Barnaby Rudge

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Title: Barnaby Rudge
Author: Charles Dickens
Release Date: April 27, 2006 [EBook #917]
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Produced by Donald Lainson
BARNABY RUDGE
A TALE OF THE RIOTS OF ‘EIGHTY
by Charles Dickens
Contibutor’s Note:
I’ve left in archaic forms such as ‘to-morrow’ or ‘to-day’ as they
occured in my copy. Also please be aware if spell-checking, that within
dialog many ‘mispelled’ words exist, i.e. ‘wery’ for ‘very’, as intended
by the author.
D.L.
PREFACE
The late Mr Waterton having, some time ago, expressed his opinion that
ravens are gradually becoming extinct in England, I offered the few
following words about my experience of these birds.
The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals, of whom I
was, at different times, the proud possessor. The first was in the bloom
of his youth, when he was discovered in a modest retirement in London,
by a friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as Sir Hugh
Evans says of Anne Page, ‘good gifts’, which he improved by study and
attention in a most exemplary manner. He slept in a stable--generally
on horseback--and so terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural
sagacity, that he has been known, by the mere superiority of his genius,
to walk off unmolested with the dog’s dinner, from before his face. He
was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues, when, in an evil hour,
his stable was newly painted. He observed the workmen closely, saw that
they were careful of the paint, and immediately burned to possess it. On
their going to dinner, he ate up all they had left behind, consisting of
a pound or two of white lead; and this youthful indiscretion terminated
in death.
While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another friend of mine
in Yorkshire discovered an older and more gifted raven at a village
public-house, which he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a
consideration, and sent up to me. The first act of this Sage, was, to
administer to the effects of his predecessor, by disinterring all the
cheese and halfpence he had buried in the garden--a work of immense
labour and research, to which he devoted all the energies of his mind.
When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the acquisition
of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept, that he would
perch outside my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill,
all day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former master
sent his duty with him, ‘and if I wished the bird to come out very
strong, would I be so good as to show him a drunken man’--which I never
did, having (unfortunately) none but sober people at hand.
But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever the stimulating
influences of this sight might have been. He had not the least respect,
I am sorry to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the cook; to
whom he was attached--but only, I fear, as a Policeman might have been.
Once, I met him unexpectedly, about half-a-mile from my house, walking
down the middle of a public street, attended by a pretty large crowd,
and spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His
gravity under those trying circumstances, I can never forget, nor the
extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be brought home, he
defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may
have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have
been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence
into his maw--which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed
the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke
countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the
frames, and tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a
wooden staircase of six steps and a landing--but after some three years
he too was taken ill, and died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye
to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over
on his back with a sepulchral cry of ‘Cuckoo!’ Since then I have been
ravenless.
No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced
into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary
and remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.
It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they
reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all
who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely
call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and
who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of
right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution;
that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful; all History
teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well,
to profit by even so humble an example as the ‘No Popery’ riots of
Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.
However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following
pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the
Romish Church, though he acknowledges, as most men do, some esteemed
friends among the followers of its creed.
In the description of the principal outrages, reference has been had to
the best authorities of that time, such as they are; the account given
in this Tale, of all the main features of the Riots, is substantially
correct.
Mr Dennis’s allusions to the flourishing condition of his trade in those
days, have their foundation in Truth, and not in the Author’s fancy. Any
file of old Newspapers, or odd volume of the Annual Register, will prove
this with terrible ease.
Even the case of Mary Jones, dwelt upon with so much pleasure by the
same character, is no effort of invention. The facts were stated,
exactly as they are stated here, in the House of Commons. Whether they
afforded as much entertainment to the merry gentlemen assembled there,
as some other most affecting circumstances of a similar nature mentioned
by Sir Samuel Romilly, is not recorded.
That the case of Mary Jones may speak the more emphatically for
itself, I subjoin it, as related by SIR WILLIAM MEREDITH in a speech in
Parliament, ‘on Frequent Executions’, made in 1777.
‘Under this act,’ the Shop-lifting Act, ‘one Mary Jones was executed,
whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press warrants
were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman’s husband
was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two
small children, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance
not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen), and most
remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper’s shop, took some coarse
linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw
her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I
have the trial in my pocket), “that she had lived in credit, and wanted
for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but
since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children
to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done
something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.” The parish officers
testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good
deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary;
and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of
shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence,
she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a
distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast
when she set out for Tyburn.’
Chapter 1
In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a
distance of about twelve miles from London--measuring from the Standard
in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard
used to be in days of yore--a house of public entertainment called the
Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as
could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of
travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem
reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those
goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times,
was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow
that ever English yeoman drew.
The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and not
its sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a
lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out
of which it seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in
more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous
progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was
said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there
was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night
while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room
with a deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a
mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin
monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some
neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there
were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are
in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as
rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry
appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly
pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the
doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true
believers exulted as in a victory.
Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or
untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps
as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes
happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age.
Its windows were old diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken
and uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with
massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and
grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the more favoured
customers smoked and drank--ay, and sang many a good song too,
sometimes--reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which,
like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the
mansion.
In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests
for many a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole
colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were more
pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and out-buildings than anybody
but the landlord could reckon up. The wheeling and circling flights
of runts, fantails, tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite
consistent with the grave and sober character of the building, but the
monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some among them
all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest. With its
overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging
out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were
nodding in its sleep. Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fancy
to detect in it other resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it
was built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and
discoloured like an old man’s skin; the sturdy timbers had decayed like
teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to comfort it in
its age, wrapt its green leaves closely round the time-worn walls.
It was a hale and hearty age though, still: and in the summer or
autumn evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak and
chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its
lustre, seemed their fit companion, and to have many good years of life
in him yet.
The evening with which we have to do, was neither a summer nor an autumn
one, but the twilight of a day in March, when the wind howled dismally
among the bare branches of the trees, and rumbling in the wide chimneys
and driving the rain against the windows of the Maypole Inn, gave such
of its frequenters as chanced to be there at the moment an undeniable
reason for prolonging their stay, and caused the landlord to prophesy
that the night would certainly clear at eleven o’clock precisely,--which
by a remarkable coincidence was the hour at which he always closed his
house.
The name of him upon whom the spirit of prophecy thus descended was
John Willet, a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which betokened
profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined with a very
strong reliance upon his own merits. It was John Willet’s ordinary
boast in his more placid moods that if he were slow he was sure; which
assertion could, in one sense at least, be by no means gainsaid, seeing
that he was in everything unquestionably the reverse of fast, and withal
one of the most dogged and positive fellows in existence--always sure
that what he thought or said or did was right, and holding it as a thing
quite settled and ordained by the laws of nature and Providence, that
anybody who said or did or thought otherwise must be inevitably and of
necessity wrong.
Mr Willet walked slowly up to the window, flattened his fat nose
against the cold glass, and shading his eyes that his sight might not
be affected by the ruddy glow of the fire, looked abroad. Then he
walked slowly back to his old seat in the chimney-corner, and, composing
himself in it with a slight shiver, such as a man might give way to and
so acquire an additional relish for the warm blaze, said, looking round
upon his guests:
‘It’ll clear at eleven o’clock. No sooner and no later. Not before and
not arterwards.’
‘How do you make out that?’ said a little man in the opposite corner.
‘The moon is past the full, and she rises at nine.’
John looked sedately and solemnly at his questioner until he had brought
his mind to bear upon the whole of his observation, and then made
answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that the moon was peculiarly his
business and nobody else’s:
‘Never you mind about the moon. Don’t you trouble yourself about her.
You let the moon alone, and I’ll let you alone.’
‘No offence I hope?’ said the little man.
Again John waited leisurely until the observation had thoroughly
penetrated to his brain, and then replying, ‘No offence as YET,’ applied
a light to his pipe and smoked in placid silence; now and then casting
a sidelong look at a man wrapped in a loose riding-coat with huge cuffs
ornamented with tarnished silver lace and large metal buttons, who
sat apart from the regular frequenters of the house, and wearing a hat
flapped over his face, which was still further shaded by the hand on
which his forehead rested, looked unsociable enough.
There was another guest, who sat, booted and spurred, at some distance
from the fire also, and whose thoughts--to judge from his folded
arms and knitted brows, and from the untasted liquor before him--were
occupied with other matters than the topics under discussion or
the persons who discussed them. This was a young man of about
eight-and-twenty, rather above the middle height, and though of somewhat
slight figure, gracefully and strongly made. He wore his own dark hair,
and was accoutred in a riding dress, which together with his large boots
(resembling in shape and fashion those worn by our Life Guardsmen at
the present day), showed indisputable traces of the bad condition of
the roads. But travel-stained though he was, he was well and even richly
attired, and without being overdressed looked a gallant gentleman.
Lying upon the table beside him, as he had carelessly thrown them down,
were a heavy riding-whip and a slouched hat, the latter worn no doubt as
being best suited to the inclemency of the weather. There, too, were a
pair of pistols in a holster-case, and a short riding-cloak. Little of
his face was visible, except the long dark lashes which concealed his
downcast eyes, but an air of careless ease and natural gracefulness
of demeanour pervaded the figure, and seemed to comprehend even those
slight accessories, which were all handsome, and in good keeping.
Towards this young gentleman the eyes of Mr Willet wandered but once,
and then as if in mute inquiry whether he had observed his silent
neighbour. It was plain that John and the young gentleman had often met
before. Finding that his look was not returned, or indeed observed by
the person to whom it was addressed, John gradually concentrated the
whole power of his eyes into one focus, and brought it to bear upon the
man in the flapped hat, at whom he came to stare in course of time with
an intensity so remarkable, that it affected his fireside cronies, who
all, as with one accord, took their pipes from their lips, and stared
with open mouths at the stranger likewise.
The sturdy landlord had a large pair of dull fish-like eyes, and the
little man who had hazarded the remark about the moon (and who was the
parish-clerk and bell-ringer of Chigwell, a village hard by) had little
round black shiny eyes like beads; moreover this little man wore at the
knees of his rusty black breeches, and on his rusty black coat, and
all down his long flapped waistcoat, little queer buttons like nothing
except his eyes; but so like them, that as they twinkled and glistened
in the light of the fire, which shone too in his bright shoe-buckles,
he seemed all eyes from head to foot, and to be gazing with every one of
them at the unknown customer. No wonder that a man should grow restless
under such an inspection as this, to say nothing of the eyes belonging
to short Tom Cobb the general chandler and post-office keeper, and long
Phil Parkes the ranger, both of whom, infected by the example of their
companions, regarded him of the flapped hat no less attentively.
The stranger became restless; perhaps from being exposed to this raking
fire of eyes, perhaps from the nature of his previous meditations--most
probably from the latter cause, for as he changed his position and
looked hastily round, he started to find himself the object of such keen
regard, and darted an angry and suspicious glance at the fireside group.
It had the effect of immediately diverting all eyes to the chimney,
except those of John Willet, who finding himself as it were, caught in
the fact, and not being (as has been already observed) of a very ready
nature, remained staring at his guest in a particularly awkward and
disconcerted manner.
‘Well?’ said the stranger.
Well. There was not much in well. It was not a long speech. ‘I thought
you gave an order,’ said the landlord, after a pause of two or three
minutes for consideration.
The stranger took off his hat, and disclosed the hard features of a man
of sixty or thereabouts, much weatherbeaten and worn by time, and
the naturally harsh expression of which was not improved by a dark
handkerchief which was bound tightly round his head, and, while it
served the purpose of a wig, shaded his forehead, and almost hid his
eyebrows. If it were intended to conceal or divert attention from a deep
gash, now healed into an ugly seam, which when it was first inflicted
must have laid bare his cheekbone, the object was but indifferently
attained, for it could scarcely fail to be noted at a glance. His
complexion was of a cadaverous hue, and he had a grizzly jagged beard
of some three weeks’ date. Such was the figure (very meanly and poorly
clad) that now rose from the seat, and stalking across the room sat down
in a corner of the chimney, which the politeness or fears of the little
clerk very readily assigned to him.
‘A highwayman!’ whispered Tom Cobb to Parkes the ranger.
‘Do you suppose highwaymen don’t dress handsomer than that?’ replied
Parkes. ‘It’s a better business than you think for, Tom, and highwaymen
don’t need or use to be shabby, take my word for it.’
Meanwhile the subject of their speculations had done due honour to the
house by calling for some drink, which was promptly supplied by the
landlord’s son Joe, a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty,
whom it pleased his father still to consider a little boy, and to treat
accordingly. Stretching out his hands to warm them by the blazing fire,
the man turned his head towards the company, and after running his eye
sharply over them, said in a voice well suited to his appearance:
‘What house is that which stands a mile or so from here?’
‘Public-house?’ said the landlord, with his usual deliberation.
‘Public-house, father!’ exclaimed Joe, ‘where’s the public-house
within a mile or so of the Maypole? He means the great house--the
Warren--naturally and of course. The old red brick house, sir, that
stands in its own grounds--?’
‘Aye,’ said the stranger.
‘And that fifteen or twenty years ago stood in a park five times as
broad, which with other and richer property has bit by bit changed hands
and dwindled away--more’s the pity!’ pursued the young man.
‘Maybe,’ was the reply. ‘But my question related to the owner. What it
has been I don’t care to know, and what it is I can see for myself.’
The heir-apparent to the Maypole pressed his finger on his lips, and
glancing at the young gentleman already noticed, who had changed his
attitude when the house was first mentioned, replied in a lower tone:
‘The owner’s name is Haredale, Mr Geoffrey Haredale, and’--again
he glanced in the same direction as before--‘and a worthy gentleman
too--hem!’
Paying as little regard to this admonitory cough, as to the significant
gesture that had preceded it, the stranger pursued his questioning.
‘I turned out of my way coming here, and took the footpath that crosses
the grounds. Who was the young lady that I saw entering a carriage? His
daughter?’
‘Why, how should I know, honest man?’ replied Joe, contriving in the
course of some arrangements about the hearth, to advance close to his
questioner and pluck him by the sleeve, ‘I didn’t see the young lady,
you know. Whew! There’s the wind again--AND rain--well it IS a night!’
Rough weather indeed!’ observed the strange man.
‘You’re used to it?’ said Joe, catching at anything which seemed to
promise a diversion of the subject.
‘Pretty well,’ returned the other. ‘About the young lady--has Mr
Haredale a daughter?’
‘No, no,’ said the young fellow fretfully, ‘he’s a single
gentleman--he’s--be quiet, can’t you, man? Don’t you see this talk is
not relished yonder?’
Regardless of this whispered remonstrance, and affecting not to hear it,
his tormentor provokingly continued:
‘Single men have had daughters before now. Perhaps she may be his
daughter, though he is not married.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Joe, adding in an undertone as he approached
him again, ‘You’ll come in for it presently, I know you will!’
‘I mean no harm’--returned the traveller boldly, ‘and have said none
that I know of. I ask a few questions--as any stranger may, and not
unnaturally--about the inmates of a remarkable house in a neighbourhood
which is new to me, and you are as aghast and disturbed as if I were
talking treason against King George. Perhaps you can tell me why, sir,
for (as I say) I am a stranger, and this is Greek to me?’
The latter observation was addressed to the obvious cause of Joe
Willet’s discomposure, who had risen and was adjusting his riding-cloak
preparatory to sallying abroad. Briefly replying that he could give him
no information, the young man beckoned to Joe, and handing him a piece
of money in payment of his reckoning, hurried out attended by young
Willet himself, who taking up a candle followed to light him to the
house-door.
While Joe was absent on this errand, the elder Willet and his three
companions continued to smoke with profound gravity, and in a deep
silence, each having his eyes fixed on a huge copper boiler that was
suspended over the fire. After some time John Willet slowly shook his
head, and thereupon his friends slowly shook theirs; but no man withdrew
his eyes from the boiler, or altered the solemn expression of his
countenance in the slightest degree.
At length Joe returned--very talkative and conciliatory, as though with
a strong presentiment that he was going to be found fault with.
‘Such a thing as love is!’ he said, drawing a chair near the fire, and
looking round for sympathy. ‘He has set off to walk to London,--all
the way to London. His nag gone lame in riding out here this blessed
afternoon, and comfortably littered down in our stable at this minute;
and he giving up a good hot supper and our best bed, because Miss
Haredale has gone to a masquerade up in town, and he has set his heart
upon seeing her! I don’t think I could persuade myself to do that,
beautiful as she is,--but then I’m not in love (at least I don’t think I
am) and that’s the whole difference.’
‘He is in love then?’ said the stranger.
‘Rather,’ replied Joe. ‘He’ll never be more in love, and may very easily
be less.’
‘Silence, sir!’ cried his father.
‘What a chap you are, Joe!’ said Long Parkes.
‘Such a inconsiderate lad!’ murmured Tom Cobb.
‘Putting himself forward and wringing the very nose off his own father’s
face!’ exclaimed the parish-clerk, metaphorically.
‘What HAVE I done?’ reasoned poor Joe.
‘Silence, sir!’ returned his father, ‘what do you mean by talking, when
you see people that are more than two or three times your age, sitting
still and silent and not dreaming of saying a word?’
‘Why that’s the proper time for me to talk, isn’t it?’ said Joe
rebelliously.
‘The proper time, sir!’ retorted his father, ‘the proper time’s no
time.’
‘Ah to be sure!’ muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two who
nodded likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the point.
‘The proper time’s no time, sir,’ repeated John Willet; ‘when I was
your age I never talked, I never wanted to talk. I listened and improved
myself that’s what I did.’
‘And you’d find your father rather a tough customer in argeyment, Joe,
if anybody was to try and tackle him,’ said Parkes.
‘For the matter o’ that, Phil!’ observed Mr Willet, blowing a long,
thin, spiral cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and staring
at it abstractedly as it floated away; ‘For the matter o’ that, Phil,
argeyment is a gift of Natur. If Natur has gifted a man with powers
of argeyment, a man has a right to make the best of ‘em, and has not
a right to stand on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted; for
that is a turning of his back on Natur, a flouting of her, a slighting
of her precious caskets, and a proving of one’s self to be a swine that
isn’t worth her scattering pearls before.’
The landlord pausing here for a very long time, Mr Parkes naturally
concluded that he had brought his discourse to an end; and therefore,
turning to the young man with some austerity, exclaimed:
‘You hear what your father says, Joe? You wouldn’t much like to tackle
him in argeyment, I’m thinking, sir.’
‘IF,’ said John Willet, turning his eyes from the ceiling to the face of
his interrupter, and uttering the monosyllable in capitals, to apprise
him that he had put in his oar, as the vulgar say, with unbecoming
and irreverent haste; ‘IF, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of
argeyment, why should I not own to it, and rather glory in the same?
Yes, sir, I AM a tough customer that way. You are right, sir. My
toughness has been proved, sir, in this room many and many a time, as I
think you know; and if you don’t know,’ added John, putting his pipe in
his mouth again, ‘so much the better, for I an’t proud and am not going
to tell you.’
A general murmur from his three cronies, and a general shaking of
heads at the copper boiler, assured John Willet that they had had good
experience of his powers and needed no further evidence to assure them
of his superiority. John smoked with a little more dignity and surveyed
them in silence.
‘It’s all very fine talking,’ muttered Joe, who had been fidgeting in
his chair with divers uneasy gestures. ‘But if you mean to tell me that
I’m never to open my lips--’
‘Silence, sir!’ roared his father. ‘No, you never are. When your
opinion’s wanted, you give it. When you’re spoke to, you speak. When
your opinion’s not wanted and you’re not spoke to, don’t you give an
opinion and don’t you speak. The world’s undergone a nice alteration
since my time, certainly. My belief is that there an’t any boys
left--that there isn’t such a thing as a boy--that there’s nothing now
between a male baby and a man--and that all the boys went out with his
blessed Majesty King George the Second.’
‘That’s a very true observation, always excepting the young princes,’
said the parish-clerk, who, as the representative of church and state in
that company, held himself bound to the nicest loyalty. ‘If it’s godly
and righteous for boys, being of the ages of boys, to behave themselves
like boys, then the young princes must be boys and cannot be otherwise.’
‘Did you ever hear tell of mermaids, sir?’ said Mr Willet.
‘Certainly I have,’ replied the clerk.
‘Very good,’ said Mr Willet. ‘According to the constitution of mermaids,
so much of a mermaid as is not a woman must be a fish. According to the
constitution of young princes, so much of a young prince (if anything)
as is not actually an angel, must be godly and righteous. Therefore if
it’s becoming and godly and righteous in the young princes (as it is
at their ages) that they should be boys, they are and must be boys, and
cannot by possibility be anything else.’
This elucidation of a knotty point being received with such marks of
approval as to put John Willet into a good humour, he contented himself
with repeating to his son his command of silence, and addressing the
stranger, said:
‘If you had asked your questions of a grown-up person--of me or any of
these gentlemen--you’d have had some satisfaction, and wouldn’t have
wasted breath. Miss Haredale is Mr Geoffrey Haredale’s niece.’
‘Is her father alive?’ said the man, carelessly.
‘No,’ rejoined the landlord, ‘he is not alive, and he is not dead--’
‘Not dead!’ cried the other.
‘Not dead in a common sort of way,’ said the landlord.
The cronies nodded to each other, and Mr Parkes remarked in an
undertone, shaking his head meanwhile as who should say, ‘let no man
contradict me, for I won’t believe him,’ that John Willet was in amazing
force to-night, and fit to tackle a Chief Justice.
The stranger suffered a short pause to elapse, and then asked abruptly,
‘What do you mean?’
‘More than you think for, friend,’ returned John Willet. ‘Perhaps
there’s more meaning in them words than you suspect.’
‘Perhaps there is,’ said the strange man, gruffly; ‘but what the devil
do you speak in such mysteries for? You tell me, first, that a man is
not alive, nor yet dead--then, that he’s not dead in a common sort of
way--then, that you mean a great deal more than I think for. To tell
you the truth, you may do that easily; for so far as I can make out, you
mean nothing. What DO you mean, I ask again?’
‘That,’ returned the landlord, a little brought down from his dignity
by the stranger’s surliness, ‘is a Maypole story, and has been any time
these four-and-twenty years. That story is Solomon Daisy’s story. It
belongs to the house; and nobody but Solomon Daisy has ever told it
under this roof, or ever shall--that’s more.’
The man glanced at the parish-clerk, whose air of consciousness and
importance plainly betokened him to be the person referred to, and,
observing that he had taken his pipe from his lips, after a very long
whiff to keep it alight, and was evidently about to tell his story
without further solicitation, gathered his large coat about him, and
shrinking further back was almost lost in the gloom of the spacious
chimney-corner, except when the flame, struggling from under a great
faggot, whose weight almost crushed it for the time, shot upward with a
strong and sudden glare, and illumining his figure for a moment, seemed
afterwards to cast it into deeper obscurity than before.
By this flickering light, which made the old room, with its heavy
timbers and panelled walls, look as if it were built of polished
ebony--the wind roaring and howling without, now rattling the latch
and creaking the hinges of the stout oaken door, and now driving at
the casement as though it would beat it in--by this light, and under
circumstances so auspicious, Solomon Daisy began his tale:
‘It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey’s elder brother--’
Here he came to a dead stop, and made so long a pause that even John
Willet grew impatient and asked why he did not proceed.
‘Cobb,’ said Solomon Daisy, dropping his voice and appealing to the
post-office keeper; ‘what day of the month is this?’
‘The nineteenth.’
‘Of March,’ said the clerk, bending forward, ‘the nineteenth of March;
that’s very strange.’
In a low voice they all acquiesced, and Solomon went on:
‘It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey’s elder brother, that twenty-two
years ago was the owner of the Warren, which, as Joe has said--not that
you remember it, Joe, for a boy like you can’t do that, but because you
have often heard me say so--was then a much larger and better place, and
a much more valuable property than it is now. His lady was lately
dead, and he was left with one child--the Miss Haredale you have been
inquiring about--who was then scarcely a year old.’
Although the speaker addressed himself to the man who had shown so much
curiosity about this same family, and made a pause here as if expecting
some exclamation of surprise or encouragement, the latter made no
remark, nor gave any indication that he heard or was interested in what
was said. Solomon therefore turned to his old companions, whose noses
were brightly illuminated by the deep red glow from the bowls of their
pipes; assured, by long experience, of their attention, and resolved to
show his sense of such indecent behaviour.
‘Mr Haredale,’ said Solomon, turning his back upon the strange man,
‘left this place when his lady died, feeling it lonely like, and went
up to London, where he stopped some months; but finding that place as
lonely as this--as I suppose and have always heard say--he suddenly
came back again with his little girl to the Warren, bringing with him
besides, that day, only two women servants, and his steward, and a
gardener.’
Mr Daisy stopped to take a whiff at his pipe, which was going out,
and then proceeded--at first in a snuffling tone, occasioned by keen
enjoyment of the tobacco and strong pulling at the pipe, and afterwards
with increasing distinctness:
‘--Bringing with him two women servants, and his steward, and a
gardener. The rest stopped behind up in London, and were to follow next
day. It happened that that night, an old gentleman who lived at Chigwell
Row, and had long been poorly, deceased, and an order came to me at half
after twelve o’clock at night to go and toll the passing-bell.’
There was a movement in the little group of listeners, sufficiently
indicative of the strong repugnance any one of them would have felt to
have turned out at such a time upon such an errand. The clerk felt and
understood it, and pursued his theme accordingly.
‘It WAS a dreary thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in
his bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his
dinner on cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go
alone, for it was too late to hope to get any other companion. However,
I wasn’t unprepared for it; as the old gentleman had often made it a
request that the bell should be tolled as soon as possible after the
breath was out of his body, and he had been expected to go for some
days. I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up
(for it was mortal cold), started out with a lighted lantern in one hand
and the key of the church in the other.’
At this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as
if he had turned himself to hear more distinctly. Slightly pointing over
his shoulder, Solomon elevated his eyebrows and nodded a silent inquiry
to Joe whether this was the case. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand and
peered into the corner, but could make out nothing, and so shook his
head.
‘It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily,
and very dark--I often think now, darker than I ever saw it before or
since; that may be my fancy, but the houses were all close shut and the
folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one other man who knows how
dark it really was. I got into the church, chained the door back so that
it should keep ajar--for, to tell the truth, I didn’t like to be shut
in there alone--and putting my lantern on the stone seat in the little
corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to trim the candle.
‘I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not
persuade myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don’t know how
it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even
those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten
long ago; and they didn’t come into my mind one after another, but
all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story there was in the
village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very
night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground
and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me
think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door
and the churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have
to pass among them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves.
I had known all the niches and arches in the church from a child; still,
I couldn’t persuade myself that those were their natural shadows which
I saw on the pavement, but felt sure there were some ugly figures hiding
among ‘em and peeping out. Thinking on in this way, I began to think of
the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could have sworn, as I looked
up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place, wrapping his
shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time I
sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length
I started up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there
rang--not that bell, for I had hardly touched the rope--but another!
‘I heard the ringing of another bell, and a deep bell too, plainly. It
was only for an instant, and even then the wind carried the sound away,
but I heard it. I listened for a long time, but it rang no more. I had
heard of corpse candles, and at last I persuaded myself that this must
be a corpse bell tolling of itself at midnight for the dead. I tolled my
bell--how, or how long, I don’t know--and ran home to bed as fast as I
could touch the ground.
‘I was up early next morning after a restless night, and told the story
to my neighbours. Some were serious and some made light of it; I don’t
think anybody believed it real. But, that morning, Mr Reuben Haredale
was found murdered in his bedchamber; and in his hand was a piece of the
cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room
and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it.
‘That was the bell I heard.
‘A bureau was found opened, and a cash-box, which Mr Haredale had
brought down that day, and was supposed to contain a large sum of money,
was gone. The steward and gardener were both missing and both suspected
for a long time, but they were never found, though hunted far and wide.
And far enough they might have looked for poor Mr Rudge the steward,
whose body--scarcely to be recognised by his clothes and the watch and
ring he wore--was found, months afterwards, at the bottom of a piece of
water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been
stabbed with a knife. He was only partly dressed; and people all agreed
that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were
many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed before his
master.
Everybody now knew that the gardener must be the murderer, and though
he has never been heard of from that day to this, he will be, mark my
words. The crime was committed this day two-and-twenty years--on the
nineteenth of March, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three. On the
nineteenth of March in some year--no matter when--I know it, I am sure
of it, for we have always, in some strange way or other, been brought
back to the subject on that day ever since--on the nineteenth of March
in some year, sooner or later, that man will be discovered.’
Chapter 2
‘A strange story!’ said the man who had been the cause of the
narration.--‘Stranger still if it comes about as you predict. Is that
all?’
A question so unexpected, nettled Solomon Daisy not a little. By dint of
relating the story very often, and ornamenting it (according to village
report) with a few flourishes suggested by the various hearers from time
to time, he had come by degrees to tell it with great effect; and ‘Is
that all?’ after the climax, was not what he was accustomed to.
‘Is that all?’ he repeated, ‘yes, that’s all, sir. And enough too, I
think.’
‘I think so too. My horse, young man! He is but a hack hired from a
roadside posting house, but he must carry me to London to-night.’
‘To-night!’ said Joe.
‘To-night,’ returned the other. ‘What do you stare at? This tavern
would seem to be a house of call for all the gaping idlers of the
neighbourhood!’
At this remark, which evidently had reference to the scrutiny he had
undergone, as mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the eyes of John
Willet and his friends were diverted with marvellous rapidity to the
copper boiler again. Not so with Joe, who, being a mettlesome fellow,
returned the stranger’s angry glance with a steady look, and rejoined:
‘It is not a very bold thing to wonder at your going on to-night. Surely
you have been asked such a harmless question in an inn before, and in
better weather than this. I thought you mightn’t know the way, as you
seem strange to this part.’
‘The way--’ repeated the other, irritably.
‘Yes. DO you know it?’
‘I’ll--humph!--I’ll find it,’ replied the man, waving his hand and
turning on his heel. ‘Landlord, take the reckoning here.’
John Willet did as he was desired; for on that point he was seldom slow,
except in the particulars of giving change, and testing the goodness of
any piece of coin that was proffered to him, by the application of his
teeth or his tongue, or some other test, or in doubtful cases, by a long
series of tests terminating in its rejection. The guest then wrapped his
garments about him so as to shelter himself as effectually as he could
from the rough weather, and without any word or sign of farewell betook
himself to the stableyard. Here Joe (who had left the room on the
conclusion of their short dialogue) was protecting himself and the horse
from the rain under the shelter of an old penthouse roof.
‘He’s pretty much of my opinion,’ said Joe, patting the horse upon the
neck. ‘I’ll wager that your stopping here to-night would please him
better than it would please me.’
‘He and I are of different opinions, as we have been more than once on
our way here,’ was the short reply.
‘So I was thinking before you came out, for he has felt your spurs, poor
beast.’
The stranger adjusted his coat-collar about his face, and made no
answer.
‘You’ll know me again, I see,’ he said, marking the young fellow’s
earnest gaze, when he had sprung into the saddle.
‘The man’s worth knowing, master, who travels a road he don’t know,
mounted on a jaded horse, and leaves good quarters to do it on such a
night as this.’
‘You have sharp eyes and a sharp tongue, I find.’
‘Both I hope by nature, but the last grows rusty sometimes for want of
using.’
‘Use the first less too, and keep their sharpness for your sweethearts,
boy,’ said the man.
So saying he shook his hand from the bridle, struck him roughly on the
head with the butt end of his whip, and galloped away; dashing through
the mud and darkness with a headlong speed, which few badly mounted
horsemen would have cared to venture, even had they been thoroughly
acquainted with the country; and which, to one who knew nothing of the
way he rode, was attended at every step with great hazard and danger.
The roads, even within twelve miles of London, were at that time
ill paved, seldom repaired, and very badly made. The way this rider
traversed had been ploughed up by the wheels of heavy waggons, and
rendered rotten by the frosts and thaws of the preceding winter, or
possibly of many winters. Great holes and gaps had been worn into the
soil, which, being now filled with water from the late rains, were not
easily distinguishable even by day; and a plunge into any one of them
might have brought down a surer-footed horse than the poor beast now
urged forward to the utmost extent of his powers. Sharp flints and
stones rolled from under his hoofs continually; the rider could scarcely
see beyond the animal’s head, or farther on either side than his own
arm would have extended. At that time, too, all the roads in the
neighbourhood of the metropolis were infested by footpads or highwaymen,
and it was a night, of all others, in which any evil-disposed person of
this class might have pursued his unlawful calling with little fear of
detection.
Still, the traveller dashed forward at the same reckless pace,
regardless alike of the dirt and wet which flew about his head, the
profound darkness of the night, and the probability of encountering
some desperate characters abroad. At every turn and angle, even where
a deviation from the direct course might have been least expected, and
could not possibly be seen until he was close upon it, he guided the
bridle with an unerring hand, and kept the middle of the road. Thus he
sped onward, raising himself in the stirrups, leaning his body forward
until it almost touched the horse’s neck, and flourishing his heavy whip
above his head with the fervour of a madman.
There are times when, the elements being in unusual commotion, those who
are bent on daring enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts, whether
of good or evil, feel a mysterious sympathy with the tumult of nature,
and are roused into corresponding violence. In the midst of thunder,
lightning, and storm, many tremendous deeds have been committed; men,
self-possessed before, have given a sudden loose to passions they could
no longer control. The demons of wrath and despair have striven to
emulate those who ride the whirlwind and direct the storm; and man,
lashed into madness with the roaring winds and boiling waters, has
become for the time as wild and merciless as the elements themselves.
Whether the traveller was possessed by thoughts which the fury of the
night had heated and stimulated into a quicker current, or was merely
impelled by some strong motive to reach his journey’s end, on he swept
more like a hunted phantom than a man, nor checked his pace until,
arriving at some cross roads, one of which led by a longer route to
the place whence he had lately started, he bore down so suddenly upon a
vehicle which was coming towards him, that in the effort to avoid it he
well-nigh pulled his horse upon his haunches, and narrowly escaped being
thrown.
‘Yoho!’ cried the voice of a man. ‘What’s that? Who goes there?’
‘A friend!’ replied the traveller.
‘A friend!’ repeated the voice. ‘Who calls himself a friend and rides
like that, abusing Heaven’s gifts in the shape of horseflesh, and
endangering, not only his own neck (which might be no great matter) but
the necks of other people?’
‘You have a lantern there, I see,’ said the traveller dismounting, ‘lend
it me for a moment. You have wounded my horse, I think, with your shaft
or wheel.’
‘Wounded him!’ cried the other, ‘if I haven’t killed him, it’s no fault
of yours. What do you mean by galloping along the king’s highway like
that, eh?’
‘Give me the light,’ returned the traveller, snatching it from his hand,
‘and don’t ask idle questions of a man who is in no mood for talking.’
‘If you had said you were in no mood for talking before, I should
perhaps have been in no mood for lighting,’ said the voice. ‘Hows’ever
as it’s the poor horse that’s damaged and not you, one of you is welcome
to the light at all events--but it’s not the crusty one.’
The traveller returned no answer to this speech, but holding the light
near to his panting and reeking beast, examined him in limb and carcass.
Meanwhile, the other man sat very composedly in his vehicle, which was
a kind of chaise with a depository for a large bag of tools, and watched
his proceedings with a careful eye.
The looker-on was a round, red-faced, sturdy yeoman, with a double chin,
and a voice husky with good living, good sleeping, good humour, and good
health. He was past the prime of life, but Father Time is not always a
hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays
his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men
and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young
and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression
of the old fellow’s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle
but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
The person whom the traveller had so abruptly encountered was of
this kind: bluff, hale, hearty, and in a green old age: at peace with
himself, and evidently disposed to be so with all the world. Although
muffled up in divers coats and handkerchiefs--one of which, passed over
his crown, and tied in a convenient crease of his double chin, secured
his three-cornered hat and bob-wig from blowing off his head--there
was no disguising his plump and comfortable figure; neither did certain
dirty finger-marks upon his face give it any other than an odd and
comical expression, through which its natural good humour shone with
undiminished lustre.
‘He is not hurt,’ said the traveller at length, raising his head and the
lantern together.
‘You have found that out at last, have you?’ rejoined the old man. ‘My
eyes have seen more light than yours, but I wouldn’t change with you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mean! I could have told you he wasn’t hurt, five minutes ago. Give me
the light, friend; ride forward at a gentler pace; and good night.’
In handing up the lantern, the man necessarily cast its rays full on the
speaker’s face. Their eyes met at the instant. He suddenly dropped it
and crushed it with his foot.
‘Did you never see a locksmith before, that you start as if you had come
upon a ghost?’ cried the old man in the chaise, ‘or is this,’ he added
hastily, thrusting his hand into the tool basket and drawing out a
hammer, ‘a scheme for robbing me? I know these roads, friend. When I
travel them, I carry nothing but a few shillings, and not a crown’s
worth of them. I tell you plainly, to save us both trouble, that there’s
nothing to be got from me but a pretty stout arm considering my years,
and this tool, which, mayhap from long acquaintance with, I can use
pretty briskly. You shall not have it all your own way, I promise you,
if you play at that game. With these words he stood upon the defensive.
‘I am not what you take me for, Gabriel Varden,’ replied the other.
‘Then what and who are you?’ returned the locksmith. ‘You know my name,
it seems. Let me know yours.’
‘I have not gained the information from any confidence of yours, but
from the inscription on your cart which tells it to all the town,’
replied the traveller.
‘You have better eyes for that than you had for your horse, then,’ said
Varden, descending nimbly from his chaise; ‘who are you? Let me see your
face.’
While the locksmith alighted, the traveller had regained his saddle,
from which he now confronted the old man, who, moving as the horse moved
in chafing under the tightened rein, kept close beside him.
‘Let me see your face, I say.’
‘Stand off!’
‘No masquerading tricks,’ said the locksmith, ‘and tales at the club
to-morrow, how Gabriel Varden was frightened by a surly voice and a dark
night. Stand--let me see your face.’
Finding that further resistance would only involve him in a personal
struggle with an antagonist by no means to be despised, the traveller
threw back his coat, and stooping down looked steadily at the locksmith.
Perhaps two men more powerfully contrasted, never opposed each other
face to face. The ruddy features of the locksmith so set off and
heightened the excessive paleness of the man on horseback, that he
looked like a bloodless ghost, while the moisture, which hard riding had
brought out upon his skin, hung there in dark and heavy drops, like dews
of agony and death. The countenance of the old locksmith lighted up with
the smile of one expecting to detect in this unpromising stranger some
latent roguery of eye or lip, which should reveal a familiar person in
that arch disguise, and spoil his jest. The face of the other, sullen
and fierce, but shrinking too, was that of a man who stood at bay; while
his firmly closed jaws, his puckered mouth, and more than all a certain
stealthy motion of the hand within his breast, seemed to announce a
desperate purpose very foreign to acting, or child’s play.
Thus they regarded each other for some time, in silence.
‘Humph!’ he said when he had scanned his features; ‘I don’t know you.’
‘Don’t desire to?’--returned the other, muffling himself as before.
‘I don’t,’ said Gabriel; ‘to be plain with you, friend, you don’t carry
in your countenance a letter of recommendation.’
‘It’s not my wish,’ said the traveller. ‘My humour is to be avoided.’
‘Well,’ said the locksmith bluntly, ‘I think you’ll have your humour.’
‘I will, at any cost,’ rejoined the traveller. ‘In proof of it, lay this
to heart--that you were never in such peril of your life as you have
been within these few moments; when you are within five minutes of
breathing your last, you will not be nearer death than you have been
to-night!’
‘Aye!’ said the sturdy locksmith.
‘Aye! and a violent death.’
‘From whose hand?’
‘From mine,’ replied the traveller.
With that he put spurs to his horse, and rode away; at first plashing
heavily through the mire at a smart trot, but gradually increasing in
speed until the last sound of his horse’s hoofs died away upon the wind;
when he was again hurrying on at the same furious gallop, which had been
his pace when the locksmith first encountered him.
Gabriel Varden remained standing in the road with the broken lantern in
his hand, listening in stupefied silence until no sound reached his ear
but the moaning of the wind, and the fast-falling rain; when he struck
himself one or two smart blows in the breast by way of rousing himself,
and broke into an exclamation of surprise.
‘What in the name of wonder can this fellow be! a madman? a highwayman?
a cut-throat? If he had not scoured off so fast, we’d have seen who was
in most danger, he or I. I never nearer death than I have been to-night!
I hope I may be no nearer to it for a score of years to come--if so,
I’ll be content to be no farther from it. My stars!--a pretty brag this
to a stout man--pooh, pooh!’
Gabriel resumed his seat, and looked wistfully up the road by which the
traveller had come; murmuring in a half whisper:
‘The Maypole--two miles to the Maypole. I came the other road from the
Warren after a long day’s work at locks and bells, on purpose that I
should not come by the Maypole and break my promise to Martha by looking
in--there’s resolution! It would be dangerous to go on to London without
a light; and it’s four miles, and a good half mile besides, to the
Halfway-House; and between this and that is the very place where one
needs a light most. Two miles to the Maypole! I told Martha I wouldn’t;
I said I wouldn’t, and I didn’t--there’s resolution!’
Repeating these two last words very often, as if to compensate for the
little resolution he was going to show by piquing himself on the great
resolution he had shown, Gabriel Varden quietly turned back, determining
to get a light at the Maypole, and to take nothing but a light.
When he got to the Maypole, however, and Joe, responding to his
well-known hail, came running out to the horse’s head, leaving the door
open behind him, and disclosing a delicious perspective of warmth and
brightness--when the ruddy gleam of the fire, streaming through the old
red curtains of the common room, seemed to bring with it, as part of
itself, a pleasant hum of voices, and a fragrant odour of steaming grog
and rare tobacco, all steeped as it were in the cheerful glow--when the
shadows, flitting across the curtain, showed that those inside had risen
from their snug seats, and were making room in the snuggest corner (how
well he knew that corner!) for the honest locksmith, and a broad glare,
suddenly streaming up, bespoke the goodness of the crackling log from
which a brilliant train of sparks was doubtless at that moment whirling
up the chimney in honour of his coming--when, superadded to these
enticements, there stole upon him from the distant kitchen a gentle
sound of frying, with a musical clatter of plates and dishes, and a
savoury smell that made even the boisterous wind a perfume--Gabriel
felt his firmness oozing rapidly away. He tried to look stoically at the
tavern, but his features would relax into a look of fondness. He turned
his head the other way, and the cold black country seemed to frown him
off, and drive him for a refuge into its hospitable arms.
‘The merciful man, Joe,’ said the locksmith, ‘is merciful to his beast.
I’ll get out for a little while.’
And how natural it was to get out! And how unnatural it seemed for a
sober man to be plodding wearily along through miry roads, encountering
the rude buffets of the wind and pelting of the rain, when there was
a clean floor covered with crisp white sand, a well swept hearth, a
blazing fire, a table decorated with white cloth, bright pewter flagons,
and other tempting preparations for a well-cooked meal--when there were
these things, and company disposed to make the most of them, all ready
to his hand, and entreating him to enjoyment!
Chapter 3
Such were the locksmith’s thoughts when first seated in the snug corner,
and slowly recovering from a pleasant defect of vision--pleasant,
because occasioned by the wind blowing in his eyes--which made it a
matter of sound policy and duty to himself, that he should take refuge
from the weather, and tempted him, for the same reason, to aggravate
a slight cough, and declare he felt but poorly. Such were still his
thoughts more than a full hour afterwards, when, supper over, he still
sat with shining jovial face in the same warm nook, listening to the
cricket-like chirrup of little Solomon Daisy, and bearing no unimportant
or slightly respected part in the social gossip round the Maypole fire.
‘I wish he may be an honest man, that’s all,’ said Solomon, winding up
a variety of speculations relative to the stranger, concerning whom
Gabriel had compared notes with the company, and so raised a grave
discussion; ‘I wish he may be an honest man.’
‘So we all do, I suppose, don’t we?’ observed the locksmith.
‘I don’t,’ said Joe.
‘No!’ cried Gabriel.
‘No. He struck me with his whip, the coward, when he was mounted and I
afoot, and I should be better pleased that he turned out what I think
him.’
‘And what may that be, Joe?’
‘No good, Mr Varden. You may shake your head, father, but I say no good,
and will say no good, and I would say no good a hundred times over, if
that would bring him back to have the drubbing he deserves.’
‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ said John Willet.
‘I won’t, father. It’s all along of you that he ventured to do what he
did. Seeing me treated like a child, and put down like a fool, HE plucks
up a heart and has a fling at a fellow that he thinks--and may well
think too--hasn’t a grain of spirit. But he’s mistaken, as I’ll show
him, and as I’ll show all of you before long.’
‘Does the boy know what he’s a saying of!’ cried the astonished John
Willet.
‘Father,’ returned Joe, ‘I know what I say and mean, well--better than
you do when you hear me. I can bear with you, but I cannot bear the
contempt that your treating me in the way you do, brings upon me from
others every day. Look at other young men of my age. Have they no
liberty, no will, no right to speak? Are they obliged to sit mumchance,
and to be ordered about till they are the laughing-stock of young and
old? I am a bye-word all over Chigwell, and I say--and it’s fairer
my saying so now, than waiting till you are dead, and I have got your
money--I say, that before long I shall be driven to break such bounds,
and that when I do, it won’t be me that you’ll have to blame, but your
own self, and no other.’
John Willet was so amazed by the exasperation and boldness of his
hopeful son, that he sat as one bewildered, staring in a ludicrous
manner at the boiler, and endeavouring, but quite ineffectually, to
collect his tardy thoughts, and invent an answer. The guests, scarcely
less disturbed, were equally at a loss; and at length, with a variety
of muttered, half-expressed condolences, and pieces of advice, rose to
depart; being at the same time slightly muddled with liquor.
The honest locksmith alone addressed a few words of coherent and
sensible advice to both parties, urging John Willet to remember that
Joe was nearly arrived at man’s estate, and should not be ruled with
too tight a hand, and exhorting Joe himself to bear with his father’s
caprices, and rather endeavour to turn them aside by temperate
remonstrance than by ill-timed rebellion. This advice was received as
such advice usually is. On John Willet it made almost as much impression
as on the sign outside the door, while Joe, who took it in the best
part, avowed himself more obliged than he could well express, but
politely intimated his intention nevertheless of taking his own course
uninfluenced by anybody.
‘You have always been a very good friend to me, Mr Varden,’ he said,
as they stood without, in the porch, and the locksmith was equipping
himself for his journey home; ‘I take it very kind of you to say all
this, but the time’s nearly come when the Maypole and I must part
company.’
‘Roving stones gather no moss, Joe,’ said Gabriel.
‘Nor milestones much,’ replied Joe. ‘I’m little better than one here,
and see as much of the world.’
‘Then, what would you do, Joe?’ pursued the locksmith, stroking his chin
reflectively. ‘What could you be? Where could you go, you see?’
‘I must trust to chance, Mr Varden.’
‘A bad thing to trust to, Joe. I don’t like it. I always tell my girl
when we talk about a husband for her, never to trust to chance, but to
make sure beforehand that she has a good man and true, and then chance
will neither make her nor break her. What are you fidgeting about there,
Joe? Nothing gone in the harness, I hope?’
‘No no,’ said Joe--finding, however, something very engrossing to do in
the way of strapping and buckling--‘Miss Dolly quite well?’
‘Hearty, thankye. She looks pretty enough to be well, and good too.’
‘She’s always both, sir’--
‘So she is, thank God!’
‘I hope,’ said Joe after some hesitation, ‘that you won’t tell this
story against me--this of my having been beat like the boy they’d make
of me--at all events, till I have met this man again and settled the
account. It’ll be a better story then.’
‘Why who should I tell it to?’ returned Gabriel. ‘They know it here, and
I’m not likely to come across anybody else who would care about it.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said the young fellow with a sigh. ‘I quite forgot
that. Yes, that’s true!’
So saying, he raised his face, which was very red,--no doubt from the
exertion of strapping and buckling as aforesaid,--and giving the reins
to the old man, who had by this time taken his seat, sighed again and
bade him good night.
‘Good night!’ cried Gabriel. ‘Now think better of what we have just
been speaking of; and don’t be rash, there’s a good fellow! I have an
interest in you, and wouldn’t have you cast yourself away. Good night!’
Returning his cheery farewell with cordial goodwill, Joe Willet lingered
until the sound of wheels ceased to vibrate in his ears, and then,
shaking his head mournfully, re-entered the house.
Gabriel Varden went his way towards London, thinking of a great
many things, and most of all of flaming terms in which to relate his
adventure, and so account satisfactorily to Mrs Varden for visiting the
Maypole, despite certain solemn covenants between himself and that lady.
Thinking begets, not only thought, but drowsiness occasionally, and the
more the locksmith thought, the more sleepy he became.
A man may be very sober--or at least firmly set upon his legs on that
neutral ground which lies between the confines of perfect sobriety and
slight tipsiness--and yet feel a strong tendency to mingle up present
circumstances with others which have no manner of connection with them;
to confound all consideration of persons, things, times, and places;
and to jumble his disjointed thoughts together in a kind of mental
kaleidoscope, producing combinations as unexpected as they are
transitory. This was Gabriel Varden’s state, as, nodding in his dog
sleep, and leaving his horse to pursue a road with which he was well
acquainted, he got over the ground unconsciously, and drew nearer and
nearer home. He had roused himself once, when the horse stopped until
the turnpike gate was opened, and had cried a lusty ‘good night!’ to the
toll-keeper; but then he awoke out of a dream about picking a lock in
the stomach of the Great Mogul, and even when he did wake, mixed up the
turnpike man with his mother-in-law who had been dead twenty years. It
is not surprising, therefore, that he soon relapsed, and jogged heavily
along, quite insensible to his progress.
And, now, he approached the great city, which lay outstretched before
him like a dark shadow on the ground, reddening the sluggish air with a
deep dull light, that told of labyrinths of public ways and shops, and
swarms of busy people. Approaching nearer and nearer yet, this halo
began to fade, and the causes which produced it slowly to develop
themselves. Long lines of poorly lighted streets might be faintly
traced, with here and there a lighter spot, where lamps were clustered
round a square or market, or round some great building; after a time
these grew more distinct, and the lamps themselves were visible; slight
yellow specks, that seemed to be rapidly snuffed out, one by one, as
intervening obstacles hid them from the sight. Then, sounds arose--the
striking of church clocks, the distant bark of dogs, the hum of traffic
in the streets; then outlines might be traced--tall steeples looming
in the air, and piles of unequal roofs oppressed by chimneys; then,
the noise swelled into a louder sound, and forms grew more distinct and
numerous still, and London--visible in the darkness by its own faint
light, and not by that of Heaven--was at hand.
The locksmith, however, all unconscious of its near vicinity, still
jogged on, half sleeping and half waking, when a loud cry at no great
distance ahead, roused him with a start.
For a moment or two he looked about him like a man who had been
transported to some strange country in his sleep, but soon recognising
familiar objects, rubbed his eyes lazily and might have relapsed again,
but that the cry was repeated--not once or twice or thrice, but many
times, and each time, if possible, with increased vehemence. Thoroughly
aroused, Gabriel, who was a bold man and not easily daunted, made
straight to the spot, urging on his stout little horse as if for life or
death.
The matter indeed looked sufficiently serious, for, coming to the place
whence the cries had proceeded, he descried the figure of a man extended
in an apparently lifeless state upon the pathway, and, hovering round
him, another person with a torch in his hand, which he waved in the air
with a wild impatience, redoubling meanwhile those cries for help which
had brought the locksmith to the spot.
‘What’s here to do?’ said the old man, alighting. ‘How’s
this--what--Barnaby?’
The bearer of the torch shook his long loose hair back from his eyes,
and thrusting his face eagerly into that of the locksmith, fixed upon
him a look which told his history at once.
‘You know me, Barnaby?’ said Varden.
He nodded--not once or twice, but a score of times, and that with a
fantastic exaggeration which would have kept his head in motion for
an hour, but that the locksmith held up his finger, and fixing his eye
sternly upon him caused him to desist; then pointed to the body with an
inquiring look.
‘There’s blood upon him,’ said Barnaby with a shudder. ‘It makes me
sick!’
‘How came it there?’ demanded Varden.
‘Steel, steel, steel!’ he replied fiercely, imitating with his hand the
thrust of a sword.
‘Is he robbed?’ said the locksmith.
Barnaby caught him by the arm, and nodded ‘Yes;’ then pointed towards
the city.
‘Oh!’ said the old man, bending over the body and looking round as he
spoke into Barnaby’s pale face, strangely lighted up by something that
was NOT intellect. ‘The robber made off that way, did he? Well, well,
never mind that just now. Hold your torch this way--a little farther
off--so. Now stand quiet, while I try to see what harm is done.’
With these words, he applied himself to a closer examination of
the prostrate form, while Barnaby, holding the torch as he had been
directed, looked on in silence, fascinated by interest or curiosity, but
repelled nevertheless by some strong and secret horror which convulsed
him in every nerve.
As he stood, at that moment, half shrinking back and half bending
forward, both his face and figure were full in the strong glare of the
link, and as distinctly revealed as though it had been broad day. He
was about three-and-twenty years old, and though rather spare, of a fair
height and strong make. His hair, of which he had a great profusion, was
red, and hanging in disorder about his face and shoulders, gave to his
restless looks an expression quite unearthly--enhanced by the paleness
of his complexion, and the glassy lustre of his large protruding eyes.
Startling as his aspect was, the features were good, and there was
something even plaintive in his wan and haggard aspect. But, the absence
of the soul is far more terrible in a living man than in a dead one; and
in this unfortunate being its noblest powers were wanting.
His dress was of green, clumsily trimmed here and there--apparently by
his own hands--with gaudy lace; brightest where the cloth was most
worn and soiled, and poorest where it was at the best. A pair of tawdry
ruffles dangled at his wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. He had
ornamented his hat with a cluster of peacock’s feathers, but they were
limp and broken, and now trailed negligently down his back. Girt to his
side was the steel hilt of an old sword without blade or scabbard; and
some particoloured ends of ribands and poor glass toys completed the
ornamental portion of his attire. The fluttered and confused disposition
of all the motley scraps that formed his dress, bespoke, in a scarcely
less degree than his eager and unsettled manner, the disorder of his
mind, and by a grotesque contrast set off and heightened the more
impressive wildness of his face.
‘Barnaby,’ said the locksmith, after a hasty but careful inspection,
‘this man is not dead, but he has a wound in his side, and is in a
fainting-fit.’
‘I know him, I know him!’ cried Barnaby, clapping his hands.
‘Know him?’ repeated the locksmith.
‘Hush!’ said Barnaby, laying his fingers upon his lips. ‘He went out
to-day a wooing. I wouldn’t for a light guinea that he should never go
a wooing again, for, if he did, some eyes would grow dim that are now as
bright as--see, when I talk of eyes, the stars come out! Whose eyes are
they? If they are angels’ eyes, why do they look down here and see good
men hurt, and only wink and sparkle all the night?’
‘Now Heaven help this silly fellow,’ murmured the perplexed locksmith;
‘can he know this gentleman? His mother’s house is not far off; I had
better see if she can tell me who he is. Barnaby, my man, help me to put
him in the chaise, and we’ll ride home together.’
‘I can’t touch him!’ cried the idiot falling back, and shuddering as
with a strong spasm; ‘he’s bloody!’
‘It’s in his nature, I know,’ muttered the locksmith, ‘it’s cruel to ask
him, but I must have help. Barnaby--good Barnaby--dear Barnaby--if you
know this gentleman, for the sake of his life and everybody’s life that
loves him, help me to raise him and lay him down.’
‘Cover him then, wrap him close--don’t let me see it--smell it--hear the
word. Don’t speak the word--don’t!’
‘No, no, I’ll not. There, you see he’s covered now. Gently. Well done,
well done!’
They placed him in the carriage with great ease, for Barnaby was strong
and active, but all the time they were so occupied he shivered from head
to foot, and evidently experienced an ecstasy of terror.
This accomplished, and the wounded man being covered with Varden’s own
greatcoat which he took off for the purpose, they proceeded onward at
a brisk pace: Barnaby gaily counting the stars upon his fingers, and
Gabriel inwardly congratulating himself upon having an adventure now,
which would silence Mrs Varden on the subject of the Maypole, for that
night, or there was no faith in woman.
Chapter 4
In the venerable suburb--it was a suburb once--of Clerkenwell, towards
that part of its confines which is nearest to the Charter House, and in
one of those cool, shady streets, of which a few, widely scattered
and dispersed, yet remain in such old parts of the metropolis,--each
tenement quietly vegetating like an ancient citizen who long ago retired
from business, and dozing on in its infirmity until in course of time it
tumbles down, and is replaced by some extravagant young heir, flaunting
in stucco and ornamental work, and all the vanities of modern days,--in
this quarter, and in a street of this description, the business of the
present chapter lies.
At the time of which it treats, though only six-and-sixty years ago,
a very large part of what is London now had no existence. Even in the
brains of the wildest speculators, there had sprung up no long rows of
streets connecting Highgate with Whitechapel, no assemblages of palaces
in the swampy levels, nor little cities in the open fields. Although
this part of town was then, as now, parcelled out in streets, and
plentifully peopled, it wore a different aspect. There were gardens
to many of the houses, and trees by the pavement side; with an air of
freshness breathing up and down, which in these days would be sought
in vain. Fields were nigh at hand, through which the New River took its
winding course, and where there was merry haymaking in the summer time.
Nature was not so far removed, or hard to get at, as in these days; and
although there were busy trades in Clerkenwell, and working jewellers
by scores, it was a purer place, with farm-houses nearer to it than many
modern Londoners would readily believe, and lovers’ walks at no great
distance, which turned into squalid courts, long before the lovers of
this age were born, or, as the phrase goes, thought of.
In one of these streets, the cleanest of them all, and on the shady
side of the way--for good housewives know that sunlight damages their
cherished furniture, and so choose the shade rather than its intrusive
glare--there stood the house with which we have to deal. It was a modest
building, not very straight, not large, not tall; not bold-faced, with
great staring windows, but a shy, blinking house, with a conical roof
going up into a peak over its garret window of four small panes of
glass, like a cocked hat on the head of an elderly gentleman with one
eye. It was not built of brick or lofty stone, but of wood and plaster;
it was not planned with a dull and wearisome regard to regularity,
for no one window matched the other, or seemed to have the slightest
reference to anything besides itself.
The shop--for it had a shop--was, with reference to the first floor,
where shops usually are; and there all resemblance between it and any
other shop stopped short and ceased. People who went in and out didn’t
go up a flight of steps to it, or walk easily in upon a level with the
street, but dived down three steep stairs, as into a cellar. Its floor
was paved with stone and brick, as that of any other cellar might be;
and in lieu of window framed and glazed it had a great black wooden flap
or shutter, nearly breast high from the ground, which turned back in
the day-time, admitting as much cold air as light, and very often more.
Behind this shop was a wainscoted parlour, looking first into a paved
yard, and beyond that again into a little terrace garden, raised some
feet above it. Any stranger would have supposed that this wainscoted
parlour, saving for the door of communication by which he had entered,
was cut off and detached from all the world; and indeed most strangers
on their first entrance were observed to grow extremely thoughtful, as
weighing and pondering in their minds whether the upper rooms were only
approachable by ladders from without; never suspecting that two of
the most unassuming and unlikely doors in existence, which the most
ingenious mechanician on earth must of necessity have supposed to be
the doors of closets, opened out of this room--each without the smallest
preparation, or so much as a quarter of an inch of passage--upon two
dark winding flights of stairs, the one upward, the other downward,
which were the sole means of communication between that chamber and the
other portions of the house.
With all these oddities, there was not a neater, more scrupulously tidy,
or more punctiliously ordered house, in Clerkenwell, in London, in all
England. There were not cleaner windows, or whiter floors, or brighter
Stoves, or more highly shining articles of furniture in old mahogany;
there was not more rubbing, scrubbing, burnishing and polishing, in the
whole street put together. Nor was this excellence attained without some
cost and trouble and great expenditure of voice, as the neighbours
were frequently reminded when the good lady of the house overlooked and
assisted in its being put to rights on cleaning days--which were usually
from Monday morning till Saturday night, both days inclusive.
Leaning against the door-post of this, his dwelling, the locksmith
stood early on the morning after he had met with the wounded man, gazing
disconsolately at a great wooden emblem of a key, painted in vivid
yellow to resemble gold, which dangled from the house-front, and swung
to and fro with a mournful creaking noise, as if complaining that it had
nothing to unlock. Sometimes, he looked over his shoulder into the shop,
which was so dark and dingy with numerous tokens of his trade, and so
blackened by the smoke of a little forge, near which his ‘prentice
was at work, that it would have been difficult for one unused to such
espials to have distinguished anything but various tools of uncouth make
and shape, great bunches of rusty keys, fragments of iron, half-finished
locks, and such like things, which garnished the walls and hung in
clusters from the ceiling.
After a long and patient contemplation of the golden key, and many such
backward glances, Gabriel stepped into the road, and stole a look at the
upper windows. One of them chanced to be thrown open at the moment,
and a roguish face met his; a face lighted up by the loveliest pair of
sparkling eyes that ever locksmith looked upon; the face of a pretty,
laughing, girl; dimpled and fresh, and healthful--the very impersonation
of good-humour and blooming beauty.
‘Hush!’ she whispered, bending forward and pointing archly to the window
underneath. ‘Mother is still asleep.’
‘Still, my dear,’ returned the locksmith in the same tone. ‘You talk as
if she had been asleep all night, instead of little more than half an
hour. But I’m very thankful. Sleep’s a blessing--no doubt about it.’ The
last few words he muttered to himself.
‘How cruel of you to keep us up so late this morning, and never tell us
where you were, or send us word!’ said the girl.
‘Ah Dolly, Dolly!’ returned the locksmith, shaking his head, and
smiling, ‘how cruel of you to run upstairs to bed! Come down to
breakfast, madcap, and come down lightly, or you’ll wake your mother.
She must be tired, I am sure--I am.’
Keeping these latter words to himself, and returning his daughter’s nod,
he was passing into the workshop, with the smile she had awakened still
beaming on his face, when he just caught sight of his ‘prentice’s brown
paper cap ducking down to avoid observation, and shrinking from the
window back to its former place, which the wearer no sooner reached than
he began to hammer lustily.
‘Listening again, Simon!’ said Gabriel to himself. ‘That’s bad. What in
the name of wonder does he expect the girl to say, that I always catch
him listening when SHE speaks, and never at any other time! A bad habit,
Sim, a sneaking, underhanded way. Ah! you may hammer, but you won’t beat
that out of me, if you work at it till your time’s up!’
So saying, and shaking his head gravely, he re-entered the workshop, and
confronted the subject of these remarks.
‘There’s enough of that just now,’ said the locksmith. ‘You needn’t make
any more of that confounded clatter. Breakfast’s ready.’
‘Sir,’ said Sim, looking up with amazing politeness, and a peculiar
little bow cut short off at the neck, ‘I shall attend you immediately.’
‘I suppose,’ muttered Gabriel, ‘that’s out of the ‘Prentice’s Garland or
the ‘Prentice’s Delight, or the ‘Prentice’s Warbler, or the Prentice’s
Guide to the Gallows, or some such improving textbook. Now he’s going to
beautify himself--here’s a precious locksmith!’
Quite unconscious that his master was looking on from the dark corner by
the parlour door, Sim threw off the paper cap, sprang from his seat,
and in two extraordinary steps, something between skating and minuet
dancing, bounded to a washing place at the other end of the shop,
and there removed from his face and hands all traces of his previous
work--practising the same step all the time with the utmost gravity.
This done, he drew from some concealed place a little scrap of
looking-glass, and with its assistance arranged his hair, and
ascertained the exact state of a little carbuncle on his nose. Having
now completed his toilet, he placed the fragment of mirror on a low
bench, and looked over his shoulder at so much of his legs as could be
reflected in that small compass, with the greatest possible complacency
and satisfaction.
Sim, as he was called in the locksmith’s family, or Mr Simon Tappertit,
as he called himself, and required all men to style him out of doors,
on holidays, and Sundays out,--was an old-fashioned, thin-faced,
sleek-haired, sharp-nosed, small-eyed little fellow, very little more
than five feet high, and thoroughly convinced in his own mind that he
was above the middle size; rather tall, in fact, than otherwise. Of his
figure, which was well enough formed, though somewhat of the leanest,
he entertained the highest admiration; and with his legs, which, in
knee-breeches, were perfect curiosities of littleness, he was enraptured
to a degree amounting to enthusiasm. He also had some majestic, shadowy
ideas, which had never been quite fathomed by his intimate friends,
concerning the power of his eye. Indeed he had been known to go so far
as to boast that he could utterly quell and subdue the haughtiest beauty
by a simple process, which he termed ‘eyeing her over;’ but it must
be added, that neither of this faculty, nor of the power he claimed
to have, through the same gift, of vanquishing and heaving down dumb
animals, even in a rabid state, had he ever furnished evidence which
could be deemed quite satisfactory and conclusive.
It may be inferred from these premises, that in the small body of Mr
Tappertit there was locked up an ambitious and aspiring soul. As
certain liquors, confined in casks too cramped in their dimensions, will
ferment, and fret, and chafe in their imprisonment, so the spiritual
essence or soul of Mr Tappertit would sometimes fume within that
precious cask, his body, until, with great foam and froth and splutter,
it would force a vent, and carry all before it. It was his custom to
remark, in reference to any one of these occasions, that his soul had
got into his head; and in this novel kind of intoxication many scrapes
and mishaps befell him, which he had frequently concealed with no small
difficulty from his worthy master.
Sim Tappertit, among the other fancies upon which his before-mentioned
soul was for ever feasting and regaling itself (and which fancies,
like the liver of Prometheus, grew as they were fed upon), had a mighty
notion of his order; and had been heard by the servant-maid openly
expressing his regret that the ‘prentices no longer carried clubs
wherewith to mace the citizens: that was his strong expression. He was
likewise reported to have said that in former times a stigma had been
cast upon the body by the execution of George Barnwell, to which they
should not have basely submitted, but should have demanded him of
the legislature--temperately at first; then by an appeal to arms, if
necessary--to be dealt with as they in their wisdom might think fit.
These thoughts always led him to consider what a glorious engine the
‘prentices might yet become if they had but a master spirit at their
head; and then he would darkly, and to the terror of his hearers, hint
at certain reckless fellows that he knew of, and at a certain Lion Heart
ready to become their captain, who, once afoot, would make the Lord
Mayor tremble on his throne.
In respect of dress and personal decoration, Sim Tappertit was no less
of an adventurous and enterprising character. He had been seen, beyond
dispute, to pull off ruffles of the finest quality at the corner of the
street on Sunday nights, and to put them carefully in his pocket before
returning home; and it was quite notorious that on all great holiday
occasions it was his habit to exchange his plain steel knee-buckles for
a pair of glittering paste, under cover of a friendly post, planted most
conveniently in that same spot. Add to this that he was in years just
twenty, in his looks much older, and in conceit at least two hundred;
that he had no objection to be jested with, touching his admiration
of his master’s daughter; and had even, when called upon at a certain
obscure tavern to pledge the lady whom he honoured with his love,
toasted, with many winks and leers, a fair creature whose Christian
name, he said, began with a D--;--and as much is known of Sim Tappertit,
who has by this time followed the locksmith in to breakfast, as is
necessary to be known in making his acquaintance.
It was a substantial meal; for, over and above the ordinary tea
equipage, the board creaked beneath the weight of a jolly round of beef,
a ham of the first magnitude, and sundry towers of buttered Yorkshire
cake, piled slice upon slice in most alluring order. There was also
a goodly jug of well-browned clay, fashioned into the form of an old
gentleman, not by any means unlike the locksmith, atop of whose bald
head was a fine white froth answering to his wig, indicative, beyond
dispute, of sparkling home-brewed ale. But, better far than fair
home-brewed, or Yorkshire cake, or ham, or beef, or anything to eat or
drink that earth or air or water can supply, there sat, presiding over
all, the locksmith’s rosy daughter, before whose dark eyes even beef
grew insignificant, and malt became as nothing.
Fathers should never kiss their daughters when young men are by. It’s
too much. There are bounds to human endurance. So thought Sim Tappertit
when Gabriel drew those rosy lips to his--those lips within Sim’s reach
from day to day, and yet so far off. He had a respect for his master,
but he wished the Yorkshire cake might choke him.
‘Father,’ said the locksmith’s daughter, when this salute was over, and
they took their seats at table, ‘what is this I hear about last night?’
‘All true, my dear; true as the Gospel, Doll.’
‘Young Mr Chester robbed, and lying wounded in the road, when you came
up!’
‘Ay--Mr Edward. And beside him, Barnaby, calling for help with all his
might. It was well it happened as it did; for the road’s a lonely one,
the hour was late, and, the night being cold, and poor Barnaby even less
sensible than usual from surprise and fright, the young gentleman might
have met his death in a very short time.’
‘I dread to think of it!’ cried his daughter with a shudder. ‘How did
you know him?’
‘Know him!’ returned the locksmith. ‘I didn’t know him--how could I? I
had never seen him, often as I had heard and spoken of him. I took him
to Mrs Rudge’s; and she no sooner saw him than the truth came out.’
‘Miss Emma, father--If this news should reach her, enlarged upon as it
is sure to be, she will go distracted.’
‘Why, lookye there again, how a man suffers for being good-natured,’
said the locksmith. ‘Miss Emma was with her uncle at the masquerade at
Carlisle House, where she had gone, as the people at the Warren told me,
sorely against her will. What does your blockhead father when he and Mrs
Rudge have laid their heads together, but goes there when he ought to be
abed, makes interest with his friend the doorkeeper, slips him on a mask
and domino, and mixes with the masquers.’
‘And like himself to do so!’ cried the girl, putting her fair arm round
his neck, and giving him a most enthusiastic kiss.
‘Like himself!’ repeated Gabriel, affecting to grumble, but evidently
delighted with the part he had taken, and with her praise. ‘Very like
himself--so your mother said. However, he mingled with the crowd,
and prettily worried and badgered he was, I warrant you, with people
squeaking, “Don’t you know me?” and “I’ve found you out,” and all that
kind of nonsense in his ears. He might have wandered on till now, but
in a little room there was a young lady who had taken off her mask, on
account of the place being very warm, and was sitting there alone.’
‘And that was she?’ said his daughter hastily.
‘And that was she,’ replied the locksmith; ‘and I no sooner whispered to
her what the matter was--as softly, Doll, and with nearly as much art as
you could have used yourself--than she gives a kind of scream and faints
away.’
‘What did you do--what happened next?’ asked his daughter. ‘Why, the
masks came flocking round, with a general noise and hubbub, and I
thought myself in luck to get clear off, that’s all,’ rejoined the
locksmith. ‘What happened when I reached home you may guess, if you
didn’t hear it. Ah! Well, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices.--Put
Toby this way, my dear.’
This Toby was the brown jug of which previous mention has been made.
Applying his lips to the worthy old gentleman’s benevolent forehead, the
locksmith, who had all this time been ravaging among the eatables, kept
them there so long, at the same time raising the vessel slowly in
the air, that at length Toby stood on his head upon his nose, when he
smacked his lips, and set him on the table again with fond reluctance.
Although Sim Tappertit had taken no share in this conversation, no part
of it being addressed to him, he had not been wanting in such silent
manifestations of astonishment, as he deemed most compatible with the
favourable display of his eyes. Regarding the pause which now ensued, as
a particularly advantageous opportunity for doing great execution with
them upon the locksmith’s daughter (who he had no doubt was looking
at him in mute admiration), he began to screw and twist his face,
and especially those features, into such extraordinary, hideous, and
unparalleled contortions, that Gabriel, who happened to look towards
him, was stricken with amazement.
‘Why, what the devil’s the matter with the lad?’ cried the locksmith.
‘Is he choking?’
‘Who?’ demanded Sim, with some disdain.
‘Who? Why, you,’ returned his master. ‘What do you mean by making those
horrible faces over your breakfast?’
‘Faces are matters of taste, sir,’ said Mr Tappertit, rather
discomfited; not the less so because he saw the locksmith’s daughter
smiling.
‘Sim,’ rejoined Gabriel, laughing heartily. ‘Don’t be a fool, for I’d
rather see you in your senses. These young fellows,’ he added, turning
to his daughter, ‘are always committing some folly or another. There was
a quarrel between Joe Willet and old John last night though I can’t say
Joe was much in fault either. He’ll be missing one of these mornings,
and will have gone away upon some wild-goose errand, seeking his
fortune.--Why, what’s the matter, Doll? YOU are making faces now. The
girls are as bad as the boys every bit!’
‘It’s the tea,’ said Dolly, turning alternately very red and very white,
which is no doubt the effect of a slight scald--‘so very hot.’
Mr Tappertit looked immensely big at a quartern loaf on the table, and
breathed hard.
‘Is that all?’ returned the locksmith. ‘Put some more milk in it.--Yes,
I am sorry for Joe, because he is a likely young fellow, and gains upon
one every time one sees him. But he’ll start off, you’ll find. Indeed he
told me as much himself!’
‘Indeed!’ cried Dolly in a faint voice. ‘In-deed!’
‘Is the tea tickling your throat still, my dear?’ said the locksmith.
But, before his daughter could make him any answer, she was taken with
a troublesome cough, and it was such a very unpleasant cough, that,
when she left off, the tears were starting in her bright eyes. The
good-natured locksmith was still patting her on the back and applying
such gentle restoratives, when a message arrived from Mrs Varden, making
known to all whom it might concern, that she felt too much indisposed
to rise after her great agitation and anxiety of the previous night; and
therefore desired to be immediately accommodated with the little black
teapot of strong mixed tea, a couple of rounds of buttered toast, a
middling-sized dish of beef and ham cut thin, and the Protestant Manual
in two volumes post octavo. Like some other ladies who in remote
ages flourished upon this globe, Mrs Varden was most devout when most
ill-tempered. Whenever she and her husband were at unusual variance,
then the Protestant Manual was in high feather.
Knowing from experience what these requests portended, the triumvirate
broke up; Dolly, to see the orders executed with all despatch; Gabriel,
to some out-of-door work in his little chaise; and Sim, to his daily
duty in the workshop, to which retreat he carried the big look, although
the loaf remained behind.
Indeed the big look increased immensely, and when he had tied his apron
on, became quite gigantic. It was not until he had several times walked
up and down with folded arms, and the longest strides he could take,
and had kicked a great many small articles out of his way, that his lip
began to curl. At length, a gloomy derision came upon his features, and
he smiled; uttering meanwhile with supreme contempt the monosyllable
‘Joe!’
‘I eyed her over, while he talked about the fellow,’ he said, ‘and that
was of course the reason of her being confused. Joe!’
He walked up and down again much quicker than before, and if possible
with longer strides; sometimes stopping to take a glance at his legs,
and sometimes to jerk out, and cast from him, another ‘Joe!’ In the
course of a quarter of an hour or so he again assumed the paper cap and
tried to work. No. It could not be done.
‘I’ll do nothing to-day,’ said Mr Tappertit, dashing it down again, ‘but
grind. I’ll grind up all the tools. Grinding will suit my present humour
well. Joe!’
Whirr-r-r-r. The grindstone was soon in motion; the sparks were flying
off in showers. This was the occupation for his heated spirit.
Whirr-r-r-r-r-r-r.
‘Something will come of this!’ said Mr Tappertit, pausing as if in
triumph, and wiping his heated face upon his sleeve. ‘Something will
come of this. I hope it mayn’t be human gore!’
Whirr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r.
Chapter 5
As soon as the business of the day was over, the locksmith sallied
forth, alone, to visit the wounded gentleman and ascertain the progress
of his recovery. The house where he had left him was in a by-street
in Southwark, not far from London Bridge; and thither he hied with all
speed, bent upon returning with as little delay as might be, and getting
to bed betimes.
The evening was boisterous--scarcely better than the previous night had
been. It was not easy for a stout man like Gabriel to keep his legs at
the street corners, or to make head against the high wind, which often
fairly got the better of him, and drove him back some paces, or, in
defiance of all his energy, forced him to take shelter in an arch or
doorway until the fury of the gust was spent. Occasionally a hat or wig,
or both, came spinning and trundling past him, like a mad thing; while
the more serious spectacle of falling tiles and slates, or of masses of
brick and mortar or fragments of stone-coping rattling upon the pavement
near at hand, and splitting into fragments, did not increase the
pleasure of the journey, or make the way less dreary.
‘A trying night for a man like me to walk in!’ said the locksmith, as
he knocked softly at the widow’s door. ‘I’d rather be in old John’s
chimney-corner, faith!’
‘Who’s there?’ demanded a woman’s voice from within. Being answered, it
added a hasty word of welcome, and the door was quickly opened.
She was about forty--perhaps two or three years older--with a cheerful
aspect, and a face that had once been pretty. It bore traces of
affliction and care, but they were of an old date, and Time had smoothed
them. Any one who had bestowed but a casual glance on Barnaby might
have known that this was his mother, from the strong resemblance between
them; but where in his face there was wildness and vacancy, in hers
there was the patient composure of long effort and quiet resignation.
One thing about this face was very strange and startling. You could not
look upon it in its most cheerful mood without feeling that it had some
extraordinary capacity of expressing terror. It was not on the surface.
It was in no one feature that it lingered. You could not take the
eyes or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and say, if this or that were
otherwise, it would not be so. Yet there it always lurked--something for
ever dimly seen, but ever there, and never absent for a moment. It was
the faintest, palest shadow of some look, to which an instant of intense
and most unutterable horror only could have given birth; but indistinct
and feeble as it was, it did suggest what that look must have been, and
fixed it in the mind as if it had had existence in a dream.
More faintly imaged, and wanting force and purpose, as it were, because
of his darkened intellect, there was this same stamp upon the son.
Seen in a picture, it must have had some legend with it, and would have
haunted those who looked upon the canvas. They who knew the Maypole
story, and could remember what the widow was, before her husband’s and
his master’s murder, understood it well. They recollected how the change
had come, and could call to mind that when her son was born, upon the
very day the deed was known, he bore upon his wrist what seemed a smear
of blood but half washed out.
‘God save you, neighbour!’ said the locksmith, as he followed her, with
the air of an old friend, into a little parlour where a cheerful fire
was burning.
‘And you,’ she answered smiling. ‘Your kind heart has brought you
here again. Nothing will keep you at home, I know of old, if there are
friends to serve or comfort, out of doors.’
‘Tut, tut,’ returned the locksmith, rubbing his hands and warming them.
‘You women are such talkers. What of the patient, neighbour?’
‘He is sleeping now. He was very restless towards daylight, and for
some hours tossed and tumbled sadly. But the fever has left him, and the
doctor says he will soon mend. He must not be removed until to-morrow.’
‘He has had visitors to-day--humph?’ said Gabriel, slyly.
‘Yes. Old Mr Chester has been here ever since we sent for him, and had
not been gone many minutes when you knocked.’
‘No ladies?’ said Gabriel, elevating his eyebrows and looking
disappointed.
‘A letter,’ replied the widow.
‘Come. That’s better than nothing!’ replied the locksmith. ‘Who was the
bearer?’
‘Barnaby, of course.’
‘Barnaby’s a jewel!’ said Varden; ‘and comes and goes with ease where we
who think ourselves much wiser would make but a poor hand of it. He is
not out wandering, again, I hope?’
‘Thank Heaven he is in his bed; having been up all night, as you know,
and on his feet all day. He was quite tired out. Ah, neighbour, if I
could but see him oftener so--if I could but tame down that terrible
restlessness--’
‘In good time,’ said the locksmith, kindly, ‘in good time--don’t be
down-hearted. To my mind he grows wiser every day.’
The widow shook her head. And yet, though she knew the locksmith sought
to cheer her, and spoke from no conviction of his own, she was glad to
hear even this praise of her poor benighted son.
‘He will be a ‘cute man yet,’ resumed the locksmith. ‘Take care, when we
are growing old and foolish, Barnaby doesn’t put us to the blush, that’s
all. But our other friend,’ he added, looking under the table and
about the floor--‘sharpest and cunningest of all the sharp and cunning
ones--where’s he?’
‘In Barnaby’s room,’ rejoined the widow, with a faint smile.
‘Ah! He’s a knowing blade!’ said Varden, shaking his head. ‘I should
be sorry to talk secrets before him. Oh! He’s a deep customer. I’ve no
doubt he can read, and write, and cast accounts if he chooses. What was
that? Him tapping at the door?’
‘No,’ returned the widow. ‘It was in the street, I think. Hark! Yes.
There again! ‘Tis some one knocking softly at the shutter. Who can it
be!’
They had been speaking in a low tone, for the invalid lay overhead, and
the walls and ceilings being thin and poorly built, the sound of their
voices might otherwise have disturbed his slumber. The party without,
whoever it was, could have stood close to the shutter without hearing
anything spoken; and, seeing the light through the chinks and finding
all so quiet, might have been persuaded that only one person was there.
‘Some thief or ruffian maybe,’ said the locksmith. ‘Give me the light.’
‘No, no,’ she returned hastily. ‘Such visitors have never come to this
poor dwelling. Do you stay here. You’re within call, at the worst. I
would rather go myself--alone.’
‘Why?’ said the locksmith, unwillingly relinquishing the candle he had
caught up from the table.
‘Because--I don’t know why--because the wish is so strong upon me,’ she
rejoined. ‘There again--do not detain me, I beg of you!’
Gabriel looked at her, in great surprise to see one who was usually so
mild and quiet thus agitated, and with so little cause. She left the
room and closed the door behind her. She stood for a moment as if
hesitating, with her hand upon the lock. In this short interval the
knocking came again, and a voice close to the window--a voice the
locksmith seemed to recollect, and to have some disagreeable association
with--whispered ‘Make haste.’
The words were uttered in that low distinct voice which finds its way so
readily to sleepers’ ears, and wakes them in a fright. For a moment
it startled even the locksmith; who involuntarily drew back from the
window, and listened.
The wind rumbling in the chimney made it difficult to hear what passed,
but he could tell that the door was opened, that there was the tread of
a man upon the creaking boards, and then a moment’s silence--broken by a
suppressed something which was not a shriek, or groan, or cry for help,
and yet might have been either or all three; and the words ‘My God!’
uttered in a voice it chilled him to hear.
He rushed out upon the instant. There, at last, was that dreadful
look--the very one he seemed to know so well and yet had never seen
before--upon her face. There she stood, frozen to the ground, gazing
with starting eyes, and livid cheeks, and every feature fixed and
ghastly, upon the man he had encountered in the dark last night. His
eyes met those of the locksmith. It was but a flash, an instant, a
breath upon a polished glass, and he was gone.
The locksmith was upon him--had the skirts of his streaming garment
almost in his grasp--when his arms were tightly clutched, and the widow
flung herself upon the ground before him.
‘The other way--the other way,’ she cried. ‘He went the other way.
Turn--turn!’
‘The other way! I see him now,’ rejoined the locksmith,
pointing--‘yonder--there--there is his shadow passing by that light.
What--who is this? Let me go.’
‘Come back, come back!’ exclaimed the woman, clasping him; ‘Do not
touch him on your life. I charge you, come back. He carries other lives
besides his own. Come back!’
‘What does this mean?’ cried the locksmith.
‘No matter what it means, don’t ask, don’t speak, don’t think about it.
He is not to be followed, checked, or stopped. Come back!’
The old man looked at her in wonder, as she writhed and clung about him;
and, borne down by her passion, suffered her to drag him into the house.
It was not until she had chained and double-locked the door, fastened
every bolt and bar with the heat and fury of a maniac, and drawn him
back into the room, that she turned upon him, once again, that stony
look of horror, and, sinking down into a chair, covered her face, and
shuddered, as though the hand of death were on her.
Chapter 6
Beyond all measure astonished by the strange occurrences which had
passed with so much violence and rapidity, the locksmith gazed upon the
shuddering figure in the chair like one half stupefied, and would have
gazed much longer, had not his tongue been loosened by compassion and
humanity.
‘You are ill,’ said Gabriel. ‘Let me call some neighbour in.’
‘Not for the world,’ she rejoined, motioning to him with her trembling
hand, and holding her face averted. ‘It is enough that you have been by,
to see this.’
‘Nay, more than enough--or less,’ said Gabriel.
‘Be it so,’ she returned. ‘As you like. Ask me no questions, I entreat
you.’
‘Neighbour,’ said the locksmith, after a pause. ‘Is this fair, or
reasonable, or just to yourself? Is it like you, who have known me so
long and sought my advice in all matters--like you, who from a girl have
had a strong mind and a staunch heart?’
‘I have need of them,’ she replied. ‘I am growing old, both in years and
care. Perhaps that, and too much trial, have made them weaker than they
used to be. Do not speak to me.’
‘How can I see what I have seen, and hold my peace!’ returned the
locksmith. ‘Who was that man, and why has his coming made this change in
you?’
She was silent, but held to the chair as though to save herself from
falling on the ground.
‘I take the licence of an old acquaintance, Mary,’ said the locksmith,
‘who has ever had a warm regard for you, and maybe has tried to prove it
when he could. Who is this ill-favoured man, and what has he to do with
you? Who is this ghost, that is only seen in the black nights and bad
weather? How does he know, and why does he haunt this house, whispering
through chinks and crevices, as if there was that between him and you,
which neither durst so much as speak aloud of? Who is he?’
‘You do well to say he haunts this house,’ returned the widow, faintly.
‘His shadow has been upon it and me, in light and darkness, at noonday
and midnight. And now, at last, he has come in the body!’
‘But he wouldn’t have gone in the body,’ returned the locksmith with
some irritation, ‘if you had left my arms and legs at liberty. What
riddle is this?’
‘It is one,’ she answered, rising as she spoke, ‘that must remain for
ever as it is. I dare not say more than that.’
‘Dare not!’ repeated the wondering locksmith.
‘Do not press me,’ she replied. ‘I am sick and faint, and every faculty
of life seems dead within me.--No!--Do not touch me, either.’
Gabriel, who had stepped forward to render her assistance, fell back as
she made this hasty exclamation, and regarded her in silent wonder.
‘Let me go my way alone,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and let the hands of
no honest man touch mine to-night.’ When she had tottered to the door,
she turned, and added with a stronger effort, ‘This is a secret, which,
of necessity, I trust to you. You are a true man. As you have ever been
good and kind to me,--keep it. If any noise was heard above, make some
excuse--say anything but what you really saw, and never let a word or
look between us, recall this circumstance. I trust to you. Mind, I trust
to you. How much I trust, you never can conceive.’
Casting her eyes upon him for an instant, she withdrew, and left him
there alone.
Gabriel, not knowing what to think, stood staring at the door with a
countenance full of surprise and dismay. The more he pondered on
what had passed, the less able he was to give it any favourable
interpretation. To find this widow woman, whose life for so many years
had been supposed to be one of solitude and retirement, and who, in her
quiet suffering character, had gained the good opinion and respect of
all who knew her--to find her linked mysteriously with an ill-omened
man, alarmed at his appearance, and yet favouring his escape, was a
discovery that pained as much as startled him. Her reliance on his
secrecy, and his tacit acquiescence, increased his distress of mind. If
he had spoken boldly, persisted in questioning her, detained her
when she rose to leave the room, made any kind of protest, instead of
silently compromising himself, as he felt he had done, he would have
been more at ease.
‘Why did I let her say it was a secret, and she trusted it to me!’ said
Gabriel, putting his wig on one side to scratch his head with greater
ease, and looking ruefully at the fire. ‘I have no more readiness than
old John himself. Why didn’t I say firmly, “You have no right to such
secrets, and I demand of you to tell me what this means,” instead of
standing gaping at her, like an old moon-calf as I am! But there’s my
weakness. I can be obstinate enough with men if need be, but women may
twist me round their fingers at their pleasure.’
He took his wig off outright as he made this reflection, and, warming
his handkerchief at the fire began to rub and polish his bald head with
it, until it glistened again.
‘And yet,’ said the locksmith, softening under this soothing process,
and stopping to smile, ‘it MAY be nothing. Any drunken brawler trying to
make his way into the house, would have alarmed a quiet soul like her.
But then’--and here was the vexation--‘how came it to be that man; how
comes he to have this influence over her; how came she to favour his
getting away from me; and, more than all, how came she not to say it
was a sudden fright, and nothing more? It’s a sad thing to have, in one
minute, reason to mistrust a person I have known so long, and an old
sweetheart into the bargain; but what else can I do, with all this upon
my mind!--Is that Barnaby outside there?’
‘Ay!’ he cried, looking in and nodding. ‘Sure enough it’s Barnaby--how
did you guess?’
‘By your shadow,’ said the locksmith.
‘Oho!’ cried Barnaby, glancing over his shoulder, ‘He’s a merry fellow,
that shadow, and keeps close to me, though I AM silly. We have such
pranks, such walks, such runs, such gambols on the grass! Sometimes
he’ll be half as tall as a church steeple, and sometimes no bigger
than a dwarf. Now, he goes on before, and now behind, and anon he’ll
be stealing on, on this side, or on that, stopping whenever I stop, and
thinking I can’t see him, though I have my eye on him sharp enough. Oh!
he’s a merry fellow. Tell me--is he silly too? I think he is.’
‘Why?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Because he never tires of mocking me, but does it all day long.--Why
don’t you come?’
‘Where?’
‘Upstairs. He wants you. Stay--where’s HIS shadow? Come. You’re a wise
man; tell me that.’
‘Beside him, Barnaby; beside him, I suppose,’ returned the locksmith.
‘No!’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Guess again.’
‘Gone out a walking, maybe?’
‘He has changed shadows with a woman,’ the idiot whispered in his ear,
and then fell back with a look of triumph. ‘Her shadow’s always with
him, and his with her. That’s sport I think, eh?’
‘Barnaby,’ said the locksmith, with a grave look; ‘come hither, lad.’
‘I know what you want to say. I know!’ he replied, keeping away from
him. ‘But I’m cunning, I’m silent. I only say so much to you--are you
ready?’ As he spoke, he caught up the light, and waved it with a wild
laugh above his head.
‘Softly--gently,’ said the locksmith, exerting all his influence to keep
him calm and quiet. ‘I thought you had been asleep.’
‘So I HAVE been asleep,’ he rejoined, with widely-opened eyes. ‘There
have been great faces coming and going--close to my face, and then a
mile away--low places to creep through, whether I would or no--high
churches to fall down from--strange creatures crowded up together neck
and heels, to sit upon the bed--that’s sleep, eh?’
‘Dreams, Barnaby, dreams,’ said the locksmith.
‘Dreams!’ he echoed softly, drawing closer to him. ‘Those are not
dreams.’
‘What are,’ replied the locksmith, ‘if they are not?’
‘I dreamed,’ said Barnaby, passing his arm through Varden’s, and peering
close into his face as he answered in a whisper, ‘I dreamed just now
that something--it was in the shape of a man--followed me--came softly
after me--wouldn’t let me be--but was always hiding and crouching, like
a cat in dark corners, waiting till I should pass; when it crept out and
came softly after me.--Did you ever see me run?’
‘Many a time, you know.’
‘You never saw me run as I did in this dream. Still it came creeping on
to worry me. Nearer, nearer, nearer--I ran faster--leaped--sprung out
of bed, and to the window--and there, in the street below--but he is
waiting for us. Are you coming?’
‘What in the street below, Barnaby?’ said Varden, imagining that
he traced some connection between this vision and what had actually
occurred.
Barnaby looked into his face, muttered incoherently, waved the light
above his head again, laughed, and drawing the locksmith’s arm more
tightly through his own, led him up the stairs in silence.
They entered a homely bedchamber, garnished in a scanty way with chairs,
whose spindle-shanks bespoke their age, and other furniture of very
little worth; but clean and neatly kept. Reclining in an easy-chair
before the fire, pale and weak from waste of blood, was Edward Chester,
the young gentleman who had been the first to quit the Maypole on the
previous night, and who, extending his hand to the locksmith, welcomed
him as his preserver and friend.
‘Say no more, sir, say no more,’ said Gabriel. ‘I hope I would have done
at least as much for any man in such a strait, and most of all for you,
sir. A certain young lady,’ he added, with some hesitation, ‘has done us
many a kind turn, and we naturally feel--I hope I give you no offence in
saying this, sir?’
The young man smiled and shook his head; at the same time moving in his
chair as if in pain.
‘It’s no great matter,’ he said, in answer to the locksmith’s
sympathising look, ‘a mere uneasiness arising at least as much from
being cooped up here, as from the slight wound I have, or from the loss
of blood. Be seated, Mr Varden.’
‘If I may make so bold, Mr Edward, as to lean upon your chair,’ returned
the locksmith, accommodating his action to his speech, and bending over
him, ‘I’ll stand here for the convenience of speaking low. Barnaby is
not in his quietest humour to-night, and at such times talking never
does him good.’
They both glanced at the subject of this remark, who had taken a seat on
the other side of the fire, and, smiling vacantly, was making puzzles on
his fingers with a skein of string.
‘Pray, tell me, sir,’ said Varden, dropping his voice still lower,
‘exactly what happened last night. I have my reason for inquiring. You
left the Maypole, alone?’
‘And walked homeward alone, until I had nearly reached the place where
you found me, when I heard the gallop of a horse.’
‘Behind you?’ said the locksmith.
‘Indeed, yes--behind me. It was a single rider, who soon overtook me,
and checking his horse, inquired the way to London.’
‘You were on the alert, sir, knowing how many highwaymen there are,
scouring the roads in all directions?’ said Varden.
‘I was, but I had only a stick, having imprudently left my pistols
in their holster-case with the landlord’s son. I directed him as he
desired. Before the words had passed my lips, he rode upon me furiously,
as if bent on trampling me down beneath his horse’s hoofs. In starting
aside, I slipped and fell. You found me with this stab and an ugly
bruise or two, and without my purse--in which he found little enough for
his pains. And now, Mr Varden,’ he added, shaking the locksmith by the
hand, ‘saving the extent of my gratitude to you, you know as much as I.’
‘Except,’ said Gabriel, bending down yet more, and looking cautiously
towards their silent neighhour, ‘except in respect of the robber
himself. What like was he, sir? Speak low, if you please. Barnaby means
no harm, but I have watched him oftener than you, and I know, little as
you would think it, that he’s listening now.’
It required a strong confidence in the locksmith’s veracity to lead any
one to this belief, for every sense and faculty that Barnaby possessed,
seemed to be fixed upon his game, to the exclusion of all other things.
Something in the young man’s face expressed this opinion, for Gabriel
repeated what he had just said, more earnestly than before, and with
another glance towards Barnaby, again asked what like the man was.
‘The night was so dark,’ said Edward, ‘the attack so sudden, and he so
wrapped and muffled up, that I can hardly say. It seems that--’
‘Don’t mention his name, sir,’ returned the locksmith, following his
look towards Barnaby; ‘I know HE saw him. I want to know what YOU saw.’
‘All I remember is,’ said Edward, ‘that as he checked his horse his
hat was blown off. He caught it, and replaced it on his head, which
I observed was bound with a dark handkerchief. A stranger entered the
Maypole while I was there, whom I had not seen--for I had sat apart for
reasons of my own--and when I rose to leave the room and glanced round,
he was in the shadow of the chimney and hidden from my sight. But, if he
and the robber were two different persons, their voices were strangely
and most remarkably alike; for directly the man addressed me in the
road, I recognised his speech again.’
‘It is as I feared. The very man was here to-night,’ thought the
locksmith, changing colour. ‘What dark history is this!’
‘Halloa!’ cried a hoarse voice in his ear. ‘Halloa, halloa, halloa! Bow
wow wow. What’s the matter here! Hal-loa!’
The speaker--who made the locksmith start as if he had been some
supernatural agent--was a large raven, who had perched upon the top of
the easy-chair, unseen by him and Edward, and listened with a polite
attention and a most extraordinary appearance of comprehending every
word, to all they had said up to this point; turning his head from one
to the other, as if his office were to judge between them, and it were
of the very last importance that he should not lose a word.
‘Look at him!’ said Varden, divided between admiration of the bird and a
kind of fear of him. ‘Was there ever such a knowing imp as that! Oh he’s
a dreadful fellow!’
The raven, with his head very much on one side, and his bright eye
shining like a diamond, preserved a thoughtful silence for a few
seconds, and then replied in a voice so hoarse and distant, that it
seemed to come through his thick feathers rather than out of his mouth.
‘Halloa, halloa, halloa! What’s the matter here! Keep up your spirits.
Never say die. Bow wow wow. I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a devil.
Hurrah!’--And then, as if exulting in his infernal character, he began
to whistle.
‘I more than half believe he speaks the truth. Upon my word I do,’
said Varden. ‘Do you see how he looks at me, as if he knew what I was
saying?’
To which the bird, balancing himself on tiptoe, as it were, and moving
his body up and down in a sort of grave dance, rejoined, ‘I’m a devil,
I’m a devil, I’m a devil,’ and flapped his wings against his sides as
if he were bursting with laughter. Barnaby clapped his hands, and fairly
rolled upon the ground in an ecstasy of delight.
‘Strange companions, sir,’ said the locksmith, shaking his head, and
looking from one to the other. ‘The bird has all the wit.’
‘Strange indeed!’ said Edward, holding out his forefinger to the raven,
who, in acknowledgment of the attention, made a dive at it immediately
with his iron bill. ‘Is he old?’
‘A mere boy, sir,’ replied the locksmith. ‘A hundred and twenty, or
thereabouts. Call him down, Barnaby, my man.’
‘Call him!’ echoed Barnaby, sitting upright upon the floor, and staring
vacantly at Gabriel, as he thrust his hair back from his face. ‘But who
can make him come! He calls me, and makes me go where he will. He goes
on before, and I follow. He’s the master, and I’m the man. Is that the
truth, Grip?’
The raven gave a short, comfortable, confidential kind of croak;--a most
expressive croak, which seemed to say, ‘You needn’t let these fellows
into our secrets. We understand each other. It’s all right.’
‘I make HIM come?’ cried Barnaby, pointing to the bird. ‘Him, who never
goes to sleep, or so much as winks!--Why, any time of night, you may see
his eyes in my dark room, shining like two sparks. And every night, and
all night too, he’s broad awake, talking to himself, thinking what he
shall do to-morrow, where we shall go, and what he shall steal, and
hide, and bury. I make HIM come! Ha ha ha!’
On second thoughts, the bird appeared disposed to come of himself. After
a short survey of the ground, and a few sidelong looks at the ceiling
and at everybody present in turn, he fluttered to the floor, and went
to Barnaby--not in a hop, or walk, or run, but in a pace like that of
a very particular gentleman with exceedingly tight boots on, trying to
walk fast over loose pebbles. Then, stepping into his extended hand,
and condescending to be held out at arm’s length, he gave vent to a
succession of sounds, not unlike the drawing of some eight or ten dozen
of long corks, and again asserted his brimstone birth and parentage with
great distinctness.
The locksmith shook his head--perhaps in some doubt of the creature’s
being really nothing but a bird--perhaps in pity for Barnaby, who by
this time had him in his arms, and was rolling about, with him, on the
ground. As he raised his eyes from the poor fellow he encountered those
of his mother, who had entered the room, and was looking on in silence.
She was quite white in the face, even to her lips, but had wholly
subdued her emotion, and wore her usual quiet look. Varden fancied as he
glanced at her that she shrunk from his eye; and that she busied herself
about the wounded gentleman to avoid him the better.
It was time he went to bed, she said. He was to be removed to his own
home on the morrow, and he had already exceeded his time for sitting up,
by a full hour. Acting on this hint, the locksmith prepared to take his
leave.
‘By the bye,’ said Edward, as he shook him by the hand, and looked from
him to Mrs Rudge and back again, ‘what noise was that below? I heard
your voice in the midst of it, and should have inquired before, but our
other conversation drove it from my memory. What was it?’
The locksmith looked towards her, and bit his lip. She leant against the
chair, and bent her eyes upon the ground. Barnaby too--he was listening.
--‘Some mad or drunken fellow, sir,’ Varden at length made answer,
looking steadily at the widow as he spoke. ‘He mistook the house, and
tried to force an entrance.’
She breathed more freely, but stood quite motionless. As the locksmith
said ‘Good night,’ and Barnaby caught up the candle to light him down
the stairs, she took it from him, and charged him--with more haste and
earnestness than so slight an occasion appeared to warrant--not to stir.
The raven followed them to satisfy himself that all was right below,
and when they reached the street-door, stood on the bottom stair drawing
corks out of number.
With a trembling hand she unfastened the chain and bolts, and turned
the key. As she had her hand upon the latch, the locksmith said in a low
voice,
‘I have told a lie to-night, for your sake, Mary, and for the sake of
bygone times and old acquaintance, when I would scorn to do so for my
own. I hope I may have done no harm, or led to none. I can’t help the
suspicions you have forced upon me, and I am loth, I tell you plainly,
to leave Mr Edward here. Take care he comes to no hurt. I doubt the
safety of this roof, and am glad he leaves it so soon. Now, let me go.’
For a moment she hid her face in her hands and wept; but resisting the
strong impulse which evidently moved her to reply, opened the door--no
wider than was sufficient for the passage of his body--and motioned him
away. As the locksmith stood upon the step, it was chained and locked
behind him, and the raven, in furtherance of these precautions, barked
like a lusty house-dog.
‘In league with that ill-looking figure that might have fallen from a
gibbet--he listening and hiding here--Barnaby first upon the spot last
night--can she who has always borne so fair a name be guilty of such
crimes in secret!’ said the locksmith, musing. ‘Heaven forgive me if I
am wrong, and send me just thoughts; but she is poor, the temptation
may be great, and we daily hear of things as strange.--Ay, bark away, my
friend. If there’s any wickedness going on, that raven’s in it, I’ll be
sworn.’
Chapter 7
Mrs Varden was a lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper--a
phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to
make everybody more or less uncomfortable. Thus it generally happened,
that when other people were merry, Mrs Varden was dull; and that
when other people were dull, Mrs Varden was disposed to be amazingly
cheerful. Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature,
that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in
respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
loyal and neutral in an instant, but would sometimes ring the changes
backwards and forwards on all possible moods and flights in one short
quarter of an hour; performing, as it were, a kind of triple bob major
on the peal of instruments in the female belfry, with a skilfulness and
rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her.
It had been observed in this good lady (who did not want for personal
attractions, being plump and buxom to look at, though like her
fair daughter, somewhat short in stature) that this uncertainty of
disposition strengthened and increased with her temporal prosperity; and
divers wise men and matrons, on friendly terms with the locksmith and
his family, even went so far as to assert, that a tumble down some
half-dozen rounds in the world’s ladder--such as the breaking of the
bank in which her husband kept his money, or some little fall of that
kind--would be the making of her, and could hardly fail to render her
one of the most agreeable companions in existence. Whether they were
right or wrong in this conjecture, certain it is that minds, like
bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from
mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by
remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.
Mrs Varden’s chief aider and abettor, and at the same time her principal
victim and object of wrath, was her single domestic servant, one Miss
Miggs; or as she was called, in conformity with those prejudices of
society which lop and top from poor hand-maidens all such genteel
excrescences--Miggs. This Miggs was a tall young lady, very much
addicted to pattens in private life; slender and shrewish, of a rather
uncomfortable figure, and though not absolutely ill-looking, of a sharp
and acid visage. As a general principle and abstract proposition, Miggs
held the male sex to be utterly contemptible and unworthy of notice;
to be fickle, false, base, sottish, inclined to perjury, and wholly
undeserving. When particularly exasperated against them (which, scandal
said, was when Sim Tappertit slighted her most) she was accustomed to
wish with great emphasis that the whole race of women could but die off,
in order that the men might be brought to know the real value of the
blessings by which they set so little store; nay, her feeling for her
order ran so high, that she sometimes declared, if she could only have
good security for a fair, round number--say ten thousand--of young
virgins following her example, she would, to spite mankind, hang, drown,
stab, or poison herself, with a joy past all expression.
It was the voice of Miggs that greeted the locksmith, when he knocked at
his own house, with a shrill cry of ‘Who’s there?’
‘Me, girl, me,’ returned Gabriel.
What, already, sir!’ said Miggs, opening the door with a look of
surprise. ‘We were just getting on our nightcaps to sit up,--me and
mistress. Oh, she has been SO bad!’
Miggs said this with an air of uncommon candour and concern; but the
parlour-door was standing open, and as Gabriel very well knew for whose
ears it was designed, he regarded her with anything but an approving
look as he passed in.
‘Master’s come home, mim,’ cried Miggs, running before him into the
parlour. ‘You was wrong, mim, and I was right. I thought he wouldn’t
keep us up so late, two nights running, mim. Master’s always considerate
so far. I’m so glad, mim, on your account. I’m a little’--here Miggs
simpered--‘a little sleepy myself; I’ll own it now, mim, though I said I
wasn’t when you asked me. It ain’t of no consequence, mim, of course.’
‘You had better,’ said the locksmith, who most devoutly wished that
Barnaby’s raven was at Miggs’s ankles, ‘you had better get to bed at
once then.’
‘Thanking you kindly, sir,’ returned Miggs, ‘I couldn’t take my rest in
peace, nor fix my thoughts upon my prayers, otherways than that I knew
mistress was comfortable in her bed this night; by rights she ought to
have been there, hours ago.’
‘You’re talkative, mistress,’ said Varden, pulling off his greatcoat,
and looking at her askew.
‘Taking the hint, sir,’ cried Miggs, with a flushed face, ‘and thanking
you for it most kindly, I will make bold to say, that if I give offence
by having consideration for my mistress, I do not ask your pardon, but
am content to get myself into trouble and to be in suffering.’
Here Mrs Varden, who, with her countenance shrouded in a large nightcap,
had been all this time intent upon the Protestant Manual, looked round,
and acknowledged Miggs’s championship by commanding her to hold her
tongue.
Every little bone in Miggs’s throat and neck developed itself with a
spitefulness quite alarming, as she replied, ‘Yes, mim, I will.’
‘How do you find yourself now, my dear?’ said the locksmith, taking a
chair near his wife (who had resumed her book), and rubbing his knees
hard as he made the inquiry.
‘You’re very anxious to know, an’t you?’ returned Mrs Varden, with
her eyes upon the print. ‘You, that have not been near me all day, and
wouldn’t have been if I was dying!’
‘My dear Martha--’ said Gabriel.
Mrs Varden turned over to the next page; then went back again to the
bottom line over leaf to be quite sure of the last words; and then went
on reading with an appearance of the deepest interest and study.
‘My dear Martha,’ said the locksmith, ‘how can you say such things,
when you know you don’t mean them? If you were dying! Why, if there was
anything serious the matter with you, Martha, shouldn’t I be in constant
attendance upon you?’
‘Yes!’ cried Mrs Varden, bursting into tears, ‘yes, you would. I don’t
doubt it, Varden. Certainly you would. That’s as much as to tell me that
you would be hovering round me like a vulture, waiting till the breath
was out of my body, that you might go and marry somebody else.’
Miggs groaned in sympathy--a little short groan, checked in its birth,
and changed into a cough. It seemed to say, ‘I can’t help it. It’s wrung
from me by the dreadful brutality of that monster master.’
‘But you’ll break my heart one of these days,’ added Mrs Varden, with
more resignation, ‘and then we shall both be happy. My only desire is
to see Dolly comfortably settled, and when she is, you may settle ME as
soon as you like.’
‘Ah!’ cried Miggs--and coughed again.
Poor Gabriel twisted his wig about in silence for a long time, and then
said mildly, ‘Has Dolly gone to bed?’
‘Your master speaks to you,’ said Mrs Varden, looking sternly over her
shoulder at Miss Miggs in waiting.
‘No, my dear, I spoke to you,’ suggested the locksmith.
‘Did you hear me, Miggs?’ cried the obdurate lady, stamping her foot
upon the ground. ‘YOU are beginning to despise me now, are you? But this
is example!’
At this cruel rebuke, Miggs, whose tears were always ready, for large
or small parties, on the shortest notice and the most reasonable terms,
fell a crying violently; holding both her hands tight upon her heart
meanwhile, as if nothing less would prevent its splitting into small
fragments. Mrs Varden, who likewise possessed that faculty in high
perfection, wept too, against Miggs; and with such effect that Miggs
gave in after a time, and, except for an occasional sob, which seemed to
threaten some remote intention of breaking out again, left her mistress
in possession of the field. Her superiority being thoroughly asserted,
that lady soon desisted likewise, and fell into a quiet melancholy.
The relief was so great, and the fatiguing occurrences of last night so
completely overpowered the locksmith, that he nodded in his chair, and
would doubtless have slept there all night, but for the voice of Mrs
Varden, which, after a pause of some five minutes, awoke him with a
start.
‘If I am ever,’ said Mrs V.--not scolding, but in a sort of monotonous
remonstrance--‘in spirits, if I am ever cheerful, if I am ever more than
usually disposed to be talkative and comfortable, this is the way I am
treated.’
‘Such spirits as you was in too, mim, but half an hour ago!’ cried
Miggs. ‘I never see such company!’
‘Because,’ said Mrs Varden, ‘because I never interfere or interrupt;
because I never question where anybody comes or goes; because my whole
mind and soul is bent on saving where I can save, and labouring in this
house;--therefore, they try me as they do.’
‘Martha,’ urged the locksmith, endeavouring to look as wakeful as
possible, ‘what is it you complain of? I really came home with every
wish and desire to be happy. I did, indeed.’
‘What do I complain of!’ retorted his wife. ‘Is it a chilling thing to
have one’s husband sulking and falling asleep directly he comes home--to
have him freezing all one’s warm-heartedness, and throwing cold water
over the fireside? Is it natural, when I know he went out upon a matter
in which I am as much interested as anybody can be, that I should wish
to know all that has happened, or that he should tell me without my
begging and praying him to do it? Is that natural, or is it not?’
‘I am very sorry, Martha,’ said the good-natured locksmith. ‘I was
really afraid you were not disposed to talk pleasantly; I’ll tell you
everything; I shall only be too glad, my dear.’
‘No, Varden,’ returned his wife, rising with dignity. ‘I dare say--thank
you! I’m not a child to be corrected one minute and petted the next--I’m
a little too old for that, Varden. Miggs, carry the light.--YOU can be
cheerful, Miggs, at least.’
Miggs, who, to this moment, had been in the very depths of compassionate
despondency, passed instantly into the liveliest state conceivable,
and tossing her head as she glanced towards the locksmith, bore off her
mistress and the light together.
‘Now, who would think,’ thought Varden, shrugging his shoulders and
drawing his chair nearer to the fire, ‘that that woman could ever be
pleasant and agreeable? And yet she can be. Well, well, all of us have
our faults. I’ll not be hard upon hers. We have been man and wife too
long for that.’
He dozed again--not the less pleasantly, perhaps, for his hearty temper.
While his eyes were closed, the door leading to the upper stairs was
partially opened; and a head appeared, which, at sight of him, hastily
drew back again.
‘I wish,’ murmured Gabriel, waking at the noise, and looking round
the room, ‘I wish somebody would marry Miggs. But that’s impossible! I
wonder whether there’s any madman alive, who would marry Miggs!’
This was such a vast speculation that he fell into a doze again, and
slept until the fire was quite burnt out. At last he roused himself; and
having double-locked the street-door according to custom, and put the
key in his pocket, went off to bed.
He had not left the room in darkness many minutes, when the head again
appeared, and Sim Tappertit entered, bearing in his hand a little lamp.
‘What the devil business has he to stop up so late!’ muttered Sim,
passing into the workshop, and setting it down upon the forge. ‘Here’s
half the night gone already. There’s only one good that has ever come to
me, out of this cursed old rusty mechanical trade, and that’s this piece
of ironmongery, upon my soul!’
As he spoke, he drew from the right hand, or rather right leg pocket of
his smalls, a clumsy large-sized key, which he inserted cautiously in
the lock his master had secured, and softly opened the door. That done,
he replaced his piece of secret workmanship in his pocket; and leaving
the lamp burning, and closing the door carefully and without noise,
stole out into the street--as little suspected by the locksmith in his
sound deep sleep, as by Barnaby himself in his phantom-haunted dreams.
Chapter 8
Clear of the locksmith’s house, Sim Tappertit laid aside his cautious
manner, and assuming in its stead that of a ruffling, swaggering, roving
blade, who would rather kill a man than otherwise, and eat him too if
needful, made the best of his way along the darkened streets.
Half pausing for an instant now and then to smite his pocket and assure
himself of the safety of his master key, he hurried on to Barbican, and
turning into one of the narrowest of the narrow streets which diverged
from that centre, slackened his pace and wiped his heated brow, as if
the termination of his walk were near at hand.
It was not a very choice spot for midnight expeditions, being in truth
one of more than questionable character, and of an appearance by no
means inviting. From the main street he had entered, itself little
better than an alley, a low-browed doorway led into a blind court, or
yard, profoundly dark, unpaved, and reeking with stagnant odours. Into
this ill-favoured pit, the locksmith’s vagrant ‘prentice groped his way;
and stopping at a house from whose defaced and rotten front the rude
effigy of a bottle swung to and fro like some gibbeted malefactor,
struck thrice upon an iron grating with his foot. After listening in
vain for some response to his signal, Mr Tappertit became impatient, and
struck the grating thrice again.
A further delay ensued, but it was not of long duration. The ground
seemed to open at his feet, and a ragged head appeared.
‘Is that the captain?’ said a voice as ragged as the head.
‘Yes,’ replied Mr Tappertit haughtily, descending as he spoke, ‘who
should it be?’
‘It’s so late, we gave you up,’ returned the voice, as its owner stopped
to shut and fasten the grating. ‘You’re late, sir.’
‘Lead on,’ said Mr Tappertit, with a gloomy majesty, ‘and make remarks
when I require you. Forward!’
This latter word of command was perhaps somewhat theatrical and
unnecessary, inasmuch as the descent was by a very narrow, steep, and
slippery flight of steps, and any rashness or departure from the beaten
track must have ended in a yawning water-butt. But Mr Tappertit being,
like some other great commanders, favourable to strong effects, and
personal display, cried ‘Forward!’ again, in the hoarsest voice he could
assume; and led the way, with folded arms and knitted brows, to the
cellar down below, where there was a small copper fixed in one corner,
a chair or two, a form and table, a glimmering fire, and a truckle-bed,
covered with a ragged patchwork rug.
‘Welcome, noble captain!’ cried a lanky figure, rising as from a nap.
The captain nodded. Then, throwing off his outer coat, he stood composed
in all his dignity, and eyed his follower over.
‘What news to-night?’ he asked, when he had looked into his very soul.
‘Nothing particular,’ replied the other, stretching himself--and he was
so long already that it was quite alarming to see him do it--‘how come
you to be so late?’
‘No matter,’ was all the captain deigned to say in answer. ‘Is the room
prepared?’
‘It is,’ replied the follower.
‘The comrade--is he here?’
‘Yes. And a sprinkling of the others--you hear ‘em?’
‘Playing skittles!’ said the captain moodily. ‘Light-hearted revellers!’
There was no doubt respecting the particular amusement in which these
heedless spirits were indulging, for even in the close and stifling
atmosphere of the vault, the noise sounded like distant thunder. It
certainly appeared, at first sight, a singular spot to choose, for that
or any other purpose of relaxation, if the other cellars answered to
the one in which this brief colloquy took place; for the floors were of
sodden earth, the walls and roof of damp bare brick tapestried with
the tracks of snails and slugs; the air was sickening, tainted, and
offensive. It seemed, from one strong flavour which was uppermost among
the various odours of the place, that it had, at no very distant period,
been used as a storehouse for cheeses; a circumstance which, while it
accounted for the greasy moisture that hung about it, was agreeably
suggestive of rats. It was naturally damp besides, and little trees of
fungus sprung from every mouldering corner.
The proprietor of this charming retreat, and owner of the ragged head
before mentioned--for he wore an old tie-wig as bare and frowzy as a
stunted hearth-broom--had by this time joined them; and stood a little
apart, rubbing his hands, wagging his hoary bristled chin, and smiling
in silence. His eyes were closed; but had they been wide open, it would
have been easy to tell, from the attentive expression of the face he
turned towards them--pale and unwholesome as might be expected in one
of his underground existence--and from a certain anxious raising and
quivering of the lids, that he was blind.
‘Even Stagg hath been asleep,’ said the long comrade, nodding towards
this person.
‘Sound, captain, sound!’ cried the blind man; ‘what does my noble
captain drink--is it brandy, rum, usquebaugh? Is it soaked gunpowder, or
blazing oil? Give it a name, heart of oak, and we’d get it for you, if
it was wine from a bishop’s cellar, or melted gold from King George’s
mint.’
‘See,’ said Mr Tappertit haughtily, ‘that it’s something strong, and
comes quick; and so long as you take care of that, you may bring it from
the devil’s cellar, if you like.’
‘Boldly said, noble captain!’ rejoined the blind man. ‘Spoken like the
‘Prentices’ Glory. Ha, ha! From the devil’s cellar! A brave joke! The
captain joketh. Ha, ha, ha!’
‘I’ll tell you what, my fine feller,’ said Mr Tappertit, eyeing the
host over as he walked to a closet, and took out a bottle and glass as
carelessly as if he had been in full possession of his sight, ‘if you
make that row, you’ll find that the captain’s very far from joking, and
so I tell you.’
‘He’s got his eyes on me!’ cried Stagg, stopping short on his way back,
and affecting to screen his face with the bottle. ‘I feel ‘em though I
can’t see ‘em. Take ‘em off, noble captain. Remove ‘em, for they pierce
like gimlets.’
Mr Tappertit smiled grimly at his comrade; and twisting out one more
look--a kind of ocular screw--under the influence of which the blind man
feigned to undergo great anguish and torture, bade him, in a softened
tone, approach, and hold his peace.
‘I obey you, captain,’ cried Stagg, drawing close to him and filling
out a bumper without spilling a drop, by reason that he held his little
finger at the brim of the glass, and stopped at the instant the liquor
touched it, ‘drink, noble governor. Death to all masters, life to all
‘prentices, and love to all fair damsels. Drink, brave general, and warm
your gallant heart!’
Mr Tappertit condescended to take the glass from his outstretched hand.
Stagg then dropped on one knee, and gently smoothed the calves of his
legs, with an air of humble admiration.
‘That I had but eyes!’ he cried, ‘to behold my captain’s symmetrical
proportions! That I had but eyes, to look upon these twin invaders of
domestic peace!’
‘Get out!’ said Mr Tappertit, glancing downward at his favourite limbs.
‘Go along, will you, Stagg!’
‘When I touch my own afterwards,’ cried the host, smiting them
reproachfully, ‘I hate ‘em. Comparatively speaking, they’ve no more
shape than wooden legs, beside these models of my noble captain’s.’
‘Yours!’ exclaimed Mr Tappertit. ‘No, I should think not. Don’t talk
about those precious old toothpicks in the same breath with mine; that’s
rather too much. Here. Take the glass. Benjamin. Lead on. To business!’
With these words, he folded his arms again; and frowning with a sullen
majesty, passed with his companion through a little door at the upper
end of the cellar, and disappeared; leaving Stagg to his private
meditations.
The vault they entered, strewn with sawdust and dimly lighted, was
between the outer one from which they had just come, and that in which
the skittle-players were diverting themselves; as was manifested by
the increased noise and clamour of tongues, which was suddenly stopped,
however, and replaced by a dead silence, at a signal from the long
comrade. Then, this young gentleman, going to a little cupboard,
returned with a thigh-bone, which in former times must have been part
and parcel of some individual at least as long as himself, and placed
the same in the hands of Mr Tappertit; who, receiving it as a sceptre
and staff of authority, cocked his three-cornered hat fiercely on the
top of his head, and mounted a large table, whereon a chair of state,
cheerfully ornamented with a couple of skulls, was placed ready for his
reception.
He had no sooner assumed this position, than another young gentleman
appeared, bearing in his arms a huge clasped book, who made him a
profound obeisance, and delivering it to the long comrade, advanced to
the table, and turning his back upon it, stood there Atlas-wise. Then,
the long comrade got upon the table too; and seating himself in a lower
chair than Mr Tappertit’s, with much state and ceremony, placed the
large book on the shoulders of their mute companion as deliberately as
if he had been a wooden desk, and prepared to make entries therein with
a pen of corresponding size.
When the long comrade had made these preparations, he looked towards Mr
Tappertit; and Mr Tappertit, flourishing the bone, knocked nine times
therewith upon one of the skulls. At the ninth stroke, a third young
gentleman emerged from the door leading to the skittle ground, and
bowing low, awaited his commands.
‘Prentice!’ said the mighty captain, ‘who waits without?’
The ‘prentice made answer that a stranger was in attendance, who claimed
admission into that secret society of ‘Prentice Knights, and a free
participation in their rights, privileges, and immunities. Thereupon
Mr Tappertit flourished the bone again, and giving the other skull a
prodigious rap on the nose, exclaimed ‘Admit him!’ At these dread words
the ‘prentice bowed once more, and so withdrew as he had come.
There soon appeared at the same door, two other ‘prentices, having
between them a third, whose eyes were bandaged, and who was attired in a
bag-wig, and a broad-skirted coat, trimmed with tarnished lace; and who
was girded with a sword, in compliance with the laws of the Institution
regulating the introduction of candidates, which required them to
assume this courtly dress, and kept it constantly in lavender, for
their convenience. One of the conductors of this novice held a rusty
blunderbuss pointed towards his ear, and the other a very ancient
sabre, with which he carved imaginary offenders as he came along in a
sanguinary and anatomical manner.
As this silent group advanced, Mr Tappertit fixed his hat upon his head.
The novice then laid his hand upon his breast and bent before him. When
he had humbled himself sufficiently, the captain ordered the bandage to
be removed, and proceeded to eye him over.
‘Ha!’ said the captain, thoughtfully, when he had concluded this ordeal.
‘Proceed.’
The long comrade read aloud as follows:--‘Mark Gilbert. Age, nineteen.
Bound to Thomas Curzon, hosier, Golden Fleece, Aldgate. Loves Curzon’s
daughter. Cannot say that Curzon’s daughter loves him. Should think it
probable. Curzon pulled his ears last Tuesday week.’
‘How!’ cried the captain, starting.
‘For looking at his daughter, please you,’ said the novice.
‘Write Curzon down, Denounced,’ said the captain. ‘Put a black cross
against the name of Curzon.’
‘So please you,’ said the novice, ‘that’s not the worst--he calls his
‘prentice idle dog, and stops his beer unless he works to his liking. He
gives Dutch cheese, too, eating Cheshire, sir, himself; and Sundays out,
are only once a month.’
‘This,’ said Mr Tappert gravely, ‘is a flagrant case. Put two black
crosses to the name of Curzon.’
‘If the society,’ said the novice, who was an ill-looking, one-sided,
shambling lad, with sunken eyes set close together in his head--‘if the
society would burn his house down--for he’s not insured--or beat him
as he comes home from his club at night, or help me to carry off his
daughter, and marry her at the Fleet, whether she gave consent or no--’
Mr Tappertit waved his grizzly truncheon as an admonition to him not to
interrupt, and ordered three black crosses to the name of Curzon.
‘Which means,’ he said in gracious explanation, ‘vengeance, complete and
terrible. ‘Prentice, do you love the Constitution?’
To which the novice (being to that end instructed by his attendant
sponsors) replied ‘I do!’
‘The Church, the State, and everything established--but the masters?’
quoth the captain.
Again the novice said ‘I do.’
Having said it, he listened meekly to the captain, who in an address
prepared for such occasions, told him how that under that same
Constitution (which was kept in a strong box somewhere, but where
exactly he could not find out, or he would have endeavoured to procure a
copy of it), the ‘prentices had, in times gone by, had frequent holidays
of right, broken people’s heads by scores, defied their masters, nay,
even achieved some glorious murders in the streets, which privileges
had gradually been wrested from them, and in all which noble aspirations
they were now restrained; how the degrading checks imposed upon them
were unquestionably attributable to the innovating spirit of the times,
and how they united therefore to resist all change, except such change
as would restore those good old English customs, by which they would
stand or fall. After illustrating the wisdom of going backward, by
reference to that sagacious fish, the crab, and the not unfrequent
practice of the mule and donkey, he described their general objects;
which were briefly vengeance on their Tyrant Masters (of whose grievous
and insupportable oppression no ‘prentice could entertain a moment’s
doubt) and the restoration, as aforesaid, of their ancient rights and
holidays; for neither of which objects were they now quite ripe, being
barely twenty strong, but which they pledged themselves to pursue with
fire and sword when needful. Then he described the oath which every
member of that small remnant of a noble body took, and which was of a
dreadful and impressive kind; binding him, at the bidding of his chief,
to resist and obstruct the Lord Mayor, sword-bearer, and chaplain; to
despise the authority of the sheriffs; and to hold the court of aldermen
as nought; but not on any account, in case the fulness of time should
bring a general rising of ‘prentices, to damage or in any way disfigure
Temple Bar, which was strictly constitutional and always to be
approached with reverence. Having gone over these several heads with
great eloquence and force, and having further informed the novice that
this society had its origin in his own teeming brain, stimulated by a
swelling sense of wrong and outrage, Mr Tappertit demanded whether he
had strength of heart to take the mighty pledge required, or whether he
would withdraw while retreat was yet in his power.
To this the novice made rejoinder, that he would take the vow, though
it should choke him; and it was accordingly administered with many
impressive circumstances, among which the lighting up of the two skulls
with a candle-end inside of each, and a great many flourishes with
the bone, were chiefly conspicuous; not to mention a variety of grave
exercises with the blunderbuss and sabre, and some dismal groaning by
unseen ‘prentices without. All these dark and direful ceremonies
being at length completed, the table was put aside, the chair of state
removed, the sceptre locked up in its usual cupboard, the doors of
communication between the three cellars thrown freely open, and the
‘Prentice Knights resigned themselves to merriment.
But Mr Tappertit, who had a soul above the vulgar herd, and who, on
account of his greatness, could only afford to be merry now and then,
threw himself on a bench with the air of a man who was faint with
dignity. He looked with an indifferent eye, alike on skittles, cards,
and dice, thinking only of the locksmith’s daughter, and the base
degenerate days on which he had fallen.
‘My noble captain neither games, nor sings, nor dances,’ said his host,
taking a seat beside him. ‘Drink, gallant general!’
Mr Tappertit drained the proffered goblet to the dregs; then thrust
his hands into his pockets, and with a lowering visage walked among the
skittles, while his followers (such is the influence of superior genius)
restrained the ardent ball, and held his little shins in dumb respect.
‘If I had been born a corsair or a pirate, a brigand, genteel highwayman
or patriot--and they’re the same thing,’ thought Mr Tappertit, musing
among the nine-pins, ‘I should have been all right. But to drag out a
ignoble existence unbeknown to mankind in general--patience! I will be
famous yet. A voice within me keeps on whispering Greatness. I shall
burst out one of these days, and when I do, what power can keep me down?
I feel my soul getting into my head at the idea. More drink there!’
‘The novice,’ pursued Mr Tappertit, not exactly in a voice of thunder,
for his tones, to say the truth were rather cracked and shrill--but very
impressively, notwithstanding--‘where is he?’
‘Here, noble captain!’ cried Stagg. ‘One stands beside me who I feel is
a stranger.’
‘Have you,’ said Mr Tappertit, letting his gaze fall on the party
indicated, who was indeed the new knight, by this time restored to his
own apparel; ‘Have you the impression of your street-door key in wax?’
The long comrade anticipated the reply, by producing it from the shelf
on which it had been deposited.
‘Good,’ said Mr Tappertit, scrutinising it attentively, while a
breathless silence reigned around; for he had constructed secret
door-keys for the whole society, and perhaps owed something of his
influence to that mean and trivial circumstance--on such slight
accidents do even men of mind depend!--‘This is easily made. Come
hither, friend.’
With that, he beckoned the new knight apart, and putting the pattern in
his pocket, motioned to him to walk by his side.
‘And so,’ he said, when they had taken a few turns up and down, you--you
love your master’s daughter?’
‘I do,’ said the ‘prentice. ‘Honour bright. No chaff, you know.’
‘Have you,’ rejoined Mr Tappertit, catching him by the wrist, and
giving him a look which would have been expressive of the most deadly
malevolence, but for an accidental hiccup that rather interfered with
it; ‘have you a--a rival?’
‘Not as I know on,’ replied the ‘prentice.
‘If you had now--’ said Mr Tappertit--‘what would you--eh?--’
The ‘prentice looked fierce and clenched his fists.
‘It is enough,’ cried Mr Tappertit hastily, ‘we understand each other.
We are observed. I thank you.’
So saying, he cast him off again; and calling the long comrade aside
after taking a few hasty turns by himself, bade him immediately write
and post against the wall, a notice, proscribing one Joseph Willet
(commonly known as Joe) of Chigwell; forbidding all ‘Prentice Knights
to succour, comfort, or hold communion with him; and requiring them,
on pain of excommunication, to molest, hurt, wrong, annoy, and pick
quarrels with the said Joseph, whensoever and wheresoever they, or any
of them, should happen to encounter him.
Having relieved his mind by this energetic proceeding, he condescended
to approach the festive board, and warming by degrees, at length deigned
to preside, and even to enchant the company with a song. After this,
he rose to such a pitch as to consent to regale the society with a
hornpipe, which he actually performed to the music of a fiddle (played
by an ingenious member) with such surpassing agility and brilliancy of
execution, that the spectators could not be sufficiently enthusiastic in
their admiration; and their host protested, with tears in his eyes, that
he had never truly felt his blindness until that moment.
But the host withdrawing--probably to weep in secret--soon returned with
the information that it wanted little more than an hour of day, and that
all the cocks in Barbican had already begun to crow, as if their lives
depended on it. At this intelligence, the ‘Prentice Knights arose in
haste, and marshalling into a line, filed off one by one and dispersed
with all speed to their several homes, leaving their leader to pass the
grating last.
‘Good night, noble captain,’ whispered the blind man as he held it open
for his passage out; ‘Farewell, brave general. Bye, bye, illustrious
commander. Good luck go with you for a--conceited, bragging,
empty-headed, duck-legged idiot.’
With which parting words, coolly added as he listened to his receding
footsteps and locked the grate upon himself, he descended the steps,
and lighting the fire below the little copper, prepared, without
any assistance, for his daily occupation; which was to retail at the
area-head above pennyworths of broth and soup, and savoury puddings,
compounded of such scraps as were to be bought in the heap for the least
money at Fleet Market in the evening time; and for the sale of which
he had need to have depended chiefly on his private connection, for the
court had no thoroughfare, and was not that kind of place in which
many people were likely to take the air, or to frequent as an agreeable
promenade.
Chapter 9
Chronicler’s are privileged to enter where they list, to come and go
through keyholes, to ride upon the wind, to overcome, in their soarings
up and down, all obstacles of distance, time, and place. Thrice blessed
be this last consideration, since it enables us to follow the disdainful
Miggs even into the sanctity of her chamber, and to hold her in sweet
companionship through the dreary watches of the night!
Miss Miggs, having undone her mistress, as she phrased it (which means,
assisted to undress her), and having seen her comfortably to bed in
the back room on the first floor, withdrew to her own apartment, in
the attic story. Notwithstanding her declaration in the locksmith’s
presence, she was in no mood for sleep; so, putting her light upon the
table and withdrawing the little window curtain, she gazed out pensively
at the wild night sky.
Perhaps she wondered what star was destined for her habitation when
she had run her little course below; perhaps speculated which of those
glimmering spheres might be the natal orb of Mr Tappertit; perhaps
marvelled how they could gaze down on that perfidious creature, man, and
not sicken and turn green as chemists’ lamps; perhaps thought of nothing
in particular. Whatever she thought about, there she sat, until her
attention, alive to anything connected with the insinuating ‘prentice,
was attracted by a noise in the next room to her own--his room; the room
in which he slept, and dreamed--it might be, sometimes dreamed of her.
That he was not dreaming now, unless he was taking a walk in his sleep,
was clear, for every now and then there came a shuffling noise, as
though he were engaged in polishing the whitewashed wall; then a gentle
creaking of his door; then the faintest indication of his stealthy
footsteps on the landing-place outside. Noting this latter circumstance,
Miss Miggs turned pale and shuddered, as mistrusting his intentions; and
more than once exclaimed, below her breath, ‘Oh! what a Providence it
is, as I am bolted in!’--which, owing doubtless to her alarm, was a
confusion of ideas on her part between a bolt and its use; for though
there was one on the door, it was not fastened.
Miss Miggs’s sense of hearing, however, having as sharp an edge as her
temper, and being of the same snappish and suspicious kind, very soon
informed her that the footsteps passed her door, and appeared to have
some object quite separate and disconnected from herself. At this
discovery she became more alarmed than ever, and was about to give
utterance to those cries of ‘Thieves!’ and ‘Murder!’ which she had
hitherto restrained, when it occurred to her to look softly out, and see
that her fears had some good palpable foundation.
Looking out accordingly, and stretching her neck over the handrail,
she descried, to her great amazement, Mr Tappertit completely dressed,
stealing downstairs, one step at a time, with his shoes in one hand
and a lamp in the other. Following him with her eyes, and going down a
little way herself to get the better of an intervening angle, she beheld
him thrust his head in at the parlour-door, draw it back again with
great swiftness, and immediately begin a retreat upstairs with all
possible expedition.
‘Here’s mysteries!’ said the damsel, when she was safe in her own room
again, quite out of breath. ‘Oh, gracious, here’s mysteries!’
The prospect of finding anybody out in anything, would have kept Miss
Miggs awake under the influence of henbane. Presently, she heard the
step again, as she would have done if it had been that of a feather
endowed with motion and walking down on tiptoe. Then gliding out as
before, she again beheld the retreating figure of the ‘prentice; again
he looked cautiously in at the parlour-door, but this time instead of
retreating, he passed in and disappeared.
Miggs was back in her room, and had her head out of the window, before
an elderly gentleman could have winked and recovered from it. Out he
came at the street-door, shut it carefully behind him, tried it with
his knee, and swaggered off, putting something in his pocket as he
went along. At this spectacle Miggs cried ‘Gracious!’ again, and then
‘Goodness gracious!’ and then ‘Goodness gracious me!’ and then, candle
in hand, went downstairs as he had done. Coming to the workshop, she saw
the lamp burning on the forge, and everything as Sim had left it.
‘Why I wish I may only have a walking funeral, and never be buried
decent with a mourning-coach and feathers, if the boy hasn’t been and
made a key for his own self!’ cried Miggs. ‘Oh the little villain!’
This conclusion was not arrived at without consideration, and much
peeping and peering about; nor was it unassisted by the recollection
that she had on several occasions come upon the ‘prentice suddenly,
and found him busy at some mysterious occupation. Lest the fact of Miss
Miggs calling him, on whom she stooped to cast a favourable eye, a
boy, should create surprise in any breast, it may be observed that she
invariably affected to regard all male bipeds under thirty as mere chits
and infants; which phenomenon is not unusual in ladies of Miss Miggs’s
temper, and is indeed generally found to be the associate of such
indomitable and savage virtue.
Miss Miggs deliberated within herself for some little time, looking hard
at the shop-door while she did so, as though her eyes and thoughts were
both upon it; and then, taking a sheet of paper from a drawer, twisted
it into a long thin spiral tube. Having filled this instrument with a
quantity of small coal-dust from the forge, she approached the door,
and dropping on one knee before it, dexterously blew into the keyhole as
much of these fine ashes as the lock would hold. When she had filled it
to the brim in a very workmanlike and skilful manner, she crept upstairs
again, and chuckled as she went.
‘There!’ cried Miggs, rubbing her hands, ‘now let’s see whether you
won’t be glad to take some notice of me, mister. He, he, he! You’ll have
eyes for somebody besides Miss Dolly now, I think. A fat-faced puss she
is, as ever I come across!’
As she uttered this criticism, she glanced approvingly at her small
mirror, as who should say, I thank my stars that can’t be said of
me!--as it certainly could not; for Miss Miggs’s style of beauty was of
that kind which Mr Tappertit himself had not inaptly termed, in private,
‘scraggy.’
‘I don’t go to bed this night!’ said Miggs, wrapping herself in a shawl,
and drawing a couple of chairs near the window, flouncing down upon
one, and putting her feet upon the other, ‘till you come home, my lad. I
wouldn’t,’ said Miggs viciously, ‘no, not for five-and-forty pound!’
With that, and with an expression of face in which a great number of
opposite ingredients, such as mischief, cunning, malice, triumph,
and patient expectation, were all mixed up together in a kind of
physiognomical punch, Miss Miggs composed herself to wait and listen,
like some fair ogress who had set a trap and was watching for a nibble
from a plump young traveller.
She sat there, with perfect composure, all night. At length, just upon
break of day, there was a footstep in the street, and presently she
could hear Mr Tappertit stop at the door. Then she could make out that
he tried his key--that he was blowing into it--that he knocked it on the
nearest post to beat the dust out--that he took it under a lamp to look
at it--that he poked bits of stick into the lock to clear it--that
he peeped into the keyhole, first with one eye, and then with the
other--that he tried the key again--that he couldn’t turn it, and what
was worse, couldn’t get it out--that he bent it--that then it was much
less disposed to come out than before--that he gave it a mighty twist
and a great pull, and then it came out so suddenly that he staggered
backwards--that he kicked the door--that he shook it--finally, that he
smote his forehead, and sat down on the step in despair.
When this crisis had arrived, Miss Miggs, affecting to be exhausted
with terror, and to cling to the window-sill for support, put out her
nightcap, and demanded in a faint voice who was there.
Mr Tappertit cried ‘Hush!’ and, backing to the road, exhorted her in
frenzied pantomime to secrecy and silence.
‘Tell me one thing,’ said Miggs. ‘Is it thieves?’
‘No--no--no!’ cried Mr Tappertit.
‘Then,’ said Miggs, more faintly than before, ‘it’s fire. Where is it,
sir? It’s near this room, I know. I’ve a good conscience, sir, and would
much rather die than go down a ladder. All I wish is, respecting my love
to my married sister, Golden Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, second
bell-handle on the right-hand door-post.’
‘Miggs!’ cried Mr Tappertit, ‘don’t you know me? Sim, you know--Sim--’
‘Oh! what about him!’ cried Miggs, clasping her hands. ‘Is he in any
danger? Is he in the midst of flames and blazes! Oh gracious, gracious!’
‘Why I’m here, an’t I?’ rejoined Mr Tappertit, knocking himself on the
breast. ‘Don’t you see me? What a fool you are, Miggs!’
‘There!’ cried Miggs, unmindful of this compliment. ‘Why--so
it--Goodness, what is the meaning of--If you please, mim, here’s--’
‘No, no!’ cried Mr Tappertit, standing on tiptoe, as if by that means
he, in the street, were any nearer being able to stop the mouth of Miggs
in the garret. ‘Don’t!--I’ve been out without leave, and something or
another’s the matter with the lock. Come down, and undo the shop window,
that I may get in that way.’
‘I dursn’t do it, Simmun,’ cried Miggs--for that was her pronunciation
of his Christian name. ‘I dursn’t do it, indeed. You know as well as
anybody, how particular I am. And to come down in the dead of night,
when the house is wrapped in slumbers and weiled in obscurity.’ And
there she stopped and shivered, for her modesty caught cold at the very
thought.
‘But Miggs,’ cried Mr Tappertit, getting under the lamp, that she might
see his eyes. ‘My darling Miggs--’
Miggs screamed slightly.
‘--That I love so much, and never can help thinking of,’ and it
is impossible to describe the use he made of his eyes when he said
this--‘do--for my sake, do.’
‘Oh Simmun,’ cried Miggs, ‘this is worse than all. I know if I come
down, you’ll go, and--’
‘And what, my precious?’ said Mr Tappertit.
‘And try,’ said Miggs, hysterically, ‘to kiss me, or some such
dreadfulness; I know you will!’
‘I swear I won’t,’ said Mr Tappertit, with remarkable earnestness. ‘Upon
my soul I won’t. It’s getting broad day, and the watchman’s waking
up. Angelic Miggs! If you’ll only come and let me in, I promise you
faithfully and truly I won’t.’
Miss Miggs, whose gentle heart was touched, did not wait for the oath
(knowing how strong the temptation was, and fearing he might forswear
himself), but tripped lightly down the stairs, and with her own fair
hands drew back the rough fastenings of the workshop window. Having
helped the wayward ‘prentice in, she faintly articulated the words
‘Simmun is safe!’ and yielding to her woman’s nature, immediately became
insensible.
‘I knew I should quench her,’ said Sim, rather embarrassed by this
circumstance. ‘Of course I was certain it would come to this, but there
was nothing else to be done--if I hadn’t eyed her over, she wouldn’t
have come down. Here. Keep up a minute, Miggs. What a slippery figure
she is! There’s no holding her, comfortably. Do keep up a minute, Miggs,
will you?’
As Miggs, however, was deaf to all entreaties, Mr Tappertit leant her
against the wall as one might dispose of a walking-stick or umbrella,
until he had secured the window, when he took her in his arms again,
and, in short stages and with great difficulty--arising from her being
tall and his being short, and perhaps in some degree from that peculiar
physical conformation on which he had already remarked--carried her
upstairs, and planting her, in the same umbrella and walking-stick
fashion, just inside her own door, left her to her repose.
‘He may be as cool as he likes,’ said Miss Miggs, recovering as soon
as she was left alone; ‘but I’m in his confidence and he can’t help
himself, nor couldn’t if he was twenty Simmunses!’
Chapter 10
It was on one of those mornings, common in early spring, when the year,
fickle and changeable in its youth like all other created things, is
undecided whether to step backward into winter or forward into summer,
and in its uncertainty inclines now to the one and now to the other, and
now to both at once--wooing summer in the sunshine, and lingering still
with winter in the shade--it was, in short, on one of those mornings,
when it is hot and cold, wet and dry, bright and lowering, sad and
cheerful, withering and genial, in the compass of one short hour, that
old John Willet, who was dropping asleep over the copper boiler, was
roused by the sound of a horse’s feet, and glancing out at window,
beheld a traveller of goodly promise, checking his bridle at the Maypole
door.
He was none of your flippant young fellows, who would call for a tankard
of mulled ale, and make themselves as much at home as if they had
ordered a hogshead of wine; none of your audacious young swaggerers, who
would even penetrate into the bar--that solemn sanctuary--and, smiting
old John upon the back, inquire if there was never a pretty girl in the
house, and where he hid his little chambermaids, with a hundred other
impertinences of that nature; none of your free-and-easy companions, who
would scrape their boots upon the firedogs in the common room, and
be not at all particular on the subject of spittoons; none of your
unconscionable blades, requiring impossible chops, and taking unheard-of
pickles for granted. He was a staid, grave, placid gentleman, something
past the prime of life, yet upright in his carriage, for all that, and
slim as a greyhound. He was well-mounted upon a sturdy chestnut cob, and
had the graceful seat of an experienced horseman; while his riding gear,
though free from such fopperies as were then in vogue, was handsome and
well chosen. He wore a riding-coat of a somewhat brighter green than
might have been expected to suit the taste of a gentleman of his years,
with a short, black velvet cape, and laced pocket-holes and cuffs, all
of a jaunty fashion; his linen, too, was of the finest kind, worked in a
rich pattern at the wrists and throat, and scrupulously white. Although
he seemed, judging from the mud he had picked up on the way, to have
come from London, his horse was as smooth and cool as his own iron-grey
periwig and pigtail. Neither man nor beast had turned a single hair; and
saving for his soiled skirts and spatter-dashes, this gentleman, with
his blooming face, white teeth, exactly-ordered dress, and perfect
calmness, might have come from making an elaborate and leisurely toilet,
to sit for an equestrian portrait at old John Willet’s gate.
It must not be supposed that John observed these several characteristics
by other than very slow degrees, or that he took in more than half a one
at a time, or that he even made up his mind upon that, without a great
deal of very serious consideration. Indeed, if he had been distracted in
the first instance by questionings and orders, it would have taken him
at the least a fortnight to have noted what is here set down; but it
happened that the gentleman, being struck with the old house, or with
the plump pigeons which were skimming and curtseying about it, or with
the tall maypole, on the top of which a weathercock, which had been out
of order for fifteen years, performed a perpetual walk to the music of
its own creaking, sat for some little time looking round in silence.
