Barnaby Rudge — A Tale Of The Riots Of Eighty

by Charles Dickens

  They were very wrathful with him (for he had wounded two men), and even called out to those in front, to bring him forth and hang him on a lamp-post. But Gabriel was quite undaunted, and looked from Hugh and Dennis, who held him by either arm, to Simon Tappertit, who confronted him.

  “You have robbed me of my daughter,” said the locksmith, “who is far dearer to me than my life; and you may take my life, if you will. I bless God that I have been enabled to keep my wife free of this scene; and that He has made me a man who will not ask mercy at such hands as yours.”

  “And a wery game old gentleman you are,” said Mr Dennis, approvingly; “and you express yourself like a man. What's the odds, brother, whether it's a lamp-post to-night, or a featherbed ten year to come, eh?”

  The locksmith glanced at him disdainfully, but returned no other answer.

  “For my part,” said the hangman, who particularly favoured the lamp-post suggestion, “I honour your principles. They're mine exactly. In such sentiments as them,” and here he emphasised his discourse with an oath, “I'm ready to meet you or any man halfway.—Have you got a bit of cord anywheres handy? Don't put yourself out of the way, if you haven't. A handkecher will do.”

  “Don't be a fool, master,” whispered Hugh, seizing Varden roughly by the shoulder; “but do as you're bid. You'll soon hear what you're wanted for. Do it!”

  “I'll do nothing at your request, or that of any scoundrel here,” returned the locksmith. “If you want any service from me, you may spare yourselves the pains of telling me what it is. I tell you, beforehand, I'll do nothing for you.”

  Mr Dennis was so affected by this constancy on the part of the staunch old man, that he protested—almost with tears in his eyes— that to baulk his inclinations would be an act of cruelty and hard dealing to which he, for one, never could reconcile his conscience. The gentleman, he said, had avowed in so many words that he was ready for working off; such being the case, he considered it their duty, as a civilised and enlightened crowd, to work him off. It was not often, he observed, that they had it in their power to accommodate themselves to the wishes of those from whom they had the misfortune to differ. Having now found an individual who expressed a desire which they could reasonably indulge (and for himself he was free to confess that in his opinion that desire did honour to his feelings), he hoped they would decide to accede to his proposition before going any further. It was an experiment which, skilfully and dexterously performed, would be over in five minutes, with great comfort and satisfaction to all parties; and though it did not become him (Mr Dennis) to speak well of himself he trusted he might be allowed to say that he had practical knowledge of the subject, and, being naturally of an obliging and friendly disposition, would work the gentleman off with a deal of pleasure.

  These remarks, which were addressed in the midst of a frightful din and turmoil to those immediately about him, were received with great favour; not so much, perhaps, because of the hangman's eloquence, as on account of the locksmith's obstinacy. Gabriel was in imminent peril, and he knew it; but he preserved a steady silence; and would have done so, if they had been debating whether they should roast him at a slow fire.

  As the hangman spoke, there was some stir and confusion on the ladder; and directly he was silent—so immediately upon his holding his peace, that the crowd below had no time to learn what he had been saying, or to shout in response—some one at the window cried:

  “He has a grey head. He is an old man: Don't hurt him!”

  The locksmith turned, with a start, towards the place from which the words had come, and looked hurriedly at the people who were hanging on the ladder and clinging to each other.

  “Pay no respect to my grey hair, young man,” he said, answering the voice and not any one he saw. “I don't ask it. My heart is green enough to scorn and despise every man among you, band of robbers that you are!”

  This incautious speech by no means tended to appease the ferocity of the crowd. They cried again to have him brought out; and it would have gone hard with the honest locksmith, but that Hugh reminded them, in answer, that they wanted his services, and must have them.

  “So, tell him what we want,” he said to Simon Tappertit, “and quickly. And open your ears, master, if you would ever use them after to-night.”

  Gabriel folded his arms, which were now at liberty, and eyed his old “prentice in silence.

  “Lookye, Varden,” said Sim, “we're bound for Newgate.”

