Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

‘How many can you bear?’ he said, filling the glass again.

‘As many as you like to give me. Pour on. Fill high. A bumper with a bead in the middle! Give me enough of this,’ he added, as he tossed it down his hairy throat, ‘and I’ll do murder if you ask me!’

‘As I don’t mean to ask you, and you might possibly do it without being invited if you went on much further,’ said Mr Chester with great composure, ‘we will stop, if agreeable to you, my good friend, at the next glass. You were drinking before you came here.’

‘I always am when I can get it,’ cried Hugh boisterously, waving the empty glass above his head, and throwing himself into a rude dancing attitude. ‘I always am. Why not? Ha ha ha! What’s so good to me as this? What ever has been? What else has kept away the cold on bitter nights, and driven hunger off in starving times? What else has given me the strength and courage of a man, when men would have left me to die, a puny child? I should never have had a man’s heart but for this. I should have died in a ditch. Where’s he who when I was a weak and sickly wretch, with trembling legs and fading sight, bade me cheer up, as this did? I never knew him; not I. I drink to the drink, master. Ha ha ha!’

‘You are an exceedingly cheerful young man,’ said Mr Chester, putting on his cravat with great deliberation, and slightly moving his head from side to side to settle his chin in its proper place. ‘Quite a boon companion.’

‘Do you see this hand, master,’ said Hugh, ‘and this arm?’ baring the brawny limb to the elbow. ‘It was once mere skin and bone, and would have been dust in some poor churchyard by this time, but for the drink.’

‘You may cover it,’ said Mr Chester, ‘it’s sufficiently real in your sleeve.’

‘I should never have been spirited up to take a kiss from the proud little beauty, master, but for the drink,’ cried Hugh. ‘Ha ha ha! It was a good one. As sweet as honeysuckle, I warrant you. I thank the drink for it. I’ll drink to the drink again, master. Fill me one more. Come. One more!’

‘You are such a promising fellow,’ said his patron, putting on his waistcoat with great nicety, and taking no heed of this request, ‘that I must caution you against having too many impulses from the drink, and getting hung before your time. What’s your age?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘At any rate,’ said Mr Chester, ‘you are young enough to escape what I may call a natural death for some years to come. How can you trust yourself in my hands on so short an acquaintance, with a halter round your neck? What a confiding nature yours must be!’

Hugh fell back a pace or two and surveyed him with a look of mingled terror, indignation, and surprise. Regarding himself in the glass with the same complacency as before, and speaking as smoothly as if he were discussing some pleasant chit-chat of the town, his patron went on:

‘Robbery on the king’s highway, my young friend, is a very dangerous and ticklish occupation. It is pleasant, I have no doubt, while it lasts; but like many other pleasures in this transitory world, it seldom lasts long. And really if in the ingenuousness of youth, you open your heart so readily on the subject, I am afraid your career will be an extremely short one.’

‘How’s this?’ said Hugh. ‘What do you talk of master? Who was it set me on?’

‘Who?’ said Mr Chester, wheeling sharply round, and looking full at him for the first time. ‘I didn’t hear you. Who was it?’

Hugh faltered, and muttered something which was not audible.

‘Who was it? I am curious to know,’ said Mr Chester, with surpassing affability. ‘Some rustic beauty perhaps? But be cautious, my good friend. They are not always to be trusted. Do take my advice now, and be careful of yourself.’ With these words he turned to the glass again, and went on with his toilet.

Hugh would have answered him that he, the questioner himself had set him on, but the words stuck in his throat. The consummate art with which his patron had led him to this point, and managed the whole conversation, perfectly baffled him. He did not doubt that if he had made the retort which was on his lips when Mr Chester turned round and questioned him so keenly, he would straightway have given him into custody and had him dragged before a justice with the stolen property upon him; in which case it was as certain he would have been hung as it was that he had been born. The ascendency which it was the purpose of the man of the world to establish over this savage instrument, was gained from that time. Hugh’s submission was complete. He dreaded him beyond description; and felt that accident and artifice had spun a web about him, which at a touch from such a master-hand as his, would bind him to the gallows.

With these thoughts passing through his mind, and yet wondering at the very same time how he who came there rioting in the confidence of this man (as he thought), should be so soon and so thoroughly subdued, Hugh stood cowering before him, regarding him uneasily from time to time, while he finished dressing. When he had done so, he took up the letter, broke the seal, and throwing himself back in his chair, read it leisurely through.

‘Very neatly worded upon my life! Quite a woman’s letter, full of what people call tenderness, and disinterestedness, and heart, and all that sort of thing!’

As he spoke, he twisted it up, and glancing lazily round at Hugh as though he would say ‘You see this?’ held it in the flame of the candle. When it was in a full blaze, he tossed it into the grate, and there it smouldered away.

‘It was directed to my son,’ he said, turning to Hugh, ‘and you did quite right to bring it here. I opened it on my own responsibility, and you see what I have done with it. Take this, for your trouble.’

Hugh stepped forward to receive the piece of money he held out to him. As he put it in his hand, he added:

‘If you should happen to find anything else of this sort, or to pick up any kind of information you may think I would like to have, bring it here, will you, my good fellow?’

