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The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

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




Jealous perhaps of his own honor, the god of eloquence decreed that
neither the wit nor the wisdom of Hector should that day be heard. He
was too hoarse for any effort to make him audible: but, as stirring
and ambitious spirits on such occasions are always abroad, tongues
were not wanting to trumpet forth his high deserts.

The candidates for oratorical fame were several, I was of the number:
and, as the gloss of my newly acquired dignity dazzled other eyes as
well as my own, I was permitted to take the lead. It was my first
essay; and I felt a momentary alarm: but, full of youthful spirits and
high in blood, I dashed forward; and uttered what first occurred.

My voice was powerful, my nonsense was applauded, my fears vanished,
and I became more collected. The real grievances of mankind, under
the best government that ever yet existed, have at all times been so
numerous that an orator, who makes them his theme, is never in want of
facts and arguments.

Could I then feel this deficiency at an epocha like the one in
question: when means so despotic were daily adopted to curb the
growing spirit of enquiry that despot ministers might pursue measures
so tragical; so subversive of the order which they pretended to
maintain, and so destructive to the happiness they were appointed to
guard? Alas! the topics were so numerous, so melancholy, so almost
maddening, that the man who would paint them truly must temper and
rein-in his feelings with an iron arm: otherwise, imagination will so
hurry him away that, while describing evils past, evils present, and
evils impending, there is danger of his being deemed an incendiary.

I spoke ill. When I remembered what I had said, and what I might and
ought to have said, I was indignant at my own want of recollection.
The applause that I received nevertheless was prodigious: the
acclamations of the mob were even awful. They displayed a feeling of
justice so acute, so prompt, and so powerful, that I was borne out of
myself; and imagined for a moment, not merely that the day of reform
was at hand, but that it was come.

Men are rendered selfish, and corrupt, by the baneful influence of the
systems under which they live: but it is well worthy the attention of
those who believe mankind to be generally capable of great happiness,
and who are desirous to promote it, that, however the wants of the
wretched may tempt them to accept the immediate relief that is within
their reach, they never collectively fail to bestow the most unbounded
applause, on those principles by which their own proceedings are
condemned. They are not in love with baseness: it is forced upon them.

The reader is doubtless aware that Hector and his friends assumed to
themselves the merit of what is called the independent interest; and
that his opponent was supported by the whole influence of the court
party. The numerous groans and hisses, and the few plaudits, bestowed
upon the orators of this party, were additional proofs of what is the
general sense of mankind; and that on the subject of corrupt influence
at least they judge rightly. In this general sense I own that my
soul triumphed: and the pangs which I felt, after the poll began, to
perceive that, whatever men might think, they could forget their duty
and vote only as their interest directed, were undescribable.

However, the party of Hector was strong. The struggle was violent.
Every scandalous art of election was resorted to, by both sides. A
spirit of rancour daily and hourly increased. The opponents came to
frequent blows. Beastly drunkenness, bloated insolence, and profligacy
of principle, met the eye on every side; and I almost hated myself,
not only for being present at and participating in it, but, to
find that I belonged to a race of animals capable of such foul and
detestable vice.

From this distress I was relieved by an event which in itself was
very far from satisfactory. The poll had proceeded for some days
with tolerable equality; and Hector had rather the advantage: though
the voters in the interest of Sir Barnard had not given him their
assistance; to which they had frequently been urged. At length, they
appeared. And how great was the surprise and indignation of our whole
party, to see them marshalled on the opposite side, with the favours
of the Idford candidate in their hats, and uniformly come up and poll
against us!

On the same day, twelve of the votes which had been promised to me
were likewise brought over to the opposite interest; and ten more of
them refused to poll for either party.

The coincidence of this desertion revived the suspicions of Hector and
his party, concerning me. This sudden turn of the poll against him
rendered his temper ungovernable; and, in the frenzy of passion, he
made no scruple of openly affirming that I was no less guilty than the
Baronet.

It was not merely the consciousness of innocence that I felt. I had
been so indefatigable in every possible way, I had ridden and walked
and talked, I had been his defender, his eulogist, his orator, his
slave, and had as it were so fouled my conscience in his cause that
indignation closed my lips. I disdained reply, or self vindication;
and, casting a glance such as irresistible feeling dictated, left the
committee room in which the accusation was made without answering a
word.




