Barnaby Rudge, page 77
‘Nay, you make too sure of that,’ said Edward.
‘You think so,’ Mr Haredale answered, ‘and I am glad you do. I know myself better, and therefore distrust myself more. Let us leave this subject for another – not so far removed from it as it might, at first sight, seem to be. Sir, you still love my niece, and she is still attached to you.’
‘I have that assurance from her own lips,’ said Edward, ‘and you know – I am sure you know – that I would not exchange it for any blessing life could yield me.’
‘You are frank, honourable, and disinterested,’ said Mr Haredale; ‘you have forced the conviction that you are so, even on my once-jaundiced mind; and I believe you. Wait here till I come back.’
He left the room as he spoke; but soon returned, with his niece.
‘On that first and only time,’ he said, looking from the one to the other, ‘when we three stood together under her father’s roof, I bade you quit it, and charged you never to return.’
‘It is the only circumstance arising out of our love,’ observed Edward, ‘that I have forgotten.’
‘You own a name,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘I had deep reason to remember. I was moved and goaded by recollections of personal wrong and injury, I know: but even now I cannot charge myself with having then, or ever, lost sight of a heartfelt desire for her true happiness; or with having acted – however much I was mistaken – with any other impulse than the one pure, single, earnest wish to be to her, as far as in my inferior nature lay, the father she had lost.’
‘Dear uncle,’ cried Emma, ‘I have known no parent but you. I have loved the memory of others, but I have loved you all my life. Never was father kinder to his child than you have been to me, without the interval of one harsh hour, since I can first remember.’
‘You speak too fondly,’ he answered, ‘and yet I cannot wish you were less partial; for I have a pleasure in hearing those words, and shall have in calling them to mind when we are far asunder, which nothing else could give me. Bear with me for a moment longer, sir, for she and I have been together many years; and although I believe that in resigning her to you I put the seal upon her future happiness, I find it needs an effort.’
He pressed her tenderly to his bosom, and after a minute’s pause, resumed:
‘I have done you wrong, sir, and I ask your forgiveness – in no common phrase, or show of sorrow; but with earnestness and sincerity. In the same spirit, I acknowledge to you both that the time has been when I connived at treachery and falsehood – which if I did not perpetrate myself, I still permitted – to rend you two asunder.’
‘You judge yourself too harshly,’ said Edward. ‘Let these things rest.’
‘They rise up in judgment against me when I look back, and not now for the first time,’ he answered. ‘I cannot part from you without your full forgiveness; for busy life and I have little left in common now, and I have regrets enough to carry into solitude, without addition to the stock.’
‘You bear a blessing from us both,’ said Emma. ‘Never mingle thoughts of me – of me who owe you so much love and duty – with anything but undying affection and gratitude for the past, and bright hopes for the future.’
‘The future,’ returned her uncle, with a melancholy smile, ‘is a bright word for you, and its image should be wreathed with cheerful hopes. Mine is of another kind, but it will be one of peace; and free, I trust, from care or passion. When you quit England I shall leave it too. There are cloisters abroad; and now that the two great objects of my life are set at rest, I know no better home. You droop at that, forgetting I am growing old, and that my course is nearly run. Well, we will speak of it again – not once or twice, but many times; and you shall give me cheerful counsel, Emma.’
‘And you will take it?’ asked his niece.
‘I’ll listen to it,’ he answered, kissing her fair brow, ‘and it will have its weight, be certain. What have I left to say? You have of late been much together. It is better and more fitting that the circumstances attendant on the past, which wrought your separation, and sowed between you suspicion and distrust, should not be entered on by me.’
‘Much, much better,’ whispered Emma. ‘Remember them no more!’
‘I avow my share in them,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘though I held it at the time in detestation. Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left alone.’
