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.