Barnaby Rudge — A Tale Of The Riots Of Eighty

by Charles Dickens

  “While I would restrain her from all correspondence with your son, and sever their intercourse here, though it should cause her death,” said Mr Haredale, who had been pacing to and fro, “I would do it kindly and tenderly if I can. I have a trust to discharge, which my nature is not formed to understand, and, for this reason, the bare fact of there being any love between them comes upon me to-night, almost for the first time.”

  “I am more delighted than I can possibly tell you,” rejoined Mr Chester with the utmost blandness, “to find my own impression so confirmed. You see the advantage of our having met. We understand each other. We quite agree. We have a most complete and thorough explanation, and we know what course to take. —Why don't you taste your tenant's wine? It's really very good.”

  “Pray who,” said Mr Haredale, “have aided Emma, or your son? Who are their go-betweens, and agents—do you know?”

  “All the good people hereabouts—the neighbourhood in general, I think,” returned the other, with his most affable smile. “The messenger I sent to you to-day, foremost among them all.”

  “The idiot? Barnaby?”

  “You are surprised? I am glad of that, for I was rather so myself. Yes. I wrung that from his mother—a very decent sort of woman— from whom, indeed, I chiefly learnt how serious the matter had become, and so determined to ride out here to-day, and hold a parley with you on this neutral ground. —You're stouter than you used to be, Haredale, but you look extremely well.”

  “Our business, I presume, is nearly at an end,” said Mr Haredale, with an expression of impatience he was at no pains to conceal. “Trust me, Mr Chester, my niece shall change from this time. I will appeal,” he added in a lower tone, “to her woman's heart, her dignity, her pride, her duty—”

  “I shall do the same by Ned,” said Mr Chester, restoring some errant faggots to their places in the grate with the toe of his boot. “If there is anything real in this world, it is those amazingly fine feelings and those natural obligations which must subsist between father and son. I shall put it to him on every ground of moral and religious feeling. I shall represent to him that we cannot possibly afford it—that I have always looked forward to his marrying well, for a genteel provision for myself in the autumn of life—that there are a great many clamorous dogs to pay, whose claims are perfectly just and right, and who must be paid out of his wife's fortune. In short, that the very highest and most honourable feelings of our nature, with every consideration of filial duty and affection, and all that sort of thing, imperatively demand that he should run away with an heiress.”

  “And break her heart as speedily as possible?” said Mr Haredale, drawing on his glove.

  “There Ned will act exactly as he pleases,” returned the other, sipping his wine; “that's entirely his affair. I wouldn't for the world interfere with my son, Haredale, beyond a certain point. The relationship between father and son, you know, is positively quite a holy kind of bond. —WON'T you let me persuade you to take one glass of wine? Well! as you please, as you please,” he added, helping himself again.

  “Chester,” said Mr Haredale, after a short silence, during which he had eyed his smiling face from time to time intently, “you have the head and heart of an evil spirit in all matters of deception.”

  “Your health!” said the other, with a nod. “But I have interrupted you—”

  “If now,” pursued Mr Haredale, “we should find it difficult to separate these young people, and break off their intercourse—if, for instance, you find it difficult on your side, what course do you intend to take?”

  “Nothing plainer, my good fellow, nothing easier,” returned the other, shrugging his shoulders and stretching himself more comfortably before the fire. “I shall then exert those powers on which you flatter me so highly—though, upon my word, I don't deserve your compliments to their full extent—and resort to a few little trivial subterfuges for rousing jealousy and resentment. You see?”

  “In short, justifying the means by the end, we are, as a last resource for tearing them asunder, to resort to treachery and—and lying,” said Mr Haredale.

  “Oh dear no. Fie, fie!” returned the other, relishing a pinch of snuff extremely. “Not lying. Only a little management, a little diplomacy, a little—intriguing, that's the word.”

  “I wish,” said Mr Haredale, moving to and fro, and stopping, and moving on again, like one who was ill at ease, “that this could have been foreseen or prevented. But as it has gone so far, and it is necessary for us to act, it is of no use shrinking or regretting. Well! I shall second your endeavours to the utmost of my power. There is one topic in the whole wide range of human thoughts on which we both agree. We shall act in concert, but apart. There will be no need, I hope, for us to meet again.”

