Barnaby Rudge, Charles Dickens [suggested reading .TXT] 📗

a great fire in the bar, and who, with surpassing foresight and quickness of apprehension, had been thinking, as he looked at the blue sky, that if that state of things lasted much longer, it might ultimately become necessary to leave off fires and throw the windows open, issued forth to hold his stirrup; calling lustily for Hugh.

‘Oh, you’re here, are you, sir?’ said John, rather surprised by the quickness with which he appeared. ‘Take this here valuable animal into the stable, and have more than particular care of him if you want to keep your place. A mortal lazy fellow, sir; he needs a deal of looking after.’

‘But you have a son,’ returned Mr Chester, giving his bridle to Hugh as he dismounted, and acknowledging his salute by a careless motion of his hand towards his hat. ‘Why don’t you make HIM useful?’

‘Why, the truth is, sir,’ replied John with great importance, ‘that my son—what, you’re a-listening are you, villain?’

‘Who’s listening?’ returned Hugh angrily. ‘A treat, indeed, to hear YOU speak! Would you have me take him in till he’s cool?’

‘Walk him up and down further off then, sir,’ cried old John, ‘and when you see me and a noble gentleman entertaining ourselves with talk, keep your distance. If you don’t know your distance, sir,’ added Mr Willet, after an enormously long pause, during which he fixed his great dull eyes on Hugh, and waited with exemplary patience for any little property in the way of ideas that might come to him, ‘we’ll find a way to teach you, pretty soon.’

Hugh shrugged his shoulders scornfully, and in his reckless swaggering way, crossed to the other side of the little green, and there, with the bridle slung loosely over his shoulder, led the horse to and fro, glancing at his master every now and then from under his bushy eyebrows, with as sinister an aspect as one would desire to see.

Mr Chester, who, without appearing to do so, had eyed him attentively during this brief dispute, stepped into the porch, and turning abruptly to Mr Willet, said,

‘You keep strange servants, John.’

‘Strange enough to look at, sir, certainly,’ answered the host; ‘but out of doors; for horses, dogs, and the likes of that; there an’t a better man in England than is that Maypole Hugh yonder. He an’t fit for indoors,’ added Mr Willet, with the confidential air of a man who felt his own superior nature. ‘I do that; but if that chap had only a little imagination, sir—’

‘He’s an active fellow now, I dare swear,’ said Mr Chester, in a musing tone, which seemed to suggest that he would have said the same had there been nobody to hear him.

‘Active, sir!’ retorted John, with quite an expression in his face; ‘that chap! Hallo there! You, sir! Bring that horse here, and go and hang my wig on the weathercock, to show this gentleman whether you’re one of the lively sort or not.’

Hugh made no answer, but throwing the bridle to his master, and snatching his wig from his head, in a manner so unceremonious and hasty that the action discomposed Mr Willet not a little, though performed at his own special desire, climbed nimbly to the very summit of the maypole before the house, and hanging the wig upon the weathercock, sent it twirling round like a roasting jack. Having achieved this performance, he cast it on the ground, and sliding down the pole with inconceivable rapidity, alighted on his feet almost as soon as it had touched the earth.

‘There, sir,’ said John, relapsing into his usual stolid state, ‘you won’t see that at many houses, besides the Maypole, where there’s good accommodation for man and beast—nor that neither, though that with him is nothing.’

This last remark bore reference to his vaulting on horseback, as upon Mr Chester’s first visit, and quickly disappearing by the stable gate.

‘That with him is nothing,’ repeated Mr Willet, brushing his wig with his wrist, and inwardly resolving to distribute a small charge for dust and damage to that article of dress, through the various items of his guest’s bill; ‘he’ll get out of a’most any winder in the house. There never was such a chap for flinging himself about and never hurting his bones. It’s my opinion, sir, that it’s pretty nearly allowing to his not having any imagination; and that if imagination could be (which it can’t) knocked into him, he’d never be able to do it any more. But we was a-talking, sir, about my son.’

‘True, Willet, true,’ said his visitor, turning again towards the landlord with his accustomed serenity of face. ‘My good friend, what about him?’

