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