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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Disowned, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, V5
+#63 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: The Disowned, Volume 5.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7635]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 4, 2004]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISOWNED, LYTTON, V5 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+    Letters from divers hands, which will absolve
+    Ourselves from long narration.--Tanner of Tyburn.
+
+One morning about a fortnight after Talbot's death, Clarence was
+sitting alone, thoughtful and melancholy, when the three following
+letters were put into his hand:
+
+LETTER I.
+
+FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.
+
+Let me, my dear Linden, be the first to congratulate you upon your
+accession of fortune: five thousand a year, Scarsdale, and 80,000 in
+the Funds, are very pretty foes to starvation!  Ah, my dear fellow, if
+you had but shot that frosty Caucasus of humanity, that pillar of the
+state, made not to bend, that--but you know already whom I mean, and
+so I will spare you more of my lamentable metaphors: had you shot Lord
+Borodaile, your happiness would now be complete!  Everybody talks of
+your luck.  La Meronville tending on you with her white hands, the
+prettiest hands in the world: who would not be wounded even by Lord
+Borodaile, for such a nurse?  And then Talbot's--yet, I will not speak
+of that, for you are very unlike the present generation; and who knows
+but you may have some gratitude, some affection, some natural feeling
+in you?  I had once; but that was before I went to France: those
+Parisians, with their fine sentiments, and witty philosophy, play the
+devil with one's good old-fashioned feelings.  So Lord Aspeden is to
+have an Italian ministry.  By the by, shall you go with him, or will
+you not rather stay at home, and enjoy your new fortunes,--hunt, race,
+dine out, dance, vote in the House of Commons, and, in short, do all
+that an Englishman and a gentleman should do?  Ornamento e splendor
+del secolo nostro.  Write me a line whenever you have nothing better
+to do.
+
+And believe me, Most truly yours,              HAVERFIELD.
+
+Will you sell your black mare, or will you buy my brown one?  Utrum
+horum mavis accipe, the only piece of Latin I remember.
+
+LETTER FROM LORD ASPEDEN.
+
+My Dear Linden,--Suffer me to enter most fully into your feeling.
+Death, my friend, is common to all: we must submit to its
+dispensations.  I heard accidentally of the great fortune left you by
+Mr. Talbot (your father, I suppose I may venture to call him).
+Indeed, though there is a silly prejudice against illegitimacy, yet as
+our immortal bard says,--
+
+                "Wherefore base?
+     When thy dimensions are as well compact,
+     Thy mind as generous and thy shape as true
+     As honest madam's issue!"
+
+For my part, my dear Linden, I say, on your behalf, that it is very
+likely that you are a natural son, for such are always the luckiest
+and the best.
+
+You have probably heard of the honour his Majesty has conferred on me,
+in appointing to my administration the city of ----.  As the choice of
+a secretary has been left to me, I need not say how happy I shall be
+to keep my promise to you.  Indeed, as I told Lord ---- yesterday
+morning, I do not know anywhere a young man who has more talent, or
+who plays better on the flute.
+
+Adieu, my dear young friend, and believe me, Very truly yours,
+                                                    ASPEDEN.
+
+LETTER FROM MADAME DE LA MERONVILLE.  (Translated.)
+
+You have done me wrong,--great wrong.  I loved you,--I waited on you,
+tended you, nursed you, gave all up for you; and you forsook
+me,--forsook me without a word.  True, that you have been engaged in a
+melancholy duty, but, at least, you had time to write a line, to cast
+a thought, to one who had shown for you the love that I have done.
+But we will pass over all this: I will not reproach you; it is beneath
+me.  The vicious upbraid: the virtuous forgive!  I have for several
+days left your house.  I should never have come to it, had you not
+been wounded, and, as I fondly imagined, for my sake.  Return when you
+will, I shall no longer be there to persecute and torment you.
+
+Pardon this letter.  I have said too much for myself,--a hundred times
+too much to you; but I shall not sin again.  This intrusion is my
+last.                                       CECILE DE LA MERONVILLE.
+
+These letters will probably suffice to clear up that part of
+Clarence's history which had not hitherto been touched upon; they will
+show that Talbot's will (after several legacies to his old servants,
+his nearest connections, and two charitable institutions, which he had
+founded, and for some years supported) had bequeathed the bulk of his
+property to Clarence.  The words in which the bequest was made were
+kind, and somewhat remarkable.  "To my relation and friend, commonly
+known by the name of Clarence Linden, to whom I am bound alike by
+blood and affection," etc.  These expressions, joined to the magnitude
+of the bequest, the apparently unaccountable attachment of the old man
+to his heir, and the mystery which wrapped the origin of the latter,
+all concurred to give rise to an opinion, easily received, and soon
+universally accredited, that Clarence was a natural son of the
+deceased; and so strong in England is the aristocratic aversion to an
+unknown lineage, that this belief, unflattering as it was, procured
+for Linden a much higher consideration, on the score of birth, than he
+might otherwise have enjoyed.  Furthermore will the above
+correspondence testify the general eclat of Madame la Meronville's
+attachment, and the construction naturally put upon it.  Nor do we see
+much left for us to explain, with regard to the Frenchwoman herself,
+which cannot equally well be gleaned by any judicious and intelligent
+reader, from the epistle last honoured by his perusal.  Clarence's
+sense of gallantry did, indeed, smite him severely, for his negligence
+and ill requital to one who, whatever her faults or follies, had at
+least done nothing with which he had a right to reproach her.  It
+must. however, be considered in his defence that the fatal event which
+had so lately occurred, the relapse which Clarence had suffered in
+consequence, and the melancholy confusion and bustle in which the last
+week or ten days had been passed, were quite sufficient to banish her
+from his remembrance.  Still she was a woman, and had loved, or seemed
+to love; and Clarence, as he wrote to her a long, kind, and almost
+brotherly letter, in return for her own, felt that, in giving pain to
+another, one often suffers almost as much for avoiding as for
+committing a sin.
+
+We have said his letter was kind; it was also frank, and yet prudent.
+In it he said that he had long loved another, which love alone could
+have rendered him insensible to her attachment; that he, nevertheless,
+should always recall her memory with equal interest and admiration;
+and then, with a tact of flattery which the nature of the
+correspondence and the sex of the person addressed rendered excusable,
+he endeavoured, as far as he was able, to soothe and please the vanity
+which the candour of his avowal was calculated to wound.
+
+When he had finished this letter he despatched another to Lord
+Aspeden, claiming a reprieve of some days before he answered the
+proposal of the diplomatist. After these epistolary efforts, he
+summoned his valet, and told him, apparently in a careless tone, to
+find out if Lady Westborough was still in town.  Then throwing himself
+on the couch, he wrestled with the grief and melancholy which the
+death of a friend, and more than a father, might well cause in a mind
+less susceptible than his, and counted the dull hours crawl onward
+till his servant returned.  Lady Westborough and all the family had
+been gone a week to their seat in ----.
+
+"Well," thought Clarence, "had he been alive, I could have intrusted
+my cause to a mediator; as it is, I will plead, or rather assert it,
+myself.  Harrison," said he aloud, "see that my black mare is ready by
+sunrise to-morrow: I shall leave town for some days."
+
+"Not in your present state of health, sir, surely?" said Harrison,
+with the license of one who had been a nurse.
+
+"My health requires it: no more words, my good Harrison, see that I am
+obeyed."  And Harrison, shaking his head doubtfully, left the room.
+
+"Rich, independent, free to aspire to the heights which in England are
+only accessible to those who join wealth to ambition, I have at
+least," said Clarence, proudly, "no unworthy pretensions even to the
+hand of Lady Flora Ardenne.  If she can love me for myself, if she can
+trust to my honour, rely on my love, feel proud in my pride, and
+aspiring in my ambition, then, indeed, this wealth will be welcome to
+me, and the disguised name which has cost me so many mortifications
+become grateful, since she will not disdain to share it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+                      A little druid wight
+    Of withered aspect; but his eye was keen
+    With sweetness mixed,--a russet brown bedight.
+                           THOMSON: Castle of Indolence.
+
+    Thus holding high discourse, they came to where
+    The cursed carle was at his wonted trade,
+    Still tempting heedless men into his snare,
+    In witching wise, as I before have said.--Ibid.
+
+It was a fine, joyous summer morning when Clarence set out, alone and
+on horseback, upon his enterprise of love and adventure.  If there be
+anything on earth more reviving and inspiriting than another, it is,
+to my taste, a bright day,--a free horse, a journey of excitement
+before one, and loneliness!  Rousseau--in his own way, a great though
+rather a morbid epicure of this world's enjoyments--talks with rapture
+of his pedestrian rambles when in his first youth.  But what are your
+foot-ploddings to the joy which lifts you into air with the bound of
+your mettled steed?
+
+But there are times when an iron and stern sadness locks, as it were,
+within itself our capacities of enjoyment; and the song of the birds,
+and the green freshness of the summer morning, and the glad motion of
+the eager horse, brought neither relief nor change to the musings of
+the young adventurer.
+
+He rode on for several miles without noticing anything on his road,
+and only now and then testifying the nature of his thoughts and his
+consciousness of solitude by brief and abrupt exclamations and
+sentences, which proclaimed the melancholy yet exciting subjects of
+his meditations.  During the heat of the noon, he rested at a small
+public-house about ---- miles from town; and resolving to take his
+horse at least ten miles farther before his day's journey ceased, he
+remounted towards the evening and slowly resumed his way.
+
+He was now entering the same county in which he first made his
+appearance in this history.  Although several miles from the spot on
+which the memorable night with the gypsies had been passed, his
+thoughts reverted to its remembrance, and he sighed as he recalled the
+ardent hopes which then fed and animated his heart.  While thus
+musing, he heard the sound of hoofs behind him, and presently came by
+a sober-looking man, on a rough, strong pony, laden (besides its
+master's weight) with saddle-bags of uncommon size, and to all
+appearance substantially and artfully filled.
