BARNABY RUDGE
A TALE OF THE RIOTS OF ‘EIGHTY
by Charles Dickens
Contibutor’s Note:
I’ve left in archaic forms such as ‘to-morrow’ or ‘to-day’ as they
occured in my copy. Also please be aware if spell-checking, that within
dialog many ‘mispelled’ words exist, i.e. ‘wery’ for ‘very’, as intended
by the author.
D.L.
PREFACE
The late Mr Waterton having, some time ago, expressed his opinion that
ravens are gradually becoming extinct in England, I offered the few
following words about my experience of these birds.
The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals, of whom I
was, at different times, the proud possessor. The first was in the bloom
of his youth, when he was discovered in a modest retirement in London,
by a friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as Sir Hugh
Evans says of Anne Page, ‘good gifts’, which he improved by study and
attention in a most exemplary manner. He slept in a stable--generally
on horseback--and so terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural
sagacity, that he has been known, by the mere superiority of his genius,
to walk off unmolested with the dog’s dinner, from before his face. He
was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues, when, in an evil hour,
his stable was newly painted. He observed the workmen closely, saw that
they were careful of the paint, and immediately burned to possess it. On
their going to dinner, he ate up all they had left behind, consisting of
a pound or two of white lead; and this youthful indiscretion terminated
in death.
While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another friend of mine
in Yorkshire discovered an older and more gifted raven at a village
public-house, which he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a
consideration, and sent up to me. The first act of this Sage, was, to
administer to the effects of his predecessor, by disinterring all the
cheese and halfpence he had buried in the garden--a work of immense
labour and research, to which he devoted all the energies of his mind.
When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the acquisition
of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept, that he would
perch outside my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill,
all day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former master
sent his duty with him, ‘and if I wished the bird to come out very
strong, would I be so good as to show him a drunken man’--which I never
did, having (unfortunately) none but sober people at hand.
But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever the stimulating
influences of this sight might have been. He had not the least respect,
I am sorry to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the cook; to
whom he was attached--but only, I fear, as a Policeman might have been.
Once, I met him unexpectedly, about half-a-mile from my house, walking
down the middle of a public street, attended by a pretty large crowd,
and spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His
gravity under those trying circumstances, I can never forget, nor the
extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be brought home, he
defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may
have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have
been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence
into his maw--which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed
the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke
countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the
frames, and tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a
wooden staircase of six steps and a landing--but after some three years
he too was taken ill, and died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye
to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over
on his back with a sepulchral cry of ‘Cuckoo!’ Since then I have been
ravenless.
No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced
into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary
and remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.
It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they
reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all
who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely
call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and
who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of
right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution;
that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful; all History
teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well,
to profit by even so humble an example as the ‘No Popery’ riots of
Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.
However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following
pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the
Romish Church, though he acknowledges, as most men do, some esteemed
friends among the followers of its creed.
In the description of the principal outrages, reference has been had to
the best authorities of that time, such as they are; the account given
in this Tale, of all the main features of the Riots, is substantially
correct.
Mr Dennis’s allusions to the flourishing condition of his trade in those
days, have their foundation in Truth, and not in the Author’s fancy. Any
file of old Newspapers, or odd volume of the Annual Register, will prove
this with terrible ease.
Even the case of Mary Jones, dwelt upon with so much pleasure by the
same character, is no effort of invention. The facts were stated,
exactly as they are stated here, in the House of Commons. Whether they
afforded as much entertainment to the merry gentlemen assembled there,
as some other most affecting circumstances of a similar nature mentioned
by Sir Samuel Romilly, is not recorded.
That the case of Mary Jones may speak the more emphatically for
itself, I subjoin it, as related by SIR WILLIAM MEREDITH in a speech in
Parliament, ‘on Frequent Executions’, made in 1777.
‘Under this act,’ the Shop-lifting Act, ‘one Mary Jones was executed,
whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press warrants
were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman’s husband
was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two
small children, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance
not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen), and most
remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper’s shop, took some coarse
linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw
her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I
have the trial in my pocket), “that she had lived in credit, and wanted
for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but
since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children
to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done
something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.” The parish officers
testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good
deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary;
and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of
shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence,
she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a
distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast
when she set out for Tyburn.’
