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Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

by Charles Dickens · English · Gutenberg #917 · 1,438,116 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

Author: Charles Dickens


        
Release date: April 27, 2006 [eBook #917]
                Most recently updated: September 17, 2026

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARNABY RUDGE: A TALE OF THE RIOTS OF 'EIGHTY ***






BARNABY RUDGE

A TALE OF THE RIOTS OF ‘EIGHTY


by Charles Dickens



Contibutor’s Note:

I’ve left in archaic forms such as ‘to-morrow’ or ‘to-day’ as they
occured in my copy. Also please be aware if spell-checking, that within
dialog many ‘mispelled’ words exist, i.e. ‘wery’ for ‘very’, as intended
by the author.

D.L.




PREFACE


The late Mr Waterton having, some time ago, expressed his opinion that
ravens are gradually becoming extinct in England, I offered the few
following words about my experience of these birds.

The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals, of whom I
was, at different times, the proud possessor. The first was in the bloom
of his youth, when he was discovered in a modest retirement in London,
by a friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as Sir Hugh
Evans says of Anne Page, ‘good gifts’, which he improved by study and
attention in a most exemplary manner. He slept in a stable--generally
on horseback--and so terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural
sagacity, that he has been known, by the mere superiority of his genius,
to walk off unmolested with the dog’s dinner, from before his face. He
was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues, when, in an evil hour,
his stable was newly painted. He observed the workmen closely, saw that
they were careful of the paint, and immediately burned to possess it. On
their going to dinner, he ate up all they had left behind, consisting of
a pound or two of white lead; and this youthful indiscretion terminated
in death.

While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another friend of mine
in Yorkshire discovered an older and more gifted raven at a village
public-house, which he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a
consideration, and sent up to me. The first act of this Sage, was, to
administer to the effects of his predecessor, by disinterring all the
cheese and halfpence he had buried in the garden--a work of immense
labour and research, to which he devoted all the energies of his mind.
When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the acquisition
of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept, that he would
perch outside my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill,
all day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former master
sent his duty with him, ‘and if I wished the bird to come out very
strong, would I be so good as to show him a drunken man’--which I never
did, having (unfortunately) none but sober people at hand.

But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever the stimulating
influences of this sight might have been. He had not the least respect,
I am sorry to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the cook; to
whom he was attached--but only, I fear, as a Policeman might have been.
Once, I met him unexpectedly, about half-a-mile from my house, walking
down the middle of a public street, attended by a pretty large crowd,
and spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His
gravity under those trying circumstances, I can never forget, nor the
extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be brought home, he
defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may
have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have
been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence
into his maw--which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed
the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke
countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the
frames, and tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a
wooden staircase of six steps and a landing--but after some three years
he too was taken ill, and died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye
to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over
on his back with a sepulchral cry of ‘Cuckoo!’ Since then I have been
ravenless.

No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced
into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary
and remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.

It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they
reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all
who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely
call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and
who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of
right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution;
that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful; all History
teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well,
to profit by even so humble an example as the ‘No Popery’ riots of
Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.

However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following
pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the
Romish Church, though he acknowledges, as most men do, some esteemed
friends among the followers of its creed.

In the description of the principal outrages, reference has been had to
the best authorities of that time, such as they are; the account given
in this Tale, of all the main features of the Riots, is substantially
correct.

Mr Dennis’s allusions to the flourishing condition of his trade in those
days, have their foundation in Truth, and not in the Author’s fancy. Any
file of old Newspapers, or odd volume of the Annual Register, will prove
this with terrible ease.

Even the case of Mary Jones, dwelt upon with so much pleasure by the
same character, is no effort of invention. The facts were stated,
exactly as they are stated here, in the House of Commons. Whether they
afforded as much entertainment to the merry gentlemen assembled there,
as some other most affecting circumstances of a similar nature mentioned
by Sir Samuel Romilly, is not recorded.

That the case of Mary Jones may speak the more emphatically for
itself, I subjoin it, as related by SIR WILLIAM MEREDITH in a speech in
Parliament, ‘on Frequent Executions’, made in 1777.

‘Under this act,’ the Shop-lifting Act, ‘one Mary Jones was executed,
whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press warrants
were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman’s husband
was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two
small children, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance
not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen), and most
remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper’s shop, took some coarse
linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw
her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I
have the trial in my pocket), “that she had lived in credit, and wanted
for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but
since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children
to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done
something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.” The parish officers
testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good
deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary;
and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of
shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence,
she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a
distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast
when she set out for Tyburn.’



Chapter 1


In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a
distance of about twelve miles from London--measuring from the Standard
in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard
used to be in days of yore--a house of public entertainment called the
Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as
could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of
travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem
reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those
goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times,
was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow
that ever English yeoman drew.

The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and not
its sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a
lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out
of which it seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in
more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous
progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was
said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there
was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night
while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room
with a deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a
mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin
monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some
neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there
were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are
in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as
rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry
appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly
pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the
doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true
believers exulted as in a victory.

Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or
untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps
as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes
happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age.
Its windows were old diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken
and uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with
massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and
grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the more favoured
customers smoked and drank--ay, and sang many a good song too,
sometimes--reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which,
like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the
mansion.

In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests
for many a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole
colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were more
pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and out-buildings than anybody
but the landlord could reckon up. The wheeling and circling flights
of runts, fantails, tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite
consistent with the grave and sober character of the building, but the
monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some among them
all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest. With its
overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging
out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were
nodding in its sleep. Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fancy
to detect in it other resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it
was built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and
discoloured like an old man’s skin; the sturdy timbers had decayed like
teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to comfort it in
its age, wrapt its green leaves closely round the time-worn walls.

It was a hale and hearty age though, still: and in the summer or
autumn evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak and
chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its
lustre, seemed their fit companion, and to have many good years of life
in him yet.

The evening with which we have to do, was neither a summer nor an autumn
one, but the twilight of a day in March, when the wind howled dismally
among the bare branches of the trees, and rumbling in the wide chimneys
and driving the rain against the windows of the Maypole Inn, gave such
of its frequenters as chanced to be there at the moment an undeniable
reason for prolonging their stay, and caused the landlord to prophesy
that the night would certainly clear at eleven o’clock precisely,--which
by a remarkable coincidence was the hour at which he always closed his
house.

The name of him upon whom the spirit of prophecy thus descended was
John Willet, a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which betokened
profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined with a very
strong reliance upon his own merits. It was John Willet’s ordinary
boast in his more placid moods that if he were slow he was sure; which
assertion could, in one sense at least, be by no means gainsaid, seeing
that he was in everything unquestionably the reverse of fast, and withal
one of the most dogged and positive fellows in existence--always sure
that what he thought or said or did was right, and holding it as a thing
quite settled and ordained by the laws of nature and Providence, that
anybody who said or did or thought otherwise must be inevitably and of
necessity wrong.

Mr Willet walked slowly up to the window, flattened his fat nose
against the cold glass, and shading his eyes that his sight might not
be affected by the ruddy glow of the fire, looked abroad. Then he
walked slowly back to his old seat in the chimney-corner, and, composing
himself in it with a slight shiver, such as a man might give way to and
so acquire an additional relish for the warm blaze, said, looking round
upon his guests:

‘It’ll clear at eleven o’clock. No sooner and no later. Not before and
not arterwards.’

‘How do you make out that?’ said a little man in the opposite corner.
‘The moon is past the full, and she rises at nine.’

John looked sedately and solemnly at his questioner until he had brought
his mind to bear upon the whole of his observation, and then made
answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that the moon was peculiarly his
business and nobody else’s:

‘Never you mind about the moon. Don’t you trouble yourself about her.
You let the moon alone, and I’ll let you alone.’

‘No offence I hope?’ said the little man.

Again John waited leisurely until the observation had thoroughly
penetrated to his brain, and then replying, ‘No offence as YET,’ applied
a light to his pipe and smoked in placid silence; now and then casting
a sidelong look at a man wrapped in a loose riding-coat with huge cuffs
ornamented with tarnished silver lace and large metal buttons, who
sat apart from the regular frequenters of the house, and wearing a hat
flapped over his face, which was still further shaded by the hand on
which his forehead rested, looked unsociable enough.

There was another guest, who sat, booted and spurred, at some distance
from the fire also, and whose thoughts--to judge from his folded
arms and knitted brows, and from the untasted liquor before him--were
occupied with other matters than the topics under discussion or
the persons who discussed them. This was a young man of about
eight-and-twenty, rather above the middle height, and though of somewhat
slight figure, gracefully and strongly made. He wore his own dark hair,
and was accoutred in a riding dress, which together with his large boots
(resembling in shape and fashion those worn by our Life Guardsmen at
the present day), showed indisputable traces of the bad condition of
the roads. But travel-stained though he was, he was well and even richly
attired, and without being overdressed looked a gallant gentleman.

Lying upon the table beside him, as he had carelessly thrown them down,
were a heavy riding-whip and a slouched hat, the latter worn no doubt as
being best suited to the inclemency of the weather. There, too, were a
pair of pistols in a holster-case, and a short riding-cloak. Little of
his face was visible, except the long dark lashes which concealed his
downcast eyes, but an air of careless ease and natural gracefulness
of demeanour pervaded the figure, and seemed to comprehend even those
slight accessories, which were all handsome, and in good keeping.

Towards this young gentleman the eyes of Mr Willet wandered but once,
and then as if in mute inquiry whether he had observed his silent
neighbour. It was plain that John and the young gentleman had often met
before. Finding that his look was not returned, or indeed observed by
the person to whom it was addressed, John gradually concentrated the
whole power of his eyes into one focus, and brought it to bear upon the
man in the flapped hat, at whom he came to stare in course of time with
an intensity so remarkable, that it affected his fireside cronies, who
all, as with one accord, took their pipes from their lips, and stared
with open mouths at the stranger likewise.

The sturdy landlord had a large pair of dull fish-like eyes, and the
little man who had hazarded the remark about the moon (and who was the
parish-clerk and bell-ringer of Chigwell, a village hard by) had little
round black shiny eyes like beads; moreover this little man wore at the
knees of his rusty black breeches, and on his rusty black coat, and
all down his long flapped waistcoat, little queer buttons like nothing
except his eyes; but so like them, that as they twinkled and glistened
in the light of the fire, which shone too in his bright shoe-buckles,
he seemed all eyes from head to foot, and to be gazing with every one of
them at the unknown customer. No wonder that a man should grow restless
under such an inspection as this, to say nothing of the eyes belonging
to short Tom Cobb the general chandler and post-office keeper, and long
Phil Parkes the ranger, both of whom, infected by the example of their
companions, regarded him of the flapped hat no less attentively.

The stranger became restless; perhaps from being exposed to this raking
fire of eyes, perhaps from the nature of his previous meditations--most
probably from the latter cause, for as he changed his position and
looked hastily round, he started to find himself the object of such keen
regard, and darted an angry and suspicious glance at the fireside group.
It had the effect of immediately diverting all eyes to the chimney,
except those of John Willet, who finding himself as it were, caught in
the fact, and not being (as has been already observed) of a very ready
nature, remained staring at his guest in a particularly awkward and
disconcerted manner.

‘Well?’ said the stranger.

Well. There was not much in well. It was not a long speech. ‘I thought
you gave an order,’ said the landlord, after a pause of two or three
minutes for consideration.

The stranger took off his hat, and disclosed the hard features of a man
of sixty or thereabouts, much weatherbeaten and worn by time, and
the naturally harsh expression of which was not improved by a dark
handkerchief which was bound tightly round his head, and, while it
served the purpose of a wig, shaded his forehead, and almost hid his
eyebrows. If it were intended to conceal or divert attention from a deep
gash, now healed into an ugly seam, which when it was first inflicted
must have laid bare his cheekbone, the object was but indifferently
attained, for it could scarcely fail to be noted at a glance. His
complexion was of a cadaverous hue, and he had a grizzly jagged beard
of some three weeks’ date. Such was the figure (very meanly and poorly
clad) that now rose from the seat, and stalking across the room sat down
in a corner of the chimney, which the politeness or fears of the little
clerk very readily assigned to him.

‘A highwayman!’ whispered Tom Cobb to Parkes the ranger.

‘Do you suppose highwaymen don’t dress handsomer than that?’ replied
Parkes. ‘It’s a better business than you think for, Tom, and highwaymen
don’t need or use to be shabby, take my word for it.’

Meanwhile the subject of their speculations had done due honour to the
house by calling for some drink, which was promptly supplied by the
landlord’s son Joe, a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty,
whom it pleased his father still to consider a little boy, and to treat
accordingly. Stretching out his hands to warm them by the blazing fire,
the man turned his head towards the company, and after running his eye
sharply over them, said in a voice well suited to his appearance:

‘What house is that which stands a mile or so from here?’

‘Public-house?’ said the landlord, with his usual deliberation.

‘Public-house, father!’ exclaimed Joe, ‘where’s the public-house
within a mile or so of the Maypole? He means the great house--the
Warren--naturally and of course. The old red brick house, sir, that
stands in its own grounds--?’

‘Aye,’ said the stranger.

‘And that fifteen or twenty years ago stood in a park five times as
broad, which with other and richer property has bit by bit changed hands
and dwindled away--more’s the pity!’ pursued the young man.

‘Maybe,’ was the reply. ‘But my question related to the owner. What it
has been I don’t care to know, and what it is I can see for myself.’

The heir-apparent to the Maypole pressed his finger on his lips, and
glancing at the young gentleman already noticed, who had changed his
attitude when the house was first mentioned, replied in a lower tone:

‘The owner’s name is Haredale, Mr Geoffrey Haredale, and’--again
he glanced in the same direction as before--‘and a worthy gentleman
too--hem!’

Paying as little regard to this admonitory cough, as to the significant
gesture that had preceded it, the stranger pursued his questioning.

‘I turned out of my way coming here, and took the footpath that crosses
the grounds. Who was the young lady that I saw entering a carriage? His
daughter?’

‘Why, how should I know, honest man?’ replied Joe, contriving in the
course of some arrangements about the hearth, to advance close to his
questioner and pluck him by the sleeve, ‘I didn’t see the young lady,
you know. Whew! There’s the wind again--AND rain--well it IS a night!’

Rough weather indeed!’ observed the strange man.

‘You’re used to it?’ said Joe, catching at anything which seemed to
promise a diversion of the subject.

‘Pretty well,’ returned the other. ‘About the young lady--has Mr
Haredale a daughter?’

‘No, no,’ said the young fellow fretfully, ‘he’s a single
gentleman--he’s--be quiet, can’t you, man? Don’t you see this talk is
not relished yonder?’

Regardless of this whispered remonstrance, and affecting not to hear it,
his tormentor provokingly continued:

‘Single men have had daughters before now. Perhaps she may be his
daughter, though he is not married.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Joe, adding in an undertone as he approached
him again, ‘You’ll come in for it presently, I know you will!’

‘I mean no harm’--returned the traveller boldly, ‘and have said none
that I know of. I ask a few questions--as any stranger may, and not
unnaturally--about the inmates of a remarkable house in a neighbourhood
which is new to me, and you are as aghast and disturbed as if I were
talking treason against King George. Perhaps you can tell me why, sir,
for (as I say) I am a stranger, and this is Greek to me?’

The latter observation was addressed to the obvious cause of Joe
Willet’s discomposure, who had risen and was adjusting his riding-cloak
preparatory to sallying abroad. Briefly replying that he could give him
no information, the young man beckoned to Joe, and handing him a piece
of money in payment of his reckoning, hurried out attended by young
Willet himself, who taking up a candle followed to light him to the
house-door.

While Joe was absent on this errand, the elder Willet and his three
companions continued to smoke with profound gravity, and in a deep
silence, each having his eyes fixed on a huge copper boiler that was
suspended over the fire. After some time John Willet slowly shook his
head, and thereupon his friends slowly shook theirs; but no man withdrew
his eyes from the boiler, or altered the solemn expression of his
countenance in the slightest degree.

At length Joe returned--very talkative and conciliatory, as though with
a strong presentiment that he was going to be found fault with.

‘Such a thing as love is!’ he said, drawing a chair near the fire, and
looking round for sympathy. ‘He has set off to walk to London,--all
the way to London. His nag gone lame in riding out here this blessed
afternoon, and comfortably littered down in our stable at this minute;
and he giving up a good hot supper and our best bed, because Miss
Haredale has gone to a masquerade up in town, and he has set his heart
upon seeing her! I don’t think I could persuade myself to do that,
beautiful as she is,--but then I’m not in love (at least I don’t think I
am) and that’s the whole difference.’

‘He is in love then?’ said the stranger.

‘Rather,’ replied Joe. ‘He’ll never be more in love, and may very easily
be less.’

‘Silence, sir!’ cried his father.

‘What a chap you are, Joe!’ said Long Parkes.

‘Such a inconsiderate lad!’ murmured Tom Cobb.

‘Putting himself forward and wringing the very nose off his own father’s
face!’ exclaimed the parish-clerk, metaphorically.

‘What HAVE I done?’ reasoned poor Joe.

‘Silence, sir!’ returned his father, ‘what do you mean by talking, when
you see people that are more than two or three times your age, sitting
still and silent and not dreaming of saying a word?’

‘Why that’s the proper time for me to talk, isn’t it?’ said Joe
rebelliously.

‘The proper time, sir!’ retorted his father, ‘the proper time’s no
time.’

‘Ah to be sure!’ muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two who
nodded likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the point.

‘The proper time’s no time, sir,’ repeated John Willet; ‘when I was
your age I never talked, I never wanted to talk. I listened and improved
myself that’s what I did.’

‘And you’d find your father rather a tough customer in argeyment, Joe,
if anybody was to try and tackle him,’ said Parkes.

‘For the matter o’ that, Phil!’ observed Mr Willet, blowing a long,
thin, spiral cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and staring
at it abstractedly as it floated away; ‘For the matter o’ that, Phil,
argeyment is a gift of Natur. If Natur has gifted a man with powers
of argeyment, a man has a right to make the best of ‘em, and has not
a right to stand on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted; for
that is a turning of his back on Natur, a flouting of her, a slighting
of her precious caskets, and a proving of one’s self to be a swine that
isn’t worth her scattering pearls before.’

The landlord pausing here for a very long time, Mr Parkes naturally
concluded that he had brought his discourse to an end; and therefore,
turning to the young man with some austerity, exclaimed:

‘You hear what your father says, Joe? You wouldn’t much like to tackle
him in argeyment, I’m thinking, sir.’

‘IF,’ said John Willet, turning his eyes from the ceiling to the face of
his interrupter, and uttering the monosyllable in capitals, to apprise
him that he had put in his oar, as the vulgar say, with unbecoming
and irreverent haste; ‘IF, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of
argeyment, why should I not own to it, and rather glory in the same?
Yes, sir, I AM a tough customer that way. You are right, sir. My
toughness has been proved, sir, in this room many and many a time, as I
think you know; and if you don’t know,’ added John, putting his pipe in
his mouth again, ‘so much the better, for I an’t proud and am not going
to tell you.’

A general murmur from his three cronies, and a general shaking of
heads at the copper boiler, assured John Willet that they had had good
experience of his powers and needed no further evidence to assure them
of his superiority. John smoked with a little more dignity and surveyed
them in silence.

‘It’s all very fine talking,’ muttered Joe, who had been fidgeting in
his chair with divers uneasy gestures. ‘But if you mean to tell me that
I’m never to open my lips--’

‘Silence, sir!’ roared his father. ‘No, you never are. When your
opinion’s wanted, you give it. When you’re spoke to, you speak. When
your opinion’s not wanted and you’re not spoke to, don’t you give an
opinion and don’t you speak. The world’s undergone a nice alteration
since my time, certainly. My belief is that there an’t any boys
left--that there isn’t such a thing as a boy--that there’s nothing now
between a male baby and a man--and that all the boys went out with his
blessed Majesty King George the Second.’

‘That’s a very true observation, always excepting the young princes,’
said the parish-clerk, who, as the representative of church and state in
that company, held himself bound to the nicest loyalty. ‘If it’s godly
and righteous for boys, being of the ages of boys, to behave themselves
like boys, then the young princes must be boys and cannot be otherwise.’

‘Did you ever hear tell of mermaids, sir?’ said Mr Willet.

‘Certainly I have,’ replied the clerk.

‘Very good,’ said Mr Willet. ‘According to the constitution of mermaids,
so much of a mermaid as is not a woman must be a fish. According to the
constitution of young princes, so much of a young prince (if anything)
as is not actually an angel, must be godly and righteous. Therefore if
it’s becoming and godly and righteous in the young princes (as it is
at their ages) that they should be boys, they are and must be boys, and
cannot by possibility be anything else.’