+
+Clarence looked, and, after a second survey, recognized the person of
+his old acquaintance, Mr. Morris Brown.
+
+Not equally reminiscent was the worshipful itinerant, who, in the
+great variety of forms and faces which it was his professional lot to
+encounter, could not be expected to preserve a very nice or
+distinguishing recollection of each.
+
+"Your servant, sir, your servant," said Mr. Brown, as he rode his pony
+alongside of our traveller.  "Are you going as far as W---- this
+evening?"
+
+"I hardly know yet," answered Clarence; "the length of my ride depends
+upon my horse rather than myself."
+
+"Oh, well, very well," said Mr. Brown; "but you will allow me,
+perhaps, sir, the honour of riding with you as far as you go."
+
+"You give me much gratification by your proposal, Mr. Brown!" said
+Clarence.
+
+The broker looked in surprise at his companion.  "So you know me,
+sir?"
+
+"I do," replied Clarence.  "I am surprised that you have forgotten
+me."
+
+Slowly Mr. Brown gazed, till at last his memory began to give itself
+the rousing shake.  "God bless me, sir, I beg you a thousand pardons:
+I now remember you perfectly; Mr. Linden, the nephew of my old
+patroness, Mrs. Minden.  Dear, dear, how could I be so forgetful!  I
+hope, by the by, sir, that the shirts wore well?  I am thinking you
+will want some more.  I have some capital cambric of curiously fine
+quality and texture, from the wardrobe of the late Lady Waddilove."
+
+"What, Lady Waddilove still!" cried Clarence.  "Why, my good friend,
+you will offer next to furnish me with pantaloons from her ladyship's
+wardrobe."
+
+"Why, really, sir, I see you preserve your fine spirits; but I do
+think I have one or two pair of plum-coloured velvet inexpressibles,
+that passed into my possession when her ladyship's husband died, which
+might, perhaps, with a leetle alteration, fit you, and, at all events,
+would be a very elegant present from a gentleman to his valet."
+
+"Well, Mr. Brown, whenever I or my valet wear plum-coloured velvet
+breeches, I will certainly purchase those in your possession; but to
+change the subject, can you inform me what has become of my old host
+and hostess, the Copperases, of Copperas Bower?"
+
+"Oh, sir, they are the same as ever; nice, genteel people they are,
+too.  Master Adolphus has grown into a fine young gentleman, very
+nearly as tall as you and I are.  His worthy father preserves his
+jovial vein, and is very merry whenever I call there.  Indeed it was
+but last week that he made an admirable witticism.  'Bob,' said he
+(Tom,--you remember Tom, or De Warens, as Mrs. Copperas was pleased to
+call him,--Tom is gone), 'Bob, have you stopped the coach?'  'Yes,
+sir,' said Bob.  'And what coach is it?' asked Mr. Copperas.  'It be
+the Swallow, sir,' said the boy.  'The Swallow! oh, very well,' cried
+Mr. Copperas; 'then, now, having swallowed in the roll, I will e'en
+roll in the swallow!  'Ha! ha! ha! sir, very facetious, was it not?"
+
+"Very, indeed," said Clarence; "and so Mr. de Warens has gone; how
+came that?"
+
+"Why, sir, you see, the boy was always of a gay turn, and he took to
+frisking about, as he called it, of a night, and so he was taken up
+for thrashing a watchman, and appeared before Sir John, the
+magistrate, the next morning."
+
+"Caractacus before Caesar!" observed Linden; "and what said Caesar?"
+
+"Sir?" said Mr. Brown.
+
+"I mean, what said Sir John?"
+
+"Oh! he asked him his name, and Tom, whose head Mrs. Copperas (poor
+good woman!) had crammed with pride enough for fifty foot-boys,
+replied, 'De Warens,' with all the air of a man of independence.  'De
+Warens!' cried Sir John, amazed, 'we'll have no De's here: take him to
+Bridewell!' and so, Mrs. Copperas, being without a foot-boy, sent for
+me, and I supplied her--with Bob!"
+
+"Out of the late Lady Waddilove's wardrobe too?" said Clarence.
+
+"Ha, ha! that's well, very well, sir.  No, not exactly; but he was a
+son of her late ladyship's coachman.  Mr. Copperas has had two other
+servants of the name of Bob before, but this is the biggest of all, so
+he humorously calls him 'Triple Bob Major!'  You observe that road to
+the right, sir: it leads to the mansion of an old customer of mine,
+General Cornelius St. Leger; many a good bargain have I sold to his
+sister.  Heaven rest her! when she died I lost a good friend, though
+she was a little hot or so, to be sure.  But she had a relation, a
+young lady; such a lovely, noble-looking creature: it did one's heart,
+ay, and one's eyes also, good to look at her; and she's gone too;
+well, well, one loses one's customers sadly; it makes me feel old and
+comfortless to think of it.  Now, yonder, as far as you can see among
+those distant woods, lived another friend of mine, to whom I offered
+to make some very valuable presents upon his marriage with the young
+lady I spoke of just now, but, poor gentleman, he had not time to
+accept them; he lost his property by a lawsuit, a few months after he
+was married, and a very different person now has Mordaunt Court."
+
+"Mordaunt Court!" cried Clarence; "do you mean to say that Mr.
+Mordaunt has lost that property?"
+
+"Why, sir, one Mr. Mordaunt has lost it, and another has gained it:
+but the real Mr. Mordaunt has not an acre in this county or elsewhere,
+I fear, poor gentleman.  He is universally regretted, for he was very
+good and very generous, though they say he was also mighty proud and
+reserved; but for my part I never perceived it.  If one is not proud
+one's self, Mr. Linden, one is very little apt to be hurt by pride in
+other people."
+
+"And where is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt?" asked Clarence, as he recalled
+his interview with that person, and the interest with which Algernon
+then inspired him.
+
+"That, sir, is more than any of us can say.  He has disappeared
+altogether.  Some declare that he has gone abroad, others that he is
+living in Wales in the greatest poverty.  However, wherever he is, I
+am sure that he cannot be rich; for the lawsuit quite ruined him, and
+the young lady he married had not a farthing."
+
+"Poor Mordaunt!" said Clarence, musingly.
+
+"I think, sir, that the squire would not be best pleased if he heard
+you pity him.  I don't know why, but he certainly looked, walked, and
+moved like one whom you felt it very hard to pity.  But I am thinking
+that it is a great shame that the general should not do anything for
+Mr. Mordaunt's wife, for she was his own flesh and blood; and I am
+sure he had no cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such
+old family as Mr. Mordaunt.  I am a great stickler for birth, sir; I
+learned that from the late Lady W.  'Brown,' she said, and I shall
+never forget her ladyship's air when she did say it, 'Brown, respect
+your superiors, and never fall into the hands of the republicans and
+atheists'!"
+
+"And why," said Clarence, who was much interested in Mordaunt's fate,
+"did General St. Leger withhold his consent?"
+
+"That we don't exactly know, sir; but some say that Mr. Mordaunt was
+very high and proud with the general, and the general was to the full
+as fond of his purse as Mr. Mordaunt could be of his pedigree; and so,
+I suppose, one pride clashed against the other, and made a quarrel
+between them."
+
+"Would not the general, then, relent after the marriage?"
+
+"Oh! no, sir; for it was a runaway affair.  Miss Diana St. Leger, his
+sister, was as hot as ginger upon it, and fretted and worried the poor
+general, who was never of the mildest, about the match, till at last
+he forbade the poor young lady's very name to be mentioned.  And when
+Miss Diana died about two years ago, he suddenly introduced a tawny
+sort of cretur, whom they call a mulatto or creole, or some such
+thing, into the house; and it seems that he has had several children
+by her, whom he never durst own during Miss Diana's life, but whom he
+now declares to be his heirs.  Well, they rule him with a rod of iron,
+and suck him as dry as an orange.  They are a bad, griping set, all of
+them; and, I am sure, I don't say so from any selfish feeling, Mr.
+Linden, though they have forbid me the house, and called me, to my
+very face, an old cheating Jew.  Think of that, sir!--I, whom the late
+Lady W. in her exceeding friendship used to call 'honest Brown,'--I
+whom your worthy--"
+
+"And who," uncourteously interrupted Clarence, "has Mordaunt Court
+now?"
+
+"Why, a distant relation of the last squire's, an elderly gentleman
+who calls himself Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt.  I am going there to-morrow
+morning, for I still keep up a connection with the family.  Indeed the
+old gentleman bought a lovely little ape of me, which I did intend as
+a present to the late (as I may call him) Mr. Mordaunt; so, though I
+will not say I exactly like him,--he is a hard hand at a bargain,--yet
+at least I will not deny him his due."
+
+"What sort of a person is he?  What character does he bear?" asked
+Clarence.
+
+"I really find it hard to answer that question," said the gossiping
+Mr. Brown.  "In great things he is very lavish and ostentatious, but
+in small things he is very penurious and saving, and miser-like; and
+all for one son, who is deformed and very sickly.  He seems to dote on
+that boy; and now I have got two or three little presents in these
+bags for Mr. Henry.  Heaven forgive me, but when I look at the poor
+creature, with his face all drawn up, and his sour, ill-tempered
+voice, and his limbs crippled, I almost think it would be better if he
+were in his grave, and the rightful Mr. Mordaunt, who would then be
+the next of kin, in his place."
+
+"So then, there is only this unhappy cripple between Mr. Mordaunt and
+the property?" said Clarence.
+
+"Exactly so, sir.  But will you let me ask where you shall put up at
+W----?  I will wait upon you, if you will give me leave, with some
+very curious and valuable articles, highly desirable either for
+yourself or for little presents to your friends."
+
+"I thank you," said Clarence, "I shall make no stay at W----, but I
+shall be glad to see you in town next week.  Favour me, meanwhile, by
+accepting this trifle."
