Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, Charles Dickens [android based ebook reader TXT] 📗

‘Was there ever,’ said Dennis, looking round the room, when the echo of his boisterous voice had died away; ‘was there ever such a game boy! Why, I mean to say, brothers, that if Muster Gashford had gone a hundred mile and got together fifty men of the common run, they wouldn’t have been worth this one.’

The greater part of the company implicitly subscribed to this opinion, and testified their faith in Hugh by nods and looks of great significance. Mr Tappertit sat and contemplated him for a long time in silence, as if he suspended his judgment; then drew a little nearer to him, and eyed him over more carefully; then went close up to him, and took him apart into a dark corner.

‘I say,’ he began, with a thoughtful brow, ‘haven’t I seen you before?’

‘It’s like you may,’ said Hugh, in his careless way. ‘I don’t know; shouldn’t wonder.’

‘No, but it’s very easily settled,’ returned Sim. ‘Look at me. Did you ever see ME before? You wouldn’t be likely to forget it, you know, if you ever did. Look at me. Don’t be afraid; I won’t do you any harm. Take a good look—steady now.’

The encouraging way in which Mr Tappertit made this request, and coupled it with an assurance that he needn’t be frightened, amused Hugh mightily—so much indeed, that he saw nothing at all of the small man before him, through closing his eyes in a fit of hearty laughter, which shook his great broad sides until they ached again.

‘Come!’ said Mr Tappertit, growing a little impatient under this disrespectful treatment. ‘Do you know me, feller?’

‘Not I,’ cried Hugh. ‘Ha ha ha! Not I! But I should like to.’

‘And yet I’d have wagered a seven-shilling piece,’ said Mr Tappertit, folding his arms, and confronting him with his legs wide apart and firmly planted on the ground, ‘that you once were hostler at the Maypole.’

Hugh opened his eyes on hearing this, and looked at him in great surprise.

‘—And so you were, too,’ said Mr Tappertit, pushing him away with a condescending playfulness. ‘When did MY eyes ever deceive—unless it was a young woman! Don’t you know me now?’

‘Why it an’t—’ Hugh faltered.

‘An’t it?’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Are you sure of that? You remember G. Varden, don’t you?’

Certainly Hugh did, and he remembered D. Varden too; but that he didn’t tell him.

‘You remember coming down there, before I was out of my time, to ask after a vagabond that had bolted off, and left his disconsolate father a prey to the bitterest emotions, and all the rest of it—don’t you?’ said Mr Tappertit.

‘Of course I do!’ cried Hugh. ‘And I saw you there.’

‘Saw me there!’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Yes, I should think you did see me there. The place would be troubled to go on without me. Don’t you remember my thinking you liked the vagabond, and on that account going to quarrel with you; and then finding you detested him worse than poison, going to drink with you? Don’t you remember that?’

‘To be sure!’ cried Hugh.

‘Well! and are you in the same mind now?’ said Mr Tappertit.

‘Yes!’ roared Hugh.

‘You speak like a man,’ said Mr Tappertit, ‘and I’ll shake hands with you.’ With these conciliatory expressions he suited the action to the word; and Hugh meeting his advances readily, they performed the ceremony with a show of great heartiness.

‘I find,’ said Mr Tappertit, looking round on the assembled guests, ‘that brother What’s-his-name and I are old acquaintance.—You never heard anything more of that rascal, I suppose, eh?’

‘Not a syllable,’ replied Hugh. ‘I never want to. I don’t believe I ever shall. He’s dead long ago, I hope.’

‘It’s to be hoped, for the sake of mankind in general and the happiness of society, that he is,’ said Mr Tappertit, rubbing his palm upon his legs, and looking at it between whiles. ‘Is your other hand at all cleaner? Much the same. Well, I’ll owe you another shake. We’ll suppose it done, if you’ve no objection.’

Hugh laughed again, and with such thorough abandonment to his mad humour, that his limbs seemed dislocated, and his whole frame in danger of tumbling to pieces; but Mr Tappertit, so far from receiving this extreme merriment with any irritation, was pleased to regard it with the utmost favour, and even to join in it, so far as one of his gravity and station could, with any regard to that decency and decorum which men in high places are expected to maintain.

Mr Tappertit did not stop here, as many public characters might have done, but calling up his brace of lieutenants, introduced Hugh to them with high commendation; declaring him to be a man who, at such times as those in which they lived, could not be too much cherished. Further, he did him the honour to remark, that he would be an acquisition of which even the United Bulldogs might be proud; and finding, upon sounding him, that he was quite ready and willing to enter the society (for he was not at all particular, and would have leagued himself that night with anything, or anybody, for any purpose whatsoever), caused the necessary preliminaries to be gone into upon the spot. This tribute to his great merit delighted no man more than Mr Dennis, as he himself proclaimed with several rare and surprising oaths; and indeed it gave unmingled satisfaction to the whole assembly.

‘Make anything you like of me!’ cried Hugh, flourishing the can he had emptied more than once. ‘Put me on any duty you please. I’m your man. I’ll do it. Here’s my captain—here’s my leader. Ha ha ha! Let him give me the word of command, and I’ll fight the whole Parliament House single-handed, or set a lighted torch to the King’s Throne itself!’ With that, he smote Mr Tappertit on the back, with such violence that his little body seemed to shrink into a mere nothing; and roared again until the very foundlings near at hand were startled in their beds.

In fact, a sense of something whimsical in their companionship seemed to have taken entire possession of his rude brain. The bare fact of being patronised by a great man whom he could have crushed with one hand, appeared in his eyes so eccentric and humorous, that a kind of ferocious merriment gained the mastery over him, and quite subdued his brutal nature. He roared and roared again; toasted Mr Tappertit a hundred times; declared himself a Bulldog to the core; and vowed to be faithful to him to the last drop of blood in his veins.

All these compliments Mr Tappertit received as matters of course—flattering enough in their way, but entirely attributable to his vast superiority. His dignified self-possession only delighted Hugh the more; and in a word, this giant and dwarf struck up a friendship which bade fair to be of long continuance, as the one held it to be his right to command, and the other considered it an exquisite pleasantry to obey. Nor was Hugh by any means a passive follower, who scrupled to act without precise and definite orders; for when Mr Tappertit mounted on an empty cask which stood by way of