Hence John, standing with his hand upon the horse’s bridle, and
his great eyes on the rider, and with nothing passing to divert his
thoughts, had really got some of these little circumstances into his
brain by the time he was called upon to speak.
‘A quaint place this,’ said the gentleman--and his voice was as rich as
his dress. ‘Are you the landlord?’
‘At your service, sir,’ replied John Willet.
‘You can give my horse good stabling, can you, and me an early dinner (I
am not particular what, so that it be cleanly served), and a decent
room of which there seems to be no lack in this great mansion,’ said the
stranger, again running his eyes over the exterior.
‘You can have, sir,’ returned John with a readiness quite surprising,
‘anything you please.’
‘It’s well I am easily satisfied,’ returned the other with a smile,
‘or that might prove a hardy pledge, my friend.’ And saying so, he
dismounted, with the aid of the block before the door, in a twinkling.
‘Halloa there! Hugh!’ roared John. ‘I ask your pardon, sir, for keeping
you standing in the porch; but my son has gone to town on business, and
the boy being, as I may say, of a kind of use to me, I’m rather put
out when he’s away. Hugh!--a dreadful idle vagrant fellow, sir, half
a gipsy, as I think--always sleeping in the sun in summer, and in
the straw in winter time, sir--Hugh! Dear Lord, to keep a gentleman
a waiting here through him!--Hugh! I wish that chap was dead, I do
indeed.’
‘Possibly he is,’ returned the other. ‘I should think if he were living,
he would have heard you by this time.’
‘In his fits of laziness, he sleeps so desperate hard,’ said the
distracted host, ‘that if you were to fire off cannon-balls into his
ears, it wouldn’t wake him, sir.’
The guest made no remark upon this novel cure for drowsiness, and recipe
for making people lively, but, with his hands clasped behind him, stood
in the porch, very much amused to see old John, with the bridle in his
hand, wavering between a strong impulse to abandon the animal to his
fate, and a half disposition to lead him into the house, and shut him up
in the parlour, while he waited on his master.
‘Pillory the fellow, here he is at last!’ cried John, in the very height
and zenith of his distress. ‘Did you hear me a calling, villain?’
The figure he addressed made no answer, but putting his hand upon the
saddle, sprung into it at a bound, turned the horse’s head towards the
stable, and was gone in an instant.
‘Brisk enough when he is awake,’ said the guest.
‘Brisk enough, sir!’ replied John, looking at the place where the horse
had been, as if not yet understanding quite, what had become of him. ‘He
melts, I think. He goes like a drop of froth. You look at him, and there
he is. You look at him again, and--there he isn’t.’
Having, in the absence of any more words, put this sudden climax to what
he had faintly intended should be a long explanation of the whole life
and character of his man, the oracular John Willet led the gentleman up
his wide dismantled staircase into the Maypole’s best apartment.
It was spacious enough in all conscience, occupying the whole depth of
the house, and having at either end a great bay window, as large as many
modern rooms; in which some few panes of stained glass, emblazoned
with fragments of armorial bearings, though cracked, and patched, and
shattered, yet remained; attesting, by their presence, that the former
owner had made the very light subservient to his state, and pressed the
sun itself into his list of flatterers; bidding it, when it shone into
his chamber, reflect the badges of his ancient family, and take new hues
and colours from their pride.
But those were old days, and now every little ray came and went as it
would; telling the plain, bare, searching truth. Although the best room
of the inn, it had the melancholy aspect of grandeur in decay, and was
much too vast for comfort. Rich rustling hangings, waving on the walls;
and, better far, the rustling of youth and beauty’s dress; the light of
women’s eyes, outshining the tapers and their own rich jewels; the sound
of gentle tongues, and music, and the tread of maiden feet, had once
been there, and filled it with delight. But they were gone, and with
them all its gladness. It was no longer a home; children were never born
and bred there; the fireside had become mercenary--a something to be
bought and sold--a very courtezan: let who would die, or sit beside, or
leave it, it was still the same--it missed nobody, cared for nobody,
had equal warmth and smiles for all. God help the man whose heart ever
changes with the world, as an old mansion when it becomes an inn!
No effort had been made to furnish this chilly waste, but before the
broad chimney a colony of chairs and tables had been planted on a square
of carpet, flanked by a ghostly screen, enriched with figures, grinning
and grotesque. After lighting with his own hands the faggots which were
heaped upon the hearth, old John withdrew to hold grave council with his
cook, touching the stranger’s entertainment; while the guest himself,
seeing small comfort in the yet unkindled wood, opened a lattice in the
distant window, and basked in a sickly gleam of cold March sun.
Leaving the window now and then, to rake the crackling logs together,
or pace the echoing room from end to end, he closed it when the fire was
quite burnt up, and having wheeled the easiest chair into the warmest
corner, summoned John Willet.
‘Sir,’ said John.
He wanted pen, ink, and paper. There was an old standish on the
mantelshelf containing a dusty apology for all three. Having set this
before him, the landlord was retiring, when he motioned him to stay.
‘There’s a house not far from here,’ said the guest when he had written
a few lines, ‘which you call the Warren, I believe?’
As this was said in the tone of one who knew the fact, and asked the
question as a thing of course, John contented himself with nodding his
head in the affirmative; at the same time taking one hand out of his
pockets to cough behind, and then putting it in again.
‘I want this note’--said the guest, glancing on what he had written, and
folding it, ‘conveyed there without loss of time, and an answer brought
back here. Have you a messenger at hand?’
John was thoughtful for a minute or thereabouts, and then said Yes.
‘Let me see him,’ said the guest.
This was disconcerting; for Joe being out, and Hugh engaged in rubbing
down the chestnut cob, he designed sending on the errand, Barnaby, who
had just then arrived in one of his rambles, and who, so that he thought
himself employed on a grave and serious business, would go anywhere.
‘Why the truth is,’ said John after a long pause, ‘that the person who’d
go quickest, is a sort of natural, as one may say, sir; and though quick
of foot, and as much to be trusted as the post itself, he’s not good at
talking, being touched and flighty, sir.’
‘You don’t,’ said the guest, raising his eyes to John’s fat face, ‘you
don’t mean--what’s the fellow’s name--you don’t mean Barnaby?’
‘Yes, I do,’ returned the landlord, his features turning quite
expressive with surprise.
‘How comes he to be here?’ inquired the guest, leaning back in his
chair; speaking in the bland, even tone, from which he never varied; and
with the same soft, courteous, never-changing smile upon his face. ‘I
saw him in London last night.’
‘He’s, for ever, here one hour, and there the next,’ returned old John,
after the usual pause to get the question in his mind. ‘Sometimes he
walks, and sometimes runs. He’s known along the road by everybody, and
sometimes comes here in a cart or chaise, and sometimes riding double.
He comes and goes, through wind, rain, snow, and hail, and on the
darkest nights. Nothing hurts HIM.’
‘He goes often to the Warren, does he not?’ said the guest carelessly.
‘I seem to remember his mother telling me something to that effect
yesterday. But I was not attending to the good woman much.’
‘You’re right, sir,’ John made answer, ‘he does. His father, sir, was
murdered in that house.’
‘So I have heard,’ returned the guest, taking a gold toothpick from his
pocket with the same sweet smile. ‘A very disagreeable circumstance for
the family.’
‘Very,’ said John with a puzzled look, as if it occurred to him, dimly
and afar off, that this might by possibility be a cool way of treating
the subject.
‘All the circumstances after a murder,’ said the guest soliloquising,
‘must be dreadfully unpleasant--so much bustle and disturbance--no
repose--a constant dwelling upon one subject--and the running in and
out, and up and down stairs, intolerable. I wouldn’t have such a thing
happen to anybody I was nearly interested in, on any account. ‘Twould
be enough to wear one’s life out.--You were going to say, friend--’ he
added, turning to John again.
‘Only that Mrs Rudge lives on a little pension from the family, and that
Barnaby’s as free of the house as any cat or dog about it,’ answered
John. ‘Shall he do your errand, sir?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied the guest. ‘Oh certainly. Let him do it by all means.
Please to bring him here that I may charge him to be quick. If he
objects to come you may tell him it’s Mr Chester. He will remember my
name, I dare say.’
John was so very much astonished to find who his visitor was, that he
could express no astonishment at all, by looks or otherwise, but left
the room as if he were in the most placid and imperturbable of all
possible conditions. It has been reported that when he got downstairs,
he looked steadily at the boiler for ten minutes by the clock, and all
that time never once left off shaking his head; for which statement
there would seem to be some ground of truth and feasibility, inasmuch
as that interval of time did certainly elapse, before he returned with
Barnaby to the guest’s apartment.
‘Come hither, lad,’ said Mr Chester. ‘You know Mr Geoffrey Haredale?’
Barnaby laughed, and looked at the landlord as though he would say,
‘You hear him?’ John, who was greatly shocked at this breach of decorum,
clapped his finger to his nose, and shook his head in mute remonstrance.
‘He knows him, sir,’ said John, frowning aside at Barnaby, ‘as well as
you or I do.’
‘I haven’t the pleasure of much acquaintance with the gentleman,’
returned his guest. ‘YOU may have. Limit the comparison to yourself, my
friend.’
Although this was said with the same easy affability, and the same
smile, John felt himself put down, and laying the indignity at Barnaby’s
door, determined to kick his raven, on the very first opportunity.
‘Give that,’ said the guest, who had by this time sealed the note, and
who beckoned his messenger towards him as he spoke, ‘into Mr Haredale’s
own hands. Wait for an answer, and bring it back to me here. If you
should find that Mr Haredale is engaged just now, tell him--can he
remember a message, landlord?’
‘When he chooses, sir,’ replied John. ‘He won’t forget this one.’
‘How are you sure of that?’
John merely pointed to him as he stood with his head bent forward, and
his earnest gaze fixed closely on his questioner’s face; and nodded
sagely.
‘Tell him then, Barnaby, should he be engaged,’ said Mr Chester, ‘that
I shall be glad to wait his convenience here, and to see him (if he will
call) at any time this evening.--At the worst I can have a bed here,
Willet, I suppose?’
Old John, immensely flattered by the personal notoriety implied in this
familiar form of address, answered, with something like a knowing look,
‘I should believe you could, sir,’ and was turning over in his mind
various forms of eulogium, with the view of selecting one appropriate to
the qualities of his best bed, when his ideas were put to flight by Mr
Chester giving Barnaby the letter, and bidding him make all speed away.
‘Speed!’ said Barnaby, folding the little packet in his breast, ‘Speed!
If you want to see hurry and mystery, come here. Here!’
With that, he put his hand, very much to John Willet’s horror, on the
guest’s fine broadcloth sleeve, and led him stealthily to the back
window.
‘Look down there,’ he said softly; ‘do you mark how they whisper in each
other’s ears; then dance and leap, to make believe they are in sport?
Do you see how they stop for a moment, when they think there is no one
looking, and mutter among themselves again; and then how they roll and
gambol, delighted with the mischief they’ve been plotting? Look at
‘em now. See how they whirl and plunge. And now they stop again, and
whisper, cautiously together--little thinking, mind, how often I have
lain upon the grass and watched them. I say what is it that they plot
and hatch? Do you know?’
‘They are only clothes,’ returned the guest, ‘such as we wear; hanging
on those lines to dry, and fluttering in the wind.’
‘Clothes!’ echoed Barnaby, looking close into his face, and falling
quickly back. ‘Ha ha! Why, how much better to be silly, than as wise
as you! You don’t see shadowy people there, like those that live in
sleep--not you. Nor eyes in the knotted panes of glass, nor swift ghosts
when it blows hard, nor do you hear voices in the air, nor see men
stalking in the sky--not you! I lead a merrier life than you, with all
your cleverness. You’re the dull men. We’re the bright ones. Ha! ha!
I’ll not change with you, clever as you are,--not I!’
With that, he waved his hat above his head, and darted off.
‘A strange creature, upon my word!’ said the guest, pulling out a
handsome box, and taking a pinch of snuff.
‘He wants imagination,’ said Mr Willet, very slowly, and after a long
silence; ‘that’s what he wants. I’ve tried to instil it into him, many
and many’s the time; but’--John added this in confidence--‘he an’t made
for it; that’s the fact.’
To record that Mr Chester smiled at John’s remark would be little to the
purpose, for he preserved the same conciliatory and pleasant look at all
times. He drew his chair nearer to the fire though, as a kind of hint
that he would prefer to be alone, and John, having no reasonable excuse
for remaining, left him to himself.
Very thoughtful old John Willet was, while the dinner was preparing; and
if his brain were ever less clear at one time than another, it is but
reasonable to suppose that he addled it in no slight degree by shaking
his head so much that day. That Mr Chester, between whom and Mr
Haredale, it was notorious to all the neighbourhood, a deep and bitter
animosity existed, should come down there for the sole purpose, as it
seemed, of seeing him, and should choose the Maypole for their place
of meeting, and should send to him express, were stumbling blocks John
could not overcome. The only resource he had, was to consult the boiler,
and wait impatiently for Barnaby’s return.
But Barnaby delayed beyond all precedent. The visitor’s dinner was
served, removed, his wine was set, the fire replenished, the hearth
clean swept; the light waned without, it grew dusk, became quite dark,
and still no Barnaby appeared. Yet, though John Willet was full of
wonder and misgiving, his guest sat cross-legged in the easy-chair, to
all appearance as little ruffled in his thoughts as in his dress--the
same calm, easy, cool gentleman, without a care or thought beyond his
golden toothpick.
‘Barnaby’s late,’ John ventured to observe, as he placed a pair of
tarnished candlesticks, some three feet high, upon the table, and
snuffed the lights they held.
‘He is rather so,’ replied the guest, sipping his wine. ‘He will not be
much longer, I dare say.’
John coughed and raked the fire together.
‘As your roads bear no very good character, if I may judge from my son’s
mishap, though,’ said Mr Chester, ‘and as I have no fancy to be knocked
on the head--which is not only disconcerting at the moment, but places
one, besides, in a ridiculous position with respect to the people who
chance to pick one up--I shall stop here to-night. I think you said you
had a bed to spare.’
‘Such a bed, sir,’ returned John Willet; ‘ay, such a bed as few, even
of the gentry’s houses, own. A fixter here, sir. I’ve heard say that
bedstead is nigh two hundred years of age. Your noble son--a fine young
gentleman--slept in it last, sir, half a year ago.’
‘Upon my life, a recommendation!’ said the guest, shrugging his
shoulders and wheeling his chair nearer to the fire. ‘See that it be
well aired, Mr Willet, and let a blazing fire be lighted there at once.
This house is something damp and chilly.’
John raked the faggots up again, more from habit than presence of mind,
or any reference to this remark, and was about to withdraw, when a
bounding step was heard upon the stair, and Barnaby came panting in.
‘He’ll have his foot in the stirrup in an hour’s time,’ he cried,
advancing. ‘He has been riding hard all day--has just come home--but
will be in the saddle again as soon as he has eat and drank, to meet his
loving friend.’
‘Was that his message?’ asked the visitor, looking up, but without the
smallest discomposure--or at least without the show of any.
‘All but the last words,’ Barnaby rejoined. ‘He meant those. I saw that,
in his face.’
‘This for your pains,’ said the other, putting money in his hand, and
glancing at him steadfastly.’This for your pains, sharp Barnaby.’
‘For Grip, and me, and Hugh, to share among us,’ he rejoined, putting
it up, and nodding, as he counted it on his fingers. ‘Grip one, me two,
Hugh three; the dog, the goat, the cats--well, we shall spend it pretty
soon, I warn you. Stay.--Look. Do you wise men see nothing there, now?’
He bent eagerly down on one knee, and gazed intently at the smoke, which
was rolling up the chimney in a thick black cloud. John Willet, who
appeared to consider himself particularly and chiefly referred to under
the term wise men, looked that way likewise, and with great solidity of
feature.
‘Now, where do they go to, when they spring so fast up there,’ asked
Barnaby; ‘eh? Why do they tread so closely on each other’s heels, and
why are they always in a hurry--which is what you blame me for, when I
only take pattern by these busy folk about me? More of ‘em! catching to
each other’s skirts; and as fast as they go, others come! What a merry
dance it is! I would that Grip and I could frisk like that!’
‘What has he in that basket at his back?’ asked the guest after a few
moments, during which Barnaby was still bending down to look higher up
the chimney, and earnestly watching the smoke.
‘In this?’ he answered, jumping up, before John Willet could
reply--shaking it as he spoke, and stooping his head to listen. ‘In
this! What is there here? Tell him!’
‘A devil, a devil, a devil!’ cried a hoarse voice.
‘Here’s money!’ said Barnaby, chinking it in his hand, ‘money for a
treat, Grip!’
‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ replied the raven, ‘keep up your spirits.
Never say die. Bow, wow, wow!’
Mr Willet, who appeared to entertain strong doubts whether a customer in
a laced coat and fine linen could be supposed to have any acquaintance
even with the existence of such unpolite gentry as the bird claimed
to belong to, took Barnaby off at this juncture, with the view of
preventing any other improper declarations, and quitted the room with
his very best bow.
Chapter 11
There was great news that night for the regular Maypole customers, to
each of whom, as he straggled in to occupy his allotted seat in the
chimney-corner, John, with a most impressive slowness of delivery, and
in an apoplectic whisper, communicated the fact that Mr Chester was
alone in the large room upstairs, and was waiting the arrival of
Mr Geoffrey Haredale, to whom he had sent a letter (doubtless of a
threatening nature) by the hands of Barnaby, then and there present.
For a little knot of smokers and solemn gossips, who had seldom any
new topics of discussion, this was a perfect Godsend. Here was a good,
dark-looking mystery progressing under that very roof--brought home to
the fireside, as it were, and enjoyable without the smallest pains
or trouble. It is extraordinary what a zest and relish it gave to the
drink, and how it heightened the flavour of the tobacco. Every man
smoked his pipe with a face of grave and serious delight, and looked at
his neighbour with a sort of quiet congratulation. Nay, it was felt
to be such a holiday and special night, that, on the motion of little
Solomon Daisy, every man (including John himself) put down his sixpence
for a can of flip, which grateful beverage was brewed with all despatch,
and set down in the midst of them on the brick floor; both that it might
simmer and stew before the fire, and that its fragrant steam, rising
up among them, and mixing with the wreaths of vapour from their pipes,
might shroud them in a delicious atmosphere of their own, and shut
out all the world. The very furniture of the room seemed to mellow and
deepen in its tone; the ceiling and walls looked blacker and more highly
polished, the curtains of a ruddier red; the fire burnt clear and high,
and the crickets in the hearthstone chirped with a more than wonted
satisfaction.
There were present two, however, who showed but little interest in the
general contentment. Of these, one was Barnaby himself, who slept,
or, to avoid being beset with questions, feigned to sleep, in the
chimney-corner; the other, Hugh, who, sleeping too, lay stretched upon
the bench on the opposite side, in the full glare of the blazing fire.
The light that fell upon this slumbering form, showed it in all its
muscular and handsome proportions. It was that of a young man, of a hale
athletic figure, and a giant’s strength, whose sunburnt face and swarthy
throat, overgrown with jet black hair, might have served a painter for
a model. Loosely attired, in the coarsest and roughest garb, with scraps
of straw and hay--his usual bed--clinging here and there, and mingling
with his uncombed locks, he had fallen asleep in a posture as careless
as his dress. The negligence and disorder of the whole man, with
something fierce and sullen in his features, gave him a picturesque
appearance, that attracted the regards even of the Maypole customers who
knew him well, and caused Long Parkes to say that Hugh looked more like
a poaching rascal to-night than ever he had seen him yet.
‘He’s waiting here, I suppose,’ said Solomon, ‘to take Mr Haredale’s
horse.’
‘That’s it, sir,’ replied John Willet. ‘He’s not often in the house, you
know. He’s more at his ease among horses than men. I look upon him as a
animal himself.’
Following up this opinion with a shrug that seemed meant to say, ‘we
can’t expect everybody to be like us,’ John put his pipe into his mouth
again, and smoked like one who felt his superiority over the general run
of mankind.
‘That chap, sir,’ said John, taking it out again after a time, and
pointing at him with the stem, ‘though he’s got all his faculties
about him--bottled up and corked down, if I may say so, somewheres or
another--’
‘Very good!’ said Parkes, nodding his head. ‘A very good expression,
Johnny. You’ll be a tackling somebody presently. You’re in twig
to-night, I see.’
‘Take care,’ said Mr Willet, not at all grateful for the compliment,
‘that I don’t tackle you, sir, which I shall certainly endeavour to do,
if you interrupt me when I’m making observations.--That chap, I was
a saying, though he has all his faculties about him, somewheres or
another, bottled up and corked down, has no more imagination than
Barnaby has. And why hasn’t he?’
The three friends shook their heads at each other; saying by that
action, without the trouble of opening their lips, ‘Do you observe what
a philosophical mind our friend has?’
‘Why hasn’t he?’ said John, gently striking the table with his open
hand. ‘Because they was never drawed out of him when he was a boy.
That’s why. What would any of us have been, if our fathers hadn’t drawed
our faculties out of us? What would my boy Joe have been, if I hadn’t
drawed his faculties out of him?--Do you mind what I’m a saying of,
gentlemen?’
‘Ah! we mind you,’ cried Parkes. ‘Go on improving of us, Johnny.’
‘Consequently, then,’ said Mr Willet, ‘that chap, whose mother was
hung when he was a little boy, along with six others, for passing bad
notes--and it’s a blessed thing to think how many people are hung in
batches every six weeks for that, and such like offences, as showing how
wide awake our government is--that chap that was then turned loose, and
had to mind cows, and frighten birds away, and what not, for a few pence
to live on, and so got on by degrees to mind horses, and to sleep in
course of time in lofts and litter, instead of under haystacks and
hedges, till at last he come to be hostler at the Maypole for his board
and lodging and a annual trifle--that chap that can’t read nor write,
and has never had much to do with anything but animals, and has never
lived in any way but like the animals he has lived among, IS a animal.
And,’ said Mr Willet, arriving at his logical conclusion, ‘is to be
treated accordingly.’
‘Willet,’ said Solomon Daisy, who had exhibited some impatience at the
intrusion of so unworthy a subject on their more interesting theme,
‘when Mr Chester come this morning, did he order the large room?’
‘He signified, sir,’ said John, ‘that he wanted a large apartment. Yes.
Certainly.’
‘Why then, I’ll tell you what,’ said Solomon, speaking softly and with
an earnest look. ‘He and Mr Haredale are going to fight a duel in it.’
Everybody looked at Mr Willet, after this alarming suggestion. Mr Willet
looked at the fire, weighing in his own mind the effect which such an
occurrence would be likely to have on the establishment.
‘Well,’ said John, ‘I don’t know--I am sure--I remember that when I went
up last, he HAD put the lights upon the mantel-shelf.’
‘It’s as plain,’ returned Solomon, ‘as the nose on Parkes’s face’--Mr
Parkes, who had a large nose, rubbed it, and looked as if he considered
this a personal allusion--‘they’ll fight in that room. You know by
the newspapers what a common thing it is for gentlemen to fight in
coffee-houses without seconds. One of ‘em will be wounded or perhaps
killed in this house.’
‘That was a challenge that Barnaby took then, eh?’ said John.
‘--Inclosing a slip of paper with the measure of his sword upon it, I’ll
bet a guinea,’ answered the little man. ‘We know what sort of gentleman
Mr Haredale is. You have told us what Barnaby said about his looks, when
he came back. Depend upon it, I’m right. Now, mind.’
The flip had had no flavour till now. The tobacco had been of mere
English growth, compared with its present taste. A duel in that great
old rambling room upstairs, and the best bed ordered already for the
wounded man!
‘Would it be swords or pistols, now?’ said John.
‘Heaven knows. Perhaps both,’ returned Solomon. ‘The gentlemen wear
swords, and may easily have pistols in their pockets--most likely have,
indeed. If they fire at each other without effect, then they’ll draw,
and go to work in earnest.’
A shade passed over Mr Willet’s face as he thought of broken windows and
disabled furniture, but bethinking himself that one of the parties would
probably be left alive to pay the damage, he brightened up again.
‘And then,’ said Solomon, looking from face to face, ‘then we shall have
one of those stains upon the floor that never come out. If Mr Haredale
wins, depend upon it, it’ll be a deep one; or if he loses, it will
perhaps be deeper still, for he’ll never give in unless he’s beaten
down. We know him better, eh?’
‘Better indeed!’ they whispered all together.
‘As to its ever being got out again,’ said Solomon, ‘I tell you it never
will, or can be. Why, do you know that it has been tried, at a certain
house we are acquainted with?’
‘The Warren!’ cried John. ‘No, sure!’
‘Yes, sure--yes. It’s only known by very few. It has been whispered
about though, for all that. They planed the board away, but there it
was. They went deep, but it went deeper. They put new boards down, but
there was one great spot that came through still, and showed itself in
the old place. And--harkye--draw nearer--Mr Geoffrey made that room his
study, and sits there, always, with his foot (as I have heard) upon it;
and he believes, through thinking of it long and very much, that it will
never fade until he finds the man who did the deed.’
As this recital ended, and they all drew closer round the fire, the
tramp of a horse was heard without.
‘The very man!’ cried John, starting up. ‘Hugh! Hugh!’
The sleeper staggered to his feet, and hurried after him. John quickly
returned, ushering in with great attention and deference (for Mr
Haredale was his landlord) the long-expected visitor, who strode into
the room clanking his heavy boots upon the floor; and looking keenly
round upon the bowing group, raised his hat in acknowledgment of their
profound respect.
‘You have a stranger here, Willet, who sent to me,’ he said, in a voice
which sounded naturally stern and deep. ‘Where is he?’
‘In the great room upstairs, sir,’ answered John.
‘Show the way. Your staircase is dark, I know. Gentlemen, good night.’
With that, he signed to the landlord to go on before; and went clanking
out, and up the stairs; old John, in his agitation, ingeniously lighting
everything but the way, and making a stumble at every second step.
‘Stop!’ he said, when they reached the landing. ‘I can announce myself.
Don’t wait.’
He laid his hand upon the door, entered, and shut it heavily. Mr Willet
was by no means disposed to stand there listening by himself, especially
as the walls were very thick; so descended, with much greater alacrity
than he had come up, and joined his friends below.
Chapter 12
There was a brief pause in the state-room of the Maypole, as Mr Haredale
tried the lock to satisfy himself that he had shut the door securely,
and, striding up the dark chamber to where the screen inclosed a little
patch of light and warmth, presented himself, abruptly and in silence,
before the smiling guest.
If the two had no greater sympathy in their inward thoughts than in
their outward bearing and appearance, the meeting did not seem likely to
prove a very calm or pleasant one. With no great disparity between them
in point of years, they were, in every other respect, as unlike and
far removed from each other as two men could well be. The one was
soft-spoken, delicately made, precise, and elegant; the other, a burly
square-built man, negligently dressed, rough and abrupt in manner,
stern, and, in his present mood, forbidding both in look and speech. The
one preserved a calm and placid smile; the other, a distrustful frown.
The new-comer, indeed, appeared bent on showing by his every tone and
gesture his determined opposition and hostility to the man he had come
to meet. The guest who received him, on the other hand, seemed to feel
that the contrast between them was all in his favour, and to derive a
quiet exultation from it which put him more at his ease than ever.
‘Haredale,’ said this gentleman, without the least appearance of
embarrassment or reserve, ‘I am very glad to see you.’
‘Let us dispense with compliments. They are misplaced between us,’
returned the other, waving his hand, ‘and say plainly what we have to
say. You have asked me to meet you. I am here. Why do we stand face to
face again?’
‘Still the same frank and sturdy character, I see!’
‘Good or bad, sir, I am,’ returned the other, leaning his arm upon
the chimney-piece, and turning a haughty look upon the occupant of
the easy-chair, ‘the man I used to be. I have lost no old likings or
dislikings; my memory has not failed me by a hair’s-breadth. You ask me
to give you a meeting. I say, I am here.’
‘Our meeting, Haredale,’ said Mr Chester, tapping his snuff-box, and
following with a smile the impatient gesture he had made--perhaps
unconsciously--towards his sword, ‘is one of conference and peace, I
hope?’
‘I have come here,’ returned the other, ‘at your desire, holding myself
bound to meet you, when and where you would. I have not come to bandy
pleasant speeches, or hollow professions. You are a smooth man of the
world, sir, and at such play have me at a disadvantage. The very last
man on this earth with whom I would enter the lists to combat with
gentle compliments and masked faces, is Mr Chester, I do assure you. I
am not his match at such weapons, and have reason to believe that few
men are.’
‘You do me a great deal of honour Haredale,’ returned the other, most
composedly, ‘and I thank you. I will be frank with you--’
‘I beg your pardon--will be what?’
‘Frank--open--perfectly candid.’
‘Hah!’ cried Mr Haredale, drawing his breath. ‘But don’t let me
interrupt you.’
‘So resolved am I to hold this course,’ returned the other, tasting his
wine with great deliberation; ‘that I have determined not to quarrel
with you, and not to be betrayed into a warm expression or a hasty
word.’
‘There again,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘you have me at a great advantage. Your
self-command--’
‘Is not to be disturbed, when it will serve my purpose, you would
say’--rejoined the other, interrupting him with the same complacency.
‘Granted. I allow it. And I have a purpose to serve now. So have you. I
am sure our object is the same. Let us attain it like sensible men, who
have ceased to be boys some time.--Do you drink?’
‘With my friends,’ returned the other.
‘At least,’ said Mr Chester, ‘you will be seated?’
‘I will stand,’ returned Mr Haredale impatiently, ‘on this dismantled,
beggared hearth, and not pollute it, fallen as it is, with mockeries. Go
on.’
‘You are wrong, Haredale,’ said the other, crossing his legs, and
smiling as he held his glass up in the bright glow of the fire. ‘You are
really very wrong. The world is a lively place enough, in which we must
accommodate ourselves to circumstances, sail with the stream as glibly
as we can, be content to take froth for substance, the surface for the
depth, the counterfeit for the real coin. I wonder no philosopher has
ever established that our globe itself is hollow. It should be, if
Nature is consistent in her works.’
‘YOU think it is, perhaps?’
‘I should say,’ he returned, sipping his wine, ‘there could be no doubt
about it. Well; we, in trifling with this jingling toy, have had
the ill-luck to jostle and fall out. We are not what the world calls
friends; but we are as good and true and loving friends for all that, as
nine out of every ten of those on whom it bestows the title. You have a
niece, and I a son--a fine lad, Haredale, but foolish. They fall in
love with each other, and form what this same world calls an attachment;
meaning a something fanciful and false like the rest, which, if it took
its own free time, would break like any other bubble. But it may not
have its own free time--will not, if they are left alone--and the
question is, shall we two, because society calls us enemies, stand
aloof, and let them rush into each other’s arms, when, by approaching
each other sensibly, as we do now, we can prevent it, and part them?’
‘I love my niece,’ said Mr Haredale, after a short silence. ‘It may
sound strangely in your ears; but I love her.’
‘Strangely, my good fellow!’ cried Mr Chester, lazily filling his glass
again, and pulling out his toothpick. ‘Not at all. I like Ned too--or,
as you say, love him--that’s the word among such near relations.
I’m very fond of Ned. He’s an amazingly good fellow, and a handsome
fellow--foolish and weak as yet; that’s all. But the thing
is, Haredale--for I’ll be very frank, as I told you I would at
first--independently of any dislike that you and I might have to being
related to each other, and independently of the religious differences
between us--and damn it, that’s important--I couldn’t afford a match of
this description. Ned and I couldn’t do it. It’s impossible.’
‘Curb your tongue, in God’s name, if this conversation is to last,’
retorted Mr Haredale fiercely. ‘I have said I love my niece. Do you
think that, loving her, I would have her fling her heart away on any man
who had your blood in his veins?’
‘You see,’ said the other, not at all disturbed, ‘the advantage of being
so frank and open. Just what I was about to add, upon my honour! I am
amazingly attached to Ned--quite doat upon him, indeed--and even if we
could afford to throw ourselves away, that very objection would be quite
insuperable.--I wish you’d take some wine?’
‘Mark me,’ said Mr Haredale, striding to the table, and laying his hand
upon it heavily. ‘If any man believes--presumes to think--that I, in
word or deed, or in the wildest dream, ever entertained remotely the
idea of Emma Haredale’s favouring the suit of any one who was akin to
you--in any way--I care not what--he lies. He lies, and does me grievous
wrong, in the mere thought.’
‘Haredale,’ returned the other, rocking himself to and fro as in assent,
and nodding at the fire, ‘it’s extremely manly, and really very generous
in you, to meet me in this unreserved and handsome way. Upon my word,
those are exactly my sentiments, only expressed with much more force and
power than I could use--you know my sluggish nature, and will forgive
me, I am sure.’
‘While I would restrain her from all correspondence with your son, and
sever their intercourse here, though it should cause her death,’ said
Mr Haredale, who had been pacing to and fro, ‘I would do it kindly and
tenderly if I can. I have a trust to discharge, which my nature is not
formed to understand, and, for this reason, the bare fact of there
being any love between them comes upon me to-night, almost for the first
time.’
‘I am more delighted than I can possibly tell you,’ rejoined Mr Chester
with the utmost blandness, ‘to find my own impression so confirmed. You
see the advantage of our having met. We understand each other. We quite
agree. We have a most complete and thorough explanation, and we know
what course to take.--Why don’t you taste your tenant’s wine? It’s
really very good.’
‘Pray who,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘have aided Emma, or your son? Who are
their go-betweens, and agents--do you know?’
‘All the good people hereabouts--the neighbourhood in general, I think,’
returned the other, with his most affable smile. ‘The messenger I sent
to you to-day, foremost among them all.’
‘The idiot? Barnaby?’
‘You are surprised? I am glad of that, for I was rather so myself. Yes.
I wrung that from his mother--a very decent sort of woman--from whom,
indeed, I chiefly learnt how serious the matter had become, and so
determined to ride out here to-day, and hold a parley with you on this
neutral ground.--You’re stouter than you used to be, Haredale, but you
look extremely well.’
‘Our business, I presume, is nearly at an end,’ said Mr Haredale, with
an expression of impatience he was at no pains to conceal. ‘Trust me, Mr
Chester, my niece shall change from this time. I will appeal,’ he added
in a lower tone, ‘to her woman’s heart, her dignity, her pride, her
duty--’
‘I shall do the same by Ned,’ said Mr Chester, restoring some errant
faggots to their places in the grate with the toe of his boot. ‘If there
is anything real in this world, it is those amazingly fine feelings and
those natural obligations which must subsist between father and son. I
shall put it to him on every ground of moral and religious feeling. I
shall represent to him that we cannot possibly afford it--that I have
always looked forward to his marrying well, for a genteel provision for
myself in the autumn of life--that there are a great many clamorous dogs
to pay, whose claims are perfectly just and right, and who must be paid
out of his wife’s fortune. In short, that the very highest and most
honourable feelings of our nature, with every consideration of filial
duty and affection, and all that sort of thing, imperatively demand that
he should run away with an heiress.’
‘And break her heart as speedily as possible?’ said Mr Haredale, drawing
on his glove.
‘There Ned will act exactly as he pleases,’ returned the other,
sipping his wine; ‘that’s entirely his affair. I wouldn’t for the
world interfere with my son, Haredale, beyond a certain point. The
relationship between father and son, you know, is positively quite a
holy kind of bond.--WON’T you let me persuade you to take one glass of
wine? Well! as you please, as you please,’ he added, helping himself
again.
‘Chester,’ said Mr Haredale, after a short silence, during which he had
eyed his smiling face from time to time intently, ‘you have the head and
heart of an evil spirit in all matters of deception.’
‘Your health!’ said the other, with a nod. ‘But I have interrupted
you--’
‘If now,’ pursued Mr Haredale, ‘we should find it difficult to separate
these young people, and break off their intercourse--if, for instance,
you find it difficult on your side, what course do you intend to take?’
‘Nothing plainer, my good fellow, nothing easier,’ returned the other,
shrugging his shoulders and stretching himself more comfortably before
the fire. ‘I shall then exert those powers on which you flatter me so
highly--though, upon my word, I don’t deserve your compliments to their
full extent--and resort to a few little trivial subterfuges for rousing
jealousy and resentment. You see?’
‘In short, justifying the means by the end, we are, as a last resource
for tearing them asunder, to resort to treachery and--and lying,’ said
Mr Haredale.
‘Oh dear no. Fie, fie!’ returned the other, relishing a pinch of snuff
extremely. ‘Not lying. Only a little management, a little diplomacy, a
little--intriguing, that’s the word.’
‘I wish,’ said Mr Haredale, moving to and fro, and stopping, and moving
on again, like one who was ill at ease, ‘that this could have been
foreseen or prevented. But as it has gone so far, and it is necessary
for us to act, it is of no use shrinking or regretting. Well! I shall
second your endeavours to the utmost of my power. There is one topic in
the whole wide range of human thoughts on which we both agree. We shall
act in concert, but apart. There will be no need, I hope, for us to meet
again.’
‘Are you going?’ said Mr Chester, rising with a graceful indolence. ‘Let
me light you down the stairs.’
‘Pray keep your seat,’ returned the other drily, ‘I know the way.’ So,
waving his hand slightly, and putting on his hat as he turned upon his
heel, he went clanking out as he had come, shut the door behind him, and
tramped down the echoing stairs.
‘Pah! A very coarse animal, indeed!’ said Mr Chester, composing himself
in the easy-chair again. ‘A rough brute. Quite a human badger!’
John Willet and his friends, who had been listening intently for the
clash of swords, or firing of pistols in the great room, and had indeed
settled the order in which they should rush in when summoned--in which
procession old John had carefully arranged that he should bring up the
rear--were very much astonished to see Mr Haredale come down without a
scratch, call for his horse, and ride away thoughtfully at a footpace.
After some consideration, it was decided that he had left the gentleman
above, for dead, and had adopted this stratagem to divert suspicion or
pursuit.
As this conclusion involved the necessity of their going upstairs
forthwith, they were about to ascend in the order they had agreed
upon, when a smart ringing at the guest’s bell, as if he had pulled it
vigorously, overthrew all their speculations, and involved them in
great uncertainty and doubt. At length Mr Willet agreed to go upstairs
himself, escorted by Hugh and Barnaby, as the strongest and stoutest
fellows on the premises, who were to make their appearance under
pretence of clearing away the glasses.
Under this protection, the brave and broad-faced John boldly entered
the room, half a foot in advance, and received an order for a boot-jack
without trembling. But when it was brought, and he leant his sturdy
shoulder to the guest, Mr Willet was observed to look very hard into his
boots as he pulled them off, and, by opening his eyes much wider than
usual, to appear to express some surprise and disappointment at not
finding them full of blood. He took occasion, too, to examine the
gentleman as closely as he could, expecting to discover sundry loopholes
in his person, pierced by his adversary’s sword. Finding none,
however, and observing in course of time that his guest was as cool and
unruffled, both in his dress and temper, as he had been all day, old
John at last heaved a deep sigh, and began to think no duel had been
fought that night.
‘And now, Willet,’ said Mr Chester, ‘if the room’s well aired, I’ll try
the merits of that famous bed.’
‘The room, sir,’ returned John, taking up a candle, and nudging Barnaby
and Hugh to accompany them, in case the gentleman should unexpectedly
drop down faint or dead from some internal wound, ‘the room’s as warm as
any toast in a tankard. Barnaby, take you that other candle, and go on
before. Hugh! Follow up, sir, with the easy-chair.’
In this order--and still, in his earnest inspection, holding his candle
very close to the guest; now making him feel extremely warm about the
legs, now threatening to set his wig on fire, and constantly begging his
pardon with great awkwardness and embarrassment--John led the party to
the best bedroom, which was nearly as large as the chamber from which
they had come, and held, drawn out near the fire for warmth, a great old
spectral bedstead, hung with faded brocade, and ornamented, at the top
of each carved post, with a plume of feathers that had once been white,
but with dust and age had now grown hearse-like and funereal.
‘Good night, my friends,’ said Mr Chester with a sweet smile, seating
himself, when he had surveyed the room from end to end, in the
easy-chair which his attendants wheeled before the fire. ‘Good night!
Barnaby, my good fellow, you say some prayers before you go to bed, I
hope?’
Barnaby nodded. ‘He has some nonsense that he calls his prayers, sir,’
returned old John, officiously. ‘I’m afraid there an’t much good in em.’
‘And Hugh?’ said Mr Chester, turning to him.
‘Not I,’ he answered. ‘I know his’--pointing to Barnaby--‘they’re well
enough. He sings ‘em sometimes in the straw. I listen.’
‘He’s quite a animal, sir,’ John whispered in his ear with dignity.
‘You’ll excuse him, I’m sure. If he has any soul at all, sir, it must be
such a very small one, that it don’t signify what he does or doesn’t in
that way. Good night, sir!’
The guest rejoined ‘God bless you!’ with a fervour that was quite
affecting; and John, beckoning his guards to go before, bowed himself
out of the room, and left him to his rest in the Maypole’s ancient bed.
Chapter 13
If Joseph Willet, the denounced and proscribed of ‘prentices, had
happened to be at home when his father’s courtly guest presented himself
before the Maypole door--that is, if it had not perversely chanced to be
one of the half-dozen days in the whole year on which he was at liberty
to absent himself for as many hours without question or reproach--he
would have contrived, by hook or crook, to dive to the very bottom of Mr
Chester’s mystery, and to come at his purpose with as much certainty as
though he had been his confidential adviser. In that fortunate case, the
lovers would have had quick warning of the ills that threatened them,
and the aid of various timely and wise suggestions to boot; for all
Joe’s readiness of thought and action, and all his sympathies and good
wishes, were enlisted in favour of the young people, and were staunch in
devotion to their cause. Whether this disposition arose out of his old
prepossessions in favour of the young lady, whose history had surrounded
her in his mind, almost from his cradle, with circumstances of unusual
interest; or from his attachment towards the young gentleman, into
whose confidence he had, through his shrewdness and alacrity, and the
rendering of sundry important services as a spy and messenger, almost
imperceptibly glided; whether they had their origin in either of these
sources, or in the habit natural to youth, or in the constant badgering
and worrying of his venerable parent, or in any hidden little love
affair of his own which gave him something of a fellow-feeling in the
matter, it is needless to inquire--especially as Joe was out of the way,
and had no opportunity on that particular occasion of testifying to his
sentiments either on one side or the other.
It was, in fact, the twenty-fifth of March, which, as most people
know to their cost, is, and has been time out of mind, one of those
unpleasant epochs termed quarter-days. On this twenty-fifth of March,
it was John Willet’s pride annually to settle, in hard cash, his account
with a certain vintner and distiller in the city of London; to give into
whose hands a canvas bag containing its exact amount, and not a penny
more or less, was the end and object of a journey for Joe, so surely as
the year and day came round.
This journey was performed upon an old grey mare, concerning whom John
had an indistinct set of ideas hovering about him, to the effect that
she could win a plate or cup if she tried. She never had tried, and
probably never would now, being some fourteen or fifteen years of age,
short in wind, long in body, and rather the worse for wear in respect of
her mane and tail. Notwithstanding these slight defects, John perfectly
gloried in the animal; and when she was brought round to the door by
Hugh, actually retired into the bar, and there, in a secret grove of
lemons, laughed with pride.
‘There’s a bit of horseflesh, Hugh!’ said John, when he had recovered
enough self-command to appear at the door again. ‘There’s a comely
creature! There’s high mettle! There’s bone!’
There was bone enough beyond all doubt; and so Hugh seemed to think, as
he sat sideways in the saddle, lazily doubled up with his chin nearly
touching his knees; and heedless of the dangling stirrups and loose
bridle-rein, sauntered up and down on the little green before the door.
‘Mind you take good care of her, sir,’ said John, appealing from this
insensible person to his son and heir, who now appeared, fully equipped
and ready. ‘Don’t you ride hard.’
‘I should be puzzled to do that, I think, father,’ Joe replied, casting
a disconsolate look at the animal.
‘None of your impudence, sir, if you please,’ retorted old John. ‘What
would you ride, sir? A wild ass or zebra would be too tame for you,
wouldn’t he, eh sir? You’d like to ride a roaring lion, wouldn’t you,
sir, eh sir? Hold your tongue, sir.’ When Mr Willet, in his differences
with his son, had exhausted all the questions that occurred to him, and
Joe had said nothing at all in answer, he generally wound up by bidding
him hold his tongue.
‘And what does the boy mean,’ added Mr Willet, after he had stared at
him for a little time, in a species of stupefaction, ‘by cocking his
hat, to such an extent! Are you going to kill the wintner, sir?’
‘No,’ said Joe, tartly; ‘I’m not. Now your mind’s at ease, father.’
‘With a milintary air, too!’ said Mr Willet, surveying him from top to
toe; ‘with a swaggering, fire-eating, biling-water drinking sort of way
with him! And what do you mean by pulling up the crocuses and snowdrops,
eh sir?’
‘It’s only a little nosegay,’ said Joe, reddening. ‘There’s no harm in
that, I hope?’
‘You’re a boy of business, you are, sir!’ said Mr Willet, disdainfully,
‘to go supposing that wintners care for nosegays.’
‘I don’t suppose anything of the kind,’ returned Joe. ‘Let them keep
their red noses for bottles and tankards. These are going to Mr Varden’s
house.’
‘And do you suppose HE minds such things as crocuses?’ demanded John.
‘I don’t know, and to say the truth, I don’t care,’ said Joe. ‘Come,
father, give me the money, and in the name of patience let me go.’
‘There it is, sir,’ replied John; ‘and take care of it; and mind you
don’t make too much haste back, but give the mare a long rest.--Do you
mind?’
‘Ay, I mind,’ returned Joe. ‘She’ll need it, Heaven knows.’
‘And don’t you score up too much at the Black Lion,’ said John. ‘Mind
that too.’
‘Then why don’t you let me have some money of my own?’ retorted Joe,
sorrowfully; ‘why don’t you, father? What do you send me into London
for, giving me only the right to call for my dinner at the Black Lion,
which you’re to pay for next time you go, as if I was not to be trusted
with a few shillings? Why do you use me like this? It’s not right of
you. You can’t expect me to be quiet under it.’
‘Let him have money!’ cried John, in a drowsy reverie. ‘What does he
call money--guineas? Hasn’t he got money? Over and above the tolls,
hasn’t he one and sixpence?’
‘One and sixpence!’ repeated his son contemptuously.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned John, ‘one and sixpence. When I was your age, I
had never seen so much money, in a heap. A shilling of it is in case
of accidents--the mare casting a shoe, or the like of that. The other
sixpence is to spend in the diversions of London; and the diversion
I recommend is going to the top of the Monument, and sitting there.
There’s no temptation there, sir--no drink--no young women--no bad
characters of any sort--nothing but imagination. That’s the way I
enjoyed myself when I was your age, sir.’
To this, Joe made no answer, but beckoning Hugh, leaped into the saddle
and rode away; and a very stalwart, manly horseman he looked, deserving
a better charger than it was his fortune to bestride. John stood staring
after him, or rather after the grey mare (for he had no eyes for her
rider), until man and beast had been out of sight some twenty minutes,
when he began to think they were gone, and slowly re-entering the house,
fell into a gentle doze.
The unfortunate grey mare, who was the agony of Joe’s life, floundered
along at her own will and pleasure until the Maypole was no longer
visible, and then, contracting her legs into what in a puppet would have
been looked upon as a clumsy and awkward imitation of a canter, mended
her pace all at once, and did it of her own accord. The acquaintance
with her rider’s usual mode of proceeding, which suggested this
improvement in hers, impelled her likewise to turn up a bye-way,
leading--not to London, but through lanes running parallel with the road
they had come, and passing within a few hundred yards of the Maypole,
which led finally to an inclosure surrounding a large, old, red-brick
mansion--the same of which mention was made as the Warren in the
first chapter of this history. Coming to a dead stop in a little copse
thereabout, she suffered her rider to dismount with right goodwill, and
to tie her to the trunk of a tree.
‘Stay there, old girl,’ said Joe, ‘and let us see whether there’s any
little commission for me to-day.’ So saying, he left her to browze upon
such stunted grass and weeds as happened to grow within the length of
her tether, and passing through a wicket gate, entered the grounds on
foot.
The pathway, after a very few minutes’ walking, brought him close to the
house, towards which, and especially towards one particular window, he
directed many covert glances. It was a dreary, silent building, with
echoing courtyards, desolated turret-chambers, and whole suites of rooms
shut up and mouldering to ruin.
The terrace-garden, dark with the shade of overhanging trees, had an air
of melancholy that was quite oppressive. Great iron gates, disused for
many years, and red with rust, drooping on their hinges and overgrown
with long rank grass, seemed as though they tried to sink into the
ground, and hide their fallen state among the friendly weeds. The
fantastic monsters on the walls, green with age and damp, and covered
here and there with moss, looked grim and desolate. There was a sombre
aspect even on that part of the mansion which was inhabited and kept
in good repair, that struck the beholder with a sense of sadness; of
something forlorn and failing, whence cheerfulness was banished. It
would have been difficult to imagine a bright fire blazing in the dull
and darkened rooms, or to picture any gaiety of heart or revelry that
the frowning walls shut in. It seemed a place where such things had
been, but could be no more--the very ghost of a house, haunting the old
spot in its old outward form, and that was all.
Much of this decayed and sombre look was attributable, no doubt, to the
death of its former master, and the temper of its present occupant;
but remembering the tale connected with the mansion, it seemed the very
place for such a deed, and one that might have been its predestined
theatre years upon years ago. Viewed with reference to this legend, the
sheet of water where the steward’s body had been found appeared to wear
a black and sullen character, such as no other pool might own; the bell
upon the roof that had told the tale of murder to the midnight wind,
became a very phantom whose voice would raise the listener’s hair on
end; and every leafless bough that nodded to another, had its stealthy
whispering of the crime.
Joe paced up and down the path, sometimes stopping in affected
contemplation of the building or the prospect, sometimes leaning against
a tree with an assumed air of idleness and indifference, but always
keeping an eye upon the window he had singled out at first. After some
quarter of an hour’s delay, a small white hand was waved to him for an
instant from this casement, and the young man, with a respectful bow,
departed; saying under his breath as he crossed his horse again, ‘No
errand for me to-day!’
But the air of smartness, the cock of the hat to which John Willet had
objected, and the spring nosegay, all betokened some little errand
of his own, having a more interesting object than a vintner or even a
locksmith. So, indeed, it turned out; for when he had settled with the
vintner--whose place of business was down in some deep cellars hard by
Thames Street, and who was as purple-faced an old gentleman as if he
had all his life supported their arched roof on his head--when he had
settled the account, and taken the receipt, and declined tasting more
than three glasses of old sherry, to the unbounded astonishment of the
purple-faced vintner, who, gimlet in hand, had projected an attack upon
at least a score of dusty casks, and who stood transfixed, or morally
gimleted as it were, to his own wall--when he had done all this, and
disposed besides of a frugal dinner at the Black Lion in Whitechapel;
spurning the Monument and John’s advice, he turned his steps towards the
locksmith’s house, attracted by the eyes of blooming Dolly Varden.
Joe was by no means a sheepish fellow, but, for all that, when he got
to the corner of the street in which the locksmith lived, he could by no
means make up his mind to walk straight to the house. First, he resolved
to stroll up another street for five minutes, then up another street for
five minutes more, and so on until he had lost full half an hour, when
he made a bold plunge and found himself with a red face and a beating
heart in the smoky workshop.
‘Joe Willet, or his ghost?’ said Varden, rising from the desk at which
he was busy with his books, and looking at him under his spectacles.
‘Which is it? Joe in the flesh, eh? That’s hearty. And how are all the
Chigwell company, Joe?’
‘Much as usual, sir--they and I agree as well as ever.’
‘Well, well!’ said the locksmith. ‘We must be patient, Joe, and bear
with old folks’ foibles. How’s the mare, Joe? Does she do the four miles
an hour as easily as ever? Ha, ha, ha! Does she, Joe? Eh!--What have we
there, Joe--a nosegay!’
‘A very poor one, sir--I thought Miss Dolly--’
‘No, no,’ said Gabriel, dropping his voice, and shaking his head, ‘not
Dolly. Give ‘em to her mother, Joe. A great deal better give ‘em to her
mother. Would you mind giving ‘em to Mrs Varden, Joe?’
‘Oh no, sir,’ Joe replied, and endeavouring, but not with the greatest
possible success, to hide his disappointment. ‘I shall be very glad, I’m
sure.’
‘That’s right,’ said the locksmith, patting him on the back. ‘It don’t
matter who has ‘em, Joe?’
‘Not a bit, sir.’--Dear heart, how the words stuck in his throat!
‘Come in,’ said Gabriel. ‘I have just been called to tea. She’s in the
parlour.’
‘She,’ thought Joe. ‘Which of ‘em I wonder--Mrs or Miss?’ The locksmith
settled the doubt as neatly as if it had been expressed aloud, by
leading him to the door, and saying, ‘Martha, my dear, here’s young Mr
Willet.’
Now, Mrs Varden, regarding the Maypole as a sort of human mantrap,
or decoy for husbands; viewing its proprietor, and all who aided and
abetted him, in the light of so many poachers among Christian men; and
believing, moreover, that the publicans coupled with sinners in Holy
Writ were veritable licensed victuallers; was far from being favourably
disposed towards her visitor. Wherefore she was taken faint directly;
and being duly presented with the crocuses and snowdrops, divined on
further consideration that they were the occasion of the languor which
had seized upon her spirits. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t bear the room
another minute,’ said the good lady, ‘if they remained here. WOULD you
excuse my putting them out of window?’
Joe begged she wouldn’t mention it on any account, and smiled feebly as
he saw them deposited on the sill outside. If anybody could have known
the pains he had taken to make up that despised and misused bunch of
flowers!--
‘I feel it quite a relief to get rid of them, I assure you,’ said Mrs
Varden. ‘I’m better already.’ And indeed she did appear to have plucked
up her spirits.
Joe expressed his gratitude to Providence for this favourable
dispensation, and tried to look as if he didn’t wonder where Dolly was.
‘You’re sad people at Chigwell, Mr Joseph,’ said Mrs V.
‘I hope not, ma’am,’ returned Joe.
‘You’re the cruellest and most inconsiderate people in the world,’ said
Mrs Varden, bridling. ‘I wonder old Mr Willet, having been a married
man himself, doesn’t know better than to conduct himself as he does. His
doing it for profit is no excuse. I would rather pay the money twenty
times over, and have Varden come home like a respectable and sober
tradesman. If there is one character,’ said Mrs Varden with great
emphasis, ‘that offends and disgusts me more than another, it is a sot.’
‘Come, Martha, my dear,’ said the locksmith cheerily, ‘let us have tea,
and don’t let us talk about sots. There are none here, and Joe don’t
want to hear about them, I dare say.’
At this crisis, Miggs appeared with toast.
‘I dare say he does not,’ said Mrs Varden; ‘and I dare say you do not,
Varden. It’s a very unpleasant subject, I have no doubt, though I
won’t say it’s personal’--Miggs coughed--‘whatever I may be forced to
think’--Miggs sneezed expressively. ‘You never will know, Varden, and
nobody at young Mr Willet’s age--you’ll excuse me, sir--can be expected
to know, what a woman suffers when she is waiting at home under such
circumstances. If you don’t believe me, as I know you don’t, here’s
Miggs, who is only too often a witness of it--ask her.’
‘Oh! she were very bad the other night, sir, indeed she were, said
Miggs. ‘If you hadn’t the sweetness of an angel in you, mim, I don’t
think you could abear it, I raly don’t.’
‘Miggs,’ said Mrs Varden, ‘you’re profane.’
‘Begging your pardon, mim,’ returned Miggs, with shrill rapidity, ‘such
was not my intentions, and such I hope is not my character, though I am
but a servant.’
‘Answering me, Miggs, and providing yourself,’ retorted her mistress,
looking round with dignity, ‘is one and the same thing. How
dare you speak of angels in connection with your sinful
fellow-beings--mere’--said Mrs Varden, glancing at herself in a
neighbouring mirror, and arranging the ribbon of her cap in a more
becoming fashion--‘mere worms and grovellers as we are!’
‘I did not intend, mim, if you please, to give offence,’ said Miggs,
confident in the strength of her compliment, and developing strongly in
the throat as usual, ‘and I did not expect it would be took as such. I
hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and
all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should.’
‘You’ll have the goodness, if you please,’ said Mrs Varden, loftily, ‘to
step upstairs and see if Dolly has finished dressing, and to tell her
that the chair that was ordered for her will be here in a minute, and
that if she keeps it waiting, I shall send it away that instant.--I’m
sorry to see that you don’t take your tea, Varden, and that you don’t
take yours, Mr Joseph; though of course it would be foolish of me to
expect that anything that can be had at home, and in the company of
females, would please YOU.’
This pronoun was understood in the plural sense, and included both
gentlemen, upon both of whom it was rather hard and undeserved, for
Gabriel had applied himself to the meal with a very promising appetite,
until it was spoilt by Mrs Varden herself, and Joe had as great a liking
for the female society of the locksmith’s house--or for a part of it at
all events--as man could well entertain.
But he had no opportunity to say anything in his own defence, for at
that moment Dolly herself appeared, and struck him quite dumb with her
beauty. Never had Dolly looked so handsome as she did then, in all the
glow and grace of youth, with all her charms increased a hundredfold by
a most becoming dress, by a thousand little coquettish ways which nobody
could assume with a better grace, and all the sparkling expectation of
that accursed party. It is impossible to tell how Joe hated that party
wherever it was, and all the other people who were going to it, whoever
they were.
And she hardly looked at him--no, hardly looked at him. And when
the chair was seen through the open door coming blundering into the
workshop, she actually clapped her hands and seemed glad to go. But Joe
gave her his arm--there was some comfort in that--and handed her into
it. To see her seat herself inside, with her laughing eyes brighter
than diamonds, and her hand--surely she had the prettiest hand in
the world--on the ledge of the open window, and her little finger
provokingly and pertly tilted up, as if it wondered why Joe didn’t
squeeze or kiss it! To think how well one or two of the modest snowdrops
would have become that delicate bodice, and how they were lying
neglected outside the parlour window! To see how Miggs looked on with
a face expressive of knowing how all this loveliness was got up, and
of being in the secret of every string and pin and hook and eye, and
of saying it ain’t half as real as you think, and I could look quite as
well myself if I took the pains! To hear that provoking precious little
scream when the chair was hoisted on its poles, and to catch that
transient but not-to-be-forgotten vision of the happy face within--what
torments and aggravations, and yet what delights were these! The very
chairmen seemed favoured rivals as they bore her down the street.
There never was such an alteration in a small room in a small time as in
that parlour when they went back to finish tea. So dark, so deserted,
so perfectly disenchanted. It seemed such sheer nonsense to be sitting
tamely there, when she was at a dance with more lovers than man could
calculate fluttering about her--with the whole party doting on and
adoring her, and wanting to marry her. Miggs was hovering about too; and
the fact of her existence, the mere circumstance of her ever having been
born, appeared, after Dolly, such an unaccountable practical joke. It
was impossible to talk. It couldn’t be done. He had nothing left for it
but to stir his tea round, and round, and round, and ruminate on all the
fascinations of the locksmith’s lovely daughter.
Gabriel was dull too. It was a part of the certain uncertainty of Mrs
Varden’s temper, that when they were in this condition, she should be
gay and sprightly.
‘I need have a cheerful disposition, I am sure,’ said the smiling
housewife, ‘to preserve any spirits at all; and how I do it I can
scarcely tell.’
‘Ah, mim,’ sighed Miggs, ‘begging your pardon for the interruption,
there an’t a many like you.’
‘Take away, Miggs,’ said Mrs Varden, rising, ‘take away, pray. I know
I’m a restraint here, and as I wish everybody to enjoy themselves as
they best can, I feel I had better go.’
‘No, no, Martha,’ cried the locksmith. ‘Stop here. I’m sure we shall be
very sorry to lose you, eh Joe!’ Joe started, and said ‘Certainly.’
‘Thank you, Varden, my dear,’ returned his wife; ‘but I know your wishes
better. Tobacco and beer, or spirits, have much greater attractions than
any I can boast of, and therefore I shall go and sit upstairs and look
out of window, my love. Good night, Mr Joseph. I’m very glad to have
seen you, and I only wish I could have provided something more suitable
to your taste. Remember me very kindly if you please to old Mr Willet,
and tell him that whenever he comes here I have a crow to pluck with
him. Good night!’
Having uttered these words with great sweetness of manner, the good
lady dropped a curtsey remarkable for its condescension, and serenely
withdrew.
And it was for this Joe had looked forward to the twenty-fifth of March
for weeks and weeks, and had gathered the flowers with so much care, and
had cocked his hat, and made himself so smart! This was the end of all
his bold determination, resolved upon for the hundredth time, to speak
out to Dolly and tell her how he loved her! To see her for a minute--for
but a minute--to find her going out to a party and glad to go; to be
looked upon as a common pipe-smoker, beer-bibber, spirit-guzzler, and
tosspot! He bade farewell to his friend the locksmith, and hastened to
take horse at the Black Lion, thinking as he turned towards home, as
many another Joe has thought before and since, that here was an end to
all his hopes--that the thing was impossible and never could be--that
she didn’t care for him--that he was wretched for life--and that the
only congenial prospect left him, was to go for a soldier or a sailor,
and get some obliging enemy to knock his brains out as soon as possible.
Chapter 14
Joe Willet rode leisurely along in his desponding mood, picturing the
locksmith’s daughter going down long country-dances, and poussetting
dreadfully with bold strangers--which was almost too much to bear--when
he heard the tramp of a horse’s feet behind him, and looking back, saw
a well-mounted gentleman advancing at a smart canter. As this rider
passed, he checked his steed, and called him of the Maypole by his name.
Joe set spurs to the grey mare, and was at his side directly.
‘I thought it was you, sir,’ he said, touching his hat. ‘A fair evening,
sir. Glad to see you out of doors again.’
The gentleman smiled and nodded. ‘What gay doings have been going on
to-day, Joe? Is she as pretty as ever? Nay, don’t blush, man.’
‘If I coloured at all, Mr Edward,’ said Joe, ‘which I didn’t know I did,
it was to think I should have been such a fool as ever to have any hope
of her. She’s as far out of my reach as--as Heaven is.’
‘Well, Joe, I hope that’s not altogether beyond it,’ said Edward,
good-humouredly. ‘Eh?’
‘Ah!’ sighed Joe. ‘It’s all very fine talking, sir. Proverbs are easily
made in cold blood. But it can’t be helped. Are you bound for our house,
sir?’
‘Yes. As I am not quite strong yet, I shall stay there to-night, and
ride home coolly in the morning.’
‘If you’re in no particular hurry,’ said Joe after a short silence, ‘and
will bear with the pace of this poor jade, I shall be glad to ride on
with you to the Warren, sir, and hold your horse when you dismount.
It’ll save you having to walk from the Maypole, there and back again. I
can spare the time well, sir, for I am too soon.’
‘And so am I,’ returned Edward, ‘though I was unconsciously riding fast
just now, in compliment I suppose to the pace of my thoughts, which were
travelling post. We will keep together, Joe, willingly, and be as good
company as may be. And cheer up, cheer up, think of the locksmith’s
daughter with a stout heart, and you shall win her yet.’
Joe shook his head; but there was something so cheery in the buoyant
hopeful manner of this speech, that his spirits rose under its
influence, and communicated as it would seem some new impulse even to
the grey mare, who, breaking from her sober amble into a gentle trot,
emulated the pace of Edward Chester’s horse, and appeared to flatter
herself that he was doing his very best.
It was a fine dry night, and the light of a young moon, which was then
just rising, shed around that peace and tranquillity which gives to
evening time its most delicious charm. The lengthened shadows of the
trees, softened as if reflected in still water, threw their carpet on
the path the travellers pursued, and the light wind stirred yet more
softly than before, as though it were soothing Nature in her sleep. By
little and little they ceased talking, and rode on side by side in a
pleasant silence.
‘The Maypole lights are brilliant to-night,’ said Edward, as they rode
along the lane from which, while the intervening trees were bare of
leaves, that hostelry was visible.
‘Brilliant indeed, sir,’ returned Joe, rising in his stirrups to get
a better view. ‘Lights in the large room, and a fire glimmering in the
best bedchamber? Why, what company can this be for, I wonder!’
‘Some benighted horseman wending towards London, and deterred from
going on to-night by the marvellous tales of my friend the highwayman, I
suppose,’ said Edward.
‘He must be a horseman of good quality to have such accommodations. Your
bed too, sir--!’
‘No matter, Joe. Any other room will do for me. But come--there’s nine
striking. We may push on.’
They cantered forward at as brisk a pace as Joe’s charger could attain,
and presently stopped in the little copse where he had left her in the
morning. Edward dismounted, gave his bridle to his companion, and walked
with a light step towards the house.
A female servant was waiting at a side gate in the garden-wall, and
admitted him without delay. He hurried along the terrace-walk, and
darted up a flight of broad steps leading into an old and gloomy hall,
whose walls were ornamented with rusty suits of armour, antlers, weapons
of the chase, and suchlike garniture. Here he paused, but not long; for
as he looked round, as if expecting the attendant to have followed, and
wondering she had not done so, a lovely girl appeared, whose dark hair
next moment rested on his breast. Almost at the same instant a heavy
hand was laid upon her arm, Edward felt himself thrust away, and Mr
Haredale stood between them.
He regarded the young man sternly without removing his hat; with
one hand clasped his niece, and with the other, in which he held his
riding-whip, motioned him towards the door. The young man drew himself
up, and returned his gaze.
‘This is well done of you, sir, to corrupt my servants, and enter my
house unbidden and in secret, like a thief!’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Leave
it, sir, and return no more.’
‘Miss Haredale’s presence,’ returned the young man, ‘and your
relationship to her, give you a licence which, if you are a brave man,
you will not abuse. You have compelled me to this course, and the fault
is yours--not mine.’
‘It is neither generous, nor honourable, nor the act of a true man,
sir,’ retorted the other, ‘to tamper with the affections of a weak,
trusting girl, while you shrink, in your unworthiness, from her guardian
and protector, and dare not meet the light of day. More than this I will
not say to you, save that I forbid you this house, and require you to be
gone.’
‘It is neither generous, nor honourable, nor the act of a true man to
play the spy,’ said Edward. ‘Your words imply dishonour, and I reject
them with the scorn they merit.’
‘You will find,’ said Mr Haredale, calmly, ‘your trusty go-between in
waiting at the gate by which you entered. I have played no spy’s part,
sir. I chanced to see you pass the gate, and followed. You might have
heard me knocking for admission, had you been less swift of foot,
or lingered in the garden. Please to withdraw. Your presence here is
offensive to me and distressful to my niece.’ As he said these words,
he passed his arm about the waist of the terrified and weeping girl, and
drew her closer to him; and though the habitual severity of his manner
was scarcely changed, there was yet apparent in the action an air of
kindness and sympathy for her distress.
‘Mr Haredale,’ said Edward, ‘your arm encircles her on whom I have set
my every hope and thought, and to purchase one minute’s happiness for
whom I would gladly lay down my life; this house is the casket that
holds the precious jewel of my existence. Your niece has plighted her
faith to me, and I have plighted mine to her. What have I done that
you should hold me in this light esteem, and give me these discourteous
words?’
‘You have done that, sir,’ answered Mr Haredale, ‘which must be undone.
You have tied a lover’s-knot here which must be cut asunder. Take good
heed of what I say. Must. I cancel the bond between ye. I reject you,
and all of your kith and kin--all the false, hollow, heartless stock.’
‘High words, sir,’ said Edward, scornfully.
‘Words of purpose and meaning, as you will find,’ replied the other.
‘Lay them to heart.’
‘Lay you then, these,’ said Edward. ‘Your cold and sullen temper, which
chills every breast about you, which turns affection into fear, and
changes duty into dread, has forced us on this secret course, repugnant
to our nature and our wish, and far more foreign, sir, to us than you.
I am not a false, a hollow, or a heartless man; the character is yours,
who poorly venture on these injurious terms, against the truth, and
under the shelter whereof I reminded you just now. You shall not cancel
the bond between us. I will not abandon this pursuit. I rely upon your
niece’s truth and honour, and set your influence at nought. I leave her
with a confidence in her pure faith, which you will never weaken, and
with no concern but that I do not leave her in some gentler care.’
With that, he pressed her cold hand to his lips, and once more
encountering and returning Mr Haredale’s steady look, withdrew.
A few words to Joe as he mounted his horse sufficiently explained what
had passed, and renewed all that young gentleman’s despondency with
tenfold aggravation. They rode back to the Maypole without exchanging a
syllable, and arrived at the door with heavy hearts.
Old John, who had peeped from behind the red curtain as they rode up
shouting for Hugh, was out directly, and said with great importance as
he held the young man’s stirrup,
‘He’s comfortable in bed--the best bed. A thorough gentleman; the
smilingest, affablest gentleman I ever had to do with.’
‘Who, Willet?’ said Edward carelessly, as he dismounted.
‘Your worthy father, sir,’ replied John. ‘Your honourable, venerable
father.’
‘What does he mean?’ said Edward, looking with a mixture of alarm and
doubt, at Joe.
‘What DO you mean?’ said Joe. ‘Don’t you see Mr Edward doesn’t
understand, father?’
‘Why, didn’t you know of it, sir?’ said John, opening his eyes wide.
‘How very singular! Bless you, he’s been here ever since noon to-day,
and Mr Haredale has been having a long talk with him, and hasn’t been
gone an hour.’
‘My father, Willet!’
‘Yes, sir, he told me so--a handsome, slim, upright gentleman, in
green-and-gold. In your old room up yonder, sir. No doubt you can go in,
sir,’ said John, walking backwards into the road and looking up at the
window. ‘He hasn’t put out his candles yet, I see.’
Edward glanced at the window also, and hastily murmuring that he had
changed his mind--forgotten something--and must return to London,
mounted his horse again and rode away; leaving the Willets, father and
son, looking at each other in mute astonishment.
Chapter 15
At noon next day, John Willet’s guest sat lingering over his breakfast
in his own home, surrounded by a variety of comforts, which left the
Maypole’s highest flight and utmost stretch of accommodation at an
infinite distance behind, and suggested comparisons very much to the
disadvantage and disfavour of that venerable tavern.
In the broad old-fashioned window-seat--as capacious as many modern
sofas, and cushioned to serve the purpose of a luxurious settee--in the
broad old-fashioned window-seat of a roomy chamber, Mr Chester lounged,
very much at his ease, over a well-furnished breakfast-table. He had
exchanged his riding-coat for a handsome morning-gown, his boots for
slippers; had been at great pains to atone for the having been obliged
to make his toilet when he rose without the aid of dressing-case and
tiring equipage; and, having gradually forgotten through these means the
discomforts of an indifferent night and an early ride, was in a state of
perfect complacency, indolence, and satisfaction.
The situation in which he found himself, indeed, was particularly
favourable to the growth of these feelings; for, not to mention the lazy
influence of a late and lonely breakfast, with the additional sedative
of a newspaper, there was an air of repose about his place of residence
peculiar to itself, and which hangs about it, even in these times, when
it is more bustling and busy than it was in days of yore.
There are, still, worse places than the Temple, on a sultry day,
for basking in the sun, or resting idly in the shade. There is yet a
drowsiness in its courts, and a dreamy dulness in its trees and gardens;
those who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their
footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing
from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet Street, ‘Who enters here leaves
noise behind.’ There is still the plash of falling water in fair
Fountain Court, and there are yet nooks and corners where dun-haunted
students may look down from their dusty garrets, on a vagrant ray of
sunlight patching the shade of the tall houses, and seldom troubled
to reflect a passing stranger’s form. There is yet, in the Temple,
something of a clerkly monkish atmosphere, which public offices of law
have not disturbed, and even legal firms have failed to scare away. In
summer time, its pumps suggest to thirsty idlers, springs cooler, and
more sparkling, and deeper than other wells; and as they trace the
spillings of full pitchers on the heated ground, they snuff the
freshness, and, sighing, cast sad looks towards the Thames, and think of
baths and boats, and saunter on, despondent.
It was in a room in Paper Buildings--a row of goodly tenements, shaded
in front by ancient trees, and looking, at the back, upon the Temple
Gardens--that this, our idler, lounged; now taking up again the paper
he had laid down a hundred times; now trifling with the fragments of
his meal; now pulling forth his golden toothpick, and glancing leisurely
about the room, or out at window into the trim garden walks, where a few
early loiterers were already pacing to and fro. Here a pair of lovers
met to quarrel and make up; there a dark-eyed nursery-maid had better
eyes for Templars than her charge; on this hand an ancient spinster,
with her lapdog in a string, regarded both enormities with scornful
sidelong looks; on that a weazen old gentleman, ogling the nursery-maid,
looked with like scorn upon the spinster, and wondered she didn’t know
she was no longer young. Apart from all these, on the river’s margin two
or three couple of business-talkers walked slowly up and down in earnest
conversation; and one young man sat thoughtfully on a bench, alone.
‘Ned is amazingly patient!’ said Mr Chester, glancing at this last-named
person as he set down his teacup and plied the golden toothpick,
‘immensely patient! He was sitting yonder when I began to dress, and has
scarcely changed his posture since. A most eccentric dog!’
As he spoke, the figure rose, and came towards him with a rapid pace.
‘Really, as if he had heard me,’ said the father, resuming his newspaper
with a yawn. ‘Dear Ned!’
Presently the room-door opened, and the young man entered; to whom his
father gently waved his hand, and smiled.
‘Are you at leisure for a little conversation, sir?’ said Edward.
‘Surely, Ned. I am always at leisure. You know my constitution.--Have
you breakfasted?’
‘Three hours ago.’
‘What a very early dog!’ cried his father, contemplating him from behind
the toothpick, with a languid smile.
‘The truth is,’ said Edward, bringing a chair forward, and seating
himself near the table, ‘that I slept but ill last night, and was glad
to rise. The cause of my uneasiness cannot but be known to you, sir; and
it is upon that I wish to speak.’
‘My dear boy,’ returned his father, ‘confide in me, I beg. But you know
my constitution--don’t be prosy, Ned.’
‘I will be plain, and brief,’ said Edward.
‘Don’t say you will, my good fellow,’ returned his father, crossing his
legs, ‘or you certainly will not. You are going to tell me’--
‘Plainly this, then,’ said the son, with an air of great concern, ‘that
I know where you were last night--from being on the spot, indeed--and
whom you saw, and what your purpose was.’
‘You don’t say so!’ cried his father. ‘I am delighted to hear it. It
saves us the worry, and terrible wear and tear of a long explanation,
and is a great relief for both. At the very house! Why didn’t you come
up? I should have been charmed to see you.’
‘I knew that what I had to say would be better said after a night’s
reflection, when both of us were cool,’ returned the son.
‘’Fore Gad, Ned,’ rejoined the father, ‘I was cool enough last night.
That detestable Maypole! By some infernal contrivance of the builder,
it holds the wind, and keeps it fresh. You remember the sharp east wind
that blew so hard five weeks ago? I give you my honour it was rampant
in that old house last night, though out of doors there was a dead calm.
But you were saying’--
‘I was about to say, Heaven knows how seriously and earnestly, that you
have made me wretched, sir. Will you hear me gravely for a moment?’
‘My dear Ned,’ said his father, ‘I will hear you with the patience of an
anchorite. Oblige me with the milk.’
‘I saw Miss Haredale last night,’ Edward resumed, when he had complied
with this request; ‘her uncle, in her presence, immediately after your
interview, and, as of course I know, in consequence of it, forbade
me the house, and, with circumstances of indignity which are of your
creation I am sure, commanded me to leave it on the instant.’
‘For his manner of doing so, I give you my honour, Ned, I am not
accountable,’ said his father. ‘That you must excuse. He is a mere boor,
a log, a brute, with no address in life.--Positively a fly in the jug.
The first I have seen this year.’
Edward rose, and paced the room. His imperturbable parent sipped his
tea.
‘Father,’ said the young man, stopping at length before him, ‘we must
not trifle in this matter. We must not deceive each other, or ourselves.
Let me pursue the manly open part I wish to take, and do not repel me by
this unkind indifference.’
‘Whether I am indifferent or no,’ returned the other, ‘I leave you, my
dear boy, to judge. A ride of twenty-five or thirty miles, through miry
roads--a Maypole dinner--a tete-a-tete with Haredale, which, vanity
apart, was quite a Valentine and Orson business--a Maypole bed--a
Maypole landlord, and a Maypole retinue of idiots and centaurs;--whether
the voluntary endurance of these things looks like indifference, dear
Ned, or like the excessive anxiety, and devotion, and all that sort of
thing, of a parent, you shall determine for yourself.’
‘I wish you to consider, sir,’ said Edward, ‘in what a cruel situation I
am placed. Loving Miss Haredale as I do’--
‘My dear fellow,’ interrupted his father with a compassionate smile,
‘you do nothing of the kind. You don’t know anything about it. There’s
no such thing, I assure you. Now, do take my word for it. You have good
sense, Ned,--great good sense. I wonder you should be guilty of such
amazing absurdities. You really surprise me.’
‘I repeat,’ said his son firmly, ‘that I love her. You have interposed
to part us, and have, to the extent I have just now told you of,
succeeded. May I induce you, sir, in time, to think more favourably of
our attachment, or is it your intention and your fixed design to hold us
asunder if you can?’
‘My dear Ned,’ returned his father, taking a pinch of snuff and pushing
his box towards him, ‘that is my purpose most undoubtedly.’
‘The time that has elapsed,’ rejoined his son, ‘since I began to know
her worth, has flown in such a dream that until now I have hardly once
paused to reflect upon my true position. What is it? From my childhood
I have been accustomed to luxury and idleness, and have been bred as
though my fortune were large, and my expectations almost without a
limit. The idea of wealth has been familiarised to me from my cradle. I
have been taught to look upon those means, by which men raise themselves
to riches and distinction, as being beyond my heeding, and beneath my
care. I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit
for nothing. I find myself at last wholly dependent upon you, with no
resource but in your favour. In this momentous question of my life we do
not, and it would seem we never can, agree. I have shrunk instinctively
alike from those to whom you have urged me to pay court, and from the
motives of interest and gain which have rendered them in your eyes
visible objects for my suit. If there never has been thus much
plain-speaking between us before, sir, the fault has not been mine,
indeed. If I seem to speak too plainly now, it is, believe me father, in
the hope that there may be a franker spirit, a worthier reliance, and a
kinder confidence between us in time to come.’
‘My good fellow,’ said his smiling father, ‘you quite affect me. Go
on, my dear Edward, I beg. But remember your promise. There is great
earnestness, vast candour, a manifest sincerity in all you say, but I
fear I observe the faintest indications of a tendency to prose.’
‘I am very sorry, sir.’
‘I am very sorry, too, Ned, but you know that I cannot fix my mind for
any long period upon one subject. If you’ll come to the point at once,
I’ll imagine all that ought to go before, and conclude it said. Oblige
me with the milk again. Listening, invariably makes me feverish.’
‘What I would say then, tends to this,’ said Edward. ‘I cannot bear
this absolute dependence, sir, even upon you. Time has been lost and
opportunity thrown away, but I am yet a young man, and may retrieve it.
Will you give me the means of devoting such abilities and energies as I
possess, to some worthy pursuit? Will you let me try to make for myself
an honourable path in life? For any term you please to name--say for
five years if you will--I will pledge myself to move no further in the
matter of our difference without your full concurrence. During that
period, I will endeavour earnestly and patiently, if ever man did, to
open some prospect for myself, and free you from the burden you fear
I should become if I married one whose worth and beauty are her chief
endowments. Will you do this, sir? At the expiration of the term we
agree upon, let us discuss this subject again. Till then, unless it is
revived by you, let it never be renewed between us.’
‘My dear Ned,’ returned his father, laying down the newspaper at which
he had been glancing carelessly, and throwing himself back in the
window-seat, ‘I believe you know how very much I dislike what are called
family affairs, which are only fit for plebeian Christmas days, and
have no manner of business with people of our condition. But as you
are proceeding upon a mistake, Ned--altogether upon a mistake--I will
conquer my repugnance to entering on such matters, and give you a
perfectly plain and candid answer, if you will do me the favour to shut
the door.’
Edward having obeyed him, he took an elegant little knife from his
pocket, and paring his nails, continued:
‘You have to thank me, Ned, for being of good family; for your mother,
charming person as she was, and almost broken-hearted, and so forth, as
she left me, when she was prematurely compelled to become immortal--had
nothing to boast of in that respect.’
‘Her father was at least an eminent lawyer, sir,’ said Edward.
‘Quite right, Ned; perfectly so. He stood high at the bar, had a great
name and great wealth, but having risen from nothing--I have
always closed my eyes to the circumstance and steadily resisted its
contemplation, but I fear his father dealt in pork, and that his
business did once involve cow-heel and sausages--he wished to marry his
daughter into a good family. He had his heart’s desire, Ned. I was a
younger son’s younger son, and I married her. We each had our object,
and gained it. She stepped at once into the politest and best circles,
and I stepped into a fortune which I assure you was very necessary to my
comfort--quite indispensable. Now, my good fellow, that fortune is among
the things that have been. It is gone, Ned, and has been gone--how old
are you? I always forget.’
‘Seven-and-twenty, sir.’
‘Are you indeed?’ cried his father, raising his eyelids in a languishing
surprise. ‘So much! Then I should say, Ned, that as nearly as I
remember, its skirts vanished from human knowledge, about eighteen or
nineteen years ago. It was about that time when I came to live in these
chambers (once your grandfather’s, and bequeathed by that extremely
respectable person to me), and commenced to live upon an inconsiderable
annuity and my past reputation.’
‘You are jesting with me, sir,’ said Edward.
‘Not in the slightest degree, I assure you,’ returned his father with
great composure. ‘These family topics are so extremely dry, that I am
sorry to say they don’t admit of any such relief. It is for that reason,
and because they have an appearance of business, that I dislike them so
very much. Well! You know the rest. A son, Ned, unless he is old enough
to be a companion--that is to say, unless he is some two or three and
twenty--is not the kind of thing to have about one. He is a restraint
upon his father, his father is a restraint upon him, and they make each
other mutually uncomfortable. Therefore, until within the last four
years or so--I have a poor memory for dates, and if I mistake, you will
correct me in your own mind--you pursued your studies at a distance, and
picked up a great variety of accomplishments. Occasionally we passed a
week or two together here, and disconcerted each other as only such near
relations can. At last you came home. I candidly tell you, my dear boy,
that if you had been awkward and overgrown, I should have exported you
to some distant part of the world.’
‘I wish with all my soul you had, sir,’ said Edward.
‘No you don’t, Ned,’ said his father coolly; ‘you are mistaken, I assure
you. I found you a handsome, prepossessing, elegant fellow, and I threw
you into the society I can still command. Having done that, my dear
fellow, I consider that I have provided for you in life, and rely upon
your doing something to provide for me in return.’
‘I do not understand your meaning, sir.’
‘My meaning, Ned, is obvious--I observe another fly in the cream-jug,
but have the goodness not to take it out as you did the first, for
their walk when their legs are milky, is extremely ungraceful and
disagreeable--my meaning is, that you must do as I did; that you must
marry well and make the most of yourself.’
‘A mere fortune-hunter!’ cried the son, indignantly.
‘What in the devil’s name, Ned, would you be!’ returned the father. ‘All
men are fortune-hunters, are they not? The law, the church, the court,
the camp--see how they are all crowded with fortune-hunters, jostling
each other in the pursuit. The stock-exchange, the pulpit, the
counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the senate,--what but
fortune-hunters are they filled with? A fortune-hunter! Yes. You
ARE one; and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, if you were
the greatest courtier, lawyer, legislator, prelate, or merchant, in
existence. If you are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself with
the reflection that at the very worst your fortune-hunting can make but
one person miserable or unhappy. How many people do you suppose these
other kinds of huntsmen crush in following their sport--hundreds at a
step? Or thousands?’
The young man leant his head upon his hand, and made no answer.
‘I am quite charmed,’ said the father rising, and walking slowly to and
fro--stopping now and then to glance at himself in the mirror, or survey
a picture through his glass, with the air of a connoisseur, ‘that we
have had this conversation, Ned, unpromising as it was. It establishes
a confidence between us which is quite delightful, and was certainly
necessary, though how you can ever have mistaken our positions and
designs, I confess I cannot understand. I conceived, until I found your
fancy for this girl, that all these points were tacitly agreed upon
between us.’
‘I knew you were embarrassed, sir,’ returned the son, raising his head
for a moment, and then falling into his former attitude, ‘but I had no
idea we were the beggared wretches you describe. How could I suppose it,
bred as I have been; witnessing the life you have always led; and the
appearance you have always made?’
‘My dear child,’ said the father--‘for you really talk so like a child
that I must call you one--you were bred upon a careful principle;
the very manner of your education, I assure you, maintained my credit
surprisingly. As to the life I lead, I must lead it, Ned. I must have
these little refinements about me. I have always been used to them, and
I cannot exist without them. They must surround me, you observe, and
therefore they are here. With regard to our circumstances, Ned, you
may set your mind at rest upon that score. They are desperate. Your own
appearance is by no means despicable, and our joint pocket-money alone
devours our income. That’s the truth.’
‘Why have I never known this before? Why have you encouraged me, sir, to
an expenditure and mode of life to which we have no right or title?’
‘My good fellow,’ returned his father more compassionately than ever,
‘if you made no appearance, how could you possibly succeed in the
pursuit for which I destined you? As to our mode of life, every man
has a right to live in the best way he can; and to make himself as
comfortable as he can, or he is an unnatural scoundrel. Our debts, I
grant, are very great, and therefore it the more behoves you, as a young
man of principle and honour, to pay them off as speedily as possible.’
‘The villain’s part,’ muttered Edward, ‘that I have unconsciously
played! I to win the heart of Emma Haredale! I would, for her sake, I
had died first!’
‘I am glad you see, Ned,’ returned his father, ‘how perfectly
self-evident it is, that nothing can be done in that quarter. But apart
from this, and the necessity of your speedily bestowing yourself on
another (as you know you could to-morrow, if you chose), I wish you’d
look upon it pleasantly. In a religious point of view alone, how
could you ever think of uniting yourself to a Catholic, unless she was
amazingly rich? You ought to be so very Protestant, coming of such a
Protestant family as you do. Let us be moral, Ned, or we are nothing.
Even if one could set that objection aside, which is impossible, we come
to another which is quite conclusive. The very idea of marrying a girl
whose father was killed, like meat! Good God, Ned, how disagreeable!
Consider the impossibility of having any respect for your father-in-law
under such unpleasant circumstances--think of his having been “viewed”
by jurors, and “sat upon” by coroners, and of his very doubtful position
in the family ever afterwards. It seems to me such an indelicate sort
of thing that I really think the girl ought to have been put to death by
the state to prevent its happening. But I tease you perhaps. You would
rather be alone? My dear Ned, most willingly. God bless you. I shall
be going out presently, but we shall meet to-night, or if not to-night,
certainly to-morrow. Take care of yourself in the mean time, for both
our sakes. You are a person of great consequence to me, Ned--of vast
consequence indeed. God bless you!’
With these words, the father, who had been arranging his cravat in
the glass, while he uttered them in a disconnected careless manner,
withdrew, humming a tune as he went. The son, who had appeared so lost
in thought as not to hear or understand them, remained quite still and
silent. After the lapse of half an hour or so, the elder Chester, gaily
dressed, went out. The younger still sat with his head resting on his
hands, in what appeared to be a kind of stupor.
Chapter 16
A series of pictures representing the streets of London in the night,
even at the comparatively recent date of this tale, would present to the
eye something so very different in character from the reality which is
witnessed in these times, that it would be difficult for the beholder to
recognise his most familiar walks in the altered aspect of little more
than half a century ago.
They were, one and all, from the broadest and best to the narrowest and
least frequented, very dark. The oil and cotton lamps, though regularly
trimmed twice or thrice in the long winter nights, burnt feebly at the
best; and at a late hour, when they were unassisted by the lamps and
candles in the shops, cast but a narrow track of doubtful light upon the
footway, leaving the projecting doors and house-fronts in the deepest
gloom. Many of the courts and lanes were left in total darkness; those
of the meaner sort, where one glimmering light twinkled for a score of
houses, being favoured in no slight degree. Even in these places, the
inhabitants had often good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon
as it was lighted; and the watch being utterly inefficient and powerless
to prevent them, they did so at their pleasure. Thus, in the lightest
thoroughfares, there was at every turn some obscure and dangerous spot
whither a thief might fly or shelter, and few would care to follow; and
the city being belted round by fields, green lanes, waste grounds, and
lonely roads, dividing it at that time from the suburbs that have joined
it since, escape, even where the pursuit was hot, was rendered easy.
It is no wonder that with these favouring circumstances in full and
constant operation, street robberies, often accompanied by cruel wounds,
and not unfrequently by loss of life, should have been of nightly
occurrence in the very heart of London, or that quiet folks should have
had great dread of traversing its streets after the shops were closed.
It was not unusual for those who wended home alone at midnight, to
keep the middle of the road, the better to guard against surprise from
lurking footpads; few would venture to repair at a late hour to Kentish
Town or Hampstead, or even to Kensington or Chelsea, unarmed and
unattended; while he who had been loudest and most valiant at the
supper-table or the tavern, and had but a mile or so to go, was glad to
fee a link-boy to escort him home.
There were many other characteristics--not quite so disagreeable--about
the thoroughfares of London then, with which they had been long
familiar. Some of the shops, especially those to the eastward of Temple
Bar, still adhered to the old practice of hanging out a sign; and the
creaking and swinging of these boards in their iron frames on windy
nights, formed a strange and mournful concert for the ears of those
who lay awake in bed or hurried through the streets. Long stands of
hackney-chairs and groups of chairmen, compared with whom the coachmen
of our day are gentle and polite, obstructed the way and filled the
air with clamour; night-cellars, indicated by a little stream of light
crossing the pavement, and stretching out half-way into the road, and
by the stifled roar of voices from below, yawned for the reception and
entertainment of the most abandoned of both sexes; under every shed and
bulk small groups of link-boys gamed away the earnings of the day; or
one more weary than the rest, gave way to sleep, and let the fragment of
his torch fall hissing on the puddled ground.
Then there was the watch with staff and lantern crying the hour, and
the kind of weather; and those who woke up at his voice and turned them
round in bed, were glad to hear it rained, or snowed, or blew, or froze,
for very comfort’s sake. The solitary passenger was startled by the
chairmen’s cry of ‘By your leave there!’ as two came trotting past
him with their empty vehicle--carried backwards to show its being
disengaged--and hurried to the nearest stand. Many a private chair,
too, inclosing some fine lady, monstrously hooped and furbelowed, and
preceded by running-footmen bearing flambeaux--for which extinguishers
are yet suspended before the doors of a few houses of the better
sort--made the way gay and light as it danced along, and darker and more
dismal when it had passed. It was not unusual for these running gentry,
who carried it with a very high hand, to quarrel in the servants’ hall
while waiting for their masters and mistresses; and, falling to blows
either there or in the street without, to strew the place of skirmish
with hair-powder, fragments of bag-wigs, and scattered nosegays. Gaming,
the vice which ran so high among all classes (the fashion being of
course set by the upper), was generally the cause of these disputes;
for cards and dice were as openly used, and worked as much mischief, and
yielded as much excitement below stairs, as above. While incidents like
these, arising out of drums and masquerades and parties at quadrille,
were passing at the west end of the town, heavy stagecoaches and scarce
heavier waggons were lumbering slowly towards the city, the coachmen,
guard, and passengers, armed to the teeth, and the coach--a day or so
perhaps behind its time, but that was nothing--despoiled by highwaymen;
who made no scruple to attack, alone and single-handed, a whole caravan
of goods and men, and sometimes shot a passenger or two, and were
sometimes shot themselves, as the case might be. On the morrow, rumours
of this new act of daring on the road yielded matter for a few hours’
conversation through the town, and a Public Progress of some fine
gentleman (half-drunk) to Tyburn, dressed in the newest fashion, and
damning the ordinary with unspeakable gallantry and grace, furnished to
the populace, at once a pleasant excitement and a wholesome and profound
example.
Among all the dangerous characters who, in such a state of society,
prowled and skulked in the metropolis at night, there was one man from
whom many as uncouth and fierce as he, shrunk with an involuntary dread.
Who he was, or whence he came, was a question often asked, but which
none could answer. His name was unknown, he had never been seen until
within about eight days or thereabouts, and was equally a stranger to
the old ruffians, upon whose haunts he ventured fearlessly, as to the
young. He could be no spy, for he never removed his slouched hat to look
about him, entered into conversation with no man, heeded nothing that
passed, listened to no discourse, regarded nobody that came or went.
But so surely as the dead of night set in, so surely this man was in the
midst of the loose concourse in the night-cellar where outcasts of every
grade resorted; and there he sat till morning.
He was not only a spectre at their licentious feasts; a something in the
midst of their revelry and riot that chilled and haunted them; but out
of doors he was the same. Directly it was dark, he was abroad--never in
company with any one, but always alone; never lingering or loitering,
but always walking swiftly; and looking (so they said who had seen him)
over his shoulder from time to time, and as he did so quickening his
pace. In the fields, the lanes, the roads, in all quarters of the
town--east, west, north, and south--that man was seen gliding on like a
shadow. He was always hurrying away. Those who encountered him, saw him
steal past, caught sight of the backward glance, and so lost him in the
darkness.
This constant restlessness, and flitting to and fro, gave rise to
strange stories. He was seen in such distant and remote places, at times
so nearly tallying with each other, that some doubted whether there were
not two of them, or more--some, whether he had not unearthly means of
travelling from spot to spot. The footpad hiding in a ditch had marked
him passing like a ghost along its brink; the vagrant had met him on the
dark high-road; the beggar had seen him pause upon the bridge to look
down at the water, and then sweep on again; they who dealt in bodies
with the surgeons could swear he slept in churchyards, and that they
had beheld him glide away among the tombs on their approach. And as they
told these stories to each other, one who had looked about him would
pull his neighbour by the sleeve, and there he would be among them.
At last, one man--he was one of those whose commerce lay among the
graves--resolved to question this strange companion. Next night, when
he had eat his poor meal voraciously (he was accustomed to do that, they
had observed, as though he had no other in the day), this fellow sat
down at his elbow.
‘A black night, master!’
‘It is a black night.’
‘Blacker than last, though that was pitchy too. Didn’t I pass you near
the turnpike in the Oxford Road?’
‘It’s like you may. I don’t know.’
‘Come, come, master,’ cried the fellow, urged on by the looks of his
comrades, and slapping him on the shoulder; ‘be more companionable and
communicative. Be more the gentleman in this good company. There are
tales among us that you have sold yourself to the devil, and I know not
what.’
‘We all have, have we not?’ returned the stranger, looking up. ‘If we
were fewer in number, perhaps he would give better wages.’
‘It goes rather hard with you, indeed,’ said the fellow, as the stranger
disclosed his haggard unwashed face, and torn clothes. ‘What of that? Be
merry, master. A stave of a roaring song now’--
‘Sing you, if you desire to hear one,’ replied the other, shaking him
roughly off; ‘and don’t touch me if you’re a prudent man; I carry
arms which go off easily--they have done so, before now--and make it
dangerous for strangers who don’t know the trick of them, to lay hands
upon me.’
‘Do you threaten?’ said the fellow.
‘Yes,’ returned the other, rising and turning upon him, and looking
fiercely round as if in apprehension of a general attack.
His voice, and look, and bearing--all expressive of the wildest
recklessness and desperation--daunted while they repelled the
bystanders. Although in a very different sphere of action now, they were
not without much of the effect they had wrought at the Maypole Inn.
‘I am what you all are, and live as you all do,’ said the man sternly,
after a short silence. ‘I am in hiding here like the rest, and if we
were surprised would perhaps do my part with the best of ye. If it’s my
humour to be left to myself, let me have it. Otherwise,’--and here
he swore a tremendous oath--‘there’ll be mischief done in this place,
though there ARE odds of a score against me.’
A low murmur, having its origin perhaps in a dread of the man and the
mystery that surrounded him, or perhaps in a sincere opinion on the part
of some of those present, that it would be an inconvenient precedent to
meddle too curiously with a gentleman’s private affairs if he saw reason
to conceal them, warned the fellow who had occasioned this discussion
that he had best pursue it no further. After a short time the strange
man lay down upon a bench to sleep, and when they thought of him again,
they found he was gone.
Next night, as soon as it was dark, he was abroad again and traversing
the streets; he was before the locksmith’s house more than once, but
the family were out, and it was close shut. This night he crossed London
Bridge and passed into Southwark. As he glided down a bye street, a
woman with a little basket on her arm, turned into it at the other end.
Directly he observed her, he sought the shelter of an archway, and
stood aside until she had passed. Then he emerged cautiously from his
hiding-place, and followed.
She went into several shops to purchase various kinds of household
necessaries, and round every place at which she stopped he hovered like
her evil spirit; following her when she reappeared. It was nigh eleven
o’clock, and the passengers in the streets were thinning fast, when she
turned, doubtless to go home. The phantom still followed her.
She turned into the same bye street in which he had seen her first,
which, being free from shops, and narrow, was extremely dark. She
quickened her pace here, as though distrustful of being stopped, and
robbed of such trifling property as she carried with her. He crept along
on the other side of the road. Had she been gifted with the speed of
wind, it seemed as if his terrible shadow would have tracked her down.
At length the widow--for she it was--reached her own door, and, panting
for breath, paused to take the key from her basket. In a flush and glow,
with the haste she had made, and the pleasure of being safe at home,
she stooped to draw it out, when, raising her head, she saw him standing
silently beside her: the apparition of a dream.
His hand was on her mouth, but that was needless, for her tongue clove
to its roof, and her power of utterance was gone. ‘I have been looking
for you many nights. Is the house empty? Answer me. Is any one inside?’
She could only answer by a rattle in her throat.
‘Make me a sign.’
She seemed to indicate that there was no one there. He took the key,
unlocked the door, carried her in, and secured it carefully behind them.
Chapter 17
It was a chilly night, and the fire in the widow’s parlour had burnt
low. Her strange companion placed her in a chair, and stooping down
before the half-extinguished ashes, raked them together and fanned them
with his hat. From time to time he glanced at her over his shoulder, as
though to assure himself of her remaining quiet and making no effort to
depart; and that done, busied himself about the fire again.
It was not without reason that he took these pains, for his dress was
dank and drenched with wet, his jaws rattled with cold, and he shivered
from head to foot. It had rained hard during the previous night and for
some hours in the morning, but since noon it had been fine. Wheresoever
he had passed the hours of darkness, his condition sufficiently
betokened that many of them had been spent beneath the open sky.
Besmeared with mire; his saturated clothes clinging with a damp embrace
about his limbs; his beard unshaven, his face unwashed, his meagre
cheeks worn into deep hollows,--a more miserable wretch could hardly be,
than this man who now cowered down upon the widow’s hearth, and watched
the struggling flame with bloodshot eyes.
She had covered her face with her hands, fearing, as it seemed, to look
towards him. So they remained for some short time in silence. Glancing
round again, he asked at length:
‘Is this your house?’
‘It is. Why, in the name of Heaven, do you darken it?’
‘Give me meat and drink,’ he answered sullenly, ‘or I dare do more than
that. The very marrow in my bones is cold, with wet and hunger. I must
have warmth and food, and I will have them here.’
‘You were the robber on the Chigwell road.’
‘I was.’
‘And nearly a murderer then.’
‘The will was not wanting. There was one came upon me and raised the
hue-and-cry, that it would have gone hard with, but for his nimbleness.
I made a thrust at him.’
‘You thrust your sword at HIM!’ cried the widow, looking upwards. ‘You
hear this man! you hear and saw!’
He looked at her, as, with her head thrown back, and her hands tight
clenched together, she uttered these words in an agony of appeal. Then,
starting to his feet as she had done, he advanced towards her.
‘Beware!’ she cried in a suppressed voice, whose firmness stopped him
midway. ‘Do not so much as touch me with a finger, or you are lost; body
and soul, you are lost.’
‘Hear me,’ he replied, menacing her with his hand. ‘I, that in the form
of a man live the life of a hunted beast; that in the body am a spirit,
a ghost upon the earth, a thing from which all creatures shrink, save
those curst beings of another world, who will not leave me;--I am, in my
desperation of this night, past all fear but that of the hell in which I
exist from day to day. Give the alarm, cry out, refuse to shelter me. I
will not hurt you. But I will not be taken alive; and so surely as you
threaten me above your breath, I fall a dead man on this floor. The
blood with which I sprinkle it, be on you and yours, in the name of the
Evil Spirit that tempts men to their ruin!’
As he spoke, he took a pistol from his breast, and firmly clutched it in
his hand.
‘Remove this man from me, good Heaven!’ cried the widow. ‘In thy grace
and mercy, give him one minute’s penitence, and strike him dead!’
‘It has no such purpose,’ he said, confronting her. ‘It is deaf. Give me
to eat and drink, lest I do that it cannot help my doing, and will not
do for you.’
‘Will you leave me, if I do thus much? Will you leave me and return no
more?’
‘I will promise nothing,’ he rejoined, seating himself at the table,
‘nothing but this--I will execute my threat if you betray me.’
She rose at length, and going to a closet or pantry in the room, brought
out some fragments of cold meat and bread and put them on the table. He
asked for brandy, and for water. These she produced likewise; and he ate
and drank with the voracity of a famished hound. All the time he was so
engaged she kept at the uttermost distance of the chamber, and sat there
shuddering, but with her face towards him. She never turned her back
upon him once; and although when she passed him (as she was obliged to
do in going to and from the cupboard) she gathered the skirts of her
garment about her, as if even its touching his by chance were horrible
to think of, still, in the midst of all this dread and terror, she kept
her face towards his own, and watched his every movement.
His repast ended--if that can be called one, which was a mere ravenous
satisfying of the calls of hunger--he moved his chair towards the
fire again, and warming himself before the blaze which had now sprung
brightly up, accosted her once more.
‘I am an outcast, to whom a roof above his head is often an uncommon
luxury, and the food a beggar would reject is delicate fare. You live
here at your ease. Do you live alone?’
‘I do not,’ she made answer with an effort.
‘Who dwells here besides?’
‘One--it is no matter who. You had best begone, or he may find you here.
Why do you linger?’
‘For warmth,’ he replied, spreading out his hands before the fire. ‘For
warmth. You are rich, perhaps?’
‘Very,’ she said faintly. ‘Very rich. No doubt I am very rich.’
‘At least you are not penniless. You have some money. You were making
purchases to-night.’
‘I have a little left. It is but a few shillings.’
‘Give me your purse. You had it in your hand at the door. Give it to
me.’
She stepped to the table and laid it down. He reached across, took it
up, and told the contents into his hand. As he was counting them, she
listened for a moment, and sprung towards him.
‘Take what there is, take all, take more if more were there, but go
before it is too late. I have heard a wayward step without, I know full
well. It will return directly. Begone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do not stop to ask. I will not answer. Much as I dread to touch you, I
would drag you to the door if I possessed the strength, rather than you
should lose an instant. Miserable wretch! fly from this place.’
‘If there are spies without, I am safer here,’ replied the man, standing
aghast. ‘I will remain here, and will not fly till the danger is past.’
‘It is too late!’ cried the widow, who had listened for the step, and
not to him. ‘Hark to that foot upon the ground. Do you tremble to hear
it! It is my son, my idiot son!’
As she said this wildly, there came a heavy knocking at the door. He
looked at her, and she at him.
‘Let him come in,’ said the man, hoarsely. ‘I fear him less than the
dark, houseless night. He knocks again. Let him come in!’
‘The dread of this hour,’ returned the widow, ‘has been upon me all my
life, and I will not. Evil will fall upon him, if you stand eye to eye.
My blighted boy! Oh! all good angels who know the truth--hear a poor
mother’s prayer, and spare my boy from knowledge of this man!’
‘He rattles at the shutters!’ cried the man. ‘He calls you. That voice
and cry! It was he who grappled with me in the road. Was it he?’
She had sunk upon her knees, and so knelt down, moving her lips, but
uttering no sound. As he gazed upon her, uncertain what to do or where
to turn, the shutters flew open. He had barely time to catch a knife
from the table, sheathe it in the loose sleeve of his coat, hide in the
closet, and do all with the lightning’s speed, when Barnaby tapped at
the bare glass, and raised the sash exultingly.
‘Why, who can keep out Grip and me!’ he cried, thrusting in his head,
and staring round the room. ‘Are you there, mother? How long you keep us
from the fire and light.’
She stammered some excuse and tendered him her hand. But Barnaby sprung
lightly in without assistance, and putting his arms about her neck,
kissed her a hundred times.
‘We have been afield, mother--leaping ditches, scrambling through
hedges, running down steep banks, up and away, and hurrying on. The wind
has been blowing, and the rushes and young plants bowing and bending to
it, lest it should do them harm, the cowards--and Grip--ha ha ha!--brave
Grip, who cares for nothing, and when the wind rolls him over in the
dust, turns manfully to bite it--Grip, bold Grip, has quarrelled with
every little bowing twig--thinking, he told me, that it mocked him--and
has worried it like a bulldog. Ha ha ha!’
The raven, in his little basket at his master’s back, hearing this
frequent mention of his name in a tone of exultation, expressed his
sympathy by crowing like a cock, and afterwards running over his various
phrases of speech with such rapidity, and in so many varieties of
hoarseness, that they sounded like the murmurs of a crowd of people.
‘He takes such care of me besides!’ said Barnaby. ‘Such care, mother! He
watches all the time I sleep, and when I shut my eyes and make-believe
to slumber, he practises new learning softly; but he keeps his eye on
me the while, and if he sees me laugh, though never so little, stops
directly. He won’t surprise me till he’s perfect.’
The raven crowed again in a rapturous manner which plainly said, ‘Those
are certainly some of my characteristics, and I glory in them.’ In the
meantime, Barnaby closed the window and secured it, and coming to the
fireplace, prepared to sit down with his face to the closet. But
his mother prevented this, by hastily taking that side herself, and
motioning him towards the other.
‘How pale you are to-night!’ said Barnaby, leaning on his stick. ‘We
have been cruel, Grip, and made her anxious!’
Anxious in good truth, and sick at heart! The listener held the door
of his hiding-place open with his hand, and closely watched her son.
Grip--alive to everything his master was unconscious of--had his head
out of the basket, and in return was watching him intently with his
glistening eye.
‘He flaps his wings,’ said Barnaby, turning almost quickly enough to
catch the retreating form and closing door, ‘as if there were strangers
here, but Grip is wiser than to fancy that. Jump then!’
Accepting this invitation with a dignity peculiar to himself, the bird
hopped up on his master’s shoulder, from that to his extended hand, and
so to the ground. Barnaby unstrapping the basket and putting it down in
a corner with the lid open, Grip’s first care was to shut it down with
all possible despatch, and then to stand upon it. Believing, no doubt,
that he had now rendered it utterly impossible, and beyond the power of
mortal man, to shut him up in it any more, he drew a great many corks in
triumph, and uttered a corresponding number of hurrahs.
‘Mother!’ said Barnaby, laying aside his hat and stick, and returning
to the chair from which he had risen, ‘I’ll tell you where we have been
to-day, and what we have been doing,--shall I?’
She took his hand in hers, and holding it, nodded the word she could not
speak.
‘You mustn’t tell,’ said Barnaby, holding up his finger, ‘for it’s a
secret, mind, and only known to me, and Grip, and Hugh. We had the dog
with us, but he’s not like Grip, clever as he is, and doesn’t guess it
yet, I’ll wager.--Why do you look behind me so?’
‘Did I?’ she answered faintly. ‘I didn’t know I did. Come nearer me.’
‘You are frightened!’ said Barnaby, changing colour. ‘Mother--you don’t
see’--
‘See what?’
‘There’s--there’s none of this about, is there?’ he answered in a
whisper, drawing closer to her and clasping the mark upon his wrist.
‘I am afraid there is, somewhere. You make my hair stand on end, and my
flesh creep. Why do you look like that? Is it in the room as I have seen
it in my dreams, dashing the ceiling and the walls with red? Tell me. Is
it?’
He fell into a shivering fit as he put the question, and shutting out
the light with his hands, sat shaking in every limb until it had passed
away. After a time, he raised his head and looked about him.
‘Is it gone?’
‘There has been nothing here,’ rejoined his mother, soothing him.
‘Nothing indeed, dear Barnaby. Look! You see there are but you and me.’
He gazed at her vacantly, and, becoming reassured by degrees, burst into
a wild laugh.
‘But let us see,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Were we talking? Was it you
and me? Where have we been?’
‘Nowhere but here.’
‘Aye, but Hugh, and I,’ said Barnaby,--‘that’s it. Maypole Hugh, and
I, you know, and Grip--we have been lying in the forest, and among the
trees by the road side, with a dark lantern after night came on, and the
dog in a noose ready to slip him when the man came by.’
‘What man?’
‘The robber; him that the stars winked at. We have waited for him
after dark these many nights, and we shall have him. I’d know him in a
thousand. Mother, see here! This is the man. Look!’
He twisted his handkerchief round his head, pulled his hat upon his
brow, wrapped his coat about him, and stood up before her: so like the
original he counterfeited, that the dark figure peering out behind him
might have passed for his own shadow.
‘Ha ha ha! We shall have him,’ he cried, ridding himself of the
semblance as hastily as he had assumed it. ‘You shall see him, mother,
bound hand and foot, and brought to London at a saddle-girth; and you
shall hear of him at Tyburn Tree if we have luck. So Hugh says. You’re
pale again, and trembling. And why DO you look behind me so?’
‘It is nothing,’ she answered. ‘I am not quite well. Go you to bed,
dear, and leave me here.’
‘To bed!’ he answered. ‘I don’t like bed. I like to lie before the fire,
watching the prospects in the burning coals--the rivers, hills, and
dells, in the deep, red sunset, and the wild faces. I am hungry too,
and Grip has eaten nothing since broad noon. Let us to supper. Grip! To
supper, lad!’
The raven flapped his wings, and, croaking his satisfaction, hopped to
the feet of his master, and there held his bill open, ready for snapping
up such lumps of meat as he should throw him. Of these he received about
a score in rapid succession, without the smallest discomposure.
‘That’s all,’ said Barnaby.
‘More!’ cried Grip. ‘More!’
But it appearing for a certainty that no more was to be had, he
retreated with his store; and disgorging the morsels one by one from his
pouch, hid them in various corners--taking particular care, however, to
avoid the closet, as being doubtful of the hidden man’s propensities and
power of resisting temptation. When he had concluded these arrangements,
he took a turn or two across the room with an elaborate assumption of
having nothing on his mind (but with one eye hard upon his treasure all
the time), and then, and not till then, began to drag it out, piece by
piece, and eat it with the utmost relish.
Barnaby, for his part, having pressed his mother to eat in vain, made a
hearty supper too. Once during the progress of his meal, he wanted more
bread from the closet and rose to get it. She hurriedly interposed to
prevent him, and summoning her utmost fortitude, passed into the recess,
and brought it out herself.
‘Mother,’ said Barnaby, looking at her steadfastly as she sat down
beside him after doing so; ‘is to-day my birthday?’
‘To-day!’ she answered. ‘Don’t you recollect it was but a week or so
ago, and that summer, autumn, and winter have to pass before it comes
again?’
‘I remember that it has been so till now,’ said Barnaby. ‘But I think
to-day must be my birthday too, for all that.’
She asked him why? ‘I’ll tell you why,’ he said. ‘I have always seen
you--I didn’t let you know it, but I have--on the evening of that day
grow very sad. I have seen you cry when Grip and I were most glad; and
look frightened with no reason; and I have touched your hand, and felt
that it was cold--as it is now. Once, mother (on a birthday that was,
also), Grip and I thought of this after we went upstairs to bed, and
when it was midnight, striking one o’clock, we came down to your door to
see if you were well. You were on your knees. I forget what it was you
said. Grip, what was it we heard her say that night?’
‘I’m a devil!’ rejoined the raven promptly.
‘No, no,’ said Barnaby. ‘But you said something in a prayer; and when
you rose and walked about, you looked (as you have done ever since,
mother, towards night on my birthday) just as you do now. I have found
that out, you see, though I am silly. So I say you’re wrong; and this
must be my birthday--my birthday, Grip!’
The bird received this information with a crow of such duration as a
cock, gifted with intelligence beyond all others of his kind, might
usher in the longest day with. Then, as if he had well considered the
sentiment, and regarded it as apposite to birthdays, he cried, ‘Never
say die!’ a great many times, and flapped his wings for emphasis.
The widow tried to make light of Barnaby’s remark, and endeavoured to
divert his attention to some new subject; too easy a task at all times,
as she knew. His supper done, Barnaby, regardless of her entreaties,
stretched himself on the mat before the fire; Grip perched upon his
leg, and divided his time between dozing in the grateful warmth, and
endeavouring (as it presently appeared) to recall a new accomplishment
he had been studying all day.
A long and profound silence ensued, broken only by some change of
position on the part of Barnaby, whose eyes were still wide open and
intently fixed upon the fire; or by an effort of recollection on the
part of Grip, who would cry in a low voice from time to time, ‘Polly put
the ket--’ and there stop short, forgetting the remainder, and go off in
a doze again.
After a long interval, Barnaby’s breathing grew more deep and regular,
and his eyes were closed. But even then the unquiet spirit of the raven
interposed. ‘Polly put the ket--’ cried Grip, and his master was broad
awake again.
At length Barnaby slept soundly, and the bird with his bill sunk
upon his breast, his breast itself puffed out into a comfortable
alderman-like form, and his bright eye growing smaller and smaller,
really seemed to be subsiding into a state of repose. Now and then he
muttered in a sepulchral voice, ‘Polly put the ket--’ but very drowsily,
and more like a drunken man than a reflecting raven.
The widow, scarcely venturing to breathe, rose from her seat. The man
glided from the closet, and extinguished the candle.
‘--tle on,’ cried Grip, suddenly struck with an idea and very much
excited. ‘--tle on. Hurrah! Polly put the ket-tle on, we’ll all have
tea; Polly put the ket-tle on, we’ll all have tea. Hurrah, hurrah,
hurrah! I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a ket-tle on, Keep up your
spirits, Never say die, Bow, wow, wow, I’m a devil, I’m a ket-tle, I’m
a--Polly put the ket-tle on, we’ll all have tea.’
They stood rooted to the ground, as though it had been a voice from the
grave.
But even this failed to awaken the sleeper. He turned over towards the
fire, his arm fell to the ground, and his head drooped heavily upon it.
The widow and her unwelcome visitor gazed at him and at each other for a
moment, and then she motioned him towards the door.
‘Stay,’ he whispered. ‘You teach your son well.’
‘I have taught him nothing that you heard to-night. Depart instantly, or
I will rouse him.’
‘You are free to do so. Shall I rouse him?’
‘You dare not do that.’
‘I dare do anything, I have told you. He knows me well, it seems. At
least I will know him.’
‘Would you kill him in his sleep?’ cried the widow, throwing herself
between them.
‘Woman,’ he returned between his teeth, as he motioned her aside, ‘I
would see him nearer, and I will. If you want one of us to kill the
other, wake him.’
With that he advanced, and bending down over the prostrate form, softly
turned back the head and looked into the face. The light of the fire
was upon it, and its every lineament was revealed distinctly. He
contemplated it for a brief space, and hastily uprose.
‘Observe,’ he whispered in the widow’s ear: ‘In him, of whose existence
I was ignorant until to-night, I have you in my power. Be careful how
you use me. Be careful how you use me. I am destitute and starving, and
a wanderer upon the earth. I may take a sure and slow revenge.’
‘There is some dreadful meaning in your words. I do not fathom it.’
‘There is a meaning in them, and I see you fathom it to its very depth.
You have anticipated it for years; you have told me as much. I leave you
to digest it. Do not forget my warning.’
He pointed, as he left her, to the slumbering form, and stealthily
withdrawing, made his way into the street. She fell on her knees beside
the sleeper, and remained like one stricken into stone, until the tears
which fear had frozen so long, came tenderly to her relief.
‘Oh Thou,’ she cried, ‘who hast taught me such deep love for this one
remnant of the promise of a happy life, out of whose affliction, even,
perhaps the comfort springs that he is ever a relying, loving child to
me--never growing old or cold at heart, but needing my care and duty in
his manly strength as in his cradle-time--help him, in his darkened walk
through this sad world, or he is doomed, and my poor heart is broken!’
Chapter 18
Gliding along the silent streets, and holding his course where they were
darkest and most gloomy, the man who had left the widow’s house crossed
London Bridge, and arriving in the City, plunged into the backways,
lanes, and courts, between Cornhill and Smithfield; with no more
fixedness of purpose than to lose himself among their windings, and
baffle pursuit, if any one were dogging his steps.
It was the dead time of the night, and all was quiet. Now and then a
drowsy watchman’s footsteps sounded on the pavement, or the lamplighter
on his rounds went flashing past, leaving behind a little track of smoke
mingled with glowing morsels of his hot red link. He hid himself even
from these partakers of his lonely walk, and, shrinking in some arch or
doorway while they passed, issued forth again when they were gone and so
pursued his solitary way.
To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan
and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to
the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old
barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things--but not
so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and
sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature. To pace
the echoing stones from hour to hour, counting the dull chimes of the
clocks; to watch the lights twinkling in chamber windows, to think what
happy forgetfulness each house shuts in; that here are children coiled
together in their beds, here youth, here age, here poverty, here wealth,
all equal in their sleep, and all at rest; to have nothing in common
with the slumbering world around, not even sleep, Heaven’s gift to
all its creatures, and be akin to nothing but despair; to feel, by the
wretched contrast with everything on every hand, more utterly alone and
cast away than in a trackless desert; this is a kind of suffering, on
which the rivers of great cities close full many a time, and which the
solitude in crowds alone awakens.
The miserable man paced up and down the streets--so long, so wearisome,
so like each other--and often cast a wistful look towards the east,
hoping to see the first faint streaks of day. But obdurate night had
yet possession of the sky, and his disturbed and restless walk found no
relief.
One house in a back street was bright with the cheerful glare of lights;
there was the sound of music in it too, and the tread of dancers,
and there were cheerful voices, and many a burst of laughter. To this
place--to be near something that was awake and glad--he returned again
and again; and more than one of those who left it when the merriment
was at its height, felt it a check upon their mirthful mood to see him
flitting to and fro like an uneasy ghost. At last the guests departed,
one and all; and then the house was close shut up, and became as dull
and silent as the rest.
His wanderings brought him at one time to the city jail. Instead of
hastening from it as a place of ill omen, and one he had cause to shun,
he sat down on some steps hard by, and resting his chin upon his hand,
gazed upon its rough and frowning walls as though even they became a
refuge in his jaded eyes. He paced it round and round, came back to the
same spot, and sat down again. He did this often, and once, with a hasty
movement, crossed to where some men were watching in the prison lodge,
and had his foot upon the steps as though determined to accost them. But
looking round, he saw that the day began to break, and failing in his
purpose, turned and fled.
He was soon in the quarter he had lately traversed, and pacing to and
fro again as he had done before. He was passing down a mean street, when
from an alley close at hand some shouts of revelry arose, and there came
straggling forth a dozen madcaps, whooping and calling to each other,
who, parting noisily, took different ways and dispersed in smaller
groups.
Hoping that some low place of entertainment which would afford him a
safe refuge might be near at hand, he turned into this court when they
were all gone, and looked about for a half-opened door, or lighted
window, or other indication of the place whence they had come. It was
so profoundly dark, however, and so ill-favoured, that he concluded they
had but turned up there, missing their way, and were pouring out again
when he observed them. With this impression, and finding there was no
outlet but that by which he had entered, he was about to turn, when from
a grating near his feet a sudden stream of light appeared, and the sound
of talking came. He retreated into a doorway to see who these talkers
were, and to listen to them.
The light came to the level of the pavement as he did this, and a man
ascended, bearing in his hand a torch. This figure unlocked and held
open the grating as for the passage of another, who presently
appeared, in the form of a young man of small stature and uncommon
self-importance, dressed in an obsolete and very gaudy fashion.
‘Good night, noble captain,’ said he with the torch. ‘Farewell,
commander. Good luck, illustrious general!’
In return to these compliments the other bade him hold his tongue, and
keep his noise to himself, and laid upon him many similar injunctions,
with great fluency of speech and sternness of manner.
‘Commend me, captain, to the stricken Miggs,’ returned the torch-bearer
in a lower voice. ‘My captain flies at higher game than Miggses. Ha, ha,
ha! My captain is an eagle, both as respects his eye and soaring wings.
My captain breaketh hearts as other bachelors break eggs at breakfast.’
‘What a fool you are, Stagg!’ said Mr Tappertit, stepping on the
pavement of the court, and brushing from his legs the dust he had
contracted in his passage upward.
‘His precious limbs!’ cried Stagg, clasping one of his ankles. ‘Shall a
Miggs aspire to these proportions! No, no, my captain. We will inveigle
ladies fair, and wed them in our secret cavern. We will unite ourselves
with blooming beauties, captain.’
‘I’ll tell you what, my buck,’ said Mr Tappertit, releasing his leg;
‘I’ll trouble you not to take liberties, and not to broach certain
questions unless certain questions are broached to you. Speak when
you’re spoke to on particular subjects, and not otherways. Hold
the torch up till I’ve got to the end of the court, and then kennel
yourself, do you hear?’
‘I hear you, noble captain.’
‘Obey then,’ said Mr Tappertit haughtily. ‘Gentlemen, lead on!’ With
which word of command (addressed to an imaginary staff or retinue) he
folded his arms, and walked with surpassing dignity down the court.
His obsequious follower stood holding the torch above his head, and then
the observer saw for the first time, from his place of concealment, that
he was blind. Some involuntary motion on his part caught the quick
ear of the blind man, before he was conscious of having moved an inch
towards him, for he turned suddenly and cried, ‘Who’s there?’
‘A man,’ said the other, advancing. ‘A friend.’
‘A stranger!’ rejoined the blind man. ‘Strangers are not my friends.
What do you do there?’
‘I saw your company come out, and waited here till they were gone. I
want a lodging.’
‘A lodging at this time!’ returned Stagg, pointing towards the dawn as
though he saw it. ‘Do you know the day is breaking?’
‘I know it,’ rejoined the other, ‘to my cost. I have been traversing
this iron-hearted town all night.’
‘You had better traverse it again,’ said the blind man, preparing to
descend, ‘till you find some lodgings suitable to your taste. I don’t
let any.’
‘Stay!’ cried the other, holding him by the arm.
‘I’ll beat this light about that hangdog face of yours (for hangdog it
is, if it answers to your voice), and rouse the neighbourhood besides,
if you detain me,’ said the blind man. ‘Let me go. Do you hear?’
‘Do YOU hear!’ returned the other, chinking a few shillings together,
and hurriedly pressing them into his hand. ‘I beg nothing of you. I will
pay for the shelter you give me. Death! Is it much to ask of such as
you! I have come from the country, and desire to rest where there are
none to question me. I am faint, exhausted, worn out, almost dead. Let
me lie down, like a dog, before your fire. I ask no more than that. If
you would be rid of me, I will depart to-morrow.’
‘If a gentleman has been unfortunate on the road,’ muttered Stagg,
yielding to the other, who, pressing on him, had already gained a
footing on the steps--‘and can pay for his accommodation--’
‘I will pay you with all I have. I am just now past the want of food,
God knows, and wish but to purchase shelter. What companion have you
below?’
‘None.’
‘Then fasten your grate there, and show me the way. Quick!’
The blind man complied after a moment’s hesitation, and they descended
together. The dialogue had passed as hurriedly as the words could be
spoken, and they stood in his wretched room before he had had time to
recover from his first surprise.
‘May I see where that door leads to, and what is beyond?’ said the man,
glancing keenly round. ‘You will not mind that?’
‘I will show you myself. Follow me, or go before. Take your choice.’
He bade him lead the way, and, by the light of the torch which his
conductor held up for the purpose, inspected all three cellars narrowly.
Assured that the blind man had spoken truth, and that he lived there
alone, the visitor returned with him to the first, in which a fire was
burning, and flung himself with a deep groan upon the ground before it.
His host pursued his usual occupation without seeming to heed him any
further. But directly he fell asleep--and he noted his falling into a
slumber, as readily as the keenest-sighted man could have done--he knelt
down beside him, and passed his hand lightly but carefully over his face
and person.
His sleep was checkered with starts and moans, and sometimes with a
muttered word or two. His hands were clenched, his brow bent, and his
mouth firmly set. All this, the blind man accurately marked; and as if
his curiosity were strongly awakened, and he had already some inkling
of his mystery, he sat watching him, if the expression may be used, and
listening, until it was broad day.
Chapter 19
Dolly Varden’s pretty little head was yet bewildered by various
recollections of the party, and her bright eyes were yet dazzled by a
crowd of images, dancing before them like motes in the sunbeams, among
which the effigy of one partner in particular did especially figure, the
same being a young coachmaker (a master in his own right) who had given
her to understand, when he handed her into the chair at parting, that
it was his fixed resolve to neglect his business from that time, and die
slowly for the love of her--Dolly’s head, and eyes, and thoughts, and
seven senses, were all in a state of flutter and confusion for which the
party was accountable, although it was now three days old, when, as
she was sitting listlessly at breakfast, reading all manner of fortunes
(that is to say, of married and flourishing fortunes) in the grounds of
her teacup, a step was heard in the workshop, and Mr Edward Chester
was descried through the glass door, standing among the rusty locks and
keys, like love among the roses--for which apt comparison the historian
may by no means take any credit to himself, the same being the
invention, in a sentimental mood, of the chaste and modest Miggs, who,
beholding him from the doorsteps she was then cleaning, did, in her
maiden meditation, give utterance to the simile.
The locksmith, who happened at the moment to have his eyes thrown upward
and his head backward, in an intense communing with Toby, did not see
his visitor, until Mrs Varden, more watchful than the rest, had desired
Sim Tappertit to open the glass door and give him admission--from which
untoward circumstance the good lady argued (for she could deduce a
precious moral from the most trifling event) that to take a draught of
small ale in the morning was to observe a pernicious, irreligious, and
Pagan custom, the relish whereof should be left to swine, and Satan, or
at least to Popish persons, and should be shunned by the righteous as
a work of sin and evil. She would no doubt have pursued her admonition
much further, and would have founded on it a long list of precious
precepts of inestimable value, but that the young gentleman standing by
in a somewhat uncomfortable and discomfited manner while she read
her spouse this lecture, occasioned her to bring it to a premature
conclusion.
‘I’m sure you’ll excuse me, sir,’ said Mrs Varden, rising and
curtseying. ‘Varden is so very thoughtless, and needs so much
reminding--Sim, bring a chair here.’
Mr Tappertit obeyed, with a flourish implying that he did so, under
protest.
‘And you can go, Sim,’ said the locksmith.
Mr Tappertit obeyed again, still under protest; and betaking himself to
the workshop, began seriously to fear that he might find it necessary to
poison his master, before his time was out.
In the meantime, Edward returned suitable replies to Mrs Varden’s
courtesies, and that lady brightened up very much; so that when he
accepted a dish of tea from the fair hands of Dolly, she was perfectly
agreeable.
‘I am sure if there’s anything we can do,--Varden, or I, or Dolly
either,--to serve you, sir, at any time, you have only to say it, and it
shall be done,’ said Mrs V.
‘I am much obliged to you, I am sure,’ returned Edward. ‘You encourage
me to say that I have come here now, to beg your good offices.’
Mrs Varden was delighted beyond measure.
‘It occurred to me that probably your fair daughter might be going to
the Warren, either to-day or to-morrow,’ said Edward, glancing at Dolly;
‘and if so, and you will allow her to take charge of this letter, ma’am,
you will oblige me more than I can tell you. The truth is, that while
I am very anxious it should reach its destination, I have particular
reasons for not trusting it to any other conveyance; so that without
your help, I am wholly at a loss.’
‘She was not going that way, sir, either to-day, or to-morrow, nor
indeed all next week,’ the lady graciously rejoined, ‘but we shall be
very glad to put ourselves out of the way on your account, and if you
wish it, you may depend upon its going to-day. You might suppose,’ said
Mrs Varden, frowning at her husband, ‘from Varden’s sitting there so
glum and silent, that he objected to this arrangement; but you must not
mind that, sir, if you please. It’s his way at home. Out of doors, he
can be cheerful and talkative enough.’
Now, the fact was, that the unfortunate locksmith, blessing his stars to
find his helpmate in such good humour, had been sitting with a beaming
face, hearing this discourse with a joy past all expression. Wherefore
this sudden attack quite took him by surprise.
‘My dear Martha--’ he said.
‘Oh yes, I dare say,’ interrupted Mrs Varden, with a smile of mingled
scorn and pleasantry. ‘Very dear! We all know that.’
‘No, but my good soul,’ said Gabriel, ‘you are quite mistaken. You are
indeed. I was delighted to find you so kind and ready. I waited, my
dear, anxiously, I assure you, to hear what you would say.’
‘You waited anxiously,’ repeated Mrs V. ‘Yes! Thank you, Varden. You
waited, as you always do, that I might bear the blame, if any came of
it. But I am used to it,’ said the lady with a kind of solemn titter,
‘and that’s my comfort!’
‘I give you my word, Martha--’ said Gabriel.
‘Let me give you MY word, my dear,’ interposed his wife with a Christian
smile, ‘that such discussions as these between married people, are much
better left alone. Therefore, if you please, Varden, we’ll drop the
subject. I have no wish to pursue it. I could. I might say a great deal.
But I would rather not. Pray don’t say any more.’
‘I don’t want to say any more,’ rejoined the goaded locksmith.
‘Well then, don’t,’ said Mrs Varden.
‘Nor did I begin it, Martha,’ added the locksmith, good-humouredly, ‘I
must say that.’
‘You did not begin it, Varden!’ exclaimed his wife, opening her eyes
very wide and looking round upon the company, as though she would say,
You hear this man! ‘You did not begin it, Varden! But you shall not say
I was out of temper. No, you did not begin it, oh dear no, not you, my
dear!’
‘Well, well,’ said the locksmith. ‘That’s settled then.’
‘Oh yes,’ rejoined his wife, ‘quite. If you like to say Dolly began it,
my dear, I shall not contradict you. I know my duty. I need know it,
I am sure. I am often obliged to bear it in mind, when my inclination
perhaps would be for the moment to forget it. Thank you, Varden.’ And
so, with a mighty show of humility and forgiveness, she folded her
hands, and looked round again, with a smile which plainly said, ‘If you
desire to see the first and foremost among female martyrs, here she is,
on view!’
This little incident, illustrative though it was of Mrs Varden’s
extraordinary sweetness and amiability, had so strong a tendency to
check the conversation and to disconcert all parties but that excellent
lady, that only a few monosyllables were uttered until Edward withdrew;
which he presently did, thanking the lady of the house a great many
times for her condescension, and whispering in Dolly’s ear that he would
call on the morrow, in case there should happen to be an answer to the
note--which, indeed, she knew without his telling, as Barnaby and his
friend Grip had dropped in on the previous night to prepare her for the
visit which was then terminating.
Gabriel, who had attended Edward to the door, came back with his hands
in his pockets; and, after fidgeting about the room in a very uneasy
manner, and casting a great many sidelong looks at Mrs Varden (who
with the calmest countenance in the world was five fathoms deep in
the Protestant Manual), inquired of Dolly how she meant to go. Dolly
supposed by the stage-coach, and looked at her lady mother, who finding
herself silently appealed to, dived down at least another fathom into
the Manual, and became unconscious of all earthly things.
‘Martha--’ said the locksmith.
‘I hear you, Varden,’ said his wife, without rising to the surface.
‘I am sorry, my dear, you have such an objection to the Maypole and old
John, for otherways as it’s a very fine morning, and Saturday’s not
a busy day with us, we might have all three gone to Chigwell in the
chaise, and had quite a happy day of it.’
Mrs Varden immediately closed the Manual, and bursting into tears,
requested to be led upstairs.
‘What is the matter now, Martha?’ inquired the locksmith.
To which Martha rejoined, ‘Oh! don’t speak to me,’ and protested in
agony that if anybody had told her so, she wouldn’t have believed it.
‘But, Martha,’ said Gabriel, putting himself in the way as she was
moving off with the aid of Dolly’s shoulder, ‘wouldn’t have believed
what? Tell me what’s wrong now. Do tell me. Upon my soul I don’t know.
Do YOU know, child? Damme!’ cried the locksmith, plucking at his wig in
a kind of frenzy, ‘nobody does know, I verily believe, but Miggs!’
‘Miggs,’ said Mrs Varden faintly, and with symptoms of approaching
incoherence, ‘is attached to me, and that is sufficient to draw down
hatred upon her in this house. She is a comfort to me, whatever she may
be to others.’
‘She’s no comfort to me,’ cried Gabriel, made bold by despair. ‘She’s
the misery of my life. She’s all the plagues of Egypt in one.’
‘She’s considered so, I have no doubt,’ said Mrs Varden. ‘I was prepared
for that; it’s natural; it’s of a piece with the rest. When you taunt
me as you do to my face, how can I wonder that you taunt her behind her
back!’ And here the incoherence coming on very strong, Mrs Varden wept,
and laughed, and sobbed, and shivered, and hiccoughed, and choked; and
said she knew it was very foolish but she couldn’t help it; and that
when she was dead and gone, perhaps they would be sorry for it--which
really under the circumstances did not appear quite so probable as she
seemed to think--with a great deal more to the same effect. In a word,
she passed with great decency through all the ceremonies incidental to
such occasions; and being supported upstairs, was deposited in a highly
spasmodic state on her own bed, where Miss Miggs shortly afterwards
flung herself upon the body.
The philosophy of all this was, that Mrs Varden wanted to go to
Chigwell; that she did not want to make any concession or explanation;
that she would only go on being implored and entreated so to do; and
that she would accept no other terms. Accordingly, after a vast amount
of moaning and crying upstairs, and much damping of foreheads, and
vinegaring of temples, and hartshorning of noses, and so forth;
and after most pathetic adjurations from Miggs, assisted by warm
brandy-and-water not over-weak, and divers other cordials, also of
a stimulating quality, administered at first in teaspoonfuls and
afterwards in increasing doses, and of which Miss Miggs herself partook
as a preventive measure (for fainting is infectious); after all these
remedies, and many more too numerous to mention, but not to take,
had been applied; and many verbal consolations, moral, religious, and
miscellaneous, had been super-added thereto; the locksmith humbled
himself, and the end was gained.
‘If it’s only for the sake of peace and quietness, father,’ said Dolly,
urging him to go upstairs.
‘Oh, Doll, Doll,’ said her good-natured father. ‘If you ever have a
husband of your own--’
Dolly glanced at the glass.
‘--Well, WHEN you have,’ said the locksmith, ‘never faint, my darling.
More domestic unhappiness has come of easy fainting, Doll, than from all
the greater passions put together. Remember that, my dear, if you would
be really happy, which you never can be, if your husband isn’t. And a
word in your ear, my precious. Never have a Miggs about you!’
With this advice he kissed his blooming daughter on the cheek, and
slowly repaired to Mrs Varden’s room; where that lady, lying all pale
and languid on her couch, was refreshing herself with a sight of her
last new bonnet, which Miggs, as a means of calming her scattered
spirits, displayed to the best advantage at her bedside.
‘Here’s master, mim,’ said Miggs. ‘Oh, what a happiness it is when man
and wife come round again! Oh gracious, to think that him and her should
ever have a word together!’ In the energy of these sentiments, which
were uttered as an apostrophe to the Heavens in general, Miss Miggs
perched the bonnet on the top of her own head, and folding her hands,
turned on her tears.
‘I can’t help it,’ cried Miggs. ‘I couldn’t, if I was to be drownded in
‘em. She has such a forgiving spirit! She’ll forget all that has passed,
and go along with you, sir--Oh, if it was to the world’s end, she’d go
along with you.’
Mrs Varden with a faint smile gently reproved her attendant for this
enthusiasm, and reminded her at the same time that she was far too
unwell to venture out that day.
‘Oh no, you’re not, mim, indeed you’re not,’ said Miggs; ‘I repeal to
master; master knows you’re not, mim. The hair, and motion of the shay,
will do you good, mim, and you must not give way, you must not raly. She
must keep up, mustn’t she, sir, for all our sakes? I was a telling
her that, just now. She must remember us, even if she forgets herself.
Master will persuade you, mim, I’m sure. There’s Miss Dolly’s a-going
you know, and master, and you, and all so happy and so comfortable. Oh!’
cried Miggs, turning on the tears again, previous to quitting the room
in great emotion, ‘I never see such a blessed one as she is for the
forgiveness of her spirit, I never, never, never did. Not more did
master neither; no, nor no one--never!’
For five minutes or thereabouts, Mrs Varden remained mildly opposed to
all her husband’s prayers that she would oblige him by taking a day’s
pleasure, but relenting at length, she suffered herself to be persuaded,
and granting him her free forgiveness (the merit whereof, she meekly
said, rested with the Manual and not with her), desired that Miggs might
come and help her dress. The handmaid attended promptly, and it is but
justice to their joint exertions to record that, when the good lady came
downstairs in course of time, completely decked out for the journey, she
really looked as if nothing had happened, and appeared in the very best
health imaginable.
As to Dolly, there she was again, the very pink and pattern of good
looks, in a smart little cherry-coloured mantle, with a hood of the same
drawn over her head, and upon the top of that hood, a little straw hat
trimmed with cherry-coloured ribbons, and worn the merest trifle on one
side--just enough in short to make it the wickedest and most provoking
head-dress that ever malicious milliner devised. And not to speak of the
manner in which these cherry-coloured decorations brightened her eyes,
or vied with her lips, or shed a new bloom on her face, she wore such
a cruel little muff, and such a heart-rending pair of shoes, and was so
surrounded and hemmed in, as it were, by aggravations of all kinds, that
when Mr Tappettit, holding the horse’s head, saw her come out of the
house alone, such impulses came over him to decoy her into the chaise
and drive off like mad, that he would unquestionably have done it, but
for certain uneasy doubts besetting him as to the shortest way to
Gretna Green; whether it was up the street or down, or up the right-hand
turning or the left; and whether, supposing all the turnpikes to be
carried by storm, the blacksmith in the end would marry them on credit;
which by reason of his clerical office appeared, even to his excited
imagination, so unlikely, that he hesitated. And while he stood
hesitating, and looking post-chaises-and-six at Dolly, out came his
master and his mistress, and the constant Miggs, and the opportunity
was gone for ever. For now the chaise creaked upon its springs, and Mrs
Varden was inside; and now it creaked again, and more than ever, and
the locksmith was inside; and now it bounded once, as if its heart beat
lightly, and Dolly was inside; and now it was gone and its place
was empty, and he and that dreary Miggs were standing in the street
together.
The hearty locksmith was in as good a humour as if nothing had occurred
for the last twelve months to put him out of his way, Dolly was all
smiles and graces, and Mrs Varden was agreeable beyond all precedent. As
they jogged through the streets talking of this thing and of that, who
should be descried upon the pavement but that very coachmaker, looking
so genteel that nobody would have believed he had ever had anything to
do with a coach but riding in it, and bowing like any nobleman. To
be sure Dolly was confused when she bowed again, and to be sure the
cherry-coloured ribbons trembled a little when she met his mournful eye,
which seemed to say, ‘I have kept my word, I have begun, the business is
going to the devil, and you’re the cause of it.’ There he stood, rooted
to the ground: as Dolly said, like a statue; and as Mrs Varden said,
like a pump; till they turned the corner: and when her father thought
it was like his impudence, and her mother wondered what he meant by it,
Dolly blushed again till her very hood was pale.
But on they went, not the less merrily for this, and there was the
locksmith in the incautious fulness of his heart ‘pulling-up’ at all
manner of places, and evincing a most intimate acquaintance with all the
taverns on the road, and all the landlords and all the landladies, with
whom, indeed, the little horse was on equally friendly terms, for he
kept on stopping of his own accord. Never were people so glad to see
other people as these landlords and landladies were to behold Mr Varden
and Mrs Varden and Miss Varden; and wouldn’t they get out, said one; and
they really must walk upstairs, said another; and she would take it
ill and be quite certain they were proud if they wouldn’t have a little
taste of something, said a third; and so on, that it was really quite a
Progress rather than a ride, and one continued scene of hospitality from
beginning to end. It was pleasant enough to be held in such esteem, not
to mention the refreshments; so Mrs Varden said nothing at the time,
and was all affability and delight--but such a body of evidence as
she collected against the unfortunate locksmith that day, to be used
thereafter as occasion might require, never was got together for
matrimonial purposes.
In course of time--and in course of a pretty long time too, for these
agreeable interruptions delayed them not a little,--they arrived upon
the skirts of the Forest, and riding pleasantly on among the trees, came
at last to the Maypole, where the locksmith’s cheerful ‘Yoho!’ speedily
brought to the porch old John, and after him young Joe, both of whom
were so transfixed at sight of the ladies, that for a moment they were
perfectly unable to give them any welcome, and could do nothing but
stare.
It was only for a moment, however, that Joe forgot himself, for speedily
reviving he thrust his drowsy father aside--to Mr Willet’s mighty and
inexpressible indignation--and darting out, stood ready to help them to
alight. It was necessary for Dolly to get out first. Joe had her in his
arms;--yes, though for a space of time no longer than you could count
one in, Joe had her in his arms. Here was a glimpse of happiness!
It would be difficult to describe what a flat and commonplace affair the
helping Mrs Varden out afterwards was, but Joe did it, and did it too
with the best grace in the world. Then old John, who, entertaining a
dull and foggy sort of idea that Mrs Varden wasn’t fond of him, had been
in some doubt whether she might not have come for purposes of assault
and battery, took courage, hoped she was well, and offered to conduct
her into the house. This tender being amicably received, they marched
in together; Joe and Dolly followed, arm-in-arm, (happiness again!) and
Varden brought up the rear.
Old John would have it that they must sit in the bar, and nobody
objecting, into the bar they went. All bars are snug places, but the
Maypole’s was the very snuggest, cosiest, and completest bar, that ever
the wit of man devised. Such amazing bottles in old oaken pigeon-holes;
such gleaming tankards dangling from pegs at about the same inclination
as thirsty men would hold them to their lips; such sturdy little Dutch
kegs ranged in rows on shelves; so many lemons hanging in separate nets,
and forming the fragrant grove already mentioned in this chronicle,
suggestive, with goodly loaves of snowy sugar stowed away hard by,
of punch, idealised beyond all mortal knowledge; such closets, such
presses, such drawers full of pipes, such places for putting things
away in hollow window-seats, all crammed to the throat with eatables,
drinkables, or savoury condiments; lastly, and to crown all, as typical
of the immense resources of the establishment, and its defiances to all
visitors to cut and come again, such a stupendous cheese!
It is a poor heart that never rejoices--it must have been the poorest,
weakest, and most watery heart that ever beat, which would not have
warmed towards the Maypole bar. Mrs Varden’s did directly. She could no
more have reproached John Willet among those household gods, the kegs
and bottles, lemons, pipes, and cheese, than she could have stabbed him
with his own bright carving-knife. The order for dinner too--it might
have soothed a savage. ‘A bit of fish,’ said John to the cook, ‘and some
lamb chops (breaded, with plenty of ketchup), and a good salad, and a
roast spring chicken, with a dish of sausages and mashed potatoes, or
something of that sort.’ Something of that sort! The resources of
these inns! To talk carelessly about dishes, which in themselves were
a first-rate holiday kind of dinner, suitable to one’s wedding-day, as
something of that sort: meaning, if you can’t get a spring chicken, any
other trifle in the way of poultry will do--such as a peacock, perhaps!
