Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

by Charles Dickens

  Chapter 68

  While Newgate was burning on the previous night, Barnaby and hisfather, having been passed among the crowd from hand to hand, stood inSmithfield, on the outskirts of the mob, gazing at the flames like menwho had been suddenly roused from sleep. Some moments elapsed beforethey could distinctly remember where they were, or how they gotthere; or recollected that while they were standing idle and listlessspectators of the fire, they had tools in their hands which had beenhurriedly given them that they might free themselves from their fetters.

  Barnaby, heavily ironed as he was, if he had obeyed his first impulse,or if he had been alone, would have made his way back to the side ofHugh, who to his clouded intellect now shone forth with the new lustreof being his preserver and truest friend. But his father's terrorof remaining in the streets, communicated itself to him when hecomprehended the full extent of his fears, and impressed him with thesame eagerness to fly to a place of safety.

  In a corner of the market among the pens for cattle, Barnaby knelt down,and pausing every now and then to pass his hand over his father's face,or look up to him with a smile, knocked off his irons. When he had seenhim spring, a free man, to his feet, and had given vent to the transportof delight which the sight awakened, he went to work upon his own, whichsoon fell rattling down upon the ground, and left his limbs unfettered.

  Gliding away together when this task was accomplished, and passingseveral groups of men, each gathered round a stooping figure to hidehim from those who passed, but unable to repress the clanking sound ofhammers, which told that they too were busy at the same work,--the twofugitives made towards Clerkenwell, and passing thence to Islington, asthe nearest point of egress, were quickly in the fields. After wanderingabout for a long time, they found in a pasture near Finchley a poorshed, with walls of mud, and roof of grass and brambles, built forsome cowherd, but now deserted. Here, they lay down for the rest of thenight.

  They wandered to and fro when it was day, and once Barnaby went offalone to a cluster of little cottages two or three miles away, topurchase some bread and milk. But finding no better shelter, theyreturned to the same place, and lay down again to wait for night.

  Heaven alone can tell, with what vague hopes of duty, and affection;with what strange promptings of nature, intelligible to him as to a manof radiant mind and most enlarged capacity; with what dim memories ofchildren he had played with when a child himself, who had prattledof their fathers, and of loving them, and being loved; with how manyhalf-remembered, dreamy associations of his mother's grief and tears andwidowhood; he watched and tended this man. But that a vague and shadowycrowd of such ideas came slowly on him; that they taught him to be sorrywhen he looked upon his haggard face, that they overflowed his eyes whenhe stooped to kiss him, that they kept him waking in a tearful gladness,shading him from the sun, fanning him with leaves, soothing him when hestarted in his sleep--ah! what a troubled sleep it was--and wonderingwhen SHE would come to join them and be happy, is the truth. He satbeside him all that day; listening for her footsteps in every breathof air, looking for her shadow on the gently-waving grass, twining thehedge flowers for her pleasure when she came, and his when he awoke; andstooping down from time to time to listen to his mutterings, and wonderwhy he was so restless in that quiet place. The sun went down, and nightcame on, and he was still quite tranquil; busied with these thoughts, asif there were no other people in the world, and the dull cloud of smokehanging on the immense city in the distance, hid no vices, no crimes, nolife or death, or cause of disquiet--nothing but clear air.

  But the hour had now come when he must go alone to find out the blindman (a task that filled him with delight) and bring him to that place;taking especial care that he was not watched or followed on his wayback. He listened to the directions he must observe, repeated them againand again, and after twice or thrice returning to surprise his fatherwith a light-hearted laugh, went forth, at last, upon his errand:leaving Grip, whom he had carried from the jail in his arms, to hiscare.

  Fleet of foot, and anxious to return, he sped swiftly on towards thecity, but could not reach it before the fires began, and made the nightangry with their dismal lustre. When he entered the town--it might bethat he was changed by going there without his late companions, and onno violent errand; or by the beautiful solitude in which he had passedthe day, or by the thoughts that had come upon him,--but it seemedpeopled by a legion of devils. This flight and pursuit, this cruelburning and destroying, these dreadful cries and stunning noises, wereTHEY the good lord's noble cause!

  Though almost stupefied by the bewildering scene, still he found theblind man's house. It was shut up and tenantless.

  He waited for a long while, but no one came. At last he withdrew; and ashe knew by this time that the soldiers were firing, and many people musthave been killed, he went down into Holborn, where he heard the greatcrowd was, to try if he could find Hugh, and persuade him to avoid thedanger, and return with him.

  If he had been stunned and shocked before, his horror was increased athousandfold when he got into this vortex of the riot, and not being anactor in the terrible spectacle, had it all before his eyes. But there,in the midst, towering above them all, close before the house they wereattacking now, was Hugh on horseback, calling to the rest!

