Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens (latest ebook reader TXT) 📖

wait in the churchyard instead. As it was easy for Barnaby to buy and carry thither such humble viands as they required, he cheerfully assented, and in the churchyard they sat down to take their frugal dinner.

Here again, the raven was in a highly reflective state; walking up and down when he had dined, with an air of elderly complacency which was strongly suggestive of his having his hands under his coat-tails; and appearing to read the tombstones with a very critical taste. Sometimes, after a long inspection of an epitaph, he would strop his beak upon the grave to which it referred, and cry in his hoarse tones, ‘I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a devil!’ but whether he addressed his observations to any supposed person below, or merely threw them off as a general remark, is matter of uncertainty.

It was a quiet pretty spot, but a sad one for Barnaby’s mother; for Mr Reuben Haredale lay there, and near the vault in which his ashes rested, was a stone to the memory of her own husband, with a brief inscription recording how and when he had lost his life. She sat here, thoughtful and apart, until their time was out, and the distant horn told that the coach was coming.

Barnaby, who had been sleeping on the grass, sprung up quickly at the sound; and Grip, who appeared to understand it equally well, walked into his basket straightway, entreating society in general (as though he intended a kind of satire upon them in connection with churchyards) never to say die on any terms. They were soon on the coach-top and rolling along the road.

It went round by the Maypole, and stopped at the door. Joe was from home, and Hugh came sluggishly out to hand up the parcel that it called for. There was no fear of old John coming out. They could see him from the coach-roof fast asleep in his cosy bar. It was a part of John’s character. He made a point of going to sleep at the coach’s time. He despised gadding about; he looked upon coaches as things that ought to be indicted; as disturbers of the peace of mankind; as restless, bustling, busy, horn-blowing contrivances, quite beneath the dignity of men, and only suited to giddy girls that did nothing but chatter and go a-shopping. ‘We know nothing about coaches here, sir,’ John would say, if any unlucky stranger made inquiry touching the offensive vehicles; ‘we don’t book for ‘em; we’d rather not; they’re more trouble than they’re worth, with their noise and rattle. If you like to wait for ‘em you can; but we don’t know anything about ‘em; they may call and they may not—there’s a carrier—he was looked upon as quite good enough for us, when I was a boy.’

She dropped her veil as Hugh climbed up, and while he hung behind, and talked to Barnaby in whispers. But neither he nor any other person spoke to her, or noticed her, or had any curiosity about her; and so, an alien, she visited and left the village where she had been born, and had lived a merry child, a comely girl, a happy wife—where she had known all her enjoyment of life, and had entered on its hardest sorrows.

Chapter 26

‘And you’re not surprised to hear this, Varden?’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Well! You and she have always been the best friends, and you should understand her if anybody does.’

‘I ask your pardon, sir,’ rejoined the locksmith. ‘I didn’t say I understood her. I wouldn’t have the presumption to say that of any woman. It’s not so easily done. But I am not so much surprised, sir, as you expected me to be, certainly.’

‘May I ask why not, my good friend?’

‘I have seen, sir,’ returned the locksmith with evident reluctance, ‘I have seen in connection with her, something that has filled me with distrust and uneasiness. She has made bad friends, how, or when, I don’t know; but that her house is a refuge for one robber and cut-throat at least, I am certain. There, sir! Now it’s out.’

‘Varden!’

‘My own eyes, sir, are my witnesses, and for her sake I would be willingly half-blind, if I could but have the pleasure of mistrusting ‘em. I have kept the secret till now, and it will go no further than yourself, I know; but I tell you that with my own eyes—broad awake—I saw, in the passage of her house one evening after dark, the highwayman who robbed and wounded Mr Edward Chester, and on the same night threatened me.’

‘And you made no effort to detain him?’ said Mr Haredale quickly.

‘Sir,’ returned the locksmith, ‘she herself prevented me—held me, with all her strength, and hung about me until he had got clear off.’ And having gone so far, he related circumstantially all that had passed upon the night in question.

This dialogue was held in a low tone in the locksmith’s little parlour, into which honest Gabriel had shown his visitor on his arrival. Mr Haredale had called upon him to entreat his company to the widow’s, that he might have the assistance of his persuasion and influence; and out of this circumstance the conversation had arisen.

