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 superst.i.tious. The servant came, and the door was opened: but the coffin approached, and I would not stir till it should pa.s.s me.
Pa.s.s it did. But where? Into the pa.s.sage.
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 quant.i.ty, 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.
Such is the uncertain fate of man, in this state of ignorance. To such sudden accidents of sickness and death are the good and the bad, the foolish and the wise, continually subject; and such at present is the frail tenure of life that the man in whose hall we feasted on Monday, or the blooming beauty with whom we sung and danced, ere the week pa.s.ses away, are descended to the grave.
What tribute can friendship or affection pay, to the memory of a man like this? There is only one that is worthy of his virtues; and that is to record them: that, he being gone, his example may inspire the benevolence he practised; and teach others to communicate the blessings he conferred.
Oh that I had the power to pourtray those virtues in all their l.u.s.tre!
Ages unborn would then rejoice, that such a man had lived; and feel the benefits he would have bestowed. But it is a task that cannot be accomplished in a few pages. His life was a vast volume of the best of actions, which originated in the best of principles. Peace, love, and reverence, be with his memory.
For my own part, if, in addition to that uncommon public worth which he possessed, and that n.o.ble scale of morality by which he regulated his life, the personal kindness which he heaped on me be remembered, I must have less of affection than savage brutality, did no portion of his spirit inspire me while I speak of these events.
Nor did his friendship end while understanding had the least remaining power. His last act of benevolence was a strenuous but incoherent effort to prevent the mischief which, disturbed as his functions were, he still had recollection enough to apprehend would fall on me.
The reader is informed of the mortgage I gave Mr. Evelyn, when I received not merely a qualification but the possession of an estate; and I imagine he will not think I was too scrupulously careful, to guard and prove the honesty of my intentions, when I further tell him that, for the sums of money which Mr. Evelyn advanced, I insisted on giving my promissory notes for repayment. I was pertinacious, and would accept such favours on no other terms.
This mortgage and these notes were lying in the possession of Mr.
Evelyn, at the time of his death. He had apprehended no danger, till the fever and the delirium seized him: at the beginning of which he called his servant, Matthew (I tell the story as the poor fellow told it to me), and, giving him a key, bade him go down to his bureau, and search among his papers for a parchment and some notes, that were tied together with red tape.
Having uttered this, he began to talk in a wild and wandering manner; of fetters, and prisons; and asked Matthew if he knew why such places were built? "So make haste, Matthew," said he, "and burn the parchment, and burn the notes, and burn the bureau. After which, you know, all will be safe, Matthew; and they can never harm Mr. Trevor.
You love Mr. Trevor, Matthew: do not you?"
His recollection then seemed to return; and he asked, "Of what have I been talking? Go, Matthew; seek the parchment and the notes: tied with red tape. Observe: there is no other parchment tied with red tape.
Bring them to me directly."
Matthew had taken the key; but just as he was going the Doctor, who had been sent for, arrived.
Matthew went, however, as he was directed; and, applying the key to the lock, found it was a wrong one.
The Doctor, alarmed for the state in which he saw Mr. Evelyn, immediately wrote a prescription, and rang for the servant to run and have it prepared at the shop of the next apothecary. Matthew answered the bell; and Mr. Evelyn seeing him eagerly demanded--"Where is the parchment? Have you brought me the parchment? Why do not you bring me the parchment?" "For," said Matthew, "I held out the key; and he saw I had nothing else in my hands."
The Doctor asked Matthew what parchment his master wanted? And Matthew replied, he could not tell: except that his master said it was in the bureau, and tied with red tape. "Why do not you bring it?" said Mr.
Evelyn. Then turning to the Doctor, added--"It is a bundle of misery; and you know, sir, we ought to drive all misery from the face of the earth. I cannot tell how it came in my possession. Why do you not go and bring it me, Matthew? And pray, sir, do you see it destroyed.
Promise me that; I beg you will! Because Mr. Trevor is in the country.
I am afraid elections are but bad things. What, sir, is your opinion?
For I think I shall die; and he will then have no friend on earth to secure him the poll."
"Seeing my poor master was so disturbed in his mind," said Matthew, "the doctor _bid_ me run as fast as I could for the stuff he had ordered: which I did. But I was obliged to wait till it was made up; and when I _come_ back my poor dear master was more distracting light-headed than ever. But still he kept raving about the parchment; and his cousin, Sir Barnard; and you, Mr. Trevor: all which the Doctor said we must not heed, because he did not know what he said. Though, for all that, I could not but mightily fear there was something hung heavy on his mind: for, as long as ever he could be heard to speak, he kept calling every now and then for the parchment. And after that, when he lay heaving for breath and rattling in the throat and n.o.body could tell a word that he said, he kept moving his lips just in the same manner as when he could make himself heard. I do believe he was calling for it almost as the breath left his body. And I cannot but say that I wish I had found it, and brought it to him; for the ease and quiet of his soul."
