.--BACON.
It is somewhat remarkable that while Talbot was bequeathing to
Clarence, as the most valuable of legacies, the doctrines of a
philosophy he had acquired, perhaps too late to practise, Glendower
was carrying those very doctrines, so far as his limited sphere would
allow, into the rule and exercise of his life.
Since the death of the bookseller, which we have before recorded,
Glendower had been left utterly without resource. The others to whom
he applied were indisposed to avail themselves of an unknown ability.
The trade of bookmaking was not then as it is now, and if it had been,
it would not have suggested itself to the high-spirited and unworldly
student. Some publishers offered, it is true, a reward tempting
enough for an immoral tale; others spoke of the value of an attack
upon the Americans; one suggested an ode to the minister, and another
hinted that a pension might possibly be granted to one who would prove
extortion not tyranny. But these insinuations fell upon a dull ear,
and the tribe of Barabbas were astonished to find that an author could
imagine interest and principle not synonymous.
Struggling with want, which hourly grew more imperious and urgent;
wasting his life on studies which brought fever to his pulse and
disappointment to his ambition; gnawed to the very soul by the
mortifications which his poverty gave to his pride; and watching with
tearless eyes, but a maddening brain, the slender form of his wife,
now waxing weaker and fainter, as the canker of disease fastened upon
the core of her young but blighted life,--there was yet a high,
though, alas! not constant consolation within him, whenever, from the
troubles of this dim spot his thoughts could escape, like birds
released from their cage, and lose themselves in the lustre and
freedom of their native heaven.
"If," thought he, as he looked upon his secret and treasured work, "if
the wind scatter or the rock receive these seeds, they were at least
dispersed by a hand which asked no selfish return, and a heart which
would have lavished the harvest of its labours upon those who know not
the husbandman and trample his hopes into the dust."
But by degrees this comfort of a noble and generous nature, these
whispers of a vanity rather to be termed holy than excusable, began to
grow unfrequent and low. The cravings of a more engrossing and heavy
want than those of the mind came eagerly and rapidly upon him; the
fair cheek of his infant became pinched and hollow; his wife conquered
nature itself by love, and starved herself in silence, and set bread
before him with a smile and bade him eat.
"But you,--you?" he would ask inquiringly, and then pause.
"I have dined, dearest: I want nothing; eat, love, eat." But he ate
not. The food robbed from her seemed to him more deadly than poison;
and he would rise, and dash his hand to his brow, and go forth alone,
with nature unsatisfied, to look upon this luxurious world and learn
content.
It was after such a scene that, one day, he wandered forth into the
streets, desperate and confused in mind, and fainting with hunger, and
half insane with fiery and wrong thoughts, which dashed over his
barren and gloomy soul, and desolated, but conquered not! It was
evening: he stood (for he had strode on so rapidly, at first, that his
strength was now exhausted, and he was forced to pause) leaning
against the railed area of a house in a lone and unfrequented street.
No passenger shared this dull and obscure thoroughfare. He stood,
literally, in scene as in heart, solitary amidst the great city, and
wherever he looked, lo, there were none!
"Two days," said he, slowly and faintly, "two days, and bread has only
once passed my lips; and that was snatched from her,--from those lips
which I have fed with sweet and holy kisses, and whence my sole
comfort in this weary life has been drawn. And she,--ay, she
starves,--and my child too. They complain not; they murmur not: but
they lift up their eyes to me and ask for--Merciful God! Thou didst
make man in benevolence; Thou dost survey this world with a pitying
and paternal eye: save, comfort, cherish them, and crush me if Thou
wilt!"
At that moment a man darted suddenly from an obscure alley, and passed
Glendower at full speed; presently came a cry, and a shout, and a
rapid trampling of feet, and, in another moment, an eager and
breathless crowd rushed upon the solitude of the street.