  “I know you are,” returned the locksmith. “You never said a truer word than that.”

  “To burn it down, I mean,” said Simon, “and force the gates, and set the prisoners at liberty. You helped to make the lock of the great door.”

  “I did,” said the locksmith. “You owe me no thanks for that—as you'll find before long.”

  “Maybe,” returned his journeyman, “but you must show us how to force it.”

  “Must I!”

  “Yes; for you know, and I don't. You must come along with us, and pick it with your own hands.”

  “When I do,” said the locksmith quietly, “my hands shall drop off at the wrists, and you shall wear them, Simon Tappertit, on your shoulders for epaulettes.”

  “We'll see that,” cried Hugh, interposing, as the indignation of the crowd again burst forth. “You fill a basket with the tools he'll want, while I bring him downstairs. Open the doors below, some of you. And light the great captain, others! Is there no business afoot, my lads, that you can do nothing but stand and grumble?”

  They looked at one another, and quickly dispersing, swarmed over the house, plundering and breaking, according to their custom, and carrying off such articles of value as happened to please their fancy. They had no great length of time for these proceedings, for the basket of tools was soon prepared and slung over a man's shoulders. The preparations being now completed, and everything ready for the attack, those who were pillaging and destroying in the other rooms were called down to the workshop. They were about to issue forth, when the man who had been last upstairs, stepped forward, and asked if the young woman in the garret (who was making a terrible noise, he said, and kept on screaming without the least cessation) was to be released?

  For his own part, Simon Tappertit would certainly have replied in the negative, but the mass of his companions, mindful of the good service she had done in the matter of the gun, being of a different opinion, he had nothing for it but to answer, Yes. The man, accordingly, went back again to the rescue, and presently returned with Miss Miggs, limp and doubled up, and very damp from much weeping.

  As the young lady had given no tokens of consciousness on their way downstairs, the bearer reported her either dead or dying; and being at some loss what to do with her, was looking round for a convenient bench or heap of ashes on which to place her senseless form, when she suddenly came upon her feet by some mysterious means, thrust back her hair, stared wildly at Mr Tappertit, cried, “My Simmuns's life is not a wictim!” and dropped into his arms with such promptitude that he staggered and reeled some paces back, beneath his lovely burden.

  “Oh bother!” said Mr Tappertit. “Here. Catch hold of her, somebody. Lock her up again; she never ought to have been let out.”

  “My Simmun!” cried Miss Miggs, in tears, and faintly. “My for ever, ever blessed Simmun!”

  “Hold up, will you,” said Mr Tappertit, in a very unresponsive tone, “I'll let you fall if you don't. What are you sliding your feet off the ground for?”

  “My angel Simmuns!” murmured Miggs—'he promised—”

  “Promised! Well, and I'll keep my promise,” answered Simon, testily. “I mean to provide for you, don't I? Stand up!”

  “Where am I to go? What is to become of me after my actions of this night!” cried Miggs. “What resting-places now remains but in the silent tombses!”

  “I wish you was in the silent tombses, I do,” cried Mr Tappertit, “and boxed up tight, in a good strong one. Here,” he cried to one of the bystanders, in
whose ear he whispered for a moment: “Take her off, will you. You understand where?”

  The fellow nodded; and taking her in his arms, notwithstanding her broken protestations, and her struggles (which latter species of opposition, involving scratches, was much more difficult of resistance), carried her away. They who were in the house poured out into the street; the locksmith was taken to the head of the crowd, and required to walk between his two conductors; the whole body was put in rapid motion; and without any shouts or noise they bore down straight on Newgate, and halted in a dense mass before the prison-gate.

  Chapter 64

  Breaking the silence they had hitherto preserved, they raised a great cry as soon as they were ranged before the jail, and demanded to speak to the governor. This visit was not wholly unexpected, for his house, which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded, the wicket-gate of the prison was closed up, and at no loophole or grating was any person to be seen. Before they had repeated their summons many times, a man appeared upon the roof of the governor's house, and asked what it was they wanted.