CHAPTER XII
_Doubts concerning the justice of wills and testaments: The provident care of the Baronet: A demonstration of his ardent love for his country: Hector loses his election: My determination to accept the Chitern Hundreds_
When a man discovers that the pathos of his story, and the virtues which he has in contemplation, are entirely beyond the power of language, what method can he take but that of leaving off abruptly: that he may suffer the imagination to perform an office to which any other effort is inadequate? As Mr. Evelyn lived so he died. To prevent evil and to do unbounded good was his ruling pa.s.sion. It never left him, till life departed.
It is a phenomenon which has frequently been remarked that, in a state of delirium, the mind has its luminous moments: during which it seems to have a more clear and comprehensive view of consequences than in its more sober periods of health. The evil that excited so strong and painful an alarm in the mind of my dying friend was no idle dream. The Baronet was his heir at law. Mr. Evelyn had made no will: for not only was his death premature but, knowing the mischiefs that have arisen from disputes concerning testamentary bequests, he strongly doubted of the morality of making any. It was never his intention to h.o.a.rd; and, hoping or I might rather say expecting to have a clear prospect of the approach of death, his plan was to distribute all the personal property in his possession before he died, in the manner that he should suppose would be most useful.
However, whether it were a just sense of rect.i.tude or an improper pride of heart, I own that I felt pleased, as far as myself was concerned, that the intentions of Mr. Evelyn, when he called for the parchment, were not executed. I did not indeed foresee all that was to happen: but I felt an abhorrence of being liable to be suspected of I know not what imputed arts, or crimes; by the aid of which malice or selfishness might a.s.sert I had come into the possession of so large a part of Mr. Evelyn"s property.
Not that, if the deeds and notes had been destroyed, I should have thought it just to have retained the estate that I held. But my virtue was not fated to be put to this trial. When I met Sir Barnard at the Cocoa tree, he not only knew of the decease of Mr. Evelyn but had ordered seals to be placed on all the locks; under which it was imagined that papers or effects might be secured. Having heard the story of Matthew, I could have no doubt but that the mortgage deeds, and the notes for sums received, would now fall into the Baronet"s power.
It is true I might, if I pleased, bid him defiance. No: I ought not to have said, if I pleased; but, if I could condescend to acknowledge myself a scoundrel. He had made me his own member, and had himself impowered me to avoid the punishment which is a.s.signed by law to unfortunate debtors: for, under this best of governments, such as a representative of the people was now my privilege. This immaculate const.i.tution, to which all the homage that man can pay is insufficient worship, vaunted as it is and revered by all parties, or all parties are broad day liars, for all and each strive to be most loud and extravagant in praise of it, this const.i.tution in its very essence decrees that things which are vile and unjust, in one man, are right and lawful, in another.
Well then: by the aid of this const.i.tution, which I too must praise if I would escape whipping, I might seat myself as Sir Barnard"s member, and aid to countenance and make laws, to which I and the other wise law-makers my coadjutors should not be subject. I might, however offensive the term may be to certain delicate ears, I might become a privileged swindler; and rob every man who should do me the injustice to think me honest.
It cannot be supposed that so dear a lover and so ardent an admirer of the const.i.tution, as Sir Barnard was, should once suspect that I would not benefit myself by all its blessings: that is, that I would not cheat him to the very best of my ability. This supposition had induced him, during our conversation at the Cocoa tree, to struggle with and keep down those indignant risings with which, notwithstanding the modulated tone of his voice, I could see he was more than half choaked.
After what I had heard and situated as I was at present, I had very little doubt either of the purity of his patriotism or the manner in which it would affect me. Still however I had some. There might be a change in his politics; but it might neither be of the nature nor of the extent that I feared.
But these doubts did not distress me long. They were entirely removed, by that most authentic source of intelligence the Gazette; in which, about a fortnight after the death of Mr. Evelyn, I read the following unequivocal proof of the Baronet"s inordinate love of his country.
"The King has been pleased to grant the dignity of a Baron of the kingdom of Great Britain to Sir Barnard Bray, Baronet; by the name stile and t.i.tle of Baron Bray, of Bray hall in the county of Somerset; and to the heirs male of his body, lawfully begotten."