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The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

T >> Thomas Holcroft >> The Adventures of Hugh Trevor




There was an emanating fervor in the look, deportment, and the very
gestures, of Mr. Evelyn that was irresistible. It surpassed his
language. It led me out of myself. It hurried me beyond the narrow
limits of prejudices and prepossessions, and transported me wherever
it pleased. I was no longer in mortal society; surrounded by
selfishness, cunning, and cowardly suspicions. He had borne me on his
wings, and seated me among the Gods; whose ministers were wisdom and
beneficence. I burst into exclamation.

'I own it, you are my friend! you are my brother! I accept your
offers, I will receive your benefits, but I will retaliate.'

I paused. I felt the egotism of my own thoughts, but could not subdue
the torrent. I continued inwardly to vow, with the most vehement
asseverations, that I would repay every mark of kindness he should
bestow fifty fold. The heart of man will not rest satisfied with
inferiority, and has recourse to a thousand stratagems, a thousand
deceptions, to relieve itself of any such doubts; which it entertains
with impatience, and pain.

My own enthusiasm however was soon inclined to subside; and I became
ready to tax myself with that meanness and degradation which I had
felt, and expressed, at the beginning of the discussion. Of this
the quick penetration of Mr. Evelyn seemed to be aware; and he so
effectually counteracted these emotions that, at length, I abandoned
all thoughts of resistance; or of betraying those jealousies which
would now have appeared almost insulting, to a man who had displayed a
spirit so disinterested.

This subject being as it were dismissed, our conversation recurred to
my present affairs, and future prospects; and, while we discoursed on
these, that which might well at this period be called the malady of my
mind exhibited itself. Though I had as it were lost sight of Olivia,
though I knew not but she might at that time be a wife, and though,
whatever her condition might be, I had sufficient reason to fear that
if she thought of me it was with pain, not with love, still that she
must and should be mine was a kind of frantic conclusion with which
I always consoled myself. But for this purpose riches presented
themselves as of the first necessity; and riches themselves would be
useless, unless obtained with the rapidity rather of enchantment than
by the ordinary progress of human events.

I did not conceal this weakness from my friend, and ventured to
propose a plan on which I had previously been ruminating; though I
had foreseen no means of putting it in practice. Every man had heard
of the fortunes acquired in the east, and of the wealth which had been
poured from the lap of India. The army there was at all times open
to men like myself; youthful, healthy, and of education. 'Tis true I
had been of opinion that there were strong moral objections to this
profession: but these my more prevalent passions had lulled me into a
forgetfulness of, and I stated this as the most probable scheme for
the accomplishment of my dearest hopes.

Mr. Evelyn, anxious not to wound me where I was most vulnerable,
began by soothing my ruling passion; and then proceeded to detail the
physical chances of a ruined constitution, of death, and of failure;
and afterward to represent, with unassuming but with stedfast energy,
the moral turpitude first of subjecting myself to the physical evils
he had recited, and next of hiring myself to enmity against nations
I had never known, and of becoming the assassin of people whom I had
never seen, and who had not had any possible opportunity of doing me
an injury, or even of giving me an offence.

The objections I started, partly to defend the opinions I had begun
with, and partly because I felt myself loth to relinquish a plan by
which my imagination had been flattered, soon became very feeble: but
the interesting nature of the subject prolonged the discussion till it
was nearly dinner time.

In the course of this enquiry, Mr. Evelyn delineated the contemptible
yet ridiculous arts which are employed to entrap men into the military
service; pourtrayed the inevitable depravity of their morals, and gave
a history of the feelings worthy of fiends which are engendered, while
they are trained to fix their bayonets, load their pieces, level them,
discharge them at men they had never seen before, strike off the heads
of these strangers with furious dexterity, stab the ground in full
gallop on which they are supposed to have fallen and to lie helpless,
and commit habitual and innumerable murders in imagination, that they
may be hardened for actual slaughter.

He afterward gave an enlightened and animated sketch of the abject
condition of those who command these men, of the total resignation
which each makes of his understanding to that of the next in rank
above him, and of the arrogant, the ignorant, the turbulent, the
dangerous and the slavish spirit which this begets. He finished the
picture with a recapitulation of the innumerable and horrid miseries
which everlastingly mark the progress of war; which he painted with
such force and truth that I recoiled from the contemplation of it with
abhorrence.

