Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
the first great step to be taken is to make examples of these witnesses,
and frighten all men from appearing against us or any of our body, any
more?’
‘There’s one we know of,’ returned Gashford, with an expressive smile,
‘who is at least as well informed upon that subject as you or I.’
‘If we mean the same gentleman, as I suppose we do,’ Hugh rejoined
softly, ‘I tell you this--he’s as good and quick information about
everything as--’ here he paused and looked round, as if to make sure
that the person in question was not within hearing, ‘as Old Nick
himself. Have you done that, master? How slow you are!’
‘It’s quite fast now,’ said Gashford, rising. ‘I say--you didn’t find
that your friend disapproved of to-day’s little expedition? Ha ha ha!
It is fortunate it jumps so well with the witness policy; for, once
planned, it must have been carried out. And now you are going, eh?’
‘Now we are going, master!’ Hugh replied. ‘Any parting words?’
‘Oh dear, no,’ said Gashford sweetly. ‘None!’
‘You’re sure?’ cried Hugh, nudging the grinning Dennis.
‘Quite sure, eh, Muster Gashford?’ chuckled the hangman.
Gashford paused a moment, struggling with his caution and his malice;
then putting himself between the two men, and laying a hand upon the arm
of each, said, in a cramped whisper:
‘Do not, my good friends--I am sure you will not--forget our talk one
night--in your house, Dennis--about this person. No mercy, no quarter,
no two beams of his house to be left standing where the builder placed
them! Fire, the saying goes, is a good servant, but a bad master. Make
it _his_ master; he deserves no better. But I am sure you will be firm, I
am sure you will be very resolute, I am sure you will remember that he
thirsts for your lives, and those of all your brave companions. If
you ever acted like staunch fellows, you will do so to-day. Won’t you,
Dennis--won’t you, Hugh?’
The two looked at him, and at each other; then bursting into a roar of
laughter, brandished their staves above their heads, shook hands, and
hurried out.
When they had been gone a little time, Gashford followed. They were yet
in sight, and hastening to that part of the adjacent fields in
which their fellows had already mustered; Hugh was looking back, and
flourishing his hat to Barnaby, who, delighted with his trust, replied
in the same way, and then resumed his pacing up and down before the
stable-door, where his feet had worn a path already. And when Gashford
himself was far distant, and looked back for the last time, he was still
walking to and fro, with the same measured tread; the most devoted and
the blithest champion that ever maintained a post, and felt his heart
lifted up with a brave sense of duty, and determination to defend it to
the last.
Smiling at the simplicity of the poor idiot, Gashford betook himself to
Welbeck Street by a different path from that which he knew the rioters
would take, and sitting down behind a curtain in one of the upper
windows of Lord George Gordon’s house, waited impatiently for their
coming. They were so long, that although he knew it had been settled
they should come that way, he had a misgiving they must have changed
their plans and taken some other route. But at length the roar of voices
was heard in the neighbouring fields, and soon afterwards they came
thronging past, in a great body.
However, they were not all, nor nearly all, in one body, but were, as he
soon found, divided into four parties, each of which stopped before the
house to give three cheers, and then went on; the leaders crying out in
what direction they were going, and calling on the spectators to join
them. The first detachment, carrying, by way of banners, some relics
of the havoc they had made in Moorfields, proclaimed that they were on
their way to Chelsea, whence they would return in the same order, to
make of the spoil they bore, a great bonfire, near at hand. The second
gave out that they were bound for Wapping, to destroy a chapel; the
third, that their place of destination was East Smithfield, and their
object the same. All this was done in broad, bright, summer day. Gay
carriages and chairs stopped to let them pass, or turned back to avoid
them; people on foot stood aside in doorways, or perhaps knocked and
begged permission to stand at a window, or in the hall, until the
rioters had passed: but nobody interfered with them; and when they had
gone by, everything went on as usual.
There still remained the fourth body, and for that the secretary looked
with a most intense eagerness. At last it came up. It was numerous, and
composed of picked men; for as he gazed down among them, he recognised
many upturned faces which he knew well--those of Simon Tappertit, Hugh,
and Dennis in the front, of course. They halted and cheered, as the
others had done; but when they moved again, they did not, like them,
proclaim what design they had. Hugh merely raised his hat upon the
bludgeon he carried, and glancing at a spectator on the opposite side of
the way, was gone.
Gashford followed the direction of his glance instinctively, and
saw, standing on the pavement, and wearing the blue cockade, Sir John
Chester. He held his hat an inch or two above his head, to propitiate
the mob; and, resting gracefully on his cane, smiling pleasantly, and
displaying his dress and person to the very best advantage, looked on
in the most tranquil state imaginable. For all that, and quick and
dexterous as he was, Gashford had seen him recognise Hugh with the air
of a patron. He had no longer any eyes for the crowd, but fixed his keen
regards upon Sir John.
He stood in the same place and posture until the last man in the
concourse had turned the corner of the street; then very deliberately
took the blue cockade out of his hat; put it carefully in his pocket,
ready for the next emergency; refreshed himself with a pinch of snuff;
put up his box; and was walking slowly off, when a passing carriage
stopped, and a lady’s hand let down the glass. Sir John’s hat was off
again immediately. After a minute’s conversation at the carriage-window,
in which it was apparent that he was vastly entertaining on the subject
of the mob, he stepped lightly in, and was driven away.
