Barnaby Rudge — A Tale Of The Riots Of Eighty

by Charles Dickens

  “Would you have had me come myself?” returned the other.

  “Humph! Perhaps not. I was before the jail on Tuesday night, but missed you in the crowd. I was out last night, too. There was good work last night—gay work—profitable work'—he added, rattling the money in his pockets.

  “Have you—”

  —'Seen your good lady? Yes.”

  “Do you mean to tell me more, or not?”

  “I'll tell you all,” returned the blind man, with a laugh. “Excuse me—but I love to see you so impatient. There's energy in it.”

  “Does she consent to say the word that may save me?”

  “No,” returned the blind man emphatically, as he turned his face towards him. “No. Thus it is. She has been at death's door since she lost her darling—has been insensible, and I know not what. I tracked her to a hospital, and presented myself (with your leave) at her bedside. Our talk was not a long one, for she was weak, and there being people near I was not quite easy. But I told her all that you and I agreed upon, and pointed out the young gentleman's position, in strong terms. She tried to soften me, but that, of course (as I told her), was lost time. She cried and moaned, you may be sure; all women do. Then, of a sudden, she found her voice and strength, and said that Heaven would help her and her innocent son; and that to Heaven she appealed against us—which she did; in really very pretty language, I assure you. I advised her, as a friend, not to count too much on assistance from any such distant quarter—recommended her to think of it—told her where I lived— said I knew she would send to me before noon, next day—and left her, either in a faint or shamming.”

  When he had concluded this narration, during which he had made several pauses, for the convenience of cracking and eating nuts, of which he seemed to have a pocketful, the blind man pulled a flask from his pocket, took a draught himself, and offered it to his companion.

  “You won't, won't you?” he said, feeling that he pushed it from him. “Well! Then the gallant gentleman who's lodging with you, will. Hallo, bully!”

  “Death!” said the other, holding him back. “Will you tell me what I am to do!”

  “Do! Nothing easier. Make a moonlight flitting in two hours” time with the young gentleman (he's quite ready to go; I have been giving him good advice as we came along), and get as far from London as you can. Let me know where you are, and leave the rest to me. She MUST come round; she can't hold out long; and as to the chances of your being retaken in the meanwhile, why it wasn't one man who got out of Newgate, but three hundred. Think of that, for your comfort.”

  “We must support life. How?”

  “How!” repeated the blind man. “By eating and drinking. And how get meat and drink, but by paying for it! Money!” he cried, slapping his pocket. “Is money the word? Why, the streets have been running money. Devil send that the sport's not over yet, for these are jolly times; golden, rare, roaring, scrambling times. Hallo, bully! Hallo! Hallo! Drink, bully, drink. Where are ye there! Hallo!”

  With such vociferations, and with a boisterous manner which bespoke his perfect abandonment to the general licence and disorder, he groped his way towards the shed, where Hugh and Barnaby were sitting on the ground.

  “Put it about!” he cried, handing his flask to Hugh. “The kennels run with wine and gold. Guineas and strong water flow from the very pumps. About with it, don't spare it!”

  Exhausted, unwashed, unshorn, begrimed with smoke and dust, his hair clotted with blood, his voice quite gone, so that he spoke in whispers; his skin parched up by fever, his whole body bruised and cut, and beaten about, Hugh still took the flask, and raised it to his lips. He was in the act of drinking, when the front of the shed was suddenly darkened, and Dennis stood before them.

  “No offence, no offence,” said that personage in a conciliatory tone, as Hugh stopped in his draught, and eyed him, with no pleasant look, from head to foot. “No offence, brother. Barnaby here too, eh? How are you, Barnaby? And two other gentlemen! Your humble servant, gentlemen. No offence to YOU either, I hope. Eh, brothers?”

