Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
of coarse faces, with here and there a blot of flaring, smoky light; a
dream of demon heads and savage eyes, and sticks and iron bars uplifted
in the air, and whirled about; a bewildering horror, in which so much
was seen, and yet so little, which seemed so long, and yet so short, in
which there were so many phantoms, not to be forgotten all through life,
and yet so many things that could not be observed in one distracting
glimpse--it flitted onward, and was gone.
As it passed away upon its work of wrath and ruin, a piercing scream was
heard. A knot of persons ran towards the spot; Gashford, who just then
emerged into the street, among them. He was on the outskirts of the
little concourse, and could not see or hear what passed within; but one
who had a better place, informed him that a widow woman had descried her
son among the rioters.
‘Is that all?’ said the secretary, turning his face homewards. ‘Well! I
think this looks a little more like business!’
Chapter 51
Promising as these outrages were to Gashford’s view, and much like
business as they looked, they extended that night no farther. The
soldiers were again called out, again they took half-a-dozen prisoners,
and again the crowd dispersed after a short and bloodless scuffle. Hot
and drunken though they were, they had not yet broken all bounds and
set all law and government at defiance. Something of their habitual
deference to the authority erected by society for its own preservation
yet remained among them, and had its majesty been vindicated in time,
the secretary would have had to digest a bitter disappointment.
By midnight, the streets were clear and quiet, and, save that there
stood in two parts of the town a heap of nodding walls and pile of
rubbish, where there had been at sunset a rich and handsome building,
everything wore its usual aspect. Even the Catholic gentry and
tradesmen, of whom there were many resident in different parts of the
City and its suburbs, had no fear for their lives or property, and
but little indignation for the wrong they had already sustained in
the plunder and destruction of their temples of worship. An honest
confidence in the government under whose protection they had lived for
many years, and a well-founded reliance on the good feeling and right
thinking of the great mass of the community, with whom, notwithstanding
their religious differences, they were every day in habits of
confidential, affectionate, and friendly intercourse, reassured them,
even under the excesses that had been committed; and convinced them that
they who were Protestants in anything but the name, were no more to
be considered as abettors of these disgraceful occurrences, than they
themselves were chargeable with the uses of the block, the rack, the
gibbet, and the stake in cruel Mary’s reign.
The clock was on the stroke of one, when Gabriel Varden, with his
lady and Miss Miggs, sat waiting in the little parlour. This fact; the
toppling wicks of the dull, wasted candles; the silence that prevailed;
and, above all, the nightcaps of both maid and matron, were sufficient
evidence that they had been prepared for bed some time ago, and had some
reason for sitting up so far beyond their usual hour.
If any other corroborative testimony had been required, it would have
been abundantly furnished in the actions of Miss Miggs, who, having
arrived at that restless state and sensitive condition of the nervous
system which are the result of long watching, did, by a constant rubbing
and tweaking of her nose, a perpetual change of position (arising from
the sudden growth of imaginary knots and knobs in her chair), a frequent
friction of her eyebrows, the incessant recurrence of a small cough, a
small groan, a gasp, a sigh, a sniff, a spasmodic start, and by other
demonstrations of that nature, so file down and rasp, as it were, the
patience of the locksmith, that after looking at her in silence for some
time, he at last broke out into this apostrophe:--
‘Miggs, my good girl, go to bed--do go to bed. You’re really worse
than the dripping of a hundred water-butts outside the window, or the
scratching of as many mice behind the wainscot. I can’t bear it. Do go
to bed, Miggs. To oblige me--do.’
‘You haven’t got nothing to untie, sir,’ returned Miss Miggs, ‘and
therefore your requests does not surprise me. But missis has--and
while you sit up, mim’--she added, turning to the locksmith’s wife,
‘I couldn’t, no, not if twenty times the quantity of cold water was
aperiently running down my back at this moment, go to bed with a quiet
spirit.’
Having spoken these words, Miss Miggs made divers efforts to rub her
shoulders in an impossible place, and shivered from head to foot;
thereby giving the beholders to understand that the imaginary cascade
was still in full flow, but that a sense of duty upheld her under that
and all other sufferings, and nerved her to endurance.
Mrs Varden being too sleepy to speak, and Miss Miggs having, as the
phrase is, said her say, the locksmith had nothing for it but to sigh
and be as quiet as he could.
But to be quiet with such a basilisk before him was impossible. If he
looked another way, it was worse to feel that she was rubbing her
cheek, or twitching her ear, or winking her eye, or making all kinds of
extraordinary shapes with her nose, than to see her do it. If she was
for a moment free from any of these complaints, it was only because of
her foot being asleep, or of her arm having got the fidgets, or of her
leg being doubled up with the cramp, or of some other horrible disorder
which racked her whole frame. If she did enjoy a moment’s ease, then
with her eyes shut and her mouth wide open, she would be seen to sit
very stiff and upright in her chair; then to nod a little way forward,
and stop with a jerk; then to nod a little farther forward, and stop
with another jerk; then to recover herself; then to come forward
again--lower--lower--lower--by very slow degrees, until, just as it
seemed impossible that she could preserve her balance for another
instant, and the locksmith was about to call out in an agony, to save
her from dashing down upon her forehead and fracturing her skull, then
all of a sudden and without the smallest notice, she would come upright
and rigid again with her eyes open, and in her countenance an expression
of defiance, sleepy but yet most obstinate, which plainly said, ‘I’ve
never once closed ‘em since I looked at you last, and I’ll take my oath
of it!’