"Where is he?" cried a hundred voices to Glendower,--"where,--which
road did the robber take?" But Glendower could not answer: his nerves
were unstrung, and his dizzy brain swam and reeled; and the faces
which peered upon him, and the voices which shrieked and yelled in his
ear, were to him as the forms and sounds of a ghastly and phantasmal
world. His head drooped upon his bosom; he clung to the area for
support: the crowd passed on; they were in pursuit of guilt; they were
thirsting after blood; they were going to fill the dungeon and feed
the gibbet; what to them was the virtue they could have supported, or
the famine they could have relieved? But they knew not his distress,
nor the extent of his weakness, or some would have tarried and aided:
for there is, after all, as much kindness as cruelty in our nature;
perhaps they thought it was only some intoxicated and maudlin idler;
or, perhaps, in the heat of their pursuit, they thought not at all.
So they rolled on, and their voices died away, and their steps were
hushed, and Glendower, insensible and cold as the iron he clung to,
was once more alone. Slowly he revived; he opened his dim and glazing
eyes, and saw the evening star break from its chamber, and, though
sullied by the thick and foggy air, scatter its holy smiles upon the
polluted city.
He looked quietly on the still night, and its first watcher among the
hosts of heaven, and felt something of balm sink into his soul; not,
indeed, that vague and delicious calm which, in his boyhood of poesy
and romance, he had drunk in, by green solitudes, from the mellow
twilight: but a quiet, sad and sober, circling gradually over his
mind, and bringing it back from its confused and disordered visions
and darkness to the recollection and reality of his bitter life.
By degrees the scene he had so imperfectly witnessed, the fight of the
robber and the eager pursuit of the mob, grew over him: a dark and
guilty thought burst upon his mind.
"I am a man like that criminal," said he, fiercely. "I have nerves,
sinews, muscles, flesh; I feel hunger, thirst, pain, as acutely: why
should I endure more than he can? Perhaps he had a wife, a child, and
he saw them starving inch by inch, and he felt that he ought to be
their protector; and so he sinned. And I--I--can I not sin too for
mine? can I not dare what the wild beast, and the vulture, and the
fierce hearts of my brethren dare for their mates and young? One
gripe from this hand, one cry from this voice, and my board might be
heaped with plenty, and my child fed, and she smile as she was wont to
smile,--for one night at least."
And as these thoughts broke upon him, Glendower rose, and with a step
firm, even in weakness, he strode unconsciously onward.
A figure appeared; Glendower's heart beat thick. He slouched his hat
over his brows, and for one moment wrestled with his pride and his
stern virtue: the virtue conquered, but not the pride; the virtue
forbade him to be the robber; the pride submitted to be the suppliant.
He sprang forward, extended his hands towards the stranger, and cried
in a sharp voice, the agony of which rang through the long dull street
with a sudden and echoless sound, "Charity! food!"
The stranger paused; one of the boldest of men in his own line, he was
as timid as a woman in any other. Mistaking the meaning of the
petitioner, and terrified by the vehemence of his gesture, he said, in
a trembling tone, as he hastily pulled out his purse,--
"There, there! do not hurt me; take it; take all!" Glendower knew the
voice, as a sound not unfamiliar to him; his pride returned in full
force. "None," thought he, "who know me, shall know my full
degradation also." And he turned away; but the stranger, mistaking
this motion, extended his hand to him, saying, "Take this, my friend:
you will have no need of violence!" and as he advanced nearer to his
supposed assailant, he beheld, by the pale lamplight, and instantly
recognized, his features.
"Ah!" cried he, in astonishment, but with internal rejoicing, "ah! is
it you who are thus reduced?"
"You say right, Crauford," said Glendower, sullenly, and drawing
himself up to his full height, "it is I: but you are mistaken; I am a
beggar, not a ruffian!"
"Good heavens!" answered Crauford; "how fortunate that we should meet!
Providence watches over us unceasingly! I have long sought you in
vain. But" (and here the wayward malignity, sometimes, though not
always, the characteristic of Crauford's nature, irresistibly broke
out), "but that you, of all men, should suffer so,--you, proud,
susceptible, virtuous beyond human virtue,--you, whose fibres are as
acute as the naked eye,--that you should bear this and wince not!"
