Barnaby Rudge Part 22

'Does my lord ask ME,' whined Gashford, drawing his chair nearer with an injured air, and laying his broad flat hand upon the table; 'ME,' he repeated, bending the dark hollows of his eyes upon him with an unwholesome smile, 'who, stricken by the magic of his eloquence in Scotland but a year ago, abjured the errors of the Romish church, and clung to him as one whose timely hand had plucked me from a pit?'

'True. No--No. I--I didn't mean it,' replied the other, shaking him by the hand, rising from his seat, and pacing restlessly about the room. 'It's a proud thing to lead the people, Gashford,' he added as he made a sudden halt.

'By force of reason too,' returned the pliant secretary.

'Ay, to be sure. They may cough and jeer, and groan in Parliament, and call me fool and madman, but which of them can raise this human sea and make it swell and roar at pleasure? Not one.'

'Not one,' repeated Gashford.

'Which of them can say for his honesty, what I can say for mine; which of them has refused a minister's bribe of one thousand pounds a year, to resign his seat in favour of another? Not one.'

'Not one,' repeated Gashford again--taking the lion's share of the mulled wine between whiles.

'And as we are honest, true, and in a sacred cause, Gashford,' said Lord George with a heightened colour and in a louder voice, as he laid his fevered hand upon his shoulder, 'and are the only men who regard the ma.s.s of people out of doors, or are regarded by them, we will uphold them to the last; and will raise a cry against these un-English Papists which shall re-echo through the country, and roll with a noise like thunder. I will be worthy of the motto on my coat of arms, "Called and chosen and faithful."

'Called,' said the secretary, 'by Heaven.'

'I am.'

'Chosen by the people.'

'Yes.'

'Faithful to both.'

'To the block!'

It would be difficult to convey an adequate idea of the excited manner in which he gave these answers to the secretary's promptings; of the rapidity of his utterance, or the violence of his tone and gesture; in which, struggling through his Puritan's demeanour, was something wild and ungovernable which broke through all restraint. For some minutes he walked rapidly up and down the room, then stopping suddenly, exclaimed, 'Gashford--YOU moved them yesterday too. Oh yes! You did.'

'I shone with a reflected light, my lord,' replied the humble secretary, laying his hand upon his heart. 'I did my best.'

'You did well,' said his master, 'and are a great and worthy instrument. If you will ring for John Grueby to carry the portmanteau into my room, and will wait here while I undress, we will dispose of business as usual, if you're not too tired.'

'Too tired, my lord!--But this is his consideration! Christian from head to foot.' With which soliloquy, the secretary tilted the jug, and looked very hard into the mulled wine, to see how much remained.

John Willet and John Grueby appeared together. The one bearing the great candlesticks, and the other the portmanteau, showed the deluded lord into his chamber; and left the secretary alone, to yawn and shake himself, and finally to fall asleep before the fire.

'Now, Mr Gashford sir,' said John Grueby in his ear, after what appeared to him a moment of unconsciousness; 'my lord's abed.'

'Oh. Very good, John,' was his mild reply. 'Thank you, John. n.o.body need sit up. I know my room.'

'I hope you're not a-going to trouble your head to-night, or my lord's head neither, with anything more about b.l.o.o.d.y Mary,' said John. 'I wish the blessed old creetur had never been born.'

'I said you might go to bed, John,' returned the secretary. 'You didn't hear me, I think.'

'Between b.l.o.o.d.y Marys, and blue c.o.c.kades, and glorious Queen Besses, and no Poperys, and Protestant a.s.sociations, and making of speeches,' pursued John Grueby, looking, as usual, a long way off, and taking no notice of this hint, 'my lord's half off his head. When we go out o' doors, such a set of ragam.u.f.fins comes a- shouting after us, "Gordon forever!" that I'm ashamed of myself and don't know where to look. When we're indoors, they come a- roaring and screaming about the house like so many devils; and my lord instead of ordering them to be drove away, goes out into the balcony and demeans himself by making speeches to 'em, and calls 'em "Men of England," and "Fellow-countrymen," as if he was fond of 'em and thanked 'em for coming. I can't make it out, but they're all mixed up somehow or another with that unfort'nate b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, and call her name out till they're hoa.r.s.e. They're all Protestants too--every man and boy among 'em: and Protestants are very fond of spoons, I find, and silver-plate in general, whenever area-gates is left open accidentally. I wish that was the worst of it, and that no more harm might be to come; but if you don't stop these ugly customers in time, Mr Gashford (and I know you; you're the man that blows the fire), you'll find 'em grow a little bit too strong for you. One of these evenings, when the weather gets warmer and Protestants are thirsty, they'll be pulling London down,--and I never heard that b.l.o.o.d.y Mary went as far as THAT.'

