Чарльз Диккенс
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
‘Nor is it my uncle’s nature either,’ she replied, with a heightened colour in her cheek. ‘It is not his nature to stab in the dark, nor is it mine to love such deeds.’
She rose as she spoke, and would have left him; but he detained her with a gentle hand, and besought her in such persuasive accents to hear him but another minute, that she was easily prevailed upon to comply, and so sat down again.
‘And it is,’ said Mr Chester, looking upward, and apostrophising the air; ‘it is this frank, ingenuous, noble nature, Ned, that you can wound so lightly. Shame – shame upon you, boy!’
She turned towards him quickly, and with a scornful look and flashing eyes. There were tears in Mr Chester’s eyes, but he dashed them hurriedly away, as though unwilling that his weakness should be known, and regarded her with mingled admiration and compassion.
‘I never until now,’ he said, ‘believed, that the frivolous actions of a young man could move me like these of my own son. I never knew till now, the worth of a woman’s heart, which boys so lightly win, and lightly fling away. Trust me, dear young lady, that I never until now did know your worth; and though an abhorrence of deceit and falsehood has impelled me to seek you out, and would have done so had you been the poorest and least gifted of your sex, I should have lacked the fortitude to sustain this interview could I have pictured you to my imagination as you really are.’
Oh! If Mrs Varden could have seen the virtuous gentleman as he said these words, with indignation sparkling from his eyes – if she could have heard his broken, quavering voice – if she could have beheld him as he stood bareheaded in the sunlight, and with unwonted energy poured forth his eloquence!
With a haughty face, but pale and trembling too, Emma regarded him in silence. She neither spoke nor moved, but gazed upon him as though she would look into his heart.
‘I throw off,’ said Mr Chester, ‘the restraint which natural affection would impose on some men, and reject all bonds but those of truth and duty. Miss Haredale, you are deceived; you are deceived by your unworthy lover, and my unworthy son.’
Still she looked at him steadily, and still said not one word.
‘I have ever opposed his professions of love for you; you will do me the justice, dear Miss Haredale, to remember that. Your uncle and myself were enemies in early life, and if I had sought retaliation, I might have found it here. But as we grow older, we grow wiser – bitter, I would fain hope – and from the first, I have opposed him in this attempt. I foresaw the end, and would have spared you, if I could.’
‘Speak plainly, sir,’ she faltered. ‘You deceive me, or are deceived yourself. I do not believe you – I cannot – I should not.’
‘First,’ said Mr Chester, soothingly, ‘for there may be in your mind some latent angry feeling to which I would not appeal, pray take this letter. It reached my hands by chance, and by mistake, and should have accounted to you (as I am told) for my son’s not answering some other note of yours. God forbid, Miss Haredale,’ said the good gentleman, with great emotion, ‘that there should be in your gentle breast one causeless ground of quarrel with him. You should know, and you will see, that he was in no fault here.’
There appeared something so very candid, so scrupulously honourable, so very truthful and just in this course – something which rendered the upright person who resorted to it, so worthy of belief – that Emma’s heart, for the first time, sunk within her. She turned away and burst into tears.
‘I would,’ said Mr Chester, leaning over her, and speaking in mild and quite venerable accents; ‘I would, dear girl, it were my task to banish, not increase, those tokens of your grief. My son, my erring son, – I will not call him deliberately criminal in this, for men so young, who have been inconstant twice or thrice before, act without reflection, almost without a knowledge of the wrong they do, – will break his plighted faith to you; has broken it even now. Shall I stop here, and having given you this warning, leave it to be fulfilled; or shall I go on?’
‘You will go on, sir,’ she answered, ‘and speak more plainly yet, in justice both to him and me.’
‘My dear girl,’ said Mr Chester, bending over her more affectionately still; ‘whom I would call my daughter, but the Fates forbid, Edward seeks to break with you upon a false and most unwarrantable pretence. I have it on his own showing; in his own hand. Forgive me, if I have had a watch upon his conduct; I am his father; I had a regard for your peace and his honour, and no better resource was left me. There lies on his desk at this present moment, ready for transmission to you, a letter, in which he tells you that our poverty – our poverty; his and mine, Miss Haredale – forbids him to pursue his claim upon your hand; in which he offers, voluntarily proposes, to free you from your pledge; and talks magnanimously (men do so, very commonly, in such cases) of being in time more worthy of your regard – and so forth. A letter, to be plain, in which he not only jilts you – pardon the word; I would summon to your aid your pride and dignity – not only jilts you, I fear, in favour of the object whose slighting treatment first inspired his brief passion for yourself and gave it birth in wounded vanity, but affects to make a merit and a virtue of the act.’