CHAPTER VIII


_The return to town: A visit to Sir Barnard: Admission denied:
Enquiries after the wounded stranger, who had disappeared: An
endeavour to guard against misrepresentation: The fears and feelings
of friends_


My determination was taken, my servant was called, my horses ordered,
and I immediately departed for London. My thoughts were far from
being clear, or of a pleasant kind. The scene I had left was the most
odious that I had ever beheld. Hector I was convinced would lose his
election; and, what was more valuable, his health. I saw prognostics
which I thought could not be mistaken; and which afterward proved as
baleful as I then imagined them to be. Whether the contest might not
ruin the family was more than I knew; and what the effect might be on
Olivia, and even on our hoped for union, I could not foresee.

The enigmatical conduct of Sir Barnard was no less perplexing. His
sudden desertion of Hector, and of the cause which he had so loudly
defended, were alarming. For what other interpretation could be put
upon the voters in the Baronet's interest, who not only refused to
poll according to their promise, but were all of them brought up in
support of the Idford candidate? Yet I was loth to conclude that an
event so fatal to all my hopes, as well to my private affections as to
my public duties, had taken place.

My horses were excellent, and carried us seventy miles in less time
than it would have taken to go post. I intended to have ordered a
chaise for the remainder of the way: but a mail coach was to pass in
half an hour, and I waited. There happened to be a vacancy in which
I seated myself; and by these means I arrived in town early in the
morning.

As soon as the day was far enough advanced, my first care was to visit
Sir Barnard; and I own I approached the street and the house with a
foreboding heart. What had happened could not be unintentional. It
was too decided, too abrupt, and had too many marks of unprincipled
treachery. I knocked, made my enquiries, and was informed the Baronet
was not at home. I asked for Lady Bray; and not at home was again the
answer.

As this was what I apprehended, it excited but little surprise, though
much vexation. However I left my card; and departed more full of
meditation even than I came. Not at home I had no doubt signified that
my visits were no longer welcome.

Still it was necessary I should know the truth; and, as I had been too
intimate with the family to be ignorant of the haunts of Sir Barnard,
I went to the Cocoa tree, a place to which he daily resorted, and
there lounged away between two and three hours over the papers; hoping
he would come.

I was again disappointed. The Baronet did not make his appearance; and
I began to conjecture that perhaps the servant had told me truly: he
might be out early; on business, or I knew not what.

As it was past his hour at the Cocoa tree, perhaps I should now find
him at home. I therefore went back; and again made my enquiries, and
again received the same dry laconic answer. It had an ill face: but I
had no immediate remedy.

My next most pressing object of attention was the wounded stranger;
whom I had left under the care of the physician, and whom I
immediately determined to enquire after: not without some silent
reproaches to myself, for having so long been absent on schemes such
as those in which I had been concerned, to the neglect of perhaps a
more serious duty. For duty seemed to require that men should rather
abstain from elections, such as they are at present, than become
aiders and abettors of them.

My horses not being arrived, and disliking the vehicle of a hackney
coach, I walked forward to the inn at which the stranger had been
left; musing much on the prospect before me, which was once more
beginning to be heavily overcast.

Being come to my journey's end, I found the stranger had been removed
two days after I left him to London: but the people of the inn could
give me no farther intelligence, concerning him or the place of his
residence.

I then asked them to direct me to the house of the physician: which
they did, but told me that he had left the kingdom.

Determined however to make every possible enquiry, I went to the
house; where I found only a person who was left in charge of the
premises, and who knew nothing more than that the physician was gone
with a patient to Lisbon.

These little incidents, trifling as they appeared, afforded me an
excellent proof of the absurdity of false modesty: which induces men,
from the egoistical fear of being thought vain, to conceal or disguise
the truth. The physician had bestowed high eulogiums on my humanity:
after which, he had hinted a desire, but with well-bred reserve, to
know who I was; and I, catching the apparent delicacy of his feelings
and thinking but very little on the subject, imagined there would be
ostentation in personally taking to myself his praises, by giving him
my name and place of abode. I therefore told him I would answer that
question when we became better acquainted; if he should then find he
had no reason to alter his good opinion of me.