Gashford had vanished long ago, and these remarks had been bestowed on empty air. Not at all discomposed by the discovery, John Grueby fixed his hat on, wrongside foremost that he might be unconscious of the shadow of the obnoxious c.o.c.kade, and withdrew to bed; shaking his head in a very gloomy and prophetic manner until he reached his chamber.

Chapter 36.

Gashford, with a smiling face, but still with looks of profound deference and humility, betook himself towards his master's room, smoothing his hair down as he went, and humming a psalm tune. As he approached Lord George's door, he cleared his throat and hummed more vigorously.

There was a remarkable contrast between this man's occupation at the moment, and the expression of his countenance, which was singularly repulsive and malicious. His beetling brow almost obscured his eyes; his lip was curled contemptuously; his very shoulders seemed to sneer in stealthy whisperings with his great flapped ears.

'Hush!' he muttered softly, as he peeped in at the chamber-door. 'He seems to be asleep. Pray Heaven he is! Too much watching, too much care, too much thought--ah! Lord preserve him for a martyr! He is a saint, if ever saint drew breath on this bad earth.'

Placing his light upon a table, he walked on tiptoe to the fire, and sitting in a chair before it with his back towards the bed, went on communing with himself like one who thought aloud: 'The saviour of his country and his country's religion, the friend of his poor countrymen, the enemy of the proud and harsh; beloved of the rejected and oppressed, adored by forty thousand bold and loyal English hearts--what happy slumbers his should be!' And here he sighed, and warmed his hands, and shook his head as men do when their hearts are full, and heaved another sigh, and warmed his hands again.

'Why, Gashford?' said Lord George, who was lying broad awake, upon his side, and had been staring at him from his entrance.

'My--my lord,' said Gashford, starting and looking round as though in great surprise. 'I have disturbed you!'

'I have not been sleeping.'

'Not sleeping!' he repeated, with a.s.sumed confusion. 'What can I say for having in your presence given utterance to thoughts--but they were sincere--they were sincere!' exclaimed the secretary, drawing his sleeve in a hasty way across his eyes; 'and why should I regret your having heard them?'

'Gashford,' said the poor lord, stretching out his hand with manifest emotion. 'Do not regret it. You love me well, I know-- too well. I don't deserve such homage.'

Gashford made no reply, but grasped the hand and pressed it to his lips. Then rising, and taking from the trunk a little desk, he placed it on a table near the fire, unlocked it with a key he carried in his pocket, sat down before it, took out a pen, and, before dipping it in the inkstand, sucked it--to compose the fashion of his mouth perhaps, on which a smile was hovering yet.

'How do our numbers stand since last enrolling-night?' inquired Lord George. 'Are we really forty thousand strong, or do we still speak in round numbers when we take the a.s.sociation at that amount?'

'Our total now exceeds that number by a score and three,' Gashford replied, casting his eyes upon his papers.

'The funds?'

'Not VERY improving; but there is some manna in the wilderness, my lord. Hem! On Friday night the widows' mites dropped in. "Forty scavengers, three and fourpence. An aged pew-opener of St Martin's parish, sixpence. A bell-ringer of the established church, sixpence. A Protestant infant, newly born, one halfpenny. The United Link Boys, three shillings--one bad. The anti-popish prisoners in Newgate, five and fourpence. A friend in Bedlam, half-a-crown. Dennis the hangman, one shilling."'

'That Dennis,' said his lordship, 'is an earnest man. I marked him in the crowd in Welbeck Street, last Friday.'

'A good man,' rejoined the secretary, 'a staunch, sincere, and truly zealous man.'

'He should be encouraged,' said Lord George. 'Make a note of Dennis. I'll talk with him.'

Gashford obeyed, and went on reading from his list: '"The Friends of Reason, half-a-guinea. The Friends of Liberty, half-a-guinea. The Friends of Peace, half-a-guinea. The Friends of Charity, half-a-guinea. The Friends of Mercy, half-a-guinea. The a.s.sociated Rememberers of b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, half-a-guinea. The United Bulldogs, half-a-guinea."'

'The United Bulldogs,' said Lord George, biting his nails most horribly, 'are a new society, are they not?'

'Formerly the 'Prentice Knights, my lord. The indentures of the old members expiring by degrees, they changed their name, it seems, though they still have 'prentices among them, as well as workmen.'

'What is their president's name?' inquired Lord George.