"You do my humanity wrong!" said Glendower, with a bitter and almost
ghastly smile; "I do worse than wince!"
"Ay, is it so?" said Crauford; "have you awakened at last? Has your
philosophy taken a more impassioned dye?"
"Mock me not!" cried Glendower; and his eye, usually soft in its deep
thoughtfulness, glared wild and savage upon the hypocrite, who stood
trembling, yet half sneering, at the storm he had raised; "my passions
are even now beyond my mastery; loose them not upon you!"
"Nay," said Crauford, gently, "I meant not to vex or wound you. I
have sought you several times since the last night we met, but in
vain; you had left your lodgings, and none knew whither. I would fain
talk with you. I have a scheme to propose to you which will make you
rich forever,--rich,--literally rich! not merely above poverty, but
high in affluence!"
Glendower looked incredulously at the speaker, who continued,--
"The scheme has danger: that you can dare!"
Glendower was still silent; but his set and stern countenance was
sufficient reply. "Some sacrifice of your pride," continued Crauford:
"that also you can bear?" and the tempter almost grinned with pleasure
as he asked the question.
"He who is poor," said Glendower, speaking at last, "has a right to
pride. He who starves has it too; but he who sees those whom he loves
famish, and cannot aid, has it not!"
"Come home with me, then," said Crauford; "you seem faint and weak:
nature craves food; come and partake of mine; we will then talk over
this scheme, and arrange its completion."
"I cannot," answered Glendower, quietly. "And why?"
"Because they starve at home!"
"Heavens!" said Crauford, affected for a moment into sincerity; "it is
indeed fortunate that business should have led me here: but meanwhile
you will not refuse this trifle,--as a loan merely. By and by our
scheme will make you so rich that I must be the borrower."
Glendower did hesitate for a moment; he did swallow a bitter rising of
the heart: but he thought of those at home and the struggle was over.
"I thank you," said he; "I thank you for their sake: the time may
come,"--and the proud gentleman stopped short, for his desolate
fortunes rose before him and forbade all hope of the future.
"Yes!" cried Crauford, "the time may come when you will repay me this
money a hundredfold. But where do you live? You are silent. Well,
you will not inform me: I understand you. Meet me, then, here, on
this very spot, three nights hence: you will not fail?"
"I will not," said Glendower; and pressing Crauford's hand with a
generous and grateful warmth, which might have softened a heart less
obdurate, he turned away.
Folding his arms, while a bitter yet joyous expression crossed his
countenance, Crauford stood still, gazing upon the retreating form of
the noble and unfortunate man whom he had marked for destruction.
"Now," said he, "this virtue is a fine thing, a very fine thing to
talk so loftily about. A little craving of the gastric juices, a
little pinching of this vile body, as your philosophers and saints
call our better part, and, lo! virtue oozes out like water through a
leaky vessel,--and the vessel sinks! No, no; virtue is a weak game,
and a poor game, and a losing game. Why, there is that man, the very
pink of integrity and rectitude, he is now only wanting temptation to
fall; and he will fall, in a fine phrase, too, I'll be sworn! And
then, having once fallen, there will be no medium: he will become
utterly corrupt; while I, honest Dick Crauford, doing as other wise
men do, cheat a trick or two, in playing with fortune, without being a
whit the worse for it. Do I not subscribe to charities? am I not
constant at church, ay, and meeting to boot? kind to my servants,
obliging to my friends, loyal to my king? 'Gad, if I were less loving
to myself, I should have been far less useful to my country! And now,
now let me see what has brought me to these filthy suburbs. Ah,
Madame H----. Woman, incomparable woman! On, Richard Crauford, thou
hast made a good night's work of it hitherto!--business seasons
pleasures!" and the villain upon system moved away.
Glendower hastened to his home; it was miserably changed, even from
the humble abode in which we last saw him. The unfortunate pair had
chosen their present residence from a melancholy refinement in luxury;
they had chosen it because none else shared it with them, and their
famine and pride and struggles and despair were without witness or
pity.
With a heavy step Glendower entered the chamber where his wife sat.