+
+"Nay, nay, sir," said Mr. Brown, pocketing the money, "I really cannot
+accept this; anything in the way of exchange,--a ring, or a seal, or--
+"
+
+"No, no, not at present," said Clarence; "the night is coming on, and
+I shall make the best of my way.  Good-by, Mr. Brown;" and Clarence
+trotted off: but he had scarce got sixty yards before he heard the
+itinerant merchant cry out, "Mr. Linden, Mr. Linden!" and looking
+back, he beheld the honest Brown putting his shaggy pony at full
+speed, in order to overtake him; so he pulled up.
+
+"Well, Mr. Brown, what do you want?"
+
+"Why, you see, sir, you gave me no exact answer about the plum-colored
+velvet inexpressibles," said Mr. Brown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+    Are we contemned?--The Double Marriage.
+
+It was dusk when Clarence arrived at the very same inn at which, more
+than five years ago, he had assumed his present name.  As he recalled
+the note addressed to him, and the sum (his whole fortune) which it
+contained, he could not help smiling at the change his lot had since
+then undergone; but the smile soon withered when he thought of the
+kind and paternal hand from which that change had proceeded, and knew
+that his gratitude was no longer availing, and that that hand, in
+pouring its last favours upon him, had become cold.  He was ushered
+into No. 4, and left to his meditations till bed-time.
+
+The next day he recommenced his journey.  Westborough Park, was,
+though in another county, within a short ride of W----; but, as he
+approached it, the character of the scenery became essentially
+changed.  Bare, bold, and meagre, the features of the country bore
+somewhat of a Scottish character.  On the right side of the road was a
+precipitous and perilous descent, and some workmen were placing posts
+along a path for foot-passengers on that side nearest the carriage-
+road, probably with a view to preserve unwary coachmen or equestrians
+from the dangerous vicinity of the descent, which a dark night might
+cause them to incur.  As Clarence looked idly on the workmen, and
+painfully on the crumbling and fearful descent I have described, he
+little thought that that spot would, a few years after, become the
+scene of a catastrophe affecting in the most powerful degree the
+interests of his future life.  Our young traveller put up his horse at
+a small inn, bearing the Westborough arms, and situated at a short
+distance from the park gates.  Now that he was so near his mistress--
+now that less than an hour, nay, than the fourth part of an hour,
+might place him before her, and decide his fate--his heart, which had
+hitherto sustained him, grew faint, and presented, first fear, then
+anxiety, and, at last, despondency to his imagination and forebodings.
+
+"At all events," said he, "I will see her alone before I will confer
+with her artful and proud mother or her cipher of a father.  I will
+then tell her all my history, and open to her all my secrets: I will
+only conceal from her my present fortunes; for even if rumour should
+have informed her of them, it will be easy to give the report no
+sanction; I have a right to that trial.  When she is convinced that,
+at least, neither my birth nor character can disgrace her, I shall see
+if her love can enable her to overlook my supposed poverty and to
+share my uncertain lot.  If so, there will be some triumph in
+undeceiving her error and rewarding her generosity; if not, I shall be
+saved from involving my happiness with that of one who looks only to
+my worldly possessions.  I owe it to her, it is true, to show her that
+I am no low-born pretender: but I owe it also to myself to ascertain
+if my own individual qualities are sufficient to gain her hand."
+
+Fraught with these ideas, which were natural enough to a man whose
+peculiar circumstances were well calculated to make him feel rather
+soured and suspicious, and whose pride had been severely wounded by
+the contempt with which his letter had been treated, Clarence walked
+into the park, and, hovering around the house, watched and waited that
+opportunity of addressing Lady Flora, which he trusted her habits of
+walking would afford him; but hours rolled away, the evening set in,
+and Lady Flora had not once quitted the house.
+
+More disappointed and sick at heart than he liked to confess, Clarence
+returned to his inn, took his solitary meal, and strolling once more
+into the park, watched beneath the windows till midnight, endeavouring
+to guess which were the casements of her apartments, and feeling his
+heart beat high at every light which flashed forth and disappeared,
+and every form which flitted across the windows of the great
+staircase.  Little did Lady Flora, as she sat in her room alone, and,
+in tears, mused over Clarence's fancied worthlessness and infidelity,
+and told her heart again and again that she loved no more,--little did
+she know whose eye kept vigils without, or whose feet brushed away the
+rank dews beneath her windows, or whose thoughts, though not
+altogether unmingled with reproach, were riveted with all the ardour
+of a young and first love upon her.
+
+It was unfortunate for Linden that he had no opportunity of personally
+pleading his suit; his altered form and faded countenance would at
+least have insured a hearing and an interest for his honest though
+somewhat haughty sincerity: but though that day, and the next, and the
+next, were passed in the most anxious and unremitting vigilance,
+Clarence only once caught a glimpse of Lady Flora, and then she was
+one amidst a large party; and Clarence, fearful of a premature and
+untimely discovery, was forced to retire into the thicknesses of the
+park, and lose the solitary reward of his watches almost as soon as he
+had won it.
+
+Wearied and racked by his suspense, and despairing of obtaining any
+favourable opportunity for an interview without such a request,
+Clarence at last resolved to write to Lady Flora, entreating her
+assent to a meeting, in which he pledged himself to clear up all that
+had hitherto seemed doubtful in his conduct or mysterious in his
+character.  Though respectful, urgent, and bearing the impress of
+truth and feeling, the tone of the letter was certainly that of a man
+who conceived he had a right to a little resentment for the past and a
+little confidence for the future.  It was what might well be written
+by one who imagined his affection had once been returned, but would as
+certainly have been deemed very presumptuous by a lady who thought
+that the affection itself was a liberty.
+
+Having penned this epistle, the next care was how to convey it.  After
+much deliberation it was at last committed to the care of a little
+girl, the daughter of the lodge-keeper, whom Lady Flora thrice a week
+personally instructed in the mysteries of spelling, reading, and
+calligraphy.  With many injunctions to deliver the letter only to the
+hands of the beautiful teacher, Clarence trusted his despatches to the
+little scholar, and, with a trembling frame and wistful eye, watched
+Susan take her road, with her green satchel and her shining cheeks, to
+the great house.
+
+One hour, two hours, three hours, passed, and the messenger had not
+returned.  Restless and impatient, Clarence walked back to his inn,
+and had not been there many minutes before a servant, in the
+Westborough livery, appeared at the door of the humble hostelry, and
+left the following letter for his perusal and gratification:--
+
+WESTBOROUGH PASS.
+
+Sir,--The letter intended for my daughter has just been given to me by
+Lady Westborough.  I know not what gave rise to the language, or the
+very extraordinary request for a clandestine meeting, which you have
+thought proper to address to Lady Flora Ardenne; but you will allow me
+to observe that, if you intend to confer upon my daughter the honour
+of a matrimonial proposal, she fully concurs with me and her mother in
+the negative which I feel necessitated to put upon your obliging
+offer.
+
+I need not add that all correspondence with my daughter must close
+here.  I have the honour to be, sir,
+
+Your very obedient servant,                          WESTBOROUGH.
+
+TO CLARENCE LINDEN, Esq.
+
+Had Clarence's blood been turned to fire, his veins could not have
+swelled and burned with a fiercer heat than they did, as he read the
+above letter,--a masterpiece, perhaps, in the line of what may be
+termed the "d--d civil" of epistolary favours.  "Insufferable
+arrogance!" he muttered within his teeth.  "I will live to repay it.
+Perfidious, unfeeling woman: what an escape I have had of her!  Now,
+now, I am on the world, and alone, thank Heaven.  I will accept
+Aspeden's offer, and leave this country; when I return, it shall not
+be as a humble suitor to Lady Flora Ardenne.  Pish! how the name
+sickens me: but come, I have a father; at least a nominal one.  He is
+old and weak, and may die before I return.  I will see him once more,
+and then, hey for Italy!  Oh! I am so happy,--so happy at my freedom
+and escape.  What, ho! waiter! my horse instantly!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+    Lucr.--What has thy father done?
+    Beat.--What have I done?  Am I not innocent?--The Cenci.
+
+Tam twilight was darkening slowly over a room of noble dimensions and
+costly fashion.  Although it was the height of summer, a low fire
+burned in the grate; and, stretching his hands over the feeble flame,
+an old man of about sixty sat in an armchair curiously carved with
+armorial bearings.  The dim yet fitful flame cast its upward light
+upon a countenance, stern, haughty, and repellent, where the passions
+of youth and manhood had dug themselves graves in many an iron line
+and deep furrow: the forehead, though high, was narrow and compressed;
+the brows sullenly overhung the eyes; and the nose, which was
+singularly prominent and decided, age had sharpened, and brought out,
+as it were, till it gave a stubborn and very forbidding expression to
+the more sunken features over which it rose with exaggerated dignity.
+Two bottles of wine, a few dried preserves, and a water glass, richly
+chased, and ornamented with gold, showed that the inmate of the
+apartment had passed the hour of the principal repast, and his
+loneliness at a time usually social seemed to indicate that few olive
+branches were accustomed to overshadow his table.
+
+The windows of the dining-room reached to the ground, and without the
+closing light just enabled one to see a thick copse of wood, which, at
+a very brief interval of turf, darkened immediately opposite the
+house.  While the old man was thus bending over the fire and conning
+his evening contemplations, a figure stole from the copse I have
+mentioned, and, approaching the window, looked pryingly into the
+apartment; then with a noiseless hand it opened the spring of the
+casement, which was framed on a peculiar and old-fashioned
+construction, that required a practised and familiar touch, entered
+the apartment, and crept on, silent and unperceived by the inhabitant
+of the room, till it paused and stood motionless, with folded arms,
+scarce three steps behind the high back of the old man's chair.