'President,' said Gashford, reading, 'Mr Simon Tappert.i.t.'

'I remember him. The little man, who sometimes brings an elderly sister to our meetings, and sometimes another female too, who is conscientious, I have no doubt, but not well-favoured?'

'The very same, my lord.'

'Tappert.i.t is an earnest man,' said Lord George, thoughtfully. 'Eh, Gashford?'

'One of the foremost among them all, my lord. He snuffs the battle from afar, like the war-horse. He throws his hat up in the street as if he were inspired, and makes most stirring speeches from the shoulders of his friends.'

'Make a note of Tappert.i.t,' said Lord George Gordon. 'We may advance him to a place of trust.'

'That,' rejoined the secretary, doing as he was told, 'is all-- except Mrs Varden's box (fourteenth time of opening), seven shillings and sixpence in silver and copper, and half-a-guinea in gold; and Miggs (being the saving of a quarter's wages), one-and- threepence.'

'Miggs,' said Lord George. 'Is that a man?'

'The name is entered on the list as a woman,' replied the secretary. 'I think she is the tall spare female of whom you spoke just now, my lord, as not being well-favoured, who sometimes comes to hear the speeches--along with Tappert.i.t and Mrs Varden.'

'Mrs Varden is the elderly lady then, is she?'

The secretary nodded, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the feather of his pen.

'She is a zealous sister,' said Lord George. 'Her collection goes on prosperously, and is pursued with fervour. Has her husband joined?'

'A malignant,' returned the secretary, folding up his papers. 'Unworthy such a wife. He remains in outer darkness and steadily refuses.'

'The consequences be upon his own head!--Gashford!'

'My lord!'

'You don't think,' he turned restlessly in his bed as he spoke, 'these people will desert me, when the hour arrives? I have spoken boldly for them, ventured much, suppressed nothing. They'll not fall off, will they?'

'No fear of that, my lord,' said Gashford, with a meaning look, which was rather the involuntary expression of his own thoughts than intended as any confirmation of his words, for the other's face was turned away. 'Be sure there is no fear of that.'

'Nor,' he said with a more restless motion than before, 'of their-- but they CAN sustain no harm from leaguing for this purpose. Right is on our side, though Might may be against us. You feel as sure of that as I--honestly, you do?'

The secretary was beginning with 'You do not doubt,' when the other interrupted him, and impatiently rejoined: 'Doubt. No. Who says I doubt? If I doubted, should I cast away relatives, friends, everything, for this unhappy country's sake; this unhappy country,' he cried, springing up in bed, after repeating the phrase 'unhappy country's sake' to himself, at least a dozen times, 'forsaken of G.o.d and man, delivered over to a dangerous confederacy of Popish powers; the prey of corruption, idolatry, and despotism! Who says I doubt? Am I called, and chosen, and faithful? Tell me. Am I, or am I not?'

'To G.o.d, the country, and yourself,' cried Gashford.

'I am. I will be. I say again, I will be: to the block. Who says as much! Do you? Does any man alive?'

The secretary drooped his head with an expression of perfect acquiescence in anything that had been said or might be; and Lord George gradually sinking down upon his pillow, fell asleep.

Although there was something very ludicrous in his vehement manner, taken in conjunction with his meagre aspect and ungraceful presence, it would scarcely have provoked a smile in any man of kindly feeling; or even if it had, he would have felt sorry and almost angry with himself next moment, for yielding to the impulse. This lord was sincere in his violence and in his wavering. A nature p.r.o.ne to false enthusiasm, and the vanity of being a leader, were the worst qualities apparent in his composition. All the rest was weakness--sheer weakness; and it is the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak men, that their very sympathies, affections, confidences--all the qualities which in better const.i.tuted minds are virtues--dwindle into foibles, or turn into downright vices.

Gashford, with many a sly look towards the bed, sat chuckling at his master's folly, until his deep and heavy breathing warned him that he might retire. Locking his desk, and replacing it within the trunk (but not before he had taken from a secret lining two printed handbills), he cautiously withdrew; looking back, as he went, at the pale face of the slumbering man, above whose head the dusty plumes that crowned the Maypole couch, waved drearily and sadly as though it were a bier.

Stopping on the staircase to listen that all was quiet, and to take off his shoes lest his footsteps should alarm any light sleeper who might be near at hand, he descended to the ground floor, and thrust one of his bills beneath the great door of the house. That done, he crept softly back to his own chamber, and from the window let another fall--carefully wrapt round a stone to save it from the wind--into the yard below.

