Читать книгу Tales from Dickens - Чарльз Диккенс, Geoffrey Palmer, Miriam Margolyes - Страница 13

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.