The kitchen too, with its great broad cavernous chimney; the kitchen,
where nothing in the way of cookery seemed impossible; where you could
believe in anything to eat, they chose to tell you of. Mrs Varden
returned from the contemplation of these wonders to the bar again, with
a head quite dizzy and bewildered. Her housekeeping capacity was not
large enough to comprehend them. She was obliged to go to sleep. Waking
was pain, in the midst of such immensity.
Dolly in the meanwhile, whose gay heart and head ran upon other matters,
passed out at the garden door, and glancing back now and then (but of
course not wondering whether Joe saw her), tripped away by a path across
the fields with which she was well acquainted, to discharge her mission
at the Warren; and this deponent hath been informed and verily
believes, that you might have seen many less pleasant objects than the
cherry-coloured mantle and ribbons, as they went fluttering along the
green meadows in the bright light of the day, like giddy things as they
were.
Chapter 20
The proud consciousness of her trust, and the great importance she
derived from it, might have advertised it to all the house if she had
had to run the gauntlet of its inhabitants; but as Dolly had played in
every dull room and passage many and many a time, when a child, and had
ever since been the humble friend of Miss Haredale, whose foster-sister
she was, she was as free of the building as the young lady herself.
So, using no greater precaution than holding her breath and walking on
tiptoe as she passed the library door, she went straight to Emma’s room
as a privileged visitor.
It was the liveliest room in the building. The chamber was sombre like
the rest for the matter of that, but the presence of youth and beauty
would make a prison cheerful (saving alas! that confinement withers
them), and lend some charms of their own to the gloomiest scene. Birds,
flowers, books, drawing, music, and a hundred such graceful tokens of
feminine loves and cares, filled it with more of life and human sympathy
than the whole house besides seemed made to hold. There was heart in
the room; and who that has a heart, ever fails to recognise the silent
presence of another!
Dolly had one undoubtedly, and it was not a tough one either, though
there was a little mist of coquettishness about it, such as sometimes
surrounds that sun of life in its morning, and slightly dims its lustre.
Thus, when Emma rose to greet her, and kissing her affectionately on the
cheek, told her, in her quiet way, that she had been very unhappy, the
tears stood in Dolly’s eyes, and she felt more sorry than she could
tell; but next moment she happened to raise them to the glass, and
really there was something there so exceedingly agreeable, that as she
sighed, she smiled, and felt surprisingly consoled.
‘I have heard about it, miss,’ said Dolly, ‘and it’s very sad indeed,
but when things are at the worst they are sure to mend.’
‘But are you sure they are at the worst?’ asked Emma with a smile.
‘Why, I don’t see how they can very well be more unpromising than they
are; I really don’t,’ said Dolly. ‘And I bring something to begin with.’
‘Not from Edward?’
Dolly nodded and smiled, and feeling in her pockets (there were pockets
in those days) with an affectation of not being able to find what she
wanted, which greatly enhanced her importance, at length produced
the letter. As Emma hastily broke the seal and became absorbed in its
contents, Dolly’s eyes, by one of those strange accidents for which
there is no accounting, wandered to the glass again. She could not help
wondering whether the coach-maker suffered very much, and quite pitied
the poor man.
It was a long letter--a very long letter, written close on all four
sides of the sheet of paper, and crossed afterwards; but it was not a
consolatory letter, for as Emma read it she stopped from time to time to
put her handkerchief to her eyes. To be sure Dolly marvelled greatly to
see her in so much distress, for to her thinking a love affair ought
to be one of the best jokes, and the slyest, merriest kind of thing in
life. But she set it down in her own mind that all this came from Miss
Haredale’s being so constant, and that if she would only take on with
some other young gentleman--just in the most innocent way possible,
to keep her first lover up to the mark--she would find herself
inexpressibly comforted.
‘I am sure that’s what I should do if it was me,’ thought Dolly. ‘To
make one’s sweetheart miserable is well enough and quite right, but to
be made miserable one’s self is a little too much!’
However it wouldn’t do to say so, and therefore she sat looking on in
silence. She needed a pretty considerable stretch of patience, for when
the long letter had been read once all through it was read again, and
when it had been read twice all through it was read again. During this
tedious process, Dolly beguiled the time in the most improving manner
that occurred to her, by curling her hair on her fingers, with the
aid of the looking-glass before mentioned, and giving it some killing
twists.
Everything has an end. Even young ladies in love cannot read their
letters for ever. In course of time the packet was folded up, and it
only remained to write the answer.
But as this promised to be a work of time likewise, Emma said she would
put it off until after dinner, and that Dolly must dine with her. As
Dolly had made up her mind to do so beforehand, she required very little
pressing; and when they had settled this point, they went to walk in the
garden.
They strolled up and down the terrace walks, talking incessantly--at
least, Dolly never left off once--and making that quarter of the sad and
mournful house quite gay. Not that they talked loudly or laughed much,
but they were both so very handsome, and it was such a breezy day, and
their light dresses and dark curls appeared so free and joyous in
their abandonment, and Emma was so fair, and Dolly so rosy, and Emma
so delicately shaped, and Dolly so plump, and--in short, there are no
flowers for any garden like such flowers, let horticulturists say what
they may, and both house and garden seemed to know it, and to brighten
up sensibly.
After this, came the dinner and the letter writing, and some more
talking, in the course of which Miss Haredale took occasion to
charge upon Dolly certain flirtish and inconstant propensities, which
accusations Dolly seemed to think very complimentary indeed, and to be
mightily amused with. Finding her quite incorrigible in this respect,
Emma suffered her to depart; but not before she had confided to her that
important and never-sufficiently-to-be-taken-care-of answer, and endowed
her moreover with a pretty little bracelet as a keepsake. Having clasped
it on her arm, and again advised her half in jest and half in earnest to
amend her roguish ways, for she knew she was fond of Joe at heart (which
Dolly stoutly denied, with a great many haughty protestations that she
hoped she could do better than that indeed! and so forth), she bade
her farewell; and after calling her back to give her more supplementary
messages for Edward, than anybody with tenfold the gravity of Dolly
Varden could be reasonably expected to remember, at length dismissed
her.
Dolly bade her good bye, and tripping lightly down the stairs arrived at
the dreaded library door, and was about to pass it again on tiptoe, when
it opened, and behold! there stood Mr Haredale. Now, Dolly had from her
childhood associated with this gentleman the idea of something grim and
ghostly, and being at the moment conscience-stricken besides, the sight
of him threw her into such a flurry that she could neither acknowledge
his presence nor run away, so she gave a great start, and then with
downcast eyes stood still and trembled.
‘Come here, girl,’ said Mr Haredale, taking her by the hand. ‘I want to
speak to you.’
‘If you please, sir, I’m in a hurry,’ faltered Dolly, ‘and--you have
frightened me by coming so suddenly upon me, sir--I would rather go,
sir, if you’ll be so good as to let me.’
‘Immediately,’ said Mr Haredale, who had by this time led her into the
room and closed the door. ‘You shall go directly. You have just left
Emma?’
‘Yes, sir, just this minute.--Father’s waiting for me, sir, if you’ll
please to have the goodness--’
‘I know. I know,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Answer me a question. What did you
bring here to-day?’
‘Bring here, sir?’ faltered Dolly.
‘You will tell me the truth, I am sure. Yes.’
Dolly hesitated for a little while, and somewhat emboldened by his
manner, said at last, ‘Well then, sir. It was a letter.’
‘From Mr Edward Chester, of course. And you are the bearer of the
answer?’
Dolly hesitated again, and not being able to decide upon any other
course of action, burst into tears.
‘You alarm yourself without cause,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Why are you so
foolish? Surely you can answer me. You know that I have but to put the
question to Emma and learn the truth directly. Have you the answer with
you?’
Dolly had what is popularly called a spirit of her own, and being now
fairly at bay, made the best of it.
‘Yes, sir,’ she rejoined, trembling and frightened as she was. ‘Yes,
sir, I have. You may kill me if you please, sir, but I won’t give it up.
I’m very sorry,--but I won’t. There, sir.’
‘I commend your firmness and your plain-speaking,’ said Mr Haredale.
‘Rest assured that I have as little desire to take your letter as your
life. You are a very discreet messenger and a good girl.’
Not feeling quite certain, as she afterwards said, whether he might not
be ‘coming over her’ with these compliments, Dolly kept as far from him
as she could, cried again, and resolved to defend her pocket (for the
letter was there) to the last extremity.
‘I have some design,’ said Mr Haredale after a short silence, during
which a smile, as he regarded her, had struggled through the gloom and
melancholy that was natural to his face, ‘of providing a companion for
my niece; for her life is a very lonely one. Would you like the office?
You are the oldest friend she has, and the best entitled to it.’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ answered Dolly, not sure but he was bantering her;
‘I can’t say. I don’t know what they might wish at home. I couldn’t give
an opinion, sir.’
‘If your friends had no objection, would you have any?’ said Mr
Haredale. ‘Come. There’s a plain question; and easy to answer.’
‘None at all that I know of sir,’ replied Dolly. ‘I should be very glad
to be near Miss Emma of course, and always am.’
‘That’s well,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘That is all I had to say. You are
anxious to go. Don’t let me detain you.’
Dolly didn’t let him, nor did she wait for him to try, for the words
had no sooner passed his lips than she was out of the room, out of the
house, and in the fields again.
The first thing to be done, of course, when she came to herself and
considered what a flurry she had been in, was to cry afresh; and the
next thing, when she reflected how well she had got over it, was to
laugh heartily. The tears once banished gave place to the smiles, and at
last Dolly laughed so much that she was fain to lean against a tree,
and give vent to her exultation. When she could laugh no longer, and was
quite tired, she put her head-dress to rights, dried her eyes, looked
back very merrily and triumphantly at the Warren chimneys, which were
just visible, and resumed her walk.
The twilight had come on, and it was quickly growing dusk, but the path
was so familiar to her from frequent traversing that she hardly thought
of this, and certainly felt no uneasiness at being left alone. Moreover,
there was the bracelet to admire; and when she had given it a good
rub, and held it out at arm’s length, it sparkled and glittered so
beautifully on her wrist, that to look at it in every point of view and
with every possible turn of the arm, was quite an absorbing business.
There was the letter too, and it looked so mysterious and knowing, when
she took it out of her pocket, and it held, as she knew, so much inside,
that to turn it over and over, and think about it, and wonder how it
began, and how it ended, and what it said all through, was another
matter of constant occupation. Between the bracelet and the letter,
there was quite enough to do without thinking of anything else; and
admiring each by turns, Dolly went on gaily.
As she passed through a wicket-gate to where the path was narrow, and
lay between two hedges garnished here and there with trees, she heard
a rustling close at hand, which brought her to a sudden stop. She
listened. All was very quiet, and she went on again--not absolutely
frightened, but a little quicker than before perhaps, and possibly not
quite so much at her ease, for a check of that kind is startling.
She had no sooner moved on again, than she was conscious of the same
sound, which was like that of a person tramping stealthily among bushes
and brushwood. Looking towards the spot whence it appeared to come, she
almost fancied she could make out a crouching figure. She stopped
again. All was quiet as before. On she went once more--decidedly faster
now--and tried to sing softly to herself. It must be the wind.
But how came the wind to blow only when she walked, and cease when she
stood still? She stopped involuntarily as she made the reflection, and
the rustling noise stopped likewise. She was really frightened now, and
was yet hesitating what to do, when the bushes crackled and snapped, and
a man came plunging through them, close before her.
Chapter 21
It was for the moment an inexpressible relief to Dolly, to recognise in
the person who forced himself into the path so abruptly, and now stood
directly in her way, Hugh of the Maypole, whose name she uttered in a
tone of delighted surprise that came from her heart.
‘Was it you?’ she said, ‘how glad I am to see you! and how could you
terrify me so!’
In answer to which, he said nothing at all, but stood quite still,
looking at her.
‘Did you come to meet me?’ asked Dolly.
Hugh nodded, and muttered something to the effect that he had been
waiting for her, and had expected her sooner.
‘I thought it likely they would send,’ said Dolly, greatly reassured by
this.
‘Nobody sent me,’ was his sullen answer. ‘I came of my own accord.’
The rough bearing of this fellow, and his wild, uncouth appearance, had
often filled the girl with a vague apprehension even when other people
were by, and had occasioned her to shrink from him involuntarily. The
having him for an unbidden companion in so solitary a place, with the
darkness fast gathering about them, renewed and even increased the alarm
she had felt at first.
If his manner had been merely dogged and passively fierce, as usual,
she would have had no greater dislike to his company than she always
felt--perhaps, indeed, would have been rather glad to have had him at
hand. But there was something of coarse bold admiration in his look,
which terrified her very much. She glanced timidly towards him,
uncertain whether to go forward or retreat, and he stood gazing at her
like a handsome satyr; and so they remained for some short time without
stirring or breaking silence. At length Dolly took courage, shot past
him, and hurried on.
‘Why do you spend so much breath in avoiding me?’ said Hugh,
accommodating his pace to hers, and keeping close at her side.
‘I wish to get back as quickly as I can, and you walk too near me,
answered Dolly.’
‘Too near!’ said Hugh, stooping over her so that she could feel his
breath upon her forehead. ‘Why too near? You’re always proud to ME,
mistress.’
‘I am proud to no one. You mistake me,’ answered Dolly. ‘Fall back, if
you please, or go on.’
‘Nay, mistress,’ he rejoined, endeavouring to draw her arm through his,
‘I’ll walk with you.’
She released herself and clenching her little hand, struck him with
right good will. At this, Maypole Hugh burst into a roar of laughter,
and passing his arm about her waist, held her in his strong grasp as
easily as if she had been a bird.
‘Ha ha ha! Well done, mistress! Strike again. You shall beat my face,
and tear my hair, and pluck my beard up by the roots, and welcome, for
the sake of your bright eyes. Strike again, mistress. Do. Ha ha ha! I
like it.’
‘Let me go,’ she cried, endeavouring with both her hands to push him
off. ‘Let me go this moment.’
‘You had as good be kinder to me, Sweetlips,’ said Hugh. ‘You had,
indeed. Come. Tell me now. Why are you always so proud? I don’t quarrel
with you for it. I love you when you’re proud. Ha ha ha! You can’t hide
your beauty from a poor fellow; that’s a comfort!’
She gave him no answer, but as he had not yet checked her progress,
continued to press forward as rapidly as she could. At length, between
the hurry she had made, her terror, and the tightness of his embrace,
her strength failed her, and she could go no further.
‘Hugh,’ cried the panting girl, ‘good Hugh; if you will leave me I will
give you anything--everything I have--and never tell one word of this to
any living creature.’
‘You had best not,’ he answered. ‘Harkye, little dove, you had best not.
All about here know me, and what I dare do if I have a mind. If ever you
are going to tell, stop when the words are on your lips, and think of
the mischief you’ll bring, if you do, upon some innocent heads that you
wouldn’t wish to hurt a hair of. Bring trouble on me, and I’ll bring
trouble and something more on them in return. I care no more for them
than for so many dogs; not so much--why should I? I’d sooner kill a man
than a dog any day. I’ve never been sorry for a man’s death in all my
life, and I have for a dog’s.’
There was something so thoroughly savage in the manner of these
expressions, and the looks and gestures by which they were accompanied,
that her great fear of him gave her new strength, and enabled her by a
sudden effort to extricate herself and run fleetly from him. But Hugh
was as nimble, strong, and swift of foot, as any man in broad England,
and it was but a fruitless expenditure of energy, for he had her in his
encircling arms again before she had gone a hundred yards.
‘Softly, darling--gently--would you fly from rough Hugh, that loves you
as well as any drawing-room gallant?’
‘I would,’ she answered, struggling to free herself again. ‘I will.
Help!’
‘A fine for crying out,’ said Hugh. ‘Ha ha ha! A fine, pretty one, from
your lips. I pay myself! Ha ha ha!’
‘Help! help! help!’ As she shrieked with the utmost violence she could
exert, a shout was heard in answer, and another, and another.
‘Thank Heaven!’ cried the girl in an ecstasy. ‘Joe, dear Joe, this way.
Help!’
Her assailant paused, and stood irresolute for a moment, but the shouts
drawing nearer and coming quick upon them, forced him to a speedy
decision. He released her, whispered with a menacing look, ‘Tell HIM:
and see what follows!’ and leaping the hedge, was gone in an instant.
Dolly darted off, and fairly ran into Joe Willet’s open arms.
‘What is the matter? are you hurt? what was it? who was it? where is
he? what was he like?’ with a great many encouraging expressions and
assurances of safety, were the first words Joe poured forth. But poor
little Dolly was so breathless and terrified that for some time she
was quite unable to answer him, and hung upon his shoulder, sobbing and
crying as if her heart would break.
Joe had not the smallest objection to have her hanging on his shoulder;
no, not the least, though it crushed the cherry-coloured ribbons sadly,
and put the smart little hat out of all shape. But he couldn’t bear to
see her cry; it went to his very heart. He tried to console her, bent
over her, whispered to her--some say kissed her, but that’s a fable. At
any rate he said all the kind and tender things he could think of and
Dolly let him go on and didn’t interrupt him once, and it was a good ten
minutes before she was able to raise her head and thank him.
‘What was it that frightened you?’ said Joe.
A man whose person was unknown to her had followed her, she answered; he
began by begging, and went on to threats of robbery, which he was on the
point of carrying into execution, and would have executed, but for Joe’s
timely aid. The hesitation and confusion with which she said this, Joe
attributed to the fright she had sustained, and no suspicion of the
truth occurred to him for a moment.
‘Stop when the words are on your lips.’ A hundred times that night, and
very often afterwards, when the disclosure was rising to her tongue,
Dolly thought of that, and repressed it. A deeply rooted dread of the
man; the conviction that his ferocious nature, once roused, would stop
at nothing; and the strong assurance that if she impeached him, the
full measure of his wrath and vengeance would be wreaked on Joe, who
had preserved her; these were considerations she had not the courage to
overcome, and inducements to secrecy too powerful for her to surmount.
Joe, for his part, was a great deal too happy to inquire very curiously
into the matter; and Dolly being yet too tremulous to walk without
assistance, they went forward very slowly, and in his mind very
pleasantly, until the Maypole lights were near at hand, twinkling their
cheerful welcome, when Dolly stopped suddenly and with a half scream
exclaimed,
‘The letter!’
‘What letter?’ cried Joe.
‘That I was carrying--I had it in my hand. My bracelet too,’ she said,
clasping her wrist. ‘I have lost them both.’
‘Do you mean just now?’ said Joe.
‘Either I dropped them then, or they were taken from me,’ answered
Dolly, vainly searching her pocket and rustling her dress. ‘They are
gone, both gone. What an unhappy girl I am!’ With these words poor
Dolly, who to do her justice was quite as sorry for the loss of the
letter as for her bracelet, fell a-crying again, and bemoaned her fate
most movingly.
Joe tried to comfort her with the assurance that directly he had housed
her in the Maypole, he would return to the spot with a lantern (for it
was now quite dark) and make strict search for the missing articles,
which there was great probability of his finding, as it was not likely
that anybody had passed that way since, and she was not conscious that
they had been forcibly taken from her. Dolly thanked him very heartily
for this offer, though with no great hope of his quest being successful;
and so with many lamentations on her side, and many hopeful words on
his, and much weakness on the part of Dolly and much tender supporting
on the part of Joe, they reached the Maypole bar at last, where the
locksmith and his wife and old John were yet keeping high festival.
Mr Willet received the intelligence of Dolly’s trouble with that
surprising presence of mind and readiness of speech for which he was so
eminently distinguished above all other men. Mrs Varden expressed her
sympathy for her daughter’s distress by scolding her roundly for being
so late; and the honest locksmith divided himself between condoling with
and kissing Dolly, and shaking hands heartily with Joe, whom he could
not sufficiently praise or thank.
In reference to this latter point, old John was far from agreeing with
his friend; for besides that he by no means approved of an adventurous
spirit in the abstract, it occurred to him that if his son and heir had
been seriously damaged in a scuffle, the consequences would assuredly
have been expensive and inconvenient, and might perhaps have proved
detrimental to the Maypole business. Wherefore, and because he looked
with no favourable eye upon young girls, but rather considered that they
and the whole female sex were a kind of nonsensical mistake on the part
of Nature, he took occasion to retire and shake his head in private at
the boiler; inspired by which silent oracle, he was moved to give Joe
various stealthy nudges with his elbow, as a parental reproof and gentle
admonition to mind his own business and not make a fool of himself.
Joe, however, took down the lantern and lighted it; and arming himself
with a stout stick, asked whether Hugh was in the stable.
‘He’s lying asleep before the kitchen fire, sir,’ said Mr Willet. ‘What
do you want him for?’
‘I want him to come with me to look after this bracelet and letter,’
answered Joe. ‘Halloa there! Hugh!’
Dolly turned pale as death, and felt as if she must faint forthwith.
After a few moments, Hugh came staggering in, stretching himself and
yawning according to custom, and presenting every appearance of having
been roused from a sound nap.
‘Here, sleepy-head,’ said Joe, giving him the lantern. ‘Carry this, and
bring the dog, and that small cudgel of yours. And woe betide the fellow
if we come upon him.’
‘What fellow?’ growled Hugh, rubbing his eyes and shaking himself.
‘What fellow?’ returned Joe, who was in a state of great valour and
bustle; ‘a fellow you ought to know of and be more alive about. It’s
well for the like of you, lazy giant that you are, to be snoring your
time away in chimney-corners, when honest men’s daughters can’t cross
even our quiet meadows at nightfall without being set upon by footpads,
and frightened out of their precious lives.’
‘They never rob me,’ cried Hugh with a laugh. ‘I have got nothing to
lose. But I’d as lief knock them at head as any other men. How many are
there?’
‘Only one,’ said Dolly faintly, for everybody looked at her.
‘And what was he like, mistress?’ said Hugh with a glance at young
Willet, so slight and momentary that the scowl it conveyed was lost on
all but her. ‘About my height?’
‘Not--not so tall,’ Dolly replied, scarce knowing what she said.
‘His dress,’ said Hugh, looking at her keenly, ‘like--like any of ours
now? I know all the people hereabouts, and maybe could give a guess at
the man, if I had anything to guide me.’
Dolly faltered and turned paler yet; then answered that he was wrapped
in a loose coat and had his face hidden by a handkerchief and that she
could give no other description of him.
‘You wouldn’t know him if you saw him then, belike?’ said Hugh with a
malicious grin.
‘I should not,’ answered Dolly, bursting into tears again. ‘I don’t wish
to see him. I can’t bear to think of him. I can’t talk about him any
more. Don’t go to look for these things, Mr Joe, pray don’t. I entreat
you not to go with that man.’
‘Not to go with me!’ cried Hugh. ‘I’m too rough for them all. They’re
all afraid of me. Why, bless you mistress, I’ve the tenderest heart
alive. I love all the ladies, ma’am,’ said Hugh, turning to the
locksmith’s wife.
Mrs Varden opined that if he did, he ought to be ashamed of himself;
such sentiments being more consistent (so she argued) with a benighted
Mussulman or wild Islander than with a stanch Protestant. Arguing from
this imperfect state of his morals, Mrs Varden further opined that he
had never studied the Manual. Hugh admitting that he never had, and
moreover that he couldn’t read, Mrs Varden declared with much severity,
that he ought to be even more ashamed of himself than before, and
strongly recommended him to save up his pocket-money for the purchase
of one, and further to teach himself the contents with all convenient
diligence. She was still pursuing this train of discourse, when Hugh,
somewhat unceremoniously and irreverently, followed his young master
out, and left her to edify the rest of the company. This she proceeded
to do, and finding that Mr Willet’s eyes were fixed upon her with an
appearance of deep attention, gradually addressed the whole of her
discourse to him, whom she entertained with a moral and theological
lecture of considerable length, in the conviction that great workings
were taking place in his spirit. The simple truth was, however, that Mr
Willet, although his eyes were wide open and he saw a woman before
him whose head by long and steady looking at seemed to grow bigger
and bigger until it filled the whole bar, was to all other intents and
purposes fast asleep; and so sat leaning back in his chair with his
hands in his pockets until his son’s return caused him to wake up with
a deep sigh, and a faint impression that he had been dreaming about
pickled pork and greens--a vision of his slumbers which was no doubt
referable to the circumstance of Mrs Varden’s having frequently
pronounced the word ‘Grace’ with much emphasis; which word, entering
the portals of Mr Willet’s brain as they stood ajar, and coupling itself
with the words ‘before meat,’ which were there ranging about, did in
time suggest a particular kind of meat together with that description of
vegetable which is usually its companion.
The search was wholly unsuccessful. Joe had groped along the path a
dozen times, and among the grass, and in the dry ditch, and in the
hedge, but all in vain. Dolly, who was quite inconsolable for her loss,
wrote a note to Miss Haredale giving her the same account of it that she
had given at the Maypole, which Joe undertook to deliver as soon as the
family were stirring next day. That done, they sat down to tea in the
bar, where there was an uncommon display of buttered toast, and--in
order that they might not grow faint for want of sustenance, and
might have a decent halting-place or halfway house between dinner and
supper--a few savoury trifles in the shape of great rashers of broiled
ham, which being well cured, done to a turn, and smoking hot, sent forth
a tempting and delicious fragrance.
Mrs Varden was seldom very Protestant at meals, unless it happened that
they were underdone, or overdone, or indeed that anything occurred to
put her out of humour. Her spirits rose considerably on beholding these
goodly preparations, and from the nothingness of good works, she passed
to the somethingness of ham and toast with great cheerfulness. Nay,
under the influence of these wholesome stimulants, she sharply reproved
her daughter for being low and despondent (which she considered an
unacceptable frame of mind), and remarked, as she held her own plate for
a fresh supply, that it would be well for Dolly, who pined over the loss
of a toy and a sheet of paper, if she would reflect upon the voluntary
sacrifices of the missionaries in foreign parts who lived chiefly on
salads.
The proceedings of such a day occasion various fluctuations in the human
thermometer, and especially in instruments so sensitively and delicately
constructed as Mrs Varden. Thus, at dinner Mrs V. stood at summer heat;
genial, smiling, and delightful. After dinner, in the sunshine of the
wine, she went up at least half-a-dozen degrees, and was perfectly
enchanting. As its effect subsided, she fell rapidly, went to sleep for
an hour or so at temperate, and woke at something below freezing. Now
she was at summer heat again, in the shade; and when tea was over, and
old John, producing a bottle of cordial from one of the oaken cases,
insisted on her sipping two glasses thereof in slow succession, she
stood steadily at ninety for one hour and a quarter. Profiting by
experience, the locksmith took advantage of this genial weather to smoke
his pipe in the porch, and in consequence of this prudent management, he
was fully prepared, when the glass went down again, to start homewards
directly.
The horse was accordingly put in, and the chaise brought round to the
door. Joe, who would on no account be dissuaded from escorting them
until they had passed the most dreary and solitary part of the road,
led out the grey mare at the same time; and having helped Dolly into her
seat (more happiness!) sprung gaily into the saddle. Then, after many
good nights, and admonitions to wrap up, and glancing of lights, and
handing in of cloaks and shawls, the chaise rolled away, and Joe trotted
beside it--on Dolly’s side, no doubt, and pretty close to the wheel too.
Chapter 22
It was a fine bright night, and for all her lowness of spirits Dolly
kept looking up at the stars in a manner so bewitching (and SHE knew
it!) that Joe was clean out of his senses, and plainly showed that if
ever a man were--not to say over head and ears, but over the Monument
and the top of Saint Paul’s in love, that man was himself. The road was
a very good one; not at all a jolting road, or an uneven one; and yet
Dolly held the side of the chaise with one little hand, all the way. If
there had been an executioner behind him with an uplifted axe ready
to chop off his head if he touched that hand, Joe couldn’t have helped
doing it. From putting his own hand upon it as if by chance, and taking
it away again after a minute or so, he got to riding along without
taking it off at all; as if he, the escort, were bound to do that as an
important part of his duty, and had come out for the purpose. The most
curious circumstance about this little incident was, that Dolly didn’t
seem to know of it. She looked so innocent and unconscious when she
turned her eyes on Joe, that it was quite provoking.
She talked though; talked about her fright, and about Joe’s coming up to
rescue her, and about her gratitude, and about her fear that she might
not have thanked him enough, and about their always being friends from
that time forth--and about all that sort of thing. And when Joe said,
not friends he hoped, Dolly was quite surprised, and said not enemies
she hoped; and when Joe said, couldn’t they be something much better
than either, Dolly all of a sudden found out a star which was brighter
than all the other stars, and begged to call his attention to the same,
and was ten thousand times more innocent and unconscious than ever.
In this manner they travelled along, talking very little above a
whisper, and wishing the road could be stretched out to some dozen times
its natural length--at least that was Joe’s desire--when, as they were
getting clear of the forest and emerging on the more frequented road,
they heard behind them the sound of a horse’s feet at a round trot,
which growing rapidly louder as it drew nearer, elicited a scream from
Mrs Varden, and the cry ‘a friend!’ from the rider, who now came panting
up, and checked his horse beside them.
‘This man again!’ cried Dolly, shuddering.
‘Hugh!’ said Joe. ‘What errand are you upon?’
‘I come to ride back with you,’ he answered, glancing covertly at the
locksmith’s daughter. ‘HE sent me.’
‘My father!’ said poor Joe; adding under his breath, with a very
unfilial apostrophe, ‘Will he never think me man enough to take care of
myself!’
‘Aye!’ returned Hugh to the first part of the inquiry. ‘The roads are
not safe just now, he says, and you’d better have a companion.’
‘Ride on then,’ said Joe. ‘I’m not going to turn yet.’
Hugh complied, and they went on again. It was his whim or humour to
ride immediately before the chaise, and from this position he constantly
turned his head, and looked back. Dolly felt that he looked at her, but
she averted her eyes and feared to raise them once, so great was the
dread with which he had inspired her.
This interruption, and the consequent wakefulness of Mrs Varden, who had
been nodding in her sleep up to this point, except for a minute or
two at a time, when she roused herself to scold the locksmith for
audaciously taking hold of her to prevent her nodding herself out of
the chaise, put a restraint upon the whispered conversation, and made
it difficult of resumption. Indeed, before they had gone another mile,
Gabriel stopped at his wife’s desire, and that good lady protested she
would not hear of Joe’s going a step further on any account whatever. It
was in vain for Joe to protest on the other hand that he was by no means
tired, and would turn back presently, and would see them safely past
such a point, and so forth. Mrs Varden was obdurate, and being so was
not to be overcome by mortal agency.
‘Good night--if I must say it,’ said Joe, sorrowfully.
‘Good night,’ said Dolly. She would have added, ‘Take care of that man,
and pray don’t trust him,’ but he had turned his horse’s head, and was
standing close to them. She had therefore nothing for it but to suffer
Joe to give her hand a gentle squeeze, and when the chaise had gone on
for some distance, to look back and wave it, as he still lingered on
the spot where they had parted, with the tall dark figure of Hugh beside
him.
What she thought about, going home; and whether the coach-maker held as
favourable a place in her meditations as he had occupied in the morning,
is unknown. They reached home at last--at last, for it was a long way,
made none the shorter by Mrs Varden’s grumbling. Miggs hearing the sound
of wheels was at the door immediately.
‘Here they are, Simmun! Here they are!’ cried Miggs, clapping her
hands, and issuing forth to help her mistress to alight. ‘Bring a
chair, Simmun. Now, an’t you the better for it, mim? Don’t you feel more
yourself than you would have done if you’d have stopped at home? Oh,
gracious! how cold you are! Goodness me, sir, she’s a perfect heap of
ice.’
‘I can’t help it, my good girl. You had better take her in to the fire,’
said the locksmith.
‘Master sounds unfeeling, mim,’ said Miggs, in a tone of commiseration,
‘but such is not his intentions, I’m sure. After what he has seen of you
this day, I never will believe but that he has a deal more affection
in his heart than to speak unkind. Come in and sit yourself down by the
fire; there’s a good dear--do.’
Mrs Varden complied. The locksmith followed with his hands in his
pockets, and Mr Tappertit trundled off with the chaise to a neighbouring
stable.
‘Martha, my dear,’ said the locksmith, when they reached the parlour,
‘if you’ll look to Dolly yourself or let somebody else do it, perhaps it
will be only kind and reasonable. She has been frightened, you know, and
is not at all well to-night.’
In fact, Dolly had thrown herself upon the sofa, quite regardless of
all the little finery of which she had been so proud in the morning, and
with her face buried in her hands was crying very much.
At first sight of this phenomenon (for Dolly was by no means accustomed
to displays of this sort, rather learning from her mother’s example to
avoid them as much as possible) Mrs Varden expressed her belief that
never was any woman so beset as she; that her life was a continued scene
of trial; that whenever she was disposed to be well and cheerful, so
sure were the people around her to throw, by some means or other, a damp
upon her spirits; and that, as she had enjoyed herself that day, and
Heaven knew it was very seldom she did enjoy herself so she was now to
pay the penalty. To all such propositions Miggs assented freely. Poor
Dolly, however, grew none the better for these restoratives, but rather
worse, indeed; and seeing that she was really ill, both Mrs Varden and
Miggs were moved to compassion, and tended her in earnest.
But even then, their very kindness shaped itself into their usual course
of policy, and though Dolly was in a swoon, it was rendered clear to
the meanest capacity, that Mrs Varden was the sufferer. Thus when
Dolly began to get a little better, and passed into that stage in which
matrons hold that remonstrance and argument may be successfully applied,
her mother represented to her, with tears in her eyes, that if she had
been flurried and worried that day, she must remember it was the common
lot of humanity, and in especial of womankind, who through the whole
of their existence must expect no less, and were bound to make up their
minds to meek endurance and patient resignation. Mrs Varden entreated
her to remember that one of these days she would, in all probability,
have to do violence to her feelings so far as to be married; and that
marriage, as she might see every day of her life (and truly she did) was
a state requiring great fortitude and forbearance. She represented to
her in lively colours, that if she (Mrs V.) had not, in steering her
course through this vale of tears, been supported by a strong principle
of duty which alone upheld and prevented her from drooping, she must
have been in her grave many years ago; in which case she desired to know
what would have become of that errant spirit (meaning the locksmith), of
whose eye she was the very apple, and in whose path she was, as it were,
a shining light and guiding star?
Miss Miggs also put in her word to the same effect. She said that indeed
and indeed Miss Dolly might take pattern by her blessed mother, who,
she always had said, and always would say, though she were to be hanged,
drawn, and quartered for it next minute, was the mildest, amiablest,
forgivingest-spirited, longest-sufferingest female as ever she could
have believed; the mere narration of whose excellencies had worked such
a wholesome change in the mind of her own sister-in-law, that, whereas,
before, she and her husband lived like cat and dog, and were in the
habit of exchanging brass candlesticks, pot-lids, flat-irons, and other
such strong resentments, they were now the happiest and affectionatest
couple upon earth; as could be proved any day on application at Golden
Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, second bell-handle on the right-hand
doorpost. After glancing at herself as a comparatively worthless vessel,
but still as one of some desert, she besought her to bear in mind that
her aforesaid dear and only mother was of a weakly constitution and
excitable temperament, who had constantly to sustain afflictions in
domestic life, compared with which thieves and robbers were as nothing,
and yet never sunk down or gave way to despair or wrath, but, in
prize-fighting phraseology, always came up to time with a cheerful
countenance, and went in to win as if nothing had happened. When Miggs
finished her solo, her mistress struck in again, and the two together
performed a duet to the same purpose; the burden being, that Mrs Varden
was persecuted perfection, and Mr Varden, as the representative of
mankind in that apartment, a creature of vicious and brutal habits,
utterly insensible to the blessings he enjoyed. Of so refined a
character, indeed, was their talent of assault under the mask of
sympathy, that when Dolly, recovering, embraced her father tenderly,
as in vindication of his goodness, Mrs Varden expressed her solemn hope
that this would be a lesson to him for the remainder of his life,
and that he would do some little justice to a woman’s nature ever
afterwards--in which aspiration Miss Miggs, by divers sniffs and
coughs, more significant than the longest oration, expressed her entire
concurrence.
But the great joy of Miggs’s heart was, that she not only picked up
a full account of what had happened, but had the exquisite delight of
conveying it to Mr Tappertit for his jealousy and torture. For that
gentleman, on account of Dolly’s indisposition, had been requested to
take his supper in the workshop, and it was conveyed thither by Miss
Miggs’s own fair hands.
‘Oh Simmun!’ said the young lady, ‘such goings on to-day! Oh, gracious
me, Simmun!’
Mr Tappertit, who was not in the best of humours, and who disliked Miss
Miggs more when she laid her hand on her heart and panted for breath
than at any other time, as her deficiency of outline was most apparent
under such circumstances, eyed her over in his loftiest style, and
deigned to express no curiosity whatever.
‘I never heard the like, nor nobody else,’ pursued Miggs. ‘The idea of
interfering with HER. What people can see in her to make it worth their
while to do so, that’s the joke--he he he!’
Finding there was a lady in the case, Mr Tappertit haughtily requested
his fair friend to be more explicit, and demanded to know what she meant
by ‘her.’
‘Why, that Dolly,’ said Miggs, with an extremely sharp emphasis on the
name. ‘But, oh upon my word and honour, young Joseph Willet is a brave
one; and he do deserve her, that he do.’
‘Woman!’ said Mr Tappertit, jumping off the counter on which he was
seated; ‘beware!’
‘My stars, Simmun!’ cried Miggs, in affected astonishment. ‘You frighten
me to death! What’s the matter?’
‘There are strings,’ said Mr Tappertit, flourishing his bread-and-cheese
knife in the air, ‘in the human heart that had better not be wibrated.
That’s what’s the matter.’
‘Oh, very well--if you’re in a huff,’ cried Miggs, turning away.
‘Huff or no huff,’ said Mr Tappertit, detaining her by the wrist. ‘What
do you mean, Jezebel? What were you going to say? Answer me!’
Notwithstanding this uncivil exhortation, Miggs gladly did as she was
required; and told him how that their young mistress, being alone in
the meadows after dark, had been attacked by three or four tall men, who
would have certainly borne her away and perhaps murdered her, but for
the timely arrival of Joseph Willet, who with his own single hand put
them all to flight, and rescued her; to the lasting admiration of his
fellow-creatures generally, and to the eternal love and gratitude of
Dolly Varden.
‘Very good,’ said Mr Tappertit, fetching a long breath when the tale was
told, and rubbing his hair up till it stood stiff and straight on end
all over his head. ‘His days are numbered.’
‘Oh, Simmun!’
‘I tell you,’ said the ‘prentice, ‘his days are numbered. Leave me. Get
along with you.’
Miggs departed at his bidding, but less because of his bidding than
because she desired to chuckle in secret. When she had given vent to
her satisfaction, she returned to the parlour; where the locksmith,
stimulated by quietness and Toby, had become talkative, and was disposed
to take a cheerful review of the occurrences of the day. But Mrs
Varden, whose practical religion (as is not uncommon) was usually of the
retrospective order, cut him short by declaiming on the sinfulness of
such junketings, and holding that it was high time to go to bed. To bed
therefore she withdrew, with an aspect as grim and gloomy as that of the
Maypole’s own state couch; and to bed the rest of the establishment soon
afterwards repaired.
Chapter 23
Twilight had given place to night some hours, and it was high noon
in those quarters of the town in which ‘the world’ condescended to
dwell--the world being then, as now, of very limited dimensions and
easily lodged--when Mr Chester reclined upon a sofa in his dressing-room
in the Temple, entertaining himself with a book.
He was dressing, as it seemed, by easy stages, and having performed half
the journey was taking a long rest. Completely attired as to his legs
and feet in the trimmest fashion of the day, he had yet the remainder of
his toilet to perform. The coat was stretched, like a refined scarecrow,
on its separate horse; the waistcoat was displayed to the best
advantage; the various ornamental articles of dress were severally set
out in most alluring order; and yet he lay dangling his legs between the
sofa and the ground, as intent upon his book as if there were nothing
but bed before him.
‘Upon my honour,’ he said, at length raising his eyes to the ceiling
with the air of a man who was reflecting seriously on what he had
read; ‘upon my honour, the most masterly composition, the most delicate
thoughts, the finest code of morality, and the most gentlemanly
sentiments in the universe! Ah Ned, Ned, if you would but form your mind
by such precepts, we should have but one common feeling on every subject
that could possibly arise between us!’
This apostrophe was addressed, like the rest of his remarks, to empty
air: for Edward was not present, and the father was quite alone.
‘My Lord Chesterfield,’ he said, pressing his hand tenderly upon the
book as he laid it down, ‘if I could but have profited by your genius
soon enough to have formed my son on the model you have left to all
wise fathers, both he and I would have been rich men. Shakespeare was
undoubtedly very fine in his way; Milton good, though prosy; Lord Bacon
deep, and decidedly knowing; but the writer who should be his country’s
pride, is my Lord Chesterfield.’
He became thoughtful again, and the toothpick was in requisition.
‘I thought I was tolerably accomplished as a man of the world,’ he
continued, ‘I flattered myself that I was pretty well versed in all
those little arts and graces which distinguish men of the world from
boors and peasants, and separate their character from those intensely
vulgar sentiments which are called the national character. Apart from
any natural prepossession in my own favour, I believed I was. Still, in
every page of this enlightened writer, I find some captivating hypocrisy
which has never occurred to me before, or some superlative piece of
selfishness to which I was utterly a stranger. I should quite blush for
myself before this stupendous creature, if remembering his precepts, one
might blush at anything. An amazing man! a nobleman indeed! any King or
Queen may make a Lord, but only the Devil himself--and the Graces--can
make a Chesterfield.’
Men who are thoroughly false and hollow, seldom try to hide those vices
from themselves; and yet in the very act of avowing them, they lay claim
to the virtues they feign most to despise. ‘For,’ say they, ‘this is
honesty, this is truth. All mankind are like us, but they have not the
candour to avow it.’ The more they affect to deny the existence of any
sincerity in the world, the more they would be thought to possess it in
its boldest shape; and this is an unconscious compliment to Truth on the
part of these philosophers, which will turn the laugh against them to
the Day of Judgment.
Mr Chester, having extolled his favourite author, as above recited,
took up the book again in the excess of his admiration and was composing
himself for a further perusal of its sublime morality, when he was
disturbed by a noise at the outer door; occasioned as it seemed by the
endeavours of his servant to obstruct the entrance of some unwelcome
visitor.
‘A late hour for an importunate creditor,’ he said, raising his eyebrows
with as indolent an expression of wonder as if the noise were in the
street, and one with which he had not the smallest possible concern.
‘Much after their accustomed time. The usual pretence I suppose. No
doubt a heavy payment to make up tomorrow. Poor fellow, he loses time,
and time is money as the good proverb says--I never found it out though.
Well. What now? You know I am not at home.’
‘A man, sir,’ replied the servant, who was to the full as cool and
negligent in his way as his master, ‘has brought home the riding-whip
you lost the other day. I told him you were out, but he said he was to
wait while I brought it in, and wouldn’t go till I did.’
‘He was quite right,’ returned his master, ‘and you’re a blockhead,
possessing no judgment or discretion whatever. Tell him to come in, and
see that he rubs his shoes for exactly five minutes first.’
The man laid the whip on a chair, and withdrew. The master, who had only
heard his foot upon the ground and had not taken the trouble to turn
round and look at him, shut his book, and pursued the train of ideas his
entrance had disturbed.
‘If time were money,’ he said, handling his snuff-box, ‘I would compound
with my creditors, and give them--let me see--how much a day? There’s
my nap after dinner--an hour--they’re extremely welcome to that, and to
make the most of it. In the morning, between my breakfast and the
paper, I could spare them another hour; in the evening before dinner
say another. Three hours a day. They might pay themselves in calls, with
interest, in twelve months. I think I shall propose it to them. Ah, my
centaur, are you there?’
‘Here I am,’ replied Hugh, striding in, followed by a dog, as rough and
sullen as himself; ‘and trouble enough I’ve had to get here. What do you
ask me to come for, and keep me out when I DO come?’
‘My good fellow,’ returned the other, raising his head a little from the
cushion and carelessly surveying him from top to toe, ‘I am delighted to
see you, and to have, in your being here, the very best proof that you
are not kept out. How are you?’
‘I’m well enough,’ said Hugh impatiently.
‘You look a perfect marvel of health. Sit down.’
‘I’d rather stand,’ said Hugh.
‘Please yourself my good fellow,’ returned Mr Chester rising, slowly
pulling off the loose robe he wore, and sitting down before the
dressing-glass. ‘Please yourself by all means.’
Having said this in the politest and blandest tone possible, he went on
dressing, and took no further notice of his guest, who stood in the same
spot as uncertain what to do next, eyeing him sulkily from time to time.
‘Are you going to speak to me, master?’ he said, after a long silence.
‘My worthy creature,’ returned Mr Chester, ‘you are a little ruffled and
out of humour. I’ll wait till you’re quite yourself again. I am in no
hurry.’
This behaviour had its intended effect. It humbled and abashed the man,
and made him still more irresolute and uncertain. Hard words he could
have returned, violence he would have repaid with interest; but this
cool, complacent, contemptuous, self-possessed reception, caused him to
feel his inferiority more completely than the most elaborate arguments.
Everything contributed to this effect. His own rough speech, contrasted
with the soft persuasive accents of the other; his rude bearing, and
Mr Chester’s polished manner; the disorder and negligence of his
ragged dress, and the elegant attire he saw before him; with all the
unaccustomed luxuries and comforts of the room, and the silence that
gave him leisure to observe these things, and feel how ill at ease they
made him; all these influences, which have too often some effect on
tutored minds and become of almost resistless power when brought to bear
on such a mind as his, quelled Hugh completely. He moved by little and
little nearer to Mr Chester’s chair, and glancing over his shoulder
at the reflection of his face in the glass, as if seeking for some
encouragement in its expression, said at length, with a rough attempt at
conciliation,
‘ARE you going to speak to me, master, or am I to go away?’
‘Speak you,’ said Mr Chester, ‘speak you, good fellow. I have spoken,
have I not? I am waiting for you.’
‘Why, look’ee, sir,’ returned Hugh with increased embarrassment, ‘am I
the man that you privately left your whip with before you rode away from
the Maypole, and told to bring it back whenever he might want to see you
on a certain subject?’
‘No doubt the same, or you have a twin brother,’ said Mr Chester,
glancing at the reflection of his anxious face; ‘which is not probable,
I should say.’
‘Then I have come, sir,’ said Hugh, ‘and I have brought it back, and
something else along with it. A letter, sir, it is, that I took from
the person who had charge of it.’ As he spoke, he laid upon the
dressing-table, Dolly’s lost epistle. The very letter that had cost her
so much trouble.
‘Did you obtain this by force, my good fellow?’ said Mr Chester, casting
his eye upon it without the least perceptible surprise or pleasure.
‘Not quite,’ said Hugh. ‘Partly.’
‘Who was the messenger from whom you took it?’
‘A woman. One Varden’s daughter.’
‘Oh indeed!’ said Mr Chester gaily. ‘What else did you take from her?’
‘What else?’
‘Yes,’ said the other, in a drawling manner, for he was fixing a very
small patch of sticking plaster on a very small pimple near the corner
of his mouth. ‘What else?’
‘Well a kiss,’ replied Hugh, after some hesitation.
‘And what else?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I think,’ said Mr Chester, in the same easy tone, and smiling twice or
thrice to try if the patch adhered--‘I think there was something else.
I have heard a trifle of jewellery spoken of--a mere trifle--a thing
of such little value, indeed, that you may have forgotten it. Do you
remember anything of the kind--such as a bracelet now, for instance?’
Hugh with a muttered oath thrust his hand into his breast, and drawing
the bracelet forth, wrapped in a scrap of hay, was about to lay it on
the table likewise, when his patron stopped his hand and bade him put it
up again.
‘You took that for yourself my excellent friend,’ he said, ‘and may keep
it. I am neither a thief nor a receiver. Don’t show it to me. You had
better hide it again, and lose no time. Don’t let me see where you put
it either,’ he added, turning away his head.
‘You’re not a receiver!’ said Hugh bluntly, despite the increasing awe
in which he held him. ‘What do you call THAT, master?’ striking the
letter with his heavy hand.
‘I call that quite another thing,’ said Mr Chester coolly. ‘I shall
prove it presently, as you will see. You are thirsty, I suppose?’
Hugh drew his sleeve across his lips, and gruffly answered yes.
‘Step to that closet and bring me a bottle you will see there, and a
glass.’
He obeyed. His patron followed him with his eyes, and when his back was
turned, smiled as he had never done when he stood beside the mirror.
On his return he filled the glass, and bade him drink. That dram
despatched, he poured him out another, and another.
‘How many can you bear?’ he said, filling the glass again.
‘As many as you like to give me. Pour on. Fill high. A bumper with a
bead in the middle! Give me enough of this,’ he added, as he tossed it
down his hairy throat, ‘and I’ll do murder if you ask me!’
‘As I don’t mean to ask you, and you might possibly do it without
being invited if you went on much further,’ said Mr Chester with great
composure, ‘we will stop, if agreeable to you, my good friend, at the
next glass. You were drinking before you came here.’
‘I always am when I can get it,’ cried Hugh boisterously, waving the
empty glass above his head, and throwing himself into a rude dancing
attitude. ‘I always am. Why not? Ha ha ha! What’s so good to me as this?
What ever has been? What else has kept away the cold on bitter nights,
and driven hunger off in starving times? What else has given me the
strength and courage of a man, when men would have left me to die, a
puny child? I should never have had a man’s heart but for this. I
should have died in a ditch. Where’s he who when I was a weak and sickly
wretch, with trembling legs and fading sight, bade me cheer up, as this
did? I never knew him; not I. I drink to the drink, master. Ha ha ha!’
‘You are an exceedingly cheerful young man,’ said Mr Chester, putting
on his cravat with great deliberation, and slightly moving his head
from side to side to settle his chin in its proper place. ‘Quite a boon
companion.’
‘Do you see this hand, master,’ said Hugh, ‘and this arm?’ baring the
brawny limb to the elbow. ‘It was once mere skin and bone, and would
have been dust in some poor churchyard by this time, but for the drink.’
‘You may cover it,’ said Mr Chester, ‘it’s sufficiently real in your
sleeve.’
‘I should never have been spirited up to take a kiss from the proud
little beauty, master, but for the drink,’ cried Hugh. ‘Ha ha ha! It was
a good one. As sweet as honeysuckle, I warrant you. I thank the drink
for it. I’ll drink to the drink again, master. Fill me one more. Come.
One more!’
‘You are such a promising fellow,’ said his patron, putting on his
waistcoat with great nicety, and taking no heed of this request, ‘that
I must caution you against having too many impulses from the drink, and
getting hung before your time. What’s your age?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘At any rate,’ said Mr Chester, ‘you are young enough to escape what
I may call a natural death for some years to come. How can you trust
yourself in my hands on so short an acquaintance, with a halter round
your neck? What a confiding nature yours must be!’
Hugh fell back a pace or two and surveyed him with a look of mingled
terror, indignation, and surprise. Regarding himself in the glass with
the same complacency as before, and speaking as smoothly as if he were
discussing some pleasant chit-chat of the town, his patron went on:
‘Robbery on the king’s highway, my young friend, is a very dangerous and
ticklish occupation. It is pleasant, I have no doubt, while it lasts;
but like many other pleasures in this transitory world, it seldom lasts
long. And really if in the ingenuousness of youth, you open your heart
so readily on the subject, I am afraid your career will be an extremely
short one.’
‘How’s this?’ said Hugh. ‘What do you talk of master? Who was it set me
on?’
‘Who?’ said Mr Chester, wheeling sharply round, and looking full at him
for the first time. ‘I didn’t hear you. Who was it?’
Hugh faltered, and muttered something which was not audible.
‘Who was it? I am curious to know,’ said Mr Chester, with surpassing
affability. ‘Some rustic beauty perhaps? But be cautious, my good
friend. They are not always to be trusted. Do take my advice now, and be
careful of yourself.’ With these words he turned to the glass again, and
went on with his toilet.
Hugh would have answered him that he, the questioner himself had set him
on, but the words stuck in his throat. The consummate art with which his
patron had led him to this point, and managed the whole conversation,
perfectly baffled him. He did not doubt that if he had made the retort
which was on his lips when Mr Chester turned round and questioned him
so keenly, he would straightway have given him into custody and had him
dragged before a justice with the stolen property upon him; in which
case it was as certain he would have been hung as it was that he had
been born. The ascendency which it was the purpose of the man of the
world to establish over this savage instrument, was gained from that
time. Hugh’s submission was complete. He dreaded him beyond description;
and felt that accident and artifice had spun a web about him, which at a
touch from such a master-hand as his, would bind him to the gallows.
With these thoughts passing through his mind, and yet wondering at the
very same time how he who came there rioting in the confidence of this
man (as he thought), should be so soon and so thoroughly subdued, Hugh
stood cowering before him, regarding him uneasily from time to time,
while he finished dressing. When he had done so, he took up the
letter, broke the seal, and throwing himself back in his chair, read it
leisurely through.
‘Very neatly worded upon my life! Quite a woman’s letter, full of what
people call tenderness, and disinterestedness, and heart, and all that
sort of thing!’
As he spoke, he twisted it up, and glancing lazily round at Hugh as
though he would say ‘You see this?’ held it in the flame of the candle.
When it was in a full blaze, he tossed it into the grate, and there it
smouldered away.
‘It was directed to my son,’ he said, turning to Hugh, ‘and you did
quite right to bring it here. I opened it on my own responsibility, and
you see what I have done with it. Take this, for your trouble.’
Hugh stepped forward to receive the piece of money he held out to him.
As he put it in his hand, he added:
‘If you should happen to find anything else of this sort, or to pick
up any kind of information you may think I would like to have, bring it
here, will you, my good fellow?’
This was said with a smile which implied--or Hugh thought it did--‘fail
to do so at your peril!’ He answered that he would.
‘And don’t,’ said his patron, with an air of the very kindest patronage,
‘don’t be at all downcast or uneasy respecting that little rashness we
have been speaking of. Your neck is as safe in my hands, my good fellow,
as though a baby’s fingers clasped it, I assure you.--Take another
glass. You are quieter now.’
Hugh accepted it from his hand, and looking stealthily at his smiling
face, drank the contents in silence.
‘Don’t you--ha, ha!--don’t you drink to the drink any more?’ said Mr
Chester, in his most winning manner.
‘To you, sir,’ was the sullen answer, with something approaching to a
bow. ‘I drink to you.’
‘Thank you. God bless you. By the bye, what is your name, my good soul?
You are called Hugh, I know, of course--your other name?’
‘I have no other name.’
‘A very strange fellow! Do you mean that you never knew one, or that you
don’t choose to tell it? Which?’
‘I’d tell it if I could,’ said Hugh, quickly. ‘I can’t. I have been
always called Hugh; nothing more. I never knew, nor saw, nor thought
about a father; and I was a boy of six--that’s not very old--when they
hung my mother up at Tyburn for a couple of thousand men to stare at.
They might have let her live. She was poor enough.’
‘How very sad!’ exclaimed his patron, with a condescending smile. ‘I
have no doubt she was an exceedingly fine woman.’
‘You see that dog of mine?’ said Hugh, abruptly.
‘Faithful, I dare say?’ rejoined his patron, looking at him through his
glass; ‘and immensely clever? Virtuous and gifted animals, whether man
or beast, always are so very hideous.’
‘Such a dog as that, and one of the same breed, was the only living
thing except me that howled that day,’ said Hugh. ‘Out of the two
thousand odd--there was a larger crowd for its being a woman--the dog
and I alone had any pity. If he’d have been a man, he’d have been
glad to be quit of her, for she had been forced to keep him lean and
half-starved; but being a dog, and not having a man’s sense, he was
sorry.’
‘It was dull of the brute, certainly,’ said Mr Chester, ‘and very like a
brute.’
Hugh made no rejoinder, but whistling to his dog, who sprung up at the
sound and came jumping and sporting about him, bade his sympathising
friend good night.
‘Good night,’ he returned. ‘Remember; you’re safe with me--quite safe. So
long as you deserve it, my good fellow, as I hope you always will, you
have a friend in me, on whose silence you may rely. Now do be careful of
yourself, pray do, and consider what jeopardy you might have stood in.
Good night! bless you!’
Hugh truckled before the hidden meaning of these words as much as such
a being could, and crept out of the door so submissively and
subserviently--with an air, in short, so different from that with which
he had entered--that his patron on being left alone, smiled more than
ever.
‘And yet,’ he said, as he took a pinch of snuff, ‘I do not like their
having hanged his mother. The fellow has a fine eye, and I am sure she
was handsome. But very probably she was coarse--red-nosed perhaps, and
had clumsy feet. Aye, it was all for the best, no doubt.’
With this comforting reflection, he put on his coat, took a farewell
glance at the glass, and summoned his man, who promptly attended,
followed by a chair and its two bearers.
‘Foh!’ said Mr Chester. ‘The very atmosphere that centaur has breathed,
seems tainted with the cart and ladder. Here, Peak. Bring some scent and
sprinkle the floor; and take away the chair he sat upon, and air it; and
dash a little of that mixture upon me. I am stifled!’
The man obeyed; and the room and its master being both purified, nothing
remained for Mr Chester but to demand his hat, to fold it jauntily under
his arm, to take his seat in the chair and be carried off; humming a
fashionable tune.
Chapter 24
How the accomplished gentleman spent the evening in the midst of a
dazzling and brilliant circle; how he enchanted all those with whom he
mingled by the grace of his deportment, the politeness of his manner,
the vivacity of his conversation, and the sweetness of his voice; how
it was observed in every corner, that Chester was a man of that happy
disposition that nothing ruffled him, that he was one on whom the
world’s cares and errors sat lightly as his dress, and in whose smiling
face a calm and tranquil mind was constantly reflected; how honest men,
who by instinct knew him better, bowed down before him nevertheless,
deferred to his every word, and courted his favourable notice; how
people, who really had good in them, went with the stream, and fawned
and flattered, and approved, and despised themselves while they did
so, and yet had not the courage to resist; how, in short, he was one of
those who are received and cherished in society (as the phrase is) by
scores who individually would shrink from and be repelled by the
object of their lavish regard; are things of course, which will suggest
themselves. Matter so commonplace needs but a passing glance, and there
an end.
The despisers of mankind--apart from the mere fools and mimics, of that
creed--are of two sorts. They who believe their merit neglected and
unappreciated, make up one class; they who receive adulation and
flattery, knowing their own worthlessness, compose the other. Be sure
that the coldest-hearted misanthropes are ever of this last order.
Mr Chester sat up in bed next morning, sipping his coffee, and
remembering with a kind of contemptuous satisfaction how he had shone
last night, and how he had been caressed and courted, when his servant
brought in a very small scrap of dirty paper, tightly sealed in two
places, on the inside whereof was inscribed in pretty large text these
words: ‘A friend. Desiring of a conference. Immediate. Private. Burn it
when you’ve read it.’
‘Where in the name of the Gunpowder Plot did you pick up this?’ said his
master.
It was given him by a person then waiting at the door, the man replied.
‘With a cloak and dagger?’ said Mr Chester.
With nothing more threatening about him, it appeared, than a leather
apron and a dirty face. ‘Let him come in.’ In he came--Mr Tappertit;
with his hair still on end, and a great lock in his hand, which he put
down on the floor in the middle of the chamber as if he were about to go
through some performances in which it was a necessary agent.
‘Sir,’ said Mr Tappertit with a low bow, ‘I thank you for this
condescension, and am glad to see you. Pardon the menial office in which
I am engaged, sir, and extend your sympathies to one, who, humble as his
appearance is, has inn’ard workings far above his station.’
Mr Chester held the bed-curtain farther back, and looked at him with a
vague impression that he was some maniac, who had not only broken open
the door of his place of confinement, but had brought away the lock. Mr
Tappertit bowed again, and displayed his legs to the best advantage.
‘You have heard, sir,’ said Mr Tappertit, laying his hand upon his
breast, ‘of G. Varden Locksmith and bell-hanger and repairs neatly
executed in town and country, Clerkenwell, London?’
‘What then?’ asked Mr Chester.
‘I’m his ‘prentice, sir.’
‘What THEN?’
‘Ahem!’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Would you permit me to shut the door, sir,
and will you further, sir, give me your honour bright, that what passes
between us is in the strictest confidence?’
Mr Chester laid himself calmly down in bed again, and turning a
perfectly undisturbed face towards the strange apparition, which had
by this time closed the door, begged him to speak out, and to be as
rational as he could, without putting himself to any very great personal
inconvenience.
‘In the first place, sir,’ said Mr Tappertit, producing a small
pocket-handkerchief and shaking it out of the folds, ‘as I have not
a card about me (for the envy of masters debases us below that level)
allow me to offer the best substitute that circumstances will admit of.
If you will take that in your own hand, sir, and cast your eye on the
right-hand corner,’ said Mr Tappertit, offering it with a graceful air,
‘you will meet with my credentials.’
‘Thank you,’ answered Mr Chester, politely accepting it, and turning to
some blood-red characters at one end. ‘“Four. Simon Tappertit. One.” Is
that the--’
‘Without the numbers, sir, that is my name,’ replied the ‘prentice.
‘They are merely intended as directions to the washerwoman, and have no
connection with myself or family. YOUR name, sir,’ said Mr Tappertit,
looking very hard at his nightcap, ‘is Chester, I suppose? You needn’t
pull it off, sir, thank you. I observe E. C. from here. We will take the
rest for granted.’
‘Pray, Mr Tappertit,’ said Mr Chester, ‘has that complicated piece of
ironmongery which you have done me the favour to bring with you, any
immediate connection with the business we are to discuss?’
‘It has not, sir,’ rejoined the ‘prentice. ‘It’s going to be fitted on a
ware’us-door in Thames Street.’
‘Perhaps, as that is the case,’ said Mr Chester, ‘and as it has a
stronger flavour of oil than I usually refresh my bedroom with, you will
oblige me so far as to put it outside the door?’
‘By all means, sir,’ said Mr Tappertit, suiting the action to the word.
‘You’ll excuse my mentioning it, I hope?’
‘Don’t apologise, sir, I beg. And now, if you please, to business.’
During the whole of this dialogue, Mr Chester had suffered nothing but
his smile of unvarying serenity and politeness to appear upon his face.
Sim Tappertit, who had far too good an opinion of himself to suspect
that anybody could be playing upon him, thought within himself that
this was something like the respect to which he was entitled, and drew
a comparison from this courteous demeanour of a stranger, by no means
favourable to the worthy locksmith.
‘From what passes in our house,’ said Mr Tappertit, ‘I am aware, sir,
that your son keeps company with a young lady against your inclinations.
Sir, your son has not used me well.’
‘Mr Tappertit,’ said the other, ‘you grieve me beyond description.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ replied the ‘prentice. ‘I’m glad to hear you say so.
He’s very proud, sir, is your son; very haughty.’
‘I am afraid he IS haughty,’ said Mr Chester. ‘Do you know I was really
afraid of that before; and you confirm me?’
‘To recount the menial offices I’ve had to do for your son, sir,’ said
Mr Tappertit; ‘the chairs I’ve had to hand him, the coaches I’ve had to
call for him, the numerous degrading duties, wholly unconnected with
my indenters, that I’ve had to do for him, would fill a family Bible.
Besides which, sir, he is but a young man himself and I do not consider
“thank’ee Sim,” a proper form of address on those occasions.’
‘Mr Tappertit, your wisdom is beyond your years. Pray go on.’
‘I thank you for your good opinion, sir,’ said Sim, much gratified,
‘and will endeavour so to do. Now sir, on this account (and perhaps for
another reason or two which I needn’t go into) I am on your side. And
what I tell you is this--that as long as our people go backwards and
forwards, to and fro, up and down, to that there jolly old Maypole,
lettering, and messaging, and fetching and carrying, you couldn’t help
your son keeping company with that young lady by deputy,--not if he was
minded night and day by all the Horse Guards, and every man of ‘em in
the very fullest uniform.’
Mr Tappertit stopped to take breath after this, and then started fresh
again.
‘Now, sir, I am a coming to the point. You will inquire of me, “how is
this to be prevented?” I’ll tell you how. If an honest, civil, smiling
gentleman like you--’
‘Mr Tappertit--really--’
‘No, no, I’m serious,’ rejoined the ‘prentice, ‘I am, upon my soul.
If an honest, civil, smiling gentleman like you, was to talk but ten
minutes to our old woman--that’s Mrs Varden--and flatter her up a bit,
you’d gain her over for ever. Then there’s this point got--that her
daughter Dolly,’--here a flush came over Mr Tappertit’s face--‘wouldn’t
be allowed to be a go-between from that time forward; and till that
point’s got, there’s nothing ever will prevent her. Mind that.’
‘Mr Tappertit, your knowledge of human nature--’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Sim, folding his arms with a dreadful calmness.
‘Now I come to THE point. Sir, there is a villain at that Maypole, a
monster in human shape, a vagabond of the deepest dye, that unless you
get rid of and have kidnapped and carried off at the very least--nothing
less will do--will marry your son to that young woman, as certainly and
as surely as if he was the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. He will,
sir, for the hatred and malice that he bears to you; let alone the
pleasure of doing a bad action, which to him is its own reward. If you
knew how this chap, this Joseph Willet--that’s his name--comes backwards
and forwards to our house, libelling, and denouncing, and threatening
you, and how I shudder when I hear him, you’d hate him worse than I
do,--worse than I do, sir,’ said Mr Tappertit wildly, putting his hair
up straighter, and making a crunching noise with his teeth; ‘if sich a
thing is possible.’
‘A little private vengeance in this, Mr Tappertit?’
‘Private vengeance, sir, or public sentiment, or both combined--destroy
him,’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Miggs says so too. Miggs and me both say so.
We can’t bear the plotting and undermining that takes place. Our souls
recoil from it. Barnaby Rudge and Mrs Rudge are in it likewise; but the
villain, Joseph Willet, is the ringleader. Their plottings and schemes
are known to me and Miggs. If you want information of ‘em, apply to us.
Put Joseph Willet down, sir. Destroy him. Crush him. And be happy.’
With these words, Mr Tappertit, who seemed to expect no reply, and to
hold it as a necessary consequence of his eloquence that his hearer
should be utterly stunned, dumbfoundered, and overwhelmed, folded his
arms so that the palm of each hand rested on the opposite shoulder, and
disappeared after the manner of those mysterious warners of whom he had
read in cheap story-books.
‘That fellow,’ said Mr Chester, relaxing his face when he was fairly
gone, ‘is good practice. I HAVE some command of my features, beyond all
doubt. He fully confirms what I suspected, though; and blunt tools are
sometimes found of use, where sharper instruments would fail. I fear
I may be obliged to make great havoc among these worthy people. A
troublesome necessity! I quite feel for them.’
With that he fell into a quiet slumber:--subsided into such a gentle,
pleasant sleep, that it was quite infantine.
Chapter 25
Leaving the favoured, and well-received, and flattered of the world;
him of the world most worldly, who never compromised himself by an
ungentlemanly action, and never was guilty of a manly one; to lie
smilingly asleep--for even sleep, working but little change in his
dissembling face, became with him a piece of cold, conventional
hypocrisy--we follow in the steps of two slow travellers on foot, making
towards Chigwell.
Barnaby and his mother. Grip in their company, of course.
The widow, to whom each painful mile seemed longer than the last, toiled
wearily along; while Barnaby, yielding to every inconstant impulse,
fluttered here and there, now leaving her far behind, now lingering far
behind himself, now darting into some by-lane or path and leaving her
to pursue her way alone, until he stealthily emerged again and came upon
her with a wild shout of merriment, as his wayward and capricious nature
prompted. Now he would call to her from the topmost branch of some high
tree by the roadside; now using his tall staff as a leaping-pole, come
flying over ditch or hedge or five-barred gate; now run with surprising
swiftness for a mile or more on the straight road, and halting, sport
upon a patch of grass with Grip till she came up. These were his
delights; and when his patient mother heard his merry voice, or looked
into his flushed and healthy face, she would not have abated them by one
sad word or murmur, though each had been to her a source of suffering in
the same degree as it was to him of pleasure.
It is something to look upon enjoyment, so that it be free and wild and
in the face of nature, though it is but the enjoyment of an idiot. It is
something to know that Heaven has left the capacity of gladness in such
a creature’s breast; it is something to be assured that, however lightly
men may crush that faculty in their fellows, the Great Creator of
mankind imparts it even to his despised and slighted work. Who would not
rather see a poor idiot happy in the sunlight, than a wise man pining in
a darkened jail!
Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite
Benevolence with an eternal frown; read in the Everlasting Book, wide
open to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pictures are not in
black and sombre hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music--save
when ye drown it--is not in sighs and groans, but songs and cheerful
sounds. Listen to the million voices in the summer air, and find one
dismal as your own. Remember, if ye can, the sense of hope and pleasure
which every glad return of day awakens in the breast of all your kind
who have not changed their nature; and learn some wisdom even from the
witless, when their hearts are lifted up they know not why, by all the
mirth and happiness it brings.
The widow’s breast was full of care, was laden heavily with secret dread
and sorrow; but her boy’s gaiety of heart gladdened her, and beguiled
the long journey. Sometimes he would bid her lean upon his arm, and
would keep beside her steadily for a short distance; but it was more his
nature to be rambling to and fro, and she better liked to see him free
and happy, even than to have him near her, because she loved him better
than herself.
She had quitted the place to which they were travelling, directly after
the event which had changed her whole existence; and for two-and-twenty
years had never had courage to revisit it. It was her native village.
How many recollections crowded on her mind when it appeared in sight!
Two-and-twenty years. Her boy’s whole life and history. The last time
she looked back upon those roofs among the trees, she carried him in her
arms, an infant. How often since that time had she sat beside him night
and day, watching for the dawn of mind that never came; how had she
feared, and doubted, and yet hoped, long after conviction forced itself
upon her! The little stratagems she had devised to try him, the little
tokens he had given in his childish way--not of dulness but of something
infinitely worse, so ghastly and unchildlike in its cunning--came back
as vividly as if but yesterday had intervened. The room in which they
used to be; the spot in which his cradle stood; he, old and elfin-like
in face, but ever dear to her, gazing at her with a wild and vacant
eye, and crooning some uncouth song as she sat by and rocked him; every
circumstance of his infancy came thronging back, and the most trivial,
perhaps, the most distinctly.
His older childhood, too; the strange imaginings he had; his terror of
certain senseless things--familiar objects he endowed with life; the
slow and gradual breaking out of that one horror, in which, before his
birth, his darkened intellect began; how, in the midst of all, she had
found some hope and comfort in his being unlike another child, and had
gone on almost believing in the slow development of his mind until he
grew a man, and then his childhood was complete and lasting; one after
another, all these old thoughts sprung up within her, strong after their
long slumber and bitterer than ever.
She took his arm and they hurried through the village street. It was
the same as it was wont to be in old times, yet different too, and wore
another air. The change was in herself, not it; but she never thought of
that, and wondered at its alteration, and where it lay, and what it was.
The people all knew Barnaby, and the children of the place came flocking
round him--as she remembered to have done with their fathers and mothers
round some silly beggarman, when a child herself. None of them knew her;
they passed each well-remembered house, and yard, and homestead; and
striking into the fields, were soon alone again.
The Warren was the end of their journey. Mr Haredale was walking in the
garden, and seeing them as they passed the iron gate, unlocked it, and
bade them enter that way.
‘At length you have mustered heart to visit the old place,’ he said to
the widow. ‘I am glad you have.’
‘For the first time, and the last, sir,’ she replied.
‘The first for many years, but not the last?’
‘The very last.’
‘You mean,’ said Mr Haredale, regarding her with some surprise, ‘that
having made this effort, you are resolved not to persevere and are
determined to relapse? This is unworthy of you. I have often told you,
you should return here. You would be happier here than elsewhere, I
know. As to Barnaby, it’s quite his home.’
‘And Grip’s,’ said Barnaby, holding the basket open. The raven hopped
gravely out, and perching on his shoulder and addressing himself to Mr
Haredale, cried--as a hint, perhaps, that some temperate refreshment
would be acceptable--‘Polly put the ket-tle on, we’ll all have tea!’
‘Hear me, Mary,’ said Mr Haredale kindly, as he motioned her to walk
with him towards the house. ‘Your life has been an example of patience
and fortitude, except in this one particular which has often given me
great pain. It is enough to know that you were cruelly involved in the
calamity which deprived me of an only brother, and Emma of her father,
without being obliged to suppose (as I sometimes am) that you associate
us with the author of our joint misfortunes.’
‘Associate you with him, sir!’ she cried.
‘Indeed,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘I think you do. I almost believe that
because your husband was bound by so many ties to our relation, and died
in his service and defence, you have come in some sort to connect us
with his murder.’
‘Alas!’ she answered. ‘You little know my heart, sir. You little know
the truth!’
‘It is natural you should do so; it is very probable you may, without
being conscious of it,’ said Mr Haredale, speaking more to himself than
her. ‘We are a fallen house. Money, dispensed with the most lavish
hand, would be a poor recompense for sufferings like yours; and thinly
scattered by hands so pinched and tied as ours, it becomes a miserable
mockery. I feel it so, God knows,’ he added, hastily. ‘Why should I
wonder if she does!’
‘You do me wrong, dear sir, indeed,’ she rejoined with great
earnestness; ‘and yet when you come to hear what I desire your leave to
say--’
‘I shall find my doubts confirmed?’ he said, observing that she faltered
and became confused. ‘Well!’
He quickened his pace for a few steps, but fell back again to her side,
and said:
‘And have you come all this way at last, solely to speak to me?’
She answered, ‘Yes.’
‘A curse,’ he muttered, ‘upon the wretched state of us proud beggars,
from whom the poor and rich are equally at a distance; the one being
forced to treat us with a show of cold respect; the other condescending
to us in their every deed and word, and keeping more aloof, the nearer
they approach us.--Why, if it were pain to you (as it must have been)
to break for this slight purpose the chain of habit forged through
two-and-twenty years, could you not let me know your wish, and beg me to
come to you?’
‘There was not time, sir,’ she rejoined. ‘I took my resolution but
last night, and taking it, felt that I must not lose a day--a day! an
hour--in having speech with you.’
They had by this time reached the house. Mr Haredale paused for a
moment, and looked at her as if surprised by the energy of her manner.
Observing, however, that she took no heed of him, but glanced up,
shuddering, at the old walls with which such horrors were connected in
her mind, he led her by a private stair into his library, where Emma was
seated in a window, reading.
The young lady, seeing who approached, hastily rose and laid aside her
book, and with many kind words, and not without tears, gave her a warm
and earnest welcome. But the widow shrunk from her embrace as though she
feared her, and sunk down trembling on a chair.
‘It is the return to this place after so long an absence,’ said Emma
gently. ‘Pray ring, dear uncle--or stay--Barnaby will run himself and
ask for wine--’
‘Not for the world,’ she cried. ‘It would have another taste--I could
not touch it. I want but a minute’s rest. Nothing but that.’
Miss Haredale stood beside her chair, regarding her with silent pity.
She remained for a little time quite still; then rose and turned to Mr
Haredale, who had sat down in his easy chair, and was contemplating her
with fixed attention.
The tale connected with the mansion borne in mind, it seemed, as has
been already said, the chosen theatre for such a deed as it had known.
The room in which this group were now assembled--hard by the very
chamber where the act was done--dull, dark, and sombre; heavy with
worm-eaten books; deadened and shut in by faded hangings, muffling every
sound; shadowed mournfully by trees whose rustling boughs gave ever and
anon a spectral knocking at the glass; wore, beyond all others in
the house, a ghostly, gloomy air. Nor were the group assembled there,
unfitting tenants of the spot. The widow, with her marked and startling
face and downcast eyes; Mr Haredale stern and despondent ever; his niece
beside him, like, yet most unlike, the picture of her father, which
gazed reproachfully down upon them from the blackened wall; Barnaby,
with his vacant look and restless eye; were all in keeping with the
place, and actors in the legend. Nay, the very raven, who had hopped
upon the table and with the air of some old necromancer appeared to be
profoundly studying a great folio volume that lay open on a desk, was
strictly in unison with the rest, and looked like the embodied spirit of
evil biding his time of mischief.
‘I scarcely know,’ said the widow, breaking silence, ‘how to begin. You
will think my mind disordered.’
‘The whole tenor of your quiet and reproachless life since you were last
here,’ returned Mr Haredale, mildly, ‘shall bear witness for you. Why do
you fear to awaken such a suspicion? You do not speak to strangers. You
have not to claim our interest or consideration for the first time. Be
more yourself. Take heart. Any advice or assistance that I can give you,
you know is yours of right, and freely yours.’
‘What if I came, sir,’ she rejoined, ‘I who have but one other friend on
earth, to reject your aid from this moment, and to say that henceforth
I launch myself upon the world, alone and unassisted, to sink or swim as
Heaven may decree!’
‘You would have, if you came to me for such a purpose,’ said Mr Haredale
calmly, ‘some reason to assign for conduct so extraordinary, which--if
one may entertain the possibility of anything so wild and strange--would
have its weight, of course.’
‘That, sir,’ she answered, ‘is the misery of my distress. I can give
no reason whatever. My own bare word is all that I can offer. It is
my duty, my imperative and bounden duty. If I did not discharge it,
I should be a base and guilty wretch. Having said that, my lips are
sealed, and I can say no more.’
As though she felt relieved at having said so much, and had nerved
herself to the remainder of her task, she spoke from this time with a
firmer voice and heightened courage.
‘Heaven is my witness, as my own heart is--and yours, dear young lady,
will speak for me, I know--that I have lived, since that time we all
have bitter reason to remember, in unchanging devotion, and gratitude to
this family. Heaven is my witness that go where I may, I shall preserve
those feelings unimpaired. And it is my witness, too, that they alone
impel me to the course I must take, and from which nothing now shall
turn me, as I hope for mercy.’
‘These are strange riddles,’ said Mr Haredale.
‘In this world, sir,’ she replied, ‘they may, perhaps, never be
explained. In another, the Truth will be discovered in its own good
time. And may that time,’ she added in a low voice, ‘be far distant!’
‘Let me be sure,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘that I understand you, for I am
doubtful of my own senses. Do you mean that you are resolved voluntarily
to deprive yourself of those means of support you have received from us
so long--that you are determined to resign the annuity we settled on you
twenty years ago--to leave house, and home, and goods, and begin life
anew--and this, for some secret reason or monstrous fancy which is
incapable of explanation, which only now exists, and has been dormant
all this time? In the name of God, under what delusion are you
labouring?’
‘As I am deeply thankful,’ she made answer, ‘for the kindness of those,
alive and dead, who have owned this house; and as I would not have its
roof fall down and crush me, or its very walls drip blood, my name being
spoken in their hearing; I never will again subsist upon their bounty,
or let it help me to subsistence. You do not know,’ she added, suddenly,
‘to what uses it may be applied; into what hands it may pass. I do, and
I renounce it.’
‘Surely,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘its uses rest with you.’
‘They did. They rest with me no longer. It may be--it IS--devoted to
purposes that mock the dead in their graves. It never can prosper with
me. It will bring some other heavy judgement on the head of my dear son,
whose innocence will suffer for his mother’s guilt.’
‘What words are these!’ cried Mr Haredale, regarding her with wonder.
‘Among what associates have you fallen? Into what guilt have you ever
been betrayed?’
‘I am guilty, and yet innocent; wrong, yet right; good in intention,
though constrained to shield and aid the bad. Ask me no more questions,
sir; but believe that I am rather to be pitied than condemned. I must
leave my house to-morrow, for while I stay there, it is haunted. My
future dwelling, if I am to live in peace, must be a secret. If my poor
boy should ever stray this way, do not tempt him to disclose it or have
him watched when he returns; for if we are hunted, we must fly again.
And now this load is off my mind, I beseech you--and you, dear Miss
Haredale, too--to trust me if you can, and think of me kindly as you
have been used to do. If I die and cannot tell my secret even then (for
that may come to pass), it will sit the lighter on my breast in that
hour for this day’s work; and on that day, and every day until it comes,
I will pray for and thank you both, and trouble you no more.’
With that, she would have left them, but they detained her, and with
many soothing words and kind entreaties, besought her to consider what
she did, and above all to repose more freely upon them, and say what
weighed so sorely on her mind. Finding her deaf to their persuasions, Mr
Haredale suggested, as a last resource, that she should confide in Emma,
of whom, as a young person and one of her own sex, she might stand in
less dread than of himself. From this proposal, however, she recoiled
with the same indescribable repugnance she had manifested when they met.
The utmost that could be wrung from her was, a promise that she would
receive Mr Haredale at her own house next evening, and in the mean time
reconsider her determination and their dissuasions--though any change on
her part, as she told them, was quite hopeless. This condition made at
last, they reluctantly suffered her to depart, since she would neither
eat nor drink within the house; and she, and Barnaby, and Grip,
accordingly went out as they had come, by the private stair and
garden-gate; seeing and being seen of no one by the way.
It was remarkable in the raven that during the whole interview he
had kept his eye on his book with exactly the air of a very sly human
rascal, who, under the mask of pretending to read hard, was listening to
everything. He still appeared to have the conversation very strongly in
his mind, for although, when they were alone again, he issued orders for
the instant preparation of innumerable kettles for purposes of tea, he
was thoughtful, and rather seemed to do so from an abstract sense of
duty, than with any regard to making himself agreeable, or being what is
commonly called good company.
They were to return by the coach. As there was an interval of full two
hours before it started, and they needed rest and some refreshment,
Barnaby begged hard for a visit to the Maypole. But his mother, who had
no wish to be recognised by any of those who had known her long ago, and
who feared besides that Mr Haredale might, on second thoughts, despatch
some messenger to that place of entertainment in quest of her, proposed
to 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 no need to do so, to recognise the speaker,
and Mr Chester waved his hand, and smiled a courteous welcome.
‘The door will be opened immediately,’ he said. ‘There is nobody but
a very dilapidated female to perform such offices. You will excuse her
infirmities? If she were in a more elevated station of society, she
would be gouty. Being but a hewer of wood and drawer of water, she
is rheumatic. My dear Haredale, these are natural class distinctions,
depend upon it.’
Mr Haredale, whose face resumed its lowering and distrustful look the
moment he heard the voice, inclined his head stiffly, and turned his
back upon the speaker.
‘Not opened yet,’ said Mr Chester. ‘Dear me! I hope the aged soul has
not caught her foot in some unlucky cobweb by the way. She is there at
last! Come in, I beg!’
Mr Haredale entered, followed by the locksmith. Turning with a look of
great astonishment to the old woman who had opened the door, he inquired
for Mrs Rudge--for Barnaby. They were both gone, she replied, wagging
her ancient head, for good. There was a gentleman in the parlour, who
perhaps could tell them more. That was all SHE knew.
‘Pray, sir,’ said Mr Haredale, presenting himself before this new
tenant, ‘where is the person whom I came here to see?’
‘My dear friend,’ he returned, ‘I have not the least idea.’
‘Your trifling is ill-timed,’ retorted the other in a suppressed tone
and voice, ‘and its subject ill-chosen. Reserve it for those who
are your friends, and do not expend it on me. I lay no claim to the
distinction, and have the self-denial to reject it.’
‘My dear, good sir,’ said Mr Chester, ‘you are heated with walking. Sit
down, I beg. Our friend is--’
‘Is but a plain honest man,’ returned Mr Haredale, ‘and quite unworthy
of your notice.’
‘Gabriel Varden by name, sir,’ said the locksmith bluntly.
‘A worthy English yeoman!’ said Mr Chester. ‘A most worthy yeoman, of
whom I have frequently heard my son Ned--darling fellow--speak, and have
often wished to see. Varden, my good friend, I am glad to know you. You
wonder now,’ he said, turning languidly to Mr Haredale, ‘to see me here.
Now, I am sure you do.’
Mr Haredale glanced at him--not fondly or admiringly--smiled, and held
his peace.
‘The mystery is solved in a moment,’ said Mr Chester; ‘in a moment. Will
you step aside with me one instant. You remember our little compact in
reference to Ned, and your dear niece, Haredale? You remember the list
of assistants in their innocent intrigue? You remember these two people
being among them? My dear fellow, congratulate yourself, and me. I have
bought them off.’
‘You have done what?’ said Mr Haredale.
‘Bought them off,’ returned his smiling friend. ‘I have found it
necessary to take some active steps towards setting this boy and girl
attachment quite at rest, and have begun by removing these two agents.
You are surprised? Who CAN withstand the influence of a little money!
They wanted it, and have been bought off. We have nothing more to fear
from them. They are gone.’
‘Gone!’ echoed Mr Haredale. ‘Where?’
‘My dear fellow--and you must permit me to say again, that you never
looked so young; so positively boyish as you do to-night--the Lord knows
where; I believe Columbus himself wouldn’t find them. Between you and
me they have their hidden reasons, but upon that point I have pledged
myself to secrecy. She appointed to see you here to-night, I know, but
found it inconvenient, and couldn’t wait. Here is the key of the door.
I am afraid you’ll find it inconveniently large; but as the tenement is
yours, your good-nature will excuse that, Haredale, I am certain!’
Chapter 27
Mr Haredale stood in the widow’s parlour with the door-key in his hand,
gazing by turns at Mr Chester and at Gabriel Varden, and occasionally
glancing downward at the key as in the hope that of its own accord
it would unlock the mystery; until Mr Chester, putting on his hat and
gloves, and sweetly inquiring whether they were walking in the same
direction, recalled him to himself.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Our roads diverge--widely, as you know. For the present,
I shall remain here.’
‘You will be hipped, Haredale; you will be miserable, melancholy,
utterly wretched,’ returned the other. ‘It’s a place of the very last
description for a man of your temper. I know it will make you very
miserable.’
‘Let it,’ said Mr Haredale, sitting down; ‘and thrive upon the thought.
Good night!’
Feigning to be wholly unconscious of the abrupt wave of the hand which
rendered this farewell tantamount to a dismissal, Mr Chester retorted
with a bland and heartfelt benediction, and inquired of Gabriel in what
direction HE was going.
‘Yours, sir, would be too much honour for the like of me,’ replied the
locksmith, hesitating.
‘I wish you to remain here a little while, Varden,’ said Mr Haredale,
without looking towards them. ‘I have a word or two to say to you.’
‘I will not intrude upon your conference another moment,’ said Mr
Chester with inconceivable politeness. ‘May it be satisfactory to you
both! God bless you!’ So saying, and bestowing upon the locksmith a most
refulgent smile, he left them.
‘A deplorably constituted creature, that rugged person,’ he said, as
he walked along the street; ‘he is an atrocity that carries its own
punishment along with it--a bear that gnaws himself. And here is one
of the inestimable advantages of having a perfect command over one’s
inclinations. I have been tempted in these two short interviews, to draw
upon that fellow, fifty times. Five men in six would have yielded to the
impulse. By suppressing mine, I wound him deeper and more keenly than if
I were the best swordsman in all Europe, and he the worst. You are the
wise man’s very last resource,’ he said, tapping the hilt of his weapon;
‘we can but appeal to you when all else is said and done. To come to you
before, and thereby spare our adversaries so much, is a barbarian mode
of warfare, quite unworthy of any man with the remotest pretensions to
delicacy of feeling, or refinement.’
He smiled so very pleasantly as he communed with himself after this
manner, that a beggar was emboldened to follow for alms, and to dog
his footsteps for some distance. He was gratified by the circumstance,
feeling it complimentary to his power of feature, and as a reward
suffered the man to follow him until he called a chair, when he
graciously dismissed him with a fervent blessing.
‘Which is as easy as cursing,’ he wisely added, as he took his seat,
‘and more becoming to the face.--To Clerkenwell, my good creatures, if
you please!’ The chairmen were rendered quite vivacious by having such a
courteous burden, and to Clerkenwell they went at a fair round trot.
Alighting at a certain point he had indicated to them upon the road, and
paying them something less than they expected from a fare of such gentle
speech, he turned into the street in which the locksmith dwelt, and
presently stood beneath the shadow of the Golden Key. Mr Tappertit, who
was hard at work by lamplight, in a corner of the workshop, remained
unconscious of his presence until a hand upon his shoulder made him
start and turn his head.
‘Industry,’ said Mr Chester, ‘is the soul of business, and the keystone
of prosperity. Mr Tappertit, I shall expect you to invite me to dinner
when you are Lord Mayor of London.’
‘Sir,’ returned the ‘prentice, laying down his hammer, and rubbing
his nose on the back of a very sooty hand, ‘I scorn the Lord Mayor and
everything that belongs to him. We must have another state of society,
sir, before you catch me being Lord Mayor. How de do, sir?’
‘The better, Mr Tappertit, for looking into your ingenuous face once
more. I hope you are well.’
‘I am as well, sir,’ said Sim, standing up to get nearer to his ear, and
whispering hoarsely, ‘as any man can be under the aggrawations to which
I am exposed. My life’s a burden to me. If it wasn’t for wengeance, I’d
play at pitch and toss with it on the losing hazard.’
‘Is Mrs Varden at home?’ said Mr Chester.
‘Sir,’ returned Sim, eyeing him over with a look of concentrated
expression,--‘she is. Did you wish to see her?’
Mr Chester nodded.
‘Then come this way, sir,’ said Sim, wiping his face upon his apron.
‘Follow me, sir.--Would you permit me to whisper in your ear, one half a
second?’
‘By all means.’
Mr Tappertit raised himself on tiptoe, applied his lips to Mr Chester’s
ear, drew back his head without saying anything, looked hard at
him, applied them to his ear again, again drew back, and finally
whispered--‘The name is Joseph Willet. Hush! I say no more.’
Having said that much, he beckoned the visitor with a mysterious aspect
to follow him to the parlour-door, where he announced him in the voice
of a gentleman-usher. ‘Mr Chester.’
‘And not Mr Ed’dard, mind,’ said Sim, looking into the door again, and
adding this by way of postscript in his own person; ‘it’s his father.’
‘But do not let his father,’ said Mr Chester, advancing hat in hand, as
he observed the effect of this last explanatory announcement, ‘do not
let his father be any check or restraint on your domestic occupations,
Miss Varden.’
‘Oh! Now! There! An’t I always a-saying it!’ exclaimed Miggs, clapping
her hands. ‘If he an’t been and took Missis for her own daughter. Well,
she DO look like it, that she do. Only think of that, mim!’
‘Is it possible,’ said Mr Chester in his softest tones, ‘that this is
Mrs Varden! I am amazed. That is not your daughter, Mrs Varden? No, no.
Your sister.’
‘My daughter, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs V., blushing with great
juvenility.
‘Ah, Mrs Varden!’ cried the visitor. ‘Ah, ma’am--humanity is indeed a
happy lot, when we can repeat ourselves in others, and still be young
as they. You must allow me to salute you--the custom of the country, my
dear madam--your daughter too.’
Dolly showed some reluctance to perform this ceremony, but was sharply
reproved by Mrs Varden, who insisted on her undergoing it that minute.
For pride, she said with great severity, was one of the seven deadly
sins, and humility and lowliness of heart were virtues. Wherefore she
desired that Dolly would be kissed immediately, on pain of her just
displeasure; at the same time giving her to understand that whatever
she saw her mother do, she might safely do herself, without being at the
trouble of any reasoning or reflection on the subject--which, indeed,
was offensive and undutiful, and in direct contravention of the church
catechism.
Thus admonished, Dolly complied, though by no means willingly; for there
was a broad, bold look of admiration in Mr Chester’s face, refined and
polished though it sought to be, which distressed her very much. As she
stood with downcast eyes, not liking to look up and meet his, he gazed
upon her with an approving air, and then turned to her mother.
‘My friend Gabriel (whose acquaintance I only made this very evening)
should be a happy man, Mrs Varden.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Mrs V., shaking her head.
‘Ah!’ echoed Miggs.
‘Is that the case?’ said Mr Chester, compassionately. ‘Dear me!’
‘Master has no intentions, sir,’ murmured Miggs as she sidled up to him,
‘but to be as grateful as his natur will let him, for everythink he owns
which it is in his powers to appreciate. But we never, sir’--said Miggs,
looking sideways at Mrs Varden, and interlarding her discourse with a
sigh--‘we never know the full value of SOME wines and fig-trees till we
lose ‘em. So much the worse, sir, for them as has the slighting of ‘em
on their consciences when they’re gone to be in full blow elsewhere.’
And Miss Miggs cast up her eyes to signify where that might be.
As Mrs Varden distinctly heard, and was intended to hear, all that Miggs
said, and as these words appeared to convey in metaphorical terms a
presage or foreboding that she would at some early period droop beneath
her trials and take an easy flight towards the stars, she immediately
began to languish, and taking a volume of the Manual from a neighbouring
table, leant her arm upon it as though she were Hope and that her
Anchor. Mr Chester perceiving this, and seeing how the volume was
lettered on the back, took it gently from her hand, and turned the
fluttering leaves.
‘My favourite book, dear madam. How often, how very often in his early
life--before he can remember’--(this clause was strictly true) ‘have I
deduced little easy moral lessons from its pages, for my dear son Ned!
You know Ned?’
Mrs Varden had that honour, and a fine affable young gentleman he was.
‘You’re a mother, Mrs Varden,’ said Mr Chester, taking a pinch of snuff,
‘and you know what I, as a father, feel, when he is praised. He gives me
some uneasiness--much uneasiness--he’s of a roving nature, ma’am--from
flower to flower--from sweet to sweet--but his is the butterfly time of
life, and we must not be hard upon such trifling.’
He glanced at Dolly. She was attending evidently to what he said. Just
what he desired!
‘The only thing I object to in this little trait of Ned’s, is,’ said Mr
Chester, ‘--and the mention of his name reminds me, by the way, that I
am about to beg the favour of a minute’s talk with you alone--the only
thing I object to in it, is, that it DOES partake of insincerity. Now,
however I may attempt to disguise the fact from myself in my affection
for Ned, still I always revert to this--that if we are not sincere, we
are nothing. Nothing upon earth. Let us be sincere, my dear madam--’
‘--and Protestant,’ murmured Mrs Varden.
‘--and Protestant above all things. Let us be sincere and Protestant,
strictly moral, strictly just (though always with a leaning towards
mercy), strictly honest, and strictly true, and we gain--it is a slight
point, certainly, but still it is something tangible; we throw up a
groundwork and foundation, so to speak, of goodness, on which we may
afterwards erect some worthy superstructure.’
Now, to be sure, Mrs Varden thought, here is a perfect character. Here
is a meek, righteous, thoroughgoing Christian, who, having mastered all
these qualities, so difficult of attainment; who, having dropped a pinch
of salt on the tails of all the cardinal virtues, and caught them every
one; makes light of their possession, and pants for more morality. For
the good woman never doubted (as many good men and women never do), that
this slighting kind of profession, this setting so little store by great
matters, this seeming to say, ‘I am not proud, I am what you hear, but I
consider myself no better than other people; let us change the subject,
pray’--was perfectly genuine and true. He so contrived it, and said
it in that way that it appeared to have been forced from him, and its
effect was marvellous.
Aware of the impression he had made--few men were quicker than he at
such discoveries--Mr Chester followed up the blow by propounding certain
virtuous maxims, somewhat vague and general in their nature, doubtless,
and occasionally partaking of the character of truisms, worn a little
out at elbow, but delivered in so charming a voice and with such
uncommon serenity and peace of mind, that they answered as well as the
best. Nor is this to be wondered at; for as hollow vessels produce a far
more musical sound in falling than those which are substantial, so it
will oftentimes be found that sentiments which have nothing in them make
the loudest ringing in the world, and are the most relished.
Mr Chester, with the volume gently extended in one hand, and with
the other planted lightly on his breast, talked to them in the most
delicious manner possible; and quite enchanted all his hearers,
notwithstanding their conflicting interests and thoughts. Even Dolly,
who, between his keen regards and her eyeing over by Mr Tappertit, was
put quite out of countenance, could not help owning within herself that
he was the sweetest-spoken gentleman she had ever seen. Even Miss Miggs,
who was divided between admiration of Mr Chester and a mortal jealousy
of her young mistress, had sufficient leisure to be propitiated. Even
Mr Tappertit, though occupied as we have seen in gazing at his heart’s
delight, could not wholly divert his thoughts from the voice of the
other charmer. Mrs Varden, to her own private thinking, had never been
so improved in all her life; and when Mr Chester, rising and craving
permission to speak with her apart, took her by the hand and led her at
arm’s length upstairs to the best sitting-room, she almost deemed him
something more than human.
‘Dear madam,’ he said, pressing her hand delicately to his lips; ‘be
seated.’
Mrs Varden called up quite a courtly air, and became seated.
‘You guess my object?’ said Mr Chester, drawing a chair towards her.
‘You divine my purpose? I am an affectionate parent, my dear Mrs
Varden.’
‘That I am sure you are, sir,’ said Mrs V.
‘Thank you,’ returned Mr Chester, tapping his snuff-box lid. ‘Heavy
moral responsibilities rest with parents, Mrs Varden.’
Mrs Varden slightly raised her hands, shook her head, and looked at the
ground as though she saw straight through the globe, out at the other
end, and into the immensity of space beyond.
‘I may confide in you,’ said Mr Chester, ‘without reserve. I love
my son, ma’am, dearly; and loving him as I do, I would save him from
working certain misery. You know of his attachment to Miss Haredale.
You have abetted him in it, and very kind of you it was to do so. I am
deeply obliged to you--most deeply obliged to you--for your interest in
his behalf; but my dear ma’am, it is a mistaken one, I do assure you.’
Mrs Varden stammered that she was sorry--
‘Sorry, my dear ma’am,’ he interposed. ‘Never be sorry for what is so
very amiable, so very good in intention, so perfectly like yourself. But
there are grave and weighty reasons, pressing family considerations, and
apart even from these, points of religious difference, which interpose
themselves, and render their union impossible; utterly im-possible.
I should have mentioned these circumstances to your husband; but he
has--you will excuse my saying this so freely--he has NOT your quickness
of apprehension or depth of moral sense. What an extremely airy house
this is, and how beautifully kept! For one like myself--a widower so
long--these tokens of female care and superintendence have inexpressible
charms.’
Mrs Varden began to think (she scarcely knew why) that the young Mr
Chester must be in the wrong and the old Mr Chester must be in the
right.
‘My son Ned,’ resumed her tempter with his most winning air, ‘has had, I
am told, your lovely daughter’s aid, and your open-hearted husband’s.’
‘--Much more than mine, sir,’ said Mrs Varden; ‘a great deal more. I
have often had my doubts. It’s a--’
‘A bad example,’ suggested Mr Chester. ‘It is. No doubt it is. Your
daughter is at that age when to set before her an encouragement for
young persons to rebel against their parents on this most important
point, is particularly injudicious. You are quite right. I ought to have
thought of that myself, but it escaped me, I confess--so far superior
are your sex to ours, dear madam, in point of penetration and sagacity.’
Mrs Varden looked as wise as if she had really said something to deserve
this compliment--firmly believed she had, in short--and her faith in her
own shrewdness increased considerably.
‘My dear ma’am,’ said Mr Chester, ‘you embolden me to be plain with
you. My son and I are at variance on this point. The young lady and her
natural guardian differ upon it, also. And the closing point is, that my
son is bound by his duty to me, by his honour, by every solemn tie and
obligation, to marry some one else.’
‘Engaged to marry another lady!’ quoth Mrs Varden, holding up her hands.
‘My dear madam, brought up, educated, and trained, expressly for that
purpose. Expressly for that purpose.--Miss Haredale, I am told, is a
very charming creature.’
‘I am her foster-mother, and should know--the best young lady in the
world,’ said Mrs Varden.
‘I have not the smallest doubt of it. I am sure she is. And you, who
have stood in that tender relation towards her, are bound to consult her
happiness. Now, can I--as I have said to Haredale, who quite agrees--can
I possibly stand by, and suffer her to throw herself away (although she
IS of a Catholic family), upon a young fellow who, as yet, has no heart
at all? It is no imputation upon him to say he has not, because young
men who have plunged deeply into the frivolities and conventionalities
of society, very seldom have. Their hearts never grow, my dear ma’am,
till after thirty. I don’t believe, no, I do NOT believe, that I had any
heart myself when I was Ned’s age.’
‘Oh sir,’ said Mrs Varden, ‘I think you must have had. It’s impossible
that you, who have so much now, can ever have been without any.’
‘I hope,’ he answered, shrugging his shoulders meekly, ‘I have a little;
I hope, a very little--Heaven knows! But to return to Ned; I have no
doubt you thought, and therefore interfered benevolently in his behalf,
that I objected to Miss Haredale. How very natural! My dear madam, I
object to him--to him--emphatically to Ned himself.’
Mrs Varden was perfectly aghast at the disclosure.
‘He has, if he honourably fulfils this solemn obligation of which I have
told you--and he must be honourable, dear Mrs Varden, or he is no son
of mine--a fortune within his reach. He is of most expensive, ruinously
expensive habits; and if, in a moment of caprice and wilfulness, he
were to marry this young lady, and so deprive himself of the means
of gratifying the tastes to which he has been so long accustomed, he
would--my dear madam, he would break the gentle creature’s heart. Mrs
Varden, my good lady, my dear soul, I put it to you--is such a sacrifice
to be endured? Is the female heart a thing to be trifled with in this
way? Ask your own, my dear madam. Ask your own, I beseech you.’
‘Truly,’ thought Mrs Varden, ‘this gentleman is a saint. But,’ she added
aloud, and not unnaturally, ‘if you take Miss Emma’s lover away, sir,
what becomes of the poor thing’s heart then?’
‘The very point,’ said Mr Chester, not at all abashed, ‘to which I
wished to lead you. A marriage with my son, whom I should be compelled
to disown, would be followed by years of misery; they would be
separated, my dear madam, in a twelvemonth. To break off this
attachment, which is more fancied than real, as you and I know very
well, will cost the dear girl but a few tears, and she is happy again.
Take the case of your own daughter, the young lady downstairs, who is
your breathing image’--Mrs Varden coughed and simpered--‘there is a
young man (I am sorry to say, a dissolute fellow, of very
indifferent character) of whom I have heard Ned speak--Bullet was
it--Pullet--Mullet--’
‘There is a young man of the name of Joseph Willet, sir,’ said Mrs
Varden, folding her hands loftily.
‘That’s he,’ cried Mr Chester. ‘Suppose this Joseph Willet now, were to
aspire to the affections of your charming daughter, and were to engage
them.’
‘It would be like his impudence,’ interposed Mrs Varden, bridling, ‘to
dare to think of such a thing!’
‘My dear madam, that’s the whole case. I know it would be like his
impudence. It is like Ned’s impudence to do as he has done; but you
would not on that account, or because of a few tears from your beautiful
daughter, refrain from checking their inclinations in their birth. I
meant to have reasoned thus with your husband when I saw him at Mrs
Rudge’s this evening--’
‘My husband,’ said Mrs Varden, interposing with emotion, ‘would be a
great deal better at home than going to Mrs Rudge’s so often. I don’t
know what he does there. I don’t see what occasion he has to busy
himself in her affairs at all, sir.’
‘If I don’t appear to express my concurrence in those last sentiments of
yours,’ returned Mr Chester, ‘quite so strongly as you might desire,
it is because his being there, my dear madam, and not proving
conversational, led me hither, and procured me the happiness of
this interview with one, in whom the whole management, conduct, and
prosperity of her family are centred, I perceive.’
With that he took Mrs Varden’s hand again, and having pressed it to his
lips with the highflown gallantry of the day--a little burlesqued
to render it the more striking in the good lady’s unaccustomed
eyes--proceeded in the same strain of mingled sophistry, cajolery,
and flattery, to entreat that her utmost influence might be exerted to
restrain her husband and daughter from any further promotion of Edward’s
suit to Miss Haredale, and from aiding or abetting either party in any
way. Mrs Varden was but a woman, and had her share of vanity, obstinacy,
and love of power. She entered into a secret treaty of alliance,
offensive and defensive, with her insinuating visitor; and really did
believe, as many others would have done who saw and heard him, that in
so doing she furthered the ends of truth, justice, and morality, in a
very uncommon degree.
Overjoyed by the success of his negotiation, and mightily amused within
himself, Mr Chester conducted her downstairs in the same state as
before; and having repeated the previous ceremony of salutation, which
also as before comprehended Dolly, took his leave; first completing the
conquest of Miss Miggs’s heart, by inquiring if ‘this young lady’ would
light him to the door.
‘Oh, mim,’ said Miggs, returning with the candle. ‘Oh gracious me, mim,
there’s a gentleman! Was there ever such an angel to talk as he is--and
such a sweet-looking man! So upright and noble, that he seems to despise
the very ground he walks on; and yet so mild and condescending, that
he seems to say “but I will take notice on it too.” And to think of
his taking you for Miss Dolly, and Miss Dolly for your sister--Oh, my
goodness me, if I was master wouldn’t I be jealous of him!’
Mrs Varden reproved her handmaid for this vain-speaking; but very gently
and mildly--quite smilingly indeed--remarking that she was a foolish,
giddy, light-headed girl, whose spirits carried her beyond all bounds,
and who didn’t mean half she said, or she would be quite angry with her.
‘For my part,’ said Dolly, in a thoughtful manner, ‘I half believe Mr
Chester is something like Miggs in that respect. For all his politeness
and pleasant speaking, I am pretty sure he was making game of us, more
than once.’
‘If you venture to say such a thing again, and to speak ill of people
behind their backs in my presence, miss,’ said Mrs Varden, ‘I shall
insist upon your taking a candle and going to bed directly. How dare
you, Dolly? I’m astonished at you. The rudeness of your whole behaviour
this evening has been disgraceful. Did anybody ever hear,’ cried the
enraged matron, bursting into tears, ‘of a daughter telling her own
mother she has been made game of!’
What a very uncertain temper Mrs Varden’s was!
Chapter 28
Repairing to a noted coffee-house in Covent Garden when he left the
locksmith’s, Mr Chester sat long over a late dinner, entertaining
himself exceedingly with the whimsical recollection of his recent
proceedings, and congratulating himself very much on his great
cleverness. Influenced by these thoughts, his face wore an expression
so benign and tranquil, that the waiter in immediate attendance upon him
felt he could almost have died in his defence, and settled in his own
mind (until the receipt of the bill, and a very small fee for very great
trouble disabused it of the idea) that such an apostolic customer was
worth half-a-dozen of the ordinary run of visitors, at least.
A visit to the gaming-table--not as a heated, anxious venturer, but
one whom it was quite a treat to see staking his two or three pieces in
deference to the follies of society, and smiling with equal benevolence
on winners and losers--made it late before he reached home. It was his
custom to bid his servant go to bed at his own time unless he had orders
to the contrary, and to leave a candle on the common stair. There was a
lamp on the landing by which he could always light it when he came home
late, and having a key of the door about him he could enter and go to
bed at his pleasure.
He opened the glass of the dull lamp, whose wick, burnt up and swollen
like a drunkard’s nose, came flying off in little carbuncles at the
candle’s touch, and scattering hot sparks about, rendered it matter
of some difficulty to kindle the lazy taper; when a noise, as of a man
snoring deeply some steps higher up, caused him to pause and listen.
It was the heavy breathing of a sleeper, close at hand. Some fellow
had lain down on the open staircase, and was slumbering soundly.
Having lighted the candle at length and opened his own door, he softly
ascended, holding the taper high above his head, and peering cautiously
about; curious to see what kind of man had chosen so comfortless a
shelter for his lodging.
With his head upon the landing and his great limbs flung over
half-a-dozen stairs, as carelessly as though he were a dead man
whom drunken bearers had thrown down by chance, there lay Hugh, face
uppermost, his long hair drooping like some wild weed upon his wooden
pillow, and his huge chest heaving with the sounds which so unwontedly
disturbed the place and hour.
He who came upon him so unexpectedly was about to break his rest by
thrusting him with his foot, when, glancing at his upturned face, he
arrested himself in the very action, and stooping down and shading the
candle with his hand, examined his features closely. Close as his first
inspection was, it did not suffice, for he passed the light, still
carefully shaded as before, across and across his face, and yet observed
him with a searching eye.
While he was thus engaged, the sleeper, without any starting or turning
round, awoke. There was a kind of fascination in meeting his steady gaze
so suddenly, which took from the other the presence of mind to withdraw
his eyes, and forced him, as it were, to meet his look. So they remained
staring at each other, until Mr Chester at last broke silence, and asked
him in a low voice, why he lay sleeping there.
‘I thought,’ said Hugh, struggling into a sitting posture and gazing at
him intently, still, ‘that you were a part of my dream. It was a curious
one. I hope it may never come true, master.’
‘What makes you shiver?’
‘The--the cold, I suppose,’ he growled, as he shook himself and rose. ‘I
hardly know where I am yet.’
‘Do you know me?’ said Mr Chester.
‘Ay, I know you,’ he answered. ‘I was dreaming of you--we’re not where I
thought we were. That’s a comfort.’
He looked round him as he spoke, and in particular looked above his
head, as though he half expected to be standing under some object
which had had existence in his dream. Then he rubbed his eyes and shook
himself again, and followed his conductor into his own rooms.
Mr Chester lighted the candles which stood upon his dressing-table, and
wheeling an easy-chair towards the fire, which was yet burning, stirred
up a cheerful blaze, sat down before it, and bade his uncouth visitor
‘Come here,’ and draw his boots off.
‘You have been drinking again, my fine fellow,’ he said, as Hugh went
down on one knee, and did as he was told.
‘As I’m alive, master, I’ve walked the twelve long miles, and waited
here I don’t know how long, and had no drink between my lips since
dinner-time at noon.’
‘And can you do nothing better, my pleasant friend, than fall asleep,
and shake the very building with your snores?’ said Mr Chester. ‘Can’t
you dream in your straw at home, dull dog as you are, that you need come
here to do it?--Reach me those slippers, and tread softly.’
Hugh obeyed in silence.
‘And harkee, my dear young gentleman,’ said Mr Chester, as he put them
on, ‘the next time you dream, don’t let it be of me, but of some dog or
horse with whom you are better acquainted. Fill the glass once--you’ll
find it and the bottle in the same place--and empty it to keep yourself
awake.’
Hugh obeyed again even more zealously--and having done so, presented
himself before his patron.
‘Now,’ said Mr Chester, ‘what do you want with me?’
‘There was news to-day,’ returned Hugh. ‘Your son was at our house--came
down on horseback. He tried to see the young woman, but couldn’t get
sight of her. He left some letter or some message which our Joe had
charge of, but he and the old one quarrelled about it when your son had
gone, and the old one wouldn’t let it be delivered. He says (that’s the
old one does) that none of his people shall interfere and get him into
trouble. He’s a landlord, he says, and lives on everybody’s custom.’
‘He’s a jewel,’ smiled Mr Chester, ‘and the better for being a dull
one.--Well?’
‘Varden’s daughter--that’s the girl I kissed--’
‘--and stole the bracelet from upon the king’s highway,’ said Mr
Chester, composedly. ‘Yes; what of her?’
‘She wrote a note at our house to the young woman, saying she lost the
letter I brought to you, and you burnt. Our Joe was to carry it, but
the old one kept him at home all next day, on purpose that he shouldn’t.
Next morning he gave it to me to take; and here it is.’
‘You didn’t deliver it then, my good friend?’ said Mr Chester, twirling
Dolly’s note between his finger and thumb, and feigning to be surprised.
‘I supposed you’d want to have it,’ retorted Hugh. ‘Burn one, burn all,
I thought.’
‘My devil-may-care acquaintance,’ said Mr Chester--‘really if you do not
draw some nicer distinctions, your career will be cut short with most
surprising suddenness. Don’t you know that the letter you brought to
me, was directed to my son who resides in this very place? And can you
descry no difference between his letters and those addressed to other
people?’
‘If you don’t want it,’ said Hugh, disconcerted by this reproof, for he
had expected high praise, ‘give it me back, and I’ll deliver it. I don’t
know how to please you, master.’
‘I shall deliver it,’ returned his patron, putting it away after a
moment’s consideration, ‘myself. Does the young lady walk out, on fine
mornings?’
‘Mostly--about noon is her usual time.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes, alone.’
‘Where?’
‘In the grounds before the house.--Them that the footpath crosses.’
‘If the weather should be fine, I may throw myself in her way to-morrow,
perhaps,’ said Mr Chester, as coolly as if she were one of his ordinary
acquaintance. ‘Mr Hugh, if I should ride up to the Maypole door, you
will do me the favour only to have seen me once. You must suppress your
gratitude, and endeavour to forget my forbearance in the matter of the
bracelet. It is natural it should break out, and it does you honour; but
when other folks are by, you must, for your own sake and safety, be as
like your usual self as though you owed me no obligation whatever, and
had never stood within these walls. You comprehend me?’
Hugh understood him perfectly. After a pause he muttered that he hoped
his patron would involve him in no trouble about this last letter;
for he had kept it back solely with the view of pleasing him. He was
continuing in this strain, when Mr Chester with a most beneficent and
patronising air cut him short by saying:
‘My good fellow, you have my promise, my word, my sealed bond (for a
verbal pledge with me is quite as good), that I will always protect you
so long as you deserve it. Now, do set your mind at rest. Keep it at
ease, I beg of you. When a man puts himself in my power so thoroughly as
you have done, I really feel as though he had a kind of claim upon me. I
am more disposed to mercy and forbearance under such circumstances
than I can tell you, Hugh. Do look upon me as your protector, and rest
assured, I entreat you, that on the subject of that indiscretion, you
may preserve, as long as you and I are friends, the lightest heart that
ever beat within a human breast. Fill that glass once more to cheer you
on your road homewards--I am really quite ashamed to think how far you
have to go--and then God bless you for the night.’
‘They think,’ said Hugh, when he had tossed the liquor down, ‘that I am
sleeping soundly in the stable. Ha ha ha! The stable door is shut, but
the steed’s gone, master.’
‘You are a most convivial fellow,’ returned his friend, ‘and I love your
humour of all things. Good night! Take the greatest possible care of
yourself, for my sake!’
It was remarkable that during the whole interview, each had endeavoured
to catch stolen glances of the other’s face, and had never looked full
at it. They interchanged one brief and hasty glance as Hugh went out,
averted their eyes directly, and so separated. Hugh closed the double
doors behind him, carefully and without noise; and Mr Chester remained
in his easy-chair, with his gaze intently fixed upon the fire.
‘Well!’ he said, after meditating for a long time--and said with a deep
sigh and an uneasy shifting of his attitude, as though he dismissed some
other subject from his thoughts, and returned to that which had held
possession of them all the day--‘the plot thickens; I have thrown the
shell; it will explode, I think, in eight-and-forty hours, and should
scatter these good folks amazingly. We shall see!’
He went to bed and fell asleep, but had not slept long when he started
up and thought that Hugh was at the outer door, calling in a strange
voice, very different from his own, to be admitted. The delusion was so
strong upon him, and was so full of that vague terror of the night
in which such visions have their being, that he rose, and taking his
sheathed sword in his hand, opened the door, and looked out upon the
staircase, and towards the spot where Hugh had lain asleep; and even
spoke to him by name. But all was dark and quiet, and creeping back
to bed again, he fell, after an hour’s uneasy watching, into a second
sleep, and woke no more till morning.
Chapter 29
The thoughts of worldly men are for ever regulated by a moral law of
gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. The
bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night, appeal
to their minds in vain. There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon,
or in the stars, for their reading. They are like some wise men, who,
learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten
such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal
Love, and Mercy, although they shine by night and day so brightly that
the blind may see them; and who, looking upward at the spangled sky,
see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and
book-learning.
It is curious to imagine these people of the world, busy in thought,
turning their eyes towards the countless spheres that shine above us,
and making them reflect the only images their minds contain. The man who
lives but in the breath of princes, has nothing in his sight but stars for
courtiers’ breasts. The envious man beholds his neighbours’ honours
even in the sky; to the money-hoarder, and the mass of worldly folk, the
whole great universe above glitters with sterling coin--fresh from the
mint--stamped with the sovereign’s head--coming always between them and
heaven, turn where they may. So do the shadows of our own desires stand
between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.
Everything was fresh and gay, as though the world were but that morning
made, when Mr Chester rode at a tranquil pace along the Forest road.
Though early in the season, it was warm and genial weather; the trees
were budding into leaf, the hedges and the grass were green, the air was
musical with songs of birds, and high above them all the lark poured
out her richest melody. In shady spots, the morning dew sparkled on
each young leaf and blade of grass; and where the sun was shining, some
diamond drops yet glistened brightly, as in unwillingness to leave so
fair a world, and have such brief existence. Even the light wind, whose
rustling was as gentle to the ear as softly-falling water, had its hope
and promise; and, leaving a pleasant fragrance in its track as it went
fluttering by, whispered of its intercourse with Summer, and of his
happy coming.
The solitary rider went glancing on among the trees, from sunlight
into shade and back again, at the same even pace--looking about him,
certainly, from time to time, but with no greater thought of the day
or the scene through which he moved, than that he was fortunate (being
choicely dressed) to have such favourable weather. He smiled very
complacently at such times, but rather as if he were satisfied with
himself than with anything else: and so went riding on, upon his
chestnut cob, as pleasant to look upon as his own horse, and probably
far less sensitive to the many cheerful influences by which he was
surrounded.
In the course of time, the Maypole’s massive chimneys rose upon his
view: but he quickened not his pace one jot, and with the same cool
gravity rode up to the tavern porch. John Willet, who was toasting
his red face before a great fire in the bar, and who, with surpassing
foresight and quickness of apprehension, had been thinking, as he looked
at the blue sky, that if that state of things lasted much longer, it
might ultimately become necessary to leave off fires and throw the
windows open, issued forth to hold his stirrup; calling lustily for
Hugh.
‘Oh, you’re here, are you, sir?’ said John, rather surprised by the
quickness with which he appeared. ‘Take this here valuable animal into
the stable, and have more than particular care of him if you want to
keep your place. A mortal lazy fellow, sir; he needs a deal of looking
after.’
‘But you have a son,’ returned Mr Chester, giving his bridle to Hugh as
he dismounted, and acknowledging his salute by a careless motion of his
hand towards his hat. ‘Why don’t you make HIM useful?’
‘Why, the truth is, sir,’ replied John with great importance, ‘that my
son--what, you’re a-listening are you, villain?’
‘Who’s listening?’ returned Hugh angrily. ‘A treat, indeed, to hear YOU
speak! Would you have me take him in till he’s cool?’
‘Walk him up and down further off then, sir,’ cried old John, ‘and when
you see me and a noble gentleman entertaining ourselves with talk, keep
your distance. If you don’t know your distance, sir,’ added Mr Willet,
after an enormously long pause, during which he fixed his great dull
eyes on Hugh, and waited with exemplary patience for any little property
in the way of ideas that might come to him, ‘we’ll find a way to teach
you, pretty soon.’
Hugh shrugged his shoulders scornfully, and in his reckless swaggering
way, crossed to the other side of the little green, and there, with
the bridle slung loosely over his shoulder, led the horse to and fro,
glancing at his master every now and then from under his bushy eyebrows,
with as sinister an aspect as one would desire to see.
Mr Chester, who, without appearing to do so, had eyed him attentively
during this brief dispute, stepped into the porch, and turning abruptly
to Mr Willet, said,
‘You keep strange servants, John.’
‘Strange enough to look at, sir, certainly,’ answered the host; ‘but out
of doors; for horses, dogs, and the likes of that; there an’t a better
man in England than is that Maypole Hugh yonder. He an’t fit for
indoors,’ added Mr Willet, with the confidential air of a man who felt
his own superior nature. ‘I do that; but if that chap had only a little
imagination, sir--’
‘He’s an active fellow now, I dare swear,’ said Mr Chester, in a musing
tone, which seemed to suggest that he would have said the same had there
been nobody to hear him.
‘Active, sir!’ retorted John, with quite an expression in his face;
‘that chap! Hallo there! You, sir! Bring that horse here, and go and
hang my wig on the weathercock, to show this gentleman whether you’re
one of the lively sort or not.’
Hugh made no answer, but throwing the bridle to his master, and
snatching his wig from his head, in a manner so unceremonious and hasty
that the action discomposed Mr Willet not a little, though performed at
his own special desire, climbed nimbly to the very summit of the maypole
before the house, and hanging the wig upon the weathercock, sent it
twirling round like a roasting jack. Having achieved this performance,
he cast it on the ground, and sliding down the pole with inconceivable
rapidity, alighted on his feet almost as soon as it had touched the
earth.
‘There, sir,’ said John, relapsing into his usual stolid state, ‘you
won’t see that at many houses, besides the Maypole, where there’s good
accommodation for man and beast--nor that neither, though that with him
is nothing.’
This last remark bore reference to his vaulting on horseback, as upon Mr
Chester’s first visit, and quickly disappearing by the stable gate.
‘That with him is nothing,’ repeated Mr Willet, brushing his wig with
his wrist, and inwardly resolving to distribute a small charge for dust
and damage to that article of dress, through the various items of his
guest’s bill; ‘he’ll get out of a’most any winder in the house. There
never was such a chap for flinging himself about and never hurting his
bones. It’s my opinion, sir, that it’s pretty nearly allowing to his
not having any imagination; and that if imagination could be (which it
can’t) knocked into him, he’d never be able to do it any more. But we
was a-talking, sir, about my son.’
‘True, Willet, true,’ said his visitor, turning again towards the
landlord with his accustomed serenity of face. ‘My good friend, what
about him?’
It has been reported that Mr Willet, previously to making answer,
winked. But as he was never known to be guilty of such lightness of
conduct either before or afterwards, this may be looked upon as
a malicious invention of his enemies--founded, perhaps, upon the
undisputed circumstance of his taking his guest by the third breast
button of his coat, counting downwards from the chin, and pouring his
reply into his ear:
‘Sir,’ whispered John, with dignity, ‘I know my duty. We want no
love-making here, sir, unbeknown to parents. I respect a certain young
gentleman, taking him in the light of a young gentleman; I respect a
certain young lady, taking her in the light of a young lady; but of the
two as a couple, I have no knowledge, sir, none whatever. My son, sir,
is upon his patrole.’
‘I thought I saw him looking through the corner window but this moment,’
said Mr Chester, who naturally thought that being on patrole, implied
walking about somewhere.
‘No doubt you did, sir,’ returned John. ‘He is upon his patrole of
honour, sir, not to leave the premises. Me and some friends of mine that
use the Maypole of an evening, sir, considered what was best to be done
with him, to prevent his doing anything unpleasant in opposing your
desires; and we’ve put him on his patrole. And what’s more, sir, he
won’t be off his patrole for a pretty long time to come, I can tell you
that.’
When he had communicated this bright idea, which had its origin in the
perusal by the village cronies of a newspaper, containing, among other
matters, an account of how some officer pending the sentence of some
court-martial had been enlarged on parole, Mr Willet drew back from his
guest’s ear, and without any visible alteration of feature, chuckled
thrice audibly. This nearest approach to a laugh in which he ever
indulged (and that but seldom and only on extreme occasions), never even
curled his lip or effected the smallest change in--no, not so much as a
slight wagging of--his great, fat, double chin, which at these times, as
at all others, remained a perfect desert in the broad map of his face;
one changeless, dull, tremendous blank.
Lest it should be matter of surprise to any, that Mr Willet adopted this
bold course in opposition to one whom he had often entertained, and who
had always paid his way at the Maypole gallantly, it may be remarked
that it was his very penetration and sagacity in this respect, which
occasioned him to indulge in those unusual demonstrations of jocularity,
just now recorded. For Mr Willet, after carefully balancing father and
son in his mental scales, had arrived at the distinct conclusion that
the old gentleman was a better sort of a customer than the young one.
Throwing his landlord into the same scale, which was already turned by
this consideration, and heaping upon him, again, his strong desires
to run counter to the unfortunate Joe, and his opposition as a general
principle to all matters of love and matrimony, it went down to the very
ground straightway, and sent the light cause of the younger gentleman
flying upwards to the ceiling. Mr Chester was not the kind of man to be
by any means dim-sighted to Mr Willet’s motives, but he thanked him as
graciously as if he had been one of the most disinterested martyrs that
ever shone on earth; and leaving him, with many complimentary reliances
on his great taste and judgment, to prepare whatever dinner he might
deem most fitting the occasion, bent his steps towards the Warren.
Dressed with more than his usual elegance; assuming a gracefulness of
manner, which, though it was the result of long study, sat easily upon
him and became him well; composing his features into their most serene
and prepossessing expression; and setting in short that guard upon
himself, at every point, which denoted that he attached no slight
importance to the impression he was about to make; he entered the bounds
of Miss Haredale’s usual walk. He had not gone far, or looked about him
long, when he descried coming towards him, a female figure. A glimpse
of the form and dress as she crossed a little wooden bridge which lay
between them, satisfied him that he had found her whom he desired to
see. He threw himself in her way, and a very few paces brought them
close together.
He raised his hat from his head, and yielding the path, suffered her to
pass him. Then, as if the idea had but that moment occurred to him, he
turned hastily back and said in an agitated voice:
‘I beg pardon--do I address Miss Haredale?’
She stopped in some confusion at being so unexpectedly accosted by a
stranger; and answered ‘Yes.’
‘Something told me,’ he said, LOOKING a compliment to her beauty, ‘that
it could be no other. Miss Haredale, I bear a name which is not unknown
to you--which it is a pride, and yet a pain to me to know, sounds
pleasantly in your ears. I am a man advanced in life, as you see. I am
the father of him whom you honour and distinguish above all other
men. May I for weighty reasons which fill me with distress, beg but a
minute’s conversation with you here?’
Who that was inexperienced in deceit, and had a frank and youthful
heart, could doubt the speaker’s truth--could doubt it too, when the
voice that spoke, was like the faint echo of one she knew so well, and
so much loved to hear? She inclined her head, and stopping, cast her
eyes upon the ground.
‘A little more apart--among these trees. It is an old man’s hand, Miss
Haredale; an honest one, believe me.’
She put hers in it as he said these words, and suffered him to lead her
to a neighbouring seat.
‘You alarm me, sir,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You are not the bearer of
any ill news, I hope?’
‘Of none that you anticipate,’ he answered, sitting down beside her.
‘Edward is well--quite well. It is of him I wish to speak, certainly;
but I have no misfortune to communicate.’
She bowed her head again, and made as though she would have begged him
to proceed; but said nothing.
‘I am sensible that I speak to you at a disadvantage, dear Miss
Haredale. Believe me that I am not so forgetful of the feelings of my
younger days as not to know that you are little disposed to view me
with favour. You have heard me described as cold-hearted, calculating,
selfish--’
‘I have never, sir,’--she interposed with an altered manner and a firmer
voice; ‘I have never heard you spoken of in harsh or disrespectful
terms. You do a great wrong to Edward’s nature if you believe him
capable of any mean or base proceeding.’
‘Pardon me, my sweet young lady, but your uncle--’
‘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.
Joe expressed his obligations, and continued, ‘You can trust me then,
and credit what I say. I believe I shall enlist in your regiment
to-night. The reason I don’t do so now is, because I don’t want until
to-night, to do what I can’t recall. Where shall I find you, this
evening?’
His friend replied with some unwillingness, and after much ineffectual
entreaty having for its object the immediate settlement of the business,
that his quarters would be at the Crooked Billet in Tower Street; where
he would be found waking until midnight, and sleeping until breakfast
time to-morrow.
‘And if I do come--which it’s a million to one, I shall--when will you
take me out of London?’ demanded Joe.
‘To-morrow morning, at half after eight o’clock,’ replied the serjeant.
‘You’ll go abroad--a country where it’s all sunshine and plunder--the
finest climate in the world.’
‘To go abroad,’ said Joe, shaking hands with him, ‘is the very thing I
want. You may expect me.’
‘You’re the kind of lad for us,’ cried the serjeant, holding Joe’s hand
in his, in the excess of his admiration. ‘You’re the boy to push your
fortune. I don’t say it because I bear you any envy, or would take away
from the credit of the rise you’ll make, but if I had been bred and
taught like you, I’d have been a colonel by this time.’
‘Tush, man!’ said Joe, ‘I’m not so young as that. Needs must when the
devil drives; and the devil that drives me is an empty pocket and an
unhappy home. For the present, good-bye.’
‘For king and country!’ cried the serjeant, flourishing his cap.
‘For bread and meat!’ cried Joe, snapping his fingers. And so they
parted.
He had very little money in his pocket; so little indeed, that after
paying for his breakfast (which he was too honest and perhaps too proud
to score up to his father’s charge) he had but a penny left. He had
courage, notwithstanding, to resist all the affectionate importunities
of the serjeant, who waylaid him at the door with many protestations of
eternal friendship, and did in particular request that he would do him
the favour to accept of only one shilling as a temporary accommodation.
Rejecting his offers both of cash and credit, Joe walked away with
stick and bundle as before, bent upon getting through the day as he best
could, and going down to the locksmith’s in the dusk of the evening;
for it should go hard, he had resolved, but he would have a parting word
with charming Dolly Varden.
He went out by Islington and so on to Highgate, and sat on many stones
and gates, but there were no voices in the bells to bid him turn. Since
the time of noble Whittington, fair flower of merchants, bells have come
to have less sympathy with humankind. They only ring for money and on
state occasions. Wanderers have increased in number; ships leave the
Thames for distant regions, carrying from stem to stern no other cargo;
the bells are silent; they ring out no entreaties or regrets; they are
used to it and have grown worldly.
Joe bought a roll, and reduced his purse to the condition (with a
difference) of that celebrated purse of Fortunatus, which, whatever were
its favoured owner’s necessities, had one unvarying amount in it. In
these real times, when all the Fairies are dead and buried, there are
still a great many purses which possess that quality. The sum-total they
contain is expressed in arithmetic by a circle, and whether it be added
to or multiplied by its own amount, the result of the problem is more
easily stated than any known in figures.
Evening drew on at last. With the desolate and solitary feeling of one
who had no home or shelter, and was alone utterly in the world for the
first time, he bent his steps towards the locksmith’s house. He had
delayed till now, knowing that Mrs Varden sometimes went out alone,
or with Miggs for her sole attendant, to lectures in the evening; and
devoutly hoping that this might be one of her nights of moral culture.
He had walked up and down before the house, on the opposite side of the
way, two or three times, when as he returned to it again, he caught a
glimpse of a fluttering skirt at the door. It was Dolly’s--to whom else
could it belong? no dress but hers had such a flow as that. He plucked
up his spirits, and followed it into the workshop of the Golden Key.
His darkening the door caused her to look round. Oh that face! ‘If it
hadn’t been for that,’ thought Joe, ‘I should never have walked into
poor Tom Cobb. She’s twenty times handsomer than ever. She might marry a
Lord!’
He didn’t say this. He only thought it--perhaps looked it also. Dolly
was glad to see him, and was SO sorry her father and mother were away
from home. Joe begged she wouldn’t mention it on any account.
Dolly hesitated to lead the way into the parlour, for there it was
nearly dark; at the same time she hesitated to stand talking in the
workshop, which was yet light and open to the street. They had got by
some means, too, before the little forge; and Joe having her hand in his
(which he had no right to have, for Dolly only gave it him to shake), it
was so like standing before some homely altar being married, that it was
the most embarrassing state of things in the world.
‘I have come,’ said Joe, ‘to say good-bye--to say good-bye for I don’t
know how many years; perhaps for ever. I am going abroad.’
Now this was exactly what he should not have said. Here he was, talking
like a gentleman at large who was free to come and go and roam about the
world at pleasure, when that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night
before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains; and had
positively stated in so many words that she was killing him by inches,
and that in a fortnight more or thereabouts he expected to make a decent
end and leave the business to his mother.
Dolly released her hand and said ‘Indeed!’ She remarked in the same
breath that it was a fine night, and in short, betrayed no more emotion
than the forge itself.
‘I couldn’t go,’ said Joe, ‘without coming to see you. I hadn’t the
heart to.’
Dolly was more sorry than she could tell, that he should have taken so
much trouble. It was such a long way, and he must have such a deal to
do. And how WAS Mr Willet--that dear old gentleman--
‘Is this all you say!’ cried Joe.
All! Good gracious, what did the man expect! She was obliged to take her
apron in her hand and run her eyes along the hem from corner to corner,
to keep herself from laughing in his face;--not because his gaze
confused her--not at all.
Joe had small experience in love affairs, and had no notion how
different young ladies are at different times; he had expected to
take Dolly up again at the very point where he had left her after that
delicious evening ride, and was no more prepared for such an alteration
than to see the sun and moon change places. He had buoyed himself up all
day with an indistinct idea that she would certainly say ‘Don’t go,’ or
‘Don’t leave us,’ or ‘Why do you go?’ or ‘Why do you leave us?’ or would
give him some little encouragement of that sort; he had even entertained
the possibility of her bursting into tears, of her throwing herself into
his arms, of her falling down in a fainting fit without previous word
or sign; but any approach to such a line of conduct as this, had been so
far from his thoughts that he could only look at her in silent wonder.
Dolly in the meanwhile, turned to the corners of her apron, and measured
the sides, and smoothed out the wrinkles, and was as silent as he. At
last after a long pause, Joe said good-bye. ‘Good-bye’--said Dolly--with
as pleasant a smile as if he were going into the next street, and were
coming back to supper; ‘good-bye.’
‘Come,’ said Joe, putting out both hands, ‘Dolly, dear Dolly, don’t let
us part like this. I love you dearly, with all my heart and soul; with
as much truth and earnestness as ever man loved woman in this world, I
do believe. I am a poor fellow, as you know--poorer now than ever, for
I have fled from home, not being able to bear it any longer, and must
fight my own way without help. You are beautiful, admired, are loved by
everybody, are well off and happy; and may you ever be so! Heaven forbid
I should ever make you otherwise; but give me a word of comfort. Say
something kind to me. I have no right to expect it of you, I know, but
I ask it because I love you, and shall treasure the slightest word from
you all through my life. Dolly, dearest, have you nothing to say to me?’
No. Nothing. Dolly was a coquette by nature, and a spoilt child. She had
no notion of being carried by storm in this way. The coachmaker would
have been dissolved in tears, and would have knelt down, and called
himself names, and clasped his hands, and beat his breast, and tugged
wildly at his cravat, and done all kinds of poetry. Joe had no business
to be going abroad. He had no right to be able to do it. If he was in
adamantine chains, he couldn’t.
‘I have said good-bye,’ said Dolly, ‘twice. Take your arm away directly,
Mr Joseph, or I’ll call Miggs.’
‘I’ll not reproach you,’ answered Joe, ‘it’s my fault, no doubt. I have
thought sometimes that you didn’t quite despise me, but I was a fool to
think so. Every one must, who has seen the life I have led--you most of
all. God bless you!’
He was gone, actually gone. Dolly waited a little while, thinking he
would return, peeped out at the door, looked up the street and down as
well as the increasing darkness would allow, came in again, waited a
little longer, went upstairs humming a tune, bolted herself in, laid
her head down on her bed, and cried as if her heart would break. And yet
such natures are made up of so many contradictions, that if Joe Willet
had come back that night, next day, next week, next month, the odds are
a hundred to one she would have treated him in the very same manner, and
have wept for it afterwards with the very same distress.
She had no sooner left the workshop than there cautiously peered out
from behind the chimney of the forge, a face which had already emerged
from the same concealment twice or thrice, unseen, and which, after
satisfying itself that it was now alone, was followed by a leg, a
shoulder, and so on by degrees, until the form of Mr Tappertit stood
confessed, with a brown-paper cap stuck negligently on one side of its
head, and its arms very much a-kimbo.
‘Have my ears deceived me,’ said the ‘prentice, ‘or do I dream! am I to
thank thee, Fortun’, or to cus thee--which?’
He gravely descended from his elevation, took down his piece of
looking-glass, planted it against the wall upon the usual bench, twisted
his head round, and looked closely at his legs.
‘If they’re a dream,’ said Sim, ‘let sculptures have such wisions, and
chisel ‘em out when they wake. This is reality. Sleep has no such limbs
as them. Tremble, Willet, and despair. She’s mine! She’s mine!’
With these triumphant expressions, he seized a hammer and dealt a heavy
blow at a vice, which in his mind’s eye represented the sconce or head
of Joseph Willet. That done, he burst into a peal of laughter which
startled Miss Miggs even in her distant kitchen, and dipping his head
into a bowl of water, had recourse to a jack-towel inside the closet
door, which served the double purpose of smothering his feelings and
drying his face.
Joe, disconsolate and down-hearted, but full of courage too, on leaving
the locksmith’s house made the best of his way to the Crooked Billet,
and there inquired for his friend the serjeant, who, expecting no man
less, received him with open arms. In the course of five minutes after
his arrival at that house of entertainment, he was enrolled among the
gallant defenders of his native land; and within half an hour, was
regaled with a steaming supper of boiled tripe and onions, prepared,
as his friend assured him more than once, at the express command of his
most Sacred Majesty the King. To this meal, which tasted very savoury
after his long fasting, he did ample justice; and when he had followed
it up, or down, with a variety of loyal and patriotic toasts, he was
conducted to a straw mattress in a loft over the stable, and locked in
there for the night.
The next morning, he found that the obliging care of his martial friend
had decorated his hat with sundry particoloured streamers, which made
a very lively appearance; and in company with that officer, and three
other military gentlemen newly enrolled, who were under a cloud so dense
that it only left three shoes, a boot, and a coat and a half visible
among them, repaired to the riverside. Here they were joined by a
corporal and four more heroes, of whom two were drunk and daring, and
two sober and penitent, but each of whom, like Joe, had his dusty stick
and bundle. The party embarked in a passage-boat bound for Gravesend,
whence they were to proceed on foot to Chatham; the wind was in their
favour, and they soon left London behind them, a mere dark mist--a giant
phantom in the air.
Chapter 32
Misfortunes, saith the adage, never come singly. There is little doubt
that troubles are exceedingly gregarious in their nature, and flying
in flocks, are apt to perch capriciously; crowding on the heads of some
poor wights until there is not an inch of room left on their unlucky
crowns, and taking no more notice of others who offer as good
resting-places for the soles of their feet, than if they had no
existence. It may have happened that a flight of troubles brooding over
London, and looking out for Joseph Willet, whom they couldn’t find,
darted down haphazard on the first young man that caught their fancy,
and settled on him instead. However this may be, certain it is that on
the very day of Joe’s departure they swarmed about the ears of Edward
Chester, and did so buzz and flap their wings, and persecute him, that
he was most profoundly wretched.
It was evening, and just eight o’clock, when he and his father, having
wine and dessert set before them, were left to themselves for the first
time that day. They had dined together, but a third person had been
present during the meal, and until they met at table they had not seen
each other since the previous night.
Edward was reserved and silent. Mr Chester was more than usually gay;
but not caring, as it seemed, to open a conversation with one whose
humour was so different, he vented the lightness of his spirit in smiles
and sparkling looks, and made no effort to awaken his attention. So they
remained for some time: the father lying on a sofa with his accustomed
air of graceful negligence; the son seated opposite to him with downcast
eyes, busied, it was plain, with painful and uneasy thoughts.
‘My dear Edward,’ said Mr Chester at length, with a most engaging laugh,
‘do not extend your drowsy influence to the decanter. Suffer THAT to
circulate, let your spirits be never so stagnant.’
Edward begged his pardon, passed it, and relapsed into his former state.
‘You do wrong not to fill your glass,’ said Mr Chester, holding up his
own before the light. ‘Wine in moderation--not in excess, for that makes
men ugly--has a thousand pleasant influences. It brightens the eye,
improves the voice, imparts a new vivacity to one’s thoughts and
conversation: you should try it, Ned.’
‘Ah father!’ cried his son, ‘if--’
‘My good fellow,’ interposed the parent hastily, as he set down his
glass, and raised his eyebrows with a startled and horrified expression,
‘for Heaven’s sake don’t call me by that obsolete and ancient name. Have
some regard for delicacy. Am I grey, or wrinkled, do I go on crutches,
have I lost my teeth, that you adopt such a mode of address? Good God,
how very coarse!’
‘I was about to speak to you from my heart, sir,’ returned Edward, ‘in
the confidence which should subsist between us; and you check me in the
outset.’
‘Now DO, Ned, DO not,’ said Mr Chester, raising his delicate hand
imploringly, ‘talk in that monstrous manner. About to speak from
your heart. Don’t you know that the heart is an ingenious part of
our formation--the centre of the blood-vessels and all that sort of
thing--which has no more to do with what you say or think, than your
knees have? How can you be so very vulgar and absurd? These anatomical
allusions should be left to gentlemen of the medical profession. They
are really not agreeable in society. You quite surprise me, Ned.’
‘Well! there are no such things to wound, or heal, or have regard for. I
know your creed, sir, and will say no more,’ returned his son.
‘There again,’ said Mr Chester, sipping his wine, ‘you are wrong. I
distinctly say there are such things. We know there are. The hearts of
animals--of bullocks, sheep, and so forth--are cooked and devoured, as
I am told, by the lower classes, with a vast deal of relish. Men are
sometimes stabbed to the heart, shot to the heart; but as to speaking
from the heart, or to the heart, or being warm-hearted, or cold-hearted,
or broken-hearted, or being all heart, or having no heart--pah! these
things are nonsense, Ned.’
‘No doubt, sir,’ returned his son, seeing that he paused for him to
speak. ‘No doubt.’
‘There’s Haredale’s niece, your late flame,’ said Mr Chester, as a
careless illustration of his meaning. ‘No doubt in your mind she was all
heart once. Now she has none at all. Yet she is the same person, Ned,
exactly.’
‘She is a changed person, sir,’ cried Edward, reddening; ‘and changed by
vile means, I believe.’
‘You have had a cool dismissal, have you?’ said his father. ‘Poor Ned!
I told you last night what would happen.--May I ask you for the
nutcrackers?’
‘She has been tampered with, and most treacherously deceived,’ cried
Edward, rising from his seat. ‘I never will believe that the knowledge
of my real position, given her by myself, has worked this change. I know
she is beset and tortured. But though our contract is at an end, and
broken past all redemption; though I charge upon her want of firmness
and want of truth, both to herself and me; I do not now, and never will
believe, that any sordid motive, or her own unbiassed will, has led her
to this course--never!’
‘You make me blush,’ returned his father gaily, ‘for the folly of your
nature, in which--but we never know ourselves--I devoutly hope there is
no reflection of my own. With regard to the young lady herself, she has
done what is very natural and proper, my dear fellow; what you yourself
proposed, as I learn from Haredale; and what I predicted--with no great
exercise of sagacity--she would do. She supposed you to be rich, or
at least quite rich enough; and found you poor. Marriage is a civil
contract; people marry to better their worldly condition and improve
appearances; it is an affair of house and furniture, of liveries,
servants, equipage, and so forth. The lady being poor and you poor
also, there is an end of the matter. You cannot enter upon these
considerations, and have no manner of business with the ceremony. I
drink her health in this glass, and respect and honour her for her
extreme good sense. It is a lesson to you. Fill yours, Ned.’
‘It is a lesson,’ returned his son, ‘by which I hope I may never profit,
and if years and experience impress it on--’
‘Don’t say on the heart,’ interposed his father.
‘On men whom the world and its hypocrisy have spoiled,’ said Edward
warmly, ‘Heaven keep me from its knowledge.’
‘Come, sir,’ returned his father, raising himself a little on the sofa,
and looking straight towards him; ‘we have had enough of this. Remember,
if you please, your interest, your duty, your moral obligations, your
filial affections, and all that sort of thing, which it is so very
delightful and charming to reflect upon; or you will repent it.’
‘I shall never repent the preservation of my self-respect, sir,’ said
Edward. ‘Forgive me if I say that I will not sacrifice it at your
bidding, and that I will not pursue the track which you would have me
take, and to which the secret share you have had in this late separation
tends.’
His father rose a little higher still, and looking at him as though
curious to know if he were quite resolved and earnest, dropped gently
down again, and said in the calmest voice--eating his nuts meanwhile,
‘Edward, my father had a son, who being a fool like you, and, like you,
entertaining low and disobedient sentiments, he disinherited and cursed
one morning after breakfast. The circumstance occurs to me with a
singular clearness of recollection this evening. I remember eating
muffins at the time, with marmalade. He led a miserable life (the son,
I mean) and died early; it was a happy release on all accounts; he
degraded the family very much. It is a sad circumstance, Edward, when a
father finds it necessary to resort to such strong measures.
