The Adventures of Hugh Trevor Part 3

The poor creature screamed with agony, while the determined fellow kept whetting his knife. At last she made a sudden spring and endeavoured to seize his arm; but, missing her aim, he immediately struck her with his fist and began to stab her.

Unable to contain myself, I shrieked with no less horror and vociferation than the poor mangled creature. The mare herself took fright, and sprang, with the snorting of terror and clattering of hoofs, with her shoulder against the door, endeavouring to get out.

This unexpected noise, aiding his guilt, inspired the murdering wretch with instantaneous dread, and he immediately took to flight; leaving the woman weltering in her blood, groaning, and, as I supposed, expiring.

Impelled by my fears and the horror of the scene, I had no longer any feeling of cold, or sense of debility. I ran to the door, shut it, and finding a fork that stood beside it made as good a cross bar-fastening as I was able. I then resolutely set my own shoulder to it, and there remained, I know not how long, in momentary dread the murderer would return. The woman's groans seemed to diminish, as if she were dying; and I durst neither stir nor speak; for I feared to do any thing but listen.

The energy of my terror was so great that it was very very long before I was weary enough of my situation to be obliged to move. Fatigue, and a dead silence without, at length however induced me first to change my position, and after a time, gradually and with great caution, to open the door and look out. Neither hearing nor seeing any thing, I waited awhile, and then ventured so far as to walk round the barn; though in the utmost trepidation, and possessed by the most horrid fears, which were increased by a great increase of darkness; the moon being then either descending or hidden behind the clouds.

Having made no discoveries, except that every thing was quiet, I once more entered the barn, where all was still as death. The woman had ceased to groan; nor could I, though I listened with the most solicitous attention, hear her breathe. Horror returned in all its force, and I stood immoveable, unknowing what to resolve on or what to attempt. At length I took courage and exclaimed, 'In the name of G.o.d, if you are alive, speak!'

The very sound of my own voice inspired unutterable terror; which was augmented by a heavy and long confined groan, proceeding from the woman. She had retained her breath, fearing the return of the a.s.sa.s.sin. The answer that followed her groan was, 'If you are a Christian soul, get me some help.' I told her I was lost, benighted, and did not know where to go for any. She replied there was a town, not half a mile distant, at the back of the barn; and named the very place at which my aunt and uncle Elford lived.

As soon as surprise and joy would permit, I asked if she knew Mr.

Elford. Her answer was, 'I am his servant; and this is his barn.'

Various recollections immediately crouded upon me, and the scene and the voice of poor Mary, to which a moment before I had been so utter a stranger, became familiar to me. 'It is I, Mary; little Hugh,' said I. 'Don't you know me?' A dismal 'Oh!' excited no doubt by the most painful a.s.sociations, was her answer. I desired her to be quiet and patient, while I ran for aid; a.s.suring her I would soon be back, for that I now knew where I was, and was perfectly acquainted with the road.

Accordingly away I ran, with all the speed I had, to my uncle's house; where, when I arrived, I knocked at the door, pelted the window, and called as vociferously as I could for them to rise. The house-dog barked violently, and my uncle was soon at the window, with my aunt at his back, demanding with surprise and dissatisfaction who I was, and what I wanted? I exclaimed, 'Come down, uncle! A man has been murdering your maid Mary! She will be dead if you do not make haste!'

'Good G.o.d!' cried my aunt, pressing forward; 'Child! Hugh Trevor!

Nephew! Is it you?' 'Yes, yes, aunt,' answered I: 'make haste and try to save the poor creature's life!'

The astonishment excited by such a messenger, bringing such a message, and at such an hour, may well be imagined. Master, mistress, and servants, were immediately in motion, and the doors opened. Question succeeded question; exclamations were incessant; and my answers quickly communicated much of the terror I myself had felt.

Regulating his proceedings according to my account, Mr. Elford dispatched a servant to the surgeon; and, having prepared a hurdle by way of litter, went with me and two of his men to the barn.

My aunt was very loath I should return; but my spirits, by the various incidents of the night, were much too active to suffer me to feel either hunger, weariness, or want of sleep; and Mr. Elford recollected I might be useful, in preventing the terrors of poor Mary at our approach; for which reason he suffered me to run before, and inform her that help was coming.

When I came to the barn, the moment I set my foot over the threshold, my terrors of murder and of her having expired all returned. After a short pause, I called with a trembling voice, 'Mary! Are you alive?'

and my heart bounded with joy to hear her, though dolefully, answer, 'yea.'