She glanced proudly at him once more, as by an involuntary impulse, and with a swelling breast rejoined, ‘If what you say be true, he takes much needless trouble, sir, to compass his design. He’s very tender of my peace of mind. I quite thank him.’
‘The truth of what I tell you, dear young lady,’ he replied, ‘you will test by the receipt or non-receipt of the letter of which I speak. Haredale, my dear fellow, I am delighted to see you, although we meet under singular circumstances, and upon a melancholy occasion. I hope you are very well.’
At these words the young lady raised her eyes, which were filled with tears; and seeing that her uncle indeed stood before them, and being quite unequal to the trial of hearing or of speaking one word more, hurriedly withdrew, and left them. They stood looking at each other, and at her retreating figure, and for a long time neither of them spoke.
‘What does this mean? Explain it,’ said Mr Haredale at length. ‘Why are you here, and why with her?’
‘My dear friend,’ rejoined the other, resuming his accustomed manner with infinite readiness, and throwing himself upon the bench with a weary air, ‘you told me not very long ago, at that delightful old tavern of which you are the esteemed proprietor (and a most charming establishment it is for persons of rural pursuits and in robust health, who are not liable to take cold), that I had the head and heart of an evil spirit in all matters of deception. I thought at the time; I really did think; you flattered me. But now I begin to wonder at your discernment, and vanity apart, do honestly believe you spoke the truth. Did you ever counterfeit extreme ingenuousness and honest indignation? My dear fellow, you have no conception, if you never did, how faint the effort makes one.’
Mr Haredale surveyed him with a look of cold contempt. ‘You may evade an explanation, I know,’ he said, folding his arms. ‘But I must have it. I can wait.’
‘Not at all. Not at all, my good fellow. You shall not wait a moment,’ returned his friend, as he lazily crossed his legs. ‘The simplest thing in the world. It lies in a nutshell. Ned has written her a letter – a boyish, honest, sentimental composition, which remains as yet in his desk, because he hasn’t had the heart to send it. I have taken a liberty, for which my parental affection and anxiety are a sufficient excuse, and possessed myself of the contents. I have described them to your niece (a most enchanting person, Haredale; quite an angelic creature), with a little colouring and description adapted to our purpose. It’s done. You may be quite easy. It’s all over. Deprived of their adherents and mediators; her pride and jealousy roused to the utmost; with nobody to undeceive her, and you to confirm me; you will find that their intercourse will close with her answer. If she receives Ned’s letter by to-morrow noon, you may date their parting from to-morrow night. No thanks, I beg; you owe me none. I have acted for myself; and if I have forwarded our compact with all the ardour even you could have desired, I have done so selfishly, indeed.’
‘I curse the compact, as you call it, with my whole heart and soul,’ returned the other. ‘It was made in an evil hour. I have bound myself to a lie; I have leagued myself with you; and though I did so with a righteous motive, and though it cost me such an effort as haply few men know, I hate and despise myself for the deed.’
‘You are very warm,’ said Mr Chester with a languid smile.
‘I AM warm. I am maddened by your coldness. ‘Death, Chester, if your blood ran warmer in your veins, and there were no restraints upon me, such as those that hold and drag me back – well; it is done; you tell me so, and on such a point I may believe you. When I am most remorseful for this treachery, I will think of you and your marriage, and try to justify myself in such remembrances, for having torn asunder Emma and your son, at any cost. Our bond is cancelled now, and we may part.’
Mr Chester kissed his hand gracefully; and with the same tranquil face he had preserved throughout – even when he had seen his companion so tortured and transported by his passion that his whole frame was shaken – lay in his lounging posture on the seat and watched him as he walked away.
‘My scapegoat and my drudge at school,’ he said, raising his head to look after him; ‘my friend of later days, who could not keep his mistress when he had won her, and threw me in her way to carry off the prize; I triumph in the present and the past. Bark on, ill-favoured, ill-conditioned cur; fortune has ever been with me – I like to hear you.’
