Chapter 54
Rumours of the prevailing disturbances had, by this time, begun to bepretty generally circulated through the towns and villages round London,and the tidings were everywhere received with that appetite for themarvellous and love of the terrible which have probably been among thenatural characteristics of mankind since the creation of the world.These accounts, however, appeared, to many persons at that day--asthey would to us at the present, but that we know them to be matter ofhistory--so monstrous and improbable, that a great number of those whowere resident at a distance, and who were credulous enough on otherpoints, were really unable to bring their minds to believe that suchthings could be; and rejected the intelligence they received on allhands, as wholly fabulous and absurd.
Mr Willet--not so much, perhaps, on account of his having argued andsettled the matter with himself, as by reason of his constitutionalobstinacy--was one of those who positively refused to entertain thecurrent topic for a moment. On this very evening, and perhaps at thevery time when Gashford kept his solitary watch, old John was so red inthe face with perpetually shaking his head in contradiction of his threeancient cronies and pot companions, that he was quite a phenomenon tobehold, and lighted up the Maypole Porch wherein they sat together, likea monstrous carbuncle in a fairy tale.
'Do you think, sir,' said Mr Willet, looking hard at Solomon Daisy--forit was his custom in cases of personal altercation to fasten upon thesmallest man in the party--'do you think, sir, that I'm a born fool?'
'No, no, Johnny,' returned Solomon, looking round upon the little circleof which he formed a part: 'We all know better than that. You're nofool, 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 ofmaking Mr Willet rather more dogged than before, he surveyed them with alook of deep disdain, and returned for answer:
'Then what do you mean by coming here, and telling me that this eveningyou're a-going to walk up to London together--you three--you--and havethe evidence of your own senses? An't,' said Mr Willet, putting his pipein his mouth with an air of solemn disgust, 'an't the evidence of MYsenses 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 totoe. 'You haven't got it, sir? You HAVE got it, sir. Don't I tell youthat His blessed Majesty King George the Third would no more stand arioting and rollicking in his streets, than he'd stand being crowed overby his own Parliament?'
'Yes, Johnny, but that's your sense--not your senses,' said theadventurous Mr Parkes.
'How do you know?' retorted John with great dignity. 'You're acontradicting 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 intometaphysics without exactly seeing his way out of them, stammered forthan apology and retreated from the argument. There then ensued a silenceof some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, at the expiration of whichperiod Mr Willet was observed to rumble and shake with laughter, andpresently remarked, in reference to his late adversary, 'that he hopedhe had tackled him enough.' Thereupon Messrs Cobb and Daisy laughed,and nodded, and Parkes was looked upon as thoroughly and effectually putdown.
'Do you suppose if all this was true, that Mr Haredale would beconstantly 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 twoyoung women in it, and only a couple of men, or so?'
'Ay, but then you know,' returned Solomon Daisy, 'his house is a goodishway out of London, and they do say that the rioters won't go more thantwo miles, or three at the farthest, off the stones. Besides, youknow, some of the Catholic gentlefolks have actually sent trinkets andsuchlike down here for safety--at least, so the story goes.'
'The story goes!' said Mr Willet testily. 'Yes, sir. The story goes thatyou saw a ghost last March. But nobody believes it.'
'Well!' said Solomon, rising, to divert the attention of his twofriends, who tittered at this retort: 'believed or disbelieved, it'strue; and true or not, if we mean to go to London, we must be going atonce. So shake hands, Johnny, and good night.'
'I shall shake hands,' returned the landlord, putting his into hispockets, 'with no man as goes to London on such nonsensical errands.'
The three cronies were therefore reduced to the necessity of shaking hiselbows; having performed that ceremony, and brought from the house theirhats, and sticks, and greatcoats, they bade him good night and departed;promising to bring him on the morrow full and true accounts of the realstate of the city, and if it were quiet, to give him the full merit ofhis victory.
John Willet looked after them, as they plodded along the road in therich 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 hadquite exhausted himself--which took some time, for he laughed as slowlyas he thought and spoke--he sat himself comfortably with his back to thehouse, put his legs upon the bench, then his apron over his face, andfell sound asleep.
How long he slept, matters not; but it was for no brief space, forwhen he awoke, the rich light had faded, the sombre hues of night werefalling fast upon the landscape, and a few bright stars were alreadytwinkling overhead. The birds were all at roost, the daisies on thegreen had closed their fairy hoods, the honeysuckle twining round theporch exhaled its perfume in a twofold degree, as though it lost itscoyness at that silent time and loved to shed its fragrance on thenight; the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green leaves. How tranquil, andhow beautiful it was!
Was there no sound in the air, besides the gentle rustling of thetrees and the grasshopper's merry chirp? Hark! Something very faint anddistant, 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. Itwas on the road, and varied with its windings. All at once it burst intoa distinct sound--the voices, and the tramping feet of many men.
It is questionable whether old John Willet, even then, would havethought of the rioters but for the cries of his cook and housemaid,who ran screaming upstairs and locked themselves into one of the oldgarrets,--shrieking dismally when they had done so, by way of renderingtheir place of refuge perfectly secret and secure. These two females didafterwards depone that Mr Willet in his consternation uttered but oneword, and called that up the stairs in a stentorian voice, six distincttimes. But as this word was a monosyllable, which, however inoffensivewhen applied to the quadruped it denotes, is highly reprehensible whenused in connection with females of unimpeachable character, many personswere inclined to believe that the young women laboured under somehallucination caused by excessive fear; and that their ears deceivedthem.