Mr. Elford and his attendants soon came up; and the remainder of the story of poor Mary was, that, being removed and put to bed, her wounds though deep and dangerous were found not to be mortal; that she recovered in a few weeks, and by the influence of Mr. Elford was retained in my aunt's service; to the great scandal of the place, where it was affirmed that such hussies and their b.a.s.t.a.r.ds ought to be whipped from parish to parish, and so, as I suppose, whipped out of the world; that in two months time she was delivered of a fine boy, whom, when my uncle left the country, she maintained by her own hard earnings; and that in the extremity of her distress, when she thought herself at the point of death, she obstinately refused to declare who was her intended murderer; and though, by his having been known to be her _sweetheart_, and his flight from the country where he never more appeared, people were sufficiently convinced who the man was, yet her pertinacious theme was--_she would never be his accuser: if G.o.d could pardon him, she could_.

CHAPTER VII

_Mistakes and family quarrels of Mr. and Mrs. Elford: His departure, and exile: with the letters he wrote_

And now the period approached when the pleasures of the days of childhood were to terminate, and when I was to experience an abundance of those rude disasters under which the poor, the friendless, and the fatherless, groan.

The first stroke which the malice of fortune aimed at me was the voluntary banishment of my uncle. Though I have forborne to interrupt my narrative by a recapitulation of the unhappy bickerings that took place between Mr. Elford and my aunt, soon after their marriage, yet these bickerings were very frequent, very bitter, and at last very fatal. Instead of the happiness which they and every body had thought so certain, they were completely wretched.

My youth had not prevented me lately from remarking, when at their house, the steady and severe silence which Mr. Elford endeavoured to preserve, and the fixed dissatisfaction and gloom of my aunt.

Notwithstanding the efforts they made, especially Mr. Elford, not to suffer their unhappiness to extend beyond themselves, it became frequently painful, even for me, to be in their company. He indeed was often in part successful, in these efforts; but she seldom, or never.

Their mutual discontent was the more easily increased to misery, because it happened between people who each had the character of prudent; and whose partiality individually acquitted them of that disorder, which the want of good temper alone had produced.

In making an estimate of the probable conveniences and inconveniences, agreements and disagreements, that might happen between them, they had reciprocally been deceived.

Mr. Elford had endeavoured to provide against this, by a plain declaration of his sentiments and expectations; which Mrs. Elford had too inconsiderately concluded she should continue to think rational and just. She imagined there was no fear of violent quarrels, between a man of so much understanding as Mr. Elford and a woman so disposed to listen to reason as herself. She was ignorant of the power of habit over her temper. The rector had taught her pride, marriage had taught her misfortune, and pride and misfortune had made her fretful, melancholy and moody. She had suffered no opposition from her first husband; her will had been his law; and she knew not, till she had made the trial, how difficult it is to concede with a good grace. The least thing that offended her threw her into tears. The pa.s.sions of Mr. Elford and my aunt were mutually too much inflamed for either of them to draw equitable and wise conclusions, and tears he held to be a false, insulting, and odious mode of proclaiming him a tyrant: it was to say, I dare not utter my complaints in words, but my tears I cannot restrain! Too angry to doubt of or examine his reasons, convinced of his own humanity, and his desire to see and make her happy, such an accusation he considered so violently unjust as to be unpardonable.

It must be owned, she did not confine her grief to weeping; she was often seized with fits of hysteric pa.s.sion, in which the most outrageous and false accusations were indulged. To reply to them, or attempt to disprove what he knew to be so absurd, he thought derogatory to innocence; and the world half suspected him to be the tyrant he had been painted. This increased his sense of injury, and consequently did not diminish the affliction of my aunt.

Of the happiness, indeed, which was to result from this marriage, she had conceived romantic ideas; and when she found herself again involved in the cares of a family, liable to the control of a man who expected the utmost propriety and order, who looked with a strict eye over every department, and whose opinion did not always coincide with her own, she became constantly peevish, and her former gloom grew ten fold more gloomy. She pined after that connubial affection which their reciprocal conduct was calculated to destroy; and from the hasty decisions of pa.s.sion convinced herself, that no part of the blame was justly her own. Mr. Elford was no less obstinate in the contrary opinion. Taking philosophy such as he found it, he like his neighbours too hastily concluded there were duties and affairs for which men were fitted, but of which women were incapable. Blending much truth with some falsehood, he thus argued:

