‘We have much in common—many things—all that the Almighty gave us,’ said Mr Haredale; ‘and common charity, not to say common sense and common decency, should teach you to refrain from these proceedings. If every one of those men had arms in their hands at this moment, as they have them in their heads, I would not leave this place without telling you that you disgrace your station.’
‘I don’t hear you, sir,’ he replied in the same manner as before; ‘I can’t hear you. It is indifferent to me what you say. Don’t retort, Gashford,’ for the secretary had made a show of wishing to do so; ‘I can hold no communion with the worshippers of idols.’
As he said this, he glanced at Sir John, who lifted his hands and eyebrows, as if deploring the intemperate conduct of Mr Haredale, and smiled in admiration of the crowd and of their leader.
‘HE retort!’ cried Haredale. ‘Look you here, my lord. Do you know this man?’
Lord George replied by laying his hand upon the shoulder of his cringing secretary, and viewing him with a smile of confidence.
‘This man,’ said Mr Haredale, eyeing him from top to toe, ‘who in his boyhood was a thief, and has been from that time to this, a servile, false, and truckling knave: this man, who has crawled and crept through life, wounding the hands he licked, and biting those he fawned upon: this sycophant, who never knew what honour, truth, or courage meant; who robbed his benefactor’s daughter of her virtue, and married her to break her heart, and did it, with stripes and cruelty: this creature, who has whined at kitchen windows for the broken food, and begged for halfpence at our chapel doors: this apostle of the faith, whose tender conscience cannot bear the altars where his vicious life was publicly denounced—Do you know this man?’
‘Oh, really—you are very, very hard upon our friend!’ exclaimed Sir John.
‘Let Mr Haredale go on,’ said Gashford, upon whose unwholesome face the perspiration had broken out during this speech, in blotches of wet; ‘I don’t mind him, Sir John; it’s quite as indifferent to me what he says, as it is to my lord. If he reviles my lord, as you have heard, Sir John, how can I hope to escape?’
‘Is it not enough, my lord,’ Mr Haredale continued, ‘that I, as good a gentleman as you, must hold my property, such as it is, by a trick at which the state connives because of these hard laws; and that we may not teach our youth in schools the common principles of right and wrong; but must we be denounced and ridden by such men as this! Here is a man to head your No-Popery cry! For shame. For shame!’
The infatuated nobleman had glanced more than once at Sir John Chester, as if to inquire whether there was any truth in these statements concerning Gashford, and Sir John had as often plainly answered by a shrug or look, ‘Oh dear me! no.’ He now said, in the same loud key, and in the same strange manner as before: