Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
and gradually assuming its recent shape; when he sprang up from his bed,
the same phantom vanished from his heated brain, and left him filled
with a dread against which reason and waking thought were powerless.
The sun was up, before he could shake it off. He rose late, but not
refreshed, and remained within doors all that day. He had a fancy for
paying his last visit to the old spot in the evening, for he had been
accustomed to walk there at that season, and desired to see it under the
aspect that was most familiar to him. At such an hour as would afford
him time to reach it a little before sunset, he left the inn, and turned
into the busy street.
He had not gone far, and was thoughtfully making his way among the noisy
crowd, when he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and, turning, recognised
one of the waiters from the inn, who begged his pardon, but he had left
his sword behind him.
‘Why have you brought it to me?’ he asked, stretching out his hand, and
yet not taking it from the man, but looking at him in a disturbed and
agitated manner.
The man was sorry to have disobliged him, and would carry it back again.
The gentleman had said that he was going a little way into the country,
and that he might not return until late. The roads were not very safe
for single travellers after dark; and, since the riots, gentlemen had
been more careful than ever, not to trust themselves unarmed in lonely
places. ‘We thought you were a stranger, sir,’ he added, ‘and that you
might believe our roads to be better than they are; but perhaps you know
them well, and carry fire-arms--’
He took the sword, and putting it up at his side, thanked the man, and
resumed his walk.
It was long remembered that he did this in a manner so strange, and
with such a trembling hand, that the messenger stood looking after his
retreating figure, doubtful whether he ought not to follow, and watch
him. It was long remembered that he had been heard pacing his bedroom in
the dead of the night; that the attendants had mentioned to each other
in the morning, how fevered and how pale he looked; and that when this
man went back to the inn, he told a fellow-servant that what he had
observed in this short interview lay very heavy on his mind, and that he
feared the gentleman intended to destroy himself, and would never come
back alive.
With a half-consciousness that his manner had attracted the man’s
attention (remembering the expression of his face when they parted),
Mr Haredale quickened his steps; and arriving at a stand of coaches,
bargained with the driver of the best to carry him so far on his road as
the point where the footway struck across the fields, and to await his
return at a house of entertainment which was within a stone’s-throw of
that place. Arriving there in due course, he alighted and pursued his
way on foot.
He passed so near the Maypole, that he could see its smoke rising from
among the trees, while a flock of pigeons--some of its old inhabitants,
doubtless--sailed gaily home to roost, between him and the unclouded
sky. ‘The old house will brighten up now,’ he said, as he looked towards
it, ‘and there will be a merry fireside beneath its ivied roof. It is
some comfort to know that everything will not be blighted hereabouts. I
shall be glad to have one picture of life and cheerfulness to turn to,
in my mind!’
He resumed his walk, and bent his steps towards the Warren. It was a
clear, calm, silent evening, with hardly a breath of wind to stir the
leaves, or any sound to break the stillness of the time, but drowsy
sheep-bells tinkling in the distance, and, at intervals, the far-off
lowing of cattle, or bark of village dogs. The sky was radiant with
the softened glory of sunset; and on the earth, and in the air, a deep
repose prevailed. At such an hour, he arrived at the deserted mansion
which had been his home so long, and looked for the last time upon its
blackened walls.
The ashes of the commonest fire are melancholy things, for in them there
is an image of death and ruin,--of something that has been bright, and
is but dull, cold, dreary dust,--with which our nature forces us to
sympathise. How much more sad the crumbled embers of a home: the casting
down of that great altar, where the worst among us sometimes perform
the worship of the heart; and where the best have offered up such
sacrifices, and done such deeds of heroism, as, chronicled, would put
the proudest temples of old Time, with all their vaunting annals, to the
blush!
He roused himself from a long train of meditation, and walked slowly
round the house. It was by this time almost dark.
He had nearly made the circuit of the building, when he uttered a
half-suppressed exclamation, started, and stood still. Reclining, in an
easy attitude, with his back against a tree, and contemplating the ruin
with an expression of pleasure,--a pleasure so keen that it overcame his
habitual indolence and command of feature, and displayed itself utterly
free from all restraint or reserve,--before him, on his own ground,
and triumphing then, as he had triumphed in every misfortune and
disappointment of his life, stood the man whose presence, of all
mankind, in any place, and least of all in that, he could the least
endure.
Although his blood so rose against this man, and his wrath so stirred
within him, that he could have struck him dead, he put such fierce
constraint upon himself that he passed him without a word or look. Yes,
and he would have gone on, and not turned, though to resist the Devil
who poured such hot temptation in his brain, required an effort scarcely
to be achieved, if this man had not himself summoned him to stop: and
that, with an assumed compassion in his voice which drove him well-nigh
mad, and in an instant routed all the self-command it had been
anguish--acute, poignant anguish--to sustain.
All consideration, reflection, mercy, forbearance; everything by which
a goaded man can curb his rage and passion; fled from him as he turned
back. And yet he said, slowly and quite calmly--far more calmly than he
had ever spoken to him before:
‘Why have you called to me?’
