A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable, or more cruel.
The people who were boisterous at Westminster upon the Friday morning, and were eagerly bent upon the work of devastation in Duke Street and Warwick Street at night, were, in the mass, the same. Allowing for the chance accessions of which any crowd is morally sure in a town where there must always be a large number of idle and profligate persons, one and the same mob was at both places. Yet they spread themselves in various directions when they dispersed in the afternoon, made no appointment for reassembling, had no definite purpose or design, and indeed, for anything they knew, were scattered beyond the hope of future union.
At The Boot, which, as has been shown, was in a manner the head-quarters of the rioters, there were not, upon this Friday night, a dozen people. Some slept in the stable and outhouses, some in the common room, some two or three in beds. The rest were in their usual homes or haunts. Perhaps not a score in all lay in the adjacent fields and lanes, and under haystacks, or near the warmth of brick-kilns, who had not their accustomed place of rest beneath the open sky. As to the public ways within the town, they had their ordinary nightly occupants, and no others; the usual amount of vice and wretchedness, but no more.
The experience of one evening, however, had taught the reckless leaders of disturbance, that they had but to show themselves in the streets, to be immediately surrounded by materials which they could only have kept together when their aid was not required, at great risk, expense, and trouble. Once possessed of this secret, they were as confident as if twenty thousand men, devoted to their will, had been encamped about them, and assumed a confidence which could not have been surpassed, though that had really been the case. All day, Saturday, they remained quiet. On Sunday, they rather studied how to keep their men within call, and in full hope, than to follow out, by any fierce measure, their first day’s proceedings.
‘I hope,’ said Dennis, as, with a loud yawn, he raised his body from a heap of straw on which he had been sleeping, and supporting his head upon his hand, appealed to Hugh on Sunday morning, ‘that Muster Gashford allows some rest? Perhaps he’d have us at work again already, eh?’
‘It’s not his way to let matters drop, you may be sure of that,’ growled Hugh in answer. ‘I’m in no humour to stir yet, though. I’m as stiff as a dead body, and as full of ugly scratches as if I had been fighting all day yesterday with wild cats.’
‘You’ve so much enthusiasm, that’s it,’ said Dennis, looking with great admiration at the uncombed head, matted beard, and torn hands and face of the wild figure before him; ‘you’re such a devil of a fellow. You hurt yourself a hundred times more than you need, because you will be foremost in everything, and will do more than the rest.’
‘For the matter of that,’ returned Hugh, shaking back his ragged hair and glancing towards the door of the stable in which they lay; ‘there’s one yonder as good as me. What did I tell you about him? Did I say he was worth a dozen, when you doubted him?’
Mr Dennis rolled lazily over upon his breast, and resting his chin upon his hand in imitation of the attitude in which Hugh lay, said, as he too looked towards the door:
‘Ay, ay, you knew him, brother, you knew him. But who’d suppose to look at that chap now, that he could be the man he is! Isn’t it a thousand cruel pities, brother, that instead of taking his nat’ral rest and qualifying himself for further exertions in this here honourable cause, he should be playing at soldiers like a boy? And his cleanliness too!’ said Mr Dennis, who certainly had no reason to entertain a fellow feeling with anybody who was particular on that score; ‘what weaknesses he’s guilty of; with respect to his cleanliness! At five o’clock this morning, there he was at the pump, though any one would think he had gone through enough, the day before yesterday, to be pretty fast asleep at that time. But no—when I woke for a minute or two, there he was at the pump, and if you’d seen him sticking them peacock’s feathers into his hat when he’d done washing—ah! I’m sorry he’s such a imperfect character, but the best on us is incomplete in some pint of view or another.’