‘It is,’ replied Edward, ‘and it is sad when a son, proffering him his
love and duty in their best and truest sense, finds himself repelled
at every turn, and forced to disobey. Dear father,’ he added, more
earnestly though in a gentler tone, ‘I have reflected many times on what
occurred between us when we first discussed this subject. Let there be
a confidence between us; not in terms, but truth. Hear what I have to
say.’
‘As I anticipate what it is, and cannot fail to do so, Edward,’ returned
his father coldly, ‘I decline. I couldn’t possibly. I am sure it would
put me out of temper, which is a state of mind I can’t endure. If
you intend to mar my plans for your establishment in life, and the
preservation of that gentility and becoming pride, which our family
have so long sustained--if, in short, you are resolved to take your own
course, you must take it, and my curse with it. I am very sorry, but
there’s really no alternative.’
‘The curse may pass your lips,’ said Edward, ‘but it will be but empty
breath. I do not believe that any man on earth has greater power to call
one down upon his fellow--least of all, upon his own child--than he has
to make one drop of rain or flake of snow fall from the clouds above us
at his impious bidding. Beware, sir, what you do.’
‘You are so very irreligious, so exceedingly undutiful, so horribly
profane,’ rejoined his father, turning his face lazily towards him, and
cracking another nut, ‘that I positively must interrupt you here. It is
quite impossible we can continue to go on, upon such terms as these. If
you will do me the favour to ring the bell, the servant will show you
to the door. Return to this roof no more, I beg you. Go, sir, since
you have no moral sense remaining; and go to the Devil, at my express
desire. Good day.’
Edward left the room without another word or look, and turned his back
upon the house for ever.
The father’s face was slightly flushed and heated, but his manner was
quite unchanged, as he rang the bell again, and addressed the servant on
his entrance.
‘Peak--if that gentleman who has just gone out--’
‘I beg your pardon, sir, Mr Edward?’
‘Were there more than one, dolt, that you ask the question?--If that
gentleman should send here for his wardrobe, let him have it, do you
hear? If he should call himself at any time, I’m not at home. You’ll
tell him so, and shut the door.’
So, it soon got whispered about, that Mr Chester was very unfortunate
in his son, who had occasioned him great grief and sorrow. And the
good people who heard this and told it again, marvelled the more at his
equanimity and even temper, and said what an amiable nature that man
must have, who, having undergone so much, could be so placid and so
calm. And when Edward’s name was spoken, Society shook its head, and
laid its finger on its lip, and sighed, and looked very grave; and those
who had sons about his age, waxed wrathful and indignant, and hoped, for
Virtue’s sake, that he was dead. And the world went on turning round, as
usual, for five years, concerning which this Narrative is silent.
Chapter 33
One wintry evening, early in the year of our Lord one thousand seven
hundred and eighty, a keen north wind arose as it grew dark, and night
came on with black and dismal looks. A bitter storm of sleet, sharp,
dense, and icy-cold, swept the wet streets, and rattled on the trembling
windows. Signboards, shaken past endurance in their creaking frames,
fell crashing on the pavement; old tottering chimneys reeled and
staggered in the blast; and many a steeple rocked again that night, as
though the earth were troubled.
It was not a time for those who could by any means get light and warmth,
to brave the fury of the weather. In coffee-houses of the better sort,
guests crowded round the fire, forgot to be political, and told each
other with a secret gladness that the blast grew fiercer every minute.
Each humble tavern by the water-side, had its group of uncouth figures
round the hearth, who talked of vessels foundering at sea, and all hands
lost; related many a dismal tale of shipwreck and drowned men, and
hoped that some they knew were safe, and shook their heads in doubt.
In private dwellings, children clustered near the blaze; listening with
timid pleasure to tales of ghosts and goblins, and tall figures clad
in white standing by bed-sides, and people who had gone to sleep in old
churches and being overlooked had found themselves alone there at the
dead hour of the night: until they shuddered at the thought of the dark
rooms upstairs, yet loved to hear the wind moan too, and hoped it would
continue bravely. From time to time these happy indoor people stopped to
listen, or one held up his finger and cried ‘Hark!’ and then, above the
rumbling in the chimney, and the fast pattering on the glass, was heard
a wailing, rushing sound, which shook the walls as though a giant’s hand
were on them; then a hoarse roar as if the sea had risen; then such a
whirl and tumult that the air seemed mad; and then, with a lengthened
howl, the waves of wind swept on, and left a moment’s interval of rest.
Cheerily, though there were none abroad to see it, shone the Maypole
light that evening. Blessings on the red--deep, ruby, glowing red--old
curtain of the window; blending into one rich stream of brightness, fire
and candle, meat, drink, and company, and gleaming like a jovial
eye upon the bleak waste out of doors! Within, what carpet like its
crunching sand, what music merry as its crackling logs, what perfume
like its kitchen’s dainty breath, what weather genial as its hearty
warmth! Blessings on the old house, how sturdily it stood! How did the
vexed wind chafe and roar about its stalwart roof; how did it pant
and strive with its wide chimneys, which still poured forth from their
hospitable throats, great clouds of smoke, and puffed defiance in its
face; how, above all, did it drive and rattle at the casement, emulous
to extinguish that cheerful glow, which would not be put down and seemed
the brighter for the conflict!
The profusion too, the rich and lavish bounty, of that goodly tavern! It
was not enough that one fire roared and sparkled on its spacious hearth;
in the tiles which paved and compassed it, five hundred flickering fires
burnt brightly also. It was not enough that one red curtain shut the
wild night out, and shed its cheerful influence on the room. In every
saucepan lid, and candlestick, and vessel of copper, brass, or tin
that hung upon the walls, were countless ruddy hangings, flashing and
gleaming with every motion of the blaze, and offering, let the eye
wander where it might, interminable vistas of the same rich colour. The
old oak wainscoting, the beams, the chairs, the seats, reflected it in
a deep, dull glimmer. There were fires and red curtains in the very eyes
of the drinkers, in their buttons, in their liquor, in the pipes they
smoked.
Mr Willet sat in what had been his accustomed place five years before,
with his eyes on the eternal boiler; and had sat there since the clock
struck eight, giving no other signs of life than breathing with a loud
and constant snore (though he was wide awake), and from time to time
putting his glass to his lips, or knocking the ashes out of his pipe,
and filling it anew. It was now half-past ten. Mr Cobb and long Phil
Parkes were his companions, as of old, and for two mortal hours and a
half, none of the company had pronounced one word.
Whether people, by dint of sitting together in the same place and the
same relative positions, and doing exactly the same things for a great
many years, acquire a sixth sense, or some unknown power of influencing
each other which serves them in its stead, is a question for philosophy
to settle. But certain it is that old John Willet, Mr Parkes, and Mr
Cobb, were one and all firmly of opinion that they were very jolly
companions--rather choice spirits than otherwise; that they looked at
each other every now and then as if there were a perpetual interchange
of ideas going on among them; that no man considered himself or his
neighbour by any means silent; and that each of them nodded occasionally
when he caught the eye of another, as if he would say, ‘You have
expressed yourself extremely well, sir, in relation to that sentiment,
and I quite agree with you.’
The room was so very warm, the tobacco so very good, and the fire so
very soothing, that Mr Willet by degrees began to doze; but as he had
perfectly acquired, by dint of long habit, the art of smoking in his
sleep, and as his breathing was pretty much the same, awake or asleep,
saving that in the latter case he sometimes experienced a slight
difficulty in respiration (such as a carpenter meets with when he is
planing and comes to a knot), neither of his companions was aware of the
circumstance, until he met with one of these impediments and was obliged
to try again.
‘Johnny’s dropped off,’ said Mr Parkes in a whisper.
‘Fast as a top,’ said Mr Cobb.
Neither of them said any more until Mr Willet came to another knot--one
of surpassing obduracy--which bade fair to throw him into convulsions,
but which he got over at last without waking, by an effort quite
superhuman.
‘He sleeps uncommon hard,’ said Mr Cobb.
Mr Parkes, who was possibly a hard-sleeper himself, replied with some
disdain, ‘Not a bit on it;’ and directed his eyes towards a handbill
pasted over the chimney-piece, which was decorated at the top with a
woodcut representing a youth of tender years running away very fast,
with a bundle over his shoulder at the end of a stick, and--to carry
out the idea--a finger-post and a milestone beside him. Mr Cobb likewise
turned his eyes in the same direction, and surveyed the placard as if
that were the first time he had ever beheld it. Now, this was a document
which Mr Willet had himself indited on the disappearance of his son
Joseph, acquainting the nobility and gentry and the public in general
with the circumstances of his having left his home; describing his dress
and appearance; and offering a reward of five pounds to any person or
persons who would pack him up and return him safely to the Maypole at
Chigwell, or lodge him in any of his Majesty’s jails until such time as
his father should come and claim him. In this advertisement Mr Willet
had obstinately persisted, despite the advice and entreaties of his
friends, in describing his son as a ‘young boy;’ and furthermore as
being from eighteen inches to a couple of feet shorter than he really
was; two circumstances which perhaps accounted, in some degree, for its
never having been productive of any other effect than the transmission
to Chigwell at various times and at a vast expense, of some
five-and-forty runaways varying from six years old to twelve.
Mr Cobb and Mr Parkes looked mysteriously at this composition, at each
other, and at old John. From the time he had pasted it up with his own
hands, Mr Willet had never by word or sign alluded to the subject, or
encouraged any one else to do so. Nobody had the least notion what his
thoughts or opinions were, connected with it; whether he remembered it
or forgot it; whether he had any idea that such an event had ever taken
place. Therefore, even while he slept, no one ventured to refer to it in
his presence; and for such sufficient reasons, these his chosen friends
were silent now.
Mr Willet had got by this time into such a complication of knots,
that it was perfectly clear he must wake or die. He chose the former
alternative, and opened his eyes.
‘If he don’t come in five minutes,’ said John, ‘I shall have supper
without him.’
The antecedent of this pronoun had been mentioned for the last time
at eight o’clock. Messrs Parkes and Cobb being used to this style of
conversation, replied without difficulty that to be sure Solomon was
very late, and they wondered what had happened to detain him.
‘He an’t blown away, I suppose,’ said Parkes. ‘It’s enough to carry a
man of his figure off his legs, and easy too. Do you hear it? It blows
great guns, indeed. There’ll be many a crash in the Forest to-night, I
reckon, and many a broken branch upon the ground to-morrow.’
‘It won’t break anything in the Maypole, I take it, sir,’ returned old
John. ‘Let it try. I give it leave--what’s that?’
‘The wind,’ cried Parkes. ‘It’s howling like a Christian, and has been
all night long.’
‘Did you ever, sir,’ asked John, after a minute’s contemplation, ‘hear
the wind say “Maypole”?’
‘Why, what man ever did?’ said Parkes.
‘Nor “ahoy,” perhaps?’ added John.
‘No. Nor that neither.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Mr Willet, perfectly unmoved; ‘then if that
was the wind just now, and you’ll wait a little time without speaking,
you’ll hear it say both words very plain.’
Mr Willet was right. After listening for a few moments, they could
clearly hear, above the roar and tumult out of doors, this shout
repeated; and that with a shrillness and energy, which denoted that it
came from some person in great distress or terror. They looked at each
other, turned pale, and held their breath. No man stirred.
It was in this emergency that Mr Willet displayed something of that
strength of mind and plenitude of mental resource, which rendered him
the admiration of all his friends and neighbours. After looking at
Messrs Parkes and Cobb for some time in silence, he clapped his two
hands to his cheeks, and sent forth a roar which made the glasses dance
and rafters ring--a long-sustained, discordant bellow, that rolled
onward with the wind, and startling every echo, made the night a hundred
times more boisterous--a deep, loud, dismal bray, that sounded like a
human gong. Then, with every vein in his head and face swollen with the
great exertion, and his countenance suffused with a lively purple, he
drew a little nearer to the fire, and turning his back upon it, said
with dignity:
‘If that’s any comfort to anybody, they’re welcome to it. If it an’t,
I’m sorry for ‘em. If either of you two gentlemen likes to go out and
see what’s the matter, you can. I’m not curious, myself.’
While he spoke the cry drew nearer and nearer, footsteps passed the
window, the latch of the door was raised, it opened, was violently shut
again, and Solomon Daisy, with a lighted lantern in his hand, and the
rain streaming from his disordered dress, dashed into the room.
A more complete picture of terror than the little man presented, it
would be difficult to imagine. The perspiration stood in beads upon his
face, his knees knocked together, his every limb trembled, the power
of articulation was quite gone; and there he stood, panting for breath,
gazing on them with such livid ashy looks, that they were infected with
his fear, though ignorant of its occasion, and, reflecting his dismayed
and horror-stricken visage, stared back again without venturing to
question him; until old John Willet, in a fit of temporary insanity,
made a dive at his cravat, and, seizing him by that portion of his
dress, shook him to and fro until his very teeth appeared to rattle in
his head.
‘Tell us what’s the matter, sir,’ said John, ‘or I’ll kill you. Tell us
what’s the matter, sir, or in another second I’ll have your head under
the biler. How dare you look like that? Is anybody a-following of you?
What do you mean? Say something, or I’ll be the death of you, I will.’
Mr Willet, in his frenzy, was so near keeping his word to the very
letter (Solomon Daisy’s eyes already beginning to roll in an alarming
manner, and certain guttural sounds, as of a choking man, to issue from
his throat), that the two bystanders, recovering in some degree,
plucked him off his victim by main force, and placed the little clerk
of Chigwell in a chair. Directing a fearful gaze all round the room, he
implored them in a faint voice to give him some drink; and above all to
lock the house-door and close and bar the shutters of the room, without
a moment’s loss of time. The latter request did not tend to reassure
his hearers, or to fill them with the most comfortable sensations; they
complied with it, however, with the greatest expedition; and having
handed him a bumper of brandy-and-water, nearly boiling hot, waited to
hear what he might have to tell them.
‘Oh, Johnny,’ said Solomon, shaking him by the hand. ‘Oh, Parkes. Oh,
Tommy Cobb. Why did I leave this house to-night! On the nineteenth of
March--of all nights in the year, on the nineteenth of March!’
They all drew closer to the fire. Parkes, who was nearest to the door,
started and looked over his shoulder. Mr Willet, with great indignation,
inquired what the devil he meant by that--and then said, ‘God forgive
me,’ and glanced over his own shoulder, and came a little nearer.
‘When I left here to-night,’ said Solomon Daisy, ‘I little thought what
day of the month it was. I have never gone alone into the church after
dark on this day, for seven-and-twenty years. I have heard it said
that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of
dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died
upon.--How the wind roars!’
Nobody spoke. All eyes were fastened on Solomon.
‘I might have known,’ he said, ‘what night it was, by the foul weather.
There’s no such night in the whole year round as this is, always. I
never sleep quietly in my bed on the nineteenth of March.’
‘Go on,’ said Tom Cobb, in a low voice. ‘Nor I neither.’
Solomon Daisy raised his glass to his lips; put it down upon the floor
with such a trembling hand that the spoon tinkled in it like a little
bell; and continued thus:
‘Have I ever said that we are always brought back to this subject in
some strange way, when the nineteenth of this month comes round? Do
you suppose it was by accident, I forgot to wind up the church-clock? I
never forgot it at any other time, though it’s such a clumsy thing that
it has to be wound up every day. Why should it escape my memory on this
day of all others?
‘I made as much haste down there as I could when I went from here, but
I had to go home first for the keys; and the wind and rain being dead
against me all the way, it was pretty well as much as I could do at
times to keep my legs. I got there at last, opened the church-door, and
went in. I had not met a soul all the way, and you may judge whether it
was dull or not. Neither of you would bear me company. If you could have
known what was to come, you’d have been in the right.
‘The wind was so strong, that it was as much as I could do to shut the
church-door by putting my whole weight against it; and even as it was,
it burst wide open twice, with such strength that any of you would have
sworn, if you had been leaning against it, as I was, that somebody was
pushing on the other side. However, I got the key turned, went into the
belfry, and wound up the clock--which was very near run down, and would
have stood stock-still in half an hour.
‘As I took up my lantern again to leave the church, it came upon me all
at once that this was the nineteenth of March. It came upon me with a
kind of shock, as if a hand had struck the thought upon my forehead;
at the very same moment, I heard a voice outside the tower--rising from
among the graves.’
Here old John precipitately interrupted the speaker, and begged that if
Mr Parkes (who was seated opposite to him and was staring directly over
his head) saw anything, he would have the goodness to mention it. Mr
Parkes apologised, and remarked that he was only listening; to which Mr
Willet angrily retorted, that his listening with that kind of expression
in his face was not agreeable, and that if he couldn’t look like other
people, he had better put his pocket-handkerchief over his head.
Mr Parkes with great submission pledged himself to do so, if again
required, and John Willet turning to Solomon desired him to proceed.
After waiting until a violent gust of wind and rain, which seemed to
shake even that sturdy house to its foundation, had passed away, the
little man complied:
‘Never tell me that it was my fancy, or that it was any other sound
which I mistook for that I tell you of. I heard the wind whistle through
the arches of the church. I heard the steeple strain and creak. I heard
the rain as it came driving against the walls. I felt the bells shake. I
saw the ropes sway to and fro. And I heard that voice.’
‘What did it say?’ asked Tom Cobb.
‘I don’t know what; I don’t know that it spoke. It gave a kind of cry,
as any one of us might do, if something dreadful followed us in a dream,
and came upon us unawares; and then it died off: seeming to pass quite
round the church.’
‘I don’t see much in that,’ said John, drawing a long breath, and
looking round him like a man who felt relieved.
‘Perhaps not,’ returned his friend, ‘but that’s not all.’
‘What more do you mean to say, sir, is to come?’ asked John, pausing in
the act of wiping his face upon his apron. ‘What are you a-going to tell
us of next?’
‘What I saw.’
‘Saw!’ echoed all three, bending forward.
‘When I opened the church-door to come out,’ said the little man, with
an expression of face which bore ample testimony to the sincerity of
his conviction, ‘when I opened the church-door to come out, which I did
suddenly, for I wanted to get it shut again before another gust of wind
came up, there crossed me--so close, that by stretching out my finger
I could have touched it--something in the likeness of a man. It was
bare-headed to the storm. It turned its face without stopping, and fixed
its eyes on mine. It was a ghost--a spirit.’
‘Whose?’ they all three cried together.
In the excess of his emotion (for he fell back trembling in his chair,
and waved his hand as if entreating them to question him no further),
his answer was lost on all but old John Willet, who happened to be
seated close beside him.
‘Who!’ cried Parkes and Tom Cobb, looking eagerly by turns at Solomon
Daisy and at Mr Willet. ‘Who was it?’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Mr Willet after a long pause, ‘you needn’t ask. The
likeness of a murdered man. This is the nineteenth of March.’
A profound silence ensued.
‘If you’ll take my advice,’ said John, ‘we had better, one and all, keep
this a secret. Such tales would not be liked at the Warren. Let us keep
it to ourselves for the present time at all events, or we may get into
trouble, and Solomon may lose his place. Whether it was really as he
says, or whether it wasn’t, is no matter. Right or wrong, nobody would
believe him. As to the probabilities, I don’t myself think,’ said Mr
Willet, eyeing the corners of the room in a manner which showed that,
like some other philosophers, he was not quite easy in his theory,
‘that a ghost as had been a man of sense in his lifetime, would be out
a-walking in such weather--I only know that I wouldn’t, if I was one.’
But this heretical doctrine was strongly opposed by the other three,
who quoted a great many precedents to show that bad weather was the very
time for such appearances; and Mr Parkes (who had had a ghost in his
family, by the mother’s side) argued the matter with so much ingenuity
and force of illustration, that John was only saved from having to
retract his opinion by the opportune appearance of supper, to which they
applied themselves with a dreadful relish. Even Solomon Daisy himself,
by dint of the elevating influences of fire, lights, brandy, and good
company, so far recovered as to handle his knife and fork in a highly
creditable manner, and to display a capacity both of eating and
drinking, such as banished all fear of his having sustained any lasting
injury from his fright.
Supper done, they crowded round the fire again, and, as is common on
such occasions, propounded all manner of leading questions calculated
to surround the story with new horrors and surprises. But Solomon Daisy,
notwithstanding these temptations, adhered so steadily to his original
account, and repeated it so often, with such slight variations, and with
such solemn asseverations of its truth and reality, that his hearers
were (with good reason) more astonished than at first. As he took John
Willet’s view of the matter in regard to the propriety of not bruiting
the tale abroad, unless the spirit should appear to him again, in which
case it would be necessary to take immediate counsel with the clergyman,
it was solemnly resolved that it should be hushed up and kept quiet.
And as most men like to have a secret to tell which may exalt their own
importance, they arrived at this conclusion with perfect unanimity.
As it was by this time growing late, and was long past their usual hour
of separating, the cronies parted for the night. Solomon Daisy, with a
fresh candle in his lantern, repaired homewards under the escort of long
Phil Parkes and Mr Cobb, who were rather more nervous than himself. Mr
Willet, after seeing them to the door, returned to collect his thoughts
with the assistance of the boiler, and to listen to the storm of wind
and rain, which had not yet abated one jot of its fury.
Chapter 34
Before old John had looked at the boiler quite twenty minutes, he got
his ideas into a focus, and brought them to bear upon Solomon Daisy’s
story. The more he thought of it, the more impressed he became with
a sense of his own wisdom, and a desire that Mr Haredale should be
impressed with it likewise. At length, to the end that he might sustain
a principal and important character in the affair; and might have the
start of Solomon and his two friends, through whose means he knew the
adventure, with a variety of exaggerations, would be known to at least
a score of people, and most likely to Mr Haredale himself, by
breakfast-time to-morrow; he determined to repair to the Warren before
going to bed.
‘He’s my landlord,’ thought John, as he took a candle in his hand, and
setting it down in a corner out of the wind’s way, opened a casement in
the rear of the house, looking towards the stables. ‘We haven’t met of
late years so often as we used to do--changes are taking place in the
family--it’s desirable that I should stand as well with them, in point
of dignity, as possible--the whispering about of this here tale will
anger him--it’s good to have confidences with a gentleman of his natur’,
and set one’s-self right besides. Halloa there! Hugh--Hugh. Hal-loa!’
When he had repeated this shout a dozen times, and startled every pigeon
from its slumbers, a door in one of the ruinous old buildings opened,
and a rough voice demanded what was amiss now, that a man couldn’t even
have his sleep in quiet.
‘What! Haven’t you sleep enough, growler, that you’re not to be knocked
up for once?’ said John.
‘No,’ replied the voice, as the speaker yawned and shook himself. ‘Not
half enough.’
‘I don’t know how you CAN sleep, with the wind a bellowsing and roaring
about you, making the tiles fly like a pack of cards,’ said John; ‘but
no matter for that. Wrap yourself up in something or another, and come
here, for you must go as far as the Warren with me. And look sharp about
it.’
Hugh, with much low growling and muttering, went back into his lair;
and presently reappeared, carrying a lantern and a cudgel, and enveloped
from head to foot in an old, frowzy, slouching horse-cloth. Mr Willet
received this figure at the back-door, and ushered him into the bar,
while he wrapped himself in sundry greatcoats and capes, and so tied and
knotted his face in shawls and handkerchiefs, that how he breathed was a
mystery.
‘You don’t take a man out of doors at near midnight in such weather,
without putting some heart into him, do you, master?’ said Hugh.
‘Yes I do, sir,’ returned Mr Willet. ‘I put the heart (as you call it)
into him when he has brought me safe home again, and his standing steady
on his legs an’t of so much consequence. So hold that light up, if you
please, and go on a step or two before, to show the way.’
Hugh obeyed with a very indifferent grace, and a longing glance at the
bottles. Old John, laying strict injunctions on his cook to keep the
doors locked in his absence, and to open to nobody but himself on pain
of dismissal, followed him into the blustering darkness out of doors.
The way was wet and dismal, and the night so black, that if Mr Willet
had been his own pilot, he would have walked into a deep horsepond
within a few hundred yards of his own house, and would certainly have
terminated his career in that ignoble sphere of action. But Hugh, who
had a sight as keen as any hawk’s, and, apart from that endowment, could
have found his way blindfold to any place within a dozen miles, dragged
old John along, quite deaf to his remonstrances, and took his own course
without the slightest reference to, or notice of, his master. So they
made head against the wind as they best could; Hugh crushing the wet
grass beneath his heavy tread, and stalking on after his ordinary savage
fashion; John Willet following at arm’s length, picking his steps, and
looking about him, now for bogs and ditches, and now for such stray
ghosts as might be wandering abroad, with looks of as much dismay and
uneasiness as his immovable face was capable of expressing.
At length they stood upon the broad gravel-walk before the Warren-house.
The building was profoundly dark, and none were moving near it save
themselves. From one solitary turret-chamber, however, there shone a
ray of light; and towards this speck of comfort in the cold, cheerless,
silent scene, Mr Willet bade his pilot lead him.
‘The old room,’ said John, looking timidly upward; ‘Mr Reuben’s own
apartment, God be with us! I wonder his brother likes to sit there, so
late at night--on this night too.’
‘Why, where else should he sit?’ asked Hugh, holding the lantern to his
breast, to keep the candle from the wind, while he trimmed it with his
fingers. ‘It’s snug enough, an’t it?’
‘Snug!’ said John indignantly. ‘You have a comfortable idea of snugness,
you have, sir. Do you know what was done in that room, you ruffian?’
‘Why, what is it the worse for that!’ cried Hugh, looking into John’s
fat face. ‘Does it keep out the rain, and snow, and wind, the less for
that? Is it less warm or dry, because a man was killed there? Ha, ha,
ha! Never believe it, master. One man’s no such matter as that comes
to.’
Mr Willet fixed his dull eyes on his follower, and began--by a species
of inspiration--to think it just barely possible that he was something
of a dangerous character, and that it might be advisable to get rid
of him one of these days. He was too prudent to say anything, with the
journey home before him; and therefore turned to the iron gate before
which this brief dialogue had passed, and pulled the handle of the bell
that hung beside it. The turret in which the light appeared being at
one corner of the building, and only divided from the path by one of
the garden-walks, upon which this gate opened, Mr Haredale threw up the
window directly, and demanded who was there.
‘Begging pardon, sir,’ said John, ‘I knew you sat up late, and made bold
to come round, having a word to say to you.’
‘Willet--is it not?’
‘Of the Maypole--at your service, sir.’
Mr Haredale closed the window, and withdrew. He presently appeared at
a door in the bottom of the turret, and coming across the garden-walk,
unlocked the gate and let them in.
‘You are a late visitor, Willet. What is the matter?’
‘Nothing to speak of, sir,’ said John; ‘an idle tale, I thought you
ought to know of; nothing more.’
‘Let your man go forward with the lantern, and give me your hand. The
stairs are crooked and narrow. Gently with your light, friend. You swing
it like a censer.’
Hugh, who had already reached the turret, held it more steadily, and
ascended first, turning round from time to time to shed his light
downward on the steps. Mr Haredale following next, eyed his lowering
face with no great favour; and Hugh, looking down on him, returned his
glances with interest, as they climbed the winding stairs.
It terminated in a little ante-room adjoining that from which they had
seen the light. Mr Haredale entered first, and led the way through it
into the latter chamber, where he seated himself at a writing-table from
which he had risen when they had rung the bell.
‘Come in,’ he said, beckoning to old John, who remained bowing at the
door. ‘Not you, friend,’ he added hastily to Hugh, who entered also.
‘Willet, why do you bring that fellow here?’
‘Why, sir,’ returned John, elevating his eyebrows, and lowering his
voice to the tone in which the question had been asked him, ‘he’s a good
guard, you see.’
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said Mr Haredale, looking towards him as he
spoke. ‘I doubt it. He has an evil eye.’
‘There’s no imagination in his eye,’ returned Mr Willet, glancing over
his shoulder at the organ in question, ‘certainly.’
‘There is no good there, be assured,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Wait in that
little room, friend, and close the door between us.’
Hugh shrugged his shoulders, and with a disdainful look, which showed,
either that he had overheard, or that he guessed the purport of their
whispering, did as he was told. When he was shut out, Mr Haredale turned
to John, and bade him go on with what he had to say, but not to speak
too loud, for there were quick ears yonder.
Thus cautioned, Mr Willet, in an oily whisper, recited all that he
had heard and said that night; laying particular stress upon his own
sagacity, upon his great regard for the family, and upon his solicitude
for their peace of mind and happiness. The story moved his auditor much
more than he had expected. Mr Haredale often changed his attitude, rose
and paced the room, returned again, desired him to repeat, as nearly as
he could, the very words that Solomon had used, and gave so many other
signs of being disturbed and ill at ease, that even Mr Willet was
surprised.
‘You did quite right,’ he said, at the end of a long conversation, ‘to
bid them keep this story secret. It is a foolish fancy on the part of
this weak-brained man, bred in his fears and superstition. But Miss
Haredale, though she would know it to be so, would be disturbed by it
if it reached her ears; it is too nearly connected with a subject very
painful to us all, to be heard with indifference. You were most prudent,
and have laid me under a great obligation. I thank you very much.’
This was equal to John’s most sanguine expectations; but he would have
preferred Mr Haredale’s looking at him when he spoke, as if he really
did thank him, to his walking up and down, speaking by fits and starts,
often stopping with his eyes fixed on the ground, moving hurriedly on
again, like one distracted, and seeming almost unconscious of what he
said or did.
This, however, was his manner; and it was so embarrassing to John that
he sat quite passive for a long time, not knowing what to do. At length
he rose. Mr Haredale stared at him for a moment as though he had quite
forgotten his being present, then shook hands with him, and opened the
door. Hugh, who was, or feigned to be, fast asleep on the ante-chamber
floor, sprang up on their entrance, and throwing his cloak about him,
grasped his stick and lantern, and prepared to descend the stairs.
‘Stay,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Will this man drink?’
‘Drink! He’d drink the Thames up, if it was strong enough, sir,’ replied
John Willet. ‘He’ll have something when he gets home. He’s better
without it, now, sir.’
‘Nay. Half the distance is done,’ said Hugh. ‘What a hard master you
are! I shall go home the better for one glassful, halfway. Come!’
As John made no reply, Mr Haredale brought out a glass of liquor, and
gave it to Hugh, who, as he took it in his hand, threw part of it upon
the floor.
‘What do you mean by splashing your drink about a gentleman’s house,
sir?’ said John.
‘I’m drinking a toast,’ Hugh rejoined, holding the glass above his head,
and fixing his eyes on Mr Haredale’s face; ‘a toast to this house and
its master.’ With that he muttered something to himself, and drank the
rest, and setting down the glass, preceded them without another word.
John was a good deal scandalised by this observance, but seeing that
Mr Haredale took little heed of what Hugh said or did, and that his
thoughts were otherwise employed, he offered no apology, and went in
silence down the stairs, across the walk, and through the garden-gate.
They stopped upon the outer side for Hugh to hold the light while Mr
Haredale locked it on the inner; and then John saw with wonder (as he
often afterwards related), that he was very pale, and that his face
had changed so much and grown so haggard since their entrance, that he
almost seemed another man.
They were in the open road again, and John Willet was walking on behind
his escort, as he had come, thinking very steadily of what he had just
now seen, when Hugh drew him suddenly aside, and almost at the same
instant three horsemen swept past--the nearest brushed his shoulder even
then--who, checking their steeds as suddenly as they could, stood still,
and waited for their coming up.
Chapter 35
When John Willet saw that the horsemen wheeled smartly round, and drew
up three abreast in the narrow road, waiting for him and his man to join
them, it occurred to him with unusual precipitation that they must be
highwaymen; and had Hugh been armed with a blunderbuss, in place of his
stout cudgel, he would certainly have ordered him to fire it off at a
venture, and would, while the word of command was obeyed, have consulted
his own personal safety in immediate flight. Under the circumstances of
disadvantage, however, in which he and his guard were placed, he deemed
it prudent to adopt a different style of generalship, and therefore
whispered his attendant to address them in the most peaceable and
courteous terms. By way of acting up to the spirit and letter of this
instruction, Hugh stepped forward, and flourishing his staff before the
very eyes of the rider nearest to him, demanded roughly what he and his
fellows meant by so nearly galloping over them, and why they scoured the
king’s highway at that late hour of night.
The man whom he addressed was beginning an angry reply in the same
strain, when he was checked by the horseman in the centre, who,
interposing with an air of authority, inquired in a somewhat loud but
not harsh or unpleasant voice:
‘Pray, is this the London road?’
‘If you follow it right, it is,’ replied Hugh roughly.
‘Nay, brother,’ said the same person, ‘you’re but a churlish Englishman,
if Englishman you be--which I should much doubt but for your tongue.
Your companion, I am sure, will answer me more civilly. How say you,
friend?’
‘I say it IS the London road, sir,’ answered John. ‘And I wish,’ he
added in a subdued voice, as he turned to Hugh, ‘that you was in any
other road, you vagabond. Are you tired of your life, sir, that you go
a-trying to provoke three great neck-or-nothing chaps, that could keep
on running over us, back’ards and for’ards, till we was dead, and then
take our bodies up behind ‘em, and drown us ten miles off?’
‘How far is it to London?’ inquired the same speaker.
‘Why, from here, sir,’ answered John, persuasively, ‘it’s thirteen very
easy mile.’
The adjective was thrown in, as an inducement to the travellers to
ride away with all speed; but instead of having the desired effect, it
elicited from the same person, the remark, ‘Thirteen miles! That’s a
long distance!’ which was followed by a short pause of indecision.
‘Pray,’ said the gentleman, ‘are there any inns hereabouts?’ At the word
‘inns,’ John plucked up his spirit in a surprising manner; his fears
rolled off like smoke; all the landlord stirred within him.
‘There are no inns,’ rejoined Mr Willet, with a strong emphasis on the
plural number; ‘but there’s a Inn--one Inn--the Maypole Inn. That’s a
Inn indeed. You won’t see the like of that Inn often.’
‘You keep it, perhaps?’ said the horseman, smiling.
‘I do, sir,’ replied John, greatly wondering how he had found this out.
‘And how far is the Maypole from here?’
‘About a mile’--John was going to add that it was the easiest mile in
all the world, when the third rider, who had hitherto kept a little in
the rear, suddenly interposed:
‘And have you one excellent bed, landlord? Hem! A bed that you can
recommend--a bed that you are sure is well aired--a bed that has been
slept in by some perfectly respectable and unexceptionable person?’
‘We don’t take in no tagrag and bobtail at our house, sir,’ answered
John. ‘And as to the bed itself--’
‘Say, as to three beds,’ interposed the gentleman who had spoken before;
‘for we shall want three if we stay, though my friend only speaks of
one.’
‘No, no, my lord; you are too good, you are too kind; but your life is
of far too much importance to the nation in these portentous times, to
be placed upon a level with one so useless and so poor as mine. A great
cause, my lord, a mighty cause, depends on you. You are its leader and
its champion, its advanced guard and its van. It is the cause of our
altars and our homes, our country and our faith. Let ME sleep on a
chair--the carpet--anywhere. No one will repine if I take cold or fever.
Let John Grueby pass the night beneath the open sky--no one will
repine for HIM. But forty thousand men of this our island in the wave
(exclusive of women and children) rivet their eyes and thoughts on Lord
George Gordon; and every day, from the rising up of the sun to the going
down of the same, pray for his health and vigour. My lord,’ said the
speaker, rising in his stirrups, ‘it is a glorious cause, and must not
be forgotten. My lord, it is a mighty cause, and must not be endangered.
My lord, it is a holy cause, and must not be deserted.’
‘It IS a holy cause,’ exclaimed his lordship, lifting up his hat with
great solemnity. ‘Amen.’
‘John Grueby,’ said the long-winded gentleman, in a tone of mild
reproof, ‘his lordship said Amen.’
‘I heard my lord, sir,’ said the man, sitting like a statue on his
horse.
‘And do not YOU say Amen, likewise?’
To which John Grueby made no reply at all, but sat looking straight
before him.
‘You surprise me, Grueby,’ said the gentleman. ‘At a crisis like the
present, when Queen Elizabeth, that maiden monarch, weeps within
her tomb, and Bloody Mary, with a brow of gloom and shadow, stalks
triumphant--’
‘Oh, sir,’ cried the man, gruffly, ‘where’s the use of talking of Bloody
Mary, under such circumstances as the present, when my lord’s wet
through, and tired with hard riding? Let’s either go on to London, sir,
or put up at once; or that unfort’nate Bloody Mary will have more to
answer for--and she’s done a deal more harm in her grave than she ever
did in her lifetime, I believe.’
By this time Mr Willet, who had never heard so many words spoken
together at one time, or delivered with such volubility and emphasis as
by the long-winded gentleman; and whose brain, being wholly unable to
sustain or compass them, had quite given itself up for lost; recovered
so far as to observe that there was ample accommodation at the Maypole
for all the party: good beds; neat wines; excellent entertainment
for man and beast; private rooms for large and small parties; dinners
dressed upon the shortest notice; choice stabling, and a lock-up
coach-house; and, in short, to run over such recommendatory scraps of
language as were painted up on various portions of the building, and
which in the course of some forty years he had learnt to repeat with
tolerable correctness. He was considering whether it was at all possible
to insert any novel sentences to the same purpose, when the gentleman
who had spoken first, turning to him of the long wind, exclaimed, ‘What
say you, Gashford? Shall we tarry at this house he speaks of, or press
forward? You shall decide.’
‘I would submit, my lord, then,’ returned the person he appealed to,
in a silky tone, ‘that your health and spirits--so important, under
Providence, to our great cause, our pure and truthful cause’--here his
lordship pulled off his hat again, though it was raining hard--‘require
refreshment and repose.’
‘Go on before, landlord, and show the way,’ said Lord George Gordon; ‘we
will follow at a footpace.’
‘If you’ll give me leave, my lord,’ said John Grueby, in a low voice,
‘I’ll change my proper place, and ride before you. The looks of the
landlord’s friend are not over honest, and it may be as well to be
cautious with him.’
‘John Grueby is quite right,’ interposed Mr Gashford, falling back
hastily. ‘My lord, a life so precious as yours must not be put in peril.
Go forward, John, by all means. If you have any reason to suspect the
fellow, blow his brains out.’
John made no answer, but looking straight before him, as his custom
seemed to be when the secretary spoke, bade Hugh push on, and followed
close behind him. Then came his lordship, with Mr Willet at his bridle
rein; and, last of all, his lordship’s secretary--for that, it seemed,
was Gashford’s office.
Hugh strode briskly on, often looking back at the servant, whose horse
was close upon his heels, and glancing with a leer at his holster
case of pistols, by which he seemed to set great store. He was a
square-built, strong-made, bull-necked fellow, of the true English
breed; and as Hugh measured him with his eye, he measured Hugh,
regarding him meanwhile with a look of bluff disdain. He was much older
than the Maypole man, being to all appearance five-and-forty; but was
one of those self-possessed, hard-headed, imperturbable fellows, who, if
they are ever beaten at fisticuffs, or other kind of warfare, never know
it, and go on coolly till they win.
‘If I led you wrong now,’ said Hugh, tauntingly, ‘you’d--ha ha
ha!--you’d shoot me through the head, I suppose.’
John Grueby took no more notice of this remark than if he had been deaf
and Hugh dumb; but kept riding on quite comfortably, with his eyes fixed
on the horizon.
‘Did you ever try a fall with a man when you were young, master?’ said
Hugh. ‘Can you make any play at single-stick?’
John Grueby looked at him sideways with the same contented air, but
deigned not a word in answer.
‘--Like this?’ said Hugh, giving his cudgel one of those skilful
flourishes, in which the rustic of that time delighted. ‘Whoop!’
‘--Or that,’ returned John Grueby, beating down his guard with his whip,
and striking him on the head with its butt end. ‘Yes, I played a little
once. You wear your hair too long; I should have cracked your crown if
it had been a little shorter.’
It was a pretty smart, loud-sounding rap, as it was, and evidently
astonished Hugh; who, for the moment, seemed disposed to drag his new
acquaintance from his saddle. But his face betokening neither malice,
triumph, rage, nor any lingering idea that he had given him offence;
his eyes gazing steadily in the old direction, and his manner being as
careless and composed as if he had merely brushed away a fly; Hugh was
so puzzled, and so disposed to look upon him as a customer of almost
supernatural toughness, that he merely laughed, and cried ‘Well done!’
then, sheering off a little, led the way in silence.
Before the lapse of many minutes the party halted at the Maypole door.
Lord George and his secretary quickly dismounting, gave their horses to
their servant, who, under the guidance of Hugh, repaired to the stables.
Right glad to escape from the inclemency of the night, they followed
Mr Willet into the common room, and stood warming themselves and drying
their clothes before the cheerful fire, while he busied himself with
such orders and preparations as his guest’s high quality required.
As he bustled in and out of the room, intent on these arrangements, he
had an opportunity of observing the two travellers, of whom, as yet, he
knew nothing but the voice. The lord, the great personage who did the
Maypole so much honour, was about the middle height, of a slender make,
and sallow complexion, with an aquiline nose, and long hair of a reddish
brown, combed perfectly straight and smooth about his ears, and slightly
powdered, but without the faintest vestige of a curl. He was attired,
under his greatcoat, in a full suit of black, quite free from any
ornament, and of the most precise and sober cut. The gravity of his
dress, together with a certain lankness of cheek and stiffness of
deportment, added nearly ten years to his age, but his figure was that
of one not yet past thirty. As he stood musing in the red glow of
the fire, it was striking to observe his very bright large eye, which
betrayed a restlessness of thought and purpose, singularly at variance
with the studied composure and sobriety of his mien, and with his
quaint and sad apparel. It had nothing harsh or cruel in its expression;
neither had his face, which was thin and mild, and wore an air of
melancholy; but it was suggestive of an indefinable uneasiness; which
infected those who looked upon him, and filled them with a kind of pity
for the man: though why it did so, they would have had some trouble to
explain.
Gashford, the secretary, was taller, angularly made, high-shouldered,
bony, and ungraceful. His dress, in imitation of his superior, was
demure and staid in the extreme; his manner, formal and constrained.
This gentleman had an overhanging brow, great hands and feet and ears,
and a pair of eyes that seemed to have made an unnatural retreat into
his head, and to have dug themselves a cave to hide in. His manner was
smooth and humble, but very sly and slinking. He wore the aspect of a
man who was always lying in wait for something that WOULDN’T come to
pass; but he looked patient--very patient--and fawned like a spaniel
dog. Even now, while he warmed and rubbed his hands before the blaze,
he had the air of one who only presumed to enjoy it in his degree as a
commoner; and though he knew his lord was not regarding him, he looked
into his face from time to time, and with a meek and deferential manner,
smiled as if for practice.
Such were the guests whom old John Willet, with a fixed and leaden
eye, surveyed a hundred times, and to whom he now advanced with a state
candlestick in each hand, beseeching them to follow him into a worthier
chamber. ‘For my lord,’ said John--it is odd enough, but certain people
seem to have as great a pleasure in pronouncing titles as their owners
have in wearing them--‘this room, my lord, isn’t at all the sort of
place for your lordship, and I have to beg your lordship’s pardon for
keeping you here, my lord, one minute.’
With this address, John ushered them upstairs into the state apartment,
which, like many other things of state, was cold and comfortless. Their
own footsteps, reverberating through the spacious room, struck upon
their hearing with a hollow sound; and its damp and chilly atmosphere
was rendered doubly cheerless by contrast with the homely warmth they
had deserted.
It was of no use, however, to propose a return to the place they had
quitted, for the preparations went on so briskly that there was no time
to stop them. John, with the tall candlesticks in his hands, bowed them
up to the fireplace; Hugh, striding in with a lighted brand and pile
of firewood, cast it down upon the hearth, and set it in a blaze; John
Grueby (who had a great blue cockade in his hat, which he appeared
to despise mightily) brought in the portmanteau he had carried on his
horse, and placed it on the floor; and presently all three were busily
engaged in drawing out the screen, laying the cloth, inspecting the
beds, lighting fires in the bedrooms, expediting the supper, and making
everything as cosy and as snug as might be, on so short a notice. In
less than an hour’s time, supper had been served, and ate, and cleared
away; and Lord George and his secretary, with slippered feet, and legs
stretched out before the fire, sat over some hot mulled wine together.
‘So ends, my lord,’ said Gashford, filling his glass with great
complacency, ‘the blessed work of a most blessed day.’
‘And of a blessed yesterday,’ said his lordship, raising his head.
‘Ah!’--and here the secretary clasped his hands--‘a blessed yesterday
indeed! The Protestants of Suffolk are godly men and true. Though others
of our countrymen have lost their way in darkness, even as we, my lord,
did lose our road to-night, theirs is the light and glory.’
‘Did I move them, Gashford?’ said Lord George.
‘Move them, my lord! Move them! They cried to be led on against the
Papists, they vowed a dreadful vengeance on their heads, they roared
like men possessed--’
‘But not by devils,’ said his lord.
‘By devils! my lord! By angels.’
‘Yes--oh surely--by angels, no doubt,’ said Lord George, thrusting his
hands into his pockets, taking them out again to bite his nails, and
looking uncomfortably at the fire. ‘Of course by angels--eh Gashford?’
‘You do not doubt it, my lord?’ said the secretary.
‘No--No,’ returned his lord. ‘No. Why should I? I suppose it would be
decidedly irreligious to doubt it--wouldn’t it, Gashford? Though there
certainly were,’ he added, without waiting for an answer, ‘some plaguy
ill-looking characters among them.’
‘When you warmed,’ said the secretary, looking sharply at the other’s
downcast eyes, which brightened slowly as he spoke; ‘when you warmed
into that noble outbreak; when you told them that you were never of
the lukewarm or the timid tribe, and bade them take heed that they were
prepared to follow one who would lead them on, though to the very death;
when you spoke of a hundred and twenty thousand men across the Scottish
border who would take their own redress at any time, if it were not
conceded; when you cried “Perish the Pope and all his base adherents;
the penal laws against them shall never be repealed while Englishmen
have hearts and hands”--and waved your own and touched your sword; and
when they cried “No Popery!” and you cried “No; not even if we wade in
blood,” and they threw up their hats and cried “Hurrah! not even if we
wade in blood; No Popery! Lord George! Down with the Papists--Vengeance
on their heads:” when this was said and done, and a word from you, my
lord, could raise or still the tumult--ah! then I felt what greatness
was indeed, and thought, When was there ever power like this of Lord
George Gordon’s!’
‘It’s a great power. You’re right. It is a great power!’ he cried with
sparkling eyes. ‘But--dear Gashford--did I really say all that?’
‘And how much more!’ cried the secretary, looking upwards. ‘Ah! how much
more!’
‘And I told them what you say, about the one hundred and forty thousand
men in Scotland, did I!’ he asked with evident delight. ‘That was bold.’
‘Our cause is boldness. Truth is always bold.’
‘Certainly. So is religion. She’s bold, Gashford?’
‘The true religion is, my lord.’
‘And that’s ours,’ he rejoined, moving uneasily in his seat, and biting
his nails as though he would pare them to the quick. ‘There can be no
doubt of ours being the true one. You feel as certain of that as I do,
Gashford, don’t you?’
‘Does my lord ask ME,’ whined Gashford, drawing his chair nearer with
an injured air, and laying his broad flat hand upon the table; ‘ME,’
he repeated, bending the dark hollows of his eyes upon him with an
unwholesome smile, ‘who, stricken by the magic of his eloquence in
Scotland but a year ago, abjured the errors of the Romish church, and
clung to him as one whose timely hand had plucked me from a pit?’
‘True. No--No. I--I didn’t mean it,’ replied the other, shaking him by
the hand, rising from his seat, and pacing restlessly about the room.
‘It’s a proud thing to lead the people, Gashford,’ he added as he made a
sudden halt.
‘By force of reason too,’ returned the pliant secretary.
‘Ay, to be sure. They may cough and jeer, and groan in Parliament, and
call me fool and madman, but which of them can raise this human sea and
make it swell and roar at pleasure? Not one.’
‘Not one,’ repeated Gashford.
‘Which of them can say for his honesty, what I can say for mine; which
of them has refused a minister’s bribe of one thousand pounds a year, to
resign his seat in favour of another? Not one.’
‘Not one,’ repeated Gashford again--taking the lion’s share of the
mulled wine between whiles.
‘And as we are honest, true, and in a sacred cause, Gashford,’ said Lord
George with a heightened colour and in a louder voice, as he laid his
fevered hand upon his shoulder, ‘and are the only men who regard the
mass of people out of doors, or are regarded by them, we will uphold
them to the last; and will raise a cry against these un-English Papists
which shall re-echo through the country, and roll with a noise like
thunder. I will be worthy of the motto on my coat of arms, “Called and
chosen and faithful.”’
‘Called,’ said the secretary, ‘by Heaven.’
‘I am.’
‘Chosen by the people.’
‘Yes.’
‘Faithful to both.’
‘To the block!’
It would be difficult to convey an adequate idea of the excited manner
in which he gave these answers to the secretary’s promptings; of the
rapidity of his utterance, or the violence of his tone and gesture; in
which, struggling through his Puritan’s demeanour, was something wild
and ungovernable which broke through all restraint. For some minutes he
walked rapidly up and down the room, then stopping suddenly, exclaimed,
‘Gashford--YOU moved them yesterday too. Oh yes! You did.’
‘I shone with a reflected light, my lord,’ replied the humble secretary,
laying his hand upon his heart. ‘I did my best.’
‘You did well,’ said his master, ‘and are a great and worthy instrument.
If you will ring for John Grueby to carry the portmanteau into my room,
and will wait here while I undress, we will dispose of business as
usual, if you’re not too tired.’
‘Too tired, my lord!--But this is his consideration! Christian from head
to foot.’ With which soliloquy, the secretary tilted the jug, and looked
very hard into the mulled wine, to see how much remained.
John Willet and John Grueby appeared together. The one bearing the great
candlesticks, and the other the portmanteau, showed the deluded lord
into his chamber; and left the secretary alone, to yawn and shake
himself, and finally to fall asleep before the fire.
‘Now, Mr Gashford sir,’ said John Grueby in his ear, after what appeared
to him a moment of unconsciousness; ‘my lord’s abed.’
‘Oh. Very good, John,’ was his mild reply. ‘Thank you, John. Nobody need
sit up. I know my room.’
‘I hope you’re not a-going to trouble your head to-night, or my lord’s
head neither, with anything more about Bloody Mary,’ said John. ‘I wish
the blessed old creetur had never been born.’
‘I said you might go to bed, John,’ returned the secretary. ‘You didn’t
hear me, I think.’
‘Between Bloody Marys, and blue cockades, and glorious Queen Besses,
and no Poperys, and Protestant associations, and making of speeches,’
pursued John Grueby, looking, as usual, a long way off, and taking no
notice of this hint, ‘my lord’s half off his head. When we go out o’
doors, such a set of ragamuffins comes a-shouting after us, “Gordon
forever!” that I’m ashamed of myself and don’t know where to look. When
we’re indoors, they come a-roaring and screaming about the house like so
many devils; and my lord instead of ordering them to be drove away, goes
out into the balcony and demeans himself by making speeches to ‘em, and
calls ‘em “Men of England,” and “Fellow-countrymen,” as if he was fond
of ‘em and thanked ‘em for coming. I can’t make it out, but they’re all
mixed up somehow or another with that unfort’nate Bloody Mary, and call
her name out till they’re hoarse. They’re all Protestants too--every man
and boy among ‘em: and Protestants are very fond of spoons, I find, and
silver-plate in general, whenever area-gates is left open accidentally.
I wish that was the worst of it, and that no more harm might be to come;
but if you don’t stop these ugly customers in time, Mr Gashford (and I
know you; you’re the man that blows the fire), you’ll find ‘em grow a
little bit too strong for you. One of these evenings, when the weather
gets warmer and Protestants are thirsty, they’ll be pulling London
down,--and I never heard that Bloody Mary went as far as THAT.’
Gashford had vanished long ago, and these remarks had been bestowed on
empty air. Not at all discomposed by the discovery, John Grueby fixed
his hat on, wrongside foremost that he might be unconscious of the
shadow of the obnoxious cockade, and withdrew to bed; shaking his head
in a very gloomy and prophetic manner until he reached his chamber.
Chapter 36
Gashford, with a smiling face, but still with looks of profound
deference and humility, betook himself towards his master’s room,
smoothing his hair down as he went, and humming a psalm tune. As he
approached Lord George’s door, he cleared his throat and hummed more
vigorously.
There was a remarkable contrast between this man’s occupation at the
moment, and the expression of his countenance, which was singularly
repulsive and malicious. His beetling brow almost obscured his eyes;
his lip was curled contemptuously; his very shoulders seemed to sneer in
stealthy whisperings with his great flapped ears.
‘Hush!’ he muttered softly, as he peeped in at the chamber-door. ‘He
seems to be asleep. Pray Heaven he is! Too much watching, too much care,
too much thought--ah! Lord preserve him for a martyr! He is a saint, if
ever saint drew breath on this bad earth.’
Placing his light upon a table, he walked on tiptoe to the fire, and
sitting in a chair before it with his back towards the bed, went on
communing with himself like one who thought aloud:
‘The saviour of his country and his country’s religion, the friend of
his poor countrymen, the enemy of the proud and harsh; beloved of the
rejected and oppressed, adored by forty thousand bold and loyal English
hearts--what happy slumbers his should be!’ And here he sighed, and
warmed his hands, and shook his head as men do when their hearts are
full, and heaved another sigh, and warmed his hands again.
‘Why, Gashford?’ said Lord George, who was lying broad awake, upon his
side, and had been staring at him from his entrance.
‘My--my lord,’ said Gashford, starting and looking round as though in
great surprise. ‘I have disturbed you!’
‘I have not been sleeping.’
‘Not sleeping!’ he repeated, with assumed confusion. ‘What can I say
for having in your presence given utterance to thoughts--but they were
sincere--they were sincere!’ exclaimed the secretary, drawing his sleeve
in a hasty way across his eyes; ‘and why should I regret your having
heard them?’
‘Gashford,’ said the poor lord, stretching out his hand with manifest
emotion. ‘Do not regret it. You love me well, I know--too well. I don’t
deserve such homage.’
Gashford made no reply, but grasped the hand and pressed it to his lips.
Then rising, and taking from the trunk a little desk, he placed it on
a table near the fire, unlocked it with a key he carried in his pocket,
sat down before it, took out a pen, and, before dipping it in the
inkstand, sucked it--to compose the fashion of his mouth perhaps, on
which a smile was hovering yet.
‘How do our numbers stand since last enrolling-night?’ inquired Lord
George. ‘Are we really forty thousand strong, or do we still speak in
round numbers when we take the Association at that amount?’
‘Our total now exceeds that number by a score and three,’ Gashford
replied, casting his eyes upon his papers.
‘The funds?’
‘Not VERY improving; but there is some manna in the wilderness, my lord.
Hem! On Friday night the widows’ mites dropped in. “Forty scavengers,
three and fourpence. An aged pew-opener of St Martin’s parish, sixpence.
A bell-ringer of the established church, sixpence. A Protestant infant,
newly born, one halfpenny. The United Link Boys, three shillings--one
bad. The anti-popish prisoners in Newgate, five and fourpence. A friend
in Bedlam, half-a-crown. Dennis the hangman, one shilling.”’
‘That Dennis,’ said his lordship, ‘is an earnest man. I marked him in
the crowd in Welbeck Street, last Friday.’
‘A good man,’ rejoined the secretary, ‘a staunch, sincere, and truly
zealous man.’
‘He should be encouraged,’ said Lord George. ‘Make a note of Dennis.
I’ll talk with him.’
Gashford obeyed, and went on reading from his list:
‘“The Friends of Reason, half-a-guinea. The Friends of Liberty,
half-a-guinea. The Friends of Peace, half-a-guinea. The Friends of
Charity, half-a-guinea. The Friends of Mercy, half-a-guinea. The
Associated Rememberers of Bloody Mary, half-a-guinea. The United
Bulldogs, half-a-guinea.”’
‘The United Bulldogs,’ said Lord George, biting his nails most horribly,
‘are a new society, are they not?’
‘Formerly the ‘Prentice Knights, my lord. The indentures of the old
members expiring by degrees, they changed their name, it seems, though
they still have ‘prentices among them, as well as workmen.’
‘What is their president’s name?’ inquired Lord George.
‘President,’ said Gashford, reading, ‘Mr Simon Tappertit.’
‘I remember him. The little man, who sometimes brings an elderly sister
to our meetings, and sometimes another female too, who is conscientious,
I have no doubt, but not well-favoured?’
‘The very same, my lord.’
‘Tappertit is an earnest man,’ said Lord George, thoughtfully. ‘Eh,
Gashford?’
‘One of the foremost among them all, my lord. He snuffs the battle from
afar, like the war-horse. He throws his hat up in the street as if he
were inspired, and makes most stirring speeches from the shoulders of
his friends.’
‘Make a note of Tappertit,’ said Lord George Gordon. ‘We may advance him
to a place of trust.’
‘That,’ rejoined the secretary, doing as he was told, ‘is all--except
Mrs Varden’s box (fourteenth time of opening), seven shillings and
sixpence in silver and copper, and half-a-guinea in gold; and Miggs
(being the saving of a quarter’s wages), one-and-threepence.’
‘Miggs,’ said Lord George. ‘Is that a man?’
‘The name is entered on the list as a woman,’ replied the secretary. ‘I
think she is the tall spare female of whom you spoke just now, my
lord, as not being well-favoured, who sometimes comes to hear the
speeches--along with Tappertit and Mrs Varden.’
‘Mrs Varden is the elderly lady then, is she?’
The secretary nodded, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the feather
of his pen.
‘She is a zealous sister,’ said Lord George. ‘Her collection goes on
prosperously, and is pursued with fervour. Has her husband joined?’
‘A malignant,’ returned the secretary, folding up his papers. ‘Unworthy
such a wife. He remains in outer darkness and steadily refuses.’
‘The consequences be upon his own head!--Gashford!’
‘My lord!’
‘You don’t think,’ he turned restlessly in his bed as he spoke, ‘these
people will desert me, when the hour arrives? I have spoken boldly for
them, ventured much, suppressed nothing. They’ll not fall off, will
they?’
‘No fear of that, my lord,’ said Gashford, with a meaning look, which
was rather the involuntary expression of his own thoughts than intended
as any confirmation of his words, for the other’s face was turned away.
‘Be sure there is no fear of that.’
‘Nor,’ he said with a more restless motion than before, ‘of their--but
they CAN sustain no harm from leaguing for this purpose. Right is on
our side, though Might may be against us. You feel as sure of that as
I--honestly, you do?’
The secretary was beginning with ‘You do not doubt,’ when the other
interrupted him, and impatiently rejoined:
‘Doubt. No. Who says I doubt? If I doubted, should I cast away
relatives, friends, everything, for this unhappy country’s sake; this
unhappy country,’ he cried, springing up in bed, after repeating the
phrase ‘unhappy country’s sake’ to himself, at least a dozen times,
‘forsaken of God and man, delivered over to a dangerous confederacy of
Popish powers; the prey of corruption, idolatry, and despotism! Who says
I doubt? Am I called, and chosen, and faithful? Tell me. Am I, or am I
not?’
‘To God, the country, and yourself,’ cried Gashford.
‘I am. I will be. I say again, I will be: to the block. Who says as
much! Do you? Does any man alive?’
The secretary drooped his head with an expression of perfect
acquiescence in anything that had been said or might be; and Lord George
gradually sinking down upon his pillow, fell asleep.
Although there was something very ludicrous in his vehement manner,
taken in conjunction with his meagre aspect and ungraceful presence, it
would scarcely have provoked a smile in any man of kindly feeling; or
even if it had, he would have felt sorry and almost angry with himself
next moment, for yielding to the impulse. This lord was sincere in his
violence and in his wavering. A nature prone to false enthusiasm, and
the vanity of being a leader, were the worst qualities apparent in his
composition. All the rest was weakness--sheer weakness; and it is
the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak men, that their very sympathies,
affections, confidences--all the qualities which in better constituted
minds are virtues--dwindle into foibles, or turn into downright vices.
Gashford, with many a sly look towards the bed, sat chuckling at his
master’s folly, until his deep and heavy breathing warned him that he
might retire. Locking his desk, and replacing it within the trunk (but
not before he had taken from a secret lining two printed handbills), he
cautiously withdrew; looking back, as he went, at the pale face of
the slumbering man, above whose head the dusty plumes that crowned the
Maypole couch, waved drearily and sadly as though it were a bier.
Stopping on the staircase to listen that all was quiet, and to take off
his shoes lest his footsteps should alarm any light sleeper who might
be near at hand, he descended to the ground floor, and thrust one of his
bills beneath the great door of the house. That done, he crept softly
back to his own chamber, and from the window let another fall--carefully
wrapt round a stone to save it from the wind--into the yard below.
They were addressed on the back ‘To every Protestant into whose hands
this shall come,’ and bore within what follows:
‘Men and Brethren. Whoever shall find this letter, will take it as a
warning to join, without delay, the friends of Lord George Gordon. There
are great events at hand; and the times are dangerous and troubled. Read
this carefully, keep it clean, and drop it somewhere else. For King and
Country. Union.’
‘More seed, more seed,’ said Gashford as he closed the window. ‘When
will the harvest come!’
Chapter 37
To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of
mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction
which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false
doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their
proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense
advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more
indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper
hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the
whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has been from the
creation of the world, a master-passion. To awaken it, to gratify it
by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to
establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking
portion of mankind.
If a man had stood on London Bridge, calling till he was hoarse, upon
the passers-by, to join with Lord George Gordon, although for an object
which no man understood, and which in that very incident had a charm of
its own,--the probability is, that he might have influenced a score of
people in a month. If all zealous Protestants had been publicly urged
to join an association for the avowed purpose of singing a hymn or two
occasionally, and hearing some indifferent speeches made, and ultimately
of petitioning Parliament not to pass an act for abolishing the
penal laws against Roman Catholic priests, the penalty of perpetual
imprisonment denounced against those who educated children in that
persuasion, and the disqualification of all members of the Romish church
to inherit real property in the United Kingdom by right of purchase or
descent,--matters so far removed from the business and bosoms of the
mass, might perhaps have called together a hundred people. But when
vague rumours got abroad, that in this Protestant association a secret
power was mustering against the government for undefined and mighty
purposes; when the air was filled with whispers of a confederacy
among the Popish powers to degrade and enslave England, establish an
inquisition in London, and turn the pens of Smithfield market into
stakes and cauldrons; when terrors and alarms which no man understood
were perpetually broached, both in and out of Parliament, by one
enthusiast who did not understand himself, and bygone bugbears which had
lain quietly in their graves for centuries, were raised again to haunt
the ignorant and credulous; when all this was done, as it were, in the
dark, and secret invitations to join the Great Protestant Association in
defence of religion, life, and liberty, were dropped in the public ways,
thrust under the house-doors, tossed in at windows, and pressed into
the hands of those who trod the streets by night; when they glared
from every wall, and shone on every post and pillar, so that stocks and
stones appeared infected with the common fear, urging all men to join
together blindfold in resistance of they knew not what, they knew not
why;--then the mania spread indeed, and the body, still increasing every
day, grew forty thousand strong.
So said, at least, in this month of March, 1780, Lord George Gordon, the
Association’s president. Whether it was the fact or otherwise, few men
knew or cared to ascertain. It had never made any public demonstration;
had scarcely ever been heard of, save through him; had never been seen;
and was supposed by many to be the mere creature of his disordered
brain. He was accustomed to talk largely about numbers of
men--stimulated, as it was inferred, by certain successful disturbances,
arising out of the same subject, which had occurred in Scotland in the
previous year; was looked upon as a cracked-brained member of the lower
house, who attacked all parties and sided with none, and was very little
regarded. It was known that there was discontent abroad--there always
is; he had been accustomed to address the people by placard, speech,
and pamphlet, upon other questions; nothing had come, in England, of his
past exertions, and nothing was apprehended from his present. Just as
he has come upon the reader, he had come, from time to time, upon the
public, and been forgotten in a day; as suddenly as he appears in these
pages, after a blank of five long years, did he and his proceedings
begin to force themselves, about this period, upon the notice of
thousands of people, who had mingled in active life during the whole
interval, and who, without being deaf or blind to passing events, had
scarcely ever thought of him before.
‘My lord,’ said Gashford in his ear, as he drew the curtains of his bed
betimes; ‘my lord!’
‘Yes--who’s that? What is it?’
‘The clock has struck nine,’ returned the secretary, with meekly folded
hands. ‘You have slept well? I hope you have slept well? If my prayers
are heard, you are refreshed indeed.’
‘To say the truth, I have slept so soundly,’ said Lord George, rubbing
his eyes and looking round the room, ‘that I don’t remember quite--what
place is this?’
‘My lord!’ cried Gashford, with a smile.
‘Oh!’ returned his superior. ‘Yes. You’re not a Jew then?’
‘A Jew!’ exclaimed the pious secretary, recoiling.
‘I dreamed that we were Jews, Gashford. You and I--both of us--Jews with
long beards.’
‘Heaven forbid, my lord! We might as well be Papists.’
‘I suppose we might,’ returned the other, very quickly. ‘Eh? You really
think so, Gashford?’
‘Surely I do,’ the secretary cried, with looks of great surprise.
‘Humph!’ he muttered. ‘Yes, that seems reasonable.’
‘I hope my lord--’ the secretary began.
‘Hope!’ he echoed, interrupting him. ‘Why do you say, you hope? There’s
no harm in thinking of such things.’
‘Not in dreams,’ returned the Secretary.
‘In dreams! No, nor waking either.’
--‘“Called, and chosen, and faithful,”’ said Gashford, taking up
Lord George’s watch which lay upon a chair, and seeming to read the
inscription on the seal, abstractedly.
It was the slightest action possible, not obtruded on his notice, and
apparently the result of a moment’s absence of mind, not worth remark.
But as the words were uttered, Lord George, who had been going on
impetuously, stopped short, reddened, and was silent. Apparently quite
unconscious of this change in his demeanour, the wily Secretary stepped
a little apart, under pretence of pulling up the window-blind, and
returning when the other had had time to recover, said:
‘The holy cause goes bravely on, my lord. I was not idle, even last
night. I dropped two of the handbills before I went to bed, and both are
gone this morning. Nobody in the house has mentioned the circumstance
of finding them, though I have been downstairs full half-an-hour. One or
two recruits will be their first fruit, I predict; and who shall say how
many more, with Heaven’s blessing on your inspired exertions!’
‘It was a famous device in the beginning,’ replied Lord George; ‘an
excellent device, and did good service in Scotland. It was quite worthy
of you. You remind me not to be a sluggard, Gashford, when the vineyard
is menaced with destruction, and may be trodden down by Papist feet. Let
the horses be saddled in half-an-hour. We must be up and doing!’
He said this with a heightened colour, and in a tone of such enthusiasm,
that the secretary deemed all further prompting needless, and withdrew.
--‘Dreamed he was a Jew,’ he said thoughtfully, as he closed the bedroom
door. ‘He may come to that before he dies. It’s like enough. Well! After
a time, and provided I lost nothing by it, I don’t see why that religion
shouldn’t suit me as well as any other. There are rich men among the
Jews; shaving is very troublesome;--yes, it would suit me well enough.
For the present, though, we must be Christian to the core. Our prophetic
motto will suit all creeds in their turn, that’s a comfort.’ Reflecting
on this source of consolation, he reached the sitting-room, and rang the
bell for breakfast.
Lord George was quickly dressed (for his plain toilet was easily made),
and as he was no less frugal in his repasts than in his Puritan attire,
his share of the meal was soon dispatched. The secretary, however, more
devoted to the good things of this world, or more intent on sustaining
his strength and spirits for the sake of the Protestant cause, ate
and drank to the last minute, and required indeed some three or four
reminders from John Grueby, before he could resolve to tear himself away
from Mr Willet’s plentiful providing.
At length he came downstairs, wiping his greasy mouth, and having paid
John Willet’s bill, climbed into his saddle. Lord George, who had been
walking up and down before the house talking to himself with earnest
gestures, mounted his horse; and returning old John Willet’s stately
bow, as well as the parting salutation of a dozen idlers whom the rumour
of a live lord being about to leave the Maypole had gathered round the
porch, they rode away, with stout John Grueby in the rear.
If Lord George Gordon had appeared in the eyes of Mr Willet, overnight,
a nobleman of somewhat quaint and odd exterior, the impression was
confirmed this morning, and increased a hundredfold. Sitting bolt
upright upon his bony steed, with his long, straight hair, dangling
about his face and fluttering in the wind; his limbs all angular and
rigid, his elbows stuck out on either side ungracefully, and his whole
frame jogged and shaken at every motion of his horse’s feet; a more
grotesque or more ungainly figure can hardly be conceived. In lieu of
whip, he carried in his hand a great gold-headed cane, as large as any
footman carries in these days, and his various modes of holding this
unwieldy weapon--now upright before his face like the sabre of a
horse-soldier, now over his shoulder like a musket, now between
his finger and thumb, but always in some uncouth and awkward
fashion--contributed in no small degree to the absurdity of his
appearance. Stiff, lank, and solemn, dressed in an unusual manner,
and ostentatiously exhibiting--whether by design or accident--all his
peculiarities of carriage, gesture, and conduct, all the qualities,
natural and artificial, in which he differed from other men; he might
have moved the sternest looker-on to laughter, and fully provoked the
smiles and whispered jests which greeted his departure from the Maypole
inn.
Quite unconscious, however, of the effect he produced, he trotted on
beside his secretary, talking to himself nearly all the way, until they
came within a mile or two of London, when now and then some passenger
went by who knew him by sight, and pointed him out to some one else, and
perhaps stood looking after him, or cried in jest or earnest as it might
be, ‘Hurrah Geordie! No Popery!’ At which he would gravely pull off his
hat, and bow. When they reached the town and rode along the streets,
these notices became more frequent; some laughed, some hissed, some
turned their heads and smiled, some wondered who he was, some ran along
the pavement by his side and cheered. When this happened in a crush of
carts and chairs and coaches, he would make a dead stop, and pulling
off his hat, cry, ‘Gentlemen, No Popery!’ to which the gentlemen would
respond with lusty voices, and with three times three; and then, on he
would go again with a score or so of the raggedest, following at his
horse’s heels, and shouting till their throats were parched.
The old ladies too--there were a great many old ladies in the streets,
and these all knew him. Some of them--not those of the highest rank,
but such as sold fruit from baskets and carried burdens--clapped their
shrivelled hands, and raised a weazen, piping, shrill ‘Hurrah, my
lord.’ Others waved their hands or handkerchiefs, or shook their fans
or parasols, or threw up windows and called in haste to those within,
to come and see. All these marks of popular esteem, he received with
profound gravity and respect; bowing very low, and so frequently that
his hat was more off his head than on; and looking up at the houses as
he passed along, with the air of one who was making a public entry, and
yet was not puffed up or proud.
So they rode (to the deep and unspeakable disgust of John Grueby) the
whole length of Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, and Cheapside, and into
St Paul’s Churchyard. Arriving close to the cathedral, he halted; spoke
to Gashford; and looking upward at its lofty dome, shook his head, as
though he said, ‘The Church in Danger!’ Then to be sure, the bystanders
stretched their throats indeed; and he went on again with mighty
acclamations from the mob, and lower bows than ever.
So along the Strand, up Swallow Street, into the Oxford Road, and thence
to his house in Welbeck Street, near Cavendish Square, whither he was
attended by a few dozen idlers; of whom he took leave on the steps with
this brief parting, ‘Gentlemen, No Popery. Good day. God bless you.’
This being rather a shorter address than they expected, was received
with some displeasure, and cries of ‘A speech! a speech!’ which might
have been complied with, but that John Grueby, making a mad charge upon
them with all three horses, on his way to the stables, caused them to
disperse into the adjoining fields, where they presently fell to
pitch and toss, chuck-farthing, odd or even, dog-fighting, and other
Protestant recreations.
In the afternoon Lord George came forth again, dressed in a black velvet
coat, and trousers and waistcoat of the Gordon plaid, all of the same
Quaker cut; and in this costume, which made him look a dozen times more
strange and singular than before, went down on foot to Westminster.
Gashford, meanwhile, bestirred himself in business matters; with which
he was still engaged when, shortly after dusk, John Grueby entered and
announced a visitor.
‘Let him come in,’ said Gashford.
‘Here! come in!’ growled John to somebody without; ‘You’re a Protestant,
an’t you?’
‘I should think so,’ replied a deep, gruff voice.
‘You’ve the looks of it,’ said John Grueby. ‘I’d have known you for one,
anywhere.’ With which remark he gave the visitor admission, retired, and
shut the door.
The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage,
with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes
so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to
prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size. A dingy
handkerchief twisted like a cord about his neck, left its great veins
exposed to view, and they were swollen and starting, as though with
gulping down strong passions, malice, and ill-will. His dress was of
threadbare velveteen--a faded, rusty, whitened black, like the ashes
of a pipe or a coal fire after a day’s extinction; discoloured with the
soils of many a stale debauch, and reeking yet with pot-house odours. In
lieu of buckles at his knees, he wore unequal loops of packthread; and
in his grimy hands he held a knotted stick, the knob of which was carved
into a rough likeness of his own vile face. Such was the visitor who
doffed his three-cornered hat in Gashford’s presence, and waited,
leering, for his notice.
‘Ah! Dennis!’ cried the secretary. ‘Sit down.’
‘I see my lord down yonder--’ cried the man, with a jerk of his thumb
towards the quarter that he spoke of, ‘and he says to me, says my lord,
“If you’ve nothing to do, Dennis, go up to my house and talk with Muster
Gashford.” Of course I’d nothing to do, you know. These an’t my working
hours. Ha ha! I was a-taking the air when I see my lord, that’s what
I was doing. I takes the air by night, as the howls does, Muster
Gashford.’
And sometimes in the day-time, eh?’ said the secretary--‘when you go out
in state, you know.’
‘Ha ha!’ roared the fellow, smiting his leg; ‘for a gentleman as ‘ull
say a pleasant thing in a pleasant way, give me Muster Gashford agin’
all London and Westminster! My lord an’t a bad ‘un at that, but he’s a
fool to you. Ah to be sure,--when I go out in state.’
‘And have your carriage,’ said the secretary; ‘and your chaplain, eh?
and all the rest of it?’
‘You’ll be the death of me,’ cried Dennis, with another roar, ‘you will.
But what’s in the wind now, Muster Gashford,’ he asked hoarsely, ‘Eh?
Are we to be under orders to pull down one of them Popish chapels--or
what?’
‘Hush!’ said the secretary, suffering the faintest smile to play upon
his face. ‘Hush! God bless me, Dennis! We associate, you know, for
strictly peaceable and lawful purposes.’
‘I know, bless you,’ returned the man, thrusting his tongue into his
cheek; ‘I entered a’ purpose, didn’t I!’
‘No doubt,’ said Gashford, smiling as before. And when he said so,
Dennis roared again, and smote his leg still harder, and falling into
fits of laughter, wiped his eyes with the corner of his neckerchief, and
cried, ‘Muster Gashford agin’ all England hollow!’
‘Lord George and I were talking of you last night,’ said Gashford, after
a pause. ‘He says you are a very earnest fellow.’
‘So I am,’ returned the hangman.
‘And that you truly hate the Papists.’
‘So I do,’ and he confirmed it with a good round oath. ‘Lookye here,
Muster Gashford,’ said the fellow, laying his hat and stick upon the
floor, and slowly beating the palm of one hand with the fingers of the
other; ‘Ob-serve. I’m a constitutional officer that works for my living,
and does my work creditable. Do I, or do I not?’
‘Unquestionably.’
‘Very good. Stop a minute. My work, is sound, Protestant,
constitutional, English work. Is it, or is it not?’
‘No man alive can doubt it.’
‘Nor dead neither. Parliament says this here--says Parliament, “If any
man, woman, or child, does anything which goes again a certain number
of our acts”--how many hanging laws may there be at this present time,
Muster Gashford? Fifty?’
‘I don’t exactly know how many,’ replied Gashford, leaning back in his
chair and yawning; ‘a great number though.’
‘Well, say fifty. Parliament says, “If any man, woman, or child, does
anything again any one of them fifty acts, that man, woman, or child,
shall be worked off by Dennis.” George the Third steps in when they
number very strong at the end of a sessions, and says, “These are too
many for Dennis. I’ll have half for myself and Dennis shall have half
for himself;” and sometimes he throws me in one over that I don’t
expect, as he did three year ago, when I got Mary Jones, a young woman
of nineteen who come up to Tyburn with a infant at her breast, and was
worked off for taking a piece of cloth off the counter of a shop in
Ludgate Hill, and putting it down again when the shopman see her;
and who had never done any harm before, and only tried to do that, in
consequence of her husband having been pressed three weeks previous, and
she being left to beg, with two young children--as was proved upon the
trial. Ha ha!--Well! That being the law and the practice of England, is
the glory of England, an’t it, Muster Gashford?’
‘Certainly,’ said the secretary.
‘And in times to come,’ pursued the hangman, ‘if our grandsons should
think of their grandfathers’ times, and find these things altered,
they’ll say, “Those were days indeed, and we’ve been going down hill
ever since.” Won’t they, Muster Gashford?’
‘I have no doubt they will,’ said the secretary.
‘Well then, look here,’ said the hangman. ‘If these Papists gets into
power, and begins to boil and roast instead of hang, what becomes of my
work! If they touch my work that’s a part of so many laws, what becomes
of the laws in general, what becomes of the religion, what becomes of
the country!--Did you ever go to church, Muster Gashford?’
‘Ever!’ repeated the secretary with some indignation; ‘of course.’
‘Well,’ said the ruffian, ‘I’ve been once--twice, counting the time I
was christened--and when I heard the Parliament prayed for, and thought
how many new hanging laws they made every sessions, I considered that I
was prayed for. Now mind, Muster Gashford,’ said the fellow, taking
up his stick and shaking it with a ferocious air, ‘I mustn’t have
my Protestant work touched, nor this here Protestant state of things
altered in no degree, if I can help it; I mustn’t have no Papists
interfering with me, unless they come to be worked off in course of law;
I mustn’t have no biling, no roasting, no frying--nothing but hanging.
My lord may well call me an earnest fellow. In support of the great
Protestant principle of having plenty of that, I’ll,’ and here he beat
his club upon the ground, ‘burn, fight, kill--do anything you bid me, so
that it’s bold and devilish--though the end of it was, that I got hung
myself.--There, Muster Gashford!’
He appropriately followed up this frequent prostitution of a noble word
to the vilest purposes, by pouring out in a kind of ecstasy at least
a score of most tremendous oaths; then wiped his heated face upon his
neckerchief, and cried, ‘No Popery! I’m a religious man, by G--!’
Gashford had leant back in his chair, regarding him with eyes so sunken,
and so shadowed by his heavy brows, that for aught the hangman saw of
them, he might have been stone blind. He remained smiling in silence for
a short time longer, and then said, slowly and distinctly:
‘You are indeed an earnest fellow, Dennis--a most valuable fellow--the
staunchest man I know of in our ranks. But you must calm yourself;
you must be peaceful, lawful, mild as any lamb. I am sure you will be
though.’
‘Ay, ay, we shall see, Muster Gashford, we shall see. You won’t have to
complain of me,’ returned the other, shaking his head.
‘I am sure I shall not,’ said the secretary in the same mild tone, and
with the same emphasis. ‘We shall have, we think, about next month, or
May, when this Papist relief bill comes before the house, to convene our
whole body for the first time. My lord has thoughts of our walking
in procession through the streets--just as an innocent display of
strength--and accompanying our petition down to the door of the House of
Commons.’
‘The sooner the better,’ said Dennis, with another oath.
‘We shall have to draw up in divisions, our numbers being so large; and,
I believe I may venture to say,’ resumed Gashford, affecting not to
hear the interruption, ‘though I have no direct instructions to that
effect--that Lord George has thought of you as an excellent leader for
one of these parties. I have no doubt you would be an admirable one.’
‘Try me,’ said the fellow, with an ugly wink.
‘You would be cool, I know,’ pursued the secretary, still smiling, and
still managing his eyes so that he could watch him closely, and really
not be seen in turn, ‘obedient to orders, and perfectly temperate. You
would lead your party into no danger, I am certain.’
‘I’d lead them, Muster Gashford,’--the hangman was beginning in a
reckless way, when Gashford started forward, laid his finger on his
lips, and feigned to write, just as the door was opened by John Grueby.
‘Oh!’ said John, looking in; ‘here’s another Protestant.’
‘Some other room, John,’ cried Gashford in his blandest voice. ‘I am
engaged just now.’
But John had brought this new visitor to the door, and he walked
in unbidden, as the words were uttered; giving to view the form and
features, rough attire, and reckless air, of Hugh.
Chapter 38
The secretary put his hand before his eyes to shade them from the glare
of the lamp, and for some moments looked at Hugh with a frowning brow,
as if he remembered to have seen him lately, but could not call to mind
where, or on what occasion. His uncertainty was very brief, for before
Hugh had spoken a word, he said, as his countenance cleared up:
‘Ay, ay, I recollect. It’s quite right, John, you needn’t wait. Don’t
go, Dennis.’
‘Your servant, master,’ said Hugh, as Grueby disappeared.
‘Yours, friend,’ returned the secretary in his smoothest manner. ‘What
brings YOU here? We left nothing behind us, I hope?’
Hugh gave a short laugh, and thrusting his hand into his breast,
produced one of the handbills, soiled and dirty from lying out of doors
all night, which he laid upon the secretary’s desk after flattening it
upon his knee, and smoothing out the wrinkles with his heavy palm.
‘Nothing but that, master. It fell into good hands, you see.’
‘What is this!’ said Gashford, turning it over with an air of perfectly
natural surprise. ‘Where did you get it from, my good fellow; what does
it mean? I don’t understand this at all.’
A little disconcerted by this reception, Hugh looked from the secretary
to Dennis, who had risen and was standing at the table too, observing
the stranger by stealth, and seeming to derive the utmost satisfaction
from his manners and appearance. Considering himself silently appealed
to by this action, Mr Dennis shook his head thrice, as if to say of
Gashford, ‘No. He don’t know anything at all about it. I know he don’t.
I’ll take my oath he don’t;’ and hiding his profile from Hugh with one
long end of his frowzy neckerchief, nodded and chuckled behind this
screen in extreme approval of the secretary’s proceedings.
‘It tells the man that finds it, to come here, don’t it?’ asked Hugh.
‘I’m no scholar, myself, but I showed it to a friend, and he said it
did.’
‘It certainly does,’ said Gashford, opening his eyes to their utmost
width; ‘really this is the most remarkable circumstance I have ever
known. How did you come by this piece of paper, my good friend?’
‘Muster Gashford,’ wheezed the hangman under his breath, ‘agin’ all
Newgate!’
Whether Hugh heard him, or saw by his manner that he was being played
upon, or perceived the secretary’s drift of himself, he came in his
blunt way to the point at once.
‘Here!’ he said, stretching out his hand and taking it back; ‘never mind
the bill, or what it says, or what it don’t say. You don’t know anything
about it, master,--no more do I,--no more does he,’ glancing at Dennis.
‘None of us know what it means, or where it comes from: there’s an end
of that. Now I want to make one against the Catholics, I’m a No-Popery
man, and ready to be sworn in. That’s what I’ve come here for.’
‘Put him down on the roll, Muster Gashford,’ said Dennis approvingly.
‘That’s the way to go to work--right to the end at once, and no
palaver.’
‘What’s the use of shooting wide of the mark, eh, old boy!’ cried Hugh.
‘My sentiments all over!’ rejoined the hangman. ‘This is the sort of
chap for my division, Muster Gashford. Down with him, sir. Put him on
the roll. I’d stand godfather to him, if he was to be christened in a
bonfire, made of the ruins of the Bank of England.’
With these and other expressions of confidence of the like flattering
kind, Mr Dennis gave him a hearty slap on the back, which Hugh was not
slow to return.
‘No Popery, brother!’ cried the hangman.
‘No Property, brother!’ responded Hugh.
‘Popery, Popery,’ said the secretary with his usual mildness.
‘It’s all the same!’ cried Dennis. ‘It’s all right. Down with him,
Muster Gashford. Down with everybody, down with everything! Hurrah for
the Protestant religion! That’s the time of day, Muster Gashford!’
The secretary regarded them both with a very favourable expression of
countenance, while they gave loose to these and other demonstrations of
their patriotic purpose; and was about to make some remark aloud, when
Dennis, stepping up to him, and shading his mouth with his hand, said,
in a hoarse whisper, as he nudged him with his elbow:
‘Don’t split upon a constitutional officer’s profession, Muster
Gashford. There are popular prejudices, you know, and he mightn’t like
it. Wait till he comes to be more intimate with me. He’s a fine-built
chap, an’t he?’
‘A powerful fellow indeed!’
‘Did you ever, Muster Gashford,’ whispered Dennis, with a horrible
kind of admiration, such as that with which a cannibal might regard his
intimate friend, when hungry,--‘did you ever--and here he drew still
closer to his ear, and fenced his mouth with both his open hands--‘see
such a throat as his? Do but cast your eye upon it. There’s a neck for
stretching, Muster Gashford!’
The secretary assented to this proposition with the best grace he could
assume--it is difficult to feign a true professional relish: which is
eccentric sometimes--and after asking the candidate a few unimportant
questions, proceeded to enrol him a member of the Great Protestant
Association of England. If anything could have exceeded Mr Dennis’s joy
on the happy conclusion of this ceremony, it would have been the rapture
with which he received the announcement that the new member could
neither read nor write: those two arts being (as Mr Dennis swore) the
greatest possible curse a civilised community could know, and militating
more against the professional emoluments and usefulness of the great
constitutional office he had the honour to hold, than any adverse
circumstances that could present themselves to his imagination.
The enrolment being completed, and Hugh having been informed by
Gashford, in his peculiar manner, of the peaceful and strictly lawful
objects contemplated by the body to which he now belonged--during which
recital Mr Dennis nudged him very much with his elbow, and made divers
remarkable faces--the secretary gave them both to understand that he
desired to be alone. Therefore they took their leaves without delay, and
came out of the house together.
‘Are you walking, brother?’ said Dennis.
‘Ay!’ returned Hugh. ‘Where you will.’
‘That’s social,’ said his new friend. ‘Which way shall we take? Shall we
go and have a look at doors that we shall make a pretty good clattering
at, before long--eh, brother?’
Hugh answering in the affirmative, they went slowly down to Westminster,
where both houses of Parliament were then sitting. Mingling in the crowd
of carriages, horses, servants, chairmen, link-boys, porters, and idlers
of all kinds, they lounged about; while Hugh’s new friend pointed out to
him significantly the weak parts of the building, how easy it was to get
into the lobby, and so to the very door of the House of Commons; and how
plainly, when they marched down there in grand array, their roars and
shouts would be heard by the members inside; with a great deal more to
the same purpose, all of which Hugh received with manifest delight.
He told him, too, who some of the Lords and Commons were, by name,
as they came in and out; whether they were friendly to the Papists or
otherwise; and bade him take notice of their liveries and equipages,
that he might be sure of them, in case of need. Sometimes he drew
him close to the windows of a passing carriage, that he might see its
master’s face by the light of the lamps; and, both in respect of people
and localities, he showed so much acquaintance with everything around,
that it was plain he had often studied there before; as indeed, when
they grew a little more confidential, he confessed he had.
Perhaps the most striking part of all this was, the number of
people--never in groups of more than two or three together--who seemed
to be skulking about the crowd for the same purpose. To the greater part
of these, a slight nod or a look from Hugh’s companion was sufficient
greeting; but, now and then, some man would come and stand beside him
in the throng, and, without turning his head or appearing to communicate
with him, would say a word or two in a low voice, which he would answer
in the same cautious manner. Then they would part, like strangers. Some
of these men often reappeared again unexpectedly in the crowd close to
Hugh, and, as they passed by, pressed his hand, or looked him sternly in
the face; but they never spoke to him, nor he to them; no, not a word.
It was remarkable, too, that whenever they happened to stand where there
was any press of people, and Hugh chanced to be looking downward, he
was sure to see an arm stretched out--under his own perhaps, or perhaps
across him--which thrust some paper into the hand or pocket of a
bystander, and was so suddenly withdrawn that it was impossible to tell
from whom it came; nor could he see in any face, on glancing quickly
round, the least confusion or surprise. They often trod upon a paper
like the one he carried in his breast, but his companion whispered him
not to touch it or to take it up,--not even to look towards it,--so
there they let them lie, and passed on.
When they had paraded the street and all the avenues of the building in
this manner for near two hours, they turned away, and his friend asked
him what he thought of what he had seen, and whether he was prepared
for a good hot piece of work if it should come to that. ‘The hotter the
better,’ said Hugh, ‘I’m prepared for anything.’--‘So am I,’ said his
friend, ‘and so are many of us; and they shook hands upon it with a
great oath, and with many terrible imprecations on the Papists.
As they were thirsty by this time, Dennis proposed that they should
repair together to The Boot, where there was good company and strong
liquor. Hugh yielding a ready assent, they bent their steps that way
with no loss of time.
This Boot was a lone house of public entertainment, situated in the
fields at the back of the Foundling Hospital; a very solitary spot at
that period, and quite deserted after dark. The tavern stood at some
distance from any high road, and was approachable only by a dark and
narrow lane; so that Hugh was much surprised to find several people
drinking there, and great merriment going on. He was still more
surprised to find among them almost every face that had caught his
attention in the crowd; but his companion having whispered him outside
the door, that it was not considered good manners at The Boot to appear
at all curious about the company, he kept his own counsel, and made no
show of recognition.
Before putting his lips to the liquor which was brought for them, Dennis
drank in a loud voice the health of Lord George Gordon, President of the
Great Protestant Association; which toast Hugh pledged likewise, with
corresponding enthusiasm. A fiddler who was present, and who appeared
to act as the appointed minstrel of the company, forthwith struck up a
Scotch reel; and that in tones so invigorating, that Hugh and his friend
(who had both been drinking before) rose from their seats as by previous
concert, and, to the great admiration of the assembled guests, performed
an extemporaneous No-Popery Dance.
Chapter 39
The applause which the performance of Hugh and his new friend elicited
from the company at The Boot, had not yet subsided, and the two dancers
were still panting from their exertions, which had been of a rather
extreme and violent character, when the party was reinforced by the
arrival of some more guests, who, being a detachment of United Bulldogs,
were received with very flattering marks of distinction and respect.
The leader of this small party--for, including himself, they were but
three in number--was our old acquaintance, Mr Tappertit, who seemed,
physically speaking, to have grown smaller with years (particularly as
to his legs, which were stupendously little), but who, in a moral point
of view, in personal dignity and self-esteem, had swelled into a giant.
Nor was it by any means difficult for the most unobservant person to
detect this state of feeling in the quondam ‘prentice, for it not only
proclaimed itself impressively and beyond mistake in his majestic
walk and kindling eye, but found a striking means of revelation in his
turned-up nose, which scouted all things of earth with deep disdain, and
sought communion with its kindred skies.
Mr Tappertit, as chief or captain of the Bulldogs, was attended by his
two lieutenants; one, the tall comrade of his younger life; the other, a
‘Prentice Knight in days of yore--Mark Gilbert, bound in the olden time
to Thomas Curzon of the Golden Fleece. These gentlemen, like himself,
were now emancipated from their ‘prentice thraldom, and served as
journeymen; but they were, in humble emulation of his great example,
bold and daring spirits, and aspired to a distinguished state in great
political events. Hence their connection with the Protestant Association
of England, sanctioned by the name of Lord George Gordon; and hence
their present visit to The Boot.
‘Gentlemen!’ said Mr Tappertit, taking off his hat as a great general
might in addressing his troops. ‘Well met. My lord does me and you the
honour to send his compliments per self.’
‘You’ve seen my lord too, have you?’ said Dennis. ‘I see him this
afternoon.’
‘My duty called me to the Lobby when our shop shut up; and I saw him
there, sir,’ Mr Tappertit replied, as he and his lieutenants took their
seats. ‘How do YOU do?’
‘Lively, master, lively,’ said the fellow. ‘Here’s a new brother,
regularly put down in black and white by Muster Gashford; a credit to
the cause; one of the stick-at-nothing sort; one arter my own heart.
D’ye see him? Has he got the looks of a man that’ll do, do you think?’
he cried, as he slapped Hugh on the back.
‘Looks or no looks,’ said Hugh, with a drunken flourish of his arm, ‘I’m
the man you want. I hate the Papists, every one of ‘em. They hate me and
I hate them. They do me all the harm they can, and I’ll do them all the
harm I can. Hurrah!’
‘Was there ever,’ said Dennis, looking round the room, when the echo
of his boisterous voice had died away; ‘was there ever such a game boy!
Why, I mean to say, brothers, that if Muster Gashford had gone a hundred
mile and got together fifty men of the common run, they wouldn’t have
been worth this one.’
The greater part of the company implicitly subscribed to this
opinion, and testified their faith in Hugh by nods and looks of great
significance. Mr Tappertit sat and contemplated him for a long time in
silence, as if he suspended his judgment; then drew a little nearer to
him, and eyed him over more carefully; then went close up to him, and
took him apart into a dark corner.
‘I say,’ he began, with a thoughtful brow, ‘haven’t I seen you before?’
‘It’s like you may,’ said Hugh, in his careless way. ‘I don’t know;
shouldn’t wonder.’
‘No, but it’s very easily settled,’ returned Sim. ‘Look at me. Did you
ever see ME before? You wouldn’t be likely to forget it, you know, if
you ever did. Look at me. Don’t be afraid; I won’t do you any harm. Take
a good look--steady now.’
The encouraging way in which Mr Tappertit made this request, and
coupled it with an assurance that he needn’t be frightened, amused Hugh
mightily--so much indeed, that he saw nothing at all of the small man
before him, through closing his eyes in a fit of hearty laughter, which
shook his great broad sides until they ached again.
‘Come!’ said Mr Tappertit, growing a little impatient under this
disrespectful treatment. ‘Do you know me, feller?’
‘Not I,’ cried Hugh. ‘Ha ha ha! Not I! But I should like to.’
‘And yet I’d have wagered a seven-shilling piece,’ said Mr Tappertit,
folding his arms, and confronting him with his legs wide apart and
firmly planted on the ground, ‘that you once were hostler at the
Maypole.’
Hugh opened his eyes on hearing this, and looked at him in great
surprise.
‘--And so you were, too,’ said Mr Tappertit, pushing him away with a
condescending playfulness. ‘When did MY eyes ever deceive--unless it was
a young woman! Don’t you know me now?’
‘Why it an’t--’ Hugh faltered.
‘An’t it?’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Are you sure of that? You remember G.
Varden, don’t you?’
Certainly Hugh did, and he remembered D. Varden too; but that he didn’t
tell him.
‘You remember coming down there, before I was out of my time, to ask
after a vagabond that had bolted off, and left his disconsolate father a
prey to the bitterest emotions, and all the rest of it--don’t you?’ said
Mr Tappertit.
‘Of course I do!’ cried Hugh. ‘And I saw you there.’
‘Saw me there!’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Yes, I should think you did see
me there. The place would be troubled to go on without me. Don’t you
remember my thinking you liked the vagabond, and on that account going
to quarrel with you; and then finding you detested him worse than
poison, going to drink with you? Don’t you remember that?’
‘To be sure!’ cried Hugh.
‘Well! and are you in the same mind now?’ said Mr Tappertit.
‘Yes!’ roared Hugh.
‘You speak like a man,’ said Mr Tappertit, ‘and I’ll shake hands with
you.’ With these conciliatory expressions he suited the action to the
word; and Hugh meeting his advances readily, they performed the ceremony
with a show of great heartiness.
‘I find,’ said Mr Tappertit, looking round on the assembled guests,
‘that brother What’s-his-name and I are old acquaintance.--You never
heard anything more of that rascal, I suppose, eh?’
‘Not a syllable,’ replied Hugh. ‘I never want to. I don’t believe I ever
shall. He’s dead long ago, I hope.’
‘It’s to be hoped, for the sake of mankind in general and the happiness
of society, that he is,’ said Mr Tappertit, rubbing his palm upon his
legs, and looking at it between whiles. ‘Is your other hand at all
cleaner? Much the same. Well, I’ll owe you another shake. We’ll suppose
it done, if you’ve no objection.’
Hugh laughed again, and with such thorough abandonment to his mad
humour, that his limbs seemed dislocated, and his whole frame in danger
of tumbling to pieces; but Mr Tappertit, so far from receiving this
extreme merriment with any irritation, was pleased to regard it with the
utmost favour, and even to join in it, so far as one of his gravity and
station could, with any regard to that decency and decorum which men in
high places are expected to maintain.
Mr Tappertit did not stop here, as many public characters might have
done, but calling up his brace of lieutenants, introduced Hugh to them
with high commendation; declaring him to be a man who, at such times as
those in which they lived, could not be too much cherished. Further, he
did him the honour to remark, that he would be an acquisition of which
even the United Bulldogs might be proud; and finding, upon sounding him,
that he was quite ready and willing to enter the society (for he was
not at all particular, and would have leagued himself that night with
anything, or anybody, for any purpose whatsoever), caused the necessary
preliminaries to be gone into upon the spot. This tribute to his great
merit delighted no man more than Mr Dennis, as he himself proclaimed
with several rare and surprising oaths; and indeed it gave unmingled
satisfaction to the whole assembly.
‘Make anything you like of me!’ cried Hugh, flourishing the can he had
emptied more than once. ‘Put me on any duty you please. I’m your man.
I’ll do it. Here’s my captain--here’s my leader. Ha ha ha! Let him
give me the word of command, and I’ll fight the whole Parliament House
single-handed, or set a lighted torch to the King’s Throne itself!’ With
that, he smote Mr Tappertit on the back, with such violence that his
little body seemed to shrink into a mere nothing; and roared again until
the very foundlings near at hand were startled in their beds.
In fact, a sense of something whimsical in their companionship seemed to
have taken entire possession of his rude brain. The bare fact of being
patronised by a great man whom he could have crushed with one hand,
appeared in his eyes so eccentric and humorous, that a kind of ferocious
merriment gained the mastery over him, and quite subdued his brutal
nature. He roared and roared again; toasted Mr Tappertit a hundred
times; declared himself a Bulldog to the core; and vowed to be faithful
to him to the last drop of blood in his veins.
All these compliments Mr Tappertit received as matters of
course--flattering enough in their way, but entirely attributable to his
vast superiority. His dignified self-possession only delighted Hugh the
more; and in a word, this giant and dwarf struck up a friendship which
bade fair to be of long continuance, as the one held it to be his right
to command, and the other considered it an exquisite pleasantry to
obey. Nor was Hugh by any means a passive follower, who scrupled to act
without precise and definite orders; for when Mr Tappertit mounted on an
empty cask which stood by way of rostrum in the room, and volunteered a
speech upon the alarming crisis then at hand, he placed himself beside
the orator, and though he grinned from ear to ear at every word he said,
threw out such expressive hints to scoffers in the management of his
cudgel, that those who were at first the most disposed to interrupt,
became remarkably attentive, and were the loudest in their approbation.
It was not all noise and jest, however, at The Boot, nor were the whole
party listeners to the speech. There were some men at the other end of
the room (which was a long, low-roofed chamber) in earnest conversation
all the time; and when any of this group went out, fresh people were
sure to come in soon afterwards and sit down in their places, as though
the others had relieved them on some watch or duty; which it was pretty
clear they did, for these changes took place by the clock, at intervals
of half an hour. These persons whispered very much among themselves,
and kept aloof, and often looked round, as jealous of their speech being
overheard; some two or three among them entered in books what seemed
to be reports from the others; when they were not thus employed one of
them would turn to the newspapers which were strewn upon the table,
and from the St James’s Chronicle, the Herald, Chronicle, or Public
Advertiser, would read to the rest in a low voice some passage having
reference to the topic in which they were all so deeply interested. But
the great attraction was a pamphlet called The Thunderer, which espoused
their own opinions, and was supposed at that time to emanate directly
from the Association. This was always in request; and whether read
aloud, to an eager knot of listeners, or by some solitary man, was
certain to be followed by stormy talking and excited looks.
In the midst of all his merriment, and admiration of his captain, Hugh
was made sensible by these and other tokens, of the presence of an air
of mystery, akin to that which had so much impressed him out of doors.
It was impossible to discard a sense that something serious was going
on, and that under the noisy revel of the public-house, there lurked
unseen and dangerous matter. Little affected by this, however, he was
perfectly satisfied with his quarters and would have remained there till
morning, but that his conductor rose soon after midnight, to go home; Mr
Tappertit following his example, left him no excuse to stay. So they all
three left the house together: roaring a No-Popery song until the fields
resounded with the dismal noise.
‘Cheer up, captain!’ cried Hugh, when they had roared themselves out of
breath. ‘Another stave!’
Mr Tappertit, nothing loath, began again; and so the three went
staggering on, arm-in-arm, shouting like madmen, and defying the watch
with great valour. Indeed this did not require any unusual bravery or
boldness, as the watchmen of that time, being selected for the office
on account of excessive age and extraordinary infirmity, had a custom
of shutting themselves up tight in their boxes on the first symptoms
of disturbance, and remaining there until they disappeared. In these
proceedings, Mr Dennis, who had a gruff voice and lungs of considerable
power, distinguished himself very much, and acquired great credit with
his two companions.
‘What a queer fellow you are!’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘You’re so precious
sly and close. Why don’t you ever tell what trade you’re of?’
‘Answer the captain instantly,’ cried Hugh, beating his hat down on his
head; ‘why don’t you ever tell what trade you’re of?’
‘I’m of as gen-teel a calling, brother, as any man in England--as light
a business as any gentleman could desire.’
‘Was you ‘prenticed to it?’ asked Mr Tappertit.
‘No. Natural genius,’ said Mr Dennis. ‘No ‘prenticing. It come
by natur’. Muster Gashford knows my calling. Look at that hand of
mine--many and many a job that hand has done, with a neatness and
dexterity, never known afore. When I look at that hand,’ said Mr
Dennis, shaking it in the air, ‘and remember the helegant bits of work
it has turned off, I feel quite molloncholy to think it should ever grow
old and feeble. But sich is life!’
He heaved a deep sigh as he indulged in these reflections, and putting
his fingers with an absent air on Hugh’s throat, and particularly under
his left ear, as if he were studying the anatomical development of that
part of his frame, shook his head in a despondent manner and actually
shed tears.
‘You’re a kind of artist, I suppose--eh!’ said Mr Tappertit.
‘Yes,’ rejoined Dennis; ‘yes--I may call myself a artist--a fancy
workman--art improves natur’--that’s my motto.’
‘And what do you call this?’ said Mr Tappertit taking his stick out of
his hand.
‘That’s my portrait atop,’ Dennis replied; ‘d’ye think it’s like?’
‘Why--it’s a little too handsome,’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Who did it? You?’
‘I!’ repeated Dennis, gazing fondly on his image. ‘I wish I had the
talent. That was carved by a friend of mine, as is now no more. The very
day afore he died, he cut that with his pocket-knife from memory! “I’ll
die game,” says my friend, “and my last moments shall be dewoted to
making Dennis’s picter.” That’s it.’
‘That was a queer fancy, wasn’t it?’ said Mr Tappertit.
‘It WAS a queer fancy,’ rejoined the other, breathing on his fictitious
nose, and polishing it with the cuff of his coat, ‘but he was a queer
subject altogether--a kind of gipsy--one of the finest, stand-up men,
you ever see. Ah! He told me some things that would startle you a bit,
did that friend of mine, on the morning when he died.’
‘You were with him at the time, were you?’ said Mr Tappertit.
‘Yes,’ he answered with a curious look, ‘I was there. Oh! yes certainly,
I was there. He wouldn’t have gone off half as comfortable without me. I
had been with three or four of his family under the same circumstances.
They were all fine fellows.’
‘They must have been fond of you,’ remarked Mr Tappertit, looking at him
sideways.
‘I don’t know that they was exactly fond of me,’ said Dennis, with a
little hesitation, ‘but they all had me near ‘em when they departed. I
come in for their wardrobes too. This very handkecher that you see round
my neck, belonged to him that I’ve been speaking of--him as did that
likeness.’
Mr Tappertit glanced at the article referred to, and appeared to think
that the deceased’s ideas of dress were of a peculiar and by no means an
expensive kind. He made no remark upon the point, however, and suffered
his mysterious companion to proceed without interruption.
‘These smalls,’ said Dennis, rubbing his legs; ‘these very smalls--they
belonged to a friend of mine that’s left off sich incumbrances for ever:
this coat too--I’ve often walked behind this coat, in the street, and
wondered whether it would ever come to me: this pair of shoes have
danced a hornpipe for another man, afore my eyes, full half-a-dozen
times at least: and as to my hat,’ he said, taking it off, and whirling
it round upon his fist--‘Lord! I’ve seen this hat go up Holborn on the
box of a hackney-coach--ah, many and many a day!’
‘You don’t mean to say their old wearers are ALL dead, I hope?’ said Mr
Tappertit, falling a little distance from him as he spoke.
‘Every one of ‘em,’ replied Dennis. ‘Every man Jack!’
There was something so very ghastly in this circumstance, and it
appeared to account, in such a very strange and dismal manner, for his
faded dress--which, in this new aspect, seemed discoloured by the earth
from graves--that Mr Tappertit abruptly found he was going another way,
and, stopping short, bade him good night with the utmost heartiness. As
they happened to be near the Old Bailey, and Mr Dennis knew there were
turnkeys in the lodge with whom he could pass the night, and discuss
professional subjects of common interest among them before a rousing
fire, and over a social glass, he separated from his companions without
any great regret, and warmly shaking hands with Hugh, and making an
early appointment for their meeting at The Boot, left them to pursue
their road.
‘That’s a strange sort of man,’ said Mr Tappertit, watching the
hackney-coachman’s hat as it went bobbing down the street. ‘I don’t know
what to make of him. Why can’t he have his smalls made to order, or wear
live clothes at any rate?’
‘He’s a lucky man, captain,’ cried Hugh. ‘I should like to have such
friends as his.’
‘I hope he don’t get ‘em to make their wills, and then knock ‘em on the
head,’ said Mr Tappertit, musing. ‘But come. The United B.’s expect me.
On!--What’s the matter?’
‘I quite forgot,’ said Hugh, who had started at the striking of a
neighbouring clock. ‘I have somebody to see to-night--I must turn back
directly. The drinking and singing put it out of my head. It’s well I
remembered it!’
Mr Tappertit looked at him as though he were about to give utterance to
some very majestic sentiments in reference to this act of desertion, but
as it was clear, from Hugh’s hasty manner, that the engagement was one
of a pressing nature, he graciously forbore, and gave him his permission
to depart immediately, which Hugh acknowledged with a roar of laughter.
‘Good night, captain!’ he cried. ‘I am yours to the death, remember!’
‘Farewell!’ said Mr Tappertit, waving his hand. ‘Be bold and vigilant!’
‘No Popery, captain!’ roared Hugh.
‘England in blood first!’ cried his desperate leader. Whereat Hugh
cheered and laughed, and ran off like a greyhound.
‘That man will prove a credit to my corps,’ said Simon, turning
thoughtfully upon his heel. ‘And let me see. In an altered state of
society--which must ensue if we break out and are victorious--when the
locksmith’s child is mine, Miggs must be got rid of somehow, or she’ll
poison the tea-kettle one evening when I’m out. He might marry Miggs, if
he was drunk enough. It shall be done. I’ll make a note of it.’
Chapter 40
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.
Chapter 41
From the workshop of the Golden Key, there issued forth a tinkling
sound, so merry and good-humoured, that it suggested the idea of some
one working blithely, and made quite pleasant music. No man who hammered
on at a dull monotonous duty, could have brought such cheerful notes
from steel and iron; none but a chirping, healthy, honest-hearted
fellow, who made the best of everything, and felt kindly towards
everybody, could have done it for an instant. He might have been a
coppersmith, and still been musical. If he had sat in a jolting waggon,
full of rods of iron, it seemed as if he would have brought some harmony
out of it.
Tink, tink, tink--clear as a silver bell, and audible at every pause of
the streets’ harsher noises, as though it said, ‘I don’t care; nothing
puts me out; I am resolved to be happy.’ Women scolded, children
squalled, heavy carts went rumbling by, horrible cries proceeded from
the lungs of hawkers; still it struck in again, no higher, no lower,
no louder, no softer; not thrusting itself on people’s notice a bit the
more for having been outdone by louder sounds--tink, tink, tink, tink,
tink.
It was a perfect embodiment of the still small voice, free from
all cold, hoarseness, huskiness, or unhealthiness of any kind;
foot-passengers slackened their pace, and were disposed to linger near
it; neighbours who had got up splenetic that morning, felt good-humour
stealing on them as they heard it, and by degrees became quite
sprightly; mothers danced their babies to its ringing; still the same
magical tink, tink, tink, came gaily from the workshop of the Golden
Key.
Who but the locksmith could have made such music! A gleam of sun shining
through the unsashed window, and chequering the dark workshop with a
broad patch of light, fell full upon him, as though attracted by his
sunny heart. There he stood working at his anvil, his face all radiant
with exercise and gladness, his sleeves turned up, his wig pushed off
his shining forehead--the easiest, freest, happiest man in all the
world. Beside him sat a sleek cat, purring and winking in the light, and
falling every now and then into an idle doze, as from excess of comfort.
Toby looked on from a tall bench hard by; one beaming smile, from his
broad nut-brown face down to the slack-baked buckles in his shoes. The
very locks that hung around had something jovial in their rust, and
seemed like gouty gentlemen of hearty natures, disposed to joke on their
infirmities. There was nothing surly or severe in the whole scene.
It seemed impossible that any one of the innumerable keys could fit a
churlish strong-box or a prison-door. Cellars of beer and wine, rooms
where there were fires, books, gossip, and cheering laughter--these
were their proper sphere of action. Places of distrust and cruelty, and
restraint, they would have left quadruple-locked for ever.
Tink, tink, tink. The locksmith paused at last, and wiped his brow. The
silence roused the cat, who, jumping softly down, crept to the door,
and watched with tiger eyes a bird-cage in an opposite window. Gabriel
lifted Toby to his mouth, and took a hearty draught.
Then, as he stood upright, with his head flung back, and his portly
chest thrown out, you would have seen that Gabriel’s lower man was
clothed in military gear. Glancing at the wall beyond, there might
have been espied, hanging on their several pegs, a cap and feather,
broadsword, sash, and coat of scarlet; which any man learned in such
matters would have known from their make and pattern to be the uniform
of a serjeant in the Royal East London Volunteers.
As the locksmith put his mug down, empty, on the bench whence it had
smiled on him before, he glanced at these articles with a laughing eye,
and looking at them with his head a little on one side, as though he
would get them all into a focus, said, leaning on his hammer:
‘Time was, now, I remember, when I was like to run mad with the desire
to wear a coat of that colour. If any one (except my father) had called
me a fool for my pains, how I should have fired and fumed! But what a
fool I must have been, sure-ly!’
‘Ah!’ sighed Mrs Varden, who had entered unobserved. ‘A fool indeed. A
man at your time of life, Varden, should know better now.’
‘Why, what a ridiculous woman you are, Martha,’ said the locksmith,
turning round with a smile.
‘Certainly,’ replied Mrs V. with great demureness. ‘Of course I am. I
know that, Varden. Thank you.’
‘I mean--’ began the locksmith.
‘Yes,’ said his wife, ‘I know what you mean. You speak quite plain
enough to be understood, Varden. It’s very kind of you to adapt yourself
to my capacity, I am sure.’
‘Tut, tut, Martha,’ rejoined the locksmith; ‘don’t take offence at
nothing. I mean, how strange it is of you to run down volunteering, when
it’s done to defend you and all the other women, and our own fireside
and everybody else’s, in case of need.’
‘It’s unchristian,’ cried Mrs Varden, shaking her head.
‘Unchristian!’ said the locksmith. ‘Why, what the devil--’
Mrs Varden looked at the ceiling, as in expectation that the consequence
of this profanity would be the immediate descent of the four-post
bedstead on the second floor, together with the best sitting-room on the
first; but no visible judgment occurring, she heaved a deep sigh, and
begged her husband, in a tone of resignation, to go on, and by all means
to blaspheme as much as possible, because he knew she liked it.
The locksmith did for a moment seem disposed to gratify her, but he gave
a great gulp, and mildly rejoined:
‘I was going to say, what on earth do you call it unchristian for?
Which would be most unchristian, Martha--to sit quietly down and let our
houses be sacked by a foreign army, or to turn out like men and drive
‘em off? Shouldn’t I be a nice sort of a Christian, if I crept into
a corner of my own chimney and looked on while a parcel of whiskered
savages bore off Dolly--or you?’
When he said ‘or you,’ Mrs Varden, despite herself, relaxed into a
smile. There was something complimentary in the idea. ‘In such a state
of things as that, indeed--’ she simpered.
‘As that!’ repeated the locksmith. ‘Well, that would be the state of
things directly. Even Miggs would go. Some black tambourine-player,
with a great turban on, would be bearing HER off, and, unless the
tambourine-player was proof against kicking and scratching, it’s
my belief he’d have the worst of it. Ha ha ha! I’d forgive the
tambourine-player. I wouldn’t have him interfered with on any account,
poor fellow.’ And here the locksmith laughed again so heartily, that
tears came into his eyes--much to Mrs Varden’s indignation, who thought
the capture of so sound a Protestant and estimable a private character
as Miggs by a pagan negro, a circumstance too shocking and awful for
contemplation.
The picture Gabriel had drawn, indeed, threatened serious consequences,
and would indubitably have led to them, but luckily at that moment a
light footstep crossed the threshold, and Dolly, running in, threw her
arms round her old father’s neck and hugged him tight.
‘Here she is at last!’ cried Gabriel. ‘And how well you look, Doll, and
how late you are, my darling!’
How well she looked? Well? Why, if he had exhausted every laudatory
adjective in the dictionary, it wouldn’t have been praise enough. When
and where was there ever such a plump, roguish, comely, bright-eyed,
enticing, bewitching, captivating, maddening little puss in all this
world, as Dolly! What was the Dolly of five years ago, to the Dolly of
that day! How many coachmakers, saddlers, cabinet-makers, and professors
of other useful arts, had deserted their fathers, mothers, sisters,
brothers, and, most of all, their cousins, for the love of her! How many
unknown gentlemen--supposed to be of mighty fortunes, if not titles--had
waited round the corner after dark, and tempted Miggs the incorruptible,
with golden guineas, to deliver offers of marriage folded up in
love-letters! How many disconsolate fathers and substantial tradesmen
had waited on the locksmith for the same purpose, with dismal tales of
how their sons had lost their appetites, and taken to shut themselves up
in dark bedrooms, and wandering in desolate suburbs with pale faces,
and all because of Dolly Varden’s loveliness and cruelty! How many
young men, in all previous times of unprecedented steadiness, had turned
suddenly wild and wicked for the same reason, and, in an ecstasy of
unrequited love, taken to wrench off door-knockers, and invert the boxes
of rheumatic watchmen! How had she recruited the king’s service, both
by sea and land, through rendering desperate his loving subjects between
the ages of eighteen and twenty-five! How many young ladies had publicly
professed, with tears in their eyes, that for their tastes she was much
too short, too tall, too bold, too cold, too stout, too thin, too fair,
too dark--too everything but handsome! How many old ladies, taking
counsel together, had thanked Heaven their daughters were not like her,
and had hoped she might come to no harm, and had thought she would come
to no good, and had wondered what people saw in her, and had arrived at
the conclusion that she was ‘going off’ in her looks, or had never
come on in them, and that she was a thorough imposition and a popular
mistake!
And yet here was this same Dolly Varden, so whimsical and hard to please
that she was Dolly Varden still, all smiles and dimples and pleasant
looks, and caring no more for the fifty or sixty young fellows who at
that very moment were breaking their hearts to marry her, than if so
many oysters had been crossed in love and opened afterwards.
Dolly hugged her father as has been already stated, and having hugged
her mother also, accompanied both into the little parlour where the
cloth was already laid for dinner, and where Miss Miggs--a trifle more
rigid and bony than of yore--received her with a sort of hysterical
gasp, intended for a smile. Into the hands of that young virgin, she
delivered her bonnet and walking dress (all of a dreadful, artful,
and designing kind), and then said with a laugh, which rivalled the
locksmith’s music, ‘How glad I always am to be at home again!’
‘And how glad we always are, Doll,’ said her father, putting back the
dark hair from her sparkling eyes, ‘to have you at home. Give me a
kiss.’
If there had been anybody of the male kind there to see her do it--but
there was not--it was a mercy.
‘I don’t like your being at the Warren,’ said the locksmith, ‘I can’t
bear to have you out of my sight. And what is the news over yonder,
Doll?’
‘What news there is, I think you know already,’ replied his daughter. ‘I
am sure you do though.’
‘Ay?’ cried the locksmith. ‘What’s that?’
‘Come, come,’ said Dolly, ‘you know very well. I want you to tell me why
Mr Haredale--oh, how gruff he is again, to be sure!--has been away from
home for some days past, and why he is travelling about (we know he IS
travelling, because of his letters) without telling his own niece why or
wherefore.’
‘Miss Emma doesn’t want to know, I’ll swear,’ returned the locksmith.
‘I don’t know that,’ said Dolly; ‘but I do, at any rate. Do tell me. Why
is he so secret, and what is this ghost story, which nobody is to tell
Miss Emma, and which seems to be mixed up with his going away? Now I see
you know by your colouring so.’
‘What the story means, or is, or has to do with it, I know no more than
you, my dear,’ returned the locksmith, ‘except that it’s some foolish
fear of little Solomon’s--which has, indeed, no meaning in it, I
suppose. As to Mr Haredale’s journey, he goes, as I believe--’
‘Yes,’ said Dolly.
‘As I believe,’ resumed the locksmith, pinching her cheek, ‘on business,
Doll. What it may be, is quite another matter. Read Blue Beard, and
don’t be too curious, pet; it’s no business of yours or mine, depend
upon that; and here’s dinner, which is much more to the purpose.’
Dolly might have remonstrated against this summary dismissal of the
subject, notwithstanding the appearance of dinner, but at the mention
of Blue Beard Mrs Varden interposed, protesting she could not find it
in her conscience to sit tamely by, and hear her child recommended to
peruse the adventures of a Turk and Mussulman--far less of a fabulous
Turk, which she considered that potentate to be. She held that, in such
stirring and tremendous times as those in which they lived, it would
be much more to the purpose if Dolly became a regular subscriber to the
Thunderer, where she would have an opportunity of reading Lord George
Gordon’s speeches word for word, which would be a greater comfort and
solace to her, than a hundred and fifty Blue Beards ever could impart.
She appealed in support of this proposition to Miss Miggs, then in
waiting, who said that indeed the peace of mind she had derived from the
perusal of that paper generally, but especially of one article of the
very last week as ever was, entitled ‘Great Britain drenched in gore,’
exceeded all belief; the same composition, she added, had also wrought
such a comforting effect on the mind of a married sister of hers, then
resident at Golden Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, second bell-handle
on the right-hand door-post, that, being in a delicate state of health,
and in fact expecting an addition to her family, she had been seized
with fits directly after its perusal, and had raved of the Inquisition
ever since; to the great improvement of her husband and friends. Miss
Miggs went on to say that she would recommend all those whose hearts
were hardened to hear Lord George themselves, whom she commended first,
in respect of his steady Protestantism, then of his oratory, then of
his eyes, then of his nose, then of his legs, and lastly of his figure
generally, which she looked upon as fit for any statue, prince, or
angel, to which sentiment Mrs Varden fully subscribed.
Mrs Varden having cut in, looked at a box upon the mantelshelf, painted
in imitation of a very red-brick dwelling-house, with a yellow roof;
having at top a real chimney, down which voluntary subscribers dropped
their silver, gold, or pence, into the parlour; and on the door the
counterfeit presentment of a brass plate, whereon was legibly inscribed
‘Protestant Association:’--and looking at it, said, that it was to her
a source of poignant misery to think that Varden never had, of all his
substance, dropped anything into that temple, save once in secret--as
she afterwards discovered--two fragments of tobacco-pipe, which she
hoped would not be put down to his last account. That Dolly, she was
grieved to say, was no less backward in her contributions, better
loving, as it seemed, to purchase ribbons and such gauds, than to
encourage the great cause, then in such heavy tribulation; and that she
did entreat her (her father she much feared could not be moved) not to
despise, but imitate, the bright example of Miss Miggs, who flung her
wages, as it were, into the very countenance of the Pope, and bruised
his features with her quarter’s money.
‘Oh, mim,’ said Miggs, ‘don’t relude to that. I had no intentions, mim,
that nobody should know. Such sacrifices as I can make, are quite a
widder’s mite. It’s all I have,’ cried Miggs with a great burst of
tears--for with her they never came on by degrees--‘but it’s made up to
me in other ways; it’s well made up.’
This was quite true, though not perhaps in the sense that Miggs
intended. As she never failed to keep her self-denial full in Mrs
Varden’s view, it drew forth so many gifts of caps and gowns and other
articles of dress, that upon the whole the red-brick house was perhaps
the best investment for her small capital she could possibly have hit
upon; returning her interest, at the rate of seven or eight per cent in
money, and fifty at least in personal repute and credit.
‘You needn’t cry, Miggs,’ said Mrs Varden, herself in tears; ‘you
needn’t be ashamed of it, though your poor mistress IS on the same
side.’
Miggs howled at this remark, in a peculiarly dismal way, and said she
knowed that master hated her. That it was a dreadful thing to live in
families and have dislikes, and not give satisfactions. That to make
divisions was a thing she could not abear to think of, neither could her
feelings let her do it. That if it was master’s wishes as she and him
should part, it was best they should part, and she hoped he might be
the happier for it, and always wished him well, and that he might find
somebody as would meet his dispositions. It would be a hard trial, she
said, to part from such a missis, but she could meet any suffering when
her conscience told her she was in the rights, and therefore she was
willing even to go that lengths. She did not think, she added, that she
could long survive the separations, but, as she was hated and looked
upon unpleasant, perhaps her dying as soon as possible would be the best
endings for all parties. With this affecting conclusion, Miss Miggs shed
more tears, and sobbed abundantly.
‘Can you bear this, Varden?’ said his wife in a solemn voice, laying
down her knife and fork.
‘Why, not very well, my dear,’ rejoined the locksmith, ‘but I try to
keep my temper.’
‘Don’t let there be words on my account, mim,’ sobbed Miggs. ‘It’s much
the best that we should part. I wouldn’t stay--oh, gracious me!--and
make dissensions, not for a annual gold mine, and found in tea and
sugar.’
Lest the reader should be at any loss to discover the cause of Miss
Miggs’s deep emotion, it may be whispered apart that, happening to
be listening, as her custom sometimes was, when Gabriel and his wife
conversed together, she had heard the locksmith’s joke relative to the
foreign black who played the tambourine, and bursting with the spiteful
feelings which the taunt awoke in her fair breast, exploded in the
manner we have witnessed. Matters having now arrived at a crisis, the
locksmith, as usual, and for the sake of peace and quietness, gave in.
‘What are you crying for, girl?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter with you?
What are you talking about hatred for? I don’t hate you; I don’t hate
anybody. Dry your eyes and make yourself agreeable, in Heaven’s name,
and let us all be happy while we can.’
The allied powers deeming it good generalship to consider this a
sufficient apology on the part of the enemy, and confession of having
been in the wrong, did dry their eyes and take it in good part. Miss
Miggs observed that she bore no malice, no not to her greatest foe, whom
she rather loved the more indeed, the greater persecution she sustained.
Mrs Varden approved of this meek and forgiving spirit in high terms,
and incidentally declared as a closing article of agreement, that Dolly
should accompany her to the Clerkenwell branch of the association, that
very night. This was an extraordinary instance of her great prudence and
policy; having had this end in view from the first, and entertaining
a secret misgiving that the locksmith (who was bold when Dolly was in
question) would object, she had backed Miss Miggs up to this point, in
order that she might have him at a disadvantage. The manoeuvre succeeded
so well that Gabriel only made a wry face, and with the warning he had
just had, fresh in his mind, did not dare to say one word.
The difference ended, therefore, in Miggs being presented with a gown
by Mrs Varden and half-a-crown by Dolly, as if she had eminently
distinguished herself in the paths of morality and goodness. Mrs V.,
according to custom, expressed her hope that Varden would take a lesson
from what had passed and learn more generous conduct for the time to
come; and the dinner being now cold and nobody’s appetite very much
improved by what had passed, they went on with it, as Mrs Varden said,
‘like Christians.’
As there was to be a grand parade of the Royal East London Volunteers
that afternoon, the locksmith did no more work; but sat down comfortably
with his pipe in his mouth, and his arm round his pretty daughter’s
waist, looking lovingly on Mrs V., from time to time, and exhibiting
from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, one smiling surface
of good humour. And to be sure, when it was time to dress him in his
regimentals, and Dolly, hanging about him in all kinds of graceful
winning ways, helped to button and buckle and brush him up and get him
into one of the tightest coats that ever was made by mortal tailor, he
was the proudest father in all England.
‘What a handy jade it is!’ said the locksmith to Mrs Varden, who stood
by with folded hands--rather proud of her husband too--while Miggs held
his cap and sword at arm’s length, as if mistrusting that the latter
might run some one through the body of its own accord; ‘but never marry
a soldier, Doll, my dear.’
Dolly didn’t ask why not, or say a word, indeed, but stooped her head
down very low to tie his sash.
‘I never wear this dress,’ said honest Gabriel, ‘but I think of poor Joe
Willet. I loved Joe; he was always a favourite of mine. Poor Joe!--Dear
heart, my girl, don’t tie me in so tight.’
Dolly laughed--not like herself at all--the strangest little laugh that
could be--and held her head down lower still.
‘Poor Joe!’ resumed the locksmith, muttering to himself; ‘I always wish
he had come to me. I might have made it up between them, if he had. Ah!
old John made a great mistake in his way of acting by that lad--a great
mistake.--Have you nearly tied that sash, my dear?’
What an ill-made sash it was! There it was, loose again and trailing
on the ground. Dolly was obliged to kneel down, and recommence at the
beginning.
‘Never mind young Willet, Varden,’ said his wife frowning; ‘you might
find some one more deserving to talk about, I think.’
Miss Miggs gave a great sniff to the same effect.
‘Nay, Martha,’ cried the locksmith, ‘don’t let us bear too hard upon
him. If the lad is dead indeed, we’ll deal kindly by his memory.’
‘A runaway and a vagabond!’ said Mrs Varden.
Miss Miggs expressed her concurrence as before.
‘A runaway, my dear, but not a vagabond,’ returned the locksmith in
a gentle tone. ‘He behaved himself well, did Joe--always--and was a
handsome, manly fellow. Don’t call him a vagabond, Martha.’
Mrs Varden coughed--and so did Miggs.
‘He tried hard to gain your good opinion, Martha, I can tell you,’ said
the locksmith smiling, and stroking his chin. ‘Ah! that he did. It seems
but yesterday that he followed me out to the Maypole door one night, and
begged me not to say how like a boy they used him--say here, at home, he
meant, though at the time, I recollect, I didn’t understand. “And how’s
Miss Dolly, sir?” says Joe,’ pursued the locksmith, musing sorrowfully,
‘Ah! Poor Joe!’
‘Well, I declare,’ cried Miggs. ‘Oh! Goodness gracious me!’
‘What’s the matter now?’ said Gabriel, turning sharply to her.
‘Why, if here an’t Miss Dolly,’ said the handmaid, stooping down to look
into her face, ‘a-giving way to floods of tears. Oh mim! oh sir. Raly
it’s give me such a turn,’ cried the susceptible damsel, pressing her
hand upon her side to quell the palpitation of her heart, ‘that you
might knock me down with a feather.’
The locksmith, after glancing at Miss Miggs as if he could have wished
to have a feather brought straightway, looked on with a broad stare
while Dolly hurried away, followed by that sympathising young woman:
then turning to his wife, stammered out, ‘Is Dolly ill? Have I done
anything? Is it my fault?’
‘Your fault!’ cried Mrs V. reproachfully. ‘There--you had better make
haste out.’
‘What have I done?’ said poor Gabriel. ‘It was agreed that Mr Edward’s
name was never to be mentioned, and I have not spoken of him, have I?’
Mrs Varden merely replied that she had no patience with him, and bounced
off after the other two. The unfortunate locksmith wound his sash about
him, girded on his sword, put on his cap, and walked out.
‘I am not much of a dab at my exercise,’ he said under his breath, ‘but
I shall get into fewer scrapes at that work than at this. Every man came
into the world for something; my department seems to be to make every
woman cry without meaning it. It’s rather hard!’
But he forgot it before he reached the end of the street, and went on
with a shining face, nodding to the neighbours, and showering about his
friendly greetings like mild spring rain.
Chapter 42
The Royal East London Volunteers made a brilliant sight that day: formed
into lines, squares, circles, triangles, and what not, to the beating
of drums, and the streaming of flags; and performed a vast number of
complex evolutions, in all of which Serjeant Varden bore a conspicuous
share. Having displayed their military prowess to the utmost in these
warlike shows, they marched in glittering order to the Chelsea Bun
House, and regaled in the adjacent taverns until dark. Then at sound
of drum they fell in again, and returned amidst the shouting of His
Majesty’s lieges to the place from whence they came.
The homeward march being somewhat tardy,--owing to the un-soldierlike
behaviour of certain corporals, who, being gentlemen of sedentary
pursuits in private life and excitable out of doors, broke several
windows with their bayonets, and rendered it imperative on the
commanding officer to deliver them over to a strong guard, with whom
they fought at intervals as they came along,--it was nine o’clock when
the locksmith reached home. A hackney-coach was waiting near his door;
and as he passed it, Mr Haredale looked from the window and called him
by 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 waited
here.’
‘There is nobody at home, I find,’ Mr Haredale answered; ‘besides, I
desired to be as private as I could.’
‘Humph!’ muttered the locksmith, looking round at his house. ‘Gone with
Simon Tappertit to that precious Branch, no doubt.’
Mr Haredale invited him to come into the coach, and, if he were not
tired or anxious to go home, to ride with him a little way that they
might have some talk together. Gabriel cheerfully complied, and the
coachman mounting his box drove off.
‘Varden,’ said Mr Haredale, after a minute’s pause, ‘you will be amazed
to 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 just
come back to town, sir?’
‘But half an hour ago.’
‘Bringing no news of Barnaby, or his mother?’ said the locksmith
dubiously. ‘Ah! you needn’t shake your head, sir. It was a wild-goose
chase. I feared that, from the first. You exhausted all reasonable means
of discovery when they went away. To begin again after so long a time
has 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 five
years ago, have their beds under the grass now. And the world is a
wide place. It’s a hopeless attempt, sir, believe me. We must leave the
discovery of this mystery, like all others, to time, and accident, and
Heaven’s pleasure.’
‘Varden, my good fellow,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘I have a deeper meaning in
my present anxiety to find them out, than you can fathom. It is not a
mere 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 peace
or quiet; I am haunted.’
His voice was so altered from its usual tones, and his manner bespoke
so much emotion, that Gabriel, in his wonder, could only sit and look
towards him in the darkness, and fancy the expression of his face.
‘Do not ask me,’ continued Mr Haredale, ‘to explain myself. If I were to
do so, you would think me the victim of some hideous fancy. It is enough
that this is so, and that I cannot--no, I can not--lie quietly in my
bed, without doing what will seem to you incomprehensible.’
‘Since when, sir,’ said the locksmith after a pause, ‘has this uneasy
feeling been upon you?’
Mr Haredale hesitated for some moments, and then replied: ‘Since the
night of the storm. In short, since the last nineteenth of March.’
As though he feared that Varden might express surprise, or reason with
him, he hastily went on:
‘You will think, I know, I labour under some delusion. Perhaps I do. But
it is not a morbid one; it is a wholesome action of the mind, reasoning
on actual occurrences. You know the furniture remains in Mrs Rudge’s
house, 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 away
the 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 many
nights. This is a secret which I trust to you in case of any unexpected
emergency. 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 the
rest, 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 may
confide it to you, and I rely upon your questioning me no more at this
time.’
With that, as if to change the theme, he led the astounded locksmith
back to the night of the Maypole highwayman, to the robbery of Edward
Chester, to the reappearance of the man at Mrs Rudge’s house, and to all
the strange circumstances which afterwards occurred. He even asked him
carelessly about the man’s height, his face, his figure, whether he was
like any one he had ever seen--like Hugh, for instance, or any man he
had known at any time--and put many questions of that sort, which the
locksmith, considering them as mere devices to engage his attention and
prevent his expressing the astonishment he felt, answered pretty much at
random.
At length, they arrived at the corner of the street in which the house
stood, where Mr Haredale, alighting, dismissed the coach. ‘If you desire
to see me safely lodged,’ he said, turning to the locksmith with a
gloomy smile, ‘you can.’
Gabriel, to whom all former marvels had been nothing in comparison
with this, followed him along the narrow pavement in silence. When they
reached the door, Mr Haredale softly opened it with a key he had about
him, and closing it when Varden entered, they were left in thorough
darkness.
They groped their way into the ground-floor room. Here Mr Haredale
struck a light, and kindled a pocket taper he had brought with him for
the purpose. It was then, when the flame was full upon him, that the
locksmith saw for the first time how haggard, pale, and changed he
looked; how worn and thin he was; how perfectly his whole appearance
coincided 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, to
note curiously the expression of his eyes. It was perfectly collected
and rational;--so much so, indeed, that he felt ashamed of his momentary
suspicion, and drooped his own when Mr Haredale looked towards him, as
if he feared they would betray his thoughts.
‘Will you walk through the house?’ said Mr Haredale, with a glance
towards the window, the crazy shutters of which were closed and
fastened. ‘Speak low.’
There was a kind of awe about the place, which would have rendered it
difficult to speak in any other manner. Gabriel whispered ‘Yes,’ and
followed him upstairs.
Everything was just as they had seen it last. There was a sense of
closeness from the exclusion of fresh air, and a gloom and heaviness
around, as though long imprisonment had made the very silence sad. The
homely hangings of the beds and windows had begun to droop; the dust lay
thick upon their dwindling folds; and damps had made their way through
ceiling, wall, and floor. The boards creaked beneath their tread, as if
resenting the unaccustomed intrusion; nimble spiders, paralysed by the
taper’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 to
find how vividly it presented those to whom it had belonged, and
with whom it was once familiar. Grip seemed to perch again upon his
high-backed chair; Barnaby to crouch in his old favourite corner by the
fire; the mother to resume her usual seat, and watch him as of old. Even
when they could separate these objects from the phantoms of the mind
which they invoked, the latter only glided out of sight, but lingered
near them still; for then they seemed to lurk in closets and behind the
doors, ready to start out and suddenly accost them in well-remembered
tones.
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 of
pocket pistols; then told the locksmith he would light him to the door.
‘But this is a dull place, sir,’ said Gabriel lingering; ‘may no one
share your watch?’
He shook his head, and so plainly evinced his wish to be alone, that
Gabriel could say no more. In another moment the locksmith was standing
in the street, whence he could see that the light once more travelled
upstairs, and soon returning to the room below, shone brightly through
the chinks of the shutters.
If ever man were sorely puzzled and perplexed, the locksmith was, that
night. Even when snugly seated by his own fireside, with Mrs Varden
opposite in a nightcap and night-jacket, and Dolly beside him (in a
most distracting dishabille) curling her hair, and smiling as if she had
never cried in all her life and never could--even then, with Toby at
his elbow and his pipe in his mouth, and Miggs (but that perhaps was not
much) falling asleep in the background, he could not quite discard his
wonder and uneasiness. So in his dreams--still there was Mr Haredale,
haggard and careworn, listening in the solitary house to every sound
that stirred, with the taper shining through the chinks until the day
should turn it pale and end his lonely watching.
Chapter 43
Next morning brought no satisfaction to the locksmith’s thoughts,
nor next day, nor the next, nor many others. Often after nightfall he
entered the street, and turned his eyes towards the well-known house;
and as surely as he did so, there was the solitary light, still gleaming
through the crevices of the window-shutter, while all within was
motionless, noiseless, cheerless, as a grave. Unwilling to hazard Mr
Haredale’s favour by disobeying his strict injunction, he never ventured
to knock at the door or to make his presence known in any way. But
whenever strong interest and curiosity attracted him to the spot--which
was not seldom--the light was always there.
If he could have known what passed within, the knowledge would have
yielded him no clue to this mysterious vigil. At twilight, Mr Haredale
shut himself up, and at daybreak he came forth. He never missed a night,
always came and went alone, and never varied his proceedings in the
least degree.
The manner of his watch was this. At dusk, he entered the house in the
same way as when the locksmith bore him company, kindled a light, went
through the rooms, and narrowly examined them. That done, he returned to
the chamber on the ground-floor, and laying his sword and pistols on the
table, sat by it until morning.
He usually had a book with him, and often tried to read, but never fixed
his eyes or thoughts upon it for five minutes together. The slightest
noise without doors, caught his ear; a step upon the pavement seemed to
make his heart leap.
He was not without some refreshment during the long lonely hours;
generally carrying in his pocket a sandwich of bread and meat, and a
small flask of wine. The latter diluted with large quantities of water,
he drank in a heated, feverish way, as though his throat were dried; but
he scarcely ever broke his fast, by so much as a crumb of bread.
If this voluntary sacrifice of sleep and comfort had its origin, as the
locksmith on consideration was disposed to think, in any superstitious
expectation of the fulfilment of a dream or vision connected with the
event on which he had brooded for so many years, and if he waited for
some ghostly visitor who walked abroad when men lay sleeping in their
beds, he showed no trace of fear or wavering. His stern features
expressed inflexible resolution; his brows were puckered, and his lips
compressed, with deep and settled purpose; and when he started at a
noise and listened, it was not with the start of fear but hope, and
catching up his sword as though the hour had come at last, he would
clutch it in his tight-clenched hand, and listen with sparkling eyes and
eager looks, until it died away.
These disappointments were numerous, for they ensued on almost every
sound, but his constancy was not shaken. Still, every night he was at
his post, the same stern, sleepless, sentinel; and still night passed,
and morning dawned, and he must watch again.
This went on for weeks; he had taken a lodging at Vauxhall in which
to pass the day and rest himself; and from this place, when the tide
served, he usually came to London Bridge from Westminster by water, in
order that he might avoid the busy streets.
One evening, shortly before twilight, he came his accustomed road upon
the river’s bank, intending to pass through Westminster Hall into Palace
Yard, and there take boat to London Bridge as usual. There was a pretty
large concourse of people assembled round the Houses of Parliament,
looking at the members as they entered and departed, and giving vent to
rather noisy demonstrations of approval or dislike, according to their
known opinions. As he made his way among the throng, he heard once or
twice the No-Popery cry, which was then becoming pretty familiar to the
ears of most men; but holding it in very slight regard, and observing
that the idlers were of the lowest grade, he neither thought nor cared
about it, but made his way along, with perfect indifference.
There were many little knots and groups of persons in Westminster Hall:
some few looking upward at its noble ceiling, and at the rays of evening
light, tinted by the setting sun, which streamed in aslant through
its small windows, and growing dimmer by degrees, were quenched in the
gathering gloom below; some, noisy passengers, mechanics going home from
work, and otherwise, who hurried quickly through, waking the echoes with
their voices, and soon darkening the small door in the distance, as
they passed into the street beyond; some, in busy conference together on
political or private matters, pacing slowly up and down with eyes that
sought the ground, and seeming, by their attitudes, to listen earnestly
from head to foot. Here, a dozen squabbling urchins made a very Babel in
the air; there, a solitary man, half clerk, half mendicant, paced up and
down with hungry dejection in his look and gait; at his elbow passed
an errand-lad, swinging his basket round and round, and with his shrill
whistle riving the very timbers of the roof; while a more observant
schoolboy, half-way through, pocketed his ball, and eyed the distant
beadle as he came looming on. It was that time of evening when, if you
shut your eyes and open them again, the darkness of an hour appears
to have gathered in a second. The smooth-worn pavement, dusty with
footsteps, still called upon the lofty walls to reiterate the shuffle
and the tread of feet unceasingly, save when the closing of some heavy
door resounded through the building like a clap of thunder, and drowned
all other noises in its rolling sound.
Mr Haredale, glancing only at such of these groups as he passed nearest
to, and then in a manner betokening that his thoughts were elsewhere,
had nearly traversed the Hall, when two persons before him caught his
attention. One of these, a gentleman in elegant attire, carried in his
hand a cane, which he twirled in a jaunty manner as he loitered on; the
other, an obsequious, crouching, fawning figure, listened to what
he said--at times throwing in a humble word himself--and, with his
shoulders shrugged up to his ears, rubbed his hands submissively, or
answered at intervals by an inclination of the head, half-way between a
nod of acquiescence, and a bow of most profound respect.
In the abstract there was nothing very remarkable in this pair, for
servility waiting on a handsome suit of clothes and a cane--not to speak
of gold and silver sticks, or wands of office--is common enough. But
there was that about the well-dressed man, yes, and about the other
likewise, which struck Mr Haredale with no pleasant feeling. He
hesitated, stopped, and would have stepped aside and turned out of his
path, but at the moment, the other two faced about quickly, and stumbled
upon him before he could avoid them.
The gentleman with the cane lifted his hat and had begun to tender an
apology, which Mr Haredale had begun as hastily to acknowledge and walk
away, when he stopped short and cried, ‘Haredale! Gad bless me, this is
strange indeed!’
‘It is,’ he returned impatiently; ‘yes--a--’
‘My dear friend,’ cried the other, detaining him, ‘why such great speed?
One minute, Haredale, for the sake of old acquaintance.’
‘I am in haste,’ he said. ‘Neither of us has sought this meeting. Let it
be a brief one. Good night!’
‘Fie, fie!’ replied Sir John (for it was he), ‘how very churlish! We
were speaking of you. Your name was on my lips--perhaps you heard me
mention it? No? I am sorry for that. I am really sorry.--You know our
friend here, Haredale? This is really a most remarkable meeting!’
The friend, plainly very ill at ease, had made bold to press Sir John’s
arm, and to give him other significant hints that he was desirous of
avoiding this introduction. As it did not suit Sir John’s purpose,
however, that it should be evaded, he appeared quite unconscious of
these silent remonstrances, and inclined his hand towards him, as he
spoke, to call attention to him more particularly.
The friend, therefore, had nothing for it, but to muster up the
pleasantest smile he could, and to make a conciliatory bow, as Mr
Haredale turned his eyes upon him. Seeing that he was recognised, he put
out his hand in an awkward and embarrassed manner, which was not mended
by its contemptuous rejection.
‘Mr Gashford!’ said Haredale, coldly. ‘It is as I have heard then. You
have left the darkness for the light, sir, and hate those whose opinions
you formerly held, with all the bitterness of a renegade. You are an
honour, sir, to any cause. I wish the one you espouse at present, much
joy of the acquisition it has made.’
The secretary rubbed his hands and bowed, as though he would disarm
his adversary by humbling himself before him. Sir John Chester again
exclaimed, with an air of great gaiety, ‘Now, really, this is a
most remarkable meeting!’ and took a pinch of snuff with his usual
self-possession.
‘Mr Haredale,’ said Gashford, stealthily raising his eyes, and
letting them drop again when they met the other’s steady gaze, ‘is too
conscientious, too honourable, too manly, I am sure, to attach unworthy
motives to an honest change of opinions, even though it implies a doubt
of those he holds himself. Mr Haredale is too just, too generous, too
clear-sighted in his moral vision, to--’
‘Yes, sir?’ he rejoined with a sarcastic smile, finding the secretary
stopped. ‘You were saying’--
Gashford meekly shrugged his shoulders, and looking on the ground again,
was silent.