  “Are you going?” said Mr Chester, rising with a graceful indolence. “Let me light you down the stairs.”

  “Pray keep your seat,” returned the other drily, “I know the way. So, waving his hand slightly, and putting on his hat as he turned upon his heel, he went clanking out as he had come, shut the door behind him, and tramped down the echoing stairs.

  “Pah! A very coarse animal, indeed!” said Mr Chester, composing himself in the easy-chair again. “A rough brute. Quite a human badger!”

  John Willet and his friends, who had been listening intently for the clash of swords, or firing of pistols in the great room, and had indeed settled the order in which they should rush in when summoned—in which procession old John had carefully arranged that he should bring up the rear—were very much astonished to see Mr Haredale come down without a scratch, call for his horse, and ride away thoughtfully at a footpace. After some consideration, it was decided that he had left the gentleman above, for dead, and had adopted this stratagem to divert suspicion or pursuit.

  As this conclusion involved the necessity of their going upstairs forthwith, they were about to ascend in the order they had agreed upon, when a smart ringing at the guest's bell, as if he had pulled it vigorously, overthrew all their speculations, and involved them in great uncertainty and doubt. At length Mr Willet agreed to go upstairs himself, escorted by Hugh and Barnaby, as the strongest and stoutest fellows on the premises, who were to make their appearance under pretence of clearing away the glasses.

  Under this protection, the brave and broad-faced John boldly entered the room, half a foot in advance, and received an order for a boot-jack without trembling. But when it was brought, and he leant his sturdy shoulder to the guest, Mr Willet was observed to look very hard into his boots as he pulled them off, and, by opening his eyes much wider than usual, to appear to express some surprise and disappointment at not finding them full of blood. He took occasion, too, to examine the gentleman as closely as he could, expecting to discover sundry loopholes in his person, pierced by his adversary's sword. Finding none, however, and observing in course of time that his guest was as cool and unruffled, both in his dress and temper, as he had been all day, old John at last heaved a deep sigh, and began to think no duel had been fought that night.

  “And now, Willet,” said Mr Chester, “if the room's well aired, I'll try the merits of that famous bed.”

  “The room, sir,” returned John, taking up a candle, and nudging Barnaby and Hugh to accompany them, in case the gentleman should unexpectedly drop down faint or dead from some internal wound, “the room's as warm as any toast in a tankard. Barnaby, take you that other candle, and go on before. Hugh! Follow up, sir, with the easy-chair.”

  In this order—and still, in his earnest inspection, holding his candle very close to the guest; now making him feel extremely warm about the legs, now threatening to set his wig on fire, and constantly begging his pardon with great awkwardness and embarrassment—John led the party to the best bedroom, which was nearly as large as the chamber from which they had come, and held, drawn out near the fire for warmth, a great old spectral bedstead, hung with faded brocade, and ornamented, at the top of each carved post, with a plume of feathers that ha
d once been white, but with dust and age had now grown hearse-like and funereal.

  “Good night, my friends,” said Mr Chester with a sweet smile, seating himself, when he had surveyed the room from end to end, in the easy-chair which his attendants wheeled before the fire. “Good night! Barnaby, my good fellow, you say some prayers before you go to bed, I hope?”

  Barnaby nodded. “He has some nonsense that he calls his prayers, sir,” returned old John, officiously. “I'm afraid there an't much good in em.”

  “And Hugh?” said Mr Chester, turning to him.

  “Not I,” he answered. “I know his'—pointing to Barnaby—'they're well enough. He sings “em sometimes in the straw. I listen.”

  “He's quite a animal, sir,” John whispered in his ear with dignity. “You'll excuse him, I'm sure. If he has any soul at all, sir, it must be such a very small one, that it don't signify what he does or doesn't in that way. Good night, sir!”

  The guest rejoined “God bless you!” with a fervour that was quite affecting; and John, beckoning his guards to go before, bowed himself out of the room, and left him to his rest in the Maypole's ancient bed.