  Some said one thing, some another, and some only groaned and hissed. It being now nearly dark, and the house high, many persons in the throng were not aware that any one had come to answer them, and continued their clamour until the intelligence was gradually diffused through the whole concourse. Ten minutes or more elapsed before any one voice could be heard with tolerable distinctness; during which interval the figure remained perched alone, against the summer-evening sky, looking down into the troubled street.

  “Are you,” said Hugh at length, “Mr Akerman, the head jailer here?”

  “Of course he is, brother,” whispered Dennis. But Hugh, without minding him, took his answer from the man himself.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

  “You have got some friends of ours in your custody, master.”

  “I have a good many people in my custody. “ He glanced downward, as he spoke, into the jail: and the feeling that he could see into the different yards, and that he overlooked everything which was hidden from their view by the rugged walls, so lashed and goaded the mob, that they howled like wolves.

  “Deliver up our friends,” said Hugh, “and you may keep the rest.”

  “It's my duty to keep them all. I shall do my duty.”

  “If you don't throw the doors open, we shall break “em down,” said Hugh; “for we will have the rioters out.”

  “All I can do, good people,” Akerman replied, “is to exhort you to disperse; and to remind you that the consequences of any disturbance in this place, will be very severe, and bitterly repented by most of you, when it is too late.”

  He made as though he would retire when he said these words, but he was checked by the voice of the locksmith.

  “Mr Akerman,” cried Gabriel, “Mr Akerman.”

  “I will hear no more from any of you,” replied the governor, turning towards the speaker, and waving his hand.

  “But I am not one of them,” said Gabriel. “I am an honest man, Mr Akerman; a respectable tradesman—Gabriel Varden, the locksmith. You know me?”

  “You among the crowd!” cried the governor in an altered voice.

  “Brought here by force—brought here to pick the lock of the great door for them,” rejoined the locksmith. “Bear witness for me, Mr Akerman, that I refuse to do it; and that I will not do it, come what may of my refusal. If any violence is done to me, please to remember this.”

  “Is there no way (if helping you?” said the governor.

  “None, Mr Akerman. You'll do your duty, and I'll do mine. Once again, you robbers and cut-throats,” said the locksmith, turning round upon them, “I refuse. Ah! Howl till you're hoarse. I refuse.”

  “Stay—stay!” said the jailer, hastily. “Mr Varden, I know you for a worthy man, and one who would do no unlawful act except upon compulsion—”

  “Upon compulsion, sir,” interposed the locksmith, who felt that the tone in which this was said, conveyed the speaker's impression that he had ample excuse for yielding to the furious multitude who beset and hemmed him in, on every side, and among whom he stood, an old man, quite alone; “upon compulsion, sir, I'll do nothing.”

  “Where is that man,” said the keeper, anxiously, “who spoke to me just now?”

  “Here!” Hugh replied.

  “Do you know what the guilt of murder is, and that by keeping that honest tradesman at your side you endanger his life!”

  “We know it very well,” he answered, “for what else did we bring him here? Let's have our friends, master, and you shall have your friend. Is that fair, lads?”

  The mob replied to him with a loud Hurrah!

  “You see how it is, sir?” cried Varden. “Keep “em out, in King George's name. Remember what I have said. Good night!”

  There was no more parley. A shower of stones and other missiles compelled the keeper of the jail to retire; and the mob, pressing on, and swarming round the walls, forced Gabriel Varden close up to the door.

  In vain the basket of tools was laid upon the ground before him, and he was urged in turn by promises, by blows, by offers of reward, and threats of instant death, to do the office for which they had brought him there. “No,” cried the sturdy locksmith, “I will not!”

  He had never loved his life so well as then, but nothing could move him. The savage faces that glared upon him, look where he would; the cries of those who thirsted, like wild animals, for his blood; the sight of men pressing forward, and trampling down their fellows, as they strove to reach him, and struck at him above the heads of other men, with axes and with iron bars; all failed to daunt him. He looked from man to man, and face to face, and still, with quickened breath and lessening colour, cried firmly, “I will not!”