Be this as it may, John Willet, in whom the very uttermost extent ofdull-headed perplexity supplied the place of courage, stationed himselfin the porch, and waited for their coming up. Once, it dimly occurredto him that there was a kind of door to the house, which had a lock andbolts; and at the same time some shadowy ideas of shutters to the lowerwindows, flitted through his brain. But he stood stock still, lookingdown 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 whoopinglike savages, they came rushing on pell mell; and in a few seconds hewas 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 cleavingthrough the throng. 'Where is he? Give him to me. Don't hurt him. Hownow, old Jack! Ha ha ha!'
Mr Willet looked at him, and saw it was Hugh; but he said nothing, andthought nothing.
'These lads are thirsty and must drink!' cried Hugh, thrusting him backtowards the house. 'Bustle, Jack, bustle. Sho
w us the best--the verybest--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 wasloudly 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, somelighted up by torches, some indistinct, some dusky and shadowy: somelooking 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 anyconsciousness of having moved, in the bar; sitting down in an arm-chair,and watching the destruction of his property, as if it were some queerplay or entertainment, of an astonishing and stupefying nature, buthaving no reference to himself--that he could make out--at all.
Yes. Here was the bar--the bar that the boldest never entered withoutspecial invitation--the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed ground:here it was, crammed with men, clubs, sticks, torches, pistols; filledwith a deafening noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; changed all atonce into a bear-garden, a madhouse, an infernal temple: men dartingin 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 oflemons, hacking and hewing at the celebrated cheese, breaking openinviolable drawers, putting things in their pockets which didn't belongto 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 weredoors wide open; dropping out of windows when the stairs were handy;leaping over the bannisters into chasms of passages: new faces andfigures presenting themselves every instant--some yelling, some singing,some fighting, some breaking glass and crockery, some laying the dustwith the liquor they couldn't drink, some ringing the bells till theypulled them down, others beating them with pokers till they beat theminto fragments: more men still--more, more, more--swarming on likeinsects: noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans,plunder, fear, and ruin!
Nearly all the time while John looked on at this bewildering scene, Hughkept near him; and though he was the loudest, wildest, most destructivevillain 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 ofhis prerogative politely kicked John Willet on the shins, Hugh bade himreturn the compliment; and if old John had had sufficient presence ofmind to understand this whispered direction, and to profit by it, hemight no doubt, under Hugh's protection, have done so with impunity.
At length the band began to reassemble outside the house, and to callto those within, to join them, for they were losing time. These murmursincreasing, and attaining a high pitch, Hugh, and some of those who yetlingered in the bar, and who plainly were the leaders of the troop, tookcounsel together, apart, as to what was to be done with John, to keephim quiet until their Chigwell work was over. Some proposed to set thehouse on fire and leave him in it; others, that he should be reducedto 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 samehour; others again, that he should be gagged and taken off with them,under a sufficient guard. All these propositions being overruled, it wasconcluded, at last, to bind him in his chair, and the word was passedfor Dennis.
'Look'ee here, Jack!' said Hugh, striding up to him: 'We are going totie 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 thespeaker, and muttered something about an ordinary every Sunday at twoo'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 ofsomething to drink here. Hand over, one of you.'
A glass of liquor being passed forward, Hugh poured the contents downold John's throat. Mr Willet feebly smacked his lips, thrust his handinto his pocket, and inquired what was to pay; adding, as he lookedvacantly 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, aftershaking him, without any visible effect upon his system, until his keysrattled in his pocket. 'Where's that Dennis?'
The word was again passed, and presently Mr Dennis, with a long cordbound about his middle, something after the manner of a friar, camehurrying 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 thewalls and cornice, with a curious eye; then shook his head.
'Move, man, can't you!' cried Hugh, with another impatient stamp of hisfoot. '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 towardshim; 'but unless--' and here he whispered in his ear--'unless we do itover 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 sobungling and unskilful, that Mr Dennis entreated, almost with tearsin his eyes, that he might be permitted to perform the duty. Hughconsenting, he achieved it in a twinkling.
'There,' he said, looking mournfully at John Willet, who displayed nomore emotion in his bonds than he had shown out of them. 'That's what Icall pretty and workmanlike. He's quite a picter now. But, brother, justa word with you--now that he's ready trussed, as one may say, wouldn'tit be better for all parties if we was to work him off? It would readuncommon well in the newspapers, it would indeed. The public would thinka great deal more on us!'
Hugh, inferring what his companion meant, rather from his gestures thanhis technical mode of expressing himself (to which, as he was ignorantof his calling, he wanted the clue), rejected this proposition for thesecond time, and gave the word 'Forward!' which was echoed by a hundredvoices from without.
'To the Warren!' shouted Dennis as he ran out, followed by the rest. 'Awitness's house, my lads!'
A loud yell followed, and the whole throng hurried off, mad for pillageand destruction. Hugh lingered behind for a few moments to stimulatehimself with more drink, and to set all the taps running, a few of whichhad accidentally been spared; then, glancing round the despoiled andplundered room, through whose shattered window the rioters had thrustthe Maypole itself,--for even that had been sawn down,--lighted a torch,clapped the mute and motionless John Willet on the back, and waving hislight above his head, and uttering a fierce shout, hastened after hiscompanions.
Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty Page 54