  Chapter 13

  If Joseph Willet, the denounced and proscribed of “prentices, had happened to be at home when his father's courtly guest presented himself before the Maypole door—that is, if it had not perversely chanced to be one of the half-dozen days in the whole year on which he was at liberty to absent himself for as many hours without question or reproach—he would have contrived, by hook or crook, to dive to the very bottom of Mr Chester's mystery, and to come at his purpose with as much certainty as though he had been his confidential adviser. In that fortunate case, the lovers would have had quick warning of the ills that threatened them, and the aid of various timely and wise suggestions to boot; for all Joe's readiness of thought and action, and all his sympathies and good wishes, were enlisted in favour of the young people, and were staunch in devotion to their cause. Whether this disposition arose out of his old prepossessions in favour of the young lady, whose history had surrounded her in his mind, almost from his cradle, with circumstances of unusual interest; or from his attachment towards the young gentleman, into whose confidence he had, through his shrewdness and alacrity, and the rendering of sundry important services as a spy and messenger, almost imperceptibly glided; whether they had their origin in either of these sources, or in the habit natural to youth, or in the constant badgering and worrying of his venerable parent, or in any hidden little love affair of his own which gave him something of a fellow-feeling in the matter, it is needless to inquire—especially as Joe was out of the way, and had no opportunity on that particular occasion of testifying to his sentiments either on one side or the other.

  It was, in fact, the twenty-fifth of March, which, as most people know to their cost, is, and has been time out of mind, one of those unpleasant epochs termed quarter-days. On this twenty-fifth of March, it was John Willet's pride annually to settle, in hard cash, his account with a certain vintner and distiller in the city of London; to give into whose hands a canvas bag containing its exact amount, and not a penny more or less, was the end and object of a journey for Joe, so surely as the year and day came round.

  This journey was performed upon an old grey mare, concerning whom John had an indistinct set of ideas hovering about him, to the effect that she could win a plate or cup if she tried. She never had tried, and probably never would now, being some fourteen or fifteen years of age, short in wind, long in body, and rather the worse for wear in respect of her mane and tail. Notwithstanding these slight defects, John perfectly gloried in the animal; and when she was brought round to the door by Hugh, actually retired into the bar, and there, in a secret grove of lemons, laughed with pride.

  “There's a bit of horseflesh, Hugh!” said John, when he had recovered enough self-command to appear at the door again. “There's a comely creature! There's high mettle! There's bone!”

  There was bone enough beyond all doubt; and so Hugh seemed to think, as he sat sideways in the saddle, lazily doubled up with his chin nearly touching his knees; and heedless of the dangling stirrups and loose bridle-rein, sauntered up and down on the little green before the door.

  “Mind you take good care of her, sir,” said John, appealing from this insensible person to his son and heir, who now appeared, fully equipped and ready. “Don't you ride hard.”

  “I should be puzzled to do that, I think, father,” Joe replied, casting a disconsolate look at the animal.

  “None of your impudence, sir, if you please,” retorted old John. “What would you ride, sir? A wild ass or zebra would be too tame for you, wouldn't he, eh sir? You'd like to ride a roaring lion, wouldn't you, sir, eh sir? Hold your tongue, sir. “ When Mr Willet, in his differences with his son, had exhausted all the questions that occurred to him, and Joe had said nothing at all in answer, he generally wound up by bidding him hold his tongue.

  “And what does the boy mean,” added Mr Willet, after he had stared at him for a little time, in a species of stupefaction, “by cocking his hat, to such an extent! Are you going to kill the wintner, sir?”

  “No,” said Joe, tartly; “I'm not. Now your mind's at ease, father.”

  “With a milintary air, too!” said Mr Willet, surveying him from top to toe; “with a swaggering, fire-eating, biling-water drinking sort of way with him! And what do you mean by pulling up the crocuses and snowdrops, eh sir?”

  “It's only a little nosegay,” said Joe, reddening. “There's no harm in that, I hope?”

  “You're a boy of business, you are, sir!” said Mr Willet, disdainfully, “to go supposing that wintners care for nosegays.”

