Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty by Charles Dickens (best way to read e books TXT) 📖

The next day was ushered in by merry peals of bells, and by the firing of the Tower guns; flags were hoisted on many of the church-steeples; the usual demonstrations were made in honour of the anniversary of the King’s birthday; and every man went about his pleasure or business as if the city were in perfect order, and there were no half-smouldering embers in its secret places, which, on the approach of night, would kindle up again and scatter ruin and dismay abroad. The leaders of the riot, rendered still more daring by the success of last night and by the booty they had acquired, kept steadily together, and only thought of implicating the mass of their followers so deeply that no hope of pardon or reward might tempt them to betray their more notorious confederates into the hands of justice.

Indeed, the sense of having gone too far to be forgiven, held the timid together no less than the bold. Many who would readily have pointed out the foremost rioters and given evidence against them, felt that escape by that means was hopeless, when their every act had been observed by scores of people who had taken no part in the disturbances; who had suffered in their persons, peace, or property, by the outrages of the mob; who would be most willing witnesses; and whom the government would, no doubt, prefer to any King’s evidence that might be offered. Many of this class had deserted their usual occupations on the Saturday morning; some had been seen by their employers active in the tumult; others knew they must be suspected, and that they would be discharged if they returned; others had been desperate from the beginning, and comforted themselves with the homely proverb, that, being hanged at all, they might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. They all hoped and believed, in a greater or less degree, that the government they seemed to have paralysed, would, in its terror, come to terms with them in the end, and suffer them to make their own conditions. The least sanguine among them reasoned with himself that, at the worst, they were too many to be all punished, and that he had as good a chance of escape as any other man. The great mass never reasoned or thought at all, but were stimulated by their own headlong passions, by poverty, by ignorance, by the love of mischief, and the hope of plunder.

One other circumstance is worthy of remark; and that is, that from the moment of their first outbreak at Westminster, every symptom of order or preconcerted arrangement among them vanished. When they divided into parties and ran to different quarters of the town, it was on the spontaneous suggestion of the moment. Each party swelled as it went along, like rivers as they roll towards the sea; new leaders sprang up as they were wanted, disappeared when the necessity was over, and reappeared at the next crisis. Each tumult took shape and form from the circumstances of the moment; sober workmen, going home from their day’s labour, were seen to cast down their baskets of tools and become rioters in an instant; mere boys on errands did the like. In a word, a moral plague ran through the city. The noise, and hurry, and excitement, had for hundreds and hundreds an attraction they had no firmness to resist. The contagion spread like a dread fever: an infectious madness, as yet not near its height, seized on new victims every hour, and society began to tremble at their ravings.

It was between two and three o’clock in the afternoon when Gashford looked into the lair described in the last chapter, and seeing only Barnaby and Dennis there, inquired for Hugh.

He was out, Barnaby told him; had gone out more than an hour ago; and had not yet returned.

‘Dennis!’ said the smiling secretary, in his smoothest voice, as he sat down cross-legged on a barrel, ‘Dennis!’

The hangman struggled into a sitting posture directly, and with his eyes wide open, looked towards him.

‘How do you do, Dennis?’ said Gashford, nodding. ‘I hope you have suffered no inconvenience from your late exertions, Dennis?’

‘I always will say of you, Muster Gashford,’ returned the hangman, staring at him, ‘that that ‘ere quiet way of yours might almost wake a dead man. It is,’ he added, with a muttered oath—still staring at him in a thoughtful manner—‘so awful sly!’

‘So distinct, eh Dennis?’

‘Distinct!’ he answered, scratching his head, and keeping his eyes upon the secretary’s face; ‘I seem to hear it, Muster Gashford, in my wery bones.’

‘I am very glad your sense of hearing is so sharp, and that I succeed in making myself so intelligible,’ said Gashford, in his unvarying, even tone. ‘Where is your friend?’

Mr Dennis looked round as in expectation of beholding him asleep upon his bed of straw; then remembering he had seen him go out, replied:

‘I can’t say where he is, Muster Gashford, I expected him back afore now. I hope it isn’t time that we was busy, Muster Gashford?’

‘Nay,’ said the secretary, ‘who should know that as well as you? How can I tell you, Dennis? You are perfect master of your own actions, you know, and accountable to nobody—except sometimes to the law, eh?’

Dennis, who was very much baffled by the cool matter-of-course manner of this reply, recovered his self-possession on his professional pursuits being referred to, and pointing towards Barnaby, shook his head and frowned.

‘Hush!’ cried Barnaby.

‘Ah! Do hush about that, Muster Gashford,’ said the hangman in a low voice, ‘pop’lar prejudices—you always forget—well, Barnaby, my lad, what’s the matter?’

‘I hear him coming,’ he answered: ‘Hark! Do you mark that? That’s his foot! Bless you, I know his step, and his dog’s too. Tramp, tramp, pit-pat, on they come together, and, ha ha ha!—and here they are!’ he cried, joyfully welcoming Hugh with both hands, and then patting him fondly on the back, as if instead of being the rough companion he was, he had been one of the most prepossessing of men. ‘Here he is, and safe too! I am glad to see him back again, old Hugh!’

‘I’m a Turk if he don’t give me a warmer welcome always than any man of sense,’ said Hugh, shaking hands with him with a kind of ferocious friendship, strange enough to see. ‘How are you, boy?’

‘Hearty!’ cried Barnaby, waving his hat. ‘Ha ha ha! And merry too, Hugh! And ready to do anything for the good cause, and the right, and to help the kind, mild, pale-faced gentleman—the lord they used so ill—eh, Hugh?’

‘Ay!’ returned his friend, dropping his hand, and looking at Gashford for an instant with a changed expression before he spoke to him. ‘Good day, master!’

‘And good day to you,’ replied the secretary, nursing his leg.

‘And many good days—whole years of them, I hope. You are heated.’

‘So would you have been, master,’ said Hugh, wiping his face, ‘if you’d been running here as fast as I have.’