Gray on the House Tops.—Specimens of the Rising Generation.—The Old
Attic.
Gray’s situation on the house tops was as far from being safe as it was
far from pleasant, for the rapidly advancing daylight, he felt
conscious, would very soon make him a prominent object to the whole
liberty of Westminster, if he found not some means of descending.
His standing upon the parapets, and in the gutters, along which he
crawled, was insecure in the extreme, and his nervousness, from
repeated slips which nearly precipitated him into the street, increased
each moment, so that he began to feel that, unless he got refuge
speedily somewhere, he should meet with a fatal and disastrous
accident. His idea was to get in at some attic window, and so make his
way into the street through the house; but this, although the only
possible means that he could think of, for rescuing him from his very
precarious situation, was fraught with dangers and difficulties; for
who would allow a man to get in at an attic window, and walk
undisturbed through their house into the street?
Jacob Gray, groaned as he thought of this, and wrung his hands in
despair. “I cannot fight my way out,” he muttered. “There is but one
remote chance for me, and that is to get into some house where there
are no men. I may succeed in alarming females, so that they may be glad
to let me go in peace, but what a slender hope is that.”
“There he goes!“ shouted a baker’s boy at this moment, looking up and
pointing at Gray, who nearly fell into the street with the suddenness
of the alarm.
Several chance passengers now stopped, and pointed Gray out to others;
so that his situation was becoming every moment more precarious.
“Stop thief! There he goes!” shouted the boy again, setting down his
basket of bread, and resolved, as boys always are under such
circumstances, to see the affair out.
“Who is it?” cried several.
“Guy Fawkes,” said the boy.
There was a laugh among the crowd, which was rapidly increasing; and
now an old lady put her head out of the window of the house on the
parapet of which was the trembling Jacob Gray, and inquired, in an
angry tone, what was the matter, and particularising the baker’s boy as
a young ruffian, wanted to know how he had collected the crowd opposite
the house.
The boy with the peculiar wit of his “order” placed his hand to his
ear, affecting not to have heard the old lady, upon which, to the great
amusement of the crowd, she screamed out—,
“Oh, you villain, I heard you call me a guy, but I’ll speak to your
master, I will, you wretch.”
“You’ll make yerself ill, mum,” said the boy, “if yer hexerts yer old
lungs so.”
The old lady shook her fists at him, and the crowd roared with laughter.
Jacob Gray could see that the mob was very much amused at something,
but what it could be he had no means of knowing, for the same obstacle,
in the shape of a projecting parapet, which prevented the old lady from
seeing him, also prevented him from seeing her. He endeavoured to crawl
round an angle of a roof and escape, observation while the altercation
was going on; but neither the baker’s boy nor a sweep who had joined
his persecutors, would permit such a thing for a moment, and they at
once called out,—
“There he goes—there he goes!”
“What do you mean?” screamed the old lady to the sweep.
“There’s a poll parrot, mum, a-top o’ your house,” replied the sweep.
“A what?” screamed she leaning as far out of the window as she could,
and looking up.
“Mind yer eye, mum,” shrieked the baker’s boy, and amid a perfect roar
of laughter, the old lady withdrew her head in a moment.
“You—you little abominable miscreant,” she cried, “I’ll come down to
you!”
“Thank you, mum.”
“There’s a man on the roof,” said some one near.
“A man?”
“Yes; just on the corner of the parapet.”
“Preserve us,” cried the old lady, leaning out of the window again and
looking.
“Lean out as far as you can, mum,” cried the sweep.
“I am,” said the old lady.
“A little further, then, and you’ll see him.”
Here was another laugh, and Jacob Gray, with a great effort, succeeded
in turning the corner of the roof just as the old lady produced a
tremendous rattle, which she began springing violently at the window,
to the rapturous delight of the crowd below.
“He’s gone into Smith-street,” cried several of the throng, and a rush
round the corner was made to keep Jacob Gray in sight.
When he got round the corner of the roof which had cost him so much
trouble, the first thing that poor Jacob Gray did was to fall over a
pail that was set out at an attic window, into a dirty drain full of
black slimy mud, interspersed here and there with delicate streaks of
green and blue. When he recovered from the shock of his fall, his first
thought was to rise as quickly as possible, but his second was to lie
where he was, as by so doing he was hidden by the parapet from the gaze
of those in the street.
But Jacob Gray was not at all aware of the ready invention and cunning
of boys in the streets of London, and it was with a curse that, if
curses were effective as implements of death would have destroyed both
the sweep and the baker’s boy he heard the latter suggest,—
“Oh, he is in the drain—I know he is—give us a stone, and I’ll hit him.”
“If ever,” muttered Gray, “I come across you, and I shall know your
confounded cracked voice again, I’ll wring your neck.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a good-sized stone came
down upon him with a very disagreeable plump. It had been thrown by the
boy with that accuracy that boys acquire in throwing stones from the
abundance of practice that they have in that polite accomplishment.
“Well, my covey, did it hit you?” cried the boy then in a very
insulting tone.
Gray looked up from among the mud, and he saw that the attic window was
open. It was very low, and he thought he might crawl in without being
seen; at all events it was better than being pelted with stones in a
gutter,—and having satisfied himself that the attic was empty, he
partially rose from the gutter, and had the satisfaction, such as it
was, of gliding over the window-sill without being seen.
This was one object gained at all events, and he stood the picture of
misery and wretchedness, gazing around him upon the scantily furnished
room, in which there was nothing but a small bed made upon a board laid
across trussels, and one rickety chair.
Exhausted, dispirited, and weak, Jacob Gray sat down upon the chair,
but it seemed as if in small matters as well as great, the fates would
never have done persecuting him, for he had not noticed that his chair
was minus a leg, and the consequence was that Jacob Gray came down on
the floor with a great noise, which was more than sufficient to alarm
anybody in the house.
He in an agony of apprehension rose instantly, and flew to the window,
but then the risk of traversing house tops in broad daylight, which it
now very nearly was, came across him, and he recoiled from the window,
feeling that in all probability, his least danger lay in remaining
where he was, and endeavouring to excite by some spurious tale the
compassion of the persons of the house.
His heart, however, felt sick and faint as he waited in trembling
expectation of some one coming; and as minute after minute rolled
onwards, leaving him still alone, he felt it would be a relief to his
mind if they would come at once, and not leave him on the rack of
apprehension.
His senses became powerfully acute to the least noise, and once or
twice he fancied he heard a creaking noise upon the staircase, as if
some one was coming cautiously up to capture him. This feeling grew
each moment until it became awfully intolerable, and he trembled so
excessively that he could not, as he wished open the door to see if any
one was upon the stairs.
A dreadful apprehension came across his mind that whoever was coming
might be armed with, perhaps, a blunderbuss, which might, on the moment
of his appearance, be discharged in his, Jacob Gray’s, face, and so
finish his career at once by a death of agony. The moment this
apprehension began to haunt him he looked around him for some place of
temporary concealment, and observing a cupboard at one end of the room,
he glided cautiously towards it, resolving to take refuge within it
until he should hear, by the voices of those who might be coming, what
might probably be their station in life and their intentions.
The cupboard door was only fastened with a button, and Jacob Gray
turned cautiously. The door, from the pressure of something inside,
immediately came wide open. A cry of terror burst from Jacob Gray, as a
dead body apparently frightfully mangled, fell at his feet.