Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
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