Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
for the man: though why it did so, they would have had some trouble to
explain.
Gashford, the secretary, was taller, angularly made, high-shouldered,
bony, and ungraceful. His dress, in imitation of his superior, was
demure and staid in the extreme; his manner, formal and constrained.
This gentleman had an overhanging brow, great hands and feet and ears,
and a pair of eyes that seemed to have made an unnatural retreat into
his head, and to have dug themselves a cave to hide in. His manner was
smooth and humble, but very sly and slinking. He wore the aspect of a
man who was always lying in wait for something that WOULDN’T come to
pass; but he looked patient--very patient--and fawned like a spaniel
dog. Even now, while he warmed and rubbed his hands before the blaze,
he had the air of one who only presumed to enjoy it in his degree as a
commoner; and though he knew his lord was not regarding him, he looked
into his face from time to time, and with a meek and deferential manner,
smiled as if for practice.
Such were the guests whom old John Willet, with a fixed and leaden
eye, surveyed a hundred times, and to whom he now advanced with a state
candlestick in each hand, beseeching them to follow him into a worthier
chamber. ‘For my lord,’ said John--it is odd enough, but certain people
seem to have as great a pleasure in pronouncing titles as their owners
have in wearing them--‘this room, my lord, isn’t at all the sort of
place for your lordship, and I have to beg your lordship’s pardon for
keeping you here, my lord, one minute.’
With this address, John ushered them upstairs into the state apartment,
which, like many other things of state, was cold and comfortless. Their
own footsteps, reverberating through the spacious room, struck upon
their hearing with a hollow sound; and its damp and chilly atmosphere
was rendered doubly cheerless by contrast with the homely warmth they
had deserted.
It was of no use, however, to propose a return to the place they had
quitted, for the preparations went on so briskly that there was no time
to stop them. John, with the tall candlesticks in his hands, bowed them
up to the fireplace; Hugh, striding in with a lighted brand and pile
of firewood, cast it down upon the hearth, and set it in a blaze; John
Grueby (who had a great blue cockade in his hat, which he appeared
to despise mightily) brought in the portmanteau he had carried on his
horse, and placed it on the floor; and presently all three were busily
engaged in drawing out the screen, laying the cloth, inspecting the
beds, lighting fires in the bedrooms, expediting the supper, and making
everything as cosy and as snug as might be, on so short a notice. In
less than an hour’s time, supper had been served, and ate, and cleared
away; and Lord George and his secretary, with slippered feet, and legs
stretched out before the fire, sat over some hot mulled wine together.
‘So ends, my lord,’ said Gashford, filling his glass with great
complacency, ‘the blessed work of a most blessed day.’
‘And of a blessed yesterday,’ said his lordship, raising his head.
‘Ah!’--and here the secretary clasped his hands--‘a blessed yesterday
indeed! The Protestants of Suffolk are godly men and true. Though others
of our countrymen have lost their way in darkness, even as we, my lord,
did lose our road to-night, theirs is the light and glory.’
‘Did I move them, Gashford?’ said Lord George.
‘Move them, my lord! Move them! They cried to be led on against the
Papists, they vowed a dreadful vengeance on their heads, they roared
like men possessed--’
‘But not by devils,’ said his lord.
‘By devils! my lord! By angels.’
‘Yes--oh surely--by angels, no doubt,’ said Lord George, thrusting his
hands into his pockets, taking them out again to bite his nails, and
looking uncomfortably at the fire. ‘Of course by angels--eh Gashford?’
‘You do not doubt it, my lord?’ said the secretary.
‘No--No,’ returned his lord. ‘No. Why should I? I suppose it would be
decidedly irreligious to doubt it--wouldn’t it, Gashford? Though there
certainly were,’ he added, without waiting for an answer, ‘some plaguy
ill-looking characters among them.’
‘When you warmed,’ said the secretary, looking sharply at the other’s
downcast eyes, which brightened slowly as he spoke; ‘when you warmed
into that noble outbreak; when you told them that you were never of
the lukewarm or the timid tribe, and bade them take heed that they were
prepared to follow one who would lead them on, though to the very death;
when you spoke of a hundred and twenty thousand men across the Scottish
border who would take their own redress at any time, if it were not
conceded; when you cried “Perish the Pope and all his base adherents;
the penal laws against them shall never be repealed while Englishmen
have hearts and hands”--and waved your own and touched your sword; and
when they cried “No Popery!” and you cried “No; not even if we wade in
blood,” and they threw up their hats and cried “Hurrah! not even if we
wade in blood; No Popery! Lord George! Down with the Papists--Vengeance
on their heads:” when this was said and done, and a word from you, my
lord, could raise or still the tumult--ah! then I felt what greatness
was indeed, and thought, When was there ever power like this of Lord
George Gordon’s!’
‘It’s a great power. You’re right. It is a great power!’ he cried with
sparkling eyes. ‘But--dear Gashford--did I really say all that?’
‘And how much more!’ cried the secretary, looking upwards. ‘Ah! how much
more!’
‘And I told them what you say, about the one hundred and forty thousand
men in Scotland, did I!’ he asked with evident delight. ‘That was bold.’
‘Our cause is boldness. Truth is always bold.’
‘Certainly. So is religion. She’s bold, Gashford?’
‘The true religion is, my lord.’
‘And that’s ours,’ he rejoined, moving uneasily in his seat, and biting
his nails as though he would pare them to the quick. ‘There can be no
doubt of ours being the true one. You feel as certain of that as I do,
Gashford, don’t you?’
