“A highwayman!” whispered Tom Cobb to Parkes the ranger.
“Do you suppose highwaymen don't dress handsomer than that?” replied Parkes. “It's a better business than you think for, Tom, and highwaymen don't need or use to be shabby, take my word for it.”
Meanwhile the subject of their speculations had done due honour to the house by calling for some drink, which was promptly supplied by the landlord's son Joe, a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty, whom it pleased his father still to consider a little boy, and to treat accordingly. Stretching out his hands to warm them by the blazing fire, the man turned his head towards the company, and after running his eye sharply over them, said in a voice well suited to his appearance:
“What house is that which stands a mile or so from here?”
“Public-house?” said the landlord, with his usual deliberation.
“Public-house, father!” exclaimed Joe, “where's the public-house within a mile or so of the Maypole? He means the great house—the Warren —naturally and of course. The old red brick house, sir, that stands in its own grounds—?”
“Aye,” said the stranger.
“And that fifteen or twenty years ago stood in a park five times as broad, which with other and richer property has bit by bit changed hands and dwindled away—more's the pity!” pursued the young man.
“Maybe,” was the reply. “But my question related to the owner. What it has been I don't care to know, and what it is I can see for myself.”
The heir-apparent to the Maypole pressed his finger on his lips, and glancing at the young gentleman already noticed, who had changed his attitude when the house was first mentioned, replied in a lower tone:
“The owner's name is Haredale, Mr Geoffrey Haredale, and'—again he glanced in the same direction as before—'and a worthy gentleman too—hem!”
Paying as little regard to this admonitory cough, as to the significant gesture that had preceded it, the stranger pursued his questioning.
“I turned out of my way coming here, and took the footpath that crosses the grounds. Who was the young lady that I saw entering a carriage? His daughter?”
“Why, how should I know, honest man?” replied Joe, contriving in the course of some arrangements about the hearth, to advance close to his questioner and pluck him by the sleeve, “I didn't see the young lady, you know. Whew! There's the wind again—AND rain— well it IS a night!”
Rough weather indeed!” observed the strange man.
“You're used to it?” said Joe, catching at anything which seemed to promise a diversion of the subject.
“Pretty well,” returned the other. “About the young lady—has Mr Haredale a daughter?”
“No, no,” said the young fellow fretfully, “he's a single gentleman—he's—be quiet, can't you, man? Don't you see this talk is not relished yonder?”
Regardless of this whispered remonstrance, and affecting not to hear it, his tormentor provokingly continued:
“Single men have had daughters before now. Perhaps she may be his daughter, though he is not married.”
“What do you mean?” said Joe, adding in an undertone as he approached him again, “You'll come in for it presently, I know you will!”
“I mean no harm'—returned the traveller boldly, “and have said none that I know of. I ask a few questions—as any stranger may, and not unnaturally—about the inmates of a remarkable house in a neighbourhood which is new to me, and you are as aghast and disturbed as if I were talking treason against King George. Perhaps you can tell me why, sir, for (as I say) I am a stranger, and this is Greek to me?”
The latter observation was addressed to the obvious cause of Joe Willet's discomposure, who had risen and was adjusting his ridingcloak preparatory to sallying abroad. Briefly replying that he could give him no information, the young man beckoned to Joe, and handing him a piece of money in payment of his reckoning, hurried out attended by young Willet himself, who taking up a candle followed to light him to the house-door.
While Joe was absent on this errand, the elder Willet and his three companions continued to smoke with profound gravity, and in a deep silence, each having his eyes fixed on a huge copper boiler that was suspended over the fire. After some time John Willet slowly shook his head, and thereupon his friends slowly shook theirs; but no man withdrew his eyes from the boiler, or altered the solemn expression of his countenance in the slightest degree.
At length Joe returned—very talkative and conciliatory, as though with a strong presentiment that he was going to be found fault with.
“Such a thing as love is!” he said, drawing a chair near the fire, and looking round for sympathy. “He has set off to walk to London ,—all the way to London . His nag gone lame in riding out here this blessed afternoon, and comfortably littered down in our stable at this minute; and he giving up a good hot supper and our best bed, because Miss Haredale has gone to a masquerade up in town, and he has set his heart upon seeing her! I don't think I could persuade myself to do that, beautiful as she is,—but then I'm not in love (at least I don't think I am) and that's the whole difference.”
“He is in love then?” said the stranger.
“Rather,” replied Joe. “He'll never be more in love, and may very easily be less.”
“Silence, sir!” cried his father.
“What a chap you are, Joe!” said Long Parkes.
“Such a inconsiderate lad!” murmured Tom Cobb.
“Putting himself forward and wringing the very nose off his own father's face!” exclaimed the parish-clerk, metaphorically.
“What HAVE I done?” reasoned poor Joe.