‘No, but let us really,’ interposed Sir John at this juncture, ‘let us
really, for a moment, contemplate the very remarkable character of this
meeting. Haredale, my dear friend, pardon me if I think you are not
sufficiently impressed with its singularity. Here we stand, by no
previous appointment or arrangement, three old schoolfellows, in
Westminster Hall; three old boarders in a remarkably dull and shady
seminary at Saint Omer’s, where you, being Catholics and of necessity
educated out of England, were brought up; and where I, being a promising
young Protestant at that time, was sent to learn the French tongue from
a native of Paris!’
‘Add to the singularity, Sir John,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘that some of you
Protestants of promise are at this moment leagued in yonder building, to
prevent our having the surpassing and unheard-of privilege of teaching
our children to read and write--here--in this land, where thousands of
us enter your service every year, and to preserve the freedom of which,
we die in bloody battles abroad, in heaps: and that others of you, to
the number of some thousands as I learn, are led on to look on all men
of my creed as wolves and beasts of prey, by this man Gashford. Add
to it besides the bare fact that this man lives in society, walks the
streets in broad day--I was about to say, holds up his head, but that he
does not--and it will be strange, and very strange, I grant you.’
‘Oh! you are hard upon our friend,’ replied Sir John, with an engaging
smile. ‘You are really very hard upon our friend!’
‘Let him go on, Sir John,’ said Gashford, fumbling with his gloves. ‘Let
him go on. I can make allowances, Sir John. I am honoured with your
good opinion, and I can dispense with Mr Haredale’s. Mr Haredale is a
sufferer from the penal laws, and I can’t expect his favour.’
‘You have so much of my favour, sir,’ retorted Mr Haredale, with a
bitter glance at the third party in their conversation, ‘that I am
glad to see you in such good company. You are the essence of your great
Association, in yourselves.’
‘Now, there you mistake,’ said Sir John, in his most benignant way.
‘There--which is a most remarkable circumstance for a man of your
punctuality and exactness, Haredale--you fall into error. I don’t belong
to the body; I have an immense respect for its members, but I don’t
belong to it; although I am, it is certainly true, the conscientious
opponent of your being relieved. I feel it my duty to be so; it is a
most unfortunate necessity; and cost me a bitter struggle.--Will you try
this box? If you don’t object to a trifling infusion of a very chaste
scent, you’ll find its flavour exquisite.’
‘I ask your pardon, Sir John,’ said Mr Haredale, declining the proffer
with a motion of his hand, ‘for having ranked you among the humble
instruments who are obvious and in all men’s sight. I should have done
more justice to your genius. Men of your capacity plot in secrecy and
safety, and leave exposed posts to the duller wits.’
‘Don’t apologise, for the world,’ replied Sir John sweetly; ‘old friends
like you and I, may be allowed some freedoms, or the deuce is in it.’
Gashford, who had been very restless all this time, but had not once
looked up, now turned to Sir John, and ventured to mutter something to
the effect that he must go, or my lord would perhaps be waiting.
‘Don’t distress yourself, good sir,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘I’ll take my
leave, and put you at your ease--’ which he was about to do without
ceremony, when he was stayed by a buzz and murmur at the upper end of
the hall, and, looking in that direction, saw Lord George Gordon coming
in, with a crowd of people round him.
There was a lurking look of triumph, though very differently expressed,
in the faces of his two companions, which made it a natural impulse
on Mr Haredale’s part not to give way before this leader, but to stand
there while he passed. He drew himself up and, clasping his hands behind
him, looked on with a proud and scornful aspect, while Lord George
slowly advanced (for the press was great about him) towards the spot
where they were standing.
He had left the House of Commons but that moment, and had come straight
down into the Hall, bringing with him, as his custom was, intelligence
of what had been said that night in reference to the Papists, and what
petitions had been presented in their favour, and who had supported
them, and when the bill was to be brought in, and when it would be
advisable to present their own Great Protestant petition. All this he
told the persons about him in a loud voice, and with great abundance
of ungainly gesture. Those who were nearest him made comments to each
other, and vented threats and murmurings; those who were outside the
crowd cried, ‘Silence,’ and ‘Stand back,’ or closed in upon the rest,
endeavouring to make a forcible exchange of places: and so they came
driving on in a very disorderly and irregular way, as it is the manner
of a crowd to do.
When they were very near to where the secretary, Sir John, and Mr
Haredale stood, Lord George turned round and, making a few remarks of
a sufficiently violent and incoherent kind, concluded with the usual
sentiment, and called for three cheers to back it. While these were in
the act of being given with great energy, he extricated himself from
the press, and stepped up to Gashford’s side. Both he and Sir John being
well known to the populace, they fell back a little, and left the four
standing together.
‘Mr Haredale, Lord George,’ said Sir John Chester, seeing that the
nobleman regarded him with an inquisitive look. ‘A Catholic gentleman
unfortunately--most unhappily a Catholic--but an esteemed acquaintance
of mine, and once of Mr Gashford’s. My dear Haredale, this is Lord
George Gordon.’
‘I should have known that, had I been ignorant of his lordship’s
person,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘I hope there is but one gentleman in England
who, addressing an ignorant and excited throng, would speak of a large
body of his fellow-subjects in such injurious language as I heard this
moment. For shame, my lord, for shame!’
‘I cannot talk to you, sir,’ replied Lord George in a loud voice, and
waving his hand in a disturbed and agitated manner; ‘we have nothing in
common.’
‘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:
‘I have nothing to say, sir, in reply, and no desire to hear anything
more. I beg you won’t obtrude your conversation, or these personal
attacks, upon me. I shall not be deterred from doing my duty to my
country and my countrymen, by any such attempts, whether they proceed
from emissaries of the Pope or not, I assure you. Come, Gashford!’
They had walked on a few paces while speaking, and were now at the
Hall-door, through which they passed together. Mr Haredale, without any
leave-taking, turned away to the river stairs, which were close at hand,
and hailed the only boatman who remained there.
But the throng of people--the foremost of whom had heard every word
that Lord George Gordon said, and among all of whom the rumour had been
rapidly dispersed that the stranger was a Papist who was bearding him
for his advocacy of the popular cause--came pouring out pell-mell, and,
forcing the nobleman, his secretary, and Sir John Chester on before
them, so that they appeared to be at their head, crowded to the top of
the stairs where Mr Haredale waited until the boat was ready, and there
stood still, leaving him on a little clear space by himself.
They were not silent, however, though inactive. At first some indistinct
mutterings arose among them, which were followed by a hiss or two, and
these swelled by degrees into a perfect storm. Then one voice said,
‘Down with the Papists!’ and there was a pretty general cheer, but
nothing more. After a lull of a few moments, one man cried out, ‘Stone
him;’ another, ‘Duck him;’ another, in a stentorian voice, ‘No Popery!’
This favourite cry the rest re-echoed, and the mob, which might have
been two hundred strong, joined in a general shout.
Mr Haredale had stood calmly on the brink of the steps, until they made
this demonstration, when he looked round contemptuously, and walked at
a slow pace down the stairs. He was pretty near the boat, when Gashford,
as if without intention, turned about, and directly afterwards a great
stone was thrown by some hand, in the crowd, which struck him on the
head, and made him stagger like a drunken man.
The blood sprung freely from the wound, and trickled down his coat. He
turned directly, and rushing up the steps with a boldness and passion
which made them all fall back, demanded:
‘Who did that? Show me the man who hit me.’
Not a soul moved; except some in the rear who slunk off, and, escaping
to the other side of the way, looked on like indifferent spectators.
‘Who did that?’ he repeated. ‘Show me the man who did it. Dog, was it
you? It was your deed, if not your hand--I know you.’
He threw himself on Gashford as he said the words, and hurled him to the
ground. There was a sudden motion in the crowd, and some laid hands upon
him, but his sword was out, and they fell off again.
‘My lord--Sir John,’--he cried, ‘draw, one of you--you are responsible
for this outrage, and I look to you. Draw, if you are gentlemen.’ With
that he struck Sir John upon the breast with the flat of his weapon,
and with a burning face and flashing eyes stood upon his guard; alone,
before them all.
For an instant, for the briefest space of time the mind can readily
conceive, there was a change in Sir John’s smooth face, such as no man
ever saw there. The next moment, he stepped forward, and laid one hand
on Mr Haredale’s arm, while with the other he endeavoured to appease the
crowd.
‘My dear friend, my good Haredale, you are blinded with passion--it’s
very natural, extremely natural--but you don’t know friends from foes.’
‘I know them all, sir, I can distinguish well--’ he retorted, almost mad
with rage. ‘Sir John, Lord George--do you hear me? Are you cowards?’
‘Never mind, sir,’ said a man, forcing his way between and pushing him
towards the stairs with friendly violence, ‘never mind asking that. For
God’s sake, get away. What CAN you do against this number? And there are
as many more in the next street, who’ll be round directly,’--indeed they
began to pour in as he said the words--‘you’d be giddy from that cut, in
the first heat of a scuffle. Now do retire, sir, or take my word for it
you’ll be worse used than you would be if every man in the crowd was a
woman, and that woman Bloody Mary. Come, sir, make haste--as quick as
you can.’
Mr Haredale, who began to turn faint and sick, felt how sensible
this advice was, and descended the steps with his unknown friend’s
assistance. John Grueby (for John it was) helped him into the boat, and
giving her a shove off, which sent her thirty feet into the tide, bade
the waterman pull away like a Briton; and walked up again as composedly
as if he had just landed.
There was at first a slight disposition on the part of the mob to resent
this interference; but John looking particularly strong and cool, and
wearing besides Lord George’s livery, they thought better of it, and
contented themselves with sending a shower of small missiles after the
boat, which plashed harmlessly in the water; for she had by this time
cleared the bridge, and was darting swiftly down the centre of the
stream.
From this amusement, they proceeded to giving Protestant knocks at the
doors of private houses, breaking a few lamps, and assaulting some stray
constables. But, it being whispered that a detachment of Life Guards had
been sent for, they took to their heels with great expedition, and left
the street quite clear.
Chapter 44
When the concourse separated, and, dividing into chance clusters, drew
off in various directions, there still remained upon the scene of the
late disturbance, one man. This man was Gashford, who, bruised by his
late fall, and hurt in a much greater degree by the indignity he had
undergone, and the exposure of which he had been the victim, limped up
and down, breathing curses and threats of vengeance.
It was not the secretary’s nature to waste his wrath in words. While he
vented the froth of his malevolence in those effusions, he kept a steady
eye on two men, who, having disappeared with the rest when the alarm was
spread, had since returned, and were now visible in the moonlight, at no
great distance, as they walked to and fro, and talked together.
He made no move towards them, but waited patiently on the dark side of
the street, until they were tired of strolling backwards and forwards
and walked away in company. Then he followed, but at some distance:
keeping them in view, without appearing to have that object, or being
seen by them.
They went up Parliament Street, past Saint Martin’s church, and away by
Saint Giles’s to Tottenham Court Road, at the back of which, upon
the western side, was then a place called the Green Lanes. This was a
retired spot, not of the choicest kind, leading into the fields. Great
heaps of ashes; stagnant pools, overgrown with rank grass and duckweed;
broken turnstiles; and the upright posts of palings long since carried
off for firewood, which menaced all heedless walkers with their jagged
and rusty nails; were the leading features of the landscape: while here
and there a donkey, or a ragged horse, tethered to a stake, and cropping
off a wretched meal from the coarse stunted turf, were quite in keeping
with the scene, and would have suggested (if the houses had not done so,
sufficiently, of themselves) how very poor the people were who lived in
the crazy huts adjacent, and how foolhardy it might prove for one who
carried money, or wore decent clothes, to walk that way alone, unless by
daylight.
Poverty has its whims and shows of taste, as wealth has. Some of these
cabins were turreted, some had false windows painted on their rotten
walls; one had a mimic clock, upon a crazy tower of four feet high,
which screened the chimney; each in its little patch of ground had a
rude seat or arbour. The population dealt in bones, in rags, in broken
glass, in old wheels, in birds, and dogs. These, in their several ways
of stowage, filled the gardens; and shedding a perfume, not of the most
delicious nature, in the air, filled it besides with yelps, and screams,
and howling.
Into this retreat, the secretary followed the two men whom he had held
in sight; and here he saw them safely lodged, in one of the meanest
houses, which was but a room, and that of small dimensions. He waited
without, until the sound of their voices, joined in a discordant song,
assured him they were making merry; and then approaching the door, by
means of a tottering plank which crossed the ditch in front, knocked at
it with his hand.
‘Muster Gashford!’ said the man who opened it, taking his pipe from
his mouth, in evident surprise. ‘Why, who’d have thought of this here
honour! Walk in, Muster Gashford--walk in, sir.’
Gashford required no second invitation, and entered with a gracious air.
There was a fire in the rusty grate (for though the spring was pretty
far advanced, the nights were cold), and on a stool beside it Hugh sat
smoking. Dennis placed a chair, his only one, for the secretary, in
front of the hearth; and took his seat again upon the stool he had left
when he rose to give the visitor admission.
‘What’s in the wind now, Muster Gashford?’ he said, as he resumed his
pipe, and looked at him askew. ‘Any orders from head-quarters? Are we
going to begin? What is it, Muster Gashford?’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ rejoined the secretary, with a friendly nod to
Hugh. ‘We have broken the ice, though. We had a little spurt to-day--eh,
Dennis?’
‘A very little one,’ growled the hangman. ‘Not half enough for me.’
‘Nor me neither!’ cried Hugh. ‘Give us something to do with life in
it--with life in it, master. Ha, ha!’
‘Why, you wouldn’t,’ said the secretary, with his worst expression of
face, and in his mildest tones, ‘have anything to do, with--with death
in it?’
‘I don’t know that,’ replied Hugh. ‘I’m open to orders. I don’t care;
not I.’
‘Nor I!’ vociferated Dennis.
‘Brave fellows!’ said the secretary, in as pastor-like a voice as if he
were commending them for some uncommon act of valour and generosity. ‘By
the bye’--and here he stopped and warmed his hands: then suddenly looked
up--‘who threw that stone to-day?’
Mr Dennis coughed and shook his head, as who should say, ‘A mystery
indeed!’ Hugh sat and smoked in silence.
‘It was well done!’ said the secretary, warming his hands again. ‘I
should like to know that man.’
‘Would you?’ said Dennis, after looking at his face to assure himself
that he was serious. ‘Would you like to know that man, Muster Gashford?’
‘I should indeed,’ replied the secretary.
‘Why then, Lord love you,’ said the hangman, in his hoarest chuckle,
as he pointed with his pipe to Hugh, ‘there he sits. That’s the man. My
stars and halters, Muster Gashford,’ he added in a whisper, as he
drew his stool close to him and jogged him with his elbow, ‘what a
interesting blade he is! He wants as much holding in as a thorough-bred
bulldog. If it hadn’t been for me to-day, he’d have had that ‘ere Roman
down, and made a riot of it, in another minute.’
‘And why not?’ cried Hugh in a surly voice, as he overheard this last
remark. ‘Where’s the good of putting things off? Strike while the iron’s
hot; that’s what I say.’
‘Ah!’ retorted Dennis, shaking his head, with a kind of pity for his
friend’s ingenuous youth; ‘but suppose the iron an’t hot, brother! You
must get people’s blood up afore you strike, and have ‘em in the humour.
There wasn’t quite enough to provoke ‘em to-day, I tell you. If you’d
had your way, you’d have spoilt the fun to come, and ruined us.’
‘Dennis is quite right,’ said Gashford, smoothly. ‘He is perfectly
correct. Dennis has great knowledge of the world.’
‘I ought to have, Muster Gashford, seeing what a many people I’ve helped
out of it, eh?’ grinned the hangman, whispering the words behind his
hand.
The secretary laughed at this jest as much as Dennis could desire, and
when he had done, said, turning to Hugh:
‘Dennis’s policy was mine, as you may have observed. You saw, for
instance, how I fell when I was set upon. I made no resistance. I did
nothing to provoke an outbreak. Oh dear no!’
‘No, by the Lord Harry!’ cried Dennis with a noisy laugh, ‘you went down
very quiet, Muster Gashford--and very flat besides. I thinks to myself
at the time “it’s all up with Muster Gashford!” I never see a man lay
flatter nor more still--with the life in him--than you did to-day. He’s
a rough ‘un to play with, is that ‘ere Papist, and that’s the fact.’
The secretary’s face, as Dennis roared with laughter, and turned his
wrinkled eyes on Hugh who did the like, might have furnished a study for
the devil’s picture. He sat quite silent until they were serious again,
and then said, looking round:
‘We are very pleasant here; so very pleasant, Dennis, that but for my
lord’s particular desire that I should sup with him, and the time being
very near at hand, I should be inclined to stay, until it would be
hardly safe to go homeward. I come upon a little business--yes, I do--as
you supposed. It’s very flattering to you; being this. If we ever
should be obliged--and we can’t tell, you know--this is a very uncertain
world’--
‘I believe you, Muster Gashford,’ interposed the hangman with a grave
nod. ‘The uncertainties as I’ve seen in reference to this here state of
existence, the unexpected contingencies as have come about!--Oh my eye!’
Feeling the subject much too vast for expression, he puffed at his pipe
again, and looked the rest.
‘I say,’ resumed the secretary, in a slow, impressive way; ‘we can’t
tell what may come to pass; and if we should be obliged, against our
wills, to have recourse to violence, my lord (who has suffered terribly
to-day, as far as words can go) consigns to you two--bearing in mind my
recommendation of you both, as good staunch men, beyond all doubt and
suspicion--the pleasant task of punishing this Haredale. You may do as
you please with him, or his, provided that you show no mercy, and no
quarter, and leave no two beams of his house standing where the builder
placed them. You may sack it, burn it, do with it as you like, but
it must come down; it must be razed to the ground; and he, and all
belonging to him, left as shelterless as new-born infants whom their
mothers have exposed. Do you understand me?’ said Gashford, pausing, and
pressing his hands together gently.
‘Understand you, master!’ cried Hugh. ‘You speak plain now. Why, this is
hearty!’
‘I knew you would like it,’ said Gashford, shaking him by the hand; ‘I
thought you would. Good night! Don’t rise, Dennis: I would rather find
my way alone. I may have to make other visits here, and it’s pleasant
to come and go without disturbing you. I can find my way perfectly well.
Good night!’
He was gone, and had shut the door behind him. They looked at each
other, and nodded approvingly: Dennis stirred up the fire.
‘This looks a little more like business!’ he said.
‘Ay, indeed!’ cried Hugh; ‘this suits me!’
‘I’ve heerd it said of Muster Gashford,’ said the hangman, ‘that he’d
a surprising memory and wonderful firmness--that he never forgot, and
never forgave.--Let’s drink his health!’
Hugh readily complied--pouring no liquor on the floor when he drank this
toast--and they pledged the secretary as a man after their own hearts,
in a bumper.
Chapter 45
While the worst passions of the worst men were thus working in the dark,
and the mantle of religion, assumed to cover the ugliest deformities,
threatened to become the shroud of all that was good and peaceful in
society, a circumstance occurred which once more altered the position of
two persons from whom this history has long been separated, and to whom
it must now return.
In a small English country town, the inhabitants of which supported
themselves by the labour of their hands in plaiting and preparing straw
for those who made bonnets and other articles of dress and ornament from
that material,--concealed under an assumed name, and living in a quiet
poverty which knew no change, no pleasures, and few cares but that
of struggling on from day to day in one great toil for bread,--dwelt
Barnaby and his mother. Their poor cottage had known no stranger’s foot
since they sought the shelter of its roof five years before; nor had
they in all that time held any commerce or communication with the old
world from which they had fled. To labour in peace, and devote her
labour and her life to her poor son, was all the widow sought. If
happiness can be said at any time to be the lot of one on whom a secret
sorrow preys, she was happy now. Tranquillity, resignation, and her
strong love of him who needed it so much, formed the small circle of her
quiet joys; and while that remained unbroken, she was contented.
For Barnaby himself, the time which had flown by, had passed him like
the wind. The daily suns of years had shed no brighter gleam of reason
on his mind; no dawn had broken on his long, dark night. He would sit
sometimes--often for days together on a low seat by the fire or by the
cottage door, busy at work (for he had learnt the art his mother plied),
and listening, God help him, to the tales she would repeat, as a lure
to keep him in her sight. He had no recollection of these little
narratives; the tale of yesterday was new to him upon the morrow; but
he liked them at the moment; and when the humour held him, would remain
patiently within doors, hearing her stories like a little child, and
working cheerfully from sunrise until it was too dark to see.
At other times,--and then their scanty earnings were barely sufficient
to furnish them with food, though of the coarsest sort,--he would wander
abroad from dawn of day until the twilight deepened into night. Few
in that place, even of the children, could be idle, and he had no
companions of his own kind. Indeed there were not many who could have
kept up with him in his rambles, had there been a legion. But there were
a score of vagabond dogs belonging to the neighbours, who served his
purpose quite as well. With two or three of these, or sometimes with a
full half-dozen barking at his heels, he would sally forth on some
long expedition that consumed the day; and though, on their return at
nightfall, the dogs would come home limping and sore-footed, and almost
spent with their fatigue, Barnaby was up and off again at sunrise with
some new attendants of the same class, with whom he would return in like
manner. On all these travels, Grip, in his little basket at his master’s
back, was a constant member of the party, and when they set off in fine
weather and in high spirits, no dog barked louder than the raven.
Their pleasures on these excursions were simple enough. A crust of bread
and scrap of meat, with water from the brook or spring, sufficed for
their repast. Barnaby’s enjoyments were, to walk, and run, and leap,
till he was tired; then to lie down in the long grass, or by the growing
corn, or in the shade of some tall tree, looking upward at the light
clouds as they floated over the blue surface of the sky, and
listening to the lark as she poured out her brilliant song. There were
wild-flowers to pluck--the bright red poppy, the gentle harebell, the
cowslip, and the rose. There were birds to watch; fish; ants; worms;
hares or rabbits, as they darted across the distant pathway in the wood
and so were gone: millions of living things to have an interest in, and
lie in wait for, and clap hands and shout in memory of, when they had
disappeared. In default of these, or when they wearied, there was the
merry sunlight to hunt out, as it crept in aslant through leaves and
boughs of trees, and hid far down--deep, deep, in hollow places--like
a silver pool, where nodding branches seemed to bathe and sport; sweet
scents of summer air breathing over fields of beans or clover; the
perfume of wet leaves or moss; the life of waving trees, and shadows
always changing. When these or any of them tired, or in excess of
pleasing tempted him to shut his eyes, there was slumber in the midst
of all these soft delights, with the gentle wind murmuring like music in
his ears, and everything around melting into one delicious dream.
Their hut--for it was little more--stood on the outskirts of the town,
at a short distance from the high road, but in a secluded place, where
few chance passengers strayed at any season of the year. It had a plot
of garden-ground attached, which Barnaby, in fits and starts of working,
trimmed, and kept in order. Within doors and without, his mother
laboured for their common good; and hail, rain, snow, or sunshine, found
no difference in her.
Though so far removed from the scenes of her past life, and with so
little thought or hope of ever visiting them again, she seemed to have
a strange desire to know what happened in the busy world. Any old
newspaper, or scrap of intelligence from London, she caught at with
avidity. The excitement it produced was not of a pleasurable kind, for
her manner at such times expressed the keenest anxiety and dread; but it
never faded in the least degree. Then, and in stormy winter nights, when
the wind blew loud and strong, the old expression came into her face,
and she would be seized with a fit of trembling, like one who had an
ague. But Barnaby noted little of this; and putting a great constraint
upon herself, she usually recovered her accustomed manner before the
change had caught his observation.
Grip was by no means an idle or unprofitable member of the humble
household. Partly by dint of Barnaby’s tuition, and partly by pursuing a
species of self-instruction common to his tribe, and exerting his powers
of observation to the utmost, he had acquired a degree of sagacity
which rendered him famous for miles round. His conversational powers and
surprising performances were the universal theme: and as many
persons came to see the wonderful raven, and none left his exertions
unrewarded--when he condescended to exhibit, which was not always,
for genius is capricious--his earnings formed an important item in the
common stock. Indeed, the bird himself appeared to know his value well;
for though he was perfectly free and unrestrained in the presence of
Barnaby and his mother, he maintained in public an amazing gravity,
and never stooped to any other gratuitous performances than biting
the ankles of vagabond boys (an exercise in which he much delighted),
killing a fowl or two occasionally, and swallowing the dinners of
various neighbouring dogs, of whom the boldest held him in great awe and
dread.
Time had glided on in this way, and nothing had happened to disturb or
change their mode of life, when, one summer’s night in June, they were
in their little garden, resting from the labours of the day. The widow’s
work was yet upon her knee, and strewn upon the ground about her; and
Barnaby stood leaning on his spade, gazing at the brightness in the
west, and singing softly to himself.
‘A brave evening, mother! If we had, chinking in our pockets, but a few
specks of that gold which is piled up yonder in the sky, we should be
rich for life.’
‘We are better as we are,’ returned the widow with a quiet smile. ‘Let
us be contented, and we do not want and need not care to have it, though
it lay shining at our feet.’
‘Ay!’ said Barnaby, resting with crossed arms on his spade, and looking
wistfully at the sunset, ‘that’s well enough, mother; but gold’s a good
thing to have. I wish that I knew where to find it. Grip and I could do
much with gold, be sure of that.’
‘What would you do?’ she asked.
‘What! A world of things. We’d dress finely--you and I, I mean; not
Grip--keep horses, dogs, wear bright colours and feathers, do no more
work, live delicately and at our ease. Oh, we’d find uses for it,
mother, and uses that would do us good. I would I knew where gold was
buried. How hard I’d work to dig it up!’
‘You do not know,’ said his mother, rising from her seat and laying her
hand upon his shoulder, ‘what men have done to win it, and how they have
found, too late, that it glitters brightest at a distance, and turns
quite dim and dull when handled.’
‘Ay, ay; so you say; so you think,’ he answered, still looking eagerly
in the same direction. ‘For all that, mother, I should like to try.’
‘Do you not see,’ she said, ‘how red it is? Nothing bears so many stains
of blood, as gold. Avoid it. None have such cause to hate its name as
we have. Do not so much as think of it, dear love. It has brought such
misery and suffering on your head and mine as few have known, and God
grant few may have to undergo. I would rather we were dead and laid down
in our graves, than you should ever come to love it.’
For a moment Barnaby withdrew his eyes and looked at her with wonder.
Then, glancing from the redness in the sky to the mark upon his wrist
as if he would compare the two, he seemed about to question her with
earnestness, when a new object caught his wandering attention, and made
him quite forgetful of his purpose.
This was a man with dusty feet and garments, who stood, bare-headed,
behind the hedge that divided their patch of garden from the pathway,
and leant meekly forward as if he sought to mingle with their
conversation, and waited for his time to speak. His face was turned
towards the brightness, too, but the light that fell upon it showed that
he was blind, and saw it not.
‘A blessing on those voices!’ said the wayfarer. ‘I feel the beauty of
the night more keenly, when I hear them. They are like eyes to me. Will
they speak again, and cheer the heart of a poor traveller?’
‘Have you no guide?’ asked the widow, after a moment’s pause.
‘None but that,’ he answered, pointing with his staff towards the sun;
‘and sometimes a milder one at night, but she is idle now.’
‘Have you travelled far?’
‘A weary way and long,’ rejoined the traveller as he shook his head. ‘A
weary, weary, way. I struck my stick just now upon the bucket of your
well--be pleased to let me have a draught of water, lady.’
‘Why do you call me lady?’ she returned. ‘I am as poor as you.’
‘Your speech is soft and gentle, and I judge by that,’ replied the man.
‘The coarsest stuffs and finest silks, are--apart from the sense of
touch--alike to me. I cannot judge you by your dress.’
‘Come round this way,’ said Barnaby, who had passed out at the
garden-gate and now stood close beside him. ‘Put your hand in mine.
You’re blind and always in the dark, eh? Are you frightened in the dark?
Do you see great crowds of faces, now? Do they grin and chatter?’
‘Alas!’ returned the other, ‘I see nothing. Waking or sleeping,
nothing.’
Barnaby looked curiously at his eyes, and touching them with his
fingers, as an inquisitive child might, led him towards the house.
‘You have come a long distance,’ said the widow, meeting him at the
door. ‘How have you found your way so far?’
‘Use and necessity are good teachers, as I have heard--the best of any,’
said the blind man, sitting down upon the chair to which Barnaby had
led him, and putting his hat and stick upon the red-tiled floor. ‘May
neither you nor your son ever learn under them. They are rough masters.’
‘You have wandered from the road, too,’ said the widow, in a tone of
pity.
‘Maybe, maybe,’ returned the blind man with a sigh, and yet with
something of a smile upon his face, ‘that’s likely. Handposts and
milestones are dumb, indeed, to me. Thank you the more for this rest,
and this refreshing drink!’
As he spoke, he raised the mug of water to his mouth. It was clear, and
cold, and sparkling, but not to his taste nevertheless, or his thirst
was not very great, for he only wetted his lips and put it down again.
He wore, hanging with a long strap round his neck, a kind of scrip or
wallet, in which to carry food. The widow set some bread and cheese
before him, but he thanked her, and said that through the kindness of
the charitable he had broken his fast once since morning, and was not
hungry. When he had made her this reply, he opened his wallet, and took
out a few pence, which was all it appeared to contain.
‘Might I make bold to ask,’ he said, turning towards where Barnaby stood
looking on, ‘that one who has the gift of sight, would lay this out for
me in bread to keep me on my way? Heaven’s blessing on the young feet
that will bestir themselves in aid of one so helpless as a sightless
man!’
Barnaby looked at his mother, who nodded assent; in another moment he
was gone upon his charitable errand. The blind man sat listening with an
attentive face, until long after the sound of his retreating footsteps
was inaudible to the widow, and then said, suddenly, and in a very
altered tone:
‘There are various degrees and kinds of blindness, widow. There is the
connubial blindness, ma’am, which perhaps you may have observed in
the course of your own experience, and which is a kind of wilful and
self-bandaging blindness. There is the blindness of party, ma’am, and
public men, which is the blindness of a mad bull in the midst of a
regiment of soldiers clothed in red. There is the blind confidence of
youth, which is the blindness of young kittens, whose eyes have not yet
opened on the world; and there is that physical blindness, ma’am, of
which I am, contrairy to my own desire, a most illustrious example.
Added to these, ma’am, is that blindness of the intellect, of which we
have a specimen in your interesting son, and which, having sometimes
glimmerings and dawnings of the light, is scarcely to be trusted as a
total darkness. Therefore, ma’am, I have taken the liberty to get him
out of the way for a short time, while you and I confer together, and
this precaution arising out of the delicacy of my sentiments towards
yourself, you will excuse me, ma’am, I know.’
Having delivered himself of this speech with many flourishes of manner,
he drew from beneath his coat a flat stone bottle, and holding the cork
between his teeth, qualified his mug of water with a plentiful infusion
of the liquor it contained. He politely drained the bumper to her
health, and the ladies, and setting it down empty, smacked his lips with
infinite relish.
‘I am a citizen of the world, ma’am,’ said the blind man, corking his
bottle, ‘and if I seem to conduct myself with freedom, it is therefore.
You wonder who I am, ma’am, and what has brought me here. Such
experience of human nature as I have, leads me to that conclusion,
without the aid of eyes by which to read the movements of your soul
as depicted in your feminine features. I will satisfy your curiosity
immediately, ma’am; immediately.’ With that he slapped his bottle on its
broad back, and having put it under his garment as before, crossed his
legs and folded his hands, and settled himself in his chair, previous to
proceeding any further.
The change in his manner was so unexpected, the craft and wickedness
of his deportment were so much aggravated by his condition--for we are
accustomed to see in those who have lost a human sense, something in its
place almost divine--and this alteration bred so many fears in her whom
he addressed, that she could not pronounce one word. After waiting, as
it seemed, for some remark or answer, and waiting in vain, the visitor
resumed:
‘Madam, my name is Stagg. A friend of mine who has desired the honour of
meeting with you any time these five years past, has commissioned me to
call upon you. I should be glad to whisper that gentleman’s name in your
ear.--Zounds, ma’am, are you deaf? Do you hear me say that I should be
glad to whisper my friend’s name in your ear?’
‘You need not repeat it,’ said the widow, with a stifled groan; ‘I see
too well from whom you come.’
‘But as a man of honour, ma’am,’ said the blind man, striking himself on
the breast, ‘whose credentials must not be disputed, I take leave to say
that I WILL mention that gentleman’s name. Ay, ay,’ he added, seeming
to catch with his quick ear the very motion of her hand, ‘but not aloud.
With your leave, ma’am, I desire the favour of a whisper.’
She moved towards him, and stooped down. He muttered a word in her
ear; and, wringing her hands, she paced up and down the room like one
distracted. The blind man, with perfect composure, produced his bottle
again, mixed another glassful; put it up as before; and, drinking from
time to time, followed her with his face in silence.
‘You are slow in conversation, widow,’ he said after a time, pausing in
his draught. ‘We shall have to talk before your son.’
‘What would you have me do?’ she answered. ‘What do you want?’
‘We are poor, widow, we are poor,’ he retorted, stretching out his right
hand, and rubbing his thumb upon its palm.
‘Poor!’ she cried. ‘And what am I?’
‘Comparisons are odious,’ said the blind man. ‘I don’t know, I don’t
care. I say that we are poor. My friend’s circumstances are indifferent,
and so are mine. We must have our rights, widow, or we must be bought
off. But you know that, as well as I, so where is the use of talking?’
She still walked wildly to and fro. At length, stopping abruptly before
him, she said:
‘Is he near here?’
‘He is. Close at hand.’
‘Then I am lost!’
‘Not lost, widow,’ said the blind man, calmly; ‘only found. Shall I call
him?’
‘Not for the world,’ she answered, with a shudder.
‘Very good,’ he replied, crossing his legs again, for he had made as
though he would rise and walk to the door. ‘As you please, widow. His
presence is not necessary that I know of. But both he and I must live;
to live, we must eat and drink; to eat and drink, we must have money:--I
say no more.’
‘Do you know how pinched and destitute I am?’ she retorted. ‘I do not
think you do, or can. If you had eyes, and could look around you on this
poor place, you would have pity on me. Oh! let your heart be softened by
your own affliction, friend, and have some sympathy with mine.’
The blind man snapped his fingers as he answered:
‘--Beside the question, ma’am, beside the question. I have the softest
heart in the world, but I can’t live upon it. Many a gentleman lives
well upon a soft head, who would find a heart of the same quality a very
great drawback. Listen to me. This is a matter of business, with which
sympathies and sentiments have nothing to do. As a mutual friend, I wish
to arrange it in a satisfactory manner, if possible; and thus the
case stands.--If you are very poor now, it’s your own choice. You have
friends who, in case of need, are always ready to help you. My friend is
in a more destitute and desolate situation than most men, and, you and
he being linked together in a common cause, he naturally looks to you to
assist him. He has boarded and lodged with me a long time (for as I
said just now, I am very soft-hearted), and I quite approve of his
entertaining this opinion. You have always had a roof over your head; he
has always been an outcast. You have your son to comfort and assist you;
he has nobody at all. The advantages must not be all one side. You are
in the same boat, and we must divide the ballast a little more equally.’
She was about to speak, but he checked her, and went on.
‘The only way of doing this, is by making up a little purse now and then
for my friend; and that’s what I advise. He bears you no malice that I
know of, ma’am: so little, that although you have treated him harshly
more than once, and driven him, I may say, out of doors, he has that
regard for you that I believe even if you disappointed him now, he would
consent to take charge of your son, and to make a man of him.’
He laid a great stress on these latter words, and paused as if to find
out what effect they had produced. She only answered by her tears.
‘He is a likely lad,’ said the blind man, thoughtfully, ‘for many
purposes, and not ill-disposed to try his fortune in a little change
and bustle, if I may judge from what I heard of his talk with you
to-night.--Come. In a word, my friend has pressing necessity for twenty
pounds. You, who can give up an annuity, can get that sum for him. It’s
a pity you should be troubled. You seem very comfortable here, and
it’s worth that much to remain so. Twenty pounds, widow, is a
moderate demand. You know where to apply for it; a post will bring it
you.--Twenty pounds!’
She was about to answer him again, but again he stopped her.
‘Don’t say anything hastily; you might be sorry for it. Think of it a
little while. Twenty pounds--of other people’s money--how easy! Turn it
over in your mind. I’m in no hurry. Night’s coming on, and if I don’t
sleep here, I shall not go far. Twenty pounds! Consider of it, ma’am,
for twenty minutes; give each pound a minute; that’s a fair allowance.
I’ll enjoy the air the while, which is very mild and pleasant in these
parts.’
With these words he groped his way to the door, carrying his chair with
him. Then seating himself, under a spreading honeysuckle, and stretching
his legs across the threshold so that no person could pass in or out
without his knowledge, he took from his pocket a pipe, flint, steel and
tinder-box, and began to smoke. It was a lovely evening, of that gentle
kind, and at that time of year, when the twilight is most beautiful.
Pausing now and then to let his smoke curl slowly off, and to sniff the
grateful fragrance of the flowers, he sat there at his ease--as though
the cottage were his proper dwelling, and he had held undisputed
possession of it all his life--waiting for the widow’s answer and for
Barnaby’s return.
Chapter 46
When Barnaby returned with the bread, the sight of the pious old pilgrim
smoking his pipe and making himself so thoroughly at home, appeared
to surprise even him; the more so, as that worthy person, instead of
putting up the loaf in his wallet as a scarce and precious article,
tossed it carelessly on the table, and producing his bottle, bade him
sit down and drink.
‘For I carry some comfort, you see,’ he said. ‘Taste that. Is it good?’
The water stood in Barnaby’s eyes as he coughed from the strength of the
draught, and answered in the affirmative.
‘Drink some more,’ said the blind man; ‘don’t be afraid of it. You don’t
taste anything like that, often, eh?’
‘Often!’ cried Barnaby. ‘Never!’
‘Too poor?’ returned the blind man with a sigh. ‘Ay. That’s bad. Your
mother, poor soul, would be happier if she was richer, Barnaby.’
‘Why, so I tell her--the very thing I told her just before you came
to-night, when all that gold was in the sky,’ said Barnaby, drawing his
chair nearer to him, and looking eagerly in his face. ‘Tell me. Is there
any way of being rich, that I could find out?’
‘Any way! A hundred ways.’
‘Ay, ay?’ he returned. ‘Do you say so? What are they?--Nay, mother, it’s
for your sake I ask; not mine;--for yours, indeed. What are they?’
The blind man turned his face, on which there was a smile of triumph, to
where the widow stood in great distress; and answered,
‘Why, they are not to be found out by stay-at-homes, my good friend.’
‘By stay-at-homes!’ cried Barnaby, plucking at his sleeve. ‘But I am not
one. Now, there you mistake. I am often out before the sun, and travel
home when he has gone to rest. I am away in the woods before the day
has reached the shady places, and am often there when the bright moon
is peeping through the boughs, and looking down upon the other moon that
lives in the water. As I walk along, I try to find, among the grass and
moss, some of that small money for which she works so hard and used to
shed so many tears. As I lie asleep in the shade, I dream of it--dream
of digging it up in heaps; and spying it out, hidden under bushes; and
seeing it sparkle, as the dew-drops do, among the leaves. But I never
find it. Tell me where it is. I’d go there, if the journey were a whole
year long, because I know she would be happier when I came home and
brought some with me. Speak again. I’ll listen to you if you talk all
night.’
The blind man passed his hand lightly over the poor fellow’s face, and
finding that his elbows were planted on the table, that his chin rested
on his two hands, that he leaned eagerly forward, and that his whole
manner expressed the utmost interest and anxiety, paused for a minute as
though he desired the widow to observe this fully, and then made answer:
‘It’s in the world, bold Barnaby, the merry world; not in solitary
places like those you pass your time in, but in crowds, and where
there’s noise and rattle.’
‘Good! good!’ cried Barnaby, rubbing his hands. ‘Yes! I love that. Grip
loves it too. It suits us both. That’s brave!’
‘--The kind of places,’ said the blind man, ‘that a young fellow likes,
and in which a good son may do more for his mother, and himself to boot,
in a month, than he could here in all his life--that is, if he had a
friend, you know, and some one to advise with.’
‘You hear this, mother?’ cried Barnaby, turning to her with delight.
‘Never tell me we shouldn’t heed it, if it lay shining at our feet. Why
do we heed it so much now? Why do you toil from morning until night?’
‘Surely,’ said the blind man, ‘surely. Have you no answer, widow? Is
your mind,’ he slowly added, ‘not made up yet?’
‘Let me speak with you,’ she answered, ‘apart.’
‘Lay your hand upon my sleeve,’ said Stagg, arising from the table; ‘and
lead me where you will. Courage, bold Barnaby. We’ll talk more of this:
I’ve a fancy for you. Wait there till I come back. Now, widow.’
She led him out at the door, and into the little garden, where they
stopped.
‘You are a fit agent,’ she said, in a half breathless manner, ‘and well
represent the man who sent you here.’
‘I’ll tell him that you said so,’ Stagg retorted. ‘He has a regard for
you, and will respect me the more (if possible) for your praise. We must
have our rights, widow.’
‘Rights! Do you know,’ she said, ‘that a word from me--’
‘Why do you stop?’ returned the blind man calmly, after a long pause.
‘Do I know that a word from you would place my friend in the last
position of the dance of life? Yes, I do. What of that? It will never be
spoken, widow.’
‘You are sure of that?’
‘Quite--so sure, that I don’t come here to discuss the question. I say
we must have our rights, or we must be bought off. Keep to that point,
or let me return to my young friend, for I have an interest in the lad,
and desire to put him in the way of making his fortune. Bah! you needn’t
speak,’ he added hastily; ‘I know what you would say: you have hinted
at it once already. Have I no feeling for you, because I am blind? No, I
have not. Why do you expect me, being in darkness, to be better than
men who have their sight--why should you? Is the hand of Heaven more
manifest in my having no eyes, than in your having two? It’s the cant
of you folks to be horrified if a blind man robs, or lies, or steals;
oh yes, it’s far worse in him, who can barely live on the few halfpence
that are thrown to him in streets, than in you, who can see, and work,
and are not dependent on the mercies of the world. A curse on you! You
who have five senses may be wicked at your pleasure; we who have four,
and want the most important, are to live and be moral on our affliction.
The true charity and justice of rich to poor, all the world over!’
He paused a moment when he had said these words, and caught the sound of
money, jingling in her hand.
‘Well?’ he cried, quickly resuming his former manner. ‘That should lead
to something. The point, widow?’
‘First answer me one question,’ she replied. ‘You say he is close at
hand. Has he left London?’
‘Being close at hand, widow, it would seem he has,’ returned the blind
man.
‘I mean, for good? You know that.’
‘Yes, for good. The truth is, widow, that his making a longer stay there
might have had disagreeable consequences. He has come away for that
reason.’
‘Listen,’ said the widow, telling some money out, upon a bench beside
them. ‘Count.’
‘Six,’ said the blind man, listening attentively. ‘Any more?’
‘They are the savings,’ she answered, ‘of five years. Six guineas.’
He put out his hand for one of the coins; felt it carefully, put it
between his teeth, rung it on the bench; and nodded to her to proceed.
‘These have been scraped together and laid by, lest sickness or death
should separate my son and me. They have been purchased at the price of
much hunger, hard labour, and want of rest. If you CAN take them--do--on
condition that you leave this place upon the instant, and enter no more
into that room, where he sits now, expecting your return.’
‘Six guineas,’ said the blind man, shaking his head, ‘though of the
fullest weight that were ever coined, fall very far short of twenty
pounds, widow.’
‘For such a sum, as you know, I must write to a distant part of the
country. To do that, and receive an answer, I must have time.’
‘Two days?’ said Stagg.
‘More.’
‘Four days?’
‘A week. Return on this day week, at the same hour, but not to the
house. Wait at the corner of the lane.’
‘Of course,’ said the blind man, with a crafty look, ‘I shall find you
there?’
‘Where else can I take refuge? Is it not enough that you have made
a beggar of me, and that I have sacrificed my whole store, so hardly
earned, to preserve this home?’
‘Humph!’ said the blind man, after some consideration. ‘Set me with my
face towards the point you speak of, and in the middle of the road. Is
this the spot?’
‘It is.’
‘On this day week at sunset. And think of him within doors.--For the
present, good night.’
She made him no answer, nor did he stop for any. He went slowly away,
turning his head from time to time, and stopping to listen, as if he
were curious to know whether he was watched by any one. The shadows of
night were closing fast around, and he was soon lost in the gloom. It
was not, however, until she had traversed the lane from end to end,
and made sure that he was gone, that she re-entered the cottage, and
hurriedly barred the door and window.
‘Mother!’ said Barnaby. ‘What is the matter? Where is the blind man?’
‘He is gone.’
‘Gone!’ he cried, starting up. ‘I must have more talk with him. Which
way did he take?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered, folding her arms about him. ‘You must not
go out to-night. There are ghosts and dreams abroad.’
‘Ay?’ said Barnaby, in a frightened whisper.
‘It is not safe to stir. We must leave this place to-morrow.’
‘This place! This cottage--and the little garden, mother!’
‘Yes! To-morrow morning at sunrise. We must travel to London; lose
ourselves in that wide place--there would be some trace of us in any
other town--then travel on again, and find some new abode.’
Little persuasion was required to reconcile Barnaby to anything that
promised change. In another minute, he was wild with delight; in
another, full of grief at the prospect of parting with his friends the
dogs; in another, wild again; then he was fearful of what she had said
to prevent his wandering abroad that night, and full of terrors and
strange questions. His light-heartedness in the end surmounted all his
other feelings, and lying down in his clothes to the end that he might
be ready on the morrow, he soon fell fast asleep before the poor turf
fire.
His mother did not close her eyes, but sat beside him, watching. Every
breath of wind sounded in her ears like that dreaded footstep at the
door, or like that hand upon the latch, and made the calm summer night,
a night of horror. At length the welcome day appeared. When she had made
the little preparations which were needful for their journey, and had
prayed upon her knees with many tears, she roused Barnaby, who jumped up
gaily at her summons.
His clothes were few enough, and to carry Grip was a labour of love. As
the sun shed his earliest beams upon the earth, they closed the door of
their deserted home, and turned away. The sky was blue and bright.
The air was fresh and filled with a thousand perfumes. Barnaby looked
upward, and laughed with all his heart.
But it was a day he usually devoted to a long ramble, and one of the
dogs--the ugliest of them all--came bounding up, and jumping round him
in the fulness of his joy. He had to bid him go back in a surly tone,
and his heart smote him while he did so. The dog retreated; turned
with a half-incredulous, half-imploring look; came a little back; and
stopped.
It was the last appeal of an old companion and a faithful friend--cast
off. Barnaby could bear no more, and as he shook his head and waved his
playmate home, he burst into tears.
‘Oh mother, mother, how mournful he will be when he scratches at the
door, and finds it always shut!’
There was such a sense of home in the thought, that though her own eyes
overflowed she would not have obliterated the recollection of it, either
from her own mind or from his, for the wealth of the whole wide world.
Chapter 47
In the exhaustless catalogue of Heaven’s mercies to mankind, the power
we have of finding some germs of comfort in the hardest trials must ever
occupy the foremost place; not only because it supports and upholds
us when we most require to be sustained, but because in this source of
consolation there is something, we have reason to believe, of the divine
spirit; something of that goodness which detects amidst our own evil
doings, a redeeming quality; something which, even in our fallen nature,
we possess in common with the angels; which had its being in the old
time when they trod the earth, and lingers on it yet, in pity.
How often, on their journey, did the widow remember with a grateful
heart, that out of his deprivation Barnaby’s cheerfulness and affection
sprung! How often did she call to mind that but for that, he might have
been sullen, morose, unkind, far removed from her--vicious, perhaps, and
cruel! How often had she cause for comfort, in his strength, and hope,
and in his simple nature! Those feeble powers of mind which rendered him
so soon forgetful of the past, save in brief gleams and flashes,--even
they were a comfort now. The world to him was full of happiness; in
every tree, and plant, and flower, in every bird, and beast, and tiny
insect whom a breath of summer wind laid low upon the ground, he had
delight. His delight was hers; and where many a wise son would have
made her sorrowful, this poor light-hearted idiot filled her breast with
thankfulness and love.
Their stock of money was low, but from the hoard she had told into the
blind man’s hand, the widow had withheld one guinea. This, with the few
pence she possessed besides, was to two persons of their frugal habits,
a goodly sum in bank. Moreover they had Grip in company; and when they
must otherwise have changed the guinea, it was but to make him exhibit
outside an alehouse door, or in a village street, or in the grounds or
gardens of a mansion of the better sort, and scores who would have given
nothing in charity, were ready to bargain for more amusement from the
talking bird.
One day--for they moved slowly, and although they had many rides in
carts and waggons, were on the road a week--Barnaby, with Grip upon his
shoulder and his mother following, begged permission at a trim lodge to
go up to the great house, at the other end of the avenue, and show his
raven. The man within was inclined to give them admittance, and was
indeed about to do so, when a stout gentleman with a long whip in his
hand, and a flushed face which seemed to indicate that he had had his
morning’s draught, rode up to the gate, and called in a loud voice and
with more oaths than the occasion seemed to warrant to have it opened
directly.
‘Who hast thou got here?’ said the gentleman angrily, as the man threw
the gate wide open, and pulled off his hat, ‘who are these? Eh? art a
beggar, woman?’
The widow answered with a curtsey, that they were poor travellers.
‘Vagrants,’ said the gentleman, ‘vagrants and vagabonds. Thee wish to be
made acquainted with the cage, dost thee--the cage, the stocks, and the
whipping-post? Where dost come from?’
She told him in a timid manner,--for he was very loud, hoarse, and
red-faced,--and besought him not to be angry, for they meant no harm,
and would go upon their way that moment.
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ replied the gentleman, ‘we don’t allow
vagrants to roam about this place. I know what thou want’st--stray
linen drying on hedges, and stray poultry, eh? What hast got in that
basket, lazy hound?’
‘Grip, Grip, Grip--Grip the clever, Grip the wicked, Grip the
knowing--Grip, Grip, Grip,’ cried the raven, whom Barnaby had shut up
on the approach of this stern personage. ‘I’m a devil I’m a devil I’m a
devil, Never say die Hurrah Bow wow wow, Polly put the kettle on we’ll
all have tea.’
‘Take the vermin out, scoundrel,’ said the gentleman, ‘and let me see
him.’
Barnaby, thus condescendingly addressed, produced his bird, but not
without much fear and trembling, and set him down upon the ground; which
he had no sooner done than Grip drew fifty corks at least, and then
began to dance; at the same time eyeing the gentleman with surprising
insolence of manner, and screwing his head so much on one side that he
appeared desirous of screwing it off upon the spot.
The cork-drawing seemed to make a greater impression on the gentleman’s
mind, than the raven’s power of speech, and was indeed particularly
adapted to his habits and capacity. He desired to have that done again,
but despite his being very peremptory, and notwithstanding that Barnaby
coaxed to the utmost, Grip turned a deaf ear to the request, and
preserved a dead silence.
‘Bring him along,’ said the gentleman, pointing to the house. But Grip,
who had watched the action, anticipated his master, by hopping on before
them;--constantly flapping his wings, and screaming ‘cook!’ meanwhile,
as a hint perhaps that there was company coming, and a small collation
would be acceptable.
Barnaby and his mother walked on, on either side of the gentleman on
horseback, who surveyed each of them from time to time in a proud and
coarse manner, and occasionally thundered out some question, the tone
of which alarmed Barnaby so much that he could find no answer, and, as
a matter of course, could make him no reply. On one of these occasions,
when the gentleman appeared disposed to exercise his horsewhip, the
widow ventured to inform him in a low voice and with tears in her eyes,
that her son was of weak mind.
‘An idiot, eh?’ said the gentleman, looking at Barnaby as he spoke. ‘And
how long hast thou been an idiot?’
‘She knows,’ was Barnaby’s timid answer, pointing to his
mother--‘I--always, I believe.’
‘From his birth,’ said the widow.
‘I don’t believe it,’ cried the gentleman, ‘not a bit of it. It’s an
excuse not to work. There’s nothing like flogging to cure that disorder.
I’d make a difference in him in ten minutes, I’ll be bound.’
‘Heaven has made none in more than twice ten years, sir,’ said the widow
mildly.
‘Then why don’t you shut him up? we pay enough for county institutions,
damn ‘em. But thou’d rather drag him about to excite charity--of course.
Ay, I know thee.’
Now, this gentleman had various endearing appellations among his
intimate friends. By some he was called ‘a country gentleman of the true
school,’ by some ‘a fine old country gentleman,’ by some ‘a sporting
gentleman,’ by some ‘a thorough-bred Englishman,’ by some ‘a genuine
John Bull;’ but they all agreed in one respect, and that was, that it
was a pity there were not more like him, and that because there were
not, the country was going to rack and ruin every day. He was in the
commission of the peace, and could write his name almost legibly; but
his greatest qualifications were, that he was more severe with poachers,
was a better shot, a harder rider, had better horses, kept better dogs,
could eat more solid food, drink more strong wine, go to bed every night
more drunk and get up every morning more sober, than any man in the
county. In knowledge of horseflesh he was almost equal to a farrier, in
stable learning he surpassed his own head groom, and in gluttony not
a pig on his estate was a match for him. He had no seat in Parliament
himself, but he was extremely patriotic, and usually drove his voters
up to the poll with his own hands. He was warmly attached to church
and state, and never appointed to the living in his gift any but a
three-bottle man and a first-rate fox-hunter. He mistrusted the honesty
of all poor people who could read and write, and had a secret jealousy
of his own wife (a young lady whom he had married for what his friends
called ‘the good old English reason,’ that her father’s property
adjoined his own) for possessing those accomplishments in a greater
degree than himself. In short, Barnaby being an idiot, and Grip a
creature of mere brute instinct, it would be very hard to say what this
gentleman was.
He rode up to the door of a handsome house approached by a great flight
of steps, where a man was waiting to take his horse, and led the way
into a large hall, which, spacious as it was, was tainted with the
fumes of last night’s stale debauch. Greatcoats, riding-whips, bridles,
top-boots, spurs, and such gear, were strewn about on all sides, and
formed, with some huge stags’ antlers, and a few portraits of dogs and
horses, its principal embellishments.
Throwing himself into a great chair (in which, by the bye, he often
snored away the night, when he had been, according to his admirers, a
finer country gentleman than usual) he bade the man to tell his mistress
to come down: and presently there appeared, a little flurried, as it
seemed, by the unwonted summons, a lady much younger than himself, who
had the appearance of being in delicate health, and not too happy.
‘Here! Thou’st no delight in following the hounds as an Englishwoman
should have,’ said the gentleman. ‘See to this here. That’ll please thee
perhaps.’
The lady smiled, sat down at a little distance from him, and glanced at
Barnaby with a look of pity.
‘He’s an idiot, the woman says,’ observed the gentleman, shaking his
head; ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Are you his mother?’ asked the lady.
She answered yes.
‘What’s the use of asking HER?’ said the gentleman, thrusting his hands
into his breeches pockets. ‘She’ll tell thee so, of course. Most likely
he’s hired, at so much a day. There. Get on. Make him do something.’
Grip having by this time recovered his urbanity, condescended, at
Barnaby’s solicitation, to repeat his various phrases of speech, and to
go through the whole of his performances with the utmost success. The
corks, and the never say die, afforded the gentleman so much delight
that he demanded the repetition of this part of the entertainment, until
Grip got into his basket, and positively refused to say another word,
good or bad. The lady too, was much amused with him; and the closing
point of his obstinacy so delighted her husband that he burst into a
roar of laughter, and demanded his price.
Barnaby looked as though he didn’t understand his meaning. Probably he
did not.
‘His price,’ said the gentleman, rattling the money in his pockets,
‘what dost want for him? How much?’
‘He’s not to be sold,’ replied Barnaby, shutting up the basket in a
great hurry, and throwing the strap over his shoulder. ‘Mother, come
away.’
‘Thou seest how much of an idiot he is, book-learner,’ said the
gentleman, looking scornfully at his wife. ‘He can make a bargain. What
dost want for him, old woman?’
‘He is my son’s constant companion,’ said the widow. ‘He is not to be
sold, sir, indeed.’
‘Not to be sold!’ cried the gentleman, growing ten times redder,
hoarser, and louder than before. ‘Not to be sold!’
‘Indeed no,’ she answered. ‘We have never thought of parting with him,
sir, I do assure you.’
He was evidently about to make a very passionate retort, when a few
murmured words from his wife happening to catch his ear, he turned
sharply round, and said, ‘Eh? What?’
‘We can hardly expect them to sell the bird, against their own desire,’
she faltered. ‘If they prefer to keep him--’
‘Prefer to keep him!’ he echoed. ‘These people, who go tramping about
the country a-pilfering and vagabondising on all hands, prefer to keep
a bird, when a landed proprietor and a justice asks his price! That old
woman’s been to school. I know she has. Don’t tell me no,’ he roared to
the widow, ‘I say, yes.’
Barnaby’s mother pleaded guilty to the accusation, and hoped there was
no harm in it.
‘No harm!’ said the gentleman. ‘No. No harm. No harm, ye old rebel, not
a bit of harm. If my clerk was here, I’d set ye in the stocks, I would,
or lay ye in jail for prowling up and down, on the look-out for petty
larcenies, ye limb of a gipsy. Here, Simon, put these pilferers out,
shove ‘em into the road, out with ‘em! Ye don’t want to sell the bird,
ye that come here to beg, don’t ye? If they an’t out in double-quick,
set the dogs upon ‘em!’
They waited for no further dismissal, but fled precipitately, leaving
the gentleman to storm away by himself (for the poor lady had already
retreated), and making a great many vain attempts to silence Grip, who,
excited by the noise, drew corks enough for a city feast as they hurried
down the avenue, and appeared to congratulate himself beyond measure on
having been the cause of the disturbance. When they had nearly reached
the lodge, another servant, emerging from the shrubbery, feigned to
be very active in ordering them off, but this man put a crown into the
widow’s hand, and whispering that his lady sent it, thrust them gently
from the gate.
This incident only suggested to the widow’s mind, when they halted at
an alehouse some miles further on, and heard the justice’s character
as given by his friends, that perhaps something more than capacity of
stomach and tastes for the kennel and the stable, were required to form
either a perfect country gentleman, a thoroughbred Englishman, or
a genuine John Bull; and that possibly the terms were sometimes
misappropriated, not to say disgraced. She little thought then, that a
circumstance so slight would ever influence their future fortunes; but
time and experience enlightened her in this respect.
‘Mother,’ said Barnaby, as they were sitting next day in a waggon which
was to take them within ten miles of the capital, ‘we’re going to London
first, you said. Shall we see that blind man there?’
She was about to answer ‘Heaven forbid!’ but checked herself, and told
him No, she thought not; why did he ask?
‘He’s a wise man,’ said Barnaby, with a thoughtful countenance. ‘I wish
that we may meet with him again. What was it that he said of crowds?
That gold was to be found where people crowded, and not among the
trees and in such quiet places? He spoke as if he loved it; London is a
crowded place; I think we shall meet him there.’
‘But why do you desire to see him, love?’ she asked.
‘Because,’ said Barnaby, looking wistfully at her, ‘he talked to me
about gold, which is a rare thing, and say what you will, a thing
you would like to have, I know. And because he came and went away so
strangely--just as white-headed old men come sometimes to my bed’s foot
in the night, and say what I can’t remember when the bright day returns.
He told me he’d come back. I wonder why he broke his word!’
‘But you never thought of being rich or gay, before, dear Barnaby. You
have always been contented.’
He laughed and bade her say that again, then cried, ‘Ay ay--oh yes,’ and
laughed once more. Then something passed that caught his fancy, and
the topic wandered from his mind, and was succeeded by another just as
fleeting.
But it was plain from what he had said, and from his returning to the
point more than once that day, and on the next, that the blind man’s
visit, and indeed his words, had taken strong possession of his mind.
Whether the idea of wealth had occurred to him for the first time
on looking at the golden clouds that evening--and images were often
presented to his thoughts by outward objects quite as remote and
distant; or whether their poor and humble way of life had suggested it,
by contrast, long ago; or whether the accident (as he would deem it) of
the blind man’s pursuing the current of his own remarks, had done so at
the moment; or he had been impressed by the mere circumstance of the
man being blind, and, therefore, unlike any one with whom he had talked
before; it was impossible to tell. She tried every means to discover,
but in vain; and the probability is that Barnaby himself was equally in
the dark.
It filled her with uneasiness to find him harping on this string, but
all that she could do, was to lead him quickly to some other subject,
and to dismiss it from his brain. To caution him against their visitor,
to show any fear or suspicion in reference to him, would only be, she
feared, to increase that interest with which Barnaby regarded him, and
to strengthen his desire to meet him once again. She hoped, by plunging
into the crowd, to rid herself of her terrible pursuer, and then, by
journeying to a distance and observing increased caution, if that were
possible, to live again unknown, in secrecy and peace.
They reached, in course of time, their halting-place within ten miles of
London, and lay there for the night, after bargaining to be carried on
for a trifle next day, in a light van which was returning empty, and was
to start at five o’clock in the morning. The driver was punctual, the
road good--save for the dust, the weather being very hot and dry--and at
seven in the forenoon of Friday the second of June, one thousand seven
hundred and eighty, they alighted at the foot of Westminster Bridge,
bade their conductor farewell, and stood alone, together, on the
scorching pavement. For the freshness which night sheds upon such
busy thoroughfares had already departed, and the sun was shining with
uncommon lustre.
Chapter 48
Uncertain where to go next, and bewildered by the crowd of people who
were already astir, they sat down in one of the recesses on the bridge,
to rest. They soon became aware that the stream of life was all pouring
one way, and that a vast throng of persons were crossing the river
from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, in unusual haste and evident
excitement. They were, for the most part, in knots of two or three, or
sometimes half-a-dozen; they spoke little together--many of them were
quite silent; and hurried on as if they had one absorbing object in
view, which was common to them all.
They were surprised to see that nearly every man in this great
concourse, which still came pouring past, without slackening in the
least, wore in his hat a blue cockade; and that the chance passengers
who were not so decorated, appeared timidly anxious to escape
observation or attack, and gave them the wall as if they would
conciliate them. This, however, was natural enough, considering their
inferiority in point of numbers; for the proportion of those who wore
blue cockades, to those who were dressed as usual, was at least forty or
fifty to one. There was no quarrelling, however: the blue cockades went
swarming on, passing each other when they could, and making all the
speed that was possible in such a multitude; and exchanged nothing more
than looks, and very often not even those, with such of the passers-by
as were not of their number.
At first, the current of people had been confined to the two pathways,
and but a few more eager stragglers kept the road. But after half an
hour or so, the passage was completely blocked up by the great press,
which, being now closely wedged together, and impeded by the carts and
coaches it encountered, moved but slowly, and was sometimes at a stand
for five or ten minutes together.
After the lapse of nearly two hours, the numbers began to diminish
visibly, and gradually dwindling away, by little and little, left the
bridge quite clear, save that, now and then, some hot and dusty man,
with the cockade in his hat, and his coat thrown over his shoulder, went
panting by, fearful of being too late, or stopped to ask which way
his friends had taken, and being directed, hastened on again like one
refreshed. In this comparative solitude, which seemed quite strange
and novel after the late crowd, the widow had for the first time an
opportunity of inquiring of an old man who came and sat beside them,
what was the meaning of that great assemblage.
‘Why, where have you come from,’ he returned, ‘that you haven’t heard of
Lord George Gordon’s great association? This is the day that he presents
the petition against the Catholics, God bless him!’
‘What have all these men to do with that?’ she said.
‘What have they to do with it!’ the old man replied. ‘Why, how you talk!
Don’t you know his lordship has declared he won’t present it to the
house at all, unless it is attended to the door by forty thousand good
and true men at least? There’s a crowd for you!’
‘A crowd indeed!’ said Barnaby. ‘Do you hear that, mother!’
‘And they’re mustering yonder, as I am told,’ resumed the old man, ‘nigh
upon a hundred thousand strong. Ah! Let Lord George alone. He knows
his power. There’ll be a good many faces inside them three windows over
there,’ and he pointed to where the House of Commons overlooked the
river, ‘that’ll turn pale when good Lord George gets up this afternoon,
and with reason too! Ay, ay. Let his lordship alone. Let him alone.
HE knows!’ And so, with much mumbling and chuckling and shaking of his
forefinger, he rose, with the assistance of his stick, and tottered off.
‘Mother!’ said Barnaby, ‘that’s a brave crowd he talks of. Come!’
‘Not to join it!’ cried his mother.
‘Yes, yes,’ he answered, plucking at her sleeve. ‘Why not? Come!’
‘You don’t know,’ she urged, ‘what mischief they may do, where they may
lead you, what their meaning is. Dear Barnaby, for my sake--’
‘For your sake!’ he cried, patting her hand. ‘Well! It IS for your sake,
mother. You remember what the blind man said, about the gold. Here’s a
brave crowd! Come! Or wait till I come back--yes, yes, wait here.’
She tried with all the earnestness her fears engendered, to turn him
from his purpose, but in vain. He was stooping down to buckle on his
shoe, when a hackney-coach passed them rather quickly, and a voice
inside called to the driver to stop.
‘Young man,’ said a voice within.
‘Who’s that?’ cried Barnaby, looking up.
‘Do you wear this ornament?’ returned the stranger, holding out a blue
cockade.
‘In Heaven’s name, no. Pray do not give it him!’ exclaimed the widow.
‘Speak for yourself, woman,’ said the man within the coach, coldly.
‘Leave the young man to his choice; he’s old enough to make it, and
to snap your apron-strings. He knows, without your telling, whether he
wears the sign of a loyal Englishman or not.’
Barnaby, trembling with impatience, cried, ‘Yes! yes, yes, I do,’ as
he had cried a dozen times already. The man threw him a cockade, and
crying, ‘Make haste to St George’s Fields,’ ordered the coachman to
drive on fast; and left them.
With hands that trembled with his eagerness to fix the bauble in his
hat, Barnaby was adjusting it as he best could, and hurriedly replying
to the tears and entreaties of his mother, when two gentlemen passed on
the opposite side of the way. Observing them, and seeing how Barnaby was
occupied, they stopped, whispered together for an instant, turned back,
and came over to them.
‘Why are you sitting here?’ said one of them, who was dressed in a plain
suit of black, wore long lank hair, and carried a great cane. ‘Why have
you not gone with the rest?’
‘I am going, sir,’ replied Barnaby, finishing his task, and putting his
hat on with an air of pride. ‘I shall be there directly.’
‘Say “my lord,” young man, when his lordship does you the honour of
speaking to you,’ said the second gentleman mildly. ‘If you don’t know
Lord George Gordon when you see him, it’s high time you should.’
‘Nay, Gashford,’ said Lord George, as Barnaby pulled off his hat again
and made him a low bow, ‘it’s no great matter on a day like this, which
every Englishman will remember with delight and pride. Put on your hat,
friend, and follow us, for you lag behind and are late. It’s past ten
now. Didn’t you know that the hour for assembling was ten o’clock?’
Barnaby shook his head and looked vacantly from one to the other.
‘You might have known it, friend,’ said Gashford, ‘it was perfectly
understood. How came you to be so ill informed?’
‘He cannot tell you, sir,’ the widow interposed. ‘It’s of no use to ask
him. We are but this morning come from a long distance in the country,
and know nothing of these matters.’
‘The cause has taken a deep root, and has spread its branches far and
wide,’ said Lord George to his secretary. ‘This is a pleasant hearing. I
thank Heaven for it!’
‘Amen!’ cried Gashford with a solemn face.
‘You do not understand me, my lord,’ said the widow. ‘Pardon me, but you
cruelly mistake my meaning. We know nothing of these matters. We have no
desire or right to join in what you are about to do. This is my son, my
poor afflicted son, dearer to me than my own life. In mercy’s name, my
lord, go your way alone, and do not tempt him into danger!’
‘My good woman,’ said Gashford, ‘how can you!--Dear me!--What do you
mean by tempting, and by danger? Do you think his lordship is a roaring
lion, going about and seeking whom he may devour? God bless me!’
‘No, no, my lord, forgive me,’ implored the widow, laying both her hands
upon his breast, and scarcely knowing what she did, or said, in the
earnestness of her supplication, ‘but there are reasons why you should
hear my earnest, mother’s prayer, and leave my son with me. Oh do! He is
not in his right senses, he is not, indeed!’
‘It is a bad sign of the wickedness of these times,’ said Lord George,
evading her touch, and colouring deeply, ‘that those who cling to the
truth and support the right cause, are set down as mad. Have you the
heart to say this of your own son, unnatural mother!’
‘I am astonished at you!’ said Gashford, with a kind of meek severity.
‘This is a very sad picture of female depravity.’
‘He has surely no appearance,’ said Lord George, glancing at Barnaby,
and whispering in his secretary’s ear, ‘of being deranged? And even
if he had, we must not construe any trifling peculiarity into madness.
Which of us’--and here he turned red again--‘would be safe, if that were
made the law!’
‘Not one,’ replied the secretary; ‘in that case, the greater the zeal,
the truth, and talent; the more direct the call from above; the clearer
would be the madness. With regard to this young man, my lord,’ he added,
with a lip that slightly curled as he looked at Barnaby, who stood
twirling his hat, and stealthily beckoning them to come away, ‘he is as
sensible and self-possessed as any one I ever saw.’
‘And you desire to make one of this great body?’ said Lord George,
addressing him; ‘and intended to make one, did you?’
‘Yes--yes,’ said Barnaby, with sparkling eyes. ‘To be sure I did! I told
her so myself.’
‘I see,’ replied Lord George, with a reproachful glance at the unhappy
mother. ‘I thought so. Follow me and this gentleman, and you shall have
your wish.’
Barnaby kissed his mother tenderly on the cheek, and bidding her be
of good cheer, for their fortunes were both made now, did as he was
desired. She, poor woman, followed too--with how much fear and grief it
would be hard to tell.
They passed quickly through the Bridge Road, where the shops were all
shut up (for the passage of the great crowd and the expectation of
their return had alarmed the tradesmen for their goods and windows),
and where, in the upper stories, all the inhabitants were congregated,
looking down into the street below, with faces variously expressive
of alarm, of interest, expectancy, and indignation. Some of these
applauded, and some hissed; but regardless of these interruptions--for
the noise of a vast congregation of people at a little distance, sounded
in his ears like the roaring of the sea--Lord George Gordon quickened
his pace, and presently arrived before St George’s Fields.
They were really fields at that time, and of considerable extent. Here
an immense multitude was collected, bearing flags of various kinds
and sizes, but all of the same colour--blue, like the cockades--some
sections marching to and fro in military array, and others drawn up in
circles, squares, and lines. A large portion, both of the bodies
which paraded the ground, and of those which remained stationary, were
occupied in singing hymns or psalms. With whomsoever this originated, it
was well done; for the sound of so many thousand voices in the air must
have stirred the heart of any man within him, and could not fail to have
a wonderful effect upon enthusiasts, however mistaken.
Scouts had been posted in advance of the great body, to give notice of
their leader’s coming. These falling back, the word was quickly passed
through the whole host, and for a short interval there ensued a profound
and deathlike silence, during which the mass was so still and
quiet, that the fluttering of a banner caught the eye, and became a
circumstance of note. Then they burst into a tremendous shout, into
another, and another; and the air seemed rent and shaken, as if by the
discharge of cannon.
‘Gashford!’ cried Lord George, pressing his secretary’s arm tight within
his own, and speaking with as much emotion in his voice, as in his
altered face, ‘I am called indeed, now. I feel and know it. I am the
leader of a host. If they summoned me at this moment with one voice to
lead them on to death, I’d do it--Yes, and fall first myself!’
‘It is a proud sight,’ said the secretary. ‘It is a noble day for
England, and for the great cause throughout the world. Such homage, my
lord, as I, an humble but devoted man, can render--’
‘What are you doing?’ cried his master, catching him by both hands;
for he had made a show of kneeling at his feet. ‘Do not unfit me, dear
Gashford, for the solemn duty of this glorious day--’ the tears stood in
the eyes of the poor gentleman as he said the words.--‘Let us go
among them; we have to find a place in some division for this new
recruit--give me your hand.’
Gashford slid his cold insidious palm into his master’s grasp, and so,
hand in hand, and followed still by Barnaby and by his mother too, they
mingled with the concourse.
They had by this time taken to their singing again, and as their leader
passed between their ranks, they raised their voices to their utmost.
Many of those who were banded together to support the religion of their
country, even unto death, had never heard a hymn or psalm in all their
lives. But these fellows having for the most part strong lungs, and
being naturally fond of singing, chanted any ribaldry or nonsense that
occurred to them, feeling pretty certain that it would not be detected
in the general chorus, and not caring much if it were. Many of these
voluntaries were sung under the very nose of Lord George Gordon, who,
quite unconscious of their burden, passed on with his usual stiff and
solemn deportment, very much edified and delighted by the pious conduct
of his followers.
So they went on and on, up this line, down that, round the exterior of
this circle, and on every side of that hollow square; and still there
were lines, and squares, and circles out of number to review. The day
being now intensely hot, and the sun striking down his fiercest rays
upon the field, those who carried heavy banners began to grow faint
and weary; most of the number assembled were fain to pull off their
neckcloths, and throw their coats and waistcoats open; and some, towards
the centre, quite overpowered by the excessive heat, which was of course
rendered more unendurable by the multitude around them, lay down upon
the grass, and offered all they had about them for a drink of water.
Still, no man left the ground, not even of those who were so distressed;
still Lord George, streaming from every pore, went on with Gashford; and
still Barnaby and his mother followed close behind them.
They had arrived at the top of a long line of some eight hundred men in
single file, and Lord George had turned his head to look back, when a
loud cry of recognition--in that peculiar and half-stifled tone which a
voice has, when it is raised in the open air and in the midst of a
great concourse of persons--was heard, and a man stepped with a shout
of laughter from the rank, and smote Barnaby on the shoulders with his
heavy hand.
‘How now!’ he cried. ‘Barnaby Rudge! Why, where have you been hiding for
these hundred years?’
Barnaby had been thinking within himself that the smell of the trodden
grass brought back his old days at cricket, when he was a young boy
and played on Chigwell Green. Confused by this sudden and boisterous
address, he stared in a bewildered manner at the man, and could scarcely
say ‘What! Hugh!’
‘Hugh!’ echoed the other; ‘ay, Hugh--Maypole Hugh! You remember my dog?
He’s alive now, and will know you, I warrant. What, you wear the colour,
do you? Well done! Ha ha ha!’
‘You know this young man, I see,’ said Lord George.
‘Know him, my lord! as well as I know my own right hand. My captain
knows him. We all know him.’
‘Will you take him into your division?’
‘It hasn’t in it a better, nor a nimbler, nor a more active man, than
Barnaby Rudge,’ said Hugh. ‘Show me the man who says it has! Fall in,
Barnaby. He shall march, my lord, between me and Dennis; and he shall
carry,’ he added, taking a flag from the hand of a tired man who
tendered it, ‘the gayest silken streamer in this valiant army.’
‘In the name of God, no!’ shrieked the widow, darting forward.
‘Barnaby--my lord--see--he’ll come back--Barnaby--Barnaby!’
‘Women in the field!’ cried Hugh, stepping between them, and holding her
off. ‘Holloa! My captain there!’
‘What’s the matter here?’ cried Simon Tappertit, bustling up in a great
heat. ‘Do you call this order?’
‘Nothing like it, captain,’ answered Hugh, still holding her back with
his outstretched hand. ‘It’s against all orders. Ladies are carrying
off our gallant soldiers from their duty. The word of command, captain!
They’re filing off the ground. Quick!’
‘Close!’ cried Simon, with the whole power of his lungs. ‘Form! March!’
She was thrown to the ground; the whole field was in motion; Barnaby was
whirled away into the heart of a dense mass of men, and she saw him no
more.
Chapter 49
The mob had been divided from its first assemblage into four divisions;
the London, the Westminster, the Southwark, and the Scotch. Each of
these divisions being subdivided into various bodies, and these bodies
being drawn up in various forms and figures, the general arrangement
was, except to the few chiefs and leaders, as unintelligible as the
plan of a great battle to the meanest soldier in the field. It was not
without its method, however; for, in a very short space of time after
being put in motion, the crowd had resolved itself into three great
parties, and were prepared, as had been arranged, to cross the river
by different bridges, and make for the House of Commons in separate
detachments.
At the head of that division which had Westminster Bridge for its
approach to the scene of action, Lord George Gordon took his post; with
Gashford at his right hand, and sundry ruffians, of most unpromising
appearance, forming a kind of staff about him. The conduct of a second
party, whose route lay by Blackfriars, was entrusted to a committee of
management, including perhaps a dozen men: while the third, which was to
go by London Bridge, and through the main streets, in order that their
numbers and their serious intentions might be the better known and
appreciated by the citizens, were led by Simon Tappertit (assisted by
a few subalterns, selected from the Brotherhood of United Bulldogs),
Dennis the hangman, Hugh, and some others.
The word of command being given, each of these great bodies took the
road assigned to it, and departed on its way, in perfect order and
profound silence. That which went through the City greatly exceeded the
others in number, and was of such prodigious extent that when the
rear began to move, the front was nearly four miles in advance,
notwithstanding that the men marched three abreast and followed very
close upon each other.
At the head of this party, in the place where Hugh, in the madness
of his humour, had stationed him, and walking between that dangerous
companion and the hangman, went Barnaby; as many a man among the
thousands who looked on that day afterwards remembered well. Forgetful
of all other things in the ecstasy of the moment, his face flushed and
his eyes sparkling with delight, heedless of the weight of the great
banner he carried, and mindful only of its flashing in the sun and
rustling in the summer breeze, on he went, proud, happy, elated past
all telling:--the only light-hearted, undesigning creature, in the whole
assembly.
‘What do you think of this?’ asked Hugh, as they passed through the
crowded streets, and looked up at the windows which were thronged with
spectators. ‘They have all turned out to see our flags and streamers?
Eh, Barnaby? Why, Barnaby’s the greatest man of all the pack! His flag’s
the largest of the lot, the brightest too. There’s nothing in the show,
like Barnaby. All eyes are turned on him. Ha ha ha!’
‘Don’t make that din, brother,’ growled the hangman, glancing with
no very approving eyes at Barnaby as he spoke: ‘I hope he don’t think
there’s nothing to be done, but carrying that there piece of blue rag,
like a boy at a breaking up. You’re ready for action I hope, eh? You, I
mean,’ he added, nudging Barnaby roughly with his elbow. ‘What are you
staring at? Why don’t you speak?’
Barnaby had been gazing at his flag, and looked vacantly from his
questioner to Hugh.
‘He don’t understand your way,’ said the latter. ‘Here, I’ll explain it
to him. Barnaby old boy, attend to me.’
‘I’ll attend,’ said Barnaby, looking anxiously round; ‘but I wish I
could see her somewhere.’
‘See who?’ demanded Dennis in a gruff tone. ‘You an’t in love I hope,
brother? That an’t the sort of thing for us, you know. We mustn’t have
no love here.’
‘She would be proud indeed to see me now, eh Hugh?’ said Barnaby.
‘Wouldn’t it make her glad to see me at the head of this large show?
She’d cry for joy, I know she would. Where CAN she be? She never sees me
at my best, and what do I care to be gay and fine if SHE’S not by?’
‘Why, what palaver’s this?’ asked Mr Dennis with supreme disdain. ‘We
an’t got no sentimental members among us, I hope.’
‘Don’t be uneasy, brother,’ cried Hugh, ‘he’s only talking of his
mother.’
‘Of his what?’ said Mr Dennis with a strong oath.
‘His mother.’
‘And have I combined myself with this here section, and turned out on
this here memorable day, to hear men talk about their mothers!’ growled
Mr Dennis with extreme disgust. ‘The notion of a man’s sweetheart’s bad
enough, but a man’s mother!’--and here his disgust was so extreme that
he spat upon the ground, and could say no more.
‘Barnaby’s right,’ cried Hugh with a grin, ‘and I say it. Lookee, bold
lad. If she’s not here to see, it’s because I’ve provided for her, and
sent half-a-dozen gentlemen, every one of ‘em with a blue flag (but not
half as fine as yours), to take her, in state, to a grand house all
hung round with gold and silver banners, and everything else you please,
where she’ll wait till you come, and want for nothing.’
‘Ay!’ said Barnaby, his face beaming with delight: ‘have you indeed?
That’s a good hearing. That’s fine! Kind Hugh!’
‘But nothing to what will come, bless you,’ retorted Hugh, with a
wink at Dennis, who regarded his new companion in arms with great
astonishment.
‘No, indeed?’ cried Barnaby.
‘Nothing at all,’ said Hugh. ‘Money, cocked hats and feathers, red coats
and gold lace; all the fine things there are, ever were, or will be;
will belong to us if we are true to that noble gentleman--the best man
in the world--carry our flags for a few days, and keep ‘em safe. That’s
all we’ve got to do.’
‘Is that all?’ cried Barnaby with glistening eyes, as he clutched his
pole the tighter; ‘I warrant you I keep this one safe, then. You have
put it in good hands. You know me, Hugh. Nobody shall wrest this flag
away.’
‘Well said!’ cried Hugh. ‘Ha ha! Nobly said! That’s the old stout
Barnaby, that I have climbed and leaped with, many and many a day--I
knew I was not mistaken in Barnaby.--Don’t you see, man,’ he added in
a whisper, as he slipped to the other side of Dennis, ‘that the lad’s a
natural, and can be got to do anything, if you take him the right way?
Letting alone the fun he is, he’s worth a dozen men, in earnest, as
you’d find if you tried a fall with him. Leave him to me. You shall soon
see whether he’s of use or not.’
Mr Dennis received these explanatory remarks with many nods and winks,
and softened his behaviour towards Barnaby from that moment. Hugh,
laying his finger on his nose, stepped back into his former place, and
they proceeded in silence.
It was between two and three o’clock in the afternoon when the three
great parties met at Westminster, and, uniting into one huge mass,
raised a tremendous shout. This was not only done in token of their
presence, but as a signal to those on whom the task devolved, that it
was time to take possession of the lobbies of both Houses, and of
the various avenues of approach, and of the gallery stairs. To the
last-named place, Hugh and Dennis, still with their pupil between them,
rushed straightway; Barnaby having given his flag into the hands of one
of their own party, who kept them at the outer door. Their followers
pressing on behind, they were borne as on a great wave to the very doors
of the gallery, whence it was impossible to retreat, even if they had
been so inclined, by reason of the throng which choked up the passages.
It is a familiar expression in describing a great crowd, that a person
might have walked upon the people’s heads. In this case it was actually
done; for a boy who had by some means got among the concourse, and was
in imminent danger of suffocation, climbed to the shoulders of a man
beside him and walked upon the people’s hats and heads into the open
street; traversing in his passage the whole length of two staircases and
a long gallery. Nor was the swarm without less dense; for a basket
which had been tossed into the crowd, was jerked from head to head,
and shoulder to shoulder, and went spinning and whirling on above them,
until it was lost to view, without ever once falling in among them or
coming near the ground.
Through this vast throng, sprinkled doubtless here and there with honest
zealots, but composed for the most part of the very scum and refuse
of London, whose growth was fostered by bad criminal laws, bad prison
regulations, and the worst conceivable police, such of the members of
both Houses of Parliament as had not taken the precaution to be already
at their posts, were compelled to fight and force their way. Their
carriages were stopped and broken; the wheels wrenched off; the glasses
shivered to atoms; the panels beaten in; drivers, footmen, and masters,
pulled from their seats and rolled in the mud. Lords, commoners, and
reverend bishops, with little distinction of person or party, were
kicked and pinched and hustled; passed from hand to hand through various
stages of ill-usage; and sent to their fellow-senators at last with
their clothes hanging in ribands about them, their bagwigs torn off,
themselves speechless and breathless, and their persons covered with the
powder which had been cuffed and beaten out of their hair. One lord was
so long in the hands of the populace, that the Peers as a body resolved
to sally forth and rescue him, and were in the act of doing so, when he
happily appeared among them covered with dirt and bruises, and hardly to
be recognised by those who knew him best. The noise and uproar were on
the increase every moment. The air was filled with execrations, hoots,
and howlings. The mob raged and roared, like a mad monster as it was,
unceasingly, and each new outrage served to swell its fury.
Within doors, matters were even yet more threatening. Lord
George--preceded by a man who carried the immense petition on a porter’s
knot through the lobby to the door of the House of Commons, where it
was received by two officers of the house who rolled it up to the table
ready for presentation--had taken his seat at an early hour, before the
Speaker went to prayers. His followers pouring in at the same time, the
lobby and all the avenues were immediately filled, as we have seen. Thus
the members were not only attacked in their passage through the streets,
but were set upon within the very walls of Parliament; while the tumult,
both within and without, was so great, that those who attempted to speak
could scarcely hear their own voices: far less, consult upon the course
it would be wise to take in such extremity, or animate each other to
dignified and firm resistance. So sure as any member, just arrived, with
dress disordered and dishevelled hair, came struggling through the crowd
in the lobby, it yelled and screamed in triumph; and when the door
of the House, partially and cautiously opened by those within for his
admission, gave them a momentary glimpse of the interior, they grew
more wild and savage, like beasts at the sight of prey, and made a rush
against the portal which strained its locks and bolts in their staples,
and shook the very beams.
The strangers’ gallery, which was immediately above the door of the
House, had been ordered to be closed on the first rumour of disturbance,
and was empty; save that now and then Lord George took his seat there,
for the convenience of coming to the head of the stairs which led to
it, and repeating to the people what had passed within. It was on
these stairs that Barnaby, Hugh, and Dennis were posted. There were two
flights, short, steep, and narrow, running parallel to each other,
and leading to two little doors communicating with a low passage which
opened on the gallery. Between them was a kind of well, or unglazed
skylight, for the admission of light and air into the lobby, which might
be some eighteen or twenty feet below.
Upon one of these little staircases--not that at the head of which Lord
George appeared from time to time, but the other--Gashford stood with
his elbow on the bannister, and his cheek resting on his hand, with his
usual crafty aspect. Whenever he varied this attitude in the slightest
degree--so much as by the gentlest motion of his arm--the uproar was
certain to increase, not merely there, but in the lobby below; from
which place no doubt, some man who acted as fugleman to the rest, was
constantly looking up and watching him.
‘Order!’ cried Hugh, in a voice which made itself heard even above the
roar and tumult, as Lord George appeared at the top of the staircase.
‘News! News from my lord!’
The noise continued, notwithstanding his appearance, until Gashford
looked round. There was silence immediately--even among the people in
the passages without, and on the other staircases, who could neither
see nor hear, but to whom, notwithstanding, the signal was conveyed with
marvellous rapidity.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Lord George, who was very pale and agitated, ‘we must
be firm. They talk of delays, but we must have no delays. They talk of
taking your petition into consideration next Tuesday, but we must have
it considered now. Present appearances look bad for our success, but we
must succeed and will!’
‘We must succeed and will!’ echoed the crowd. And so among their shouts
and cheers and other cries, he bowed to them and retired, and presently
came back again. There was another gesture from Gashford, and a dead
silence directly.
‘I am afraid,’ he said, this time, ‘that we have little reason,
gentlemen, to hope for any redress from the proceedings of Parliament.
But we must redress our own grievances, we must meet again, we must put
our trust in Providence, and it will bless our endeavours.’
This speech being a little more temperate than the last, was not so
favourably received. When the noise and exasperation were at their
height, he came back once more, and told them that the alarm had gone
forth for many miles round; that when the King heard of their assembling
together in that great body, he had no doubt, His Majesty would send
down private orders to have their wishes complied with; and--with the
manner of his speech as childish, irresolute, and uncertain as his
matter--was proceeding in this strain, when two gentlemen suddenly
appeared at the door where he stood, and pressing past him and coming a
step or two lower down upon the stairs, confronted the people.
The boldness of this action quite took them by surprise. They were
not the less disconcerted, when one of the gentlemen, turning to Lord
George, spoke thus--in a loud voice that they might hear him well, but
quite coolly and collectedly:
‘You may tell these people, if you please, my lord, that I am General
Conway of whom they have heard; and that I oppose this petition, and all
their proceedings, and yours. I am a soldier, you may tell them, and I
will protect the freedom of this place with my sword. You see, my lord,
that the members of this House are all in arms to-day; you know that the
entrance to it is a narrow one; you cannot be ignorant that there are
men within these walls who are determined to defend that pass to the
last, and before whom many lives must fall if your adherents persevere.
Have a care what you do.’
‘And my Lord George,’ said the other gentleman, addressing him in like
manner, ‘I desire them to hear this, from me--Colonel Gordon--your
near relation. If a man among this crowd, whose uproar strikes us deaf,
crosses the threshold of the House of Commons, I swear to run my sword
that moment--not into his, but into your body!’
With that, they stepped back again, keeping their faces towards the
crowd; took each an arm of the misguided nobleman; drew him into the
passage, and shut the door; which they directly locked and fastened on
the inside.
This was so quickly done, and the demeanour of both gentlemen--who
were not young men either--was so gallant and resolute, that the crowd
faltered and stared at each other with irresolute and timid looks. Many
tried to turn towards the door; some of the faintest-hearted cried they
had best go back, and called to those behind to give way; and the panic
and confusion were increasing rapidly, when Gashford whispered Hugh.
‘What now!’ Hugh roared aloud, turning towards them. ‘Why go back? Where
can you do better than here, boys! One good rush against these doors and
one below at the same time, will do the business. Rush on, then! As to
the door below, let those stand back who are afraid. Let those who are
not afraid, try who shall be the first to pass it. Here goes! Look out
down there!’
Without the delay of an instant, he threw himself headlong over the
bannisters into the lobby below. He had hardly touched the ground when
Barnaby was at his side. The chaplain’s assistant, and some members who
were imploring the people to retire, immediately withdrew; and then,
with a great shout, both crowds threw themselves against the doors
pell-mell, and besieged the House in earnest.
At that moment, when a second onset must have brought them into
collision with those who stood on the defensive within, in which case
great loss of life and bloodshed would inevitably have ensued,--the
hindmost portion of the crowd gave way, and the rumour spread from mouth
to mouth that a messenger had been despatched by water for the military,
who were forming in the street. Fearful of sustaining a charge in the
narrow passages in which they were so closely wedged together, the
throng poured out as impetuously as they had flocked in. As the whole
stream turned at once, Barnaby and Hugh went with it: and so, fighting
and struggling and trampling on fallen men and being trampled on in turn
themselves, they and the whole mass floated by degrees into the open
street, where a large detachment of the Guards, both horse and foot,
came hurrying up; clearing the ground before them so rapidly that the
people seemed to melt away as they advanced.
The word of command to halt being given, the soldiers formed across the
street; the rioters, breathless and exhausted with their late exertions,
formed likewise, though in a very irregular and disorderly manner. The
commanding officer rode hastily into the open space between the two
bodies, accompanied by a magistrate and an officer of the House of
Commons, for whose accommodation a couple of troopers had hastily
dismounted. The Riot Act was read, but not a man stirred.
In the first rank of the insurgents, Barnaby and Hugh stood side by
side. Somebody had thrust into Barnaby’s hands when he came out into the
street, his precious flag; which, being now rolled up and tied round
the pole, looked like a giant quarter-staff as he grasped it firmly and
stood upon his guard. If ever man believed with his whole heart and soul
that he was engaged in a just cause, and that he was bound to stand by
his leader to the last, poor Barnaby believed it of himself and Lord
George Gordon.
After an ineffectual attempt to make himself heard, the magistrate gave
the word and the Horse Guards came riding in among the crowd. But, even
then, he galloped here and there, exhorting the people to disperse; and,
although heavy stones were thrown at the men, and some were desperately
cut and bruised, they had no orders but to make prisoners of such of the
rioters as were the most active, and to drive the people back with the
flat of their sabres. As the horses came in among them, the throng gave
way at many points, and the Guards, following up their advantage, were
rapidly clearing the ground, when two or three of the foremost, who were
in a manner cut off from the rest by the people closing round them, made
straight towards Barnaby and Hugh, who had no doubt been pointed out as
the two men who dropped into the lobby: laying about them now with some
effect, and inflicting on the more turbulent of their opponents, a few
slight flesh wounds, under the influence of which a man dropped,
here and there, into the arms of his fellows, amid much groaning and
confusion.
At the sight of gashed and bloody faces, seen for a moment in the crowd,
then hidden by the press around them, Barnaby turned pale and sick. But
he stood his ground, and grasping his pole more firmly yet, kept his
eye fixed upon the nearest soldier--nodding his head meanwhile, as Hugh,
with a scowling visage, whispered in his ear.
The soldier came spurring on, making his horse rear as the people
pressed about him, cutting at the hands of those who would have grasped
his rein and forced his charger back, and waving to his comrades to
follow--and still Barnaby, without retreating an inch, waited for his
coming. Some called to him to fly, and some were in the very act of
closing round him, to prevent his being taken, when the pole swept into
the air above the people’s heads, and the man’s saddle was empty in an
instant.
Then, he and Hugh turned and fled, the crowd opening to let them pass,
and closing up again so quickly that there was no clue to the course
they had taken. Panting for breath, hot, dusty, and exhausted with
fatigue, they reached the riverside in safety, and getting into a boat
with all despatch were soon out of any immediate danger.
As they glided down the river, they plainly heard the people cheering;
and supposing they might have forced the soldiers to retreat, lay upon
their oars for a few minutes, uncertain whether to return or not. But
the crowd passing along Westminster Bridge, soon assured them that the
populace were dispersing; and Hugh rightly guessed from this, that
they had cheered the magistrate for offering to dismiss the military on
condition of their immediate departure to their several homes, and that
he and Barnaby were better where they were. He advised, therefore, that
they should proceed to Blackfriars, and, going ashore at the bridge,
make the best of their way to The Boot; where there was not only good
entertainment and safe lodging, but where they would certainly be joined
by many of their late companions. Barnaby assenting, they decided on
this course of action, and pulled for Blackfriars accordingly.
They landed at a critical time, and fortunately for themselves at the
right moment. For, coming into Fleet Street, they found it in an unusual
stir; and inquiring the cause, were told that a body of Horse Guards had
just galloped past, and that they were escorting some rioters whom they
had made prisoners, to Newgate for safety. Not at all ill-pleased to
have so narrowly escaped the cavalcade, they lost no more time in asking
questions, but hurried to The Boot with as much speed as Hugh considered
it prudent to make, without appearing singular or attracting an
inconvenient share of public notice.
Chapter 50
They were among the first to reach the tavern, but they had not been
there many minutes, when several groups of men who had formed part of
the crowd, came straggling in. Among them were Simon Tappertit and Mr
Dennis; both of whom, but especially the latter, greeted Barnaby with
the utmost warmth, and paid him many compliments on the prowess he had
shown.
‘Which,’ said Dennis, with an oath, as he rested his bludgeon in a
corner with his hat upon it, and took his seat at the same table with
them, ‘it does me good to think of. There was a opportunity! But it
led to nothing. For my part, I don’t know what would. There’s no spirit
among the people in these here times. Bring something to eat and drink
here. I’m disgusted with humanity.’
‘On what account?’ asked Mr Tappertit, who had been quenching his fiery
face in a half-gallon can. ‘Don’t you consider this a good beginning,
mister?’
‘Give me security that it an’t a ending,’ rejoined the hangman. ‘When
that soldier went down, we might have made London ours; but no;--we
stand, and gape, and look on--the justice (I wish he had had a bullet in
each eye, as he would have had, if we’d gone to work my way) says,
“My lads, if you’ll give me your word to disperse, I’ll order off the
military,” our people sets up a hurrah, throws up the game with the
winning cards in their hands, and skulks away like a pack of tame curs
as they are. Ah,’ said the hangman, in a tone of deep disgust, ‘it makes
me blush for my feller creeturs. I wish I had been born a ox, I do!’
‘You’d have been quite as agreeable a character if you had been, I
think,’ returned Simon Tappertit, going out in a lofty manner.
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ rejoined the hangman, calling after him;
‘if I was a horned animal at the present moment, with the smallest
grain of sense, I’d toss every man in this company, excepting them two,’
meaning Hugh and Barnaby, ‘for his manner of conducting himself this
day.’
With which mournful review of their proceedings, Mr Dennis sought
consolation in cold boiled beef and beer; but without at all relaxing
the grim and dissatisfied expression of his face, the gloom of which was
rather deepened than dissipated by their grateful influence.
The company who were thus libelled might have retaliated by strong
words, if not by blows, but they were dispirited and worn out. The
greater part of them had fasted since morning; all had suffered
extremely from the excessive heat; and between the day’s shouting,
exertion, and excitement, many had quite lost their voices, and so much
of their strength that they could hardly stand. Then they were uncertain
what to do next, fearful of the consequences of what they had done
already, and sensible that after all they had carried no point, but had
indeed left matters worse than they had found them. Of those who had
come to The Boot, many dropped off within an hour; such of them as were
really honest and sincere, never, after the morning’s experience, to
return, or to hold any communication with their late companions. Others
remained but to refresh themselves, and then went home desponding;
others who had theretofore been regular in their attendance, avoided the
place altogether. The half-dozen prisoners whom the Guards had taken,
were magnified by report into half-a-hundred at least; and their
friends, being faint and sober, so slackened in their energy, and so
drooped beneath these dispiriting influences, that by eight o’clock in
the evening, Dennis, Hugh, and Barnaby, were left alone. Even they were
fast asleep upon the benches, when Gashford’s entrance roused them.
‘Oh! you ARE here then?’ said the Secretary. ‘Dear me!’
‘Why, where should we be, Muster Gashford!’ Dennis rejoined as he rose
into a sitting posture.
‘Oh nowhere, nowhere,’ he returned with excessive mildness. ‘The streets
are filled with blue cockades. I rather thought you might have been
among them. I am glad you are not.’
‘You have orders for us, master, then?’ said Hugh.
‘Oh dear, no. Not I. No orders, my good fellow. What orders should I
have? You are not in my service.’
‘Muster Gashford,’ remonstrated Dennis, ‘we belong to the cause, don’t
we?’
‘The cause!’ repeated the secretary, looking at him in a sort of
abstraction. ‘There is no cause. The cause is lost.’
‘Lost!’
‘Oh yes. You have heard, I suppose? The petition is rejected by a
hundred and ninety-two, to six. It’s quite final. We might have spared
ourselves some trouble. That, and my lord’s vexation, are the only
circumstances I regret. I am quite satisfied in all other respects.’
As he said this, he took a penknife from his pocket, and putting his
hat upon his knee, began to busy himself in ripping off the blue cockade
which he had worn all day; at the same time humming a psalm tune which
had been very popular in the morning, and dwelling on it with a gentle
regret.
His two adherents looked at each other, and at him, as if they were at a
loss how to pursue the subject. At length Hugh, after some elbowing and
winking between himself and Mr Dennis, ventured to stay his hand, and to
ask him why he meddled with that riband in his hat.
‘Because,’ said the secretary, looking up with something between a snarl
and a smile; ‘because to sit still and wear it, or to fall asleep and
wear it, is a mockery. That’s all, friend.’
‘What would you have us do, master!’ cried Hugh.
‘Nothing,’ returned Gashford, shrugging his shoulders, ‘nothing. When my
lord was reproached and threatened for standing by you, I, as a prudent
man, would have had you do nothing. When the soldiers were trampling you
under their horses’ feet, I would have had you do nothing. When one of
them was struck down by a daring hand, and I saw confusion and dismay in
all their faces, I would have had you do nothing--just what you did,
in short. This is the young man who had so little prudence and so much
boldness. Ah! I am sorry for him.’
‘Sorry, master!’ cried Hugh.
‘Sorry, Muster Gashford!’ echoed Dennis.
‘In case there should be a proclamation out to-morrow, offering five
hundred pounds, or some such trifle, for his apprehension; and in case
it should include another man who dropped into the lobby from the stairs
above,’ said Gashford, coldly; ‘still, do nothing.’
‘Fire and fury, master!’ cried Hugh, starting up. ‘What have we done,
that you should talk to us like this!’
‘Nothing,’ returned Gashford with a sneer. ‘If you are cast into prison;
if the young man--’ here he looked hard at Barnaby’s attentive face--‘is
dragged from us and from his friends; perhaps from people whom he loves,
and whom his death would kill; is thrown into jail, brought out and
hanged before their eyes; still, do nothing. You’ll find it your best
policy, I have no doubt.’
‘Come on!’ cried Hugh, striding towards the door. ‘Dennis--Barnaby--come
on!’
‘Where? To do what?’ said Gashford, slipping past him, and standing with
his back against it.
‘Anywhere! Anything!’ cried Hugh. ‘Stand aside, master, or the window
will serve our turn as well. Let us out!’
‘Ha ha ha! You are of such--of such an impetuous nature,’ said Gashford,
changing his manner for one of the utmost good fellowship and the
pleasantest raillery; ‘you are such an excitable creature--but you’ll
drink with me before you go?’
‘Oh, yes--certainly,’ growled Dennis, drawing his sleeve across his
thirsty lips. ‘No malice, brother. Drink with Muster Gashford!’
Hugh wiped his heated brow, and relaxed into a smile. The artful
secretary laughed outright.
‘Some liquor here! Be quick, or he’ll not stop, even for that. He is a
man of such desperate ardour!’ said the smooth secretary, whom Mr Dennis
corroborated with sundry nods and muttered oaths--‘Once roused, he is a
fellow of such fierce determination!’
Hugh poised his sturdy arm aloft, and clapping Barnaby on the back,
bade him fear nothing. They shook hands together--poor Barnaby evidently
possessed with the idea that he was among the most virtuous and
disinterested heroes in the world--and Gashford laughed again.
‘I hear,’ he said smoothly, as he stood among them with a great measure
of liquor in his hand, and filled their glasses as quickly and as
often as they chose, ‘I hear--but I cannot say whether it be true or
false--that the men who are loitering in the streets to-night are half
disposed to pull down a Romish chapel or two, and that they only want
leaders. I even heard mention of those in Duke Street, Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, and in Warwick Street, Golden Square; but common report, you
know--You are not going?’
--‘To do nothing, master, eh?’ cried Hugh. ‘No jails and halter for
Barnaby and me. They must be frightened out of that. Leaders are wanted,
are they? Now boys!’
‘A most impetuous fellow!’ cried the secretary. ‘Ha ha! A courageous,
boisterous, most vehement fellow! A man who--’
There was no need to finish the sentence, for they had rushed out of the
house, and were far beyond hearing. He stopped in the middle of a laugh,
listened, drew on his gloves, and, clasping his hands behind him, paced
the deserted room for a long time, then bent his steps towards the busy
town, and walked into the streets.
They were filled with people, for the rumour of that day’s proceedings
had made a great noise. Those persons who did not care to leave home,
were at their doors or windows, and one topic of discourse prevailed
on every side. Some reported that the riots were effectually put down;
others that they had broken out again: some said that Lord George Gordon
had been sent under a strong guard to the Tower; others that an attempt
had been made upon the King’s life, that the soldiers had been again
called out, and that the noise of musketry in a distant part of the town
had been plainly heard within an hour. As it grew darker, these stories
became more direful and mysterious; and often, when some frightened
passenger ran past with tidings that the rioters were not far off,
and were coming up, the doors were shut and barred, lower windows
made secure, and as much consternation engendered, as if the city were
invaded by a foreign army.
Gashford walked stealthily about, listening to all he heard, and
diffusing or confirming, whenever he had an opportunity, such false
intelligence as suited his own purpose; and, busily occupied in this
way, turned into Holborn for the twentieth time, when a great many women
and children came flying along the street--often panting and looking
back--and the confused murmur of numerous voices struck upon his ear.
Assured by these tokens, and by the red light which began to flash
upon the houses on either side, that some of his friends were indeed
approaching, he begged a moment’s shelter at a door which opened as he
passed, and running with some other persons to an upper window, looked
out upon the crowd.
They had torches among them, and the chief faces were distinctly
visible. That they had been engaged in the destruction of some building
was sufficiently apparent, and that it was a Catholic place of worship
was evident from the spoils they bore as trophies, which were easily
recognisable for the vestments of priests, and rich fragments of altar
furniture. Covered with soot, and dirt, and dust, and lime; their
garments torn to rags; their hair hanging wildly about them; their hands
and faces jagged and bleeding with the wounds of rusty nails; Barnaby,
Hugh, and Dennis hurried on before them all, like hideous madmen. After
them, the dense throng came fighting on: some singing; some shouting in
triumph; some quarrelling among themselves; some menacing the spectators
as they passed; some with great wooden fragments, on which they spent
their rage as if they had been alive, rending them limb from limb,
and hurling the scattered morsels high into the air; some in a drunken
state, unconscious of the hurts they had received from falling bricks,
and stones, and beams; one borne upon a shutter, in the very midst,
covered with a dingy cloth, a senseless, ghastly heap. Thus--a vision
of coarse faces, with here and there a blot of flaring, smoky light; a
dream of demon heads and savage eyes, and sticks and iron bars uplifted
in the air, and whirled about; a bewildering horror, in which so much
was seen, and yet so little, which seemed so long, and yet so short, in
which there were so many phantoms, not to be forgotten all through life,
and yet so many things that could not be observed in one distracting
glimpse--it flitted onward, and was gone.
As it passed away upon its work of wrath and ruin, a piercing scream was
heard. A knot of persons ran towards the spot; Gashford, who just then
emerged into the street, among them. He was on the outskirts of the
little concourse, and could not see or hear what passed within; but one
who had a better place, informed him that a widow woman had descried her
son among the rioters.
‘Is that all?’ said the secretary, turning his face homewards. ‘Well! I
think this looks a little more like business!’
Chapter 51
Promising as these outrages were to Gashford’s view, and much like
business as they looked, they extended that night no farther. The
soldiers were again called out, again they took half-a-dozen prisoners,
and again the crowd dispersed after a short and bloodless scuffle. Hot
and drunken though they were, they had not yet broken all bounds and
set all law and government at defiance. Something of their habitual
deference to the authority erected by society for its own preservation
yet remained among them, and had its majesty been vindicated in time,
the secretary would have had to digest a bitter disappointment.
By midnight, the streets were clear and quiet, and, save that there
stood in two parts of the town a heap of nodding walls and pile of
rubbish, where there had been at sunset a rich and handsome building,
everything wore its usual aspect. Even the Catholic gentry and
tradesmen, of whom there were many resident in different parts of the
City and its suburbs, had no fear for their lives or property, and
but little indignation for the wrong they had already sustained in
the plunder and destruction of their temples of worship. An honest
confidence in the government under whose protection they had lived for
many years, and a well-founded reliance on the good feeling and right
thinking of the great mass of the community, with whom, notwithstanding
their religious differences, they were every day in habits of
confidential, affectionate, and friendly intercourse, reassured them,
even under the excesses that had been committed; and convinced them that
they who were Protestants in anything but the name, were no more to
be considered as abettors of these disgraceful occurrences, than they
themselves were chargeable with the uses of the block, the rack, the
gibbet, and the stake in cruel Mary’s reign.
The clock was on the stroke of one, when Gabriel Varden, with his
lady and Miss Miggs, sat waiting in the little parlour. This fact; the
toppling wicks of the dull, wasted candles; the silence that prevailed;
and, above all, the nightcaps of both maid and matron, were sufficient
evidence that they had been prepared for bed some time ago, and had some
reason for sitting up so far beyond their usual hour.
If any other corroborative testimony had been required, it would have
been abundantly furnished in the actions of Miss Miggs, who, having
arrived at that restless state and sensitive condition of the nervous
system which are the result of long watching, did, by a constant rubbing
and tweaking of her nose, a perpetual change of position (arising from
the sudden growth of imaginary knots and knobs in her chair), a frequent
friction of her eyebrows, the incessant recurrence of a small cough, a
small groan, a gasp, a sigh, a sniff, a spasmodic start, and by other
demonstrations of that nature, so file down and rasp, as it were, the
patience of the locksmith, that after looking at her in silence for some
time, he at last broke out into this apostrophe:--
‘Miggs, my good girl, go to bed--do go to bed. You’re really worse
than the dripping of a hundred water-butts outside the window, or the
scratching of as many mice behind the wainscot. I can’t bear it. Do go
to bed, Miggs. To oblige me--do.’
‘You haven’t got nothing to untie, sir,’ returned Miss Miggs, ‘and
therefore your requests does not surprise me. But missis has--and
while you sit up, mim’--she added, turning to the locksmith’s wife,
‘I couldn’t, no, not if twenty times the quantity of cold water was
aperiently running down my back at this moment, go to bed with a quiet
spirit.’
Having spoken these words, Miss Miggs made divers efforts to rub her
shoulders in an impossible place, and shivered from head to foot;
thereby giving the beholders to understand that the imaginary cascade
was still in full flow, but that a sense of duty upheld her under that
and all other sufferings, and nerved her to endurance.
Mrs Varden being too sleepy to speak, and Miss Miggs having, as the
phrase is, said her say, the locksmith had nothing for it but to sigh
and be as quiet as he could.
But to be quiet with such a basilisk before him was impossible. If he
looked another way, it was worse to feel that she was rubbing her
cheek, or twitching her ear, or winking her eye, or making all kinds of
extraordinary shapes with her nose, than to see her do it. If she was
for a moment free from any of these complaints, it was only because of
her foot being asleep, or of her arm having got the fidgets, or of her
leg being doubled up with the cramp, or of some other horrible disorder
which racked her whole frame. If she did enjoy a moment’s ease, then
with her eyes shut and her mouth wide open, she would be seen to sit
very stiff and upright in her chair; then to nod a little way forward,
and stop with a jerk; then to nod a little farther forward, and stop
with another jerk; then to recover herself; then to come forward
again--lower--lower--lower--by very slow degrees, until, just as it
seemed impossible that she could preserve her balance for another
instant, and the locksmith was about to call out in an agony, to save
her from dashing down upon her forehead and fracturing her skull, then
all of a sudden and without the smallest notice, she would come upright
and rigid again with her eyes open, and in her countenance an expression
of defiance, sleepy but yet most obstinate, which plainly said, ‘I’ve
never once closed ‘em since I looked at you last, and I’ll take my oath
of it!’
At length, after the clock had struck two, there was a sound at the
street door, as if somebody had fallen against the knocker by accident.
Miss Miggs immediately jumping up and clapping her hands, cried with a
drowsy mingling of the sacred and profane, ‘Ally Looyer, mim! there’s
Simmuns’s knock!’
‘Who’s there?’ said Gabriel.
‘Me!’ cried the well-known voice of Mr Tappertit. Gabriel opened the
door, and gave him admission.
He did not cut a very insinuating figure, for a man of his stature
suffers in a crowd; and having been active in yesterday morning’s work,
his dress was literally crushed from head to foot: his hat being beaten
out of all shape, and his shoes trodden down at heel like slippers. His
coat fluttered in strips about him, the buckles were torn away both from
his knees and feet, half his neckerchief was gone, and the bosom of
his shirt was rent to tatters. Yet notwithstanding all these personal
disadvantages; despite his being very weak from heat and fatigue; and
so begrimed with mud and dust that he might have been in a case, for
anything of the real texture (either of his skin or apparel) that the
eye could discern; he stalked haughtily into the parlour, and throwing
himself into a chair, and endeavouring to thrust his hands into the
pockets of his small-clothes, which were turned inside out and displayed
upon his legs, like tassels, surveyed the household with a gloomy
dignity.
‘Simon,’ said the locksmith gravely, ‘how comes it that you return home
at this time of night, and in this condition? Give me an assurance that
you have not been among the rioters, and I am satisfied.’
‘Sir,’ replied Mr Tappertit, with a contemptuous look, ‘I wonder at YOUR
assurance in making such demands.’
‘You have been drinking,’ said the locksmith.
‘As a general principle, and in the most offensive sense of the words,
sir,’ returned his journeyman with great self-possession,
‘I consider you a liar. In that last observation you have
unintentionally--unintentionally, sir,--struck upon the truth.’
‘Martha,’ said the locksmith, turning to his wife, and shaking his head
sorrowfully, while a smile at the absurd figure beside him still played
upon his open face, ‘I trust it may turn out that this poor lad is not
the victim of the knaves and fools we have so often had words about, and
who have done so much harm to-day. If he has been at Warwick Street or
Duke Street to-night--’
‘He has been at neither, sir,’ cried Mr Tappertit in a loud voice, which
he suddenly dropped into a whisper as he repeated, with eyes fixed upon
the locksmith, ‘he has been at neither.’
‘I am glad of it, with all my heart,’ said the locksmith in a serious
tone; ‘for if he had been, and it could be proved against him, Martha,
your Great Association would have been to him the cart that draws men
to the gallows and leaves them hanging in the air. It would, as sure as
we’re alive!’
Mrs Varden was too much scared by Simon’s altered manner and appearance,
and by the accounts of the rioters which had reached her ears that
night, to offer any retort, or to have recourse to her usual matrimonial
policy. Miss Miggs wrung her hands, and wept.
‘He was not at Duke Street, or at Warwick Street, G. Varden,’ said
Simon, sternly; ‘but he WAS at Westminster. Perhaps, sir, he kicked a
county member, perhaps, sir, he tapped a lord--you may stare, sir, I
repeat it--blood flowed from noses, and perhaps he tapped a lord. Who
knows? This,’ he added, putting his hand into his waistcoat-pocket,
and taking out a large tooth, at the sight of which both Miggs and Mrs
Varden screamed, ‘this was a bishop’s. Beware, G. Varden!’
‘Now, I would rather,’ said the locksmith hastily, ‘have paid five
hundred pounds, than had this come to pass. You idiot, do you know what
peril you stand in?’
‘I know it, sir,’ replied his journeyman, ‘and it is my glory. I was
there, everybody saw me there. I was conspicuous, and prominent. I will
abide the consequences.’
The locksmith, really disturbed and agitated, paced to and fro in
silence--glancing at his former ‘prentice every now and then--and at
length stopping before him, said:
‘Get to bed, and sleep for a couple of hours that you may wake penitent,
and with some of your senses about you. Be sorry for what you have
done, and we will try to save you. If I call him by five o’clock,’ said
Varden, turning hurriedly to his wife, and he washes himself clean
and changes his dress, he may get to the Tower Stairs, and away by the
Gravesend tide-boat, before any search is made for him. From there he
can easily get on to Canterbury, where your cousin will give him
work till this storm has blown over. I am not sure that I do right in
screening him from the punishment he deserves, but he has lived in this
house, man and boy, for a dozen years, and I should be sorry if for this
one day’s work he made a miserable end. Lock the front-door, Miggs, and
show no light towards the street when you go upstairs. Quick, Simon! Get
to bed!’
‘And do you suppose, sir,’ retorted Mr Tappertit, with a thickness
and slowness of speech which contrasted forcibly with the rapidity and
earnestness of his kind-hearted master--‘and do you suppose, sir, that I
am base and mean enough to accept your servile proposition?--Miscreant!’
‘Whatever you please, Sim, but get to bed. Every minute is of
consequence. The light here, Miggs!’
‘Yes yes, oh do! Go to bed directly,’ cried the two women together.
Mr Tappertit stood upon his feet, and pushing his chair away to show
that he needed no assistance, answered, swaying himself to and fro, and
managing his head as if it had no connection whatever with his body:
‘You spoke of Miggs, sir--Miggs may be smothered!’
‘Oh Simmun!’ ejaculated that young lady in a faint voice. ‘Oh mim! Oh
sir! Oh goodness gracious, what a turn he has give me!’
‘This family may ALL be smothered, sir,’ returned Mr Tappertit, after
glancing at her with a smile of ineffable disdain, ‘excepting Mrs V.
I have come here, sir, for her sake, this night. Mrs Varden, take this
piece of paper. It’s a protection, ma’am. You may need it.’
With these words he held out at arm’s length, a dirty, crumpled scrap of
writing. The locksmith took it from him, opened it, and read as follows:
‘All good friends to our cause, I hope will be particular, and do no
injury to the property of any true Protestant. I am well assured that
the proprietor of this house is a staunch and worthy friend to the
cause.
GEORGE GORDON.’
‘What’s this!’ said the locksmith, with an altered face.
‘Something that’ll do you good service, young feller,’ replied his
journeyman, ‘as you’ll find. Keep that safe, and where you can lay your
hand upon it in an instant. And chalk “No Popery” on your door to-morrow
night, and for a week to come--that’s all.’
‘This is a genuine document,’ said the locksmith, ‘I know, for I have
seen the hand before. What threat does it imply? What devil is abroad?’
‘A fiery devil,’ retorted Sim; ‘a flaming, furious devil. Don’t you put
yourself in its way, or you’re done for, my buck. Be warned in time, G.
Varden. Farewell!’
But here the two women threw themselves in his way--especially Miss
Miggs, who fell upon him with such fervour that she pinned him against
the wall--and conjured him in moving words not to go forth till he was
sober; to listen to reason; to think of it; to take some rest, and then
determine.
‘I tell you,’ said Mr Tappertit, ‘that my mind is made up. My bleeding
country calls me and I go! Miggs, if you don’t get out of the way, I’ll
pinch you.’
Miss Miggs, still clinging to the rebel, screamed once vociferously--but
whether in the distraction of her mind, or because of his having
executed his threat, is uncertain.
‘Release me,’ said Simon, struggling to free himself from her chaste,
but spider-like embrace. ‘Let me go! I have made arrangements for you in
an altered state of society, and mean to provide for you comfortably in
life--there! Will that satisfy you?’
‘Oh Simmun!’ cried Miss Miggs. ‘Oh my blessed Simmun! Oh mim! what are
my feelings at this conflicting moment!’
Of a rather turbulent description, it would seem; for her nightcap
had been knocked off in the scuffle, and she was on her knees upon
the floor, making a strange revelation of blue and yellow curl-papers,
straggling locks of hair, tags of staylaces, and strings of it’s
impossible to say what; panting for breath, clasping her hands, turning
her eyes upwards, shedding abundance of tears, and exhibiting various
other symptoms of the acutest mental suffering.
‘I leave,’ said Simon, turning to his master, with an utter disregard of
Miggs’s maidenly affliction, ‘a box of things upstairs. Do what you
like with ‘em. I don’t want ‘em. I’m never coming back here, any more.
Provide yourself, sir, with a journeyman; I’m my country’s journeyman;
henceforward that’s MY line of business.’
‘Be what you like in two hours’ time, but now go up to bed,’ returned
the locksmith, planting himself in the doorway. ‘Do you hear me? Go to
bed!’
‘I hear you, and defy you, Varden,’ rejoined Simon Tappertit. ‘This
night, sir, I have been in the country, planning an expedition which
shall fill your bell-hanging soul with wonder and dismay. The plot
demands my utmost energy. Let me pass!’
‘I’ll knock you down if you come near the door,’ replied the locksmith.
‘You had better go to bed!’
Simon made no answer, but gathering himself up as straight as he could,
plunged head foremost at his old master, and the two went driving out
into the workshop together, plying their hands and feet so briskly that
they looked like half-a-dozen, while Miggs and Mrs Varden screamed for
twelve.
It would have been easy for Varden to knock his old ‘prentice down,
and bind him hand and foot; but as he was loth to hurt him in his then
defenceless state, he contented himself with parrying his blows when he
could, taking them in perfect good part when he could not, and keeping
between him and the door, until a favourable opportunity should present
itself for forcing him to retreat up-stairs, and shutting him up in his
own room. But, in the goodness of his heart, he calculated too much upon
his adversary’s weakness, and forgot that drunken men who have lost
the power of walking steadily, can often run. Watching his time, Simon
Tappertit made a cunning show of falling back, staggered unexpectedly
forward, brushed past him, opened the door (he knew the trick of that
lock well), and darted down the street like a mad dog. The locksmith
paused for a moment in the excess of his astonishment, and then gave
chase.
It was an excellent season for a run, for at that silent hour the
streets were deserted, the air was cool, and the flying figure before
him distinctly visible at a great distance, as it sped away, with a long
gaunt shadow following at its heels. But the short-winded locksmith had
no chance against a man of Sim’s youth and spare figure, though the day
had been when he could have run him down in no time. The space between
them rapidly increased, and as the rays of the rising sun streamed upon
Simon in the act of turning a distant corner, Gabriel Varden was fain
to give up, and sit down on a doorstep to fetch his breath. Simon
meanwhile, without once stopping, fled at the same degree of swiftness
to The Boot, where, as he well knew, some of his company were lying,
and at which respectable hostelry--for he had already acquired the
distinction of being in great peril of the law--a friendly watch had
been expecting him all night, and was even now on the look-out for his
coming.
‘Go thy ways, Sim, go thy ways,’ said the locksmith, as soon as he could
speak. ‘I have done my best for thee, poor lad, and would have saved
thee, but the rope is round thy neck, I fear.’
So saying, and shaking his head in a very sorrowful and disconsolate
manner, he turned back, and soon re-entered his own house, where Mrs
Varden and the faithful Miggs had been anxiously expecting his return.
Now Mrs Varden (and by consequence Miss Miggs likewise) was impressed
with a secret misgiving that she had done wrong; that she had, to the
utmost of her small means, aided and abetted the growth of disturbances,
the end of which it was impossible to foresee; that she had led remotely
to the scene which had just passed; and that the locksmith’s time for
triumph and reproach had now arrived indeed. And so strongly did Mrs
Varden feel this, and so crestfallen was she in consequence, that while
her husband was pursuing their lost journeyman, she secreted under her
chair the little red-brick dwelling-house with the yellow roof, lest it
should furnish new occasion for reference to the painful theme; and now
hid the same still more, with the skirts of her dress.
But it happened that the locksmith had been thinking of this very
article on his way home, and that, coming into the room and not seeing
it, he at once demanded where it was.
Mrs Varden had no resource but to produce it, which she did with many
tears, and broken protestations that if she could have known--
‘Yes, yes,’ said Varden, ‘of course--I know that. I don’t mean to
reproach you, my dear. But recollect from this time that all good things
perverted to evil purposes, are worse than those which are naturally
bad. A thoroughly wicked woman, is wicked indeed. When religion goes
wrong, she is very wrong, for the same reason. Let us say no more about
it, my dear.’
So he dropped the red-brick dwelling-house on the floor, and setting his
heel upon it, crushed it into pieces. The halfpence, and sixpences,
and other voluntary contributions, rolled about in all directions, but
nobody offered to touch them, or to take them up.
‘That,’ said the locksmith, ‘is easily disposed of, and I would to
Heaven that everything growing out of the same society could be settled
as easily.’
‘It happens very fortunately, Varden,’ said his wife, with her
handkerchief to her eyes, ‘that in case any more disturbances should
happen--which I hope not; I sincerely hope not--’
‘I hope so too, my dear.’
‘--That in case any should occur, we have the piece of paper which that
poor misguided young man brought.’
‘Ay, to be sure,’ said the locksmith, turning quickly round. ‘Where is
that piece of paper?’
Mrs Varden stood aghast as he took it from her outstretched hand, tore
it into fragments, and threw them under the grate.
‘Not use it?’ she said.
‘Use it!’ cried the locksmith. No! Let them come and pull the roof about
our ears; let them burn us out of house and home; I’d neither have the
protection of their leader, nor chalk their howl upon my door, though,
for not doing it, they shot me on my own threshold. Use it! Let them
come and do their worst. The first man who crosses my doorstep on such
an errand as theirs, had better be a hundred miles away. Let him look to
it. The others may have their will. I wouldn’t beg or buy them off, if,
instead of every pound of iron in the place, there was a hundred weight
of gold. Get you to bed, Martha. I shall take down the shutters and go
to work.’
‘So early!’ said his wife.
‘Ay,’ replied the locksmith cheerily, ‘so early. Come when they may,
they shall not find us skulking and hiding, as if we feared to take our
portion of the light of day, and left it all to them. So pleasant dreams
to you, my dear, and cheerful sleep!’
With that he gave his wife a hearty kiss, and bade her delay no longer,
or it would be time to rise before she lay down to rest. Mrs Varden
quite amiably and meekly walked upstairs, followed by Miggs, who,
although a good deal subdued, could not refrain from sundry stimulative
coughs and sniffs by the way, or from holding up her hands in
astonishment at the daring conduct of master.
Chapter 52
A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly
in a large city. Where it comes from or whither it goes, few men
can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as
difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does
the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain,
more terrible when roused, more unreasonable, or more cruel.
The people who were boisterous at Westminster upon the Friday morning,
and were eagerly bent upon the work of devastation in Duke Street and
Warwick Street at night, were, in the mass, the same. Allowing for the
chance accessions of which any crowd is morally sure in a town where
there must always be a large number of idle and profligate persons,
one and the same mob was at both places. Yet they spread themselves
in various directions when they dispersed in the afternoon, made no
appointment for reassembling, had no definite purpose or design, and
indeed, for anything they knew, were scattered beyond the hope of future
union.
At The Boot, which, as has been shown, was in a manner the head-quarters
of the rioters, there were not, upon this Friday night, a dozen people.
Some slept in the stable and outhouses, some in the common room, some
two or three in beds. The rest were in their usual homes or haunts.
Perhaps not a score in all lay in the adjacent fields and lanes, and
under haystacks, or near the warmth of brick-kilns, who had not their
accustomed place of rest beneath the open sky. As to the public ways
within the town, they had their ordinary nightly occupants, and no
others; the usual amount of vice and wretchedness, but no more.
The experience of one evening, however, had taught the reckless leaders
of disturbance, that they had but to show themselves in the streets, to
be immediately surrounded by materials which they could only have kept
together when their aid was not required, at great risk, expense, and
trouble. Once possessed of this secret, they were as confident as if
twenty thousand men, devoted to their will, had been encamped about
them, and assumed a confidence which could not have been surpassed,
though that had really been the case. All day, Saturday, they remained
quiet. On Sunday, they rather studied how to keep their men within call,
and in full hope, than to follow out, by any fierce measure, their first
day’s proceedings.
‘I hope,’ said Dennis, as, with a loud yawn, he raised his body from
a heap of straw on which he had been sleeping, and supporting his head
upon his hand, appealed to Hugh on Sunday morning, ‘that Muster Gashford
allows some rest? Perhaps he’d have us at work again already, eh?’
‘It’s not his way to let matters drop, you may be sure of that,’ growled
Hugh in answer. ‘I’m in no humour to stir yet, though. I’m as stiff as
a dead body, and as full of ugly scratches as if I had been fighting all
day yesterday with wild cats.’
‘You’ve so much enthusiasm, that’s it,’ said Dennis, looking with great
admiration at the uncombed head, matted beard, and torn hands and face
of the wild figure before him; ‘you’re such a devil of a fellow. You
hurt yourself a hundred times more than you need, because you will be
foremost in everything, and will do more than the rest.’
‘For the matter of that,’ returned Hugh, shaking back his ragged hair
and glancing towards the door of the stable in which they lay; ‘there’s
one yonder as good as me. What did I tell you about him? Did I say he
was worth a dozen, when you doubted him?’
Mr Dennis rolled lazily over upon his breast, and resting his chin upon
his hand in imitation of the attitude in which Hugh lay, said, as he too
looked towards the door:
‘Ay, ay, you knew him, brother, you knew him. But who’d suppose to look
at that chap now, that he could be the man he is! Isn’t it a thousand
cruel pities, brother, that instead of taking his nat’ral rest and
qualifying himself for further exertions in this here honourable cause,
he should be playing at soldiers like a boy? And his cleanliness too!’
said Mr Dennis, who certainly had no reason to entertain a fellow
feeling with anybody who was particular on that score; ‘what weaknesses
he’s guilty of; with respect to his cleanliness! At five o’clock this
morning, there he was at the pump, though any one would think he had
gone through enough, the day before yesterday, to be pretty fast asleep
at that time. But no--when I woke for a minute or two, there he was at
the pump, and if you’d seen him sticking them peacock’s feathers into
his hat when he’d done washing--ah! I’m sorry he’s such a imperfect
character, but the best on us is incomplete in some pint of view or
another.’
The subject of this dialogue and of these concluding remarks, which were
uttered in a tone of philosophical meditation, was, as the reader will
have divined, no other than Barnaby, who, with his flag in hand, stood
sentry in the little patch of sunlight at the distant door, or walked
to and fro outside, singing softly to himself; and keeping time to the
music of some clear church bells. Whether he stood still, leaning with
both hands on the flagstaff, or, bearing it upon his shoulder, paced
slowly up and down, the careful arrangement of his poor dress, and his
erect and lofty bearing, showed how high a sense he had of the great
importance of his trust, and how happy and how proud it made him. To
Hugh and his companion, who lay in a dark corner of the gloomy shed,
he, and the sunlight, and the peaceful Sabbath sound to which he made
response, seemed like a bright picture framed by the door, and set
off by the stable’s blackness. The whole formed such a contrast to
themselves, as they lay wallowing, like some obscene animals, in their
squalor and wickedness on the two heaps of straw, that for a few moments
they looked on without speaking, and felt almost ashamed.
‘Ah!’ said Hugh at length, carrying it off with a laugh: ‘He’s a rare
fellow is Barnaby, and can do more, with less rest, or meat, or drink,
than any of us. As to his soldiering, I put him on duty there.’
‘Then there was a object in it, and a proper good one too, I’ll be
sworn,’ retorted Dennis with a broad grin, and an oath of the same
quality. ‘What was it, brother?’
‘Why, you see,’ said Hugh, crawling a little nearer to him, ‘that our
noble captain yonder, came in yesterday morning rather the worse for
liquor, and was--like you and me--ditto last night.’
Dennis looked to where Simon Tappertit lay coiled upon a truss of hay,
snoring profoundly, and nodded.
‘And our noble captain,’ continued Hugh with another laugh, ‘our noble
captain and I, have planned for to-morrow a roaring expedition, with
good profit in it.’
‘Again the Papists?’ asked Dennis, rubbing his hands.
‘Ay, against the Papists--against one of ‘em at least, that some of us,
and I for one, owe a good heavy grudge to.’
‘Not Muster Gashford’s friend that he spoke to us about in my house,
eh?’ said Dennis, brimfull of pleasant expectation.
‘The same man,’ said Hugh.
‘That’s your sort,’ cried Mr Dennis, gaily shaking hands with him,
‘that’s the kind of game. Let’s have revenges and injuries, and all
that, and we shall get on twice as fast. Now you talk, indeed!’
‘Ha ha ha! The captain,’ added Hugh, ‘has thoughts of carrying off a
woman in the bustle, and--ha ha ha!--and so have I!’
Mr Dennis received this part of the scheme with a wry face, observing
that as a general principle he objected to women altogether, as being
unsafe and slippery persons on whom there was no calculating with any
certainty, and who were never in the same mind for four-and-twenty hours
at a stretch. He might have expatiated on this suggestive theme at
much greater length, but that it occurred to him to ask what connection
existed between the proposed expedition and Barnaby’s being posted at
the stable-door as sentry; to which Hugh cautiously replied in these
words:
‘Why, the people we mean to visit, were friends of his, once upon a
time, and I know that much of him to feel pretty sure that if he thought
we were going to do them any harm, he’d be no friend to our side, but
would lend a ready hand to the other. So I’ve persuaded him (for I know
him of old) that Lord George has picked him out to guard this place
to-morrow while we’re away, and that it’s a great honour--and so he’s on
duty now, and as proud of it as if he was a general. Ha ha! What do you
say to me for a careful man as well as a devil of a one?’
Mr Dennis exhausted himself in compliments, and then added,
‘But about the expedition itself--’
‘About that,’ said Hugh, ‘you shall hear all particulars from me and
the great captain conjointly and both together--for see, he’s waking up.
Rouse yourself, lion-heart. Ha ha! Put a good face upon it, and drink
again. Another hair of the dog that bit you, captain! Call for
drink! There’s enough of gold and silver cups and candlesticks buried
underneath my bed,’ he added, rolling back the straw, and pointing to
where the ground was newly turned, ‘to pay for it, if it was a score of
casks full. Drink, captain!’
Mr Tappertit received these jovial promptings with a very bad grace,
being much the worse, both in mind and body, for his two nights of
debauch, and but indifferently able to stand upon his legs. With Hugh’s
assistance, however, he contrived to stagger to the pump; and having
refreshed himself with an abundant draught of cold water, and a copious
shower of the same refreshing liquid on his head and face, he ordered
some rum and milk to be served; and upon that innocent beverage and some
biscuits and cheese made a pretty hearty meal. That done, he disposed
himself in an easy attitude on the ground beside his two companions (who
were carousing after their own tastes), and proceeded to enlighten Mr
Dennis in reference to to-morrow’s project.
That their conversation was an interesting one, was rendered manifest by
its length, and by the close attention of all three. That it was not
of an oppressively grave character, but was enlivened by various
pleasantries arising out of the subject, was clear from their loud and
frequent roars of laughter, which startled Barnaby on his post, and made
him wonder at their levity. But he was not summoned to join them, until
they had eaten, and drunk, and slept, and talked together for some
hours; not, indeed, until the twilight; when they informed him that they
were about to make a slight demonstration in the streets--just to keep
the people’s hands in, as it was Sunday night, and the public might
otherwise be disappointed--and that he was free to accompany them if he
would.
Without the slightest preparation, saving that they carried clubs and
wore the blue cockade, they sallied out into the streets; and, with no
more settled design than that of doing as much mischief as they could,
paraded them at random. Their numbers rapidly increasing, they soon
divided into parties; and agreeing to meet by-and-by, in the fields
near Welbeck Street, scoured the town in various directions. The largest
body, and that which augmented with the greatest rapidity, was the
one to which Hugh and Barnaby belonged. This took its way towards
Moorfields, where there was a rich chapel, and in which neighbourhood
several Catholic families were known to reside.
Beginning with the private houses so occupied, they broke open the doors
and windows; and while they destroyed the furniture and left but the
bare walls, made a sharp search for tools and engines of destruction,
such as hammers, pokers, axes, saws, and such like instruments. Many of
the rioters made belts of cord, of handkerchiefs, or any material they
found at hand, and wore these weapons as openly as pioneers upon a
field-day. There was not the least disguise or concealment--indeed, on
this night, very little excitement or hurry. From the chapels, they
tore down and took away the very altars, benches, pulpits, pews, and
flooring; from the dwelling-houses, the very wainscoting and stairs.
This Sunday evening’s recreation they pursued like mere workmen who had
a certain task to do, and did it. Fifty resolute men might have turned
them at any moment; a single company of soldiers could have scattered
them like dust; but no man interposed, no authority restrained them,
and, except by the terrified persons who fled from their approach, they
were as little heeded as if they were pursuing their lawful occupations
with the utmost sobriety and good conduct.
In the same manner, they marched to the place of rendezvous agreed upon,
made great fires in the fields, and reserving the most valuable of their
spoils, burnt the rest. Priestly garments, images of saints, rich stuffs
and ornaments, altar-furniture and household goods, were cast into the
flames, and shed a glare on the whole country round; but they danced
and howled, and roared about these fires till they were tired, and were
never for an instant checked.
As the main body filed off from this scene of action, and passed down
Welbeck Street, they came upon Gashford, who had been a witness of their
proceedings, and was walking stealthily along the pavement. Keeping up
with him, and yet not seeming to speak, Hugh muttered in his ear:
‘Is this better, master?’
‘No,’ said Gashford. ‘It is not.’
‘What would you have?’ said Hugh. ‘Fevers are never at their height at
once. They must get on by degrees.’
‘I would have you,’ said Gashford, pinching his arm with such
malevolence that his nails seemed to meet in the skin; ‘I would have you
put some meaning into your work. Fools! Can you make no better bonfires
than of rags and scraps? Can you burn nothing whole?’
‘A little patience, master,’ said Hugh. ‘Wait but a few hours, and you
shall see. Look for a redness in the sky, to-morrow night.’
With that, he fell back into his place beside Barnaby; and when the
secretary looked after him, both were lost in the crowd.
Chapter 53
The next day was ushered in by merry peals of bells, and by the firing
of the Tower guns; flags were hoisted on many of the church-steeples;
the usual demonstrations were made in honour of the anniversary of the
King’s birthday; and every man went about his pleasure or business as
if the city were in perfect order, and there were no half-smouldering
embers in its secret places, which, on the approach of night, would
kindle up again and scatter ruin and dismay abroad. The leaders of the
riot, rendered still more daring by the success of last night and by
the booty they had acquired, kept steadily together, and only thought of
implicating the mass of their followers so deeply that no hope of pardon
or reward might tempt them to betray their more notorious confederates
into the hands of justice.
Indeed, the sense of having gone too far to be forgiven, held the timid
together no less than the bold. Many who would readily have pointed out
the foremost rioters and given evidence against them, felt that escape
by that means was hopeless, when their every act had been observed by
scores of people who had taken no part in the disturbances; who had
suffered in their persons, peace, or property, by the outrages of the
mob; who would be most willing witnesses; and whom the government would,
no doubt, prefer to any King’s evidence that might be offered. Many of
this class had deserted their usual occupations on the Saturday morning;
some had been seen by their employers active in the tumult; others
knew they must be suspected, and that they would be discharged if they
returned; others had been desperate from the beginning, and comforted
themselves with the homely proverb, that, being hanged at all, they
might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. They all hoped and
believed, in a greater or less degree, that the government they seemed
to have paralysed, would, in its terror, come to terms with them in the
end, and suffer them to make their own conditions. The least sanguine
among them reasoned with himself that, at the worst, they were too many
to be all punished, and that he had as good a chance of escape as any
other man. The great mass never reasoned or thought at all, but were
stimulated by their own headlong passions, by poverty, by ignorance, by
the love of mischief, and the hope of plunder.
One other circumstance is worthy of remark; and that is, that from the
moment of their first outbreak at Westminster, every symptom of order
or preconcerted arrangement among them vanished. When they divided
into parties and ran to different quarters of the town, it was on the
spontaneous suggestion of the moment. Each party swelled as it went
along, like rivers as they roll towards the sea; new leaders sprang
up as they were wanted, disappeared when the necessity was over, and
reappeared at the next crisis. Each tumult took shape and form from the
circumstances of the moment; sober workmen, going home from their day’s
labour, were seen to cast down their baskets of tools and become rioters
in an instant; mere boys on errands did the like. In a word, a moral
plague ran through the city. The noise, and hurry, and excitement, had
for hundreds and hundreds an attraction they had no firmness to resist.
The contagion spread like a dread fever: an infectious madness, as yet
not near its height, seized on new victims every hour, and society began
to tremble at their ravings.
It was between two and three o’clock in the afternoon when Gashford
looked into the lair described in the last chapter, and seeing only
Barnaby and Dennis there, inquired for Hugh.
He was out, Barnaby told him; had gone out more than an hour ago; and
had not yet returned.
‘Dennis!’ said the smiling secretary, in his smoothest voice, as he sat
down cross-legged on a barrel, ‘Dennis!’
The hangman struggled into a sitting posture directly, and with his eyes
wide open, looked towards him.
‘How do you do, Dennis?’ said Gashford, nodding. ‘I hope you have
suffered no inconvenience from your late exertions, Dennis?’
‘I always will say of you, Muster Gashford,’ returned the hangman,
staring at him, ‘that that ‘ere quiet way of yours might almost wake a
dead man. It is,’ he added, with a muttered oath--still staring at him
in a thoughtful manner--‘so awful sly!’
‘So distinct, eh Dennis?’
‘Distinct!’ he answered, scratching his head, and keeping his eyes upon
the secretary’s face; ‘I seem to hear it, Muster Gashford, in my wery
bones.’
‘I am very glad your sense of hearing is so sharp, and that I succeed
in making myself so intelligible,’ said Gashford, in his unvarying, even
tone. ‘Where is your friend?’
Mr Dennis looked round as in expectation of beholding him asleep upon
his bed of straw; then remembering he had seen him go out, replied:
‘I can’t say where he is, Muster Gashford, I expected him back afore
now. I hope it isn’t time that we was busy, Muster Gashford?’
‘Nay,’ said the secretary, ‘who should know that as well as you? How
can I tell you, Dennis? You are perfect master of your own actions, you
know, and accountable to nobody--except sometimes to the law, eh?’
Dennis, who was very much baffled by the cool matter-of-course manner of
this reply, recovered his self-possession on his professional pursuits
being referred to, and pointing towards Barnaby, shook his head and
frowned.
‘Hush!’ cried Barnaby.
‘Ah! Do hush about that, Muster Gashford,’ said the hangman in a low
voice, ‘pop’lar prejudices--you always forget--well, Barnaby, my lad,
what’s the matter?’
‘I hear him coming,’ he answered: ‘Hark! Do you mark that? That’s his
foot! Bless you, I know his step, and his dog’s too. Tramp, tramp,
pit-pat, on they come together, and, ha ha ha!--and here they are!’ he
cried, joyfully welcoming Hugh with both hands, and then patting him
fondly on the back, as if instead of being the rough companion he was,
he had been one of the most prepossessing of men. ‘Here he is, and safe
too! I am glad to see him back again, old Hugh!’
‘I’m a Turk if he don’t give me a warmer welcome always than any man
of sense,’ said Hugh, shaking hands with him with a kind of ferocious
friendship, strange enough to see. ‘How are you, boy?’
‘Hearty!’ cried Barnaby, waving his hat. ‘Ha ha ha! And merry too,
Hugh! And ready to do anything for the good cause, and the right, and
to help the kind, mild, pale-faced gentleman--the lord they used so
ill--eh, Hugh?’
‘Ay!’ returned his friend, dropping his hand, and looking at Gashford
for an instant with a changed expression before he spoke to him. ‘Good
day, master!’
‘And good day to you,’ replied the secretary, nursing his leg.
‘And many good days--whole years of them, I hope. You are heated.’
‘So would you have been, master,’ said Hugh, wiping his face, ‘if you’d
been running here as fast as I have.’
‘You know the news, then? Yes, I supposed you would have heard it.’
‘News! what news?’
‘You don’t?’ cried Gashford, raising his eyebrows with an exclamation
of surprise. ‘Dear me! Come; then I AM the first to make you acquainted
with your distinguished position, after all. Do you see the King’s Arms
a-top?’ he smilingly asked, as he took a large paper from his pocket,
unfolded it, and held it out for Hugh’s inspection.
‘Well!’ said Hugh. ‘What’s that to me?’
‘Much. A great deal,’ replied the secretary. ‘Read it.’
‘I told you, the first time I saw you, that I couldn’t read,’ said Hugh,
impatiently. ‘What in the Devil’s name’s inside of it?’
‘It is a proclamation from the King in Council,’ said Gashford, ‘dated
to-day, and offering a reward of five hundred pounds--five hundred
pounds is a great deal of money, and a large temptation to some
people--to any one who will discover the person or persons most active
in demolishing those chapels on Saturday night.’
‘Is that all?’ cried Hugh, with an indifferent air. ‘I knew of that.’
‘Truly I might have known you did,’ said Gashford, smiling, and folding
up the document again. ‘Your friend, I might have guessed--indeed I did
guess--was sure to tell you.’
‘My friend!’ stammered Hugh, with an unsuccessful effort to appear
surprised. ‘What friend?’
‘Tut tut--do you suppose I don’t know where you have been?’ retorted
Gashford, rubbing his hands, and beating the back of one on the palm of
the other, and looking at him with a cunning eye. ‘How dull you think
me! Shall I say his name?’
‘No,’ said Hugh, with a hasty glance towards Dennis.
‘You have also heard from him, no doubt,’ resumed the secretary, after a
moment’s pause, ‘that the rioters who have been taken (poor fellows) are
committed for trial, and that some very active witnesses have had the
temerity to appear against them. Among others--’ and here he clenched
his teeth, as if he would suppress by force some violent words that rose
upon his tongue; and spoke very slowly. ‘Among others, a gentleman
who saw the work going on in Warwick Street; a Catholic gentleman; one
Haredale.’
Hugh would have prevented his uttering the word, but it was out already.
Hearing the name, Barnaby turned swiftly round.