My feelings had been so agitated by this discourse that my imagination
was thoroughly rouzed. My former ideas, concerning the enormous vices
of war, had not only been revived but increased; and, though I began
with debating the question, I soon ceased to oppose: so that my
thoughts were rather busied in filling up the picture, and collecting
all its horrors, than in apologizing for or denying their existence.
This was the temper of mind in which Mr. Evelyn, attending to his
own concerns, left me for a short time; and my heart was so agonized
by the recollection that this was a system to which men were still
devoted, and of which they were still in the headlong and hot pursuit,
that I then immediately, and perhaps with less effort than I ever made
on a similar occasion, produced the following poem:

THE HERO

All hail to the hero whom victory leads,
Triumphant, from fields of renown!
From kingdoms left barren! from plains drench'd in blood!
And the sacking of many a fair town!

His gore-dripping sword shall hang high in the hall;
Revered for the havoc it spread!
For the deaths it has dealt! for the terrors it struck!
And the torrents of blood it has shed!

His banners in haughty procession shall ride,
On Jehovah's proud altars unfurl'd!
While anthems and priests waft to heaven his praise,
For the slaughter and wreck of a world!

Though widows and orphans together shall crowd,
To gaze as at heaven's dread rod,
And mutter their curses, and mingle their tears,
Invoking the vengeance of God:

Though, while bloated Revelry roars at his board,
Where surfeiting hecatombs fume,
Desolation and Famine shall howl, and old Earth
Her skeleton hordes shall intomb:

All ghastly and mangled, from fields where they fell,
With horrible groanings and cries,
What though, when he slumbers, the dead from their graves
In dread visitation shall rise:

Yet he among heroes exalted shall sit;
And slaves to his splendor shall bend;
And senates shall echo his virtues; and kings
Shall own him their saviour, and friend!

Then hail to the hero whom victory leads,
Triumphant, from fields of renown!
From kingdoms left barren! from plains drench'd in blood!
And the sacking of many a fair town!

I was too full of my subject, and poet like too much delighted with
the verses I had so suddenly produced, not to shew them immediately to
Mr. Evelyn.

He seemed to do them even more than justice: he read them again
and again, and each time with a feeling now of compassion, now of
amazement, and now of horror, that shewed how strongly the picture had
seized upon his soul. The associations of misery which his imagination
added were so forcible that tears repeatedly rolled down his cheeks.
To this more soothing trains of thought succeeded. The pain of the
past and the present was alleviated by a prospect of futurity. Our
minds rose to a state of mutual rapture, excited by a foresight
that the time was at length come in which men were awakening to a
comprehensive view of their own mad and destructive systems; that
their vices began to be on the decline and no longer to be mistaken
for the most splendid virtues, as they had formerly been; and that
truth was breaking forth upon the world with most animating force and
vigour.

There have been few moments of my life in which I have experienced
intellectual enjoyment with a pleasure so exquisite. Clarke himself,
unused as his thoughts had been to explore the future and wrest
happiness to themselves by anticipation, partook of our emotions; and
seemed in a state similar to those religious converts who imagine they
feel that a new light is broke in upon them. It was a happy afternoon!
It was a type of those which shall hereafter be the substitutes of
the wretched resources of drinking, obscene conversation, and games
of chance, to which men have had recourse that they might rouze their
minds: being rather willing to suffer the extremes of misery than that
dullness, and inanity, which they find still more insupportable.

This incident united me and Mr. Evelyn more intimately, and
powerfully, than all that had passed. The warmth with which he spoke,
of the benefits that society must receive from talents like mine,
dilated my heart. Every man is better acquainted with his own powers
and virtues than any other can possibly be; and, when they are
discovered, acknowledged, and applauded, instead of being denied or
overlooked as is more generally the case, the pleasure he receives is
as great as it is unusual.