He looked from her to Edward, and said in a gentler tone:
‘In goods and fortune you are now nearly equal; I have been her faithful steward, and to that remnant of a richer property which my brother left her, I desire to add, in token of my love, a poor pittance, scarcely worth the mention, for which I have no longer any need. I am glad you go abroad. Let our ill-fated house remain the ruin it is. When you return after a few thriving years, you will command a better, and more fortunate one. We are friends?’
Edward took his extended hand, and grasped it heartily.
‘You are neither slow nor cold in your response,’ said Mr Haredale, doing the like by him, ‘and when I look upon you now, and know you, I feel that I would choose you for her husband. Her father had a generous nature, and you would have pleased him well. I give her to you in his name, and with his blessing. If the world and I part in this act, we part on happier terms than we have lived for many a day.’
He placed her in his arms, and would have left the room, but that he was stopped in his passage to the door by a great noise at a distance, which made them start and pause.
It was a loud shouting, mingled with boisterous acclamations, that rent the very air. It drew nearer and nearer every moment, and approached so rapidly, that even while they listened, it burst into a deafening confusion of sounds at the street corner.
‘This must be stopped – quieted,’ said Mr Haredale, hastily. ‘We should have foreseen this, and provided against it. I will go out to them at once.’
But before he could reach the door, and before Edward could catch up his hat and follow him, they were again arrested by a loud shriek from above stairs: and the locksmith’s wife, bursting in, and fairly running into Mr Haredale’s arms, cried out:
‘She knows it all, dear sir! – she knows it all! We broke it out to her by degrees, and she is quite prepared.’ Having made this communication, and furthermore thanked Heaven with great fervour and heartiness, the good lady, according to the custom of matrons on all occasions of excitement, fainted away directly.
They ran to the window, threw up the sash, and looked into the crowded street. Among a dense mob of persons, of whom not one was for an instant still, the locksmith’s ruddy face and burly form could be descried, beating about as though he were struggling with a rough sea. Now he was carried back a score of yards, now onward nearly to the door, now back again, now forced against the opposite houses, now against those adjoining his own: now carried up a flight of steps, and greeted by the outstretched hands of half a hundred men, while the whole tumultuous concourse stretched their throats, and cheered with all their might. Though he was really in a fair way to be torn to pieces in the general enthusiasm, the locksmith, nothing discomposed, echoed their shouts till he was hoarse as they, and in a glow of joy and right good-humour, waved his hat until the daylight shone between its brim and crown.
But in all the bandyings from hand to hand, and strivings to and fro, and sweepings here and there, which – saving that he looked more jolly and more radiant after every struggle – troubled his peace of mind no more than if he had been a straw upon the water’s surface, he never once released his firm grasp of an arm, drawn tight through his. He sometimes turned to clap this friend upon the back, or whisper in his ear a word of staunch encouragement, or cheer him with a smile; but his great care was to shield him from the pressure, and force a passage for him to the Golden Key. Passive and timid, scared, pale, and wondering, and gazing at the throng as if he were newly risen from the dead, and felt himself a ghost among the living, Barnaby – not Barnaby in the spirit, but in flesh and blood, with pulses, sinews, nerves, and beating heart, and strong affections – clung to his stout old friend, and followed where he led.
And thus, in course of time, they reached the door, held ready for their entrance by no unwilling hands. Then slipping in, and shutting out the crowd by main force, Gabriel stood between Mr Haredale and Edward Chester, and Barnaby, rushing up the stairs, fell upon his knees beside his mother’s bed.
‘Such is the blessed end, sir,’ cried the panting locksmith, to Mr Haredale, ‘of the best day’s work we ever did. The rogues! it’s been hard fighting to get away from ’em. I almost thought, once or twice, they’d have been too much for us with their kindness!’
