Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
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