‘I forbore,’ said Gabriel, ‘from repeating one word of this to anybody, as it could do her no good and might do her great harm. I thought and hoped, to say the truth, that she would come to me, and talk to me about it, and tell me how it was; but though I have purposely put myself in her way more than once or twice, she has never touched upon the subject—except by a look. And indeed,’ said the good-natured locksmith, ‘there was a good deal in the look, more than could have been put into a great many words. It said among other matters “Don’t ask me anything” so imploringly, that I didn’t ask her anything. You’ll think me an old fool, I know, sir. If it’s any relief to call me one, pray do.’

‘I am greatly disturbed by what you tell me,’ said Mr Haredale, after a silence. ‘What meaning do you attach to it?’

The locksmith shook his head, and looked doubtfully out of window at the failing light.

‘She cannot have married again,’ said Mr Haredale.

‘Not without our knowledge surely, sir.’

‘She may have done so, in the fear that it would lead, if known, to some objection or estrangement. Suppose she married incautiously— it is not improbable, for her existence has been a lonely and monotonous one for many years—and the man turned out a ruffian, she would be anxious to screen him, and yet would revolt from his crimes. This might be. It bears strongly on the whole drift of her discourse yesterday, and would quite explain her conduct. Do you suppose Barnaby is privy to these circumstances?’

‘Quite impossible to say, sir,’ returned the locksmith, shaking his head again: ‘and next to impossible to find out from him. If what you suppose is really the case, I tremble for the lad—a notable person, sir, to put to bad uses—’

‘It is not possible, Varden,’ said Mr Haredale, in a still lower tone of voice than he had spoken yet, ‘that we have been blinded and deceived by this woman from the beginning? It is not possible that this connection was formed in her husband’s lifetime, and led to his and my brother’s—’

‘Good God, sir,’ cried Gabriel, interrupting him, ‘don’t entertain such dark thoughts for a moment. Five-and-twenty years ago, where was there a girl like her? A gay, handsome, laughing, bright-eyed damsel! Think what she was, sir. It makes my heart ache now, even now, though I’m an old man, with a woman for a daughter, to think what she was and what she is. We all change, but that’s with Time; Time does his work honestly, and I don’t mind him. A fig for Time, sir. Use him well, and he’s a hearty fellow, and scorns to have you at a disadvantage. But care and suffering (and those have changed her) are devils, sir—secret, stealthy, undermining devils— who tread down the brightest flowers in Eden, and do more havoc in a month than Time does in a year. Picture to yourself for one minute what Mary was before they went to work with her fresh heart and face—do her that justice—and say whether such a thing is possible.’

‘You’re a good fellow, Varden,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘and are quite right. I have brooded on that subject so long, that every breath of suspicion carries me back to it. You are quite right.’

‘It isn’t, sir,’ cried the locksmith with brightened eyes, and sturdy, honest voice; ‘it isn’t because I courted her before Rudge, and failed, that I say she was too good for him. She would have been as much too good for me. But she WAS too good for him; he wasn’t free and frank enough for her. I don’t reproach his memory with it, poor fellow; I only want to put her before you as she really was. For myself, I’ll keep her old picture in my mind; and thinking of that, and what has altered her, I’ll stand her friend, and try to win her back to peace. And damme, sir,’ cried Gabriel, ‘with your pardon for the word, I’d do the same if she had married fifty highwaymen in a twelvemonth; and think it in the Protestant Manual too, though Martha said it wasn’t, tooth and nail, till doomsday!’

If the dark little parlour had been filled with a dense fog, which, clearing away in an instant, left it all radiance and brightness, it could not have been more suddenly cheered than by this outbreak on the part of the hearty locksmith. In a voice nearly as full and round as his own, Mr Haredale cried ‘Well said!’ and bade him come away without more parley. The locksmith complied right willingly; and both getting into a hackney coach which was waiting at the door, drove off straightway.

They alighted at the street corner, and dismissing their conveyance, walked to the house. To their first knock at the door there was no response. A second met with the like result. But in answer to the third, which was of a more vigorous kind, the parlour window-sash was gently raised, and a musical voice cried:

‘Haredale, my dear fellow, I am extremely glad to see you. How very much you have improved in your appearance since our last meeting! I never saw you looking better. HOW do you do?’

Mr Haredale turned his eyes towards the casement whence the voice proceeded, though there was