Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty

by Charles Dickens

  Chapter 73

  By this Friday night--for it was on Friday in the riot week, that Emmaand Dolly were rescued, by the timely aid of Joe and Edward Chester--thedisturbances were entirely quelled, and peace and order were restoredto the affrighted city. True, after what had happened, it was impossiblefor any man to say how long this better state of things might last, orhow suddenly new outrages, exceeding even those so lately witnessed,might burst forth and fill its streets with ruin and bloodshed; forthis reason, those who had fled from the recent tumults still kept ata distance, and many families, hitherto unable to procure the meansof flight, now availed themselves of the calm, and withdrew into thecountry. The shops, too, from Tyburn to Whitechapel, were still shut;and very little business was transacted in any of the places of greatcommercial resort. But, notwithstanding, and in spite of the melancholyforebodings of that numerous class of society who see with the greatestclearness into the darkest perspectives, the town remained profoundlyquiet. The strong military force disposed in every advantageous quarter,and stationed at every commanding point, held the scattered fragmentsof the mob in check; the search after rioters was prosecuted withunrelenting vigour; and if there were any among them so desperate andreckless as to be inclined, after the terrible scenes they had beheld,to venture forth again, they were so daunted by these resolute measures,that they quickly shrunk into their hiding-places, and had no thoughtbut for their safety.

  In a word, the crowd was utterly routed. Upwards of two hundred had beenshot dead in the streets. Two hundred and fifty more were lying, badlywounded, in the hospitals; of whom seventy or eighty died within a shorttime afterwards. A hundred were already in custody, and more were takenevery hour. How many perished in the conflagrations, or by their ownexcesses, is unknown; but that numbers found a terrible grave in the hotashes of the flames they had kindled, or crept into vaults and cellarsto drink in secret or to nurse their sores, and never saw the lightagain, is certain. When the embers of the fires had been black and coldfor many weeks, the labourers' spades proved this, beyond a doubt.

  Seventy-two private houses and four strong jails were destroyed in thefour great days of these riots. The total loss of property, as estimatedby the sufferers, was one hundred and fifty-five thousand pounds; at thelowest and least partial estimate of disinterested persons, it exceededone hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds. For this immense loss,compensation was soon afterwards made out of the public purse, inpursuance of a vote of the House of Commons; the sum being levied on thevarious wards in the city, on the county, and the borough of Southwark.Both Lord Mansfield and Lord Saville, however, who had been greatsufferers, refused to accept of any compensation whatever.

  The House of Commons, sitting on Tuesday with locked and guarded doors,had passed a resolution to the effect that, as soon as the tumultssubsided, it would immediately proceed to consider the petitionspresented from many of his Majesty's Protestant subjects, and would takethe same into its serious consideration. While this question was underdebate, Mr Herbert, one of the members present, indignantly rose andcalled upon the House to observe that Lord George Gordon was thensitting under the gallery with the blue cockade, the signal ofrebellion, in his hat. He was not only obliged, by those who sat near,to take it out; but offering to go into the street to pacify the mobwith the somewhat indefinite assurance that the House was prepared togive them 'the satisfaction they sought,' was actually held down in hisseat by the combined force of several members. In short, the disorderand violence which reigned triumphant out of doors, penetrated intothe senate, and there, as elsewhere, terror and alarm prevailed, andordinary forms were for the time forgotten.

  On the Thursday, both Houses had adjourned until the following Mondayse'nnight, declaring it impossible to pursue their deliberations withthe necessary gravity and freedom, while they were surrounded by armedtroops. And now that the rioters were dispersed, the citizens were besetwith a new fear; for, finding the public thoroughfares and all theirusual places of resort filled with soldiers entrusted with the free useof fire and sword, they began to lend a greedy ear to the rumours whichwere afloat of martial law being declared, and to dismal stories ofprisoners having been seen hanging on lamp-posts in Cheapside andFleet Street. These terrors being promptly dispelled by a Proclamationdeclaring that all the rioters in custody would be tried by a specialcommission in due course of law, a fresh alarm was engendered by itsbeing whispered abroad that French money had been found on some of therioters, and that the disturbances had been fomented by foreign powerswho sought to compass the overthrow and ruin of England. This report,which was strengthened by the diffusion of anonymous handbills, butwhich, if it had any foundation at all, probably owed its origin to thecircumstance of some few coins which were not English money having beenswept into the pockets of the insurgents with other miscellaneous booty,and afterwards discovered on the prisoners or the dead bodies,--causeda great sensation; and men's minds being in that excited state when theyare most apt to catch at any shadow of apprehension, was bruited aboutwith much industry.