Chapter 1
In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a
distance of about twelve miles from London--measuring from the Standard
in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard
used to be in days of yore--a house of public entertainment called the
Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as
could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of
travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem
reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those
goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times,
was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow
that ever English yeoman drew.
The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and not
its sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a
lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out
of which it seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in
more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous
progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was
said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there
was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night
while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room
with a deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a
mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin
monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some
neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there
were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are
in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as
rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry
appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly
pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the
doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true
believers exulted as in a victory.
Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or
untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps
as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes
happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age.
Its windows were old diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken
and uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with
massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and
grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the more favoured
customers smoked and drank--ay, and sang many a good song too,
sometimes--reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which,
like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the
mansion.
In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests
for many a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole
colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were more
pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and out-buildings than anybody
but the landlord could reckon up. The wheeling and circling flights
of runts, fantails, tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite
consistent with the grave and sober character of the building, but the
monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some among them
all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest. With its
overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging
out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were
nodding in its sleep. Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fancy
to detect in it other resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it
was built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and
discoloured like an old man’s skin; the sturdy timbers had decayed like
teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to comfort it in
its age, wrapt its green leaves closely round the time-worn walls.
It was a hale and hearty age though, still: and in the summer or
autumn evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak and
chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its
lustre, seemed their fit companion, and to have many good years of life
in him yet.
The evening with which we have to do, was neither a summer nor an autumn
one, but the twilight of a day in March, when the wind howled dismally
among the bare branches of the trees, and rumbling in the wide chimneys
and driving the rain against the windows of the Maypole Inn, gave such
of its frequenters as chanced to be there at the moment an undeniable
reason for prolonging their stay, and caused the landlord to prophesy
that the night would certainly clear at eleven o’clock precisely,--which
by a remarkable coincidence was the hour at which he always closed his
house.
The name of him upon whom the spirit of prophecy thus descended was
John Willet, a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which betokened
profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined with a very
strong reliance upon his own merits. It was John Willet’s ordinary
boast in his more placid moods that if he were slow he was sure; which
assertion could, in one sense at least, be by no means gainsaid, seeing
that he was in everything unquestionably the reverse of fast, and withal
one of the most dogged and positive fellows in existence--always sure
that what he thought or said or did was right, and holding it as a thing
quite settled and ordained by the laws of nature and Providence, that
anybody who said or did or thought otherwise must be inevitably and of
necessity wrong.
Mr Willet walked slowly up to the window, flattened his fat nose
against the cold glass, and shading his eyes that his sight might not
be affected by the ruddy glow of the fire, looked abroad. Then he
walked slowly back to his old seat in the chimney-corner, and, composing
himself in it with a slight shiver, such as a man might give way to and
so acquire an additional relish for the warm blaze, said, looking round
upon his guests:
‘It’ll clear at eleven o’clock. No sooner and no later. Not before and
not arterwards.’
‘How do you make out that?’ said a little man in the opposite corner.
‘The moon is past the full, and she rises at nine.’
John looked sedately and solemnly at his questioner until he had brought
his mind to bear upon the whole of his observation, and then made
answer, in a tone which seemed to imply that the moon was peculiarly his
business and nobody else’s:
‘Never you mind about the moon. Don’t you trouble yourself about her.
You let the moon alone, and I’ll let you alone.’
‘No offence I hope?’ said the little man.
Again John waited leisurely until the observation had thoroughly
penetrated to his brain, and then replying, ‘No offence as YET,’ applied
a light to his pipe and smoked in placid silence; now and then casting
a sidelong look at a man wrapped in a loose riding-coat with huge cuffs
ornamented with tarnished silver lace and large metal buttons, who
sat apart from the regular frequenters of the house, and wearing a hat
flapped over his face, which was still further shaded by the hand on
which his forehead rested, looked unsociable enough.
There was another guest, who sat, booted and spurred, at some distance
from the fire also, and whose thoughts--to judge from his folded
arms and knitted brows, and from the untasted liquor before him--were
occupied with other matters than the topics under discussion or
the persons who discussed them. This was a young man of about
eight-and-twenty, rather above the middle height, and though of somewhat
slight figure, gracefully and strongly made. He wore his own dark hair,
and was accoutred in a riding dress, which together with his large boots
(resembling in shape and fashion those worn by our Life Guardsmen at
the present day), showed indisputable traces of the bad condition of
the roads. But travel-stained though he was, he was well and even richly
attired, and without being overdressed looked a gallant gentleman.