'The leading features in the character of an amiable and good woman are mildness, complacency, and equanimity of temper. The man, if he be a provident and worthy husband, is immersed in a thousand cares: his mind is agitated, his memory loaded, and his body fatigued. He returns from the bustle of the world chagrined perhaps at disappointments, angry at indolent or perfidious people, and terrified lest his unavoidable connections with such people should make him appear to be indolent or perfidious himself. Is this a time for the wife of his bosom, his dearest most intimate friend, to add to his vexations and increase the fever of an overburthened mind, by a contumelious tongue or a discontented brow? Business, in its most prosperous state, is full of anxiety, labour, and turmoil. Oh! how dear to the memory of man is that wife who clothes her face in smiles; who uses gentle expressions, and who makes her lap soft to receive and hush his cares to rest. There is not in all nature so fascinating an object as a faithful, tender, and affectionate wife!'

Had he wished for a wife who, instead of indulging the caprice of indolence would have awakened him to energy, and have taught him to be just not captious, his desires would have been more rational: but, to a man who had formed a system of obedience to authority, and not to reason, the arguments he used were irrefragable. To a woman who imagined that obedience, in all cases, was the badge of abject slavery, they were absurd. Thus opposite in principle and in practice, their unhappy state of existence finally became so intolerable, to one of them at least, as to occasion the violent measure and the painful sensations described by Mr. Elford in the following letter.

'TO MRS. ELFORD,

'The bitterness of unjust reproach, the invectives of an ungoverned tongue, the rancorous accusations of a stubborn heart, these, wretched as they long have made me, to me are now no more. Forgetful man! No more? You I can forsake; but where shall I fly to rid myself of them?

You have riveted them upon me, and while I have life they can never die. With you I have travelled through the vale of tears: you, like misery personified, have held the cup of sorrow; have fed me with affliction, strewed thorns beneath my feet by day, and wound adders round my pillow by night. Absence itself cannot afford a cure. Yes, reconcile it to your conscience how you may, you have given my peace a mortal wound.

'You cannot forget, when I first thought of you for a wife, the plainness and sincerity with which I acted. I carefully stated that my family was reputable but not rich, and that I was a younger brother; that my wealth was not great; but that it was sufficient, with industry and the character I had established, to gratify the desires of people whose hearts were not vitiated, and whose wants were bounded. I conscientiously repeated my ideas concerning the regulations and economy of a well governed family; and of the parts which it became the husband and the wife to take. That was the time in which you ought to have made your objections: but then every thing was just, every thing was rational; and from your ready acquiescence to my proposals and the admiration with which you seemed to receive them, I had no doubt of enjoying that serene that delightful state of connubial happiness, so often desired and so seldom obtained.

'On such conditions and with such views, I confidently entered with you into a partners.h.i.+p which unhappily cannot be dissolved. The irrevocable contract was scarcely ratified before it was violated.

With a temper habitually gloomy and suspicious, and a mind incapable of bending to those inevitable little anxieties and vexations which occur in the most quiet families, you soon discovered your propensity to repel every thing that your jealous and fanciful temper deemed an infringement of your privileges.

'Let your own heart testify how long and how ardently I endeavoured, by mildness and the most simple and convincing reasons, to bring you back to your duty. But in vain: causes of disagreement became so frequent, and injury succeeded injury so fast, that I was obliged to proceed to those gentle severities which are all that a husband, who preserves a proper respect for himself, can inflict. And gentle they certainly were, when compared to the contumely by which they were provoked. I forbore those tender and endearing epithets, by which former affection should be continually revived. I then avoided and indeed refused to converse with you, except in the company of a third person or as far as necessity obliged me. Sorry am I to say that, instead of warning you to shun the rocks of mischief, my efforts did but aggravate your folly.

'It is true you had your hours of contrition, in which, with tears and prayers and unbounded acknowledgments of the absurdity of your conduct, together with solemn a.s.surances of reformation, you have for a moment recalled my lost love, and made me hope you would acquire some power over the discordant pa.s.sions that devoured you. But these promises were so often repeated, and so continually forgotten, that at length they afforded neither hope nor ease: they had only been gleams of suns.h.i.+ne, foreboding that the tempest would soon return with increasing violence. Yes, partial as I know you, and blind to your own errors, you cannot deny that at last you approached the fury, rather than the woman.

