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 assumed 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 Association 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
Associated Rememberers of Bloody 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 Tappertit.’
‘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.’
‘Tappertit 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 Tappertit,’ 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 Tappertit 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 God 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 God, 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 prone 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 constituted
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!’