When at a distance he had heard a faint moan, but as he had approached
it ceased; for she from whom it came knew his step, and hushed her
grief and pain that they might not add to his own. The peevishness,
the querulous and stinging irritations of want, came not to that
affectionate and kindly heart; nor could all those biting and bitter
evils of fate which turn the love that is born of luxury into rancour
and gall scathe the beautiful and holy passion which had knit into one
those two unearthly natures. They rather clung the closer to each
other, as all things in heaven and earth spoke in tempest or in gloom
around them, and coined their sorrows into endearment, and their looks
into smiles, and strove each from the depth of despair to pluck hope
and comfort for the other.
This, it is true, was more striking and constant in her than in
Glendower; for in love, man, be he ever so generous, is always
outdone. Yet even when in moments of extreme passion and conflict the
strife broke from his breast into words, never once was his discontent
vented upon her, nor his reproaches lavished on any but fortune or
himself, nor his murmurs mingled with a single breath wounding to her
tenderness or detracting from his love.
He threw open the door; the wretched light cast its sickly beams over,
the squalid walls, foul with green damps, and the miserable yet clean
bed, and the fireless hearth, and the empty board, and the pale cheek
of the wife, as she rose and flung her arms round his neck, and
murmured out her joy and welcome. "There," said he, as he extricated
himself from her, and flung the money upon the table, "there, love,
pine no more, feed yourself and our daughter, and then let us sleep
and be happy in our dreams."
A writer, one of the most gifted of the present day, has told the
narrator of this history that no interest of a high nature can be
given to extreme poverty. I know not if this be true yet if I mistake
not our human feelings, there is nothing so exalted, or so divine, as
a great and brave spirit working out its end through every earthly
obstacle and evil; watching through the utter darkness, and steadily
defying the phantoms which crowd around it; wrestling with the mighty
allurements, and rejecting the fearful voice of that WANT which is the
deadliest and surest of human tempters; nursing through all calamity
the love of species, and the warmer and closer affections of private
ties; sacrificing no duty, resisting all sin; and amidst every horror
and every humiliation, feeding the still and bright light of that
genius which, like the lamp of the fabulist, though it may waste
itself for years amidst the depths of solitude, and the silence of the
tomb, shall live and burn immortal and undimmed, when all around it is
rottenness and decay!
And yet I confess that it is a painful and bitter task to record the
humiliations, the wearing, petty, stinging humiliations, of Poverty;
to count the drops as they slowly fall, one by one, upon the fretted
and indignant heart; to particularize, with the scrupulous and nice
hand of indifference, the fractional and divided movements in the
dial-plate of Misery; to behold the refinement of birth, the masculine
pride of blood, the dignities of intellect, the wealth of knowledge,
the delicacy, and graces of womanhood,--all that ennoble and soften
the stony mass of commonplaces which is our life frittered into atoms,
trampled into the dust and mire of the meanest thoroughfares of
distress; life and soul, the energies and aims of man, ground into one
prostrating want, cramped into one levelling sympathy with the dregs
and refuse of his kind, blistered into a single galling and festering
sore: this is, I own, a painful and a bitter task; but it hath its
redemption,--a pride even in debasement, a pleasure even in woe,--and
it is therefore that, while I have abridged, I have not shunned it.
There are some whom the lightning of fortune blasts, only to render
holy. Amidst all that humbles and scathes; amidst all that shatters
from their life its verdure, smites to the dust the pomp and summit of
their pride, and in the very heart of existence writeth a sudden and
"strange defeature,"--they stand erect,--riven, not uprooted,--a
monument less of pity than of awe! There are some who pass through
the Lazar-House of Misery with a step more august than a Caesar's in
his hall. The very things which, seen alone, are despicable and vile,
associated with them become almost venerable and divine; and one ray,
however dim and feeble, of that intense holiness which, in the INFANT
GOD, shed majesty over the manger and the straw, not denied to those
who in the depth of affliction cherish His patient image, flings over
the meanest localities of earth an emanation from the glory of Heaven!