The secretary smiled, but he had other thoughts to dwell upon, and
soon dismissed the topic. Dinner was brought him, but he sent it down
untasted; and, in restless pacings up and down the room, and constant
glances at the clock, and many futile efforts to sit down and read, or
go to sleep, or look out of the window, consumed four weary hours. When
the dial told him thus much time had crept away, he stole upstairs to
the top of the house, and coming out upon the roof sat down, with his
face towards the east.
Heedless of the fresh air that blew upon his heated brow, of the
pleasant meadows from which he turned, of the piles of roofs and
chimneys upon which he looked, of the smoke and rising mist he vainly
sought to pierce, of the shrill cries of children at their evening
sports, the distant hum and turmoil of the town, the cheerful country
breath that rustled past to meet it, and to droop, and die; he watched,
and watched, till it was dark save for the specks of light that twinkled
in the streets below and far away--and, as the darkness deepened,
strained his gaze and grew more eager yet.
‘Nothing but gloom in that direction, still!’ he muttered restlessly.
‘Dog! where is the redness in the sky, you promised me!’
Chapter 54
Rumours of the prevailing disturbances had, by this time, begun to be
pretty generally circulated through the towns and villages round London,
and the tidings were everywhere received with that appetite for the
marvellous and love of the terrible which have probably been among the
natural characteristics of mankind since the creation of the world.
These accounts, however, appeared, to many persons at that day--as
they would to us at the present, but that we know them to be matter of
history--so monstrous and improbable, that a great number of those who
were resident at a distance, and who were credulous enough on other
points, were really unable to bring their minds to believe that such
things could be; and rejected the intelligence they received on all
hands, as wholly fabulous and absurd.
Mr Willet--not so much, perhaps, on account of his having argued and
settled the matter with himself, as by reason of his constitutional
obstinacy--was one of those who positively refused to entertain the
current topic for a moment. On this very evening, and perhaps at the
very time when Gashford kept his solitary watch, old John was so red in
the face with perpetually shaking his head in contradiction of his three
ancient cronies and pot companions, that he was quite a phenomenon to
behold, and lighted up the Maypole Porch wherein they sat together, like
a monstrous carbuncle in a fairy tale.
‘Do you think, sir,’ said Mr Willet, looking hard at Solomon Daisy--for
it was his custom in cases of personal altercation to fasten upon the
smallest man in the party--‘do you think, sir, that I’m a born fool?’
‘No, no, Johnny,’ returned Solomon, looking round upon the little circle
of which he formed a part: ‘We all know better than that. You’re no
fool, Johnny. No, no!’
Mr Cobb and Mr Parkes shook their heads in unison, muttering, ‘No, no,
Johnny, not you!’ But as such compliments had usually the effect of
making Mr Willet rather more dogged than before, he surveyed them with a
look of deep disdain, and returned for answer:
‘Then what do you mean by coming here, and telling me that this evening
you’re a-going to walk up to London together--you three--you--and have
the evidence of your own senses? An’t,’ said Mr Willet, putting his pipe
in his mouth with an air of solemn disgust, ‘an’t the evidence of MY
senses enough for you?’
‘But we haven’t got it, Johnny,’ pleaded Parkes, humbly.
‘You haven’t got it, sir?’ repeated Mr Willet, eyeing him from top to
toe. ‘You haven’t got it, sir? You HAVE got it, sir. Don’t I tell you
that His blessed Majesty King George the Third would no more stand a
rioting and rollicking in his streets, than he’d stand being crowed over
by his own Parliament?’
‘Yes, Johnny, but that’s your sense--not your senses,’ said the
adventurous Mr Parkes.
‘How do you know?’ retorted John with great dignity. ‘You’re a
contradicting pretty free, you are, sir. How do YOU know which it is?
I’m not aware I ever told you, sir.’
Mr Parkes, finding himself in the position of having got into
metaphysics without exactly seeing his way out of them, stammered forth
an apology and retreated from the argument. There then ensued a silence
of some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, at the expiration of which
period Mr Willet was observed to rumble and shake with laughter, and
presently remarked, in reference to his late adversary, ‘that he hoped
he had tackled him enough.’ Thereupon Messrs Cobb and Daisy laughed,
and nodded, and Parkes was looked upon as thoroughly and effectually put
down.
‘Do you suppose if all this was true, that Mr Haredale would be
constantly away from home, as he is?’ said John, after another silence.
‘Do you think he wouldn’t be afraid to leave his house with them two
young women in it, and only a couple of men, or so?’
‘Ay, but then you know,’ returned Solomon Daisy, ‘his house is a goodish
way out of London, and they do say that the rioters won’t go more than
two miles, or three at the farthest, off the stones. Besides, you
know, some of the Catholic gentlefolks have actually sent trinkets and
suchlike down here for safety--at least, so the story goes.’
‘The story goes!’ said Mr Willet testily. ‘Yes, sir. The story goes that
you saw a ghost last March. But nobody believes it.’