  All remaining quiet, however, during the whole of this Friday, and onthis Friday night, and no new discoveries being made, confidence beganto be restored, and the most timid and desponding breathed again.In Southwark, no fewer than three thousand of the inhabitants formedthemselves into a watch, and patrolled the streets every hour. Nor werethe citizens slow to follow so good an example: and it being the mannerof peaceful men to be very bold when the danger is over, they wereabundantly fierce and daring; not scrupling to question the stoutestpassenger with great severity, and carrying it with a very high handover all errand-boys, servant-girls, and 'prentices.

  As day deepened into evening, and darkness crept into the nooks andcorners of the town as if it were mustering in secret and gatheringstrength to venture into the open ways, Barnaby sat in his dungeon,wondering at the silence, and listening in vain for the noise and outcrywhich had ushered in the night of late. Beside him, with his hand inhers, sat one in whose companionship he felt at peace. She was worn, andaltered, full of grief, and heavy-hearted; but the same to him.

  'Mother,' he said, after a long silence: 'how long,--how many days andnights,--shall I be kept here?'

  'Not many, dear. I hope not many.'

  'You hope! Ay, but your hoping will not undo these chains. I hope, butthey don't mind that. Grip hopes, but who cares for Grip?'

  The raven gave a short, dull, melancholy croak. It said 'Nobody,' asplainly as a croak could speak.

  'Who cares for Grip, except you and me?' said Barnaby, smoothing thebird's rumpled feathers with his hand. 'He never speaks in this place;he never says a word in jail; he sits and mopes all day in his darkcorner, dozing sometimes, and sometimes looking at the light that creepsin through the bars, and shines in his bright eye as if a spark fromthose great fires had fallen into the room and was burning yet. But whocares for Grip?'

  The raven croaked again--Nobody.

  'And by the way,' said Barnaby, withdrawing his hand from the bird, andlaying it upon his mother's arm, as he looked eagerly in her face; 'ifthey kill me--they may: I heard it said they would--what will become ofGrip when I am dead?'

  The sound of the word, or the current of his own thoughts, suggested toGrip his old phrase 'Never say die!' But he stopped short in the middleof it, drew a dismal cork, and subsided into a faint croak, as if helacked the heart to get through the shortest sentence.

  'Will they take HIS life as well as mine?' said Barnaby. 'I wish theywould. If you and I and he could die together, there would be none tofeel sorry, or to grieve for us. But do what they will, I don't fearthem, mother!'

  'They will not harm you,' she said, her tears choking her utterance.'They never will harm you, when they know all. I am sure they neverwill.'

  'Oh! Don't be too sure of that,' cried Barnaby, with a strange pleasurein the belief that she was self-deceived, and in his own sagacity. 'Theyhave marked me from the first. I heard them say so to each other whenthey brought me to this pla
ce last night; and I believe them. Don't youcry for me. They said that I was bold, and so I am, and so I will be.You may think that I am silly, but I can die as well as another.--I havedone no harm, have I?' he added quickly.

  'None before Heaven,' she answered.

  'Why then,' said Barnaby, 'let them do their worst. You told meonce--you--when I asked you what death meant, that it was nothing tobe feared, if we did no harm--Aha! mother, you thought I had forgottenthat!'

  His merry laugh and playful manner smote her to the heart. She drew himcloser to her, and besought him to talk to her in whispers and to bevery quiet, for it was getting dark, and their time was short, and shewould soon have to leave him for the night.

  'You will come to-morrow?' said Barnaby.

  Yes. And every day. And they would never part again.

  He joyfully replied that this was well, and what he wished, and what hehad felt quite certain she would tell him; and then he asked her whereshe had been so long, and why she had not come to see him when he hadbeen a great soldier, and ran through the wild schemes he had had fortheir being rich and living prosperously, and with some faint notion inhis mind that she was sad and he had made her so, tried to console andcomfort her, and talked of their former life and his old sports andfreedom: little dreaming that every word he uttered only increased hersorrow, and that her tears fell faster at the freshened recollection oftheir lost tranquillity.

  'Mother,' said Barnaby, as they heard the man approaching to close thecells for the night, 'when I spoke to you just now about my father youcried "Hush!" and turned away your head. Why did you do so? Tell me why,in a word. You thought HE was dead. You are not sorry that he is aliveand has come back to us. Where is he? Here?'

  'Do not ask any one where he is, or speak about him,' she made answer.