  Sickened by the sights surrounding him on every side, and by the heatand roar, and crash, he forced his way among the crowd (where manyrecognised him, and with shouts pressed back to let him pass), and intime was nearly up with Hugh, who was savagely threatening some one, butwhom or what he said, he could not, in the great confusion, understand.At that moment the crowd forced their way into the house, and Hugh--itwas impossible to see by what means, in such a concourse--fell headlongdown.

  Barnaby was beside him when he staggered to his feet. It was well hemade him hear his voice, or Hugh, with his uplifted axe, would havecleft his skull in twain.

  'Barnaby--you! Whose hand was that, that struck me down?'

  'Not mine.'

  'Whose!--I say, whose!' he cried, reeling back, and looking wildlyround. 'What are you doing? Where is he? Show me!'

  'You are hurt,' said Barnaby--as indeed he was, in the head, both by theblow he had received, and by his horse's hoof. 'Come away with me.'

  As he spoke, he took the horse's bridle in his hand, turned him, anddragged Hugh several paces. This brought them out of the crowd, whichwas pouring from the street into the vintner's cellars.

  'Where's--where's Dennis?' said Hugh, coming to a stop, and checkingBarnaby with his strong arm. 'Where has he been all day? What didhe mean by leaving me as he did, in the jail, last night? Tell me,you--d'ye hear!'

  With a flourish of his dangerous weapon, he fell down upon the groundlike a log. After a minute, though already frantic with drinking andwith the wound in his head, he crawled to a stream of burning spiritwhich was pouring down the kennel, and began to drink at it as if itwere a brook of water.

  Barnaby drew him away, and forced him to rise. Though he could neitherstand nor walk, he involuntarily staggered to his horse, climbed uponhis back, and clung there. After vainly attempting to divest the animalof his clanking trappings, Barnaby sprung up behind him, snatched thebridle, turned into Leather Lane, which was close at hand, and urged thefrightened horse into a heavy trot.

  He looked back, once, before he left the street; and looked upon a sightnot easily to be erased, even from his remembrance, so long as he hadlife.

  The vintner's house with a half-a-dozen others near at hand, was onegreat, glowing blaze. All night, no one had essayed to quench theflames, or stop their progress; but now a body of soldiers were activelyengaged in pulling down two old wooden houses, which were every momentin danger of taking fire, and which could scarcely fail, if they wereleft to burn, to extend the conflagration immensely. The tumblingdown of nodding walls and heavy blocks of wood, the hooting andthe execrations of the crowd, the distant firing of other militarydetachments, the distracted looks and cries of those whose habitationswere in dang
er, the hurrying to and fro of frightened people withtheir goods; the reflections in every quarter of the sky, of deep, red,soaring flames, as though the last day had come and the whole universewere burning; the dust, and smoke, and drift of fiery particles,scorching and kindling all it fell upon; the hot unwholesome vapour,the blight on everything; the stars, and moon, and very sky,obliterated;--made up such a sum of dreariness and ruin, that it seemedas if the face of Heaven were blotted out, and night, in its rest andquiet, and softened light, never could look upon the earth again.

  But there was a worse spectacle than this--worse by far than fire andsmoke, or even the rabble's unappeasable and maniac rage. The guttersof the street, and every crack and fissure in the stones, ran withscorching spirit, which being dammed up by busy hands, overflowedthe road and pavement, and formed a great pool, into which the peopledropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps all round this fearfulpond, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, womenwith children in their arms and babies at their breasts, and drank untilthey died. While some stooped with their lips to the brink and neverraised their heads again, others sprang up from their fiery draught,and danced, half in a mad triumph, and half in the agony of suffocation,until they fell, and steeped their corpses in the liquor that had killedthem. Nor was even this the worst or most appalling kind of death thathappened on this fatal night. From the burning cellars, where theydrank out of hats, pails, buckets, tubs, and shoes, some men were drawn,alive, but all alight from head to foot; who, in their unendurableanguish and suffering, making for anything that had the look of water,rolled, hissing, in this hideous lake, and splashed up liquid firewhich lapped in all it met with as it ran along the surface, andneither spared the living nor the dead. On this last night of the greatriots--for the last night it was--the wretched victims of a senselessoutcry, became themselves the dust and ashes of the flames they hadkindled, and strewed the public streets of London.

  With all he saw in this last glance fixed indelibly upon his mind,Barnaby hurried from the city which enclosed such horrors; and holdingdown his head that he might not even see the glare of the fires upon thequiet landscape, was soon in the still country roads.

  He stopped at about half-a-mile from the shed where his father lay, andwith some difficulty making Hugh sensible that he must dismount, sunkthe horse's furniture in a pool of stagnant water, and turned the animalloose. That done, he supported his companion as well as he could, andled him slowly forward.