  Dennis dealt him a blow upon the face which felled him to the ground. He sprung up again like a man in the prime of life, and with blood upon his forehead, caught him by the throat.

  “You cowardly dog!” he said: “Give me my daughter. Give me my daughter.”

  They struggled together. Some cried “Kill him,” and some (but they were not near enough) strove to trample him to death. Tug as he would at the old man's wrists, the hangman could not force him to unclench his hands.

  “Is this all the return you make me, you ungrateful monster?” he articulated with great difficulty, and with many oaths.

  “Give me my daughter!” cried the locksmith, who was now as fierce as those who gathered round him: “Give me my daughter!”

  He was down again, and up, and down once more, and buffeting with a score of them, who bandied him from hand to hand, when one tall fellow, fresh from a slaughter-house, whose dress and great thighboots smoked hot with grease and blood, raised a pole-axe, and swearing a horrible oath, aimed it at the old man's uncovered head. At that instant, and in the very act, he fell himself, as if struck by lightning, and over his body a one-armed man came darting to the locksmith's side. Another man was with him, and both caught the locksmith roughly in their grasp.

  “Leave him to us!” they cried to Hugh—struggling, as they spoke, to force a passage backward through the crowd. “Leave him to us. Why do you waste your whole strength on such as he, when a couple of men can finish him in as many minutes! You lose time. Remember the prisoners! remember Barnaby!”

  The cry ran through the mob. Hammers began to rattle on the walls; and every man strove to reach the prison, and be among the foremost rank. Fighting their way through the press and struggle, as desperately as if they were in the midst of enemies rather than their own friends, the two men retreated with the locksmith between them, and dragged him through the very heart of the concourse.

  And now the strokes began to fall like hail upon the gate, and on the strong building; for those who could not reach the door, spent their fierce rage on anything—even on the great blocks of stone, which shivered their weapons into fragments, and made their hands and arms to tingle as if the walls were active in their stout resistance, and dealt
them back their blows. The clash of iron ringing upon iron, mingled with the deafening tumult and sounded high above it, as the great sledge-hammers rattled on the nailed and plated door: the sparks flew off in showers; men worked in gangs, and at short intervals relieved each other, that all their strength might be devoted to the work; but there stood the portal still, as grim and dark and strong as ever, and, saving for the dints upon its battered surface, quite unchanged.

  While some brought all their energies to bear upon this toilsome task; and some, rearing ladders against the prison, tried to clamber to the summit of the walls they were too short to scale; and some again engaged a body of police a hundred strong, and beat them back and trod them under foot by force of numbers; others besieged the house on which the jailer had appeared, and driving in the door, brought out his furniture, and piled it up against the prison-gate, to make a bonfire which should burn it down. As soon as this device was understood, all those who had laboured hitherto, cast down their tools and helped to swell the heap; which reached half-way across the street, and was so high, that those who threw more fuel on the top, got up by ladders. When all the keeper's goods were flung upon this costly pile, to the last fragment, they smeared it with the pitch, and tar, and rosin they had brought, and sprinkled it with turpentine. To all the woodwork round the prison-doors they did the like, leaving not a joist or beam untouched. This infernal christening performed, they fired the pile with lighted matches and with blazing tow, and then stood by, awaiting the result.

  The furniture being very dry, and rendered more combustible by wax and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison-wall, and twining up its loftly front like burning serpents. At first they crowded round the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their looks: but when it grew hotter and fiercer—when it crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great furnace—when it shone upon the opposite houses, and lighted up not only the pale and wondering faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of each habitation— when through the deep red heat and glow, the fire was seen sporting and toying with the door, now clinging to its obdurate surface, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and soaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to its ruin—when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock of St Sepulchre's so often pointing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the unwonted light like something richly jewelled— when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, dotting the longest distance in the fiery vista with their specks of brightness—when wall and tower, and roof and chimney-stack, seemed drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger— when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon the view, and things the most familiar put on some new aspect—then the mob began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and shouts, and clamour, such as happily is seldom heard, bestirred themselves to feed the fire, and keep it at its height.