They had striven all the previous day to rescue Barnaby from his impending fate. Failing in their attempts, in the first quarter to which they addressed themselves, they renewed them in another. Failing there, likewise, they began afresh at midnight; and made their way, not only to the judge and jury who had tried him, but to men of influence at court, to the young Prince of Wales,2 and even to the antechamber of the king himself. Successful, at last, in awakening an interest in his favour, and an inclination to inquire more dispassionately into his case, they had had an interview with the minister, in his bed, so late as eight o’clock that morning. The result of a searching inquiry (in which they, who had known the poor fellow from his childhood, did other good service, besides bringing it about) was, that between eleven and twelve o’clock, a free pardon to Barnaby Rudge was made out and signed, and entrusted to a horse-soldier for instant conveyance to the place of execution. This courier reached the spot just as the cart appeared in sight; and Barnaby being carried back to jail, Mr Haredale, assured that all was safe, had gone straight from Bloomsbury Square to the Golden Key, leaving to Gabriel the grateful task of bringing him home in triumph.
‘I needn’t say,’ observed the locksmith, when he had shaken hands with all the males in the house, and hugged all the females, five-and-forty times, at least, ‘that, except among ourselves, I didn’t want to make a triumph of it. But directly we got into the streets we were known, and this hubbub began. Of the two,’ he added, as he wiped his crimson face, ‘and after experience of both, I think I’d rather be taken out of my house by a crowd of enemies, than escorted home by a mob of friends!’
It was plain enough, however, that this was mere talk on Gabriel’s part, and that the whole proceeding afforded him the keenest delight; for the people continuing to make a great noise without, and to cheer as if their voices were in the freshest order, and good for a fortnight, he sent up stairs for Grip (who had come home at his master’s back, and had acknowledged the favours of the multitude by drawing blood from every finger that came within his reach), and with the bird upon his arm, presented himself at the first-floor window, and waved his hat again until it dangled by a shred, between his fingers and thumb. This demonstration having been received with appropriate shouts, and silence being in some degree restored, he thanked them for their sympathy; and taking the liberty to inform them that there was a sick person in the house, proposed that they should give three cheers for King George, three more for Old England, and three more for nothing particular, as a closing ceremony. The crowd assenting, substituted Gabriel Varden for the nothing particular; and giving him one over, for good measure, dispersed in high good-humour.
What congratulations they exchanged when they were left alone; what an overflowing of joy and happiness there was among them; how incapable it was of expression in Barnaby’s own person; and how he went wildly from one to another, until he became so far tranquillized as to stretch himself on the ground beside his mother’s couch, and fall into a deep sleep; are matters that need not be told. And it is well they happen to be of this class, for they would be very hard to tell, were their narration ever so indispensable.
Before leaving this bright picture, it may be well to glance at a dark and very different one which was presented to only a few eyes, that same night.
The scene was a churchyard; the time, midnight; the persons, Edward Chester, a clergyman, a grave-digger, and the four bearers of a homely coffin. They stood about a grave which had been newly dug, and one of the bearers held up a dim lantern, – the only light there – which shed its feeble ray upon the book of prayer. He placed it for a moment on the coffin, when he and his companions were about to lower it down. There was no inscription on the lid.
The mould fell solemnly upon the last house of this nameless man; and the rattling dust left a dismal echo even in the accustomed ears of those who had borne it to its resting-place. The grave was filled in to the top, and trodden down. They all left the spot together.
‘You never saw him, living?’ asked the priest, of Edward.
‘Often, years ago; not knowing him for my brother.’
‘Never since?’
‘Never. Yesterday, he steadily refused to see me. It was urged upon him, many times, at my desire.’
‘Still he refused? That was hardened and unnatural.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I infer that you do not.’
‘You are right. We hear the world wonder every day at monsters of ingratitude. Did it never occur to you that it often looks for monsters of affection, as though they were things of course?’
They had reached the gate by this time, and bidding each other good night, departed on their separate ways.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTIETH
That afternoon, when he had slept off his fatigue; had shaved, and washed, and dressed, and freshened himself from top to toe; when he had dined, comforted himself with a pipe, an extra Toby, a nap in the great arm-chair, and a quiet chat with Mrs Varden on everything that had happened, was happening, or about to happen, within the sphere of their domestic concern; the locksmith sat himself down at the tea-table in the little back parlour: the rosiest, cosiest, merriest, heartiest, best-contented old buck, in Great Britain or out of it.