Our conversation after dinner reverted to the plans I was to pursue.
The law necessarily came under consideration; and Mr. Evelyn, not
having considered the subject under the same points of view as Turl
had done, was strongly in favour of that profession. He foresaw in
me a future Judge, whose integrity should benefit and whose wisdom
should enlighten mankind. He conceived there could be no function more
honourable, more sacred, or more beneficial. An upright judge, with
his own passions and prejudices subdued, attentive to the principles
of justice by which alone the happiness of the world can be promoted,
and by the rectitude of his decisions affording precedent and example
to future generations, he considered as a character that must command
the reverence and love of the human race.

My imagination while he spoke was not idle. I helped to fill up the
picture. It placed me on the judgment seat. It gave me the penetration
of Solomon, the benevolence of Zaleucus, and the legislative soul of
Alfred. As usual, it overstepped the probable with wonderful ease and
celerity. Not only the objections of Turl disappeared, but the jargon
of the law, its voluminous lumber with which I had been disgusted
when reading the civilians at college, and all my other doubts and
disgusts, vanished.

Our inquiries accordingly ended with a determination that I should
continue my journey to town, should keep my terms at the Temple, and
should place myself, as is customary, under one of the most eminent
barristers.

This necessarily brought me to consider the expence; and the moment
that subject recurred I felt all the pain which could not but assault
a mind like mine. I had nurtured, not only the haughtiness of
independance, but the supposition that, in my own extraordinary powers
and gifts, I possessed innumerable resources; and, at moments, had
encouraged those many extravagant flights with which the reader is
already well acquainted.

However, after all that had passed, and for the reasons that had been
sufficiently urged, I found it necessary to submit: though by the
concession my soul seemed to be subdued, and its faculties to be
shrunk and half withered. It was an oppressive sensation that could
not be shaken off, yet that must be endured. Such at least was my
present conclusion.

In the course of the evening, Mr. Evelyn at my request stated his
reasons for pursuing his own course of studies; and instanced a
variety of facts which convinced me of the benefits to be derived
from the science of surgery, of the rash conclusions to which modern
theorists and enquirers have been led, and of the necessity there is
that some practitioner, equally well informed with themselves but
aware of the evil of false deductions, should demonstrate the mischief
of hasty assertion, and that things which are only conjectural ought
not to be given as indubitable.

Of this nature he considered their hypotheses relating to the
brain, the nervous system, the lymphatic fluid, and other subjects;
concerning which many curious but hitherto equivocal facts have been
the discovery of modern research.

Mr. Evelyn not only read all the best authors, but went to London,
every winter, and assiduously maintained an intercourse with the most
able men, attended their lectures, was present at their operations,
and fully informed himself of their differences both in opinion and
practice.

But his frame was delicate, a too long abode in London always
occasioned pulmonary symptoms, and experience taught him that his
native air was more healthful and animating than any other. The
difficulties attending his studies were greatly increased by his
residence in the country; but they were surmounted by his precaution,
and by the general favour which his benevolence secured to him among
the neighbouring people. Though there were not wanting some who
considered him as a very strange, if not a dangerous and a wicked,
man.

It is curious yet an astonishing and an afflicting speculation that
men should be most prone to suspect, and hate, those who are most
unwearied in endeavouring to remove their evils. That a surgeon
must be acquainted with the direction, site, and properties, of the
muscles, arteries, ligaments, nerves, and other parts, before he
can cut the living body with the least possible injury, and that
this knowledge can only be acquired by experience, is a very plain
proposition. It is equally self-evident that a dead body is no longer
subject to pain; and that it certainly cannot be more disgraced by the
knife of a surgeon than by the gnawing of worms. When will men shake
off their infantine terrors, and their idiot-like prepossessions?




CHAPTER X


_The departure: Ejaculations: Present pleasures and future hopes: A
strange dialogue in the dark; and a generous and beautiful defender_


The pleasure I this day received in the company of Mr. Evelyn was
uncommon, the friendship with which he had inspired me was pure,
and the respect that my heart paid to his virtues was profound. But
eagerness of pursuit was my characteristic. My plan being formed,
every moment of delay would have been torment; and he, entering into
all my thoughts and sympathising with all my wishes, prompted me to
follow my bent. It was therefore agreed that I and my companion should
depart by one of the coaches which would pass an inn at some distance
in the morning. A messenger was accordingly dispatched to take places
in the first vacant coach, arrangements for money-matters were made
with every possible delicacy by my friend, the night passed away, day
returned, and we departed.