+
+In a few minutes the latter moved from his position, and slowly rose;
+the abruptness with which he turned, brought the dark figure of the
+intruder full and suddenly before him: he started back, and cried in
+an alarmed tone, "Who is there?"
+
+The stranger made no reply.
+
+The old man, in a voice in which anger and pride mingled with fear,
+repeated the question.  The figure advanced, dropped the cloak in
+which it was wrapped, and presenting the features of Clarence Linden,
+said, in a low but clear tone,--
+
+"Your son."
+
+The old man dropped his hold of the bell-rope, which he had just
+before seized, and leaned as if for support against the oak wainscot;
+Clarence approached.
+
+"Yes!" said he, mournfully, "your unfortunate, your offending, but
+your guiltless son.  More than five years I have been banished from
+your house; I have been thrown, while yet a boy, without friends,
+without guidance, without name, upon the wide world, and to the mercy
+of chance.  I come now to you as a man, claiming no assistance, and
+uttering no reproach, but to tell you that him whom an earthly father
+rejected God has preserved; that without one unworthy or debasing act
+I have won for myself the friends who support and the wealth which
+dignifies life,--since it renders it independent.  Through all the
+disadvantages I have struggled against I have preserved unimpaired my
+honour, and unsullied my conscience; you have disowned, but you might
+have claimed me without shame.  Father, these hands are clean!"
+
+A strong and evident emotion shook the old man's frame.  He raised
+himself to his full height, which was still tall and commanding, and
+in a voice, the natural harshness of which was rendered yet more
+repellent by passion, replied, "Boy! your presumption is insufferable.
+What to me is your wretched fate?  Go, go, go to your miserable
+mother: find her out; claim kindred there; live together, toil
+together, rot together, but come not to me! disgrace to my house, ask
+not admittance to my affections; the law may give you my name, but
+sooner would I be torn piecemeal than own your right to it.  If you
+want money, name the sum, take it: cut up my fortune to shreds, seize
+my property, revel on it; but come not here.  This house is sacred;
+pollute it not: I disown you; I discard you; I,--ay, I detest,--I
+loathe you!"
+
+And with these words, which came forth as if heaved from the inmost
+heart of the speaker, who shook with the fury he endeavoured to
+stifle, he fell back into his chair, and fixed his eyes, which glared
+fearfully through the increasing darkness upon Linden, who stood high,
+erect, and sorrowfully before him.
+
+"Alas, my lord!" said Clarence, with mournful bitterness, "have not
+the years which have seared your form and whitened your locks brought
+some meekness to your rancour, some mercy to your injustice, for one
+whose only crime against you seems to have been his birth.  But I said
+I came not to reproach, nor do I.  Many a bitter hour, many a pang of
+shame and mortification and misery, which have made scars in my heart
+that will never wear away, my wrongs have cost me; but let them pass.
+Let them not swell your future and last account whenever it be
+required.  I am about to leave this country, with a heavy and
+foreboding heart; we may never meet again on earth.  I have no longer
+any wish, any chance, of resuming the name you have deprived me of.  I
+shall never thrust myself on your relationship or cross your view.
+Lavish your wealth upon him whom you have placed so immeasurably above
+me in your affections.  But I have not deserved your curse, Father;
+give me your blessing, and let me depart in peace."
+
+"Peace! and what peace have I had? what respite from gnawing shame,
+the foulness and leprosy of humiliation and reproach, since--since--?
+But this is not your fault, you say: no, no,--it is another's; and you
+are only the mark of my stigma; my disgrace, not its perpetrator.  Ha!
+a nice distinction, truly.  My blessing you say!  Come, kneel; kneel,
+boy, and have it!"
+
+Clarence approached, and stood bending and bareheaded before his
+father, but he knelt not.
+
+"Why do you not kneel?" cried the old man, vehemently.
+
+"It is the attitude of the injurer, not of the injured!" said
+Clarence, firmly.
+
+"Injured! insolent reprobate, is it not I who am injured?  Do you not
+read it in my brow,--here, here?" and the old man struck his clenched
+hand violently against his temples.  "Was I not injured?" he
+continued, sinking his voice into a key unnaturally low; "did I not
+trust implicitly? did I not give up my heart without suspicion? was I
+not duped deliciously? was I not kind enough, blind enough, fool
+enough and was I not betrayed,--damnably, filthily betrayed?  But that
+was no injury.  Was not my old age turned into a sapless tree, a
+poisoned spring?  Were not my days made a curse to me, and my nights a
+torture?  Was I not, am I not, a mock and a by-word, and a miserable,
+impotent, unavenged old man?  Injured!  But this is no injury!  Boy,
+boy, what are your wrongs to mine?"
+
+"Father!" cried Clarence, deprecatingly, "I am not the cause of your
+wrongs: is it just that the innocent should suffer for the guilty?"
+
+"Speak not in that voice!" cried the old man, "that voice!--fie, fie
+on it.  Hence! away! away, boy! why tarry you?  My son! and have that
+voice?  Pooh, you are not my son.  Ha! ha!--my son?"
+
+"What am I, then?" said Clarence, soothingly: for he was shocked and
+grieved, rather than irritated by a wrath which partook so strongly of
+insanity.
+
+"I will tell you," cried the father, "I will tell you what you are:
+you are my curse!"
+
+"Farewell!" said Clarence, much agitated, and retiring to the window
+by which he had entered; "may your heart never smite you for your
+cruelty!  Farewell! may the blessing you have withheld from me be with
+you!"
+
+"Stop! stay!" cried the father; for his fury was checked for one
+moment, and his nature, fierce as it was, relented: but Clarence was
+already gone, and the miserable old man was left alone to darkness,
+and solitude, and the passions which can make a hell of the human
+heart!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+    Sed quae praeclara et prospera tanti,
+    Ut rebus laetis par sit mensura malornm?--JUVENAL.
+
+    ["But what excellence or prosperity so great that there should be
+    an equal measure of evils for our joys?"]
+
+We are now transported to a father and a son of a very different
+stamp.
+
+It was about the hour of one p.m., when the door of Mr. Vavasour
+Mordaunt's study was thrown open, and the servant announced Mr. Brown.
+
+"Your servant, sir; your servant, Mr. Henry," said the itinerant,
+bowing low to the two gentlemen thus addressed.  The former, Mr.
+Vavasour Mordaunt, might be about the same age as Linden's father.  A
+shrewd, sensible, ambitious man of the world, he had made his way from
+the state of a younger brother, with no fortune and very little
+interest, to considerable wealth, besides the property he had acquired
+by law, and to a degree of consideration for general influence and
+personal ability, which, considering he had no official or
+parliamentary rank, very few of his equals enjoyed.  Persevering,
+steady, crafty, and possessing, to an eminent degree, that happy art
+of "canting" which opens the readiest way to character and
+consequence, the rise and reputation of Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt appeared
+less to be wondered at than envied; yet, even envy was only for those
+who could not look beyond the surface of things.  He was at heart an
+anxious and unhappy man.  The evil we do in the world is often paid
+back in the bosom of home.  Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt was, like Crauford,
+what might be termed a mistaken utilitarian: he had lived utterly and
+invariably for self; but instead of uniting self-interest with the
+interest of others, he considered them as perfectly incompatible ends.
+But character was among the greatest of all objects to him; so that,
+though he had rarely deviated into what might fairly be termed a
+virtue, he had never transgressed what might rigidly be called a
+propriety.  He had not the aptitude, the wit, the moral audacity of
+Crauford: he could not have indulged in one offence with impunity, by
+a mingled courage and hypocrisy in veiling others; he was the slave of
+the forms which Crauford subjugated to himself.  He was only so far
+resembling Crauford as one man of the world resembles another in
+selfishness and dissimulation: he could be dishonest, not villanous,--
+much less a villain upon system.  He was a canter, Crauford a
+hypocrite: his uttered opinions were, like Crauford's, different from
+his conduct; but he believed the truth of the former even while
+sinning in the latter; he canted so sincerely that the tears came into
+his eyes when he spoke.  Never was there a man more exemplary in
+words: people who departed from him went away impressed with the idea
+of an excess of honour, a plethora of conscience.  "It was almost a
+pity," said they, "that Mr. Vavasour was so romantic;" and thereupon
+they named him as executor to their wills and guardian to their sons.
+None but he could, in carrying the lawsuit against Mordaunt, have lost
+nothing in reputation by success.  But there was something so
+specious, so ostensibly fair in his manner and words, while he was
+ruining Mordaunt, that it was impossible not to suppose he was
+actuated by the purest motives, the most holy desire for justice; not
+for himself, he said, for he was old, and already rich enough, but for
+his son!  From that son came the punishment of all his offences,--the
+black drop at the bottom of a bowl seemingly so sparkling.  To him, as
+the father grew old and desirous of quiet, Vavasour had transferred
+all his selfishness, as if to a securer and more durable firm.  The
+child, when young, had been singularly handsome and intelligent; and
+Vavasour, as he toiled and toiled at his ingenious and graceful
+cheateries, pleased himself with anticipating the importance and
+advantages the heir to his labours would enjoy.  For that son he
+certainly had persevered more arduously than otherwise he might have
+done in the lawsuit, of the justice of which he better satisfied the
+world than his own breast; for that son he rejoiced as he looked
+around the stately halls and noble domain from which the rightful
+possessor had been driven; for that son he extended economy into
+penuriousness, and hope into anxiety; and, too old to expect much more
+from the world himself, for that son he anticipated, with a wearing
+and feverish fancy, whatever wealth could purchase, beauty win, or
+intellect command.
+
+But as if, like the Castle of Otranto, there was something in Mordaunt
+Court which contained a penalty and a doom for the usurper, no sooner
+had Vavasour possessed himself of his kinsman's estate, than the
+prosperity of his life dried and withered away, like Jonah's gourd, in
+a single night.  His son, at the age of thirteen, fell from a
+scaffold, on which the workmen were making some extensive alterations
+in the old house, and became a cripple and a valetudinarian for life.
