The Adventures of Hugh Trevor Part 56

My reply was another slight inclination of the head, tinctured with disdain: on which his lordship turned his back, with a kind of open-mouthed nonchalance that was truly epigrammatic; and fell into conversation with Sir Barnard, who had advanced toward the fire, with all the apparent ease of the most intimate friendship: though, since his lordship had changed sides, they had become, in politics at least, the most outrageous enemies.

This brought a train of reflections into my mind, on the behaviour of political partisans toward each other; and on the efforts they make, after they have been venting the most cutting sarcasms in their mutual parliamentary attacks, to behave out of doors as if they had totally forgotten what had pa.s.sed within: or were incapable, if not of feeling, of remembering insult.

What is most remarkable, the men of greatest talent exert this amenity with the greatest effect: for they utter and receive the most biting reproaches, yet meet each other as if no such bickerings had ever pa.s.sed.

It is not then, in characters like these, hypocrisy?

No. It is an effort to live in harmony with mankind: yet to speak the truth and tell them of their mistakes unsparingly, and regardless of personal danger. In other words, it is an attempt to perform the most sacred of duties: but the manner of performing it effectually has. .h.i.therto been ill understood.

Sir Barnard had witnessed the short scene between me and his lordship; and presently took occasion to ask me in a whisper, 'How and where we had become acquainted?'

I replied 'I had resided in the house of his lordship.'

'Ay, indeed!' said the Baronet. 'In what capacity?'

My pride was piqued, and I answered, 'As his companion; and, as I was taught to suppose myself, his friend. But I was soon cured of my mistake.'

'By what means?'

'By his lordship's patriotism. By the purity of his politics.'

I spoke with a sneer, and the Baronet burst into a malicious laugh of triumph: but, unwilling that the cause of it should be suspected, it was instantly restrained.

'What concern had you,' continued he, 'in his lordship's politics?'

'I have reason to believe I helped to reconcile him to the Minister.'

'You, Mr. Trevor! How came you to do so unprincipled, so profligate, a thing?'

'It was wholly unintentional.'

'I do not understand you.'

'I wrote certain letters that were printed in the ----'

'What, Mr. Trevor! were you the author of the three last letters of Themistocles?'

'I was.'

The Baronet's face glowed with exultation. 'I knew,' said he with a vehement but under voice, 'he never wrote them himself! I have said it a thousand times; and I am not easily deceived. Every body said the same.'

There is no calculating how much the knowledge of this circ.u.mstance raised me in Sir Barnard's opinion; and consequently elevated himself, in the idea he conceived of his own power. 'Had he indeed got hold of the author of Themistocles? Why then he was a great man! A prodigious senator! The wish of his heart was accomplished! He could now wreak vengeance where he most wished it to fall; and fall it should, without mercy or remission.' His little soul was on tip-toe, and he overlooked the world.

Though we had retired to the farthest corner of the room, and his lordship pretended to be engaged in chit chat with persons who were proud of his condescension, I could perceive his suspicions were awakened. His eye repeatedly gave enquiring glances; and, while it endeavoured to counterfeit indifference by a stare, it was disturbed and contracted by apprehension.

Malignity, hatred, and revenge, are closely related; and of these pa.s.sions men of but little mental powers are very susceptible. It is happy for society that their impotence impedes the execution of their desires. I was odious in the sight of Lord Idford in every point of view: for he had first injured me; which, as has been often remarked, too frequently renders him who commits the injury implacable; and he had since encountered a rival in me; which was an insult that his vanity and pride could ill indeed digest.

Still however he was a courtier; a man of fashion; a person of the best breeding; and therefore could smile.

A smile is a delightful thing, when it is the genuine offspring of the heart: but heaven defend me from the jaundiced eye, the simpering lip, and the wrinkled cheek; that turn smiles to grimace, and give the lie to open and undisguised pleasure.

It was a smile such as this that his lordship bestowed upon me, when I and the Baronet joined his group. Addressing himself to me, with a simper that antic.i.p.ated the pain he intended to give, he said--'Do you know, Mr. Trevor, that your friend the bishop of **** is to dine with us? You will be glad to meet each other.'

I instantly replied, with fire in my eyes, 'I shall be as glad to meet that most pious and right reverend pastor as I was to meet your lordship.'

Agreeably to rule, he bowed; and gave the company to understand he took this as a polite acknowledgment of respect. But his gesture was accompanied with a disconcerted leer of smothered malice, which I could not misinterpret. It was sardonic; and, to me, who knew what was pa.s.sing in his heart, disgusting, and painful.

I had scarcely spoken before my lord the bishop entered; and with him, as two supporters--Heavens! Who?--The president of the college where I had been educated; and the tutor, whose veto had prevented me from taking my degrees!

