Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
looked with like scorn upon the spinster, and wondered she didn’t know
she was no longer young. Apart from all these, on the river’s margin two
or three couple of business-talkers walked slowly up and down in earnest
conversation; and one young man sat thoughtfully on a bench, alone.
‘Ned is amazingly patient!’ said Mr Chester, glancing at this last-named
person as he set down his teacup and plied the golden toothpick,
‘immensely patient! He was sitting yonder when I began to dress, and has
scarcely changed his posture since. A most eccentric dog!’
As he spoke, the figure rose, and came towards him with a rapid pace.
‘Really, as if he had heard me,’ said the father, resuming his newspaper
with a yawn. ‘Dear Ned!’
Presently the room-door opened, and the young man entered; to whom his
father gently waved his hand, and smiled.
‘Are you at leisure for a little conversation, sir?’ said Edward.
‘Surely, Ned. I am always at leisure. You know my constitution.--Have
you breakfasted?’
‘Three hours ago.’
‘What a very early dog!’ cried his father, contemplating him from behind
the toothpick, with a languid smile.
‘The truth is,’ said Edward, bringing a chair forward, and seating
himself near the table, ‘that I slept but ill last night, and was glad
to rise. The cause of my uneasiness cannot but be known to you, sir; and
it is upon that I wish to speak.’
‘My dear boy,’ returned his father, ‘confide in me, I beg. But you know
my constitution--don’t be prosy, Ned.’
‘I will be plain, and brief,’ said Edward.
‘Don’t say you will, my good fellow,’ returned his father, crossing his
legs, ‘or you certainly will not. You are going to tell me’--
‘Plainly this, then,’ said the son, with an air of great concern, ‘that
I know where you were last night--from being on the spot, indeed--and
whom you saw, and what your purpose was.’
‘You don’t say so!’ cried his father. ‘I am delighted to hear it. It
saves us the worry, and terrible wear and tear of a long explanation,
and is a great relief for both. At the very house! Why didn’t you come
up? I should have been charmed to see you.’
‘I knew that what I had to say would be better said after a night’s
reflection, when both of us were cool,’ returned the son.
‘’Fore Gad, Ned,’ rejoined the father, ‘I was cool enough last night.
That detestable Maypole! By some infernal contrivance of the builder,
it holds the wind, and keeps it fresh. You remember the sharp east wind
that blew so hard five weeks ago? I give you my honour it was rampant
in that old house last night, though out of doors there was a dead calm.
But you were saying’--
‘I was about to say, Heaven knows how seriously and earnestly, that you
have made me wretched, sir. Will you hear me gravely for a moment?’
‘My dear Ned,’ said his father, ‘I will hear you with the patience of an
anchorite. Oblige me with the milk.’
‘I saw Miss Haredale last night,’ Edward resumed, when he had complied
with this request; ‘her uncle, in her presence, immediately after your
interview, and, as of course I know, in consequence of it, forbade
me the house, and, with circumstances of indignity which are of your
creation I am sure, commanded me to leave it on the instant.’
‘For his manner of doing so, I give you my honour, Ned, I am not
accountable,’ said his father. ‘That you must excuse. He is a mere boor,
a log, a brute, with no address in life.--Positively a fly in the jug.
The first I have seen this year.’
Edward rose, and paced the room. His imperturbable parent sipped his
tea.
‘Father,’ said the young man, stopping at length before him, ‘we must
not trifle in this matter. We must not deceive each other, or ourselves.
Let me pursue the manly open part I wish to take, and do not repel me by
this unkind indifference.’
‘Whether I am indifferent or no,’ returned the other, ‘I leave you, my
dear boy, to judge. A ride of twenty-five or thirty miles, through miry
roads--a Maypole dinner--a tete-a-tete with Haredale, which, vanity
apart, was quite a Valentine and Orson business--a Maypole bed--a
Maypole landlord, and a Maypole retinue of idiots and centaurs;--whether
the voluntary endurance of these things looks like indifference, dear
Ned, or like the excessive anxiety, and devotion, and all that sort of
thing, of a parent, you shall determine for yourself.’
‘I wish you to consider, sir,’ said Edward, ‘in what a cruel situation I
am placed. Loving Miss Haredale as I do--’
‘My dear fellow,’ interrupted his father with a compassionate smile,
‘you do nothing of the kind. You don’t know anything about it. There’s
no such thing, I assure you. Now, do take my word for it. You have good
sense, Ned,--great good sense. I wonder you should be guilty of such
amazing absurdities. You really surprise me.’
‘I repeat,’ said his son firmly, ‘that I love her. You have interposed
to part us, and have, to the extent I have just now told you of,
succeeded. May I induce you, sir, in time, to think more favourably of
our attachment, or is it your intention and your fixed design to hold us
asunder if you can?’
‘My dear Ned,’ returned his father, taking a pinch of snuff and pushing
his box towards him, ‘that is my purpose most undoubtedly.’
