a bottle, repeated a great many times, and flap its wings against its
sides as if it were bursting with laughter. This raven was named Grip
and was Barnaby's constant companion. The neighbors used to say it was
one hundred and twenty years old (for ravens live a very long time), and
some said it knew altogether too much to be only a bird. But Barnaby
would hear nothing said against it, and, next to his mother, loved it
better than anything in the world.
Barnaby knew that folks called him half-witted, but he cared little for
that. Sometimes he would laugh at what they said.
"Why," he would say, "how much better to be silly than as wise as you!
_You_ don't see shadowy people like those that live in sleep--not you.
Nor eyes in the knotted panes of glass, nor swift ghosts when it blows
hard, nor do you hear voices in the air, nor see men stalking in the
sky--not you. I lead a merrier life than you with all your cleverness.
_You're_ the dull men. _We're_ the bright ones. Ha, ha! I'll not change
with you, not I!"
Haredale, who had been so kind to Barnaby's mother, was a burly, stern
man who had few acquaintances and lived much alone. When first he came
to live at The Warren an enemy of his, Sir John Chester, had circulated
suspicious rumors about him, so that some came half to believe he
himself had had something to do with his brother's murder.
These whispers so affected Haredale that as time passed he grew gloomy
and morose and lived in seclusion, thinking only how he could solve the
mystery of the murder, and loving more and more the little Emma as she
grew into a beautiful girl. He neglected The Warren so that the property
looked quite desolate and ruined, and at length superstitious people in
the neighborhood came to mutter that it was haunted by the ghost of
Rudge, the steward, whose body had been found in the pond.
The old bell-ringer of the near-by church even said he had seen this
ghost once, when he went, late one night, to wind the church clock. But
of course others, who knew there were no such things as ghosts, only
smiled at these stories.
Sir John Chester, who so hated Haredale, was just as smooth and smiling
and elegant as the other was rough. Haredale had been Sir John's drudge
and scapegoat at school and the latter had always despised him. And as
the years went by Sir John came to hate him.
His own son Edward had fallen in love with Emma, Haredale's niece, and
she loved him in return. Sir John had been all his life utterly selfish
and without conscience. He had little money and was much in debt and
wanted his son to marry an heiress, so that he himself could continue
his life of pleasure. Edward, however, gave his father to understand
that he would never give up his love for Emma. Sir John believed that if
Haredale chose, he could make his niece dislike Edward, and because he
did not, Sir John hated Haredale the more bitterly.
Emma had a close friend named Dolly Varden, the daughter of a locksmith.
Dolly was a pretty, dimpled, roguish little flirt, as rosy and sparkling
and fresh as an apple, and she had a great many lovers.
One of these was her father's apprentice, who lived in the same house.
His name was Simon Tappertit--a conceited, bragging, empty-headed young
man with a great opinion of his own good looks. When he looked at his
thin legs, which he admired exceedingly, he could not see how it was
that Dolly could help worshiping him.
Tappertit had ambitions of his own and thought himself a great man who
was kept down by a tyrannical master, though the good-natured locksmith
was the kindest man in London. He had formed a society of apprentices
whose toast was, "Death to all masters, life to all apprentices, and
love to all fair damsels!" He was their leader. He had made them all
keys to fit their masters' doors, and at night, when they were supposed
to be asleep in bed, they would steal out to meet in a dirty cellar
owned by an old blind man, where they kept a skull and cross-bones and
signed high-sounding oaths with a pen dipped in blood, and did other
silly things. The object of the society was to hurt, annoy, wrong and
pick quarrels with such of their masters as happened not to please them.
With such cheap fooleries Tappertit had convinced himself that he was
fit to be a great general.
But with all his smirking, Dolly Varden only laughed at him. To tell the
truth, she was very fond of young Joe Willet, whose father kept the
Maypole Inn, very near The Warren where her friend Emma Haredale lived.
Joe was a good, brave fellow, and was head over ears in love with Dolly,
but Dolly was a coquette, and never let him know how much she cared for
him. Joe was not contented at home, for his father seemed to think him a
child and did not treat him according to his years, so that but for
leaving Dolly Varden he would long ago have run away to seek his
fortune.
