Little thinking of the plan for his happy settlement in life which had
suggested itself to the teeming brain of his provident commander, Hugh
made no pause until Saint Dunstan’s giants struck the hour above him,
when he worked the handle of a pump which stood hard by, with great
vigour, and thrusting his head under the spout, let the water gush upon
him until a little stream ran down from every uncombed hair, and he was
wet to the waist. Considerably refreshed by this ablution, both in mind
and body, and almost sobered for the time, he dried himself as he best
could; then crossed the road, and plied the knocker of the Middle Temple
gate.
The night-porter looked through a small grating in the portal with a
surly eye, and cried ‘Halloa!’ which greeting Hugh returned in kind, and
bade him open quickly.
‘We don’t sell beer here,’ cried the man; ‘what else do you want?’
‘To come in,’ Hugh replied, with a kick at the door.
‘Where to go?’
‘Paper Buildings.’
‘Whose chambers?’
‘Sir John Chester’s.’ Each of which answers, he emphasised with another
kick.
After a little growling on the other side, the gate was opened, and he
passed in: undergoing a close inspection from the porter as he did so.
‘YOU wanting Sir John, at this time of night!’ said the man.
‘Ay!’ said Hugh. ‘I! What of that?’
‘Why, I must go with you and see that you do, for I don’t believe it.’
‘Come along then.’
Eyeing him with suspicious looks, the man, with key and lantern, walked
on at his side, and attended him to Sir John Chester’s door, at which
Hugh gave one knock, that echoed through the dark staircase like a
ghostly summons, and made the dull light tremble in the drowsy lamp.
‘Do you think he wants me now?’ said Hugh.
Before the man had time to answer, a footstep was heard within, a light
appeared, and Sir John, in his dressing-gown and slippers, opened the
door.
‘I ask your pardon, Sir John,’ said the porter, pulling off his hat.
‘Here’s a young man says he wants to speak to you. It’s late for
strangers. I thought it best to see that all was right.’
‘Aha!’ cried Sir John, raising his eyebrows. ‘It’s you, messenger, is
it? Go in. Quite right, friend. I commend your prudence highly. Thank
you. God bless you. Good night.’
To be commended, thanked, God-blessed, and bade good night by one who
carried ‘Sir’ before his name, and wrote himself M.P. to boot, was
something for a porter. He withdrew with much humility and reverence.
Sir John followed his late visitor into the dressing-room, and sitting
in his easy-chair before the fire, and moving it so that he could see
him as he stood, hat in hand, beside the door, looked at him from head
to foot.
The old face, calm and pleasant as ever; the complexion, quite juvenile
in its bloom and clearness; the same smile; the wonted precision and
elegance of dress; the white, well-ordered teeth; the delicate hands;
the composed and quiet manner; everything as it used to be: no mark of
age or passion, envy, hate, or discontent: all unruffled and serene, and
quite delightful to behold.
He wrote himself M.P.--but how? Why, thus. It was a proud family--more
proud, indeed, than wealthy. He had stood in danger of arrest; of
bailiffs, and a jail--a vulgar jail, to which the common people with
small incomes went. Gentlemen of ancient houses have no privilege of
exemption from such cruel laws--unless they are of one great house, and
then they have. A proud man of his stock and kindred had the means of
sending him there. He offered--not indeed to pay his debts, but to let
him sit for a close borough until his own son came of age, which, if he
lived, would come to pass in twenty years. It was quite as good as an
Insolvent Act, and infinitely more genteel. So Sir John Chester was a
member of Parliament.
But how Sir John? Nothing so simple, or so easy. One touch with a sword
of state, and the transformation was effected. John Chester, Esquire,
M.P., attended court--went up with an address--headed a deputation.
Such elegance of manner, so many graces of deportment, such powers of
conversation, could never pass unnoticed. Mr was too common for
such merit. A man so gentlemanly should have been--but Fortune is
capricious--born a Duke: just as some dukes should have been born
labourers. He caught the fancy of the king, knelt down a grub, and rose
a butterfly. John Chester, Esquire, was knighted and became Sir John.