The subject of this dialogue and of these concluding remarks, which were uttered in a tone of philosophical meditation, was, as the reader will have divined, no other than Barnaby, who, with his flag in hand, stood sentry in the little patch of sunlight at the distant door, or walked to and fro outside, singing softly to himself; and keeping time to the music of some clear church bells. Whether he stood still, leaning with both hands on the flagstaff, or, bearing it upon his shoulder, paced slowly up and down, the careful arrangement of his poor dress, and his erect and lofty bearing, showed how high a sense he had of the great importance of his trust, and how happy and how proud it made him. To Hugh and his companion, who lay in a dark corner of the gloomy shed, he, and the sunlight, and the peaceful Sabbath sound to which he made response, seemed like a bright picture framed by the door, and set off by the stable’s blackness. The whole formed such a contrast to themselves, as they lay wallowing, like some obscene animals, in their squalor and wickedness on the two heaps of straw, that for a few moments they looked on without speaking, and felt almost ashamed.
‘Ah!’ said Hugh at length, carrying it off with a laugh: ‘He’s a rare fellow is Barnaby, and can do more, with less rest, or meat, or drink, than any of us. As to his soldiering, I put him on duty there.’
‘Then there was a object in it, and a proper good one too, I’ll be sworn,’ retorted Dennis with a broad grin, and an oath of the same quality. ‘What was it, brother?’
‘Why, you see,’ said Hugh, crawling a little nearer to him, ‘that our noble captain yonder, came in yesterday morning rather the worse for liquor, and was—like you and me—ditto last night.’
Dennis looked to where Simon Tappertit lay coiled upon a truss of hay, snoring profoundly, and nodded.
‘And our noble captain,’ continued Hugh with another laugh, ‘our noble captain and I, have planned for to-morrow a roaring expedition, with good profit in it.’
‘Again the Papists?’ asked Dennis, rubbing his hands.
‘Ay, against the Papists—against one of ‘em at least, that some of us, and I for one, owe a good heavy grudge to.’
‘Not Muster Gashford’s friend that he spoke to us about in my house, eh?’ said Dennis, brimfull of pleasant expectation.
‘The same man,’ said Hugh.
‘That’s your sort,’ cried Mr Dennis, gaily shaking hands with him, ‘that’s the kind of game. Let’s have revenges and injuries, and all that, and we shall get on twice as fast. Now you talk, indeed!’
‘Ha ha ha! The captain,’ added Hugh, ‘has thoughts of carrying off a woman in the bustle, and—ha ha ha!—and so have I!’
Mr Dennis received this part of the scheme with a wry face, observing that as a general principle he objected to women altogether, as being unsafe and slippery persons on whom there was no calculating with any certainty, and who were never in the same mind for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch. He might have expatiated on this suggestive theme at much greater length, but that it occurred to him to ask what connection existed between the proposed expedition and Barnaby’s being posted at the stable-door as sentry; to which Hugh cautiously replied in these words:
‘Why, the people we mean to visit, were friends of his, once upon a time, and I know that much of him to feel pretty sure that if he thought we were going to do them any harm, he’d be no friend to our side, but would lend a ready hand to the other. So I’ve persuaded him (for I know him of old) that Lord George has picked him out to guard this place to-morrow while we’re away, and that it’s a great honour—and so he’s on duty now, and as proud of it as if he was a general. Ha ha! What do you say to me for a careful man as well as a devil of a one?’
Mr Dennis exhausted himself in compliments, and then added,
‘But about the expedition itself—’
‘About that,’ said Hugh, ‘you shall hear all particulars from me and the great captain conjointly and both together—for see, he’s waking up. Rouse yourself, lion-heart. Ha ha! Put a good face upon it, and drink again. Another hair of the dog that bit you, captain! Call for drink! There’s enough of gold and silver cups and candlesticks buried underneath my bed,’ he added, rolling back the straw, and pointing to where the ground was newly turned, ‘to pay for it, if it was a score of casks full. Drink, captain!’