+But still Vavasour, always of a sanguine temperament, cherished a hope
+that surgical assistance might restore him: from place to place, from
+professor to professor, from quack to quack, he carried the unhappy
+boy, and as each remedy failed he was only the more impatient to
+devise a new one.  But as it was the mind as well as person of his son
+in which the father had stored up his ambition; so, in despite of this
+fearful accident and the wretched health by which it was followed,
+Vavasour never suffered his son to rest from the tasks and tuitions
+and lectures of the various masters by whom he was surrounded.  The
+poor boy, it is true, deprived of physical exertion and naturally of a
+serious disposition, required very little urging to second his
+father's wishes for his mental improvement; and as the tutors were all
+of the orthodox university calibre, who imagine that there is no
+knowledge (but vanity) in any other works than those in which their
+own education has consisted, so Henry Vavasour became at once the
+victor and victim of Bentleys and Scaligers, word-weighers and metre-
+scanners, till, utterly ignorant of everything which could have
+softened his temper, dignified his misfortunes, and reconciled him to
+his lot, he was sinking fast into the grave, soured by incessant pain
+into moroseness, envy, and bitterness; exhausted by an unwholesome and
+useless application to unprofitable studies; an excellent scholar (as
+it is termed), with the worst regulated and worst informed mind of
+almost any of his contemporaries equal to himself in the advantages of
+ability, original goodness of disposition, and the costly and profuse
+expenditure of education.
+
+But the vain father, as he heard, on all sides, of his son's talents,
+saw nothing sinister in their direction; and though the poor boy grew
+daily more contracted in mind and broken in frame, Vavasour yet hugged
+more and more closely to his breast the hope of ultimate cure for the
+latter and future glory for the former.  So he went on heaping money
+and extending acres, and planting and improving and building and
+hoping and anticipating, for one at whose very feet the grave was
+already dug!
+
+But we left Mr. Brown in the study, making his bow and professions of
+service to Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt and his son.
+
+"Good day, honest Brown," said the former, a middle-sized and rather
+stout man, with a well-powdered head, and a sharp, shrewd, and very
+sallow countenance; "good day; have you brought any of the foreign
+liqueurs you spoke of, for Mr. Henry?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I have some curiously fine eau d'or and liqueur des files,
+besides the marasquino and curacoa.  The late Lady Waddilove honoured
+my taste in these matters with her especial approbation."
+
+"My dear boy," said Vavasour, turning to his son, who lay extended on
+the couch, reading not the "Prometheus" (that most noble drama ever
+created), but the notes upon it, "my dear boy, as you are fond of
+liqueurs, I desired Brown to get some peculiarly fine; perhaps--"
+
+"Pish!" said the son, fretfully interrupting him, "do, I beseech you,
+take your hand off my shoulder.  See now, you have made me lose my
+place.  I really do wish you would leave me alone for one moment in
+the day."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Henry," said the father, looking reverently on the
+Greek characters which his son preferred to the newspaper.  "It is
+very vexatious, I own; but do taste these liqueurs.  Dr. Lukewarm said
+you might have everything you liked--"
+
+"But quiet!" muttered the cripple.
+
+"I assure you, sir," said the wandering merchant, "that they are
+excellent; allow me, Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt, to ring for a corkscrew.
+I really do think, sir, that Mr. Henry looks much better.  I declare
+he has quite a colour."
+
+"No, indeed!" said Vavasour, eagerly.  "Well, it seems to me, too,
+that he is getting better.  I intend him to try Mr. E----'s patent
+collar in a day or two; but that will in some measure prevent his
+reading.  A great pity; for I am very anxious that he should lose no
+time in his studies just at present.  He goes to Cambridge in
+October."
+
+"Indeed, sir!  Well, he will set the town in a blaze, I guess, sir!
+Everybody says what a fine scholar Mr. Henry is,--even in the
+servants' hall!"
+
+"Ay, ay," said Vavasour, gratified even by this praise, "he is clever
+enough, Brown; and, what is more" (and here Vavasour's look grew
+sanctified), "he is good enough.  His principles do equal honour to
+his head and heart.  He would be no son of mine if he were not as much
+the gentleman as the scholar."
+
+The youth lifted his heavy and distorted face from his book, and a
+sneer raised his lip for a moment; but a sudden spasm of pain seizing
+him, the expression changed, and Vavasour, whose eyes were fixed upon
+him, hastened to his assistance.
+
+"Throw open the window, Brown, ring the bell, call--"
+
+"Pooh, Father," cried the boy, with a sharp, angry voice, "I am not
+going to die yet, nor faint either; but it is all your fault.  If you
+will have those odious, vulgar people here for your own pleasure, at
+least suffer me, another day, to retire."
+
+"My son, my son!" said the grieved father, in reproachful anger, "it
+was my anxiety to give you some trifling enjoyment that brought Brown
+here: you must be sensible of that!"
+
+"You tease me to death," grumbled the peevish unfortunate.
+
+"Well, sir," said Mr. Brown, "shall I leave the bottles here? or do
+you please that I shall give them to the butler?  I see that I am
+displeasing and troublesome to Mr. Henry; but as my worthy friend and
+patroness, the late Lady--"
+
+"Go, go, honest Brown!" said Vavasour (who desired every man's good
+word), "go, and give the liqueurs to Preston.  Mr. Henry is extremely
+sorry that he is too unwell to see you now; and I--I have the heart of
+a father for his sufferings."
+
+Mr. Brown withdrew.  "'Odious and vulgar,'" said he to himself, in a
+little fury,--for Mr. Brown peculiarly valued himself on his
+gentility,--"'odious and vulgar!'  To think of his little lordship
+uttering such shameful words!  However, I will go into the steward's
+room, and abuse him there.  But, I suppose, I shall get no dinner in
+this house,--no, not so much as a crust of bread; for while the old
+gentleman is launching out into such prodigious expenses on a great
+scale,--making heathenish temples, and spoiling the fine old house
+with his new picture gallery and nonsense,--he is so close in small
+matters, that I warrant not a candle-end escapes him; griping and
+pinching and squeezing with one hand, and scattering money, as if it
+were dirt, with the other,--and all for that cross, ugly, deformed,
+little whippersnapper of a son.  'Odious and vulgar,' indeed!  What
+shocking language!  Mr. Algernon Mordaunt would never have made use of
+such words, I know.  And, bless me, now I think of it, I wonder where
+that poor gentleman is.  The young heir here is not long for this
+world, I can see; and who knows but what Mr. Algernon may be in great
+distress; and I am sure, as far as four hundred pounds, or even a
+thousand, go, I would not mind lending it him, only upon the post-
+obits of Squire Vavasour and his hopeful.  I like doing a kind thing;
+and Mr. Algernon was always very good to me; and I am sure I don't
+care about the security, though I think it will be as sure as
+sixpence; for the old gentleman must be past sixty, and the young one
+is the worse life of the two.  And when he's gone, what relation so
+near as Mr. Algernon?  We should help one another; it is but one's
+duty: and if he is in great distress he would not mind a handsome
+premium.  Well, nobody can say Morris Brown is not as charitable as
+the best Christian breathing; and, as the late Lady Waddilove very
+justly observed, 'Brown, believe me, a prudent risk is the surest
+gain!'  I will lose no time in finding the late squire out."
+
+Muttering over these reflections, Mr. Brown took his way to the
+steward's room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+Clar.--How, two letters?--The Lover's Progress.
+
+LETTER FROM CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ., TO THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.
+
+HOTEL ----, CALAIS.
+
+My Dear Duke,--After your kind letter, you will forgive me for not
+having called upon you before I left England, for you have led me to
+hope that I may dispense with ceremony towards you; and, in sad and
+sober earnest, I was in no mood to visit even you during the few days
+I was in London, previous to my departure.  Some French philosopher
+has said that, 'the best compliment we can pay our friends, when in
+sickness or misfortune, is to avoid them.'  I will not say how far I
+disagree with this sentiment, but I know that a French philosopher
+will be an unanswerable authority with you; and so I will take shelter
+even under the battery of an enemy.
+
+I am waiting here for some days in expectation of Lord Aspeden's
+arrival.  Sick as I was of England and all that has lately occurred to
+me there, I was glad to have an opportunity of leaving it sooner than
+my chief could do; and I amuse myself very indifferently in this dull
+town, with reading all the morning, plays all the evening, and dreams
+of my happier friends all the night.
+
+And so you are sorry that I did not destroy Lord Borodaile.  My dear
+duke, you would have been much more sorry if I had!  What could you
+then have done for a living Pasquin for your stray lampoons and
+vagrant sarcasms?  Had an unfortunate bullet carried away--
+
+    "That peer of England, pillar of the state,"
+
+as you term him, pray on whom could 'Duke Humphrey unfold his
+griefs'?--Ah, Duke, better as it is, believe me; and, whenever you are
+at a loss for a subject for wit, you will find cause to bless my
+forbearance, and congratulate yourself upon the existence of its
+object.
+
+Dare I hope that, amidst all the gayeties which court you, you will
+find time to write to me?  If so, you shall have in return the
+earliest intelligence of every new soprano, and the most elaborate
+criticisms on every budding figurante of our court.
+
+Have you met Trollolop lately, and in what new pursuit are his
+intellectual energies engaged?  There, you see, I have fairly
+entrapped your Grace into a question which common courtesy will oblige
+you to answer.
+
+Adieu, ever, my dear Duke.  Most truly yours, etc.
+
+LETTER FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD TO CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ.
+
+A thousand thanks, mon cher, for your letter, though it was certainly
+less amusing and animated than I could have wished it for your sake,
+as well as my own; yet it could not have been more welcomely received,
+had it been as witty as your conversation itself.  I heard that you
+had accepted the place of secretary to Lord Aspeden, and that you had
+passed through London on your way to the Continent, looking (the
+amiable Callythorpe, 'who never flatters,' is my authority) more like
+a ghost than yourself.  So you may be sure, my dear Linden, that I was
+very anxious to be convinced under your own hand of your carnal
+existence.