‘I thought when you left me this evening, my esteemed acquaintance,’
said Sir John after a pretty long silence, ‘that you intended to return
with all despatch?’
‘So I did, master.’
‘And so you have?’ he retorted, glancing at his watch. ‘Is that what you
would say?’
Instead of replying, Hugh changed the leg on which he leant, shuffled
his cap from one hand to the other, looked at the ground, the wall, the
ceiling, and finally at Sir John himself; before whose pleasant face he
lowered his eyes again, and fixed them on the floor.
‘And how have you been employing yourself in the meanwhile?’ quoth Sir
John, lazily crossing his legs. ‘Where have you been? what harm have you
been doing?’
‘No harm at all, master,’ growled Hugh, with humility. ‘I have only done
as you ordered.’
‘As I WHAT?’ returned Sir John.
‘Well then,’ said Hugh uneasily, ‘as you advised, or said I ought, or
said I might, or said that you would do, if you was me. Don’t be so hard
upon me, master.’
Something like an expression of triumph in the perfect control he had
established over this rough instrument appeared in the knight’s face for
an instant; but it vanished directly, as he said--paring his nails while
speaking:
‘When you say I ordered you, my good fellow, you imply that I directed
you to do something for me--something I wanted done--something for my
own ends and purposes--you see? Now I am sure I needn’t enlarge upon the
extreme absurdity of such an idea, however unintentional; so please--’
and here he turned his eyes upon him--‘to be more guarded. Will you?’
‘I meant to give you no offence,’ said Hugh. ‘I don’t know what to say.
You catch me up so very short.’
‘You will be caught up much shorter, my good friend--infinitely
shorter--one of these days, depend upon it,’ replied his patron calmly.
‘By-the-bye, instead of wondering why you have been so long, my wonder
should be why you came at all. Why did you?’
‘You know, master,’ said Hugh, ‘that I couldn’t read the bill I found,
and that supposing it to be something particular from the way it was
wrapped up, I brought it here.’
‘And could you ask no one else to read it, Bruin?’ said Sir John.
‘No one that I could trust with secrets, master. Since Barnaby Rudge
was lost sight of for good and all--and that’s five years ago--I haven’t
talked with any one but you.’
‘You have done me honour, I am sure.’
‘I have come to and fro, master, all through that time, when there was
anything to tell, because I knew that you’d be angry with me if I stayed
away,’ said Hugh, blurting the words out, after an embarrassed silence;
‘and because I wished to please you if I could, and not to have you go
against me. There. That’s the true reason why I came to-night. You know
that, master, I am sure.’
‘You are a specious fellow,’ returned Sir John, fixing his eyes upon
him, ‘and carry two faces under your hood, as well as the best. Didn’t
you give me in this room, this evening, any other reason; no dislike
of anybody who has slighted you lately, on all occasions, abused you,
treated you with rudeness; acted towards you, more as if you were a
mongrel dog than a man like himself?’
‘To be sure I did!’ cried Hugh, his passion rising, as the other meant
it should; ‘and I say it all over now, again. I’d do anything to have
some revenge on him--anything. And when you told me that he and all
the Catholics would suffer from those who joined together under that
handbill, I said I’d make one of ‘em, if their master was the devil
himself. I AM one of ‘em. See whether I am as good as my word and turn
out to be among the foremost, or no. I mayn’t have much head, master,
but I’ve head enough to remember those that use me ill. You shall see,
and so shall he, and so shall hundreds more, how my spirit backs me
when the time comes. My bark is nothing to my bite. Some that I know had
better have a wild lion among ‘em than me, when I am fairly loose--they
had!’
The knight looked at him with a smile of far deeper meaning than
ordinary; and pointing to the old cupboard, followed him with his eyes
while he filled and drank a glass of liquor; and smiled when his back
was turned, with deeper meaning yet.
‘You are in a blustering mood, my friend,’ he said, when Hugh confronted
him again.
‘Not I, master!’ cried Hugh. ‘I don’t say half I mean. I can’t. I
haven’t got the gift. There are talkers enough among us; I’ll be one of
the doers.’
‘Oh! you have joined those fellows then?’ said Sir John, with an air of
most profound indifference.
