We obeyed; I highly delighted with the benevolent and hospitable manner of our host; and Clarke most glad to escape, from a scene which no explanation had yet reconciled to his feelings, or notions of good and evil.
CHAPTER IX
A review of emotions and mistakes: Repose after fatigue: Singular thoughts concerning property: Benevolence on a large scale. A proposal accepted; which greatly alters the face of affairs: Sketches of war: The hero: The raptures of a poet: Projects and opinions, relative to law. Thoughts on the science of surgery
In the relation of this adventure, I have given a picture, not of things as they were afterward discovered to be, but, as they appeared to us at the time; reflected through the medium of consternation and terror. We had been powerfully prepared for these, by the previous circumstances. Our imaginations had been strongly preyed upon by our distress, by the accidents of falling, and by the mingled noises we had heard: proceeding from the church-yard robbers, from the village-dogs and curs disturbed by them and us, and from the whistling, roaring, and howling which are so common to high gusts of wind; and so almost distracting to a mind already in a state of visionary deception and alarm. There was indeed enough to excite that wild and uncontroulable dread, which rushed upon us every moment. Mingled as they were with darkness, ignorance, and confusion, the succeeding objects were actually horrible.
Thus the discourse and dialect, as well as the voices, of the men employed to furnish dead bodies, were gross and rude; and the timidity and prejudices of those, who probably were young in the employment, contrasted with the jokes, vulgar sarcasms, and oaths, of the boisterous and hardened adepts, though habitual to such people, gave a colouring to the preceding circumstances, that so confirmed and realized our fears as not to allow us the leisure to doubt. To repeat such coarse colloquies and vulgar ribaldry is no pleasing task; except as a history of the manners of such men, and of the emotions with which on this occasion they were accompanied. These indeed made the repetition necessary.
It is likewise true that, in their own opinion, these men were more or less criminal: and guilt always assumes an audacity, and fierceness, which it does not feel. They were not intentionally acting well: but were doing that which they supposed to be a deed of desperate wickedness, for selfish purposes. Had the consent of any one of them when dying been asked, to have his body dug up and dissected, he would have heard the proposal with detestation. Consequently, they deceived us the more effectually: for they had the manners of that guilt which, as far as intention was concerned, they actually possessed.
Add to this the spectacle of a dissecting-room; seen indistinctly by the partial glimmerings of a lanthorn. Whoever has been in such a place will recognise the picture. Here preparations of arms, pendent in rows, with the vessels injected. There legs, feet, and other limbs. In this place the intestines: in that membranes, cartilages, muscles, with the bones and all their varieties of clothing, in every imaginary mangled form. These things ought not to be terrible: but to persons of little reflection, and not familiarized to them, they always are.
Escaped from this scene, restored as it were to human intercourse, and encouraged by the kindness of our host, whose name was Evelyn, our pulses began to grow temperate; and our imaginations to relax and gravitate toward common sense. We took the refreshment that was brought us, and conversed during the meal with Mr. Evelyn: partly on the incidents of the night, and partly in answering a few questions; which he put with a feeling that denoted a desire rather to afford us aid than to gratify his own curiosity. After which, as we were weary and he disposed to pursue his nocturnal researches, we immediately retired to rest. Clarke was full to overflowing with cogitation: but, for the present, it was too large, or rather too confused, for utterance; and it soon overpowered and sunk him into sleep.
For my own part, my mind was too much alive to be immediately overcome by fatigue. I lay revolving in thought the incidents of the night; which led me into reveries on the singular character of Mr. Evelyn, on my own forlorn state, on the bleak prospect before me, and on Olivia.
This last train of thinking was not easily dismissed. At length, however, both mind and body were so overwearied that I fell into an unusually profound sleep; from which I did not awake till Clarke, who had risen two hours before, came between nine and ten o'clock and rouzed me, to inform me that breakfast was waiting, and that our host expected my company.