Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty, Charles Dickens [android based ebook reader TXT] 📗

‘Ah!’—and here the secretary clasped his hands—‘a blessed yesterday indeed! The Protestants of Suffolk are godly men and true. Though others of our countrymen have lost their way in darkness, even as we, my lord, did lose our road to-night, theirs is the light and glory.’

‘Did I move them, Gashford?’ said Lord George.

‘Move them, my lord! Move them! They cried to be led on against the Papists, they vowed a dreadful vengeance on their heads, they roared like men possessed—’

‘But not by devils,’ said his lord.

‘By devils! my lord! By angels.’

‘Yes—oh surely—by angels, no doubt,’ said Lord George, thrusting his hands into his pockets, taking them out again to bite his nails, and looking uncomfortably at the fire. ‘Of course by angels—eh Gashford?’

‘You do not doubt it, my lord?’ said the secretary.

‘No—No,’ returned his lord. ‘No. Why should I? I suppose it would be decidedly irreligious to doubt it—wouldn’t it, Gashford? Though there certainly were,’ he added, without waiting for an answer, ‘some plaguy ill-looking characters among them.’

‘When you warmed,’ said the secretary, looking sharply at the other’s downcast eyes, which brightened slowly as he spoke; ‘when you warmed into that noble outbreak; when you told them that you were never of the lukewarm or the timid tribe, and bade them take heed that they were prepared to follow one who would lead them on, though to the very death; when you spoke of a hundred and twenty thousand men across the Scottish border who would take their own redress at any time, if it were not conceded; when you cried “Perish the Pope and all his base adherents; the penal laws against them shall never be repealed while Englishmen have hearts and hands”—and waved your own and touched your sword; and when they cried “No Popery!” and you cried “No; not even if we wade in blood,” and they threw up their hats and cried “Hurrah! not even if we wade in blood; No Popery! Lord George! Down with the Papists—Vengeance on their heads:” when this was said and done, and a word from you, my lord, could raise or still the tumult—ah! then I felt what greatness was indeed, and thought, When was there ever power like this of Lord George Gordon’s!’

‘It’s a great power. You’re right. It is a great power!’ he cried with sparkling eyes. ‘But—dear Gashford—did I really say all that?’

‘And how much more!’ cried the secretary, looking upwards. ‘Ah! how much more!’

‘And I told them what you say, about the one hundred and forty thousand men in Scotland, did I!’ he asked with evident delight. ‘That was bold.’

‘Our cause is boldness. Truth is always bold.’

‘Certainly. So is religion. She’s bold, Gashford?’

‘The true religion is, my lord.’

‘And that’s ours,’ he rejoined, moving uneasily in his seat, and biting his nails as though he would pare them to the quick. ‘There can be no doubt of ours being the true one. You feel as certain of that as I do, Gashford, don’t you?’

‘Does my lord ask ME,’ whined Gashford, drawing his chair nearer with an injured air, and laying his broad flat hand upon the table; ‘ME,’ he repeated, bending the dark hollows of his eyes upon him with an unwholesome smile, ‘who, stricken by the magic of his eloquence in Scotland but a year ago, abjured the errors of the Romish church, and clung to him as one whose timely hand had plucked me from a pit?’

‘True. No—No. I—I didn’t mean it,’ replied the other, shaking him by the hand, rising from his seat, and pacing restlessly about the room. ‘It’s a proud thing to lead the people, Gashford,’ he added as he made a sudden halt.

‘By force of reason too,’ returned the pliant secretary.

‘Ay, to be sure. They may cough and jeer, and groan in Parliament, and call me fool and madman, but which of them can raise this human sea and make it swell and roar at pleasure? Not one.’

‘Not one,’ repeated Gashford.

‘Which of them can say for his honesty, what I can say for mine; which of them has refused a minister’s bribe of one thousand pounds a year, to resign his seat in favour of another? Not one.’

‘Not one,’ repeated Gashford again—taking the lion’s share of the mulled wine between whiles.

‘And as we are honest, true, and in a sacred cause, Gashford,’ said Lord George with a heightened colour and in a louder voice, as he laid his fevered hand upon his shoulder, ‘and are the only men who regard the mass of people out of doors, or are regarded by them, we will uphold them to the last; and will raise a cry against these un-English Papists which shall re-echo through the country, and roll with a noise like thunder. I will be worthy of the motto on my coat of arms, “Called and chosen and faithful.”’

‘Called,’ said the secretary, ‘by Heaven.’

‘I am.’

‘Chosen by the people.’

‘Yes.’

‘Faithful to both.’

‘To the block!’

It would be difficult to convey an adequate idea of the excited manner in which he gave these answers to the secretary’s promptings; of the rapidity of his utterance, or the violence of his tone and gesture; in which, struggling through his Puritan’s demeanour, was something wild and ungovernable which broke through all restraint. For some minutes he walked rapidly up and down the room, then stopping suddenly, exclaimed,

‘Gashford—YOU moved them yesterday too. Oh yes! You did.’

‘I shone with a reflected light, my lord,’ replied the humble secretary, laying his hand upon his heart. ‘I did my best.’

‘You did well,’ said his master, ‘and are a great and worthy instrument. If you will ring for John Grueby to carry the portmanteau into my room, and will wait here while I undress, we will dispose of business as usual, if you’re not too tired.’

‘Too tired, my lord!—But this is his consideration! Christian from head to foot.’ With which soliloquy, the secretary tilted the jug, and looked very hard into the mulled wine, to see how much remained.

John Willet and John Grueby appeared together. The one bearing the great candlesticks, and the other the portmanteau, showed the deluded lord into his chamber; and left the secretary alone, to yawn and shake himself, and finally to fall asleep before the fire.

‘Now, Mr Gashford sir,’ said John Grueby in his ear, after what appeared to him a moment of unconsciousness; ‘my lord’s abed.’

‘Oh. Very good, John,’ was his mild reply. ‘Thank you, John. Nobody need sit up. I know my room.’

‘I hope you’re not a-going to trouble your head to-night, or my lord’s head neither, with anything more about Bloody Mary,’