This elucidation of a knotty point being received with such marks of
approval as to put John Willet into a good humour, he contented himself
with repeating to his son his command of silence, and addressing the
stranger, said:

‘If you had asked your questions of a grown-up person--of me or any of
these gentlemen--you’d have had some satisfaction, and wouldn’t have
wasted breath. Miss Haredale is Mr Geoffrey Haredale’s niece.’

‘Is her father alive?’ said the man, carelessly.

‘No,’ rejoined the landlord, ‘he is not alive, and he is not dead--’

‘Not dead!’ cried the other.

‘Not dead in a common sort of way,’ said the landlord.

The cronies nodded to each other, and Mr Parkes remarked in an
undertone, shaking his head meanwhile as who should say, ‘let no man
contradict me, for I won’t believe him,’ that John Willet was in amazing
force to-night, and fit to tackle a Chief Justice.

The stranger suffered a short pause to elapse, and then asked abruptly,
‘What do you mean?’

‘More than you think for, friend,’ returned John Willet. ‘Perhaps
there’s more meaning in them words than you suspect.’

‘Perhaps there is,’ said the strange man, gruffly; ‘but what the devil
do you speak in such mysteries for? You tell me, first, that a man is
not alive, nor yet dead--then, that he’s not dead in a common sort of
way--then, that you mean a great deal more than I think for. To tell
you the truth, you may do that easily; for so far as I can make out, you
mean nothing. What DO you mean, I ask again?’

‘That,’ returned the landlord, a little brought down from his dignity
by the stranger’s surliness, ‘is a Maypole story, and has been any time
these four-and-twenty years. That story is Solomon Daisy’s story. It
belongs to the house; and nobody but Solomon Daisy has ever told it
under this roof, or ever shall--that’s more.’

The man glanced at the parish-clerk, whose air of consciousness and
importance plainly betokened him to be the person referred to, and,
observing that he had taken his pipe from his lips, after a very long
whiff to keep it alight, and was evidently about to tell his story
without further solicitation, gathered his large coat about him, and
shrinking further back was almost lost in the gloom of the spacious
chimney-corner, except when the flame, struggling from under a great
faggot, whose weight almost crushed it for the time, shot upward with a
strong and sudden glare, and illumining his figure for a moment, seemed
afterwards to cast it into deeper obscurity than before.

By this flickering light, which made the old room, with its heavy
timbers and panelled walls, look as if it were built of polished
ebony--the wind roaring and howling without, now rattling the latch
and creaking the hinges of the stout oaken door, and now driving at
the casement as though it would beat it in--by this light, and under
circumstances so auspicious, Solomon Daisy began his tale:

‘It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey’s elder brother--’

Here he came to a dead stop, and made so long a pause that even John
Willet grew impatient and asked why he did not proceed.

‘Cobb,’ said Solomon Daisy, dropping his voice and appealing to the
post-office keeper; ‘what day of the month is this?’

‘The nineteenth.’

‘Of March,’ said the clerk, bending forward, ‘the nineteenth of March;
that’s very strange.’

In a low voice they all acquiesced, and Solomon went on:

‘It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey’s elder brother, that twenty-two
years ago was the owner of the Warren, which, as Joe has said--not that
you remember it, Joe, for a boy like you can’t do that, but because you
have often heard me say so--was then a much larger and better place, and
a much more valuable property than it is now. His lady was lately
dead, and he was left with one child--the Miss Haredale you have been
inquiring about--who was then scarcely a year old.’

Although the speaker addressed himself to the man who had shown so much
curiosity about this same family, and made a pause here as if expecting
some exclamation of surprise or encouragement, the latter made no
remark, nor gave any indication that he heard or was interested in what
was said. Solomon therefore turned to his old companions, whose noses
were brightly illuminated by the deep red glow from the bowls of their
pipes; assured, by long experience, of their attention, and resolved to
show his sense of such indecent behaviour.

‘Mr Haredale,’ said Solomon, turning his back upon the strange man,
‘left this place when his lady died, feeling it lonely like, and went
up to London, where he stopped some months; but finding that place as
lonely as this--as I suppose and have always heard say--he suddenly
came back again with his little girl to the Warren, bringing with him
besides, that day, only two women servants, and his steward, and a
gardener.’

Mr Daisy stopped to take a whiff at his pipe, which was going out,
and then proceeded--at first in a snuffling tone, occasioned by keen
enjoyment of the tobacco and strong pulling at the pipe, and afterwards
with increasing distinctness:

‘--Bringing with him two women servants, and his steward, and a
gardener. The rest stopped behind up in London, and were to follow next
day. It happened that that night, an old gentleman who lived at Chigwell
Row, and had long been poorly, deceased, and an order came to me at half
after twelve o’clock at night to go and toll the passing-bell.’

There was a movement in the little group of listeners, sufficiently
indicative of the strong repugnance any one of them would have felt to
have turned out at such a time upon such an errand. The clerk felt and
understood it, and pursued his theme accordingly.

‘It WAS a dreary thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in
his bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his
dinner on cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go
alone, for it was too late to hope to get any other companion. However,
I wasn’t unprepared for it; as the old gentleman had often made it a
request that the bell should be tolled as soon as possible after the
breath was out of his body, and he had been expected to go for some
days. I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up
(for it was mortal cold), started out with a lighted lantern in one hand
and the key of the church in the other.’

At this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as
if he had turned himself to hear more distinctly. Slightly pointing over
his shoulder, Solomon elevated his eyebrows and nodded a silent inquiry
to Joe whether this was the case. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand and
peered into the corner, but could make out nothing, and so shook his
head.

‘It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily,
and very dark--I often think now, darker than I ever saw it before or
since; that may be my fancy, but the houses were all close shut and the
folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one other man who knows how
dark it really was. I got into the church, chained the door back so that
it should keep ajar--for, to tell the truth, I didn’t like to be shut
in there alone--and putting my lantern on the stone seat in the little
corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to trim the candle.

‘I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not
persuade myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don’t know how
it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even
those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten
long ago; and they didn’t come into my mind one after another, but
all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story there was in the
village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very
night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground
and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me
think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door
and the churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have
to pass among them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves.
I had known all the niches and arches in the church from a child; still,
I couldn’t persuade myself that those were their natural shadows which
I saw on the pavement, but felt sure there were some ugly figures hiding
among ‘em and peeping out. Thinking on in this way, I began to think of
the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could have sworn, as I looked
up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place, wrapping his
shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time I
sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length
I started up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there
rang--not that bell, for I had hardly touched the rope--but another!

‘I heard the ringing of another bell, and a deep bell too, plainly. It
was only for an instant, and even then the wind carried the sound away,
but I heard it. I listened for a long time, but it rang no more. I had
heard of corpse candles, and at last I persuaded myself that this must
be a corpse bell tolling of itself at midnight for the dead. I tolled my
bell--how, or how long, I don’t know--and ran home to bed as fast as I
could touch the ground.

‘I was up early next morning after a restless night, and told the story
to my neighbours. Some were serious and some made light of it; I don’t
think anybody believed it real. But, that morning, Mr Reuben Haredale
was found murdered in his bedchamber; and in his hand was a piece of the
cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room
and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it.

‘That was the bell I heard.

‘A bureau was found opened, and a cash-box, which Mr Haredale had
brought down that day, and was supposed to contain a large sum of money,
was gone. The steward and gardener were both missing and both suspected
for a long time, but they were never found, though hunted far and wide.
And far enough they might have looked for poor Mr Rudge the steward,
whose body--scarcely to be recognised by his clothes and the watch and
ring he wore--was found, months afterwards, at the bottom of a piece of
water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been
stabbed with a knife. He was only partly dressed; and people all agreed
that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were
many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed before his
master.

Everybody now knew that the gardener must be the murderer, and though
he has never been heard of from that day to this, he will be, mark my
words. The crime was committed this day two-and-twenty years--on the
nineteenth of March, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three. On the
nineteenth of March in some year--no matter when--I know it, I am sure
of it, for we have always, in some strange way or other, been brought
back to the subject on that day ever since--on the nineteenth of March
in some year, sooner or later, that man will be discovered.’



Chapter 2


‘A strange story!’ said the man who had been the cause of the
narration.--‘Stranger still if it comes about as you predict. Is that
all?’

A question so unexpected, nettled Solomon Daisy not a little. By dint of
relating the story very often, and ornamenting it (according to village
report) with a few flourishes suggested by the various hearers from time
to time, he had come by degrees to tell it with great effect; and ‘Is
that all?’ after the climax, was not what he was accustomed to.

‘Is that all?’ he repeated, ‘yes, that’s all, sir. And enough too, I
think.’

‘I think so too. My horse, young man! He is but a hack hired from a
roadside posting house, but he must carry me to London to-night.’

‘To-night!’ said Joe.

‘To-night,’ returned the other. ‘What do you stare at? This tavern
would seem to be a house of call for all the gaping idlers of the
neighbourhood!’

At this remark, which evidently had reference to the scrutiny he had
undergone, as mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the eyes of John
Willet and his friends were diverted with marvellous rapidity to the
copper boiler again. Not so with Joe, who, being a mettlesome fellow,
returned the stranger’s angry glance with a steady look, and rejoined:

‘It is not a very bold thing to wonder at your going on to-night. Surely
you have been asked such a harmless question in an inn before, and in
better weather than this. I thought you mightn’t know the way, as you
seem strange to this part.’

‘The way--’ repeated the other, irritably.

‘Yes. DO you know it?’

‘I’ll--humph!--I’ll find it,’ replied the man, waving his hand and
turning on his heel. ‘Landlord, take the reckoning here.’

John Willet did as he was desired; for on that point he was seldom slow,
except in the particulars of giving change, and testing the goodness of
any piece of coin that was proffered to him, by the application of his
teeth or his tongue, or some other test, or in doubtful cases, by a long
series of tests terminating in its rejection. The guest then wrapped his
garments about him so as to shelter himself as effectually as he could
from the rough weather, and without any word or sign of farewell betook
himself to the stableyard. Here Joe (who had left the room on the
conclusion of their short dialogue) was protecting himself and the horse
from the rain under the shelter of an old penthouse roof.

‘He’s pretty much of my opinion,’ said Joe, patting the horse upon the
neck. ‘I’ll wager that your stopping here to-night would please him
better than it would please me.’

‘He and I are of different opinions, as we have been more than once on
our way here,’ was the short reply.

‘So I was thinking before you came out, for he has felt your spurs, poor
beast.’

The stranger adjusted his coat-collar about his face, and made no
answer.

‘You’ll know me again, I see,’ he said, marking the young fellow’s
earnest gaze, when he had sprung into the saddle.

‘The man’s worth knowing, master, who travels a road he don’t know,
mounted on a jaded horse, and leaves good quarters to do it on such a
night as this.’

‘You have sharp eyes and a sharp tongue, I find.’

‘Both I hope by nature, but the last grows rusty sometimes for want of
using.’

‘Use the first less too, and keep their sharpness for your sweethearts,
boy,’ said the man.

So saying he shook his hand from the bridle, struck him roughly on the
head with the butt end of his whip, and galloped away; dashing through
the mud and darkness with a headlong speed, which few badly mounted
horsemen would have cared to venture, even had they been thoroughly
acquainted with the country; and which, to one who knew nothing of the
way he rode, was attended at every step with great hazard and danger.

The roads, even within twelve miles of London, were at that time
ill paved, seldom repaired, and very badly made. The way this rider
traversed had been ploughed up by the wheels of heavy waggons, and
rendered rotten by the frosts and thaws of the preceding winter, or
possibly of many winters. Great holes and gaps had been worn into the
soil, which, being now filled with water from the late rains, were not
easily distinguishable even by day; and a plunge into any one of them
might have brought down a surer-footed horse than the poor beast now
urged forward to the utmost extent of his powers. Sharp flints and
stones rolled from under his hoofs continually; the rider could scarcely
see beyond the animal’s head, or farther on either side than his own
arm would have extended. At that time, too, all the roads in the
neighbourhood of the metropolis were infested by footpads or highwaymen,
and it was a night, of all others, in which any evil-disposed person of
this class might have pursued his unlawful calling with little fear of
detection.

Still, the traveller dashed forward at the same reckless pace,
regardless alike of the dirt and wet which flew about his head, the
profound darkness of the night, and the probability of encountering
some desperate characters abroad. At every turn and angle, even where
a deviation from the direct course might have been least expected, and
could not possibly be seen until he was close upon it, he guided the
bridle with an unerring hand, and kept the middle of the road. Thus he
sped onward, raising himself in the stirrups, leaning his body forward
until it almost touched the horse’s neck, and flourishing his heavy whip
above his head with the fervour of a madman.

There are times when, the elements being in unusual commotion, those who
are bent on daring enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts, whether
of good or evil, feel a mysterious sympathy with the tumult of nature,
and are roused into corresponding violence. In the midst of thunder,
lightning, and storm, many tremendous deeds have been committed; men,
self-possessed before, have given a sudden loose to passions they could
no longer control. The demons of wrath and despair have striven to
emulate those who ride the whirlwind and direct the storm; and man,
lashed into madness with the roaring winds and boiling waters, has
become for the time as wild and merciless as the elements themselves.

Whether the traveller was possessed by thoughts which the fury of the
night had heated and stimulated into a quicker current, or was merely
impelled by some strong motive to reach his journey’s end, on he swept
more like a hunted phantom than a man, nor checked his pace until,
arriving at some cross roads, one of which led by a longer route to
the place whence he had lately started, he bore down so suddenly upon a
vehicle which was coming towards him, that in the effort to avoid it he
well-nigh pulled his horse upon his haunches, and narrowly escaped being
thrown.

‘Yoho!’ cried the voice of a man. ‘What’s that? Who goes there?’

‘A friend!’ replied the traveller.

‘A friend!’ repeated the voice. ‘Who calls himself a friend and rides
like that, abusing Heaven’s gifts in the shape of horseflesh, and
endangering, not only his own neck (which might be no great matter) but
the necks of other people?’

‘You have a lantern there, I see,’ said the traveller dismounting, ‘lend
it me for a moment. You have wounded my horse, I think, with your shaft
or wheel.’

‘Wounded him!’ cried the other, ‘if I haven’t killed him, it’s no fault
of yours. What do you mean by galloping along the king’s highway like
that, eh?’

‘Give me the light,’ returned the traveller, snatching it from his hand,
‘and don’t ask idle questions of a man who is in no mood for talking.’

‘If you had said you were in no mood for talking before, I should
perhaps have been in no mood for lighting,’ said the voice. ‘Hows’ever
as it’s the poor horse that’s damaged and not you, one of you is welcome
to the light at all events--but it’s not the crusty one.’

The traveller returned no answer to this speech, but holding the light
near to his panting and reeking beast, examined him in limb and carcass.
Meanwhile, the other man sat very composedly in his vehicle, which was
a kind of chaise with a depository for a large bag of tools, and watched
his proceedings with a careful eye.

The looker-on was a round, red-faced, sturdy yeoman, with a double chin,
and a voice husky with good living, good sleeping, good humour, and good
health. He was past the prime of life, but Father Time is not always a
hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays
his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men
and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young
and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression
of the old fellow’s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle
but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.

The person whom the traveller had so abruptly encountered was of
this kind: bluff, hale, hearty, and in a green old age: at peace with
himself, and evidently disposed to be so with all the world. Although
muffled up in divers coats and handkerchiefs--one of which, passed over
his crown, and tied in a convenient crease of his double chin, secured
his three-cornered hat and bob-wig from blowing off his head--there
was no disguising his plump and comfortable figure; neither did certain
dirty finger-marks upon his face give it any other than an odd and
comical expression, through which its natural good humour shone with
undiminished lustre.

‘He is not hurt,’ said the traveller at length, raising his head and the
lantern together.

‘You have found that out at last, have you?’ rejoined the old man. ‘My
eyes have seen more light than yours, but I wouldn’t change with you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mean! I could have told you he wasn’t hurt, five minutes ago. Give me
the light, friend; ride forward at a gentler pace; and good night.’

In handing up the lantern, the man necessarily cast its rays full on the
speaker’s face. Their eyes met at the instant. He suddenly dropped it
and crushed it with his foot.

‘Did you never see a locksmith before, that you start as if you had come
upon a ghost?’ cried the old man in the chaise, ‘or is this,’ he added
hastily, thrusting his hand into the tool basket and drawing out a
hammer, ‘a scheme for robbing me? I know these roads, friend. When I
travel them, I carry nothing but a few shillings, and not a crown’s
worth of them. I tell you plainly, to save us both trouble, that there’s
nothing to be got from me but a pretty stout arm considering my years,
and this tool, which, mayhap from long acquaintance with, I can use
pretty briskly. You shall not have it all your own way, I promise you,
if you play at that game. With these words he stood upon the defensive.

‘I am not what you take me for, Gabriel Varden,’ replied the other.

‘Then what and who are you?’ returned the locksmith. ‘You know my name,
it seems. Let me know yours.’

‘I have not gained the information from any confidence of yours, but
from the inscription on your cart which tells it to all the town,’
replied the traveller.

‘You have better eyes for that than you had for your horse, then,’ said
Varden, descending nimbly from his chaise; ‘who are you? Let me see your
face.’

While the locksmith alighted, the traveller had regained his saddle,
from which he now confronted the old man, who, moving as the horse moved
in chafing under the tightened rein, kept close beside him.

‘Let me see your face, I say.’

‘Stand off!’

‘No masquerading tricks,’ said the locksmith, ‘and tales at the club
to-morrow, how Gabriel Varden was frightened by a surly voice and a dark
night. Stand--let me see your face.’

Finding that further resistance would only involve him in a personal
struggle with an antagonist by no means to be despised, the traveller
threw back his coat, and stooping down looked steadily at the locksmith.

Perhaps two men more powerfully contrasted, never opposed each other
face to face. The ruddy features of the locksmith so set off and
heightened the excessive paleness of the man on horseback, that he
looked like a bloodless ghost, while the moisture, which hard riding had
brought out upon his skin, hung there in dark and heavy drops, like dews
of agony and death. The countenance of the old locksmith lighted up with
the smile of one expecting to detect in this unpromising stranger some
latent roguery of eye or lip, which should reveal a familiar person in
that arch disguise, and spoil his jest. The face of the other, sullen
and fierce, but shrinking too, was that of a man who stood at bay; while
his firmly closed jaws, his puckered mouth, and more than all a certain
stealthy motion of the hand within his breast, seemed to announce a
desperate purpose very foreign to acting, or child’s play.

Thus they regarded each other for some time, in silence.

‘Humph!’ he said when he had scanned his features; ‘I don’t know you.’

‘Don’t desire to?’--returned the other, muffling himself as before.

‘I don’t,’ said Gabriel; ‘to be plain with you, friend, you don’t carry
in your countenance a letter of recommendation.’

‘It’s not my wish,’ said the traveller. ‘My humour is to be avoided.’

‘Well,’ said the locksmith bluntly, ‘I think you’ll have your humour.’

‘I will, at any cost,’ rejoined the traveller. ‘In proof of it, lay this
to heart--that you were never in such peril of your life as you have
been within these few moments; when you are within five minutes of
breathing your last, you will not be nearer death than you have been
to-night!’

‘Aye!’ said the sturdy locksmith.

‘Aye! and a violent death.’

‘From whose hand?’

‘From mine,’ replied the traveller.

With that he put spurs to his horse, and rode away; at first plashing
heavily through the mire at a smart trot, but gradually increasing in
speed until the last sound of his horse’s hoofs died away upon the wind;
when he was again hurrying on at the same furious gallop, which had been
his pace when the locksmith first encountered him.

Gabriel Varden remained standing in the road with the broken lantern in
his hand, listening in stupefied silence until no sound reached his ear
but the moaning of the wind, and the fast-falling rain; when he struck
himself one or two smart blows in the breast by way of rousing himself,
and broke into an exclamation of surprise.

‘What in the name of wonder can this fellow be! a madman? a highwayman?
a cut-throat? If he had not scoured off so fast, we’d have seen who was
in most danger, he or I. I never nearer death than I have been to-night!
I hope I may be no nearer to it for a score of years to come--if so,
I’ll be content to be no farther from it. My stars!--a pretty brag this
to a stout man--pooh, pooh!’

Gabriel resumed his seat, and looked wistfully up the road by which the
traveller had come; murmuring in a half whisper:

‘The Maypole--two miles to the Maypole. I came the other road from the
Warren after a long day’s work at locks and bells, on purpose that I
should not come by the Maypole and break my promise to Martha by looking
in--there’s resolution! It would be dangerous to go on to London without
a light; and it’s four miles, and a good half mile besides, to the
Halfway-House; and between this and that is the very place where one
needs a light most. Two miles to the Maypole! I told Martha I wouldn’t;
I said I wouldn’t, and I didn’t--there’s resolution!’

Repeating these two last words very often, as if to compensate for the
little resolution he was going to show by piquing himself on the great
resolution he had shown, Gabriel Varden quietly turned back, determining
to get a light at the Maypole, and to take nothing but a light.