Both Joe and Dolly knew how Edward Chester loved Emma Haredale, and they
used sometimes to carry notes from one to the other, since the hatred of
Sir John for Emma's uncle often prevented the lovers from meeting.
Sir John found this out, and bribed a hostler at the Maypole Inn to spy
for him and prevent, if he could, these letters passing. The hostler was
an uncouth, drunken giant that people called Maypole Hugh, as strong as
an ox, and cruel and cunning. Hugh watched carefully, and from time to
time would go to Sir John's house in London and report what he had
seen.
II
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER AND WHO HE WAS
About this time residents in the neighborhood of The Warren and the
Maypole Inn began to tell tales of a mysterious man who roamed about the
country-side.
He was seen often and by many persons, always at night, skulking in the
shadow or riding furiously on a horse. He was fierce and haggard and
discourteous to travelers, wore a slouch hat which he never took off,
and generally kept the lower part of his face muffled in a handkerchief.
He always went alone. Some said he slept in church-yards, others that he
never slept at all, and still others that he was a wicked man who had
sold his soul to the Evil One.
One night he rested at the Maypole Inn, and a little while after he had
gone, Varden the locksmith, Dolly's father, as he drove home, found
Edward Chester lying in the road, having been wounded and robbed of his
money. Barnaby Rudge had seen the attack and was bending over him. He
had been too frightened to give aid, but from his description Varden
knew the robber was the stranger who had stopped at the inn.
The honest locksmith took Edward into his chaise, drove him to Barnaby's
house, which was near by, and left him in care of Mrs. Rudge, where a
doctor soon dressed the wound, which was not serious.
Next day Mr. Varden came to see how the wounded man was. As he sat
talking with Mrs. Rudge a tapping came at the window. She went to the
door. The locksmith heard her cry out, and sprang forward to find
standing there, to his astonishment, the robber of the night before. He
grasped at him, but the woman threw herself before him, clasped his arm
and besought him, for her life's sake, not to pursue the man.
The locksmith had known Barnaby's mother all his life, but so strange
was her action now (especially since she refused to answer any question,
begging him to ask her nothing) that he almost wondered if she herself
could be in league with a crime-doer. Her apparent agony touched him,
however, and, raising no alarm, he went home in great puzzle of mind.
He would have been far more disturbed if he had known the whole truth.
For the mysterious stranger he had seen, who by night had haunted the
neighborhood, was none other than Mrs. Rudge's husband, Barnaby's
father, the steward who everybody believed had been murdered with his
master, and whose body had been found in the pond.
Rudge himself had committed that wicked deed. He had killed both master
and gardener, and to cover the crime had put his own clothes, his watch
and ring on the latter's body and sunk it in the pond. When, on the
night of the murder, he told his wife what he had done, she had shrunk
fearfully from him, declaring that, although being his wife she would
not give him up to justice, yet she would never own him or shelter him.
He had fled then with the money he had stolen, and that night, while she
lay sick with horror, Barnaby had been born with his poor crazed brain,
the look of terror in his baby face and the birth-mark of blood on his
wrist.
For many years the guilty wretch had wandered the earth, but he could
not escape the knowledge of his deed. And at last his conscience had
driven him back to the scene of his crime, friendless, penniless,
fearful of the sunlight, slinking by night like a ghost about the house
in which he had murdered his master, and hounding his miserable wife for
money with which to buy food and drink. The poor woman had kept her
terrible secret, giving him every coin she could save, striving so that
Barnaby, unhappily born as he was, should never know the shame of having
his father suffer death on the gallows. When Rudge had come to her house
that day he had thought her alone, and she had saved him from capture
only by begging the locksmith to stay his hand.
After his hairbreadth escape from Varden, Rudge hid himself in a narrow
street. When the next dawn came, as he searched for some dark den in
which he might lie sheltered till another night, he saw Simon Tappertit
issuing with his noisy apprentice crew from the cellar in which they
held their meetings. He entered its door, made friends with the
villainous blind man who kept it and there established his headquarters.
Once more, one night after the wounded Edward had been taken to his own
home, Rudge hunted out his trembling wife and demanded money,
threatening to bring harm to Barnaby if she refused him, and she gave
him all she had.