There he sat, with his beaming eye on Mrs V., and his shining face suffused with gladness, and his capacious waistcoat smiling in every wrinkle, and his jovial humour peeping from under the table in the very plumpness of his legs: a sight to turn the vinegar of misanthropy into purest milk of human kindness.1 There he sat, watching his wife as she decorated the room with flowers for the greater honour of Dolly and Joseph Willet, who had gone out walking, and for whom the tea-kettle had been singing gaily on the hob full twenty minutes, chirping as never kettle chirped before; for whom the best service of real undoubted china, patterned with divers round-faced mandarins holding up broad umbrellas, was now displayed in all its glory; to tempt whose appetites a clear, transparent, juicy ham, garnished with cool green lettuce leaves and fragrant cucumber, reposed upon a shady table, covered with a snow white cloth; for whose delight, preserves and jams, crisp cakes and other pastry, short to eat, with cunning twists and cottage loaves, and rolls of bread both white and brown, were all set forth in rich profusion; in whose youth Mrs V. herself had grown quite young, and stood there in a gown of red and white; symmetrical in figure, buxom in boddice, ruddy in cheek and lip, faultless in ankle, laughing in face and mood, in all respects delicious to behold – there sat the locksmith among all and every these delights, the sun that shone upon them all: the centre of the system: the source of light, heat, life, and frank enjoyment in the bright household world.
And when had Dolly ever been the Dolly of that afternoon? To see how she came in arm-in-arm with Joe; and how she made an effort not to blush or seem at all confused; and how she made believe she didn’t care to sit on his side of the table; and how she coaxed the locksmith in a whisper not to joke; and how her colour came and went in a little restless flutter of happiness, which made her do everything wrong, and yet so charmingly wrong that it was much better than right! – why, the locksmith could have looked on at this (as he mentioned to Mrs Varden when they retired for the night) for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch, and never wished it done.
The recollections, too, with which they made merry over that long protracted tea! The glee with which the locksmith asked Joe if he remembered that stormy night at the Maypole when he first asked after Dolly – the laugh they all had about that night when she was going out to the party in the sedan-chair – the unmerciful manner in which they rallied Mrs Varden about putting those flowers outside that very window – the difficulty Mrs Varden found in joining the laugh against herself at first, and the extraordinary perception she had of the joke when she overcame it – the confidential statements of Joe concerning the precise day and hour when he was first conscious of being fond of Dolly, and Dolly’s blushing admissions, half volunteered, and half extorted, as to the time from which she dated the discovery that she ‘didn’t mind’ Joe – here was an exhaustless fund of mirth and conversation!
Then there was a great deal to be said regarding Mrs Varden’s doubts, and motherly alarms, and shrewd suspicions; and it appeared that from Mrs Varden’s penetration and extreme sagacity nothing had ever been hidden. She had known it all along. She had seen it from the first. She had always predicted it. She had been aware of it before the principals. She had said within herself (for she remembered the exact words) ‘that young Willet is certainly looking after our Dolly, and I must look after him.’ Accordingly she had looked after him, and had observed many little circumstances (all of which she named) so exceedingly minute that nobody else could make anything out of them even now; and had, it seemed from first to last, displayed the most unbounded tact and most consummate generalship.
Of course the night when Joe would ride homeward by the side of the chaise, and when Mrs Varden would insist upon his going back again, was not forgotten – nor the night when Dolly fainted on his name being mentioned – nor the times upon times when Mrs Varden, ever watchful and prudent, had found her pining in her own chamber. In short, nothing was forgotten; and everything by some means or other brought them back to the conclusion, that that was the happiest hour in all their lives; consequently, that everything must have occurred for the best, and nothing could be suggested which would have made it better.
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