  'Why not?' said Barnaby. 'Because he is a stern man, and talks roughly?Well! I don't like him, or want to be with him by myself; but why notspeak about him?'

  'Because I am sorry that he is alive; sorry that he has come back;and sorry that he and you have ever met. Because, dear Barnaby, theendeavour of my life has been to keep you two asunder.'

  'Father and son asunder! Why?'

  'He has,' she whispered in his ear, 'he has shed blood. The time hascome when you must know it. He has shed the blood of one who loved himwell, and trusted him, and never did him wrong in word or deed.'

  Barnaby recoiled in horror, and glancing at his stained wrist for aninstant, wrapped it, shuddering, in his dress.

  'But,' she added hastily as the key turned in the lock, 'although weshun him, he is your father, dearest, and I am his wretched wife. Theyseek his life, and he will lose it. It must not be by our means; nay, ifwe could win him back to penitence, we should be bound to love him yet.Do not seem to know him, except as one who fled with you from the jail,and if they question you about him, do not answer them. God be with youthrough the night, dear boy! God be with you!'

  She tore herself away, and in a few seconds Barnaby was alone. He stoodfor a long time rooted to the spot, with his face hidden in his hands;then flung himself, sobbing, on his miserable bed.

  But the moon came slowly up in all her gentle glory, and the starslooked out, and through the small compass of the grated window, asthrough the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt,the face of Heaven shone bright and merciful. He raised his head;gazed upward at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the earth insadness, as if the night, more thoughtful than the day, looked down insorrow on the sufferings and evil deeds of men; and felt its peace sinkdeep into his heart. He, a poor idiot, caged in his narrow cell, was asmuch lifted up to God, while gazing on the mild light, as the freest andmost favoured man in all the spacious city; and in his ill-rememberedprayer, and in the fragment of the childish hymn, with which he sung andcrooned himself asleep, there breathed as true a spirit as ever studiedhomily expressed, or old cathedral arches echoed.

  As his mother crossed a yard on her way out, she saw, through a grateddoor which separated it from another court, her husband, walking roundand round, with his hands folded on his breast, and his head hung down.She asked the man who conducted her, if she might speak a word withthis prisoner. Yes, but she must be quick for he was locking up forthe night, and there was but a minute or so to spare. Saying this, heunlocked the door, and bade her go in.

  It grated harshly as it turned upon its hinges, but he was deaf tothe noise, and still walked round and round the little court, withoutraising his head or changing his attitude in the least. She spoke tohim, but her voice was weak, and failed her. At length she put herselfin his track, and when he came near, stretched out her hand and touchedhim.

  He started backward, trembling from head to foot; but seeing who it was,demanded why she came there. Before she could reply, he spoke again.

  'Am I to live or die? Do you murder too, or spare?'

  'My son--our son,' she answered, 'is in this prison.'

  'What is that to me?' he cried, stamping impatiently on the stonepavement. 'I know it. He can no more aid me than I can aid him. If youare come to talk of him, begone!'

  As he spoke he resumed his walk, and hurried round the court as before.When he came again to where she stood, he stopped, and said,

  'Am I to live or die? Do you repent?'

  'Oh!--do YOU?' she answered. 'Will you, while time remains? Do notbelieve that I could save you, if I dared.'

  'Say if you would,' he answered with an oath, as he tried to disengagehimself and pass on. 'Say if you would.'

  'Listen to me for one moment,' she returned; 'for but a moment. I am butnewly risen from a sick-bed, from which I never hoped to rise again. Thebest among us think, at such a time, of good intentions half-performedand duties left undone. If I have ever, since that fatal night, omittedto pray for your repentance before death--if I omitted, even then,anything which might tend to urge it on you when the horror of yourcrime was fresh--if, in our later meeting, I yielded to the dread thatwas upon me, and forgot to fall upon my knees and solemnly adjure you,in the name of him you sent to his account with Heaven, to prepare forthe retribution which must come, and which is stealing on you now--Ihumbly before you, and in the agony of supplication in which you see me,beseech that you will let me make atonement.'

  'What is the meaning of your canting words?' he answered roughly. 'Speakso that I may understand you.'

  'I will,' she answered, 'I desire to. Bear with me for a moment more.The hand of Him who set His curse on murder, is heavy on us now. Youcannot doubt it. Our son, our innocent boy, on whom His anger fellbefore his birth, is in this place in peril of his life--brought hereby your guilt; yes, by that alone, as Heaven sees and knows, for hehas been led astray in the darkness of his intellect, and that is theterrible consequence of your crime.'

  'If you come, woman-like, to load me with reproaches--' he muttered,again endeavouring to break away.