They were addressed on the back 'To every Protestant into whose hands this shall come,' and bore within what follows: 'Men and Brethren. Whoever shall find this letter, will take it as a warning to join, without delay, the friends of Lord George Gordon. There are great events at hand; and the times are dangerous and troubled. Read this carefully, keep it clean, and drop it somewhere else. For King and Country. Union.'

'More seed, more seed,' said Gashford as he closed the window. 'When will the harvest come!'

Chapter 37.

To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of Truth and Common Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of the world, a master-pa.s.sion. To awaken it, to gratify it by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind.

If a man had stood on London Bridge, calling till he was hoa.r.s.e, upon the pa.s.sers-by, to join with Lord George Gordon, although for an object which no man understood, and which in that very incident had a charm of its own,--the probability is, that he might have influenced a score of people in a month. If all zealous Protestants had been publicly urged to join an a.s.sociation for the avowed purpose of singing a hymn or two occasionally, and hearing some indifferent speeches made, and ultimately of pet.i.tioning Parliament not to pa.s.s an act for abolishing the penal laws against Roman Catholic priests, the penalty of perpetual imprisonment denounced against those who educated children in that persuasion, and the disqualification of all members of the Romish church to inherit real property in the United Kingdom by right of purchase or descent,--matters so far removed from the business and bosoms of the ma.s.s, might perhaps have called together a hundred people. But when vague rumours got abroad, that in this Protestant a.s.sociation a secret power was mustering against the government for undefined and mighty purposes; when the air was filled with whispers of a confederacy among the Popish powers to degrade and enslave England, establish an inquisition in London, and turn the pens of Smithfield market into stakes and cauldrons; when terrors and alarms which no man understood were perpetually broached, both in and out of Parliament, by one enthusiast who did not understand himself, and bygone bugbears which had lain quietly in their graves for centuries, were raised again to haunt the ignorant and credulous; when all this was done, as it were, in the dark, and secret invitations to join the Great Protestant a.s.sociation in defence of religion, life, and liberty, were dropped in the public ways, thrust under the house-doors, tossed in at windows, and pressed into the hands of those who trod the streets by night; when they glared from every wall, and shone on every post and pillar, so that stocks and stones appeared infected with the common fear, urging all men to join together blindfold in resistance of they knew not what, they knew not why;--then the mania spread indeed, and the body, still increasing every day, grew forty thousand strong.

So said, at least, in this month of March, 1780, Lord George Gordon, the a.s.sociation's president. Whether it was the fact or otherwise, few men knew or cared to ascertain. It had never made any public demonstration; had scarcely ever been heard of, save through him; had never been seen; and was supposed by many to be the mere creature of his disordered brain. He was accustomed to talk largely about numbers of men--stimulated, as it was inferred, by certain successful disturbances, arising out of the same subject, which had occurred in Scotland in the previous year; was looked upon as a cracked-brained member of the lower house, who attacked all parties and sided with none, and was very little regarded. It was known that there was discontent abroad--there always is; he had been accustomed to address the people by placard, speech, and pamphlet, upon other questions; nothing had come, in England, of his past exertions, and nothing was apprehended from his present. Just as he has come upon the reader, he had come, from time to time, upon the public, and been forgotten in a day; as suddenly as he appears in these pages, after a blank of five long years, did he and his proceedings begin to force themselves, about this period, upon the notice of thousands of people, who had mingled in active life during the whole interval, and who, without being deaf or blind to pa.s.sing events, had scarcely ever thought of him before.

'My lord,' said Gashford in his ear, as he drew the curtains of his bed betimes; 'my lord!'

'Yes--who's that? What is it?'

'The clock has struck nine,' returned the secretary, with meekly folded hands. 'You have slept well? I hope you have slept well? If my prayers are heard, you are refreshed indeed.'

'To say the truth, I have slept so soundly,' said Lord George, rubbing his eyes and looking round the room, 'that I don't remember quite--what place is this?'

'My lord!' cried Gashford, with a smile.

'Oh!' returned his superior. 'Yes. You're not a Jew then?'

'A Jew!' exclaimed the pious secretary, recoiling.

'I dreamed that we were Jews, Gashford. You and I--both of us-- Jews with long beards.'

'Heaven forbid, my lord! We might as well be Papists.'

'I suppose we might,' returned the other, very quickly. 'Eh? You really think so, Gashford?'

'Surely I do,' the secretary cried, with looks of great surprise.

'Humph!' he muttered. 'Yes, that seems reasonable.'

'I hope my lord--' the secretary began.

'Hope!' he echoed, interrupting him. 'Why do you say, you hope? There's no harm in thinking of such things.'