Thus do men by affecting not to be vain, indulge a kind of double
refined vanity; and lead themselves and others into error.

Being disappointed in all my enquiries of this day, my next care was
to see Miss Wilmot. Surrounded as I was by persons who thought me
inimical to them, and therefore were probably my inveterate enemies, I
knew not what false reports might be spread; nor how to guard against
them in the public opinion. But I had one consolation. Olivia had
declared she was resolved to enquire, before she again gave the least
credit to calumny. It was therefore essentially necessary that I
should acquaint Miss Wilmot with all that had passed.

It was now evening; and, when I came to her lodgings, I found her
brother and Turl both there. Though my absence had been short, the
meeting gave me no little pleasure. It would likewise save me the
trouble of a thrice told tale: for to friends like these my heart was
always open; and I had something like an abhorrence of concealment,
and secret transactions. I wished them to share in all my joys; and,
as to my griefs, they not only excited their sympathy but produced
remarks and counsel, by which they had often been cured.

I told my story; and it may well be imagined my hearers were neither
inattentive nor unmoved. The selfishness and depravity into which
men are driven, and the vices of which being thus impelled they are
capable, exemplified as these vices were in my narration, drew heavy
sighs from the gentle and kind hearted Lydia, made her much oppressed
brother groan in spirit, and excited in Turl those comprehensive
powers that trace the history of facts through a long succession, and
teach, by miseries that are past, how miseries in future are to be
avoided.

The general feeling however was that danger was hovering over me. The
indignation of Wilmot, at the treatment of men who most endeavoured to
deserve well of their age and country, was very strong.

Neither was Turl less moved. His manner was placid, yet his feelings
were acute. But, though they might vibrate for a moment toward
discord, they touched the true harmony at last. He who has fixed
principles of action is soon called to a recollection of his duties,
and the manner in which he ought to act.

Roused by his friendship for me, I should rather say by his affection,
he collected his faculties; and presented to the imagination so
sublime a picture of fortitude, and of the virtue of enduring injuries
and oppression with dignity, that he prepared my mind most admirably
for the trials that were to succeed.




CHAPTER IX


_A second and more successful attempt to obtain an interview with the
Baronet: An enigmatical dialogue: The meaning of which however may be
guessed_


It was not only the wish of my heart but it was quite necessary for me
to see Mr. Evelyn. However, it was exceedingly desirable that I should
previously meet the Baronet: lest, in what I should say, my surmises
might be false; and I might produce a family disagreement between
persons who would both have conferred essential benefits on me, if the
supposed defection of Sir Barnard should not be true. I determined
therefore once more to go to the Cocoa tree and wait.

As it happened, waiting was not necessary. The Baronet was there; and,
though there was something of coldness in his manner, it was by no
means what my fears had taught me to expect. Salutation having passed,
I requested to speak with him. We retired into a private room; and he
began by telling me he was glad to see me again in town; and no longer
continuing to support a person whom he no longer esteemed his friend.

At hearing this remark, and the significance with which it was
delivered, my evil augury returned upon me in full force. I answered
that I had quitted Mr. Mowbray not because I had deserted his
interest, but because I had been unjustly accused. 'Accused of what,
Mr. Trevor?'

'Of having been influenced by you to betray a party which I had
pretended to espouse.'

'And were you not influenced by me, Mr. Trevor?'

'I never can be influenced by any man, Sir Barnard, to commit an
action which my heart condemns.'

'Do you mean, Mr. Trevor, that your heart condemns me?'

'The question is very direct; and I am not desirous of wounding your
feelings, Sir Barnard: but I must not be guilty of falsehood. I
certainly wish you had acted otherwise.'

'Then you pretend to set up for yourself, Mr. Trevor; and to have no
deference whatever for me, and my opinions.'

'Personally, as a gentleman who meant to do me service, I wish to
preserve every respect for you, Sir Barnard. But I hope you do not
expect of me any deference that should, on any occasion whatever,
induce me to abandon either my public or my private duties.' 'Very
well, Mr. Trevor. Very well. I dare say you are so perfectly
acquainted with your duties that no man on earth, not even he who
had been your greatest friend, could induce you to alter any of your
notions.'

