Amid the multitude of vices by which his life was so foully stained, and his heart so deplorably corrupted, still there were some traits in his character that strongly demonstrated original nobleness of mind. When brutal passion was not to be gratified, he was feelingly alive to the tale of sorrow, and his purse was ever open to relieve the distressed, and administer comfort to the afflicted. His style of living was proportioned to his ample fortune, and in money matters he was always open, liberal, and generous, sometimes so even to profuse extravagance. But his mind, long neglected and vitiated, was now incapable of entertaining a single virtue, or even a shattered remnant of self-dignity. His disposition became so entirely changed, that the original intention of nature appears to have been inverted. That generosity which formerly excited admiration, gave place to the most niggardly and despicable turn of mind, so that he could not bear the idea of parting with money even to discharge his lawful debts.
Those ephemeral friends to whom crime only had attached him, now treated him with coolness, and in many instances with the most cutting contempt. Despised by all his former acquaintances, both sober and dissipated, he exhibited the melancholy picture of a man possessing an excellent understanding, a mind amply stored with elegant and useful knowledge, and a princely fortune, isolated in the world, and scornfully driven, by the common consent of mankind, from that society of which, had he made a right use of his natural endowments, he would have been a distinguished ornament.
Meanness, marked by dishonesty, was strongly exemplified in his refusing to honour a bill which the unhappy girl he left in Scotland, as he supposed on a death-bed, had drawn to discharge the expense of the lodgings he had procured for her. The physician’s bill, too, he refused to discharge. The poor forsaken creature wrote to him, describing her situation in terms that ought to have moved the most obdurate heart; but his, now completely imbruted, was dead to the description of her misery, and deaf to her entreaties. She wrote again, but he would not pay the postage of her letter. The family in which he had placed her, trusting to the debt thus incurred for the payment of their rent, which they could not in any other way make up, were turned out of doors, and with them the wretched patient, now in the last stage of consumption, without a penny to procure a morsel of bread.
In this deplorable condition, with no shelter but the canopy of heaven, she must have perished, had not the compassion of a poor waggoner been moved and extended to her. Through the means of this humble and humane individual she was enabled to reach London, where languid and sinking she sought the abode of her father, once her happy home, the scene of youthful innocence and joy. But, alas! what a sad change!—No home was there. Her father’s dwelling-house was now a prison! After her elopement he used every possible endeavour to find her out, by which means he incurred expenses, neglected his business, and ultimately became insolvent. The benevolent waggoner did not, however, forsake her: he procured her admission into an hospital, where, within a week, she yielded her last breath.
Despised and detested by all who knew him, F.’s stay in London grew every day more irksome, and he seriously meditated a return to the country, where he could gratify his new grovelling passion for saving money, now indeed his ruling one, though a residence there he knew would compel him occasionally to encounter the reproaches of his amiable mother; and the deadly injury intended for E. made him by no means anxious to come under her indignant glance.
The ancestors of F. had inhabited an elegant mansion for time immemorial, and the eminent virtues by which their lives were distinguished rendered it venerable. This mansion had fallen to him on his uncle’s decease, and thither he determined to repair, and make it his residence in a manner corresponding with the late change in his disposition. He therefore made up his mind to turn hermit, and accordingly disposed of his horses, equipages, and entire establishment; returned to the country, and shut himself up in complete seclusion.
The honour of disgracing the family name, hitherto unsullied, and of polluting this venerable mansion, where his ancestors had long maintained an untainted reputation, was reserved for this their parsimonious representative; nor was he long in a state of inactivity, notwithstanding his mode of life was so different from the splendid hospitality which formerly rendered this residence celebrated.
In a village at a short distance lived the widow of a medical gentleman, with three daughters, the eldest of whom was “not quite twenty.” This interesting family managed to live genteelly and comfortably on a small annuity, until the arrival of F., whose pestilential influence proved as destructive, and almost as widely diffused, as the fabulous accounts of privileged travellers represent that of the Upas tree.
It would be horrible and inexpressibly painful to describe the arts he used to ensnare these innocent, industrious and unsuspecting females. In somewhat less than thirteen months he plunged them into guilt and misery, and kept them all living in his house at the same time! His next triumph was over the daughter of a clergyman, for whom he succeeded in procuring a living in the neighbourhood, to enable him the more easily to execute his infamous designs against innocence and peace.
The facility with which the ruin of these four young women was accomplished, encouraged him to make another attack on the much injured E., an attempt which must certainly be considered as a master-piece of impudence and hardened villainy, inasmuch as he endeavoured to make his mother an efficient agent in the destruction of her beloved and amiable young friend. He wrote a long letter to his mother, expressing penitence and remorse for his former behaviour to E., with an anxious desire to make all the reparation he could; and finally, that, if she could forgive him, he was ready to marry her when and where she pleased.