Mr Tappertit received these jovial promptings with a very bad grace, being much the worse, both in mind and body, for his two nights of debauch, and but indifferently able to stand upon his legs. With Hugh’s assistance, however, he contrived to stagger to the pump; and having refreshed himself with an abundant draught of cold water, and a copious shower of the same refreshing liquid on his head and face, he ordered some rum and milk to be served; and upon that innocent beverage and some biscuits and cheese made a pretty hearty meal. That done, he disposed himself in an easy attitude on the ground beside his two companions (who were carousing after their own tastes), and proceeded to enlighten Mr Dennis in reference to to-morrow’s project.
That their conversation was an interesting one, was rendered manifest by its length, and by the close attention of all three. That it was not of an oppressively grave character, but was enlivened by various pleasantries arising out of the subject, was clear from their loud and frequent roars of laughter, which startled Barnaby on his post, and made him wonder at their levity. But he was not summoned to join them, until they had eaten, and drunk, and slept, and talked together for some hours; not, indeed, until the twilight; when they informed him that they were about to make a slight demonstration in the streets—just to keep the people’s hands in, as it was Sunday night, and the public might otherwise be disappointed—and that he was free to accompany them if he would.
Without the slightest preparation, saving that they carried clubs and wore the blue cockade, they sallied out into the streets; and, with no more settled design than that of doing as much mischief as they could, paraded them at random. Their numbers rapidly increasing, they soon divided into parties; and agreeing to meet by-and-by, in the fields near Welbeck Street, scoured the town in various directions. The largest body, and that which augmented with the greatest rapidity, was the one to which Hugh and Barnaby belonged. This took its way towards Moorfields, where there was a rich chapel, and in which neighbourhood several Catholic families were known to reside.
Beginning with the private houses so occupied, they broke open the doors and windows; and while they destroyed the furniture and left but the bare walls, made a sharp search for tools and engines of destruction, such as hammers, pokers, axes, saws, and such like instruments. Many of the rioters made belts of cord, of handkerchiefs, or any material they found at hand, and wore these weapons as openly as pioneers upon a field-day. There was not the least disguise or concealment—indeed, on this night, very little excitement or hurry. From the chapels, they tore down and took away the very altars, benches, pulpits, pews, and flooring; from the dwelling-houses, the very wainscoting and stairs. This Sunday evening’s recreation they pursued like mere workmen who had a certain task to do, and did it. Fifty resolute men might have turned them at any moment; a single company of soldiers could have scattered them like dust; but no man interposed, no authority restrained them, and, except by the terrified persons who fled from their approach, they were as little heeded as if they were pursuing their lawful occupations with the utmost sobriety and good conduct.
In the same manner, they marched to the place of rendezvous agreed upon, made great fires in the fields, and reserving the most valuable of their spoils, burnt the rest. Priestly garments, images of saints, rich stuffs and ornaments, altar-furniture and household goods, were cast into the flames, and shed a glare on the whole country round; but they danced and howled, and roared about these fires till they were tired, and were never for an instant checked.
0241m
As the main body filed off from this scene of action, and passed down Welbeck Street, they came upon Gashford, who had been a witness of their proceedings, and was walking stealthily along the pavement. Keeping up with him, and yet not seeming to speak, Hugh muttered in his ear:
‘Is this better, master?’
‘No,’ said Gashford. ‘It is not.’
‘What would you have?’ said Hugh. ‘Fevers are never at their height at once. They must get on by degrees.’
‘I would have you,’ said Gashford, pinching his arm with such malevolence that his nails seemed to meet in the skin; ‘I would have you put some meaning into your work. Fools! Can you make no better bonfires than of rags and scraps? Can you burn nothing whole?’
‘A little patience, master,’ said Hugh. ‘Wait but a few hours, and you shall see. Look for a redness in the sky, to-morrow night.’
With that, he fell back into his place beside Barnaby; and when the secretary looked after him, both were lost in the crowd.