In the life of every man of enterprise there are moments of extreme peril. In an instant, and as it were by enchantment, I saw myself surrounded by the cowardly, servile, dwarf-demons, for so my imagination painted them, who had been my chief tormentors. Or rather by reptiles the most envenomed; with which I was shut up, as if I had been thrown into their den; and by which, if I did not exterminate them, I must expect to be devoured.

But these feelings were of short duration. My heart found an immediate repellent, both to fear and revenge, in my eyes. Good G.o.d! What were the figures now before me? Such as to excite pity, in every bosom that was not shut to commiseration for the vices into which mankind are mistakenly hurried; and for their deplorable consequences.

What a fearful alteration had a few months produced! In the bishop especially!

He had been struck by the palsy, and dragged one side along with extreme difficulty. His bloated cheeks and body had fallen into deep pits; and the swelling ma.s.sy parts were of a black-red hue, so that the skin appeared a bag of morbid contents. His mouth was drawn awry, his speech entirely inarticulate, his eye obscured by thick rheum, and his clothes were stained by the saliva that occasionally driveled from his lips. His legs were wasted, his breast was sunk, and his protuberant paunch looked like the receptacle of dropsy, atrophy, catarrh, and every imaginable malady.

My heart sunk within me. Poor creature! What would I have given to have possessed the power of restoring thee to something human!

Resentment to thee? Alas! Had I not felt compa.s.sion, such as never can be forgotten, I surely should have despised, should have almost hated, myself.

The president was evidently travelling the same road. His legs, which had been extremely muscular, instead of being as round and smooth in their surface as they formerly were, each appeared to be covered with innumerable nodes; that formed irregular figures, and angles. What they were swathed with I cannot imagine: but I conjecture there must have been stiff brown paper next to the smooth silk stocking, which produced the irregularities of the surface. The dullness of his eyes, the slowness of their motions, his drooping eyelids, his flaccid cheeks, his hanging chin, and the bagging of his cloaths, all denoted waste, want of animation, lethargy, debility and decline.

The condition of the tutor was no less pitiable. He was gasping with an asthma; and was obliged incessantly to struggle with suffocation.

It was what physicians call a confirmed case: while he lived, he was doomed to live in pain. Where is the tyrant that can invent tortures, equal to those which men invent for themselves?

These were the guests who were come to feast: to indulge appet.i.tes they had never been able to subdue, though their appet.i.tes were vipers that were eating away their vitals.

How strongly did this scene bring to my recollection Pope on the ruling pa.s.sion! I could almost fancy I heard the poor bishop quoting

'Mercy! cries h.e.l.luo, mercy on my soul!

'Is there no hope?--Alas!--Then bring the jowl.'

The present man is but the slave of the past. What induced the president and the tutor, when the bishop's more able-bodied footmen had rather carried than conducted him up stairs, officially to become his supporters as he entered the room? Was it unmixed humanity? Or was it those servile habits to which their cunning had subjected them? and by which they supposed not only that preferment but that happiness was attainable.

Humanity doubtless had its share; for it is a sensation that never utterly abandons the breast of man: and, as it is often strengthened by a consciousness that we ourselves are in need of aid, let us suppose that the president and the tutor were become humane.

Though feelings of acrimony towards these persons were entirely deadened in me by the spectacle I beheld, yet I knew not well how to behave. I was prompted to shew them how placable I was become, by accosting them first: but this might be misconstrued into that servility for which I had thought of them with so much contempt.

Beside, the bishop and the president, if not the tutor, were in the phraseology of the world my superiors; and etiquette had established the rule that, if they thought proper to notice me, they would be the first to salute.

His lordship however eased me of farther trouble on this head, by asking the bishop--'Have you forgotten your old acquaintance Mr.

Trevor, my lord?'

What answer this consecrated right reverend father returned I could not hear. He muttered something: but the sounds were as unintelligible as the features of his face; or the drooping deadness of his eyes. The president, however, hearing this, thought proper to bow: though very slightly, till the earl added, with a significant emphasis on the two last words--'Sir Barnard is become Mr. Trevor's particular friend;'

which was no sooner p.r.o.nounced than the countenances of both the bishop's supporters changed, to something which might be called exceedingly civil, in the tutor, and prodigiously condescending, in the president.

This was a memorable day: and, if the event which I have now to relate should be offensive to the feelings of any man, or any cla.s.s of men, I can only say that I share the common fate of historians: who, though they should relate nothing but facts, never fail to excite displeasure, if not resentment and persecution, in the partisans of this or that particular opinion, faction, or establishment.

The dinner was served. It was sumptuous: or rather such as gluttony delights in. The persons a.s.sembled, I am sorry to say it, were several of them gluttons; and encouraged and countenanced each other in the vice to which they were addicted.

Dish succeeded to dish: and one plateful was but devoured that another and another might be gorged.