Chapter 42
The Royal East London Volunteers made a brilliant sight that day: formedinto lines, squares, circles, triangles, and what not, to the beatingof drums, and the streaming of flags; and performed a vast number ofcomplex evolutions, in all of which Serjeant Varden bore a conspicuousshare. Having displayed their military prowess to the utmost in thesewarlike shows, they marched in glittering order to the Chelsea BunHouse, and regaled in the adjacent taverns until dark. Then at soundof drum they fell in again, and returned amidst the shouting of HisMajesty's lieges to the place from whence they came.
The homeward march being somewhat tardy,--owing to the un-soldierlikebehaviour of certain corporals, who, being gentlemen of sedentarypursuits in private life and excitable out of doors, broke severalwindows with their bayonets, and rendered it imperative on thecommanding officer to deliver them over to a strong guard, with whomthey fought at intervals as they came along,--it was nine o'clock whenthe locksmith reached home. A hackney-coach was waiting near his door;and as he passed it, Mr Haredale looked from the window and called himby his name.
'The sight of you is good for sore eyes, sir,' said the locksmith,stepping up to him. 'I wish you had walked in though, rather than waitedhere.'
'There is nobody at home, I find,' Mr Haredale answered; 'besides, Idesired to be as private as I could.'
'Humph!' muttered the locksmith, looking round at his house. 'Gone withSimon Tappertit to that precious Branch, no doubt.'
Mr Haredale invited him to come into the coach, and, if he were nottired or anxious to go home, to ride with him a little way that theymight have some talk together. Gabriel cheerfully complied, and thecoachman mounting his box drove off.
'Varden,' said Mr Haredale, after a minute's pause, 'you will be amazedto hear what errand I am on; it will seem a very strange one.'
'I have no doubt it's a reasonable one, sir, and has a meaning in it,'replied the locksmith; 'or it would not be yours at all. Have you justcome back to town, sir?'
'But half an hour ago.'
'Bringing no news of Barnaby, or his mother?' said the locksmithdubiously. 'Ah! you needn't shake your head, sir. It was a wild-goosechase. I feared that, from the first. You exhausted all reasonable meansof discovery when they went away. To begin again after so long a timehas passed is hopeless, sir--quite hopeless.'
'Why, where are they?' he returned impatiently. 'Where can they be?Above ground?'
'God knows,' rejoined the locksmith, 'many that I knew above it fiveyears ago, have their beds under the grass now. And the world is awide place. It's a hopeless attempt, sir, believe me. We must leave thediscovery of this mystery, like all others, to time, and accident, andHeaven's pleasure.'
'Varden, my good fellow,' said Mr Haredale, 'I have a deeper meaning inmy present anxiety to find them out, than you can fathom. It is not amere whim; it is not the casual revival of my old wishes and desires;but an earnest, solemn purpose. My thoughts and dreams all tend to it,and fix it in my mind. I have no rest by day or night; I have no peaceor quiet; I am haunted.'
His voice was so altered from its usual tones, and his manner bespokeso much emotion, that Gabriel, in his wonder, could only sit and looktowards him in the darkness, and fancy the expression of his face.
'Do not ask me,' continued Mr Haredale, 'to explain myself. If I were todo so, you would think me the victim of some hideous fancy. It is enoughthat this is so, and that I cannot--no, I can not--lie quietly in mybed, without doing what will seem to you incomprehensible.'
'Since when, sir,' said the locksmith after a pause, 'has this uneasyfeeling been upon you?'
Mr Haredale hesitated for some moments, and then replied: 'Since thenight of the storm. In short, since the last nineteenth of March.'
As though he feared that Varden might express surprise, or reason withhim, he hastily went on:
'You will think, I know, I labour under some delusion. Perhaps I do. Butit is not a morbid one; it is a wholesome action of the mind, reasoningon actual occurrences. You know the furniture remains in Mrs Rudge'shouse, and that it has been shut up, by my orders, since she went away,save once a-week or so, when an old neighbour visits it to scare awaythe rats. I am on my way there now.'
'For what purpose?' asked the locksmith.
'To pass the night there,' he replied; 'and not to-night alone, but manynights. This is a secret which I trust to you in case of any unexpectedemergency. You will not come, unless in case of strong necessity, to me;from dusk to broad day I shall be there. Emma, your daughter, and therest, suppose me out of London, as I have been until within this hour.Do not undeceive them. This is the errand I am bound upon. I know I mayconfide it to you, and I rely upon your questioning me no more at thistime.'