This was said with a smile which implied – or Hugh thought it did – ‘fail to do so at your peril!’ He answered that he would.

‘And don’t,’ said his patron, with an air of the very kindest patronage, ‘don’t be at all downcast or uneasy respecting that little rashness we have been speaking of. Your neck is as safe in my hands, my good fellow, as though a baby’s fingers clasped it, I assure you. – Take another glass. You are quieter now.’

Hugh accepted it from his hand, and looking stealthily at his smiling face, drank the contents in silence.

‘Don’t you – ha, ha! – don’t you drink to the drink any more?’ said Mr Chester, in his most winning manner.

‘To you, sir,’ was the sullen answer, with something approaching to a bow. ‘I drink to you.’

‘Thank you. God bless you. By the bye, what is your name, my good soul? You are called Hugh, I know, of course – your other name?’

‘I have no other name.’

‘A very strange fellow! Do you mean that you never knew one, or that you don’t choose to tell it? Which?’

‘I’d tell it if I could,’ said Hugh, quickly. ‘I can’t. I have been always called Hugh; nothing more. I never knew, nor saw, nor thought about a father; and I was a boy of six – that’s not very old – when they hung my mother up at Tyburn for a couple of thousand men to stare at. They might have let her live. She was poor enough.’

‘How very sad!’ exclaimed his patron, with a condescending smile. ‘I have no doubt she was an exceedingly fine woman.’

‘You see that dog of mine?’ said Hugh, abruptly.

‘Faithful, I dare say?’ rejoined his patron, looking at him through his glass; ‘and immensely clever? Virtuous and gifted animals, whether man or beast, always are so very hideous.’

‘Such a dog as that, and one of the same breed, was the only living thing except me that howled that day,’ said Hugh. ‘Out of the two thousand odd – there was a larger crowd for its being a woman – the dog and I alone had any pity. If he’d have been a man, he’d have been glad to be quit of her, for she had been forced to keep him lean and half-starved; but being a dog, and not having a man’s sense, he was sorry.’

‘It was dull of the brute, certainly,’ said Mr Chester, ‘and very like a brute.’

Hugh made no rejoinder, but whistling to his dog, who sprung up at the sound and came jumping and sporting about him, bade his sympathising friend good night.

‘Good night,’ he returned. ‘Remember; you’re safe with me – quite safe. So long as you deserve it, my good fellow, as I hope you always will, you have a friend in me, on whose silence you may rely. Now do be careful of yourself, pray do, and consider what jeopardy you might have stood in. Good night! bless you!’

Hugh truckled before the hidden meaning of these words as much as such a being could, and crept out of the door so submissively and subserviently – with an air, in short, so different from that with which he had entered – that his patron on being left alone, smiled more than ever.

‘And yet,’ he said, as he took a pinch of snuff, ‘I do not like their having hanged his mother. The fellow has a fine eye, and I am sure she was handsome. But very probably she was coarse – red-nosed perhaps, and had clumsy feet. Aye, it was all for the best, no doubt.’

With this comforting reflection, he put on his coat, took a farewell glance at the glass, and summoned his man, who promptly attended, followed by a chair and its two bearers.

‘Foh!’ said Mr Chester. ‘The very atmosphere that centaur has breathed, seems tainted with the cart and ladder. Here, Peak. Bring some scent and sprinkle the floor; and take away the chair he sat upon, and air it; and dash a little of that mixture upon me. I am stifled!’

The man obeyed; and the room and its master being both purified, nothing remained for Mr Chester but to demand his hat, to fold it jauntily under his arm, to take his seat in the chair and be carried off; humming a fashionable tune.

Chapter 24

How the accomplished gentleman spent the evening in the midst of a dazzling and brilliant circle; how he enchanted all those with whom he mingled by the grace of his deportment, the politeness of his manner, the vivacity of his conversation, and the sweetness of his voice; how it was observed in every corner, that Chester was a man of that happy disposition that nothing ruffled him, that he was one on whom the world’s cares and errors sat lightly as his dress, and in whose smiling face a calm and tranquil mind was constantly reflected; how honest men, who by instinct knew him better, bowed down before him nevertheless, deferred to his every word, and courted his favourable notice; how people, who really had good in them, went with the stream, and fawned and flattered, and approved, and despised themselves while they did so, and yet had not the courage to resist; how, in short, he was one of those who are received and cherished in society (as the phrase is) by scores who individually would shrink from and be repelled by the object of their lavish regard; are things of course, which will suggest themselves. Matter so commonplace needs but a passing glance, and there an end.

The despisers of mankind – apart from the mere fools and mimics, of that creed – are of two sorts. They who believe their merit neglected and unappreciated, make up one class; they who receive adulation and flattery, knowing their own worthlessness, compose the other. Be sure that the coldest-hearted misanthropes are ever of this last order.

Mr Chester sat up in bed next morning, sipping his coffee, and remembering with a kind of contemptuous satisfaction how he had shone last night, and how he had been caressed and courted, when his servant brought in a very small scrap of dirty paper, tightly sealed in two places, on the inside whereof was inscribed in pretty large text these words: ‘A friend. Desiring of a conference. Immediate. Private. Burn it when you’ve read it.’

‘Where in the name of the Gunpowder Plot did you pick up this?’ said his master.