When he got to the Maypole, however, and Joe, responding to his
well-known hail, came running out to the horse’s head, leaving the door
open behind him, and disclosing a delicious perspective of warmth and
brightness--when the ruddy gleam of the fire, streaming through the old
red curtains of the common room, seemed to bring with it, as part of
itself, a pleasant hum of voices, and a fragrant odour of steaming grog
and rare tobacco, all steeped as it were in the cheerful glow--when the
shadows, flitting across the curtain, showed that those inside had risen
from their snug seats, and were making room in the snuggest corner (how
well he knew that corner!) for the honest locksmith, and a broad glare,
suddenly streaming up, bespoke the goodness of the crackling log from
which a brilliant train of sparks was doubtless at that moment whirling
up the chimney in honour of his coming--when, superadded to these
enticements, there stole upon him from the distant kitchen a gentle
sound of frying, with a musical clatter of plates and dishes, and a
savoury smell that made even the boisterous wind a perfume--Gabriel
felt his firmness oozing rapidly away. He tried to look stoically at the
tavern, but his features would relax into a look of fondness. He turned
his head the other way, and the cold black country seemed to frown him
off, and drive him for a refuge into its hospitable arms.

‘The merciful man, Joe,’ said the locksmith, ‘is merciful to his beast.
I’ll get out for a little while.’

And how natural it was to get out! And how unnatural it seemed for a
sober man to be plodding wearily along through miry roads, encountering
the rude buffets of the wind and pelting of the rain, when there was
a clean floor covered with crisp white sand, a well swept hearth, a
blazing fire, a table decorated with white cloth, bright pewter flagons,
and other tempting preparations for a well-cooked meal--when there were
these things, and company disposed to make the most of them, all ready
to his hand, and entreating him to enjoyment!



Chapter 3


Such were the locksmith’s thoughts when first seated in the snug corner,
and slowly recovering from a pleasant defect of vision--pleasant,
because occasioned by the wind blowing in his eyes--which made it a
matter of sound policy and duty to himself, that he should take refuge
from the weather, and tempted him, for the same reason, to aggravate
a slight cough, and declare he felt but poorly. Such were still his
thoughts more than a full hour afterwards, when, supper over, he still
sat with shining jovial face in the same warm nook, listening to the
cricket-like chirrup of little Solomon Daisy, and bearing no unimportant
or slightly respected part in the social gossip round the Maypole fire.

‘I wish he may be an honest man, that’s all,’ said Solomon, winding up
a variety of speculations relative to the stranger, concerning whom
Gabriel had compared notes with the company, and so raised a grave
discussion; ‘I wish he may be an honest man.’

‘So we all do, I suppose, don’t we?’ observed the locksmith.

‘I don’t,’ said Joe.

‘No!’ cried Gabriel.

‘No. He struck me with his whip, the coward, when he was mounted and I
afoot, and I should be better pleased that he turned out what I think
him.’

‘And what may that be, Joe?’

‘No good, Mr Varden. You may shake your head, father, but I say no good,
and will say no good, and I would say no good a hundred times over, if
that would bring him back to have the drubbing he deserves.’

‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ said John Willet.

‘I won’t, father. It’s all along of you that he ventured to do what he
did. Seeing me treated like a child, and put down like a fool, HE plucks
up a heart and has a fling at a fellow that he thinks--and may well
think too--hasn’t a grain of spirit. But he’s mistaken, as I’ll show
him, and as I’ll show all of you before long.’

‘Does the boy know what he’s a saying of!’ cried the astonished John
Willet.

‘Father,’ returned Joe, ‘I know what I say and mean, well--better than
you do when you hear me. I can bear with you, but I cannot bear the
contempt that your treating me in the way you do, brings upon me from
others every day. Look at other young men of my age. Have they no
liberty, no will, no right to speak? Are they obliged to sit mumchance,
and to be ordered about till they are the laughing-stock of young and
old? I am a bye-word all over Chigwell, and I say--and it’s fairer
my saying so now, than waiting till you are dead, and I have got your
money--I say, that before long I shall be driven to break such bounds,
and that when I do, it won’t be me that you’ll have to blame, but your
own self, and no other.’

John Willet was so amazed by the exasperation and boldness of his
hopeful son, that he sat as one bewildered, staring in a ludicrous
manner at the boiler, and endeavouring, but quite ineffectually, to
collect his tardy thoughts, and invent an answer. The guests, scarcely
less disturbed, were equally at a loss; and at length, with a variety
of muttered, half-expressed condolences, and pieces of advice, rose to
depart; being at the same time slightly muddled with liquor.

The honest locksmith alone addressed a few words of coherent and
sensible advice to both parties, urging John Willet to remember that
Joe was nearly arrived at man’s estate, and should not be ruled with
too tight a hand, and exhorting Joe himself to bear with his father’s
caprices, and rather endeavour to turn them aside by temperate
remonstrance than by ill-timed rebellion. This advice was received as
such advice usually is. On John Willet it made almost as much impression
as on the sign outside the door, while Joe, who took it in the best
part, avowed himself more obliged than he could well express, but
politely intimated his intention nevertheless of taking his own course
uninfluenced by anybody.

‘You have always been a very good friend to me, Mr Varden,’ he said,
as they stood without, in the porch, and the locksmith was equipping
himself for his journey home; ‘I take it very kind of you to say all
this, but the time’s nearly come when the Maypole and I must part
company.’

‘Roving stones gather no moss, Joe,’ said Gabriel.

‘Nor milestones much,’ replied Joe. ‘I’m little better than one here,
and see as much of the world.’

‘Then, what would you do, Joe?’ pursued the locksmith, stroking his chin
reflectively. ‘What could you be? Where could you go, you see?’

‘I must trust to chance, Mr Varden.’

‘A bad thing to trust to, Joe. I don’t like it. I always tell my girl
when we talk about a husband for her, never to trust to chance, but to
make sure beforehand that she has a good man and true, and then chance
will neither make her nor break her. What are you fidgeting about there,
Joe? Nothing gone in the harness, I hope?’

‘No no,’ said Joe--finding, however, something very engrossing to do in
the way of strapping and buckling--‘Miss Dolly quite well?’

‘Hearty, thankye. She looks pretty enough to be well, and good too.’

‘She’s always both, sir’--

‘So she is, thank God!’

‘I hope,’ said Joe after some hesitation, ‘that you won’t tell this
story against me--this of my having been beat like the boy they’d make
of me--at all events, till I have met this man again and settled the
account. It’ll be a better story then.’

‘Why who should I tell it to?’ returned Gabriel. ‘They know it here, and
I’m not likely to come across anybody else who would care about it.’

‘That’s true enough,’ said the young fellow with a sigh. ‘I quite forgot
that. Yes, that’s true!’

So saying, he raised his face, which was very red,--no doubt from the
exertion of strapping and buckling as aforesaid,--and giving the reins
to the old man, who had by this time taken his seat, sighed again and
bade him good night.

‘Good night!’ cried Gabriel. ‘Now think better of what we have just
been speaking of; and don’t be rash, there’s a good fellow! I have an
interest in you, and wouldn’t have you cast yourself away. Good night!’

Returning his cheery farewell with cordial goodwill, Joe Willet lingered
until the sound of wheels ceased to vibrate in his ears, and then,
shaking his head mournfully, re-entered the house.

Gabriel Varden went his way towards London, thinking of a great
many things, and most of all of flaming terms in which to relate his
adventure, and so account satisfactorily to Mrs Varden for visiting the
Maypole, despite certain solemn covenants between himself and that lady.
Thinking begets, not only thought, but drowsiness occasionally, and the
more the locksmith thought, the more sleepy he became.

A man may be very sober--or at least firmly set upon his legs on that
neutral ground which lies between the confines of perfect sobriety and
slight tipsiness--and yet feel a strong tendency to mingle up present
circumstances with others which have no manner of connection with them;
to confound all consideration of persons, things, times, and places;
and to jumble his disjointed thoughts together in a kind of mental
kaleidoscope, producing combinations as unexpected as they are
transitory. This was Gabriel Varden’s state, as, nodding in his dog
sleep, and leaving his horse to pursue a road with which he was well
acquainted, he got over the ground unconsciously, and drew nearer and
nearer home. He had roused himself once, when the horse stopped until
the turnpike gate was opened, and had cried a lusty ‘good night!’ to the
toll-keeper; but then he awoke out of a dream about picking a lock in
the stomach of the Great Mogul, and even when he did wake, mixed up the
turnpike man with his mother-in-law who had been dead twenty years. It
is not surprising, therefore, that he soon relapsed, and jogged heavily
along, quite insensible to his progress.

And, now, he approached the great city, which lay outstretched before
him like a dark shadow on the ground, reddening the sluggish air with a
deep dull light, that told of labyrinths of public ways and shops, and
swarms of busy people. Approaching nearer and nearer yet, this halo
began to fade, and the causes which produced it slowly to develop
themselves. Long lines of poorly lighted streets might be faintly
traced, with here and there a lighter spot, where lamps were clustered
round a square or market, or round some great building; after a time
these grew more distinct, and the lamps themselves were visible; slight
yellow specks, that seemed to be rapidly snuffed out, one by one, as
intervening obstacles hid them from the sight. Then, sounds arose--the
striking of church clocks, the distant bark of dogs, the hum of traffic
in the streets; then outlines might be traced--tall steeples looming
in the air, and piles of unequal roofs oppressed by chimneys; then,
the noise swelled into a louder sound, and forms grew more distinct and
numerous still, and London--visible in the darkness by its own faint
light, and not by that of Heaven--was at hand.

The locksmith, however, all unconscious of its near vicinity, still
jogged on, half sleeping and half waking, when a loud cry at no great
distance ahead, roused him with a start.

For a moment or two he looked about him like a man who had been
transported to some strange country in his sleep, but soon recognising
familiar objects, rubbed his eyes lazily and might have relapsed again,
but that the cry was repeated--not once or twice or thrice, but many
times, and each time, if possible, with increased vehemence. Thoroughly
aroused, Gabriel, who was a bold man and not easily daunted, made
straight to the spot, urging on his stout little horse as if for life or
death.

The matter indeed looked sufficiently serious, for, coming to the place
whence the cries had proceeded, he descried the figure of a man extended
in an apparently lifeless state upon the pathway, and, hovering round
him, another person with a torch in his hand, which he waved in the air
with a wild impatience, redoubling meanwhile those cries for help which
had brought the locksmith to the spot.

‘What’s here to do?’ said the old man, alighting. ‘How’s
this--what--Barnaby?’

The bearer of the torch shook his long loose hair back from his eyes,
and thrusting his face eagerly into that of the locksmith, fixed upon
him a look which told his history at once.

‘You know me, Barnaby?’ said Varden.

He nodded--not once or twice, but a score of times, and that with a
fantastic exaggeration which would have kept his head in motion for
an hour, but that the locksmith held up his finger, and fixing his eye
sternly upon him caused him to desist; then pointed to the body with an
inquiring look.

‘There’s blood upon him,’ said Barnaby with a shudder. ‘It makes me
sick!’

‘How came it there?’ demanded Varden.

‘Steel, steel, steel!’ he replied fiercely, imitating with his hand the
thrust of a sword.

‘Is he robbed?’ said the locksmith.

Barnaby caught him by the arm, and nodded ‘Yes;’ then pointed towards
the city.

‘Oh!’ said the old man, bending over the body and looking round as he
spoke into Barnaby’s pale face, strangely lighted up by something that
was NOT intellect. ‘The robber made off that way, did he? Well, well,
never mind that just now. Hold your torch this way--a little farther
off--so. Now stand quiet, while I try to see what harm is done.’

With these words, he applied himself to a closer examination of
the prostrate form, while Barnaby, holding the torch as he had been
directed, looked on in silence, fascinated by interest or curiosity, but
repelled nevertheless by some strong and secret horror which convulsed
him in every nerve.

As he stood, at that moment, half shrinking back and half bending
forward, both his face and figure were full in the strong glare of the
link, and as distinctly revealed as though it had been broad day. He
was about three-and-twenty years old, and though rather spare, of a fair
height and strong make. His hair, of which he had a great profusion, was
red, and hanging in disorder about his face and shoulders, gave to his
restless looks an expression quite unearthly--enhanced by the paleness
of his complexion, and the glassy lustre of his large protruding eyes.
Startling as his aspect was, the features were good, and there was
something even plaintive in his wan and haggard aspect. But, the absence
of the soul is far more terrible in a living man than in a dead one; and
in this unfortunate being its noblest powers were wanting.

His dress was of green, clumsily trimmed here and there--apparently by
his own hands--with gaudy lace; brightest where the cloth was most
worn and soiled, and poorest where it was at the best. A pair of tawdry
ruffles dangled at his wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. He had
ornamented his hat with a cluster of peacock’s feathers, but they were
limp and broken, and now trailed negligently down his back. Girt to his
side was the steel hilt of an old sword without blade or scabbard; and
some particoloured ends of ribands and poor glass toys completed the
ornamental portion of his attire. The fluttered and confused disposition
of all the motley scraps that formed his dress, bespoke, in a scarcely
less degree than his eager and unsettled manner, the disorder of his
mind, and by a grotesque contrast set off and heightened the more
impressive wildness of his face.

‘Barnaby,’ said the locksmith, after a hasty but careful inspection,
‘this man is not dead, but he has a wound in his side, and is in a
fainting-fit.’

‘I know him, I know him!’ cried Barnaby, clapping his hands.

‘Know him?’ repeated the locksmith.

‘Hush!’ said Barnaby, laying his fingers upon his lips. ‘He went out
to-day a wooing. I wouldn’t for a light guinea that he should never go
a wooing again, for, if he did, some eyes would grow dim that are now as
bright as--see, when I talk of eyes, the stars come out! Whose eyes are
they? If they are angels’ eyes, why do they look down here and see good
men hurt, and only wink and sparkle all the night?’

‘Now Heaven help this silly fellow,’ murmured the perplexed locksmith;
‘can he know this gentleman? His mother’s house is not far off; I had
better see if she can tell me who he is. Barnaby, my man, help me to put
him in the chaise, and we’ll ride home together.’

‘I can’t touch him!’ cried the idiot falling back, and shuddering as
with a strong spasm; ‘he’s bloody!’

‘It’s in his nature, I know,’ muttered the locksmith, ‘it’s cruel to ask
him, but I must have help. Barnaby--good Barnaby--dear Barnaby--if you
know this gentleman, for the sake of his life and everybody’s life that
loves him, help me to raise him and lay him down.’

‘Cover him then, wrap him close--don’t let me see it--smell it--hear the
word. Don’t speak the word--don’t!’

‘No, no, I’ll not. There, you see he’s covered now. Gently. Well done,
well done!’

They placed him in the carriage with great ease, for Barnaby was strong
and active, but all the time they were so occupied he shivered from head
to foot, and evidently experienced an ecstasy of terror.

This accomplished, and the wounded man being covered with Varden’s own
greatcoat which he took off for the purpose, they proceeded onward at
a brisk pace: Barnaby gaily counting the stars upon his fingers, and
Gabriel inwardly congratulating himself upon having an adventure now,
which would silence Mrs Varden on the subject of the Maypole, for that
night, or there was no faith in woman.



Chapter 4


In the venerable suburb--it was a suburb once--of Clerkenwell, towards
that part of its confines which is nearest to the Charter House, and in
one of those cool, shady streets, of which a few, widely scattered
and dispersed, yet remain in such old parts of the metropolis,--each
tenement quietly vegetating like an ancient citizen who long ago retired
from business, and dozing on in its infirmity until in course of time it
tumbles down, and is replaced by some extravagant young heir, flaunting
in stucco and ornamental work, and all the vanities of modern days,--in
this quarter, and in a street of this description, the business of the
present chapter lies.

At the time of which it treats, though only six-and-sixty years ago,
a very large part of what is London now had no existence. Even in the
brains of the wildest speculators, there had sprung up no long rows of
streets connecting Highgate with Whitechapel, no assemblages of palaces
in the swampy levels, nor little cities in the open fields. Although
this part of town was then, as now, parcelled out in streets, and
plentifully peopled, it wore a different aspect. There were gardens
to many of the houses, and trees by the pavement side; with an air of
freshness breathing up and down, which in these days would be sought
in vain. Fields were nigh at hand, through which the New River took its
winding course, and where there was merry haymaking in the summer time.
Nature was not so far removed, or hard to get at, as in these days; and
although there were busy trades in Clerkenwell, and working jewellers
by scores, it was a purer place, with farm-houses nearer to it than many
modern Londoners would readily believe, and lovers’ walks at no great
distance, which turned into squalid courts, long before the lovers of
this age were born, or, as the phrase goes, thought of.

In one of these streets, the cleanest of them all, and on the shady
side of the way--for good housewives know that sunlight damages their
cherished furniture, and so choose the shade rather than its intrusive
glare--there stood the house with which we have to deal. It was a modest
building, not very straight, not large, not tall; not bold-faced, with
great staring windows, but a shy, blinking house, with a conical roof
going up into a peak over its garret window of four small panes of
glass, like a cocked hat on the head of an elderly gentleman with one
eye. It was not built of brick or lofty stone, but of wood and plaster;
it was not planned with a dull and wearisome regard to regularity,
for no one window matched the other, or seemed to have the slightest
reference to anything besides itself.

The shop--for it had a shop--was, with reference to the first floor,
where shops usually are; and there all resemblance between it and any
other shop stopped short and ceased. People who went in and out didn’t
go up a flight of steps to it, or walk easily in upon a level with the
street, but dived down three steep stairs, as into a cellar. Its floor
was paved with stone and brick, as that of any other cellar might be;
and in lieu of window framed and glazed it had a great black wooden flap
or shutter, nearly breast high from the ground, which turned back in
the day-time, admitting as much cold air as light, and very often more.
Behind this shop was a wainscoted parlour, looking first into a paved
yard, and beyond that again into a little terrace garden, raised some
feet above it. Any stranger would have supposed that this wainscoted
parlour, saving for the door of communication by which he had entered,
was cut off and detached from all the world; and indeed most strangers
on their first entrance were observed to grow extremely thoughtful, as
weighing and pondering in their minds whether the upper rooms were only
approachable by ladders from without; never suspecting that two of
the most unassuming and unlikely doors in existence, which the most
ingenious mechanician on earth must of necessity have supposed to be
the doors of closets, opened out of this room--each without the smallest
preparation, or so much as a quarter of an inch of passage--upon two
dark winding flights of stairs, the one upward, the other downward,
which were the sole means of communication between that chamber and the
other portions of the house.

With all these oddities, there was not a neater, more scrupulously tidy,
or more punctiliously ordered house, in Clerkenwell, in London, in all
England. There were not cleaner windows, or whiter floors, or brighter
Stoves, or more highly shining articles of furniture in old mahogany;
there was not more rubbing, scrubbing, burnishing and polishing, in the
whole street put together. Nor was this excellence attained without some
cost and trouble and great expenditure of voice, as the neighbours
were frequently reminded when the good lady of the house overlooked and
assisted in its being put to rights on cleaning days--which were usually
from Monday morning till Saturday night, both days inclusive.

Leaning against the door-post of this, his dwelling, the locksmith
stood early on the morning after he had met with the wounded man, gazing
disconsolately at a great wooden emblem of a key, painted in vivid
yellow to resemble gold, which dangled from the house-front, and swung
to and fro with a mournful creaking noise, as if complaining that it had
nothing to unlock. Sometimes, he looked over his shoulder into the shop,
which was so dark and dingy with numerous tokens of his trade, and so
blackened by the smoke of a little forge, near which his ‘prentice
was at work, that it would have been difficult for one unused to such
espials to have distinguished anything but various tools of uncouth make
and shape, great bunches of rusty keys, fragments of iron, half-finished
locks, and such like things, which garnished the walls and hung in
clusters from the ceiling.

After a long and patient contemplation of the golden key, and many such
backward glances, Gabriel stepped into the road, and stole a look at the
upper windows. One of them chanced to be thrown open at the moment,
and a roguish face met his; a face lighted up by the loveliest pair of
sparkling eyes that ever locksmith looked upon; the face of a pretty,
laughing girl; dimpled and fresh, and healthful--the very impersonation
of good-humour and blooming beauty.

‘Hush!’ she whispered, bending forward and pointing archly to the window
underneath. ‘Mother is still asleep.’

‘Still, my dear,’ returned the locksmith in the same tone. ‘You talk as
if she had been asleep all night, instead of little more than half an
hour. But I’m very thankful. Sleep’s a blessing--no doubt about it.’ The
last few words he muttered to himself.

‘How cruel of you to keep us up so late this morning, and never tell us
where you were, or send us word!’ said the girl.

‘Ah Dolly, Dolly!’ returned the locksmith, shaking his head, and
smiling, ‘how cruel of you to run upstairs to bed! Come down to
breakfast, madcap, and come down lightly, or you’ll wake your mother.
She must be tired, I am sure--I am.’