0248m
The next day was ushered in by merry peals of bells, and by the firing of the Tower guns; flags were hoisted on many of the church-steeples; the usual demonstrations were made in honour of the anniversary of the King’s birthday; and every man went about his pleasure or business as if the city were in perfect order, and there were no half-smouldering embers in its secret places, which, on the approach of night, would kindle up again and scatter ruin and dismay abroad. The leaders of the riot, rendered still more daring by the success of last night and by the booty they had acquired, kept steadily together, and only thought of implicating the mass of their followers so deeply that no hope of pardon or reward might tempt them to betray their more notorious confederates into the hands of justice.
Indeed, the sense of having gone too far to be forgiven, held the timid together no less than the bold. Many who would readily have pointed out the foremost rioters and given evidence against them, felt that escape by that means was hopeless, when their every act had been observed by scores of people who had taken no part in the disturbances; who had suffered in their persons, peace, or property, by the outrages of the mob; who would be most willing witnesses; and whom the government would, no doubt, prefer to any King’s evidence that might be offered. Many of this class had deserted their usual occupations on the Saturday morning; some had been seen by their employers active in the tumult; others knew they must be suspected, and that they would be discharged if they returned; others had been desperate from the beginning, and comforted themselves with the homely proverb, that, being hanged at all, they might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. They all hoped and believed, in a greater or less degree, that the government they seemed to have paralysed, would, in its terror, come to terms with them in the end, and suffer them to make their own conditions. The least sanguine among them reasoned with himself that, at the worst, they were too many to be all punished, and that he had as good a chance of escape as any other man. The great mass never reasoned or thought at all, but were stimulated by their own headlong passions, by poverty, by ignorance, by the love of mischief, and the hope of plunder.
One other circumstance is worthy of remark; and that is, that from the moment of their first outbreak at Westminster, every symptom of order or preconcerted arrangement among them vanished. When they divided into parties and ran to different quarters of the town, it was on the spontaneous suggestion of the moment. Each party swelled as it went along, like rivers as they roll towards the sea; new leaders sprang up as they were wanted, disappeared when the necessity was over, and reappeared at the next crisis. Each tumult took shape and form from the circumstances of the moment; sober workmen, going home from their day’s labour, were seen to cast down their baskets of tools and become rioters in an instant; mere boys on errands did the like. In a word, a moral plague ran through the city. The noise, and hurry, and excitement, had for hundreds and hundreds an attraction they had no firmness to resist. The contagion spread like a dread fever: an infectious madness, as yet not near its height, seized on new victims every hour, and society began to tremble at their ravings.
It was between two and three o’clock in the afternoon when Gashford looked into the lair described in the last chapter, and seeing only Barnaby and Dennis there, inquired for Hugh.
He was out, Barnaby told him; had gone out more than an hour ago; and had not yet returned.
‘Dennis!’ said the smiling secretary, in his smoothest voice, as he sat down cross-legged on a barrel, ‘Dennis!’
The hangman struggled into a sitting posture directly, and with his eyes wide open, looked towards him.
‘How do you do, Dennis?’ said Gashford, nodding. ‘I hope you have suffered no inconvenience from your late exertions, Dennis?’
‘I always will say of you, Muster Gashford,’ returned the hangman, staring at him, ‘that that ‘ere quiet way of yours might almost wake a dead man. It is,’ he added, with a muttered oath—still staring at him in a thoughtful manner—‘so awful sly!’
‘So distinct, eh Dennis?’
‘Distinct!’ he answered, scratching his head, and keeping his eyes upon the secretary’s face; ‘I seem to hear it, Muster Gashford, in my wery bones.’
‘I am very glad your sense of hearing is so sharp, and that I succeed in making myself so intelligible,’ said Gashford, in his unvarying, even tone. ‘Where is your friend?’
Mr Dennis looked round as in expectation of beholding him asleep upon his bed of straw; then remembering he had seen him go out, replied:
‘I can’t say where he is, Muster Gashford, I expected him back afore now. I hope it isn’t time that we was busy, Muster Gashford?’
‘Nay,’ said the secretary, ‘who should know that as well as you? How can I tell you, Dennis? You are perfect master of your own actions, you know, and accountable to nobody—except sometimes to the law, eh?’
