Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
and driven hunger off in starving times? What else has given me the
strength and courage of a man, when men would have left me to die, a
puny child? I should never have had a man’s heart but for this. I
should have died in a ditch. Where’s he who when I was a weak and sickly
wretch, with trembling legs and fading sight, bade me cheer up, as this
did? I never knew him; not I. I drink to the drink, master. Ha ha ha!’
‘You are an exceedingly cheerful young man,’ said Mr Chester, putting
on his cravat with great deliberation, and slightly moving his head
from side to side to settle his chin in its proper place. ‘Quite a boon
companion.’
‘Do you see this hand, master,’ said Hugh, ‘and this arm?’ baring the
brawny limb to the elbow. ‘It was once mere skin and bone, and would
have been dust in some poor churchyard by this time, but for the drink.’
‘You may cover it,’ said Mr Chester, ‘it’s sufficiently real in your
sleeve.’
‘I should never have been spirited up to take a kiss from the proud
little beauty, master, but for the drink,’ cried Hugh. ‘Ha ha ha! It was
a good one. As sweet as honeysuckle, I warrant you. I thank the drink
for it. I’ll drink to the drink again, master. Fill me one more. Come.
One more!’
‘You are such a promising fellow,’ said his patron, putting on his
waistcoat with great nicety, and taking no heed of this request, ‘that
I must caution you against having too many impulses from the drink, and
getting hung before your time. What’s your age?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘At any rate,’ said Mr Chester, ‘you are young enough to escape what
I may call a natural death for some years to come. How can you trust
yourself in my hands on so short an acquaintance, with a halter round
your neck? What a confiding nature yours must be!’
Hugh fell back a pace or two and surveyed him with a look of mingled
terror, indignation, and surprise. Regarding himself in the glass with
the same complacency as before, and speaking as smoothly as if he were
discussing some pleasant chit-chat of the town, his patron went on:
‘Robbery on the king’s highway, my young friend, is a very dangerous and
ticklish occupation. It is pleasant, I have no doubt, while it lasts;
but like many other pleasures in this transitory world, it seldom lasts
long. And really if in the ingenuousness of youth, you open your heart
so readily on the subject, I am afraid your career will be an extremely
short one.’
‘How’s this?’ said Hugh. ‘What do you talk of master? Who was it set me
on?’
‘Who?’ said Mr Chester, wheeling sharply round, and looking full at him
for the first time. ‘I didn’t hear you. Who was it?’
Hugh faltered, and muttered something which was not audible.
‘Who was it? I am curious to know,’ said Mr Chester, with surpassing
affability. ‘Some rustic beauty perhaps? But be cautious, my good
friend. They are not always to be trusted. Do take my advice now, and be
careful of yourself.’ With these words he turned to the glass again, and
went on with his toilet.
Hugh would have answered him that he, the questioner himself had set him
on, but the words stuck in his throat. The consummate art with which his
patron had led him to this point, and managed the whole conversation,
perfectly baffled him. He did not doubt that if he had made the retort
which was on his lips when Mr Chester turned round and questioned him
so keenly, he would straightway have given him into custody and had him
dragged before a justice with the stolen property upon him; in which
case it was as certain he would have been hung as it was that he had
been born. The ascendency which it was the purpose of the man of the
world to establish over this savage instrument, was gained from that
time. Hugh’s submission was complete. He dreaded him beyond description;
and felt that accident and artifice had spun a web about him, which at a
touch from such a master-hand as his, would bind him to the gallows.
With these thoughts passing through his mind, and yet wondering at the
very same time how he who came there rioting in the confidence of this
man (as he thought), should be so soon and so thoroughly subdued, Hugh
stood cowering before him, regarding him uneasily from time to time,
while he finished dressing. When he had done so, he took up the
letter, broke the seal, and throwing himself back in his chair, read it
leisurely through.
‘Very neatly worded upon my life! Quite a woman’s letter, full of what
people call tenderness, and disinterestedness, and heart, and all that
sort of thing!’
As he spoke, he twisted it up, and glancing lazily round at Hugh as
though he would say ‘You see this?’ held it in the flame of the candle.
When it was in a full blaze, he tossed it into the grate, and there it
smouldered away.
‘It was directed to my son,’ he said, turning to Hugh, ‘and you did
quite right to bring it here. I opened it on my own responsibility, and
you see what I have done with it. Take this, for your trouble.’
Hugh stepped forward to receive the piece of money he held out to him.
As he put it in his hand, he added:
‘If you should happen to find anything else of this sort, or to pick
up any kind of information you may think I would like to have, bring it
here, will you, my good fellow?’
This was said with a smile which implied--or Hugh thought it did--‘fail
to do so at your peril!’ He answered that he would.
‘And don’t,’ said his patron, with an air of the very kindest patronage,
‘don’t be at all downcast or uneasy respecting that little rashness we
have been speaking of. Your neck is as safe in my hands, my good fellow,
as though a baby’s fingers clasped it, I assure you.--Take another
glass. You are quieter now.’
Hugh accepted it from his hand, and looking stealthily at his smiling
face, drank the contents in silence.
‘Don’t you--ha, ha!--don’t you drink to the drink any more?’ said Mr
Chester, in his most winning manner.