With that, as if to change the theme, he led the astounded locksmithback to the night of the Maypole highwayman, to the robbery of EdwardChester, to the reappearance of the man at Mrs Rudge's house, and to allthe strange circumstances which afterwards occurred. He even asked himcarelessly about the man's height, his face, his figure, whether he waslike any one he had ever seen--like Hugh, for instance, or any man hehad known at any time--and put many questions of that sort, which thelocksmith, considering them as mere devices to engage his attention andprevent his expressing the astonishment he felt, answered pretty much atrandom.
At length, they arrived at the corner of the street in which the housestood, where Mr Haredale, alighting, dismissed the coach. 'If you desireto see me safely lodged,' he said, turning to the locksmith with agloomy smile, 'you can.'
Gabriel, to whom all former marvels had been nothing in comparisonwith this, followed him along the narrow pavement in silence. When theyreached the door, Mr Haredale softly opened it with a key he had abouthim, and closing it when Varden entered, they were left in thoroughdarkness.
They groped their way into the ground-floor room. Here Mr Haredalestruck a light, and kindled a pocket taper he had brought with him forthe purpose. It was then, when the flame was full upon him, that thelocksmith saw for the first time how haggard, pale, and changed helooked; how worn and thin he was; how perfectly his whole appearancecoincided with all that he had said so strangely as they rode along.It was not an unnatural impulse in Gabriel, after what he had heard, tonote curiously the expression of his eyes. It was perfectly collectedand rational;--so much so, indeed, that he felt ashamed of his momentarysuspicion, and drooped his own when Mr Haredale looked towards him, asif he feared they would betray his thoughts.
'Will you walk through the house?' said Mr Haredale, with a glancetowards the window, the crazy shutters of which were closed andfastened. 'Speak low.'
There was a kind of awe about the place, which would have rendered itdifficult to speak in any other manner. Gabriel whispered 'Yes,' andfollowed him upstairs.
Everything was just as they had seen it last. There was a sense ofcloseness from the exclusion of fresh air, and a gloom and heavinessaround, as though long imprisonment had made the very silence sad. Thehomely hangings of the beds and windows had begun to droop; the dust laythick upon their dwindling folds; and damps had made their way throughceiling, wall, and floor. The boards creaked beneath their tread, as ifresenting the unaccustomed intrusion; nimble spiders, paralysed by thetaper's glare, checked the motion of their hundred legs upon the wall,or dropped like lifeless things upon the ground; the death-watch ticked;and the scampering feet of rats and mice rattled behind the wainscot.
As they looked about them on the decaying furniture, it was strange tofind how vividly it presented those to whom it had belonged, andwith whom it was once familiar. Grip seemed to perch again upon hishigh-backed chair; Barnaby to crouch in his old favourite corner by thefire; the mother to resume her usual seat, and watch him as of old. Evenwhen they could separate these objects from the phantoms of the mindwhich they invoked, the latter only glided out of sight, but lingerednear them still; for then they seemed to lurk in closets and behind thedoors, ready to start out and suddenly accost them in well-rememberedtone
s.
They went downstairs, and again into the room they had just now left.Mr Haredale unbuckled his sword and laid it on the table, with a pair ofpocket pistols; then told the locksmith he would light him to the door.
'But this is a dull place, sir,' said Gabriel lingering; 'may no oneshare your watch?'
He shook his head, and so plainly evinced his wish to be alone, thatGabriel could say no more. In another moment the locksmith was standingin the street, whence he could see that the light once more travelledupstairs, and soon returning to the room below, shone brightly throughthe chinks of the shutters.
If ever man were sorely puzzled and perplexed, the locksmith was, thatnight. Even when snugly seated by his own fireside, with Mrs Vardenopposite in a nightcap and night-jacket, and Dolly beside him (in amost distracting dishabille) curling her hair, and smiling as if she hadnever cried in all her life and never could--even then, with Toby athis elbow and his pipe in his mouth, and Miggs (but that perhaps was notmuch) falling asleep in the background, he could not quite discard hiswonder and uneasiness. So in his dreams--still there was Mr Haredale,haggard and careworn, listening in the solitary house to every soundthat stirred, with the taper shining through the chinks until the dayshould turn it pale and end his lonely watching.