Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
‘A mettlesome fellow like you, and not made up his mind!’ cried the
serjeant. ‘Here--let me give the bell a pull, and you’ll make up your
mind in half a minute, I know.’
‘You’re right so far’--answered Joe, ‘for if you pull the bell here,
where I’m known, there’ll be an end of my soldiering inclinations in no
time. Look in my face. You see me, do you?’
‘I do,’ replied the serjeant with an oath, ‘and a finer young fellow or
one better qualified to serve his king and country, I never set my--’ he
used an adjective in this place--‘eyes on.’
‘Thank you,’ said Joe, ‘I didn’t ask you for want of a compliment, but
thank you all the same. Do I look like a sneaking fellow or a liar?’
The serjeant rejoined with many choice asseverations that he didn’t; and
that if his (the serjeant’s) own father were to say he did, he would
run the old gentleman through the body cheerfully, and consider it a
meritorious action.
Joe expressed his obligations, and continued, ‘You can trust me then,
and credit what I say. I believe I shall enlist in your regiment
to-night. The reason I don’t do so now is, because I don’t want until
to-night, to do what I can’t recall. Where shall I find you, this
evening?’
His friend replied with some unwillingness, and after much ineffectual
entreaty having for its object the immediate settlement of the business,
that his quarters would be at the Crooked Billet in Tower Street; where
he would be found waking until midnight, and sleeping until breakfast
time to-morrow.
‘And if I do come--which it’s a million to one, I shall--when will you
take me out of London?’ demanded Joe.
‘To-morrow morning, at half after eight o’clock,’ replied the serjeant.
‘You’ll go abroad--a country where it’s all sunshine and plunder--the
finest climate in the world.’
‘To go abroad,’ said Joe, shaking hands with him, ‘is the very thing I
want. You may expect me.’
‘You’re the kind of lad for us,’ cried the serjeant, holding Joe’s hand
in his, in the excess of his admiration. ‘You’re the boy to push your
fortune. I don’t say it because I bear you any envy, or would take away
from the credit of the rise you’ll make, but if I had been bred and
taught like you, I’d have been a colonel by this time.’
‘Tush, man!’ said Joe, ‘I’m not so young as that. Needs must when the
devil drives; and the devil that drives me is an empty pocket and an
unhappy home. For the present, good-bye.’
‘For king and country!’ cried the serjeant, flourishing his cap.
‘For bread and meat!’ cried Joe, snapping his fingers. And so they
parted.
He had very little money in his pocket; so little indeed, that after
paying for his breakfast (which he was too honest and perhaps too proud
to score up to his father’s charge) he had but a penny left. He had
courage, notwithstanding, to resist all the affectionate importunities
of the serjeant, who waylaid him at the door with many protestations of
eternal friendship, and did in particular request that he would do him
the favour to accept of only one shilling as a temporary accommodation.
Rejecting his offers both of cash and credit, Joe walked away with
stick and bundle as before, bent upon getting through the day as he best
could, and going down to the locksmith’s in the dusk of the evening;
for it should go hard, he had resolved, but he would have a parting word
with charming Dolly Varden.
He went out by Islington and so on to Highgate, and sat on many stones
and gates, but there were no voices in the bells to bid him turn. Since
the time of noble Whittington, fair flower of merchants, bells have come
to have less sympathy with humankind. They only ring for money and on
state occasions. Wanderers have increased in number; ships leave the
Thames for distant regions, carrying from stem to stern no other cargo;
the bells are silent; they ring out no entreaties or regrets; they are
used to it and have grown worldly.
Joe bought a roll, and reduced his purse to the condition (with a
difference) of that celebrated purse of Fortunatus, which, whatever were
its favoured owner’s necessities, had one unvarying amount in it. In
these real times, when all the Fairies are dead and buried, there are
still a great many purses which possess that quality. The sum-total they
contain is expressed in arithmetic by a circle, and whether it be added
to or multiplied by its own amount, the result of the problem is more
easily stated than any known in figures.
Evening drew on at last. With the desolate and solitary feeling of one
who had no home or shelter, and was alone utterly in the world for the
first time, he bent his steps towards the locksmith’s house. He had
delayed till now, knowing that Mrs Varden sometimes went out alone,
or with Miggs for her sole attendant, to lectures in the evening; and
devoutly hoping that this might be one of her nights of moral culture.
He had walked up and down before the house, on the opposite side of the
way, two or three times, when as he returned to it again, he caught a
glimpse of a fluttering skirt at the door. It was Dolly’s--to whom else
could it belong? no dress but hers had such a flow as that. He plucked
up his spirits, and followed it into the workshop of the Golden Key.
His darkening the door caused her to look round. Oh that face! ‘If it
hadn’t been for that,’ thought Joe, ‘I should never have walked into
poor Tom Cobb. She’s twenty times handsomer than ever. She might marry a
Lord!’
He didn’t say this. He only thought it--perhaps looked it also. Dolly
was glad to see him, and was SO sorry her father and mother were away
from home. Joe begged she wouldn’t mention it on any account.