Dennis, who was very much baffled by the cool matter-of-course manner of this reply, recovered his self-possession on his professional pursuits being referred to, and pointing towards Barnaby, shook his head and frowned.
‘Hush!’ cried Barnaby.
‘Ah! Do hush about that, Muster Gashford,’ said the hangman in a low voice, ‘pop’lar prejudices—you always forget—well, Barnaby, my lad, what’s the matter?’
‘I hear him coming,’ he answered: ‘Hark! Do you mark that? That’s his foot! Bless you, I know his step, and his dog’s too. Tramp, tramp, pit-pat, on they come together, and, ha ha ha!—and here they are!’ he cried, joyfully welcoming Hugh with both hands, and then patting him fondly on the back, as if instead of being the rough companion he was, he had been one of the most prepossessing of men. ‘Here he is, and safe too! I am glad to see him back again, old Hugh!’
‘I’m a Turk if he don’t give me a warmer welcome always than any man of sense,’ said Hugh, shaking hands with him with a kind of ferocious friendship, strange enough to see. ‘How are you, boy?’
‘Hearty!’ cried Barnaby, waving his hat. ‘Ha ha ha! And merry too, Hugh! And ready to do anything for the good cause, and the right, and to help the kind, mild, pale-faced gentleman—the lord they used so ill—eh, Hugh?’
‘Ay!’ returned his friend, dropping his hand, and looking at Gashford for an instant with a changed expression before he spoke to him. ‘Good day, master!’
‘And good day to you,’ replied the secretary, nursing his leg.
‘And many good days—whole years of them, I hope. You are heated.’
‘So would you have been, master,’ said Hugh, wiping his face, ‘if you’d been running here as fast as I have.’
‘You know the news, then? Yes, I supposed you would have heard it.’
‘News! what news?’
‘You don’t?’ cried Gashford, raising his eyebrows with an exclamation of surprise. ‘Dear me! Come; then I AM the first to make you acquainted with your distinguished position, after all. Do you see the King’s Arms a-top?’ he smilingly asked, as he took a large paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and held it out for Hugh’s inspection.
‘Well!’ said Hugh. ‘What’s that to me?’
‘Much. A great deal,’ replied the secretary. ‘Read it.’
‘I told you, the first time I saw you, that I couldn’t read,’ said Hugh, impatiently. ‘What in the Devil’s name’s inside of it?’
‘It is a proclamation from the King in Council,’ said Gashford, ‘dated to-day, and offering a reward of five hundred pounds—five hundred pounds is a great deal of money, and a large temptation to some people—to any one who will discover the person or persons most active in demolishing those chapels on Saturday night.’
‘Is that all?’ cried Hugh, with an indifferent air. ‘I knew of that.’
‘Truly I might have known you did,’ said Gashford, smiling, and folding up the document again. ‘Your friend, I might have guessed—indeed I did guess—was sure to tell you.’
‘My friend!’ stammered Hugh, with an unsuccessful effort to appear surprised. ‘What friend?’
‘Tut tut—do you suppose I don’t know where you have been?’ retorted Gashford, rubbing his hands, and beating the back of one on the palm of the other, and looking at him with a cunning eye. ‘How dull you think me! Shall I say his name?’
‘No,’ said Hugh, with a hasty glance towards Dennis.
‘You have also heard from him, no doubt,’ resumed the secretary, after a moment’s pause, ‘that the rioters who have been taken (poor fellows) are committed for trial, and that some very active witnesses have had the temerity to appear against them. Among others—’ and here he clenched his teeth, as if he would suppress by force some violent words that rose upon his tongue; and spoke very slowly. ‘Among others, a gentleman who saw the work going on in Warwick Street; a Catholic gentleman; one Haredale.’
Hugh would have prevented his uttering the word, but it was out already. Hearing the name, Barnaby turned swiftly round.