But this time dread of him made her desperate. When morning came she
went to Haredale and told him that she and her son could no longer live
on his bounty. The next day, with Barnaby, who carried on his back his
beloved raven, Grip, she left the house afoot, telling no one where they
were going lest her husband find her out, and pushed far into the
country to find a home in some obscure village. And though Rudge, the
murderer, and the blind man (who was much more crafty and cunning than
many men with eyesight) searched for them everywhere, it was a long time
before they found any trace.
Perhaps Joe and Dolly Varden missed poor cheery Barnaby more than did
any one else. But several events occurred soon after this that gave them
other things to think of.
Maypole Hugh, the savage hostler, had continued his spying work for
Edward's father, and Sir John determined it was high time to break off
his son's attachment for Emma Haredale.
One day Dolly was carrying a letter from Emma at The Warren to Edward,
and as she passed through the fields, Hugh attacked her, throwing his
arms around her and pretending to make coarse love to her. She was
dreadfully frightened and screamed as loud as she could. Joe, as it
happened, was walking within sound of her voice, and ran like the wind
to her aid.
In another moment Hugh had leaped the hedge and disappeared and Dolly
was sobbing in her rescuer's arms. She was afraid to tell Joe who had
frightened her, for fear the hostler would take his revenge by harming
him, so she only said she had been attacked by a man whom she had never
seen.
In her scare she had forgotten all about the letter she had carried, and
now she discovered it was gone. It was nowhere to be found.
This, of course, was because Hugh had stolen it. It was to get the
letter that he had frightened her, and he was soon on his way to carry
it to Sir John. Dolly did not guess this. She wrote to Emma telling her
of the mishap, and this note Joe, to whom she intrusted it, knowing no
reason to distrust the hostler, gave to Hugh to deliver. So Sir John got
both missives in the end.
Emma Haredale, not understanding why Edward returned no answer to her
letter, was hurt, and thought him cold. Sir John, seizing his
opportunity, told her one day (pretending sorrow while he did so) that
his son, naturally fickle, had fallen in love with some one else, to
whom he was soon to be married.
Emma, not dreaming the father of the man she loved could be such a false
liar, believed him, and when Edward wrote her, speaking of his poverty
and telling her he was going to leave England to try to better his
prospects, she thought his manly letter only an excuse to part from her.
Proud, though heartbroken, she did not answer it, and so, thanks to his
father's selfish scheming, Edward sailed away to the West Indies,
hopeless and despairing.
Another left England at the same time whose going meant far more to
Dolly Varden. This was Joe. His father, the innkeeper, had been
restraining him more and more, until his treatment had become the jest
of the country-side, and Joe had chafed to the point of rebellion at the
gibes that continually met him. One day, at the jeer of an old enemy of
his, his wrath boiled over. He sprang upon him and thrashed him soundly
in the inn before the assembled guests. Then, knowing his father would
never forgive him, he went to his own room and barricaded the door. That
night Joe let himself down from his window and before daylight was in
London.
He went first to the locksmith's house to tell Dolly he had run away
and that he loved her, but Dolly being a flirt, only laughed. To tell
the truth, she was so very fond of Joe that she didn't like to show him
how sorry she was. So the poor fellow went away thinking she cared very
little (though as soon as he was out of sight she nearly cried her eyes
out), and enlisted as a soldier. That same night Joe started from London
to fight in the war in America. And it was a long time before either he
or Edward Chester was heard of again.
III
BARNABY GETS INTO TROUBLE
Five years went by, and Edward Chester remained in the West Indies and
prospered. For five years Joe Willet fought in the war in America. And
for five years Barnaby Rudge with his mother and Grip, the raven, lived
unmolested in their little village and were happy.
At the end of the five years three things happened at about the same
time: Edward started back to England from the West Indies with a fair
fortune in his pocket; Joe was sent back from America with one arm gone,
and Barnaby and his mother left their village home again, secretly, and
set out for London, hoping to lose themselves in its hugeness. The wily
blind man, the companion now of Rudge, the murderer, had found them
out!
He came one day and made Mrs. Rudge give him all the money she had been
able to lay by in these five years except a single gold piece. He told
her he would return in a week for more and that if she had not got it
then, he would entice Barnaby away to join in the evil life of his
father. So she left the village the very next morning, and she and
Barnaby trudged afoot all the weary way to the great city.