Lying upon the table beside him, as he had carelessly thrown them down,
were a heavy riding-whip and a slouched hat, the latter worn no doubt as
being best suited to the inclemency of the weather. There, too, were a
pair of pistols in a holster-case, and a short riding-cloak. Little of
his face was visible, except the long dark lashes which concealed his
downcast eyes, but an air of careless ease and natural gracefulness
of demeanour pervaded the figure, and seemed to comprehend even those
slight accessories, which were all handsome, and in good keeping.
Towards this young gentleman the eyes of Mr Willet wandered but once,
and then as if in mute inquiry whether he had observed his silent
neighbour. It was plain that John and the young gentleman had often met
before. Finding that his look was not returned, or indeed observed by
the person to whom it was addressed, John gradually concentrated the
whole power of his eyes into one focus, and brought it to bear upon the
man in the flapped hat, at whom he came to stare in course of time with
an intensity so remarkable, that it affected his fireside cronies, who
all, as with one accord, took their pipes from their lips, and stared
with open mouths at the stranger likewise.
The sturdy landlord had a large pair of dull fish-like eyes, and the
little man who had hazarded the remark about the moon (and who was the
parish-clerk and bell-ringer of Chigwell, a village hard by) had little
round black shiny eyes like beads; moreover this little man wore at the
knees of his rusty black breeches, and on his rusty black coat, and
all down his long flapped waistcoat, little queer buttons like nothing
except his eyes; but so like them, that as they twinkled and glistened
in the light of the fire, which shone too in his bright shoe-buckles,
he seemed all eyes from head to foot, and to be gazing with every one of
them at the unknown customer. No wonder that a man should grow restless
under such an inspection as this, to say nothing of the eyes belonging
to short Tom Cobb the general chandler and post-office keeper, and long
Phil Parkes the ranger, both of whom, infected by the example of their
companions, regarded him of the flapped hat no less attentively.
The stranger became restless; perhaps from being exposed to this raking
fire of eyes, perhaps from the nature of his previous meditations--most
probably from the latter cause, for as he changed his position and
looked hastily round, he started to find himself the object of such keen
regard, and darted an angry and suspicious glance at the fireside group.
It had the effect of immediately diverting all eyes to the chimney,
except those of John Willet, who finding himself as it were, caught in
the fact, and not being (as has been already observed) of a very ready
nature, remained staring at his guest in a particularly awkward and
disconcerted manner.
‘Well?’ said the stranger.
Well. There was not much in well. It was not a long speech. ‘I thought
you gave an order,’ said the landlord, after a pause of two or three
minutes for consideration.
The stranger took off his hat, and disclosed the hard features of a man
of sixty or thereabouts, much weatherbeaten and worn by time, and
the naturally harsh expression of which was not improved by a dark
handkerchief which was bound tightly round his head, and, while it
served the purpose of a wig, shaded his forehead, and almost hid his
eyebrows. If it were intended to conceal or divert attention from a deep
gash, now healed into an ugly seam, which when it was first inflicted
must have laid bare his cheekbone, the object was but indifferently
attained, for it could scarcely fail to be noted at a glance. His
complexion was of a cadaverous hue, and he had a grizzly jagged beard
of some three weeks’ date. Such was the figure (very meanly and poorly
clad) that now rose from the seat, and stalking across the room sat down
in a corner of the chimney, which the politeness or fears of the little
clerk very readily assigned to him.
‘A highwayman!’ whispered Tom Cobb to Parkes the ranger.
‘Do you suppose highwaymen don’t dress handsomer than that?’ replied
Parkes. ‘It’s a better business than you think for, Tom, and highwaymen
don’t need or use to be shabby, take my word for it.’
Meanwhile the subject of their speculations had done due honour to the
house by calling for some drink, which was promptly supplied by the
landlord’s son Joe, a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty,
whom it pleased his father still to consider a little boy, and to treat
accordingly. Stretching out his hands to warm them by the blazing fire,
the man turned his head towards the company, and after running his eye
sharply over them, said in a voice well suited to his appearance:
‘What house is that which stands a mile or so from here?’
‘Public-house?’ said the landlord, with his usual deliberation.