+
+Take care of yourself, my good fellow, and don't imagine, as I am apt
+to do, that youth is like my hunter, Fearnought, and will carry you
+over everything.  In return for your philosophical maxim, I will give
+you another.  "In age we should remember that we have been young, and
+in youth that we are to be old."  Ehem!--am I not profound as a
+moralist?  I think a few such sentences would become my long face
+well; and, to say truth, I am tired of being witty; every one thinks
+he can be that: so I will borrow Trollolop's philosophy,--take snuff,
+wear a wig out of curl, and grow wise instead of merry.
+
+A propos of Trollolop; let me not forget that you honour him with your
+inquiries.  I saw him three days since, and he asked me if I had been
+impressed lately with the idea vulgarly called Clarence Linden; and he
+then proceeded to inform me that he had heard the atoms which composed
+your frame were about to be resolved into a new form.  While I was
+knitting my brows very wisely at this intelligence, he passed on to
+apprise me that I had neither length, breadth, nor extension, nor
+anything but mind.  Flattered by so delicate a compliment to my
+understanding, I yielded my assent: and he then shifted his ground,
+and told me that there was no such thing as mind; that we were but
+modifications of matter; and that, in a word, I was all body.  I took
+advantage of this doctrine, and forthwith removed my modification of
+matter from his.
+
+Findlater has just lost his younger brother in a duel.  You have no
+idea how shocking it was.  Sir Christopher one day heard his brother,
+who had just entered the ---- Dragoons, ridiculed for his want of
+spirit, by Major Elton, who professed to be the youth's best friend.
+The honest heart of our worthy baronet was shocked beyond measure at
+this perfidy, and the next time his brother mentioned Elton's name
+with praise, out came the story.  You may guess the rest: young
+Findlater called out Elton, who shot him through the lungs!  "I did it
+for the best," cried Sir Christopher.
+
+La pauvre petite Meronville!  What an Ariadne!  Just as I was thinking
+to play the Bacchus to your Theseus, up steps an old gentleman from
+Yorkshire, who hears it is fashionable to marry bonas robas, proposes
+honourable matrimony, and deprives me and the world of La Meronville!
+The wedding took place on Monday last, and the happy pair set out to
+their seat in the North.  Verily, we shall have quite a new race in
+the next generation; I expect all the babes will skip into the world
+with a pas de zephyr, singing in sweet trebles,--
+
+    "Little dancing loves we are!
+     Who the deuce is our papa?"
+
+I think you will be surprised to hear that Lord Borodaile is beginning
+to thaw; I saw him smile the other day!  Certainly, we are not so near
+the North Pole as we were!  He is going, and so am I, in the course of
+the autumn, to your old friends the Westboroughs.  Report says that he
+is un peu epris de la belle Flore; but, then, Report is such a liar!
+For my own part I always contradict her.
+
+I eagerly embrace your offer of correspondence, and assure you that
+there are few people by whose friendship I conceive myself so much
+honoured as by yours.  You will believe this; for you know that, like
+Callythorpe, I never flatter.  Farewell for the present.
+
+Sincerely yours,                                   HAVERFIELD.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+    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!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tanquam faciem honesti video:
+quae, si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores (ut ait Plato) excitaret
+sapientia.--TULLY.
+
+["Son Marcus, you seethe form and as it were the face of Virtue: that
+Wisdom, which if it could be perceived by the eyes, would (as Plato
+saith) kindle absolute and marvellous affection."]
+
+
+It was almost dawn when Glendower returned to his home.  Fearful of
+disturbing his wife, he stole with mute steps to the damp and rugged
+chamber, where the last son of a princely line, and the legitimate
+owner of lands and halls which ducal rank might have envied, held his
+miserable asylum.  The first faint streaks of coming light broke
+through the shutterless and shattered windows, and he saw that she
+reclined in a deep sleep upon the chair beside their child's couch.
+She would not go to bed herself till Glendower returned, and she had
+sat up, watching and praying, and listening for his footsteps, till,
+in the utter exhaustion of debility and sickness, sleep had fallen
+upon her.  Glendower bent over her.
+
+"Sleep," said he, "sleep on!  The wicked do not come to thee now.
+Thou art in a world that has no fellowship with this,--a world from
+which even happiness is not banished!  Nor woe nor pain, nor memory of
+the past nor despair of all before thee, make the characters of thy
+present state!  Thou forestallest the forgetfulness of the grave, and
+thy heart concentrates all earth's comfort in one word,--'Oblivion!
+'Beautiful, how beautiful thou art even yet! that smile, that
+momentary blush, years have not conquered them.  They are as when, my
+young bride, thou didst lean first upon my bosom, and dream that
+sorrow was no more!  And I have brought thee unto this!  These green
+walls make thy bridal chamber, yon fragments of bread thy bridal
+board.  Well! it is no matter! thou art on thy way to a land where all
+things, even a breaking heart, are at rest. I weep not; wherefore
+should I weep?  Tears are not for the dead, but their survivors.  I
+would rather see thee drop inch by inch into the grave, and smile as I
+beheld it, than save thee for an inheritance of sin.  What is there in
+this little and sordid life that we should strive to hold it?  What in
+this dreadful dream that we should fear to wake?"
+
+And Glendower knelt beside his wife, and, despite his words, tears
+flowed fast and gushingly down his cheeks; and wearied as he was, he
+watched upon her slumbers, till they fell from the eyes to which his
+presence was more joyous than the day.
+
+It was a beautiful thing, even in sorrow, to see that couple, whom
+want could not debase, nor misfortune, which makes even generosity
+selfish, divorce!  All that Fate had stripped from the poetry and
+graces of life, had not shaken one leaf from the romance of their
+green and unwithered affections!  They were the very type of love in
+its holiest and most enduring shape: their hearts had grown together;
+their being had flowed through caves and deserts, and reflected the
+storms of an angry Heaven; but its waters had indissolubly mingled
+into one!  Young, gifted, noble, and devoted, they were worthy victims
+of this blighting and bitter world!  Their garden was turned into a
+wilderness; but, like our first parents, it was hand in hand that
+they took their solitary way!  Evil beset them, but they swerved not;
+the rains and the winds fell upon their unsheltered beads, but they
+were not bowed; and through the mazes and briers of this weary life,
+their bleeding footsteps strayed not, for they had a clew!  The mind
+seemed, as it were, to become visible and external as the frame
+decayed, and to cover the body with something of its own invulnerable
+power; so that whatever should have attacked the mortal and frail
+part, fell upon that which, imperishable and divine, resisted and
+subdued it!
+
+It was unfortunate for Glendower that he never again met Wolfe: for
+neither fanaticism of political faith, nor sternness of natural
+temper, subdued in the republican the real benevolence and generosity
+which redeemed and elevated his character; nor could any impulse of
+party zeal have induced him, like Crauford, systematically to take
+advantage of poverty in order to tempt to participation in his
+schemes.  From a more evil companion Glendower had not yet escaped:
+Crauford, by some means or other, found out his abode, and lost no
+time in availing himself of the discovery.  In order fully to
+comprehend his unwearied persecution of Glendower, it must constantly
+be remembered that to this persecution he was bound by a necessity
+which, urgent, dark, and implicating life itself, rendered him callous
+to every obstacle and unsusceptible of all remorse.  With the
+exquisite tact which he possessed, he never openly recurred to his
+former proposal of fraud: he contented himself with endeavouring to
+persuade Glendower to accept pecuniary assistance, but in vain.  The
+veil once torn from his character no craft could restore.  Through all
+his pretences and sevenfold hypocrisy Glendower penetrated at once
+into his real motives: he was not to be duped by assurances of
+friendship which he knew the very dissimilarities between their
+natures rendered impossible.  He had seen at the first, despite all
+allegations to the contrary, that in the fraud Crauford had proposed,
+that person could by no means be an uninfluenced and cold adviser.  In
+after conversations, Crauford, driven by the awful interest he had in
+success from his usual consummateness of duplicity, betrayed in
+various important minutiae how deeply he was implicated in the crime
+for which he had argued; and not even the visible and progressive
+decay of his wife and child could force the stern mind of Glendower
+into accepting those wages of iniquity which he knew well were only
+offered as an earnest or a snare.
+
+There is a royalty in extreme suffering, when the mind falls not with
+the fortunes, which no hardihood of vice can violate unabashed.  Often
+and often, humble and defeated through all his dissimulation, was
+Crauford driven from the presence of the man whom it was his bitterest
+punishment to fear most when most he affected to despise; and as
+often, re-collecting his powers and fortifying himself in his
+experience of human frailty when sufficiently tried, did he return to
+his attempts.  He waylaid the door and watched the paths of his
+intended prey.  He knew that the mind which even best repels
+temptation first urged hath seldom power to resist the same
+suggestion, if daily--dropping, unwearying--presenting itself in every
+form, obtruded in every hour, losing its horror by custom, and finding
+in the rebellious bosom itself its smoothest vizard and most alluring
+excuse.  And it was, indeed, a mighty and perilous trial to Glendower,
+when rushing from the presence of his wife and child, when fainting
+under accumulated evils, when almost delirious with sickening and
+heated thought, to hear at each prompting of the wrung and excited
+nature, each heave of the black fountain that in no mortal breast is
+utterly exhausted, one smooth, soft, persuasive voice forever
+whispering, "Relief!"--relief, certain, utter, instantaneous! the
+voice of one pledged never to relax an effort or spare a pang, by a
+danger to himself, a danger of shame and death,--the voice of one who
+never spoke but in friendship and compassion, profound in craft, and a
+very sage in the disguises with which language invests deeds.  But
+VIRTUE has resources buried in itself, which we know not till the
+invading hour calls them from their retreats.  Surrounded by hosts
+without, and when Nature itself, turned traitor, is its most deadly
+enemy within, it assumes a new and a superhuman power, which is
+greater than Nature itself.  Whatever be its creed, whatever be its
+sect, from whatever segment of the globe its orisons arise, Virtue is
+God's empire, and from His throne of thrones He will defend it.