'I should hope, Sir Barnard, that either friend or enemy might so
induce me: provided he had truth and reason on his side.'

'Very well, Mr. Trevor. All that is very fine. I dare say you
understand your own interest, and will take your own road: even though
you might if you pleased travel more at your ease, and in better
company, by going another way.'

'Will you be kind enough to explain yourself, Sir Barnard?'

'No, Mr. Trevor. I shall give no explanations, till I am sure I am
talking to my friend: my fast friend, Mr. Trevor: that will think and
act with me. If you will give me your word and honor as a gentleman to
that, why then we will talk together.'

'If by thinking and acting together, Sir Barnard, you mean that
you expect I should blindly and implicitly conform to any
tergiversation--I mean to any change--'

'You need explain yourself no farther, Mr. Trevor. I very well
understand your meaning. My friend is my friend, Mr. Trevor; and he
is no other man's friend, Mr. Trevor. I could not but suppose you
understood all that perfectly at first; and I am very sorry to be so
much deceived. But it is my misfortune to be always deceived, and
entrapped; and--'

'Entrapped, Sir Barnard! I hope you do not apply that word to me?'

'Nay, nay, Mr. Trevor, I want no quarrelling.'

'Nor do I, Sir Barnard. But, if you suppose me capable of taking any
advantage of what you may now think an ill-placed confidence in me,
you egregiously mistake both my intentions and my character.'

'I hope I do, Mr. Trevor. You have a great fluency: but I hope I do.'

I saw him preparing to go; and, being exceedingly anxious to have a
determinate answer, I added--'Let me intreat you, Sir Barnard, to give
me an explicit declaration of what you expect from me.'

'You must excuse me, Mr. Trevor. I shall say no more, at present. You
say I mistake your intentions. I hope I do. Time will tell. When you
are my friend, I shall be very glad to see you; and so will Lady Bray.
Good morning to you, Mr. Trevor.'




CHAPTER X


_Reflections on the mutability of fortune, on money expended, and
on the duties of love and friendship: A strange incident, shewing
the propensity of man to superstitious terrors: A lamentable and
unexpected event_


Well might I forebode the approach of evil: and, except that complaint
is of no avail, is waste of time, is unhappiness and therefore is
immoral, well might I complain of those sudden strokes of fate by
which, whenever my prospects began to be flattering, they were
suddenly obscured in darkness and despair. But, if I had not supposed
myself marked in an extraordinary manner as the child of fortune, to
whose smiles and frowns I seemed to be capriciously subjected, I know
not what should have induced me to have written my history; or rather
the history of my youth; for of what is yet reserved for me I am still
ignorant.

Not that I pretend to consider the hypocrisy, selfishness and
profligacy of titled folly, and church pride, as things in themselves
extraordinary. It was the coincidence and the number and manner of
them, by which in the crisis of my fate I seemed to be so repeatedly
and so peculiarly affected, that occasioned surprise and pain.

Yet what was all that I had hitherto felt from persons like these,
when I remember that which I was now immediately doomed to feel? The
perverted and the vicious it is true can excite emotion, and excite
it strongly. But how comparatively feeble does their utmost malice
seem, as far as it affects only ourselves, when brought in competition
with the thunder-bolt that strikes the virtuous; that shuts the
gate of hope; and that robs us of those unspeakable pleasures which
imagination has fondly stored, as a grand resource against evil, fall
when and how it may?

Parting from the Baronet, expecting what was almost certain some
change of political sentiment, no matter how brought about, by which
my flattering expectations were at once to be rooted up, my thoughts
inevitably flowed into that train which was bitterness little
short of anguish. Mr. Evelyn was a man of such peculiar virtue and
disinterested benevolence, of a heart so generous and so little
capable of accusing me in consequence of the baseness of others, that
to have suspected him of such a mistake would have been the height of
injustice. But I could not forget the sums that he had advanced, in
all four hundred pounds, the more than probable failure of all the
plans for which they had been advanced, and the incapacity I had and
should have to repay these sums.

