Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
understood it, and pursued his theme accordingly.
‘It WAS a dreary thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in
his bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his
dinner on cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go
alone, for it was too late to hope to get any other companion. However,
I wasn’t unprepared for it; as the old gentleman had often made it a
request that the bell should be tolled as soon as possible after the
breath was out of his body, and he had been expected to go for some
days. I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up
(for it was mortal cold), started out with a lighted lantern in one hand
and the key of the church in the other.’
At this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as
if he had turned himself to hear more distinctly. Slightly pointing over
his shoulder, Solomon elevated his eyebrows and nodded a silent inquiry
to Joe whether this was the case. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand and
peered into the corner, but could make out nothing, and so shook his
head.
‘It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily,
and very dark--I often think now, darker than I ever saw it before or
since; that may be my fancy, but the houses were all close shut and the
folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one other man who knows how
dark it really was. I got into the church, chained the door back so that
it should keep ajar--for, to tell the truth, I didn’t like to be shut
in there alone--and putting my lantern on the stone seat in the little
corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to trim the candle.
‘I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not
persuade myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don’t know how
it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even
those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten
long ago; and they didn’t come into my mind one after another, but
all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story there was in the
village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very
night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground
and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me
think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door
and the churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have
to pass among them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves.
I had known all the niches and arches in the church from a child; still,
I couldn’t persuade myself that those were their natural shadows which
I saw on the pavement, but felt sure there were some ugly figures hiding
among ‘em and peeping out. Thinking on in this way, I began to think of
the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could have sworn, as I looked
up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place, wrapping his
shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time I
sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length
I started up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there
rang--not that bell, for I had hardly touched the rope--but another!
‘I heard the ringing of another bell, and a deep bell too, plainly. It
was only for an instant, and even then the wind carried the sound away,
but I heard it. I listened for a long time, but it rang no more. I had
heard of corpse candles, and at last I persuaded myself that this must
be a corpse bell tolling of itself at midnight for the dead. I tolled my
bell--how, or how long, I don’t know--and ran home to bed as fast as I
could touch the ground.
‘I was up early next morning after a restless night, and told the story
to my neighbours. Some were serious and some made light of it; I don’t
think anybody believed it real. But, that morning, Mr Reuben Haredale
was found murdered in his bedchamber; and in his hand was a piece of the
cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room
and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it.
‘That was the bell I heard.
‘A bureau was found opened, and a cash-box, which Mr Haredale had
brought down that day, and was supposed to contain a large sum of money,
was gone. The steward and gardener were both missing and both suspected
for a long time, but they were never found, though hunted far and wide.
And far enough they might have looked for poor Mr Rudge the steward,
whose body--scarcely to be recognised by his clothes and the watch and
ring he wore--was found, months afterwards, at the bottom of a piece of
water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been
stabbed with a knife. He was only partly dressed; and people all agreed
that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were
many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed before his
master.
Everybody now knew that the gardener must be the murderer, and though
he has never been heard of from that day to this, he will be, mark my
words. The crime was committed this day two-and-twenty years--on the
nineteenth of March, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three. On the
nineteenth of March in some year--no matter when--I know it, I am sure
of it, for we have always, in some strange way or other, been brought
back to the subject on that day ever since--on the nineteenth of March
in some year, sooner or later, that man will be discovered.’
Chapter 2
‘A strange story!’ said the man who had been the cause of the
narration.--‘Stranger still if it comes about as you predict. Is that
all?’
A question so unexpected, nettled Solomon Daisy not a little. By dint of
relating the story very often, and ornamenting it (according to village
report) with a few flourishes suggested by the various hearers from time
to time, he had come by degrees to tell it with great effect; and ‘Is
that all?’ after the climax, was not what he was accustomed to.
‘Is that all?’ he repeated, ‘yes, that’s all, sir. And enough too, I
think.’
‘I think so too. My horse, young man! He is but a hack hired from a
roadside posting house, but he must carry me to London to-night.’
‘To-night!’ said Joe.
‘To-night,’ returned the other. ‘What do you stare at? This tavern
would seem to be a house of call for all the gaping idlers of the
neighbourhood!’