Keeping these latter words to himself, and returning his daughter’s nod,
he was passing into the workshop, with the smile she had awakened still
beaming on his face, when he just caught sight of his ‘prentice’s brown
paper cap ducking down to avoid observation, and shrinking from the
window back to its former place, which the wearer no sooner reached than
he began to hammer lustily.

‘Listening again, Simon!’ said Gabriel to himself. ‘That’s bad. What in
the name of wonder does he expect the girl to say, that I always catch
him listening when SHE speaks, and never at any other time! A bad habit,
Sim, a sneaking, underhanded way. Ah! you may hammer, but you won’t beat
that out of me, if you work at it till your time’s up!’

So saying, and shaking his head gravely, he re-entered the workshop, and
confronted the subject of these remarks.

‘There’s enough of that just now,’ said the locksmith. ‘You needn’t make
any more of that confounded clatter. Breakfast’s ready.’

‘Sir,’ said Sim, looking up with amazing politeness, and a peculiar
little bow cut short off at the neck, ‘I shall attend you immediately.’

‘I suppose,’ muttered Gabriel, ‘that’s out of the ‘Prentice’s Garland or
the ‘Prentice’s Delight, or the ‘Prentice’s Warbler, or the Prentice’s
Guide to the Gallows, or some such improving textbook. Now he’s going to
beautify himself--here’s a precious locksmith!’

Quite unconscious that his master was looking on from the dark corner by
the parlour door, Sim threw off the paper cap, sprang from his seat,
and in two extraordinary steps, something between skating and minuet
dancing, bounded to a washing place at the other end of the shop,
and there removed from his face and hands all traces of his previous
work--practising the same step all the time with the utmost gravity.
This done, he drew from some concealed place a little scrap of
looking-glass, and with its assistance arranged his hair, and
ascertained the exact state of a little carbuncle on his nose. Having
now completed his toilet, he placed the fragment of mirror on a low
bench, and looked over his shoulder at so much of his legs as could be
reflected in that small compass, with the greatest possible complacency
and satisfaction.

Sim, as he was called in the locksmith’s family, or Mr Simon Tappertit,
as he called himself, and required all men to style him out of doors,
on holidays, and Sundays out,--was an old-fashioned, thin-faced,
sleek-haired, sharp-nosed, small-eyed little fellow, very little more
than five feet high, and thoroughly convinced in his own mind that he
was above the middle size; rather tall, in fact, than otherwise. Of his
figure, which was well enough formed, though somewhat of the leanest,
he entertained the highest admiration; and with his legs, which, in
knee-breeches, were perfect curiosities of littleness, he was enraptured
to a degree amounting to enthusiasm. He also had some majestic, shadowy
ideas, which had never been quite fathomed by his intimate friends,
concerning the power of his eye. Indeed he had been known to go so far
as to boast that he could utterly quell and subdue the haughtiest beauty
by a simple process, which he termed ‘eyeing her over;’ but it must
be added, that neither of this faculty, nor of the power he claimed
to have, through the same gift, of vanquishing and heaving down dumb
animals, even in a rabid state, had he ever furnished evidence which
could be deemed quite satisfactory and conclusive.

It may be inferred from these premises, that in the small body of Mr
Tappertit there was locked up an ambitious and aspiring soul. As
certain liquors, confined in casks too cramped in their dimensions, will
ferment, and fret, and chafe in their imprisonment, so the spiritual
essence or soul of Mr Tappertit would sometimes fume within that
precious cask, his body, until, with great foam and froth and splutter,
it would force a vent, and carry all before it. It was his custom to
remark, in reference to any one of these occasions, that his soul had
got into his head; and in this novel kind of intoxication many scrapes
and mishaps befell him, which he had frequently concealed with no small
difficulty from his worthy master.

Sim Tappertit, among the other fancies upon which his before-mentioned
soul was for ever feasting and regaling itself (and which fancies,
like the liver of Prometheus, grew as they were fed upon), had a mighty
notion of his order; and had been heard by the servant-maid openly
expressing his regret that the ‘prentices no longer carried clubs
wherewith to mace the citizens: that was his strong expression. He was
likewise reported to have said that in former times a stigma had been
cast upon the body by the execution of George Barnwell, to which they
should not have basely submitted, but should have demanded him of
the legislature--temperately at first; then by an appeal to arms, if
necessary--to be dealt with as they in their wisdom might think fit.
These thoughts always led him to consider what a glorious engine the
‘prentices might yet become if they had but a master spirit at their
head; and then he would darkly, and to the terror of his hearers, hint
at certain reckless fellows that he knew of, and at a certain Lion Heart
ready to become their captain, who, once afoot, would make the Lord
Mayor tremble on his throne.

In respect of dress and personal decoration, Sim Tappertit was no less
of an adventurous and enterprising character. He had been seen, beyond
dispute, to pull off ruffles of the finest quality at the corner of the
street on Sunday nights, and to put them carefully in his pocket before
returning home; and it was quite notorious that on all great holiday
occasions it was his habit to exchange his plain steel knee-buckles for
a pair of glittering paste, under cover of a friendly post, planted most
conveniently in that same spot. Add to this that he was in years just
twenty, in his looks much older, and in conceit at least two hundred;
that he had no objection to be jested with, touching his admiration
of his master’s daughter; and had even, when called upon at a certain
obscure tavern to pledge the lady whom he honoured with his love,
toasted, with many winks and leers, a fair creature whose Christian
name, he said, began with a D--;--and as much is known of Sim Tappertit,
who has by this time followed the locksmith in to breakfast, as is
necessary to be known in making his acquaintance.

It was a substantial meal; for, over and above the ordinary tea
equipage, the board creaked beneath the weight of a jolly round of beef,
a ham of the first magnitude, and sundry towers of buttered Yorkshire
cake, piled slice upon slice in most alluring order. There was also
a goodly jug of well-browned clay, fashioned into the form of an old
gentleman, not by any means unlike the locksmith, atop of whose bald
head was a fine white froth answering to his wig, indicative, beyond
dispute, of sparkling home-brewed ale. But, better far than fair
home-brewed, or Yorkshire cake, or ham, or beef, or anything to eat or
drink that earth or air or water can supply, there sat, presiding over
all, the locksmith’s rosy daughter, before whose dark eyes even beef
grew insignificant, and malt became as nothing.

Fathers should never kiss their daughters when young men are by. It’s
too much. There are bounds to human endurance. So thought Sim Tappertit
when Gabriel drew those rosy lips to his--those lips within Sim’s reach
from day to day, and yet so far off. He had a respect for his master,
but he wished the Yorkshire cake might choke him.

‘Father,’ said the locksmith’s daughter, when this salute was over, and
they took their seats at table, ‘what is this I hear about last night?’

‘All true, my dear; true as the Gospel, Doll.’

‘Young Mr Chester robbed, and lying wounded in the road, when you came
up!’

‘Ay--Mr Edward. And beside him, Barnaby, calling for help with all his
might. It was well it happened as it did; for the road’s a lonely one,
the hour was late, and, the night being cold, and poor Barnaby even less
sensible than usual from surprise and fright, the young gentleman might
have met his death in a very short time.’

‘I dread to think of it!’ cried his daughter with a shudder. ‘How did
you know him?’

‘Know him!’ returned the locksmith. ‘I didn’t know him--how could I? I
had never seen him, often as I had heard and spoken of him. I took him
to Mrs Rudge’s; and she no sooner saw him than the truth came out.’

‘Miss Emma, father--If this news should reach her, enlarged upon as it
is sure to be, she will go distracted.’

‘Why, lookye there again, how a man suffers for being good-natured,’
said the locksmith. ‘Miss Emma was with her uncle at the masquerade at
Carlisle House, where she had gone, as the people at the Warren told me,
sorely against her will. What does your blockhead father when he and Mrs
Rudge have laid their heads together, but goes there when he ought to be
abed, makes interest with his friend the doorkeeper, slips him on a mask
and domino, and mixes with the masquers.’

‘And like himself to do so!’ cried the girl, putting her fair arm round
his neck, and giving him a most enthusiastic kiss.

‘Like himself!’ repeated Gabriel, affecting to grumble, but evidently
delighted with the part he had taken, and with her praise. ‘Very like
himself--so your mother said. However, he mingled with the crowd,
and prettily worried and badgered he was, I warrant you, with people
squeaking, “Don’t you know me?” and “I’ve found you out,” and all that
kind of nonsense in his ears. He might have wandered on till now, but
in a little room there was a young lady who had taken off her mask, on
account of the place being very warm, and was sitting there alone.’

‘And that was she?’ said his daughter hastily.

‘And that was she,’ replied the locksmith; ‘and I no sooner whispered to
her what the matter was--as softly, Doll, and with nearly as much art as
you could have used yourself--than she gives a kind of scream and faints
away.’

‘What did you do--what happened next?’ asked his daughter. ‘Why, the
masks came flocking round, with a general noise and hubbub, and I
thought myself in luck to get clear off, that’s all,’ rejoined the
locksmith. ‘What happened when I reached home you may guess, if you
didn’t hear it. Ah! Well, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices.--Put
Toby this way, my dear.’

This Toby was the brown jug of which previous mention has been made.
Applying his lips to the worthy old gentleman’s benevolent forehead, the
locksmith, who had all this time been ravaging among the eatables, kept
them there so long, at the same time raising the vessel slowly in
the air, that at length Toby stood on his head upon his nose, when he
smacked his lips, and set him on the table again with fond reluctance.

Although Sim Tappertit had taken no share in this conversation, no part
of it being addressed to him, he had not been wanting in such silent
manifestations of astonishment, as he deemed most compatible with the
favourable display of his eyes. Regarding the pause which now ensued, as
a particularly advantageous opportunity for doing great execution with
them upon the locksmith’s daughter (who he had no doubt was looking
at him in mute admiration), he began to screw and twist his face,
and especially those features, into such extraordinary, hideous, and
unparalleled contortions, that Gabriel, who happened to look towards
him, was stricken with amazement.

‘Why, what the devil’s the matter with the lad?’ cried the locksmith.
‘Is he choking?’

‘Who?’ demanded Sim, with some disdain.

‘Who? Why, you,’ returned his master. ‘What do you mean by making those
horrible faces over your breakfast?’

‘Faces are matters of taste, sir,’ said Mr Tappertit, rather
discomfited; not the less so because he saw the locksmith’s daughter
smiling.

‘Sim,’ rejoined Gabriel, laughing heartily. ‘Don’t be a fool, for I’d
rather see you in your senses. These young fellows,’ he added, turning
to his daughter, ‘are always committing some folly or another. There was
a quarrel between Joe Willet and old John last night though I can’t say
Joe was much in fault either. He’ll be missing one of these mornings,
and will have gone away upon some wild-goose errand, seeking his
fortune.--Why, what’s the matter, Doll? YOU are making faces now. The
girls are as bad as the boys every bit!’

‘It’s the tea,’ said Dolly, turning alternately very red and very white,
which is no doubt the effect of a slight scald--‘so very hot.’

Mr Tappertit looked immensely big at a quartern loaf on the table, and
breathed hard.

‘Is that all?’ returned the locksmith. ‘Put some more milk in it.--Yes,
I am sorry for Joe, because he is a likely young fellow, and gains upon
one every time one sees him. But he’ll start off, you’ll find. Indeed he
told me as much himself!’

‘Indeed!’ cried Dolly in a faint voice. ‘In-deed!’

‘Is the tea tickling your throat still, my dear?’ said the locksmith.

But, before his daughter could make him any answer, she was taken with
a troublesome cough, and it was such a very unpleasant cough, that,
when she left off, the tears were starting in her bright eyes. The
good-natured locksmith was still patting her on the back and applying
such gentle restoratives, when a message arrived from Mrs Varden, making
known to all whom it might concern, that she felt too much indisposed
to rise after her great agitation and anxiety of the previous night; and
therefore desired to be immediately accommodated with the little black
teapot of strong mixed tea, a couple of rounds of buttered toast, a
middling-sized dish of beef and ham cut thin, and the Protestant Manual
in two volumes post octavo. Like some other ladies who in remote
ages flourished upon this globe, Mrs Varden was most devout when most
ill-tempered. Whenever she and her husband were at unusual variance,
then the Protestant Manual was in high feather.

Knowing from experience what these requests portended, the triumvirate
broke up; Dolly, to see the orders executed with all despatch; Gabriel,
to some out-of-door work in his little chaise; and Sim, to his daily
duty in the workshop, to which retreat he carried the big look, although
the loaf remained behind.

Indeed the big look increased immensely, and when he had tied his apron
on, became quite gigantic. It was not until he had several times walked
up and down with folded arms, and the longest strides he could take,
and had kicked a great many small articles out of his way, that his lip
began to curl. At length, a gloomy derision came upon his features, and
he smiled; uttering meanwhile with supreme contempt the monosyllable
‘Joe!’

‘I eyed her over, while he talked about the fellow,’ he said, ‘and that
was of course the reason of her being confused. Joe!’

He walked up and down again much quicker than before, and if possible
with longer strides; sometimes stopping to take a glance at his legs,
and sometimes to jerk out, and cast from him, another ‘Joe!’ In the
course of a quarter of an hour or so he again assumed the paper cap and
tried to work. No. It could not be done.

‘I’ll do nothing to-day,’ said Mr Tappertit, dashing it down again, ‘but
grind. I’ll grind up all the tools. Grinding will suit my present humour
well. Joe!’

Whirr-r-r-r. The grindstone was soon in motion; the sparks were flying
off in showers. This was the occupation for his heated spirit.

Whirr-r-r-r-r-r-r.

‘Something will come of this!’ said Mr Tappertit, pausing as if in
triumph, and wiping his heated face upon his sleeve. ‘Something will
come of this. I hope it mayn’t be human gore!’

Whirr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r.



Chapter 5


As soon as the business of the day was over, the locksmith sallied
forth, alone, to visit the wounded gentleman and ascertain the progress
of his recovery. The house where he had left him was in a by-street
in Southwark, not far from London Bridge; and thither he hied with all
speed, bent upon returning with as little delay as might be, and getting
to bed betimes.

The evening was boisterous--scarcely better than the previous night had
been. It was not easy for a stout man like Gabriel to keep his legs at
the street corners, or to make head against the high wind, which often
fairly got the better of him, and drove him back some paces, or, in
defiance of all his energy, forced him to take shelter in an arch or
doorway until the fury of the gust was spent. Occasionally a hat or wig,
or both, came spinning and trundling past him, like a mad thing; while
the more serious spectacle of falling tiles and slates, or of masses of
brick and mortar or fragments of stone-coping rattling upon the pavement
near at hand, and splitting into fragments, did not increase the
pleasure of the journey, or make the way less dreary.

‘A trying night for a man like me to walk in!’ said the locksmith, as
he knocked softly at the widow’s door. ‘I’d rather be in old John’s
chimney-corner, faith!’

‘Who’s there?’ demanded a woman’s voice from within. Being answered, it
added a hasty word of welcome, and the door was quickly opened.

She was about forty--perhaps two or three years older--with a cheerful
aspect, and a face that had once been pretty. It bore traces of
affliction and care, but they were of an old date, and Time had smoothed
them. Any one who had bestowed but a casual glance on Barnaby might
have known that this was his mother, from the strong resemblance between
them; but where in his face there was wildness and vacancy, in hers
there was the patient composure of long effort and quiet resignation.

One thing about this face was very strange and startling. You could not
look upon it in its most cheerful mood without feeling that it had some
extraordinary capacity of expressing terror. It was not on the surface.
It was in no one feature that it lingered. You could not take the
eyes or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and say, if this or that were
otherwise, it would not be so. Yet there it always lurked--something for
ever dimly seen, but ever there, and never absent for a moment. It was
the faintest, palest shadow of some look, to which an instant of intense
and most unutterable horror only could have given birth; but indistinct
and feeble as it was, it did suggest what that look must have been, and
fixed it in the mind as if it had had existence in a dream.

More faintly imaged, and wanting force and purpose, as it were, because
of his darkened intellect, there was this same stamp upon the son.
Seen in a picture, it must have had some legend with it, and would have
haunted those who looked upon the canvas. They who knew the Maypole
story, and could remember what the widow was, before her husband’s and
his master’s murder, understood it well. They recollected how the change
had come, and could call to mind that when her son was born, upon the
very day the deed was known, he bore upon his wrist what seemed a smear
of blood but half washed out.

‘God save you, neighbour!’ said the locksmith, as he followed her, with
the air of an old friend, into a little parlour where a cheerful fire
was burning.

‘And you,’ she answered smiling. ‘Your kind heart has brought you
here again. Nothing will keep you at home, I know of old, if there are
friends to serve or comfort, out of doors.’

‘Tut, tut,’ returned the locksmith, rubbing his hands and warming them.
‘You women are such talkers. What of the patient, neighbour?’

‘He is sleeping now. He was very restless towards daylight, and for
some hours tossed and tumbled sadly. But the fever has left him, and the
doctor says he will soon mend. He must not be removed until to-morrow.’

‘He has had visitors to-day--humph?’ said Gabriel, slyly.

‘Yes. Old Mr Chester has been here ever since we sent for him, and had
not been gone many minutes when you knocked.’

‘No ladies?’ said Gabriel, elevating his eyebrows and looking
disappointed.

‘A letter,’ replied the widow.

‘Come. That’s better than nothing!’ replied the locksmith. ‘Who was the
bearer?’

‘Barnaby, of course.’

‘Barnaby’s a jewel!’ said Varden; ‘and comes and goes with ease where we
who think ourselves much wiser would make but a poor hand of it. He is
not out wandering, again, I hope?’

‘Thank Heaven he is in his bed; having been up all night, as you know,
and on his feet all day. He was quite tired out. Ah, neighbour, if I
could but see him oftener so--if I could but tame down that terrible
restlessness--’

‘In good time,’ said the locksmith, kindly, ‘in good time--don’t be
down-hearted. To my mind he grows wiser every day.’

The widow shook her head. And yet, though she knew the locksmith sought
to cheer her, and spoke from no conviction of his own, she was glad to
hear even this praise of her poor benighted son.

‘He will be a ‘cute man yet,’ resumed the locksmith. ‘Take care, when we
are growing old and foolish, Barnaby doesn’t put us to the blush, that’s
all. But our other friend,’ he added, looking under the table and
about the floor--‘sharpest and cunningest of all the sharp and cunning
ones--where’s he?’

‘In Barnaby’s room,’ rejoined the widow, with a faint smile.

‘Ah! He’s a knowing blade!’ said Varden, shaking his head. ‘I should
be sorry to talk secrets before him. Oh! He’s a deep customer. I’ve no
doubt he can read, and write, and cast accounts if he chooses. What was
that? Him tapping at the door?’

‘No,’ returned the widow. ‘It was in the street, I think. Hark! Yes.
There again! ‘Tis some one knocking softly at the shutter. Who can it
be!’

They had been speaking in a low tone, for the invalid lay overhead, and
the walls and ceilings being thin and poorly built, the sound of their
voices might otherwise have disturbed his slumber. The party without,
whoever it was, could have stood close to the shutter without hearing
anything spoken; and, seeing the light through the chinks and finding
all so quiet, might have been persuaded that only one person was there.

‘Some thief or ruffian maybe,’ said the locksmith. ‘Give me the light.’

‘No, no,’ she returned hastily. ‘Such visitors have never come to this
poor dwelling. Do you stay here. You’re within call, at the worst. I
would rather go myself--alone.’

‘Why?’ said the locksmith, unwillingly relinquishing the candle he had
caught up from the table.

‘Because--I don’t know why--because the wish is so strong upon me,’ she
rejoined. ‘There again--do not detain me, I beg of you!’

Gabriel looked at her, in great surprise to see one who was usually so
mild and quiet thus agitated, and with so little cause. She left the
room and closed the door behind her. She stood for a moment as if
hesitating, with her hand upon the lock. In this short interval the
knocking came again, and a voice close to the window--a voice the
locksmith seemed to recollect, and to have some disagreeable association
with--whispered ‘Make haste.’

The words were uttered in that low distinct voice which finds its way so
readily to sleepers’ ears, and wakes them in a fright. For a moment
it startled even the locksmith; who involuntarily drew back from the
window, and listened.

The wind rumbling in the chimney made it difficult to hear what passed,
but he could tell that the door was opened, that there was the tread of
a man upon the creaking boards, and then a moment’s silence--broken by a
suppressed something which was not a shriek, or groan, or cry for help,
and yet might have been either or all three; and the words ‘My God!’
uttered in a voice it chilled him to hear.

He rushed out upon the instant. There, at last, was that dreadful
look--the very one he seemed to know so well and yet had never seen
before--upon her face. There she stood, frozen to the ground, gazing
with starting eyes, and livid cheeks, and every feature fixed and
ghastly, upon the man he had encountered in the dark last night. His
eyes met those of the locksmith. It was but a flash, an instant, a
breath upon a polished glass, and he was gone.

