Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
could not have been more suddenly cheered than by this outbreak on the
part of the hearty locksmith. In a voice nearly as full and round as his
own, Mr Haredale cried ‘Well said!’ and bade him come away without more
parley. The locksmith complied right willingly; and both getting into a
hackney coach which was waiting at the door, drove off straightway.
They alighted at the street corner, and dismissing their conveyance,
walked to the house. To their first knock at the door there was no
response. A second met with the like result. But in answer to the third,
which was of a more vigorous kind, the parlour window-sash was gently
raised, and a musical voice cried:
‘Haredale, my dear fellow, I am extremely glad to see you. How very much
you have improved in your appearance since our last meeting! I never saw
you looking better. HOW do you do?’
Mr Haredale turned his eyes towards the casement whence the voice
proceeded, though there was no need to do so, to recognise the speaker,
and Mr Chester waved his hand, and smiled a courteous welcome.
‘The door will be opened immediately,’ he said. ‘There is nobody but
a very dilapidated female to perform such offices. You will excuse her
infirmities? If she were in a more elevated station of society, she
would be gouty. Being but a hewer of wood and drawer of water, she
is rheumatic. My dear Haredale, these are natural class distinctions,
depend upon it.’
Mr Haredale, whose face resumed its lowering and distrustful look the
moment he heard the voice, inclined his head stiffly, and turned his
back upon the speaker.
‘Not opened yet,’ said Mr Chester. ‘Dear me! I hope the aged soul has
not caught her foot in some unlucky cobweb by the way. She is there at
last! Come in, I beg!’
Mr Haredale entered, followed by the locksmith. Turning with a look of
great astonishment to the old woman who had opened the door, he inquired
for Mrs Rudge--for Barnaby. They were both gone, she replied, wagging
her ancient head, for good. There was a gentleman in the parlour, who
perhaps could tell them more. That was all SHE knew.
‘Pray, sir,’ said Mr Haredale, presenting himself before this new
tenant, ‘where is the person whom I came here to see?’
‘My dear friend,’ he returned, ‘I have not the least idea.’
‘Your trifling is ill-timed,’ retorted the other in a suppressed tone
and voice, ‘and its subject ill-chosen. Reserve it for those who
are your friends, and do not expend it on me. I lay no claim to the
distinction, and have the self-denial to reject it.’
‘My dear, good sir,’ said Mr Chester, ‘you are heated with walking. Sit
down, I beg. Our friend is--’
‘Is but a plain honest man,’ returned Mr Haredale, ‘and quite unworthy
of your notice.’
‘Gabriel Varden by name, sir,’ said the locksmith bluntly.
‘A worthy English yeoman!’ said Mr Chester. ‘A most worthy yeoman, of
whom I have frequently heard my son Ned--darling fellow--speak, and have
often wished to see. Varden, my good friend, I am glad to know you. You
wonder now,’ he said, turning languidly to Mr Haredale, ‘to see me here.
Now, I am sure you do.’
Mr Haredale glanced at him--not fondly or admiringly--smiled, and held
his peace.
‘The mystery is solved in a moment,’ said Mr Chester; ‘in a moment. Will
you step aside with me one instant. You remember our little compact in
reference to Ned, and your dear niece, Haredale? You remember the list
of assistants in their innocent intrigue? You remember these two people
being among them? My dear fellow, congratulate yourself, and me. I have
bought them off.’
‘You have done what?’ said Mr Haredale.
‘Bought them off,’ returned his smiling friend. ‘I have found it
necessary to take some active steps towards setting this boy and girl
attachment quite at rest, and have begun by removing these two agents.
You are surprised? Who CAN withstand the influence of a little money!
They wanted it, and have been bought off. We have nothing more to fear
from them. They are gone.’
‘Gone!’ echoed Mr Haredale. ‘Where?’
‘My dear fellow--and you must permit me to say again, that you never
looked so young; so positively boyish as you do to-night--the Lord knows
where; I believe Columbus himself wouldn’t find them. Between you and
me they have their hidden reasons, but upon that point I have pledged
myself to secrecy. She appointed to see you here to-night, I know, but
found it inconvenient, and couldn’t wait. Here is the key of the door.
I am afraid you’ll find it inconveniently large; but as the tenement is
yours, your good-nature will excuse that, Haredale, I am certain!’
Chapter 27
Mr Haredale stood in the widow’s parlour with the door-key in his hand,
gazing by turns at Mr Chester and at Gabriel Varden, and occasionally
glancing downward at the key as in the hope that of its own accord
it would unlock the mystery; until Mr Chester, putting on his hat and
gloves, and sweetly inquiring whether they were walking in the same
direction, recalled him to himself.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Our roads diverge--widely, as you know. For the present,
I shall remain here.’
‘You will be hipped, Haredale; you will be miserable, melancholy,
utterly wretched,’ returned the other. ‘It’s a place of the very last
description for a man of your temper. I know it will make you very
miserable.’
‘Let it,’ said Mr Haredale, sitting down; ‘and thrive upon the thought.
Good night!’
Feigning to be wholly unconscious of the abrupt wave of the hand which
rendered this farewell tantamount to a dismissal, Mr Chester retorted
with a bland and heartfelt benediction, and inquired of Gabriel in what
direction HE was going.
‘Yours, sir, would be too much honour for the like of me,’ replied the
locksmith, hesitating.
‘I wish you to remain here a little while, Varden,’ said Mr Haredale,
without looking towards them. ‘I have a word or two to say to you.’