At this remark, which evidently had reference to the scrutiny he had
undergone, as mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the eyes of John
Willet and his friends were diverted with marvellous rapidity to the
copper boiler again. Not so with Joe, who, being a mettlesome fellow,
returned the stranger’s angry glance with a steady look, and rejoined:
‘It is not a very bold thing to wonder at your going on to-night. Surely
you have been asked such a harmless question in an inn before, and in
better weather than this. I thought you mightn’t know the way, as you
seem strange to this part.’
‘The way--’ repeated the other, irritably.
‘Yes. DO you know it?’
‘I’ll--humph!--I’ll find it,’ replied the man, waving his hand and
turning on his heel. ‘Landlord, take the reckoning here.’
John Willet did as he was desired; for on that point he was seldom slow,
except in the particulars of giving change, and testing the goodness of
any piece of coin that was proffered to him, by the application of his
teeth or his tongue, or some other test, or in doubtful cases, by a long
series of tests terminating in its rejection. The guest then wrapped his
garments about him so as to shelter himself as effectually as he could
from the rough weather, and without any word or sign of farewell betook
himself to the stableyard. Here Joe (who had left the room on the
conclusion of their short dialogue) was protecting himself and the horse
from the rain under the shelter of an old penthouse roof.
‘He’s pretty much of my opinion,’ said Joe, patting the horse upon the
neck. ‘I’ll wager that your stopping here to-night would please him
better than it would please me.’
‘He and I are of different opinions, as we have been more than once on
our way here,’ was the short reply.
‘So I was thinking before you came out, for he has felt your spurs, poor
beast.’
The stranger adjusted his coat-collar about his face, and made no
answer.
‘You’ll know me again, I see,’ he said, marking the young fellow’s
earnest gaze, when he had sprung into the saddle.
‘The man’s worth knowing, master, who travels a road he don’t know,
mounted on a jaded horse, and leaves good quarters to do it on such a
night as this.’
‘You have sharp eyes and a sharp tongue, I find.’
‘Both I hope by nature, but the last grows rusty sometimes for want of
using.’
‘Use the first less too, and keep their sharpness for your sweethearts,
boy,’ said the man.
So saying he shook his hand from the bridle, struck him roughly on the
head with the butt end of his whip, and galloped away; dashing through
the mud and darkness with a headlong speed, which few badly mounted
horsemen would have cared to venture, even had they been thoroughly
acquainted with the country; and which, to one who knew nothing of the
way he rode, was attended at every step with great hazard and danger.
The roads, even within twelve miles of London, were at that time
ill paved, seldom repaired, and very badly made. The way this rider
traversed had been ploughed up by the wheels of heavy waggons, and
rendered rotten by the frosts and thaws of the preceding winter, or
possibly of many winters. Great holes and gaps had been worn into the
soil, which, being now filled with water from the late rains, were not
easily distinguishable even by day; and a plunge into any one of them
might have brought down a surer-footed horse than the poor beast now
urged forward to the utmost extent of his powers. Sharp flints and
stones rolled from under his hoofs continually; the rider could scarcely
see beyond the animal’s head, or farther on either side than his own
arm would have extended. At that time, too, all the roads in the
neighbourhood of the metropolis were infested by footpads or highwaymen,
and it was a night, of all others, in which any evil-disposed person of
this class might have pursued his unlawful calling with little fear of
detection.
Still, the traveller dashed forward at the same reckless pace,
regardless alike of the dirt and wet which flew about his head, the
profound darkness of the night, and the probability of encountering
some desperate characters abroad. At every turn and angle, even where
a deviation from the direct course might have been least expected, and
could not possibly be seen until he was close upon it, he guided the
bridle with an unerring hand, and kept the middle of the road. Thus he
sped onward, raising himself in the stirrups, leaning his body forward
until it almost touched the horse’s neck, and flourishing his heavy whip
above his head with the fervour of a madman.
There are times when, the elements being in unusual commotion, those who
are bent on daring enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts, whether
of good or evil, feel a mysterious sympathy with the tumult of nature,
and are roused into corresponding violence. In the midst of thunder,
lightning, and storm, many tremendous deeds have been committed; men,
self-possessed before, have given a sudden loose to passions they could
no longer control. The demons of wrath and despair have striven to
emulate those who ride the whirlwind and direct the storm; and man,
lashed into madness with the roaring winds and boiling waters, has
become for the time as wild and merciless as the elements themselves.
Whether the traveller was possessed by thoughts which the fury of the
night had heated and stimulated into a quicker current, or was merely