The spot where they had met, was in an avenue of trees. Mr Haredale not passing out on either hand, had walked straight on. He chanced to turn his head when at some considerable distance, and seeing that his late companion had by that time risen and was looking after him, stood still as though he half expected him to follow and waited for his coming up.
‘It MAY come to that one day, but not yet,’ said Mr Chester, waving his hand, as though they were the best of friends, and turning away. ‘Not yet, Haredale. Life is pleasant enough to me; dull and full of heaviness to you. No. To cross swords with such a man – to indulge his humour unless upon extremity – would be weak indeed.’
For all that, he drew his sword as he walked along, and in an absent humour ran his eye from hilt to point full twenty times. But thoughtfulness begets wrinkles; remembering this, he soon put it up, smoothed his contracted brow, hummed a gay tune with greater gaiety of manner, and was his unruffled self again.
Chapter 30
A homely proverb recognises the existence of a troublesome class of persons who, having an inch conceded them, will take an ell. Not to quote the illustrious examples of those heroic scourges of mankind, whose amiable path in life has been from birth to death through blood, and fire, and ruin, and who would seem to have existed for no better purpose than to teach mankind that as the absence of pain is pleasure, so the earth, purged of their presence, may be deemed a blessed place – not to quote such mighty instances, it will be sufficient to refer to old John Willet.
Old John having long encroached a good standard inch, full measure, on the liberty of Joe, and having snipped off a Flemish ell in the matter of the parole, grew so despotic and so great, that his thirst for conquest knew no bounds. The more young Joe submitted, the more absolute old John became. The ell soon faded into nothing. Yards, furlongs, miles arose; and on went old John in the pleasantest manner possible, trimming off an exuberance in this place, shearing away some liberty of speech or action in that, and conducting himself in his small way with as much high mightiness and majesty, as the most glorious tyrant that ever had his statue reared in the public ways, of ancient or of modern times.
As great men are urged on to the abuse of power (when they need urging, which is not often), by their flatterers and dependents, so old John was impelled to these exercises of authority by the applause and admiration of his Maypole cronies, who, in the intervals of their nightly pipes and pots, would shake their heads and say that Mr Willet was a father of the good old English sort; that there were no new-fangled notions or modern ways in him; that he put them in mind of what their fathers were when they were boys; that there was no mistake about him; that it would be well for the country if there were more like him, and more was the pity that there were not; with many other original remarks of that nature. Then they would condescendingly give Joe to understand that it was all for his good, and he would be thankful for it one day; and in particular, Mr Cobb would acquaint him, that when he was his age, his father thought no more of giving him a parental kick, or a box on the ears, or a cuff on the head, or some little admonition of that sort, than he did of any other ordinary duty of life; and he would further remark, with looks of great significance, that but for this judicious bringing up, he might have never been the man he was at that present speaking; which was probable enough, as he was, beyond all question, the dullest dog of the party. In short, between old John and old John’s friends, there never was an unfortunate young fellow so bullied, badgered, worried, fretted, and brow-beaten; so constantly beset, or made so tired of his life, as poor Joe Willet.
This had come to be the recognised and established state of things; but as John was very anxious to flourish his supremacy before the eyes of Mr Chester, he did that day exceed himself, and did so goad and chafe his son and heir, that but for Joe’s having made a solemn vow to keep his hands in his pockets when they were not otherwise engaged, it is impossible to say what he might have done with them. But the longest day has an end, and at length Mr Chester came downstairs to mount his horse, which was ready at the door.
As old John was not in the way at the moment, Joe, who was sitting in the bar ruminating on his dismal fate and the manifold perfections of Dolly Varden, ran out to hold the guest’s stirrup and assist him to mount. Mr Chester was scarcely in the saddle, and Joe was in the very act of making him a graceful bow, when old John came diving out of the porch, and collared him.
‘None of that, sir,’ said John, ‘none of that, sir. No breaking of patroles. How dare you come out of the door, sir, without leave? You’re trying to get away, sir, are you, and to make a traitor of yourself again? What do you mean, sir?’
‘Let me go, father,’ said Joe, imploringly, as he marked the smile upon their visitor’s face, and observed the pleasure his disgrace afforded him. ‘This is too bad. Who wants to get away?’