‘Public-house, father!’ exclaimed Joe, ‘where’s the public-house
within a mile or so of the Maypole? He means the great house--the
Warren--naturally and of course. The old red brick house, sir, that
stands in its own grounds--?’
‘Aye,’ said the stranger.
‘And that fifteen or twenty years ago stood in a park five times as
broad, which with other and richer property has bit by bit changed hands
and dwindled away--more’s the pity!’ pursued the young man.
‘Maybe,’ was the reply. ‘But my question related to the owner. What it
has been I don’t care to know, and what it is I can see for myself.’
The heir-apparent to the Maypole pressed his finger on his lips, and
glancing at the young gentleman already noticed, who had changed his
attitude when the house was first mentioned, replied in a lower tone:
‘The owner’s name is Haredale, Mr Geoffrey Haredale, and’--again
he glanced in the same direction as before--‘and a worthy gentleman
too--hem!’
Paying as little regard to this admonitory cough, as to the significant
gesture that had preceded it, the stranger pursued his questioning.
‘I turned out of my way coming here, and took the footpath that crosses
the grounds. Who was the young lady that I saw entering a carriage? His
daughter?’
‘Why, how should I know, honest man?’ replied Joe, contriving in the
course of some arrangements about the hearth, to advance close to his
questioner and pluck him by the sleeve, ‘I didn’t see the young lady,
you know. Whew! There’s the wind again--AND rain--well it IS a night!’
Rough weather indeed!’ observed the strange man.
‘You’re used to it?’ said Joe, catching at anything which seemed to
promise a diversion of the subject.
‘Pretty well,’ returned the other. ‘About the young lady--has Mr
Haredale a daughter?’
‘No, no,’ said the young fellow fretfully, ‘he’s a single
gentleman--he’s--be quiet, can’t you, man? Don’t you see this talk is
not relished yonder?’
Regardless of this whispered remonstrance, and affecting not to hear it,
his tormentor provokingly continued:
‘Single men have had daughters before now. Perhaps she may be his
daughter, though he is not married.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Joe, adding in an undertone as he approached
him again, ‘You’ll come in for it presently, I know you will!’
‘I mean no harm’--returned the traveller boldly, ‘and have said none
that I know of. I ask a few questions--as any stranger may, and not
unnaturally--about the inmates of a remarkable house in a neighbourhood
which is new to me, and you are as aghast and disturbed as if I were
talking treason against King George. Perhaps you can tell me why, sir,
for (as I say) I am a stranger, and this is Greek to me?’
The latter observation was addressed to the obvious cause of Joe
Willet’s discomposure, who had risen and was adjusting his riding-cloak
preparatory to sallying abroad. Briefly replying that he could give him
no information, the young man beckoned to Joe, and handing him a piece
of money in payment of his reckoning, hurried out attended by young
Willet himself, who taking up a candle followed to light him to the
house-door.
While Joe was absent on this errand, the elder Willet and his three
companions continued to smoke with profound gravity, and in a deep
silence, each having his eyes fixed on a huge copper boiler that was
suspended over the fire. After some time John Willet slowly shook his
head, and thereupon his friends slowly shook theirs; but no man withdrew
his eyes from the boiler, or altered the solemn expression of his
countenance in the slightest degree.
At length Joe returned--very talkative and conciliatory, as though with
a strong presentiment that he was going to be found fault with.
‘Such a thing as love is!’ he said, drawing a chair near the fire, and
looking round for sympathy. ‘He has set off to walk to London,--all
the way to London. His nag gone lame in riding out here this blessed
afternoon, and comfortably littered down in our stable at this minute;
and he giving up a good hot supper and our best bed, because Miss
Haredale has gone to a masquerade up in town, and he has set his heart
upon seeing her! I don’t think I could persuade myself to do that,
beautiful as she is,--but then I’m not in love (at least I don’t think I
am) and that’s the whole difference.’
‘He is in love then?’ said the stranger.
‘Rather,’ replied Joe. ‘He’ll never be more in love, and may very easily
be less.’
‘Silence, sir!’ cried his father.
‘What a chap you are, Joe!’ said Long Parkes.
‘Such a inconsiderate lad!’ murmured Tom Cobb.
‘Putting himself forward and wringing the very nose off his own father’s
face!’ exclaimed the parish-clerk, metaphorically.
‘What HAVE I done?’ reasoned poor Joe.