Neither could I forbear to take a retrospective view of the manner in
which they had been expended. Could I approve of that manner? Could I
forget how short a time it was, though I had squandered my own money,
since I had forfeited no atom of my independence by accepting the
earnings of others? Suppose this parliamentary plan to fail, and fail
it must, for there were no hopes that I could honestly retain my seat,
to what other means could I resort? While I continued to indulge
in wild and extravagant schemes of enriching myself, by which I
did but impoverish others, ought I to require of Olivia to partake
of my folly, and its consequences? Had I nothing but the cup of
wretchedness to offer, and must I still urge her to drink? Was it not
my duty rather to tear myself at once away from her; and place some
insurmountable barrier between us, that should relieve her from such
an ill-fated predilection?

Full of these thoughts, I proceeded toward the residence of Mr.
Evelyn. It was necessary that I should see him immediately: for
silence would have been the meanest deceit. I went with an afflicted
heart. But how did I return? Why do I say afflicted? No! Anguish, real
anguish, since I had known him, had not yet reached me. But it was
coming. It was rushing forward, like a torrent; to bear away inferior
cares and sorrows, and engulph them wholly.

Unexpected events are sometimes peculiarly marked, by certain uncommon
incidental circumstances. As I was walking hastily forward, anxious to
meet Mr. Evelyn at home, I saw a coffin borne before me by four men at
some distance. Their pace was brisk. I had several streets to pass,
before I arrived at the house where Mr. Evelyn had apartments; and
still the coffin turned the way that I was to go.

I overtook and went before it: but the gloomy object had excited my
attention, and I presently looked behind me. Still it took the same
route. I looked again, and again; and it was continually at my heels.

It is strange how imagination will work, and how ideas will suggest
themselves. I wished it any where else; but it seemed to pursue me.

At length I came to my journey's end; and, having knocked at the door,
looked round with a kind of infatuated fear. The coffin was following,
and I stood with an absurd and fanciful trepidation, waiting that
I might once see it fairly past the door. Yet I was no bigot, no
believer in omens, and was almost ashamed of an idea which the coffin
itself and the gloomy state of my mind had suggested: but which was in
reality superstitious. The servant came, and the door was opened: but
the coffin approached, and I would not stir till it should pass me.

Pass it did. But where? Into the passage.

I stood speechless. The men asked where it was to go? 'Into the first
floor,' was the answer.

It was the apartment of Mr. Evelyn.

Heavens! What was the pang that shot across my brain? I gasped for
utterance: but still was dumb. A dread so terrible had seized me that
there I stood; motionless and stupefied.

The woman who opened the door and directed the men belonged to the
house; and, just as the bearers were proceeding with the coffin up
stairs, Matthew, the country servant, who had attended Mr. Evelyn in
the dissecting room the first night of our meeting, came in.

The moment he saw me, the poor fellow burst into tears; and
exclaimed--'Oh sir!'

His look and the tone of his voice were sufficient. There was but one
event that could have produced them, in such an extraordinary and
unfeigned degree of grief. My horrible fears were fulfilled.

He paused a moment, sobbed, and again cried in a most piercing and
lamentable tone, 'My poor master!'

I must draw the curtain over feelings that I cannot pretend to paint.
How long I stood, what I first said, or what my looks were, are things
of which I know nothing. I only recollect that my eyes were stone, and
had not a tear to shed.




CHAPTER XI


_A proof of the danger of not attending to trifles: A feeble attempt
to characterise a man of uncommon virtue: The dying anxieties of Mr.
Evelyn_


The melancholy particulars of this strange tragedy were that,
three days before, Mr. Evelyn, being then in perfect health, had
been dissecting a limb in a high state of putrescence. During the
operation, the instrument had slipped, and made what he considered
only as a scratch of the skin; and so slight that he did not
immediately deem it worthy of notice: though, when he had ended, he
felt a tingling; and then thought it prudent to wash with vinegar, and
bind it up to keep out the air.

He was so busily engaged, during the day, that he paid no more
attention to it; though he once or twice felt a throbbing that was
unusual. Being fatigued, and finding his spirits rather agitated, he
took a gentle opiate at going to rest: but was waked in the middle of
the night, by symptoms of a very alarming kind. The morbid humour that
was introduced into the system, small as it probably was in quantity,
was so active that Mr. Evelyn was seized with a violent inflammatory
fever: so that he was delirious when he woke, and died in less than
eight and forty hours after he received this slight wound.

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