‘Who wants to get away!’ cried John, shaking him. ‘Why you do, sir, you do. You’re the boy, sir,’ added John, collaring with one hand, and aiding the effect of a farewell bow to the visitor with the other, ‘that wants to sneak into houses, and stir up differences between noble gentlemen and their sons, are you, eh? Hold your tongue, sir.’
Joe made no effort to reply. It was the crowning circumstance of his degradation. He extricated himself from his father’s grasp, darted an angry look at the departing guest, and returned into the house.
‘But for her,’ thought Joe, as he threw his arms upon a table in the common room, and laid his head upon them, ‘but for Dolly, who I couldn’t bear should think me the rascal they would make me out to be if I ran away, this house and I should part to-night.’
It being evening by this time, Solomon Daisy, Tom Cobb, and Long Parkes, were all in the common room too, and had from the window been witnesses of what had just occurred. Mr Willet joining them soon afterwards, received the compliments of the company with great composure, and lighting his pipe, sat down among them.
‘We’ll see, gentlemen,’ said John, after a long pause, ‘who’s the master of this house, and who isn’t. We’ll see whether boys are to govern men, or men are to govern boys.’
‘And quite right too,’ assented Solomon Daisy with some approving nods; ‘quite right, Johnny. Very good, Johnny. Well said, Mr Willet. Brayvo, sir.’
John slowly brought his eyes to bear upon him, looked at him for a long time, and finally made answer, to the unspeakable consternation of his hearers, ‘When I want encouragement from you, sir, I’ll ask you for it. You let me alone, sir. I can get on without you, I hope. Don’t you tackle me, sir, if you please.’
‘Don’t take it ill, Johnny; I didn’t mean any harm,’ pleaded the little man.
‘Very good, sir,’ said John, more than usually obstinate after his late success. ‘Never mind, sir. I can stand pretty firm of myself, sir, I believe, without being shored up by you.’ And having given utterance to this retort, Mr Willet fixed his eyes upon the boiler, and fell into a kind of tobacco-trance.
The spirits of the company being somewhat damped by this embarrassing line of conduct on the part of their host, nothing more was said for a long time; but at length Mr Cobb took upon himself to remark, as he rose to knock the ashes out of his pipe, that he hoped Joe would thenceforth learn to obey his father in all things; that he had found, that day, he was not one of the sort of men who were to be trifled with; and that he would recommend him, poetically speaking, to mind his eye for the future.
‘I’d recommend you, in return,’ said Joe, looking up with a flushed face, ‘not to talk to me.’
‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ cried Mr Willet, suddenly rousing himself, and turning round.
‘I won’t, father,’ cried Joe, smiting the table with his fist, so that the jugs and glasses rung again; ‘these things are hard enough to bear from you; from anybody else I never will endure them any more. Therefore I say, Mr Cobb, don’t talk to me.’
‘Why, who are you,’ said Mr Cobb, sneeringly, ‘that you’re not to be talked to, eh, Joe?’
To which Joe returned no answer, but with a very ominous shake of the head, resumed his old position, which he would have peacefully preserved until the house shut up at night, but that Mr Cobb, stimulated by the wonder of the company at the young man’s presumption, retorted with sundry taunts, which proved too much for flesh and blood to bear. Crowding into one moment the vexation and the wrath of years, Joe started up, overturned the table, fell upon his long enemy, pummelled him with all his might and main, and finished by driving him with surprising swiftness against a heap of spittoons in one corner; plunging into which, head foremost, with a tremendous crash, he lay at full length among the ruins, stunned and motionless. Then, without waiting to receive the compliments of the bystanders on the victory he had won, he retreated to his own bedchamber, and considering himself in a state of siege, piled all the portable furniture against the door by way of barricade.
‘I have done it now,’ said Joe, as he sat down upon his bedstead and wiped his heated face. ‘I knew it would come at last. The Maypole and I must part company. I’m a roving vagabond – she hates me for evermore – it’s all over!’
Chapter 31
Pondering on his unhappy lot, Joe sat and listened for a long time, expecting every moment to hear their creaking footsteps on the stairs, or to be greeted by his worthy father with a summons to capitulate unconditionally, and deliver himself up straightway. But neither voice nor footstep came; and though some distant echoes, as of closing doors and people hurrying in and out of rooms, resounding from time to time through the great passages, and penetrating to his remote seclusion, gave note of unusual commotion downstairs, no nearer sound disturbed his place of retreat, which seemed the quieter for these far-off noises, and was as dull and full of gloom as any hermit’s cell.