  'I do not. I have a different purpose. You must hear it. If notto-night, to-morrow; if not to-morrow, at another time. You MUST hearit. Husband, escape is hopeless--impossible.'

  'You tell me so, do you?' he said, raising his manacled hand, andshaking it. 'You!'

  'Yes,' she said, with indescribable earnestness. 'But why?'

  'To make me easy in this jail. To make the time 'twixt this and death,pass pleasantly. For my good--yes, for my good, of course,' he said,grinding his teeth, and smiling at her with a livid face.

  'Not to load you with reproaches,' she replied; 'not to aggravate thetortures and miseries of your condition, not to give you one hard word,but to restore you to peace and hope. Husband, dear husband, if you willbut confess this dreadful crime; if you will but implore forgiveness ofHeaven and of those whom you have wronged on earth; if you will dismissthese vain uneasy thoughts, which never can be realised, and will relyon Penitence and on the Truth, I promise you, in the great name of theCreator, whose image you have defaced, that He will comfort and consoleyou. And for myself,' she cried, clasping her hands, and looking upward
,'I swear before Him, as He knows my heart and reads it now, that fromthat hour I will love and cherish you as I did of old, and watch younight and day in the short interval that will remain to us, andsoothe you with my truest love and duty, and pray with you, that onethreatening judgment may be arrested, and that our boy may be spared tobless God, in his poor way, in the free air and light!'

  He fell back and gazed at her while she poured out these words, asthough he were for a moment awed by her manner, and knew not what to do.But anger and fear soon got the mastery of him, and he spurned her fromhim.

  'Begone!' he cried. 'Leave me! You plot, do you! You plot to get speechwith me, and let them know I am the man they say I am. A curse on youand on your boy.'

  'On him the curse has already fallen,' she replied, wringing her hands.

  'Let it fall heavier. Let it fall on one and all. I hate you both. Theworst has come to me. The only comfort that I seek or I can have, willbe the knowledge that it comes to you. Now go!'

  She would have urged him gently, even then, but he menaced her with hischain.

  'I say go--I say it for the last time. The gallows has me in its grasp,and it is a black phantom that may urge me on to something more. Begone!I curse the hour that I was born, the man I slew, and all the livingworld!'

  In a paroxysm of wrath, and terror, and the fear of death, he broke fromher, and rushed into the darkness of his cell, where he cast himselfjangling down upon the stone floor, and smote it with his ironed hands.The man returned to lock the dungeon door, and having done so, carriedher away.

  On that warm, balmy night in June, there were glad faces and lighthearts in all quarters of the town, and sleep, banished by the latehorrors, was doubly welcomed. On that night, families made merry intheir houses, and greeted each other on the common danger they hadescaped; and those who had been denounced, ventured into the streets;and they who had been plundered, got good shelter. Even the timorousLord Mayor, who was summoned that night before the Privy Council toanswer for his conduct, came back contented; observing to all hisfriends that he had got off very well with a reprimand, and repeatingwith huge satisfaction his memorable defence before the Council, 'thatsuch was his temerity, he thought death would have been his portion.'

  On that night, too, more of the scattered remnants of the mob weretraced to their lurking-places, and taken; and in the hospitals, anddeep among the ruins they had made, and in the ditches, and fields, manyunshrouded wretches lay dead: envied by those who had been active inthe disturbances, and who pillowed their doomed heads in the temporaryjails.

  And in the Tower, in a dreary room whose thick stone walls shut outthe hum of life, and made a stillness which the records left by formerprisoners with those silent witnesses seemed to deepen and intensify;remorseful for every act that had been done by every man among the cruelcrowd; feeling for the time their guilt his own, and their lives put inperil by himself; and finding, amidst such reflections, little comfortin fanaticism, or in his fancied call; sat the unhappy author ofall--Lord George Gordon.

  He had been made prisoner that evening. 'If you are sure it's me youwant,' he said to the officers, who waited outside with the warrant forhis arrest on a charge of High Treason, 'I am ready to accompany you--'which he did without resistance. He was conducted first before the PrivyCouncil, and afterwards to the Horse Guards, and then was taken by wayof Westminster Bridge, and back over London Bridge (for the purpose ofavoiding the main streets), to the Tower, under the strongest guard everknown to enter its gates with a single prisoner.

  Of all his forty thousand men, not one remained to bear him company.Friends, dependents, followers,--none were there. His fawning secretaryhad played the traitor; and he whose weakness had been goaded and urgedon by so many for their own purposes, was desolate and alone.