‘I will not intrude upon your conference another moment,’ said Mr
Chester with inconceivable politeness. ‘May it be satisfactory to you
both! God bless you!’ So saying, and bestowing upon the locksmith a most
refulgent smile, he left them.
‘A deplorably constituted creature, that rugged person,’ he said, as
he walked along the street; ‘he is an atrocity that carries its own
punishment along with it--a bear that gnaws himself. And here is one
of the inestimable advantages of having a perfect command over one’s
inclinations. I have been tempted in these two short interviews, to draw
upon that fellow, fifty times. Five men in six would have yielded to the
impulse. By suppressing mine, I wound him deeper and more keenly than if
I were the best swordsman in all Europe, and he the worst. You are the
wise man’s very last resource,’ he said, tapping the hilt of his weapon;
‘we can but appeal to you when all else is said and done. To come to you
before, and thereby spare our adversaries so much, is a barbarian mode
of warfare, quite unworthy of any man with the remotest pretensions to
delicacy of feeling, or refinement.’
He smiled so very pleasantly as he communed with himself after this
manner, that a beggar was emboldened to follow for alms, and to dog
his footsteps for some distance. He was gratified by the circumstance,
feeling it complimentary to his power of feature, and as a reward
suffered the man to follow him until he called a chair, when he
graciously dismissed him with a fervent blessing.
‘Which is as easy as cursing,’ he wisely added, as he took his seat,
‘and more becoming to the face.--To Clerkenwell, my good creatures, if
you please!’ The chairmen were rendered quite vivacious by having such a
courteous burden, and to Clerkenwell they went at a fair round trot.
Alighting at a certain point he had indicated to them upon the road, and
paying them something less than they expected from a fare of such gentle
speech, he turned into the street in which the locksmith dwelt, and
presently stood beneath the shadow of the Golden Key. Mr Tappertit, who
was hard at work by lamplight, in a corner of the workshop, remained
unconscious of his presence until a hand upon his shoulder made him
start and turn his head.
‘Industry,’ said Mr Chester, ‘is the soul of business, and the keystone
of prosperity. Mr Tappertit, I shall expect you to invite me to dinner
when you are Lord Mayor of London.’
‘Sir,’ returned the ‘prentice, laying down his hammer, and rubbing
his nose on the back of a very sooty hand, ‘I scorn the Lord Mayor and
everything that belongs to him. We must have another state of society,
sir, before you catch me being Lord Mayor. How de do, sir?’
‘The better, Mr Tappertit, for looking into your ingenuous face once
more. I hope you are well.’
‘I am as well, sir,’ said Sim, standing up to get nearer to his ear, and
whispering hoarsely, ‘as any man can be under the aggrawations to which
I am exposed. My life’s a burden to me. If it wasn’t for wengeance, I’d
play at pitch and toss with it on the losing hazard.’
‘Is Mrs Varden at home?’ said Mr Chester.
‘Sir,’ returned Sim, eyeing him over with a look of concentrated
expression,--‘she is. Did you wish to see her?’
Mr Chester nodded.
‘Then come this way, sir,’ said Sim, wiping his face upon his apron.
‘Follow me, sir.--Would you permit me to whisper in your ear, one half a
second?’
‘By all means.’
Mr Tappertit raised himself on tiptoe, applied his lips to Mr Chester’s
ear, drew back his head without saying anything, looked hard at
him, applied them to his ear again, again drew back, and finally
whispered--‘The name is Joseph Willet. Hush! I say no more.’
Having said that much, he beckoned the visitor with a mysterious aspect
to follow him to the parlour-door, where he announced him in the voice
of a gentleman-usher. ‘Mr Chester.’
‘And not Mr Ed’dard, mind,’ said Sim, looking into the door again, and
adding this by way of postscript in his own person; ‘it’s his father.’
‘But do not let his father,’ said Mr Chester, advancing hat in hand, as
he observed the effect of this last explanatory announcement, ‘do not
let his father be any check or restraint on your domestic occupations,
Miss Varden.’
‘Oh! Now! There! An’t I always a-saying it!’ exclaimed Miggs, clapping
her hands. ‘If he an’t been and took Missis for her own daughter. Well,
she DO look like it, that she do. Only think of that, mim!’
‘Is it possible,’ said Mr Chester in his softest tones, ‘that this is
Mrs Varden! I am amazed. That is not your daughter, Mrs Varden? No, no.
Your sister.’
‘My daughter, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs V., blushing with great
juvenility.
‘Ah, Mrs Varden!’ cried the visitor. ‘Ah, ma’am--humanity is indeed a
happy lot, when we can repeat ourselves in others, and still be young
as they. You must allow me to salute you--the custom of the country, my
dear madam--your daughter too.’
Dolly showed some reluctance to perform this ceremony, but was sharply
reproved by Mrs Varden, who insisted on her undergoing it that minute.
For pride, she said with great severity, was one of the seven deadly
sins, and humility and lowliness of heart were virtues. Wherefore she
desired that Dolly would be kissed immediately, on pain of her just
displeasure; at the same time giving her to understand that whatever
she saw her mother do, she might safely do herself, without being at the
trouble of any reasoning or reflection on the subject--which, indeed,
was offensive and undutiful, and in direct contravention of the church
catechism.
Thus admonished, Dolly complied, though by no means willingly; for there
was a broad, bold look of admiration in Mr Chester’s face, refined and
polished though it sought to be, which distressed her very much. As she
stood with downcast eyes, not liking to look up and meet his, he gazed
upon her with an approving air, and then turned to her mother.