Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
‘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