+Though cast into the distant earth, and struggling on the dim arena of
+a human heart, all things above are spectators of its conflict or
+enlisted in its cause.  The angels have their charge over it; the
+banners of archangels are on its side; and from sphere to sphere,
+through the illimitable ether, and round the impenetrable darkness at
+the feet of God, its triumph is hymned by harps which are strung to
+the glories of the Creator!
+
+One evening, when Crauford had joined Glendower in his solitary
+wanderings, the dissembler renewed his attacks.
+
+"But why not," said he, "accept from my friendship what to my
+benevolence you would deny?  I couple with my offers, my prayers
+rather, no conditions.  How then do you, can you, reconcile it to your
+conscience, to suffer your wife and child to perish before your eyes?"
+
+"Man, man," said Glendower, "tempt me no more: let them die!  At
+present the worst is death: what you offer me is dishonour."
+
+"Heavens, how uncharitable is this!  Can you call the mere act of
+accepting money from one who loves you dishonour?"
+
+"It is in vain that you varnish your designs," said Glendower,
+stopping and fixing his eyes upon him.  "Do you not think that cunning
+ever betrays itself?  In a thousand words, in a thousand looks which
+have escaped you, but not me, I know that, if there be one being on
+this earth whom you hate and would injure, that being is myself.  Nay,
+start not: listen to me patiently.  I have sworn that it is the last
+opportunity you shall have.  I will not subject myself to farther
+temptation: I am now sane; but there are things which may drive me
+mad, and in madness you might conquer.  You hate me it is out of the
+nature of earthly things that you should not.  But even were it
+otherwise, do you think that I could believe you would come from your
+voluptuous home to these miserable retreats; that, among the lairs of
+beggary and theft, you would lie in wait to allure me to forsake
+poverty, without a stronger motive than love for one who affects it
+not for you?  I know you: I have read your heart; I have penetrated
+into that stronger motive; it is your own safety.  In the system of
+atrocity you proposed to me, you are the principal.  You have already
+bared to me enough of the extent to which that system reaches to
+convince me that a single miscreant, however ingenious, cannot,
+unassisted, support it with impunity.  You want help: I am he in whom
+you have dared to believe that you could find it.  You are detected;
+now be undeceived!"
+
+"Is it so?" said Crauford; and as he saw that it was no longer
+possible to feign, the poison of his heart broke forth in its full
+venom.  The fiend rose from the reptile, and stood exposed in its
+natural shape.  Returning Glendower's stern but lofty gaze with an eye
+to which all evil passions lent their unholy fire, he repeated, "Is it
+so? then you are more penetrating than I thought; but it is
+indifferent to me.  It was for your sake, not mine, most righteous
+man, that I wished you might have a disguise to satisfy the modesty of
+your punctilios.  It is all one to Richard Crauford whether you go
+blindfold or with open eyes into his snare.  Go you must, and shall.
+Ay, frowns will not awe me.  You have desired the truth: you shall
+have it.  You are right: I hate you,--hate you with a soul whose force
+of hatred you cannot dream of.  Your pride, your stubbornness, your
+coldness of heart, which things that would stir the blood of beggars
+cannot warm; your icy and passionless virtue,--I hate, I hate all!
+You are right also, most wise inquisitor, in supposing that in the
+scheme proposed to you, I am the principal: I am!  You were to be the
+tool, and shall.  I have offered you mild inducements,--pleas to
+soothe the technicalities of your conscience: you have rejected them;
+be it so.  Now choose between my first offer and the gibbet.  Ay, the
+gibbet!  That night on which we made the appointment which shall not
+yet be in vain,--on that night you stopped me in the street; you
+demanded money; you robbed me; I will swear; I will prove it.  Now,
+then, tremble, man of morality: dupe of your own strength, you are in
+my power; tremble!  Yet in my safety is your escape: I am generous.  I
+repeat my original offer,--wealth, as great as you will demand, or--
+the gibbet, the gibbet: do I speak loud enough? do you hear?"
+
+"Poor fool!" said Glendower, laughing scornfully and moving away.  But
+when Crauford, partly in mockery, partly in menace, placed his hand
+upon Glendower's shoulder, as if to stop him, the touch seemed to
+change his mood from scorn to fury; turning abruptly round, he seized
+the villain's throat with a giant's strength, and cried out, while his
+whole countenance worked beneath the tempestuous wrath within, "What
+if I squeeze out thy poisonous life from thee this moment!" and then
+once more bursting into a withering laughter, as he surveyed the
+terror which he had excited, he added, "No, no: thou art too vile!"
+and, dashing the hypocrite against the wall of a neighbouring house,
+he strode away.
+
+Recovering himself slowly, and trembling with rage and fear, Crauford
+gazed round, expecting yet to find he had sported too far with the
+passions he had sought to control.  When, however, he had fully
+satisfied himself that Glendower was gone, all his wrathful and angry
+feelings returned with redoubled force.  But their most biting torture
+was the consciousness of their impotence.  For after the first
+paroxysm of rage had subsided he saw, too clearly, that his threat
+could not be executed without incurring the most imminent danger of
+discovery.  High as his character stood, it was possible that no
+charge against him might excite suspicion, but a word might cause
+inquiry, and inquiry would be ruin.  Forced, therefore, to stomach his
+failure, his indignation, his shame, his hatred, and his vengeance,
+his own heart became a punishment almost adequate to his vices.
+
+"But my foe will die," said he, clinching his fist so firmly that the
+nails almost brought blood from the palm; "he will starve, famish, and
+see them--his wife, his child--perish first!  I shall have my triumph,
+though I shall not witness it.  But now, away to my villa: there, at
+least, will be some one whom I can mock and beat and trample, if I
+will!  Would--would--would that I were that very man, destitute as he
+is!  His neck, at least, is safe: if he dies, it will not be upon the
+gallows, nor among the hootings of the mob!  Oh, horror! horror!  What
+are my villa, my wine, my women, with that black thought ever
+following me like a shadow?  Who, who while an avalanche is sailing
+over him, who would sit down to feast?"
+
+Leaving this man to shun or be overtaken by Fate, we return to
+Glendower.  It is needless to say that Crauford visited him no more;
+and, indeed, shortly afterwards Glendower again changed his home.  But
+every day and every hour brought new strength to the disease which was
+creeping and burning through the veins of the devoted wife; and
+Glendower, who saw on earth nothing before them but a jail, from which
+as yet they had been miraculously delivered, repined not as he beheld
+her approach to a gentler and benigner home.  Often he sat, as she was
+bending over their child, and gazed upon her cheek with an insane and
+fearful joy at the characters which consumption had there engraved;
+but when she turned towards him her fond eyes (those deep wells of
+love, in which truth lay hid, and which neither languor nor disease
+could exhaust), the unnatural hardness of his heart melted away, and
+he would rush from the house, to give vent to an agony against which
+fortitude and manhood were in vain.
+
+There was no hope for their distress.  His wife had, unknown to
+Glendower (for she dreaded his pride), written several times to a
+relation, who, though distant, was still the nearest in blood which
+fate had spared her, but ineffectually; the scions of a large and
+illegitimate family, which surrounded him, utterly prevented the
+success, and generally interrupted the application, of any claimant on
+his riches but themselves.  Glendower, whose temper had ever kept him
+aloof from all but the commonest acquaintances, knew no human being to
+apply to.  Utterly unable to avail himself of the mine which his
+knowledge and talents should have proved; sick, and despondent at
+heart, and debarred by the loftiness of honour, or rather principle
+that nothing could quell, from any unlawful means of earning bread,
+which to most minds would have been rendered excusable by the urgency
+of nature,--Glendower marked the days drag on in dull and protracted
+despair, and envied every corpse that he saw borne to the asylum in
+which all earth's hopes seemed centred and confined.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+    For ours was not like earthly love.
+    And must this parting be our very last?
+    No!  I shall love thee still when death itself is past.
+         .     .     .     .     .     .
+    Hush'd were his Gertrude's lips!  but still their bland
+    And beautiful expression seem'd to melt
+    With love that could not die! and still his hand
+    She presses to the heart, no more that felt.
+    Ah, heart! where once each fond affection dwelt.
+                                                  CAMPBELL.
+
+"I wonder," said Mr. Brown to himself, as he spurred his shaggy pony
+to a speed very unusual to the steady habits of either party, "I wonder
+where I shall find him.  I would not for the late Lady Waddilove's
+best diamond cross have any body forestall me in the news.  To think
+of my young master dying so soon after my last visit, or rather my
+last visit but one; and to think of the old gentleman taking on so,
+and raving about his injustice to the rightful possessor, and saying
+that he is justly punished, and asking me so eagerly if I could
+discover the retreat of the late squire, and believing me so
+implicitly when I undertook to do it, and giving me this letter!"  And
+here Mr. Brown wistfully examined an epistle sealed with black wax,
+peeping into the corners, which irritated rather than satisfied his
+curiosity.  "I wonder what the old gentleman says in it; I suppose he
+will, of course, give up the estate and house.  Let me see; that long
+picture gallery, just built, will, at all events, want furnishing.
+That would be a famous opportunity to get rid of the Indian jars, and
+the sofas, and the great Turkey carpet.  How lucky that I should just
+have come in time to get the letter.  But let me consider how I shall
+find out?--an advertisement in the paper?  Ah! that's the plan.
