Our precious, delightful humbug, Johnson, greedily telling the story of the highwayman and omitting no scandalous detail from the task in which he revelled, halts at this point to make an insincere moral reflection, which he felt would be called for by some of his readers, even in the middle of the eighteenth century, when morals and improving discourses were alike at a heavy discount.
"The road to vice," he remarks, with his tongue in his cheek, "is of easy access, and, fascinating as it appears when you proceed, it closes behind, and leaves nothing on the retrospect but ruggedness and gloom. Tracey had entered the delusive path, and though he had the wish, possessed not the fortitude, to retrace his steps."
That was bad for Tracey. He and his companions, we learn, for some time amused their parents with various artifices; "but were at last denied any further pecuniary assistance." In this Micawberish high-falutin style, are Tracey's experiences told.
To fill their pockets, Tracey and his friends went upon the road. Expelled from the University, he reformed for awhile, and made his way through England until he arrived in Cheshire, where he took service with a wealthy grazier. He soon became fond of the country, and reconciled to his now humble lot, and being a youth of elegant appearance, and possessing very pleasing and fascinating manners, his friendship was courted by every one. He was proficient in music and singing, and often, when the toils of the day were over, the villagers would assemble at his master's door, and "measure their gay steps to the sound of his violin; 'in fact, as Mr. Micawber might say,' they danced to his fiddling."
The country girls vied with one another for his attention; but the grazier's daughter (or perhaps the prospect of the grazier's money) was the object of his choice; and so firmly had he gained the esteem of his master, that their marriage was agreed upon, and at length celebrated with every mark of happiness and satisfaction.
For a time he remained happy in this condition of life; especially as his wife had brought a part of her father's property with her. He managed farm and stock with skill and industry, and might have become an ornament and a shining light in the Cheshire cheese-farming, only for the vagabond blood in him. He found a respectable life insufferably dull after his early riotous days; and was so loud in his praise of town and its delights, that he at length disturbed the content of his wife and his father-in-law as well, and induced them to realise all their property, and to accompany him to London, where, he said, he expected to procure some lucrative situation.
Johnson, perhaps thinking this to be too great a demand upon the credulity of his readers, feels constrained to add at this point a criticism of his own. "It was no small proof of the influence he had over the resolutions and actions of others, that he could thus induce a country farmer to forget his accustomed habits, and follow an adventurous son-in-law into scenes with which he was altogether unacquainted." We may heartily agree with him here.
Having disposed of their joint stock and other property, they proceeded to London by way of Trentham, in Staffordshire, where they intended to rest for a day or two. In the house where they stayed Tracey met some of his old college friends, with whom he spent a jovial time. This confirmed him in his desire to return to his former extravagant way of living, and he seems instantly to have lost all his new-found honesty and sense of responsibility, under the influence of this old acquaintance.
Early next morning he arose and, stealing his father-in-law's pocket-book, and everything of value that lay handy, went off on his horse, and thus, without a word of farewell, disappeared. "Thus," remarks our author, ready with the moralising reflections we know he really detested, "he in a moment blasted the good hopes which the reader must have entertained of him; and his future serves only to confirm that contempt which every honourable mind must feel for him, after so infamous an action. Every endeavour to discover his retreat proved ineffectual, and his wife and father-in-law never heard of him again, until he expiated his crimes by an ignominious death."
It appears that Tracey proceeded to Coventry, where he alighted at an inn, in which he observed an unusual stillness. Entering the house, and hearing sounds of quarrelling upstairs, his curiosity led him to enquire what was amiss, and walking abruptly into one of the rooms, surprised the innkeeper and his wife in a heated dispute. The innkeeper, an elderly man, had married a woman much younger than himself, and had discovered, too late, that she had really been angling for his money, rather than for himself: hence these disagreements.