‘Duty, duty, bold Barnaby!’ cried Hugh, assuming his wildest and most rapid manner, and thrusting into his hand his staff and flag which leant against the wall. ‘Mount guard without loss of time, for we are off upon our expedition. Up, Dennis, and get ready! Take care that no one turns the straw upon my bed, brave Barnaby; we know what’s underneath it—eh? Now, master, quick! What you have to say, say speedily, for the little captain and a cluster of ‘em are in the fields, and only waiting for us. Sharp’s the word, and strike’s the action. Quick!’
Barnaby was not proof against this bustle and despatch. The look of mingled astonishment and anger which had appeared in his face when he turned towards them, faded from it as the words passed from his memory, like breath from a polished mirror; and grasping the weapon which Hugh forced upon him, he proudly took his station at the door, beyond their hearing.
‘You might have spoiled our plans, master,’ said Hugh. ‘YOU, too, of all men!’
‘Who would have supposed that HE would be so quick?’ urged Gashford.
‘He’s as quick sometimes—I don’t mean with his hands, for that you know, but with his head—as you or any man,’ said Hugh. ‘Dennis, it’s time we were going; they’re waiting for us; I came to tell you. Reach me my stick and belt. Here! Lend a hand, master. Fling this over my shoulder, and buckle it behind, will you?’
‘Brisk as ever!’ said the secretary, adjusting it for him as he desired.
‘A man need be brisk to-day; there’s brisk work a-foot.’
‘There is, is there?’ said Gashford. He said it with such a provoking assumption of ignorance, that Hugh, looking over his shoulder and angrily down upon him, replied:
‘Is there! You know there is! Who knows better than you, master, that 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 ithismaster; 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!’
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.’
‘Well!’ said Solomon, rising, to divert the attention of his two friends, who tittered at this retort: ‘believed or disbelieved, it’s true; and true or not, if we mean to go to London, we must be going at once. So shake hands, Johnny, and good night.’
‘I shall shake hands,’ returned the landlord, putting his into his pockets, ‘with no man as goes to London on such nonsensical errands.’
The three cronies were therefore reduced to the necessity of shaking his elbows; having performed that ceremony, and brought from the house their hats, and sticks, and greatcoats, they bade him good night and departed; promising to bring him on the morrow full and true accounts of the real state of the city, and if it were quiet, to give him the full merit of his victory.
John Willet looked after them, as they plodded along the road in the rich glow of a summer evening; and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, laughed inwardly at their folly, until his sides were sore. When he had quite exhausted himself—which took some time, for he laughed as slowly as he thought and spoke—he sat himself comfortably with his back to the house, put his legs upon the bench, then his apron over his face, and fell sound asleep.
How long he slept, matters not; but it was for no brief space, for when he awoke, the rich light had faded, the sombre hues of night were falling fast upon the landscape, and a few bright stars were already twinkling overhead. The birds were all at roost, the daisies on the green had closed their fairy hoods, the honeysuckle twining round the porch exhaled its perfume in a twofold degree, as though it lost its coyness at that silent time and loved to shed its fragrance on the night; the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green leaves. How tranquil, and how beautiful it was!
Was there no sound in the air, besides the gentle rustling of the trees and the grasshopper’s merry chirp? Hark! Something very faint and distant, not unlike the murmuring in a sea-shell. Now it grew louder, fainter now, and now it altogether died away. Presently, it came again, subsided, came once more, grew louder, fainter—swelled into a roar. It was on the road, and varied with its windings. All at once it burst into a distinct sound—the voices, and the tramping feet of many men.
It is questionable whether old John Willet, even then, would have thought of the rioters but for the cries of his cook and housemaid, who ran screaming upstairs and locked themselves into one of the old garrets,—shrieking dismally when they had done so, by way of rendering their place of refuge perfectly secret and secure. These two females did afterwards depone that Mr Willet in his consternation uttered but one word, and called that up the stairs in a stentorian voice, six distinct times. But as this word was a monosyllable, which, however inoffensive when applied to the quadruped it denotes, is highly reprehensible when used in connection with females of unimpeachable character, many persons were inclined to believe that the young women laboured under some hallucination caused by excessive fear; and that their ears deceived them.