  “I don't suppose anything of the kind,” returned Joe. “Let them keep their red noses for bottles and tankards. These are going to Mr Varden's house.”

  “And do you suppose HE minds such things as crocuses?” demanded John.

  “I don't know, and to say the truth, I don't care,” said Joe. “Come, father, give me the money, and in the name of patience let me go.”

  “There it is, sir,” replied John; “and take care of it; and mind you don't make too much haste back, but give the mare a long rest.—Do you mind?”

  “Ay, I mind,” returned Joe. “She'll need it, Heaven knows.”

  “And don't you score up too much at the Black Lion,” said John. “Mind that too.”

  “Then why don't you let me have some money of my own?” retorted Joe, sorrowfully; “why don't you, father? What do you send me into London for, giving me only the right to call for my dinner at the Black Lion, which you're to pay for next time you go, as if I was not to be trusted with a few shillings? Why do you use me like this? It's not right of you. You can't expect me to be quiet under it.”

  “Let him have money!” cried John, in a drowsy reverie. “What does he call money—guineas? Hasn't he got money? Over and above the tolls, hasn't he one and sixpence?”

  “One and sixpence!” repeated his son contemptuously.

  “Yes, sir,” returned John, “one and sixpence. When I was your age, I had never seen so much money, in a heap. A shilling of it is in case of accidents—the mare casting a shoe, or the like of that. The other sixpence is to spend in the diversions of London; and the diversion I recommend is going to the top of the Monument, and sitting there. There's no temptation there, sir—no drink—no young women—no bad characters of any sort—nothing but imagination. That's the way I enjoyed myself when I was your age, sir.”

  To this, Joe made no answer, but beckoning Hugh, leaped into the saddle and rode away; and a very stalwart, manly horseman he looked, deserving a better charger than it was his fortune to bestride. John stood staring after him, or rather after the grey mare (for he had no eyes for her rider), until man and beast had been out of sight some twenty minutes, when he began to think they were gone, and slowly re-entering the house, fell into a gentle doze.

  The unfortunate grey mare, who was the agony of Joe's life, flounde
red along at her own will and pleasure until the Maypole was no longer visible, and then, contracting her legs into what in a puppet would have been looked upon as a clumsy and awkward imitation of a canter, mended her pace all at once, and did it of her own accord. The acquaintance with her rider's usual mode of proceeding, which suggested this improvement in hers, impelled her likewise to turn up a bye-way, leading—not to London, but through lanes running parallel with the road they had come, and passing within a few hundred yards of the Maypole, which led finally to an inclosure surrounding a large, old, red-brick mansion—the same of which mention was made as the Warren in the first chapter of this history. Coming to a dead stop in a little copse thereabout, she suffered her rider to dismount with right goodwill, and to tie her to the trunk of a tree.

  “Stay there, old girl,” said Joe, “and let us see whether there's any little commission for me to-day. “ So saying, he left her to browze upon such stunted grass and weeds as happened to grow within the length of her tether, and passing through a wicket gate, entered the grounds on foot.

  The pathway, after a very few minutes” walking, brought him close to the house, towards which, and especially towards one particular window, he directed many covert glances. It was a dreary, silent building, with echoing courtyards, desolated turret-chambers, and whole suites of rooms shut up and mouldering to ruin.

  The terrace-garden, dark with the shade of overhanging trees, had an air of melancholy that was quite oppressive. Great iron gates, disused for many years, and red with rust, drooping on their hinges and overgrown with long rank grass, seemed as though they tried to sink into the ground, and hide their fallen state among the friendly weeds. The fantastic monsters on the walls, green with age and damp, and covered here and there with moss, looked grim and desolate. There was a sombre aspect even on that part of the mansion which was inhabited and kept in good repair, that struck the beholder with a sense of sadness; of something forlorn and failing, whence cheerfulness was banished. It would have been difficult to imagine a bright fire blazing in the dull and darkened rooms, or to picture any gaiety of heart or revelry that the frowning walls shut in. It seemed a place where such things had been, but could be no more—the very ghost of a house, haunting the old spot in its old outward form, and that was all.