‘Does my lord ask ME,’ whined Gashford, drawing his chair nearer with
an injured air, and laying his broad flat hand upon the table; ‘ME,’
he repeated, bending the dark hollows of his eyes upon him with an
unwholesome smile, ‘who, stricken by the magic of his eloquence in
Scotland but a year ago, abjured the errors of the Romish church, and
clung to him as one whose timely hand had plucked me from a pit?’
‘True. No--No. I--I didn’t mean it,’ replied the other, shaking him by
the hand, rising from his seat, and pacing restlessly about the room.
‘It’s a proud thing to lead the people, Gashford,’ he added as he made a
sudden halt.
‘By force of reason too,’ returned the pliant secretary.
‘Ay, to be sure. They may cough and jeer, and groan in Parliament, and
call me fool and madman, but which of them can raise this human sea and
make it swell and roar at pleasure? Not one.’
‘Not one,’ repeated Gashford.
‘Which of them can say for his honesty, what I can say for mine; which
of them has refused a minister’s bribe of one thousand pounds a year, to
resign his seat in favour of another? Not one.’
‘Not one,’ repeated Gashford again--taking the lion’s share of the
mulled wine between whiles.
‘And as we are honest, true, and in a sacred cause, Gashford,’ said Lord
George with a heightened colour and in a louder voice, as he laid his
fevered hand upon his shoulder, ‘and are the only men who regard the
mass of people out of doors, or are regarded by them, we will uphold
them to the last; and will raise a cry against these un-English Papists
which shall re-echo through the country, and roll with a noise like
thunder. I will be worthy of the motto on my coat of arms, “Called and
chosen and faithful.”’
‘Called,’ said the secretary, ‘by Heaven.’
‘I am.’
‘Chosen by the people.’
‘Yes.’
‘Faithful to both.’
‘To the block!’
It would be difficult to convey an adequate idea of the excited manner
in which he gave these answers to the secretary’s promptings; of the
rapidity of his utterance, or the violence of his tone and gesture; in
which, struggling through his Puritan’s demeanour, was something wild
and ungovernable which broke through all restraint. For some minutes he
walked rapidly up and down the room, then stopping suddenly, exclaimed,
‘Gashford--YOU moved them yesterday too. Oh yes! You did.’
‘I shone with a reflected light, my lord,’ replied the humble secretary,
laying his hand upon his heart. ‘I did my best.’
‘You did well,’ said his master, ‘and are a great and worthy instrument.
If you will ring for John Grueby to carry the portmanteau into my room,
and will wait here while I undress, we will dispose of business as
usual, if you’re not too tired.’
‘Too tired, my lord!--But this is his consideration! Christian from head
to foot.’ With which soliloquy, the secretary tilted the jug, and looked
very hard into the mulled wine, to see how much remained.
John Willet and John Grueby appeared together. The one bearing the great
candlesticks, and the other the portmanteau, showed the deluded lord
into his chamber; and left the secretary alone, to yawn and shake
himself, and finally to fall asleep before the fire.
‘Now, Mr Gashford sir,’ said John Grueby in his ear, after what appeared
to him a moment of unconsciousness; ‘my lord’s abed.’
‘Oh. Very good, John,’ was his mild reply. ‘Thank you, John. Nobody need
sit up. I know my room.’
‘I hope you’re not a-going to trouble your head to-night, or my lord’s
head neither, with anything more about Bloody Mary,’ said John. ‘I wish
the blessed old creetur had never been born.’
‘I said you might go to bed, John,’ returned the secretary. ‘You didn’t
hear me, I think.’
‘Between Bloody Marys, and blue cockades, and glorious Queen Besses,
and no Poperys, and Protestant associations, and making of speeches,’
pursued John Grueby, looking, as usual, a long way off, and taking no
notice of this hint, ‘my lord’s half off his head. When we go out o’
doors, such a set of ragamuffins comes a-shouting after us, “Gordon
forever!” that I’m ashamed of myself and don’t know where to look. When
we’re indoors, they come a-roaring and screaming about the house like so
many devils; and my lord instead of ordering them to be drove away, goes
out into the balcony and demeans himself by making speeches to ‘em, and
calls ‘em “Men of England,” and “Fellow-countrymen,” as if he was fond
of ‘em and thanked ‘em for coming. I can’t make it out, but they’re all
mixed up somehow or another with that unfort’nate Bloody Mary, and call
her name out till they’re hoarse. They’re all Protestants too--every man
and boy among ‘em: and Protestants are very fond of spoons, I find, and
silver-plate in general, whenever area-gates is left open accidentally.
I wish that was the worst of it, and that no more harm might be to come;
but if you don’t stop these ugly customers in time, Mr Gashford (and I
know you; you’re the man that blows the fire), you’ll find ‘em grow a
little bit too strong for you. One of these evenings, when the weather
gets warmer and Protestants are thirsty, they’ll be pulling London
down,--and I never heard that Bloody Mary went as far as THAT.’
Gashford had vanished long ago, and these remarks had been bestowed on
empty air. Not at all discomposed by the discovery, John Grueby fixed
his hat on, wrongside foremost that he might be unconscious of the
shadow of the obnoxious cockade, and withdrew to bed; shaking his head
in a very gloomy and prophetic manner until he reached his chamber.
Chapter 36
Gashford, with a smiling face, but still with looks of profound
deference and humility, betook himself towards his master’s room,