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The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

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




Here then, in a moment, the enigma was solved. The peer who had
aspired to the hand of Olivia, and who tempted her with all his
opulence and all his dignity, could be no other than Lord Idford. He
had long been intimate with Hector, and now comes without ceremony and
joins the family. See how the aunt smiles on him! Nay, mark! Olivia
is attentive to him! Her lips move! Her eyes are directed to his! She
is conversing with him, and at her ease, while I am racked by all the
terrors that jealousy can raise! What, can she not cast one look this
way? Is she fascinated by a reptile? Is there no instinctive sympathy,
that should make her tremble to betray the dearest interests of love
in the very presence of the lover! Does she act complacency, and sit
calm and unruffled! Has she no foreboding that I will dart upon that
insect; that thing; which, being less than man, presumes because it
is called Lord! Thinks she that I will not crush, tear, tread, him to
dust? He, the defrauder of my fair fame, who plundered me of the first
fruits of genius by infamous falsehood, who joined in plotting my
destruction by arts which the basest cowards blush at! Is he the fiend
that comes to snatch me from bliss; and plunge me into pangs and
horrors unutterable?

From these ravings of the mind I was a little recovered, by the very
serious alarm which the wild changes of my countenance produced in
Lady Bray. I apologised, pleaded indisposition, but presently was
lost again in revery. Fortunately, a gentleman of her ladyship's
acquaintance came into the box, and left me to continue my embittered
meditations.

Olivia was now attentive to the music; and the lord had only her aunt
and Hector, apparently, to bestow his conversation upon.

This was some relief; and so far allayed the fever of my mind as to
call me back to self examination, and to question my own conduct.

For the earl I could not but have the most rooted contempt. I could
not compare myself with him, and entertain a doubt, concerning who
ought to be preferred.

But what reason had I to accuse Olivia? What did these angry emotions
of my soul forebode? Perhaps that my habitual irritability, were she
mine, would make her miserable!

What was the end of existence? Happiness. Had I not a right then to be
happy? Yes. But so had she. So had her aunt. Nay so had that rival,
odious and despicable as he was, whose appearance had raised this
tempest in my soul.

But was constraint, was force, justifiable in this aunt; or in this
insignificant, this selfish lord?

Force it is said is the law of nature; and it is that law which impels
the ravenous tiger to spring upon the lamb, and suck its blood, to
appease his craving appetite. But, if so, if self-gratification were
a defensible motive, the detestable Norman robber, the monster who
inhabited a cave and seized on every stray virgin, to deflower, murder
her and prey on her remains, was justifiable.

In the agitated mind, dreams like these are endless. While they were
passing, I stared with fixed attention toward Olivia; and, had she not
been almost motionless, my passive trances could not have continued.

The first dance was over, the second act had begun, more visitors came
to pay their respects to Lady Bray, and I endeavoured to recollect
myself and shake off a behaviour that might well be construed
inattention, if not ill manners; and might injure me even in that
point on which I was then so deeply intent. I uttered two or three
sentences; and her ladyship complimented me on being once more awake.

The persevering attention of Olivia to the scene, for it was
impossible to forbear glancing at her every moment, contributed to
calm my fears.

It did more: it was a most beneficial lesson to me. It called me
again to the consideration of that impetuosity of temper which was so
dangerous in me. Into what acts of frenzy and desperation might not
these fevers of the soul hurry me? What in the present instance could
I urge to justify such excess? Had I not heard the reproaches of her
aunt for her having refused the hand of this Lord: if this Lord it
should happen to be? When he entered the box, what had she done, that
should excite such frantic ecstacies in me? What, except return those
civilities without which it is impossible for man or woman to be
amiable? Did she now coquet, prattle, and display her power; tempted
as she was by such a public scene of triumph? Was not her demeanour as
chastely cautious as my own exigent heart could desire?

Every question that the facts before me suggested was an aggravating
reproof of my headlong passions; and, luckily for me, my thoughts took
that train which was most corrective and healthful. They led me too
to dwell, with a melting and mild rapture, on the endearing virtues
of Olivia: dignified, yet not austere; firm, yet not repulsive;
circumspect, yet capable of all those flowing affections without which
circumspection is but meanness.

Nor were these visionary attributes: such as the disordered
imagination of a lover falsely bestows. They were as real as those
personal beauties by which they were embellished.