‘Silence, sir!’ returned his father, ‘what do you mean by talking, when
you see people that are more than two or three times your age, sitting
still and silent and not dreaming of saying a word?’
‘Why that’s the proper time for me to talk, isn’t it?’ said Joe
rebelliously.
‘The proper time, sir!’ retorted his father, ‘the proper time’s no
time.’
‘Ah to be sure!’ muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two who
nodded likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the point.
‘The proper time’s no time, sir,’ repeated John Willet; ‘when I was
your age I never talked, I never wanted to talk. I listened and improved
myself that’s what I did.’
‘And you’d find your father rather a tough customer in argeyment, Joe,
if anybody was to try and tackle him,’ said Parkes.
‘For the matter o’ that, Phil!’ observed Mr Willet, blowing a long,
thin, spiral cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and staring
at it abstractedly as it floated away; ‘For the matter o’ that, Phil,
argeyment is a gift of Natur. If Natur has gifted a man with powers
of argeyment, a man has a right to make the best of ‘em, and has not
a right to stand on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted; for
that is a turning of his back on Natur, a flouting of her, a slighting
of her precious caskets, and a proving of one’s self to be a swine that
isn’t worth her scattering pearls before.’
The landlord pausing here for a very long time, Mr Parkes naturally
concluded that he had brought his discourse to an end; and therefore,
turning to the young man with some austerity, exclaimed:
‘You hear what your father says, Joe? You wouldn’t much like to tackle
him in argeyment, I’m thinking, sir.’
‘IF,’ said John Willet, turning his eyes from the ceiling to the face of
his interrupter, and uttering the monosyllable in capitals, to apprise
him that he had put in his oar, as the vulgar say, with unbecoming
and irreverent haste; ‘IF, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of
argeyment, why should I not own to it, and rather glory in the same?
Yes, sir, I AM a tough customer that way. You are right, sir. My
toughness has been proved, sir, in this room many and many a time, as I
think you know; and if you don’t know,’ added John, putting his pipe in
his mouth again, ‘so much the better, for I an’t proud and am not going
to tell you.’
A general murmur from his three cronies, and a general shaking of
heads at the copper boiler, assured John Willet that they had had good
experience of his powers and needed no further evidence to assure them
of his superiority. John smoked with a little more dignity and surveyed
them in silence.
‘It’s all very fine talking,’ muttered Joe, who had been fidgeting in
his chair with divers uneasy gestures. ‘But if you mean to tell me that
I’m never to open my lips--’
‘Silence, sir!’ roared his father. ‘No, you never are. When your
opinion’s wanted, you give it. When you’re spoke to, you speak. When
your opinion’s not wanted and you’re not spoke to, don’t you give an
opinion and don’t you speak. The world’s undergone a nice alteration
since my time, certainly. My belief is that there an’t any boys
left--that there isn’t such a thing as a boy--that there’s nothing now
between a male baby and a man--and that all the boys went out with his
blessed Majesty King George the Second.’
‘That’s a very true observation, always excepting the young princes,’
said the parish-clerk, who, as the representative of church and state in
that company, held himself bound to the nicest loyalty. ‘If it’s godly
and righteous for boys, being of the ages of boys, to behave themselves
like boys, then the young princes must be boys and cannot be otherwise.’
‘Did you ever hear tell of mermaids, sir?’ said Mr Willet.
‘Certainly I have,’ replied the clerk.
‘Very good,’ said Mr Willet. ‘According to the constitution of mermaids,
so much of a mermaid as is not a woman must be a fish. According to the
constitution of young princes, so much of a young prince (if anything)
as is not actually an angel, must be godly and righteous. Therefore if
it’s becoming and godly and righteous in the young princes (as it is
at their ages) that they should be boys, they are and must be boys, and
cannot by possibility be anything else.’
This elucidation of a knotty point being received with such marks of
approval as to put John Willet into a good humour, he contented himself
with repeating to his son his command of silence, and addressing the
stranger, said:
‘If you had asked your questions of a grown-up person--of me or any of
these gentlemen--you’d have had some satisfaction, and wouldn’t have
wasted breath. Miss Haredale is Mr Geoffrey Haredale’s niece.’
‘Is her father alive?’ said the man, carelessly.
‘No,’ rejoined the landlord, ‘he is not alive, and he is not dead--’
‘Not dead!’ cried the other.