I will leave the reader to image to himself the crowding sensations
that pressed upon my heart on this occasion, the tumult of thought
which incidents so sudden and unexpected produced, and the feelings
which mutually passed between me and my noble benefactor. I shall
live, said I, to acknowledge this in my old age. I shall have a story
to tell, a man to describe, and a friend to revere, that will astonish
and render common hearers incredulous. But this was the language of my
heart: not of my tongue. That was dumb. A pressure of the hand, with
eyes averted, was all the utterance I had.

A child and its mother were the only passengers beside ourselves. The
coach, which was to be in London at ten that night, rolled along, they
were asleep, I was silent, and poor Clarke was full of ejaculation.

'If there be a good man on God's earth, that gentleman is one! He will
find his road to heaven safe enough! He will be among the sheep, and
sit on the right hand of God! I hope I shall be in his company! Though
that can't be. I am unworthy. I may think myself happy to sit far
enough lower down. Not that I can say; for I find the best people have
the least pride. Perhaps as it is in earth so it may be in heaven.
God send us all safe there together! For my part, I think that within
these few weeks I am a different kind of a creature. But what can a
poor carpenter do? He must not speak to gentlefolk, unless in the
way of his work: so he can have no sociability, but with his poor
neighbours. And though some of them to be sure be as good-meaning
people as any on earth, they are no better learned than himself: so
they can teach him nothing. But I have happened on good luck, so I
have no right to complain. And I am very sure, in my own mind, that
there is good luck in store for us all: for providence else would not
have brought us and guided us where it did, by such marvellous means;
so that, while we thought we were breaking our necks and falling into
the hands of murderers, and being frightened out of our senses by the
most shocking sights I must say that ever were seen, we were all the
while going straight on as fast as we could to good fortune! So that
it is true enough that man is blind, but that God can see.'

What pleasure does the mind of man take in solving all its
difficulties! How impatient is it that any thing should remain
unexplained; and how ready to elevate its own ignorance into mystery
and miracle!

To have remained longer silent, while the honest heart of my companion
was thus overflowing with kindness, would have been no proof of the
same excellent and winning quality in myself. I encouraged his hopes,
in which I was very ready to participate. My own pleasing dreams
revived in full force; and I presently ranged my cloud-constructed
castles, which I built, pulled down and rebuilt with admirable
facilty, and lorded it over my airy domains at will. 'Tis a folly to
rail at these domains: for there are no earthly abodes that are half
so captivating.

Nothing worth mentioning happened on the road till we came to the
last stage but one, where we changed horses; at which time it was
quite dark. Our female companion and her child had been set down at
Hungerford; and two new passengers, both ladies, as soon as the horses
were put to, were shewn to the carriage.

They had a footman, who mounted the box; and we soon learned from
their discourse that they had been waiting for the nephew of the elder
lady, who was to have taken them in his phæton, but that they had
been disappointed. They had been on a visit, and had been brought to
Salt-hill in a gentleman's carriage; which they had sent back. While
the coach had stopped, I had fallen into a doze; but awoke when
it began to move again, and when I heard the voices of females
conversing.

The old lady spoke most, and complained of the rudeness of her nephew
in subjecting them to the inconvenience of a stage-coach, or of
waiting they knew not how long till post-horses should come in, which
as they were informed would be tired and unfit for more work: it
happening that there was a great run at that time on the Bath road.

The reader will presently understand that they were people of real
fashion; and the eldest lady spoke of persons and things which denoted
that high life was familiar to her. This gave Clarke a new opportunity
of wondering how he, a poor carpenter, came into such company: which
he directly expressed to me, with the simplicity and undisguise that
are common to such characters.

The old lady, who had before signified her chagrin at the expedient
to which her nephew had reduced her, did not find her pride soothed
when she learned that she was in company with carpenters: for it
soon appeared that she considered me and my companion as familiar
acquaintances of the same rank.

Her young friend was likewise led into this error; and, when the
former began to express her disgust too freely to accord with the
feelings of the latter, she interrupted her with saying '_Ayez la
bonté, madame, de parler François_? 'Be kind enough, madam, to speak
French.'