Though they knew nothing of it, there was great excitement in London.
Lord George Gordon, a well-meaning but crack-brained nobleman, led
astray by flatterers till he believed he had a God-given mission to
drive all Catholics out of England, had, sometime before this, begun to
hold meetings and to stir up the people with the cry of "No Popery!"
He declared that the religion of the country was in danger of being
overthrown and that the Pope of Rome was plotting to make his religion
supreme. And this idea he talked wherever he went. He was a slender,
sallow man who dressed in severe black and wore his hair smoothly
combed, and his bright, restless eyes and his look of uncertainty made
it clear that he was no man to lead, but was rather himself the misled
dupe of others.
One of these schemers who ruled him was his secretary, Gashford, a man
of ugly face, with beetling brows and great flapped ears. He had been a
thief and a scoundrel all his life, and had wormed himself into Lord
George's confidence by flattery. He easily fooled his master into
believing that the rabble who flocked to hear him, and the idle loungers
who yelled themselves hoarse at what he said, were crowds of honest
citizens who believed as he did, and were ready to follow his
leadership. Gashford had added to his followers even Dennis, the hangman
of London, and the foolish nobleman not knowing the ruffian's true
calling, thought him a man to trust.
For many weeks this banding together of all the lawless ragamuffins of
London had gone on, till one had only to shout "No Popery!" on any
street corner to draw together a crowd bent on mischief. Respectable
people grew afraid and kept to their houses, and criminals and street
vagabonds grew bolder and bolder.
As may be guessed, Simon Tappertit, the one-time apprentice of Varden
the locksmith, rejoiced at this excitement as at a chance to show his
talent for leadership. His apprentice society had now become the "United
Bulldogs," and he himself, helping the schemes of Gashford, strutted
about among the crowds with an air of vast importance.
Sir John Chester watched the trouble gathering with glee. His old enemy
Haredale, he knew, was a Catholic, and as this movement, if it grew bold
enough, meant harm to all of that religion, he hoped for its success. He
was too cunning to aid it publicly, but he sent Maypole Hugh, who was
still his spy, to Gashford; and the brawny hostler, who savagely longed
for fighting and plunder, joined with the secretary and with Dennis the
hangman to help increase the tumult.
A day had been set on which Lord George Gordon had vowed he would march
to Parliament at the head of forty thousand men to demand the passing of
a law to forbid all Catholics to enter the country. This vast
rabble-army gathered in a great field, under the command of these sorry
leaders--the misguided lord, Dennis the hangman, Tappertit, Hugh the
hostler, Gashford the secretary, and other rowdies picked for their
boldness and daring. The mob thus formed covered an immense space. All
wore blue cockades in their hats or carried blue flags, and from them
went up a hoarse roar of oaths, shouts and ribald songs.
Such was the scene on which Barnaby and his mother came as they walked
into London. They knew nothing of its cause or its meaning. Mrs. Rudge
saw its rough disorder with terror, but the confusion, the waving flags
and the shouts had got into Barnaby's brain. To him this seemed a
splendid host marching to some noble cause. He watched with sparkling
eyes, longing to join it.
Suddenly Maypole Hugh rushed from the crowd with a shout of recognition,
and, thrusting a flagstaff into Barnaby's hands, drew him into the
ranks.
His mother shrieked and ran forward, but she was thrown to the ground;
Barnaby was whirled away into the moving mass and she saw him no more.
Barnaby enjoyed that hour of march with all his soul, and the louder the
howling the more he was thrilled. The crowd surrounded the houses of
Parliament and fought the police. At length a regiment of mounted
soldiers charged them. Barnaby thought this brave work and held his
ground valiantly, even knocking one soldier off his horse with the
flagstaff, until others dragged him to a place of safety.
That night the drunken mob, grown bolder, tore down, pillaged and burned
all the Catholic chapels within their reach, and, with Hugh and Dennis
the hangman, poor crazed Barnaby ran at its head, covered with dirt, his
garments torn to rags, singing and leaping with delight. He thought he
was the most courageous of all, that he was helping to destroy the
country's enemies, and that when the fighting was over he and his mother
would be rich and she would always be proud that he was so noble and so
brave.