“Silence, sir!” returned his father, “what do you mean by talking, when you see people that are more than two or three times your age, sitting still and silent and not dreaming of saying a word?”
“Why that's the proper time for me to talk, isn't it?” said Joe rebelliously.
“The proper time, sir!” retorted his father, “the proper time's no time.”
“Ah to be sure!” muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two who nodded likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the point.
“The proper time's no time, sir,” repeated John Willet; “when I was your age I never talked, I never wanted to talk. I listened and improved myself that's what I did.”
“And you'd find your father rather a tough customer in argeyment, Joe, if anybody was to try and tackle him,” said Parkes.
“For the matter o” that, Phil!” observed Mr Willet, blowing a long, thin, spiral cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and staring at it abstractedly as it floated away; “For the matter o” that, Phil, argeyment is a gift of Natur. If Natur has gifted a man with powers of argeyment, a man has a right to make the best of “em, and has not a right to stand on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted; for that is a turning of his back on Natur, a flouting of her, a slighting of her precious caskets, and a proving of one's self to be a swine that isn't worth her scattering pearls before.”
The landlord pausing here for a very long time, Mr Parkes naturally concluded that he had brought his discourse to an end; and therefore, turning to the young man with some austerity, exclaimed:
“You hear what your father says, Joe? You wouldn't much like to tackle him in argeyment, I'm thinking, sir.”
“IF,” said John Willet, turning his eyes from the ceiling to the face of his interrupter, and uttering the monosyllable in capitals, to apprise him that he had put in his oar, as the vulgar say, with unbecoming and irreverent haste; “IF, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of argeyment, why should I not own to it, and rather glory in the same? Yes, sir, I AM a tough customer that way. You are right, sir. My toughness has been proved, sir, in this room many and many a time, as I think you know; and if you don't know,” added John, putting his pipe in his mouth again, “so much the better, for I an't proud and am not going to tell you.”
A general murmur from his three cronies, and a g
eneral shaking of heads at the copper boiler, assured John Willet that they had had good experience of his powers and needed no further evidence to assure them of his superiority. John smoked with a little more dignity and surveyed them in silence.
“It's all very fine talking,” muttered Joe, who had been fidgeting in his chair with divers uneasy gestures. “But if you mean to tell me that I'm never to open my lips—”
“Silence, sir!” roared his father. “No, you never are. When your opinion's wanted, you give it. When you're spoke to, you speak. When your opinion's not wanted and you're not spoke to, don't you give an opinion and don't you speak. The world's undergone a nice alteration since my time, certainly. My belief is that there an't any boys left—that there isn't such a thing as a boy—that there's nothing now between a male baby and a man—and that all the boys went out with his blessed Majesty King George the Second.”
“That's a very true observation, always excepting the young princes,” said the parish-clerk, who, as the representative of church and state in that company, held himself bound to the nicest loyalty. “If it's godly and righteous for boys, being of the ages of boys, to behave themselves like boys, then the young princes must be boys and cannot be otherwise.”
“Did you ever hear tell of mermaids, sir?” said Mr Willet.
“Certainly I have,” replied the clerk.
“Very good,” said Mr Willet. “According to the constitution of mermaids, so much of a mermaid as is not a woman must be a fish. According to the constitution of young princes, so much of a young prince (if anything) as is not actually an angel, must be godly and righteous. Therefore if it's becoming and godly and righteous in the young princes (as it is at their ages) that they should be boys, they are and must be boys, and cannot by possibility be anything else.”
This elucidation of a knotty point being received with such marks of approval as to put John Willet into a good humour, he contented himself with repeating to his son his command of silence, and addressing the stranger, said:
“If you had asked your questions of a grown-up person—of me or any of these gentlemen—you'd have had some satisfaction, and wouldn't have wasted breath. Miss Haredale is Mr Geoffrey Haredale's niece.”
“Is her father alive?” said the man, carelessly.
“No,” rejoined the landlord, “he is not alive, and he is not dead—”
“Not dead!” cried the other.
“Not dead in a common sort of way,” said the landlord.
The cronies nodded to each other, and Mr Parkes remarked in an undertone, shaking his head meanwhile as who should say, “let no man contradict me, for I won't believe him,” that John Willet was in amazing force to-night, and fit to tackle a Chief Justice.
The stranger suffered a short pause to elapse, and then asked abruptly, “What do you mean?”
“More than you think for, friend,” returned John Willet. “Perhaps there's more meaning in them words than you suspect.”
“Perhaps there is,” said the strange man, gruffly; “but what the devil do you speak in such mysteries for? You tell me, first, that a man is not alive, nor yet dead—then, that he's not dead in a common sort of way—then, that you mean a great deal more than I think for. To tell you the truth, you may do that easily; for so far as I can make out, you mean nothing. What DO you mean, I ask again?”