  Notwithstanding that he spoke in this very friendly and confident manner, he seemed to have considerable hesitation about entering, and remained outside the roof. He was rather better dressed than usual: wearing the same suit of threadbare black, it is true, but having round his neck an unwholesome-looking cravat of a yellowish white; and, on his hands, great leather gloves, such as a gardener might wear in following his trade. His shoes were newly greased, and ornamented with a pair of rusty iron buckles; the packthread at his knees had been renewed; and where he wanted buttons, he wore pins. Altogether, he had something the look of a tipstaff, or a bailiff's follower, desperately faded, but who had a notion of keeping up the appearance of a professional character, and making the best of the worst means.

  “You're very snug here,” said Mr Dennis, pulling out a mouldy pocket-handkerchief, which looked like a decomposed halter, and wiping his forehead in a nervous manner.

  “Not snug enough to prevent your finding us, it seems,” Hugh answered, sulkily.

  “Why I'll tell you what, brother,” said Dennis, with a friendly smile, “when you don't want me to know which way you're riding, you must wear another sort of bells on your horse. Ah! I know the sound of them you wore last night, and have got quick ears for “em; that's the truth. Well, but how are you, brother?”

  He had by this time approached, and now ventured to sit down by him.

  “How am I?” answered Hugh. “Where were you yesterday? Where did you go when you left me in the jail? Why did you leave me? And what did you mean by rolling your eyes and shaking your fist at me, eh?”

  “I shake my fist!—at you, brother!” said Dennis, gently checking Hugh's uplifted hand, which looked threatening.

  “Your stick, then; it's all one.”

  “Lord love you, brother, I meant nothing. You don't understand me by half. I shouldn't wonder now,” he added, in the tone of a desponding and an injured man, “but you thought, because I wanted them chaps left in the prison, that I was a going to desert the banners?”

  Hugh told him, with an oath, that he had thought so.

  “Well!” said Mr Dennis, mournfully, “if you an't enough to make a man mistrust his feller-creeturs, I don't know what is. Desert the banners! Me! Ned Dennis, as was so christened by his own father!—Is this axe your'n, brother?”

  Yes, it's mine,” said Hugh, in the same sullen manner as before; “it might have hurt you, if you had come in its way once or twice last night. Put it down.”

  “Might have hurt me!” said Mr Dennis, still keeping it in his hand, and feeling the edge with an air of abstraction. “Might have hurt me! and me exerting myself all the time to the wery best advantage. Here's a world! And you're not a-going to ask me to take a sup out of that “ere bottle, eh?”

  Hugh passed it towards him. As he raised it to his lips, Barnaby jumped up, and motioning them to be silent, looked eagerly out.

  “What's the matter, Barnaby?” said Dennis, glancing at Hugh and dropping the flask, but still holding the axe in his hand.

  “Hush!” he answered softly. “What do I see glittering behind the hedge?”

  “What!” cried the hangman, raising his voice to its highest pitch, and laying hold of him and Hugh. “Not SOLDIERS, surely!”

  That moment, the shed was filled with armed men; and a body of horse, galloping into the field, drew up before it.

  “There!” said Dennis, who remained untouched among them when they had seized their prisoners; “it's them two young ones, gentlemen, that the proclamation puts a price on. This other's an escaped felon. —I'm sorry for it, brother,” he added, in a tone of resignation, addressing himself to Hugh; “but you've brought it on yourself; you forced me to do it; you wouldn't respect the soundest constitootional principles, you know; you went and wiolated the wery framework of society. I had sooner have given away a trifle in charity than done this, I would upon my soul. —If you'll keep fast hold on “em, gentl
emen, I think I can make a shift to tie “em better than you can.”

  But this operation was postponed for a few moments by a new occurrence. The blind man, whose ears were quicker than most people's sight, had been alarmed, before Barnaby, by a rustling in the bushes, under cover of which the soldiers had advanced. He retreated instantly—had hidden somewhere for a minute—and probably in his confusion mistaking the point at which he had emerged, was now seen running across the open meadow.

  An officer cried directly that he had helped to plunder a house last night. He was loudly called on, to surrender. He ran the harder, and in a few seconds would have been out of gunshot. The word was given, and the men fired.