To aspire to the possession of a woman so gifted, and to be the
lunatic which my own reproaches at this moment pictured me, was to
demand that which I did not deserve. To be worthy of her, it was fit I
should resemble her.

I endeavoured to obey these admonitions. I schooled myself, concerning
my remissness to Lady Bray. I recovered my temper, became attentive,
talked rather pleasantly, and re-established myself in her good
graces: in which I could perceive I had somewhat declined, by the
folly of my behaviour. To remind the reader on every occasion of the
progress of intellect, and the benefits derived from experience, would
be to weary his patience, insult his understanding, and counteract
my own intentions. It would suppose in him a total absence of
observation, and reasoning. Yet to be entirely silent might lead the
young, and the inattentive, to imagine I had in the beginning proposed
a mode of instruction which, as I proceeded, I had either forgotten,
abandoned, or had not the power to execute. If such will attend to the
alteration in my conduct, they will perceive that I, like every other
human being, could not but reflect more or less on the motives that
actuated me; and profit by the lessons I received: though rooted
habits and violent passions were the most difficult to cure.

After the curtain dropped, I accompanied Lady Bray into the great
room; and perceived among the throng, at some little distance, Olivia,
and her aunt, attended by the peer.

I had foreseen the possibility of this; and had reasoned that there
might be more danger in an abrupt rencontre, of this kind, than in
meeting Olivia and her terrible aunt at the house of Lady Bray's
friend, as her ladyship had promised me; where I should receive her
countenance, and that of the family to which I should be introduced.
I therefore endeavoured to direct her ladyship's attention from the
place where the Mowbray party was, and succeeded in my endeavours.

Soon afterward, I saw Hector, with a knot of fashionable youths;
among whom I was rather surprised to discover my at that time unknown
father-in-law, Belmont.

I had no inclination to be noticed by this groupe; and, as Lady Bray's
carriage was presently afterward _stopping the way_, I had the good
fortune to escape unperceived, or at least unaccosted, by both
parties.




CHAPTER VII


_A debt discharged: A tavern dinner and a dissertation: The man of the
world ridiculing the man of virtue: or, is honesty the best policy?
Fools pay for being flattered: Security essential to happiness: A
triumphant retort, and difficult to be answered: Vice inevitable,
under a vitiated system: A dangerous attack: or an exhibition of one
of the principal arts of a gambler: A few cant phrases_


To the friendship of Mr. Evelyn I had so far subjected myself and the
spirit of independence which I was very properly ambitious to cherish
as, for the present, to accept the aid he was so desirous to bestow.
I was something like compelled to be his debtor, but was unwilling to
be the debtor of any other man on earth; and, as he had enabled me to
appear in the style I have described, and furnished me with money, I
was determined to seek out Belmont, and discharge the debt which his
bounty had conferred; after he had previously plundered me, at Bath.
He had sunk in my esteem: I now considered him as a professed gambler:
but I remembered this action as that which it really was; an effort of
benevolence, to aid a human being in distress.

Thus actuated, I went the next day to the billiard-table which he had
been accustomed to frequent; where I once more found him at play. He
met me not only unabashed, but with something like cordiality. He had
so accustomed himself to his own hypothesis, that 'self-gratification
is the law of nature,' and had so confused a sense of what true
self-gratification is, with such an active faculty of perverting facts
and exhibiting pictures of general turpitude, that he had very little
sense of the vice of his own conduct; and was therefore very little
subject to self-reproof. He behaved to me with the utmost ease and
good humour; and, when his match was over, proposed that we should
dine together at the Thatched-house.

For a moment, I questioned the propriety of assenting: but, seeing him
now as before familiar with the officers of the guards, and people of
whose company no one was ashamed, and recollecting where and how I had
seen him the evening before, I did not long hesitate. Beside which, I
was prompted, not only by the pleasure which his conversation gave,
but by an increase of curiosity to be better acquainted with who and
what he really was.

As soon as we were alone, I discharged my conscience by repaying him
the twenty pounds. This gave occasion to the following dialogue.

'I perceive, Trevor, you are still the same. You pique yourself on
paying your borrowings. Had it been a debt of honour indeed, I should
not have been surprised: for those are debts that must be discharged.
Otherwise, it would introduce a very inconvenient practice indeed.'