The locksmith was upon him--had the skirts of his streaming garment
almost in his grasp--when his arms were tightly clutched, and the widow
flung herself upon the ground before him.

‘The other way--the other way,’ she cried. ‘He went the other way.
Turn--turn!’

‘The other way! I see him now,’ rejoined the locksmith,
pointing--‘yonder--there--there is his shadow passing by that light.
What--who is this? Let me go.’

‘Come back, come back!’ exclaimed the woman, clasping him; ‘Do not
touch him on your life. I charge you, come back. He carries other lives
besides his own. Come back!’

‘What does this mean?’ cried the locksmith.

‘No matter what it means, don’t ask, don’t speak, don’t think about it.
He is not to be followed, checked, or stopped. Come back!’

The old man looked at her in wonder, as she writhed and clung about him;
and, borne down by her passion, suffered her to drag him into the house.
It was not until she had chained and double-locked the door, fastened
every bolt and bar with the heat and fury of a maniac, and drawn him
back into the room, that she turned upon him, once again, that stony
look of horror, and, sinking down into a chair, covered her face, and
shuddered, as though the hand of death were on her.



Chapter 6


Beyond all measure astonished by the strange occurrences which had
passed with so much violence and rapidity, the locksmith gazed upon the
shuddering figure in the chair like one half stupefied, and would have
gazed much longer, had not his tongue been loosened by compassion and
humanity.

‘You are ill,’ said Gabriel. ‘Let me call some neighbour in.’

‘Not for the world,’ she rejoined, motioning to him with her trembling
hand, and holding her face averted. ‘It is enough that you have been by,
to see this.’

‘Nay, more than enough--or less,’ said Gabriel.

‘Be it so,’ she returned. ‘As you like. Ask me no questions, I entreat
you.’

‘Neighbour,’ said the locksmith, after a pause. ‘Is this fair, or
reasonable, or just to yourself? Is it like you, who have known me so
long and sought my advice in all matters--like you, who from a girl have
had a strong mind and a staunch heart?’

‘I have need of them,’ she replied. ‘I am growing old, both in years and
care. Perhaps that, and too much trial, have made them weaker than they
used to be. Do not speak to me.’

‘How can I see what I have seen, and hold my peace!’ returned the
locksmith. ‘Who was that man, and why has his coming made this change in
you?’

She was silent, but held to the chair as though to save herself from
falling on the ground.

‘I take the licence of an old acquaintance, Mary,’ said the locksmith,
‘who has ever had a warm regard for you, and maybe has tried to prove it
when he could. Who is this ill-favoured man, and what has he to do with
you? Who is this ghost, that is only seen in the black nights and bad
weather? How does he know, and why does he haunt this house, whispering
through chinks and crevices, as if there was that between him and you,
which neither durst so much as speak aloud of? Who is he?’

‘You do well to say he haunts this house,’ returned the widow, faintly.
‘His shadow has been upon it and me, in light and darkness, at noonday
and midnight. And now, at last, he has come in the body!’

‘But he wouldn’t have gone in the body,’ returned the locksmith with
some irritation, ‘if you had left my arms and legs at liberty. What
riddle is this?’

‘It is one,’ she answered, rising as she spoke, ‘that must remain for
ever as it is. I dare not say more than that.’

‘Dare not!’ repeated the wondering locksmith.

‘Do not press me,’ she replied. ‘I am sick and faint, and every faculty
of life seems dead within me.--No!--Do not touch me, either.’

Gabriel, who had stepped forward to render her assistance, fell back as
she made this hasty exclamation, and regarded her in silent wonder.

‘Let me go my way alone,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and let the hands of
no honest man touch mine to-night.’ When she had tottered to the door,
she turned, and added with a stronger effort, ‘This is a secret, which,
of necessity, I trust to you. You are a true man. As you have ever been
good and kind to me,--keep it. If any noise was heard above, make some
excuse--say anything but what you really saw, and never let a word or
look between us, recall this circumstance. I trust to you. Mind, I trust
to you. How much I trust, you never can conceive.’

Casting her eyes upon him for an instant, she withdrew, and left him
there alone.

Gabriel, not knowing what to think, stood staring at the door with a
countenance full of surprise and dismay. The more he pondered on
what had passed, the less able he was to give it any favourable
interpretation. To find this widow woman, whose life for so many years
had been supposed to be one of solitude and retirement, and who, in her
quiet suffering character, had gained the good opinion and respect of
all who knew her--to find her linked mysteriously with an ill-omened
man, alarmed at his appearance, and yet favouring his escape, was a
discovery that pained as much as startled him. Her reliance on his
secrecy, and his tacit acquiescence, increased his distress of mind. If
he had spoken boldly, persisted in questioning her, detained her
when she rose to leave the room, made any kind of protest, instead of
silently compromising himself, as he felt he had done, he would have
been more at ease.

‘Why did I let her say it was a secret, and she trusted it to me!’ said
Gabriel, putting his wig on one side to scratch his head with greater
ease, and looking ruefully at the fire. ‘I have no more readiness than
old John himself. Why didn’t I say firmly, “You have no right to such
secrets, and I demand of you to tell me what this means,” instead of
standing gaping at her, like an old moon-calf as I am! But there’s my
weakness. I can be obstinate enough with men if need be, but women may
twist me round their fingers at their pleasure.’

He took his wig off outright as he made this reflection, and, warming
his handkerchief at the fire began to rub and polish his bald head with
it, until it glistened again.

‘And yet,’ said the locksmith, softening under this soothing process,
and stopping to smile, ‘it MAY be nothing. Any drunken brawler trying to
make his way into the house, would have alarmed a quiet soul like her.
But then’--and here was the vexation--‘how came it to be that man; how
comes he to have this influence over her; how came she to favour his
getting away from me; and, more than all, how came she not to say it
was a sudden fright, and nothing more? It’s a sad thing to have, in one
minute, reason to mistrust a person I have known so long, and an old
sweetheart into the bargain; but what else can I do, with all this upon
my mind!--Is that Barnaby outside there?’

‘Ay!’ he cried, looking in and nodding. ‘Sure enough it’s Barnaby--how
did you guess?’

‘By your shadow,’ said the locksmith.

‘Oho!’ cried Barnaby, glancing over his shoulder, ‘He’s a merry fellow,
that shadow, and keeps close to me, though I AM silly. We have such
pranks, such walks, such runs, such gambols on the grass! Sometimes
he’ll be half as tall as a church steeple, and sometimes no bigger
than a dwarf. Now, he goes on before, and now behind, and anon he’ll
be stealing on, on this side, or on that, stopping whenever I stop, and
thinking I can’t see him, though I have my eye on him sharp enough. Oh!
he’s a merry fellow. Tell me--is he silly too? I think he is.’

‘Why?’ asked Gabriel.

‘Because he never tires of mocking me, but does it all day long.--Why
don’t you come?’

‘Where?’

‘Upstairs. He wants you. Stay--where’s HIS shadow? Come. You’re a wise
man; tell me that.’

‘Beside him, Barnaby; beside him, I suppose,’ returned the locksmith.

‘No!’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Guess again.’

‘Gone out a walking, maybe?’

‘He has changed shadows with a woman,’ the idiot whispered in his ear,
and then fell back with a look of triumph. ‘Her shadow’s always with
him, and his with her. That’s sport I think, eh?’

‘Barnaby,’ said the locksmith, with a grave look; ‘come hither, lad.’

‘I know what you want to say. I know!’ he replied, keeping away from
him. ‘But I’m cunning, I’m silent. I only say so much to you--are you
ready?’ As he spoke, he caught up the light, and waved it with a wild
laugh above his head.

‘Softly--gently,’ said the locksmith, exerting all his influence to keep
him calm and quiet. ‘I thought you had been asleep.’

‘So I HAVE been asleep,’ he rejoined, with widely-opened eyes. ‘There
have been great faces coming and going--close to my face, and then a
mile away--low places to creep through, whether I would or no--high
churches to fall down from--strange creatures crowded up together neck
and heels, to sit upon the bed--that’s sleep, eh?’

‘Dreams, Barnaby, dreams,’ said the locksmith.

‘Dreams!’ he echoed softly, drawing closer to him. ‘Those are not
dreams.’

‘What are,’ replied the locksmith, ‘if they are not?’

‘I dreamed,’ said Barnaby, passing his arm through Varden’s, and peering
close into his face as he answered in a whisper, ‘I dreamed just now
that something--it was in the shape of a man--followed me--came softly
after me--wouldn’t let me be--but was always hiding and crouching, like
a cat in dark corners, waiting till I should pass; when it crept out and
came softly after me.--Did you ever see me run?’

‘Many a time, you know.’

‘You never saw me run as I did in this dream. Still it came creeping on
to worry me. Nearer, nearer, nearer--I ran faster--leaped--sprung out
of bed, and to the window--and there, in the street below--but he is
waiting for us. Are you coming?’

‘What in the street below, Barnaby?’ said Varden, imagining that
he traced some connection between this vision and what had actually
occurred.

Barnaby looked into his face, muttered incoherently, waved the light
above his head again, laughed, and drawing the locksmith’s arm more
tightly through his own, led him up the stairs in silence.

They entered a homely bedchamber, garnished in a scanty way with chairs,
whose spindle-shanks bespoke their age, and other furniture of very
little worth; but clean and neatly kept. Reclining in an easy-chair
before the fire, pale and weak from waste of blood, was Edward Chester,
the young gentleman who had been the first to quit the Maypole on the
previous night, and who, extending his hand to the locksmith, welcomed
him as his preserver and friend.

‘Say no more, sir, say no more,’ said Gabriel. ‘I hope I would have done
at least as much for any man in such a strait, and most of all for you,
sir. A certain young lady,’ he added, with some hesitation, ‘has done us
many a kind turn, and we naturally feel--I hope I give you no offence in
saying this, sir?’

The young man smiled and shook his head; at the same time moving in his
chair as if in pain.

‘It’s no great matter,’ he said, in answer to the locksmith’s
sympathising look, ‘a mere uneasiness arising at least as much from
being cooped up here, as from the slight wound I have, or from the loss
of blood. Be seated, Mr Varden.’

‘If I may make so bold, Mr Edward, as to lean upon your chair,’ returned
the locksmith, accommodating his action to his speech, and bending over
him, ‘I’ll stand here for the convenience of speaking low. Barnaby is
not in his quietest humour to-night, and at such times talking never
does him good.’

They both glanced at the subject of this remark, who had taken a seat on
the other side of the fire, and, smiling vacantly, was making puzzles on
his fingers with a skein of string.

‘Pray, tell me, sir,’ said Varden, dropping his voice still lower,
‘exactly what happened last night. I have my reason for inquiring. You
left the Maypole, alone?’

‘And walked homeward alone, until I had nearly reached the place where
you found me, when I heard the gallop of a horse.’

‘Behind you?’ said the locksmith.

‘Indeed, yes--behind me. It was a single rider, who soon overtook me,
and checking his horse, inquired the way to London.’

‘You were on the alert, sir, knowing how many highwaymen there are,
scouring the roads in all directions?’ said Varden.

‘I was, but I had only a stick, having imprudently left my pistols
in their holster-case with the landlord’s son. I directed him as he
desired. Before the words had passed my lips, he rode upon me furiously,
as if bent on trampling me down beneath his horse’s hoofs. In starting
aside, I slipped and fell. You found me with this stab and an ugly
bruise or two, and without my purse--in which he found little enough for
his pains. And now, Mr Varden,’ he added, shaking the locksmith by the
hand, ‘saving the extent of my gratitude to you, you know as much as I.’

‘Except,’ said Gabriel, bending down yet more, and looking cautiously
towards their silent neighhour, ‘except in respect of the robber
himself. What like was he, sir? Speak low, if you please. Barnaby means
no harm, but I have watched him oftener than you, and I know, little as
you would think it, that he’s listening now.’

It required a strong confidence in the locksmith’s veracity to lead any
one to this belief, for every sense and faculty that Barnaby possessed,
seemed to be fixed upon his game, to the exclusion of all other things.
Something in the young man’s face expressed this opinion, for Gabriel
repeated what he had just said, more earnestly than before, and with
another glance towards Barnaby, again asked what like the man was.

‘The night was so dark,’ said Edward, ‘the attack so sudden, and he so
wrapped and muffled up, that I can hardly say. It seems that--’

‘Don’t mention his name, sir,’ returned the locksmith, following his
look towards Barnaby; ‘I know HE saw him. I want to know what YOU saw.’

‘All I remember is,’ said Edward, ‘that as he checked his horse his
hat was blown off. He caught it, and replaced it on his head, which
I observed was bound with a dark handkerchief. A stranger entered the
Maypole while I was there, whom I had not seen--for I had sat apart for
reasons of my own--and when I rose to leave the room and glanced round,
he was in the shadow of the chimney and hidden from my sight. But, if he
and the robber were two different persons, their voices were strangely
and most remarkably alike; for directly the man addressed me in the
road, I recognised his speech again.’

‘It is as I feared. The very man was here to-night,’ thought the
locksmith, changing colour. ‘What dark history is this!’

‘Halloa!’ cried a hoarse voice in his ear. ‘Halloa, halloa, halloa! Bow
wow wow. What’s the matter here! Hal-loa!’

The speaker--who made the locksmith start as if he had been some
supernatural agent--was a large raven, who had perched upon the top of
the easy-chair, unseen by him and Edward, and listened with a polite
attention and a most extraordinary appearance of comprehending every
word, to all they had said up to this point; turning his head from one
to the other, as if his office were to judge between them, and it were
of the very last importance that he should not lose a word.

‘Look at him!’ said Varden, divided between admiration of the bird and a
kind of fear of him. ‘Was there ever such a knowing imp as that! Oh he’s
a dreadful fellow!’

The raven, with his head very much on one side, and his bright eye
shining like a diamond, preserved a thoughtful silence for a few
seconds, and then replied in a voice so hoarse and distant, that it
seemed to come through his thick feathers rather than out of his mouth.

‘Halloa, halloa, halloa! What’s the matter here! Keep up your spirits.
Never say die. Bow wow wow. I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a devil.
Hurrah!’--And then, as if exulting in his infernal character, he began
to whistle.

‘I more than half believe he speaks the truth. Upon my word I do,’
said Varden. ‘Do you see how he looks at me, as if he knew what I was
saying?’

To which the bird, balancing himself on tiptoe, as it were, and moving
his body up and down in a sort of grave dance, rejoined, ‘I’m a devil,
I’m a devil, I’m a devil,’ and flapped his wings against his sides as
if he were bursting with laughter. Barnaby clapped his hands, and fairly
rolled upon the ground in an ecstasy of delight.

‘Strange companions, sir,’ said the locksmith, shaking his head, and
looking from one to the other. ‘The bird has all the wit.’

‘Strange indeed!’ said Edward, holding out his forefinger to the raven,
who, in acknowledgment of the attention, made a dive at it immediately
with his iron bill. ‘Is he old?’

‘A mere boy, sir,’ replied the locksmith. ‘A hundred and twenty, or
thereabouts. Call him down, Barnaby, my man.’

‘Call him!’ echoed Barnaby, sitting upright upon the floor, and staring
vacantly at Gabriel, as he thrust his hair back from his face. ‘But who
can make him come! He calls me, and makes me go where he will. He goes
on before, and I follow. He’s the master, and I’m the man. Is that the
truth, Grip?’

The raven gave a short, comfortable, confidential kind of croak;--a most
expressive croak, which seemed to say, ‘You needn’t let these fellows
into our secrets. We understand each other. It’s all right.’

‘I make HIM come?’ cried Barnaby, pointing to the bird. ‘Him, who never
goes to sleep, or so much as winks!--Why, any time of night, you may see
his eyes in my dark room, shining like two sparks. And every night, and
all night too, he’s broad awake, talking to himself, thinking what he
shall do to-morrow, where we shall go, and what he shall steal, and
hide, and bury. I make HIM come! Ha ha ha!’

On second thoughts, the bird appeared disposed to come of himself. After
a short survey of the ground, and a few sidelong looks at the ceiling
and at everybody present in turn, he fluttered to the floor, and went
to Barnaby--not in a hop, or walk, or run, but in a pace like that of
a very particular gentleman with exceedingly tight boots on, trying to
walk fast over loose pebbles. Then, stepping into his extended hand,
and condescending to be held out at arm’s length, he gave vent to a
succession of sounds, not unlike the drawing of some eight or ten dozen
of long corks, and again asserted his brimstone birth and parentage with
great distinctness.

The locksmith shook his head--perhaps in some doubt of the creature’s
being really nothing but a bird--perhaps in pity for Barnaby, who by
this time had him in his arms, and was rolling about, with him, on the
ground. As he raised his eyes from the poor fellow he encountered those
of his mother, who had entered the room, and was looking on in silence.

She was quite white in the face, even to her lips, but had wholly
subdued her emotion, and wore her usual quiet look. Varden fancied as he
glanced at her that she shrunk from his eye; and that she busied herself
about the wounded gentleman to avoid him the better.

It was time he went to bed, she said. He was to be removed to his own
home on the morrow, and he had already exceeded his time for sitting up,
by a full hour. Acting on this hint, the locksmith prepared to take his
leave.

‘By the bye,’ said Edward, as he shook him by the hand, and looked from
him to Mrs Rudge and back again, ‘what noise was that below? I heard
your voice in the midst of it, and should have inquired before, but our
other conversation drove it from my memory. What was it?’

The locksmith looked towards her, and bit his lip. She leant against the
chair, and bent her eyes upon the ground. Barnaby too--he was listening.

--‘Some mad or drunken fellow, sir,’ Varden at length made answer,
looking steadily at the widow as he spoke. ‘He mistook the house, and
tried to force an entrance.’

She breathed more freely, but stood quite motionless. As the locksmith
said ‘Good night,’ and Barnaby caught up the candle to light him down
the stairs, she took it from him, and charged him--with more haste and
earnestness than so slight an occasion appeared to warrant--not to stir.
The raven followed them to satisfy himself that all was right below,
and when they reached the street-door, stood on the bottom stair drawing
corks out of number.

With a trembling hand she unfastened the chain and bolts, and turned
the key. As she had her hand upon the latch, the locksmith said in a low
voice,

‘I have told a lie to-night, for your sake, Mary, and for the sake of
bygone times and old acquaintance, when I would scorn to do so for my
own. I hope I may have done no harm, or led to none. I can’t help the
suspicions you have forced upon me, and I am loth, I tell you plainly,
to leave Mr Edward here. Take care he comes to no hurt. I doubt the
safety of this roof, and am glad he leaves it so soon. Now, let me go.’

For a moment she hid her face in her hands and wept; but resisting the
strong impulse which evidently moved her to reply, opened the door--no
wider than was sufficient for the passage of his body--and motioned him
away. As the locksmith stood upon the step, it was chained and locked
behind him, and the raven, in furtherance of these precautions, barked
like a lusty house-dog.

‘In league with that ill-looking figure that might have fallen from a
gibbet--he listening and hiding here--Barnaby first upon the spot last
night--can she who has always borne so fair a name be guilty of such
crimes in secret!’ said the locksmith, musing. ‘Heaven forgive me if I
am wrong, and send me just thoughts; but she is poor, the temptation
may be great, and we daily hear of things as strange.--Ay, bark away, my
friend. If there’s any wickedness going on, that raven’s in it, I’ll be
sworn.’



Chapter 7


Mrs Varden was a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper--a
phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to
make everybody more or less uncomfortable. Thus it generally happened,
that when other people were merry, Mrs Varden was dull; and that
when other people were dull, Mrs Varden was disposed to be amazingly
cheerful. Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature,
that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in
respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes
backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short
quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major
on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and
rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her.

It had been observed in this good lady (who did not want for personal
attractions, being plump and buxom to look at, though like her
fair daughter, somewhat short in stature) that this uncertainty of
disposition strengthened and increased with her temporal prosperity; and
divers wise men and matrons, on friendly terms with the locksmith and
his family, even went so far as to assert, that a tumble down some
half-dozen rounds in the world’s ladder--such as the breaking of the
bank in which her husband kept his money, or some little fall of that
kind--would be the making of her, and could hardly fail to render her
one of the most agreeable companions in existence. Whether they were
right or wrong in this conjecture, certain it is that minds, like
bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from
mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by
remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.