Be this as it may, John Willet, in whom the very uttermost extent of dull-headed perplexity supplied the place of courage, stationed himself in the porch, and waited for their coming up. Once, it dimly occurred to him that there was a kind of door to the house, which had a lock and bolts; and at the same time some shadowy ideas of shutters to the lower windows, flitted through his brain. But he stood stock still, looking down the road in the direction in which the noise was rapidly advancing, and did not so much as take his hands out of his pockets.
He had not to wait long. A dark mass, looming through a cloud of dust, soon became visible; the mob quickened their pace; shouting and whooping like savages, they came rushing on pell mell; and in a few seconds he was bandied from hand to hand, in the heart of a crowd of men.
‘Halloa!’ cried a voice he knew, as the man who spoke came cleaving through the throng. ‘Where is he? Give him to me. Don’t hurt him. How now, old Jack! Ha ha ha!’
Mr Willet looked at him, and saw it was Hugh; but he said nothing, and thought nothing.
‘These lads are thirsty and must drink!’ cried Hugh, thrusting him back towards the house. ‘Bustle, Jack, bustle. Show us the best—the very best—the over-proof that you keep for your own drinking, Jack!’
John faintly articulated the words, ‘Who’s to pay?’
‘He says “Who’s to pay?”’ cried Hugh, with a roar of laughter which was loudly echoed by the crowd. Then turning to John, he added, ‘Pay! Why, nobody.’
John stared round at the mass of faces—some grinning, some fierce, some lighted up by torches, some indistinct, some dusky and shadowy: some looking at him, some at his house, some at each other—and while he was, as he thought, in the very act of doing so, found himself, without any consciousness of having moved, in the bar; sitting down in an arm-chair, and watching the destruction of his property, as if it were some queer play or entertainment, of an astonishing and stupefying nature, but having no reference to himself—that he could make out—at all.
Yes. Here was the bar—the bar that the boldest never entered without special invitation—the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed ground: here it was, crammed with men, clubs, sticks, torches, pistols; filled with a deafening noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; changed all at once into a bear-garden, a madhouse, an infernal temple: men darting in and out, by door and window, smashing the glass, turning the taps, drinking liquor out of China punchbowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking private and personal pipes, cutting down the sacred grove of lemons, hacking and hewing at the celebrated cheese, breaking open inviolable drawers, putting things in their pockets which didn’t belong to them, dividing his own money before his own eyes, wantonly wasting, breaking, pulling down and tearing up: nothing quiet, nothing private: men everywhere—above, below, overhead, in the bedrooms, in the kitchen, in the yard, in the stables—clambering in at windows when there were doors wide open; dropping out of windows when the stairs were handy; leaping over the bannisters into chasms of passages: new faces and figures presenting themselves every instant—some yelling, some singing, some fighting, some breaking glass and crockery, some laying the dust with the liquor they couldn’t drink, some ringing the bells till they pulled them down, others beating them with pokers till they beat them into fragments: more men still—more, more, more—swarming on like insects: noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plunder, fear, and ruin!
Nearly all the time while John looked on at this bewildering scene, Hugh kept near him; and though he was the loudest, wildest, most destructive villain there, he saved his old master’s bones a score of times. Nay, even when Mr Tappertit, excited by liquor, came up, and in assertion of his prerogative politely kicked John Willet on the shins, Hugh bade him return the compliment; and if old John had had sufficient presence of mind to understand this whispered direction, and to profit by it, he might no doubt, under Hugh’s protection, have done so with impunity.