‘Duty, duty, bold Barnaby!’ cried Hugh, assuming his wildest and most
rapid manner, and thrusting into his hand his staff and flag which leant
against the wall. ‘Mount guard without loss of time, for we are off upon
our expedition. Up, Dennis, and get ready! Take care that no one turns
the straw upon my bed, brave Barnaby; we know what’s underneath it--eh?
Now, master, quick! What you have to say, say speedily, for the little
captain and a cluster of ‘em are in the fields, and only waiting for us.
Sharp’s the word, and strike’s the action. Quick!’
Barnaby was not proof against this bustle and despatch. The look of
mingled astonishment and anger which had appeared in his face when he
turned towards them, faded from it as the words passed from his memory,
like breath from a polished mirror; and grasping the weapon which Hugh
forced upon him, he proudly took his station at the door, beyond their
hearing.
‘You might have spoiled our plans, master,’ said Hugh. ‘YOU, too, of all
men!’
‘Who would have supposed that HE would be so quick?’ urged Gashford.
‘He’s as quick sometimes--I don’t mean with his hands, for that you
know, but with his head--as you or any man,’ said Hugh. ‘Dennis, it’s
time we were going; they’re waiting for us; I came to tell you. Reach
me my stick and belt. Here! Lend a hand, master. Fling this over my
shoulder, and buckle it behind, will you?’
‘Brisk as ever!’ said the secretary, adjusting it for him as he desired.
‘A man need be brisk to-day; there’s brisk work a-foot.’
‘There is, is there?’ said Gashford. He said it with such a provoking
assumption of ignorance, that Hugh, looking over his shoulder and
angrily down upon him, replied:
‘Is there! You know there is! Who knows better than you, master, that
the first great step to be taken is to make examples of these witnesses,
and frighten all men from appearing against us or any of our body, any
more?’
‘There’s one we know of,’ returned Gashford, with an expressive smile,
‘who is at least as well informed upon that subject as you or I.’
‘If we mean the same gentleman, as I suppose we do,’ Hugh rejoined
softly, ‘I tell you this--he’s as good and quick information about
everything as--’ here he paused and looked round, as if to make sure
that the person in question was not within hearing, ‘as Old Nick
himself. Have you done that, master? How slow you are!’
‘It’s quite fast now,’ said Gashford, rising. ‘I say--you didn’t find
that your friend disapproved of to-day’s little expedition? Ha ha ha!
It is fortunate it jumps so well with the witness policy; for, once
planned, it must have been carried out. And now you are going, eh?’
‘Now we are going, master!’ Hugh replied. ‘Any parting words?’
‘Oh dear, no,’ said Gashford sweetly. ‘None!’
‘You’re sure?’ cried Hugh, nudging the grinning Dennis.
‘Quite sure, eh, Muster Gashford?’ chuckled the hangman.
Gashford paused a moment, struggling with his caution and his malice;
then putting himself between the two men, and laying a hand upon the arm
of each, said, in a cramped whisper:
‘Do not, my good friends--I am sure you will not--forget our talk one
night--in your house, Dennis--about this person. No mercy, no quarter,
no two beams of his house to be left standing where the builder placed
them! Fire, the saying goes, is a good servant, but a bad master. Make
it _his_ master; he deserves no better. But I am sure you will be firm, I
am sure you will be very resolute, I am sure you will remember that he
thirsts for your lives, and those of all your brave companions. If
you ever acted like staunch fellows, you will do so to-day. Won’t you,
Dennis--won’t you, Hugh?’
The two looked at him, and at each other; then bursting into a roar of
laughter, brandished their staves above their heads, shook hands, and
hurried out.
When they had been gone a little time, Gashford followed. They were yet
in sight, and hastening to that part of the adjacent fields in
which their fellows had already mustered; Hugh was looking back, and
flourishing his hat to Barnaby, who, delighted with his trust, replied
in the same way, and then resumed his pacing up and down before the
stable-door, where his feet had worn a path already. And when Gashford
himself was far distant, and looked back for the last time, he was still
walking to and fro, with the same measured tread; the most devoted and
the blithest champion that ever maintained a post, and felt his heart
lifted up with a brave sense of duty, and determination to defend it to
the last.
Smiling at the simplicity of the poor idiot, Gashford betook himself to
Welbeck Street by a different path from that which he knew the rioters
would take, and sitting down behind a curtain in one of the upper
windows of Lord George Gordon’s house, waited impatiently for their
coming. They were so long, that although he knew it had been settled
they should come that way, he had a misgiving they must have changed
their plans and taken some other route. But at length the roar of voices
was heard in the neighbouring fields, and soon afterwards they came
thronging past, in a great body.
However, they were not all, nor nearly all, in one body, but were, as he
soon found, divided into four parties, each of which stopped before the
house to give three cheers, and then went on; the leaders crying out in
what direction they were going, and calling on the spectators to join
them. The first detachment, carrying, by way of banners, some relics
of the havoc they had made in Moorfields, proclaimed that they were on
their way to Chelsea, whence they would return in the same order, to
make of the spoil they bore, a great bonfire, near at hand. The second
gave out that they were bound for Wapping, to destroy a chapel; the
third, that their place of destination was East Smithfield, and their
object the same. All this was done in broad, bright, summer day. Gay
carriages and chairs stopped to let them pass, or turned back to avoid
them; people on foot stood aside in doorways, or perhaps knocked and
begged permission to stand at a window, or in the hall, until the
rioters had passed: but nobody interfered with them; and when they had
gone by, everything went on as usual.
There still remained the fourth body, and for that the secretary looked
with a most intense eagerness. At last it came up. It was numerous, and
composed of picked men; for as he gazed down among them, he recognised
many upturned faces which he knew well--those of Simon Tappertit, Hugh,
and Dennis in the front, of course. They halted and cheered, as the
others had done; but when they moved again, they did not, like them,
proclaim what design they had. Hugh merely raised his hat upon the
bludgeon he carried, and glancing at a spectator on the opposite side of
the way, was gone.
Gashford followed the direction of his glance instinctively, and
saw, standing on the pavement, and wearing the blue cockade, Sir John
Chester. He held his hat an inch or two above his head, to propitiate
the mob; and, resting gracefully on his cane, smiling pleasantly, and
displaying his dress and person to the very best advantage, looked on
in the most tranquil state imaginable. For all that, and quick and
dexterous as he was, Gashford had seen him recognise Hugh with the air
of a patron. He had no longer any eyes for the crowd, but fixed his keen
regards upon Sir John.
He stood in the same place and posture until the last man in the
concourse had turned the corner of the street; then very deliberately
took the blue cockade out of his hat; put it carefully in his pocket,
ready for the next emergency; refreshed himself with a pinch of snuff;
put up his box; and was walking slowly off, when a passing carriage
stopped, and a lady’s hand let down the glass. Sir John’s hat was off
again immediately. After a minute’s conversation at the carriage-window,
in which it was apparent that he was vastly entertaining on the subject
of the mob, he stepped lightly in, and was driven away.
The secretary smiled, but he had other thoughts to dwell upon, and
soon dismissed the topic. Dinner was brought him, but he sent it down
untasted; and, in restless pacings up and down the room, and constant
glances at the clock, and many futile efforts to sit down and read, or
go to sleep, or look out of the window, consumed four weary hours. When
the dial told him thus much time had crept away, he stole upstairs to
the top of the house, and coming out upon the roof sat down, with his
face towards the east.
Heedless of the fresh air that blew upon his heated brow, of the
pleasant meadows from which he turned, of the piles of roofs and
chimneys upon which he looked, of the smoke and rising mist he vainly
sought to pierce, of the shrill cries of children at their evening
sports, the distant hum and turmoil of the town, the cheerful country
breath that rustled past to meet it, and to droop, and die; he watched,
and watched, till it was dark save for the specks of light that twinkled
in the streets below and far away--and, as the darkness deepened,
strained his gaze and grew more eager yet.
‘Nothing but gloom in that direction, still!’ he muttered restlessly.
‘Dog! where is the redness in the sky, you promised me!’
Chapter 54
Rumours of the prevailing disturbances had, by this time, begun to be
pretty generally circulated through the towns and villages round London,
and the tidings were everywhere received with that appetite for the
marvellous and love of the terrible which have probably been among the
natural characteristics of mankind since the creation of the world.
These accounts, however, appeared, to many persons at that day--as
they would to us at the present, but that we know them to be matter of
history--so monstrous and improbable, that a great number of those who
were resident at a distance, and who were credulous enough on other
points, were really unable to bring their minds to believe that such
things could be; and rejected the intelligence they received on all
hands, as wholly fabulous and absurd.
Mr Willet--not so much, perhaps, on account of his having argued and
settled the matter with himself, as by reason of his constitutional
obstinacy--was one of those who positively refused to entertain the
current topic for a moment. On this very evening, and perhaps at the
very time when Gashford kept his solitary watch, old John was so red in
the face with perpetually shaking his head in contradiction of his three
ancient cronies and pot companions, that he was quite a phenomenon to
behold, and lighted up the Maypole Porch wherein they sat together, like
a monstrous carbuncle in a fairy tale.
‘Do you think, sir,’ said Mr Willet, looking hard at Solomon Daisy--for
it was his custom in cases of personal altercation to fasten upon the
smallest man in the party--‘do you think, sir, that I’m a born fool?’
‘No, no, Johnny,’ returned Solomon, looking round upon the little circle
of which he formed a part: ‘We all know better than that. You’re no
fool, Johnny. No, no!’
Mr Cobb and Mr Parkes shook their heads in unison, muttering, ‘No, no,
Johnny, not you!’ But as such compliments had usually the effect of
making Mr Willet rather more dogged than before, he surveyed them with a
look of deep disdain, and returned for answer:
‘Then what do you mean by coming here, and telling me that this evening
you’re a-going to walk up to London together--you three--you--and have
the evidence of your own senses? An’t,’ said Mr Willet, putting his pipe
in his mouth with an air of solemn disgust, ‘an’t the evidence of MY
senses enough for you?’
‘But we haven’t got it, Johnny,’ pleaded Parkes, humbly.
‘You haven’t got it, sir?’ repeated Mr Willet, eyeing him from top to
toe. ‘You haven’t got it, sir? You HAVE got it, sir. Don’t I tell you
that His blessed Majesty King George the Third would no more stand a
rioting and rollicking in his streets, than he’d stand being crowed over
by his own Parliament?’
‘Yes, Johnny, but that’s your sense--not your senses,’ said the
adventurous Mr Parkes.
‘How do you know?’ retorted John with great dignity. ‘You’re a
contradicting pretty free, you are, sir. How do YOU know which it is?
I’m not aware I ever told you, sir.’
Mr Parkes, finding himself in the position of having got into
metaphysics without exactly seeing his way out of them, stammered forth
an apology and retreated from the argument. There then ensued a silence
of some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, at the expiration of which
period Mr Willet was observed to rumble and shake with laughter, and
presently remarked, in reference to his late adversary, ‘that he hoped
he had tackled him enough.’ Thereupon Messrs Cobb and Daisy laughed,
and nodded, and Parkes was looked upon as thoroughly and effectually put
down.
‘Do you suppose if all this was true, that Mr Haredale would be
constantly away from home, as he is?’ said John, after another silence.
‘Do you think he wouldn’t be afraid to leave his house with them two
young women in it, and only a couple of men, or so?’
‘Ay, but then you know,’ returned Solomon Daisy, ‘his house is a goodish
way out of London, and they do say that the rioters won’t go more than
two miles, or three at the farthest, off the stones. Besides, you
know, some of the Catholic gentlefolks have actually sent trinkets and
suchlike down here for safety--at least, so the story goes.’
‘The story goes!’ said Mr Willet testily. ‘Yes, sir. The story goes that
you saw a ghost last March. But nobody believes it.’
‘Well!’ said Solomon, rising, to divert the attention of his two
friends, who tittered at this retort: ‘believed or disbelieved, it’s
true; and true or not, if we mean to go to London, we must be going at
once. So shake hands, Johnny, and good night.’
‘I shall shake hands,’ returned the landlord, putting his into his
pockets, ‘with no man as goes to London on such nonsensical errands.’
The three cronies were therefore reduced to the necessity of shaking his
elbows; having performed that ceremony, and brought from the house their
hats, and sticks, and greatcoats, they bade him good night and departed;
promising to bring him on the morrow full and true accounts of the real
state of the city, and if it were quiet, to give him the full merit of
his victory.
John Willet looked after them, as they plodded along the road in the
rich glow of a summer evening; and knocking the ashes out of his pipe,
laughed inwardly at their folly, until his sides were sore. When he had
quite exhausted himself--which took some time, for he laughed as slowly
as he thought and spoke--he sat himself comfortably with his back to the
house, put his legs upon the bench, then his apron over his face, and
fell sound asleep.
How long he slept, matters not; but it was for no brief space, for
when he awoke, the rich light had faded, the sombre hues of night were
falling fast upon the landscape, and a few bright stars were already
twinkling overhead. The birds were all at roost, the daisies on the
green had closed their fairy hoods, the honeysuckle twining round the
porch exhaled its perfume in a twofold degree, as though it lost its
coyness at that silent time and loved to shed its fragrance on the
night; the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green leaves. How tranquil, and
how beautiful it was!
Was there no sound in the air, besides the gentle rustling of the
trees and the grasshopper’s merry chirp? Hark! Something very faint and
distant, not unlike the murmuring in a sea-shell. Now it grew louder,
fainter now, and now it altogether died away. Presently, it came again,
subsided, came once more, grew louder, fainter--swelled into a roar. It
was on the road, and varied with its windings. All at once it burst into
a distinct sound--the voices, and the tramping feet of many men.
It is questionable whether old John Willet, even then, would have
thought of the rioters but for the cries of his cook and housemaid,
who ran screaming upstairs and locked themselves into one of the old
garrets,--shrieking dismally when they had done so, by way of rendering
their place of refuge perfectly secret and secure. These two females did
afterwards depone that Mr Willet in his consternation uttered but one
word, and called that up the stairs in a stentorian voice, six distinct
times. But as this word was a monosyllable, which, however inoffensive
when applied to the quadruped it denotes, is highly reprehensible when
used in connection with females of unimpeachable character, many persons
were inclined to believe that the young women laboured under some
hallucination caused by excessive fear; and that their ears deceived
them.
Be this as it may, John Willet, in whom the very uttermost extent of
dull-headed perplexity supplied the place of courage, stationed himself
in the porch, and waited for their coming up. Once, it dimly occurred
to him that there was a kind of door to the house, which had a lock and
bolts; and at the same time some shadowy ideas of shutters to the lower
windows, flitted through his brain. But he stood stock still, looking
down the road in the direction in which the noise was rapidly advancing,
and did not so much as take his hands out of his pockets.
He had not to wait long. A dark mass, looming through a cloud of dust,
soon became visible; the mob quickened their pace; shouting and whooping
like savages, they came rushing on pell mell; and in a few seconds he
was bandied from hand to hand, in the heart of a crowd of men.
‘Halloa!’ cried a voice he knew, as the man who spoke came cleaving
through the throng. ‘Where is he? Give him to me. Don’t hurt him. How
now, old Jack! Ha ha ha!’
Mr Willet looked at him, and saw it was Hugh; but he said nothing, and
thought nothing.
‘These lads are thirsty and must drink!’ cried Hugh, thrusting him back
towards the house. ‘Bustle, Jack, bustle. Show us the best--the very
best--the over-proof that you keep for your own drinking, Jack!’
John faintly articulated the words, ‘Who’s to pay?’
‘He says “Who’s to pay?”’ cried Hugh, with a roar of laughter which was
loudly echoed by the crowd. Then turning to John, he added, ‘Pay! Why,
nobody.’
John stared round at the mass of faces--some grinning, some fierce, some
lighted up by torches, some indistinct, some dusky and shadowy: some
looking at him, some at his house, some at each other--and while he was,
as he thought, in the very act of doing so, found himself, without any
consciousness of having moved, in the bar; sitting down in an arm-chair,
and watching the destruction of his property, as if it were some queer
play or entertainment, of an astonishing and stupefying nature, but
having no reference to himself--that he could make out--at all.
Yes. Here was the bar--the bar that the boldest never entered without
special invitation--the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed ground:
here it was, crammed with men, clubs, sticks, torches, pistols; filled
with a deafening noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; changed all at
once into a bear-garden, a madhouse, an infernal temple: men darting
in and out, by door and window, smashing the glass, turning the taps,
drinking liquor out of China punchbowls, sitting astride of casks,
smoking private and personal pipes, cutting down the sacred grove of
lemons, hacking and hewing at the celebrated cheese, breaking open
inviolable drawers, putting things in their pockets which didn’t belong
to them, dividing his own money before his own eyes, wantonly wasting,
breaking, pulling down and tearing up: nothing quiet, nothing private:
men everywhere--above, below, overhead, in the bedrooms, in the kitchen,
in the yard, in the stables--clambering in at windows when there were
doors wide open; dropping out of windows when the stairs were handy;
leaping over the bannisters into chasms of passages: new faces and
figures presenting themselves every instant--some yelling, some singing,
some fighting, some breaking glass and crockery, some laying the dust
with the liquor they couldn’t drink, some ringing the bells till they
pulled them down, others beating them with pokers till they beat them
into fragments: more men still--more, more, more--swarming on like
insects: noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans,
plunder, fear, and ruin!
Nearly all the time while John looked on at this bewildering scene, Hugh
kept near him; and though he was the loudest, wildest, most destructive
villain there, he saved his old master’s bones a score of times. Nay,
even when Mr Tappertit, excited by liquor, came up, and in assertion of
his prerogative politely kicked John Willet on the shins, Hugh bade him
return the compliment; and if old John had had sufficient presence of
mind to understand this whispered direction, and to profit by it, he
might no doubt, under Hugh’s protection, have done so with impunity.
At length the band began to reassemble outside the house, and to call
to those within, to join them, for they were losing time. These murmurs
increasing, and attaining a high pitch, Hugh, and some of those who yet
lingered in the bar, and who plainly were the leaders of the troop, took
counsel together, apart, as to what was to be done with John, to keep
him quiet until their Chigwell work was over. Some proposed to set the
house on fire and leave him in it; others, that he should be reduced
to a state of temporary insensibility, by knocking on the head; others,
that he should be sworn to sit where he was until to-morrow at the same
hour; others again, that he should be gagged and taken off with them,
under a sufficient guard. All these propositions being overruled, it was
concluded, at last, to bind him in his chair, and the word was passed
for Dennis.
‘Look’ee here, Jack!’ said Hugh, striding up to him: ‘We are going to
tie you, hand and foot, but otherwise you won’t be hurt. D’ye hear?’
John Willet looked at another man, as if he didn’t know which was the
speaker, and muttered something about an ordinary every Sunday at two
o’clock.
‘You won’t be hurt I tell you, Jack--do you hear me?’ roared Hugh,
impressing the assurance upon him by means of a heavy blow on the back.
‘He’s so dead scared, he’s woolgathering, I think. Give him a drop of
something to drink here. Hand over, one of you.’
A glass of liquor being passed forward, Hugh poured the contents down
old John’s throat. Mr Willet feebly smacked his lips, thrust his hand
into his pocket, and inquired what was to pay; adding, as he looked
vacantly round, that he believed there was a trifle of broken glass--
‘He’s out of his senses for the time, it’s my belief,’ said Hugh, after
shaking him, without any visible effect upon his system, until his keys
rattled in his pocket. ‘Where’s that Dennis?’
The word was again passed, and presently Mr Dennis, with a long cord
bound about his middle, something after the manner of a friar, came
hurrying in, attended by a body-guard of half-a-dozen of his men.
‘Come! Be alive here!’ cried Hugh, stamping his foot upon the ground.
‘Make haste!’
Dennis, with a wink and a nod, unwound the cord from about his person,
and raising his eyes to the ceiling, looked all over it, and round the
walls and cornice, with a curious eye; then shook his head.
‘Move, man, can’t you!’ cried Hugh, with another impatient stamp of his
foot. ‘Are we to wait here, till the cry has gone for ten miles round,
and our work’s interrupted?’
‘It’s all very fine talking, brother,’ answered Dennis, stepping towards
him; ‘but unless--’ and here he whispered in his ear--‘unless we do it
over the door, it can’t be done at all in this here room.’
‘What can’t?’ Hugh demanded.
‘What can’t!’ retorted Dennis. ‘Why, the old man can’t.’
‘Why, you weren’t going to hang him!’ cried Hugh.
‘No, brother?’ returned the hangman with a stare. ‘What else?’
Hugh made no answer, but snatching the rope from his companion’s hand,
proceeded to bind old John himself; but his very first move was so
bungling and unskilful, that Mr Dennis entreated, almost with tears
in his eyes, that he might be permitted to perform the duty. Hugh
consenting, he achieved it in a twinkling.
‘There,’ he said, looking mournfully at John Willet, who displayed no
more emotion in his bonds than he had shown out of them. ‘That’s what I
call pretty and workmanlike. He’s quite a picter now. But, brother, just
a word with you--now that he’s ready trussed, as one may say, wouldn’t
it be better for all parties if we was to work him off? It would read
uncommon well in the newspapers, it would indeed. The public would think
a great deal more on us!’
Hugh, inferring what his companion meant, rather from his gestures than
his technical mode of expressing himself (to which, as he was ignorant
of his calling, he wanted the clue), rejected this proposition for the
second time, and gave the word ‘Forward!’ which was echoed by a hundred
voices from without.
‘To the Warren!’ shouted Dennis as he ran out, followed by the rest. ‘A
witness’s house, my lads!’
A loud yell followed, and the whole throng hurried off, mad for pillage
and destruction. Hugh lingered behind for a few moments to stimulate
himself with more drink, and to set all the taps running, a few of which
had accidentally been spared; then, glancing round the despoiled and
plundered room, through whose shattered window the rioters had thrust
the Maypole itself,--for even that had been sawn down,--lighted a torch,
clapped the mute and motionless John Willet on the back, and waving his
light above his head, and uttering a fierce shout, hastened after his
companions.
Chapter 55
John Willet, left alone in his dismantled bar, continued to sit staring
about him; awake as to his eyes, certainly, but with all his powers of
reason and reflection in a sound and dreamless sleep. He looked round
upon the room which had been for years, and was within an hour ago, the
pride of his heart; and not a muscle of his face was moved. The night,
without, looked black and cold through the dreary gaps in the casement;
the precious liquids, now nearly leaked away, dripped with a hollow
sound upon the floor; the Maypole peered ruefully in through the broken
window, like the bowsprit of a wrecked ship; the ground might have
been the bottom of the sea, it was so strewn with precious fragments.
Currents of air rushed in, as the old doors jarred and creaked upon
their hinges; the candles flickered and guttered down, and made long
winding-sheets; the cheery deep-red curtains flapped and fluttered idly
in the wind; even the stout Dutch kegs, overthrown and lying empty in
dark corners, seemed the mere husks of good fellows whose jollity had
departed, and who could kindle with a friendly glow no more. John saw
this desolation, and yet saw it not. He was perfectly contented to sit
there, staring at it, and felt no more indignation or discomfort in his
bonds than if they had been robes of honour. So far as he was personally
concerned, old Time lay snoring, and the world stood still.
Save for the dripping from the barrels, the rustling of such light
fragments of destruction as the wind affected, and the dull creaking of
the open doors, all was profoundly quiet: indeed, these sounds, like
the ticking of the death-watch in the night, only made the silence they
invaded deeper and more apparent. But quiet or noisy, it was all one
to John. If a train of heavy artillery could have come up and commenced
ball practice outside the window, it would have been all the same to
him. He was a long way beyond surprise. A ghost couldn’t have overtaken
him.
By and by he heard a footstep--a hurried, and yet cautious
footstep--coming on towards the house. It stopped, advanced again,
then seemed to go quite round it. Having done that, it came beneath the
window, and a head looked in.
It was strongly relieved against the darkness outside by the glare of
the guttering candles. A pale, worn, withered face; the eyes--but that
was owing to its gaunt condition--unnaturally large and bright; the
hair, a grizzled black. It gave a searching glance all round the room,
and a deep voice said:
‘Are you alone in this house?’
John made no sign, though the question was repeated twice, and he heard
it distinctly. After a moment’s pause, the man got in at the window.
John was not at all surprised at this, either. There had been so much
getting in and out of window in the course of the last hour or so, that
he had quite forgotten the door, and seemed to have lived among such
exercises from infancy.
The man wore a large, dark, faded cloak, and a slouched hat; he walked
up close to John, and looked at him. John returned the compliment with
interest.
‘How long have you been sitting thus?’ said the man.
John considered, but nothing came of it.
‘Which way have the party gone?’
Some wandering speculations relative to the fashion of the stranger’s
boots, got into Mr Willet’s mind by some accident or other, but they got
out again in a hurry, and left him in his former state.
‘You would do well to speak,’ said the man; ‘you may keep a whole skin,
though you have nothing else left that can be hurt. Which way have the
party gone?’
‘That!’ said John, finding his voice all at once, and nodding with
perfect good faith--he couldn’t point; he was so tightly bound--in
exactly the opposite direction to the right one.
‘You lie!’ said the man angrily, and with a threatening gesture. ‘I came
that way. You would betray me.’
It was so evident that John’s imperturbability was not assumed, but was
the result of the late proceedings under his roof, that the man stayed
his hand in the very act of striking him, and turned away.
John looked after him without so much as a twitch in a single nerve
of his face. He seized a glass, and holding it under one of the little
casks until a few drops were collected, drank them greedily off; then
throwing it down upon the floor impatiently, he took the vessel in his
hands and drained it into his throat. Some scraps of bread and meat were
scattered about, and on these he fell next; eating them with voracity,
and pausing every now and then to listen for some fancied noise outside.
When he had refreshed himself in this manner with violent haste, and
raised another barrel to his lips, he pulled his hat upon his brow as
though he were about to leave the house, and turned to John.
‘Where are your servants?’
Mr Willet indistinctly remembered to have heard the rioters calling to
them to throw the key of the room in which they were, out of window, for
their keeping. He therefore replied, ‘Locked up.’
‘Well for them if they remain quiet, and well for you if you do the
like,’ said the man. ‘Now show me the way the party went.’
This time Mr Willet indicated it correctly. The man was hurrying to the
door, when suddenly there came towards them on the wind, the loud
and rapid tolling of an alarm-bell, and then a bright and vivid glare
streamed up, which illumined, not only the whole chamber, but all the
country.
It was not the sudden change from darkness to this dreadful light, it
was not the sound of distant shrieks and shouts of triumph, it was not
this dread invasion of the serenity and peace of night, that drove the
man back as though a thunderbolt had struck him. It was the Bell. If the
ghastliest shape the human mind has ever pictured in its wildest dreams
had risen up before him, he could not have staggered backward from its
touch, as he did from the first sound of that loud iron voice. With eyes
that started from his head, his limbs convulsed, his face most horrible
to see, he raised one arm high up into the air, and holding something
visionary back and down, with his other hand, drove at it as though
he held a knife and stabbed it to the heart. He clutched his hair,
and stopped his ears, and travelled madly round and round; then gave a
frightful cry, and with it rushed away: still, still, the Bell tolled on
and seemed to follow him--louder and louder, hotter and hotter yet.
The glare grew brighter, the roar of voices deeper; the crash of heavy
bodies falling, shook the air; bright streams of sparks rose up into the
sky; but louder than them all--rising faster far, to Heaven--a million
times more fierce and furious--pouring forth dreadful secrets after its
long silence--speaking the language of the dead--the Bell--the Bell!
What hunt of spectres could surpass that dread pursuit and flight! Had
there been a legion of them on his track, he could have better borne it.
They would have had a beginning and an end, but here all space was full.
The one pursuing voice was everywhere: it sounded in the earth, the air;
shook the long grass, and howled among the trembling trees. The
echoes caught it up, the owls hooted as it flew upon the breeze, the
nightingale was silent and hid herself among the thickest boughs:
it seemed to goad and urge the angry fire, and lash it into madness;
everything was steeped in one prevailing red; the glow was everywhere;
nature was drenched in blood: still the remorseless crying of that awful
voice--the Bell, the Bell!
It ceased; but not in his ears. The knell was at his heart. No work of
man had ever voice like that which sounded there, and warned him that it
cried unceasingly to Heaven. Who could hear that bell, and not know what
it said! There was murder in its every note--cruel, relentless, savage
murder--the murder of a confiding man, by one who held his every trust.
Its ringing summoned phantoms from their graves. What face was that,
in which a friendly smile changed to a look of half incredulous horror,
which stiffened for a moment into one of pain, then changed again into
an imploring glance at Heaven, and so fell idly down with upturned
eyes, like the dead stags’ he had often peeped at when a little child:
shrinking and shuddering--there was a dreadful thing to think of
now!--and clinging to an apron as he looked! He sank upon the ground,
and grovelling down as if he would dig himself a place to hide in,
covered his face and ears: but no, no, no,--a hundred walls and roofs of
brass would not shut out that bell, for in it spoke the wrathful voice
of God, and from that voice, the whole wide universe could not afford a
refuge!
While he rushed up and down, not knowing where to turn, and while he
lay crouching there, the work went briskly on indeed. When they left the
Maypole, the rioters formed into a solid body, and advanced at a quick
pace towards the Warren. Rumour of their approach having gone before,
they found the garden-doors fast closed, the windows made secure, and
the house profoundly dark: not a light being visible in any portion of
the building. After some fruitless ringing at the bells, and beating
at the iron gates, they drew off a few paces to reconnoitre, and confer
upon the course it would be best to take.
Very little conference was needed, when all were bent upon one desperate
purpose, infuriated with liquor, and flushed with successful riot.
The word being given to surround the house, some climbed the gates, or
dropped into the shallow trench and scaled the garden wall, while others
pulled down the solid iron fence, and while they made a breach to
enter by, made deadly weapons of the bars. The house being completely
encircled, a small number of men were despatched to break open a
tool-shed in the garden; and during their absence on this errand, the
remainder contented themselves with knocking violently at the doors, and
calling to those within, to come down and open them on peril of their
lives.
No answer being returned to this repeated summons, and the detachment
who had been sent away, coming back with an accession of pickaxes,
spades, and hoes, they,--together with those who had such arms already,
or carried (as many did) axes, poles, and crowbars,--struggled into the
foremost rank, ready to beset the doors and windows. They had not at
this time more than a dozen lighted torches among them; but when these
preparations were completed, flaming links were distributed and passed
from hand to hand with such rapidity, that, in a minute’s time, at
least two-thirds of the whole roaring mass bore, each man in his hand,
a blazing brand. Whirling these about their heads they raised a loud
shout, and fell to work upon the doors and windows.
Amidst the clattering of heavy blows, the rattling of broken glass, the
cries and execrations of the mob, and all the din and turmoil of the
scene, Hugh and his friends kept together at the turret-door where Mr
Haredale had last admitted him and old John Willet; and spent their
united force on that. It was a strong old oaken door, guarded by good
bolts and a heavy bar, but it soon went crashing in upon the narrow
stairs behind, and made, as it were, a platform to facilitate their
tearing up into the rooms above. Almost at the same moment, a dozen
other points were forced, and at every one the crowd poured in like
water.
A few armed servant-men were posted in the hall, and when the rioters
forced an entrance there, they fired some half-a-dozen shots. But these
taking no effect, and the concourse coming on like an army of devils,
they only thought of consulting their own safety, and retreated, echoing
their assailants’ cries, and hoping in the confusion to be taken
for rioters themselves; in which stratagem they succeeded, with the
exception of one old man who was never heard of again, and was said
to have had his brains beaten out with an iron bar (one of his fellows
reported that he had seen the old man fall), and to have been afterwards
burnt in the flames.
The besiegers being now in complete possession of the house, spread
themselves over it from garret to cellar, and plied their demon labours
fiercely. While some small parties kindled bonfires underneath the
windows, others broke up the furniture and cast the fragments down
to feed the flames below; where the apertures in the wall (windows no
longer) were large enough, they threw out tables, chests of drawers,
beds, mirrors, pictures, and flung them whole into the fire; while
every fresh addition to the blazing masses was received with shouts,
and howls, and yells, which added new and dismal terrors to the
conflagration. Those who had axes and had spent their fury on the
movables, chopped and tore down the doors and window frames, broke up
the flooring, hewed away the rafters, and buried men who lingered in the
upper rooms, in heaps of ruins. Some searched the drawers, the chests,
the boxes, writing-desks, and closets, for jewels, plate, and money;
while others, less mindful of gain and more mad for destruction, cast
their whole contents into the courtyard without examination, and called
to those below, to heap them on the blaze. Men who had been into the
cellars, and had staved the casks, rushed to and fro stark mad, setting
fire to all they saw--often to the dresses of their own friends--and
kindling the building in so many parts that some had no time for
escape, and were seen, with drooping hands and blackened faces, hanging
senseless on the window-sills to which they had crawled, until they were
sucked and drawn into the burning gulf. The more the fire crackled and
raged, the wilder and more cruel the men grew; as though moving in that
element they became fiends, and changed their earthly nature for the
qualities that give delight in hell.
The burning pile, revealing rooms and passages red hot, through gaps
made in the crumbling walls; the tributary fires that licked the outer
bricks and stones, with their long forked tongues, and ran up to meet
the glowing mass within; the shining of the flames upon the villains who
looked on and fed them; the roaring of the angry blaze, so bright and
high that it seemed in its rapacity to have swallowed up the very smoke;
the living flakes the wind bore rapidly away and hurried on with, like
a storm of fiery snow; the noiseless breaking of great beams of wood,
which fell like feathers on the heap of ashes, and crumbled in the very
act to sparks and powder; the lurid tinge that overspread the sky,
and the darkness, very deep by contrast, which prevailed around; the
exposure to the coarse, common gaze, of every little nook which usages
of home had made a sacred place, and the destruction by rude hands of
every little household favourite which old associations made a dear
and precious thing: all this taking place--not among pitying looks and
friendly murmurs of compassion, but brutal shouts and exultations,
which seemed to make the very rats who stood by the old house too long,
creatures with some claim upon the pity and regard of those its roof had
sheltered:--combined to form a scene never to be forgotten by those who
saw it and were not actors in the work, so long as life endured.
And who were they? The alarm-bell rang--and it was pulled by no faint or
hesitating hands--for a long time; but not a soul was seen. Some of the
insurgents said that when it ceased, they heard the shrieks of women,
and saw some garments fluttering in the air, as a party of men bore away
no unresisting burdens. No one could say that this was true or false, in
such an uproar; but where was Hugh? Who among them had seen him, since
the forcing of the doors? The cry spread through the body. Where was
Hugh!
‘Here!’ he hoarsely cried, appearing from the darkness; out of breath,
and blackened with the smoke. ‘We have done all we can; the fire is
burning itself out; and even the corners where it hasn’t spread, are
nothing but heaps of ruins. Disperse, my lads, while the coast’s
clear; get back by different ways; and meet as usual!’ With that, he
disappeared again,--contrary to his wont, for he was always first to
advance, and last to go away,--leaving them to follow homewards as they
would.
It was not an easy task to draw off such a throng. If Bedlam gates had
been flung wide open, there would not have issued forth such maniacs as
the frenzy of that night had made. There were men there, who danced and
trampled on the beds of flowers as though they trod down human enemies,
and wrenched them from the stalks, like savages who twisted human necks.
There were men who cast their lighted torches in the air, and suffered
them to fall upon their heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep
unseemly burns. There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled
in it with their hands as if in water; and others who were restrained by
force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing. On the skull of
one drunken lad--not twenty, by his looks--who lay upon the ground with
a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof came streaming down in a
shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his head like wax. When the
scattered parties were collected, men--living yet, but singed as with
hot irons--were plucked out of the cellars, and carried off upon the
shoulders of others, who strove to wake them as they went along, with
ribald jokes, and left them, dead, in the passages of hospitals. But of
all the howling throng not one learnt mercy from, or sickened at, these
sights; nor was the fierce, besotted, senseless rage of one man glutted.
Slowly, and in small clusters, with hoarse hurrahs and repetitions
of their usual cry, the assembly dropped away. The last few red-eyed
stragglers reeled after those who had gone before; the distant noise of
men calling to each other, and whistling for others whom they missed,
grew fainter and fainter; at length even these sounds died away, and
silence reigned alone.
Silence indeed! The glare of the flames had sunk into a fitful, flashing
light; and the gentle stars, invisible till now, looked down upon the
blackening heap. A dull smoke hung upon the ruin, as though to hide it
from those eyes of Heaven; and the wind forbore to move it. Bare walls,
roof open to the sky--chambers, where the beloved dead had, many and
many a fair day, risen to new life and energy; where so many dear ones
had been sad and merry; which were connected with so many thoughts and
hopes, regrets and changes--all gone. Nothing left but a dull and dreary
blank--a smouldering heap of dust and ashes--the silence and solitude of
utter desolation.
Chapter 56
The Maypole cronies, little dreaming of the change so soon to come upon
their favourite haunt, struck through the Forest path upon their way to
London; and avoiding the main road, which was hot and dusty, kept to the
by-paths and the fields. As they drew nearer to their destination, they
began to make inquiries of the people whom they passed, concerning the
riots, and the truth or falsehood of the stories they had heard. The
answers went far beyond any intelligence that had spread to quiet
Chigwell. One man told them that that afternoon the Guards, conveying to
Newgate some rioters who had been re-examined, had been set upon by the
mob and compelled to retreat; another, that the houses of two witnesses
near Clare Market were about to be pulled down when he came away;
another, that Sir George Saville’s house in Leicester Fields was to be
burned that night, and that it would go hard with Sir George if he fell
into the people’s hands, as it was he who had brought in the Catholic
bill. All accounts agreed that the mob were out, in stronger numbers
and more numerous parties than had yet appeared; that the streets were
unsafe; that no man’s house or life was worth an hour’s purchase; that
the public consternation was increasing every moment; and that many
families had already fled the city. One fellow who wore the popular
colour, damned them for not having cockades in their hats, and bade them
set a good watch to-morrow night upon their prison doors, for the locks
would have a straining; another asked if they were fire-proof, that
they walked abroad without the distinguishing mark of all good and true
men;--and a third who rode on horseback, and was quite alone, ordered
them to throw each man a shilling, in his hat, towards the support of
the rioters. Although they were afraid to refuse compliance with this
demand, and were much alarmed by these reports, they agreed, having come
so far, to go forward, and see the real state of things with their own
eyes. So they pushed on quicker, as men do who are excited by portentous
news; and ruminating on what they had heard, spoke little to each other.
It was now night, and as they came nearer to the city they had dismal
confirmation of this intelligence in three great fires, all close
together, which burnt fiercely and were gloomily reflected in the sky.
Arriving in the immediate suburbs, they found that almost every house
had chalked upon its door in large characters ‘No Popery,’ that the
shops were shut, and that alarm and anxiety were depicted in every face
they passed.
Noting these things with a degree of apprehension which neither of the
three cared to impart, in its full extent, to his companions, they
came to a turnpike-gate, which was shut. They were passing through the
turnstile on the path, when a horseman rode up from London at a hard
gallop, and called to the toll-keeper in a voice of great agitation, to
open quickly in the name of God.
The adjuration was so earnest and vehement, that the man, with a lantern
in his hand, came running out--toll-keeper though he was--and was about
to throw the gate open, when happening to look behind him, he exclaimed,
‘Good Heaven, what’s that! Another fire!’
At this, the three turned their heads, and saw in the distance--straight
in the direction whence they had come--a broad sheet of flame, casting
a threatening light upon the clouds, which glimmered as though the
conflagration were behind them, and showed like a wrathful sunset.
‘My mind misgives me,’ said the horseman, ‘or I know from what far
building those flames come. Don’t stand aghast, my good fellow. Open the
gate!’
‘Sir,’ cried the man, laying his hand upon his horse’s bridle as he let
him through: ‘I know you now, sir; be advised by me; do not go on. I saw
them pass, and know what kind of men they are. You will be murdered.’
‘So be it!’ said the horseman, looking intently towards the fire, and
not at him who spoke.
‘But sir--sir,’ cried the man, grasping at his rein more tightly yet,
‘if you do go on, wear the blue riband. Here, sir,’ he added, taking one
from his own hat, ‘it’s necessity, not choice, that makes me wear it;
it’s love of life and home, sir. Wear it for this one night, sir; only
for this one night.’
‘Do!’ cried the three friends, pressing round his horse. ‘Mr
Haredale--worthy sir--good gentleman--pray be persuaded.’
‘Who’s that?’ cried Mr Haredale, stooping down to look. ‘Did I hear
Daisy’s voice?’
‘You did, sir,’ cried the little man. ‘Do be persuaded, sir. This
gentleman says very true. Your life may hang upon it.’
‘Are you,’ said Mr Haredale abruptly, ‘afraid to come with me?’
‘I, sir?--N-n-no.’
‘Put that riband in your hat. If we meet the rioters, swear that I took
you prisoner for wearing it. I will tell them so with my own lips; for
as I hope for mercy when I die, I will take no quarter from them, nor
shall they have quarter from me, if we come hand to hand to-night.
Up here--behind me--quick! Clasp me tight round the body, and fear
nothing.’
In an instant they were riding away, at full gallop, in a dense cloud of
dust, and speeding on, like hunters in a dream.
It was well the good horse knew the road he traversed, for never
once--no, never once in all the journey--did Mr Haredale cast his eyes
upon the ground, or turn them, for an instant, from the light towards
which they sped so madly. Once he said in a low voice, ‘It is my house,’
but that was the only time he spoke. When they came to dark and doubtful
places, he never forgot to put his hand upon the little man to hold him
more securely in his seat, but he kept his head erect and his eyes fixed
on the fire, then, and always.
The road was dangerous enough, for they went the nearest
way--headlong--far from the highway--by lonely lanes and paths, where
waggon-wheels had worn deep ruts; where hedge and ditch hemmed in
the narrow strip of ground; and tall trees, arching overhead, made it
profoundly dark. But on, on, on, with neither stop nor stumble, till
they reached the Maypole door, and could plainly see that the fire began
to fade, as if for want of fuel.
‘Down--for one moment--for but one moment,’ said Mr Haredale, helping
Daisy to the ground, and following himself. ‘Willet--Willet--where are
my niece and servants--Willet!’
Crying to him distractedly, he rushed into the bar.--The landlord bound
and fastened to his chair; the place dismantled, stripped, and pulled
about his ears;--nobody could have taken shelter here.
He was a strong man, accustomed to restrain himself, and suppress his
strong emotions; but this preparation for what was to follow--though he
had seen that fire burning, and knew that his house must be razed to the
ground--was more than he could bear. He covered his face with his hands
for a moment, and turned away his head.
‘Johnny, Johnny,’ said Solomon--and the simple-hearted fellow cried
outright, and wrung his hands--‘Oh dear old Johnny, here’s a change!
That the Maypole bar should come to this, and we should live to see
it! The old Warren too, Johnny--Mr Haredale--oh, Johnny, what a piteous
sight this is!’
Pointing to Mr Haredale as he said these words, little Solomon Daisy put
his elbows on the back of Mr Willet’s chair, and fairly blubbered on his
shoulder.
While Solomon was speaking, old John sat, mute as a stock-fish, staring
at him with an unearthly glare, and displaying, by every possible
symptom, entire and complete unconsciousness. But when Solomon was
silent again, John followed with his great round eyes the direction
of his looks, and did appear to have some dawning distant notion that
somebody had come to see him.
‘You know us, don’t you, Johnny?’ said the little clerk, rapping himself
on the breast. ‘Daisy, you know--Chigwell Church--bell-ringer--little
desk on Sundays--eh, Johnny?’
Mr Willet reflected for a few moments, and then muttered, as it were
mechanically: ‘Let us sing to the praise and glory of--’
‘Yes, to be sure,’ cried the little man, hastily; ‘that’s it--that’s me,
Johnny. You’re all right now, an’t you? Say you’re all right, Johnny.’
‘All right?’ pondered Mr Willet, as if that were a matter entirely
between himself and his conscience. ‘All right? Ah!’
‘They haven’t been misusing you with sticks, or pokers, or any other
blunt instruments--have they, Johnny?’ asked Solomon, with a very
anxious glance at Mr Willet’s head. ‘They didn’t beat you, did they?’
John knitted his brow; looked downwards, as if he were mentally engaged
in some arithmetical calculation; then upwards, as if the total would
not come at his call; then at Solomon Daisy, from his eyebrow to his
shoe-buckle; then very slowly round the bar. And then a great, round,
leaden-looking, and not at all transparent tear, came rolling out of
each eye, and he said, as he shook his head:
‘If they’d only had the goodness to murder me, I’d have thanked ‘em
kindly.’
‘No, no, no, don’t say that, Johnny,’ whimpered his little friend. ‘It’s
very, very bad, but not quite so bad as that. No, no!’
‘Look’ee here, sir!’ cried John, turning his rueful eyes on Mr Haredale,
who had dropped on one knee, and was hastily beginning to untie
his bonds. ‘Look’ee here, sir! The very Maypole--the old dumb
Maypole--stares in at the winder, as if it said, “John Willet, John
Willet, let’s go and pitch ourselves in the nighest pool of water as is
deep enough to hold us; for our day is over!”’
‘Don’t, Johnny, don’t,’ cried his friend: no less affected with this
mournful effort of Mr Willet’s imagination, than by the sepulchral tone
in which he had spoken of the Maypole. ‘Please don’t, Johnny!’
‘Your loss is great, and your misfortune a heavy one,’ said Mr Haredale,
looking restlessly towards the door: ‘and this is not a time to comfort
you. If it were, I am in no condition to do so. Before I leave you, tell
me one thing, and try to tell me plainly, I implore you. Have you seen,
or heard of Emma?’
‘No!’ said Mr Willet.
‘Nor any one but these bloodhounds?’
‘No!’
‘They rode away, I trust in Heaven, before these dreadful scenes began,’
said Mr Haredale, who, between his agitation, his eagerness to mount
his horse again, and the dexterity with which the cords were tied, had
scarcely yet undone one knot. ‘A knife, Daisy!’
‘You didn’t,’ said John, looking about, as though he had lost his
pocket-handkerchief, or some such slight article--‘either of you
gentlemen--see a--a coffin anywheres, did you?’
‘Willet!’ cried Mr Haredale. Solomon dropped the knife, and instantly
becoming limp from head to foot, exclaimed ‘Good gracious!’
‘--Because,’ said John, not at all regarding them, ‘a dead man called a
little time ago, on his way yonder. I could have told you what name was
on the plate, if he had brought his coffin with him, and left it behind.
If he didn’t, it don’t signify.’
His landlord, who had listened to these words with breathless attention,
started that moment to his feet; and, without a word, drew Solomon
Daisy to the door, mounted his horse, took him up behind again, and flew
rather than galloped towards the pile of ruins, which that day’s sun
had shone upon, a stately house. Mr Willet stared after them, listened,
looked down upon himself to make quite sure that he was still unbound,
and, without any manifestation of impatience, disappointment, or
surprise, gently relapsed into the condition from which he had so
imperfectly recovered.
Mr Haredale tied his horse to the trunk of a tree, and grasping his
companion’s arm, stole softly along the footpath, and into what had
been the garden of his house. He stopped for an instant to look upon its
smoking walls, and at the stars that shone through roof and floor upon
the heap of crumbling ashes. Solomon glanced timidly in his face, but
his lips were tightly pressed together, a resolute and stern expression
sat upon his brow, and not a tear, a look, or gesture indicating grief,
escaped him.
He drew his sword; felt for a moment in his breast, as though he carried
other arms about him; then grasping Solomon by the wrist again, went
with a cautious step all round the house. He looked into every doorway
and gap in the wall; retraced his steps at every rustling of the air
among the leaves; and searched in every shadowed nook with outstretched
hands. Thus they made the circuit of the building: but they returned
to the spot from which they had set out, without encountering any human
being, or finding the least trace of any concealed straggler.
After a short pause, Mr Haredale shouted twice or thrice. Then cried
aloud, ‘Is there any one in hiding here, who knows my voice! There is
nothing to fear now. If any of my people are near, I entreat them
to answer!’ He called them all by name; his voice was echoed in many
mournful tones; then all was silent as before.
They were standing near the foot of the turret, where the alarm-bell
hung. The fire had raged there, and the floors had been sawn, and hewn,
and beaten down, besides. It was open to the night; but a part of the
staircase still remained, winding upward from a great mound of dust and
cinders. Fragments of the jagged and broken steps offered an insecure
and giddy footing here and there, and then were lost again, behind
protruding angles of the wall, or in the deep shadows cast upon it by
other portions of the ruin; for by this time the moon had risen, and
shone brightly.
As they stood here, listening to the echoes as they died away, and
hoping in vain to hear a voice they knew, some of the ashes in this
turret slipped and rolled down. Startled by the least noise in that
melancholy place, Solomon looked up in his companion’s face, and saw
that he had turned towards the spot, and that he watched and listened
keenly.
He covered the little man’s mouth with his hand, and looked again.
Instantly, with kindling eyes, he bade him on his life keep still, and
neither speak nor move. Then holding his breath, and stooping down,
he stole into the turret, with his drawn sword in his hand, and
disappeared.
Terrified to be left there by himself, under such desolate
circumstances, and after all he had seen and heard that night, Solomon
would have followed, but there had been something in Mr Haredale’s
manner and his look, the recollection of which held him spellbound. He
stood rooted to the spot; and scarcely venturing to breathe, looked up
with mingled fear and wonder.
Again the ashes slipped and rolled--very, very softly--again--and then
again, as though they crumbled underneath the tread of a stealthy foot.
And now a figure was dimly visible; climbing very softly; and often
stopping to look down; now it pursued its difficult way; and now it was
hidden from the view again.
It emerged once more, into the shadowy and uncertain light--higher now,
but not much, for the way was steep and toilsome, and its progress very
slow. What phantom of the brain did he pursue; and why did he look down
so constantly? He knew he was alone. Surely his mind was not affected by
that night’s loss and agony. He was not about to throw himself headlong
from the summit of the tottering wall. Solomon turned sick, and clasped
his hands. His limbs trembled beneath him, and a cold sweat broke out
upon his pallid face.
If he complied with Mr Haredale’s last injunction now, it was because he
had not the power to speak or move. He strained his gaze, and fixed it
on a patch of moonlight, into which, if he continued to ascend, he must
soon emerge. When he appeared there, he would try to call to him.
Again the ashes slipped and crumbled; some stones rolled down, and fell
with a dull, heavy sound upon the ground below. He kept his eyes upon
the piece of moonlight. The figure was coming on, for its shadow was
already thrown upon the wall. Now it appeared--and now looked round at
him--and now--
The horror-stricken clerk uttered a scream that pierced the air, and
cried, ‘The ghost! The ghost!’
Long before the echo of his cry had died away, another form rushed out
into the light, flung itself upon the foremost one, knelt down upon its
breast, and clutched its throat with both hands.
‘Villain!’ cried Mr Haredale, in a terrible voice--for it was he. ‘Dead
and buried, as all men supposed through your infernal arts, but reserved
by Heaven for this--at last--at last I have you. You, whose hands are
red with my brother’s blood, and that of his faithful servant, shed
to conceal your own atrocious guilt--You, Rudge, double murderer and
monster, I arrest you in the name of God, who has delivered you into my
hands. No. Though you had the strength of twenty men,’ he added, as the
murderer writhed and struggled, ‘you could not escape me or loosen my
grasp to-night!’
Chapter 57
Barnaby, armed as we have seen, continued to pace up and down before
the stable-door; glad to be alone again, and heartily rejoicing in the
unaccustomed silence and tranquillity. After the whirl of noise and riot
in which the last two days had been passed, the pleasures of solitude
and peace were enhanced a thousandfold. He felt quite happy; and as he
leaned upon his staff and mused, a bright smile overspread his face, and
none but cheerful visions floated into his brain.
Had he no thoughts of her, whose sole delight he was, and whom he had
unconsciously plunged in such bitter sorrow and such deep affliction?
Oh, yes. She was at the heart of all his cheerful hopes and proud
reflections. It was she whom all this honour and distinction were to
gladden; the joy and profit were for her. What delight it gave her
to hear of the bravery of her poor boy! Ah! He would have known that,
without Hugh’s telling him. And what a precious thing it was to know she
lived so happily, and heard with so much pride (he pictured to himself
her look when they told her) that he was in such high esteem: bold among
the boldest, and trusted before them all! And when these frays were
over, and the good lord had conquered his enemies, and they were all at
peace again, and he and she were rich, what happiness they would have
in talking of these troubled times when he was a great soldier: and when
they sat alone together in the tranquil twilight, and she had no longer
reason to be anxious for the morrow, what pleasure would he have in the
reflection that this was his doing--his--poor foolish Barnaby’s; and
in patting her on the cheek, and saying with a merry laugh, ‘Am I silly
now, mother--am I silly now?’
With a lighter heart and step, and eyes the brighter for the happy tear
that dimmed them for a moment, Barnaby resumed his walk; and singing
gaily to himself, kept guard upon his quiet post.
His comrade Grip, the partner of his watch, though fond of basking in
the sunshine, preferred to-day to walk about the stable; having a great
deal to do in the way of scattering the straw, hiding under it such
small articles as had been casually left about, and haunting Hugh’s
bed, to which he seemed to have taken a particular attachment. Sometimes
Barnaby looked in and called him, and then he came hopping out; but
he merely did this as a concession to his master’s weakness, and soon
returned again to his own grave pursuits: peering into the straw with
his bill, and rapidly covering up the place, as if, Midas-like, he were
whispering secrets to the earth and burying them; constantly busying
himself upon the sly; and affecting, whenever Barnaby came past, to
look up in the clouds and have nothing whatever on his mind: in short,
conducting himself, in many respects, in a more than usually thoughtful,
deep, and mysterious manner.
As the day crept on, Barnaby, who had no directions forbidding him to
eat and drink upon his post, but had been, on the contrary, supplied
with a bottle of beer and a basket of provisions, determined to break
his fast, which he had not done since morning. To this end, he sat down
on the ground before the door, and putting his staff across his knees in
case of alarm or surprise, summoned Grip to dinner.
This call, the bird obeyed with great alacrity; crying, as he sidled
up to his master, ‘I’m a devil, I’m a Polly, I’m a kettle, I’m a
Protestant, No Popery!’ Having learnt this latter sentiment from the
gentry among whom he had lived of late, he delivered it with uncommon
emphasis.
‘Well said, Grip!’ cried his master, as he fed him with the daintiest
bits. ‘Well said, old boy!’
‘Never say die, bow wow wow, keep up your spirits, Grip Grip Grip,
Holloa! We’ll all have tea, I’m a Protestant kettle, No Popery!’ cried
the raven.
‘Gordon for ever, Grip!’ cried Barnaby.
The raven, placing his head upon the ground, looked at his master
sideways, as though he would have said, ‘Say that again!’ Perfectly
understanding his desire, Barnaby repeated the phrase a great many
times. The bird listened with profound attention; sometimes repeating
the popular cry in a low voice, as if to compare the two, and try if it
would at all help him to this new accomplishment; sometimes flapping
his wings, or barking; and sometimes in a kind of desperation drawing a
multitude of corks, with extraordinary viciousness.
Barnaby was so intent upon his favourite, that he was not at first
aware of the approach of two persons on horseback, who were riding at a
foot-pace, and coming straight towards his post. When he perceived them,
however, which he did when they were within some fifty yards of him, he
jumped hastily up, and ordering Grip within doors, stood with both hands
on his staff, waiting until he should know whether they were friends or
foes.
He had hardly done so, when he observed that those who advanced were a
gentleman and his servant; almost at the same moment he recognised Lord
George Gordon, before whom he stood uncovered, with his eyes turned
towards the ground.
‘Good day!’ said Lord George, not reining in his horse until he was
close beside him. ‘Well!’
‘All quiet, sir, all safe!’ cried Barnaby. ‘The rest are away--they went
by that path--that one. A grand party!’
‘Ay?’ said Lord George, looking thoughtfully at him. ‘And you?’
‘Oh! They left me here to watch--to mount guard--to keep everything
secure till they come back. I’ll do it, sir, for your sake. You’re a
good gentleman; a kind gentleman--ay, you are. There are many against
you, but we’ll be a match for them, never fear!’
‘What’s that?’ said Lord George--pointing to the raven who was peeping
out of the stable-door--but still looking thoughtfully, and in some
perplexity, it seemed, at Barnaby.
‘Why, don’t you know!’ retorted Barnaby, with a wondering laugh. ‘Not
know what HE is! A bird, to be sure. My bird--my friend--Grip.’
‘A devil, a kettle, a Grip, a Polly, a Protestant, no Popery!’ cried the
raven.
‘Though, indeed,’ added Barnaby, laying his hand upon the neck of Lord
George’s horse, and speaking softly: ‘you had good reason to ask me what
he is, for sometimes it puzzles me--and I am used to him--to think
he’s only a bird. He’s my brother, Grip is--always with me--always
talking--always merry--eh, Grip?’
The raven answered by an affectionate croak, and hopping on his master’s
arm, which he held downward for that purpose, submitted with an air of
perfect indifference to be fondled, and turned his restless, curious
eye, now upon Lord George, and now upon his man.
Lord George, biting his nails in a discomfited manner, regarded Barnaby
for some time in silence; then beckoning to his servant, said:
‘Come hither, John.’
John Grueby touched his hat, and came.
‘Have you ever seen this young man before?’ his master asked in a low
voice.
‘Twice, my lord,’ said John. ‘I saw him in the crowd last night and
Saturday.’
‘Did--did it seem to you that his manner was at all wild or strange?’
Lord George demanded, faltering.
‘Mad,’ said John, with emphatic brevity.
‘And why do you think him mad, sir?’ said his master, speaking in a
peevish tone. ‘Don’t use that word too freely. Why do you think him
mad?’
‘My lord,’ John Grueby answered, ‘look at his dress, look at his eyes,
look at his restless way, hear him cry “No Popery!” Mad, my lord.’
‘So because one man dresses unlike another,’ returned his angry master,
glancing at himself; ‘and happens to differ from other men in his
carriage and manner, and to advocate a great cause which the corrupt and
irreligious desert, he is to be accounted mad, is he?’
‘Stark, staring, raving, roaring mad, my lord,’ returned the unmoved
John.
‘Do you say this to my face?’ cried his master, turning sharply upon
him.
‘To any man, my lord, who asks me,’ answered John.
‘Mr Gashford, I find, was right,’ said Lord George; ‘I thought him
prejudiced, though I ought to have known a man like him better than to
have supposed it possible!’
‘I shall never have Mr Gashford’s good word, my lord,’ replied John,
touching his hat respectfully, ‘and I don’t covet it.’
‘You are an ill-conditioned, most ungrateful fellow,’ said Lord George:
‘a spy, for anything I know. Mr Gashford is perfectly correct, as I
might have felt convinced he was. I have done wrong to retain you in
my service. It is a tacit insult to him as my choice and confidential
friend to do so, remembering the cause you sided with, on the day he was
maligned at Westminster. You will leave me to-night--nay, as soon as we
reach home. The sooner the better.’
‘If it comes to that, I say so too, my lord. Let Mr Gashford have his
will. As to my being a spy, my lord, you know me better than to believe
it, I am sure. I don’t know much about causes. My cause is the cause of
one man against two hundred; and I hope it always will be.’
‘You have said quite enough,’ returned Lord George, motioning him to go
back. ‘I desire to hear no more.’
‘If you’ll let me have another word, my lord,’ returned John Grueby,
‘I’d give this silly fellow a caution not to stay here by himself. The
proclamation is in a good many hands already, and it’s well known that
he was concerned in the business it relates to. He had better get to a
place of safety if he can, poor creature.’
‘You hear what this man says?’ cried Lord George, addressing Barnaby,
who had looked on and wondered while this dialogue passed. ‘He thinks
you may be afraid to remain upon your post, and are kept here perhaps
against your will. What do you say?’
‘I think, young man,’ said John, in explanation, ‘that the soldiers may
turn out and take you; and that if they do, you will certainly be hung
by the neck till you’re dead--dead--dead. And I think you had better go
from here, as fast as you can. That’s what I think.’
‘He’s a coward, Grip, a coward!’ cried Barnaby, putting the raven on the
ground, and shouldering his staff. ‘Let them come! Gordon for ever! Let
them come!’
‘Ay!’ said Lord George, ‘let them! Let us see who will venture to attack
a power like ours; the solemn league of a whole people. THIS a madman!
You have said well, very well. I am proud to be the leader of such men
as you.’
Barnaby’s heart swelled within his bosom as he heard these words. He took
Lord George’s hand and carried it to his lips; patted his horse’s crest,
as if the affection and admiration he had conceived for the man extended
to the animal he rode; then unfurling his flag, and proudly waving it,
resumed his pacing up and down.
Lord George, with a kindling eye and glowing cheek, took off his hat,
and flourishing it above his head, bade him exultingly Farewell!--then
cantered off at a brisk pace; after glancing angrily round to see that
his servant followed. Honest John set spurs to his horse and rode after
his master, but not before he had again warned Barnaby to retreat,
with many significant gestures, which indeed he continued to make, and
Barnaby to resist, until the windings of the road concealed them from
each other’s view.
Left to himself again with a still higher sense of the importance of
his post, and stimulated to enthusiasm by the special notice and
encouragement of his leader, Barnaby walked to and fro in a delicious
trance rather than as a waking man. The sunshine which prevailed around
was in his mind. He had but one desire ungratified. If she could only
see him now!
The day wore on; its heat was gently giving place to the cool of
evening; a light wind sprung up, fanning his long hair, and making
the banner rustle pleasantly above his head. There was a freedom and
freshness in the sound and in the time, which chimed exactly with his
mood. He was happier than ever.
He was leaning on his staff looking towards the declining sun, and
reflecting with a smile that he stood sentinel at that moment over
buried gold, when two or three figures appeared in the distance, making
towards the house at a rapid pace, and motioning with their hands as
though they urged its inmates to retreat from some approaching danger.
As they drew nearer, they became more earnest in their gestures; and
they were no sooner within hearing, than the foremost among them cried
that the soldiers were coming up.
At these words, Barnaby furled his flag, and tied it round the pole. His
heart beat high while he did so, but he had no more fear or thought of
retreating than the pole itself. The friendly stragglers hurried past
him, after giving him notice of his danger, and quickly passed into the
house, where the utmost confusion immediately prevailed. As those within
hastily closed the windows and the doors, they urged him by looks and
signs to fly without loss of time, and called to him many times to do
so; but he only shook his head indignantly in answer, and stood the
firmer on his post. Finding that he was not to be persuaded, they took
care of themselves; and leaving the place with only one old woman in it,
speedily withdrew.
As yet there had been no symptom of the news having any better
foundation than in the fears of those who brought it, but The Boot had
not been deserted five minutes, when there appeared, coming across the
fields, a body of men who, it was easy to see, by the glitter of their
arms and ornaments in the sun, and by their orderly and regular mode of
advancing--for they came on as one man--were soldiers. In a very little
time, Barnaby knew that they were a strong detachment of the Foot
Guards, having along with them two gentlemen in private clothes, and a
small party of Horse; the latter brought up the rear, and were not in
number more than six or eight.
They advanced steadily; neither quickening their pace as they came
nearer, nor raising any cry, nor showing the least emotion or anxiety.
Though this was a matter of course in the case of regular troops,
even to Barnaby, there was something particularly impressive and
disconcerting in it to one accustomed to the noise and tumult of an
undisciplined mob. For all that, he stood his ground not a whit the less
resolutely, and looked on undismayed.
Presently, they marched into the yard, and halted. The
commanding-officer despatched a messenger to the horsemen, one of whom
came riding back. Some words passed between them, and they glanced at
Barnaby; who well remembered the man he had unhorsed at Westminster, and
saw him now before his eyes. The man being speedily dismissed, saluted,
and rode back to his comrades, who were drawn up apart at a short
distance.
The officer then gave the word to prime and load. The heavy ringing of
the musket-stocks upon the ground, and the sharp and rapid rattling of
the ramrods in their barrels, were a kind of relief to Barnaby, deadly
though he knew the purport of such sounds to be. When this was done,
other commands were given, and the soldiers instantaneously formed in
single file all round the house and stables; completely encircling them
in every part, at a distance, perhaps, of some half-dozen yards; at
least that seemed in Barnaby’s eyes to be about the space left between
himself and those who confronted him. The horsemen remained drawn up by
themselves as before.
The two gentlemen in private clothes who had kept aloof, now rode
forward, one on either side the officer. The proclamation having been
produced and read by one of them, the officer called on Barnaby to
surrender.
He made no answer, but stepping within the door, before which he had
kept guard, held his pole crosswise to protect it. In the midst of a
profound silence, he was again called upon to yield.
Still he offered no reply. Indeed he had enough to do, to run his eye
backward and forward along the half-dozen men who immediately fronted
him, and settle hurriedly within himself at which of them he would
strike first, when they pressed on him. He caught the eye of one in the
centre, and resolved to hew that fellow down, though he died for it.
Again there was a dead silence, and again the same voice called upon him
to deliver himself up.
Next moment he was back in the stable, dealing blows about him like a
madman. Two of the men lay stretched at his feet: the one he had marked,
dropped first--he had a thought for that, even in the hot blood and
hurry of the struggle. Another blow--another! Down, mastered, wounded in
the breast by a heavy blow from the butt-end of a gun (he saw the weapon
in the act of falling)--breathless--and a prisoner.
An exclamation of surprise from the officer recalled him, in some
degree, to himself. He looked round. Grip, after working in secret all
the afternoon, and with redoubled vigour while everybody’s attention was
distracted, had plucked away the straw from Hugh’s bed, and turned up
the loose ground with his iron bill. The hole had been recklessly filled
to the brim, and was merely sprinkled with earth. Golden cups, spoons,
candlesticks, coined guineas--all the riches were revealed.
They brought spades and a sack; dug up everything that was hidden there;
and carried away more than two men could lift. They handcuffed him
and bound his arms, searched him, and took away all he had. Nobody
questioned or reproached him, or seemed to have much curiosity about
him. The two men he had stunned, were carried off by their companions in
the same business-like way in which everything else was done. Finally,
he was left under a guard of four soldiers with fixed bayonets, while
the officer directed in person the search of the house and the other
buildings connected with it.
This was soon completed. The soldiers formed again in the yard; he was
marched out, with his guard about him; and ordered to fall in, where a
space was left. The others closed up all round, and so they moved away,
with the prisoner in the centre.
When they came into the streets, he felt he was a sight; and looking up
as they passed quickly along, could see people running to the windows a
little too late, and throwing up the sashes to look after him. Sometimes
he met a staring face beyond the heads about him, or under the arms of
his conductors, or peering down upon him from a waggon-top or coach-box;
but this was all he saw, being surrounded by so many men. The very
noises of the streets seemed muffled and subdued; and the air came stale
and hot upon him, like the sickly breath of an oven.
Tramp, tramp. Tramp, tramp. Heads erect, shoulders square, every man
stepping in exact time--all so orderly and regular--nobody looking at
him--nobody seeming conscious of his presence,--he could hardly believe
he was a Prisoner. But at the word, though only thought, not spoken, he
felt the handcuffs galling his wrists, the cord pressing his arms to
his sides: the loaded guns levelled at his head; and those cold, bright,
sharp, shining points turned towards him: the mere looking down at
which, now that he was bound and helpless, made the warm current of his
life run cold.
Chapter 58
They were not long in reaching the barracks, for the officer who
commanded the party was desirous to avoid rousing the people by the
display of military force in the streets, and was humanely anxious
to give as little opportunity as possible for any attempt at rescue;
knowing that it must lead to bloodshed and loss of life, and that if the
civil authorities by whom he was accompanied, empowered him to order his
men to fire, many innocent persons would probably fall, whom curiosity
or idleness had attracted to the spot. He therefore led the party
briskly on, avoiding with a merciful prudence the more public and
crowded thoroughfares, and pursuing those which he deemed least likely
to be infested by disorderly persons. This wise proceeding not only
enabled them to gain their quarters without any interruption, but
completely baffled a body of rioters who had assembled in one of the
main streets, through which it was considered certain they would pass,
and who remained gathered together for the purpose of releasing the
prisoner from their hands, long after they had deposited him in a place
of security, closed the barrack-gates, and set a double guard at every
entrance for its better protection.
Arrived at this place, poor Barnaby was marched into a stone-floored
room, where there was a very powerful smell of tobacco, a strong
thorough draught of air, and a great wooden bedstead, large enough for a
score of men. Several soldiers in undress were lounging about, or eating
from tin cans; military accoutrements dangled on rows of pegs along the
whitewashed wall; and some half-dozen men lay fast asleep upon their
backs, snoring in concert. After remaining here just long enough to
note these things, he was marched out again, and conveyed across the
parade-ground to another portion of the building.
Perhaps a man never sees so much at a glance as when he is in a
situation of extremity. The chances are a hundred to one, that if
Barnaby had lounged in at the gate to look about him, he would have
lounged out again with a very imperfect idea of the place, and would
have remembered very little about it. But as he was taken handcuffed
across the gravelled area, nothing escaped his notice. The dry, arid
look of the dusty square, and of the bare brick building; the clothes
hanging at some of the windows; and the men in their shirt-sleeves and
braces, lolling with half their bodies out of the others; the green
sun-blinds at the officers’ quarters, and the little scanty trees in
front; the drummer-boys practising in a distant courtyard; the men at
drill on the parade; the two soldiers carrying a basket between them,
who winked to each other as he went by, and slily pointed to their
throats; the spruce serjeant who hurried past with a cane in his hand,
and under his arm a clasped book with a vellum cover; the fellows in the
ground-floor rooms, furbishing and brushing up their different articles
of dress, who stopped to look at him, and whose voices as they
spoke together echoed loudly through the empty galleries and
passages;--everything, down to the stand of muskets before the
guard-house, and the drum with a pipe-clayed belt attached, in one
corner, impressed itself upon his observation, as though he had noticed
them in the same place a hundred times, or had been a whole day among
them, in place of one brief hurried minute.
He was taken into a small paved back yard, and there they opened a great
door, plated with iron, and pierced some five feet above the ground with
a few holes to let in air and light. Into this dungeon he was walked
straightway; and having locked him up there, and placed a sentry over
him, they left him to his meditations.
The cell, or black hole, for it had those words painted on the door, was
very dark, and having recently accommodated a drunken deserter, by no
means clean. Barnaby felt his way to some straw at the farther end, and
looking towards the door, tried to accustom himself to the gloom, which,
coming from the bright sunshine out of doors, was not an easy task.
There was a kind of portico or colonnade outside, and this obstructed
even the little light that at the best could have found its way through
the small apertures in the door. The footsteps of the sentinel echoed
monotonously as he paced its stone pavement to and fro (reminding
Barnaby of the watch he had so lately kept himself); and as he passed
and repassed the door, he made the cell for an instant so black by the
interposition of his body, that his going away again seemed like the
appearance of a new ray of light, and was quite a circumstance to look
for.
When the prisoner had sat sometime upon the ground, gazing at the
chinks, and listening to the advancing and receding footsteps of his
guard, the man stood still upon his post. Barnaby, quite unable to
think, or to speculate on what would be done with him, had been lulled
into a kind of doze by his regular pace; but his stopping roused him;
and then he became aware that two men were in conversation under the
colonnade, and very near the door of his cell.
How long they had been talking there, he could not tell, for he had
fallen into an unconsciousness of his real position, and when the
footsteps ceased, was answering aloud some question which seemed to have
been put to him by Hugh in the stable, though of the fancied purport,
either of question or reply, notwithstanding that he awoke with the
latter on his lips, he had no recollection whatever. The first words
that reached his ears, were these:
‘Why is he brought here then, if he has to be taken away again so soon?’
‘Why where would you have him go! Damme, he’s not as safe anywhere as
among the king’s troops, is he? What WOULD you do with him? Would you
hand him over to a pack of cowardly civilians, that shake in their
shoes till they wear the soles out, with trembling at the threats of the
ragamuffins he belongs to?’
‘That’s true enough.’
‘True enough!--I’ll tell you what. I wish, Tom Green, that I was a
commissioned instead of a non-commissioned officer, and that I had the
command of two companies--only two companies--of my own regiment.
Call me out to stop these riots--give me the needful authority, and
half-a-dozen rounds of ball cartridge--’
‘Ay!’ said the other voice. ‘That’s all very well, but they won’t give
the needful authority. If the magistrate won’t give the word, what’s the
officer to do?’
Not very well knowing, as it seemed, how to overcome this difficulty,
the other man contented himself with damning the magistrates.
‘With all my heart,’ said his friend.
‘Where’s the use of a magistrate?’ returned the other voice. ‘What’s
a magistrate in this case, but an impertinent, unnecessary,
unconstitutional sort of interference? Here’s a proclamation. Here’s a
man referred to in that proclamation. Here’s proof against him, and a
witness on the spot. Damme! Take him out and shoot him, sir. Who wants a
magistrate?’
‘When does he go before Sir John Fielding?’ asked the man who had spoken
first.
‘To-night at eight o’clock,’ returned the other. ‘Mark what follows. The
magistrate commits him to Newgate. Our people take him to Newgate. The
rioters pelt our people. Our people retire before the rioters. Stones
are thrown, insults are offered, not a shot’s fired. Why? Because of the
magistrates. Damn the magistrates!’
When he had in some degree relieved his mind by cursing the magistrates
in various other forms of speech, the man was silent, save for a low
growling, still having reference to those authorities, which from time
to time escaped him.
Barnaby, who had wit enough to know that this conversation concerned,
and very nearly concerned, himself, remained perfectly quiet until they
ceased to speak, when he groped his way to the door, and peeping through
the air-holes, tried to make out what kind of men they were, to whom he
had been listening.
The one who condemned the civil power in such strong terms, was a
serjeant--engaged just then, as the streaming ribands in his cap
announced, on the recruiting service. He stood leaning sideways against
a pillar nearly opposite the door, and as he growled to himself, drew
figures on the pavement with his cane. The other man had his back
towards the dungeon, and Barnaby could only see his form. To judge from
that, he was a gallant, manly, handsome fellow, but he had lost his left
arm. It had been taken off between the elbow and the shoulder, and his
empty coat-sleeve hung across his breast.
It was probably this circumstance which gave him an interest beyond any
that his companion could boast of, and attracted Barnaby’s attention.
There was something soldierly in his bearing, and he wore a jaunty cap
and jacket. Perhaps he had been in the service at one time or other.
If he had, it could not have been very long ago, for he was but a young
fellow now.
‘Well, well,’ he said thoughtfully; ‘let the fault be where it may, it
makes a man sorrowful to come back to old England, and see her in this
condition.’
‘I suppose the pigs will join ‘em next,’ said the serjeant, with
an imprecation on the rioters, ‘now that the birds have set ‘em the
example.’
‘The birds!’ repeated Tom Green.
‘Ah--birds,’ said the serjeant testily; ‘that’s English, an’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Go to the guard-house, and see. You’ll find a bird there, that’s got
their cry as pat as any of ‘em, and bawls “No Popery,” like a man--or
like a devil, as he says he is. I shouldn’t wonder. The devil’s loose
in London somewhere. Damme if I wouldn’t twist his neck round, on the
chance, if I had MY way.’
The young man had taken two or three steps away, as if to go and see
this creature, when he was arrested by the voice of Barnaby.
‘It’s mine,’ he called out, half laughing and half weeping--‘my pet,
my friend Grip. Ha ha ha! Don’t hurt him, he has done no harm. I taught
him; it’s my fault. Let me have him, if you please. He’s the only friend
I have left now. He’ll not dance, or talk, or whistle for you, I
know; but he will for me, because he knows me and loves me--though you
wouldn’t think it--very well. You wouldn’t hurt a bird, I’m sure. You’re
a brave soldier, sir, and wouldn’t harm a woman or a child--no, no, nor
a poor bird, I’m certain.’
This latter adjuration was addressed to the serjeant, whom Barnaby
judged from his red coat to be high in office, and able to seal Grip’s
destiny by a word. But that gentleman, in reply, surlily damned him for
a thief and rebel as he was, and with many disinterested imprecations on
his own eyes, liver, blood, and body, assured him that if it rested with
him to decide, he would put a final stopper on the bird, and his master
too.
‘You talk boldly to a caged man,’ said Barnaby, in anger. ‘If I was on
the other side of the door and there were none to part us, you’d change
your note--ay, you may toss your head--you would! Kill the bird--do.
Kill anything you can, and so revenge yourself on those who with their
bare hands untied could do as much to you!’
Having vented his defiance, he flung himself into the furthest corner
of his prison, and muttering, ‘Good bye, Grip--good bye, dear old Grip!’
shed tears for the first time since he had been taken captive; and hid
his face in the straw.
He had had some fancy at first, that the one-armed man would help him,
or would give him a kind word in answer. He hardly knew why, but he
hoped and thought so. The young fellow had stopped when he called out,
and checking himself in the very act of turning round, stood listening
to every word he said. Perhaps he built his feeble trust on this;
perhaps on his being young, and having a frank and honest manner.
However that might be, he built on sand. The other went away directly
he had finished speaking, and neither answered him, nor returned. No
matter. They were all against him here: he might have known as much.
Good bye, old Grip, good bye!
After some time, they came and unlocked the door, and called to him to
come out. He rose directly, and complied, for he would not have THEM
think he was subdued or frightened. He walked out like a man, and looked
from face to face.
None of them returned his gaze or seemed to notice it. They marched
him back to the parade by the way they had brought him, and there they
halted, among a body of soldiers, at least twice as numerous as that
which had taken him prisoner in the afternoon. The officer he had seen
before, bade him in a few brief words take notice that if he attempted
to escape, no matter how favourable a chance he might suppose he had,
certain of the men had orders to fire upon him, that moment. They then
closed round him as before, and marched him off again.
In the same unbroken order they arrived at Bow Street, followed and
beset on all sides by a crowd which was continually increasing. Here
he was placed before a blind gentleman, and asked if he wished to say
anything. Not he. What had he got to tell them? After a very little
talking, which he was careless of and quite indifferent to, they told
him he was to go to Newgate, and took him away.
He went out into the street, so surrounded and hemmed in on every side
by soldiers, that he could see nothing; but he knew there was a great
crowd of people, by the murmur; and that they were not friendly to the
soldiers, was soon rendered evident by their yells and hisses. How often
and how eagerly he listened for the voice of Hugh! There was not a voice
he knew among them all. Was Hugh a prisoner too? Was there no hope!
As they came nearer and nearer to the prison, the hootings of the people
grew more violent; stones were thrown; and every now and then, a rush
was made against the soldiers, which they staggered under. One of them,
close before him, smarting under a blow upon the temple, levelled his
musket, but the officer struck it upwards with his sword, and ordered
him on peril of his life to desist. This was the last thing he saw
with any distinctness, for directly afterwards he was tossed about,
and beaten to and fro, as though in a tempestuous sea. But go where
he would, there were the same guards about him. Twice or thrice he was
thrown down, and so were they; but even then, he could not elude their
vigilance for a moment. They were up again, and had closed about him,
before he, with his wrists so tightly bound, could scramble to his feet.
Fenced in, thus, he felt himself hoisted to the top of a low flight of
steps, and then for a moment he caught a glimpse of the fighting in
the crowd, and of a few red coats sprinkled together, here and there,
struggling to rejoin their fellows. Next moment, everything was dark and
gloomy, and he was standing in the prison lobby; the centre of a group
of men.
A smith was speedily in attendance, who riveted upon him a set of heavy
irons. Stumbling on as well as he could, beneath the unusual burden of
these fetters, he was conducted to a strong stone cell, where, fastening
the door with locks, and bolts, and chains, they left him, well secured;
having first, unseen by him, thrust in Grip, who, with his head drooping
and his deep black plumes rough and rumpled, appeared to comprehend and
to partake, his master’s fallen fortunes.
Chapter 59
It is necessary at this juncture to return to Hugh, who, having, as we
have seen, called to the rioters to disperse from about the Warren, and
meet again as usual, glided back into the darkness from which he had
emerged, and reappeared no more that night.
He paused in the copse which sheltered him from the observation of his
mad companions, and waited to ascertain whether they drew off at his
bidding, or still lingered and called to him to join them. Some few, he
saw, were indisposed to go away without him, and made towards the spot
where he stood concealed as though they were about to follow in his
footsteps, and urge him to come back; but these men, being in their turn
called to by their friends, and in truth not greatly caring to venture
into the dark parts of the grounds, where they might be easily surprised
and taken, if any of the neighbours or retainers of the family were
watching them from among the trees, soon abandoned the idea, and hastily
assembling such men as they found of their mind at the moment, straggled
off.
When he was satisfied that the great mass of the insurgents were
imitating this example, and that the ground was rapidly clearing, he
plunged into the thickest portion of the little wood; and, crashing the
branches as he went, made straight towards a distant light: guided by
that, and by the sullen glow of the fire behind him.
As he drew nearer and nearer to the twinkling beacon towards which he
bent his course, the red glare of a few torches began to reveal itself,
and the voices of men speaking together in a subdued tone broke the
silence which, save for a distant shouting now and then, already
prevailed. At length he cleared the wood, and, springing across a ditch,
stood in a dark lane, where a small body of ill-looking vagabonds, whom
he had left there some twenty minutes before, waited his coming with
impatience.
They were gathered round an old post-chaise or chariot, driven by one of
themselves, who sat postilion-wise upon the near horse. The blinds were
drawn up, and Mr Tappertit and Dennis kept guard at the two windows. The
former assumed the command of the party, for he challenged Hugh as he
advanced towards them; and when he did so, those who were resting on the
ground about the carriage rose to their feet and clustered round him.
‘Well!’ said Simon, in a low voice; ‘is all right?’
‘Right enough,’ replied Hugh, in the same tone. ‘They’re dispersing
now--had begun before I came away.’
‘And is the coast clear?’
‘Clear enough before our men, I take it,’ said Hugh. ‘There are not many
who, knowing of their work over yonder, will want to meddle with ‘em
to-night.--Who’s got some drink here?’
Everybody had some plunder from the cellar; half-a-dozen flasks and
bottles were offered directly. He selected the largest, and putting it
to his mouth, sent the wine gurgling down his throat. Having emptied
it, he threw it down, and stretched out his hand for another, which he
emptied likewise, at a draught. Another was given him, and this he half
emptied too. Reserving what remained to finish with, he asked:
‘Have you got anything to eat, any of you? I’m as ravenous as a hungry
wolf. Which of you was in the larder--come?’
‘I was, brother,’ said Dennis, pulling off his hat, and fumbling in
the crown. ‘There’s a matter of cold venison pasty somewhere or another
here, if that’ll do.’
‘Do!’ cried Hugh, seating himself on the pathway. ‘Bring it out! Quick!
Show a light here, and gather round! Let me sup in state, my lads! Ha ha
ha!’
Entering into his boisterous humour, for they all had drunk deeply, and
were as wild as he, they crowded about him, while two of their number
who had torches, held them up, one on either side of him, that his
banquet might not be despatched in the dark. Mr Dennis, having by this
time succeeded in extricating from his hat a great mass of pasty, which
had been wedged in so tightly that it was not easily got out, put it
before him; and Hugh, having borrowed a notched and jagged knife from
one of the company, fell to work upon it vigorously.
‘I should recommend you to swallow a little fire every day, about an
hour afore dinner, brother,’ said Dennis, after a pause. ‘It seems to
agree with you, and to stimulate your appetite.’
Hugh looked at him, and at the blackened faces by which he was
surrounded, and, stopping for a moment to flourish his knife above his
head, answered with a roar of laughter.
‘Keep order, there, will you?’ said Simon Tappertit.
‘Why, isn’t a man allowed to regale himself, noble captain,’ retorted
his lieutenant, parting the men who stood between them, with his knife,
that he might see him,--‘to regale himself a little bit after such work
as mine? What a hard captain! What a strict captain! What a tyrannical
captain! Ha ha ha!’
‘I wish one of you fellers would hold a bottle to his mouth to keep him
quiet,’ said Simon, ‘unless you want the military to be down upon us.’
‘And what if they are down upon us!’ retorted Hugh. ‘Who cares? Who’s
afraid? Let ‘em come, I say, let ‘em come. The more, the merrier. Give
me bold Barnaby at my side, and we two will settle the military, without
troubling any of you. Barnaby’s the man for the military. Barnaby’s
health!’
But as the majority of those present were by no means anxious for a
second engagement that night, being already weary and exhausted, they
sided with Mr Tappertit, and pressed him to make haste with his supper,
for they had already delayed too long. Knowing, even in the height of
his frenzy, that they incurred great danger by lingering so near the
scene of the late outrages, Hugh made an end of his meal without more
remonstrance, and rising, stepped up to Mr Tappertit, and smote him on
the back.
‘Now then,’ he cried, ‘I’m ready. There are brave birds inside this
cage, eh? Delicate birds,--tender, loving, little doves. I caged ‘em--I
caged ‘em--one more peep!’
He thrust the little man aside as he spoke, and mounting on the steps,
which were half let down, pulled down the blind by force, and stared
into the chaise like an ogre into his larder.
‘Ha ha ha! and did you scratch, and pinch, and struggle, pretty
mistress?’ he cried, as he grasped a little hand that sought in vain to
free itself from his grip: ‘you, so bright-eyed, and cherry-lipped, and
daintily made? But I love you better for it, mistress. Ay, I do. You
should stab me and welcome, so that it pleased you, and you had to
cure me afterwards. I love to see you proud and scornful. It makes you
handsomer than ever; and who so handsome as you at any time, my pretty
one!’
‘Come!’ said Mr Tappertit, who had waited during this speech with
considerable impatience. ‘There’s enough of that. Come down.’
The little hand seconded this admonition by thrusting Hugh’s great head
away with all its force, and drawing up the blind, amidst his noisy
laughter, and vows that he must have another look, for the last glimpse
of that sweet face had provoked him past all bearing. However, as the
suppressed impatience of the party now broke out into open murmurs,
he abandoned this design, and taking his seat upon the bar, contented
himself with tapping at the front windows of the carriage, and trying to
steal a glance inside; Mr Tappertit, mounting the steps and hanging on
by the door, issued his directions to the driver with a commanding
voice and attitude; the rest got up behind, or ran by the side of the
carriage, as they could; some, in imitation of Hugh, endeavoured to
see the face he had praised so highly, and were reminded of their
impertinence by hints from the cudgel of Mr Tappertit. Thus they pursued
their journey by circuitous and winding roads; preserving, except when
they halted to take breath, or to quarrel about the best way of reaching
London, pretty good order and tolerable silence.
In the mean time, Dolly--beautiful, bewitching, captivating little
Dolly--her hair dishevelled, her dress torn, her dark eyelashes wet with
tears, her bosom heaving--her face, now pale with fear, now crimsoned
with indignation--her whole self a hundred times more beautiful in
this heightened aspect than ever she had been before--vainly strove to
comfort Emma Haredale, and to impart to her the consolation of which she
stood in so much need herself. The soldiers were sure to come; they must
be rescued; it would be impossible to convey them through the streets
of London when they set the threats of their guards at defiance, and
shrieked to the passengers for help. If they did this when they
came into the more frequented ways, she was certain--she was quite
certain--they must be released. So poor Dolly said, and so poor Dolly
tried to think; but the invariable conclusion of all such arguments was,
that Dolly burst into tears; cried, as she wrung her hands, what would
they do or think, or who would comfort them, at home, at the Golden Key;
and sobbed most piteously.
Miss Haredale, whose feelings were usually of a quieter kind than
Dolly’s, and not so much upon the surface, was dreadfully alarmed, and
indeed had only just recovered from a swoon. She was very pale, and the
hand which Dolly held was quite cold; but she bade her, nevertheless,
remember that, under Providence, much must depend upon their own
discretion; that if they remained quiet and lulled the vigilance of the
ruffians into whose hands they had fallen, the chances of their being
able to procure assistance when they reached the town, were very much
increased; that unless society were quite unhinged, a hot pursuit must
be immediately commenced; and that her uncle, she might be sure, would
never rest until he had found them out and rescued them. But as she said
these latter words, the idea that he had fallen in a general massacre of
the Catholics that night--no very wild or improbable supposition after
what they had seen and undergone--struck her dumb; and, lost in the
horrors they had witnessed, and those they might be yet reserved for,
she sat incapable of thought, or speech, or outward show of grief: as
rigid, and almost as white and cold, as marble.
Oh, how many, many times, in that long ride, did Dolly think of her old
lover,--poor, fond, slighted Joe! How many, many times, did she recall
that night when she ran into his arms from the very man now projecting
his hateful gaze into the darkness where she sat, and leering through
the glass in monstrous admiration! And when she thought of Joe, and what
a brave fellow he was, and how he would have rode boldly up, and
dashed in among these villains now, yes, though they were double the
number--and here she clenched her little hand, and pressed her foot upon
the ground--the pride she felt for a moment in having won his heart,
faded in a burst of tears, and she sobbed more bitterly than ever.
As the night wore on, and they proceeded by ways which were quite
unknown to them--for they could recognise none of the objects of which
they sometimes caught a hurried glimpse--their fears increased; nor were
they without good foundation; it was not difficult for two beautiful
young women to find, in their being borne they knew not whither by a
band of daring villains who eyed them as some among these fellows did,
reasons for the worst alarm. When they at last entered London, by a
suburb with which they were wholly unacquainted, it was past midnight,
and the streets were dark and empty. Nor was this the worst, for the
carriage stopping in a lonely spot, Hugh suddenly opened the door,
jumped in, and took his seat between them.
It was in vain they cried for help. He put his arm about the neck of
each, and swore to stifle them with kisses if they were not as silent as
the grave.
‘I come here to keep you quiet,’ he said, ‘and that’s the means I shall
take. So don’t be quiet, pretty mistresses--make a noise--do--and I
shall like it all the better.’
They were proceeding at a rapid pace, and apparently with fewer
attendants than before, though it was so dark (the torches being
extinguished) that this was mere conjecture. They shrunk from his touch,
each into the farthest corner of the carriage; but shrink as Dolly
would, his arm encircled her waist, and held her fast. She neither cried
nor spoke, for terror and disgust deprived her of the power; but she
plucked at his hand as though she would die in the effort to disengage
herself; and crouching on the ground, with her head averted and held
down, repelled him with a strength she wondered at as much as he. The
carriage stopped again.
‘Lift this one out,’ said Hugh to the man who opened the door, as
he took Miss Haredale’s hand, and felt how heavily it fell. ‘She’s
fainted.’
‘So much the better,’ growled Dennis--it was that amiable gentleman.
‘She’s quiet. I always like ‘em to faint, unless they’re very tender and
composed.’
‘Can you take her by yourself?’ asked Hugh.
‘I don’t know till I try. I ought to be able to; I’ve lifted up a good
many in my time,’ said the hangman. ‘Up then! She’s no small weight,
brother; none of these here fine gals are. Up again! Now we have her.’
Having by this time hoisted the young lady into his arms, he staggered
off with his burden.
‘Look ye, pretty bird,’ said Hugh, drawing Dolly towards him. ‘Remember
what I told you--a kiss for every cry. Scream, if you love me, darling.
Scream once, mistress. Pretty mistress, only once, if you love me.’
Thrusting his face away with all her force, and holding down her head,
Dolly submitted to be carried out of the chaise, and borne after Miss
Haredale into a miserable cottage, where Hugh, after hugging her to his
breast, set her gently down upon the floor.
Poor Dolly! Do what she would, she only looked the better for it, and
tempted them the more. When her eyes flashed angrily, and her ripe lips
slightly parted, to give her rapid breathing vent, who could resist it?
When she wept and sobbed as though her heart would break, and bemoaned
her miseries in the sweetest voice that ever fell upon a listener’s ear,
who could be insensible to the little winning pettishness which now
and then displayed itself, even in the sincerity and earnestness of her
grief? When, forgetful for a moment of herself, as she was now, she fell
on her knees beside her friend, and bent over her, and laid her cheek
to hers, and put her arms about her, what mortal eyes could have avoided
wandering to the delicate bodice, the streaming hair, the neglected
dress, the perfect abandonment and unconsciousness of the blooming
little beauty? Who could look on and see her lavish caresses and
endearments, and not desire to be in Emma Haredale’s place; to be either
her or Dolly; either the hugging or the hugged? Not Hugh. Not Dennis.
‘I tell you what it is, young women,’ said Mr Dennis, ‘I an’t much of a
lady’s man myself, nor am I a party in the present business further than
lending a willing hand to my friends: but if I see much more of this
here sort of thing, I shall become a principal instead of a accessory. I
tell you candid.’
‘Why have you brought us here?’ said Emma. ‘Are we to be murdered?’
‘Murdered!’ cried Dennis, sitting down upon a stool, and regarding her
with great favour. ‘Why, my dear, who’d murder sich chickabiddies as
you? If you was to ask me, now, whether you was brought here to be
married, there might be something in it.’
And here he exchanged a grin with Hugh, who removed his eyes from Dolly
for the purpose.
‘No, no,’ said Dennis, ‘there’ll be no murdering, my pets. Nothing of
that sort. Quite the contrairy.’
‘You are an older man than your companion, sir,’ said Emma, trembling.
‘Have you no pity for us? Do you not consider that we are women?’
‘I do indeed, my dear,’ retorted Dennis. ‘It would be very hard not to,
with two such specimens afore my eyes. Ha ha! Oh yes, I consider that.
We all consider that, miss.’
He shook his head waggishly, leered at Hugh again, and laughed very
much, as if he had said a noble thing, and rather thought he was coming
out.
‘There’ll be no murdering, my dear. Not a bit on it. I tell you what
though, brother,’ said Dennis, cocking his hat for the convenience
of scratching his head, and looking gravely at Hugh, ‘it’s worthy of
notice, as a proof of the amazing equalness and dignity of our law, that
it don’t make no distinction between men and women. I’ve heerd the judge
say, sometimes, to a highwayman or housebreaker as had tied the ladies
neck and heels--you’ll excuse me making mention of it, my darlings--and
put ‘em in a cellar, that he showed no consideration to women. Now, I
say that there judge didn’t know his business, brother; and that if
I had been that there highwayman or housebreaker, I should have made
answer: “What are you a talking of, my lord? I showed the women as much
consideration as the law does, and what more would you have me do?” If
you was to count up in the newspapers the number of females as have
been worked off in this here city alone, in the last ten year,’ said Mr
Dennis thoughtfully, ‘you’d be surprised at the total--quite amazed, you
would. There’s a dignified and equal thing; a beautiful thing! But we’ve
no security for its lasting. Now that they’ve begun to favour these here
Papists, I shouldn’t wonder if they went and altered even THAT, one of
these days. Upon my soul, I shouldn’t.’
The subject, perhaps from being of too exclusive and professional a
nature, failed to interest Hugh as much as his friend had anticipated.
But he had no time to pursue it, for at this crisis Mr Tappertit entered
precipitately; at sight of whom Dolly uttered a scream of joy, and
fairly threw herself into his arms.
‘I knew it, I was sure of it!’ cried Dolly. ‘My dear father’s at the
door. Thank God, thank God! Bless you, Sim. Heaven bless you for this!’
Simon Tappertit, who had at first implicitly believed that the
locksmith’s daughter, unable any longer to suppress her secret passion
for himself, was about to give it full vent in its intensity, and to
declare that she was his for ever, looked extremely foolish when she
said these words;--the more so, as they were received by Hugh and Dennis
with a loud laugh, which made her draw back, and regard him with a fixed
and earnest look.
‘Miss Haredale,’ said Sim, after a very awkward silence, ‘I hope
you’re as comfortable as circumstances will permit of. Dolly Varden,
my darling--my own, my lovely one--I hope YOU’RE pretty comfortable
likewise.’
Poor little Dolly! She saw how it was; hid her face in her hands; and
sobbed more bitterly than ever.
‘You meet in me, Miss V.,’ said Simon, laying his hand upon his breast,
‘not a ‘prentice, not a workman, not a slave, not the wictim of your
father’s tyrannical behaviour, but the leader of a great people, the
captain of a noble band, in which these gentlemen are, as I may say,
corporals and serjeants. You behold in me, not a private individual, but
a public character; not a mender of locks, but a healer of the wounds of
his unhappy country. Dolly V., sweet Dolly V., for how many years have
I looked forward to this present meeting! For how many years has it been
my intention to exalt and ennoble you! I redeem it. Behold in me, your
husband. Yes, beautiful Dolly--charmer--enslaver--S. Tappertit is all
your own!’
As he said these words he advanced towards her. Dolly retreated till she
could go no farther, and then sank down upon the floor. Thinking it very
possible that this might be maiden modesty, Simon essayed to raise her;
on which Dolly, goaded to desperation, wound her hands in his hair, and
crying out amidst her tears that he was a dreadful little wretch, and
always had been, shook, and pulled, and beat him, until he was fain to
call for help, most lustily. Hugh had never admired her half so much as
at that moment.
‘She’s in an excited state to-night,’ said Simon, as he smoothed his
rumpled feathers, ‘and don’t know when she’s well off. Let her be by
herself till to-morrow, and that’ll bring her down a little. Carry her
into the next house!’
Hugh had her in his arms directly. It might be that Mr Tappertit’s heart
was really softened by her distress, or it might be that he felt it in
some degree indecorous that his intended bride should be struggling in
the grasp of another man. He commanded him, on second thoughts, to put
her down again, and looked moodily on as she flew to Miss Haredale’s
side, and clinging to her dress, hid her flushed face in its folds.
‘They shall remain here together till to-morrow,’ said Simon, who had
now quite recovered his dignity--‘till to-morrow. Come away!’
‘Ay!’ cried Hugh. ‘Come away, captain. Ha ha ha!’
‘What are you laughing at?’ demanded Simon sternly.
‘Nothing, captain, nothing,’ Hugh rejoined; and as he spoke, and clapped
his hand upon the shoulder of the little man, he laughed again, for some
unknown reason, with tenfold violence.
Mr Tappertit surveyed him from head to foot with lofty scorn (this only
made him laugh the more), and turning to the prisoners, said:
‘You’ll take notice, ladies, that this place is well watched on every
side, and that the least noise is certain to be attended with unpleasant
consequences. You’ll hear--both of you--more of our intentions
to-morrow. In the mean time, don’t show yourselves at the window, or
appeal to any of the people you may see pass it; for if you do, it’ll
be known directly that you come from a Catholic house, and all the
exertions our men can make, may not be able to save your lives.’
With this last caution, which was true enough, he turned to the door,
followed by Hugh and Dennis. They paused for a moment, going out, to
look at them clasped in each other’s arms, and then left the cottage;
fastening the door, and setting a good watch upon it, and indeed all
round the house.
‘I say,’ growled Dennis, as they walked away in company, ‘that’s a
dainty pair. Muster Gashford’s one is as handsome as the other, eh?’
‘Hush!’ said Hugh, hastily. ‘Don’t you mention names. It’s a bad habit.’
‘I wouldn’t like to be HIM, then (as you don’t like names), when he
breaks it out to her; that’s all,’ said Dennis. ‘She’s one of them fine,
black-eyed, proud gals, as I wouldn’t trust at such times with a knife
too near ‘em. I’ve seen some of that sort, afore now. I recollect one
that was worked off, many year ago--and there was a gentleman in that
case too--that says to me, with her lip a trembling, but her hand as
steady as ever I see one: “Dennis, I’m near my end, but if I had a
dagger in these fingers, and he was within my reach, I’d strike him dead
afore me;”--ah, she did--and she’d have done it too!’
Strike who dead?’ demanded Hugh.
‘How should I know, brother?’ answered Dennis. ‘SHE never said; not
she.’
Hugh looked, for a moment, as though he would have made some further
inquiry into this incoherent recollection; but Simon Tappertit, who had
been meditating deeply, gave his thoughts a new direction.
‘Hugh!’ said Sim. ‘You have done well to-day. You shall be rewarded.
So have you, Dennis.--There’s no young woman YOU want to carry off, is
there?’
‘N--no,’ returned that gentleman, stroking his grizzly beard, which was
some two inches long. ‘None in partickler, I think.’
‘Very good,’ said Sim; ‘then we’ll find some other way of making it up
to you. As to you, old boy’--he turned to Hugh--‘you shall have Miggs
(her that I promised you, you know) within three days. Mind. I pass my
word for it.’
Hugh thanked him heartily; and as he did so, his laughing fit returned
with such violence that he was obliged to hold his side with one hand,
and to lean with the other on the shoulder of his small captain, without
whose support he would certainly have rolled upon the ground.
Chapter 60
The three worthies turned their faces towards The Boot, with the
intention of passing the night in that place of rendezvous, and of
seeking the repose they so much needed in the shelter of their old
den; for now that the mischief and destruction they had purposed were
achieved, and their prisoners were safely bestowed for the night, they
began to be conscious of exhaustion, and to feel the wasting effects of
the madness which had led to such deplorable results.
Notwithstanding the lassitude and fatigue which oppressed him now, in
common with his two companions, and indeed with all who had taken an
active share in that night’s work, Hugh’s boisterous merriment broke out
afresh whenever he looked at Simon Tappertit, and vented itself--much to
that gentleman’s indignation--in such shouts of laughter as bade fair to
bring the watch upon them, and involve them in a skirmish, to which in
their present worn-out condition they might prove by no means equal.
Even Mr Dennis, who was not at all particular on the score of gravity
or dignity, and who had a great relish for his young friend’s eccentric
humours, took occasion to remonstrate with him on this imprudent
behaviour, which he held to be a species of suicide, tantamount to a
man’s working himself off without being overtaken by the law, than which
he could imagine nothing more ridiculous or impertinent.
Not abating one jot of his noisy mirth for these remonstrances, Hugh
reeled along between them, having an arm of each, until they hove in
sight of The Boot, and were within a field or two of that convenient
tavern. He happened by great good luck to have roared and shouted
himself into silence by this time. They were proceeding onward without
noise, when a scout who had been creeping about the ditches all night,
to warn any stragglers from encroaching further on what was now such
dangerous ground, peeped cautiously from his hiding-place, and called to
them to stop.
‘Stop! and why?’ said Hugh.
Because (the scout replied) the house was filled with constables and
soldiers; having been surprised that afternoon. The inmates had fled
or been taken into custody, he could not say which. He had prevented a
great many people from approaching nearer, and he believed they had
gone to the markets and such places to pass the night. He had seen the
distant fires, but they were all out now. He had heard the people who
passed and repassed, speaking of them too, and could report that the
prevailing opinion was one of apprehension and dismay. He had not heard
a word of Barnaby--didn’t even know his name--but it had been said in
his hearing that some man had been taken and carried off to Newgate.
Whether this was true or false, he could not affirm.
The three took counsel together, on hearing this, and debated what it
might be best to do. Hugh, deeming it possible that Barnaby was in the
hands of the soldiers, and at that moment under detention at The Boot,
was for advancing stealthily, and firing the house; but his companions,
who objected to such rash measures unless they had a crowd at their
backs, represented that if Barnaby were taken he had assuredly been
removed to a stronger prison; they would never have dreamed of keeping
him all night in a place so weak and open to attack. Yielding to this
reasoning, and to their persuasions, Hugh consented to turn back and
to repair to Fleet Market; for which place, it seemed, a few of their
boldest associates had shaped their course, on receiving the same
intelligence.
Feeling their strength recruited and their spirits roused, now that
there was a new necessity for action, they hurried away, quite forgetful
of the fatigue under which they had been sinking but a few minutes
before; and soon arrived at their new place of destination.
Fleet Market, at that time, was a long irregular row of wooden sheds
and penthouses, occupying the centre of what is now called Farringdon
Street. They were jumbled together in a most unsightly fashion, in the
middle of the road; to the great obstruction of the thoroughfare and the
annoyance of passengers, who were fain to make their way, as they best
could, among carts, baskets, barrows, trucks, casks, bulks, and benches,
and to jostle with porters, hucksters, waggoners, and a motley crowd
of buyers, sellers, pick-pockets, vagrants, and idlers. The air was
perfumed with the stench of rotten leaves and faded fruit; the refuse of
the butchers’ stalls, and offal and garbage of a hundred kinds. It
was indispensable to most public conveniences in those days, that they
should be public nuisances likewise; and Fleet Market maintained the
principle to admiration.
To this place, perhaps because its sheds and baskets were a tolerable
substitute for beds, or perhaps because it afforded the means of a hasty
barricade in case of need, many of the rioters had straggled, not only
that night, but for two or three nights before. It was now broad day,
but the morning being cold, a group of them were gathered round a fire
in a public-house, drinking hot purl, and smoking pipes, and planning
new schemes for to-morrow.
Hugh and his two friends being known to most of these men, were received
with signal marks of approbation, and inducted into the most honourable
seats. The room-door was closed and fastened to keep intruders at a
distance, and then they proceeded to exchange news.
‘The soldiers have taken possession of The Boot, I hear,’ said Hugh.
‘Who knows anything about it?’
Several cried that they did; but the majority of the company having
been engaged in the assault upon the Warren, and all present having been
concerned in one or other of the night’s expeditions, it proved that
they knew no more than Hugh himself; having been merely warned by each
other, or by the scout, and knowing nothing of their own knowledge.
‘We left a man on guard there to-day,’ said Hugh, looking round him,
‘who is not here. You know who it is--Barnaby, who brought the soldier
down, at Westminster. Has any man seen or heard of him?’
They shook their heads, and murmured an answer in the negative, as each
man looked round and appealed to his fellow; when a noise was heard
without, and a man was heard to say that he wanted Hugh--that he must
see Hugh.
‘He is but one man,’ cried Hugh to those who kept the door; ‘let him
come in.’
‘Ay, ay!’ muttered the others. ‘Let him come in. Let him come in.’
The door was accordingly unlocked and opened. A one-armed man, with
his head and face tied up with a bloody cloth, as though he had been
severely beaten, his clothes torn, and his remaining hand grasping a
thick stick, rushed in among them, and panting for breath, demanded
which was Hugh.
‘Here he is,’ replied the person he inquired for. ‘I am Hugh. What do
you want with me?’
‘I have a message for you,’ said the man. ‘You know one Barnaby.’
‘What of him? Did he send the message?’
‘Yes. He’s taken. He’s in one of the strong cells in Newgate. He
defended himself as well as he could, but was overpowered by numbers.
That’s his message.’
‘When did you see him?’ asked Hugh, hastily.
‘On his way to prison, where he was taken by a party of soldiers. They
took a by-road, and not the one we expected. I was one of the few who
tried to rescue him, and he called to me, and told me to tell Hugh where
he was. We made a good struggle, though it failed. Look here!’
He pointed to his dress and to his bandaged head, and still panting for
breath, glanced round the room; then faced towards Hugh again.
‘I know you by sight,’ he said, ‘for I was in the crowd on Friday, and
on Saturday, and yesterday, but I didn’t know your name. You’re a bold
fellow, I know. So is he. He fought like a lion tonight, but it was of
no use. I did my best, considering that I want this limb.’
Again he glanced inquisitively round the room or seemed to do so, for
his face was nearly hidden by the bandage--and again facing sharply
towards Hugh, grasped his stick as if he half expected to be set upon,
and stood on the defensive.
If he had any such apprehension, however, he was speedily reassured by
the demeanour of all present. None thought of the bearer of the tidings.
He was lost in the news he brought. Oaths, threats, and execrations,
were vented on all sides. Some cried that if they bore this tamely,
another day would see them all in jail; some, that they should have
rescued the other prisoners, and this would not have happened. One man
cried in a loud voice, ‘Who’ll follow me to Newgate!’ and there was a
loud shout and general rush towards the door.
But Hugh and Dennis stood with their backs against it, and kept them
back, until the clamour had so far subsided that their voices could be
heard, when they called to them together that to go now, in broad day,
would be madness; and that if they waited until night and arranged a
plan of attack, they might release, not only their own companions, but
all the prisoners, and burn down the jail.
‘Not that jail alone,’ cried Hugh, ‘but every jail in London. They shall
have no place to put their prisoners in. We’ll burn them all down; make
bonfires of them every one! Here!’ he cried, catching at the hangman’s
hand. ‘Let all who’re men here, join with us. Shake hands upon it.
Barnaby out of jail, and not a jail left standing! Who joins?’
Every man there. And they swore a great oath to release their friends
from Newgate next night; to force the doors and burn the jail; or perish
in the fire themselves.
Chapter 61
On that same night--events so crowd upon each other in convulsed and
distracted times, that more than the stirring incidents of a whole life
often become compressed into the compass of four-and-twenty hours--on
that same night, Mr Haredale, having strongly bound his prisoner,
with the assistance of the sexton, and forced him to mount his horse,
conducted him to Chigwell; bent upon procuring a conveyance to London
from that place, and carrying him at once before a justice. The
disturbed state of the town would be, he knew, a sufficient reason for
demanding the murderer’s committal to prison before daybreak, as no man
could answer for the security of any of the watch-houses or ordinary
places of detention; and to convey a prisoner through the streets when
the mob were again abroad, would not only be a task of great danger and
hazard, but would be to challenge an attempt at rescue. Directing the
sexton to lead the horse, he walked close by the murderer’s side, and in
this order they reached the village about the middle of the night.
The people were all awake and up, for they were fearful of being burnt
in their beds, and sought to comfort and assure each other by watching
in company. A few of the stoutest-hearted were armed and gathered in a
body on the green. To these, who knew him well, Mr Haredale addressed
himself, briefly narrating what had happened, and beseeching them to aid
in conveying the criminal to London before the dawn of day.
But not a man among them dared to help him by so much as the motion of
a finger. The rioters, in their passage through the village, had
menaced with their fiercest vengeance, any person who should aid in
extinguishing the fire, or render the least assistance to him, or any
Catholic whomsoever. Their threats extended to their lives and all they
possessed. They were assembled for their own protection, and could not
endanger themselves by lending any aid to him. This they told him, not
without hesitation and regret, as they kept aloof in the moonlight and
glanced fearfully at the ghostly rider, who, with his head drooping on
his breast and his hat slouched down upon his brow, neither moved nor
spoke.
Finding it impossible to persuade them, and indeed hardly knowing how
to do so after what they had seen of the fury of the crowd, Mr Haredale
besought them that at least they would leave him free to act for
himself, and would suffer him to take the only chaise and pair of
horses that the place afforded. This was not acceded to without some
difficulty, but in the end they told him to do what he would, and go
away from them in heaven’s name.
Leaving the sexton at the horse’s bridle, he drew out the chaise
with his own hands, and would have harnessed the horses, but that the
post-boy of the village--a soft-hearted, good-for-nothing, vagabond kind
of fellow--was moved by his earnestness and passion, and, throwing down
a pitchfork with which he was armed, swore that the rioters might cut
him into mincemeat if they liked, but he would not stand by and see
an honest gentleman who had done no wrong, reduced to such extremity,
without doing what he could to help him. Mr Haredale shook him warmly
by the hand, and thanked him from his heart. In five minutes’ time the
chaise was ready, and this good scapegrace in his saddle. The murderer
was put inside, the blinds were drawn up, the sexton took his seat upon
the bar, Mr Haredale mounted his horse and rode close beside the door;
and so they started in the dead of night, and in profound silence, for
London.
The consternation was so extreme that even the horses which had escaped
the flames at the Warren, could find no friends to shelter them. They
passed them on the road, browsing on the stunted grass; and the driver
told them, that the poor beasts had wandered to the village first, but
had been driven away, lest they should bring the vengeance of the crowd
on any of the inhabitants.
Nor was this feeling confined to such small places, where the people
were timid, ignorant, and unprotected. When they came near London they
met, in the grey light of morning, more than one poor Catholic family
who, terrified by the threats and warnings of their neighbours, were
quitting the city on foot, and who told them they could hire no cart or
horse for the removal of their goods, and had been compelled to leave
them behind, at the mercy of the crowd. Near Mile End they passed a
house, the master of which, a Catholic gentleman of small means, having
hired a waggon to remove his furniture by midnight, had had it all
brought down into the street, to wait the vehicle’s arrival, and save
time in the packing. But the man with whom he made the bargain, alarmed
by the fires that night, and by the sight of the rioters passing his
door, had refused to keep it: and the poor gentleman, with his wife and
servant and their little children, were sitting trembling among their
goods in the open street, dreading the arrival of day and not knowing
where to turn or what to do.
It was the same, they heard, with the public conveyances. The panic
was so great that the mails and stage-coaches were afraid to carry
passengers who professed the obnoxious religion. If the drivers knew
them, or they admitted that they held that creed, they would not take
them, no, though they offered large sums; and yesterday, people had
been afraid to recognise Catholic acquaintance in the streets, lest
they should be marked by spies, and burnt out, as it was called, in
consequence. One mild old man--a priest, whose chapel was destroyed;
a very feeble, patient, inoffensive creature--who was trudging away,
alone, designing to walk some distance from town, and then try his
fortune with the coaches, told Mr Haredale that he feared he might not
find a magistrate who would have the hardihood to commit a prisoner to
jail, on his complaint. But notwithstanding these discouraging accounts
they went on, and reached the Mansion House soon after sunrise.
Mr Haredale threw himself from his horse, but he had no need to knock
at the door, for it was already open, and there stood upon the step
a portly old man, with a very red, or rather purple face, who with an
anxious expression of countenance, was remonstrating with some unseen
personage upstairs, while the porter essayed to close the door by
degrees and get rid of him. With the intense impatience and excitement
natural to one in his condition, Mr Haredale thrust himself forward and
was about to speak, when the fat old gentleman interposed:
‘My good sir,’ said he, ‘pray let me get an answer. This is the sixth
time I have been here. I was here five times yesterday. My house is
threatened with destruction. It is to be burned down to-night, and was
to have been last night, but they had other business on their hands.
Pray let me get an answer.’
‘My good sir,’ returned Mr Haredale, shaking his head, ‘my house is
burned to the ground. But heaven forbid that yours should be. Get your
answer. Be brief, in mercy to me.’
‘Now, you hear this, my lord?’--said the old gentleman, calling up
the stairs, to where the skirt of a dressing-gown fluttered on the
landing-place. ‘Here is a gentleman here, whose house was actually burnt
down last night.’
‘Dear me, dear me,’ replied a testy voice, ‘I am very sorry for it, but
what am I to do? I can’t build it up again. The chief magistrate of the
city can’t go and be a rebuilding of people’s houses, my good sir. Stuff
and nonsense!’
‘But the chief magistrate of the city can prevent people’s houses from
having any need to be rebuilt, if the chief magistrate’s a man, and
not a dummy--can’t he, my lord?’ cried the old gentleman in a choleric
manner.
‘You are disrespectable, sir,’ said the Lord Mayor--‘leastways,
disrespectful I mean.’
‘Disrespectful, my lord!’ returned the old gentleman. ‘I was respectful
five times yesterday. I can’t be respectful for ever. Men can’t stand
on being respectful when their houses are going to be burnt over their
heads, with them in ‘em. What am I to do, my lord? AM I to have any
protection!’
‘I told you yesterday, sir,’ said the Lord Mayor, ‘that you might have
an alderman in your house, if you could get one to come.’
‘What the devil’s the good of an alderman?’ returned the choleric old
gentleman.
‘--To awe the crowd, sir,’ said the Lord Mayor.
‘Oh Lord ha’ mercy!’ whimpered the old gentleman, as he wiped his
forehead in a state of ludicrous distress, ‘to think of sending an
alderman to awe a crowd! Why, my lord, if they were even so many babies,
fed on mother’s milk, what do you think they’d care for an alderman!
Will YOU come?’
‘I!’ said the Lord Mayor, most emphatically: ‘Certainly not.’
‘Then what,’ returned the old gentleman, ‘what am I to do? Am I a
citizen of England? Am I to have the benefit of the laws? Am I to have
any return for the King’s taxes?’
‘I don’t know, I am sure,’ said the Lord Mayor; ‘what a pity it is
you’re a Catholic! Why couldn’t you be a Protestant, and then you
wouldn’t have got yourself into such a mess? I’m sure I don’t know
what’s to be done.--There are great people at the bottom of these
riots.--Oh dear me, what a thing it is to be a public character!--You
must look in again in the course of the day.--Would a javelin-man
do?--Or there’s Philips the constable,--HE’S disengaged,--he’s not very
old for a man at his time of life, except in his legs, and if you put
him up at a window he’d look quite young by candle-light, and might
frighten ‘em very much.--Oh dear!--well!--we’ll see about it.’
‘Stop!’ cried Mr Haredale, pressing the door open as the porter strove
to shut it, and speaking rapidly, ‘My Lord Mayor, I beg you not to go
away. I have a man here, who committed a murder eight-and-twenty years
ago. Half-a-dozen words from me, on oath, will justify you in committing
him to prison for re-examination. I only seek, just now, to have him
consigned to a place of safety. The least delay may involve his being
rescued by the rioters.’
‘Oh dear me!’ cried the Lord Mayor. ‘God bless my soul--and body--oh
Lor!--well I!--there are great people at the bottom of these riots, you
know.--You really mustn’t.’
‘My lord,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘the murdered gentleman was my brother; I
succeeded to his inheritance; there were not wanting slanderous tongues
at that time, to whisper that the guilt of this most foul and cruel deed
was mine--mine, who loved him, as he knows, in Heaven, dearly. The time
has come, after all these years of gloom and misery, for avenging him,
and bringing to light a crime so artful and so devilish that it has no
parallel. Every second’s delay on your part loosens this man’s bloody
hands again, and leads to his escape. My lord, I charge you hear me, and
despatch this matter on the instant.’
‘Oh dear me!’ cried the chief magistrate; ‘these an’t business
hours, you know--I wonder at you--how ungentlemanly it is of you--you
mustn’t--you really mustn’t.--And I suppose you are a Catholic too?’
‘I am,’ said Mr Haredale.
‘God bless my soul, I believe people turn Catholics a’purpose to vex
and worrit me,’ cried the Lord Mayor. ‘I wish you wouldn’t come here;
they’ll be setting the Mansion House afire next, and we shall have you
to thank for it. You must lock your prisoner up, sir--give him to a
watchman--and--call again at a proper time. Then we’ll see about it!’
Before Mr Haredale could answer, the sharp closing of a door and drawing
of its bolts, gave notice that the Lord Mayor had retreated to his
bedroom, and that further remonstrance would be unavailing. The two
clients retreated likewise, and the porter shut them out into the
street.
‘That’s the way he puts me off,’ said the old gentleman, ‘I can get no
redress and no help. What are you going to do, sir?’
‘To try elsewhere,’ answered Mr Haredale, who was by this time on
horseback.
‘I feel for you, I assure you--and well I may, for we are in a common
cause,’ said the old gentleman. ‘I may not have a house to offer you
to-night; let me tender it while I can. On second thoughts though,’ he
added, putting up a pocket-book he had produced while speaking, ‘I’ll
not give you a card, for if it was found upon you, it might get you
into trouble. Langdale--that’s my name--vintner and distiller--Holborn
Hill--you’re heartily welcome, if you’ll come.’
Mr Haredale bowed, and rode off, close beside the chaise as before;
determining to repair to the house of Sir John Fielding, who had the
reputation of being a bold and active magistrate, and fully resolved, in
case the rioters should come upon them, to do execution on the murderer
with his own hands, rather than suffer him to be released.
They arrived at the magistrate’s dwelling, however, without molestation
(for the mob, as we have seen, were then intent on deeper schemes), and
knocked at the door. As it had been pretty generally rumoured that Sir
John was proscribed by the rioters, a body of thief-takers had been
keeping watch in the house all night. To one of them Mr Haredale stated
his business, which appearing to the man of sufficient moment to warrant
his arousing the justice, procured him an immediate audience.
No time was lost in committing the murderer to Newgate; then a new
building, recently completed at a vast expense, and considered to be of
enormous strength. The warrant being made out, three of the thief-takers
bound him afresh (he had been struggling, it seemed, in the chaise, and
had loosened his manacles); gagged him lest they should meet with any
of the mob, and he should call to them for help; and seated themselves,
along with him, in the carriage. These men being all well armed, made
a formidable escort; but they drew up the blinds again, as though the
carriage were empty, and directed Mr Haredale to ride forward, that he
might not attract attention by seeming to belong to it.
The wisdom of this proceeding was sufficiently obvious, for as they
hurried through the city they passed among several groups of men, who,
if they had not supposed the chaise to be quite empty, would certainly
have stopped it. But those within keeping quite close, and the driver
tarrying to be asked no questions, they reached the prison without
interruption, and, once there, had him out, and safe within its gloomy
walls, in a twinkling.
With eager eyes and strained attention, Mr Haredale saw him chained, and
locked and barred up in his cell. Nay, when he had left the jail, and
stood in the free street, without, he felt the iron plates upon the
doors, with his hands, and drew them over the stone wall, to assure
himself that it was real; and to exult in its being so strong, and
rough, and cold. It was not until he turned his back upon the jail, and
glanced along the empty streets, so lifeless and quiet in the bright
morning, that he felt the weight upon his heart; that he knew he was
tortured by anxiety for those he had left at home; and that home itself
was but another bead in the long rosary of his regrets.
Chapter 62
The prisoner, left to himself, sat down upon his bedstead: and resting
his elbows on his knees, and his chin upon his hands, remained in
that attitude for hours. It would be hard to say, of what nature his
reflections were. They had no distinctness, and, saving for some
flashes now and then, no reference to his condition or the train of
circumstances by which it had been brought about. The cracks in the
pavement of his cell, the chinks in the wall where stone was joined
to stone, the bars in the window, the iron ring upon the floor,--such
things as these, subsiding strangely into one another, and awakening an
indescribable kind of interest and amusement, engrossed his whole mind;
and although at the bottom of his every thought there was an uneasy
sense of guilt, and dread of death, he felt no more than that vague
consciousness of it, which a sleeper has of pain. It pursues him through
his dreams, gnaws at the heart of all his fancied pleasures, robs the
banquet of its taste, music of its sweetness, makes happiness itself
unhappy, and yet is no bodily sensation, but a phantom without shape,
or form, or visible presence; pervading everything, but having no
existence; recognisable everywhere, but nowhere seen, or touched, or met
with face to face, until the sleep is past, and waking agony returns.
After a long time the door of his cell opened. He looked up; saw the
blind man enter; and relapsed into his former position.
Guided by his breathing, the visitor advanced to where he sat; and
stopping beside him, and stretching out his hand to assure himself that
he was right, remained, for a good space, silent.
‘This is bad, Rudge. This is bad,’ he said at length.
The prisoner shuffled with his feet upon the ground in turning his body
from him, but made no other answer.
‘How were you taken?’ he asked. ‘And where? You never told me more than
half your secret. No matter; I know it now. How was it, and where, eh?’
he asked again, coming still nearer to him.
‘At Chigwell,’ said the other.
‘At Chigwell! How came you there?’
‘Because I went there to avoid the man I stumbled on,’ he answered.
‘Because I was chased and driven there, by him and Fate. Because I was
urged to go there, by something stronger than my own will. When I found
him watching in the house she used to live in, night after night, I knew
I never could escape him--never! and when I heard the Bell--’
He shivered; muttered that it was very cold; paced quickly up and down
the narrow cell; and sitting down again, fell into his old posture.
‘You were saying,’ said the blind man, after another pause, ‘that when
you heard the Bell--’
‘Let it be, will you?’ he retorted in a hurried voice. ‘It hangs there
yet.’
The blind man turned a wistful and inquisitive face towards him, but he
continued to speak, without noticing him.
‘I went to Chigwell, in search of the mob. I have been so hunted and
beset by this man, that I knew my only hope of safety lay in joining
them. They had gone on before; I followed them when it left off.’
‘When what left off?’
‘The Bell. They had quitted the place. I hoped that some of them might
be still lingering among the ruins, and was searching for them when
I heard--’ he drew a long breath, and wiped his forehead with his
sleeve--‘his voice.’
‘Saying what?’
‘No matter what. I don’t know. I was then at the foot of the turret,
where I did the--’
‘Ay,’ said the blind man, nodding his head with perfect composure, ‘I
understand.’
‘I climbed the stair, or so much of it as was left; meaning to hide till
he had gone. But he heard me; and followed almost as soon as I set foot
upon the ashes.’
‘You might have hidden in the wall, and thrown him down, or stabbed
him,’ said the blind man.
‘Might I? Between that man and me, was one who led him on--I saw it,
though he did not--and raised above his head a bloody hand. It was in
the room above that HE and I stood glaring at each other on the night of
the murder, and before he fell he raised his hand like that, and fixed
his eyes on me. I knew the chase would end there.’
‘You have a strong fancy,’ said the blind man, with a smile.
‘Strengthen yours with blood, and see what it will come to.’
He groaned, and rocked himself, and looking up for the first time, said,
in a low, hollow voice:
‘Eight-and-twenty years! Eight-and-twenty years! He has never changed
in all that time, never grown older, nor altered in the least degree.
He has been before me in the dark night, and the broad sunny day; in the
twilight, the moonlight, the sunlight, the light of fire, and lamp,
and candle; and in the deepest gloom. Always the same! In company, in
solitude, on land, on shipboard; sometimes leaving me alone for months,
and sometimes always with me. I have seen him, at sea, come gliding in
the dead of night along the bright reflection of the moon in the calm
water; and I have seen him, on quays and market-places, with his hand
uplifted, towering, the centre of a busy crowd, unconscious of the
terrible form that had its silent stand among them. Fancy! Are you real?
Am I? Are these iron fetters, riveted on me by the smith’s hammer, or
are they fancies I can shatter at a blow?’
The blind man listened in silence.
‘Fancy! Do I fancy that I killed him? Do I fancy that as I left the
chamber where he lay, I saw the face of a man peeping from a dark door,
who plainly showed me by his fearful looks that he suspected what I
had done? Do I remember that I spoke fairly to him--that I drew
nearer--nearer yet--with the hot knife in my sleeve? Do I fancy how HE
died? Did he stagger back into the angle of the wall into which I had
hemmed him, and, bleeding inwardly, stand, not fall, a corpse before
me? Did I see him, for an instant, as I see you now, erect and on his
feet--but dead!’
The blind man, who knew that he had risen, motioned him to sit down
again upon his bedstead; but he took no notice of the gesture.
‘It was then I thought, for the first time, of fastening the murder upon
him. It was then I dressed him in my clothes, and dragged him down
the back-stairs to the piece of water. Do I remember listening to the
bubbles that came rising up when I had rolled him in? Do I remember
wiping the water from my face, and because the body splashed it there,
in its descent, feeling as if it MUST be blood?
‘Did I go home when I had done? And oh, my God! how long it took to do!
Did I stand before my wife, and tell her? Did I see her fall upon the
ground; and, when I stooped to raise her, did she thrust me back with a
force that cast me off as if I had been a child, staining the hand with
which she clasped my wrist? Is THAT fancy?
‘Did she go down upon her knees, and call on Heaven to witness that she
and her unborn child renounced me from that hour; and did she, in words
so solemn that they turned me cold--me, fresh from the horrors my own
hands had made--warn me to fly while there was time; for though she
would be silent, being my wretched wife, she would not shelter me? Did I
go forth that night, abjured of God and man, and anchored deep in hell,
to wander at my cable’s length about the earth, and surely be drawn down
at last?’
‘Why did you return? said the blind man.
‘Why is blood red? I could no more help it, than I could live without
breath. I struggled against the impulse, but I was drawn back, through
every difficult and adverse circumstance, as by a mighty engine. Nothing
could stop me. The day and hour were none of my choice. Sleeping and
waking, I had been among the old haunts for years--had visited my own
grave. Why did I come back? Because this jail was gaping for me, and he
stood beckoning at the door.’
‘You were not known?’ said the blind man.
‘I was a man who had been twenty-two years dead. No. I was not known.’
‘You should have kept your secret better.’
‘MY secret? MINE? It was a secret, any breath of air could whisper at
its will. The stars had it in their twinkling, the water in its flowing,
the leaves in their rustling, the seasons in their return. It lurked
in strangers’ faces, and their voices. Everything had lips on which it
always trembled.--MY secret!’
‘It was revealed by your own act at any rate,’ said the blind man.
‘The act was not mine. I did it, but it was not mine. I was forced
at times to wander round, and round, and round that spot. If you had
chained me up when the fit was on me, I should have broken away, and
gone there. As truly as the loadstone draws iron towards it, so he,
lying at the bottom of his grave, could draw me near him when he would.
Was that fancy? Did I like to go there, or did I strive and wrestle with
the power that forced me?’
The blind man shrugged his shoulders, and smiled incredulously. The
prisoner again resumed his old attitude, and for a long time both were
mute.
‘I suppose then,’ said his visitor, at length breaking silence, ‘that
you are penitent and resigned; that you desire to make peace with
everybody (in particular, with your wife who has brought you to this);
and that you ask no greater favour than to be carried to Tyburn as soon
as possible? That being the case, I had better take my leave. I am not
good enough to be company for you.’
‘Have I not told you,’ said the other fiercely, ‘that I have striven
and wrestled with the power that brought me here? Has my whole life, for
eight-and-twenty years, been one perpetual struggle and resistance, and
do you think I want to lie down and die? Do all men shrink from death--I
most of all!’
‘That’s better said. That’s better spoken, Rudge--but I’ll not call you
that again--than anything you have said yet,’ returned the blind man,
speaking more familiarly, and laying his hands upon his arm. ‘Lookye,--I
never killed a man myself, for I have never been placed in a position
that made it worth my while. Farther, I am not an advocate for killing
men, and I don’t think I should recommend it or like it--for it’s very
hazardous--under any circumstances. But as you had the misfortune to get
into this trouble before I made your acquaintance, and as you have been
my companion, and have been of use to me for a long time now, I overlook
that part of the matter, and am only anxious that you shouldn’t die
unnecessarily. Now, I do not consider that, at present, it is at all
necessary.’
‘What else is left me?’ returned the prisoner. ‘To eat my way through
these walls with my teeth?’
‘Something easier than that,’ returned his friend. ‘Promise me that you
will talk no more of these fancies of yours--idle, foolish things, quite
beneath a man--and I’ll tell you what I mean.’
‘Tell me,’ said the other.
‘Your worthy lady with the tender conscience; your scrupulous, virtuous,
punctilious, but not blindly affectionate wife--’
‘What of her?’
‘Is now in London.’
‘A curse upon her, be she where she may!’
‘That’s natural enough. If she had taken her annuity as usual, you would
not have been here, and we should have been better off. But that’s apart
from the business. She’s in London. Scared, as I suppose, and have no
doubt, by my representation when I waited upon her, that you were close
at hand (which I, of course, urged only as an inducement to compliance,
knowing that she was not pining to see you), she left that place, and
travelled up to London.’
‘How do you know?’
‘From my friend the noble captain--the illustrious general--the bladder,
Mr Tappertit. I learnt from him the last time I saw him, which was
yesterday, that your son who is called Barnaby--not after his father, I
suppose--’
‘Death! does that matter now!’
‘--You are impatient,’ said the blind man, calmly; ‘it’s a good sign,
and looks like life--that your son Barnaby had been lured away from her
by one of his companions who knew him of old, at Chigwell; and that he
is now among the rioters.’
‘And what is that to me? If father and son be hanged together, what
comfort shall I find in that?’
‘Stay--stay, my friend,’ returned the blind man, with a cunning look,
‘you travel fast to journeys’ ends. Suppose I track my lady out, and say
thus much: “You want your son, ma’am--good. I, knowing those who tempt
him to remain among them, can restore him to you, ma’am--good. You must
pay a price, ma’am, for his restoration--good again. The price is small,
and easy to be paid--dear ma’am, that’s best of all.”’
‘What mockery is this?’
‘Very likely, she may reply in those words. “No mockery at all,” I
answer: “Madam, a person said to be your husband (identity is difficult
of proof after the lapse of many years) is in prison, his life in
peril--the charge against him, murder. Now, ma’am, your husband has been
dead a long, long time. The gentleman never can be confounded with him,
if you will have the goodness to say a few words, on oath, as to when he
died, and how; and that this person (who I am told resembles him in some
degree) is no more he than I am. Such testimony will set the question
quite at rest. Pledge yourself to me to give it, ma’ am, and I will
undertake to keep your son (a fine lad) out of harm’s way until you have
done this trifling service, when he shall be delivered up to you, safe
and sound. On the other hand, if you decline to do so, I fear he will be
betrayed, and handed over to the law, which will assuredly sentence him
to suffer death. It is, in fact, a choice between his life and death. If
you refuse, he swings. If you comply, the timber is not grown, nor the
hemp sown, that shall do him any harm.”’
‘There is a gleam of hope in this!’ cried the prisoner.
‘A gleam!’ returned his friend, ‘a noon-blaze; a full and glorious
daylight. Hush! I hear the tread of distant feet. Rely on me.’
‘When shall I hear more?’
‘As soon as I do. I should hope, to-morrow. They are coming to say that
our time for talk is over. I hear the jingling of the keys. Not another
word of this just now, or they may overhear us.’
As he said these words, the lock was turned, and one of the prison
turnkeys appearing at the door, announced that it was time for visitors
to leave the jail.
‘So soon!’ said Stagg, meekly. ‘But it can’t be helped. Cheer up,
friend. This mistake will soon be set at rest, and then you are a man
again! If this charitable gentleman will lead a blind man (who has
nothing in return but prayers) to the prison-porch, and set him with his
face towards the west, he will do a worthy deed. Thank you, good sir. I
thank you very kindly.’
So saying, and pausing for an instant at the door to turn his grinning
face towards his friend, he departed.
When the officer had seen him to the porch, he returned, and again
unlocking and unbarring the door of the cell, set it wide open,
informing its inmate that he was at liberty to walk in the adjacent
yard, if he thought proper, for an hour.
The prisoner answered with a sullen nod; and being left alone again, sat
brooding over what he had heard, and pondering upon the hopes the recent
conversation had awakened; gazing abstractedly, the while he did so,
on the light without, and watching the shadows thrown by one wall on
another, and on the stone-paved ground.
It was a dull, square yard, made cold and gloomy by high walls, and
seeming to chill the very sunlight. The stone, so bare, and rough,
and obdurate, filled even him with longing thoughts of meadow-land and
trees; and with a burning wish to be at liberty. As he looked, he rose,
and leaning against the door-post, gazed up at the bright blue sky,
smiling even on that dreary home of crime. He seemed, for a moment, to
remember lying on his back in some sweet-scented place, and gazing at it
through moving branches, long ago.
His attention was suddenly attracted by a clanking sound--he knew what
it was, for he had startled himself by making the same noise in walking
to the door. Presently a voice began to sing, and he saw the shadow of
a figure on the pavement. It stopped--was silent all at once, as
though the person for a moment had forgotten where he was, but
soon remembered--and so, with the same clanking noise, the shadow
disappeared.
He walked out into the court and paced it to and fro; startling the
echoes, as he went, with the harsh jangling of his fetters. There was a
door near his, which, like his, stood ajar.
He had not taken half-a-dozen turns up and down the yard, when, standing
still to observe this door, he heard the clanking sound again. A face
looked out of the grated window--he saw it very dimly, for the cell was
dark and the bars were heavy--and directly afterwards, a man appeared,
and came towards him.
For the sense of loneliness he had, he might have been in jail a year.
Made eager by the hope of companionship, he quickened his pace, and
hastened to meet the man half way--
What was this! His son!
They stood face to face, staring at each other. He shrinking and cowed,
despite himself; Barnaby struggling with his imperfect memory, and
wondering where he had seen that face before. He was not uncertain long,
for suddenly he laid hands upon him, and striving to bear him to the
ground, cried:
‘Ah! I know! You are the robber!’
He said nothing in reply at first, but held down his head, and struggled
with him silently. Finding the younger man too strong for him, he raised
his face, looked close into his eyes, and said,
‘I am your father.’
God knows what magic the name had for his ears; but Barnaby released his
hold, fell back, and looked at him aghast. Suddenly he sprung towards
him, put his arms about his neck, and pressed his head against his
cheek.
Yes, yes, he was; he was sure he was. But where had he been so long, and
why had he left his mother by herself, or worse than by herself, with
her poor foolish boy? And had she really been as happy as they said?
And where was she? Was she near there? She was not happy now, and he in
jail? Ah, no.
Not a word was said in answer; but Grip croaked loudly, and hopped
about them, round and round, as if enclosing them in a magic circle, and
invoking all the powers of mischief.
Chapter 63
During the whole of this day, every regiment in or near the metropolis
was on duty in one or other part of the town; and the regulars and
militia, in obedience to the orders which were sent to every barrack and
station within twenty-four hours’ journey, began to pour in by all the
roads. But the disturbance had attained to such a formidable height, and
the rioters had grown, with impunity, to be so audacious, that the sight
of this great force, continually augmented by new arrivals, instead of
operating as a check, stimulated them to outrages of greater hardihood
than any they had yet committed; and helped to kindle a flame in
London, the like of which had never been beheld, even in its ancient and
rebellious times.
All yesterday, and on this day likewise, the commander-in-chief
endeavoured to arouse the magistrates to a sense of their duty, and in
particular the Lord Mayor, who was the faintest-hearted and most timid
of them all. With this object, large bodies of the soldiery were several
times despatched to the Mansion House to await his orders: but as he
could, by no threats or persuasions, be induced to give any, and as the
men remained in the open street, fruitlessly for any good purpose, and
thrivingly for a very bad one; these laudable attempts did harm rather
than good. For the crowd, becoming speedily acquainted with the Lord
Mayor’s temper, did not fail to take advantage of it by boasting that
even the civil authorities were opposed to the Papists, and could not
find it in their hearts to molest those who were guilty of no other
offence. These vaunts they took care to make within the hearing of the
soldiers; and they, being naturally loth to quarrel with the people,
received their advances kindly enough: answering, when they were asked
if they desired to fire upon their countrymen, ‘No, they would be damned
if they did;’ and showing much honest simplicity and good nature.
The feeling that the military were No-Popery men, and were ripe for
disobeying orders and joining the mob, soon became very prevalent in
consequence. Rumours of their disaffection, and of their leaning towards
the popular cause, spread from mouth to mouth with astonishing rapidity;
and whenever they were drawn up idly in the streets or squares, there
was sure to be a crowd about them, cheering and shaking hands, and
treating them with a great show of confidence and affection.
By this time, the crowd was everywhere; all concealment and disguise
were laid aside, and they pervaded the whole town. If any man among them
wanted money, he had but to knock at the door of a dwelling-house, or
walk into a shop, and demand it in the rioters name; and his demand
was instantly complied with. The peaceable citizens being afraid to lay
hands upon them, singly and alone, it may be easily supposed that
when gathered together in bodies, they were perfectly secure from
interruption. They assembled in the streets, traversed them at their
will and pleasure, and publicly concerted their plans. Business was
quite suspended; the greater part of the shops were closed; most of the
houses displayed a blue flag in token of their adherence to the popular
side; and even the Jews in Houndsditch, Whitechapel, and those quarters,
wrote upon their doors or window-shutters, ‘This House is a True
Protestant.’ The crowd was the law, and never was the law held in
greater dread, or more implicitly obeyed.
It was about six o’clock in the evening, when a vast mob poured
into Lincoln’s Inn Fields by every avenue, and divided--evidently in
pursuance of a previous design--into several parties. It must not be
understood that this arrangement was known to the whole crowd, but that
it was the work of a few leaders; who, mingling with the men as they
came upon the ground, and calling to them to fall into this or that
parry, effected it as rapidly as if it had been determined on by a
council of the whole number, and every man had known his place.
It was perfectly notorious to the assemblage that the largest body,
which comprehended about two-thirds of the whole, was designed for
the attack on Newgate. It comprehended all the rioters who had been
conspicuous in any of their former proceedings; all those whom they
recommended as daring hands and fit for the work; all those whose
companions had been taken in the riots; and a great number of people
who were relatives or friends of felons in the jail. This last class
included, not only the most desperate and utterly abandoned villains in
London, but some who were comparatively innocent. There was more than
one woman there, disguised in man’s attire, and bent upon the rescue
of a child or brother. There were the two sons of a man who lay under
sentence of death, and who was to be executed along with three
others, on the next day but one. There was a great party of boys whose
fellow-pickpockets were in the prison; and at the skirts of all, a score
of miserable women, outcasts from the world, seeking to release some
other fallen creature as miserable as themselves, or moved by a general
sympathy perhaps--God knows--with all who were without hope, and
wretched.
Old swords, and pistols without ball or powder; sledge-hammers, knives,
axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butchers’ shops; a forest of
iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the walls, each
carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches; tow smeared
with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked from fence
and paling; and even crutches taken from crippled beggars in the
streets; composed their arms. When all was ready, Hugh and Dennis, with
Simon Tappertit between them, led the way. Roaring and chafing like an
angry sea, the crowd pressed after them.
Instead of going straight down Holborn to the jail, as all expected,
their leaders took the way to Clerkenwell, and pouring down a quiet
street, halted before a locksmith’s house--the Golden Key.
‘Beat at the door,’ cried Hugh to the men about him. ‘We want one of his
craft to-night. Beat it in, if no one answers.’
The shop was shut. Both door and shutters were of a strong and sturdy
kind, and they knocked without effect. But the impatient crowd raising
a cry of ‘Set fire to the house!’ and torches being passed to the front,
an upper window was thrown open, and the stout old locksmith stood
before them.
‘What now, you villains!’ he demanded. ‘Where is my daughter?’
‘Ask no questions of us, old man,’ retorted Hugh, waving his comrades
to be silent, ‘but come down, and bring the tools of your trade. We want
you.’
‘Want me!’ cried the locksmith, glancing at the regimental dress he
wore: ‘Ay, and if some that I could name possessed the hearts of mice,
ye should have had me long ago. Mark me, my lad--and you about him do
the same. There are a score among ye whom I see now and know, who are
dead men from this hour. Begone! and rob an undertaker’s while you can!
You’ll want some coffins before long.’
‘Will you come down?’ cried Hugh.
‘Will you give me my daughter, ruffian?’ cried the locksmith.
‘I know nothing of her,’ Hugh rejoined. ‘Burn the door!’
‘Stop!’ cried the locksmith, in a voice that made them
falter--presenting, as he spoke, a gun. ‘Let an old man do that. You can
spare him better.’
The young fellow who held the light, and who was stooping down before
the door, rose hastily at these words, and fell back. The locksmith ran
his eye along the upturned faces, and kept the weapon levelled at the
threshold of his house. It had no other rest than his shoulder, but was
as steady as the house itself.
‘Let the man who does it, take heed to his prayers,’ he said firmly; ‘I
warn him.’
Snatching a torch from one who stood near him, Hugh was stepping forward
with an oath, when he was arrested by a shrill and piercing shriek, and,
looking upward, saw a fluttering garment on the house-top.
There was another shriek, and another, and then a shrill voice cried,
‘Is Simmun below!’ At the same moment a lean neck was stretched over
the parapet, and Miss Miggs, indistinctly seen in the gathering gloom
of evening, screeched in a frenzied manner, ‘Oh! dear gentlemen, let me
hear Simmuns’s answer from his own lips. Speak to me, Simmun. Speak to
me!’
Mr Tappertit, who was not at all flattered by this compliment, looked
up, and bidding her hold her peace, ordered her to come down and open
the door, for they wanted her master, and would take no denial.
‘Oh good gentlemen!’ cried Miss Miggs. ‘Oh my own precious, precious
Simmun--’
‘Hold your nonsense, will you!’ retorted Mr Tappertit; ‘and come down
and open the door.--G. Varden, drop that gun, or it will be worse for
you.’
‘Don’t mind his gun,’ screamed Miggs. ‘Simmun and gentlemen, I poured a
mug of table-beer right down the barrel.’
The crowd gave a loud shout, which was followed by a roar of laughter.
‘It wouldn’t go off, not if you was to load it up to the muzzle,’
screamed Miggs. ‘Simmun and gentlemen, I’m locked up in the front attic,
through the little door on the right hand when you think you’ve got to
the very top of the stairs--and up the flight of corner steps, being
careful not to knock your heads against the rafters, and not to tread on
one side in case you should fall into the two-pair bedroom through the
lath and plasture, which do not bear, but the contrairy. Simmun and
gentlemen, I’ve been locked up here for safety, but my endeavours has
always been, and always will be, to be on the right side--the blessed
side and to prenounce the Pope of Babylon, and all her inward and
her outward workings, which is Pagin. My sentiments is of little
consequences, I know,’ cried Miggs, with additional shrillness, ‘for my
positions is but a servant, and as sich, of humilities, still I gives
expressions to my feelings, and places my reliances on them which
entertains my own opinions!’