Mrs Varden’s chief aider and abettor, and at the same time her principal
victim and object of wrath, was her single domestic servant, one Miss
Miggs; or as she was called, in conformity with those prejudices of
society which lop and top from poor hand-maidens all such genteel
excrescences--Miggs. This Miggs was a tall young lady, very much
addicted to pattens in private life; slender and shrewish, of a rather
uncomfortable figure, and though not absolutely ill-looking, of a sharp
and acid visage. As a general principle and abstract proposition, Miggs
held the male sex to be utterly contemptible and unworthy of notice;
to be fickle, false, base, sottish, inclined to perjury, and wholly
undeserving. When particularly exasperated against them (which, scandal
said, was when Sim Tappertit slighted her most) she was accustomed to
wish with great emphasis that the whole race of women could but die off,
in order that the men might be brought to know the real value of the
blessings by which they set so little store; nay, her feeling for her
order ran so high, that she sometimes declared, if she could only have
good security for a fair, round number--say ten thousand--of young
virgins following her example, she would, to spite mankind, hang, drown,
stab, or poison herself, with a joy past all expression.

It was the voice of Miggs that greeted the locksmith, when he knocked at
his own house, with a shrill cry of ‘Who’s there?’

‘Me, girl, me,’ returned Gabriel.

What, already, sir!’ said Miggs, opening the door with a look of
surprise. ‘We were just getting on our nightcaps to sit up,--me and
mistress. Oh, she has been SO bad!’

Miggs said this with an air of uncommon candour and concern; but the
parlour-door was standing open, and as Gabriel very well knew for whose
ears it was designed, he regarded her with anything but an approving
look as he passed in.

‘Master’s come home, mim,’ cried Miggs, running before him into the
parlour. ‘You was wrong, mim, and I was right. I thought he wouldn’t
keep us up so late, two nights running, mim. Master’s always considerate
so far. I’m so glad, mim, on your account. I’m a little’--here Miggs
simpered--‘a little sleepy myself; I’ll own it now, mim, though I said I
wasn’t when you asked me. It ain’t of no consequence, mim, of course.’

‘You had better,’ said the locksmith, who most devoutly wished that
Barnaby’s raven was at Miggs’s ankles, ‘you had better get to bed at
once then.’

‘Thanking you kindly, sir,’ returned Miggs, ‘I couldn’t take my rest in
peace, nor fix my thoughts upon my prayers, otherways than that I knew
mistress was comfortable in her bed this night; by rights she ought to
have been there, hours ago.’

‘You’re talkative, mistress,’ said Varden, pulling off his greatcoat,
and looking at her askew.

‘Taking the hint, sir,’ cried Miggs, with a flushed face, ‘and thanking
you for it most kindly, I will make bold to say, that if I give offence
by having consideration for my mistress, I do not ask your pardon, but
am content to get myself into trouble and to be in suffering.’

Here Mrs Varden, who, with her countenance shrouded in a large nightcap,
had been all this time intent upon the Protestant Manual, looked round,
and acknowledged Miggs’s championship by commanding her to hold her
tongue.

Every little bone in Miggs’s throat and neck developed itself with a
spitefulness quite alarming, as she replied, ‘Yes, mim, I will.’

‘How do you find yourself now, my dear?’ said the locksmith, taking a
chair near his wife (who had resumed her book), and rubbing his knees
hard as he made the inquiry.

‘You’re very anxious to know, an’t you?’ returned Mrs Varden, with
her eyes upon the print. ‘You, that have not been near me all day, and
wouldn’t have been if I was dying!’

‘My dear Martha--’ said Gabriel.

Mrs Varden turned over to the next page; then went back again to the
bottom line over leaf to be quite sure of the last words; and then went
on reading with an appearance of the deepest interest and study.

‘My dear Martha,’ said the locksmith, ‘how can you say such things,
when you know you don’t mean them? If you were dying! Why, if there was
anything serious the matter with you, Martha, shouldn’t I be in constant
attendance upon you?’

‘Yes!’ cried Mrs Varden, bursting into tears, ‘yes, you would. I don’t
doubt it, Varden. Certainly you would. That’s as much as to tell me that
you would be hovering round me like a vulture, waiting till the breath
was out of my body, that you might go and marry somebody else.’

Miggs groaned in sympathy--a little short groan, checked in its birth,
and changed into a cough. It seemed to say, ‘I can’t help it. It’s wrung
from me by the dreadful brutality of that monster master.’

‘But you’ll break my heart one of these days,’ added Mrs Varden, with
more resignation, ‘and then we shall both be happy. My only desire is
to see Dolly comfortably settled, and when she is, you may settle ME as
soon as you like.’

‘Ah!’ cried Miggs--and coughed again.

Poor Gabriel twisted his wig about in silence for a long time, and then
said mildly, ‘Has Dolly gone to bed?’

‘Your master speaks to you,’ said Mrs Varden, looking sternly over her
shoulder at Miss Miggs in waiting.

‘No, my dear, I spoke to you,’ suggested the locksmith.

‘Did you hear me, Miggs?’ cried the obdurate lady, stamping her foot
upon the ground. ‘YOU are beginning to despise me now, are you? But this
is example!’

At this cruel rebuke, Miggs, whose tears were always ready, for large
or small parties, on the shortest notice and the most reasonable terms,
fell a crying violently; holding both her hands tight upon her heart
meanwhile, as if nothing less would prevent its splitting into small
fragments. Mrs Varden, who likewise possessed that faculty in high
perfection, wept too, against Miggs; and with such effect that Miggs
gave in after a time, and, except for an occasional sob, which seemed to
threaten some remote intention of breaking out again, left her mistress
in possession of the field. Her superiority being thoroughly asserted,
that lady soon desisted likewise, and fell into a quiet melancholy.

The relief was so great, and the fatiguing occurrences of last night so
completely overpowered the locksmith, that he nodded in his chair, and
would doubtless have slept there all night, but for the voice of Mrs
Varden, which, after a pause of some five minutes, awoke him with a
start.

‘If I am ever,’ said Mrs V.--not scolding, but in a sort of monotonous
remonstrance--‘in spirits, if I am ever cheerful, if I am ever more than
usually disposed to be talkative and comfortable, this is the way I am
treated.’

‘Such spirits as you was in too, mim, but half an hour ago!’ cried
Miggs. ‘I never see such company!’

‘Because,’ said Mrs Varden, ‘because I never interfere or interrupt;
because I never question where anybody comes or goes; because my whole
mind and soul is bent on saving where I can save, and labouring in this
house;--therefore, they try me as they do.’

‘Martha,’ urged the locksmith, endeavouring to look as wakeful as
possible, ‘what is it you complain of? I really came home with every
wish and desire to be happy. I did, indeed.’

‘What do I complain of!’ retorted his wife. ‘Is it a chilling thing to
have one’s husband sulking and falling asleep directly he comes home--to
have him freezing all one’s warm-heartedness, and throwing cold water
over the fireside? Is it natural, when I know he went out upon a matter
in which I am as much interested as anybody can be, that I should wish
to know all that has happened, or that he should tell me without my
begging and praying him to do it? Is that natural, or is it not?’

‘I am very sorry, Martha,’ said the good-natured locksmith. ‘I was
really afraid you were not disposed to talk pleasantly; I’ll tell you
everything; I shall only be too glad, my dear.’

‘No, Varden,’ returned his wife, rising with dignity. ‘I dare say--thank
you! I’m not a child to be corrected one minute and petted the next--I’m
a little too old for that, Varden. Miggs, carry the light.--YOU can be
cheerful, Miggs, at least.’

Miggs, who, to this moment, had been in the very depths of compassionate
despondency, passed instantly into the liveliest state conceivable,
and tossing her head as she glanced towards the locksmith, bore off her
mistress and the light together.

‘Now, who would think,’ thought Varden, shrugging his shoulders and
drawing his chair nearer to the fire, ‘that that woman could ever be
pleasant and agreeable? And yet she can be. Well, well, all of us have
our faults. I’ll not be hard upon hers. We have been man and wife too
long for that.’

He dozed again--not the less pleasantly, perhaps, for his hearty temper.
While his eyes were closed, the door leading to the upper stairs was
partially opened; and a head appeared, which, at sight of him, hastily
drew back again.

‘I wish,’ murmured Gabriel, waking at the noise, and looking round
the room, ‘I wish somebody would marry Miggs. But that’s impossible! I
wonder whether there’s any madman alive, who would marry Miggs!’

This was such a vast speculation that he fell into a doze again, and
slept until the fire was quite burnt out. At last he roused himself; and
having double-locked the street-door according to custom, and put the
key in his pocket, went off to bed.

He had not left the room in darkness many minutes, when the head again
appeared, and Sim Tappertit entered, bearing in his hand a little lamp.

‘What the devil business has he to stop up so late!’ muttered Sim,
passing into the workshop, and setting it down upon the forge. ‘Here’s
half the night gone already. There’s only one good that has ever come to
me, out of this cursed old rusty mechanical trade, and that’s this piece
of ironmongery, upon my soul!’

As he spoke, he drew from the right hand, or rather right leg pocket of
his smalls, a clumsy large-sized key, which he inserted cautiously in
the lock his master had secured, and softly opened the door. That done,
he replaced his piece of secret workmanship in his pocket; and leaving
the lamp burning, and closing the door carefully and without noise,
stole out into the street--as little suspected by the locksmith in his
sound deep sleep, as by Barnaby himself in his phantom-haunted dreams.



Chapter 8


Clear of the locksmith’s house, Sim Tappertit laid aside his cautious
manner, and assuming in its stead that of a ruffling, swaggering, roving
blade, who would rather kill a man than otherwise, and eat him too if
needful, made the best of his way along the darkened streets.

Half pausing for an instant now and then to smite his pocket and assure
himself of the safety of his master key, he hurried on to Barbican, and
turning into one of the narrowest of the narrow streets which diverged
from that centre, slackened his pace and wiped his heated brow, as if
the termination of his walk were near at hand.

It was not a very choice spot for midnight expeditions, being in truth
one of more than questionable character, and of an appearance by no
means inviting. From the main street he had entered, itself little
better than an alley, a low-browed doorway led into a blind court, or
yard, profoundly dark, unpaved, and reeking with stagnant odours. Into
this ill-favoured pit, the locksmith’s vagrant ‘prentice groped his way;
and stopping at a house from whose defaced and rotten front the rude
effigy of a bottle swung to and fro like some gibbeted malefactor,
struck thrice upon an iron grating with his foot. After listening in
vain for some response to his signal, Mr Tappertit became impatient, and
struck the grating thrice again.

A further delay ensued, but it was not of long duration. The ground
seemed to open at his feet, and a ragged head appeared.

‘Is that the captain?’ said a voice as ragged as the head.

‘Yes,’ replied Mr Tappertit haughtily, descending as he spoke, ‘who
should it be?’

‘It’s so late, we gave you up,’ returned the voice, as its owner stopped
to shut and fasten the grating. ‘You’re late, sir.’

‘Lead on,’ said Mr Tappertit, with a gloomy majesty, ‘and make remarks
when I require you. Forward!’

This latter word of command was perhaps somewhat theatrical and
unnecessary, inasmuch as the descent was by a very narrow, steep, and
slippery flight of steps, and any rashness or departure from the beaten
track must have ended in a yawning water-butt. But Mr Tappertit being,
like some other great commanders, favourable to strong effects, and
personal display, cried ‘Forward!’ again, in the hoarsest voice he could
assume; and led the way, with folded arms and knitted brows, to the
cellar down below, where there was a small copper fixed in one corner,
a chair or two, a form and table, a glimmering fire, and a truckle-bed,
covered with a ragged patchwork rug.

‘Welcome, noble captain!’ cried a lanky figure, rising as from a nap.

The captain nodded. Then, throwing off his outer coat, he stood composed
in all his dignity, and eyed his follower over.

‘What news to-night?’ he asked, when he had looked into his very soul.

‘Nothing particular,’ replied the other, stretching himself--and he was
so long already that it was quite alarming to see him do it--‘how come
you to be so late?’

‘No matter,’ was all the captain deigned to say in answer. ‘Is the room
prepared?’

‘It is,’ replied the follower.

‘The comrade--is he here?’

‘Yes. And a sprinkling of the others--you hear ‘em?’

‘Playing skittles!’ said the captain moodily. ‘Light-hearted revellers!’

There was no doubt respecting the particular amusement in which these
heedless spirits were indulging, for even in the close and stifling
atmosphere of the vault, the noise sounded like distant thunder. It
certainly appeared, at first sight, a singular spot to choose, for that
or any other purpose of relaxation, if the other cellars answered to
the one in which this brief colloquy took place; for the floors were of
sodden earth, the walls and roof of damp bare brick tapestried with
the tracks of snails and slugs; the air was sickening, tainted, and
offensive. It seemed, from one strong flavour which was uppermost among
the various odours of the place, that it had, at no very distant period,
been used as a storehouse for cheeses; a circumstance which, while it
accounted for the greasy moisture that hung about it, was agreeably
suggestive of rats. It was naturally damp besides, and little trees of
fungus sprung from every mouldering corner.

The proprietor of this charming retreat, and owner of the ragged head
before mentioned--for he wore an old tie-wig as bare and frowzy as a
stunted hearth-broom--had by this time joined them; and stood a little
apart, rubbing his hands, wagging his hoary bristled chin, and smiling
in silence. His eyes were closed; but had they been wide open, it would
have been easy to tell, from the attentive expression of the face he
turned towards them--pale and unwholesome as might be expected in one
of his underground existence--and from a certain anxious raising and
quivering of the lids, that he was blind.

‘Even Stagg hath been asleep,’ said the long comrade, nodding towards
this person.

‘Sound, captain, sound!’ cried the blind man; ‘what does my noble
captain drink--is it brandy, rum, usquebaugh? Is it soaked gunpowder, or
blazing oil? Give it a name, heart of oak, and we’d get it for you, if
it was wine from a bishop’s cellar, or melted gold from King George’s
mint.’

‘See,’ said Mr Tappertit haughtily, ‘that it’s something strong, and
comes quick; and so long as you take care of that, you may bring it from
the devil’s cellar, if you like.’

‘Boldly said, noble captain!’ rejoined the blind man. ‘Spoken like the
‘Prentices’ Glory. Ha, ha! From the devil’s cellar! A brave joke! The
captain joketh. Ha, ha, ha!’

‘I’ll tell you what, my fine feller,’ said Mr Tappertit, eyeing the
host over as he walked to a closet, and took out a bottle and glass as
carelessly as if he had been in full possession of his sight, ‘if you
make that row, you’ll find that the captain’s very far from joking, and
so I tell you.’

‘He’s got his eyes on me!’ cried Stagg, stopping short on his way back,
and affecting to screen his face with the bottle. ‘I feel ‘em though I
can’t see ‘em. Take ‘em off, noble captain. Remove ‘em, for they pierce
like gimlets.’

Mr Tappertit smiled grimly at his comrade; and twisting out one more
look--a kind of ocular screw--under the influence of which the blind man
feigned to undergo great anguish and torture, bade him, in a softened
tone, approach, and hold his peace.

‘I obey you, captain,’ cried Stagg, drawing close to him and filling
out a bumper without spilling a drop, by reason that he held his little
finger at the brim of the glass, and stopped at the instant the liquor
touched it, ‘drink, noble governor. Death to all masters, life to all
‘prentices, and love to all fair damsels. Drink, brave general, and warm
your gallant heart!’

Mr Tappertit condescended to take the glass from his outstretched hand.
Stagg then dropped on one knee, and gently smoothed the calves of his
legs, with an air of humble admiration.

‘That I had but eyes!’ he cried, ‘to behold my captain’s symmetrical
proportions! That I had but eyes, to look upon these twin invaders of
domestic peace!’

‘Get out!’ said Mr Tappertit, glancing downward at his favourite limbs.
‘Go along, will you, Stagg!’

‘When I touch my own afterwards,’ cried the host, smiting them
reproachfully, ‘I hate ‘em. Comparatively speaking, they’ve no more
shape than wooden legs, beside these models of my noble captain’s.’

‘Yours!’ exclaimed Mr Tappertit. ‘No, I should think not. Don’t talk
about those precious old toothpicks in the same breath with mine; that’s
rather too much. Here. Take the glass. Benjamin. Lead on. To business!’

With these words, he folded his arms again; and frowning with a sullen
majesty, passed with his companion through a little door at the upper
end of the cellar, and disappeared; leaving Stagg to his private
meditations.

The vault they entered, strewn with sawdust and dimly lighted, was
between the outer one from which they had just come, and that in which
the skittle-players were diverting themselves; as was manifested by
the increased noise and clamour of tongues, which was suddenly stopped,
however, and replaced by a dead silence, at a signal from the long
comrade. Then, this young gentleman, going to a little cupboard,
returned with a thigh-bone, which in former times must have been part
and parcel of some individual at least as long as himself, and placed
the same in the hands of Mr Tappertit; who, receiving it as a sceptre
and staff of authority, cocked his three-cornered hat fiercely on the
top of his head, and mounted a large table, whereon a chair of state,
cheerfully ornamented with a couple of skulls, was placed ready for his
reception.

He had no sooner assumed this position, than another young gentleman
appeared, bearing in his arms a huge clasped book, who made him a
profound obeisance, and delivering it to the long comrade, advanced to
the table, and turning his back upon it, stood there Atlas-wise. Then,
the long comrade got upon the table too; and seating himself in a lower
chair than Mr Tappertit’s, with much state and ceremony, placed the
large book on the shoulders of their mute companion as deliberately as
if he had been a wooden desk, and prepared to make entries therein with
a pen of corresponding size.

When the long comrade had made these preparations, he looked towards Mr
Tappertit; and Mr Tappertit, flourishing the bone, knocked nine times
therewith upon one of the skulls. At the ninth stroke, a third young
gentleman emerged from the door leading to the skittle ground, and
bowing low, awaited his commands.

‘Prentice!’ said the mighty captain, ‘who waits without?’

The ‘prentice made answer that a stranger was in attendance, who claimed
admission into that secret society of ‘Prentice Knights, and a free
participation in their rights, privileges, and immunities. Thereupon
Mr Tappertit flourished the bone again, and giving the other skull a
prodigious rap on the nose, exclaimed ‘Admit him!’ At these dread words
the ‘prentice bowed once more, and so withdrew as he had come.

There soon appeared at the same door, two other ‘prentices, having
between them a third, whose eyes were bandaged, and who was attired in a
bag-wig, and a broad-skirted coat, trimmed with tarnished lace; and who
was girded with a sword, in compliance with the laws of the Institution
regulating the introduction of candidates, which required them to
assume this courtly dress, and kept it constantly in lavender, for
their convenience. One of the conductors of this novice held a rusty
blunderbuss pointed towards his ear, and the other a very ancient
sabre, with which he carved imaginary offenders as he came along in a
sanguinary and anatomical manner.

As this silent group advanced, Mr Tappertit fixed his hat upon his head.
The novice then laid his hand upon his breast and bent before him. When
he had humbled himself sufficiently, the captain ordered the bandage to
be removed, and proceeded to eye him over.

‘Ha!’ said the captain, thoughtfully, when he had concluded this ordeal.
‘Proceed.’

The long comrade read aloud as follows:--‘Mark Gilbert. Age, nineteen.
Bound to Thomas Curzon, hosier, Golden Fleece, Aldgate. Loves Curzon’s
daughter. Cannot say that Curzon’s daughter loves him. Should think it
probable. Curzon pulled his ears last Tuesday week.’

‘How!’ cried the captain, starting.

‘For looking at his daughter, please you,’ said the novice.

‘Write Curzon down, Denounced,’ said the captain. ‘Put a black cross
against the name of Curzon.’

‘So please you,’ said the novice, ‘that’s not the worst--he calls his
‘prentice idle dog, and stops his beer unless he works to his liking. He
gives Dutch cheese, too, eating Cheshire, sir, himself; and Sundays out,
are only once a month.’

‘This,’ said Mr Tappert gravely, ‘is a flagrant case. Put two black
crosses to the name of Curzon.’

‘If the society,’ said the novice, who was an ill-looking, one-sided,
shambling lad, with sunken eyes set close together in his head--‘if the
society would burn his house down--for he’s not insured--or beat him
as he comes home from his club at night, or help me to carry off his
daughter, and marry her at the Fleet, whether she gave consent or no--’

Mr Tappertit waved his grizzly truncheon as an admonition to him not to
interrupt, and ordered three black crosses to the name of Curzon.

‘Which means,’ he said in gracious explanation, ‘vengeance, complete and
terrible. ‘Prentice, do you love the Constitution?’

To which the novice (being to that end instructed by his attendant
sponsors) replied ‘I do!’

‘The Church, the State, and everything established--but the masters?’
quoth the captain.

Again the novice said ‘I do.’