It came on darker and darker. The old-fashioned furniture of the chamber, which was a kind of hospital for all the invalided movables in the house, grew indistinct and shadowy in its many shapes; chairs and tables, which by day were as honest cripples as need be, assumed a doubtful and mysterious character; and one old leprous screen of faded India leather and gold binding, which had kept out many a cold breath of air in days of yore and shut in many a jolly face, frowned on him with a spectral aspect, and stood at full height in its allotted corner, like some gaunt ghost who waited to be questioned. A portrait opposite the window – a queer, old grey-eyed general, in an oval frame – seemed to wink and doze as the light decayed, and at length, when the last faint glimmering speck of day went out, to shut its eyes in good earnest, and fall sound asleep. There was such a hush and mystery about everything, that Joe could not help following its example; and so went off into a slumber likewise, and dreamed of Dolly, till the clock of Chigwell church struck two.
Still nobody came. The distant noises in the house had ceased, and out of doors all was quiet; save for the occasional barking of some deep-mouthed dog, and the shaking of the branches by the night wind. He gazed mournfully out of window at each well-known object as it lay sleeping in the dim light of the moon; and creeping back to his former seat, thought about the late uproar, until, with long thinking of, it seemed to have occurred a month ago. Thus, between dozing, and thinking, and walking to the window and looking out, the night wore away; the grim old screen, and the kindred chairs and tables, began slowly to reveal themselves in their accustomed forms; the grey-eyed general seemed to wink and yawn and rouse himself; and at last he was broad awake again, and very uncomfortable and cold and haggard he looked, in the dull grey light of morning.
The sun had begun to peep above the forest trees, and already flung across the curling mist bright bars of gold, when Joe dropped from his window on the ground below, a little bundle and his trusty stick, and prepared to descend himself.
It was not a very difficult task; for there were so many projections and gable ends in the way, that they formed a series of clumsy steps, with no greater obstacle than a jump of some few feet at last. Joe, with his stick and bundle on his shoulder, quickly stood on the firm earth, and looked up at the old Maypole, it might be for the last time.
He didn’t apostrophise it, for he was no great scholar. He didn’t curse it, for he had little ill-will to give to anything on earth. He felt more affectionate and kind to it than ever he had done in all his life before, so said with all his heart, ‘God bless you!’ as a parting wish, and turned away.
He walked along at a brisk pace, big with great thoughts of going for a soldier and dying in some foreign country where it was very hot and sandy, and leaving God knows what unheard-of wealth in prize-money to Dolly, who would be very much affected when she came to know of it; and full of such youthful visions, which were sometimes sanguine and sometimes melancholy, but always had her for their main point and centre, pushed on vigorously until the noise of London sounded in his ears, and the Black Lion hove in sight.
It was only eight o’clock then, and very much astonished the Black Lion was, to see him come walking in with dust upon his feet at that early hour, with no grey mare to bear him company. But as he ordered breakfast to be got ready with all speed, and on its being set before him gave indisputable tokens of a hearty appetite, the Lion received him, as usual, with a hospitable welcome; and treated him with those marks of distinction, which, as a regular customer, and one within the freemasonry of the trade, he had a right to claim.
This Lion or landlord, – for he was called both man and beast, by reason of his having instructed the artist who painted his sign, to convey into the features of the lordly brute whose effigy it bore, as near a counterpart of his own face as his skill could compass and devise, – was a gentleman almost as quick of apprehension, and of almost as subtle a wit, as the mighty John himself. But the difference between them lay in this: that whereas Mr Willet’s extreme sagacity and acuteness were the efforts of unassisted nature, the Lion stood indebted, in no small amount, to beer; of which he swigged such copious draughts, that most of his faculties were utterly drowned and washed away, except the one great faculty of sleep, which he retained in surprising perfection. The creaking Lion over the house-door was, therefore, to say the truth, rather a drowsy, tame, and feeble lion; and as these social representatives of a savage class are usually of a conventional character (being depicted, for the most part, in impossible attitudes and of unearthly colours), he was frequently supposed by the more ignorant and uninformed among the neighbours, to be the veritable portrait of the host as he appeared on the occasion of some great funeral ceremony or public mourning.
‘What noisy fellow is that in the next room?’ said Joe, when he had disposed of his breakfast, and had washed and brushed himself.