‘Not dead in a common sort of way,’ said the landlord.
The cronies nodded to each other, and Mr Parkes remarked in an
undertone, shaking his head meanwhile as who should say, ‘let no man
contradict me, for I won’t believe him,’ that John Willet was in amazing
force to-night, and fit to tackle a Chief Justice.
The stranger suffered a short pause to elapse, and then asked abruptly,
‘What do you mean?’
‘More than you think for, friend,’ returned John Willet. ‘Perhaps
there’s more meaning in them words than you suspect.’
‘Perhaps there is,’ said the strange man, gruffly; ‘but what the devil
do you speak in such mysteries for? You tell me, first, that a man is
not alive, nor yet dead--then, that he’s not dead in a common sort of
way--then, that you mean a great deal more than I think for. To tell
you the truth, you may do that easily; for so far as I can make out, you
mean nothing. What DO you mean, I ask again?’
‘That,’ returned the landlord, a little brought down from his dignity
by the stranger’s surliness, ‘is a Maypole story, and has been any time
these four-and-twenty years. That story is Solomon Daisy’s story. It
belongs to the house; and nobody but Solomon Daisy has ever told it
under this roof, or ever shall--that’s more.’
The man glanced at the parish-clerk, whose air of consciousness and
importance plainly betokened him to be the person referred to, and,
observing that he had taken his pipe from his lips, after a very long
whiff to keep it alight, and was evidently about to tell his story
without further solicitation, gathered his large coat about him, and
shrinking further back was almost lost in the gloom of the spacious
chimney-corner, except when the flame, struggling from under a great
faggot, whose weight almost crushed it for the time, shot upward with a
strong and sudden glare, and illumining his figure for a moment, seemed
afterwards to cast it into deeper obscurity than before.
By this flickering light, which made the old room, with its heavy
timbers and panelled walls, look as if it were built of polished
ebony--the wind roaring and howling without, now rattling the latch
and creaking the hinges of the stout oaken door, and now driving at
the casement as though it would beat it in--by this light, and under
circumstances so auspicious, Solomon Daisy began his tale:
‘It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey’s elder brother--’
Here he came to a dead stop, and made so long a pause that even John
Willet grew impatient and asked why he did not proceed.
‘Cobb,’ said Solomon Daisy, dropping his voice and appealing to the
post-office keeper; ‘what day of the month is this?’
‘The nineteenth.’
‘Of March,’ said the clerk, bending forward, ‘the nineteenth of March;
that’s very strange.’
In a low voice they all acquiesced, and Solomon went on:
‘It was Mr Reuben Haredale, Mr Geoffrey’s elder brother, that twenty-two
years ago was the owner of the Warren, which, as Joe has said--not that
you remember it, Joe, for a boy like you can’t do that, but because you
have often heard me say so--was then a much larger and better place, and
a much more valuable property than it is now. His lady was lately
dead, and he was left with one child--the Miss Haredale you have been
inquiring about--who was then scarcely a year old.’
Although the speaker addressed himself to the man who had shown so much
curiosity about this same family, and made a pause here as if expecting
some exclamation of surprise or encouragement, the latter made no
remark, nor gave any indication that he heard or was interested in what
was said. Solomon therefore turned to his old companions, whose noses
were brightly illuminated by the deep red glow from the bowls of their
pipes; assured, by long experience, of their attention, and resolved to
show his sense of such indecent behaviour.
‘Mr Haredale,’ said Solomon, turning his back upon the strange man,
‘left this place when his lady died, feeling it lonely like, and went
up to London, where he stopped some months; but finding that place as
lonely as this--as I suppose and have always heard say--he suddenly
came back again with his little girl to the Warren, bringing with him
besides, that day, only two women servants, and his steward, and a
gardener.’
Mr Daisy stopped to take a whiff at his pipe, which was going out,
and then proceeded--at first in a snuffling tone, occasioned by keen
enjoyment of the tobacco and strong pulling at the pipe, and afterwards
with increasing distinctness:
‘--Bringing with him two women servants, and his steward, and a
gardener. The rest stopped behind up in London, and were to follow next
day. It happened that that night, an old gentleman who lived at Chigwell
Row, and had long been poorly, deceased, and an order came to me at half
after twelve o’clock at night to go and toll the passing-bell.’