Having said it, he listened meekly to the captain, who in an address
prepared for such occasions, told him how that under that same
Constitution (which was kept in a strong box somewhere, but where
exactly he could not find out, or he would have endeavoured to procure a
copy of it), the ‘prentices had, in times gone by, had frequent holidays
of right, broken people’s heads by scores, defied their masters, nay,
even achieved some glorious murders in the streets, which privileges
had gradually been wrested from them, and in all which noble aspirations
they were now restrained; how the degrading checks imposed upon them
were unquestionably attributable to the innovating spirit of the times,
and how they united therefore to resist all change, except such change
as would restore those good old English customs, by which they would
stand or fall. After illustrating the wisdom of going backward, by
reference to that sagacious fish, the crab, and the not unfrequent
practice of the mule and donkey, he described their general objects;
which were briefly vengeance on their Tyrant Masters (of whose grievous
and insupportable oppression no ‘prentice could entertain a moment’s
doubt) and the restoration, as aforesaid, of their ancient rights and
holidays; for neither of which objects were they now quite ripe, being
barely twenty strong, but which they pledged themselves to pursue with
fire and sword when needful. Then he described the oath which every
member of that small remnant of a noble body took, and which was of a
dreadful and impressive kind; binding him, at the bidding of his chief,
to resist and obstruct the Lord Mayor, sword-bearer, and chaplain; to
despise the authority of the sheriffs; and to hold the court of aldermen
as nought; but not on any account, in case the fulness of time should
bring a general rising of ‘prentices, to damage or in any way disfigure
Temple Bar, which was strictly constitutional and always to be
approached with reverence. Having gone over these several heads with
great eloquence and force, and having further informed the novice that
this society had its origin in his own teeming brain, stimulated by a
swelling sense of wrong and outrage, Mr Tappertit demanded whether he
had strength of heart to take the mighty pledge required, or whether he
would withdraw while retreat was yet in his power.

To this the novice made rejoinder, that he would take the vow, though
it should choke him; and it was accordingly administered with many
impressive circumstances, among which the lighting up of the two skulls
with a candle-end inside of each, and a great many flourishes with
the bone, were chiefly conspicuous; not to mention a variety of grave
exercises with the blunderbuss and sabre, and some dismal groaning by
unseen ‘prentices without. All these dark and direful ceremonies
being at length completed, the table was put aside, the chair of state
removed, the sceptre locked up in its usual cupboard, the doors of
communication between the three cellars thrown freely open, and the
‘Prentice Knights resigned themselves to merriment.

But Mr Tappertit, who had a soul above the vulgar herd, and who, on
account of his greatness, could only afford to be merry now and then,
threw himself on a bench with the air of a man who was faint with
dignity. He looked with an indifferent eye, alike on skittles, cards,
and dice, thinking only of the locksmith’s daughter, and the base
degenerate days on which he had fallen.

‘My noble captain neither games, nor sings, nor dances,’ said his host,
taking a seat beside him. ‘Drink, gallant general!’

Mr Tappertit drained the proffered goblet to the dregs; then thrust
his hands into his pockets, and with a lowering visage walked among the
skittles, while his followers (such is the influence of superior genius)
restrained the ardent ball, and held his little shins in dumb respect.

‘If I had been born a corsair or a pirate, a brigand, genteel highwayman
or patriot--and they’re the same thing,’ thought Mr Tappertit, musing
among the nine-pins, ‘I should have been all right. But to drag out a
ignoble existence unbeknown to mankind in general--patience! I will be
famous yet. A voice within me keeps on whispering Greatness. I shall
burst out one of these days, and when I do, what power can keep me down?
I feel my soul getting into my head at the idea. More drink there!’

‘The novice,’ pursued Mr Tappertit, not exactly in a voice of thunder,
for his tones, to say the truth were rather cracked and shrill--but very
impressively, notwithstanding--‘where is he?’

‘Here, noble captain!’ cried Stagg. ‘One stands beside me who I feel is
a stranger.’

‘Have you,’ said Mr Tappertit, letting his gaze fall on the party
indicated, who was indeed the new knight, by this time restored to his
own apparel; ‘Have you the impression of your street-door key in wax?’

The long comrade anticipated the reply, by producing it from the shelf
on which it had been deposited.

‘Good,’ said Mr Tappertit, scrutinising it attentively, while a
breathless silence reigned around; for he had constructed secret
door-keys for the whole society, and perhaps owed something of his
influence to that mean and trivial circumstance--on such slight
accidents do even men of mind depend!--‘This is easily made. Come
hither, friend.’

With that, he beckoned the new knight apart, and putting the pattern in
his pocket, motioned to him to walk by his side.

‘And so,’ he said, when they had taken a few turns up and down, you--you
love your master’s daughter?’

‘I do,’ said the ‘prentice. ‘Honour bright. No chaff, you know.’

‘Have you,’ rejoined Mr Tappertit, catching him by the wrist, and
giving him a look which would have been expressive of the most deadly
malevolence, but for an accidental hiccup that rather interfered with
it; ‘have you a--a rival?’

‘Not as I know on,’ replied the ‘prentice.

‘If you had now--’ said Mr Tappertit--‘what would you--eh?--’

The ‘prentice looked fierce and clenched his fists.

‘It is enough,’ cried Mr Tappertit hastily, ‘we understand each other.
We are observed. I thank you.’

So saying, he cast him off again; and calling the long comrade aside
after taking a few hasty turns by himself, bade him immediately write
and post against the wall, a notice, proscribing one Joseph Willet
(commonly known as Joe) of Chigwell; forbidding all ‘Prentice Knights
to succour, comfort, or hold communion with him; and requiring them,
on pain of excommunication, to molest, hurt, wrong, annoy, and pick
quarrels with the said Joseph, whensoever and wheresoever they, or any
of them, should happen to encounter him.

Having relieved his mind by this energetic proceeding, he condescended
to approach the festive board, and warming by degrees, at length deigned
to preside, and even to enchant the company with a song. After this,
he rose to such a pitch as to consent to regale the society with a
hornpipe, which he actually performed to the music of a fiddle (played
by an ingenious member) with such surpassing agility and brilliancy of
execution, that the spectators could not be sufficiently enthusiastic in
their admiration; and their host protested, with tears in his eyes, that
he had never truly felt his blindness until that moment.

But the host withdrawing--probably to weep in secret--soon returned with
the information that it wanted little more than an hour of day, and that
all the cocks in Barbican had already begun to crow, as if their lives
depended on it. At this intelligence, the ‘Prentice Knights arose in
haste, and marshalling into a line, filed off one by one and dispersed
with all speed to their several homes, leaving their leader to pass the
grating last.

‘Good night, noble captain,’ whispered the blind man as he held it open
for his passage out; ‘Farewell, brave general. Bye, bye, illustrious
commander. Good luck go with you for a--conceited, bragging,
empty-headed, duck-legged idiot.’

With which parting words, coolly added as he listened to his receding
footsteps and locked the grate upon himself, he descended the steps,
and lighting the fire below the little copper, prepared, without
any assistance, for his daily occupation; which was to retail at the
area-head above pennyworths of broth and soup, and savoury puddings,
compounded of such scraps as were to be bought in the heap for the least
money at Fleet Market in the evening time; and for the sale of which
he had need to have depended chiefly on his private connection, for the
court had no thoroughfare, and was not that kind of place in which
many people were likely to take the air, or to frequent as an agreeable
promenade.



Chapter 9


Chroniclers are privileged to enter where they list, to come and go
through keyholes, to ride upon the wind, to overcome, in their soarings
up and down, all obstacles of distance, time, and place. Thrice blessed
be this last consideration, since it enables us to follow the disdainful
Miggs even into the sanctity of her chamber, and to hold her in sweet
companionship through the dreary watches of the night!

Miss Miggs, having undone her mistress, as she phrased it (which means,
assisted to undress her), and having seen her comfortably to bed in
the back room on the first floor, withdrew to her own apartment, in
the attic story. Notwithstanding her declaration in the locksmith’s
presence, she was in no mood for sleep; so, putting her light upon the
table and withdrawing the little window curtain, she gazed out pensively
at the wild night sky.

Perhaps she wondered what star was destined for her habitation when
she had run her little course below; perhaps speculated which of those
glimmering spheres might be the natal orb of Mr Tappertit; perhaps
marvelled how they could gaze down on that perfidious creature, man, and
not sicken and turn green as chemists’ lamps; perhaps thought of nothing
in particular. Whatever she thought about, there she sat, until her
attention, alive to anything connected with the insinuating ‘prentice,
was attracted by a noise in the next room to her own--his room; the room
in which he slept, and dreamed--it might be, sometimes dreamed of her.

That he was not dreaming now, unless he was taking a walk in his sleep,
was clear, for every now and then there came a shuffling noise, as
though he were engaged in polishing the whitewashed wall; then a gentle
creaking of his door; then the faintest indication of his stealthy
footsteps on the landing-place outside. Noting this latter circumstance,
Miss Miggs turned pale and shuddered, as mistrusting his intentions; and
more than once exclaimed, below her breath, ‘Oh! what a Providence it
is, as I am bolted in!’--which, owing doubtless to her alarm, was a
confusion of ideas on her part between a bolt and its use; for though
there was one on the door, it was not fastened.

Miss Miggs’s sense of hearing, however, having as sharp an edge as her
temper, and being of the same snappish and suspicious kind, very soon
informed her that the footsteps passed her door, and appeared to have
some object quite separate and disconnected from herself. At this
discovery she became more alarmed than ever, and was about to give
utterance to those cries of ‘Thieves!’ and ‘Murder!’ which she had
hitherto restrained, when it occurred to her to look softly out, and see
that her fears had some good palpable foundation.

Looking out accordingly, and stretching her neck over the handrail,
she descried, to her great amazement, Mr Tappertit completely dressed,
stealing downstairs, one step at a time, with his shoes in one hand
and a lamp in the other. Following him with her eyes, and going down a
little way herself to get the better of an intervening angle, she beheld
him thrust his head in at the parlour-door, draw it back again with
great swiftness, and immediately begin a retreat upstairs with all
possible expedition.

‘Here’s mysteries!’ said the damsel, when she was safe in her own room
again, quite out of breath. ‘Oh, gracious, here’s mysteries!’

The prospect of finding anybody out in anything, would have kept Miss
Miggs awake under the influence of henbane. Presently, she heard the
step again, as she would have done if it had been that of a feather
endowed with motion and walking down on tiptoe. Then gliding out as
before, she again beheld the retreating figure of the ‘prentice; again
he looked cautiously in at the parlour-door, but this time instead of
retreating, he passed in and disappeared.

Miggs was back in her room, and had her head out of the window, before
an elderly gentleman could have winked and recovered from it. Out he
came at the street-door, shut it carefully behind him, tried it with
his knee, and swaggered off, putting something in his pocket as he
went along. At this spectacle Miggs cried ‘Gracious!’ again, and then
‘Goodness gracious!’ and then ‘Goodness gracious me!’ and then, candle
in hand, went downstairs as he had done. Coming to the workshop, she saw
the lamp burning on the forge, and everything as Sim had left it.

‘Why I wish I may only have a walking funeral, and never be buried
decent with a mourning-coach and feathers, if the boy hasn’t been and
made a key for his own self!’ cried Miggs. ‘Oh the little villain!’

This conclusion was not arrived at without consideration, and much
peeping and peering about; nor was it unassisted by the recollection
that she had on several occasions come upon the ‘prentice suddenly,
and found him busy at some mysterious occupation. Lest the fact of Miss
Miggs calling him, on whom she stooped to cast a favourable eye, a
boy, should create surprise in any breast, it may be observed that she
invariably affected to regard all male bipeds under thirty as mere chits
and infants; which phenomenon is not unusual in ladies of Miss Miggs’s
temper, and is indeed generally found to be the associate of such
indomitable and savage virtue.

Miss Miggs deliberated within herself for some little time, looking hard
at the shop-door while she did so, as though her eyes and thoughts were
both upon it; and then, taking a sheet of paper from a drawer, twisted
it into a long thin spiral tube. Having filled this instrument with a
quantity of small coal-dust from the forge, she approached the door,
and dropping on one knee before it, dexterously blew into the keyhole as
much of these fine ashes as the lock would hold. When she had filled it
to the brim in a very workmanlike and skilful manner, she crept upstairs
again, and chuckled as she went.

‘There!’ cried Miggs, rubbing her hands, ‘now let’s see whether you
won’t be glad to take some notice of me, mister. He, he, he! You’ll have
eyes for somebody besides Miss Dolly now, I think. A fat-faced puss she
is, as ever I come across!’

As she uttered this criticism, she glanced approvingly at her small
mirror, as who should say, I thank my stars that can’t be said of
me!--as it certainly could not; for Miss Miggs’s style of beauty was of
that kind which Mr Tappertit himself had not inaptly termed, in private,
‘scraggy.’

‘I don’t go to bed this night!’ said Miggs, wrapping herself in a shawl,
and drawing a couple of chairs near the window, flouncing down upon
one, and putting her feet upon the other, ‘till you come home, my lad. I
wouldn’t,’ said Miggs viciously, ‘no, not for five-and-forty pound!’

With that, and with an expression of face in which a great number of
opposite ingredients, such as mischief, cunning, malice, triumph,
and patient expectation, were all mixed up together in a kind of
physiognomical punch, Miss Miggs composed herself to wait and listen,
like some fair ogress who had set a trap and was watching for a nibble
from a plump young traveller.

She sat there, with perfect composure, all night. At length, just upon
break of day, there was a footstep in the street, and presently she
could hear Mr Tappertit stop at the door. Then she could make out that
he tried his key--that he was blowing into it--that he knocked it on the
nearest post to beat the dust out--that he took it under a lamp to look
at it--that he poked bits of stick into the lock to clear it--that
he peeped into the keyhole, first with one eye, and then with the
other--that he tried the key again--that he couldn’t turn it, and what
was worse, couldn’t get it out--that he bent it--that then it was much
less disposed to come out than before--that he gave it a mighty twist
and a great pull, and then it came out so suddenly that he staggered
backwards--that he kicked the door--that he shook it--finally, that he
smote his forehead, and sat down on the step in despair.

When this crisis had arrived, Miss Miggs, affecting to be exhausted
with terror, and to cling to the window-sill for support, put out her
nightcap, and demanded in a faint voice who was there.

Mr Tappertit cried ‘Hush!’ and, backing to the road, exhorted her in
frenzied pantomime to secrecy and silence.

‘Tell me one thing,’ said Miggs. ‘Is it thieves?’

‘No--no--no!’ cried Mr Tappertit.

‘Then,’ said Miggs, more faintly than before, ‘it’s fire. Where is it,
sir? It’s near this room, I know. I’ve a good conscience, sir, and would
much rather die than go down a ladder. All I wish is, respecting my love
to my married sister, Golden Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, second
bell-handle on the right-hand door-post.’

‘Miggs!’ cried Mr Tappertit, ‘don’t you know me? Sim, you know--Sim--’

‘Oh! what about him!’ cried Miggs, clasping her hands. ‘Is he in any
danger? Is he in the midst of flames and blazes! Oh gracious, gracious!’

‘Why I’m here, an’t I?’ rejoined Mr Tappertit, knocking himself on the
breast. ‘Don’t you see me? What a fool you are, Miggs!’

‘There!’ cried Miggs, unmindful of this compliment. ‘Why--so
it--Goodness, what is the meaning of--If you please, mim, here’s--’

‘No, no!’ cried Mr Tappertit, standing on tiptoe, as if by that means
he, in the street, were any nearer being able to stop the mouth of Miggs
in the garret. ‘Don’t!--I’ve been out without leave, and something or
another’s the matter with the lock. Come down, and undo the shop window,
that I may get in that way.’

‘I dursn’t do it, Simmun,’ cried Miggs--for that was her pronunciation
of his Christian name. ‘I dursn’t do it, indeed. You know as well as
anybody, how particular I am. And to come down in the dead of night,
when the house is wrapped in slumbers and weiled in obscurity.’ And
there she stopped and shivered, for her modesty caught cold at the very
thought.

‘But Miggs,’ cried Mr Tappertit, getting under the lamp, that she might
see his eyes. ‘My darling Miggs--’

Miggs screamed slightly.

‘--That I love so much, and never can help thinking of,’ and it
is impossible to describe the use he made of his eyes when he said
this--‘do--for my sake, do.’

‘Oh Simmun,’ cried Miggs, ‘this is worse than all. I know if I come
down, you’ll go, and--’

‘And what, my precious?’ said Mr Tappertit.

‘And try,’ said Miggs, hysterically, ‘to kiss me, or some such
dreadfulness; I know you will!’

‘I swear I won’t,’ said Mr Tappertit, with remarkable earnestness. ‘Upon
my soul I won’t. It’s getting broad day, and the watchman’s waking
up. Angelic Miggs! If you’ll only come and let me in, I promise you
faithfully and truly I won’t.’

Miss Miggs, whose gentle heart was touched, did not wait for the oath
(knowing how strong the temptation was, and fearing he might forswear
himself), but tripped lightly down the stairs, and with her own fair
hands drew back the rough fastenings of the workshop window. Having
helped the wayward ‘prentice in, she faintly articulated the words
‘Simmun is safe!’ and yielding to her woman’s nature, immediately became
insensible.

‘I knew I should quench her,’ said Sim, rather embarrassed by this
circumstance. ‘Of course I was certain it would come to this, but there
was nothing else to be done--if I hadn’t eyed her over, she wouldn’t
have come down. Here. Keep up a minute, Miggs. What a slippery figure
she is! There’s no holding her, comfortably. Do keep up a minute, Miggs,
will you?’

As Miggs, however, was deaf to all entreaties, Mr Tappertit leant her
against the wall as one might dispose of a walking-stick or umbrella,
until he had secured the window, when he took her in his arms again,
and, in short stages and with great difficulty--arising from her being
tall and his being short, and perhaps in some degree from that peculiar
physical conformation on which he had already remarked--carried her
upstairs, and planting her, in the same umbrella and walking-stick
fashion, just inside her own door, left her to her repose.

‘He may be as cool as he likes,’ said Miss Miggs, recovering as soon
as she was left alone; ‘but I’m in his confidence and he can’t help
himself, nor couldn’t if he was twenty Simmunses!’



Chapter 10


It was on one of those mornings, common in early spring, when the year,
fickle and changeable in its youth like all other created things, is
undecided whether to step backward into winter or forward into summer,
and in its uncertainty inclines now to the one and now to the other, and
now to both at once--wooing summer in the sunshine, and lingering still
with winter in the shade--it was, in short, on one of those mornings,
when it is hot and cold, wet and dry, bright and lowering, sad and
cheerful, withering and genial, in the compass of one short hour, that
old John Willet, who was dropping asleep over the copper boiler, was
roused by the sound of a horse’s feet, and glancing out at window,
beheld a traveller of goodly promise, checking his bridle at the Maypole
door.

He was none of your flippant young fellows, who would call for a tankard
of mulled ale, and make themselves as much at home as if they had
ordered a hogshead of wine; none of your audacious young swaggerers, who
would even penetrate into the bar--that solemn sanctuary--and, smiting
old John upon the back, inquire if there was never a pretty girl in the
house, and where he hid his little chambermaids, with a hundred other
impertinences of that nature; none of your free-and-easy companions, who
would scrape their boots upon the firedogs in the common room, and
be not at all particular on the subject of spittoons; none of your
unconscionable blades, requiring impossible chops, and taking unheard-of
pickles for granted. He was a staid, grave, placid gentleman, something
past the prime of life, yet upright in his carriage, for all that, and
slim as a greyhound. He was well-mounted upon a sturdy chestnut cob, and
had the graceful seat of an experienced horseman; while his riding gear,
though free from such fopperies as were then in vogue, was handsome and
well chosen. He wore a riding-coat of a somewhat brighter green than
might have been expected to suit the taste of a gentleman of his years,
with a short, black velvet cape, and laced pocket-holes and cuffs, all
of a jaunty fashion; his linen, too, was of the finest kind, worked in a
rich pattern at the wrists and throat, and scrupulously white. Although
he seemed, judging from the mud he had picked up on the way, to have
come from London, his horse was as smooth and cool as his own iron-grey
periwig and pigtail. Neither man nor beast had turned a single hair; and
saving for his soiled skirts and spatter-dashes, this gentleman, with
his blooming face, white teeth, exactly-ordered dress, and perfect
calmness, might have come from making an elaborate and leisurely toilet,
to sit for an equestrian portrait at old John Willet’s gate.

It must not be supposed that John observed these several characteristics
by other than very slow degrees, or that he took in more than half a one
at a time, or that he even made up his mind upon that, without a great
deal of very serious consideration. Indeed, if he had been distracted in
the first instance by questionings and orders, it would have taken him
at the least a fortnight to have noted what is here set down; but it
happened that the gentleman, being struck with the old house, or with
the plump pigeons which were skimming and curtseying about it, or with
the tall maypole, on the top of which a weathercock, which had been out
of order for fifteen years, performed a perpetual walk to the music of
its own creaking, sat for some little time looking round in silence.
Hence John, standing with his hand upon the horse’s bridle, and
his great eyes on the rider, and with nothing passing to divert his
thoughts, had really got some of these little circumstances into his
brain by the time he was called upon to speak.

‘A quaint place this,’ said the gentleman--and his voice was as rich as
his dress. ‘Are you the landlord?’

‘At your service, sir,’ replied John Willet.