'I believe, as you say, it would be inconvenient beyond description
to you--What do you call yourselves?--Oh! I recollect: "sporting
gentlemen" is the phrase. It would be inconvenient I say, to you
sporting gentlemen.'

'Whom, when we sporting gentlemen are absent, you call blacklegs,
rooks, Grecians, and other pleasant epithets. Some such word, I could
perceive, was quivering on your tongue. You remember the plucking
you had at Bath; and, though you are too much ashamed of having been
duped to mention it, yet it remains on your mind with a feeling of
resentment. That is natural: but it is foolish.'

'Is it foolish to have a sense of right and wrong?'

'Where is that sense to be found? Who has it? I have continually a
sense, if so you please to call it, that there is something which I
want; and by that I am impelled to act.'

'True. But Locke, I think, tells us that crime consists in not taking
sufficient time to consider, before we act.'

'And, begging his pardon, wise as in a certain sense I allow you this
Locke was, in the instance you have cited, he was an ass. If I do
not mistake, he has before proved to me that I cannot act without a
motive; and then he bids me stop when I am in such a hurry that no
motive occurs to my memory.'

'According to this, an actual murderer is not a more guilty man than
he who only dreams that he commits murder?'

'Make what you will of the inference, but it is accurate. They are
both dead asleep, to any ideas except those that hurry them forward.'

'That is, in plain English, there is no such thing as vice.'

'Might you not as well have said as virtue?'

'Speaking absolutely, I do not pretend to deny what you assert. But
you will not tell me that the man who robs me, and leaves me bound to
a tree in danger of starving, has not done me an injury?'

'Will you be kind enough to shew me who it is, among those who have
any thing to lose, that does not rob? Men who enjoy the pleasures of
life rob those who are deprived of them of their due; and, according
to my apprehension, the latter have a right to make reprisals.'

'Upon my soul, Belmont, you have a most inveterate habit of
confounding every thing that should guide and regulate mankind.
You shift the question, confound terms, and are the most desperate
gladiator of vice I ever encountered. Your dangerous genius is a mine;
where the ore is rich indeed, but the poisonous vapour that envelopes
it deadly.'

'Each to his system. We have both the voyage of life to make. You
place that very sober and discreet person called Honesty at the helm;
by the single direction of whom you expect to attain happiness: which
is just as rational as to hope to circumnavigate the globe with one
wind. I take a different course: it is my maxim to shift my sails, and
steer as pleasure and interest bid.'

'Acting as you do, I cannot wonder that you should make a jest of
honesty.'

'Upon my honour I treated Sir Honesty with every possible decorum,
till I found that the insidious rascal was making a jest of me. Not
that I am quite certain I am not more truly the friend of this very
respectable person than those who pretend they are always in his
company; for I neither cant with Madam Morality nor pray with Dame
Methodism: though I cannot but think I am almost as religious, as
moral, ay and as charitable too, as your devotees and sabbath-keepers;
who go to church to pray and be saved, and leave their servants to
stay at home, roast the meat and be damned.'

'I must again repeat, you have the most active fertility at embroiling
all order and system I have any where met with.'

'Ha, ha, ha! Order and system are very pretty words. But you make a
small mistake. It is not I that embroil. I find confusion already
established; and, since I cannot correct it, give me a reason why I
ought not to profit by the chaotic hubbub?'

'But I say you can correct it. You are one of the men who might have
been best fitted for the task.'

'I know not what I might have been: but I feel that I am not. The
first right of man, ay and, to talk in your own idiom, the first moral
duty too, is to be happy; and he is an idiot that, having a banquet
spread before him, forbears to taste because he himself is not the
purveyor. What matters it to me how it came there? Why am I to be
excluded? Have I not as exquisite a relish as he that provided for the
bill of fare?

'Let dull fools puzzle their brain concerning moral fitness, which
they have not elevation enough of mind to understand; give me
enjoyment.

'Let me eat the pine apple while they are discussing the moral fitness
of feasting on such luxuries.'

'This doctrine would subject the world to your appetites and
pleasures.'

'And is not that a noble doctrine? It is the wish and passion of the
world to be gulled; and gulled let it be. Let it have its enjoyments;
give me mine.

'One man is my banker, and is assiduously careful to keep cash at
my command; which he transfers to me in the most gentleman-like and
honourable manner imaginable: namely, by a box and dice.