  There was a breathless pause and a profound silence, during which all eyes were fixed upon him. He had been seen to start at the discharge, as if the report had frightened him. But he neither stopped nor slackened his pace in the least, and ran on full forty yards further. Then, without one reel or stagger, or sign of faintness, or quivering of any limb, he dropped.

  Some of them hurried up to where he lay;—the hangman with them. Everything had passed so quickly, that the smoke had not yet scattered, but curled slowly off in a little cloud, which seemed like the dead man's spirit moving solemnly away. There were a few drops of blood upon the grass—more, when they turned him over— that was all.

  “Look here! Look here!” said the hangman, stooping one knee beside the body, and gazing up with a disconsolate face at the officer and men. “Here's a pretty sight!”

  “Stand out of the way,” replied the officer. “Serjeant! see what he had about him.”

  The man turned his pockets out upon the grass, and counted, besides some foreign coins and two rings, five-and-forty guineas in gold. These were bundled up in a handkerchief and carried away; the body remained there for the present, but six men and the serjeant were left to take it to the nearest public-house.

  “Now then, if you're going,” said the serjeant, clapping Dennis on the back, and pointing after the officer who was walking towards the shed.

  To which Mr Dennis only replied, “Don't talk to me!” and then repeated what he had said before, namely, “Here's a pretty sight!”

  “It's not one that you care for much, I should think,” observed the serjeant coolly.

  “Why, who,” said Mr Dennis rising, “should care for it, if I don't?”

  “Oh! I didn't know you was so tender-hearted,” said the serjeant. “That's all!”

  “Tender-hearted!” echoed Dennis. “Tender-hearted! Look at this man. Do you call THIS constitootional? Do you see him shot through and through instead of being worked off like a Briton? Damme, if I know which party to side with. You're as bad as the other. What's to become of the country if the military power's to go a superseding the ciwilians in this way? Where's this poor feller-creetur's rights as a citizen, that he didn't have ME in his last moments! I was here. I was willing. I was ready. These are nice times, brother, to have the dead crying out against us in this way, and sleep comfortably in our beds arterwards; wery nice!”

  Whether he derived any material consolation from binding the prisoners, is uncertain; most probably he did. At all events his being summoned to that work, diverted him, for the time, from these painful reflections, and gave his thoughts a more congenial occupation.

  They were not all three carried off together, but in two parties; Barnaby and his father, going by one road in the centre of a body of foot; and Hugh, fast bound upon a horse, and strongly guarded by a troop of cavalry, being taken by another.

  They had no opportunity for the least communication, in the short interval which preceded their departure; being kept strictly apart. Hugh only observed that Barnaby walked with a drooping head among his guard, and, without raising his eyes, that he tried to wave his fettered hand when he passed. For himself, he buoyed up his courage as he rode along, with the assurance that the mob would force his jail wherever it might be, and set him at liberty. But when they got into London, and more especially into Fleet Market, lately the stronghold of the rioters, where the military were rooting out the last remnant of the crowd, he saw that this hope was gone, and felt that he was riding to his death.

  Chapter 70

  Mr Dennis having despatched this piece of business without any personal hurt or inconvenience, and having now retired into the tranquil respectability of private life, resolved to solace himself with half an hour or so of female society. With this amiable purpose in his mind, he bent his steps towards the house where Dolly and Miss Haredale were still confined, and whither Miss Miggs had also been removed by order of Mr Simon Tappertit.

  As he walked along the streets with his leather gloves clasped behind him, and his face indicative of cheerful thought and pleasant calculation, Mr Dennis might have been likened unto a farmer ruminating among his crops, and enjoying by anticipation the bountiful gifts of Providence. Look where he would, some heap of ruins afforded him rich promise of a working off; the whole town appeared to have been ploughed and sown, and nurtured by most genial weather; and a goodly harvest was at hand.

  Having taken up arms and resorted to deeds of violence, with the great main object of preserving the Old Bailey in all its purity, and the gallows in all its pristine usefulness and moral grandeur, it would perhaps be going too far to assert that Mr Dennis had ever distinctly contemplated and foreseen this happy state of things. He rather looked upon it as one of those beautiful dispensations which are inscrutably brought about for the behoof and advantage of good men. He felt, as it were, personally referred to, in this prosperous ripening for the gibbet; and had never considered himself so much the pet and favourite child of Destiny, or loved that lady so well or with such a calm and virtuous reliance, in all his life.

