The doubts that pervaded my mind imparted, I suppose, something of that appearance to my countenance which is occasioned by fear; for my adversary approached me with looks of contempt; and, as I retreated, bade me stand forward and face him like a man. The crowd behind seconded him; and, fearing it should be a run-away victory, was rather willing to press upon and push me forward than to recede, and give me any play. Hector and Andrews were all the while very active, as instigators.
My indecision occasioned me to receive several severe blows, without returning one; till, at length, I was again extended on the ground, by a very desperate blow near the ear; which, for a few seconds, deprived me of all sense and recollection.
This was no longer to be endured. As soon as I recovered, I sprang on my feet, condescended to strip, and became in turn the a.s.sailant. The joy and vociferation of the mob were immense. They thought it had been all over; and to see me now rise, stand forward, and fight, as I did, with so much determination and effect, was, to them, rapture. They had discovered a hero. Their education had taught them, for such is education, that the man who has the power to endure and to inflict the most misery is the most admirable.
For six successive rounds, I had completely the advantage; during which my brave foe had received five knock-down blows: for that is the phrase. His companions and friends were astonished. The beau pugilists were vociferating their bets; five pounds to a crown in my favour.
The carpenter was as hardy as he was courageous. He collected himself; I had become less circ.u.mspect, and he threw in another dangerous blow near my temple, with the left hand, that again felled me insensible to the earth.
I now recovered more slowly, and less effectually. I had been severely breathed, by the violence of exertion. The laws of pugilistic war will not suffer a man to lie, after being knocked down, more than a certain number of seconds. Hector had his stop-watch in his hand; and tall Andrews joined him, to enforce the rule in all its rigour. I was lifted on my feet before I had perfectly recovered my recollection; and was again knocked down, though with less injury. While down, I received a kick in the side; of which my partisans instantly accused Andrews.
Meaning to do me mischief, he did me a favour. The wrangling that took place gave me time to recover; and being again brought in face of my opponent, I once more proposed a reconciliation; and, stretching out my arm, asked him to shake hands. But, no. The ducking was too bitterly remembered. "He would beat me; or never go alive from the ground."
For a moment, the generous thought of acknowledging myself vanquished suggested itself: but rising vanity, and false shame, spurned at the proposal, therefore, since he was so desperate, I had no resource but in being equally savage. Accordingly, I bent my whole powers to this detestable purpose, brought him twice more to the ground, and, on the third a.s.sault, gave him a blow that verified his own prediction; for he fell dead at my feet, and was taken up lifeless from the place.
Agony to agony! Vice to vice! Such was my fate! Where, when, how, was it to have an end? Were not my own personal sufferings sufficient?
Accuse an innocent man of theft; deliver him over to the fury of a mob; and, not contented with that, meet him again to fight, beat, murder him! And without malice; without evil intention! Nay, with the very reverse: abhorring the mischief I had done him; and admiring the intrepidity and fort.i.tude he had displayed!
Nor did it end here: the intelligence that was instantly sent round was horror indeed. He had left a wife and seven children!
CHAPTER III
_The kind behaviour of old friends: A joyful recovery: More misfortunes: Patience per force_
Never were sensations more truly tragical than mine: yet, as is frequent, they had a dash of the ridiculous; which resulted from the machinations of my good friends, Hector and Andrews. To inspire others with the contempt in which they held, or rather endeavoured to hold, me, and to revenge the insults which they supposed themselves to have received from me, were their incentives. They knew I had been stripped of my money at the gaming-table: they mingled with the partisans of the carpenter; and, informing them that I was a pretended gentleman, advised them to have me taken before a magistrate; for that the law would at least make me provide for the widow and children. Perhaps it would hang me: as I deserved. They farther proposed a subscription, to begin with me; and accordingly they came up to me, as by deputation, with the murdered man"s hat.
The mortification they intended me had its full effect. I was pennyless; and the epithets which generous souls like these appropriate, to such upstart intruders upon their rights and privileges as myself, were muttered with as much insolence as they had the courage to a.s.sume.
I was not yet tamed. I could not endure this baiting. I hated, almost abhorred, Andrews. He dared to pretend love to Olivia: he had brought me into disgrace with her; nay was soon to rob me of her everlastingly; and, recollecting the kick he had bestowed upon me when down, I called him a scoundrel; and accompanied the coa.r.s.e expression with a blow.
In a moment, the mob were again in agitation, expected another battle, admired my hardy valour, and called for a ring. Andrews knew better: he saved them the trouble; and shuffled away; followed though scouted even by Hector himself, for his cowardice. Mowbray remembered the battle of the rats; and, by comparison, found himself a very hero.