‘You can give my horse good stabling, can you, and me an early dinner (I
am not particular what, so that it be cleanly served), and a decent
room of which there seems to be no lack in this great mansion,’ said the
stranger, again running his eyes over the exterior.

‘You can have, sir,’ returned John with a readiness quite surprising,
‘anything you please.’

‘It’s well I am easily satisfied,’ returned the other with a smile,
‘or that might prove a hardy pledge, my friend.’ And saying so, he
dismounted, with the aid of the block before the door, in a twinkling.

‘Halloa there! Hugh!’ roared John. ‘I ask your pardon, sir, for keeping
you standing in the porch; but my son has gone to town on business, and
the boy being, as I may say, of a kind of use to me, I’m rather put
out when he’s away. Hugh!--a dreadful idle vagrant fellow, sir, half
a gipsy, as I think--always sleeping in the sun in summer, and in
the straw in winter time, sir--Hugh! Dear Lord, to keep a gentleman
a waiting here through him!--Hugh! I wish that chap was dead, I do
indeed.’

‘Possibly he is,’ returned the other. ‘I should think if he were living,
he would have heard you by this time.’

‘In his fits of laziness, he sleeps so desperate hard,’ said the
distracted host, ‘that if you were to fire off cannon-balls into his
ears, it wouldn’t wake him, sir.’

The guest made no remark upon this novel cure for drowsiness, and recipe
for making people lively, but, with his hands clasped behind him, stood
in the porch, very much amused to see old John, with the bridle in his
hand, wavering between a strong impulse to abandon the animal to his
fate, and a half disposition to lead him into the house, and shut him up
in the parlour, while he waited on his master.

‘Pillory the fellow, here he is at last!’ cried John, in the very height
and zenith of his distress. ‘Did you hear me a calling, villain?’

The figure he addressed made no answer, but putting his hand upon the
saddle, sprung into it at a bound, turned the horse’s head towards the
stable, and was gone in an instant.

‘Brisk enough when he is awake,’ said the guest.

‘Brisk enough, sir!’ replied John, looking at the place where the horse
had been, as if not yet understanding quite what had become of him. ‘He
melts, I think. He goes like a drop of froth. You look at him, and there
he is. You look at him again, and--there he isn’t.’

Having, in the absence of any more words, put this sudden climax to what
he had faintly intended should be a long explanation of the whole life
and character of his man, the oracular John Willet led the gentleman up
his wide dismantled staircase into the Maypole’s best apartment.

It was spacious enough in all conscience, occupying the whole depth of
the house, and having at either end a great bay window, as large as many
modern rooms; in which some few panes of stained glass, emblazoned
with fragments of armorial bearings, though cracked, and patched, and
shattered, yet remained; attesting, by their presence, that the former
owner had made the very light subservient to his state, and pressed the
sun itself into his list of flatterers; bidding it, when it shone into
his chamber, reflect the badges of his ancient family, and take new hues
and colours from their pride.

But those were old days, and now every little ray came and went as it
would; telling the plain, bare, searching truth. Although the best room
of the inn, it had the melancholy aspect of grandeur in decay, and was
much too vast for comfort. Rich rustling hangings, waving on the walls;
and, better far, the rustling of youth and beauty’s dress; the light of
women’s eyes, outshining the tapers and their own rich jewels; the sound
of gentle tongues, and music, and the tread of maiden feet, had once
been there, and filled it with delight. But they were gone, and with
them all its gladness. It was no longer a home; children were never born
and bred there; the fireside had become mercenary--a something to be
bought and sold--a very courtezan: let who would die, or sit beside, or
leave it, it was still the same--it missed nobody, cared for nobody,
had equal warmth and smiles for all. God help the man whose heart ever
changes with the world, as an old mansion when it becomes an inn!

No effort had been made to furnish this chilly waste, but before the
broad chimney a colony of chairs and tables had been planted on a square
of carpet, flanked by a ghostly screen, enriched with figures, grinning
and grotesque. After lighting with his own hands the faggots which were
heaped upon the hearth, old John withdrew to hold grave council with his
cook, touching the stranger’s entertainment; while the guest himself,
seeing small comfort in the yet unkindled wood, opened a lattice in the
distant window, and basked in a sickly gleam of cold March sun.

Leaving the window now and then, to rake the crackling logs together,
or pace the echoing room from end to end, he closed it when the fire was
quite burnt up, and having wheeled the easiest chair into the warmest
corner, summoned John Willet.

‘Sir,’ said John.

He wanted pen, ink, and paper. There was an old standish on the
mantelshelf containing a dusty apology for all three. Having set this
before him, the landlord was retiring, when he motioned him to stay.

‘There’s a house not far from here,’ said the guest when he had written
a few lines, ‘which you call the Warren, I believe?’

As this was said in the tone of one who knew the fact, and asked the
question as a thing of course, John contented himself with nodding his
head in the affirmative; at the same time taking one hand out of his
pockets to cough behind, and then putting it in again.

‘I want this note’--said the guest, glancing on what he had written, and
folding it, ‘conveyed there without loss of time, and an answer brought
back here. Have you a messenger at hand?’

John was thoughtful for a minute or thereabouts, and then said Yes.

‘Let me see him,’ said the guest.

This was disconcerting; for Joe being out, and Hugh engaged in rubbing
down the chestnut cob, he designed sending on the errand, Barnaby, who
had just then arrived in one of his rambles, and who, so that he thought
himself employed on a grave and serious business, would go anywhere.

‘Why the truth is,’ said John after a long pause, ‘that the person who’d
go quickest, is a sort of natural, as one may say, sir; and though quick
of foot, and as much to be trusted as the post itself, he’s not good at
talking, being touched and flighty, sir.’

‘You don’t,’ said the guest, raising his eyes to John’s fat face, ‘you
don’t mean--what’s the fellow’s name--you don’t mean Barnaby?’

‘Yes, I do,’ returned the landlord, his features turning quite
expressive with surprise.

‘How comes he to be here?’ inquired the guest, leaning back in his
chair; speaking in the bland, even tone, from which he never varied; and
with the same soft, courteous, never-changing smile upon his face. ‘I
saw him in London last night.’

‘He’s, for ever, here one hour, and there the next,’ returned old John,
after the usual pause to get the question in his mind. ‘Sometimes he
walks, and sometimes runs. He’s known along the road by everybody, and
sometimes comes here in a cart or chaise, and sometimes riding double.
He comes and goes, through wind, rain, snow, and hail, and on the
darkest nights. Nothing hurts HIM.’

‘He goes often to the Warren, does he not?’ said the guest carelessly.
‘I seem to remember his mother telling me something to that effect
yesterday. But I was not attending to the good woman much.’

‘You’re right, sir,’ John made answer, ‘he does. His father, sir, was
murdered in that house.’

‘So I have heard,’ returned the guest, taking a gold toothpick from his
pocket with the same sweet smile. ‘A very disagreeable circumstance for
the family.’

‘Very,’ said John with a puzzled look, as if it occurred to him, dimly
and afar off, that this might by possibility be a cool way of treating
the subject.

‘All the circumstances after a murder,’ said the guest soliloquising,
‘must be dreadfully unpleasant--so much bustle and disturbance--no
repose--a constant dwelling upon one subject--and the running in and
out, and up and down stairs, intolerable. I wouldn’t have such a thing
happen to anybody I was nearly interested in, on any account. ‘Twould
be enough to wear one’s life out.--You were going to say, friend--’ he
added, turning to John again.

‘Only that Mrs Rudge lives on a little pension from the family, and that
Barnaby’s as free of the house as any cat or dog about it,’ answered
John. ‘Shall he do your errand, sir?’

‘Oh yes,’ replied the guest. ‘Oh certainly. Let him do it by all means.
Please to bring him here that I may charge him to be quick. If he
objects to come you may tell him it’s Mr Chester. He will remember my
name, I dare say.’

John was so very much astonished to find who his visitor was, that he
could express no astonishment at all, by looks or otherwise, but left
the room as if he were in the most placid and imperturbable of all
possible conditions. It has been reported that when he got downstairs,
he looked steadily at the boiler for ten minutes by the clock, and all
that time never once left off shaking his head; for which statement
there would seem to be some ground of truth and feasibility, inasmuch
as that interval of time did certainly elapse, before he returned with
Barnaby to the guest’s apartment.

‘Come hither, lad,’ said Mr Chester. ‘You know Mr Geoffrey Haredale?’

Barnaby laughed, and looked at the landlord as though he would say,
‘You hear him?’ John, who was greatly shocked at this breach of decorum,
clapped his finger to his nose, and shook his head in mute remonstrance.

‘He knows him, sir,’ said John, frowning aside at Barnaby, ‘as well as
you or I do.’

‘I haven’t the pleasure of much acquaintance with the gentleman,’
returned his guest. ‘YOU may have. Limit the comparison to yourself, my
friend.’

Although this was said with the same easy affability, and the same
smile, John felt himself put down, and laying the indignity at Barnaby’s
door, determined to kick his raven, on the very first opportunity.

‘Give that,’ said the guest, who had by this time sealed the note, and
who beckoned his messenger towards him as he spoke, ‘into Mr Haredale’s
own hands. Wait for an answer, and bring it back to me here. If you
should find that Mr Haredale is engaged just now, tell him--can he
remember a message, landlord?’

‘When he chooses, sir,’ replied John. ‘He won’t forget this one.’

‘How are you sure of that?’

John merely pointed to him as he stood with his head bent forward, and
his earnest gaze fixed closely on his questioner’s face; and nodded
sagely.

‘Tell him then, Barnaby, should he be engaged,’ said Mr Chester, ‘that
I shall be glad to wait his convenience here, and to see him (if he will
call) at any time this evening.--At the worst I can have a bed here,
Willet, I suppose?’

Old John, immensely flattered by the personal notoriety implied in this
familiar form of address, answered, with something like a knowing look,
‘I should believe you could, sir,’ and was turning over in his mind
various forms of eulogium, with the view of selecting one appropriate to
the qualities of his best bed, when his ideas were put to flight by Mr
Chester giving Barnaby the letter, and bidding him make all speed away.

‘Speed!’ said Barnaby, folding the little packet in his breast, ‘Speed!
If you want to see hurry and mystery, come here. Here!’

With that, he put his hand, very much to John Willet’s horror, on the
guest’s fine broadcloth sleeve, and led him stealthily to the back
window.

‘Look down there,’ he said softly; ‘do you mark how they whisper in each
other’s ears; then dance and leap, to make believe they are in sport?
Do you see how they stop for a moment, when they think there is no one
looking, and mutter among themselves again; and then how they roll and
gambol, delighted with the mischief they’ve been plotting? Look at
‘em now. See how they whirl and plunge. And now they stop again, and
whisper, cautiously together--little thinking, mind, how often I have
lain upon the grass and watched them. I say what is it that they plot
and hatch? Do you know?’

‘They are only clothes,’ returned the guest, ‘such as we wear; hanging
on those lines to dry, and fluttering in the wind.’

‘Clothes!’ echoed Barnaby, looking close into his face, and falling
quickly back. ‘Ha ha! Why, how much better to be silly, than as wise
as you! You don’t see shadowy people there, like those that live in
sleep--not you. Nor eyes in the knotted panes of glass, nor swift ghosts
when it blows hard, nor do you hear voices in the air, nor see men
stalking in the sky--not you! I lead a merrier life than you, with all
your cleverness. You’re the dull men. We’re the bright ones. Ha! ha!
I’ll not change with you, clever as you are,--not I!’

With that, he waved his hat above his head, and darted off.

‘A strange creature, upon my word!’ said the guest, pulling out a
handsome box, and taking a pinch of snuff.

‘He wants imagination,’ said Mr Willet, very slowly, and after a long
silence; ‘that’s what he wants. I’ve tried to instil it into him, many
and many’s the time; but’--John added this in confidence--‘he an’t made
for it; that’s the fact.’

To record that Mr Chester smiled at John’s remark would be little to the
purpose, for he preserved the same conciliatory and pleasant look at all
times. He drew his chair nearer to the fire though, as a kind of hint
that he would prefer to be alone, and John, having no reasonable excuse
for remaining, left him to himself.

Very thoughtful old John Willet was, while the dinner was preparing; and
if his brain were ever less clear at one time than another, it is but
reasonable to suppose that he addled it in no slight degree by shaking
his head so much that day. That Mr Chester, between whom and Mr
Haredale, it was notorious to all the neighbourhood, a deep and bitter
animosity existed, should come down there for the sole purpose, as it
seemed, of seeing him, and should choose the Maypole for their place
of meeting, and should send to him express, were stumbling blocks John
could not overcome. The only resource he had, was to consult the boiler,
and wait impatiently for Barnaby’s return.

But Barnaby delayed beyond all precedent. The visitor’s dinner was
served, removed, his wine was set, the fire replenished, the hearth
clean swept; the light waned without, it grew dusk, became quite dark,
and still no Barnaby appeared. Yet, though John Willet was full of
wonder and misgiving, his guest sat cross-legged in the easy-chair, to
all appearance as little ruffled in his thoughts as in his dress--the
same calm, easy, cool gentleman, without a care or thought beyond his
golden toothpick.

‘Barnaby’s late,’ John ventured to observe, as he placed a pair of
tarnished candlesticks, some three feet high, upon the table, and
snuffed the lights they held.

‘He is rather so,’ replied the guest, sipping his wine. ‘He will not be
much longer, I dare say.’

John coughed and raked the fire together.

‘As your roads bear no very good character, if I may judge from my son’s
mishap, though,’ said Mr Chester, ‘and as I have no fancy to be knocked
on the head--which is not only disconcerting at the moment, but places
one, besides, in a ridiculous position with respect to the people who
chance to pick one up--I shall stop here to-night. I think you said you
had a bed to spare.’

‘Such a bed, sir,’ returned John Willet; ‘ay, such a bed as few, even
of the gentry’s houses, own. A fixter here, sir. I’ve heard say that
bedstead is nigh two hundred years of age. Your noble son--a fine young
gentleman--slept in it last, sir, half a year ago.’

‘Upon my life, a recommendation!’ said the guest, shrugging his
shoulders and wheeling his chair nearer to the fire. ‘See that it be
well aired, Mr Willet, and let a blazing fire be lighted there at once.
This house is something damp and chilly.’

John raked the faggots up again, more from habit than presence of mind,
or any reference to this remark, and was about to withdraw, when a
bounding step was heard upon the stair, and Barnaby came panting in.

‘He’ll have his foot in the stirrup in an hour’s time,’ he cried,
advancing. ‘He has been riding hard all day--has just come home--but
will be in the saddle again as soon as he has eat and drank, to meet his
loving friend.’

‘Was that his message?’ asked the visitor, looking up, but without the
smallest discomposure--or at least without the show of any.

‘All but the last words,’ Barnaby rejoined. ‘He meant those. I saw that,
in his face.’

‘This for your pains,’ said the other, putting money in his hand, and
glancing at him steadfastly.’This for your pains, sharp Barnaby.’

‘For Grip, and me, and Hugh, to share among us,’ he rejoined, putting
it up, and nodding, as he counted it on his fingers. ‘Grip one, me two,
Hugh three; the dog, the goat, the cats--well, we shall spend it pretty
soon, I warn you. Stay.--Look. Do you wise men see nothing there, now?’

He bent eagerly down on one knee, and gazed intently at the smoke, which
was rolling up the chimney in a thick black cloud. John Willet, who
appeared to consider himself particularly and chiefly referred to under
the term wise men, looked that way likewise, and with great solidity of
feature.

‘Now, where do they go to, when they spring so fast up there,’ asked
Barnaby; ‘eh? Why do they tread so closely on each other’s heels, and
why are they always in a hurry--which is what you blame me for, when I
only take pattern by these busy folk about me? More of ‘em! catching to
each other’s skirts; and as fast as they go, others come! What a merry
dance it is! I would that Grip and I could frisk like that!’

‘What has he in that basket at his back?’ asked the guest after a few
moments, during which Barnaby was still bending down to look higher up
the chimney, and earnestly watching the smoke.

‘In this?’ he answered, jumping up, before John Willet could
reply--shaking it as he spoke, and stooping his head to listen. ‘In
this! What is there here? Tell him!’

‘A devil, a devil, a devil!’ cried a hoarse voice.

‘Here’s money!’ said Barnaby, chinking it in his hand, ‘money for a
treat, Grip!’

‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ replied the raven, ‘keep up your spirits.
Never say die. Bow, wow, wow!’

Mr Willet, who appeared to entertain strong doubts whether a customer in
a laced coat and fine linen could be supposed to have any acquaintance
even with the existence of such unpolite gentry as the bird claimed
to belong to, took Barnaby off at this juncture, with the view of
preventing any other improper declarations, and quitted the room with
his very best bow.



Chapter 11


There was great news that night for the regular Maypole customers, to
each of whom, as he straggled in to occupy his allotted seat in the
chimney-corner, John, with a most impressive slowness of delivery, and
in an apoplectic whisper, communicated the fact that Mr Chester was
alone in the large room upstairs, and was waiting the arrival of
Mr Geoffrey Haredale, to whom he had sent a letter (doubtless of a
threatening nature) by the hands of Barnaby, then and there present.

For a little knot of smokers and solemn gossips, who had seldom any
new topics of discussion, this was a perfect Godsend. Here was a good,
dark-looking mystery progressing under that very roof--brought home to
the fireside, as it were, and enjoyable without the smallest pains
or trouble. It is extraordinary what a zest and relish it gave to the
drink, and how it heightened the flavour of the tobacco. Every man
smoked his pipe with a face of grave and serious delight, and looked at
his neighbour with a sort of quiet congratulation. Nay, it was felt
to be such a holiday and special night, that, on the motion of little
Solomon Daisy, every man (including John himself) put down his sixpence
for a can of flip, which grateful beverage was brewed with all despatch,
and set down in the midst of them on the brick floor; both that it might
simmer and stew before the fire, and that its fragrant steam, rising
up among them, and mixing with the wreaths of vapour from their pipes,
might shroud them in a delicious atmosphere of their own, and shut
out all the world. The very furniture of the room seemed to mellow and
deepen in its tone; the ceiling and walls looked blacker and more highly
polished, the curtains of a ruddier red; the fire burnt clear and high,
and the crickets in the hearthstone chirped with a more than wonted
satisfaction.

There were present two, however, who showed but little interest in the
general contentment. Of these, one was Barnaby himself, who slept,
or, to avoid being beset with questions, feigned to sleep, in the
chimney-corner; the other, Hugh, who, sleeping too, lay stretched upon
the bench on the opposite side, in the full glare of the blazing fire.

The light that fell upon this slumbering form, showed it in all its
muscular and handsome proportions. It was that of a young man, of a hale
athletic figure, and a giant’s strength, whose sunburnt face and swarthy
throat, overgrown with jet black hair, might have served a painter for
a model. Loosely attired, in the coarsest and roughest garb, with scraps
of straw and hay--his usual bed--clinging here and there, and mingling
with his uncombed locks, he had fallen asleep in a posture as careless
as his dress. The negligence and disorder of the whole man, with
something fierce and sullen in his features, gave him a picturesque
appearance, that attracted the regards even of the Maypole customers who
knew him well, and caused Long Parkes to say that Hugh looked more like
a poaching rascal to-night than ever he had seen him yet.

‘He’s waiting here, I suppose,’ said Solomon, ‘to take Mr Haredale’s
horse.’

‘That’s it, sir,’ replied John Willet. ‘He’s not often in the house, you
know. He’s more at his ease among horses than men. I look upon him as a
animal himself.’

Following up this opinion with a shrug that seemed meant to say, ‘we
can’t expect everybody to be like us,’ John put his pipe into his mouth
again, and smoked like one who felt his superiority over the general run
of mankind.

‘That chap, sir,’ said John, taking it out again after a time, and
pointing at him with the stem, ‘though he’s got all his faculties
about him--bottled up and corked down, if I may say so, somewheres or
another--’

‘Very good!’ said Parkes, nodding his head. ‘A very good expression,
Johnny. You’ll be a tackling somebody presently. You’re in twig
to-night, I see.’

‘Take care,’ said Mr Willet, not at all grateful for the compliment,
‘that I don’t tackle you, sir, which I shall certainly endeavour to do,
if you interrupt me when I’m making observations.--That chap, I was
a saying, though he has all his faculties about him, somewheres or
another, bottled up and corked down, has no more imagination than
Barnaby has. And why hasn’t he?’

The three friends shook their heads at each other; saying by that
action, without the trouble of opening their lips, ‘Do you observe what
a philosophical mind our friend has?’

‘Why hasn’t he?’ said John, gently striking the table with his open
hand. ‘Because they was never drawed out of him when he was a boy.
That’s why. What would any of us have been, if our fathers hadn’t drawed
our faculties out of us? What would my boy Joe have been, if I hadn’t
drawed his faculties out of him?--Do you mind what I’m a saying of,
gentlemen?’

‘Ah! we mind you,’ cried Parkes. ‘Go on

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