It has been reported that Mr Willet, previously to making answer, winked. But as he was never known to be guilty of such lightness of conduct either before or afterwards, this may be looked upon as a malicious invention of his enemies—founded, perhaps, upon the undisputed circumstance of his taking his guest by the third breast button of his coat, counting downwards from the chin, and pouring his reply into his ear:

‘Sir,’ whispered John, with dignity, ‘I know my duty. We want no love-making here, sir, unbeknown to parents. I respect a certain young gentleman, taking him in the light of a young gentleman; I respect a certain young lady, taking her in the light of a young lady; but of the two as a couple, I have no knowledge, sir, none whatever. My son, sir, is upon his patrole.’

‘I thought I saw him looking through the corner window but this moment,’ said Mr Chester, who naturally thought that being on patrole, implied walking about somewhere.

‘No doubt you did, sir,’ returned John. ‘He is upon his patrole of honour, sir, not to leave the premises. Me and some friends of mine that use the Maypole of an evening, sir, considered what was best to be done with him, to prevent his doing anything unpleasant in opposing your desires; and we’ve put him on his patrole. And what’s more, sir, he won’t be off his patrole for a pretty long time to come, I can tell you that.’

When he had communicated this bright idea, which had its origin in the perusal by the village cronies of a newspaper, containing, among other matters, an account of how some officer pending the sentence of some court-martial had been enlarged on parole, Mr Willet drew back from his guest’s ear, and without any visible alteration of feature, chuckled thrice audibly. This nearest approach to a laugh in which he ever indulged (and that but seldom and only on extreme occasions), never even curled his lip or effected the smallest change in—no, not so much as a slight wagging of—his great, fat, double chin, which at these times, as at all others, remained a perfect desert in the broad map of his face; one changeless, dull, tremendous blank.

Lest it should be matter of surprise to any, that Mr Willet adopted this bold course in opposition to one whom he had often entertained, and who had always paid his way at the Maypole gallantly, it may be remarked that it was his very penetration and sagacity in this respect, which occasioned him to indulge in those unusual demonstrations of jocularity, just now recorded. For Mr Willet, after carefully balancing father and son in his mental scales, had arrived at the distinct conclusion that the old gentleman was a better sort of a customer than the young one. Throwing his landlord into the same scale, which was already turned by this consideration, and heaping upon him, again, his strong desires to run counter to the unfortunate Joe, and his opposition as a general principle to all matters of love and matrimony, it went down to the very ground straightway, and sent the light cause of the younger gentleman flying upwards to the ceiling. Mr Chester was not the kind of man to be by any means dim-sighted to Mr Willet’s motives, but he thanked him as graciously as if he had been one of the most disinterested martyrs that ever shone on earth; and leaving him, with many complimentary reliances on his great taste and judgment, to prepare whatever dinner he might deem most fitting the occasion, bent his steps towards the Warren.

Dressed with more than his usual elegance; assuming a gracefulness of manner, which, though it was the result of long study, sat easily upon him and became him well; composing his features into their most serene and prepossessing expression; and setting in short that guard upon himself, at every point, which denoted that he attached no slight importance to the impression he was about to make; he entered the bounds of Miss Haredale’s usual walk. He had not gone far, or looked about him long, when he descried coming towards him, a female figure. A glimpse of the form and dress as she crossed a little wooden bridge which lay between them, satisfied him that he had found her whom he desired to see. He threw himself in her way, and a very few paces brought them close together.

He raised his hat from his head, and yielding the path, suffered her to pass him. Then, as if the idea had but that moment occurred to him, he turned hastily back and said in an agitated voice:

‘I beg pardon—do I address Miss Haredale?’

She stopped in some confusion at being so unexpectedly accosted by a stranger; and answered ‘Yes.’

‘Something told me,’ he said, LOOKING a compliment to her beauty, ‘that it could be no other. Miss Haredale, I bear a name which is not unknown to you—which it is a pride, and yet a pain to me to know, sounds pleasantly in your ears. I am a man advanced in life, as you see. I am the father of him whom you honour and distinguish above all other men. May I for weighty reasons which fill me with distress, beg but a minute’s conversation with you here?’

Who that was inexperienced in deceit, and had a frank and youthful heart, could doubt the speaker’s truth—could doubt it too, when the voice that spoke, was like the faint echo of one she knew so well, and so much loved to hear? She inclined her head, and stopping, cast her eyes upon the ground.

‘A little more apart—among these trees. It is an old man’s hand, Miss Haredale; an honest one, believe me.’

She put hers in it as he said these words, and suffered him to lead her to a neighbouring seat.

‘You alarm me, sir,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You are not the bearer of any ill news, I hope?’

‘Of none that you anticipate,’ he answered, sitting down beside her. ‘Edward