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