‘A recruiting serjeant,’ replied the Lion.
Joe started involuntarily. Here was the very thing he had been dreaming of, all the way along.
‘And I wish,’ said the Lion, ‘he was anywhere else but here. The party make noise enough, but don’t call for much. There’s great cry there, Mr Willet, but very little wool. Your father wouldn’t like ‘em, I know.’
Perhaps not much under any circumstances. Perhaps if he could have known what was passing at that moment in Joe’s mind, he would have liked them still less.
‘Is he recruiting for a – for a fine regiment?’ said Joe, glancing at a little round mirror that hung in the bar.
‘I believe he is,’ replied the host. ‘It’s much the same thing, whatever regiment he’s recruiting for. I’m told there an’t a deal of difference between a fine man and another one, when they’re shot through and through.’
‘They’re not all shot,’ said Joe.
‘No,’ the Lion answered, ‘not all. Those that are – supposing it’s done easy – are the best off in my opinion.’
‘Ah!’ retorted Joe, ‘but you don’t care for glory.’
‘For what?’ said the Lion.
‘Glory.’
‘No,’ returned the Lion, with supreme indifference. ‘I don’t. You’re right in that, Mr Willet. When Glory comes here, and calls for anything to drink and changes a guinea to pay for it, I’ll give it him for nothing. It’s my belief, sir, that the Glory’s arms wouldn’t do a very strong business.’
These remarks were not at all comforting. Joe walked out, stopped at the door of the next room, and listened. The serjeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love-making. A battle was the finest thing in the world – when your side won it – and Englishmen always did that. ‘Supposing you should be killed, sir?’ said a timid voice in one corner. ‘Well, sir, supposing you should be,’ said the serjeant, ‘what then? Your country loves you, sir; his Majesty King George the Third loves you; your memory is honoured, revered, respected; everybody’s fond of you, and grateful to you; your name’s wrote down at full length in a book in the War Office. Damme, gentlemen, we must all die some time, or another, eh?’
The voice coughed, and said no more.
Joe walked into the room. A group of half-a-dozen fellows had gathered together in the taproom, and were listening with greedy ears. One of them, a carter in a smockfrock, seemed wavering and disposed to enlist. The rest, who were by no means disposed, strongly urged him to do so (according to the custom of mankind), backed the serjeant’s arguments, and grinned among themselves. ‘I say nothing, boys,’ said the serjeant, who sat a little apart, drinking his liquor. ‘For lads of spirit’ – here he cast an eye on Joe – ‘this is the time. I don’t want to inveigle you. The king’s not come to that, I hope. Brisk young blood is what we want; not milk and water. We won’t take five men out of six. We want top-sawyers, we do. I’m not a-going to tell tales out of school, but, damme, if every gentleman’s son that carries arms in our corps, through being under a cloud and having little differences with his relations, was counted up’ – here his eye fell on Joe again, and so good-naturedly, that Joe beckoned him out. He came directly.
‘You’re a gentleman, by G – !’ was his first remark, as he slapped him on the back. ‘You’re a gentleman in disguise. So am I. Let’s swear a friendship.’
Joe didn’t exactly do that, but he shook hands with him, and thanked him for his good opinion.
‘You want to serve,’ said his new friend. ‘You shall. You were made for it. You’re one of us by nature. What’ll you take to drink?’
‘Nothing just now,’ replied Joe, smiling faintly. ‘I haven’t quite made up my mind.’
‘A mettlesome fellow like you, and not made up his mind!’ cried the serjeant. ‘Here – let me give the bell a pull, and you’ll make up your mind in half a minute, I know.’
‘You’re right so far’ – answered Joe, ‘for if you pull the bell here, where I’m known, there’ll be an end of my soldiering inclinations in no time. Look in my face. You see me, do you?’
‘I do,’ replied the serjeant with an oath, ‘and a finer young fellow or one better qualified to serve his king and country, I never set my – ’ he used an adjective in this place – ‘eyes on.’
‘Thank you,’ said Joe, ‘I didn’t ask you for want of a compliment, but thank you all the same. Do I look like a sneaking fellow or a liar?’
The serjeant rejoined with many choice asseverations that he didn’t; and that if his (the serjeant’s) own father were to say he did, he would run the old gentleman through the body cheerfully, and consider it a meritorious action.
