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 destitute 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 principal 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.