‘To remark,’ said Sir John Chester with his wonted composure, ‘what an
odd chance it is, that we should meet here!’
‘It IS a strange chance.’
‘Strange? The most remarkable and singular thing in the world. I never
ride in the evening; I have not done so for years. The whim seized me,
quite unaccountably, in the middle of last night.--How very picturesque
this is!’--He pointed, as he spoke, to the dismantled house, and raised
his glass to his eye.
‘You praise your own work very freely.’
Sir John let fall his glass; inclined his face towards him with an air
of the most courteous inquiry; and slightly shook his head as though he
were remarking to himself, ‘I fear this animal is going mad!’
‘I say you praise your own work very freely,’ repeated Mr Haredale.
‘Work!’ echoed Sir John, looking smilingly round. ‘Mine!--I beg your
pardon, I really beg your pardon--’
‘Why, you see,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘those walls. You see those tottering
gables. You see on every side where fire and smoke have raged. You see
the destruction that has been wanton here. Do you not?’
‘My good friend,’ returned the knight, gently checking his impatience
with his hand, ‘of course I do. I see everything you speak of, when you
stand aside, and do not interpose yourself between the view and me. I
am very sorry for you. If I had not had the pleasure to meet you here,
I think I should have written to tell you so. But you don’t bear it as
well as I had expected--excuse me--no, you don’t indeed.’
He pulled out his snuff-box, and addressing him with the superior air of
a man who, by reason of his higher nature, has a right to read a moral
lesson to another, continued:
‘For you are a philosopher, you know--one of that stern and rigid school
who are far above the weaknesses of mankind in general. You are removed,
a long way, from the frailties of the crowd. You contemplate them from a
height, and rail at them with a most impressive bitterness. I have heard
you.’
--‘And shall again,’ said Mr Haredale.
‘Thank you,’ returned the other. ‘Shall we walk as we talk? The damp
falls rather heavily. Well,--as you please. But I grieve to say that I
can spare you only a very few moments.’
‘I would,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘you had spared me none. I would, with
all my soul, you had been in Paradise (if such a monstrous lie could be
enacted), rather than here to-night.’
‘Nay,’ returned the other--‘really--you do yourself injustice. You are a
rough companion, but I would not go so far to avoid you.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Listen to me.’
‘While you rail?’ inquired Sir John.
‘While I deliver your infamy. You urged and stimulated to do your work
a fit agent, but one who in his nature--in the very essence of his
being--is a traitor, and who has been false to you (despite the sympathy
you two should have together) as he has been to all others. With hints,
and looks, and crafty words, which told again are nothing, you set on
Gashford to this work--this work before us now. With these same hints,
and looks, and crafty words, which told again are nothing, you urged
him on to gratify the deadly hate he owes me--I have earned it, I thank
Heaven--by the abduction and dishonour of my niece. You did. I see
denial in your looks,’ he cried, abruptly pointing in his face, and
stepping back, ‘and denial is a lie!’
He had his hand upon his sword; but the knight, with a contemptuous
smile, replied to him as coldly as before.
‘You will take notice, sir--if you can discriminate sufficiently--that I
have taken the trouble to deny nothing. Your discernment is hardly fine
enough for the perusal of faces, not of a kind as coarse as your speech;
nor has it ever been, that I remember; or, in one face that I could
name, you would have read indifference, not to say disgust, somewhat
sooner than you did. I speak of a long time ago,--but you understand
me.’
‘Disguise it as you will, you mean denial. Denial explicit or reserved,
expressed or left to be inferred, is still a lie. You say you don’t
deny. Do you admit?’
‘You yourself,’ returned Sir John, suffering the current of his
speech to flow as smoothly as if it had been stemmed by no one word of
interruption, ‘publicly proclaimed the character of the gentleman in
question (I think it was in Westminster Hall) in terms which relieve me
from the necessity of making any further allusion to him. You may
have been warranted; you may not have been; I can’t say. Assuming the
gentleman to be what you described, and to have made to you or any other
person any statements that may have happened to suggest themselves to
him, for the sake of his own security, or for the sake of money, or for
his own amusement, or for any other consideration,--I have nothing to
say of him, except that his extremely degrading situation appears to me
to be shared with his employers. You are so very plain yourself, that
you will excuse a little freedom in me, I am sure.’
‘Attend to me again, Sir John but once,’ cried Mr Haredale; ‘in your
every look, and word, and gesture, you tell me this was not your act. I
tell you that it was, and that you tampered with the man I speak of, and
with your wretched son (whom God forgive!) to do this deed. You talk of
degradation and character. You told me once that you had purchased the
absence of the poor idiot and his mother, when (as I have discovered
since, and then suspected) you had gone to tempt them, and had found
them flown. To you I traced the insinuation that I alone reaped any
harvest from my brother’s death; and all the foul attacks and whispered
calumnies that followed in its train. In every action of my life, from