‘To you, sir,’ was the sullen answer, with something approaching to a
bow. ‘I drink to you.’
‘Thank you. God bless you. By the bye, what is your name, my good soul?
You are called Hugh, I know, of course--your other name?’
‘I have no other name.’
‘A very strange fellow! Do you mean that you never knew one, or that you
don’t choose to tell it? Which?’
‘I’d tell it if I could,’ said Hugh, quickly. ‘I can’t. I have been
always called Hugh; nothing more. I never knew, nor saw, nor thought
about a father; and I was a boy of six--that’s not very old--when they
hung my mother up at Tyburn for a couple of thousand men to stare at.
They might have let her live. She was poor enough.’
‘How very sad!’ exclaimed his patron, with a condescending smile. ‘I
have no doubt she was an exceedingly fine woman.’
‘You see that dog of mine?’ said Hugh, abruptly.
‘Faithful, I dare say?’ rejoined his patron, looking at him through his
glass; ‘and immensely clever? Virtuous and gifted animals, whether man
or beast, always are so very hideous.’
‘Such a dog as that, and one of the same breed, was the only living
thing except me that howled that day,’ said Hugh. ‘Out of the two
thousand odd--there was a larger crowd for its being a woman--the dog
and I alone had any pity. If he’d have been a man, he’d have been
glad to be quit of her, for she had been forced to keep him lean and
half-starved; but being a dog, and not having a man’s sense, he was
sorry.’
‘It was dull of the brute, certainly,’ said Mr Chester, ‘and very like a
brute.’
Hugh made no rejoinder, but whistling to his dog, who sprung up at the
sound and came jumping and sporting about him, bade his sympathising
friend good night.
‘Good night,’ he returned. ‘Remember; you’re safe with me--quite safe. So
long as you deserve it, my good fellow, as I hope you always will, you
have a friend in me, on whose silence you may rely. Now do be careful of
yourself, pray do, and consider what jeopardy you might have stood in.
Good night! bless you!’
Hugh truckled before the hidden meaning of these words as much as such
a being could, and crept out of the door so submissively and
subserviently--with an air, in short, so different from that with which
he had entered--that his patron on being left alone, smiled more than
ever.
‘And yet,’ he said, as he took a pinch of snuff, ‘I do not like their
having hanged his mother. The fellow has a fine eye, and I am sure she
was handsome. But very probably she was coarse--red-nosed perhaps, and
had clumsy feet. Aye, it was all for the best, no doubt.’
With this comforting reflection, he put on his coat, took a farewell
glance at the glass, and summoned his man, who promptly attended,
followed by a chair and its two bearers.
‘Foh!’ said Mr Chester. ‘The very atmosphere that centaur has breathed,
seems tainted with the cart and ladder. Here, Peak. Bring some scent and
sprinkle the floor; and take away the chair he sat upon, and air it; and
dash a little of that mixture upon me. I am stifled!’
The man obeyed; and the room and its master being both purified, nothing
remained for Mr Chester but to demand his hat, to fold it jauntily under
his arm, to take his seat in the chair and be carried off; humming a
fashionable tune.
Chapter 24
How the accomplished gentleman spent the evening in the midst of a
dazzling and brilliant circle; how he enchanted all those with whom he
mingled by the grace of his deportment, the politeness of his manner,
the vivacity of his conversation, and the sweetness of his voice; how
it was observed in every corner, that Chester was a man of that happy
disposition that nothing ruffled him, that he was one on whom the
world’s cares and errors sat lightly as his dress, and in whose smiling
face a calm and tranquil mind was constantly reflected; how honest men,
who by instinct knew him better, bowed down before him nevertheless,
deferred to his every word, and courted his favourable notice; how
people, who really had good in them, went with the stream, and fawned
and flattered, and approved, and despised themselves while they did
so, and yet had not the courage to resist; how, in short, he was one of
those who are received and cherished in society (as the phrase is) by
scores who individually would shrink from and be repelled by the
object of their lavish regard; are things of course, which will suggest
themselves. Matter so commonplace needs but a passing glance, and there
an end.
The despisers of mankind--apart from the mere fools and mimics, of that
creed--are of two sorts. They who believe their merit neglected and
unappreciated, make up one class; they who receive adulation and
flattery, knowing their own worthlessness, compose the other. Be sure
that the coldest-hearted misanthropes are ever of this last order.
Mr Chester sat up in bed next morning, sipping his coffee, and
remembering with a kind of contemptuous satisfaction how he had shone
last night, and how he had been caressed and courted, when his servant
brought in a very small scrap of dirty paper, tightly sealed in two
places, on the inside whereof was inscribed in pretty large text these
words: ‘A friend. Desiring of a conference. Immediate. Private. Burn it
when you’ve read it.’
‘Where in the name of the Gunpowder Plot did you pick up this?’ said his
master.
It was given him by a person then waiting at the door, the man replied.
‘With a cloak and dagger?’ said Mr Chester.
With nothing more threatening about him, it appeared, than a leather
apron and a dirty face. ‘Let him come in.’ In he came--Mr Tappertit;
with his hair still on end, and a great lock in his hand, which he put
down on the floor in the middle of the chamber as if he were about to go
through some performances in which it was a necessary agent.
‘Sir,’ said Mr Tappertit with a low bow, ‘I thank you for this