+'Algernon Mordaunt, Esq.: something greatly to his advantage; apply to
+Mr. Brown, etc.'  Ah! that will do well, very well.  The Turkey carpet
+won't be quite long enough.  I wish I had discovered Mr. Mordaunt's
+address before, and lent him some money during the young gentleman's
+life: it would have seemed more generous.  However, I can offer it
+now, before I show the letter.  Bless me, it's getting dark.  Come,
+Dobbin, ye-up!"  Such were the meditations of the faithful friend of
+the late Lady Waddilove, as he hastened to London, charged with the
+task of discovering Mordaunt and with the delivery of the following
+epistle:--
+
+You are now, sir, the heir to that property which, some years ago,
+passed from your hands into mine.  My son, for whom alone wealth or I
+may say life was valuable to me, is no more.  I only, an old,
+childless man, stand between you and the estates of Mordaunt.  Do not
+wait for my death to enjoy them.  I cannot live here, where everything
+reminds me of my great and irreparable loss.  I shall remove next
+month into another home.  Consider this, then, as once more yours.
+The house, I believe, you will not find disimproved by my alterations:
+the mortgages on the estate have been paid off; the former rental you
+will perhaps allow my steward to account to you for, and after my
+death the present one will be yours.  I am informed that you are a
+proud man, and not likely to receive favours.  Be it so, sir! it is no
+favour you will receive, but justice; there are circumstances
+connected with my treaty with your father which have of late vexed my
+conscience; and conscience, sir, must be satisfied at any loss.  But
+we shall meet, perhaps, and talk over the past; at present I will not
+enlarge on it.  If you have suffered by me, I am sufficiently
+punished, and my only hope is to repair your losses.
+
+I am, etc.,                            H. VAVASOUR MORDAUNT.
+
+Such was the letter, so important to Mordaunt, with which our worthy
+friend was charged.  Bowed to the dust as Vavasour was by the loss of
+his son, and open to conscience as affliction had made him, he had
+lived too long for effect, not to be susceptible to its influence,
+even to the last. Amidst all his grief, and it was intense, there were
+some whispers of self-exaltation at the thought of the eclat which his
+generosity and abdication would excite; and, with true worldly
+morality, the hoped-for plaudits of others gave a triumph rather than
+humiliation to his reconcilement with himself.
+
+To say truth, there were indeed circumstances connected with his
+treaty with Mordaunt's father calculated to vex his conscience.  He
+knew that he had not only taken great advantage of Mr. Mordaunt's
+distress, but that at his instigation a paper which could forever have
+prevented Mr. Mordaunt's sale of the property, had been destroyed.
+These circumstances, during the life of his son, he had endeavoured to
+forget or to palliate.  But grief is rarely deaf to remorse; and at
+the death of that idolized son the voice at his heart grew imperious,
+and he lost the power in losing the motive of reasoning it away.
+
+Mr. Brown's advertisement was unanswered; and, with the zeal and
+patience of the Christian proselyte's tribe and calling, the good man
+commenced, in person, a most elaborate and painstaking research.  For
+a long time, his endeavours were so ineffectual that Mr. Brown, in
+despair, disposed of the two Indian jars for half their value, and
+heaved a despondent sigh, whenever he saw the great Turkey carpet
+rolled up in his warehouse with as much obstinacy as if it never meant
+to unroll itself again.
+
+At last, however, by dint of indefatigable and minute investigation,
+he ascertained that the object of his search had resided in London,
+under a feigned name; from lodging to lodging, and corner to corner,
+he tracked him, till at length he made himself master of Mordaunt's
+present retreat.  A joyful look did Mr. Brown cast at the great Turkey
+carpet, as he passed by it, on his way to his street door, on the
+morning of his intended visit to Mordaunt.  "It is a fine thing to
+have a good heart," said he, in the true style of Sir Christopher
+Findlater, and he again eyed the Turkey carpet.  "I really feel quite
+happy at the thought of the pleasure I shall give."
+
+After a walk through as many obscure and filthy wynds and lanes and
+alleys and courts as ever were threaded by some humble fugitive from
+justice, the patient Morris came to a sort of court, situated among
+the miserable hovels in the vicinity of the Tower.  He paused
+wonderingly at a dwelling in which every window was broken, and where
+the tiles, torn from the roof, lay scattered in forlorn confusion
+beside the door; where the dingy bricks looked crumbling away, from
+very age and rottenness, and the fabric, which was of great antiquity,
+seemed so rocking and infirm that the eye looked upon its distorted
+and overhanging position with a sensation of pain and dread; where the
+very rats had deserted their loathsome cells from the insecurity of
+their tenure, and the ragged mothers of the abject neighbourhood
+forbade their brawling children to wander under the threatening walls,
+lest they should keep the promise of their mouldering aspect, and,
+falling, bare to the obstructed and sickly day the secrets of their
+prison-house.  Girt with the foul and reeking lairs of that extreme
+destitution which necessity urges irresistibly into guilt, and
+excluded, by filthy alleys and an eternal atmosphere of smoke and rank
+vapour, from the blessed sun and the pure air of heaven, the miserable
+mansion seemed set apart for every disease to couch within,--too
+perilous even for the hunted criminal; too dreary even for the beggar
+to prefer it to the bare hedge, or the inhospitable porch, beneath
+whose mockery of shelter the frost of winter had so often numbed him
+into sleep.
+
+Thrice did the heavy and silver-headed cane of Mr. Brown resound upon
+the door, over which was a curious carving of a lion dormant, and a
+date, of which only the two numbers 15 were discernable.  Roused by a
+note so unusual, and an apparition so unwontedly smug as the worthy
+Morris, a whole legion of dingy and smoke-dried brats, came trooping
+from the surrounding huts, and with many an elvish cry, and strange
+oath, and cabalistic word, which thrilled the respectable marrow of
+Mr. Brown, they collected in a gaping, and, to his alarmed eye, a
+menacing group, as near to the house as their fears and parents would
+permit them.
+
+"It is very dangerous," thought Mr. Brown, looking shiveringly up at
+the hanging and tottering roof, "and very appalling," as he turned to
+the ragged crowd of infant reprobates which began with every moment to
+increase.  At last he summoned courage, and inquired, in a tone half
+soothing and half dignified, if they could inform him how to obtain
+admittance or how to arouse the inhabitants.
+
+An old crone, leaning out of an opposite window, with matted hair
+hanging over a begrimed and shrivelled countenance, made answer.  "No
+one," she said, in her peculiar dialect, which the worthy man scarcely
+comprehended, "lived there or had done so for years:" but Brown knew
+better; and while he was asserting the fact, a girl put her head out
+of another hovel, and said that she had sometimes seen, at the dusk of
+the evening, a man leave the house, but whether any one else lived in
+it she could not tell.  Again Mr. Brown sounded an alarm, but no
+answer came forth, and in great fear and trembling he applied violent
+hands to the door: it required but little force; it gave way; he
+entered; and, jealous of the entrance of the mob without, reclosed and
+barred, as well as he was able, the shattered door.  The house was
+unnaturally large for the neighbourhood, and Brown was in doubt
+whether first to ascend a broken and perilous staircase or search the
+rooms below: he decided on the latter; he found no one, and with a
+misgiving heart, which nothing but the recollection of the great
+Turkey carpet could have inspired, he ascended the quaking steps.  All
+was silent.  But a door was unclosed.  He entered, and saw the object
+of his search before him.
+
+Over a pallet bent a form, on which, though youth seemed withered and
+even pride broken, the unconquerable soul left somewhat of grace and
+of glory, that sustained the beholder's remembrance of better days; a
+child in its first infancy knelt on the nearer side of the bed with
+clasped hands, and vacant eyes that turned towards the intruder with a
+listless and lacklustre gaze.  But Glendower, or rather Mordaunt, as
+he bent over the pallet, spoke not, moved not: his eyes were riveted
+on one object; his heart seemed turned into stone and his veins
+curdled into ice.  Awed and chilled by the breathing desolation of the
+spot, Brown approached, and spoke he scarcely knew what.  "You are,"
+he concluded his address, "the master of Mordaunt Court; "and he
+placed the letter in the hands of the person he thus greeted.
+
+"Awake, hear me!" cried Algernon to Isabel, as she lay extended on the
+couch; and the messenger of glad tidings, for the first time seeing
+her countenance, shuddered, and knew that he was in the chamber of
+death.
+
+"Awake, my own, own love!  Happy days are in store for us yet: our
+misery is past; you will live, live to bless me in riches, as you have
+done in want."
+
+Isabel raised her eyes to his, and a smile, sweet, comforting, and
+full of love, passed the lips which were about to close forever.
+"Thank Heaven," she murmured, "for your dear sake.  It is pleasant to
+die now, and thus;" and she placed the hand that was clasped in her
+relaxing and wan fingers within the bosom which had been for anguished
+and hopeless years his asylum and refuge, and which now when fortune
+changed, as if it had only breathed in comfort to his afflictions, was
+for the first time and forever to be cold,--cold even to him!
+
+"You will live, you will live," cried Mordaunt, in wild and
+incredulous despair, "in mercy live!  You, who have been my angel of
+hope, do not,--O God, O God! do not desert me now!"
+
+But that faithful and loving heart was already deaf to his voice, and
+the film grew darkening and rapidly over the eye which still with
+undying fondness sought him out through the shade and agony of death.
+Sense and consciousness were gone, and dim and confused images whirled
+round her soul, struggling a little moment before they sank into the
+depth and silence where the past lies buried.  But still mindful of
+him, and grasping, as it were, at his remembrance, she clasped, closer
+and closer, the icy hand which she held, to her breast. "Your hand is
+cold, dearest, it is cold," said she, faintly, "but I will warm it
+here!"  And so her spirit passed away, and Mordaunt felt afterwards,
+in a lone and surviving pilgrimage, that her last thought had been
+kindness to him, and that her last act had spoken forgetfulness even
+of death in the tenderness of love!
+
+
+
+
+
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