The moment I was permitted, I enquired to what place the poor carpenter had been taken; and followed with infinite terror, but with a faint degree of hope; some affirming that he was dead, others that he was not. I was attended by several of my admirers.
It would be vain to attempt any picture of what my feelings were, when, coming into his dwelling, I found him alive! sitting surrounded by his wife, children, and companions! I fell on my knees to him. I owned all the mischief I had done him. I conjured him, for G.o.d"s sake, to forgive me. I was half frantic; and the worthy fellow, in the same free spirit with which he had fought, stretched out his hand, in token of his forgiveness and friendship.
His unaffected magnanimity prompted me instantly to execute a design which I had before formed. "Stay where you are, my good friends,"
said I, to the people that stood round him. "I will be back in a few minutes. The little reparation that I can make I will make: to shew you that it was from error, and not ill intention, that I have done this brave man so much injury."
So saying, I ran out of the house, directed my course to my lodgings, and hastened to my trunk; to take out the ten-pound note, which I had reserved to pay my Bath debts. My pa.s.sions were too much in a hurry to admit of any enquiry how these debts were to be paid, when I should have given the bank-note to the carpenter. I was determined not to enquire; but to appease my feelings, rescue my character, and bestow it on him.
Where were my troubles to end? The persecuting malice of fortune was intolerable. Philip, the footman whom I had hired, but scarcely ever employed, had disappeared: having previously broken open my trunk, and taken, with the ten pounds, such of my linen and effects as he could carry under his cloaths, and in his pockets, without being seen.
This was a stroke little less painful than the worst of the accidents that had befallen me: yet, so hara.s.sed was my mind, and so wearied with grieving, that I did not feel it with half the poignancy.
Act however I must. But how? I had left the carpenter and his family in suspense. Must I talk of favours which I could not confer? or mention remuneration that would but seem like mockery? This was painful: but not so painful as falsehood.
I therefore returned, related the story of the robbery, and added that "my intentions were to have endeavoured to afford some small recompence, for the unintentional injury I had committed. I was sorry that, at present, this accident had deprived me of the power: but I hoped I should not always be so very dest.i.tute. I certainly should neither forget the debt I had incurred, nor the n.o.ble behaviour of the man who had suffered so much from me. At present I was very unfortunate: but, if ever I should become more prosperous, I should remember my obligation, and in what manner it would become me to see it discharged."
I was heard with patience, and with no disappointment. My auditors, though poor, were far from selfish. Beside, as I had not previously declared what I had intended, I had excited little expectation. My vanquished opponent, whose name was Clarke, was soothed by the justice I did him, in defending his innocence and praising his courage; and said "I had given him the satisfaction of a man, and that was all he asked." He rather sympathized with my loss than felt a loss of his own; and gave various indications of a generous spirit, such as is seldom to be found among persons who would think themselves highly disgraced by any comparison between them and a poor carpenter. I own I quitted him with a degree of esteem, such as neither the lord nor the bishop I had once been so willing, or rather so industrious, to revere had the good fortune to inspire.
Having said every thing I could recollect, to remove the doubts which the whole transaction might have excited against me, I was eager to return to my lodging, and consider what was best to be done.
The probability of tracing my footman and recovering the bank note, a considerable portion of which by the bye was due to him for wages, suggested itself. I recollected that when I rose, after my two hours sleep, he had brought the breakfast; and had manifested some tokens of anxiety, at perceiving the perturbation of my mind. I had hastily devoured the bread and b.u.t.ter that was on the table, and drank a single bason of tea; after which he enquired as I went out, when I should be back? And I had answered, in a wild manner, "I did not know.
Perhaps never."
From the degree of interest that he had shewn, the robbery appeared the more strange; and the remembrance of his enquiring and compa.s.sionate looks made me the less eager to pursue, and have him hanged: though, at that time, I considered hanging as a very excellent thing.
Beside, I had not the means of pursuit: I had no money. He had probably taken the London road; and, profiting by the first stage-coach that pa.s.sed, was now beyond my reach.
But how was I to act? How discharge my debts? What was to become of me? I could find no solution to these difficulties. I was oppressed by them. I was wearied by the excess of action on my body, as well as mind. I sunk down on the bed, without undressing or covering myself, and fell into a profound sleep.