Dolly hesitated to lead the way into the parlour, for there it was
nearly dark; at the same time she hesitated to stand talking in the
workshop, which was yet light and open to the street. They had got by
some means, too, before the little forge; and Joe having her hand in his
(which he had no right to have, for Dolly only gave it him to shake), it
was so like standing before some homely altar being married, that it was
the most embarrassing state of things in the world.
‘I have come,’ said Joe, ‘to say good-bye--to say good-bye for I don’t
know how many years; perhaps for ever. I am going abroad.’
Now this was exactly what he should not have said. Here he was, talking
like a gentleman at large who was free to come and go and roam about the
world at pleasure, when that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night
before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains; and had
positively stated in so many words that she was killing him by inches,
and that in a fortnight more or thereabouts he expected to make a decent
end and leave the business to his mother.
Dolly released her hand and said ‘Indeed!’ She remarked in the same
breath that it was a fine night, and in short, betrayed no more emotion
than the forge itself.
‘I couldn’t go,’ said Joe, ‘without coming to see you. I hadn’t the
heart to.’
Dolly was more sorry than she could tell, that he should have taken so
much trouble. It was such a long way, and he must have such a deal to
do. And how WAS Mr Willet--that dear old gentleman--
‘Is this all you say!’ cried Joe.
All! Good gracious, what did the man expect! She was obliged to take her
apron in her hand and run her eyes along the hem from corner to corner,
to keep herself from laughing in his face;--not because his gaze
confused her--not at all.
Joe had small experience in love affairs, and had no notion how
different young ladies are at different times; he had expected to
take Dolly up again at the very point where he had left her after that
delicious evening ride, and was no more prepared for such an alteration
than to see the sun and moon change places. He had buoyed himself up all
day with an indistinct idea that she would certainly say ‘Don’t go,’ or
‘Don’t leave us,’ or ‘Why do you go?’ or ‘Why do you leave us?’ or would
give him some little encouragement of that sort; he had even entertained
the possibility of her bursting into tears, of her throwing herself into
his arms, of her falling down in a fainting fit without previous word
or sign; but any approach to such a line of conduct as this, had been so
far from his thoughts that he could only look at her in silent wonder.
Dolly in the meanwhile, turned to the corners of her apron, and measured
the sides, and smoothed out the wrinkles, and was as silent as he. At
last after a long pause, Joe said good-bye. ‘Good-bye’--said Dolly--with
as pleasant a smile as if he were going into the next street, and were
coming back to supper; ‘good-bye.’
‘Come,’ said Joe, putting out both hands, ‘Dolly, dear Dolly, don’t let
us part like this. I love you dearly, with all my heart and soul; with
as much truth and earnestness as ever man loved woman in this world, I
do believe. I am a poor fellow, as you know--poorer now than ever, for
I have fled from home, not being able to bear it any longer, and must
fight my own way without help. You are beautiful, admired, are loved by
everybody, are well off and happy; and may you ever be so! Heaven forbid
I should ever make you otherwise; but give me a word of comfort. Say
something kind to me. I have no right to expect it of you, I know, but
I ask it because I love you, and shall treasure the slightest word from
you all through my life. Dolly, dearest, have you nothing to say to me?’
No. Nothing. Dolly was a coquette by nature, and a spoilt child. She had
no notion of being carried by storm in this way. The coachmaker would
have been dissolved in tears, and would have knelt down, and called
himself names, and clasped his hands, and beat his breast, and tugged
wildly at his cravat, and done all kinds of poetry. Joe had no business
to be going abroad. He had no right to be able to do it. If he was in
adamantine chains, he couldn’t.
‘I have said good-bye,’ said Dolly, ‘twice. Take your arm away directly,
Mr Joseph, or I’ll call Miggs.’
‘I’ll not reproach you,’ answered Joe, ‘it’s my fault, no doubt. I have
thought sometimes that you didn’t quite despise me, but I was a fool to
think so. Every one must, who has seen the life I have led--you most of
all. God bless you!’
He was gone, actually gone. Dolly waited a little while, thinking he
would return, peeped out at the door, looked up the street and down as
well as the increasing darkness would allow, came in again, waited a
little longer, went upstairs humming a tune, bolted herself in, laid
her head down on her bed, and cried as if her heart would break. And yet
such natures are made up of so many contradictions, that if Joe Willet
had come back that night, next day, next week, next month, the odds are
a hundred to one she would have treated him in the very same manner, and
have wept for it afterwards with the very same distress.
She had no sooner left the workshop than there cautiously peered out
from behind the chimney of the forge, a face which had already emerged
from the same concealment twice or thrice, unseen, and which, after
satisfying itself that it was now alone, was followed by a leg, a
shoulder, and so on by degrees, until the form of Mr Tappertit stood
confessed, with a brown-paper cap stuck negligently on one side of its
head, and its arms very much a-kimbo.
‘Have my ears deceived me,’ said the ‘prentice, ‘or do I dream! am I to
thank thee, Fortun’, or to cus thee--which?’
He gravely descended from his elevation, took down his piece of
looking-glass, planted it against the wall upon the usual bench, twisted
his head round, and looked closely at his legs.
‘If they’re a dream,’ said Sim, ‘let sculptures have such wisions, and
chisel ‘em out when they wake. This is reality. Sleep has no such limbs
as them. Tremble, Willet, and despair. She’s mine! She’s mine!’