‘Yes. I went up to the house you told me of; and got put down upon the
muster. There was another man there, named Dennis--’
‘Dennis, eh!’ cried Sir John, laughing. ‘Ay, ay! a pleasant fellow, I
believe?’
‘A roaring dog, master--one after my own heart--hot upon the matter
too--red hot.’
‘So I have heard,’ replied Sir John, carelessly. ‘You don’t happen to
know his trade, do you?’
‘He wouldn’t say,’ cried Hugh. ‘He keeps it secret.’
‘Ha ha!’ laughed Sir John. ‘A strange fancy--a weakness with some
persons--you’ll know it one day, I dare swear.’
‘We’re intimate already,’ said Hugh.
‘Quite natural! And have been drinking together, eh?’ pursued Sir John.
‘Did you say what place you went to in company, when you left Lord
George’s?’
Hugh had not said or thought of saying, but he told him; and this
inquiry being followed by a long train of questions, he related all that
had passed both in and out of doors, the kind of people he had seen,
their numbers, state of feeling, mode of conversation, apparent
expectations and intentions. His questioning was so artfully contrived,
that he seemed even in his own eyes to volunteer all this information
rather than to have it wrested from him; and he was brought to this
state of feeling so naturally, that when Mr Chester yawned at length and
declared himself quite wearied out, he made a rough kind of excuse for
having talked so much.
‘There--get you gone,’ said Sir John, holding the door open in his hand.
‘You have made a pretty evening’s work. I told you not to do this. You
may get into trouble. You’ll have an opportunity of revenging yourself
on your proud friend Haredale, though, and for that, you’d hazard
anything, I suppose?’
‘I would,’ retorted Hugh, stopping in his passage out and looking
back; ‘but what do I risk! What do I stand a chance of losing, master?
Friends, home? A fig for ‘em all; I have none; they are nothing to me.
Give me a good scuffle; let me pay off old scores in a bold riot where
there are men to stand by me; and then use me as you like--it don’t
matter much to me what the end is!’
‘What have you done with that paper?’ said Sir John.
‘I have it here, master.’
‘Drop it again as you go along; it’s as well not to keep such things
about you.’
Hugh nodded, and touching his cap with an air of as much respect as he
could summon up, departed.
Sir John, fastening the doors behind him, went back to his
dressing-room, and sat down once again before the fire, at which he
gazed for a long time, in earnest meditation.
‘This happens fortunately,’ he said, breaking into a smile, ‘and
promises well. Let me see. My relative and I, who are the most
Protestant fellows in the world, give our worst wishes to the Roman
Catholic cause; and to Saville, who introduces their bill, I have a
personal objection besides; but as each of us has himself for the first
article in his creed, we cannot commit ourselves by joining with a very
extravagant madman, such as this Gordon most undoubtedly is. Now really,
to foment his disturbances in secret, through the medium of such a very
apt instrument as my savage friend here, may further our real ends;
and to express at all becoming seasons, in moderate and polite terms,
a disapprobation of his proceedings, though we agree with him in
principle, will certainly be to gain a character for honesty and
uprightness of purpose, which cannot fail to do us infinite service, and
to raise us into some importance. Good! So much for public grounds. As
to private considerations, I confess that if these vagabonds WOULD make
some riotous demonstration (which does not appear impossible), and WOULD
inflict some little chastisement on Haredale as a not inactive man among
his sect, it would be extremely agreeable to my feelings, and would
amuse me beyond measure. Good again! Perhaps better!’
When he came to this point, he took a pinch of snuff; then beginning
slowly to undress, he resumed his meditations, by saying with a smile:
‘I fear, I DO fear exceedingly, that my friend is following fast in the
footsteps of his mother. His intimacy with Mr Dennis is very ominous.
But I have no doubt he must have come to that end any way. If I lend
him a helping hand, the only difference is, that he may, upon the whole,
possibly drink a few gallons, or puncheons, or hogsheads, less in this
life than he otherwise would. It’s no business of mine. It’s a matter of
very small importance!’
So he took another pinch of snuff, and went to bed.