There was a movement in the little group of listeners, sufficiently
indicative of the strong repugnance any one of them would have felt to
have turned out at such a time upon such an errand. The clerk felt and
understood it, and pursued his theme accordingly.
‘It WAS a dreary thing, especially as the grave-digger was laid up in
his bed, from long working in a damp soil and sitting down to take his
dinner on cold tombstones, and I was consequently under obligation to go
alone, for it was too late to hope to get any other companion. However,
I wasn’t unprepared for it; as the old gentleman had often made it a
request that the bell should be tolled as soon as possible after the
breath was out of his body, and he had been expected to go for some
days. I put as good a face upon it as I could, and muffling myself up
(for it was mortal cold), started out with a lighted lantern in one hand
and the key of the church in the other.’
At this point of the narrative, the dress of the strange man rustled as
if he had turned himself to hear more distinctly. Slightly pointing over
his shoulder, Solomon elevated his eyebrows and nodded a silent inquiry
to Joe whether this was the case. Joe shaded his eyes with his hand and
peered into the corner, but could make out nothing, and so shook his
head.
‘It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily,
and very dark--I often think now, darker than I ever saw it before or
since; that may be my fancy, but the houses were all close shut and the
folks in doors, and perhaps there is only one other man who knows how
dark it really was. I got into the church, chained the door back so that
it should keep ajar--for, to tell the truth, I didn’t like to be shut
in there alone--and putting my lantern on the stone seat in the little
corner where the bell-rope is, sat down beside it to trim the candle.
‘I sat down to trim the candle, and when I had done so I could not
persuade myself to get up again, and go about my work. I don’t know how
it was, but I thought of all the ghost stories I had ever heard, even
those that I had heard when I was a boy at school, and had forgotten
long ago; and they didn’t come into my mind one after another, but
all crowding at once, like. I recollected one story there was in the
village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very
night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground
and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning. This made me
think how many people I had known, were buried between the church-door
and the churchyard gate, and what a dreadful thing it would be to have
to pass among them and know them again, so earthy and unlike themselves.
I had known all the niches and arches in the church from a child; still,
I couldn’t persuade myself that those were their natural shadows which
I saw on the pavement, but felt sure there were some ugly figures hiding
among ‘em and peeping out. Thinking on in this way, I began to think of
the old gentleman who was just dead, and I could have sworn, as I looked
up the dark chancel, that I saw him in his usual place, wrapping his
shroud about him and shivering as if he felt it cold. All this time I
sat listening and listening, and hardly dared to breathe. At length
I started up and took the bell-rope in my hands. At that minute there
rang--not that bell, for I had hardly touched the rope--but another!
‘I heard the ringing of another bell, and a deep bell too, plainly. It
was only for an instant, and even then the wind carried the sound away,
but I heard it. I listened for a long time, but it rang no more. I had
heard of corpse candles, and at last I persuaded myself that this must
be a corpse bell tolling of itself at midnight for the dead. I tolled my
bell--how, or how long, I don’t know--and ran home to bed as fast as I
could touch the ground.
‘I was up early next morning after a restless night, and told the story
to my neighbours. Some were serious and some made light of it; I don’t
think anybody believed it real. But, that morning, Mr Reuben Haredale
was found murdered in his bedchamber; and in his hand was a piece of the
cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room
and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it.
‘That was the bell I heard.
‘A bureau was found opened, and a cash-box, which Mr Haredale had
brought down that day, and was supposed to contain a large sum of money,
was gone. The steward and gardener were both missing and both suspected
for a long time, but they were never found, though hunted far and wide.
And far enough they might have looked for poor Mr Rudge the steward,
whose body--scarcely to be recognised by his clothes and the watch and
ring he wore--was found, months afterwards, at the bottom of a piece of
water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been
stabbed with a knife. He was only partly dressed; and people all agreed
that he had been sitting up reading in his own room, where there were
many traces of blood, and was suddenly fallen upon and killed before his
master.
Everybody now knew that the gardener must be the murderer, and though
he has never been heard of from that day to this, he will be, mark my
words. The crime was committed this day two-and-twenty years--on the
nineteenth of March, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-three. On the
nineteenth of March in some year--no matter when--I know it, I am sure
of it, for we have always, in some strange way or other, been brought
back to the subject on that day ever since--on the nineteenth of March
in some year, sooner or later, that man will be discovered.’