At length the band began to reassemble outside the house, and to call to those within, to join them, for they were losing time. These murmurs increasing, and attaining a high pitch, Hugh, and some of those who yet lingered in the bar, and who plainly were the leaders of the troop, took counsel together, apart, as to what was to be done with John, to keep him quiet until their Chigwell work was over. Some proposed to set the house on fire and leave him in it; others, that he should be reduced to a state of temporary insensibility, by knocking on the head; others, that he should be sworn to sit where he was until to-morrow at the same hour; others again, that he should be gagged and taken off with them, under a sufficient guard. All these propositions being overruled, it was concluded, at last, to bind him in his chair, and the word was passed for Dennis.
‘Look’ee here, Jack!’ said Hugh, striding up to him: ‘We are going to tie you, hand and foot, but otherwise you won’t be hurt. D’ye hear?’
John Willet looked at another man, as if he didn’t know which was the speaker, and muttered something about an ordinary every Sunday at two o’clock.
‘You won’t be hurt I tell you, Jack—do you hear me?’ roared Hugh, impressing the assurance upon him by means of a heavy blow on the back. ‘He’s so dead scared, he’s woolgathering, I think. Give him a drop of something to drink here. Hand over, one of you.’
A glass of liquor being passed forward, Hugh poured the contents down old John’s throat. Mr Willet feebly smacked his lips, thrust his hand into his pocket, and inquired what was to pay; adding, as he looked vacantly round, that he believed there was a trifle of broken glass—
‘He’s out of his senses for the time, it’s my belief,’ said Hugh, after shaking him, without any visible effect upon his system, until his keys rattled in his pocket. ‘Where’s that Dennis?’
The word was again passed, and presently Mr Dennis, with a long cord bound about his middle, something after the manner of a friar, came hurrying in, attended by a body-guard of half-a-dozen of his men.
‘Come! Be alive here!’ cried Hugh, stamping his foot upon the ground. ‘Make haste!’
Dennis, with a wink and a nod, unwound the cord from about his person, and raising his eyes to the ceiling, looked all over it, and round the walls and cornice, with a curious eye; then shook his head.
‘Move, man, can’t you!’ cried Hugh, with another impatient stamp of his foot. ‘Are we to wait here, till the cry has gone for ten miles round, and our work’s interrupted?’
‘It’s all very fine talking, brother,’ answered Dennis, stepping towards him; ‘but unless—’ and here he whispered in his ear—‘unless we do it over the door, it can’t be done at all in this here room.’
‘What can’t?’ Hugh demanded.
‘What can’t!’ retorted Dennis. ‘Why, the old man can’t.’
‘Why, you weren’t going to hang him!’ cried Hugh.
‘No, brother?’ returned the hangman with a stare. ‘What else?’
Hugh made no answer, but snatching the rope from his companion’s hand, proceeded to bind old John himself; but his very first move was so bungling and unskilful, that Mr Dennis entreated, almost with tears in his eyes, that he might be permitted to perform the duty. Hugh consenting, he achieved it in a twinkling.
‘There,’ he said, looking mournfully at John Willet, who displayed no more emotion in his bonds than he had shown out of them. ‘That’s what I call pretty and workmanlike. He’s quite a picter now. But, brother, just a word with you—now that he’s ready trussed, as one may say, wouldn’t it be better for all parties if we was to work him off? It would read uncommon well in the newspapers, it would indeed. The public would think a great deal more on us!’
Hugh, inferring what his companion meant, rather from his gestures than his technical mode of expressing himself (to which, as he was ignorant of his calling, he wanted the clue), rejected this proposition for the second time, and gave the word ‘Forward!’ which was echoed by a hundred voices from without.
‘To the Warren!’ shouted Dennis as he ran out, followed by the rest. ‘A witness’s house, my lads!’
A loud yell followed, and the whole throng hurried off, mad for pillage and destruction. Hugh lingered behind for a few moments to stimulate himself with more drink, and to set all the taps running, a few of which had accidentally been spared; then, glancing round the despoiled and plundered room, through whose shattered window the rioters had thrust the Maypole itself,—for even that had been sawn down,—lighted a torch, clapped the mute and motionless John Willet on the back, and waving his light above his head, and uttering a fierce shout, hastened after his companions.