The old lady complied; and a conversation ensued which certainly will
neither surprise nor move the reader so much as it did me. Should
he ask how I, as a man of honor, could suffer them to remain in the
deception of imagining I did not understand them, let him wait till
he knows enough to surmise what the emotions were that were in a
moment kindled in my bosom. At first, indeed, they were but dark and
improbable conjectures: but, dark as they were, they shook my whole
frame.

The dialogue that ensued soon testified that the old lady was in no
very complacent temper of mind. Her beginning sentences expressed
dissatisfaction, were sarcastic, and evidently glanced at her young
companion, whose replies were mild and conciliating. But, not
satisfied with indirect reproach, her assailant, still speaking
French, continued her interrogatories to the following effect.

'And are you still determined, Miss, to persist in your obstinate
refusal of his lordship?'

'Let me intreat you, dear madam, not to enter on that subject again.'

'Oh, to be sure! You very kindly intreat me to torment myself as much
as I please, so that I do not trouble you!'

'How can you, madam, accuse me of such cruelty? Is it just? Am I
indeed of such a nature?'

'Yes, indeed are you, Miss: however you may flatter yourself. It is
nothing but perversity that can make you trifle with the honor and
happiness of your family--Now you are silent! Your fine spirit no
doubt disdains to reply!'

'What can I say?'

'Say that you are a headstrong girl; acknowledge your fault, and
consent to be the wife of a peer--Silent again!'

'I could wish, madam, not to make you more angry.'

'No, indeed; there is no occasion for that! You have been doing
nothing else for many weeks past. For my part, I cannot conceive what
your objection can be! Had that desperado been living, for whom since
his death you have acknowledged what you call your weak prepossession,
I should have known very well to what cause to attribute your
stubbornness: but, as it is, I cannot conceive either your motives or
your meaning. Nothing however is to be wondered at, in a young lady
of your character. No prudent person would have dared to indulge a
thought in favour of a mad adventurer, whose actions were as rash as
they were insolent, whose family was mean yet had dared to oppose
and even make ridiculous attempts to rival that from which you are
descended, and who yet was himself an outcast of that family.'

'It is cruel, madam, to disturb the ashes of the dead!'

This was the first word of retort that had escaped the chidden
sufferer; and this was uttered in a voice half suffocated with
passion.

'Cruel, indeed! Every thing is cruel that contradicts the wishes of
young ladies, whose melting tenderness is ruinous to themselves and to
every body that ought to be most dear to them.'

'You must pardon me, madam, for again and again repeating, in my own
defence, that there is no part of my conduct which can justify such an
accusation.'

'How, Miss! Is an avowed partiality for a fortune-hunter no proof? Is
it no stain on the character of a modern young lady? Is it no insult
to her family?'

'It was a partiality which had never been avowed, till death had put
an end to hope. It was produced and counteracted by very extraordinary
circumstances: but, however strong it might be at some moments, which
I acknowledge it was, for I disdain falsehood, it was not indulged. I
needed no monitor to shew me there were too many reasons why it ought
not to be.'

'I have not patience. A runagate! A vagabond! A gambler! A prize
fighter! One of the lowest and most contemptible of adventurers!
who had betrayed his patrons, who had flown in the face of his
benefactors, who was capable of every kind of malice and mischief, and
who had not a single virtue!'

'Madam, I cannot listen to such an assertion as that, however I may
offend you, without continually protesting it is unfounded; and that
you have been greatly misinformed. I scorn to apologise for his
mistakes: but I know that he had virtues which those who have given
you this character of him are never likely to possess. How he could be
guilty of the crimes of which he has been accused I cannot conceive.
Even when a boy, I have heard him express sentiments which I shall
never forget; and which have since been confirmed by his actions. You
were acquainted with none of them. You speak from report; and from
report which I am sure was false, and wicked. His heart I know to have
been compassionate, his principles such as no mean mind could have
conceived, and his courage blameably great; though it saved my life.
[Tears half choaked her utterance.] But for him I should have been
where he now is: a different train of events might have taken place,
and he perhaps might have been living. I owe him my life, and you must
forgive me if I cannot sit patiently and hear his memory traduced
without the least occasion: for, [Her sobbing could not be stifled.]
since he is dead, you can no longer think him dangerous.'

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