'Another is my steward; and he lays out my grounds, stocks my park
with deer, builds me palaces, erects me hot-houses, and torments
heaven and earth to furnish my table with delicacies; for all of
which I pay him in the current coin of flattery. It is true I permit
him to call these things his own: but the real enjoyment of them is
notoriously mine. He, poor egotist, talks bombast and nonsense by
wholesale. I applaud and smile at his folly; while he imagines it is
at his wit. The poor man is amused with fine speeches, unsubstantial
flatteries, cringes, bows, and hypocritical tokens of servility; which
are so many jests upon him.

'Thus is he mocked with the shadow, while I banquet upon the
substance. I bask in arbours and groves, without once having given
myself a thought concerning planting or pruning. I feast on the fish,
without so much as the trouble of catching them; and still less of
constructing the pond. By the provision he makes, that is, by avarice
and extortion, he nurtures a brood of sycophants and slaves. Wife,
children, friends, servants, all have the same character, only
differently shaded: except that, if any of them can become his tyrants
and tormentors, they all are ready for the task. I have studied the
noble arts both of tickling and tormenting: by which I have subjected
this very self-important race to my will and pleasure.'

'For a man whose acuteness has carried him so very far, I am amazed
that it did not impel him to advance one step farther. Happiness is
what I and all men desire, as certainly as you do: but that happiness
is of a strange kind, and held by a frail and feeble tenure, that is
agitated by innumerable fears: that, if the means on which it depends
be detected, is wholly destroyed; and that, when lost, finds infamy
and misery its certain substitutes.

'Mark what I say; and mark it deeply. There can be no happiness
without security; and there can be no security without sincerity.
Therefore, hypocrites, of every class, are acting contrary to their
own intentions. They are providing misery for themselves, as well as
for others: instead of the substantial pleasures of which they are in
search.'

'Indeed? The Lord have mercy then upon all establishments: legal,
political, and ecclesiastic!'

'Let me farther observe to you that the system of general enjoyment,
which you propose, is something, if I may so call it, more than
rational: it is dignified; it is sublime. I feel with you that he is
a poor circumscribed egotist, who can enjoy nothing but that which he
calls his own. Let me taste every blessing which the hand of nature
presents: let me banquet with you on her bounties: but let me not
embitter the delicious repast by fraud, that enslaves me to an eternal
watchfulness; depredation, that puts even my life in jeopardy; and a
system founded in lies, and everlastingly haunted by the spectres of
self-contempt.'

Our dialogue was interrupted, by the entrance of the waiters.

When we had dined, Belmont began to enquire concerning my prospects
and affairs.

'I expect,' said he, 'you will be less communicative and open hearted,
now, than you formerly were. You have discovered, what I never
attempted to conceal, that my present dependence is on the exercise of
talents which your gravity despises: especially since they have laid
you under contribution. This misfortune however, had you possessed
them, despicable as they are, you would have escaped.'

'Yes: just as the man, who hanged himself last night, escaped a
head-ache this morning. I will own to you I cannot take the pleasure
in your company, or think of you with that friendship, which I
formerly felt: for, though I find your conversation no less animating,
like strong liquors, it leaves an unwholesome heat behind.

'However, I have no objection to inform you that fortune has given me
a momentary respite from persecution. How soon she may think proper
to stretch me on the rack again is more than I can foresee: though I
greatly suspect her of cruelty and caprice. She seems at present to be
in one of her best humours; and has given me a kind of promise to make
me one of the sage legislators of this happy land.'

'What do you mean?'

'That I shall be a member of the new parliament.'

Belmont burst into a violent fit of laughter. At first, I was at a
loss to conjecture why; and especially why it should be so long, and
so unaffected: but I soon learned it was a burst of triumph, which he
could not restrain.

'I congratulate you, Mr. Trevor,' said he, with a momentary gravity,
'on your noble and moral pursuits!--The lecture you have been reading,
as well as those I have formerly heard you read, now come upon me with
invincible force!--There is no resisting precept thus exemplified
by practice!--How loud, how lofty, how sovereign, is the contempt
in which you hold hypocrisy!--How severe will the laws be that you
will enact, against petty depredators!--I foresee you will hang,
not only those that handle a card, or a dice-box, but, those that
make them.--Then what honours, what rewards, what triumphs, will
you decree to your own wholesale marauders! your great captains;
chosen, empowered and paid by yourself and sages no less moral and
disinterested!--With what gusto will you send him to swing who commits
a single robbery: and with what sublime oratory will you exalt the
prowess of the man who has plundered, starved, and exterminated
nations--"A Daniel come to judgment! Oh wise young judge, how do I
honor thee!"