At length, after the clock had struck two, there was a sound at the
street door, as if somebody had fallen against the knocker by accident.
Miss Miggs immediately jumping up and clapping her hands, cried with a
drowsy mingling of the sacred and profane, ‘Ally Looyer, mim! there’s
Simmuns’s knock!’
‘Who’s there?’ said Gabriel.
‘Me!’ cried the well-known voice of Mr Tappertit. Gabriel opened the
door, and gave him admission.
He did not cut a very insinuating figure, for a man of his stature
suffers in a crowd; and having been active in yesterday morning’s work,
his dress was literally crushed from head to foot: his hat being beaten
out of all shape, and his shoes trodden down at heel like slippers. His
coat fluttered in strips about him, the buckles were torn away both from
his knees and feet, half his neckerchief was gone, and the bosom of
his shirt was rent to tatters. Yet notwithstanding all these personal
disadvantages; despite his being very weak from heat and fatigue; and
so begrimed with mud and dust that he might have been in a case, for
anything of the real texture (either of his skin or apparel) that the
eye could discern; he stalked haughtily into the parlour, and throwing
himself into a chair, and endeavouring to thrust his hands into the
pockets of his small-clothes, which were turned inside out and displayed
upon his legs, like tassels, surveyed the household with a gloomy
dignity.
‘Simon,’ said the locksmith gravely, ‘how comes it that you return home
at this time of night, and in this condition? Give me an assurance that
you have not been among the rioters, and I am satisfied.’
‘Sir,’ replied Mr Tappertit, with a contemptuous look, ‘I wonder at YOUR
assurance in making such demands.’
‘You have been drinking,’ said the locksmith.
‘As a general principle, and in the most offensive sense of the words,
sir,’ returned his journeyman with great self-possession,
‘I consider you a liar. In that last observation you have
unintentionally--unintentionally, sir,--struck upon the truth.’
‘Martha,’ said the locksmith, turning to his wife, and shaking his head
sorrowfully, while a smile at the absurd figure beside him still played
upon his open face, ‘I trust it may turn out that this poor lad is not
the victim of the knaves and fools we have so often had words about, and
who have done so much harm to-day. If he has been at Warwick Street or
Duke Street to-night--’
‘He has been at neither, sir,’ cried Mr Tappertit in a loud voice, which
he suddenly dropped into a whisper as he repeated, with eyes fixed upon
the locksmith, ‘he has been at neither.’
‘I am glad of it, with all my heart,’ said the locksmith in a serious
tone; ‘for if he had been, and it could be proved against him, Martha,
your Great Association would have been to him the cart that draws men
to the gallows and leaves them hanging in the air. It would, as sure as
we’re alive!’
Mrs Varden was too much scared by Simon’s altered manner and appearance,
and by the accounts of the rioters which had reached her ears that
night, to offer any retort, or to have recourse to her usual matrimonial
policy. Miss Miggs wrung her hands, and wept.
‘He was not at Duke Street, or at Warwick Street, G. Varden,’ said
Simon, sternly; ‘but he WAS at Westminster. Perhaps, sir, he kicked a
county member, perhaps, sir, he tapped a lord--you may stare, sir, I
repeat it--blood flowed from noses, and perhaps he tapped a lord. Who
knows? This,’ he added, putting his hand into his waistcoat-pocket,
and taking out a large tooth, at the sight of which both Miggs and Mrs
Varden screamed, ‘this was a bishop’s. Beware, G. Varden!’
‘Now, I would rather,’ said the locksmith hastily, ‘have paid five
hundred pounds, than had this come to pass. You idiot, do you know what
peril you stand in?’
‘I know it, sir,’ replied his journeyman, ‘and it is my glory. I was
there, everybody saw me there. I was conspicuous, and prominent. I will
abide the consequences.’
The locksmith, really disturbed and agitated, paced to and fro in
silence--glancing at his former ‘prentice every now and then--and at
length stopping before him, said:
‘Get to bed, and sleep for a couple of hours that you may wake penitent,
and with some of your senses about you. Be sorry for what you have
done, and we will try to save you. If I call him by five o’clock,’ said
Varden, turning hurriedly to his wife, and he washes himself clean
and changes his dress, he may get to the Tower Stairs, and away by the
Gravesend tide-boat, before any search is made for him. From there he
can easily get on to Canterbury, where your cousin will give him
work till this storm has blown over. I am not sure that I do right in
screening him from the punishment he deserves, but he has lived in this
house, man and boy, for a dozen years, and I should be sorry if for this
one day’s work he made a miserable end. Lock the front-door, Miggs, and
show no light towards the street when you go upstairs. Quick, Simon! Get
to bed!’
‘And do you suppose, sir,’ retorted Mr Tappertit, with a thickness
and slowness of speech which contrasted forcibly with the rapidity and
earnestness of his kind-hearted master--‘and do you suppose, sir, that I
am base and mean enough to accept your servile proposition?--Miscreant!’