The golden cups, the candlesticks and the money they stole from the
burned chapels Hugh and the hangman buried under a heap of straw in the
tavern which they had made their headquarters, and left Barnaby to guard
the place. He counted this a sacred trust, and when soldiers came to
arrest all in the building he refused to fly in time. He even fought
them single-handed and felled two before he was knocked down with the
butt of a musket and handcuffed.
While he had been resisting, Grip had been busily plucking away the
straw from the hidden plunder; now his hoarse croak showed them the
hoard and they unearthed it all. At length, closing ranks around
Barnaby, they marched him off to a barracks, from which he was taken to
Newgate Prison, where a blacksmith put irons on his arms and legs, and
he and the raven were locked in a cell.
While Barnaby was guarding the tavern room, Hugh, egged on by his
master, Sir John Chester, had proposed the burning of The Warren, where
Haredale still lived with Emma, his niece, and Dolly Varden, now her
companion.
The crowd agreed gladly, since Haredale was a Catholic and that same day
in London had given evidence to the police against the rioters who had
burned the chapels. They rushed away, marched hastily across the fields,
tied the old host of the Maypole Inn to his chair, drank all the liquor
they could find and then rushed to The Warren. There they put the
servants to flight, burst in the doors, staved the wine-casks in the
cellar, split up the costly furniture with hammers and axes and set fire
to the building, so that it soon burned to the ground.
Haredale, in London, saw the red glare in the sky and rode post-haste to
the place, but found on his arrival only ruins and ashes. He believed
that Emma and Dolly had had time to escape to safety; but while he was
searching the grounds for some sign of them he saw in the starlight a
man hiding in a broken turret.
He drew his sword and advanced. As the figure moved into the light he
rushed forward, flung himself upon him and clutched his throat.
"Villain!" he cried in a terrible voice, "dead and buried as all men
supposed, at last, at last I have you! You, Rudge, slayer of my brother
and of his faithful servant! Double murderer and monster, I arrest you
in the name of God!"
Bound and fettered in his carriage, Haredale took Rudge back to London
and had him locked in Newgate Prison.
IV
BARNABY PROSPERS AT LAST
Haredale searched vainly next day for Emma and Dolly Varden. He could
not believe they had lost their lives in the burning building, yet he
was filled with anxiety because of their disappearance. Could he have
known what had happened he would have been even more fearful.
Simon Tappertit had seen his chance at last to win for himself the
lovely Dolly, who had scorned him when he was an apprentice of the
locksmith. He had bribed Hugh and the hangman to aid him. While the mob
was occupied at the front of the house this precious pair had entered
from the back, seized the two girls and put them into a coach.
This they guarded at a distance till the burning was done; then, with
Tappertit on the box and surrounded by his ruffians, the coach was
driven into the city.
Emma had spent the day in the fear that her uncle had been killed with
other Catholics in London, and at this new and surpassing fright she had
fainted. Dolly, though no less concerned, had fought her captors
bravely, though vainly. Often in that long ride she wished that Joe, her
vanished lover, were there to rescue her as he had rescued her once from
Maypole Hugh.
She had determined when she reached the London streets to scream as
loudly as she could for help; but before they came to the city Hugh
climbed into the carriage and sat between them, threatening to choke
either if she made a noise.
In this wise they were driven to a miserable cottage, and in the dirty
apartment to which they were taken Dolly threw herself upon the
unconscious Emma and wept pitifully, unmindful of the jeers of Hugh and
of the hangman.
When Tappertit entered the room suddenly, Dolly, not knowing his part in
the plot, screamed with joy and threw herself into his arms crying:
"I knew it! My dear father's at the door! Heaven bless you for rescuing
us!"
But she saw in an instant her mistake, when the ridiculous braggart laid
his hand on his breast and told her, now that he no longer was an
apprentice but a famous leader of the people, he had chosen to be her
husband. With this announcement he left them.
Meanwhile Mrs. Rudge, day and night, had searched everywhere for
Barnaby. In one of the riots she was injured, and was taken to a
hospital, and while she lay there she heard with agony that her son had
been so active in the disturbances that a price had been put by the
Government on his head.