  As to being taken up, himself, for a rioter, and punished with the rest, Mr Dennis dismissed that possibility from his thoughts as an idle chimera; arguing that the line of conduct he had adopted at Newgate, and the service he had rendered that day, would be more than a set-off against any evidence which might identify him as a member of the crowd. That any charge of companionship which might be made against him by those who were themselves in danger, would certainly go for nought. And that if any trivial indiscretion on his part should unluckily come out, the uncommon usefulness of his office, at present, and the great demand for the exercise of its functions, would certainly cause it to be winked at, and passed over. In a word, he had played his cards throughout, with great care; had changed sides at the very nick of time; had delivered up two of the most notorious rioters, and a distinguished felon to boot; and was quite at his ease.

  Saving—for there is a reservation; and even Mr Dennis was not perfectly happy—saving for one circumstance; to wit, the forcible detention of Dolly and Miss Haredale, in a house almost adjoining his own. This was a stumbling-block; for if they were discovered and released, they could, by the testimony they had it in their power to give, place him in a situation of great jeopardy; and to set them at liberty, first extorting from them an oath of secrecy and silence, was a thing not to be thought of. It was more, perhaps, with an eye to the danger which lurked in this quarter, than from his abstract love of conversation with the sex, that the hangman, quickening his steps, now hastened into their society, cursing the amorous natures of Hugh and Mr Tappertit with great heartiness, at every step he took.

  When be entered the miserable room in which they were confined, Dolly and Miss Haredale withdrew in silence to the remotest corner. But Miss Miggs, who was particularly tender of her reputation, immediately fell upon her knees and began to scream very loud, crying, “What will become of me!'—'Where is my Simmuns!'—'Have mercy, good gentlemen, on my sex's weaknesses!'—with other doleful lamentations of that nature, which she delivered with great propriety and decorum.

  “Miss, miss,” whispered Dennis, beckoning to her with his forefinger, “come here—I won't hurt you. Come here, my lamb, will you?”

  On hearing this tender epithet, Miss Miggs, who had lef
t off screaming when he opened his lips, and had listened to him attentively, began again, crying: “Oh I'm his lamb! He says I'm his lamb! Oh gracious, why wasn't I born old and ugly! Why was I ever made to be the youngest of six, and all of “em dead and in their blessed graves, excepting one married sister, which is settled in Golden Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, second bellhandle on the—!”

  “Don't I say I an't a-going to hurt you?” said Dennis, pointing to a chair. “Why miss, what's the matter?”

  “I don't know what mayn't be the matter!” cried Miss Miggs, clasping her hands distractedly. “Anything may be the matter!”

  “But nothing is, I tell you,” said the hangman. “First stop that noise and come and sit down here, will you, chuckey?”

  The coaxing tone in which he said these latter words might have failed in its object, if he had not accompanied them with sundry sharp jerks of his thumb over one shoulder, and with divers winks and thrustings of his tongue into his cheek, from which signals the damsel gathered that he sought to speak to her apart, concerning Miss Haredale and Dolly. Her curiosity being very powerful, and her jealousy by no means inactive, she arose, and with a great deal of shivering and starting back, and much muscular action among all the small bones in her throat, gradually approached him.

  “Sit down,” said the hangman.

  Suiting the action to the word, he thrust her rather suddenly and prematurely into a chair, and designing to reassure her by a little harmless jocularity, such as is adapted to please and fascinate the sex, converted his right forefinger into an ideal bradawl or gimlet, and made as though he would screw the same into her side— whereat Miss Miggs shrieked again, and evinced symptoms of faintness.

  “Lovey, my dear,” whispered Dennis, drawing his chair close to hers. “When was your young man here last, eh?”

  “MY young man, good gentleman!” answered Miggs in a tone of exquisite distress.