I remained speechless, a few moments; and entirely disconcerted. I was
irritated; though I knew not precisely at what. I attempted to answer;
but was so confused that I talked absolute nonsense.

After some time, however, I recollected that my purpose in going into
parliament was to counteract all these abuses. I then recovered my
faculties, and urged this plea very emphatically.

Still the moral dignity, and virtue, of the honourable house I was
about to enter, dwelt with such force on the imagination of Belmont
that I could get no reply from him: except sarcasms, such as those
I have repeated, with the same intervening fits of laughter as the
images suggested themselves to his mind.

And here, lest the reader himself should be misled like Belmont, I
must remark that no mistake is more common, and I believe none more
pernicious, than that of imagining that, because man has not attained
absolute and perfect virtue, the very existence of virtue is doubtful.

Hence it happens that he, who in any manner participates in the vices
of a nation, or a body of men, is reproached as if loaded with the
whole guilt.

Hence likewise, because men without exception are more or less tainted
with error, all pretensions to superior moral principles are laughed
at, as false and ridiculous.

This is the doctrine at least which the people who most offend these
principles are the most zealous in propagating. Belmont had no refuge
against self-reproach, but in cherishing such trains of thought.

That the vices which are the most despised in society instead of being
the most despicable are virtues, if compared to actions that find
honor and reward, is a truth too glaring to be denied. That the cant
with which these master crimes are glossed over, and painted as just,
expedient, ay and heroic actions, that this diabolical cant should
be and is adopted by men even of the highest powers, is a fact that
astonishes and confounds. It impels us continually to ask--Are they
cowards? Are they hypocrites? Or is the world inhabited by none but
lunatics? And that men even of such uncommon genius as Belmont should
be entangled, and bewildered, by the destructive incongruity of those
who assume to themselves the highest wisdom, because they possess the
highest stations in society, is a proof how incumbent it is on such
as are convinced of these melancholy truths to declare them openly,
undauntedly, and with a perseverance that no threats or terrors can
shake.

When we had taken as much wine as Belmont could prevail on me to
drink, and he was very urgent, he asked if I played Piquet?

I answered in the affirmative.

'You no doubt then play it well.'

'I do not think it a game of much difficulty.'

'It is my opinion I am your master at it.'

'That may be.'

'Though you do not think it is. Will you try?'

'What, with a man who avows he does not scruple to take every
advantage?'

'Have you not eyes? Are you, a metaphysician, a wit, and a senator, so
easily deceived?'

'A man may lose his temper; and with it his caution.'

'So you think yourself able to instruct the world, but not to keep
your mind calm and circumspect for half an hour?'

'Had I a sufficient motive, I should suppose I have strength enough
for such an exertion.'

'Then try. The exercise will be wholesome. Shew your skill and
acuteness. Here is your twenty-pound bill: win and take it; or own
that you have no confidence in yourself.'

'I have that confidence which assures me I shall, one day or other,
convince you that I understand the road to happiness better than
yourself.'

'Yet you are cursedly afraid of me. You scarcely can sit still. You
blame your own rashness, in venturing to spend the afternoon with me:
and now you would as soon handle burning coals as a pack of cards in
my company.'

'And what is it you find so omnipotent in yourself, that it should
induce you to all this vapouring?'

'I tell you again, you dare not oppose your penetration to mine. You
pretend to despise me, yet own I am your master. A child is not in
more fear of the rod than you are of me.'

He saw he had sufficiently piqued me, and rang the bell for cards.
They were brought: he shuffled, cut them, and continued to banter me.

'What card do you chuse?--The knave of hearts?--There it is!' [He
shewed it, with a flirt of the cards, at the bottom of the pack.] His
brother of diamonds?--Look! You have it!--Of spades?--Presto! It is
here! You have three knaves on your side, you see. I will keep the
fourth, and drive you out of the field--Come, for twenty?'

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