Without taking much notice of these outpourings of Miss Miggs after she
had made her first announcement in relation to the gun, the crowd
raised a ladder against the window where the locksmith stood, and
notwithstanding that he closed, and fastened, and defended it manfully,
soon forced an entrance by shivering the glass and breaking in the
frames. After dealing a few stout blows about him, he found himself
defenceless, in the midst of a furious crowd, which overflowed the room
and softened off in a confused heap of faces at the door and window.
They were very wrathful with him (for he had wounded two men), and
even called out to those in front, to bring him forth and hang him on
a lamp-post. But Gabriel was quite undaunted, and looked from Hugh and
Dennis, who held him by either arm, to Simon Tappertit, who confronted
him.
‘You have robbed me of my daughter,’ said the locksmith, ‘who is far
dearer to me than my life; and you may take my life, if you will. I
bless God that I have been enabled to keep my wife free of this scene;
and that He has made me a man who will not ask mercy at such hands as
yours.’
‘And a wery game old gentleman you are,’ said Mr Dennis, approvingly;
‘and you express yourself like a man. What’s the odds, brother, whether
it’s a lamp-post to-night, or a feather-bed ten year to come, eh?’
The locksmith glanced at him disdainfully, but returned no other answer.
‘For my part,’ said the hangman, who particularly favoured the lamp-post
suggestion, ‘I honour your principles. They’re mine exactly. In such
sentiments as them,’ and here he emphasised his discourse with an oath,
‘I’m ready to meet you or any man halfway.--Have you got a bit of cord
anywheres handy? Don’t put yourself out of the way, if you haven’t. A
handkecher will do.’
‘Don’t be a fool, master,’ whispered Hugh, seizing Varden roughly by
the shoulder; ‘but do as you’re bid. You’ll soon hear what you’re wanted
for. Do it!’
‘I’ll do nothing at your request, or that of any scoundrel here,’
returned the locksmith. ‘If you want any service from me, you may spare
yourselves the pains of telling me what it is. I tell you, beforehand,
I’ll do nothing for you.’
Mr Dennis was so affected by this constancy on the part of the staunch
old man, that he protested--almost with tears in his eyes--that to baulk
his inclinations would be an act of cruelty and hard dealing to which
he, for one, never could reconcile his conscience. The gentleman, he
said, had avowed in so many words that he was ready for working off;
such being the case, he considered it their duty, as a civilised and
enlightened crowd, to work him off. It was not often, he observed, that
they had it in their power to accommodate themselves to the wishes of
those from whom they had the misfortune to differ. Having now found an
individual who expressed a desire which they could reasonably indulge
(and for himself he was free to confess that in his opinion that desire
did honour to his feelings), he hoped they would decide to accede to
his proposition before going any further. It was an experiment which,
skilfully and dexterously performed, would be over in five minutes, with
great comfort and satisfaction to all parties; and though it did not
become him (Mr Dennis) to speak well of himself he trusted he might
be allowed to say that he had practical knowledge of the subject, and,
being naturally of an obliging and friendly disposition, would work the
gentleman off with a deal of pleasure.
These remarks, which were addressed in the midst of a frightful din and
turmoil to those immediately about him, were received with great favour;
not so much, perhaps, because of the hangman’s eloquence, as on account
of the locksmith’s obstinacy. Gabriel was in imminent peril, and he knew
it; but he preserved a steady silence; and would have done so, if they
had been debating whether they should roast him at a slow fire.
As the hangman spoke, there was some stir and confusion on the ladder;
and directly he was silent--so immediately upon his holding his peace,
that the crowd below had no time to learn what he had been saying, or to
shout in response--some one at the window cried:
‘He has a grey head. He is an old man: Don’t hurt him!’
The locksmith turned, with a start, towards the place from which the
words had come, and looked hurriedly at the people who were hanging on
the ladder and clinging to each other.
‘Pay no respect to my grey hair, young man,’ he said, answering the
voice and not any one he saw. ‘I don’t ask it. My heart is green enough
to scorn and despise every man among you, band of robbers that you are!’
This incautious speech by no means tended to appease the ferocity of the
crowd. They cried again to have him brought out; and it would have gone
hard with the honest locksmith, but that Hugh reminded them, in answer,
that they wanted his services, and must have them.
‘So, tell him what we want,’ he said to Simon Tappertit, ‘and quickly.
And open your ears, master, if you would ever use them after to-night.’
Gabriel folded his arms, which were now at liberty, and eyed his old
‘prentice in silence.
‘Lookye, Varden,’ said Sim, ‘we’re bound for Newgate.’
‘I know you are,’ returned the locksmith. ‘You never said a truer word
than that.’
‘To burn it down, I mean,’ said Simon, ‘and force the gates, and set the
prisoners at liberty. You helped to make the lock of the great door.’
‘I did,’ said the locksmith. ‘You owe me no thanks for that--as you’ll
find before long.’
‘Maybe,’ returned his journeyman, ‘but you must show us how to force
it.’
‘Must I!’
‘Yes; for you know, and I don’t. You must come along with us, and pick
it with your own hands.’
‘When I do,’ said the locksmith quietly, ‘my hands shall drop off at the
wrists, and you shall wear them, Simon Tappertit, on your shoulders for
epaulettes.’
‘We’ll see that,’ cried Hugh, interposing, as the indignation of the
crowd again burst forth. ‘You fill a basket with the tools he’ll want,
while I bring him downstairs. Open the doors below, some of you. And
light the great captain, others! Is there no business afoot, my lads,
that you can do nothing but stand and grumble?’
They looked at one another, and quickly dispersing, swarmed over the
house, plundering and breaking, according to their custom, and carrying
off such articles of value as happened to please their fancy. They had
no great length of time for these proceedings, for the basket of tools
was soon prepared and slung over a man’s shoulders. The preparations
being now completed, and everything ready for the attack, those who
were pillaging and destroying in the other rooms were called down to the
workshop. They were about to issue forth, when the man who had been last
upstairs, stepped forward, and asked if the young woman in the garret
(who was making a terrible noise, he said, and kept on screaming without
the least cessation) was to be released?
For his own part, Simon Tappertit would certainly have replied in the
negative, but the mass of his companions, mindful of the good service
she had done in the matter of the gun, being of a different opinion, he
had nothing for it but to answer, Yes. The man, accordingly, went back
again to the rescue, and presently returned with Miss Miggs, limp and
doubled up, and very damp from much weeping.
As the young lady had given no tokens of consciousness on their way
downstairs, the bearer reported her either dead or dying; and being at
some loss what to do with her, was looking round for a convenient bench
or heap of ashes on which to place her senseless form, when she suddenly
came upon her feet by some mysterious means, thrust back her hair,
stared wildly at Mr Tappertit, cried, ‘My Simmuns’s life is not a
wictim!’ and dropped into his arms with such promptitude that he
staggered and reeled some paces back, beneath his lovely burden.
‘Oh bother!’ said Mr Tappertit. ‘Here. Catch hold of her, somebody. Lock
her up again; she never ought to have been let out.’
‘My Simmun!’ cried Miss Miggs, in tears, and faintly. ‘My for ever, ever
blessed Simmun!’
‘Hold up, will you,’ said Mr Tappertit, in a very unresponsive tone,
‘I’ll let you fall if you don’t. What are you sliding your feet off the
ground for?’
‘My angel Simmuns!’ murmured Miggs--‘he promised--’
‘Promised! Well, and I’ll keep my promise,’ answered Simon, testily. ‘I
mean to provide for you, don’t I? Stand up!’
‘Where am I to go? What is to become of me after my actions of this
night!’ cried Miggs. ‘What resting-places now remains but in the silent
tombses!’
‘I wish you was in the silent tombses, I do,’ cried Mr Tappertit, ‘and
boxed up tight, in a good strong one. Here,’ he cried to one of the
bystanders, in whose ear he whispered for a moment: ‘Take her off, will
you. You understand where?’
The fellow nodded; and taking her in his arms, notwithstanding her
broken protestations, and her struggles (which latter species of
opposition, involving scratches, was much more difficult of resistance),
carried her away. They who were in the house poured out into the street;
the locksmith was taken to the head of the crowd, and required to walk
between his two conductors; the whole body was put in rapid motion;
and without any shouts or noise they bore down straight on Newgate, and
halted in a dense mass before the prison-gate.
Chapter 64
Breaking the silence they had hitherto preserved, they raised a great
cry as soon as they were ranged before the jail, and demanded to speak
to the governor. This visit was not wholly unexpected, for his house,
which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded, the wicket-gate of
the prison was closed up, and at no loophole or grating was any person
to be seen. Before they had repeated their summons many times, a man
appeared upon the roof of the governor’s house, and asked what it was
they wanted.
Some said one thing, some another, and some only groaned and hissed. It
being now nearly dark, and the house high, many persons in the throng
were not aware that any one had come to answer them, and continued their
clamour until the intelligence was gradually diffused through the whole
concourse. Ten minutes or more elapsed before any one voice could be
heard with tolerable distinctness; during which interval the figure
remained perched alone, against the summer-evening sky, looking down
into the troubled street.
‘Are you,’ said Hugh at length, ‘Mr Akerman, the head jailer here?’
‘Of course he is, brother,’ whispered Dennis. But Hugh, without minding
him, took his answer from the man himself.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am.’
‘You have got some friends of ours in your custody, master.’
‘I have a good many people in my custody.’ He glanced downward, as
he spoke, into the jail: and the feeling that he could see into the
different yards, and that he overlooked everything which was hidden from
their view by the rugged walls, so lashed and goaded the mob, that they
howled like wolves.
‘Deliver up our friends,’ said Hugh, ‘and you may keep the rest.’
‘It’s my duty to keep them all. I shall do my duty.’
‘If you don’t throw the doors open, we shall break ‘em down,’ said Hugh;
‘for we will have the rioters out.’
‘All I can do, good people,’ Akerman replied, ‘is to exhort you to
disperse; and to remind you that the consequences of any disturbance in
this place, will be very severe, and bitterly repented by most of you,
when it is too late.’
He made as though he would retire when he said these words, but he was
checked by the voice of the locksmith.
‘Mr Akerman,’ cried Gabriel, ‘Mr Akerman.’
‘I will hear no more from any of you,’ replied the governor, turning
towards the speaker, and waving his hand.
‘But I am not one of them,’ said Gabriel. ‘I am an honest man, Mr
Akerman; a respectable tradesman--Gabriel Varden, the locksmith. You
know me?’
‘You among the crowd!’ cried the governor in an altered voice.
‘Brought here by force--brought here to pick the lock of the great door
for them,’ rejoined the locksmith. ‘Bear witness for me, Mr Akerman,
that I refuse to do it; and that I will not do it, come what may of my
refusal. If any violence is done to me, please to remember this.’
‘Is there no way of helping you?’ said the governor.
‘None, Mr Akerman. You’ll do your duty, and I’ll do mine. Once again,
you robbers and cut-throats,’ said the locksmith, turning round upon
them, ‘I refuse. Ah! Howl till you’re hoarse. I refuse.’
‘Stay--stay!’ said the jailer, hastily. ‘Mr Varden, I know you for
a worthy man, and one who would do no unlawful act except upon
compulsion--’
‘Upon compulsion, sir,’ interposed the locksmith, who felt that the tone
in which this was said, conveyed the speaker’s impression that he had
ample excuse for yielding to the furious multitude who beset and hemmed
him in, on every side, and among whom he stood, an old man, quite alone;
‘upon compulsion, sir, I’ll do nothing.’
‘Where is that man,’ said the keeper, anxiously, ‘who spoke to me just
now?’
‘Here!’ Hugh replied.
‘Do you know what the guilt of murder is, and that by keeping that
honest tradesman at your side you endanger his life!’
‘We know it very well,’ he answered, ‘for what else did we bring him
here? Let’s have our friends, master, and you shall have your friend. Is
that fair, lads?’
The mob replied to him with a loud Hurrah!
‘You see how it is, sir?’ cried Varden. ‘Keep ‘em out, in King George’s
name. Remember what I have said. Good night!’
There was no more parley. A shower of stones and other missiles
compelled the keeper of the jail to retire; and the mob, pressing on,
and swarming round the walls, forced Gabriel Varden close up to the
door.
In vain the basket of tools was laid upon the ground before him, and
he was urged in turn by promises, by blows, by offers of reward, and
threats of instant death, to do the office for which they had brought
him there. ‘No,’ cried the sturdy locksmith, ‘I will not!’
He had never loved his life so well as then, but nothing could move him.
The savage faces that glared upon him, look where he would; the cries of
those who thirsted, like wild animals, for his blood; the sight of men
pressing forward, and trampling down their fellows, as they strove to
reach him, and struck at him above the heads of other men, with axes and
with iron bars; all failed to daunt him. He looked from man to man, and
face to face, and still, with quickened breath and lessening colour,
cried firmly, ‘I will not!’
Dennis dealt him a blow upon the face which felled him to the ground. He
sprung up again like a man in the prime of life, and with blood upon his
forehead, caught him by the throat.
‘You cowardly dog!’ he said: ‘Give me my daughter. Give me my daughter.’
They struggled together. Some cried ‘Kill him,’ and some (but they were
not near enough) strove to trample him to death. Tug as he would at the
old man’s wrists, the hangman could not force him to unclench his hands.
‘Is this all the return you make me, you ungrateful monster?’ he
articulated with great difficulty, and with many oaths.
‘Give me my daughter!’ cried the locksmith, who was now as fierce as
those who gathered round him: ‘Give me my daughter!’
He was down again, and up, and down once more, and buffeting with a
score of them, who bandied him from hand to hand, when one tall fellow,
fresh from a slaughter-house, whose dress and great thigh-boots smoked
hot with grease and blood, raised a pole-axe, and swearing a horrible
oath, aimed it at the old man’s uncovered head. At that instant, and in
the very act, he fell himself, as if struck by lightning, and over his
body a one-armed man came darting to the locksmith’s side. Another man
was with him, and both caught the locksmith roughly in their grasp.
‘Leave him to us!’ they cried to Hugh--struggling, as they spoke, to
force a passage backward through the crowd. ‘Leave him to us. Why do you
waste your whole strength on such as he, when a couple of men can finish
him in as many minutes! You lose time. Remember the prisoners! remember
Barnaby!’
The cry ran through the mob. Hammers began to rattle on the walls; and
every man strove to reach the prison, and be among the foremost rank.
Fighting their way through the press and struggle, as desperately as if
they were in the midst of enemies rather than their own friends, the two
men retreated with the locksmith between them, and dragged him through
the very heart of the concourse.
And now the strokes began to fall like hail upon the gate, and on the
strong building; for those who could not reach the door, spent their
fierce rage on anything--even on the great blocks of stone, which
shivered their weapons into fragments, and made their hands and arms to
tingle as if the walls were active in their stout resistance, and dealt
them back their blows. The clash of iron ringing upon iron, mingled
with the deafening tumult and sounded high above it, as the great
sledge-hammers rattled on the nailed and plated door: the sparks flew
off in showers; men worked in gangs, and at short intervals relieved
each other, that all their strength might be devoted to the work; but
there stood the portal still, as grim and dark and strong as ever, and,
saving for the dints upon its battered surface, quite unchanged.
While some brought all their energies to bear upon this toilsome task;
and some, rearing ladders against the prison, tried to clamber to the
summit of the walls they were too short to scale; and some again engaged
a body of police a hundred strong, and beat them back and trod them
under foot by force of numbers; others besieged the house on which the
jailer had appeared, and driving in the door, brought out his furniture,
and piled it up against the prison-gate, to make a bonfire which should
burn it down. As soon as this device was understood, all those who had
laboured hitherto, cast down their tools and helped to swell the heap;
which reached half-way across the street, and was so high, that those
who threw more fuel on the top, got up by ladders. When all the keeper’s
goods were flung upon this costly pile, to the last fragment, they
smeared it with the pitch, and tar, and rosin they had brought, and
sprinkled it with turpentine. To all the woodwork round the prison-doors
they did the like, leaving not a joist or beam untouched. This infernal
christening performed, they fired the pile with lighted matches and with
blazing tow, and then stood by, awaiting the result.
The furniture being very dry, and rendered more combustible by wax
and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames
roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison-wall, and twining up
its loftly front like burning serpents. At first they crowded round the
blaze, and vented their exultation only in their looks: but when it grew
hotter and fiercer--when it crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great
furnace--when it shone upon the opposite houses, and lighted up not only
the pale and wondering faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of
each habitation--when through the deep red heat and glow, the fire was
seen sporting and toying with the door, now clinging to its obdurate
surface, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and soaring high into
the sky, anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to
its ruin--when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock of
St Sepulchre’s so often pointing to the hour of death, was legible as in
broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the unwonted
light like something richly jewelled--when blackened stone and sombre
brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and windows shone like
burnished gold, dotting the longest distance in the fiery vista
with their specks of brightness--when wall and tower, and roof and
chimney-stack, seemed drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to
reel and stagger--when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out
upon the view, and things the most familiar put on some new aspect--then
the mob began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and shouts, and
clamour, such as happily is seldom heard, bestirred themselves to feed
the fire, and keep it at its height.
Although the heat was so intense that the paint on the houses over
against the prison, parched and crackled up, and swelling into boils,
as it were from excess of torture, broke and crumbled away; although the
glass fell from the window-sashes, and the lead and iron on the roofs
blistered the incautious hand that touched them, and the sparrows in the
eaves took wing, and rendered giddy by the smoke, fell fluttering down
upon the blazing pile; still the fire was tended unceasingly by busy
hands, and round it, men were going always. They never slackened in
their zeal, or kept aloof, but pressed upon the flames so hard, that
those in front had much ado to save themselves from being thrust in; if
one man swooned or dropped, a dozen struggled for his place, and that
although they knew the pain, and thirst, and pressure to be unendurable.
Those who fell down in fainting-fits, and were not crushed or burnt,
were carried to an inn-yard close at hand, and dashed with water from a
pump; of which buckets full were passed from man to man among the crowd;
but such was the strong desire of all to drink, and such the fighting to
be first, that, for the most part, the whole contents were spilled upon
the ground, without the lips of one man being moistened.
Meanwhile, and in the midst of all the roar and outcry, those who were
nearest to the pile, heaped up again the burning fragments that came
toppling down, and raked the fire about the door, which, although a
sheet of flame, was still a door fast locked and barred, and kept
them out. Great pieces of blazing wood were passed, besides, above the
people’s heads to such as stood about the ladders, and some of these,
climbing up to the topmost stave, and holding on with one hand by the
prison wall, exerted all their skill and force to cast these fire-brands
on the roof, or down into the yards within. In many instances their
efforts were successful; which occasioned a new and appalling addition
to the horrors of the scene: for the prisoners within, seeing from
between their bars that the fire caught in many places and thrived
fiercely, and being all locked up in strong cells for the night, began
to know that they were in danger of being burnt alive. This terrible
fear, spreading from cell to cell and from yard to yard, vented itself
in such dismal cries and wailings, and in such dreadful shrieks for
help, that the whole jail resounded with the noise; which was loudly
heard even above the shouting of the mob and roaring of the flames, and
was so full of agony and despair, that it made the boldest tremble.
It was remarkable that these cries began in that quarter of the jail
which fronted Newgate Street, where, it was well known, the men who were
to suffer death on Thursday were confined. And not only were these four
who had so short a time to live, the first to whom the dread of being
burnt occurred, but they were, throughout, the most importunate of all:
for they could be plainly heard, notwithstanding the great thickness of
the walls, crying that the wind set that way, and that the flames would
shortly reach them; and calling to the officers of the jail to come
and quench the fire from a cistern which was in their yard, and full
of water. Judging from what the crowd outside the walls could hear from
time to time, these four doomed wretches never ceased to call for
help; and that with as much distraction, and in as great a frenzy of
attachment to existence, as though each had an honoured, happy life
before him, instead of eight-and-forty hours of miserable imprisonment,
and then a violent and shameful death.
But the anguish and suffering of the two sons of one of these men, when
they heard, or fancied that they heard, their father’s voice, is past
description. After wringing their hands and rushing to and fro as if
they were stark mad, one mounted on the shoulders of his brother, and
tried to clamber up the face of the high wall, guarded at the top with
spikes and points of iron. And when he fell among the crowd, he was not
deterred by his bruises, but mounted up again, and fell again, and, when
he found the feat impossible, began to beat the stones and tear them
with his hands, as if he could that way make a breach in the strong
building, and force a passage in. At last, they cleft their way among
the mob about the door, though many men, a dozen times their match, had
tried in vain to do so, and were seen, in--yes, in--the fire, striving
to prize it down, with crowbars.
Nor were they alone affected by the outcry from within the prison. The
women who were looking on, shrieked loudly, beat their hands together,
stopped their ears; and many fainted: the men who were not near the
walls and active in the siege, rather than do nothing, tore up the
pavement of the street, and did so with a haste and fury they could
not have surpassed if that had been the jail, and they were near their
object. Not one living creature in the throng was for an instant still.
The whole great mass were mad.
A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why, or what it meant.
But those around the gate had seen it slowly yield, and drop from its
topmost hinge. It hung on that side by but one, but it was upright
still, because of the bar, and its having sunk, of its own weight, into
the heap of ashes at its foot. There was now a gap at the top of the
doorway, through which could be descried a gloomy passage, cavernous and
dark. Pile up the fire!
It burnt fiercely. The door was red-hot, and the gap wider. They vainly
tried to shield their faces with their hands, and standing as if in
readiness for a spring, watched the place. Dark figures, some crawling
on their hands and knees, some carried in the arms of others, were seen
to pass along the roof. It was plain the jail could hold out no longer.
The keeper, and his officers, and their wives and children, were
escaping. Pile up the fire!
The door sank down again: it settled deeper in the
cinders--tottered--yielded--was down!
As they shouted again, they fell back, for a moment, and left a clear
space about the fire that lay between them and the jail entry. Hugh
leapt upon the blazing heap, and scattering a train of sparks into the
air, and making the dark lobby glitter with those that hung upon his
dress, dashed into the jail.
The hangman followed. And then so many rushed upon their track, that the
fire got trodden down and thinly strewn about the street; but there was
no need of it now, for, inside and out, the prison was in flames.
Chapter 65
During the whole course of the terrible scene which was now at its
height, one man in the jail suffered a degree of fear and mental torment
which had no parallel in the endurance, even of those who lay under
sentence of death.
When the rioters first assembled before the building, the murderer
was roused from sleep--if such slumbers as his may have that blessed
name--by the roar of voices, and the struggling of a great crowd. He
started up as these sounds met his ear, and, sitting on his bedstead,
listened.
After a short interval of silence the noise burst out again. Still
listening attentively, he made out, in course of time, that the jail was
besieged by a furious multitude. His guilty conscience instantly arrayed
these men against himself, and brought the fear upon him that he would
be singled out, and torn to pieces.
Once impressed with the terror of this conceit, everything tended to
confirm and strengthen it. His double crime, the circumstances under
which it had been committed, the length of time that had elapsed, and
its discovery in spite of all, made him, as it were, the visible object
of the Almighty’s wrath. In all the crime and vice and moral gloom of
the great pest-house of the capital, he stood alone, marked and singled
out by his great guilt, a Lucifer among the devils. The other prisoners
were a host, hiding and sheltering each other--a crowd like that without
the walls. He was one man against the whole united concourse; a single,
solitary, lonely man, from whom the very captives in the jail fell off
and shrunk appalled.
It might be that the intelligence of his capture having been bruited
abroad, they had come there purposely to drag him out and kill him in
the street; or it might be that they were the rioters, and, in pursuance
of an old design, had come to sack the prison. But in either case he had
no belief or hope that they would spare him. Every shout they raised,
and every sound they made, was a blow upon his heart. As the attack went
on, he grew more wild and frantic in his terror: tried to pull away the
bars that guarded the chimney and prevented him from climbing up: called
loudly on the turnkeys to cluster round the cell and save him from the
fury of the rabble; or put him in some dungeon underground, no matter
of what depth, how dark it was, or loathsome, or beset with rats and
creeping things, so that it hid him and was hard to find.
But no one came, or answered him. Fearful, even while he cried to them,
of attracting attention, he was silent. By and bye, he saw, as he looked
from his grated window, a strange glimmering on the stone walls and
pavement of the yard. It was feeble at first, and came and went, as
though some officers with torches were passing to and fro upon the roof
of the prison. Soon it reddened, and lighted brands came whirling down,
spattering the ground with fire, and burning sullenly in corners. One
rolled beneath a wooden bench, and set it in a blaze; another caught a
water-spout, and so went climbing up the wall, leaving a long straight
track of fire behind it. After a time, a slow thick shower of burning
fragments, from some upper portion of the prison which was blazing nigh,
began to fall before his door. Remembering that it opened outwards, he
knew that every spark which fell upon the heap, and in the act lost
its bright life, and died an ugly speck of dust and rubbish, helped
to entomb him in a living grave. Still, though the jail resounded with
shrieks and cries for help,--though the fire bounded up as if each
separate flame had had a tiger’s life, and roared as though, in every
one, there were a hungry voice--though the heat began to grow intense,
and the air suffocating, and the clamour without increased, and the
danger of his situation even from one merciless element was every moment
more extreme,--still he was afraid to raise his voice again, lest
the crowd should break in, and should, of their own ears or from the
information given them by the other prisoners, get the clue to his place
of confinement. Thus fearful alike, of those within the prison and
of those without; of noise and silence; light and darkness; of being
released, and being left there to die; he was so tortured and tormented,
that nothing man has ever done to man in the horrible caprice of power
and cruelty, exceeds his self-inflicted punishment.
Now, now, the door was down. Now they came rushing through the jail,
calling to each other in the vaulted passages; clashing the iron gates
dividing yard from yard; beating at the doors of cells and wards;
wrenching off bolts and locks and bars; tearing down the door-posts to
get men out; endeavouring to drag them by main force through gaps and
windows where a child could scarcely pass; whooping and yelling without
a moment’s rest; and running through the heat and flames as if they were
cased in metal. By their legs, their arms, the hair upon their heads,
they dragged the prisoners out. Some threw themselves upon the captives
as they got towards the door, and tried to file away their irons; some
danced about them with a frenzied joy, and rent their clothes, and were
ready, as it seemed, to tear them limb from limb. Now a party of a dozen
men came darting through the yard into which the murderer cast fearful
glances from his darkened window; dragging a prisoner along the ground
whose dress they had nearly torn from his body in their mad eagerness to
set him free, and who was bleeding and senseless in their hands. Now
a score of prisoners ran to and fro, who had lost themselves in the
intricacies of the prison, and were so bewildered with the noise and
glare that they knew not where to turn or what to do, and still cried
out for help, as loudly as before. Anon some famished wretch whose theft
had been a loaf of bread, or scrap of butcher’s meat, came skulking
past, barefooted--going slowly away because that jail, his house, was
burning; not because he had any other, or had friends to meet, or old
haunts to revisit, or any liberty to gain, but liberty to starve and
die. And then a knot of highwaymen went trooping by, conducted by the
friends they had among the crowd, who muffled their fetters as they went
along, with handkerchiefs and bands of hay, and wrapped them in coats
and cloaks, and gave them drink from bottles, and held it to their lips,
because of their handcuffs which there was no time to remove. All this,
and Heaven knows how much more, was done amidst a noise, a hurry, and
distraction, like nothing that we know of, even in our dreams; which
seemed for ever on the rise, and never to decrease for the space of a
single instant.
He was still looking down from his window upon these things, when a band
of men with torches, ladders, axes, and many kinds of weapons, poured
into the yard, and hammering at his door, inquired if there were any
prisoner within. He left the window when he saw them coming, and drew
back into the remotest corner of the cell; but although he returned them
no answer, they had a fancy that some one was inside, for they presently
set ladders against it, and began to tear away the bars at the casement;
not only that, indeed, but with pickaxes to hew down the very stones in
the wall.
As soon as they had made a breach at the window, large enough for the
admission of a man’s head, one of them thrust in a torch and looked all
round the room. He followed this man’s gaze until it rested on himself,
and heard him demand why he had not answered, but made him no reply.
In the general surprise and wonder, they were used to this; without
saying anything more, they enlarged the breach until it was large enough
to admit the body of a man, and then came dropping down upon the floor,
one after another, until the cell was full. They caught him up among
them, handed him to the window, and those who stood upon the ladders
passed him down upon the pavement of the yard. Then the rest came out,
one after another, and, bidding him fly, and lose no time, or the way
would be choked up, hurried away to rescue others.
It seemed not a minute’s work from first to last. He staggered to his
feet, incredulous of what had happened, when the yard was filled
again, and a crowd rushed on, hurrying Barnaby among them. In another
minute--not so much: another minute! the same instant, with no lapse or
interval between!--he and his son were being passed from hand to hand,
through the dense crowd in the street, and were glancing backward at a
burning pile which some one said was Newgate.
From the moment of their first entrance into the prison, the crowd
dispersed themselves about it, and swarmed into every chink and crevice,
as if they had a perfect acquaintance with its innermost parts, and bore
in their minds an exact plan of the whole. For this immediate knowledge
of the place, they were, no doubt, in a great degree, indebted to the
hangman, who stood in the lobby, directing some to go this way, some
that, and some the other; and who materially assisted in bringing about
the wonderful rapidity with which the release of the prisoners was
effected.
But this functionary of the law reserved one important piece of
intelligence, and kept it snugly to himself. When he had issued his
instructions relative to every other part of the building, and the mob
were dispersed from end to end, and busy at their work, he took a bundle
of keys from a kind of cupboard in the wall, and going by a kind of
passage near the chapel (it joined the governors house, and was then
on fire), betook himself to the condemned cells, which were a series of
small, strong, dismal rooms, opening on a low gallery, guarded, at the
end at which he entered, by a strong iron wicket, and at its opposite
extremity by two doors and a thick grate. Having double locked the
wicket, and assured himself that the other entrances were well secured,
he sat down on a bench in the gallery, and sucked the head of his stick
with the utmost complacency, tranquillity, and contentment.
It would have been strange enough, a man’s enjoying himself in this
quiet manner, while the prison was burning, and such a tumult was
cleaving the air, though he had been outside the walls. But here, in the
very heart of the building, and moreover with the prayers and cries
of the four men under sentence sounding in his ears, and their hands,
stretched out through the gratings in their cell-doors, clasped in
frantic entreaty before his very eyes, it was particularly remarkable.
Indeed, Mr Dennis appeared to think it an uncommon circumstance, and to
banter himself upon it; for he thrust his hat on one side as some men do
when they are in a waggish humour, sucked the head of his stick with a
higher relish, and smiled as though he would say, ‘Dennis, you’re a rum
dog; you’re a queer fellow; you’re capital company, Dennis, and quite a
character!’
He sat in this way for some minutes, while the four men in the cells,
who were certain that somebody had entered the gallery, but could not
see who, gave vent to such piteous entreaties as wretches in their
miserable condition may be supposed to have been inspired with: urging,
whoever it was, to set them at liberty, for the love of Heaven; and
protesting, with great fervour, and truly enough, perhaps, for the time,
that if they escaped, they would amend their ways, and would never,
never, never again do wrong before God or man, but would lead penitent
and sober lives, and sorrowfully repent the crimes they had committed.
The terrible energy with which they spoke, would have moved any person,
no matter how good or just (if any good or just person could have
strayed into that sad place that night), to have set them at liberty:
and, while he would have left any other punishment to its free course,
to have saved them from this last dreadful and repulsive penalty; which
never turned a man inclined to evil, and has hardened thousands who were
half inclined to good.
Mr Dennis, who had been bred and nurtured in the good old school, and
had administered the good old laws on the good old plan, always once
and sometimes twice every six weeks, for a long time, bore these appeals
with a deal of philosophy. Being at last, however, rather disturbed in
his pleasant reflection by their repetition, he rapped at one of the
doors with his stick, and cried:
‘Hold your noise there, will you?’
At this they all cried together that they were to be hanged on the next
day but one; and again implored his aid.
‘Aid! For what!’ said Mr Dennis, playfully rapping the knuckles of the
hand nearest him.
‘To save us!’ they cried.
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr Dennis, winking at the wall in the absence
of any friend with whom he could humour the joke. ‘And so you’re to be
worked off, are you, brothers?’
‘Unless we are released to-night,’ one of them cried, ‘we are dead men!’
‘I tell you what it is,’ said the hangman, gravely; ‘I’m afraid, my
friend, that you’re not in that ‘ere state of mind that’s suitable to
your condition, then; you’re not a-going to be released: don’t think
it--Will you leave off that ‘ere indecent row? I wonder you an’t ashamed
of yourselves, I do.’
He followed up this reproof by rapping every set of knuckles one after
the other, and having done so, resumed his seat again with a cheerful
countenance.
‘You’ve had law,’ he said, crossing his legs and elevating his eyebrows:
‘laws have been made a’ purpose for you; a wery handsome prison’s
been made a’ purpose for you; a parson’s kept a purpose for you;
a constitootional officer’s appointed a’ purpose for you; carts is
maintained a’ purpose for you--and yet you’re not contented!--WILL you
hold that noise, you sir in the furthest?’
A groan was the only answer.
‘So well as I can make out,’ said Mr Dennis, in a tone of mingled
badinage and remonstrance, ‘there’s not a man among you. I begin to
think I’m on the opposite side, and among the ladies; though for the
matter of that, I’ve seen a many ladies face it out, in a manner that
did honour to the sex.--You in number two, don’t grind them teeth of
yours. Worse manners,’ said the hangman, rapping at the door with his
stick, ‘I never see in this place afore. I’m ashamed of you. You’re a
disgrace to the Bailey.’
After pausing for a moment to hear if anything could be pleaded in
justification, Mr Dennis resumed in a sort of coaxing tone:
‘Now look’ee here, you four. I’m come here to take care of you, and see
that you an’t burnt, instead of the other thing. It’s no use your making
any noise, for you won’t be found out by them as has broken in, and
you’ll only be hoarse when you come to the speeches,--which is a pity.
What I say in respect to the speeches always is, “Give it mouth.” That’s
my maxim. Give it mouth. I’ve heerd,’ said the hangman, pulling off his
hat to take his handkerchief from the crown and wipe his face, and then
putting it on again a little more on one side than before, ‘I’ve heerd a
eloquence on them boards--you know what boards I mean--and have heerd
a degree of mouth given to them speeches, that they was as clear as a
bell, and as good as a play. There’s a pattern! And always, when a thing
of this natur’s to come off, what I stand up for, is, a proper frame of
mind. Let’s have a proper frame of mind, and we can go through with it,
creditable--pleasant--sociable. Whatever you do (and I address myself in
particular, to you in the furthest), never snivel. I’d sooner by half,
though I lose by it, see a man tear his clothes a’ purpose to spile
‘em before they come to me, than find him snivelling. It’s ten to one a
better frame of mind, every way!’
While the hangman addressed them to this effect, in the tone and with
the air of a pastor in familiar conversation with his flock, the noise
had been in some degree subdued; for the rioters were busy in conveying
the prisoners to the Sessions House, which was beyond the main walls of
the prison, though connected with it, and the crowd were busy too, in
passing them from thence along the street. But when he had got thus far
in his discourse, the sound of voices in the yard showed plainly that
the mob had returned and were coming that way; and directly afterwards a
violent crashing at the grate below, gave note of their attack upon the
cells (as they were called) at last.
It was in vain the hangman ran from door to door, and covered the
grates, one after another, with his hat, in futile efforts to stifle
the cries of the four men within; it was in vain he dogged their
outstretched hands, and beat them with his stick, or menaced them
with new and lingering pains in the execution of his office; the place
resounded with their cries. These, together with the feeling that they
were now the last men in the jail, so worked upon and stimulated the
besiegers, that in an incredibly short space of time they forced the
strong grate down below, which was formed of iron rods two inches
square, drove in the two other doors, as if they had been but deal
partitions, and stood at the end of the gallery with only a bar or two
between them and the cells.
‘Halloa!’ cried Hugh, who was the first to look into the dusky passage:
‘Dennis before us! Well done, old boy. Be quick, and open here, for we
shall be suffocated in the smoke, going out.’
‘Go out at once, then,’ said Dennis. ‘What do you want here?’
‘Want!’ echoed Hugh. ‘The four men.’
‘Four devils!’ cried the hangman. ‘Don’t you know they’re left for death
on Thursday? Don’t you respect the law--the constitootion--nothing? Let
the four men be.’
‘Is this a time for joking?’ cried Hugh. ‘Do you hear ‘em? Pull away
these bars that have got fixed between the door and the ground; and let
us in.’
‘Brother,’ said the hangman, in a low voice, as he stooped under
pretence of doing what Hugh desired, but only looked up in his face,
‘can’t you leave these here four men to me, if I’ve the whim! You
do what you like, and have what you like of everything for your
share,--give me my share. I want these four men left alone, I tell you!’
‘Pull the bars down, or stand out of the way,’ was Hugh’s reply.
‘You can turn the crowd if you like, you know that well enough,
brother,’ said the hangman, slowly. ‘What! You WILL come in, will you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You won’t let these men alone, and leave ‘em to me? You’ve no respect
for nothing--haven’t you?’ said the hangman, retreating to the door by
which he had entered, and regarding his companion with a scowl. ‘You
WILL come in, will you, brother!’
‘I tell you, yes. What the devil ails you? Where are you going?’
‘No matter where I’m going,’ rejoined the hangman, looking in again at
the iron wicket, which he had nearly shut upon himself, and held ajar.
‘Remember where you’re coming. That’s all!’
With that, he shook his likeness at Hugh, and giving him a grin,
compared with which his usual smile was amiable, disappeared, and shut
the door.
Hugh paused no longer, but goaded alike by the cries of the convicts,
and by the impatience of the crowd, warned the man immediately behind
him--the way was only wide enough for one abreast--to stand back, and
wielded a sledge-hammer with such strength, that after a few blows the
iron bent and broke, and gave them free admittance.
If the two sons of one of these men, of whom mention has been made,
were furious in their zeal before, they had now the wrath and vigour of
lions. Calling to the man within each cell, to keep as far back as he
could, lest the axes crashing through the door should wound him, a party
went to work upon each one, to beat it in by sheer strength, and force
the bolts and staples from their hold. But although these two lads had
the weakest party, and the worst armed, and did not begin until after
the others, having stopped to whisper to him through the grate, that
door was the first open, and that man was the first out. As they dragged
him into the gallery to knock off his irons, he fell down among them,
a mere heap of chains, and was carried out in that state on men’s
shoulders, with no sign of life.
The release of these four wretched creatures, and conveying them,
astounded and bewildered, into the streets so full of life--a spectacle
they had never thought to see again, until they emerged from solitude
and silence upon that last journey, when the air should be heavy with
the pent-up breath of thousands, and the streets and houses should
be built and roofed with human faces, not with bricks and tiles and
stones--was the crowning horror of the scene. Their pale and haggard
looks and hollow eyes; their staggering feet, and hands stretched out as
if to save themselves from falling; their wandering and uncertain air;
the way they heaved and gasped for breath, as though in water, when they
were first plunged into the crowd; all marked them for the men. No need
to say ‘this one was doomed to die;’ for there were the words broadly
stamped and branded on his face. The crowd fell off, as if they had been
laid out for burial, and had risen in their shrouds; and many were seen
to shudder, as though they had been actually dead men, when they chanced
to touch or brush against their garments.
At the bidding of the mob, the houses were all illuminated that
night--lighted up from top to bottom as at a time of public gaiety and
joy. Many years afterwards, old people who lived in their youth near
this part of the city, remembered being in a great glare of light,
within doors and without, and as they looked, timid and frightened
children, from the windows, seeing a FACE go by. Though the whole great
crowd and all its other terrors had faded from their recollection, this
one object remained; alone, distinct, and well remembered. Even in the
unpractised minds of infants, one of these doomed men darting past,
and but an instant seen, was an image of force enough to dim the whole
concourse; to find itself an all-absorbing place, and hold it ever
after.
When this last task had been achieved, the shouts and cries grew
fainter; the clank of fetters, which had resounded on all sides as
the prisoners escaped, was heard no more; all the noises of the crowd
subsided into a hoarse and sullen murmur as it passed into the distance;
and when the human tide had rolled away, a melancholy heap of smoking
ruins marked the spot where it had lately chafed and roared.
Chapter 66
Although he had had no rest upon the previous night, and had watched
with little intermission for some weeks past, sleeping only in the day
by starts and snatches, Mr Haredale, from the dawn of morning until
sunset, sought his niece in every place where he deemed it possible she
could have taken refuge. All day long, nothing, save a draught of water,
passed his lips; though he prosecuted his inquiries far and wide, and
never so much as sat down, once.
In every quarter he could think of; at Chigwell and in London; at the
houses of the tradespeople with whom he dealt, and of the friends he
knew; he pursued his search. A prey to the most harrowing anxieties and
apprehensions, he went from magistrate to magistrate, and finally to the
Secretary of State. The only comfort he received was from this minister,
who assured him that the Government, being now driven to the exercise
of the extreme prerogatives of the Crown, were determined to exert them;
that a proclamation would probably be out upon the morrow, giving to the
military, discretionary and unlimited power in the suppression of the
riots; that the sympathies of the King, the Administration, and both
Houses of Parliament, and indeed of all good men of every religious
persuasion, were strongly with the injured Catholics; and that justice
should be done them at any cost or hazard. He told him, moreover, that
other persons whose houses had been burnt, had for a time lost sight of
their children or their relatives, but had, in every case, within his
knowledge, succeeded in discovering them; that his complaint should be
remembered, and fully stated in the instructions given to the officers
in command, and to all the inferior myrmidons of justice; and that
everything that could be done to help him, should be done, with a
goodwill and in good faith.
Grateful for this consolation, feeble as it was in its reference to the
past, and little hope as it afforded him in connection with the subject
of distress which lay nearest to his heart; and really thankful for the
interest the minister expressed, and seemed to feel, in his condition;
Mr Haredale withdrew. He found himself, with the night coming on, alone
in the streets; and destitute of any place in which to lay his head.
He entered an hotel near Charing Cross, and ordered some refreshment and
a bed. He saw that his faint and worn appearance attracted the attention
of the landlord and his waiters; and thinking that they might suppose
him to be penniless, took out his purse, and laid it on the table. It
was not that, the landlord said, in a faltering voice. If he were one
of those who had suffered by the rioters, he durst not give him
entertainment. He had a family of children, and had been twice warned to
be careful in receiving guests. He heartily prayed his forgiveness, but
what could he do?
Nothing. No man felt that more sincerely than Mr Haredale. He told the
man as much, and left the house.
Feeling that he might have anticipated this occurrence, after what
he had seen at Chigwell in the morning, where no man dared to touch a
spade, though he offered a large reward to all who would come and dig
among the ruins of his house, he walked along the Strand; too proud
to expose himself to another refusal, and of too generous a spirit
to involve in distress or ruin any honest tradesman who might be weak
enough to give him shelter. He wandered into one of the streets by the
side of the river, and was pacing in a thoughtful manner up and
down, thinking of things that had happened long ago, when he heard a
servant-man at an upper window call to another on the opposite side of
the street, that the mob were setting fire to Newgate.
To Newgate! where that man was! His failing strength returned, his
energies came back with tenfold vigour, on the instant. If it were
possible--if they should set the murderer free--was he, after all he had
undergone, to die with the suspicion of having slain his own brother,
dimly gathering about him--
He had no consciousness of going to the jail; but there he stood, before
it. There was the crowd wedged and pressed together in a dense, dark,
moving mass; and there were the flames soaring up into the air. His head
turned round and round, lights flashed before his eyes, and he struggled
hard with two men.
‘Nay, nay,’ said one. ‘Be more yourself, my good sir. We attract
attention here. Come away. What can you do among so many men?’
‘The gentleman’s always for doing something,’ said the other, forcing
him along as he spoke. ‘I like him for that. I do like him for that.’
They had by this time got him into a court, hard by the prison. He
looked from one to the other, and as he tried to release himself, felt
that he tottered on his feet. He who had spoken first, was the old
gentleman whom he had seen at the Lord Mayor’s. The other was John
Grueby, who had stood by him so manfully at Westminster.
‘What does this mean?’ he asked them faintly. ‘How came we together?’
‘On the skirts of the crowd,’ returned the distiller; ‘but come with us.
Pray come with us. You seem to know my friend here?’
‘Surely,’ said Mr Haredale, looking in a kind of stupor at John.
‘He’ll tell you then,’ returned the old gentleman, ‘that I am a man
to be trusted. He’s my servant. He was lately (as you know, I have no
doubt) in Lord George Gordon’s service; but he left it, and brought,
in pure goodwill to me and others, who are marked by the rioters, such
intelligence as he had picked up, of their designs.’
--‘On one condition, please, sir,’ said John, touching his hat. No
evidence against my lord--a misled man--a kind-hearted man, sir. My lord
never intended this.’
‘The condition will be observed, of course,’ rejoined the old distiller.
‘It’s a point of honour. But come with us, sir; pray come with us.’
John Grueby added no entreaties, but he adopted a different kind of
persuasion, by putting his arm through one of Mr Haredale’s, while his
master took the other, and leading him away with all speed.
Sensible, from a strange lightness in his head, and a difficulty in
fixing his thoughts on anything, even to the extent of bearing his
companions in his mind for a minute together without looking at them,
that his brain was affected by the agitation and suffering through which
he had passed, and to which he was still a prey, Mr Haredale let them
lead him where they would. As they went along, he was conscious of
having no command over what he said or thought, and that he had a fear
of going mad.
The distiller lived, as he had told him when they first met, on Holborn
Hill, where he had great storehouses and drove a large trade. They
approached his house by a back entrance, lest they should attract the
notice of the crowd, and went into an upper room which faced towards the
street; the windows, however, in common with those of every other room
in the house, were boarded up inside, in order that, out of doors, all
might appear quite dark.
They laid him on a sofa in this chamber, perfectly insensible; but John
immediately fetching a surgeon, who took from him a large quantity of
blood, he gradually came to himself. As he was, for the time, too weak
to walk, they had no difficulty in persuading him to remain there all
night, and got him to bed without loss of a minute. That done, they
gave him cordial and some toast, and presently a pretty strong
composing-draught, under the influence of which he soon fell into a
lethargy, and, for a time, forgot his troubles.
The vintner, who was a very hearty old fellow and a worthy man, had
no thoughts of going to bed himself, for he had received several
threatening warnings from the rioters, and had indeed gone out that
evening to try and gather from the conversation of the mob whether his
house was to be the next attacked. He sat all night in an easy-chair in
the same room--dozing a little now and then--and received from time
to time the reports of John Grueby and two or three other trustworthy
persons in his employ, who went out into the streets as scouts; and
for whose entertainment an ample allowance of good cheer (which the old
vintner, despite his anxiety, now and then attacked himself) was set
forth in an adjoining chamber.
These accounts were of a sufficiently alarming nature from the first;
but as the night wore on, they grew so much worse, and involved such a
fearful amount of riot and destruction, that in comparison with these
new tidings all the previous disturbances sunk to nothing.
The first intelligence that came, was of the taking of Newgate, and the
escape of all the prisoners, whose track, as they made up Holborn and
into the adjacent streets, was proclaimed to those citizens who were
shut up in their houses, by the rattling of their chains, which formed
a dismal concert, and was heard in every direction, as though so many
forges were at work. The flames too, shone so brightly through the
vintner’s skylights, that the rooms and staircases below were nearly as
light as in broad day; while the distant shouting of the mob seemed to
shake the very walls and ceilings.
At length they were heard approaching the house, and some minutes of
terrible anxiety ensued. They came close up, and stopped before it;
but after giving three loud yells, went on. And although they returned
several times that night, creating new alarms each time, they did
nothing there; having their hands full. Shortly after they had gone away
for the first time, one of the scouts came running in with the news that
they had stopped before Lord Mansfield’s house in Bloomsbury Square.
Soon afterwards there came another, and another, and then the first
returned again, and so, by little and little, their tale was this:--That
the mob gathering round Lord Mansfield’s house, had called on those
within to open the door, and receiving no reply (for Lord and Lady
Mansfield were at that moment escaping by the backway), forced an
entrance according to their usual custom. That they then began to
demolish the house with great fury, and setting fire to it in several
parts, involved in a common ruin the whole of the costly furniture, the
plate and jewels, a beautiful gallery of pictures, the rarest collection
of manuscripts ever possessed by any one private person in the world,
and worse than all, because nothing could replace this loss, the great
Law Library, on almost every page of which were notes in the Judge’s
own hand, of inestimable value,--being the results of the study and
experience of his whole life. That while they were howling and exulting
round the fire, a troop of soldiers, with a magistrate among them, came
up, and being too late (for the mischief was by that time done), began
to disperse the crowd. That the Riot Act being read, and the crowd still
resisting, the soldiers received orders to fire, and levelling their
muskets shot dead at the first discharge six men and a woman, and
wounded many persons; and loading again directly, fired another volley,
but over the people’s heads it was supposed, as none were seen to fall.
That thereupon, and daunted by the shrieks and tumult, the crowd began
to disperse, and the soldiers went away, leaving the killed and wounded
on the ground: which they had no sooner done than the rioters came back
again, and taking up the dead bodies, and the wounded people, formed
into a rude procession, having the bodies in the front. That in this
order they paraded off with a horrible merriment; fixing weapons in the
dead men’s hands to make them look as if alive; and preceded by a fellow
ringing Lord Mansfield’s dinner-bell with all his might.
The scouts reported further, that this party meeting with some others
who had been at similar work elsewhere, they all united into one, and
drafting off a few men with the killed and wounded, marched away to Lord
Mansfield’s country seat at Caen Wood, between Hampstead and Highgate;
bent upon destroying that house likewise, and lighting up a great fire
there, which from that height should be seen all over London. But in
this, they were disappointed, for a party of horse having arrived before
them, they retreated faster than they went, and came straight back to
town.
There being now a great many parties in the streets, each went to
work according to its humour, and a dozen houses were quickly blazing,
including those of Sir John Fielding and two other justices, and four
in Holborn--one of the greatest thoroughfares in London--which were all
burning at the same time, and burned until they went out of themselves,
for the people cut the engine hose, and would not suffer the firemen to
play upon the flames. At one house near Moorfields, they found in one of
the rooms some canary birds in cages, and these they cast into the fire
alive. The poor little creatures screamed, it was said, like infants,
when they were flung upon the blaze; and one man was so touched that he
tried in vain to save them, which roused the indignation of the crowd,
and nearly cost him his life.
At this same house, one of the fellows who went through the rooms,
breaking the furniture and helping to destroy the building, found a
child’s doll--a poor toy--which he exhibited at the window to the mob
below, as the image of some unholy saint which the late occupants had
worshipped. While he was doing this, another man with an equally tender
conscience (they had both been foremost in throwing down the canary
birds for roasting alive), took his seat on the parapet of the house,
and harangued the crowd from a pamphlet circulated by the Association,
relative to the true principles of Christianity! Meanwhile the Lord
Mayor, with his hands in his pockets, looked on as an idle man might
look at any other show, and seemed mightily satisfied to have got a good
place.
Such were the accounts brought to the old vintner by his servants as he
sat at the side of Mr Haredale’s bed, having been unable even to doze,
after the first part of the night; too much disturbed by his own fears;
by the cries of the mob, the light of the fires, and the firing of the
soldiers. Such, with the addition of the release of all the prisoners in
the New Jail at Clerkenwell, and as many robberies of passengers in
the streets, as the crowd had leisure to indulge in, were the scenes of
which Mr Haredale was happily unconscious, and which were all enacted
before midnight.
Chapter 67
When darkness broke away and morning began to dawn, the town wore a
strange aspect indeed.
Sleep had hardly been thought of all night. The general alarm was so
apparent in the faces of the inhabitants, and its expression was so
aggravated by want of rest (few persons, with any property to lose,
having dared go to bed since Monday), that a stranger coming into the
streets would have supposed some mortal pest or plague to have been
raging. In place of the usual cheerfulness and animation of morning,
everything was dead and silent. The shops remained closed, offices and
warehouses were shut, the coach and chair stands were deserted, no carts
or waggons rumbled through the slowly waking streets, the early cries
were all hushed; a universal gloom prevailed. Great numbers of people
were out, even at daybreak, but they flitted to and fro as though they
shrank from the sound of their own footsteps; the public ways were
haunted rather than frequented; and round the smoking ruins people stood
apart from one another and in silence, not venturing to condemn the
rioters, or to be supposed to do so, even in whispers.
At the Lord President’s in Piccadilly, at Lambeth Palace, at the Lord
Chancellor’s in Great Ormond Street, in the Royal Exchange, the Bank,
the Guildhall, the Inns of Court, the Courts of Law, and every chamber
fronting the streets near Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament,
parties of soldiers were posted before daylight. A body of Horse Guards
paraded Palace Yard; an encampment was formed in the Park, where fifteen
hundred men and five battalions of Militia were under arms; the Tower
was fortified, the drawbridges were raised, the cannon loaded and
pointed, and two regiments of artillery busied in strengthening the
fortress and preparing it for defence. A numerous detachment of soldiers
were stationed to keep guard at the New River Head, which the people had
threatened to attack, and where, it was said, they meant to cut off the
main-pipes, so that there might be no water for the extinction of the
flames. In the Poultry, and on Cornhill, and at several other leading
points, iron chains were drawn across the street; parties of soldiers
were distributed in some of the old city churches while it was yet
dark; and in several private houses (among them, Lord Rockingham’s in
Grosvenor Square); which were blockaded as though to sustain a siege,
and had guns pointed from the windows. When the sun rose, it shone into
handsome apartments filled with armed men; the furniture hastily heaped
away in corners, and made of little or no account, in the terror of the
time--on arms glittering in city chambers, among desks and stools, and
dusty books--into little smoky churchyards in odd lanes and by-ways,
with soldiers lying down among the tombs, or lounging under the shade of
the one old tree, and their pile of muskets sparkling in the light--on
solitary sentries pacing up and down in courtyards, silent now, but
yesterday resounding with the din and hum of business--everywhere on
guard-rooms, garrisons, and threatening preparations.
As the day crept on, still more unusual sights were witnessed in the
streets. The gates of the King’s Bench and Fleet Prisons being opened at
the usual hour, were found to have notices affixed to them, announcing
that the rioters would come that night to burn them down. The wardens,
too well knowing the likelihood there was of this promise being
fulfilled, were fain to set their prisoners at liberty, and give
them leave to move their goods; so, all day, such of them as had any
furniture were occupied in conveying it, some to this place, some to
that, and not a few to the brokers’ shops, where they gladly sold it,
for any wretched price those gentry chose to give. There were some
broken men among these debtors who had been in jail so long, and were
so miserable and destitute of friends, so dead to the world, and utterly
forgotten and uncared for, that they implored their jailers not to
set them free, and to send them, if need were, to some other place of
custody. But they, refusing to comply, lest they should incur the anger
of the mob, turned them into the streets, where they wandered up and
down hardly remembering the ways untrodden by their feet so long, and
crying--such abject things those rotten-hearted jails had made them--as
they slunk off in their rags, and dragged their slipshod feet along the
pavement.
Even of the three hundred prisoners who had escaped from Newgate, there
were some--a few, but there were some--who sought their jailers out and
delivered themselves up: preferring imprisonment and punishment to the
horrors of such another night as the last. Many of the convicts, drawn
back to their old place of captivity by some indescribable attraction,
or by a desire to exult over it in its downfall and glut their revenge
by seeing it in ashes, actually went back in broad noon, and loitered
about the cells. Fifty were retaken at one time on this next day, within
the prison walls; but their fate did not deter others, for there they
went in spite of everything, and there they were taken in twos and
threes, twice or thrice a day, all through the week. Of the fifty just
mentioned, some were occupied in endeavouring to rekindle the fire; but
in general they seemed to have no object in view but to prowl and lounge
about the old place: being often found asleep in the ruins, or sitting
talking there, or even eating and drinking, as in a choice retreat.
Besides the notices on the gates of the Fleet and the King’s Bench,
many similar announcements were left, before one o’clock at noon, at
the houses of private individuals; and further, the mob proclaimed their
intention of seizing on the Bank, the Mint, the Arsenal at Woolwich, and
the Royal Palaces. The notices were seldom delivered by more than one
man, who, if it were at a shop, went in, and laid it, with a bloody
threat perhaps, upon the counter; or if it were at a private
house, knocked at the door, and thrust it in the servant’s hand.
Notwithstanding the presence of the military in every quarter of the
town, and the great force in the Park, these messengers did their
errands with impunity all through the day. So did two boys who went
down Holborn alone, armed with bars taken from the railings of Lord
Mansfield’s house, and demanded money for the rioters. So did a tall man
on horseback who made a collection for the same purpose in Fleet Street,
and refused to take anything but gold.
A rumour had now got into circulation, too, which diffused a greater
dread all through London, even than these publicly announced intentions
of the rioters, though all men knew that if they were successfully
effected, there must ensue a national bankruptcy and general ruin. It
was said that they meant to throw the gates of Bedlam open, and let all
the madmen loose. This suggested such dreadful images to the people’s
minds, and was indeed an act so fraught with new and unimaginable
horrors in the contemplation, that it beset them more than any loss or
cruelty of which they could foresee the worst, and drove many sane men
nearly mad themselves.
So the day passed on: the prisoners moving their goods; people running
to and fro in the streets, carrying away their property; groups standing
in silence round the ruins; all business suspended; and the soldiers
disposed as has been already mentioned, remaining quite inactive. So the
day passed on, and dreaded night drew near again.
At last, at seven o’clock in the evening, the Privy Council issued a
solemn proclamation that it was now necessary to employ the military,
and that the officers had most direct and effectual orders, by an
immediate exertion of their utmost force, to repress the disturbances;
and warning all good subjects of the King to keep themselves, their
servants, and apprentices, within doors that night. There was then
delivered out to every soldier on duty, thirty-six rounds of powder and
ball; the drums beat; and the whole force was under arms at sunset.
The City authorities, stimulated by these vigorous measures, held a
Common Council; passed a vote thanking the military associations who
had tendered their aid to the civil authorities; accepted it; and placed
them under the direction of the two sheriffs. At the Queen’s palace,
a double guard, the yeomen on duty, the groom-porters, and all other
attendants, were stationed in the passages and on the staircases at
seven o’clock, with strict instructions to be watchful on their posts
all night; and all the doors were locked. The gentlemen of the Temple,
and the other Inns, mounted guard within their gates, and strengthened
them with the great stones of the pavement, which they took up for the
purpose. In Lincoln’s Inn, they gave up the hall and commons to the
Northumberland Militia, under the command of Lord Algernon Percy; in
some few of the city wards, the burgesses turned out, and without
making a very fierce show, looked brave enough. Some hundreds of stout
gentlemen threw themselves, armed to the teeth, into the halls of the
different companies, double-locked and bolted all the gates, and
dared the rioters (among themselves) to come on at their peril. These
arrangements being all made simultaneously, or nearly so, were completed
by the time it got dark; and then the streets were comparatively clear,
and were guarded at all the great corners and chief avenues by
the troops: while parties of the officers rode up and down in all
directions, ordering chance stragglers home, and admonishing the
residents to keep within their houses, and, if any firing ensued, not
to approach the windows. More chains were drawn across such of the
thoroughfares as were of a nature to favour the approach of a great
crowd, and at each of these points a considerable force was stationed.
All these precautions having been taken, and it being now quite dark,
those in command awaited the result in some anxiety: and not without a
hope that such vigilant demonstrations might of themselves dishearten
the populace, and prevent any new outrages.
But in this reckoning they were cruelly mistaken, for in half an hour,
or less, as though the setting in of night had been their preconcerted
signal, the rioters having previously, in small parties, prevented the
lighting of the street lamps, rose like a great sea; and that in so many
places at once, and with such inconceivable fury, that those who had the
direction of the troops knew not, at first, where to turn or what to do.
One after another, new fires blazed up in every quarter of the town,
as though it were the intention of the insurgents to wrap the city in a
circle of flames, which, contracting by degrees, should burn the whole
to ashes; the crowd swarmed and roared in every street; and none but
rioters and soldiers being out of doors, it seemed to the latter as if
all London were arrayed against them, and they stood alone against the
town.
In two hours, six-and-thirty fires were raging--six-and-thirty great
conflagrations: among them the Borough Clink in Tooley Street, the
King’s Bench, the Fleet, and the New Bridewell. In almost every street,
there was a battle; and in every quarter the muskets of the troops were
heard above the shouts and tumult of the mob. The firing began in the
Poultry, where the chain was drawn across the road, where nearly a score
of people were killed on the first discharge. Their bodies having been
hastily carried into St Mildred’s Church by the soldiers, the latter
fired again, and following fast upon the crowd, who began to give way
when they saw the execution that was done, formed across Cheapside, and
charged them at the point of the bayonet.
The streets were now a dreadful spectacle. The shouts of the rabble,
the shrieks of women, the cries of the wounded, and the constant firing,
formed a deafening and an awful accompaniment to the sights which every
corner presented. Wherever the road was obstructed by the chains, there
the fighting and the loss of life were greatest; but there was hot work
and bloodshed in almost every leading thoroughfare.
At Holborn Bridge, and on Holborn Hill, the confusion was greater than
in any other part; for the crowd that poured out of the city in two
great streams, one by Ludgate Hill, and one by Newgate Street, united at
that spot, and formed a mass so dense, that at every volley the people
seemed to fall in heaps. At this place a large detachment of soldiery
were posted, who fired, now up Fleet Market, now up Holborn, now up Snow
Hill--constantly raking the streets in each direction. At this place
too, several large fires were burning, so that all the terrors of that
terrible night seemed to be concentrated in one spot.
Full twenty times, the rioters, headed by one man who wielded an axe
in his right hand, and bestrode a brewer’s horse of great size and
strength, caparisoned with fetters taken out of Newgate, which clanked
and jingled as he went, made an attempt to force a passage at this
point, and fire the vintner’s house. Full twenty times they were
repulsed with loss of life, and still came back again; and though
the fellow at their head was marked and singled out by all, and was a
conspicuous object as the only rioter on horseback, not a man could
hit him. So surely as the smoke cleared away, so surely there was he;
calling hoarsely to his companions, brandishing his axe above his head,
and dashing on as though he bore a charmed life, and was proof against
ball and powder.
This man was Hugh; and in every part of the riot, he was seen. He headed
two attacks upon the Bank, helped to break open the Toll-houses on
Blackfriars Bridge, and cast the money into the street: fired two of the
prisons with his own hand: was here, and there, and everywhere--always
foremost--always active--striking at the soldiers, cheering on the
crowd, making his horse’s iron music heard through all the yell and
uproar: but never hurt or stopped. Turn him at one place, and he made
a new struggle in another; force him to retreat at this point, and he
advanced on that, directly. Driven from Holborn for the twentieth
time, he rode at the head of a great crowd straight upon Saint Paul’s,
attacked a guard of soldiers who kept watch over a body of prisoners
within the iron railings, forced them to retreat, rescued the men they
had in custody, and with this accession to his party, came back again,
mad with liquor and excitement, and hallooing them on like a demon.
It would have been no easy task for the most careful rider to sit a
horse in the midst of such a throng and tumult; but though this madman
rolled upon his back (he had no saddle) like a boat upon the sea, he
never for an instant lost his seat, or failed to guide him where he
would. Through the very thickest of the press, over dead bodies and
burning fragments, now on the pavement, now in the road, now riding up
a flight of steps to make himself the more conspicuous to his party,
and now forcing a passage through a mass of human beings, so closely
squeezed together that it seemed as if the edge of a knife would
scarcely part them,--on he went, as though he could surmount all
obstacles by the mere exercise of his will. And perhaps his not being
shot was in some degree attributable to this very circumstance; for his
extreme audacity, and the conviction that he must be one of those to
whom the proclamation referred, inspired the soldiers with a desire to
take him alive, and diverted many an aim which otherwise might have been
more near the mark.
The vintner and Mr Haredale, unable to sit quietly listening to the
noise without seeing what went on, had climbed to the roof of the house,
and hiding behind a stack of chimneys, were looking cautiously down into
the street, almost hoping that after so many repulses the rioters would
be foiled, when a great shout proclaimed that a parry were coming round
the other way; and the dismal jingling of those accursed fetters warned
them next moment that they too were led by Hugh. The soldiers had
advanced into Fleet Market and were dispersing the people there; so that
they came on with hardly any check, and were soon before the house.
‘All’s over now,’ said the vintner. ‘Fifty thousand pounds will be
scattered in a minute. We must save ourselves. We can do no more, and
shall have reason to be thankful if we do as much.’
Their first impulse was, to clamber along the roofs of the houses, and,
knocking at some garret window for admission, pass down that way into
the street, and so escape. But another fierce cry from below, and a
general upturning of the faces of the crowd, apprised them that they
were discovered, and even that Mr Haredale was recognised; for Hugh,
seeing him plainly in the bright glare of the fire, which in that part
made it as light as day, called to him by his name, and swore to have
his life.
‘Leave me here,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘and in Heaven’s name, my good
friend, save yourself! Come on!’ he muttered, as he turned towards Hugh
and faced him without any further effort at concealment: ‘This roof is
high, and if we close, we will die together!’
‘Madness,’ said the honest vintner, pulling him back, ‘sheer madness.
Hear reason, sir. My good sir, hear reason. I could never make myself
heard by knocking at a window now; and even if I could, no one would be
bold enough to connive at my escape. Through the cellars, there’s a kind
of passage into the back street by which we roll casks in and out. We
shall have time to get down there before they can force an entry. Do
not delay an instant, but come with me--for both our sakes--for mine--my
dear good sir!’
As he spoke, and drew Mr Haredale back, they had both a glimpse of the
street. It was but a glimpse, but it showed them the crowd, gathering
and clustering round the house: some of the armed men pressing to the
front to break down the doors and windows, some bringing brands from
the nearest fire, some with lifted faces following their course upon the
roof and pointing them out to their companions: all raging and roaring
like the flames they lighted up. They saw some men thirsting for the
treasures of strong liquor which they knew were stored within; they saw
others, who had been wounded, sinking down into the opposite doorways
and dying, solitary wretches, in the midst of all the vast assemblage;
here a frightened woman trying to escape; and there a lost child; and
there a drunken ruffian, unconscious of the death-wound on his head,
raving and fighting to the last. All these things, and even such trivial
incidents as a man with his hat off, or turning round, or stooping down,
or shaking hands with another, they marked distinctly; yet in a glance
so brief, that, in the act of stepping back, they lost the whole, and
saw but the pale faces of each other, and the red sky above them.
Mr Haredale yielded to the entreaties of his companion--more because he
was resolved to defend him, than for any thought he had of his own life,
or any care he entertained for his own safety--and quickly re-entering
the house, they descended the stairs together. Loud blows were
thundering on the shutters, crowbars were already thrust beneath the
door, the glass fell from the sashes, a deep light shone through every
crevice, and they heard the voices of the foremost in the crowd so close
to every chink and keyhole, that they seemed to be hoarsely whispering
their threats into their very ears. They had but a moment reached the
bottom of the cellar-steps and shut the door behind them, when the mob
broke in.
The vaults were profoundly dark, and having no torch or candle--for
they had been afraid to carry one, lest it should betray their place of
refuge--they were obliged to grope with their hands. But they were not
long without light, for they had not gone far when they heard the crowd
forcing the door; and, looking back among the low-arched passages,
could see them in the distance, hurrying to and fro with flashing links,
broaching the casks, staving the great vats, turning off upon the right
hand and the left, into the different cellars, and lying down to drink
at the channels of strong spirits which were already flowing on the
ground.
They hurried on, not the less quickly for this; and had reached the only
vault which lay between them and the passage out, when suddenly, from
the direction in which they were going, a strong light gleamed upon
their faces; and before they could slip aside, or turn back, or hide
themselves, two men (one bearing a torch) came upon them, and cried in
an astonished whisper, ‘Here they are!’
At the same instant they pulled off what they wore upon their heads. Mr
Haredale saw before him Edward Chester, and then saw, when the vintner
gasped his name, Joe Willet.
Ay, the same Joe, though with an arm the less, who used to make the
quarterly journey on the grey mare to pay the bill to the purple-faced
vintner; and that very same purple-faced vintner, formerly of Thames
Street, now looked him in the face, and challenged him by name.
‘Give me your hand,’ said Joe softly, taking it whether the astonished
vintner would or no. ‘Don’t fear to shake it; it’s a friendly one and
a hearty one, though it has no fellow. Why, how well you look and how
bluff you are! And you--God bless you, sir. Take heart, take heart.
We’ll find them. Be of good cheer; we have not been idle.’
There was something so honest and frank in Joe’s speech, that Mr
Haredale put his hand in his involuntarily, though their meeting
was suspicious enough. But his glance at Edward Chester, and that
gentleman’s keeping aloof, were not lost upon Joe, who said bluntly,
glancing at Edward while he spoke:
‘Times are changed, Mr Haredale, and times have come when we ought to
know friends from enemies, and make no confusion of names. Let me tell
you that but for this gentleman, you would most likely have been dead by
this time, or badly wounded at the best.’
‘What do you say?’ cried Mr Haredale.
‘I say,’ said Joe, ‘first, that it was a bold thing to be in the crowd
at all disguised as one of them; though I won’t say much about that, on
second thoughts, for that’s my case too. Secondly, that it was a brave
and glorious action--that’s what I call it--to strike that fellow off
his horse before their eyes!’
‘What fellow! Whose eyes!’
‘What fellow, sir!’ cried Joe: ‘a fellow who has no goodwill to you, and
who has the daring and devilry in him of twenty fellows. I know him of
old. Once in the house, HE would have found you, here or anywhere. The
rest owe you no particular grudge, and, unless they see you, will only
think of drinking themselves dead. But we lose time. Are you ready?’
‘Quite,’ said Edward. ‘Put out the torch, Joe, and go on. And be silent,
there’s a good fellow.’
‘Silent or not silent,’ murmured Joe, as he dropped the flaring link
upon the ground, crushed it with his foot, and gave his hand to Mr
Haredale, ‘it was a brave and glorious action;--no man can alter that.’
Both Mr Haredale and the worthy vintner were too amazed and too much
hurried to ask any further questions, so followed their conductors
in silence. It seemed, from a short whispering which presently ensued
between them and the vintner relative to the best way of escape, that
they had entered by the back-door, with the connivance of John Grueby,
who watched outside with the key in his pocket, and whom they had taken
into their confidence. A party of the crowd coming up that way, just as
they entered, John had double-locked the door again, and made off for
the soldiers, so that means of retreat was cut off from under them.
However, as the front-door had been forced, and this minor crowd, being
anxious to get at the liquor, had no fancy for losing time in breaking
down another, but had gone round and got in from Holborn with the rest,
the narrow lane in the rear was quite free of people. So, when they had
crawled through the passage indicated by the vintner (which was a mere
shelving-trap for the admission of casks), and had managed with some
difficulty to unchain and raise the door at the upper end, they emerged
into the street without being observed or interrupted. Joe still holding
Mr Haredale tight, and Edward taking the same care of the vintner, they
hurried through the streets at a rapid pace; occasionally standing aside
to let some fugitives go by, or to keep out of the way of the soldiers
who followed them, and whose questions, when they halted to put any,
were speedily stopped by one whispered word from Joe.
Chapter 68
While Newgate was burning on the previous night, Barnaby and his
father, having been passed among the crowd from hand to hand, stood in
Smithfield, on the outskirts of the mob, gazing at the flames like men
who had been suddenly roused from sleep. Some moments elapsed before
they could distinctly remember where they were, or how they got
there; or recollected that while they were standing idle and listless
spectators of the fire, they had tools in their hands which had been
hurriedly given them that they might free themselves from their fetters.
Barnaby, heavily ironed as he was, if he had obeyed his first impulse,
or if he had been alone, would have made his way back to the side of
Hugh, who to his clouded intellect now shone forth with the new lustre
of being his preserver and truest friend. But his father’s terror
of remaining in the streets, communicated itself to him when he
comprehended the full extent of his fears, and impressed him with the
same eagerness to fly to a place of safety.
In a corner of the market among the pens for cattle, Barnaby knelt down,
and pausing every now and then to pass his hand over his father’s face,
or look up to him with a smile, knocked off his irons. When he had seen
him spring, a free man, to his feet, and had given vent to the transport
of delight which the sight awakened, he went to work upon his own, which
soon fell rattling down upon the ground, and left his limbs unfettered.
Gliding away together when this task was accomplished, and passing
several groups of men, each gathered round a stooping figure to hide
him from those who passed, but unable to repress the clanking sound of
hammers, which told that they too were busy at the same work,--the two
fugitives made towards Clerkenwell, and passing thence to Islington, as
the nearest point of egress, were quickly in the fields. After wandering
about for a long time, they found in a pasture near Finchley a poor
shed, with walls of mud, and roof of grass and brambles, built for
some cowherd, but now deserted. Here, they lay down for the rest of the
night.
They wandered to and fro when it was day, and once Barnaby went off
alone to a cluster of little cottages two or three miles away, to
purchase some bread and milk. But finding no better shelter, they
returned to the same place, and lay down again to wait for night.
Heaven alone can tell, with what vague hopes of duty, and affection;
with what strange promptings of nature, intelligible to him as to a man
of radiant mind and most enlarged capacity; with what dim memories of
children he had played with when a child himself, who had prattled
of their fathers, and of loving them, and being loved; with how many
half-remembered, dreamy associations of his mother’s grief and tears and
widowhood; he watched and tended this man. But that a vague and shadowy
crowd of such ideas came slowly on him; that they taught him to be sorry
when he looked upon his haggard face, that they overflowed his eyes when
he stooped to kiss him, that they kept him waking in a tearful gladness,
shading him from the sun, fanning him with leaves, soothing him when he
started in his sleep--ah! what a troubled sleep it was--and wondering
when SHE would come to join them and be happy, is the truth. He sat
beside him all that day; listening for her footsteps in every breath
of air, looking for her shadow on the gently-waving grass, twining the
hedge flowers for her pleasure when she came, and his when he awoke; and
stooping down from time to time to listen to his mutterings, and wonder
why he was so restless in that quiet place. The sun went down, and night
came on, and he was still quite tranquil; busied with these thoughts, as
if there were no other people in the world, and the dull cloud of smoke
hanging on the immense city in the distance, hid no vices, no crimes, no
life or death, or cause of disquiet--nothing but clear air.
But the hour had now come when he must go alone to find out the blind
man (a task that filled him with delight) and bring him to that place;
taking especial care that he was not watched or followed on his way
back. He listened to the directions he must observe, repeated them again
and again, and after twice or thrice returning to surprise his father
with a light-hearted laugh, went forth, at last, upon his errand:
leaving Grip, whom he had carried from the jail in his arms, to his
care.
Fleet of foot, and anxious to return, he sped swiftly on towards the
city, but could not reach it before the fires began, and made the night
angry with their dismal lustre. When he entered the town--it might be
that he was changed by going there without his late companions, and on
no violent errand; or by the beautiful solitude in which he had passed
the day, or by the thoughts that had come upon him,--but it seemed
peopled by a legion of devils. This flight and pursuit, this cruel
burning and destroying, these dreadful cries and stunning noises, were
THEY the good lord’s noble cause!
Though almost stupefied by the bewildering scene, still he found the
blind man’s house. It was shut up and tenantless.
He waited for a long while, but no one came. At last he withdrew; and as
he knew by this time that the soldiers were firing, and many people must
have been killed, he went down into Holborn, where he heard the great
crowd was, to try if he could find Hugh, and persuade him to avoid the
danger, and return with him.
If he had been stunned and shocked before, his horror was increased a
thousandfold when he got into this vortex of the riot, and not being an
actor in the terrible spectacle, had it all before his eyes. But there,
in the midst, towering above them all, close before the house they were
attacking now, was Hugh on horseback, calling to the rest!
Sickened by the sights surrounding him on every side, and by the heat
and roar, and crash, he forced his way among the crowd (where many
recognised him, and with shouts pressed back to let him pass), and in
time was nearly up with Hugh, who was savagely threatening some one, but
whom or what he said, he could not, in the great confusion, understand.
At that moment the crowd forced their way into the house, and Hugh--it
was impossible to see by what means, in such a concourse--fell headlong
down.
Barnaby was beside him when he staggered to his feet. It was well he
made him hear his voice, or Hugh, with his uplifted axe, would have
cleft his skull in twain.
‘Barnaby--you! Whose hand was that, that struck me down?’
‘Not mine.’
‘Whose!--I say, whose!’ he cried, reeling back, and looking wildly
round. ‘What are you doing? Where is he? Show me!’
‘You are hurt,’ said Barnaby--as indeed he was, in the head, both by the
blow he had received, and by his horse’s hoof. ‘Come away with me.’
As he spoke, he took the horse’s bridle in his hand, turned him, and
dragged Hugh several paces. This brought them out of the crowd, which
was pouring from the street into the vintner’s cellars.
‘Where’s--where’s Dennis?’ said Hugh, coming to a stop, and checking
Barnaby with his strong arm. ‘Where has he been all day? What did
he mean by leaving me as he did, in the jail, last night? Tell me,
you--d’ye hear!’
With a flourish of his dangerous weapon, he fell down upon the ground
like a log. After a minute, though already frantic with drinking and
with the wound in his head, he crawled to a stream of burning spirit
which was pouring down the kennel, and began to drink at it as if it
were a brook of water.
Barnaby drew him away, and forced him to rise. Though he could neither
stand nor walk, he involuntarily staggered to his horse, climbed upon
his back, and clung there. After vainly attempting to divest the animal
of his clanking trappings, Barnaby sprung up behind him, snatched the
bridle, turned into Leather Lane, which was close at hand, and urged the
frightened horse into a heavy trot.
He looked back, once, before he left the street; and looked upon a sight
not easily to be erased, even from his remembrance, so long as he had
life.
The vintner’s house with a half-a-dozen others near at hand, was one
great, glowing blaze. All night, no one had essayed to quench the
flames, or stop their progress; but now a body of soldiers were actively
engaged in pulling down two old wooden houses, which were every moment
in danger of taking fire, and which could scarcely fail, if they were
left to burn, to extend the conflagration immensely. The tumbling
down of nodding walls and heavy blocks of wood, the hooting and
the execrations of the crowd, the distant firing of other military
detachments, the distracted looks and cries of those whose habitations
were in danger, the hurrying to and fro of frightened people with
their goods; the reflections in every quarter of the sky, of deep, red,
soaring flames, as though the last day had come and the whole universe
were burning; the dust, and smoke, and drift of fiery particles,
scorching and kindling all it fell upon; the hot unwholesome vapour,
the blight on everything; the stars, and moon, and very sky,
obliterated;--made up such a sum of dreariness and ruin, that it seemed
as if the face of Heaven were blotted out, and night, in its rest and
quiet, and softened light, never could look upon the earth again.
But there was a worse spectacle than this--worse by far than fire and
smoke, or even the rabble’s unappeasable and maniac rage. The gutters
of the street, and every crack and fissure in the stones, ran with
scorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands, overflowed
the road and pavement, and formed a great pool, into which the people
dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps all round this fearful
pond, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, women
with children in their arms and babies at their breasts, and drank until
they died. While some stooped with their lips to the brink and never
raised their heads again, others sprang up from their fiery draught,
and danced, half in a mad triumph, and half in the agony of suffocation,
until they fell, and steeped their corpses in the liquor that had killed
them. Nor was even this the worst or most appalling kind of death that
happened on this fatal night. From the burning cellars, where they
drank out of hats, pails, buckets, tubs, and shoes, some men were drawn,
alive, but all alight from head to foot; who, in their unendurable
anguish and suffering, making for anything that had the look of water,
rolled, hissing, in this hideous lake, and splashed up liquid fire
which lapped in all it met with as it ran along the surface, and
neither spared the living nor the dead. On this last night of the great
riots--for the last night it was--the wretched victims of a senseless
outcry, became themselves the dust and ashes of the flames they had
kindled, and strewed the public streets of London.
With all he saw in this last glance fixed indelibly upon his mind,
Barnaby hurried from the city which enclosed such horrors; and holding
down his head that he might not even see the glare of the fires upon the
quiet landscape, was soon in the still country roads.
He stopped at about half-a-mile from the shed where his father lay, and
with some difficulty making Hugh sensible that he must dismount, sunk
the horse’s furniture in a pool of stagnant water, and turned the animal
loose. That done, he supported his companion as well as he could, and
led him slowly forward.
Chapter 69
It was the dead of night, and very dark, when Barnaby, with his
stumbling comrade, approached the place where he had left his father;
but he could see him stealing away into the gloom, distrustful even of
him, and rapidly retreating. After calling to him twice or thrice that
there was nothing to fear, but without effect, he suffered Hugh to sink
upon the ground, and followed to bring him back.
He continued to creep away, until Barnaby was close upon him; then
turned, and said in a terrible, though suppressed voice:
‘Let me go. Do not lay hands upon me. You have told her; and you and she
together have betrayed me!’
Barnaby looked at him, in silence.
‘You have seen your mother!’
‘No,’ cried Barnaby, eagerly. ‘Not for a long time--longer than I can
tell. A whole year, I think. Is she here?’
His father looked upon him steadfastly for a few moments, and then
said--drawing nearer to him as he spoke, for, seeing his face, and
hearing his words, it was impossible to doubt his truth:
‘What man is that?’
‘Hugh--Hugh. Only Hugh. You know him. HE will not harm you. Why, you’re
afraid of Hugh! Ha ha ha! Afraid of gruff, old, noisy Hugh!’
‘What man is he, I ask you,’ he rejoined so fiercely, that Barnaby
stopped in his laugh, and shrinking back, surveyed him with a look of
terrified amazement.
‘Why, how stern you are! You make me fear you, though you are my father.
Why do you speak to me so?’
--‘I want,’ he answered, putting away the hand which his son, with
a timid desire to propitiate him, laid upon his sleeve,--‘I want an
answer, and you give me only jeers and questions. Who have you brought
with you to this hiding-place, poor fool; and where is the blind man?’
‘I don’t know where. His house was close shut. I waited, but no person
came; that was no fault of mine. This is Hugh--brave Hugh, who broke
into that ugly jail, and set us free. Aha! You like him now, do you? You
like him now!’
‘Why does he lie upon the ground?’
‘He has had a fall, and has been drinking. The fields and trees go
round, and round, and round with him, and the ground heaves under his
feet. You know him? You remember? See!’
They had by this time returned to where he lay, and both stooped over
him to look into his face.
‘I recollect the man,’ his father murmured. ‘Why did you bring him
here?’
‘Because he would have been killed if I had left him over yonder. They
were firing guns and shedding blood. Does the sight of blood turn you
sick, father? I see it does, by your face. That’s like me--What are you
looking at?’
‘At nothing!’ said the murderer softly, as he started back a pace or
two, and gazed with sunken jaw and staring eyes above his son’s head.
‘At nothing!’
He remained in the same attitude and with the same expression on his
face for a minute or more; then glanced slowly round as if he had lost
something; and went shivering back, towards the shed.
‘Shall I bring him in, father?’ asked Barnaby, who had looked on,
wondering.
He only answered with a suppressed groan, and lying down upon the
ground, wrapped his cloak about his head, and shrunk into the darkest
corner.
Finding that nothing would rouse Hugh now, or make him sensible for a
moment, Barnaby dragged him along the grass, and laid him on a little
heap of refuse hay and straw which had been his own bed; first having
brought some water from a running stream hard by, and washed his wound,
and laved his hands and face. Then he lay down himself, between the two,
to pass the night; and looking at the stars, fell fast asleep.
Awakened early in the morning, by the sunshine and the songs of birds,
and hum of insects, he left them sleeping in the hut, and walked into
the sweet and pleasant air. But he felt that on his jaded senses,
oppressed and burdened with the dreadful scenes of last night, and many
nights before, all the beauties of opening day, which he had so often
tasted, and in which he had had such deep delight, fell heavily. He
thought of the blithe mornings when he and the dogs went bounding on
together through the woods and fields; and the recollection filled his
eyes with tears. He had no consciousness, God help him, of having done
wrong, nor had he any new perception of the merits of the cause in which
he had been engaged, or those of the men who advocated it; but he was
full of cares now, and regrets, and dismal recollections, and wishes
(quite unknown to him before) that this or that event had never
happened, and that the sorrow and suffering of so many people had been
spared. And now he began to think how happy they would be--his father,
mother, he, and Hugh--if they rambled away together, and lived in some
lonely place, where there were none of these troubles; and that perhaps
the blind man, who had talked so wisely about gold, and told him of
the great secrets he knew, could teach them how to live without being
pinched by want. As this occurred to him, he was the more sorry that he
had not seen him last night; and he was still brooding over this regret,
when his father came, and touched him on the shoulder.
‘Ah!’ cried Barnaby, starting from his fit of thoughtfulness. ‘Is it
only you?’
‘Who should it be?’
‘I almost thought,’ he answered, ‘it was the blind man. I must have some
talk with him, father.’
‘And so must I, for without seeing him, I don’t know where to fly or
what to do, and lingering here, is death. You must go to him again, and
bring him here.’
‘Must I!’ cried Barnaby, delighted; ‘that’s brave, father. That’s what I
want to do.’
‘But you must bring only him, and none other. And though you wait at
his door a whole day and night, still you must wait, and not come back
without him.’
‘Don’t you fear that,’ he cried gaily. ‘He shall come, he shall come.’
‘Trim off these gewgaws,’ said his father, plucking the scraps of ribbon
and the feathers from his hat, ‘and over your own dress wear my cloak.
Take heed how you go, and they will be too busy in the streets to notice
you. Of your coming back you need take no account, for he’ll manage
that, safely.’
‘To be sure!’ said Barnaby. ‘To be sure he will! A wise man, father, and
one who can teach us to be rich. Oh! I know him, I know him.’
He was speedily dressed, and as well disguised as he could be. With a
lighter heart he then set off upon his second journey, leaving Hugh,
who was still in a drunken stupor, stretched upon the ground within the
shed, and his father walking to and fro before it.
The murderer, full of anxious thoughts, looked after him, and paced up
and down, disquieted by every breath of air that whispered among the
boughs, and by every light shadow thrown by the passing clouds upon the
daisied ground. He was anxious for his safe return, and yet, though his
own life and safety hung upon it, felt a relief while he was gone. In
the intense selfishness which the constant presence before him of his
great crimes, and their consequences here and hereafter, engendered,
every thought of Barnaby, as his son, was swallowed up and lost. Still,
his presence was a torture and reproach; in his wild eyes, there were
terrible images of that guilty night; with his unearthly aspect, and his
half-formed mind, he seemed to the murderer a creature who had sprung
into existence from his victim’s blood. He could not bear his look, his
voice, his touch; and yet he was forced, by his own desperate condition
and his only hope of cheating the gibbet, to have him by his side, and
to know that he was inseparable from his single chance of escape.
He walked to and fro, with little rest, all day, revolving these things
in his mind; and still Hugh lay, unconscious, in the shed. At length,
when the sun was setting, Barnaby returned, leading the blind man, and
talking earnestly to him as they came along together.
The murderer advanced to meet them, and bidding his son go on and speak
to Hugh, who had just then staggered to his feet, took his place at the
blind man’s elbow, and slowly followed, towards the shed.
‘Why did you send HIM?’ said Stagg. ‘Don’t you know it was the way to
have him lost, as soon as found?’
‘Would you have had me come myself?’ returned the other.
‘Humph! Perhaps not. I was before the jail on Tuesday night, but missed
you in the crowd. I was out last night, too. There was good work last
night--gay work--profitable work’--he added, rattling the money in his
pockets.
‘Have you--’
--‘Seen your good lady? Yes.’
‘Do you mean to tell me more, or not?’
‘I’ll tell you all,’ returned the blind man, with a laugh. ‘Excuse
me--but I love to see you so impatient. There’s energy in it.’
‘Does she consent to say the word that may save me?’
‘No,’ returned the blind man emphatically, as he turned his face towards
him. ‘No. Thus it is. She has been at death’s door since she lost her
darling--has been insensible, and I know not what. I tracked her to a
hospital, and presented myself (with your leave) at her bedside. Our
talk was not a long one, for she was weak, and there being people near
I was not quite easy. But I told her all that you and I agreed upon, and
pointed out the young gentleman’s position, in strong terms. She tried
to soften me, but that, of course (as I told her), was lost time. She
cried and moaned, you may be sure; all women do. Then, of a sudden, she
found her voice and strength, and said that Heaven would help her and
her innocent son; and that to Heaven she appealed against us--which she
did; in really very pretty language, I assure you. I advised her, as
a friend, not to count too much on assistance from any such distant
quarter--recommended her to think of it--told her where I lived--said I
knew she would send to me before noon, next day--and left her, either in
a faint or shamming.’
When he had concluded this narration, during which he had made several
pauses, for the convenience of cracking and eating nuts, of which
he seemed to have a pocketful, the blind man pulled a flask from his
pocket, took a draught himself, and offered it to his companion.
‘You won’t, won’t you?’ he said, feeling that he pushed it from him.
‘Well! Then the gallant gentleman who’s lodging with you, will. Hallo,
bully!’
‘Death!’ said the other, holding him back. ‘Will you tell me what I am
to do!’
‘Do! Nothing easier. Make a moonlight flitting in two hours’ time with
the young gentleman (he’s quite ready to go; I have been giving him good
advice as we came along), and get as far from London as you can. Let me
know where you are, and leave the rest to me. She MUST come round; she
can’t hold out long; and as to the chances of your being retaken in
the meanwhile, why it wasn’t one man who got out of Newgate, but three
hundred. Think of that, for your comfort.’
‘We must support life. How?’
‘How!’ repeated the blind man. ‘By eating and drinking. And how get meat
and drink, but by paying for it! Money!’ he cried, slapping his pocket.
‘Is money the word? Why, the streets have been running money. Devil send
that the sport’s not over yet, for these are jolly times; golden, rare,
roaring, scrambling times. Hallo, bully! Hallo! Hallo! Drink, bully,
drink. Where are ye there! Hallo!’
With such vociferations, and with a boisterous manner which bespoke his
perfect abandonment to the general licence and disorder, he groped his
way towards the shed, where Hugh and Barnaby were sitting on the ground.
‘Put it about!’ he cried, handing his flask to Hugh. ‘The kennels run
with wine and gold. Guineas and strong water flow from the very pumps.
About with it, don’t spare it!’
Exhausted, unwashed, unshorn, begrimed with smoke and dust, his hair
clotted with blood, his voice quite gone, so that he spoke in whispers;
his skin parched up by fever, his whole body bruised and cut, and beaten
about, Hugh still took the flask, and raised it to his lips. He was in
the act of drinking, when the front of the shed was suddenly darkened,
and Dennis stood before them.
‘No offence, no offence,’ said that personage in a conciliatory tone, as
Hugh stopped in his draught, and eyed him, with no pleasant look, from
head to foot. ‘No offence, brother. Barnaby here too, eh? How are you,
Barnaby? And two other gentlemen! Your humble servant, gentlemen. No
offence to YOU either, I hope. Eh, brothers?’
Notwithstanding that he spoke in this very friendly and confident
manner, he seemed to have considerable hesitation about entering, and
remained outside the roof. He was rather better dressed than usual:
wearing the same suit of threadbare black, it is true, but having round
his neck an unwholesome-looking cravat of a yellowish white; and, on his
hands, great leather gloves, such as a gardener might wear in following
his trade. His shoes were newly greased, and ornamented with a pair of
rusty iron buckles; the packthread at his knees had been renewed; and
where he wanted buttons, he wore pins. Altogether, he had something the
look of a tipstaff, or a bailiff’s follower, desperately faded, but who
had a notion of keeping up the appearance of a professional character,
and making the best of the worst means.
‘You’re very snug here,’ said Mr Dennis, pulling out a mouldy
pocket-handkerchief, which looked like a decomposed halter, and wiping
his forehead in a nervous manner.
‘Not snug enough to prevent your finding us, it seems,’ Hugh answered,
sulkily.
‘Why I’ll tell you what, brother,’ said Dennis, with a friendly smile,
‘when you don’t want me to know which way you’re riding, you must wear
another sort of bells on your horse. Ah! I know the sound of them you
wore last night, and have got quick ears for ‘em; that’s the truth.
Well, but how are you, brother?’
He had by this time approached, and now ventured to sit down by him.
‘How am I?’ answered Hugh. ‘Where were you yesterday? Where did you go
when you left me in the jail? Why did you leave me? And what did you
mean by rolling your eyes and shaking your fist at me, eh?’
‘I shake my fist!--at you, brother!’ said Dennis, gently checking Hugh’s
uplifted hand, which looked threatening.
‘Your stick, then; it’s all one.’
‘Lord love you, brother, I meant nothing. You don’t understand me by
half. I shouldn’t wonder now,’ he added, in the tone of a desponding and
an injured man, ‘but you thought, because I wanted them chaps left in
the prison, that I was a going to desert the banners?’
Hugh told him, with an oath, that he had thought so.
‘Well!’ said Mr Dennis, mournfully, ‘if you an’t enough to make a man
mistrust his feller-creeturs, I don’t know what is. Desert the banners!
Me! Ned Dennis, as was so christened by his own father!--Is this axe
your’n, brother?’
‘Yes, it’s mine,’ said Hugh, in the same sullen manner as before; ‘it
might have hurt you, if you had come in its way once or twice last
night. Put it down.’
‘Might have hurt me!’ said Mr Dennis, still keeping it in his hand, and
feeling the edge with an air of abstraction. ‘Might have hurt me! and me
exerting myself all the time to the wery best advantage. Here’s a world!
And you’re not a-going to ask me to take a sup out of that ‘ere bottle,
eh?’
Hugh passed it towards him. As he raised it to his lips, Barnaby jumped
up, and motioning them to be silent, looked eagerly out.
‘What’s the matter, Barnaby?’ said Dennis, glancing at Hugh and dropping
the flask, but still holding the axe in his hand.
‘Hush!’ he answered softly. ‘What do I see glittering behind the hedge?’
‘What!’ cried the hangman, raising his voice to its highest pitch, and
laying hold of him and Hugh. ‘Not SOLDIERS, surely!’
That moment, the shed was filled with armed men; and a body of horse,
galloping into the field, drew up before it.
‘There!’ said Dennis, who remained untouched among them when they had
seized their prisoners; ‘it’s them two young ones, gentlemen, that the
proclamation puts a price on. This other’s an escaped felon.--I’m sorry
for it, brother,’ he added, in a tone of resignation, addressing himself
to Hugh; ‘but you’ve brought it on yourself; you forced me to do it; you
wouldn’t respect the soundest constitootional principles, you know; you
went and wiolated the wery framework of society. I had sooner have
given away a trifle in charity than done this, I would upon my soul.--If
you’ll keep fast hold on ‘em, gentlemen, I think I can make a shift to
tie ‘em better than you can.’
But this operation was postponed for a few moments by a new occurrence.
The blind man, whose ears were quicker than most people’s sight, had
been alarmed, before Barnaby, by a rustling in the bushes, under cover
of which the soldiers had advanced. He retreated instantly--had hidden
somewhere for a minute--and probably in his confusion mistaking the
point at which he had emerged, was now seen running across the open
meadow.
An officer cried directly that he had helped to plunder a house last
night. He was loudly called on, to surrender. He ran the harder, and in
a few seconds would have been out of gunshot. The word was given, and
the men fired.
There was a breathless pause and a profound silence, during which all
eyes were fixed upon him. He had been seen to start at the discharge, as
if the report had frightened him. But he neither stopped nor slackened
his pace in the least, and ran on full forty yards further. Then,
without one reel or stagger, or sign of faintness, or quivering of any
limb, he dropped.
Some of them hurried up to where he lay;--the hangman with them.
Everything had passed so quickly, that the smoke had not yet scattered,
but curled slowly off in a little cloud, which seemed like the dead
man’s spirit moving solemnly away. There were a few drops of blood upon
the grass--more, when they turned him over--that was all.
‘Look here! Look here!’ said the hangman, stooping one knee beside the
body, and gazing up with a disconsolate face at the officer and men.
‘Here’s a pretty sight!’
‘Stand out of the way,’ replied the officer. ‘Serjeant! see what he had
about him.’
The man turned his pockets out upon the grass, and counted, besides some
foreign coins and two rings, five-and-forty guineas in gold. These were
bundled up in a handkerchief and carried away; the body remained there
for the present, but six men and the serjeant were left to take it to
the nearest public-house.
‘Now then, if you’re going,’ said the serjeant, clapping Dennis on the
back, and pointing after the officer who was walking towards the shed.
To which Mr Dennis only replied, ‘Don’t talk to me!’ and then repeated
what he had said before, namely, ‘Here’s a pretty sight!’
‘It’s not one that you care for much, I should think,’ observed the
serjeant coolly.
‘Why, who,’ said Mr Dennis rising, ‘should care for it, if I don’t?’
‘Oh! I didn’t know you was so tender-hearted,’ said the serjeant.
‘That’s all!’
‘Tender-hearted!’ echoed Dennis. ‘Tender-hearted! Look at this man. Do
you call THIS constitootional? Do you see him shot through and through
instead of being worked off like a Briton? Damme, if I know which
party to side with. You’re as bad as the other. What’s to become of the
country if the military power’s to go a superseding the ciwilians in
this way? Where’s this poor feller-creetur’s rights as a citizen, that
he didn’t have ME in his last moments! I was here. I was willing. I
was ready. These are nice times, brother, to have the dead crying out
against us in this way, and sleep comfortably in our beds arterwards;
wery nice!’
Whether he derived any material consolation from binding the prisoners,
is uncertain; most probably he did. At all events his being summoned to
that work, diverted him, for the time, from these painful reflections,
and gave his thoughts a more congenial occupation.
They were not all three carried off together, but in two parties;
Barnaby and his father, going by one road in the centre of a body of
foot; and Hugh, fast bound upon a horse, and strongly guarded by a troop
of cavalry, being taken by another.
They had no opportunity for the least communication, in the short
interval which preceded their departure; being kept strictly apart. Hugh
only observed that Barnaby walked with a drooping head among his guard,
and, without raising his eyes, that he tried to wave his fettered hand
when he passed. For himself, he buoyed up his courage as he rode along,
with the assurance that the mob would force his jail wherever it might
be, and set him at liberty. But when they got into London, and more
especially into Fleet Market, lately the stronghold of the rioters,
where the military were rooting out the last remnant of the crowd, he
saw that this hope was gone, and felt that he was riding to his death.
Chapter 70
Mr Dennis having despatched this piece of business without any personal
hurt or inconvenience, and having now retired into the tranquil
respectability of private life, resolved to solace himself with half an
hour or so of female society. With this amiable purpose in his mind,
he bent his steps towards the house where Dolly and Miss Haredale were
still confined, and whither Miss Miggs had also been removed by order of
Mr Simon Tappertit.
As he walked along the streets with his leather gloves clasped
behind him, and his face indicative of cheerful thought and pleasant
calculation, Mr Dennis might have been likened unto a farmer ruminating
among his crops, and enjoying by anticipation the bountiful gifts of
Providence. Look where he would, some heap of ruins afforded him rich
promise of a working off; the whole town appeared to have been ploughed
and sown, and nurtured by most genial weather; and a goodly harvest was
at hand.
Having taken up arms and resorted to deeds of violence, with the great
main object of preserving the Old Bailey in all its purity, and the
gallows in all its pristine usefulness and moral grandeur, it would
perhaps be going too far to assert that Mr Dennis had ever distinctly
contemplated and foreseen this happy state of things. He rather looked
upon it as one of those beautiful dispensations which are inscrutably
brought about for the behoof and advantage of good men. He felt, as
it were, personally referred to, in this prosperous ripening for the
gibbet; and had never considered himself so much the pet and favourite
child of Destiny, or loved that lady so well or with such a calm and
virtuous reliance, in all his life.
As to being taken up, himself, for a rioter, and punished with the
rest, Mr Dennis dismissed that possibility from his thoughts as an idle
chimera; arguing that the line of conduct he had adopted at Newgate,
and the service he had rendered that day, would be more than a set-off
against any evidence which might identify him as a member of the crowd.
That any charge of companionship which might be made against him by
those who were themselves in danger, would certainly go for nought. And
that if any trivial indiscretion on his part should unluckily come out,
the uncommon usefulness of his office, at present, and the great demand
for the exercise of its functions, would certainly cause it to be winked
at, and passed over. In a word, he had played his cards throughout, with
great care; had changed sides at the very nick of time; had delivered
up two of the most notorious rioters, and a distinguished felon to boot;
and was quite at his ease.
Saving--for there is a reservation; and even Mr Dennis was not perfectly
happy--saving for one circumstance; to wit, the forcible detention of
Dolly and Miss Haredale, in a house almost adjoining his own. This was
a stumbling-block; for if they were discovered and released, they could,
by the testimony they had it in their power to give, place him in a
situation of great jeopardy; and to set them at liberty, first extorting
from them an oath of secrecy and silence, was a thing not to be thought
of. It was more, perhaps, with an eye to the danger which lurked in this
quarter, than from his abstract love of conversation with the sex, that
the hangman, quickening his steps, now hastened into their society,
cursing the amorous natures of Hugh and Mr Tappertit with great
heartiness, at every step he took.
When he entered the miserable room in which they were confined, Dolly
and Miss Haredale withdrew in silence to the remotest corner. But Miss
Miggs, who was particularly tender of her reputation, immediately fell
upon her knees and began to scream very loud, crying, ‘What will become
of me!’--‘Where is my Simmuns!’--‘Have mercy, good gentlemen, on my
sex’s weaknesses!’--with other doleful lamentations of that nature,
which she delivered with great propriety and decorum.
‘Miss, miss,’ whispered Dennis, beckoning to her with his forefinger,
‘come here--I won’t hurt you. Come here, my lamb, will you?’
On hearing this tender epithet, Miss Miggs, who had left off screaming
when he opened his lips, and had listened to him attentively, began
again, crying: ‘Oh I’m his lamb! He says I’m his lamb! Oh gracious, why
wasn’t I born old and ugly! Why was I ever made to be the youngest of
six, and all of ‘em dead and in their blessed graves, excepting
one married sister, which is settled in Golden Lion Court, number
twenty-sivin, second bell-handle on the--!’
‘Don’t I say I an’t a-going to hurt you?’ said Dennis, pointing to a
chair. ‘Why miss, what’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know what mayn’t be the matter!’ cried Miss Miggs, clasping her
hands distractedly. ‘Anything may be the matter!’
‘But nothing is, I tell you,’ said the hangman. ‘First stop that noise
and come and sit down here, will you, chuckey?’
The coaxing tone in which he said these latter words might have failed
in its object, if he had not accompanied them with sundry sharp jerks of
his thumb over one shoulder, and with divers winks and thrustings of his
tongue into his cheek, from which signals the damsel gathered that he
sought to speak to her apart, concerning Miss Haredale and Dolly. Her
curiosity being very powerful, and her jealousy by no means inactive,
she arose, and with a great deal of shivering and starting back, and
much muscular action among all the small bones in her throat, gradually
approached him.
‘Sit down,’ said the hangman.
Suiting the action to the word, he thrust her rather suddenly and
prematurely into a chair, and designing to reassure her by a little
harmless jocularity, such as is adapted to please and fascinate the sex,
converted his right forefinger into an ideal bradawl or gimlet, and
made as though he would screw the same into her side--whereat Miss Miggs
shrieked again, and evinced symptoms of faintness.
‘Lovey, my dear,’ whispered Dennis, drawing his chair close to hers.
‘When was your young man here last, eh?’
‘MY young man, good gentleman!’ answered Miggs in a tone of exquisite
distress.
‘Ah! Simmuns, you know--him?’ said Dennis.
‘Mine indeed!’ cried Miggs, with a burst of bitterness--and as she said
it, she glanced towards Dolly. ‘MINE, good gentleman!’
This was just what Mr Dennis wanted, and expected.
‘Ah!’ he said, looking so soothingly, not to say amorously on Miggs,
that she sat, as she afterwards remarked, on pins and needles of
the sharpest Whitechapel kind, not knowing what intentions might be
suggesting that expression to his features: ‘I was afraid of that. I saw
as much myself. It’s her fault. She WILL entice ‘em.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ cried Miggs, folding her hands and looking upwards with
a kind of devout blankness, ‘I wouldn’t lay myself out as she does; I
wouldn’t be as bold as her; I wouldn’t seem to say to all male creeturs
“Come and kiss me”’--and here a shudder quite convulsed her frame--‘for
any earthly crowns as might be offered. Worlds,’ Miggs added solemnly,
‘should not reduce me. No. Not if I was Wenis.’
‘Well, but you ARE Wenus, you know,’ said Mr Dennis, confidentially.
‘No, I am not, good gentleman,’ answered Miggs, shaking her head with an
air of self-denial which seemed to imply that she might be if she chose,
but she hoped she knew better. ‘No, I am not, good gentleman. Don’t
charge me with it.’
Up to this time she had turned round, every now and then, to where Dolly
and Miss Haredale had retired and uttered a scream, or groan, or laid
her hand upon her heart and trembled excessively, with a view of keeping
up appearances, and giving them to understand that she conversed with
the visitor, under protest and on compulsion, and at a great personal
sacrifice, for their common good. But at this point, Mr Dennis looked
so very full of meaning, and gave such a singularly expressive twitch
to his face as a request to her to come still nearer to him, that
she abandoned these little arts, and gave him her whole and undivided
attention.
‘When was Simmuns here, I say?’ quoth Dennis, in her ear.
‘Not since yesterday morning; and then only for a few minutes. Not all
day, the day before.’
‘You know he meant all along to carry off that one!’ said Dennis,
indicating Dolly by the slightest possible jerk of his head:--‘And to
hand you over to somebody else.’
Miss Miggs, who had fallen into a terrible state of grief when the first
part of this sentence was spoken, recovered a little at the second,
and seemed by the sudden check she put upon her tears, to intimate
that possibly this arrangement might meet her views; and that it might,
perhaps, remain an open question.
‘--But unfort’nately,’ pursued Dennis, who observed this: ‘somebody else
was fond of her too, you see; and even if he wasn’t, somebody else is
took for a rioter, and it’s all over with him.’
Miss Miggs relapsed.
‘Now I want,’ said Dennis, ‘to clear this house, and to see you righted.
What if I was to get her off, out of the way, eh?’
Miss Miggs, brightening again, rejoined, with many breaks and pauses
from excess of feeling, that temptations had been Simmuns’s bane. That
it was not his faults, but hers (meaning Dolly’s). That men did not see
through these dreadful arts as women did, and therefore was caged
and trapped, as Simmun had been. That she had no personal motives to
serve--far from it--on the contrary, her intentions was good towards
all parties. But forasmuch as she knowed that Simmun, if united to any
designing and artful minxes (she would name no names, for that was not
her dispositions)--to ANY designing and artful minxes--must be made
miserable and unhappy for life, she DID incline towards prewentions.
Such, she added, was her free confessions. But as this was private
feelings, and might perhaps be looked upon as wengeance, she begged the
gentleman would say no more. Whatever he said, wishing to do her duty
by all mankind, even by them as had ever been her bitterest enemies, she
would not listen to him. With that she stopped her ears, and shook her
head from side to side, to intimate to Mr Dennis that though he talked
until he had no breath left, she was as deaf as any adder.
‘Lookee here, my sugar-stick,’ said Mr Dennis, ‘if your view’s the same
as mine, and you’ll only be quiet and slip away at the right time, I
can have the house clear to-morrow, and be out of this trouble.--Stop
though! there’s the other.’
‘Which other, sir?’ asked Miggs--still with her fingers in her ears and
her head shaking obstinately.
‘Why, the tallest one, yonder,’ said Dennis, as he stroked his chin, and
added, in an undertone to himself, something about not crossing Muster
Gashford.
Miss Miggs replied (still being profoundly deaf) that if Miss Haredale
stood in the way at all, he might make himself quite easy on that score;
as she had gathered, from what passed between Hugh and Mr Tappertit when
they were last there, that she was to be removed alone (not by them, but
by somebody else), to-morrow night.
Mr Dennis opened his eyes very wide at this piece of information,
whistled once, considered once, and finally slapped his head once and
nodded once, as if he had got the clue to this mysterious removal, and
so dismissed it. Then he imparted his design concerning Dolly to Miss
Miggs, who was taken more deaf than before, when he began; and so
remained, all through.
The notable scheme was this. Mr Dennis was immediately to seek out from
among the rioters, some daring young fellow (and he had one in his eye,
he said), who, terrified by the threats he could hold out to him, and
alarmed by the capture of so many who were no better and no worse than
he, would gladly avail himself of any help to get abroad, and out of
harm’s way, with his plunder, even though his journey were incumbered
by an unwilling companion; indeed, the unwilling companion being
a beautiful girl, would probably be an additional inducement and
temptation. Such a person found, he proposed to bring him there on
the ensuing night, when the tall one was taken off, and Miss Miggs had
purposely retired; and then that Dolly should be gagged, muffled in a
cloak, and carried in any handy conveyance down to the river’s side;
where there were abundant means of getting her smuggled snugly off in
any small craft of doubtful character, and no questions asked. With
regard to the expense of this removal, he would say, at a rough
calculation, that two or three silver tea or coffee-pots, with something
additional for drink (such as a muffineer, or toast-rack), would more
than cover it. Articles of plate of every kind having been buried by the
rioters in several lonely parts of London, and particularly, as he
knew, in St James’s Square, which, though easy of access, was little
frequented after dark, and had a convenient piece of water in the midst,
the needful funds were close at hand, and could be had upon the shortest
notice. With regard to Dolly, the gentleman would exercise his own
discretion. He would be bound to do nothing but to take her away,
and keep her away. All other arrangements and dispositions would rest
entirely with himself.
If Miss Miggs had had her hearing, no doubt she would have been greatly
shocked by the indelicacy of a young female’s going away with a stranger
by night (for her moral feelings, as we have said, were of the tenderest
kind); but directly Mr Dennis ceased to speak, she reminded him that he
had only wasted breath. She then went on to say (still with her fingers
in her ears) that nothing less than a severe practical lesson would save
the locksmith’s daughter from utter ruin; and that she felt it, as it
were, a moral obligation and a sacred duty to the family, to wish that
some one would devise one for her reformation. Miss Miggs remarked, and
very justly, as an abstract sentiment which happened to occur to her
at the moment, that she dared to say the locksmith and his wife would
murmur, and repine, if they were ever, by forcible abduction, or
otherwise, to lose their child; but that we seldom knew, in this world,
what was best for us: such being our sinful and imperfect natures, that
very few arrived at that clear understanding.
Having brought their conversation to this satisfactory end, they parted:
Dennis, to pursue his design, and take another walk about his farm; Miss
Miggs, to launch, when he left her, into such a burst of mental anguish
(which she gave them to understand was occasioned by certain tender
things he had had the presumption and audacity to say), that little
Dolly’s heart was quite melted. Indeed, she said and did so much to
soothe the outraged feelings of Miss Miggs, and looked so beautiful
while doing so, that if that young maid had not had ample vent for her
surpassing spite, in a knowledge of the mischief that was brewing, she
must have scratched her features, on the spot.
Chapter 71
All next day, Emma Haredale, Dolly, and Miggs, remained cooped up
together in what had now been their prison for so many days, without
seeing any person, or hearing any sound but the murmured conversation,
in an outer room, of the men who kept watch over them. There appeared to
be more of these fellows than there had been hitherto; and they could
no longer hear the voices of women, which they had before plainly
distinguished. Some new excitement, too, seemed to prevail among them;
for there was much stealthy going in and out, and a constant questioning
of those who were newly arrived. They had previously been quite reckless
in their behaviour; often making a great uproar; quarrelling among
themselves, fighting, dancing, and singing. They were now very subdued
and silent, conversing almost in whispers, and stealing in and out with
a soft and stealthy tread, very different from the boisterous trampling
in which their arrivals and departures had hitherto been announced to
the trembling captives.
Whether this change was occasioned by the presence among them of some
person of authority in their ranks, or by any other cause, they were
unable to decide. Sometimes they thought it was in part attributable to
there being a sick man in the chamber, for last night there had been a
shuffling of feet, as though a burden were brought in, and afterwards a
moaning noise. But they had no means of ascertaining the truth: for
any question or entreaty on their parts only provoked a storm of
execrations, or something worse; and they were too happy to be left
alone, unassailed by threats or admiration, to risk even that comfort,
by any voluntary communication with those who held them in durance.
It was sufficiently evident, both to Emma and to the locksmith’s poor
little daughter herself, that she, Dolly, was the great object of
attraction; and that so soon as they should have leisure to indulge in
the softer passion, Hugh and Mr Tappertit would certainly fall to blows
for her sake; in which latter case, it was not very difficult to see
whose prize she would become. With all her old horror of that man
revived, and deepened into a degree of aversion and abhorrence which no
language can describe; with a thousand old recollections and regrets,
and causes of distress, anxiety, and fear, besetting her on all sides;
poor Dolly Varden--sweet, blooming, buxom Dolly--began to hang her head,
and fade, and droop, like a beautiful flower. The colour fled from her
cheeks, her courage forsook her, her gentle heart failed. Unmindful
of all her provoking caprices, forgetful of all her conquests and
inconstancy, with all her winning little vanities quite gone, she
nestled all the livelong day in Emma Haredale’s bosom; and, sometimes
calling on her dear old grey-haired father, sometimes on her mother, and
sometimes even on her old home, pined slowly away, like a poor bird in
its cage.
Light hearts, light hearts, that float so gaily on a smooth stream, that
are so sparkling and buoyant in the sunshine--down upon fruit, bloom
upon flowers, blush in summer air, life of the winged insect, whose
whole existence is a day--how soon ye sink in troubled water! Poor
Dolly’s heart--a little, gentle, idle, fickle thing; giddy, restless,
fluttering; constant to nothing but bright looks, and smiles and
laughter--Dolly’s heart was breaking.
Emma had known grief, and could bear it better. She had little comfort
to impart, but she could soothe and tend her, and she did so; and Dolly
clung to her like a child to its nurse. In endeavouring to inspire her
with some fortitude, she increased her own; and though the nights
were long, and the days dismal, and she felt the wasting influence
of watching and fatigue, and had perhaps a more defined and clear
perception of their destitute condition and its worst dangers, she
uttered no complaint. Before the ruffians, in whose power they were, she
bore herself so calmly, and with such an appearance, in the midst of all
her terror, of a secret conviction that they dared not harm her, that
there was not a man among them but held her in some degree of dread;
and more than one believed she had a weapon hidden in her dress, and was
prepared to use it.
Such was their condition when they were joined by Miss Miggs, who gave
them to understand that she too had been taken prisoner because of her
charms, and detailed such feats of resistance she had performed (her
virtue having given her supernatural strength), that they felt it quite
a happiness to have her for a champion. Nor was this the only comfort
they derived at first from Miggs’s presence and society: for that young
lady displayed such resignation and long-suffering, and so much meek
endurance, under her trials, and breathed in all her chaste discourse a
spirit of such holy confidence and resignation, and devout belief that
all would happen for the best, that Emma felt her courage strengthened
by the bright example; never doubting but that everything she said was
true, and that she, like them, was torn from all she loved, and agonised
by doubt and apprehension. As to poor Dolly, she was roused, at
first, by seeing one who came from home; but when she heard under what
circumstances she had left it, and into whose hands her father had
fallen, she wept more bitterly than ever, and refused all comfort.
Miss Miggs was at some trouble to reprove her for this state of mind,
and to entreat her to take example by herself, who, she said, was now
receiving back, with interest, tenfold the amount of her subscriptions
to the red-brick dwelling-house, in the articles of peace of mind and a
quiet conscience. And, while on serious topics, Miss Miggs considered it
her duty to try her hand at the conversion of Miss Haredale; for whose
improvement she launched into a polemical address of some length, in the
course whereof, she likened herself unto a chosen missionary, and that
young lady to a cannibal in darkness. Indeed, she returned so often to
these subjects, and so frequently called upon them to take a lesson from
her,--at the same time vaunting and, as it were, rioting in, her huge
unworthiness, and abundant excess of sin,--that, in the course of a
short time, she became, in that small chamber, rather a nuisance than a
comfort, and rendered them, if possible, even more unhappy than they had
been before.
The night had now come; and for the first time (for their jailers had
been regular in bringing food and candles), they were left in darkness.
Any change in their condition in such a place inspired new fears; and
when some hours had passed, and the gloom was still unbroken, Emma could
no longer repress her alarm.
They listened attentively. There was the same murmuring in the outer
room, and now and then a moan which seemed to be wrung from a person in
great pain, who made an effort to subdue it, but could not. Even these
men seemed to be in darkness too; for no light shone through the chinks
in the door, nor were they moving, as their custom was, but quite still:
the silence being unbroken by so much as the creaking of a board.
At first, Miss Miggs wondered greatly in her own mind who this sick
person might be; but arriving, on second thoughts, at the conclusion
that he was a part of the schemes on foot, and an artful device soon to
be employed with great success, she opined, for Miss Haredale’s comfort,
that it must be some misguided Papist who had been wounded: and this
happy supposition encouraged her to say, under her breath, ‘Ally
Looyer!’ several times.
‘Is it possible,’ said Emma, with some indignation, ‘that you who have
seen these men committing the outrages you have told us of, and who have
fallen into their hands, like us, can exult in their cruelties!’
‘Personal considerations, miss,’ rejoined Miggs, ‘sinks into nothing,
afore a noble cause. Ally Looyer! Ally Looyer! Ally Looyer, good
gentlemen!’
It seemed from the shrill pertinacity with which Miss Miggs repeated
this form of acclamation, that she was calling the same through the
keyhole of the door; but in the profound darkness she could not be seen.
‘If the time has come--Heaven knows it may come at any moment--when they
are bent on prosecuting the designs, whatever they may be, with which
they have brought us here, can you still encourage, and take part with
them?’ demanded Emma.
‘I thank my goodness-gracious-blessed-stars I can, miss,’ returned
Miggs, with increased energy.--‘Ally Looyer, good gentlemen!’
Even Dolly, cast down and disappointed as she was, revived at this, and
bade Miggs hold her tongue directly.
‘WHICH, was you pleased to observe, Miss Varden?’ said Miggs, with a
strong emphasis on the irrelative pronoun.
Dolly repeated her request.
‘Ho, gracious me!’ cried Miggs, with hysterical derision. ‘Ho, gracious
me! Yes, to be sure I will. Ho yes! I am a abject slave, and a
toiling, moiling, constant-working, always-being-found-fault-with,
never-giving-satisfactions, nor-having-no-time-to-clean-oneself,
potter’s wessel--an’t I, miss! Ho yes! My situations is lowly, and my
capacities is limited, and my duties is to humble myself afore the
base degenerating daughters of their blessed mothers as is--fit to
keep companies with holy saints but is born to persecutions from
wicked relations--and to demean myself before them as is no better than
Infidels--an’t it, miss! Ho yes! My only becoming occupations is to help
young flaunting pagins to brush and comb and titiwate theirselves into
whitening and suppulchres, and leave the young men to think that there
an’t a bit of padding in it nor no pinching ins nor fillings out nor
pomatums nor deceits nor earthly wanities--an’t it, miss! Yes, to be
sure it is--ho yes!’
Having delivered these ironical passages with a most wonderful
volubility, and with a shrillness perfectly deafening (especially when
she jerked out the interjections), Miss Miggs, from mere habit, and not
because weeping was at all appropriate to the occasion, which was one of
triumph, concluded by bursting into a flood of tears, and calling in an
impassioned manner on the name of Simmuns.
What Emma Haredale and Dolly would have done, or how long Miss Miggs,
now that she had hoisted her true colours, would have gone on waving
them before their astonished senses, it is impossible to tell. Nor is
it necessary to speculate on these matters, for a startling interruption
occurred at that moment, which took their whole attention by storm.
This was a violent knocking at the door of the house, and then its
sudden bursting open; which was immediately succeeded by a scuffle in
the room without, and the clash of weapons. Transported with the hope
that rescue had at length arrived, Emma and Dolly shrieked aloud for
help; nor were their shrieks unanswered; for after a hurried interval, a
man, bearing in one hand a drawn sword, and in the other a taper, rushed
into the chamber where they were confined.
It was some check upon their transport to find in this person an entire
stranger, but they appealed to him, nevertheless, and besought him, in
impassioned language, to restore them to their friends.
‘For what other purpose am I here?’ he answered, closing the door, and
standing with his back against it. ‘With what object have I made my way
to this place, through difficulty and danger, but to preserve you?’
With a joy for which it was impossible to find adequate expression, they
embraced each other, and thanked Heaven for this most timely aid. Their
deliverer stepped forward for a moment to put the light upon the table,
and immediately returning to his former position against the door, bared
his head, and looked on smilingly.
‘You have news of my uncle, sir?’ said Emma, turning hastily towards
him.
‘And of my father and mother?’ added Dolly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Good news.’
‘They are alive and unhurt?’ they both cried at once.
‘Yes, and unhurt,’ he rejoined.
‘And close at hand?’
‘I did not say close at hand,’ he answered smoothly; ‘they are at no
great distance. YOUR friends, sweet one,’ he added, addressing Dolly,
‘are within a few hours’ journey. You will be restored to them, I hope,
to-night.’
‘My uncle, sir--’ faltered Emma.
‘Your uncle, dear Miss Haredale, happily--I say happily, because he has
succeeded where many of our creed have failed, and is safe--has crossed
the sea, and is out of Britain.’
‘I thank God for it,’ said Emma, faintly.
‘You say well. You have reason to be thankful: greater reason than it is
possible for you, who have seen but one night of these cruel outrages,
to imagine.’
‘Does he desire,’ said Emma, ‘that I should follow him?’
‘Do you ask if he desires it?’ cried the stranger in surprise. ‘IF he
desires it! But you do not know the danger of remaining in England,
the difficulty of escape, or the price hundreds would pay to secure the
means, when you make that inquiry. Pardon me. I had forgotten that you
could not, being prisoner here.’
‘I gather, sir,’ said Emma, after a moment’s pause, ‘from what you hint
at, but fear to tell me, that I have witnessed but the beginning, and
the least, of the violence to which we are exposed, and that it has not
yet slackened in its fury?’
He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, lifted up his hands; and with
the same smooth smile, which was not a pleasant one to see, cast his
eyes upon the ground, and remained silent.
‘You may venture, sir, to speak plain,’ said Emma, ‘and to tell me the
worst. We have undergone some preparation for it.’
But here Dolly interposed, and entreated her not to hear the worst, but
the best; and besought the gentleman to tell them the best, and to
keep the remainder of his news until they were safe among their friends
again.
‘It is told in three words,’ he said, glancing at the locksmith’s
daughter with a look of some displeasure. ‘The people have risen, to a
man, against us; the streets are filled with soldiers, who support
them and do their bidding. We have no protection but from above, and no
safety but in flight; and that is a poor resource; for we are watched on
every hand, and detained here, both by force and fraud. Miss Haredale,
I cannot bear--believe me, that I cannot bear--by speaking of myself,
or what I have done, or am prepared to do, to seem to vaunt my services
before you. But, having powerful Protestant connections, and having my
whole wealth embarked with theirs in shipping and commerce, I happily
possessed the means of saving your uncle. I have the means of saving
you; and in redemption of my sacred promise, made to him, I am here;
pledged not to leave you until I have placed you in his arms. The
treachery or penitence of one of the men about you, led to the discovery
of your place of confinement; and that I have forced my way here, sword
in hand, you see.’
‘You bring,’ said Emma, faltering, ‘some note or token from my uncle?’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ cried Dolly, pointing at him earnestly; ‘now I am sure
he doesn’t. Don’t go with him for the world!’
‘Hush, pretty fool--be silent,’ he replied, frowning angrily upon her.
‘No, Miss Haredale, I have no letter, nor any token of any kind; for
while I sympathise with you, and such as you, on whom misfortune so
heavy and so undeserved has fallen, I value my life. I carry, therefore,
no writing which, found upon me, would lead to its certain loss. I
never thought of bringing any other token, nor did Mr Haredale think of
entrusting me with one--possibly because he had good experience of my
faith and honesty, and owed his life to me.’
There was a reproof conveyed in these words, which to a nature like
Emma Haredale’s, was well addressed. But Dolly, who was differently
constituted, was by no means touched by it, and still conjured her, in
all the terms of affection and attachment she could think of, not to be
lured away.
‘Time presses,’ said their visitor, who, although he sought to express
the deepest interest, had something cold and even in his speech, that
grated on the ear; ‘and danger surrounds us. If I have exposed myself to
it, in vain, let it be so; but if you and he should ever meet again, do
me justice. If you decide to remain (as I think you do), remember, Miss
Haredale, that I left you with a solemn caution, and acquitting myself
of all the consequences to which you expose yourself.’
‘Stay, sir!’ cried Emma--‘one moment, I beg you. Cannot we’--and she drew
Dolly closer to her--‘cannot we go together?’
‘The task of conveying one female in safety through such scenes as we
must encounter, to say nothing of attracting the attention of those who
crowd the streets,’ he answered, ‘is enough. I have said that she will
be restored to her friends to-night. If you accept the service I tender,
Miss Haredale, she shall be instantly placed in safe conduct, and that
promise redeemed. Do you decide to remain? People of all ranks and
creeds are flying from the town, which is sacked from end to end. Let me
be of use in some quarter. Do you stay, or go?’
‘Dolly,’ said Emma, in a hurried manner, ‘my dear girl, this is our last
hope. If we part now, it is only that we may meet again in happiness and
honour. I will trust to this gentleman.’
‘No no-no!’ cried Dolly, clinging to her. ‘Pray, pray, do not!’
‘You hear,’ said Emma, ‘that to-night--only to-night--within a few
hours--think of that!--you will be among those who would die of grief to
lose you, and who are now plunged in the deepest misery for your sake.
Pray for me, dear girl, as I will for you; and never forget the many
quiet hours we have passed together. Say one “God bless you!” Say that
at parting!’
But Dolly could say nothing; no, not when Emma kissed her cheek a
hundred times, and covered it with tears, could she do more than hang
upon her neck, and sob, and clasp, and hold her tight.
‘We have time for no more of this,’ cried the man, unclenching her
hands, and pushing her roughly off, as he drew Emma Haredale towards the
door: ‘Now! Quick, outside there! are you ready?’
‘Ay!’ cried a loud voice, which made him start. ‘Quite ready! Stand back
here, for your lives!’
And in an instant he was felled like an ox in the butcher’s
shambles--struck down as though a block of marble had fallen from the
roof and crushed him--and cheerful light, and beaming faces came pouring
in--and Emma was clasped in her uncle’s embrace, and Dolly, with a
shriek that pierced the air, fell into the arms of her father and
mother.
What fainting there was, what laughing, what crying, what sobbing, what
smiling, how much questioning, no answering, all talking together, all
beside themselves with joy; what kissing, congratulating, embracing,
shaking of hands, and falling into all these raptures, over and over and
over again; no language can describe.
At length, and after a long time, the old locksmith went up and fairly
hugged two strangers, who had stood apart and left them to themselves;
and then they saw--whom? Yes, Edward Chester and Joseph Willet.
‘See here!’ cried the locksmith. ‘See here! where would any of us have
been without these two? Oh, Mr Edward, Mr Edward--oh, Joe, Joe, how
light, and yet how full, you have made my old heart to-night!’
‘It was Mr Edward that knocked him down, sir,’ said Joe: ‘I longed to do
it, but I gave it up to him. Come, you brave and honest gentleman! Get
your senses together, for you haven’t long to lie here.’
He had his foot upon the breast of their sham deliverer, in the absence
of a spare arm; and gave him a gentle roll as he spoke. Gashford, for
it was no other, crouching yet malignant, raised his scowling face, like
sin subdued, and pleaded to be gently used.
‘I have access to all my lord’s papers, Mr Haredale,’ he said, in a
submissive voice: Mr Haredale keeping his back towards him, and not once
looking round: ‘there are very important documents among them. There are
a great many in secret drawers, and distributed in various places, known
only to my lord and me. I can give some very valuable information, and
render important assistance to any inquiry. You will have to answer it,
if I receive ill usage.
‘Pah!’ cried Joe, in deep disgust. ‘Get up, man; you’re waited for,
outside. Get up, do you hear?’
Gashford slowly rose; and picking up his hat, and looking with a baffled
malevolence, yet with an air of despicable humility, all round the room,
crawled out.
‘And now, gentlemen,’ said Joe, who seemed to be the spokesman of the
party, for all the rest were silent; ‘the sooner we get back to the
Black Lion, the better, perhaps.’
Mr Haredale nodded assent, and drawing his niece’s arm through his,
and taking one of her hands between his own, passed out straightway;
followed by the locksmith, Mrs Varden, and Dolly--who would scarcely
have presented a sufficient surface for all the hugs and caresses they
bestowed upon her though she had been a dozen Dollys. Edward Chester and
Joe followed.
And did Dolly never once look behind--not once? Was there not one little
fleeting glimpse of the dark eyelash, almost resting on her flushed
cheek, and of the downcast sparkling eye it shaded? Joe thought there
was--and he is not likely to have been mistaken; for there were not many
eyes like Dolly’s, that’s the truth.
The outer room through which they had to pass, was full of men; among
them, Mr Dennis in safe keeping; and there, had been since yesterday,
lying in hiding behind a wooden screen which was now thrown down,
Simon Tappertit, the recreant ‘prentice, burnt and bruised, and with a
gun-shot wound in his body; and his legs--his perfect legs, the pride
and glory of his life, the comfort of his existence--crushed into
shapeless ugliness. Wondering no longer at the moans they had heard,
Dolly kept closer to her father, and shuddered at the sight; but neither
bruises, burns, nor gun-shot wound, nor all the torture of his shattered
limbs, sent half so keen a pang to Simon’s breast, as Dolly passing out,
with Joe for her preserver.
A coach was ready at the door, and Dolly found herself safe and whole
inside, between her father and mother, with Emma Haredale and her uncle,
quite real, sitting opposite. But there was no Joe, no Edward; and they
had said nothing. They had only bowed once, and kept at a distance. Dear
heart! what a long way it was to the Black Lion!
Chapter 72
The Black Lion was so far off, and occupied such a length of time in the
getting at, that notwithstanding the strong presumptive evidence she had
about her of the late events being real and of actual occurrence, Dolly
could not divest herself of the belief that she must be in a dream which
was lasting all night. Nor was she quite certain that she saw and heard
with her own proper senses, even when the coach, in the fulness of time,
stopped at the Black Lion, and the host of that tavern approached in a
gush of cheerful light to help them to dismount, and give them hearty
welcome.
There too, at the coach door, one on one side, one upon the other, were
already Edward Chester and Joe Willet, who must have followed in another
coach: and this was such a strange and unaccountable proceeding, that
Dolly was the more inclined to favour the idea of her being fast asleep.
But when Mr Willet appeared--old John himself--so heavy-headed and
obstinate, and with such a double chin as the liveliest imagination
could never in its boldest flights have conjured up in all its vast
proportions--then she stood corrected, and unwillingly admitted to
herself that she was broad awake.
And Joe had lost an arm--he--that well-made, handsome, gallant fellow!
As Dolly glanced towards him, and thought of the pain he must have
suffered, and the far-off places in which he had been wandering, and
wondered who had been his nurse, and hoped that whoever it was, she
had been as kind and gentle and considerate as she would have been,
the tears came rising to her bright eyes, one by one, little by little,
until she could keep them back no longer, and so before them all, wept
bitterly.
‘We are all safe now, Dolly,’ said her father, kindly. ‘We shall not be
separated any more. Cheer up, my love, cheer up!’
The locksmith’s wife knew better perhaps, than he, what ailed her
daughter. But Mrs Varden being quite an altered woman--for the riots had
done that good--added her word to his, and comforted her with similar
representations.
‘Mayhap,’ said Mr Willet, senior, looking round upon the company, ‘she’s
hungry. That’s what it is, depend upon it--I am, myself.’
The Black Lion, who, like old John, had been waiting supper past all
reasonable and conscionable hours, hailed this as a philosophical
discovery of the profoundest and most penetrating kind; and the table
being already spread, they sat down to supper straightway.
The conversation was not of the liveliest nature, nor were the appetites
of some among them very keen. But, in both these respects, old John more
than atoned for any deficiency on the part of the rest, and very much
distinguished himself.
It was not in point of actual conversation that Mr Willet shone so
brilliantly, for he had none of his old cronies to ‘tackle,’ and was
rather timorous of venturing on Joe; having certain vague misgivings
within him, that he was ready on the shortest notice, and on receipt of
the slightest offence, to fell the Black Lion to the floor of his own
parlour, and immediately to withdraw to China or some other remote and
unknown region, there to dwell for evermore, or at least until he had
got rid of his remaining arm and both legs, and perhaps an eye or so,
into the bargain. It was with a peculiar kind of pantomime that Mr
Willet filled up every pause; and in this he was considered by the Black
Lion, who had been his familiar for some years, quite to surpass and
go beyond himself, and outrun the expectations of his most admiring
friends.
The subject that worked in Mr Willet’s mind, and occasioned these
demonstrations, was no other than his son’s bodily disfigurement, which
he had never yet got himself thoroughly to believe, or comprehend.
Shortly after their first meeting, he had been observed to wander, in
a state of great perplexity, to the kitchen, and to direct his gaze
towards the fire, as if in search of his usual adviser in all matters of
doubt and difficulty. But there being no boiler at the Black Lion, and
the rioters having so beaten and battered his own that it was quite
unfit for further service, he wandered out again, in a perfect bog of
uncertainty and mental confusion, and in that state took the strangest
means of resolving his doubts: such as feeling the sleeve of his son’s
greatcoat as deeming it possible that his arm might be there; looking at
his own arms and those of everybody else, as if to assure himself that
two and not one was the usual allowance; sitting by the hour together in
a brown study, as if he were endeavouring to recall Joe’s image in his
younger days, and to remember whether he really had in those times one
arm or a pair; and employing himself in many other speculations of the
same kind.
Finding himself at this supper, surrounded by faces with which he had
been so well acquainted in old times, Mr Willet recurred to the subject
with uncommon vigour; apparently resolved to understand it now or never.
Sometimes, after every two or three mouthfuls, he laid down his knife
and fork, and stared at his son with all his might--particularly at his
maimed side; then, he looked slowly round the table until he caught some
person’s eye, when he shook his head with great solemnity, patted his
shoulder, winked, or as one may say--for winking was a very slow process
with him--went to sleep with one eye for a minute or two; and so, with
another solemn shaking of his head, took up his knife and fork
again, and went on eating. Sometimes, he put his food into his mouth
abstractedly, and, with all his faculties concentrated on Joe, gazed at
him in a fit of stupefaction as he cut his meat with one hand, until he
was recalled to himself by symptoms of choking on his own part, and was
by that means restored to consciousness. At other times he resorted to
such small devices as asking him for the salt, the pepper, the vinegar,
the mustard--anything that was on his maimed side--and watching him as
he handed it. By dint of these experiments, he did at last so satisfy
and convince himself, that, after a longer silence than he had yet
maintained, he laid down his knife and fork on either side his plate,
drank a long draught from a tankard beside him (still keeping his eyes
on Joe), and leaning backward in his chair and fetching a long breath,
said, as he looked all round the board:
‘It’s been took off!’
‘By George!’ said the Black Lion, striking the table with his hand,
‘he’s got it!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Willet, with the look of a man who felt that he had
earned a compliment, and deserved it. ‘That’s where it is. It’s been
took off.’
‘Tell him where it was done,’ said the Black Lion to Joe.
‘At the defence of the Savannah, father.’
‘At the defence of the Salwanners,’ repeated Mr Willet, softly; again
looking round the table.
‘In America, where the war is,’ said Joe.
‘In America, where the war is,’ repeated Mr Willet. ‘It was took off in
the defence of the Salwanners in America where the war is.’ Continuing
to repeat these words to himself in a low tone of voice (the same
information had been conveyed to him in the same terms, at least fifty
times before), Mr Willet arose from table, walked round to Joe, felt his
empty sleeve all the way up, from the cuff, to where the stump of his
arm remained; shook his hand; lighted his pipe at the fire, took a long
whiff, walked to the door, turned round once when he had reached it,
wiped his left eye with the back of his forefinger, and said, in
a faltering voice: ‘My son’s arm--was took off--at the defence of
the--Salwanners--in America--where the war is’--with which words he
withdrew, and returned no more that night.
Indeed, on various pretences, they all withdrew one after another, save
Dolly, who was left sitting there alone. It was a great relief to be
alone, and she was crying to her heart’s content, when she heard Joe’s
voice at the end of the passage, bidding somebody good night.
Good night! Then he was going elsewhere--to some distance, perhaps. To
what kind of home COULD he be going, now that it was so late!
She heard him walk along the passage, and pass the door. But there was a
hesitation in his footsteps. He turned back--Dolly’s heart beat high--he
looked in.
‘Good night!’--he didn’t say Dolly, but there was comfort in his not
saying Miss Varden.
‘Good night!’ sobbed Dolly.
‘I am sorry you take on so much, for what is past and gone,’ said Joe
kindly. ‘Don’t. I can’t bear to see you do it. Think of it no longer.
You are safe and happy now.’
Dolly cried the more.
‘You must have suffered very much within these few days--and yet you’re
not changed, unless it’s for the better. They said you were, but I don’t
see it. You were--you were always very beautiful,’ said Joe, ‘but you
are more beautiful than ever, now. You are indeed. There can be no harm
in my saying so, for you must know it. You are told so very often, I am
sure.’
As a general principle, Dolly DID know it, and WAS told so, very often.
But the coachmaker had turned out, years ago, to be a special donkey;
and whether she had been afraid of making similar discoveries in others,
or had grown by dint of long custom to be careless of compliments
generally, certain it is that although she cried so much, she was better
pleased to be told so now, than ever she had been in all her life.
‘I shall bless your name,’ sobbed the locksmith’s little daughter, ‘as
long as I live. I shall never hear it spoken without feeling as if my
heart would burst. I shall remember it in my prayers, every night and
morning till I die!’
‘Will you?’ said Joe, eagerly. ‘Will you indeed? It makes me--well, it
makes me very glad and proud to hear you say so.’
Dolly still sobbed, and held her handkerchief to her eyes. Joe still
stood, looking at her.
‘Your voice,’ said Joe, ‘brings up old times so pleasantly, that, for
the moment, I feel as if that night--there can be no harm in talking
of that night now--had come back, and nothing had happened in the mean
time. I feel as if I hadn’t suffered any hardships, but had knocked down
poor Tom Cobb only yesterday, and had come to see you with my bundle on
my shoulder before running away.--You remember?’
Remember! But she said nothing. She raised her eyes for an instant. It
was but a glance; a little, tearful, timid glance. It kept Joe silent
though, for a long time.
‘Well!’ he said stoutly, ‘it was to be otherwise, and was. I have been
abroad, fighting all the summer and frozen up all the winter, ever
since. I have come back as poor in purse as I went, and crippled for
life besides. But, Dolly, I would rather have lost this other arm--ay, I
would rather have lost my head--than have come back to find you dead,
or anything but what I always pictured you to myself, and what I always
hoped and wished to find you. Thank God for all!’
Oh how much, and how keenly, the little coquette of five years ago, felt
now! She had found her heart at last. Never having known its worth till
now, she had never known the worth of his. How priceless it appeared!
‘I did hope once,’ said Joe, in his homely way, ‘that I might come back
a rich man, and marry you. But I was a boy then, and have long known
better than that. I am a poor, maimed, discharged soldier, and must
be content to rub through life as I can. I can’t say, even now, that I
shall be glad to see you married, Dolly; but I AM glad--yes, I am, and
glad to think I can say so--to know that you are admired and courted,
and can pick and choose for a happy life. It’s a comfort to me to know
that you’ll talk to your husband about me; and I hope the time will come
when I may be able to like him, and to shake hands with him, and to
come and see you as a poor friend who knew you when you were a girl. God
bless you!’
His hand DID tremble; but for all that, he took it away again, and left
her.
Chapter 73
By this Friday night--for it was on Friday in the riot week, that Emma
and Dolly were rescued, by the timely aid of Joe and Edward Chester--the
disturbances were entirely quelled, and peace and order were restored
to the affrighted city. True, after what had happened, it was impossible
for any man to say how long this better state of things might last, or
how suddenly new outrages, exceeding even those so lately witnessed,
might burst forth and fill its streets with ruin and bloodshed; for
this reason, those who had fled from the recent tumults still kept at
a distance, and many families, hitherto unable to procure the means
of flight, now availed themselves of the calm, and withdrew into the
country. The shops, too, from Tyburn to Whitechapel, were still shut;
and very little business was transacted in any of the places of great
commercial resort. But, notwithstanding, and in spite of the melancholy
forebodings of that numerous class of society who see with the greatest
clearness into the darkest perspectives, the town remained profoundly
quiet. The strong military force disposed in every advantageous quarter,
and stationed at every commanding point, held the scattered fragments
of the mob in check; the search after rioters was prosecuted with
unrelenting vigour; and if there were any among them so desperate and
reckless as to be inclined, after the terrible scenes they had beheld,
to venture forth again, they were so daunted by these resolute measures,
that they quickly shrunk into their hiding-places, and had no thought
but for their safety.
In a word, the crowd was utterly routed. Upwards of two hundred had been
shot dead in the streets. Two hundred and fifty more were lying, badly
wounded, in the hospitals; of whom seventy or eighty died within a short
time afterwards. A hundred were already in custody, and more were taken
every hour. How many perished in the conflagrations, or by their own
excesses, is unknown; but that numbers found a terrible grave in the hot
ashes of the flames they had kindled, or crept into vaults and cellars
to drink in secret or to nurse their sores, and never saw the light
again, is certain. When the embers of the fires had been black and cold
for many weeks, the labourers’ spades proved this, beyond a doubt.
Seventy-two private houses and four strong jails were destroyed in the
four great days of these riots. The total loss of property, as estimated
by the sufferers, was one hundred and fifty-five thousand pounds; at the
lowest and least partial estimate of disinterested persons, it exceeded
one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds. For this immense loss,
compensation was soon afterwards made out of the public purse, in
pursuance of a vote of the House of Commons; the sum being levied on the
various wards in the city, on the county, and the borough of Southwark.
Both Lord Mansfield and Lord Saville, however, who had been great
sufferers, refused to accept of any compensation whatever.
The House of Commons, sitting on Tuesday with locked and guarded doors,
had passed a resolution to the effect that, as soon as the tumults
subsided, it would immediately proceed to consider the petitions
presented from many of his Majesty’s Protestant subjects, and would take
the same into its serious consideration. While this question was under
debate, Mr Herbert, one of the members present, indignantly rose and
called upon the House to observe that Lord George Gordon was then
sitting under the gallery with the blue cockade, the signal of
rebellion, in his hat. He was not only obliged, by those who sat near,
to take it out; but offering to go into the street to pacify the mob
with the somewhat indefinite assurance that the House was prepared to
give them ‘the satisfaction they sought,’ was actually held down in his
seat by the combined force of several members. In short, the disorder
and violence which reigned triumphant out of doors, penetrated into
the senate, and there, as elsewhere, terror and alarm prevailed, and
ordinary forms were for the time forgotten.
On the Thursday, both Houses had adjourned until the following Monday
se’nnight, declaring it impossible to pursue their deliberations with
the necessary gravity and freedom, while they were surrounded by armed
troops. And now that the rioters were dispersed, the citizens were beset
with a new fear; for, finding the public thoroughfares and all their
usual places of resort filled with soldiers entrusted with the free use
of fire and sword, they began to lend a greedy ear to the rumours which
were afloat of martial law being declared, and to dismal stories of
prisoners having been seen hanging on lamp-posts in Cheapside and
Fleet Street. These terrors being promptly dispelled by a Proclamation
declaring that all the rioters in custody would be tried by a special
commission in due course of law, a fresh alarm was engendered by its
being whispered abroad that French money had been found on some of the
rioters, and that the disturbances had been fomented by foreign powers
who sought to compass the overthrow and ruin of England. This report,
which was strengthened by the diffusion of anonymous handbills, but
which, if it had any foundation at all, probably owed its origin to the
circumstance of some few coins which were not English money having been
swept into the pockets of the insurgents with other miscellaneous booty,
and afterwards discovered on the prisoners or the dead bodies,--caused
a great sensation; and men’s minds being in that excited state when they
are most apt to catch at any shadow of apprehension, was bruited about
with much industry.