‘The time that has elapsed,’ rejoined his son, ‘since I began to know
her worth, has flown in such a dream that until now I have hardly once
paused to reflect upon my true position. What is it? From my childhood
I have been accustomed to luxury and idleness, and have been bred as
though my fortune were large, and my expectations almost without a
limit. The idea of wealth has been familiarised to me from my cradle. I
have been taught to look upon those means, by which men raise themselves
to riches and distinction, as being beyond my heeding, and beneath my
care. I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit
for nothing. I find myself at last wholly dependent upon you, with no
resource but in your favour. In this momentous question of my life we do
not, and it would seem we never can, agree. I have shrunk instinctively
alike from those to whom you have urged me to pay court, and from the
motives of interest and gain which have rendered them in your eyes
visible objects for my suit. If there never has been thus much
plain-speaking between us before, sir, the fault has not been mine,
indeed. If I seem to speak too plainly now, it is, believe me father, in
the hope that there may be a franker spirit, a worthier reliance, and a
kinder confidence between us in time to come.’
‘My good fellow,’ said his smiling father, ‘you quite affect me. Go
on, my dear Edward, I beg. But remember your promise. There is great
earnestness, vast candour, a manifest sincerity in all you say, but I
fear I observe the faintest indications of a tendency to prose.’
‘I am very sorry, sir.’
‘I am very sorry, too, Ned, but you know that I cannot fix my mind for
any long period upon one subject. If you’ll come to the point at once,
I’ll imagine all that ought to go before, and conclude it said. Oblige
me with the milk again. Listening, invariably makes me feverish.’
‘What I would say then, tends to this,’ said Edward. ‘I cannot bear
this absolute dependence, sir, even upon you. Time has been lost and
opportunity thrown away, but I am yet a young man, and may retrieve it.
Will you give me the means of devoting such abilities and energies as I
possess, to some worthy pursuit? Will you let me try to make for myself
an honourable path in life? For any term you please to name--say for
five years if you will--I will pledge myself to move no further in the
matter of our difference without your full concurrence. During that
period, I will endeavour earnestly and patiently, if ever man did, to
open some prospect for myself, and free you from the burden you fear
I should become if I married one whose worth and beauty are her chief
endowments. Will you do this, sir? At the expiration of the term we
agree upon, let us discuss this subject again. Till then, unless it is
revived by you, let it never be renewed between us.’
‘My dear Ned,’ returned his father, laying down the newspaper at which
he had been glancing carelessly, and throwing himself back in the
window-seat, ‘I believe you know how very much I dislike what are called
family affairs, which are only fit for plebeian Christmas days, and
have no manner of business with people of our condition. But as you
are proceeding upon a mistake, Ned--altogether upon a mistake--I will
conquer my repugnance to entering on such matters, and give you a
perfectly plain and candid answer, if you will do me the favour to shut
the door.’
Edward having obeyed him, he took an elegant little knife from his
pocket, and paring his nails, continued:
‘You have to thank me, Ned, for being of good family; for your mother,
charming person as she was, and almost broken-hearted, and so forth, as
she left me, when she was prematurely compelled to become immortal--had
nothing to boast of in that respect.’
‘Her father was at least an eminent lawyer, sir,’ said Edward.
‘Quite right, Ned; perfectly so. He stood high at the bar, had a great
name and great wealth, but having risen from nothing--I have
always closed my eyes to the circumstance and steadily resisted its
contemplation, but I fear his father dealt in pork, and that his
business did once involve cow-heel and sausages--he wished to marry his
daughter into a good family. He had his heart’s desire, Ned. I was a
younger son’s younger son, and I married her. We each had our object,
and gained it. She stepped at once into the politest and best circles,
and I stepped into a fortune which I assure you was very necessary to my
comfort--quite indispensable. Now, my good fellow, that fortune is among
the things that have been. It is gone, Ned, and has been gone--how old
are you? I always forget.’
‘Seven-and-twenty, sir.’
‘Are you indeed?’ cried his father, raising his eyelids in a languishing
surprise. ‘So much! Then I should say, Ned, that as nearly as I
remember, its skirts vanished from human knowledge, about eighteen or
nineteen years ago. It was about that time when I came to live in these
chambers (once your grandfather’s, and bequeathed by that extremely
respectable person to me), and commenced to live upon an inconsiderable
annuity and my past reputation.’
‘You are jesting with me, sir,’ said Edward.
‘Not in the slightest degree, I assure you,’ returned his father with
great composure. ‘These family topics are so extremely dry, that I am
sorry to say they don’t admit of any such relief. It is for that reason,
and because they have an appearance of business, that I dislike them so
very much. Well! You know the rest. A son, Ned, unless he is old enough
to be a companion--that is to say, unless he is some two or three and
twenty--is not the kind of thing to have about one. He is a restraint
upon his father, his father is a restraint upon him, and they make each
other mutually uncomfortable. Therefore, until within the last four
years or so--I have a poor memory for dates, and if I mistake, you will
correct me in your own mind--you pursued your studies at a distance, and
picked up a great variety of accomplishments. Occasionally we passed a
week or two together here, and disconcerted each other as only such near
relations can. At last you came home. I candidly tell you, my dear boy,
that if you had been awkward and overgrown, I should have exported you
to some distant part of the world.’
‘I wish with all my soul you had, sir,’ said Edward.
‘No you don’t, Ned,’ said his father coolly; ‘you are mistaken, I assure
you. I found you a handsome, prepossessing, elegant fellow, and I threw
you into the society I can still command. Having done that, my dear