CHAPTER IV
_A fever: Bad men have good qualities: More proofs of compa.s.sion: A scandalous tale does not lose in telling: Farewell to Bath_
The emptiness of my stomach (for I had eaten nothing except the bread and b.u.t.ter I mentioned, since the preceding day at dinner) the heats into which my violent exertions had thrown me, and the sudden reverse of cold to which my motionless sleep subjected me, produced consequences that might easily have been foreseen: I awoke, in the dead of the might, and found myself seized with shivering fits, my teeth chattering, a sickness at my stomach, my head intolerably heavy, and my temples bruised with the blows I had received, and having a sensation as if they were ready to burst. To all this was added the stiffness that pervaded the muscles of my arms, and body, from the bruises, falls, and battering they had received.
It was with difficulty I could undress myself, and get into bed; where, after I had lain shaking with increasing violence I know not how long, my agueish sensations left me; and were changed into all the soreness, pains, and burning, that denote a violent fever.
During this paroxysm, I felt consolation from its excess; which persuaded me that I was now on my death bed. I remembered all the wrongs, which I conceived myself to have suffered, with a sort of misanthropical delight; arising from the persuasion that, in my loss, the world would be punished for the vileness of its injustice toward me. Perhaps every human being conceives that, when he is gone, there will be a chasm, which no other mortal can supply; and I am not certain that he does not conceive truly. Young men of active and impetuous talents have this persuasion in a very forcible degree.
All that I can remember of this fit of sickness, till the violence and danger of it were over, is, that the people of the house came to me in the morning, I knew not at what hour, and made some enquiries. A delirium succeeded; which was so violent that, at the beginning of my convalescence, I had absolutely lost my memory; and could not without effort recollect where I was, how I had come there, or what had befallen me. The first objects that forcibly arrested my attention, and excited memory, were the honest carpenter, Clarke, and his wife sitting by my bedside, and endeavouring to console me.
The particulars which I afterward learned were, that Belmont had come, the first day of my illness; had seen me delirious; had heard the account of my having been robbed, and had left a twenty-pound note for my immediate necessities.
So true is it that the licentious, the depraved, and the unprincipled are susceptible of virtue; and desirous of communicating happiness.
The most ignorant only are the most inveterately brutal: but nothing less than idiotism, or madness, can absolutely deprive man of his propensity to do good.
I was further informed that a sealed paper, addressed to Mr. Trevor, had been received, and opened in the presence of the physician, containing another twenty-pound bank-bill; but the paper that inclosed it was blank: and that Clarke, unable to go immediately to work, and reflecting on what he had heard from me concerning the dest.i.tute state in which I, a stranger in Bath, was left by the robbery of my servant, had walked out the next day, had come with fear and diffidence to enquire after me, and that, finding me in a high fever, his wife had been my first nurse.
Her own large family indeed prevented her from watching and continuing always with me; and therefore another attendant was obliged to be hired: but she was by my bed side the greatest part of every day; and her husband the same till he was again able to work; after which he never failed to come in the evening.
He was a generous fellow. I had won his heart, by my desire to do him justice; and my condescension excited a degree of adoration in him, when he found that I was really what the world calls a gentleman. He had visited me before Belmont had left the money; and, hearing the landlady talk of sending me to the hospital, had proposed to take me to his home; that he and his wife might do a Christian part by me, and I not be left to the mercy of strangers.
And here, as they are intimately connected with my own history, it is necessary I should mention such particulars as I have since learned, concerning Olivia.
Hector and Andrews had been busy, in collecting all the particulars they could, relating to me, from the mob; among whom the strangest rumours ran: of which these my fast friends were predisposed to select the most unfavourable, and to believe and report them as true. All of these they carried to Olivia, and her aunt; and the chief of them were, that I had falsely accused a man of theft, had seized him by the collar, dragged him to the water, and had been the princ.i.p.al person in ducking him to death. The brother of this man had discovered who I was; and had followed me, with his comrades, to have me taken before a magistrate: but I had artfully talked to the people round me, had got a part of the mob on my side, and had then begun to beat and ill use the brother. They added that I had stripped like a common bruiser, of which character I was ambitious; that the brother had fought with uncommon bravery; that he had been treated with foul play, by me and my abettors; and that, in conclusion, I had killed him: that, in addition to this, I had prevented a subscription, for the widow and _nine_ young children, which had been proposed by them; that I had insulted them, struck at Andrews, and challenged him to box with me, for this their charitable endeavour to relieve the widow and her children; and that, having lost my last guinea at the gaming table the night before in their presence, I should probably run away from my lodgings, or perhaps turn highwayman; for which they thought me quite desperate enough.