“That,” returned the landlord, a little brought down from his dignity by the stranger's surliness, “is a Maypole story, and has been any time these four-and-twenty years. That story is Solomon Daisy's story. It belongs to the house; and nobody but Solomon Daisy has ever told it under this roof, or ever shall—that's more.”
The man glanced at the parish-clerk, whose air of consciousness and importance plainly betokened him to be the person referred to, and, observing that he had taken his pipe from his lips, after a very long whiff to keep it alight, and was evidently about to tell his story without further solicitation, gathered his large coat about him, and shrinking further back was almost lost in the gloom of the spacious chimney-corner, except when the flame, struggling from under a great faggot, whose weight almost crushed it for the time, shot upward with a strong and sudden glare, and illumining his figure for a moment, seemed afterwards to cast it into deeper obscurity than before.
By this flickering light, which made the old room, with its heavy timbers and panelled walls, look as if it were built of polished ebony—the wind roaring and howling without, now rattling the latch and creaking the hinges of the stout oaken door, and now driving at the casement as though it would beat it in—by this light, and under circumstances so auspicious, Solomon Daisy began his tale:
“It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey's elder brother—”
Here he came to a dead stop, and made so long a pause that even John Willet grew impatient and asked why he did not proceed.
“Cobb,” said Solomon Daisy, dropping his voice and appealing to the post-office keeper; “what day of the month is this?”
“The nineteenth.”
“Of March,” said the clerk, bending forward, “the nineteenth of March; that's very strange.”
In a low voice they all acquiesced, and Solomon went on:
“It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey's elder brother, that twenty-two years ago was the owner of the Warren, which, as Joe has said—not that you remember it, Joe, for a boy like you can't do that, but because you have often heard me say so—was then a much larger and better place, and a much more valuable property than it is now. His lady was lately dead, and he was left with one child—the Miss Haredale you have been inquiring about—who was then scarcely a year old.”
Although the speaker addressed himself to the man who had shown so much curiosity about this same family, and made a pause here as if expecting some exclamation of surprise or encouragement, the latter made no remark, nor gave any indication that he heard or was interested in what was said. Solomon therefore turned to his old companions, whose noses were brightly illuminated by the deep red glow from the bowls of their pipes; assured, by long experience, of their attention, and resolved to show his sense of such indecent behaviour.
“Mr Haredale,” said Solomon, turning his back upon the strange man, “left this place when his lady died, feeling it lonely like, and went up to London, where he stopped some months; but finding that place as lonely as this—as I suppose and have always heard say—he suddenly came back again with his little girl to the Warren, bringing with him besides, that day, only two women servants, and his steward, and a gardener.”
Mr Daisy stopped to take a whiff at his pipe, which was going out, and then proceeded—at first in a snuffling tone, occasioned by keen enjoyment of the tobacco and strong pulling at the pipe, and afterwards with increasing distinctness:
“—Bringing with him two women servants, and his steward, and a gardener. The rest stopped behind up in London , and were to follow next day. It happened that that night, an old gentleman who lived at Chigwell Row, and had long been poorly, deceased, and an order came to me at half after twelve o'clock at night to go and toll the passing-bell.”
There was a movement in the little group of listeners, sufficiently indicative of the strong repugnance any one of them would have felt to have turned out at such a time upon such an errand. The clerk felt and understood it, and pursued his theme accordingly.
“It WAS a dreary thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in his bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his dinner on cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go alone, for it was too late to hope to get any other companion. However, I wasn't unprepared for it; as the old gentleman had often made it a request that the bell should be tolled as soon as possible after the breath was out of his body, and he had been expected to go for some days. I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up (for it was mortal cold), started out with a lighted lantern in one hand and the key of the church in the other.”
At this point o
f the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as if he had turned himself to hear more distinctly. Slightly pointing over his shoulder, Solomon elevated his eyebrows and nodded a silent inquiry to Joe whether this was the case. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand and peered into the corner, but could make out nothing, and so shook his head.
“It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily, and very dark—I often think now, darker than I ever saw it before or since; that may be my fancy, but the houses were all close shut and the folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one other man who knows how dark it really was. I got into the church, chained the door back so that it should keep ajar—for, to tell the truth, I didn't like to be shut in there alone—and putting my lantern on the stone seat in the little corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to trim the candle.
“I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not persuade myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don't know how it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten long ago; and they didn't come into my mind one after another, but all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door and the churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have to pass among them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves. I had known all the niches and arches in the church from a child; still, I couldn't persuade myself that those were their natural shadows which I saw on the pavement, but felt sure there were some ugly figures hiding among “em and peeping out. Thinking on in this way, I began to think of the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could have sworn, as I looked up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place, wrapping his shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time I sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length I started up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there rang—not that bell, for I had hardly touched the rope—but another!
Barnaby Rudge — A Tale Of The Riots Of Eighty Page 2