'To a man like me, of a delicate temper, quick at discovering errors and eager to redress them, even in cases where they do not personally affect myself but indefatigable where they do, this eternal discord, these quarrels and despicable brawls are become insupportable. I have endured the torture seven miserable years, and surely that is no slight trial: surely that is sufficient to prove I have not wanted patience or fort.i.tude. To be a good husband and a provident father, and to protect those that depend on me from injury and want, are qualities which I believe the whole world will allow me, you alone excepted. _You_ upbraid me with faults; _you_ accuse me of crimes; _you_ proclaim me a tyrant. When I am gone, when your pa.s.sions have subsided, and when you feel the want of me, you will be more just. You will then lament that nothing, short of this desperate proof, could convince you of the criminality of your conduct.

'Where I shall seek, where find, or where endure existence, or to what hospitable or inhospitable sh.o.r.e I shall wander, I know not yet: I only know that in England it cannot, shall not be. We have lived long enough in misery; which, everlastingly to avoid, seas or death shall everlastingly divide us.

W. ELFORD.'

This letter, although it contained many marks of that impatience which had increased his family misfortunes, could only have been written by a man of virtue, whose very austerity had in it a preponderance of benevolent intention. Such was my uncle; whose memory, though but a child, I often had occasion to regret.

By various plausible pretexts, with the hope of forwarding a fortune that was to descend to me, Mr. Elford had been prevailed on to lend my father several sums of money, to the amount of seven hundred pounds. My uncle too had found other occasions for the exercise of his humanity. His property had been hastily sold, and therefore disadvantageously, so that the sum with which he went to seek his fortune on foreign sh.o.r.es was but small. He was enough acquainted with my father's affairs to know that of the money lent to him there was little hope.

To me he wrote a letter which will sufficiently shew how kind he would have been, had he possessed the power. It was inclosed in one to my father, with directions to suffer me to read it now, and that it should be preserved and given to me when age should have matured my understanding. The following were its contents.

'TO HUGH TREVOR.

'My dear boy: young as you are, I have conceived a friends.h.i.+p and affection for you, which perhaps inflict as severe a pang, at the present moment, as any one of the distressing circ.u.mstances that occasion my flight. Had I wealth to leave, I would endeavour to secure you from the baneful effects of poverty; as it is, accept all that I have to give, my best wishes, my dearest love, and a little good advice. Though your understanding is greatly above your years, yet you cannot have experience and knowledge enough of sorrow to conceive what my feelings are: but if hereafter you should remember me, and if at that most serious moment when you enter on the marriage state you should wish for a friend like me to advise with, let this letter supply my place. The miseries I have endured, by my mistakes on the subject, are so strongly imprinted on my mind, that I can think of nothing else; and, inapplicable as it may seem to your present course of thought, I cannot persuade myself but that it is the most interesting of all topics, upon which I could write to you.

'Of the wisdom of entering into the marriage state, and of the virtue of the inst.i.tution, I have lately begun to entertain the most serious doubts. Whether they are well founded, or are the consequences of my own mistakes of conduct, I dare not at this moment determine: but, while the present forms of society exist, should you arrive at manhood the probability is that you will marry. If then you should ever think of marriage, think of it as a duty; and not merely as the means of self gratification, or the indulgence of some childish and irrational pa.s.sion, which irrational people dignify with the name of love. Let the affection you conceive for woman be founded on the qualities of her mind.

'But above all things first examine yourself, whether you can endure opposition without anger; and next put the woman you intend to marry to the same test; for, unless you are mutually unshaken in your resolutions on this head, if you marry you are miserable. The task of man and wife is reciprocally arduous. She should be mild, good-humoured, cheerful and tender; he cool, rational, and vigilant; without acrimony, devoid of captiousness, and free from pa.s.sion. It is mutually their duty to inspect and to expostulate, but to beware how they reprove. Where gentleness and equanimity of temper are wanting, happiness never can be obtained. Believe me, my dear boy, I have never stood so low in my own opinion as when I have caught myself betrayed into petulance, and descending to pa.s.sion. The combats I have maintained to overcome this weakness are inconceivable.

'Whether it be const.i.tutional in me or habitual I cannot determine'--[Had Mr. Elford been more a philosopher, he would have known that frequent anger is merely a habit.]--'but I suspect that to this I chiefly owe my present misfortunes, as I am half persuaded there is no woman that may not be moulded into what form her husband pleases, provided he possess a superior understanding and an entire command of his temper. But Oh! how severe the task to preserve a perfect equality in despite of the ill humour, caprice, or injustice of a woman for whom you undergo a thousand difficulties, encounter continual labours, and undauntedly expose yourself to every fatigue and danger!--I blush to think I have sunk beneath the trial.--But we have both gone too far to recede: we have mutually said and done what never can be forgotten.