All remaining quiet, however, during the whole of this Friday, and on
this Friday night, and no new discoveries being made, confidence began
to be restored, and the most timid and desponding breathed again.
In Southwark, no fewer than three thousand of the inhabitants formed
themselves into a watch, and patrolled the streets every hour. Nor were
the citizens slow to follow so good an example: and it being the manner
of peaceful men to be very bold when the danger is over, they were
abundantly fierce and daring; not scrupling to question the stoutest
passenger with great severity, and carrying it with a very high hand
over all errand-boys, servant-girls, and ‘prentices.
As day deepened into evening, and darkness crept into the nooks and
corners of the town as if it were mustering in secret and gathering
strength to venture into the open ways, Barnaby sat in his dungeon,
wondering at the silence, and listening in vain for the noise and outcry
which had ushered in the night of late. Beside him, with his hand in
hers, sat one in whose companionship he felt at peace. She was worn, and
altered, full of grief, and heavy-hearted; but the same to him.
‘Mother,’ he said, after a long silence: ‘how long,--how many days and
nights,--shall I be kept here?’
‘Not many, dear. I hope not many.’
‘You hope! Ay, but your hoping will not undo these chains. I hope, but
they don’t mind that. Grip hopes, but who cares for Grip?’
The raven gave a short, dull, melancholy croak. It said ‘Nobody,’ as
plainly as a croak could speak.
‘Who cares for Grip, except you and me?’ said Barnaby, smoothing the
bird’s rumpled feathers with his hand. ‘He never speaks in this place;
he never says a word in jail; he sits and mopes all day in his dark
corner, dozing sometimes, and sometimes looking at the light that creeps
in through the bars, and shines in his bright eye as if a spark from
those great fires had fallen into the room and was burning yet. But who
cares for Grip?’
The raven croaked again--Nobody.
‘And by the way,’ said Barnaby, withdrawing his hand from the bird, and
laying it upon his mother’s arm, as he looked eagerly in her face; ‘if
they kill me--they may: I heard it said they would--what will become of
Grip when I am dead?’
The sound of the word, or the current of his own thoughts, suggested to
Grip his old phrase ‘Never say die!’ But he stopped short in the middle
of it, drew a dismal cork, and subsided into a faint croak, as if he
lacked the heart to get through the shortest sentence.
‘Will they take HIS life as well as mine?’ said Barnaby. ‘I wish they
would. If you and I and he could die together, there would be none to
feel sorry, or to grieve for us. But do what they will, I don’t fear
them, mother!’
‘They will not harm you,’ she said, her tears choking her utterance.
‘They never will harm you, when they know all. I am sure they never
will.’
‘Oh! Don’t be too sure of that,’ cried Barnaby, with a strange pleasure
in the belief that she was self-deceived, and in his own sagacity. ‘They
have marked me from the first. I heard them say so to each other when
they brought me to this place last night; and I believe them. Don’t you
cry for me. They said that I was bold, and so I am, and so I will be.
You may think that I am silly, but I can die as well as another.--I have
done no harm, have I?’ he added quickly.
‘None before Heaven,’ she answered.
‘Why then,’ said Barnaby, ‘let them do their worst. You told me
once--you--when I asked you what death meant, that it was nothing to
be feared, if we did no harm--Aha! mother, you thought I had forgotten
that!’
His merry laugh and playful manner smote her to the heart. She drew him
closer to her, and besought him to talk to her in whispers and to be
very quiet, for it was getting dark, and their time was short, and she
would soon have to leave him for the night.
‘You will come to-morrow?’ said Barnaby.
Yes. And every day. And they would never part again.
He joyfully replied that this was well, and what he wished, and what he
had felt quite certain she would tell him; and then he asked her where
she had been so long, and why she had not come to see him when he had
been a great soldier, and ran through the wild schemes he had had for
their being rich and living prosperously, and with some faint notion in
his mind that she was sad and he had made her so, tried to console and
comfort her, and talked of their former life and his old sports and
freedom: little dreaming that every word he uttered only increased her
sorrow, and that her tears fell faster at the freshened recollection of
their lost tranquillity.
‘Mother,’ said Barnaby, as they heard the man approaching to close the
cells for the night, ‘when I spoke to you just now about my father you
cried “Hush!” and turned away your head. Why did you do so? Tell me why,
in a word. You thought HE was dead. You are not sorry that he is alive
and has come back to us. Where is he? Here?’
‘Do not ask any one where he is, or speak about him,’ she made answer.
‘Why not?’ said Barnaby. ‘Because he is a stern man, and talks roughly?
Well! I don’t like him, or want to be with him by myself; but why not
speak about him?’
‘Because I am sorry that he is alive; sorry that he has come back;
and sorry that he and you have ever met. Because, dear Barnaby, the
endeavour of my life has been to keep you two asunder.’
‘Father and son asunder! Why?’
‘He has,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘he has shed blood. The time has
come when you must know it. He has shed the blood of one who loved him
well, and trusted him, and never did him wrong in word or deed.’
Barnaby recoiled in horror, and glancing at his stained wrist for an
instant, wrapped it, shuddering, in his dress.
‘But,’ she added hastily as the key turned in the lock, ‘although we
shun him, he is your father, dearest, and I am his wretched wife. They
seek his life, and he will lose it. It must not be by our means; nay, if
we could win him back to penitence, we should be bound to love him yet.
Do not seem to know him, except as one who fled with you from the jail,
and if they question you about him, do not answer them. God be with you
through the night, dear boy! God be with you!’
She tore herself away, and in a few seconds Barnaby was alone. He stood
for a long time rooted to the spot, with his face hidden in his hands;
then flung himself, sobbing, on his miserable bed.
But the moon came slowly up in all her gentle glory, and the stars
looked out, and through the small compass of the grated window, as
through the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt,
the face of Heaven shone bright and merciful. He raised his head;
gazed upward at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the earth in
sadness, as if the night, more thoughtful than the day, looked down in
sorrow on the sufferings and evil deeds of men; and felt its peace sink
deep into his heart. He, a poor idiot, caged in his narrow cell, was as
much lifted up to God, while gazing on the mild light, as the freest and
most favoured man in all the spacious city; and in his ill-remembered
prayer, and in the fragment of the childish hymn, with which he sung and
crooned himself asleep, there breathed as true a spirit as ever studied
homily expressed, or old cathedral arches echoed.
As his mother crossed a yard on her way out, she saw, through a grated
door which separated it from another court, her husband, walking round
and round, with his hands folded on his breast, and his head hung down.
She asked the man who conducted her, if she might speak a word with
this prisoner. Yes, but she must be quick for he was locking up for
the night, and there was but a minute or so to spare. Saying this, he
unlocked the door, and bade her go in.
It grated harshly as it turned upon its hinges, but he was deaf to
the noise, and still walked round and round the little court, without
raising his head or changing his attitude in the least. She spoke to
him, but her voice was weak, and failed her. At length she put herself
in his track, and when he came near, stretched out her hand and touched
him.
He started backward, trembling from head to foot; but seeing who it was,
demanded why she came there. Before she could reply, he spoke again.
‘Am I to live or die? Do you murder too, or spare?’
‘My son--our son,’ she answered, ‘is in this prison.’
‘What is that to me?’ he cried, stamping impatiently on the stone
pavement. ‘I know it. He can no more aid me than I can aid him. If you
are come to talk of him, begone!’
As he spoke he resumed his walk, and hurried round the court as before.
When he came again to where she stood, he stopped, and said,
‘Am I to live or die? Do you repent?’
‘Oh!--do YOU?’ she answered. ‘Will you, while time remains? Do not
believe that I could save you, if I dared.’
‘Say if you would,’ he answered with an oath, as he tried to disengage
himself and pass on. ‘Say if you would.’
‘Listen to me for one moment,’ she returned; ‘for but a moment. I am but
newly risen from a sick-bed, from which I never hoped to rise again. The
best among us think, at such a time, of good intentions half-performed
and duties left undone. If I have ever, since that fatal night, omitted
to pray for your repentance before death--if I omitted, even then,
anything which might tend to urge it on you when the horror of your
crime was fresh--if, in our later meeting, I yielded to the dread that
was upon me, and forgot to fall upon my knees and solemnly adjure you,
in the name of him you sent to his account with Heaven, to prepare for
the retribution which must come, and which is stealing on you now--I
humbly before you, and in the agony of supplication in which you see me,
beseech that you will let me make atonement.’
‘What is the meaning of your canting words?’ he answered roughly. ‘Speak
so that I may understand you.’
‘I will,’ she answered, ‘I desire to. Bear with me for a moment more.
The hand of Him who set His curse on murder, is heavy on us now. You
cannot doubt it. Our son, our innocent boy, on whom His anger fell
before his birth, is in this place in peril of his life--brought here
by your guilt; yes, by that alone, as Heaven sees and knows, for he
has been led astray in the darkness of his intellect, and that is the
terrible consequence of your crime.’
‘If you come, woman-like, to load me with reproaches--’ he muttered,
again endeavouring to break away.
‘I do not. I have a different purpose. You must hear it. If not
to-night, to-morrow; if not to-morrow, at another time. You MUST hear
it. Husband, escape is hopeless--impossible.’
‘You tell me so, do you?’ he said, raising his manacled hand, and
shaking it. ‘You!’
‘Yes,’ she said, with indescribable earnestness. ‘But why?’
‘To make me easy in this jail. To make the time ‘twixt this and death,
pass pleasantly. For my good--yes, for my good, of course,’ he said,
grinding his teeth, and smiling at her with a livid face.
‘Not to load you with reproaches,’ she replied; ‘not to aggravate the
tortures and miseries of your condition, not to give you one hard word,
but to restore you to peace and hope. Husband, dear husband, if you will
but confess this dreadful crime; if you will but implore forgiveness of
Heaven and of those whom you have wronged on earth; if you will dismiss
these vain uneasy thoughts, which never can be realised, and will rely
on Penitence and on the Truth, I promise you, in the great name of the
Creator, whose image you have defaced, that He will comfort and console
you. And for myself,’ she cried, clasping her hands, and looking upward,
‘I swear before Him, as He knows my heart and reads it now, that from
that hour I will love and cherish you as I did of old, and watch you
night and day in the short interval that will remain to us, and
soothe you with my truest love and duty, and pray with you, that one
threatening judgment may be arrested, and that our boy may be spared to
bless God, in his poor way, in the free air and light!’
He fell back and gazed at her while she poured out these words, as
though he were for a moment awed by her manner, and knew not what to do.
But anger and fear soon got the mastery of him, and he spurned her from
him.
‘Begone!’ he cried. ‘Leave me! You plot, do you! You plot to get speech
with me, and let them know I am the man they say I am. A curse on you
and on your boy.’
‘On him the curse has already fallen,’ she replied, wringing her hands.
‘Let it fall heavier. Let it fall on one and all. I hate you both. The
worst has come to me. The only comfort that I seek or I can have, will
be the knowledge that it comes to you. Now go!’
She would have urged him gently, even then, but he menaced her with his
chain.
‘I say go--I say it for the last time. The gallows has me in its grasp,
and it is a black phantom that may urge me on to something more. Begone!
I curse the hour that I was born, the man I slew, and all the living
world!’
In a paroxysm of wrath, and terror, and the fear of death, he broke from
her, and rushed into the darkness of his cell, where he cast himself
jangling down upon the stone floor, and smote it with his ironed hands.
The man returned to lock the dungeon door, and having done so, carried
her away.
On that warm, balmy night in June, there were glad faces and light
hearts in all quarters of the town, and sleep, banished by the late
horrors, was doubly welcomed. On that night, families made merry in
their houses, and greeted each other on the common danger they had
escaped; and those who had been denounced, ventured into the streets;
and they who had been plundered, got good shelter. Even the timorous
Lord Mayor, who was summoned that night before the Privy Council to
answer for his conduct, came back contented; observing to all his
friends that he had got off very well with a reprimand, and repeating
with huge satisfaction his memorable defence before the Council, ‘that
such was his temerity, he thought death would have been his portion.’
On that night, too, more of the scattered remnants of the mob were
traced to their lurking-places, and taken; and in the hospitals, and
deep among the ruins they had made, and in the ditches, and fields, many
unshrouded wretches lay dead: envied by those who had been active in
the disturbances, and who pillowed their doomed heads in the temporary
jails.
And in the Tower, in a dreary room whose thick stone walls shut out
the hum of life, and made a stillness which the records left by former
prisoners with those silent witnesses seemed to deepen and intensify;
remorseful for every act that had been done by every man among the cruel
crowd; feeling for the time their guilt his own, and their lives put in
peril by himself; and finding, amidst such reflections, little comfort
in fanaticism, or in his fancied call; sat the unhappy author of
all--Lord George Gordon.
He had been made prisoner that evening. ‘If you are sure it’s me you
want,’ he said to the officers, who waited outside with the warrant for
his arrest on a charge of High Treason, ‘I am ready to accompany you--’
which he did without resistance. He was conducted first before the Privy
Council, and afterwards to the Horse Guards, and then was taken by way
of Westminster Bridge, and back over London Bridge (for the purpose of
avoiding the main streets), to the Tower, under the strongest guard ever
known to enter its gates with a single prisoner.
Of all his forty thousand men, not one remained to bear him company.
Friends, dependents, followers,--none were there. His fawning secretary
had played the traitor; and he whose weakness had been goaded and urged
on by so many for their own purposes, was desolate and alone.
Chapter 74
Mr Dennis, having been made prisoner late in the evening, was removed to
a neighbouring round-house for that night, and carried before a justice
for examination on the next day, Saturday. The charges against him
being numerous and weighty, and it being in particular proved, by the
testimony of Gabriel Varden, that he had shown a special desire to take
his life, he was committed for trial. Moreover he was honoured with
the distinction of being considered a chief among the insurgents, and
received from the magistrate’s lips the complimentary assurance that
he was in a position of imminent danger, and would do well to prepare
himself for the worst.
To say that Mr Dennis’s modesty was not somewhat startled by these
honours, or that he was altogether prepared for so flattering a
reception, would be to claim for him a greater amount of stoical
philosophy than even he possessed. Indeed this gentleman’s stoicism was
of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary
fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of
counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen
to befall himself. It is therefore no disparagement to the great officer
in question to state, without disguise or concealment, that he was at
first very much alarmed, and that he betrayed divers emotions of fear,
until his reasoning powers came to his relief, and set before him a more
hopeful prospect.
In proportion as Mr Dennis exercised these intellectual qualities
with which he was gifted, in reviewing his best chances of coming off
handsomely and with small personal inconvenience, his spirits rose, and
his confidence increased. When he remembered the great estimation in
which his office was held, and the constant demand for his services;
when he bethought himself, how the Statute Book regarded him as a kind
of Universal Medicine applicable to men, women, and children, of every
age and variety of criminal constitution; and how high he stood, in
his official capacity, in the favour of the Crown, and both Houses of
Parliament, the Mint, the Bank of England, and the Judges of the land;
when he recollected that whatever Ministry was in or out, he remained
their peculiar pet and panacea, and that for his sake England stood
single and conspicuous among the civilised nations of the earth: when
he called these things to mind and dwelt upon them, he felt certain that
the national gratitude MUST relieve him from the consequences of his
late proceedings, and would certainly restore him to his old place in
the happy social system.
With these crumbs, or as one may say, with these whole loaves of comfort
to regale upon, Mr Dennis took his place among the escort that awaited
him, and repaired to jail with a manly indifference. Arriving at
Newgate, where some of the ruined cells had been hastily fitted up for
the safe keeping of rioters, he was warmly received by the turnkeys,
as an unusual and interesting case, which agreeably relieved their
monotonous duties. In this spirit, he was fettered with great care, and
conveyed into the interior of the prison.
‘Brother,’ cried the hangman, as, following an officer, he traversed
under these novel circumstances the remains of passages with which he
was well acquainted, ‘am I going to be along with anybody?’
‘If you’d have left more walls standing, you’d have been alone,’ was the
reply. ‘As it is, we’re cramped for room, and you’ll have company.’
‘Well,’ returned Dennis, ‘I don’t object to company, brother. I rather
like company. I was formed for society, I was.’
‘That’s rather a pity, an’t it?’ said the man.
‘No,’ answered Dennis, ‘I’m not aware that it is. Why should it be a
pity, brother?’
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said the man carelessly. ‘I thought that was what
you meant. Being formed for society, and being cut off in your flower,
you know--’
‘I say,’ interposed the other quickly, ‘what are you talking of? Don’t.
Who’s a-going to be cut off in their flowers?’
‘Oh, nobody particular. I thought you was, perhaps,’ said the man.
Mr Dennis wiped his face, which had suddenly grown very hot, and
remarking in a tremulous voice to his conductor that he had always been
fond of his joke, followed him in silence until he stopped at a door.
‘This is my quarters, is it?’ he asked facetiously.
‘This is the shop, sir,’ replied his friend.
He was walking in, but not with the best possible grace, when he
suddenly stopped, and started back.
‘Halloa!’ said the officer. ‘You’re nervous.’
‘Nervous!’ whispered Dennis in great alarm. ‘Well I may be. Shut the
door.’
‘I will, when you’re in,’ returned the man.
‘But I can’t go in there,’ whispered Dennis. ‘I can’t be shut up with
that man. Do you want me to be throttled, brother?’
The officer seemed to entertain no particular desire on the subject one
way or other, but briefly remarking that he had his orders, and intended
to obey them, pushed him in, turned the key, and retired.
Dennis stood trembling with his back against the door, and involuntarily
raising his arm to defend himself, stared at a man, the only other
tenant of the cell, who lay, stretched at his full length, upon a stone
bench, and who paused in his deep breathing as if he were about to wake.
But he rolled over on one side, let his arm fall negligently down, drew
a long sigh, and murmuring indistinctly, fell fast asleep again.
Relieved in some degree by this, the hangman took his eyes for an
instant from the slumbering figure, and glanced round the cell in search
of some ‘vantage-ground or weapon of defence. There was nothing moveable
within it, but a clumsy table which could not be displaced without
noise, and a heavy chair. Stealing on tiptoe towards this latter
piece of furniture, he retired with it into the remotest corner,
and intrenching himself behind it, watched the enemy with the utmost
vigilance and caution.
The sleeping man was Hugh; and perhaps it was not unnatural for Dennis
to feel in a state of very uncomfortable suspense, and to wish with
his whole soul that he might never wake again. Tired of standing, he
crouched down in his corner after some time, and rested on the cold
pavement; but although Hugh’s breathing still proclaimed that he
was sleeping soundly, he could not trust him out of his sight for an
instant. He was so afraid of him, and of some sudden onslaught, that he
was not content to see his closed eyes through the chair-back, but
every now and then, rose stealthily to his feet, and peered at him with
outstretched neck, to assure himself that he really was still asleep,
and was not about to spring upon him when he was off his guard.
He slept so long and so soundly, that Mr Dennis began to think he might
sleep on until the turnkey visited them. He was congratulating himself
upon these promising appearances, and blessing his stars with much
fervour, when one or two unpleasant symptoms manifested themselves: such
as another motion of the arm, another sigh, a restless tossing of the
head. Then, just as it seemed that he was about to fall heavily to the
ground from his narrow bed, Hugh’s eyes opened.
It happened that his face was turned directly towards his unexpected
visitor. He looked lazily at him for some half-dozen seconds without any
aspect of surprise or recognition; then suddenly jumped up, and with a
great oath pronounced his name.
‘Keep off, brother, keep off!’ cried Dennis, dodging behind the chair.
‘Don’t do me a mischief. I’m a prisoner like you. I haven’t the free use
of my limbs. I’m quite an old man. Don’t hurt me!’
He whined out the last three words in such piteous accents, that Hugh,
who had dragged away the chair, and aimed a blow at him with it, checked
himself, and bade him get up.
‘I’ll get up certainly, brother,’ cried Dennis, anxious to propitiate
him by any means in his power. ‘I’ll comply with any request of yours,
I’m sure. There--I’m up now. What can I do for you? Only say the word,
and I’ll do it.’
‘What can you do for me!’ cried Hugh, clutching him by the collar with
both hands, and shaking him as though he were bent on stopping his
breath by that means. ‘What have you done for me?’
‘The best. The best that could be done,’ returned the hangman.
Hugh made him no answer, but shaking him in his strong grip until his
teeth chattered in his head, cast him down upon the floor, and flung
himself on the bench again.
‘If it wasn’t for the comfort it is to me, to see you here,’ he
muttered, ‘I’d have crushed your head against it; I would.’
It was some time before Dennis had breath enough to speak, but as soon
as he could resume his propitiatory strain, he did so.
‘I did the best that could be done, brother,’ he whined; ‘I did indeed.
I was forced with two bayonets and I don’t know how many bullets on each
side of me, to point you out. If you hadn’t been taken, you’d have been
shot; and what a sight that would have been--a fine young man like you!’
‘Will it be a better sight now?’ asked Hugh, raising his head, with such
a fierce expression, that the other durst not answer him just then.
‘A deal better,’ said Dennis meekly, after a pause. ‘First, there’s all
the chances of the law, and they’re five hundred strong. We may get off
scot-free. Unlikelier things than that have come to pass. Even if we
shouldn’t, and the chances fail, we can but be worked off once: and when
it’s well done, it’s so neat, so skilful, so captiwating, if that don’t
seem too strong a word, that you’d hardly believe it could be brought
to sich perfection. Kill one’s fellow-creeturs off, with muskets!--Pah!’
and his nature so revolted at the bare idea, that he spat upon the
dungeon pavement.
His warming on this topic, which to one unacquainted with his pursuits
and tastes appeared like courage; together with his artful suppression
of his own secret hopes, and mention of himself as being in the same
condition with Hugh; did more to soothe that ruffian than the most
elaborate arguments could have done, or the most abject submission.
He rested his arms upon his knees, and stooping forward, looked from
beneath his shaggy hair at Dennis, with something of a smile upon his
face.
‘The fact is, brother,’ said the hangman, in a tone of greater
confidence, ‘that you got into bad company. The man that was with you
was looked after more than you, and it was him I wanted. As to me, what
have I got by it? Here we are, in one and the same plight.’
‘Lookee, rascal,’ said Hugh, contracting his brows, ‘I’m not altogether
such a shallow blade but I know you expected to get something by it, or
you wouldn’t have done it. But it’s done, and you’re here, and it will
soon be all over with you and me; and I’d as soon die as live, or live
as die. Why should I trouble myself to have revenge on you? To eat, and
drink, and go to sleep, as long as I stay here, is all I care for. If
there was but a little more sun to bask in, than can find its way into
this cursed place, I’d lie in it all day, and not trouble myself to sit
or stand up once. That’s all the care I have for myself. Why should I
care for YOU?’
Finishing this speech with a growl like the yawn of a wild beast, he
stretched himself upon the bench again, and closed his eyes once more.
After looking at him in silence for some moments, Dennis, who was
greatly relieved to find him in this mood, drew the chair towards his
rough couch and sat down near him--taking the precaution, however, to
keep out of the range of his brawny arm.
‘Well said, brother; nothing could be better said,’ he ventured to
observe. ‘We’ll eat and drink of the best, and sleep our best, and make
the best of it every way. Anything can be got for money. Let’s spend it
merrily.’
‘Ay,’ said Hugh, coiling himself into a new position.--‘Where is it?’
‘Why, they took mine from me at the lodge,’ said Mr Dennis; ‘but mine’s
a peculiar case.’
‘Is it? They took mine too.’
‘Why then, I tell you what, brother,’ Dennis began. ‘You must look up
your friends--’
‘My friends!’ cried Hugh, starting up and resting on his hands. ‘Where
are my friends?’
‘Your relations then,’ said Dennis.
‘Ha ha ha!’ laughed Hugh, waving one arm above his head. ‘He talks of
friends to me--talks of relations to a man whose mother died the death
in store for her son, and left him, a hungry brat, without a face he
knew in all the world! He talks of this to me!’
‘Brother,’ cried the hangman, whose features underwent a sudden change,
‘you don’t mean to say--’
‘I mean to say,’ Hugh interposed, ‘that they hung her up at Tyburn. What
was good enough for her, is good enough for me. Let them do the like by
me as soon as they please--the sooner the better. Say no more to me. I’m
going to sleep.’
‘But I want to speak to you; I want to hear more about that,’ said
Dennis, changing colour.
‘If you’re a wise man,’ growled Hugh, raising his head to look at him
with a frown, ‘you’ll hold your tongue. I tell you I’m going to sleep.’
Dennis venturing to say something more in spite of this caution, the
desperate fellow struck at him with all his force, and missing him, lay
down again with many muttered oaths and imprecations, and turned his
face towards the wall. After two or three ineffectual twitches at his
dress, which he was hardy enough to venture upon, notwithstanding his
dangerous humour, Mr Dennis, who burnt, for reasons of his own, to
pursue the conversation, had no alternative but to sit as patiently as
he could: waiting his further pleasure.
Chapter 75
A month has elapsed,--and we stand in the bedchamber of Sir John
Chester. Through the half-opened window, the Temple Garden looks green
and pleasant; the placid river, gay with boat and barge, and dimpled
with the plash of many an oar, sparkles in the distance; the sky is blue
and clear; and the summer air steals gently in, filling the room with
perfume. The very town, the smoky town, is radiant. High roofs and
steeple-tops, wont to look black and sullen, smile a cheerful grey;
every old gilded vane, and ball, and cross, glitters anew in the bright
morning sun; and, high among them all, St Paul’s towers up, showing its
lofty crest in burnished gold.
Sir John was breakfasting in bed. His chocolate and toast stood upon a
little table at his elbow; books and newspapers lay ready to his hand,
upon the coverlet; and, sometimes pausing to glance with an air of
tranquil satisfaction round the well-ordered room, and sometimes to
gaze indolently at the summer sky, he ate, and drank, and read the news
luxuriously.
The cheerful influence of the morning seemed to have some effect, even
upon his equable temper. His manner was unusually gay; his smile more
placid and agreeable than usual; his voice more clear and pleasant. He
laid down the newspaper he had been reading; leaned back upon his
pillow with the air of one who resigned himself to a train of charming
recollections; and after a pause, soliloquised as follows:
‘And my friend the centaur, goes the way of his mamma! I am not
surprised. And his mysterious friend Mr Dennis, likewise! I am not
surprised. And my old postman, the exceedingly free-and-easy young
madman of Chigwell! I am quite rejoiced. It’s the very best thing that
could possibly happen to him.’
After delivering himself of these remarks, he fell again into his
smiling train of reflection; from which he roused himself at length
to finish his chocolate, which was getting cold, and ring the bell for
more.
The new supply arriving, he took the cup from his servant’s hand;
and saying, with a charming affability, ‘I am obliged to you, Peak,’
dismissed him.
‘It is a remarkable circumstance,’ he mused, dallying lazily with the
teaspoon, ‘that my friend the madman should have been within an ace of
escaping, on his trial; and it was a good stroke of chance (or, as the
world would say, a providential occurrence) that the brother of my Lord
Mayor should have been in court, with other country justices, into whose
very dense heads curiosity had penetrated. For though the brother of my
Lord Mayor was decidedly wrong; and established his near relationship
to that amusing person beyond all doubt, in stating that my friend
was sane, and had, to his knowledge, wandered about the country with a
vagabond parent, avowing revolutionary and rebellious sentiments; I am
not the less obliged to him for volunteering that evidence. These insane
creatures make such very odd and embarrassing remarks, that they really
ought to be hanged for the comfort of society.’
The country justice had indeed turned the wavering scale against poor
Barnaby, and solved the doubt that trembled in his favour. Grip little
thought how much he had to answer for.
‘They will be a singular party,’ said Sir John, leaning his head upon
his hand, and sipping his chocolate; ‘a very curious party. The hangman
himself; the centaur; and the madman. The centaur would make a very
handsome preparation in Surgeons’ Hall, and would benefit science
extremely. I hope they have taken care to bespeak him.--Peak, I am not
at home, of course, to anybody but the hairdresser.’
This reminder to his servant was called forth by a knock at the door,
which the man hastened to open. After a prolonged murmur of question and
answer, he returned; and as he cautiously closed the room-door behind
him, a man was heard to cough in the passage.
‘Now, it is of no use, Peak,’ said Sir John, raising his hand in
deprecation of his delivering any message; ‘I am not at home. I cannot
possibly hear you. I told you I was not at home, and my word is sacred.
Will you never do as you are desired?’
Having nothing to oppose to this reproof, the man was about to withdraw,
when the visitor who had given occasion to it, probably rendered
impatient by delay, knocked with his knuckles at the chamber-door, and
called out that he had urgent business with Sir John Chester, which
admitted of no delay.
‘Let him in,’ said Sir John. ‘My good fellow,’ he added, when the door
was opened, ‘how come you to intrude yourself in this extraordinary
manner upon the privacy of a gentleman? How can you be so wholly
destitute of self-respect as to be guilty of such remarkable
ill-breeding?’
‘My business, Sir John, is not of a common kind, I do assure you,’
returned the person he addressed. ‘If I have taken any uncommon course
to get admission to you, I hope I shall be pardoned on that account.’
‘Well! we shall see; we shall see,’ returned Sir John, whose face
cleared up when he saw who it was, and whose prepossessing smile was now
restored. ‘I am sure we have met before,’ he added in his winning tone,
‘but really I forget your name?’
‘My name is Gabriel Varden, sir.’
‘Varden, of course, Varden,’ returned Sir John, tapping his forehead.
‘Dear me, how very defective my memory becomes! Varden to be sure--Mr
Varden the locksmith. You have a charming wife, Mr Varden, and a most
beautiful daughter. They are well?’
Gabriel thanked him, and said they were.
‘I rejoice to hear it,’ said Sir John. ‘Commend me to them when you
return, and say that I wished I were fortunate enough to convey, myself,
the salute which I entrust you to deliver. And what,’ he asked very
sweetly, after a moment’s pause, ‘can I do for you? You may command me
freely.’
‘I thank you, Sir John,’ said Gabriel, with some pride in his
manner, ‘but I have come to ask no favour of you, though I come on
business.--Private,’ he added, with a glance at the man who stood
looking on, ‘and very pressing business.’
‘I cannot say you are the more welcome for being independent, and having
nothing to ask of me,’ returned Sir John, graciously, ‘for I should have
been happy to render you a service; still, you are welcome on any terms.
Oblige me with some more chocolate, Peak, and don’t wait.’
The man retired, and left them alone.
‘Sir John,’ said Gabriel, ‘I am a working-man, and have been so, all my
life. If I don’t prepare you enough for what I have to tell; if I come
to the point too abruptly; and give you a shock, which a gentleman could
have spared you, or at all events lessened very much; I hope you will
give me credit for meaning well. I wish to be careful and considerate,
and I trust that in a straightforward person like me, you’ll take the
will for the deed.’
‘Mr Varden,’ returned the other, perfectly composed under this exordium;
‘I beg you’ll take a chair. Chocolate, perhaps, you don’t relish? Well!
it IS an acquired taste, no doubt.’
‘Sir John,’ said Gabriel, who had acknowledged with a bow the invitation
to be seated, but had not availed himself of it. ‘Sir John’--he
dropped his voice and drew nearer to the bed--‘I am just now come from
Newgate--’
‘Good Gad!’ cried Sir John, hastily sitting up in bed; ‘from Newgate,
Mr Varden! How could you be so very imprudent as to come from Newgate!
Newgate, where there are jail-fevers, and ragged people, and bare-footed
men and women, and a thousand horrors! Peak, bring the camphor, quick!
Heaven and earth, Mr Varden, my dear, good soul, how COULD you come from
Newgate?’
Gabriel returned no answer, but looked on in silence while Peak (who had
entered with the hot chocolate) ran to a drawer, and returning with
a bottle, sprinkled his master’s dressing-gown and the bedding; and
besides moistening the locksmith himself, plentifully, described a
circle round about him on the carpet. When he had done this, he again
retired; and Sir John, reclining in an easy attitude upon his pillow,
once more turned a smiling face towards his visitor.
‘You will forgive me, Mr Varden, I am sure, for being at first a little
sensitive both on your account and my own. I confess I was startled,
notwithstanding your delicate exordium. Might I ask you to do me the
favour not to approach any nearer?--You have really come from Newgate!’
The locksmith inclined his head.
‘In-deed! And now, Mr Varden, all exaggeration and embellishment apart,’
said Sir John Chester, confidentially, as he sipped his chocolate, ‘what
kind of place IS Newgate?’
‘A strange place, Sir John,’ returned the locksmith, ‘of a sad and
doleful kind. A strange place, where many strange things are heard and
seen; but few more strange than that I come to tell you of. The case is
urgent. I am sent here.’
‘Not--no, no--not from the jail?’
‘Yes, Sir John; from the jail.’
‘And my good, credulous, open-hearted friend,’ said Sir John, setting
down his cup, and laughing,--‘by whom?’
‘By a man called Dennis--for many years the hangman, and to-morrow
morning the hanged,’ returned the locksmith.
Sir John had expected--had been quite certain from the first--that he
would say he had come from Hugh, and was prepared to meet him on that
point. But this answer occasioned him a degree of astonishment, which,
for the moment, he could not, with all his command of feature, prevent
his face from expressing. He quickly subdued it, however, and said in
the same light tone:
‘And what does the gentleman require of me? My memory may be at
fault again, but I don’t recollect that I ever had the pleasure of
an introduction to him, or that I ever numbered him among my personal
friends, I do assure you, Mr Varden.’
‘Sir John,’ returned the locksmith, gravely, ‘I will tell you, as nearly
as I can, in the words he used to me, what he desires that you should
know, and what you ought to know without a moment’s loss of time.’
Sir John Chester settled himself in a position of greater repose, and
looked at his visitor with an expression of face which seemed to say,
‘This is an amusing fellow! I’ll hear him out.’
‘You may have seen in the newspapers, sir,’ said Gabriel, pointing to
the one which lay by his side, ‘that I was a witness against this man
upon his trial some days since; and that it was not his fault I was
alive, and able to speak to what I knew.’
‘MAY have seen!’ cried Sir John. ‘My dear Mr Varden, you are quite
a public character, and live in all men’s thoughts most deservedly.
Nothing can exceed the interest with which I read your testimony,
and remembered that I had the pleasure of a slight acquaintance with
you.---I hope we shall have your portrait published?’
‘This morning, sir,’ said the locksmith, taking no notice of these
compliments, ‘early this morning, a message was brought to me from
Newgate, at this man’s request, desiring that I would go and see him,
for he had something particular to communicate. I needn’t tell you
that he is no friend of mine, and that I had never seen him, until the
rioters beset my house.’
Sir John fanned himself gently with the newspaper, and nodded.
‘I knew, however, from the general report,’ resumed Gabriel, ‘that the
order for his execution to-morrow, went down to the prison last night;
and looking upon him as a dying man, I complied with his request.’
‘You are quite a Christian, Mr Varden,’ said Sir John; ‘and in that
amiable capacity, you increase my desire that you should take a chair.’
‘He said,’ continued Gabriel, looking steadily at the knight, ‘that he
had sent to me, because he had no friend or companion in the whole world
(being the common hangman), and because he believed, from the way in
which I had given my evidence, that I was an honest man, and would act
truly by him. He said that, being shunned by every one who knew his
calling, even by people of the lowest and most wretched grade, and
finding, when he joined the rioters, that the men he acted with had no
suspicion of it (which I believe is true enough, for a poor fool of an
old ‘prentice of mine was one of them), he had kept his own counsel, up
to the time of his being taken and put in jail.’
‘Very discreet of Mr Dennis,’ observed Sir John with a slight yawn,
though still with the utmost affability, ‘but--except for your admirable
and lucid manner of telling it, which is perfect--not very interesting
to me.’
‘When,’ pursued the locksmith, quite unabashed and wholly regardless of
these interruptions, ‘when he was taken to the jail, he found that his
fellow-prisoner, in the same room, was a young man, Hugh by name, a
leader in the riots, who had been betrayed and given up by himself. From
something which fell from this unhappy creature in the course of the
angry words they had at meeting, he discovered that his mother had
suffered the death to which they both are now condemned.--The time is
very short, Sir John.’
The knight laid down his paper fan, replaced his cup upon the table at
his side, and, saving for the smile that lurked about his mouth, looked
at the locksmith with as much steadiness as the locksmith looked at him.
‘They have been in prison now, a month. One conversation led to many
more; and the hangman soon found, from a comparison of time, and place,
and dates, that he had executed the sentence of the law upon this woman,
himself. She had been tempted by want--as so many people are--into the
easy crime of passing forged notes. She was young and handsome; and the
traders who employ men, women, and children in this traffic, looked
upon her as one who was well adapted for their business, and who
would probably go on without suspicion for a long time. But they were
mistaken; for she was stopped in the commission of her very first
offence, and died for it. She was of gipsy blood, Sir John--’
It might have been the effect of a passing cloud which obscured the sun,
and cast a shadow on his face; but the knight turned deadly pale. Still
he met the locksmith’s eye, as before.
‘She was of gipsy blood, Sir John,’ repeated Gabriel, ‘and had a high,
free spirit. This, and her good looks, and her lofty manner, interested
some gentlemen who were easily moved by dark eyes; and efforts were made
to save her. They might have been successful, if she would have given
them any clue to her history. But she never would, or did. There was
reason to suspect that she would make an attempt upon her life. A watch
was set upon her night and day; and from that time she never spoke
again--’
Sir John stretched out his hand towards his cup. The locksmith going on,
arrested it half-way.
--‘Until she had but a minute to live. Then she broke silence, and said,
in a low firm voice which no one heard but this executioner, for all
other living creatures had retired and left her to her fate, “If I had
a dagger within these fingers and he was within my reach, I would strike
him dead before me, even now!” The man asked “Who?” She said, “The
father of her boy.”’
Sir John drew back his outstretched hand, and seeing that the locksmith
paused, signed to him with easy politeness and without any new
appearance of emotion, to proceed.
‘It was the first word she had ever spoken, from which it could be
understood that she had any relative on earth. “Was the child alive?” he
asked. “Yes.” He asked her where it was, its name, and whether she had
any wish respecting it. She had but one, she said. It was that the boy
might live and grow, in utter ignorance of his father, so that no arts
might teach him to be gentle and forgiving. When he became a man,
she trusted to the God of their tribe to bring the father and the
son together, and revenge her through her child. He asked her other
questions, but she spoke no more. Indeed, he says, she scarcely said
this much, to him, but stood with her face turned upwards to the sky,
and never looked towards him once.’
Sir John took a pinch of snuff; glanced approvingly at an elegant little
sketch, entitled ‘Nature,’ on the wall; and raising his eyes to the
locksmith’s face again, said, with an air of courtesy and patronage,
‘You were observing, Mr Varden--’
‘That she never,’ returned the locksmith, who was not to be diverted by
any artifice from his firm manner, and his steady gaze, ‘that she never
looked towards him once, Sir John; and so she died, and he forgot her.
But, some years afterwards, a man was sentenced to die the same death,
who was a gipsy too; a sunburnt, swarthy fellow, almost a wild man; and
while he lay in prison, under sentence, he, who had seen the hangman
more than once while he was free, cut an image of him on his stick, by
way of braving death, and showing those who attended on him, how little
he cared or thought about it. He gave this stick into his hands at
Tyburn, and told him then, that the woman I have spoken of had left her
own people to join a fine gentleman, and that, being deserted by him,
and cast off by her old friends, she had sworn within her own proud
breast, that whatever her misery might be, she would ask no help of any
human being. He told him that she had kept her word to the last; and
that, meeting even him in the streets--he had been fond of her once, it
seems--she had slipped from him by a trick, and he never saw her again,
until, being in one of the frequent crowds at Tyburn, with some of
his rough companions, he had been driven almost mad by seeing, in
the criminal under another name, whose death he had come to witness,
herself. Standing in the same place in which she had stood, he told
the hangman this, and told him, too, her real name, which only her own
people and the gentleman for whose sake she had left them, knew. That
name he will tell again, Sir John, to none but you.’
‘To none but me!’ exclaimed the knight, pausing in the act of raising
his cup to his lips with a perfectly steady hand, and curling up his
little finger for the better display of a brilliant ring with which it
was ornamented: ‘but me!--My dear Mr Varden, how very preposterous, to
select me for his confidence! With you at his elbow, too, who are so
perfectly trustworthy!’
‘Sir John, Sir John,’ returned the locksmith, ‘at twelve tomorrow, these
men die. Hear the few words I have to add, and do not hope to deceive
me; for though I am a plain man of humble station, and you are a
gentleman of rank and learning, the truth raises me to your level, and
I KNOW that you anticipate the disclosure with which I am about to end,
and that you believe this doomed man, Hugh, to be your son.’
‘Nay,’ said Sir John, bantering him with a gay air; ‘the wild gentleman,
who died so suddenly, scarcely went as far as that, I think?’
‘He did not,’ returned the locksmith, ‘for she had bound him by some
pledge, known only to these people, and which the worst among them
respect, not to tell your name: but, in a fantastic pattern on the
stick, he had carved some letters, and when the hangman asked it, he
bade him, especially if he should ever meet with her son in after life,
remember that place well.’
‘What place?’
‘Chester.’
The knight finished his cup of chocolate with an appearance of infinite
relish, and carefully wiped his lips upon his handkerchief.
‘Sir John,’ said the locksmith, ‘this is all that has been told to me;
but since these two men have been left for death, they have conferred
together closely. See them, and hear what they can add. See this Dennis,
and learn from him what he has not trusted to me. If you, who hold the
clue to all, want corroboration (which you do not), the means are easy.’
‘And to what,’ said Sir John Chester, rising on his elbow, after
smoothing the pillow for its reception; ‘my dear, good-natured,
estimable Mr Varden--with whom I cannot be angry if I would--to what
does all this tend?’
‘I take you for a man, Sir John, and I suppose it tends to some pleading
of natural affection in your breast,’ returned the locksmith. ‘I suppose
to the straining of every nerve, and the exertion of all the influence
you have, or can make, in behalf of your miserable son, and the man
who has disclosed his existence to you. At the worst, I suppose to your
seeing your son, and awakening him to a sense of his crime and danger.
He has no such sense now. Think what his life must have been, when he
said in my hearing, that if I moved you to anything, it would be to
hastening his death, and ensuring his silence, if you had it in your
power!’
‘And have you, my good Mr Varden,’ said Sir John in a tone of mild
reproof, ‘have you really lived to your present age, and remained so
very simple and credulous, as to approach a gentleman of established
character with such credentials as these, from desperate men in their
last extremity, catching at any straw? Oh dear! Oh fie, fie!’
The locksmith was going to interpose, but he stopped him:
‘On any other subject, Mr Varden, I shall be delighted--I shall be
charmed--to converse with you, but I owe it to my own character not to
pursue this topic for another moment.’
‘Think better of it, sir, when I am gone,’ returned the locksmith;
‘think better of it, sir. Although you have, thrice within as many
weeks, turned your lawful son, Mr Edward, from your door, you may have
time, you may have years to make your peace with HIM, Sir John: but that
twelve o’clock will soon be here, and soon be past for ever.’
‘I thank you very much,’ returned the knight, kissing his delicate hand
to the locksmith, ‘for your guileless advice; and I only wish, my good
soul, although your simplicity is quite captivating, that you had a
little more worldly wisdom. I never so much regretted the arrival of my
hairdresser as I do at this moment. God bless you! Good morning! You’ll
not forget my message to the ladies, Mr Varden? Peak, show Mr Varden to
the door.’
Gabriel said no more, but gave the knight a parting look, and left him.
As he quitted the room, Sir John’s face changed; and the smile gave
place to a haggard and anxious expression, like that of a weary actor
jaded by the performance of a difficult part. He rose from his bed with
a heavy sigh, and wrapped himself in his morning-gown.
‘So she kept her word,’ he said, ‘and was constant to her threat! I
would I had never seen that dark face of hers,--I might have read these
consequences in it, from the first. This affair would make a noise
abroad, if it rested on better evidence; but, as it is, and by not
joining the scattered links of the chain, I can afford to slight
it.--Extremely distressing to be the parent of such an uncouth creature!
Still, I gave him very good advice. I told him he would certainly be
hanged. I could have done no more if I had known of our relationship;
and there are a great many fathers who have never done as much for THEIR
natural children.--The hairdresser may come in, Peak!’
The hairdresser came in; and saw in Sir John Chester (whose
accommodating conscience was soon quieted by the numerous precedents
that occurred to him in support of his last observation), the same
imperturbable, fascinating, elegant gentleman he had seen yesterday, and
many yesterdays before.
Chapter 76
As the locksmith walked slowly away from Sir John Chester’s chambers,
he lingered under the trees which shaded the path, almost hoping that
he might be summoned to return. He had turned back thrice, and still
loitered at the corner, when the clock struck twelve.
It was a solemn sound, and not merely for its reference to to-morrow;
for he knew that in that chime the murderer’s knell was rung. He had
seen him pass along the crowded street, amidst the execration of the
throng; and marked his quivering lip, and trembling limbs; the ashy hue
upon his face, his clammy brow, the wild distraction of his eye--the
fear of death that swallowed up all other thoughts, and gnawed without
cessation at his heart and brain. He had marked the wandering look,
seeking for hope, and finding, turn where it would, despair. He had seen
the remorseful, pitiful, desolate creature, riding, with his coffin
by his side, to the gibbet. He knew that, to the last, he had been an
unyielding, obdurate man; that in the savage terror of his condition he
had hardened, rather than relented, to his wife and child; and that the
last words which had passed his white lips were curses on them as his
enemies.
Mr Haredale had determined to be there, and see it done. Nothing but
the evidence of his own senses could satisfy that gloomy thirst for
retribution which had been gathering upon him for so many years. The
locksmith knew this, and when the chimes had ceased to vibrate, hurried
away to meet him.
‘For these two men,’ he said, as he went, ‘I can do no more. Heaven have
mercy on them!--Alas! I say I can do no more for them, but whom can I
help? Mary Rudge will have a home, and a firm friend when she most wants
one; but Barnaby--poor Barnaby--willing Barnaby--what aid can I render
him? There are many, many men of sense, God forgive me,’ cried the
honest locksmith, stopping in a narrow court to pass his hand across his
eyes, ‘I could better afford to lose than Barnaby. We have always been
good friends, but I never knew, till now, how much I loved the lad.’
There were not many in the great city who thought of Barnaby that day,
otherwise than as an actor in a show which was to take place to-morrow.
But if the whole population had had him in their minds, and had wished
his life to be spared, not one among them could have done so with a
purer zeal or greater singleness of heart than the good locksmith.
Barnaby was to die. There was no hope. It is not the least evil
attendant upon the frequent exhibition of this last dread punishment,
of Death, that it hardens the minds of those who deal it out, and makes
them, though they be amiable men in other respects, indifferent to, or
unconscious of, their great responsibility. The word had gone forth that
Barnaby was to die. It went forth, every month, for lighter crimes.
It was a thing so common, that very few were startled by the awful
sentence, or cared to question its propriety. Just then, too, when the
law had been so flagrantly outraged, its dignity must be asserted.
The symbol of its dignity,--stamped upon every page of the criminal
statute-book,--was the gallows; and Barnaby was to die.
They had tried to save him. The locksmith had carried petitions and
memorials to the fountain-head, with his own hands. But the well was not
one of mercy, and Barnaby was to die.
From the first his mother had never left him, save at night; and with
her beside him, he was as usual contented. On this last day, he was more
elated and more proud than he had been yet; and when she dropped the
book she had been reading to him aloud, and fell upon his neck, he
stopped in his busy task of folding a piece of crape about his hat,
and wondered at her anguish. Grip uttered a feeble croak, half in
encouragement, it seemed, and half in remonstrance, but he wanted heart
to sustain it, and lapsed abruptly into silence.
With them who stood upon the brink of the great gulf which none can see
beyond, Time, so soon to lose itself in vast Eternity, rolled on like a
mighty river, swollen and rapid as it nears the sea. It was morning but
now; they had sat and talked together in a dream; and here was evening.
The dreadful hour of separation, which even yesterday had seemed so
distant, was at hand.
They walked out into the courtyard, clinging to each other, but not
speaking. Barnaby knew that the jail was a dull, sad, miserable place,
and looked forward to to-morrow, as to a passage from it to something
bright and beautiful. He had a vague impression too, that he was
expected to be brave--that he was a man of great consequence, and that
the prison people would be glad to make him weep. He trod the ground
more firmly as he thought of this, and bade her take heart and cry no
more, and feel how steady his hand was. ‘They call me silly, mother.
They shall see to-morrow!’
Dennis and Hugh were in the courtyard. Hugh came forth from his cell as
they did, stretching himself as though he had been sleeping. Dennis sat
upon a bench in a corner, with his knees and chin huddled together, and
rocked himself to and fro like a person in severe pain.
The mother and son remained on one side of the court, and these two men
upon the other. Hugh strode up and down, glancing fiercely every now and
then at the bright summer sky, and looking round, when he had done so,
at the walls.
‘No reprieve, no reprieve! Nobody comes near us. There’s only the night
left now!’ moaned Dennis faintly, as he wrung his hands. ‘Do you think
they’ll reprieve me in the night, brother? I’ve known reprieves come
in the night, afore now. I’ve known ‘em come as late as five, six, and
seven o’clock in the morning. Don’t you think there’s a good chance
yet,--don’t you? Say you do. Say you do, young man,’ whined the
miserable creature, with an imploring gesture towards Barnaby, ‘or I
shall go mad!’
‘Better be mad than sane, here,’ said Hugh. ‘GO mad.’
‘But tell me what you think. Somebody tell me what he thinks!’ cried
the wretched object,--so mean, and wretched, and despicable, that even
Pity’s self might have turned away, at sight of such a being in the
likeness of a man--‘isn’t there a chance for me,--isn’t there a good
chance for me? Isn’t it likely they may be doing this to frighten me?
Don’t you think it is? Oh!’ he almost shrieked, as he wrung his hands,
‘won’t anybody give me comfort!’
‘You ought to be the best, instead of the worst,’ said Hugh, stopping
before him. ‘Ha, ha, ha! See the hangman, when it comes home to him!’
‘You don’t know what it is,’ cried Dennis, actually writhing as he
spoke: ‘I do. That I should come to be worked off! I! I! That I should
come!’
‘And why not?’ said Hugh, as he thrust back his matted hair to get a
better view of his late associate. ‘How often, before I knew your trade,
did I hear you talking of this as if it was a treat?’
‘I an’t unconsistent,’ screamed the miserable creature; ‘I’d talk so
again, if I was hangman. Some other man has got my old opinions at this
minute. That makes it worse. Somebody’s longing to work me off. I know
by myself that somebody must be!’
‘He’ll soon have his longing,’ said Hugh, resuming his walk. ‘Think of
that, and be quiet.’
Although one of these men displayed, in his speech and bearing, the
most reckless hardihood; and the other, in his every word and action,
testified such an extreme of abject cowardice that it was humiliating
to see him; it would be difficult to say which of them would most have
repelled and shocked an observer. Hugh’s was the dogged desperation of
a savage at the stake; the hangman was reduced to a condition little
better, if any, than that of a hound with the halter round his neck.
Yet, as Mr Dennis knew and could have told them, these were the two
commonest states of mind in persons brought to their pass. Such was the
wholesome growth of the seed sown by the law, that this kind of harvest
was usually looked for, as a matter of course.
In one respect they all agreed. The wandering and uncontrollable train
of thought, suggesting sudden recollections of things distant and long
forgotten and remote from each other--the vague restless craving for
something undefined, which nothing could satisfy--the swift flight of
the minutes, fusing themselves into hours, as if by enchantment--the
rapid coming of the solemn night--the shadow of death always upon them,
and yet so dim and faint, that objects the meanest and most trivial
started from the gloom beyond, and forced themselves upon the view--the
impossibility of holding the mind, even if they had been so disposed,
to penitence and preparation, or of keeping it to any point while one
hideous fascination tempted it away--these things were common to them
all, and varied only in their outward tokens.
‘Fetch me the book I left within--upon your bed,’ she said to Barnaby,
as the clock struck. ‘Kiss me first.’
He looked in her face, and saw there, that the time was come. After a
long embrace, he tore himself away, and ran to bring it to her; bidding
her not stir till he came back. He soon returned, for a shriek recalled
him,--but she was gone.
He ran to the yard-gate, and looked through. They were carrying her
away. She had said her heart would break. It was better so.
‘Don’t you think,’ whimpered Dennis, creeping up to him, as he stood
with his feet rooted to the ground, gazing at the blank walls--‘don’t
you think there’s still a chance? It’s a dreadful end; it’s a terrible
end for a man like me. Don’t you think there’s a chance? I don’t mean
for you, I mean for me. Don’t let HIM hear us (meaning Hugh); ‘he’s so
desperate.’
‘Now then,’ said the officer, who had been lounging in and out with his
hands in his pockets, and yawning as if he were in the last extremity
for some subject of interest: ‘it’s time to turn in, boys.’
‘Not yet,’ cried Dennis, ‘not yet. Not for an hour yet.’
‘I say,--your watch goes different from what it used to,’ returned the
man. ‘Once upon a time it was always too fast. It’s got the other fault
now.’
‘My friend,’ cried the wretched creature, falling on his knees, ‘my
dear friend--you always were my dear friend--there’s some mistake. Some
letter has been mislaid, or some messenger has been stopped upon the
way. He may have fallen dead. I saw a man once, fall down dead in the
street, myself, and he had papers in his pocket. Send to inquire. Let
somebody go to inquire. They never will hang me. They never can.--Yes,
they will,’ he cried, starting to his feet with a terrible scream.
‘They’ll hang me by a trick, and keep the pardon back. It’s a plot
against me. I shall lose my life!’ And uttering another yell, he fell in
a fit upon the ground.
‘See the hangman when it comes home to him!’ cried Hugh again, as they
bore him away--‘Ha ha ha! Courage, bold Barnaby, what care we? Your
hand! They do well to put us out of the world, for if we got loose a
second time, we wouldn’t let them off so easy, eh? Another shake! A man
can die but once. If you wake in the night, sing that out lustily, and
fall asleep again. Ha ha ha!’
Barnaby glanced once more through the grate into the empty yard;
and then watched Hugh as he strode to the steps leading to his
sleeping-cell. He heard him shout, and burst into a roar of laughter,
and saw him flourish his hat. Then he turned away himself, like one who
walked in his sleep; and, without any sense of fear or sorrow, lay down
on his pallet, listening for the clock to strike again.
Chapter 77
The time wore on. The noises in the streets became less frequent by
degrees, until silence was scarcely broken save by the bells in church
towers, marking the progress--softer and more stealthy while the city
slumbered--of that Great Watcher with the hoary head, who never sleeps
or rests. In the brief interval of darkness and repose which feverish
towns enjoy, all busy sounds were hushed; and those who awoke from
dreams lay listening in their beds, and longed for dawn, and wished the
dead of the night were past.
Into the street outside the jail’s main wall, workmen came straggling at
this solemn hour, in groups of two or three, and meeting in the centre,
cast their tools upon the ground and spoke in whispers. Others soon
issued from the jail itself, bearing on their shoulders planks and
beams: these materials being all brought forth, the rest bestirred
themselves, and the dull sound of hammers began to echo through the
stillness.
Here and there among this knot of labourers, one, with a lantern or
a smoky link, stood by to light his fellows at their work; and by its
doubtful aid, some might be dimly seen taking up the pavement of the
road, while others held great upright posts, or fixed them in the holes
thus made for their reception. Some dragged slowly on, towards the rest,
an empty cart, which they brought rumbling from the prison-yard; while
others erected strong barriers across the street. All were busily
engaged. Their dusky figures moving to and fro, at that unusual hour,
so active and so silent, might have been taken for those of shadowy
creatures toiling at midnight on some ghostly unsubstantial work, which,
like themselves, would vanish with the first gleam of day, and leave but
morning mist and vapour.
While it was yet dark, a few lookers-on collected, who had plainly come
there for the purpose and intended to remain: even those who had to pass
the spot on their way to some other place, lingered, and lingered yet,
as though the attraction of that were irresistible. Meanwhile the noise
of saw and mallet went on briskly, mingled with the clattering of boards
on the stone pavement of the road, and sometimes with the workmen’s
voices as they called to one another. Whenever the chimes of the
neighbouring church were heard--and that was every quarter of an hour--a
strange sensation, instantaneous and indescribable, but perfectly
obvious, seemed to pervade them all.
Gradually, a faint brightness appeared in the east, and the air, which
had been very warm all through the night, felt cool and chilly. Though
there was no daylight yet, the darkness was diminished, and the stars
looked pale. The prison, which had been a mere black mass with little
shape or form, put on its usual aspect; and ever and anon a solitary
watchman could be seen upon its roof, stopping to look down upon the
preparations in the street. This man, from forming, as it were, a part
of the jail, and knowing or being supposed to know all that was passing
within, became an object of as much interest, and was as eagerly looked
for, and as awfully pointed out, as if he had been a spirit.
By and by, the feeble light grew stronger, and the houses with their
signboards and inscriptions, stood plainly out, in the dull grey
morning. Heavy stage waggons crawled from the inn-yard opposite; and
travellers peeped out; and as they rolled sluggishly away, cast many
a backward look towards the jail. And now, the sun’s first beams came
glancing into the street; and the night’s work, which, in its various
stages and in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred
shapes, wore its own proper form--a scaffold, and a gibbet.
As the warmth of the cheerful day began to shed itself upon the scanty
crowd, the murmur of tongues was heard, shutters were thrown open,
and blinds drawn up, and those who had slept in rooms over against the
prison, where places to see the execution were let at high prices, rose
hastily from their beds. In some of the houses, people were busy taking
out the window-sashes for the better accommodation of spectators; in
others, the spectators were already seated, and beguiling the time with
cards, or drink, or jokes among themselves. Some had purchased seats
upon the house-tops, and were already crawling to their stations from
parapet and garret-window. Some were yet bargaining for good places, and
stood in them in a state of indecision: gazing at the slowly-swelling
crowd, and at the workmen as they rested listlessly against the
scaffold--affecting to listen with indifference to the proprietor’s
eulogy of the commanding view his house afforded, and the surpassing
cheapness of his terms.
A fairer morning never shone. From the roofs and upper stories of these
buildings, the spires of city churches and the great cathedral dome were
visible, rising up beyond the prison, into the blue sky, and clad in the
colour of light summer clouds, and showing in the clear atmosphere their
every scrap of tracery and fretwork, and every niche and loophole. All
was brightness and promise, excepting in the street below, into which
(for it yet lay in shadow) the eye looked down as into a dark trench,
where, in the midst of so much life, and hope, and renewal of existence,
stood the terrible instrument of death. It seemed as if the very sun
forbore to look upon it.
But it was better, grim and sombre in the shade, than when, the day
being more advanced, it stood confessed in the full glare and glory of
the sun, with its black paint blistering, and its nooses dangling in the
light like loathsome garlands. It was better in the solitude and gloom
of midnight with a few forms clustering about it, than in the freshness
and the stir of morning: the centre of an eager crowd. It was better
haunting the street like a spectre, when men were in their beds, and
influencing perchance the city’s dreams, than braving the broad day, and
thrusting its obscene presence upon their waking senses.
Five o’clock had struck--six--seven--and eight. Along the two main
streets at either end of the cross-way, a living stream had now set in,
rolling towards the marts of gain and business. Carts, coaches, waggons,
trucks, and barrows, forced a passage through the outskirts of the
throng, and clattered onward in the same direction. Some of these
which were public conveyances and had come from a short distance in the
country, stopped; and the driver pointed to the gibbet with his whip,
though he might have spared himself the pains, for the heads of all the
passengers were turned that way without his help, and the coach-windows
were stuck full of staring eyes. In some of the carts and waggons, women
might be seen, glancing fearfully at the same unsightly thing; and even
little children were held up above the people’s heads to see what kind
of a toy a gallows was, and learn how men were hanged.
Two rioters were to die before the prison, who had been concerned in
the attack upon it; and one directly afterwards in Bloomsbury Square.
At nine o’clock, a strong body of military marched into the street,
and formed and lined a narrow passage into Holborn, which had been
indifferently kept all night by constables. Through this, another
cart was brought (the one already mentioned had been employed in the
construction of the scaffold), and wheeled up to the prison-gate. These
preparations made, the soldiers stood at ease; the officers lounged
to and fro, in the alley they had made, or talked together at the
scaffold’s foot; and the concourse, which had been rapidly augmenting
for some hours, and still received additions every minute, waited with
an impatience which increased with every chime of St Sepulchre’s clock,
for twelve at noon.
Up to this time they had been very quiet, comparatively silent, save
when the arrival of some new party at a window, hitherto unoccupied,
gave them something new to look at or to talk of. But, as the hour
approached, a buzz and hum arose, which, deepening every moment, soon
swelled into a roar, and seemed to fill the air. No words or even voices
could be distinguished in this clamour, nor did they speak much to each
other; though such as were better informed upon the topic than the rest,
would tell their neighbours, perhaps, that they might know the hangman
when he came out, by his being the shorter one: and that the man who
was to suffer with him was named Hugh: and that it was Barnaby Rudge who
would be hanged in Bloomsbury Square.
The hum grew, as the time drew near, so loud, that those who were at the
windows could not hear the church-clock strike, though it was close at
hand. Nor had they any need to hear it, either, for they could see it
in the people’s faces. So surely as another quarter chimed, there was
a movement in the crowd--as if something had passed over it--as if the
light upon them had been changed--in which the fact was readable as on a
brazen dial, figured by a giant’s hand.
Three quarters past eleven! The murmur now was deafening, yet every man
seemed mute. Look where you would among the crowd, you saw strained eyes
and lips compressed; it would have been difficult for the most vigilant
observer to point this way or that, and say that yonder man had cried
out. It were as easy to detect the motion of lips in a sea-shell.
Three quarters past eleven! Many spectators who had retired from the
windows, came back refreshed, as though their watch had just begun.
Those who had fallen asleep, roused themselves; and every person in the
crowd made one last effort to better his position--which caused a press
against the sturdy barriers that made them bend and yield like twigs.
The officers, who until now had kept together, fell into their several
positions, and gave the words of command. Swords were drawn, muskets
shouldered, and the bright steel winding its way among the crowd,
gleamed and glittered in the sun like a river. Along this shining path,
two men came hurrying on, leading a horse, which was speedily harnessed
to the cart at the prison-door. Then, a profound silence replaced the
tumult that had so long been gathering, and a breathless pause ensued.
Every window was now choked up with heads; the house-tops teemed with
people--clinging to chimneys, peering over gable-ends, and holding on
where the sudden loosening of any brick or stone would dash them down
into the street. The church tower, the church roof, the church yard,
the prison leads, the very water-spouts and lampposts--every inch of
room--swarmed with human life.
At the first stroke of twelve the prison-bell began to toll. Then the
roar--mingled now with cries of ‘Hats off!’ and ‘Poor fellows!’ and,
from some specks in the great concourse, with a shriek or groan--burst
forth again. It was terrible to see--if any one in that distraction of
excitement could have seen--the world of eager eyes, all strained upon
the scaffold and the beam.
The hollow murmuring was heard within the jail as plainly as without.
The three were brought forth into the yard, together, as it resounded
through the air. They knew its import well.
‘D’ye hear?’ cried Hugh, undaunted by the sound. ‘They expect us!
I heard them gathering when I woke in the night, and turned over on
t’other side and fell asleep again. We shall see how they welcome the
hangman, now that it comes home to him. Ha, ha, ha!’
The Ordinary coming up at this moment, reproved him for his indecent
mirth, and advised him to alter his demeanour.
‘And why, master?’ said Hugh. ‘Can I do better than bear it easily? YOU
bear it easily enough. Oh! never tell me,’ he cried, as the other would
have spoken, ‘for all your sad look and your solemn air, you think
little enough of it! They say you’re the best maker of lobster salads in
London. Ha, ha! I’ve heard that, you see, before now. Is it a good
one, this morning--is your hand in? How does the breakfast look? I hope
there’s enough, and to spare, for all this hungry company that’ll sit
down to it, when the sight’s over.’
‘I fear,’ observed the clergyman, shaking his head, ‘that you are
incorrigible.’
‘You’re right. I am,’ rejoined Hugh sternly. ‘Be no hypocrite, master!
You make a merry-making of this, every month; let me be merry, too. If
you want a frightened fellow there’s one that’ll suit you. Try your hand
upon him.’
He pointed, as he spoke, to Dennis, who, with his legs trailing on the
ground, was held between two men; and who trembled so, that all his
joints and limbs seemed racked by spasms. Turning from this wretched
spectacle, he called to Barnaby, who stood apart.
‘What cheer, Barnaby? Don’t be downcast, lad. Leave that to HIM.’
‘Bless you,’ cried Barnaby, stepping lightly towards him, ‘I’m not
frightened, Hugh. I’m quite happy. I wouldn’t desire to live now,
if they’d let me. Look at me! Am I afraid to die? Will they see ME
tremble?’
Hugh gazed for a moment at his face, on which there was a strange,
unearthly smile; and at his eye, which sparkled brightly; and
interposing between him and the Ordinary, gruffly whispered to the
latter:
‘I wouldn’t say much to him, master, if I was you. He may spoil your
appetite for breakfast, though you ARE used to it.’
He was the only one of the three who had washed or trimmed himself
that morning. Neither of the others had done so, since their doom was
pronounced. He still wore the broken peacock’s feathers in his hat; and
all his usual scraps of finery were carefully disposed about his person.
His kindling eye, his firm step, his proud and resolute bearing, might
have graced some lofty act of heroism; some voluntary sacrifice, born of
a noble cause and pure enthusiasm; rather than that felon’s death.
But all these things increased his guilt. They were mere assumptions.
The law had declared it so, and so it must be. The good minister had
been greatly shocked, not a quarter of an hour before, at his parting
with Grip. For one in his condition, to fondle a bird!--The yard was
filled with people; bluff civic functionaries, officers of justice,
soldiers, the curious in such matters, and guests who had been bidden as
to a wedding. Hugh looked about him, nodded gloomily to some person
in authority, who indicated with his hand in what direction he was to
proceed; and clapping Barnaby on the shoulder, passed out with the gait
of a lion.
They entered a large room, so near to the scaffold that the voices of
those who stood about it, could be plainly heard: some beseeching
the javelin-men to take them out of the crowd: others crying to those
behind, to stand back, for they were pressed to death, and suffocating
for want of air.
In the middle of this chamber, two smiths, with hammers, stood beside an
anvil. Hugh walked straight up to them, and set his foot upon it with a
sound as though it had been struck by a heavy weapon. Then, with folded
arms, he stood to have his irons knocked off: scowling haughtily round,
as those who were present eyed him narrowly and whispered to each other.
It took so much time to drag Dennis in, that this ceremony was over with
Hugh, and nearly over with Barnaby, before he appeared. He no sooner
came into the place he knew so well, however, and among faces with which
he was so familiar, than he recovered strength and sense enough to clasp
his hands and make a last appeal.
‘Gentlemen, good gentlemen,’ cried the abject creature, grovelling down
upon his knees, and actually prostrating himself upon the stone floor:
‘Governor, dear governor--honourable sheriffs--worthy gentlemen--have
mercy upon a wretched man that has served His Majesty, and the Law, and
Parliament, for so many years, and don’t--don’t let me die--because of a
mistake.’
‘Dennis,’ said the governor of the jail, ‘you know what the course
is, and that the order came with the rest. You know that we could do
nothing, even if we would.’
‘All I ask, sir,--all I want and beg, is time, to make it sure,’ cried
the trembling wretch, looking wildly round for sympathy. ‘The King and
Government can’t know it’s me; I’m sure they can’t know it’s me; or they
never would bring me to this dreadful slaughterhouse. They know my name,
but they don’t know it’s the same man. Stop my execution--for charity’s
sake stop my execution, gentlemen--till they can be told that I’ve
been hangman here, nigh thirty year. Will no one go and tell them?’ he
implored, clenching his hands and glaring round, and round, and round
again--‘will no charitable person go and tell them!’
‘Mr Akerman,’ said a gentleman who stood by, after a moment’s pause,
‘since it may possibly produce in this unhappy man a better frame of
mind, even at this last minute, let me assure him that he was well known
to have been the hangman, when his sentence was considered.’
‘--But perhaps they think on that account that the punishment’s not so
great,’ cried the criminal, shuffling towards this speaker on his knees,
and holding up his folded hands; ‘whereas it’s worse, it’s worse a
hundred times, to me than any man. Let them know that, sir. Let them
know that. They’ve made it worse to me by giving me so much to do. Stop
my execution till they know that!’
The governor beckoned with his hand, and the two men, who had supported
him before, approached. He uttered a piercing cry:
‘Wait! Wait. Only a moment--only one moment more! Give me a last chance
of reprieve. One of us three is to go to Bloomsbury Square. Let me be
the one. It may come in that time; it’s sure to come. In the Lord’s name
let me be sent to Bloomsbury Square. Don’t hang me here. It’s murder.’
They took him to the anvil: but even then he could be heard above the
clinking of the smiths’ hammers, and the hoarse raging of the crowd,
crying that he knew of Hugh’s birth--that his father was living, and
was a gentleman of influence and rank--that he had family secrets in his
possession--that he could tell nothing unless they gave him time, but
must die with them on his mind; and he continued to rave in this sort
until his voice failed him, and he sank down a mere heap of clothes
between the two attendants.
It was at this moment that the clock struck the first stroke of twelve,
and the bell began to toll. The various officers, with the two sheriffs
at their head, moved towards the door. All was ready when the last chime
came upon the ear.
They told Hugh this, and asked if he had anything to say.
‘To say!’ he cried. ‘Not I. I’m ready.--Yes,’ he added, as his eye fell
upon Barnaby, ‘I have a word to say, too. Come hither, lad.’
There was, for the moment, something kind, and even tender, struggling
in his fierce aspect, as he wrung his poor companion by the hand.
‘I’ll say this,’ he cried, looking firmly round, ‘that if I had ten
lives to lose, and the loss of each would give me ten times the agony
of the hardest death, I’d lay them all down--ay, I would, though you
gentlemen may not believe it--to save this one. This one,’ he added,
wringing his hand again, ‘that will be lost through me.’
‘Not through you,’ said the idiot, mildly. ‘Don’t say that. You were
not to blame. You have always been very good to me.--Hugh, we shall know
what makes the stars shine, NOW!’
‘I took him from her in a reckless mood, and didn’t think what harm
would come of it,’ said Hugh, laying his hand upon his head, and
speaking in a lower voice. ‘I ask her pardon; and his.--Look here,’ he
added roughly, in his former tone. ‘You see this lad?’
They murmured ‘Yes,’ and seemed to wonder why he asked.
‘That gentleman yonder--’ pointing to the clergyman--‘has often in the
last few days spoken to me of faith, and strong belief. You see what
I am--more brute than man, as I have been often told--but I had faith
enough to believe, and did believe as strongly as any of you gentlemen
can believe anything, that this one life would be spared. See what he
is!--Look at him!’
Barnaby had moved towards the door, and stood beckoning him to follow.
‘If this was not faith, and strong belief!’ cried Hugh, raising his
right arm aloft, and looking upward like a savage prophet whom the near
approach of Death had filled with inspiration, ‘where are they! What
else should teach me--me, born as I was born, and reared as I have
been reared--to hope for any mercy in this hardened, cruel, unrelenting
place! Upon these human shambles, I, who never raised this hand in
prayer till now, call down the wrath of God! On that black tree, of
which I am the ripened fruit, I do invoke the curse of all its victims,
past, and present, and to come. On the head of that man, who, in his
conscience, owns me for his son, I leave the wish that he may never
sicken on his bed of down, but die a violent death as I do now, and have
the night-wind for his only mourner. To this I say, Amen, amen!’
His arm fell downward by his side; he turned; and moved towards them
with a steady step, the man he had been before.
‘There is nothing more?’ said the governor.
Hugh motioned Barnaby not to come near him (though without looking in
the direction where he stood) and answered, ‘There is nothing more.’
‘Move forward!’
‘--Unless,’ said Hugh, glancing hurriedly back,--‘unless any person here
has a fancy for a dog; and not then, unless he means to use him well.
There’s one, belongs to me, at the house I came from, and it wouldn’t
be easy to find a better. He’ll whine at first, but he’ll soon get over
that.--You wonder that I think about a dog just now,’ he added, with a
kind of laugh. ‘If any man deserved it of me half as well, I’d think of
HIM.’
He spoke no more, but moved onward in his place, with a careless air,
though listening at the same time to the Service for the Dead, with
something between sullen attention, and quickened curiosity. As soon as
he had passed the door, his miserable associate was carried out; and the
crowd beheld the rest.
Barnaby would have mounted the steps at the same time--indeed he would
have gone before them, but in both attempts he was restrained, as he
was to undergo the sentence elsewhere. In a few minutes the sheriffs
reappeared, the same procession was again formed, and they passed
through various rooms and passages to another door--that at which the
cart was waiting. He held down his head to avoid seeing what he knew his
eyes must otherwise encounter, and took his seat sorrowfully,--and yet
with something of a childish pride and pleasure,--in the vehicle. The
officers fell into their places at the sides, in front and in the rear;
the sheriffs’ carriages rolled on; a guard of soldiers surrounded the
whole; and they moved slowly forward through the throng and pressure
toward Lord Mansfield’s ruined house.
It was a sad sight--all the show, and strength, and glitter, assembled
round one helpless creature--and sadder yet to note, as he rode along,
how his wandering thoughts found strange encouragement in the crowded
windows and the concourse in the streets; and how, even then, he felt
the influence of the bright sky, and looked up, smiling, into its deep
unfathomable blue. But there had been many such sights since the riots
were over--some so moving in their nature, and so repulsive too, that
they were far more calculated to awaken pity for the sufferers, than
respect for that law whose strong arm seemed in more than one case to be
as wantonly stretched forth now that all was safe, as it had been basely
paralysed in time of danger.
Two cripples--both mere boys--one with a leg of wood, one who dragged
his twisted limbs along by the help of a crutch, were hanged in this
same Bloomsbury Square. As the cart was about to glide from under them,
it was observed that they stood with their faces from, not to, the house
they had assisted to despoil; and their misery was protracted that this
omission might be remedied. Another boy was hanged in Bow Street; other
young lads in various quarters of the town. Four wretched women, too,
were put to death. In a word, those who suffered as rioters were, for
the most part, the weakest, meanest, and most miserable among them. It
was a most exquisite satire upon the false religious cry which had led
to so much misery, that some of these people owned themselves to be
Catholics, and begged to be attended by their own priests.
One young man was hanged in Bishopsgate Street, whose aged grey-headed
father waited for him at the gallows, kissed him at its foot when he
arrived, and sat there, on the ground, till they took him down. They
would have given him the body of his child; but he had no hearse, no
coffin, nothing to remove it in, being too poor--and walked meekly away
beside the cart that took it back to prison, trying, as he went, to
touch its lifeless hand.
But the crowd had forgotten these matters, or cared little about them
if they lived in their memory: and while one great multitude fought
and hustled to get near the gibbet before Newgate, for a parting look,
another followed in the train of poor lost Barnaby, to swell the throng
that waited for him on the spot.
Chapter 78
On this same day, and about this very hour, Mr Willet the elder sat
smoking his pipe in a chamber at the Black Lion. Although it was hot
summer weather, Mr Willet sat close to the fire. He was in a state of
profound cogitation, with his own thoughts, and it was his custom
at such times to stew himself slowly, under the impression that that
process of cookery was favourable to the melting out of his ideas,
which, when he began to simmer, sometimes oozed forth so copiously as to
astonish even himself.
Mr Willet had been several thousand times comforted by his friends and
acquaintance, with the assurance that for the loss he had sustained in
the damage done to the Maypole, he could ‘come upon the county.’ But as
this phrase happened to bear an unfortunate resemblance to the popular
expression of ‘coming on the parish,’ it suggested to Mr Willet’s mind
no more consolatory visions than pauperism on an extensive scale, and
ruin in a capacious aspect. Consequently, he had never failed to receive
the intelligence with a rueful shake of the head, or a dreary stare, and
had been always observed to appear much more melancholy after a visit of
condolence than at any other time in the whole four-and-twenty hours.
It chanced, however, that sitting over the fire on this particular
occasion--perhaps because he was, as it were, done to a turn; perhaps
because he was in an unusually bright state of mind; perhaps because
he had considered the subject so long; perhaps because of all these
favouring circumstances, taken together--it chanced that, sitting over
the fire on this particular occasion, Mr Willet did, afar off and in
the remotest depths of his intellect, perceive a kind of lurking hint or
faint suggestion, that out of the public purse there might issue funds
for the restoration of the Maypole to its former high place among the
taverns of the earth. And this dim ray of light did so diffuse itself
within him, and did so kindle up and shine, that at last he had it as
plainly and visibly before him as the blaze by which he sat; and, fully
persuaded that he was the first to make the discovery, and that he had
started, hunted down, fallen upon, and knocked on the head, a perfectly
original idea which had never presented itself to any other man, alive
or dead, he laid down his pipe, rubbed his hands, and chuckled audibly.
‘Why, father!’ cried Joe, entering at the moment, ‘you’re in spirits
to-day!’
‘It’s nothing partickler,’ said Mr Willet, chuckling again. ‘It’s
nothing at all partickler, Joseph. Tell me something about the
Salwanners.’ Having preferred this request, Mr Willet chuckled a third
time, and after these unusual demonstrations of levity, he put his pipe
in his mouth again.
‘What shall I tell you, father?’ asked Joe, laying his hand upon his
sire’s shoulder, and looking down into his face. ‘That I have come back,
poorer than a church mouse? You know that. That I have come back, maimed
and crippled? You know that.’
‘It was took off,’ muttered Mr Willet, with his eyes upon the fire, ‘at
the defence of the Salwanners, in America, where the war is.’
‘Quite right,’ returned Joe, smiling, and leaning with his remaining
elbow on the back of his father’s chair; ‘the very subject I came to
speak to you about. A man with one arm, father, is not of much use in
the busy world.’
This was one of those vast propositions which Mr Willet had never
considered for an instant, and required time to ‘tackle.’ Wherefore he
made no answer.
‘At all events,’ said Joe, ‘he can’t pick and choose his means of
earning a livelihood, as another man may. He can’t say “I will turn my
hand to this,” or “I won’t turn my hand to that,” but must take what he
can do, and be thankful it’s no worse.--What did you say?’
Mr Willet had been softly repeating to himself, in a musing tone, the
words ‘defence of the Salwanners:’ but he seemed embarrassed at having
been overheard, and answered ‘Nothing.’
‘Now look here, father.--Mr Edward has come to England from the West
Indies. When he was lost sight of (I ran away on the same day, father),
he made a voyage to one of the islands, where a school-friend of his
had settled; and, finding him, wasn’t too proud to be employed on his
estate, and--and in short, got on well, and is prospering, and has come
over here on business of his own, and is going back again speedily. Our
returning nearly at the same time, and meeting in the course of the late
troubles, has been a good thing every way; for it has not only enabled
us to do old friends some service, but has opened a path in life for me
which I may tread without being a burden upon you. To be plain, father,
he can employ me; I have satisfied myself that I can be of real use to
him; and I am going to carry my one arm away with him, and to make the
most of it.’
In the mind’s eye of Mr Willet, the West Indies, and indeed all foreign
countries, were inhabited by savage nations, who were perpetually
burying pipes of peace, flourishing tomahawks, and puncturing strange
patterns in their bodies. He no sooner heard this announcement,
therefore, than he leaned back in his chair, took his pipe from his
lips, and stared at his son with as much dismay as if he already beheld
him tied to a stake, and tortured for the entertainment of a lively
population. In what form of expression his feelings would have found
a vent, it is impossible to say. Nor is it necessary: for, before a
syllable occurred to him, Dolly Varden came running into the room, in
tears, threw herself on Joe’s breast without a word of explanation, and
clasped her white arms round his neck.
‘Dolly!’ cried Joe. ‘Dolly!’
‘Ay, call me that; call me that always,’ exclaimed the locksmith’s
little daughter; ‘never speak coldly to me, never be distant, never
again reprove me for the follies I have long repented, or I shall die,
Joe.’
‘I reprove you!’ said Joe.
‘Yes--for every kind and honest word you uttered, went to my heart. For
you, who have borne so much from me--for you, who owe your sufferings
and pain to my caprice--for you to be so kind--so noble to me, Joe--’
He could say nothing to her. Not a syllable. There was an odd sort of
eloquence in his one arm, which had crept round her waist: but his lips
were mute.
‘If you had reminded me by a word--only by one short word,’ sobbed
Dolly, clinging yet closer to him, ‘how little I deserved that you
should treat me with so much forbearance; if you had exulted only for
one moment in your triumph, I could have borne it better.’
‘Triumph!’ repeated Joe, with a smile which seemed to say, ‘I am a
pretty figure for that.’
‘Yes, triumph,’ she cried, with her whole heart and soul in her earnest
voice, and gushing tears; ‘for it is one. I am glad to think and know
it is. I wouldn’t be less humbled, dear--I wouldn’t be without the
recollection of that last time we spoke together in this place--no, not
if I could recall the past, and make our parting, yesterday.’
Did ever lover look as Joe looked now!
‘Dear Joe,’ said Dolly, ‘I always loved you--in my own heart I always
did, although I was so vain and giddy. I hoped you would come back that
night. I made quite sure you would. I prayed for it on my knees. Through
all these long, long years, I have never once forgotten you, or left off
hoping that this happy time might come.’
The eloquence of Joe’s arm surpassed the most impassioned language; and
so did that of his lips--yet he said nothing, either.
‘And now, at last,’ cried Dolly, trembling with the fervour of her
speech, ‘if you were sick, and shattered in your every limb; if you were
ailing, weak, and sorrowful; if, instead of being what you are, you were
in everybody’s eyes but mine the wreck and ruin of a man; I would be
your wife, dear love, with greater pride and joy, than if you were the
stateliest lord in England!’
‘What have I done,’ cried Joe, ‘what have I done to meet with this
reward?’
‘You have taught me,’ said Dolly, raising her pretty face to his, ‘to
know myself, and your worth; to be something better than I was; to be
more deserving of your true and manly nature. In years to come, dear
Joe, you shall find that you have done so; for I will be, not only
now, when we are young and full of hope, but when we have grown old and
weary, your patient, gentle, never-tiring wife. I will never know a wish
or care beyond our home and you, and I will always study how to please
you with my best affection and my most devoted love. I will: indeed I
will!’
Joe could only repeat his former eloquence--but it was very much to the
purpose.
‘They know of this, at home,’ said Dolly. ‘For your sake, I would leave
even them; but they know it, and are glad of it, and are as proud of you
as I am, and as full of gratitude.--You’ll not come and see me as a poor
friend who knew me when I was a girl, will you, dear Joe?’
Well, well! It don’t matter what Joe said in answer, but he said a great
deal; and Dolly said a great deal too: and he folded Dolly in his one
arm pretty tight, considering that it was but one; and Dolly made no
resistance: and if ever two people were happy in this world--which is
not an utterly miserable one, with all its faults--we may, with some
appearance of certainty, conclude that they were.
To say that during these proceedings Mr Willet the elder underwent
the greatest emotions of astonishment of which our common nature is
susceptible--to say that he was in a perfect paralysis of surprise, and
that he wandered into the most stupendous and theretofore unattainable
heights of complicated amazement--would be to shadow forth his state of
mind in the feeblest and lamest terms. If a roc, an eagle, a griffin, a
flying elephant, a winged sea-horse, had suddenly appeared, and, taking
him on its back, carried him bodily into the heart of the ‘Salwanners,’
it would have been to him as an everyday occurrence, in comparison with
what he now beheld. To be sitting quietly by, seeing and hearing these
things; to be completely overlooked, unnoticed, and disregarded,
while his son and a young lady were talking to each other in the most
impassioned manner, kissing each other, and making themselves in
all respects perfectly at home; was a position so tremendous, so
inexplicable, so utterly beyond the widest range of his capacity of
comprehension, that he fell into a lethargy of wonder, and could no more
rouse himself than an enchanted sleeper in the first year of his fairy
lease, a century long.
‘Father,’ said Joe, presenting Dolly. ‘You know who this is?’
Mr Willet looked first at her, then at his son, then back again at
Dolly, and then made an ineffectual effort to extract a whiff from his
pipe, which had gone out long ago.
‘Say a word, father, if it’s only “how d’ye do,”’ urged Joe.
‘Certainly, Joseph,’ answered Mr Willet. ‘Oh yes! Why not?’
‘To be sure,’ said Joe. ‘Why not?’
‘Ah!’ replied his father. ‘Why not?’ and with this remark, which he
uttered in a low voice as though he were discussing some grave question
with himself, he used the little finger--if any of his fingers can
be said to have come under that denomination--of his right hand as a
tobacco-stopper, and was silent again.
And so he sat for half an hour at least, although Dolly, in the most
endearing of manners, hoped, a dozen times, that he was not angry with
her. So he sat for half an hour, quite motionless, and looking all
the while like nothing so much as a great Dutch Pin or Skittle. At the
expiration of that period, he suddenly, and without the least notice,
burst (to the great consternation of the young people) into a very loud
and very short laugh; and repeating, ‘Certainly, Joseph. Oh yes! Why
not?’ went out for a walk.
Chapter 79
Old John did not walk near the Golden Key, for between the Golden Key
and the Black Lion there lay a wilderness of streets--as everybody
knows who is acquainted with the relative bearings of Clerkenwell and
Whitechapel--and he was by no means famous for pedestrian exercises.
But the Golden Key lies in our way, though it was out of his; so to the
Golden Key this chapter goes.
The Golden Key itself, fair emblem of the locksmith’s trade, had been
pulled down by the rioters, and roughly trampled under foot. But, now,
it was hoisted up again in all the glory of a new coat of paint,
and showed more bravely even than in days of yore. Indeed the whole
house-front was spruce and trim, and so freshened up throughout, that if
there yet remained at large any of the rioters who had been concerned in
the attack upon it, the sight of the old, goodly, prosperous dwelling,
so revived, must have been to them as gall and wormwood.
The shutters of the shop were closed, however, and the window-blinds
above were all pulled down, and in place of its usual cheerful
appearance, the house had a look of sadness and an air of mourning;
which the neighbours, who in old days had often seen poor Barnaby go in
and out, were at no loss to understand. The door stood partly open;
but the locksmith’s hammer was unheard; the cat sat moping on the ashy
forge; all was deserted, dark, and silent.
On the threshold of this door, Mr Haredale and Edward Chester met. The
younger man gave place; and both passing in with a familiar air, which
seemed to denote that they were tarrying there, or were well-accustomed
to go to and fro unquestioned, shut it behind them.
Entering the old back-parlour, and ascending the flight of stairs,
abrupt and steep, and quaintly fashioned as of old, they turned into
the best room; the pride of Mrs Varden’s heart, and erst the scene of
Miggs’s household labours.
‘Varden brought the mother here last evening, he told me?’ said Mr
Haredale.
‘She is above-stairs now--in the room over here,’ Edward rejoined. ‘Her
grief, they say, is past all telling. I needn’t add--for that you know
beforehand, sir--that the care, humanity, and sympathy of these good
people have no bounds.’
‘I am sure of that. Heaven repay them for it, and for much more! Varden
is out?’
‘He returned with your messenger, who arrived almost at the moment of
his coming home himself. He was out the whole night--but that of course
you know. He was with you the greater part of it?’
‘He was. Without him, I should have lacked my right hand. He is an older
man than I; but nothing can conquer him.’
‘The cheeriest, stoutest-hearted fellow in the world.’
‘He has a right to be. He has a right to he. A better creature never
lived. He reaps what he has sown--no more.’
‘It is not all men,’ said Edward, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘who have
the happiness to do that.’
‘More than you imagine,’ returned Mr Haredale. ‘We note the harvest more
than the seed-time. You do so in me.’
In truth his pale and haggard face, and gloomy bearing, had so far
influenced the remark, that Edward was, for the moment, at a loss to
answer him.
‘Tut, tut,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘’twas not very difficult to read a
thought so natural. But you are mistaken nevertheless. I have had my
share of sorrows--more than the common lot, perhaps, but I have borne
them ill. I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and
brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God’s great creation.
The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.
I have turned FROM the world, and I pay the penalty.’
Edward would have interposed, but he went on without giving him time.
‘It is too late to evade it now. I sometimes think, that if I had
to live my life once more, I might amend this fault--not so much, I
discover when I search my mind, for the love of what is right, as for my
own sake. But even when I make these better resolutions, I instinctively
recoil from the idea of suffering again what I have undergone; and in
this circumstance I find the unwelcome assurance that I should still be
the same man, though I could cancel the past, and begin anew, with its
experience to guide me.’
‘Nay, you make too sure of that,’ said Edward.
‘You think so,’ Mr Haredale answered, ‘and I am glad you do. I know
myself better, and therefore distrust myself more. Let us leave this
subject for another--not so far removed from it as it might, at first
sight, seem to be. Sir, you still love my niece, and she is still
attached to you.’
‘I have that assurance from her own lips,’ said Edward, ‘and you know--I
am sure you know--that I would not exchange it for any blessing life
could yield me.’
‘You are frank, honourable, and disinterested,’ said Mr Haredale; ‘you
have forced the conviction that you are so, even on my once-jaundiced
mind, and I believe you. Wait here till I come back.’
He left the room as he spoke; but soon returned with his niece. ‘On that
first and only time,’ he said, looking from the one to the other, ‘when
we three stood together under her father’s roof, I told you to quit it,
and charged you never to return.’
‘It is the only circumstance arising out of our love,’ observed Edward,
‘that I have forgotten.’
‘You own a name,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘I had deep reason to remember. I
was moved and goaded by recollections of personal wrong and injury, I
know, but, even now I cannot charge myself with having, then, or ever,
lost sight of a heartfelt desire for her true happiness; or with having
acted--however much I was mistaken--with any other impulse than the one
pure, single, earnest wish to be to her, as far as in my inferior nature
lay, the father she had lost.’
‘Dear uncle,’ cried Emma, ‘I have known no parent but you. I have loved
the memory of others, but I have loved you all my life. Never was father
kinder to his child than you have been to me, without the interval of
one harsh hour, since I can first remember.’
‘You speak too fondly,’ he answered, ‘and yet I cannot wish you were
less partial; for I have a pleasure in hearing those words, and shall
have in calling them to mind when we are far asunder, which nothing else
could give me. Bear with me for a moment longer, Edward, for she and I
have been together many years; and although I believe that in resigning
her to you I put the seal upon her future happiness, I find it needs an
effort.’
He pressed her tenderly to his bosom, and after a minute’s pause,
resumed:
‘I have done you wrong, sir, and I ask your forgiveness--in no common
phrase, or show of sorrow; but with earnestness and sincerity. In the
same spirit, I acknowledge to you both that the time has been when
I connived at treachery and falsehood--which if I did not perpetrate
myself, I still permitted--to rend you two asunder.’
‘You judge yourself too harshly,’ said Edward. ‘Let these things rest.’
‘They rise in judgment against me when I look back, and not now for
the first time,’ he answered. ‘I cannot part from you without your full
forgiveness; for busy life and I have little left in common now, and
I have regrets enough to carry into solitude, without addition to the
stock.’
‘You bear a blessing from us both,’ said Emma. ‘Never mingle thoughts of
me--of me who owe you so much love and duty--with anything but undying
affection and gratitude for the past, and bright hopes for the future.’
‘The future,’ returned her uncle, with a melancholy smile, ‘is a bright
word for you, and its image should be wreathed with cheerful hopes. Mine
is of another kind, but it will be one of peace, and free, I trust, from
care or passion. When you quit England I shall leave it too. There are
cloisters abroad; and now that the two great objects of my life are set
at rest, I know no better home. You droop at that, forgetting that I am
growing old, and that my course is nearly run. Well, we will speak of it
again--not once or twice, but many times; and you shall give me cheerful
counsel, Emma.’
‘And you will take it?’ asked his niece.
‘I’ll listen to it,’ he answered, with a kiss, ‘and it will have its
weight, be certain. What have I left to say? You have, of late, been
much together. It is better and more fitting that the circumstances
attendant on the past, which wrought your separation, and sowed between
you suspicion and distrust, should not be entered on by me.’
‘Much, much better,’ whispered Emma.
‘I avow my share in them,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘though I held it, at the
time, in detestation. Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the
broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by
the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.
Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, and left
alone.’
He looked from her to Edward, and said in a gentler tone:
‘In goods and fortune you are now nearly equal. I have been her faithful
steward, and to that remnant of a richer property which my brother left
her, I desire to add, in token of my love, a poor pittance, scarcely
worth the mention, for which I have no longer any need. I am glad you go
abroad. Let our ill-fated house remain the ruin it is. When you return,
after a few thriving years, you will command a better, and a more
fortunate one. We are friends?’
Edward took his extended hand, and grasped it heartily.
‘You are neither slow nor cold in your response,’ said Mr Haredale,
doing the like by him, ‘and when I look upon you now, and know you, I
feel that I would choose you for her husband. Her father had a generous
nature, and you would have pleased him well. I give her to you in his
name, and with his blessing. If the world and I part in this act, we
part on happier terms than we have lived for many a day.’
He placed her in his arms, and would have left the room, but that he was
stopped in his passage to the door by a great noise at a distance, which
made them start and pause.
It was a loud shouting, mingled with boisterous acclamations, that rent
the very air. It drew nearer and nearer every moment, and approached
so rapidly, that, even while they listened, it burst into a deafening
confusion of sounds at the street corner.
‘This must be stopped--quieted,’ said Mr Haredale, hastily. ‘We should
have foreseen this, and provided against it. I will go out to them at
once.’
But, before he could reach the door, and before Edward could catch up
his hat and follow him, they were again arrested by a loud shriek from
above-stairs: and the locksmith’s wife, bursting in, and fairly running
into Mr Haredale’s arms, cried out:
‘She knows it all, dear sir!--she knows it all! We broke it out to her
by degrees, and she is quite prepared.’ Having made this communication,
and furthermore thanked Heaven with great fervour and heartiness, the
good lady, according to the custom of matrons, on all occasions of
excitement, fainted away directly.
They ran to the window, drew up the sash, and looked into the crowded
street. Among a dense mob of persons, of whom not one was for an instant
still, the locksmith’s ruddy face and burly form could be descried,
beating about as though he was struggling with a rough sea. Now, he was
carried back a score of yards, now onward nearly to the door, now
back again, now forced against the opposite houses, now against those
adjoining his own: now carried up a flight of steps, and greeted by the
outstretched hands of half a hundred men, while the whole tumultuous
concourse stretched their throats, and cheered with all their might.
Though he was really in a fair way to be torn to pieces in the general
enthusiasm, the locksmith, nothing discomposed, echoed their shouts till
he was as hoarse as they, and in a glow of joy and right good-humour,
waved his hat until the daylight shone between its brim and crown.
But in all the bandyings from hand to hand, and strivings to and fro,
and sweepings here and there, which--saving that he looked more jolly
and more radiant after every struggle--troubled his peace of mind no
more than if he had been a straw upon the water’s surface, he never once
released his firm grasp of an arm, drawn tight through his. He sometimes
turned to clap this friend upon the back, or whisper in his ear a word
of staunch encouragement, or cheer him with a smile; but his great care
was to shield him from the pressure, and force a passage for him to the
Golden Key. Passive and timid, scared, pale, and wondering, and gazing
at the throng as if he were newly risen from the dead, and felt himself
a ghost among the living, Barnaby--not Barnaby in the spirit, but in
flesh and blood, with pulses, sinews, nerves, and beating heart, and
strong affections--clung to his stout old friend, and followed where he
led.
And thus, in course of time, they reached the door, held ready for their
entrance by no unwilling hands. Then slipping in, and shutting out
the crowd by main force, Gabriel stood between Mr Haredale and Edward
Chester, and Barnaby, rushing up the stairs, fell upon his knees beside
his mother’s bed.
‘Such is the blessed end, sir,’ cried the panting locksmith, to Mr
Haredale, ‘of the best day’s work we ever did. The rogues! it’s been
hard fighting to get away from ‘em. I almost thought, once or twice,
they’d have been too much for us with their kindness!’
They had striven, all the previous day, to rescue Barnaby from his
impending fate. Failing in their attempts, in the first quarter to which
they addressed themselves, they renewed them in another. Failing there,
likewise, they began afresh at midnight; and made their way, not only to
the judge and jury who had tried him, but to men of influence at court,
to the young Prince of Wales, and even to the ante-chamber of the King
himself. Successful, at last, in awakening an interest in his favour,
and an inclination to inquire more dispassionately into his case, they
had had an interview with the minister, in his bed, so late as eight
o’clock that morning. The result of a searching inquiry (in which
they, who had known the poor fellow from his childhood, did other good
service, besides bringing it about) was, that between eleven and twelve
o’clock, a free pardon to Barnaby Rudge was made out and signed, and
entrusted to a horse-soldier for instant conveyance to the place of
execution. This courier reached the spot just as the cart appeared in
sight; and Barnaby being carried back to jail, Mr Haredale, assured that
all was safe, had gone straight from Bloomsbury Square to the Golden
Key, leaving to Gabriel the grateful task of bringing him home in
triumph.
‘I needn’t say,’ observed the locksmith, when he had shaken hands with
all the males in the house, and hugged all the females, five-and-forty
times, at least, ‘that, except among ourselves, I didn’t want to make a
triumph of it. But, directly we got into the street we were known, and
this hubbub began. Of the two,’ he added, as he wiped his crimson face,
‘and after experience of both, I think I’d rather be taken out of my
house by a crowd of enemies, than escorted home by a mob of friends!’
It was plain enough, however, that this was mere talk on Gabriel’s part,
and that the whole proceeding afforded him the keenest delight; for
the people continuing to make a great noise without, and to cheer as if
their voices were in the freshest order, and good for a fortnight, he
sent upstairs for Grip (who had come home at his master’s back, and had
acknowledged the favours of the multitude by drawing blood from every
finger that came within his reach), and with the bird upon his arm
presented himself at the first-floor window, and waved his hat again
until it dangled by a shred, between his finger and thumb. This
demonstration having been received with appropriate shouts, and silence
being in some degree restored, he thanked them for their sympathy; and
taking the liberty to inform them that there was a sick person in the
house, proposed that they should give three cheers for King George,
three more for Old England, and three more for nothing particular, as
a closing ceremony. The crowd assenting, substituted Gabriel Varden
for the nothing particular; and giving him one over, for good measure,
dispersed in high good-humour.
What congratulations were exchanged among the inmates at the Golden
Key, when they were left alone; what an overflowing of joy and happiness
there was among them; how incapable it was of expression in Barnaby’s
own person; and how he went wildly from one to another, until he became
so far tranquillised, as to stretch himself on the ground beside his
mother’s couch and fall into a deep sleep; are matters that need not be
told. And it is well they happened to be of this class, for they would
be very hard to tell, were their narration ever so indispensable.
Before leaving this bright picture, it may be well to glance at a dark
and very different one which was presented to only a few eyes, that same
night.
The scene was a churchyard; the time, midnight; the persons, Edward
Chester, a clergyman, a grave-digger, and the four bearers of a homely
coffin. They stood about a grave which had been newly dug, and one of
the bearers held up a dim lantern,--the only light there--which shed
its feeble ray upon the book of prayer. He placed it for a moment on the
coffin, when he and his companions were about to lower it down. There
was no inscription on the lid.
The mould fell solemnly upon the last house of this nameless man; and
the rattling dust left a dismal echo even in the accustomed ears of
those who had borne it to its resting-place. The grave was filled in to
the top, and trodden down. They all left the spot together.
‘You never saw him, living?’ asked the clergyman, of Edward.
‘Often, years ago; not knowing him for my brother.’
‘Never since?’
‘Never. Yesterday, he steadily refused to see me. It was urged upon him,
many times, at my desire.’
‘Still he refused? That was hardened and unnatural.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I infer that you do not?’
‘You are right. We hear the world wonder, every day, at monsters of
ingratitude. Did it never occur to you that it often looks for monsters
of affection, as though they were things of course?’
They had reached the gate by this time, and bidding each other good
night, departed on their separate ways.
Chapter 80
That afternoon, when he had slept off his fatigue; had shaved, and
washed, and dressed, and freshened himself from top to toe; when he had
dined, comforted himself with a pipe, an extra Toby, a nap in the great
arm-chair, and a quiet chat with Mrs Varden on everything that had
happened, was happening, or about to happen, within the sphere of their
domestic concern; the locksmith sat himself down at the tea-table in
the little back-parlour: the rosiest, cosiest, merriest, heartiest,
best-contented old buck, in Great Britain or out of it.
There he sat, with his beaming eye on Mrs V., and his shining face
suffused with gladness, and his capacious waistcoat smiling in every
wrinkle, and his jovial humour peeping from under the table in the very
plumpness of his legs; a sight to turn the vinegar of misanthropy into
purest milk of human kindness. There he sat, watching his wife as she
decorated the room with flowers for the greater honour of Dolly and
Joseph Willet, who had gone out walking, and for whom the tea-kettle
had been singing gaily on the hob full twenty minutes, chirping as
never kettle chirped before; for whom the best service of real undoubted
china, patterned with divers round-faced mandarins holding up broad
umbrellas, was now displayed in all its glory; to tempt whose
appetites a clear, transparent, juicy ham, garnished with cool green
lettuce-leaves and fragrant cucumber, reposed upon a shady table,
covered with a snow-white cloth; for whose delight, preserves and jams,
crisp cakes and other pastry, short to eat, with cunning twists, and
cottage loaves, and rolls of bread both white and brown, were all set
forth in rich profusion; in whose youth Mrs V. herself had grown quite
young, and stood there in a gown of red and white: symmetrical in
figure, buxom in bodice, ruddy in cheek and lip, faultless in ankle,
laughing in face and mood, in all respects delicious to behold--there
sat the locksmith among all and every these delights, the sun that shone
upon them all: the centre of the system: the source of light, heat,
life, and frank enjoyment in the bright household world.
And when had Dolly ever been the Dolly of that afternoon? To see how she
came in, arm-in-arm with Joe; and how she made an effort not to blush or
seem at all confused; and how she made believe she didn’t care to sit on
his side of the table; and how she coaxed the locksmith in a whisper not
to joke; and how her colour came and went in a little restless flutter
of happiness, which made her do everything wrong, and yet so charmingly
wrong that it was better than right!--why, the locksmith could have
looked on at this (as he mentioned to Mrs Varden when they retired for
the night) for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch, and never wished it
done.
The recollections, too, with which they made merry over that long
protracted tea! The glee with which the locksmith asked Joe if he
remembered that stormy night at the Maypole when he first asked after
Dolly--the laugh they all had, about that night when she was going out
to the party in the sedan-chair--the unmerciful manner in which they
rallied Mrs Varden about putting those flowers outside that very
window--the difficulty Mrs Varden found in joining the laugh against
herself, at first, and the extraordinary perception she had of the joke
when she overcame it--the confidential statements of Joe concerning the
precise day and hour when he was first conscious of being fond of Dolly,
and Dolly’s blushing admissions, half volunteered and half extorted, as
to the time from which she dated the discovery that she ‘didn’t mind’
Joe--here was an exhaustless fund of mirth and conversation.
Then, there was a great deal to be said regarding Mrs Varden’s doubts,
and motherly alarms, and shrewd suspicions; and it appeared that from
Mrs Varden’s penetration and extreme sagacity nothing had ever been
hidden. She had known it all along. She had seen it from the first. She
had always predicted it. She had been aware of it before the principals.
She had said within herself (for she remembered the exact words) ‘that
young Willet is certainly looking after our Dolly, and I must look
after HIM.’ Accordingly, she had looked after him, and had observed many
little circumstances (all of which she named) so exceedingly minute that
nobody else could make anything out of them even now; and had, it
seemed from first to last, displayed the most unbounded tact and most
consummate generalship.
Of course the night when Joe WOULD ride homeward by the side of the
chaise, and when Mrs Varden WOULD insist upon his going back again,
was not forgotten--nor the night when Dolly fainted on his name being
mentioned--nor the times upon times when Mrs Varden, ever watchful and
prudent, had found her pining in her own chamber. In short, nothing was
forgotten; and everything by some means or other brought them back to
the conclusion, that that was the happiest hour in all their lives;
consequently, that everything must have occurred for the best, and
nothing could be suggested which would have made it better.
While they were in the full glow of such discourse as this, there came a
startling knock at the door, opening from the street into the workshop,
which had been kept closed all day that the house might be more quiet.
Joe, as in duty bound, would hear of nobody but himself going to open
it; and accordingly left the room for that purpose.
It would have been odd enough, certainly, if Joe had forgotten the way
to this door; and even if he had, as it was a pretty large one and stood
straight before him, he could not easily have missed it. But Dolly,
perhaps because she was in the flutter of spirits before mentioned, or
perhaps because she thought he would not be able to open it with his one
arm--she could have had no other reason--hurried out after him; and they
stopped so long in the passage--no doubt owing to Joe’s entreaties
that she would not expose herself to the draught of July air which must
infallibly come rushing in on this same door being opened--that the
knock was repeated, in a yet more startling manner than before.
‘Is anybody going to open that door?’ cried the locksmith. ‘Or shall I
come?’
Upon that, Dolly went running back into the parlour, all dimples and
blushes; and Joe opened it with a mighty noise, and other superfluous
demonstrations of being in a violent hurry.
‘Well,’ said the locksmith, when he reappeared: ‘what is it? eh Joe?
what are you laughing at?’
‘Nothing, sir. It’s coming in.’
‘Who’s coming in? what’s coming in?’ Mrs Varden, as much at a loss as
her husband, could only shake her head in answer to his inquiring look:
so, the locksmith wheeled his chair round to command a better view of
the room-door, and stared at it with his eyes wide open, and a mingled
expression of curiosity and wonder shining in his jolly face.
Instead of some person or persons straightway appearing, divers
remarkable sounds were heard, first in the workshop and afterwards
in the little dark passage between it and the parlour, as though some
unwieldy chest or heavy piece of furniture were being brought in, by an
amount of human strength inadequate to the task. At length after much
struggling and humping, and bruising of the wall on both sides, the
door was forced open as by a battering-ram; and the locksmith, steadily
regarding what appeared beyond, smote his thigh, elevated his eyebrows,
opened his mouth, and cried in a loud voice expressive of the utmost
consternation:
‘Damme, if it an’t Miggs come back!’
The young damsel whom he named no sooner heard these words, than
deserting a small boy and a very large box by which she was accompanied,
and advancing with such precipitation that her bonnet flew off her head,
burst into the room, clasped her hands (in which she held a pair of
pattens, one in each), raised her eyes devotedly to the ceiling, and
shed a flood of tears.
‘The old story!’ cried the locksmith, looking at her in inexpressible
desperation. ‘She was born to be a damper, this young woman! nothing can
prevent it!’
‘Ho master, ho mim!’ cried Miggs, ‘can I constrain my feelings in these
here once agin united moments! Ho Mr Warsen, here’s blessedness
among relations, sir! Here’s forgivenesses of injuries, here’s
amicablenesses!’
The locksmith looked from his wife to Dolly, and from Dolly to Joe, and
from Joe to Miggs, with his eyebrows still elevated and his mouth still
open. When his eyes got back to Miggs, they rested on her; fascinated.
‘To think,’ cried Miggs with hysterical joy, ‘that Mr Joe, and dear
Miss Dolly, has raly come together after all as has been said and done
contrairy! To see them two a-settin’ along with him and her, so pleasant
and in all respects so affable and mild; and me not knowing of it, and
not being in the ways to make no preparations for their teas. Ho what a
cutting thing it is, and yet what sweet sensations is awoke within me!’
Either in clasping her hands again, or in an ecstasy of pious joy, Miss
Miggs clinked her pattens after the manner of a pair of cymbals, at this
juncture; and then resumed, in the softest accents:
‘And did my missis think--ho goodness, did she think--as her own Miggs,
which supported her under so many trials, and understood her natur’
when them as intended well but acted rough, went so deep into her
feelings--did she think as her own Miggs would ever leave her? Did she
think as Miggs, though she was but a servant, and knowed that servitudes
was no inheritances, would forgit that she was the humble instruments
as always made it comfortable between them two when they fell out,
and always told master of the meekness and forgiveness of her blessed
dispositions! Did she think as Miggs had no attachments! Did she think
that wages was her only object!’
To none of these interrogatories, whereof every one was more
pathetically delivered than the last, did Mrs Varden answer one word:
but Miggs, not at all abashed by this circumstance, turned to the
small boy in attendance--her eldest nephew--son of her own married
sister--born in Golden Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, and bred in the
very shadow of the second bell-handle on the right-hand door-post--and
with a plentiful use of her pocket-handkerchief, addressed herself to
him: requesting that on his return home he would console his parents for
the loss of her, his aunt, by delivering to them a faithful statement
of his having left her in the bosom of that family, with which, as his
aforesaid parents well knew, her best affections were incorporated; that
he would remind them that nothing less than her imperious sense of duty,
and devoted attachment to her old master and missis, likewise Miss Dolly
and young Mr Joe, should ever have induced her to decline that pressing
invitation which they, his parents, had, as he could testify, given her,
to lodge and board with them, free of all cost and charge, for evermore;
lastly, that he would help her with her box upstairs, and then repair
straight home, bearing her blessing and her strong injunctions to mingle
in his prayers a supplication that he might in course of time grow up
a locksmith, or a Mr Joe, and have Mrs Vardens and Miss Dollys for his
relations and friends.
Having brought this admonition to an end--upon which, to say the truth,
the young gentleman for whose benefit it was designed, bestowed little
or no heed, having to all appearance his faculties absorbed in the
contemplation of the sweetmeats,--Miss Miggs signified to the company in
general that they were not to be uneasy, for she would soon return; and,
with her nephew’s aid, prepared to bear her wardrobe up the staircase.
‘My dear,’ said the locksmith to his wife. ‘Do you desire this?’
‘I desire it!’ she answered. ‘I am astonished--I am amazed--at her
audacity. Let her leave the house this moment.’
Miggs, hearing this, let her end of the box fall heavily to the floor,
gave a very loud sniff, crossed her arms, screwed down the corners of
her mouth, and cried, in an ascending scale, ‘Ho, good gracious!’ three
distinct times.
‘You hear what your mistress says, my love,’ remarked the locksmith.
‘You had better go, I think. Stay; take this with you, for the sake of
old service.’
Miss Miggs clutched the bank-note he took from his pocket-book and held
out to her; deposited it in a small, red leather purse; put the purse
in her pocket (displaying, as she did so, a considerable portion of some
under-garment, made of flannel, and more black cotton stocking than is
commonly seen in public); and, tossing her head, as she looked at Mrs
Varden, repeated--
‘Ho, good gracious!’
‘I think you said that once before, my dear,’ observed the locksmith.
‘Times is changed, is they, mim!’ cried Miggs, bridling; ‘you can spare
me now, can you? You can keep ‘em down without me? You’re not in wants
of any one to scold, or throw the blame upon, no longer, an’t you, mim?
I’m glad to find you’ve grown so independent. I wish you joy, I’m sure!’
With that she dropped a curtsey, and keeping her head erect, her ear
towards Mrs Varden, and her eye on the rest of the company, as she
alluded to them in her remarks, proceeded:
‘I’m quite delighted, I’m sure, to find sich independency, feeling sorry
though, at the same time, mim, that you should have been forced into
submissions when you couldn’t help yourself--he he he! It must be great
vexations, ‘specially considering how ill you always spoke of Mr Joe--to
have him for a son-in-law at last; and I wonder Miss Dolly can put
up with him, either, after being off and on for so many years with a
coachmaker. But I HAVE heerd say, that the coachmaker thought twice
about it--he he he!--and that he told a young man as was a frind of his,
that he hoped he knowed better than to be drawed into that; though she
and all the family DID pull uncommon strong!’
Here she paused for a reply, and receiving none, went on as before.
‘I HAVE heerd say, mim, that the illnesses of some ladies was all
pretensions, and that they could faint away, stone dead, whenever they
had the inclinations so to do. Of course I never see sich cases with my
own eyes--ho no! He he he! Nor master neither--ho no! He he he! I HAVE
heerd the neighbours make remark as some one as they was acquainted
with, was a poor good-natur’d mean-spirited creetur, as went out
fishing for a wife one day, and caught a Tartar. Of course I never to my
knowledge see the poor person himself. Nor did you neither, mim--ho no.
I wonder who it can be--don’t you, mim? No doubt you do, mim. Ho yes. He
he he!’
Again Miggs paused for a reply; and none being offered, was so oppressed
with teeming spite and spleen, that she seemed like to burst.
‘I’m glad Miss Dolly can laugh,’ cried Miggs with a feeble titter. ‘I
like to see folks a-laughing--so do you, mim, don’t you? You was always
glad to see people in spirits, wasn’t you, mim? And you always did your
best to keep ‘em cheerful, didn’t you, mim? Though there an’t such a
great deal to laugh at now either; is there, mim? It an’t so much of a
catch, after looking out so sharp ever since she was a little chit, and
costing such a deal in dress and show, to get a poor, common soldier,
with one arm, is it, mim? He he! I wouldn’t have a husband with one arm,
anyways. I would have two arms. I would have two arms, if it was me,
though instead of hands they’d only got hooks at the end, like our
dustman!’
Miss Miggs was about to add, and had, indeed, begun to add, that,
taking them in the abstract, dustmen were far more eligible matches than
soldiers, though, to be sure, when people were past choosing they must
take the best they could get, and think themselves well off too; but her
vexation and chagrin being of that internally bitter sort which finds no
relief in words, and is aggravated to madness by want of contradiction,
she could hold out no longer, and burst into a storm of sobs and tears.
In this extremity she fell on the unlucky nephew, tooth and nail, and
plucking a handful of hair from his head, demanded to know how long she
was to stand there to be insulted, and whether or no he meant to help
her to carry out the box again, and if he took a pleasure in hearing his
family reviled: with other inquiries of that nature; at which disgrace
and provocation, the small boy, who had been all this time gradually
lashed into rebellion by the sight of unattainable pastry, walked off
indignant, leaving his aunt and the box to follow at their leisure.
Somehow or other, by dint of pushing and pulling, they did attain the
street at last; where Miss Miggs, all blowzed with the exertion of
getting there, and with her sobs and tears, sat down upon her property
to rest and grieve, until she could ensnare some other youth to help her
home.
‘It’s a thing to laugh at, Martha, not to care for,’ whispered the
locksmith, as he followed his wife to the window, and good-humouredly
dried her eyes. ‘What does it matter? You had seen your fault before.
Come! Bring up Toby again, my dear; Dolly shall sing us a song; and
we’ll be all the merrier for this interruption!’
Chapter 81
Another month had passed, and the end of August had nearly come, when Mr
Haredale stood alone in the mail-coach office at Bristol. Although but a
few weeks had intervened since his conversation with Edward Chester and
his niece, in the locksmith’s house, and he had made no change, in the
mean time, in his accustomed style of dress, his appearance was greatly
altered. He looked much older, and more care-worn. Agitation and anxiety
of mind scatter wrinkles and grey hairs with no unsparing hand; but
deeper traces follow on the silent uprooting of old habits, and severing
of dear, familiar ties. The affections may not be so easily wounded as
the passions, but their hurts are deeper, and more lasting. He was now a
solitary man, and the heart within him was dreary and lonesome.
He was not the less alone for having spent so many years in seclusion
and retirement. This was no better preparation than a round of social
cheerfulness: perhaps it even increased the keenness of his sensibility.
He had been so dependent upon her for companionship and love; she had
come to be so much a part and parcel of his existence; they had had so
many cares and thoughts in common, which no one else had shared; that
losing her was beginning life anew, and being required to summon up the
hope and elasticity of youth, amid the doubts, distrusts, and weakened
energies of age.
The effort he had made to part from her with seeming cheerfulness and
hope--and they had parted only yesterday--left him the more depressed.
With these feelings, he was about to revisit London for the last time,
and look once more upon the walls of their old home, before turning his
back upon it, for ever.
The journey was a very different one, in those days, from what the
present generation find it; but it came to an end, as the longest
journey will, and he stood again in the streets of the metropolis. He
lay at the inn where the coach stopped, and resolved, before he went
to bed, that he would make his arrival known to no one; would spend but
another night in London; and would spare himself the pang of parting,
even with the honest locksmith.
Such conditions of the mind as that to which he was a prey when he lay
down to rest, are favourable to the growth of disordered fancies, and
uneasy visions. He knew this, even in the horror with which he started
from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the
presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it
were, the witness of his dream. But it was not a new terror of the
night; it had been present to him before, in many shapes; it had haunted
him in bygone times, and visited his pillow again and again. If it had
been but an ugly object, a childish spectre, haunting his sleep, its
return, in its old form, might have awakened a momentary sensation of
fear, which, almost in the act of waking, would have passed away. This
disquiet, however, lingered about him, and would yield to nothing. When
he closed his eyes again, he felt it hovering near; as he slowly sunk
into a slumber, he was conscious of its gathering strength and purpose,
and gradually assuming its recent shape; when he sprang up from his bed,
the same phantom vanished from his heated brain, and left him filled
with a dread against which reason and waking thought were powerless.
The sun was up, before he could shake it off. He rose late, but not
refreshed, and remained within doors all that day. He had a fancy for
paying his last visit to the old spot in the evening, for he had been
accustomed to walk there at that season, and desired to see it under the
aspect that was most familiar to him. At such an hour as would afford
him time to reach it a little before sunset, he left the inn, and turned
into the busy street.
He had not gone far, and was thoughtfully making his way among the noisy
crowd, when he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and, turning, recognised
one of the waiters from the inn, who begged his pardon, but he had left
his sword behind him.
‘Why have you brought it to me?’ he asked, stretching out his hand, and
yet not taking it from the man, but looking at him in a disturbed and
agitated manner.
The man was sorry to have disobliged him, and would carry it back again.
The gentleman had said that he was going a little way into the country,
and that he might not return until late. The roads were not very safe
for single travellers after dark; and, since the riots, gentlemen had
been more careful than ever, not to trust themselves unarmed in lonely
places. ‘We thought you were a stranger, sir,’ he added, ‘and that you
might believe our roads to be better than they are; but perhaps you know
them well, and carry fire-arms--’
He took the sword, and putting it up at his side, thanked the man, and
resumed his walk.
It was long remembered that he did this in a manner so strange, and
with such a trembling hand, that the messenger stood looking after his
retreating figure, doubtful whether he ought not to follow, and watch
him. It was long remembered that he had been heard pacing his bedroom in
the dead of the night; that the attendants had mentioned to each other
in the morning, how fevered and how pale he looked; and that when this
man went back to the inn, he told a fellow-servant that what he had
observed in this short interview lay very heavy on his mind, and that he
feared the gentleman intended to destroy himself, and would never come
back alive.
With a half-consciousness that his manner had attracted the man’s
attention (remembering the expression of his face when they parted),
Mr Haredale quickened his steps; and arriving at a stand of coaches,
bargained with the driver of the best to carry him so far on his road as
the point where the footway struck across the fields, and to await his
return at a house of entertainment which was within a stone’s-throw of
that place. Arriving there in due course, he alighted and pursued his
way on foot.
He passed so near the Maypole, that he could see its smoke rising from
among the trees, while a flock of pigeons--some of its old inhabitants,
doubtless--sailed gaily home to roost, between him and the unclouded
sky. ‘The old house will brighten up now,’ he said, as he looked towards
it, ‘and there will be a merry fireside beneath its ivied roof. It is
some comfort to know that everything will not be blighted hereabouts. I
shall be glad to have one picture of life and cheerfulness to turn to,
in my mind!’
He resumed his walk, and bent his steps towards the Warren. It was a
clear, calm, silent evening, with hardly a breath of wind to stir the
leaves, or any sound to break the stillness of the time, but drowsy
sheep-bells tinkling in the distance, and, at intervals, the far-off
lowing of cattle, or bark of village dogs. The sky was radiant with
the softened glory of sunset; and on the earth, and in the air, a deep
repose prevailed. At such an hour, he arrived at the deserted mansion
which had been his home so long, and looked for the last time upon its
blackened walls.
The ashes of the commonest fire are melancholy things, for in them there
is an image of death and ruin,--of something that has been bright, and
is but dull, cold, dreary dust,--with which our nature forces us to
sympathise. How much more sad the crumbled embers of a home: the casting
down of that great altar, where the worst among us sometimes perform
the worship of the heart; and where the best have offered up such
sacrifices, and done such deeds of heroism, as, chronicled, would put
the proudest temples of old Time, with all their vaunting annals, to the
blush!
He roused himself from a long train of meditation, and walked slowly
round the house. It was by this time almost dark.
He had nearly made the circuit of the building, when he uttered a
half-suppressed exclamation, started, and stood still. Reclining, in an
easy attitude, with his back against a tree, and contemplating the ruin
with an expression of pleasure,--a pleasure so keen that it overcame his
habitual indolence and command of feature, and displayed itself utterly
free from all restraint or reserve,--before him, on his own ground,
and triumphing then, as he had triumphed in every misfortune and
disappointment of his life, stood the man whose presence, of all
mankind, in any place, and least of all in that, he could the least
endure.
Although his blood so rose against this man, and his wrath so stirred
within him, that he could have struck him dead, he put such fierce
constraint upon himself that he passed him without a word or look. Yes,
and he would have gone on, and not turned, though to resist the Devil
who poured such hot temptation in his brain, required an effort scarcely
to be achieved, if this man had not himself summoned him to stop: and
that, with an assumed compassion in his voice which drove him well-nigh
mad, and in an instant routed all the self-command it had been
anguish--acute, poignant anguish--to sustain.
All consideration, reflection, mercy, forbearance; everything by which
a goaded man can curb his rage and passion; fled from him as he turned
back. And yet he said, slowly and quite calmly--far more calmly than he
had ever spoken to him before:
‘Why have you called to me?’
‘To remark,’ said Sir John Chester with his wonted composure, ‘what an
odd chance it is, that we should meet here!’
‘It IS a strange chance.’
‘Strange? The most remarkable and singular thing in the world. I never
ride in the evening; I have not done so for years. The whim seized me,
quite unaccountably, in the middle of last night.--How very picturesque
this is!’--He pointed, as he spoke, to the dismantled house, and raised
his glass to his eye.
‘You praise your own work very freely.’
Sir John let fall his glass; inclined his face towards him with an air
of the most courteous inquiry; and slightly shook his head as though he
were remarking to himself, ‘I fear this animal is going mad!’
‘I say you praise your own work very freely,’ repeated Mr Haredale.
‘Work!’ echoed Sir John, looking smilingly round. ‘Mine!--I beg your
pardon, I really beg your pardon--’
‘Why, you see,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘those walls. You see those tottering
gables. You see on every side where fire and smoke have raged. You see
the destruction that has been wanton here. Do you not?’
‘My good friend,’ returned the knight, gently checking his impatience
with his hand, ‘of course I do. I see everything you speak of, when you
stand aside, and do not interpose yourself between the view and me. I
am very sorry for you. If I had not had the pleasure to meet you here,
I think I should have written to tell you so. But you don’t bear it as
well as I had expected--excuse me--no, you don’t indeed.’
He pulled out his snuff-box, and addressing him with the superior air of
a man who, by reason of his higher nature, has a right to read a moral
lesson to another, continued:
‘For you are a philosopher, you know--one of that stern and rigid school
who are far above the weaknesses of mankind in general. You are removed,
a long way, from the frailties of the crowd. You contemplate them from a
height, and rail at them with a most impressive bitterness. I have heard
you.’
--‘And shall again,’ said Mr Haredale.
‘Thank you,’ returned the other. ‘Shall we walk as we talk? The damp
falls rather heavily. Well,--as you please. But I grieve to say that I
can spare you only a very few moments.’
‘I would,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘you had spared me none. I would, with
all my soul, you had been in Paradise (if such a monstrous lie could be
enacted), rather than here to-night.’
‘Nay,’ returned the other--‘really--you do yourself injustice. You are a
rough companion, but I would not go so far to avoid you.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Mr Haredale. ‘Listen to me.’
‘While you rail?’ inquired Sir John.
‘While I deliver your infamy. You urged and stimulated to do your work
a fit agent, but one who in his nature--in the very essence of his
being--is a traitor, and who has been false to you (despite the sympathy
you two should have together) as he has been to all others. With hints,
and looks, and crafty words, which told again are nothing, you set on
Gashford to this work--this work before us now. With these same hints,
and looks, and crafty words, which told again are nothing, you urged
him on to gratify the deadly hate he owes me--I have earned it, I thank
Heaven--by the abduction and dishonour of my niece. You did. I see
denial in your looks,’ he cried, abruptly pointing in his face, and
stepping back, ‘and denial is a lie!’
He had his hand upon his sword; but the knight, with a contemptuous
smile, replied to him as coldly as before.
‘You will take notice, sir--if you can discriminate sufficiently--that I
have taken the trouble to deny nothing. Your discernment is hardly fine
enough for the perusal of faces, not of a kind as coarse as your speech;
nor has it ever been, that I remember; or, in one face that I could
name, you would have read indifference, not to say disgust, somewhat
sooner than you did. I speak of a long time ago,--but you understand
me.’
‘Disguise it as you will, you mean denial. Denial explicit or reserved,
expressed or left to be inferred, is still a lie. You say you don’t
deny. Do you admit?’
‘You yourself,’ returned Sir John, suffering the current of his
speech to flow as smoothly as if it had been stemmed by no one word of
interruption, ‘publicly proclaimed the character of the gentleman in
question (I think it was in Westminster Hall) in terms which relieve me
from the necessity of making any further allusion to him. You may
have been warranted; you may not have been; I can’t say. Assuming the
gentleman to be what you described, and to have made to you or any other
person any statements that may have happened to suggest themselves to
him, for the sake of his own security, or for the sake of money, or for
his own amusement, or for any other consideration,--I have nothing to
say of him, except that his extremely degrading situation appears to me
to be shared with his employers. You are so very plain yourself, that
you will excuse a little freedom in me, I am sure.’
‘Attend to me again, Sir John but once,’ cried Mr Haredale; ‘in your
every look, and word, and gesture, you tell me this was not your act. I
tell you that it was, and that you tampered with the man I speak of, and
with your wretched son (whom God forgive!) to do this deed. You talk of
degradation and character. You told me once that you had purchased the
absence of the poor idiot and his mother, when (as I have discovered
since, and then suspected) you had gone to tempt them, and had found
them flown. To you I traced the insinuation that I alone reaped any
harvest from my brother’s death; and all the foul attacks and whispered
calumnies that followed in its train. In every action of my life, from
that first hope which you converted into grief and desolation, you have
stood, like an adverse fate, between me and peace. In all, you have ever
been the same cold-blooded, hollow, false, unworthy villain. For the
second time, and for the last, I cast these charges in your teeth, and
spurn you from me as I would a faithless dog!’
With that he raised his arm, and struck him on the breast so that he
staggered. Sir John, the instant he recovered, drew his sword, threw
away the scabbard and his hat, and running on his adversary made a
desperate lunge at his heart, which, but that his guard was quick and
true, would have stretched him dead upon the grass.
In the act of striking him, the torrent of his opponent’s rage had
reached a stop. He parried his rapid thrusts, without returning them,
and called to him, with a frantic kind of terror in his face, to keep
back.
‘Not to-night! not to-night!’ he cried. ‘In God’s name, not tonight!’
Seeing that he lowered his weapon, and that he would not thrust in turn,
Sir John lowered his.
‘Not to-night!’ his adversary cried. ‘Be warned in time!’
‘You told me--it must have been in a sort of inspiration--’ said Sir
John, quite deliberately, though now he dropped his mask, and showed his
hatred in his face, ‘that this was the last time. Be assured it is! Did
you believe our last meeting was forgotten? Did you believe that your
every word and look was not to be accounted for, and was not well
remembered? Do you believe that I have waited your time, or you mine?
What kind of man is he who entered, with all his sickening cant of
honesty and truth, into a bond with me to prevent a marriage he affected
to dislike, and when I had redeemed my part to the spirit and the
letter, skulked from his, and brought the match about in his own time,
to rid himself of a burden he had grown tired of, and cast a spurious
lustre on his house?’
‘I have acted,’ cried Mr Haredale, ‘with honour and in good faith. I do
so now. Do not force me to renew this duel to-night!’
‘You said my “wretched” son, I think?’ said Sir John, with a smile.
‘Poor fool! The dupe of such a shallow knave--trapped into marriage by
such an uncle and by such a niece--he well deserves your pity. But he
is no longer a son of mine: you are welcome to the prize your craft has
made, sir.’
‘Once more,’ cried his opponent, wildly stamping on the ground,
‘although you tear me from my better angel, I implore you not to come
within the reach of my sword to-night. Oh! why were you here at all! Why
have we met! To-morrow would have cast us far apart for ever!’
‘That being the case,’ returned Sir John, without the least emotion, ‘it
is very fortunate we have met to-night. Haredale, I have always despised
you, as you know, but I have given you credit for a species of brute
courage. For the honour of my judgment, which I had thought a good one,
I am sorry to find you a coward.’
Not another word was spoken on either side. They crossed swords, though
it was now quite dusk, and attacked each other fiercely. They were
well matched, and each was thoroughly skilled in the management of his
weapon.
After a few seconds they grew hotter and more furious, and pressing on
each other inflicted and received several slight wounds. It was directly
after receiving one of these in his arm, that Mr Haredale, making a
keener thrust as he felt the warm blood spirting out, plunged his sword
through his opponent’s body to the hilt.
Their eyes met, and were on each other as he drew it out. He put his
arm about the dying man, who repulsed him, feebly, and dropped upon the
turf. Raising himself upon his hands, he gazed at him for an instant,
with scorn and hatred in his look; but, seeming to remember, even then,
that this expression would distort his features after death, he tried
to smile, and, faintly moving his right hand, as if to hide his bloody
linen in his vest, fell back dead--the phantom of last night.
Chapter the Last
A parting glance at such of the actors in this little history as it has
not, in the course of its events, dismissed, will bring it to an end.
Mr Haredale fled that night. Before pursuit could be begun, indeed
before Sir John was traced or missed, he had left the kingdom. Repairing
straight to a religious establishment, known throughout Europe for the
rigour and severity of its discipline, and for the merciless penitence
it exacted from those who sought its shelter as a refuge from the world,
he took the vows which thenceforth shut him out from nature and
his kind, and after a few remorseful years was buried in its gloomy
cloisters.
Two days elapsed before the body of Sir John was found. As soon as
it was recognised and carried home, the faithful valet, true to his
master’s creed, eloped with all the cash and movables he could lay his
hands on, and started as a finished gentleman upon his own account. In
this career he met with great success, and would certainly have married
an heiress in the end, but for an unlucky check which led to his
premature decease. He sank under a contagious disorder, very prevalent
at that time, and vulgarly termed the jail fever.
Lord George Gordon, remaining in his prison in the Tower until Monday
the fifth of February in the following year, was on that day solemnly
tried at Westminster for High Treason. Of this crime he was, after a
patient investigation, declared Not Guilty; upon the ground that there
was no proof of his having called the multitude together with any
traitorous or unlawful intentions. Yet so many people were there, still,
to whom those riots taught no lesson of reproof or moderation, that a
public subscription was set on foot in Scotland to defray the cost of
his defence.
For seven years afterwards he remained, at the strong intercession of
his friends, comparatively quiet; saving that he, every now and then,
took occasion to display his zeal for the Protestant faith in some
extravagant proceeding which was the delight of its enemies; and saving,
besides, that he was formally excommunicated by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, for refusing to appear as a witness in the Ecclesiastical
Court when cited for that purpose. In the year 1788 he was stimulated by
some new insanity to write and publish an injurious pamphlet, reflecting
on the Queen of France, in very violent terms. Being indicted for the
libel, and (after various strange demonstrations in court) found guilty,
he fled into Holland in place of appearing to receive sentence: from
whence, as the quiet burgomasters of Amsterdam had no relish for his
company, he was sent home again with all speed. Arriving in the month of
July at Harwich, and going thence to Birmingham, he made in the latter
place, in August, a public profession of the Jewish religion; and
figured there as a Jew until he was arrested, and brought back to London
to receive the sentence he had evaded. By virtue of this sentence he
was, in the month of December, cast into Newgate for five years and ten
months, and required besides to pay a large fine, and to furnish heavy
securities for his future good behaviour.
After addressing, in the midsummer of the following year, an appeal to
the commiseration of the National Assembly of France, which the English
minister refused to sanction, he composed himself to undergo his full
term of punishment; and suffering his beard to grow nearly to his waist,
and conforming in all respects to the ceremonies of his new religion, he
applied himself to the study of history, and occasionally to the art
of painting, in which, in his younger days, he had shown some skill.
Deserted by his former friends, and treated in all respects like the
worst criminal in the jail, he lingered on, quite cheerful and resigned,
until the 1st of November 1793, when he died in his cell, being then
only three-and-forty years of age.
Many men with fewer sympathies for the distressed and needy, with less
abilities and harder hearts, have made a shining figure and left a
brilliant fame. He had his mourners. The prisoners bemoaned his loss,
and missed him; for though his means were not large, his charity was
great, and in bestowing alms among them he considered the necessities of
all alike, and knew no distinction of sect or creed. There are wise men
in the highways of the world who may learn something, even from this
poor crazy lord who died in Newgate.
To the last, he was truly served by bluff John Grueby. John was at his
side before he had been four-and-twenty hours in the Tower, and never
left him until he died. He had one other constant attendant, in the
person of a beautiful Jewish girl; who attached herself to him
from feelings half religious, half romantic, but whose virtuous and
disinterested character appears to have been beyond the censure even of
the most censorious.
Gashford deserted him, of course. He subsisted for a time upon his
traffic in his master’s secrets; and, this trade failing when the stock
was quite exhausted, procured an appointment in the honourable corps
of spies and eavesdroppers employed by the government. As one of these
wretched underlings, he did his drudgery, sometimes abroad, sometimes at
home, and long endured the various miseries of such a station. Ten or a
dozen years ago--not more--a meagre, wan old man, diseased and miserably
poor, was found dead in his bed at an obscure inn in the Borough, where
he was quite unknown. He had taken poison. There was no clue to his
name; but it was discovered from certain entries in a pocket-book he
carried, that he had been secretary to Lord George Gordon in the time of
the famous riots.
Many months after the re-establishment of peace and order, and even when
it had ceased to be the town-talk, that every military officer, kept at
free quarters by the City during the late alarms, had cost for his board
and lodging four pounds four per day, and every private soldier two and
twopence halfpenny; many months after even this engrossing topic was
forgotten, and the United Bulldogs were to a man all killed, imprisoned,
or transported, Mr Simon Tappertit, being removed from a hospital
to prison, and thence to his place of trial, was discharged by
proclamation, on two wooden legs. Shorn of his graceful limbs, and
brought down from his high estate to circumstances of utter destitution,
and the deepest misery, he made shift to stump back to his old master,
and beg for some relief. By the locksmith’s advice and aid, he was
established in business as a shoeblack, and opened shop under an archway
near the Horse Guards. This being a central quarter, he quickly made a
very large connection; and on levee days, was sometimes known to have
as many as twenty half-pay officers waiting their turn for polishing.
Indeed his trade increased to that extent, that in course of time he
entertained no less than two apprentices, besides taking for his wife
the widow of an eminent bone and rag collector, formerly of Millbank.
With this lady (who assisted in the business) he lived in great domestic
happiness, only chequered by those little storms which serve to clear
the atmosphere of wedlock, and brighten its horizon. In some of these
gusts of bad weather, Mr Tappertit would, in the assertion of his
prerogative, so far forget himself, as to correct his lady with a brush,
or boot, or shoe; while she (but only in extreme cases) would retaliate
by taking off his legs, and leaving him exposed to the derision of those
urchins who delight in mischief.
Miss Miggs, baffled in all her schemes, matrimonial and otherwise, and
cast upon a thankless, undeserving world, turned very sharp and sour;
and did at length become so acid, and did so pinch and slap and tweak
the hair and noses of the youth of Golden Lion Court, that she was by
one consent expelled that sanctuary, and desired to bless some other
spot of earth, in preference. It chanced at that moment, that the
justices of the peace for Middlesex proclaimed by public placard that
they stood in need of a female turnkey for the County Bridewell, and
appointed a day and hour for the inspection of candidates. Miss Miggs
attending at the time appointed, was instantly chosen and selected from
one hundred and twenty-four competitors, and at once promoted to
the office; which she held until her decease, more than thirty years
afterwards, remaining single all that time. It was observed of this lady
that while she was inflexible and grim to all her female flock, she was
particularly so to those who could establish any claim to beauty: and
it was often remarked as a proof of her indomitable virtue and severe
chastity, that to such as had been frail she showed no mercy; always
falling upon them on the slightest occasion, or on no occasion at all,
with the fullest measure of her wrath. Among other useful inventions
which she practised upon this class of offenders and bequeathed to
posterity, was the art of inflicting an exquisitely vicious poke or dig
with the wards of a key in the small of the back, near the spine. She
likewise originated a mode of treading by accident (in pattens) on
such as had small feet; also very remarkable for its ingenuity, and
previously quite unknown.
It was not very long, you may be sure, before Joe Willet and Dolly
Varden were made husband and wife, and with a handsome sum in bank (for
the locksmith could afford to give his daughter a good dowry), reopened
the Maypole. It was not very long, you may be sure, before a red-faced
little boy was seen staggering about the Maypole passage, and kicking up
his heels on the green before the door. It was not very long, counting
by years, before there was a red-faced little girl, another red-faced
little boy, and a whole troop of girls and boys: so that, go to Chigwell
when you would, there would surely be seen, either in the village
street, or on the green, or frolicking in the farm-yard--for it was a
farm now, as well as a tavern--more small Joes and small Dollys than
could be easily counted. It was not a very long time before these
appearances ensued; but it WAS a VERY long time before Joe looked five
years older, or Dolly either, or the locksmith either, or his wife
either: for cheerfulness and content are great beautifiers, and are
famous preservers of youthful looks, depend upon it.
It was a long time, too, before there was such a country inn as the
Maypole, in all England: indeed it is a great question whether there has
ever been such another to this hour, or ever will be. It was a long time
too--for Never, as the proverb says, is a long day--before they forgot
to have an interest in wounded soldiers at the Maypole, or before Joe
omitted to refresh them, for the sake of his old campaign; or before
the serjeant left off looking in there, now and then; or before they
fatigued themselves, or each other, by talking on these occasions of
battles and sieges, and hard weather and hard service, and a thousand
things belonging to a soldier’s life. As to the great silver snuff-box
which the King sent Joe with his own hand, because of his conduct in the
Riots, what guest ever went to the Maypole without putting finger and
thumb into that box, and taking a great pinch, though he had never taken
a pinch of snuff before, and almost sneezed himself into convulsions
even then? As to the purple-faced vintner, where is the man who lived in
those times and never saw HIM at the Maypole: to all appearance as much
at home in the best room, as if he lived there? And as to the feastings
and christenings, and revellings at Christmas, and celebrations of
birthdays, wedding-days, and all manner of days, both at the Maypole and
the Golden Key,--if they are not notorious, what facts are?
Mr Willet the elder, having been by some extraordinary means possessed
with the idea that Joe wanted to be married, and that it would be well
for him, his father, to retire into private life, and enable him to live
in comfort, took up his abode in a small cottage at Chigwell; where
they widened and enlarged the fireplace for him, hung up the boiler,
and furthermore planted in the little garden outside the front-door, a
fictitious Maypole; so that he was quite at home directly. To this, his
new habitation, Tom Cobb, Phil Parkes, and Solomon Daisy went regularly
every night: and in the chimney-corner, they all four quaffed, and
smoked, and prosed, and dozed, as they had done of old. It being
accidentally discovered after a short time that Mr Willet still appeared
to consider himself a landlord by profession, Joe provided him with
a slate, upon which the old man regularly scored up vast accounts for
meat, drink, and tobacco. As he grew older this passion increased upon
him; and it became his delight to chalk against the name of each of his
cronies a sum of enormous magnitude, and impossible to be paid: and such
was his secret joy in these entries, that he would be perpetually seen
going behind the door to look at them, and coming forth again, suffused
with the liveliest satisfaction.
He never recovered the surprise the Rioters had given him, and remained
in the same mental condition down to the last moment of his life. It was
like to have been brought to a speedy termination by the first sight of
his first grandchild, which appeared to fill him with the belief that
some alarming miracle had happened to Joe. Being promptly blooded,
however, by a skilful surgeon, he rallied; and although the doctors
all agreed, on his being attacked with symptoms of apoplexy six months
afterwards, that he ought to die, and took it very ill that he did
not, he remained alive--possibly on account of his constitutional
slowness--for nearly seven years more, when he was one morning found
speechless in his bed. He lay in this state, free from all tokens
of uneasiness, for a whole week, when he was suddenly restored to
consciousness by hearing the nurse whisper in his son’s ear that he was
going. ‘I’m a-going, Joseph,’ said Mr Willet, turning round upon the
instant, ‘to the Salwanners’--and immediately gave up the ghost.
He left a large sum of money behind him; even more than he was supposed
to have been worth, although the neighbours, according to the custom of
mankind in calculating the wealth that other people ought to have saved,
had estimated his property in good round numbers. Joe inherited the
whole; so that he became a man of great consequence in those parts, and
was perfectly independent.
Some time elapsed before Barnaby got the better of the shock he had
sustained, or regained his old health and gaiety. But he recovered
by degrees: and although he could never separate his condemnation and
escape from the idea of a terrific dream, he became, in other respects,
more rational. Dating from the time of his recovery, he had a better
memory and greater steadiness of purpose; but a dark cloud overhung his
whole previous existence, and never cleared away.
He was not the less happy for this, for his love of freedom and interest
in all that moved or grew, or had its being in the elements, remained
to him unimpaired. He lived with his mother on the Maypole farm, tending
the poultry and the cattle, working in a garden of his own, and helping
everywhere. He was known to every bird and beast about the place, and
had a name for every one. Never was there a lighter-hearted husbandman,
a creature more popular with young and old, a blither or more happy soul
than Barnaby; and though he was free to ramble where he would, he never
quitted Her, but was for evermore her stay and comfort.
It was remarkable that although he had that dim sense of the past, he
sought out Hugh’s dog, and took him under his care; and that he never
could be tempted into London. When the Riots were many years old,
and Edward and his wife came back to England with a family almost as
numerous as Dolly’s, and one day appeared at the Maypole porch, he knew
them instantly, and wept and leaped for joy. But neither to visit them,
nor on any other pretence, no matter how full of promise and enjoyment,
could he be persuaded to set foot in the streets: nor did he ever
conquer this repugnance or look upon the town again.
Grip soon recovered his looks, and became as glossy and sleek as ever.
But he was profoundly silent. Whether he had forgotten the art of Polite
Conversation in Newgate, or had made a vow in those troubled times to
forego, for a period, the display of his accomplishments, is matter of
uncertainty; but certain it is that for a whole year he never indulged
in any other sound than a grave, decorous croak. At the expiration of
that term, the morning being very bright and sunny, he was heard to
address himself to the horses in the stable, upon the subject of the
Kettle, so often mentioned in these pages; and before the witness who
overheard him could run into the house with the intelligence, and add
to it upon his solemn affirmation the statement that he had heard him
laugh, the bird himself advanced with fantastic steps to the very door
of the bar, and there cried, ‘I’m a devil, I’m a devil, I’m a devil!’
with extraordinary rapture.
From that period (although he was supposed to be much affected by the
death of Mr Willet senior), he constantly practised and improved himself
in the vulgar tongue; and, as he was a mere infant for a raven when
Barnaby was grey, he has very probably gone on talking to the present
time.
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