Rumours of the prevailing disturbances had, by this time, begun
to be pretty generally circulated through the towns and villages round London,
and the tidings were everywhere received with that appetite for the marvellous
and love of the terrible which have probably been among the natural
characteristics of mankind since the creation of the world. These accounts,
however, appeared, to many persons at that day--as they would to us at the
present, but that we know them to be matter of history--so monstrous and
improbable, that a great number of those who were resident at a distance, and
who were credulous enough on other points, were really unable to bring their
minds to believe that such things could be; and rejected the intelligence they
received on all hands, as wholly fabulous and absurd.
Mr Willet--not so much, perhaps, on account of his having argued and settled
the matter with himself, as by reason of his constitutional obstinacy--was one
of those who positively refused to entertain the current topic for a moment. On
this very evening, and perhaps at the very time when Gashford kept his solitary
watch, old John was so red in the face with perpetually shaking his head in
contradiction of his three ancient cronies and pot companions, that he was quite
a phenomenon to behold, and lighted up the Maypole Porch wherein they sat
together, like a monstrous carbuncle in a fairy tale.
'Do you think, sir,' said Mr Willet, looking hard at Solomon Daisy--for it
was his custom in cases of personal altercation to fasten upon the smallest man
in the party--'do you think, sir, that I'm a born fool?'
'No, no, Johnny,' returned Solomon, looking round upon the little circle of
which he formed a part: 'We all know better than that. You're no fool, Johnny.
No, no!'
Mr Cobb and Mr Parkes shook their heads in unison, muttering, 'No, no,
Johnny, not you!' But as such compliments had usually the effect of making Mr
Willet rather more dogged than before, he surveyed them with a look of deep
disdain, and returned for answer:
'Then what do you mean by coming here, and telling me that this evening
you're a-going to walk up to London together--you three-- you--and have the
evidence of your own senses? An't,' said Mr Willet, putting his pipe in his
mouth with an air of solemn disgust, 'an't the evidence of MY senses enough for
you?'
'But we haven't got it, Johnny,' pleaded Parkes, humbly.
'You haven't got it, sir?' repeated Mr Willet, eyeing him from top to toe.
'You haven't got it, sir? You HAVE got it, sir. Don't I tell you that His
blessed Majesty King George the Third would no more stand a rioting and
rollicking in his streets, than he'd stand being crowed over by his own
Parliament?'
'Yes, Johnny, but that's your sense--not your senses,' said the adventurous
Mr Parkes.
'How do you know? 'retorted John with great dignity. 'You're a contradicting
pretty free, you are, sir. How do YOU know which it is? I'm not aware I ever
told you, sir.'
Mr Parkes, finding himself in the position of having got into metaphysics
without exactly seeing his way out of them, stammered forth an apology and
retreated from the argument. There then ensued a silence of some ten minutes or
a quarter of an hour, at the expiration of which period Mr Willet was observed
to rumble and shake with laughter, and presently remarked, in reference to his
late adversary, 'that he hoped he had tackled him enough.' Thereupon Messrs Cobb
and Daisy laughed, and nodded, and Parkes was looked upon as thoroughly and
effectually put down.
'Do you suppose if all this was true, that Mr Haredale would be constantly
away from home, as he is?' said John, after another silence. 'Do you think he
wouldn't be afraid to leave his house with them two young women in it, and only
a couple of men, or so?'
'Ay, but then you know,' returned Solomon Daisy, 'his house is a goodish way
out of London, and they do say that the rioters won't go more than two miles, or
three at the farthest, off the stones. Besides, you know, some of the Catholic
gentlefolks have actually sent trinkets and suchlike down here for safety--at
least, so the story goes.'
'The story goes!' said Mr Willet testily. 'Yes, sir. The story goes that you
saw a ghost last March. But nobody believes it.'
'Well!' said Solomon, rising, to divert the attention of his two friends, who
tittered at this retort: 'believed or disbelieved, it's true; and true or not,
if we mean to go to London, we must be going at once. So shake hands, Johnny,
and good night.'
'I shall shake hands,' returned the landlord, putting his into his pockets,
'with no man as goes to London on such nonsensical errands.'
The three cronies were therefore reduced to the necessity of shaking his
elbows; having performed that ceremony, and brought from the house their hats,
and sticks, and greatcoats, they bade him good night and departed; promising to
bring him on the morrow full and true accounts of the real state of the city,
and if it were quiet, to give him the full merit of his victory.
John Willet looked after them, as they plodded along the road in the rich
glow of a summer evening; and knocking the ashes out of his pipe, laughed
inwardly at their folly, until his sides were sore. When he had quite exhausted
himself--which took some time, for he laughed as slowly as he thought and
spoke--he sat himself comfortably with his back to the house, put his legs upon
the bench, then his apron over his face, and fell sound asleep.
How long he slept, matters not; but it was for no brief space, for when he
awoke, the rich light had faded, the sombre hues of night were falling fast upon
the landscape, and a few bright stars were already twinkling overhead. The birds
were all at roost, the daisies on the green had closed their fairy hoods, the
honeysuckle twining round the porch exhaled its perfume in a twofold degree, as
though it lost its coyness at that silent time and loved to shed its fragrance
on the night; the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green leaves. How tranquil, and
how beautiful it was!
Was there no sound in the air, besides the gentle rustling of the trees and
the grasshopper's merry chirp? Hark! Something very faint and distant, not
unlike the murmuring in a sea-shell. Now it grew louder, fainter now, and now it
altogether died away. Presently, it came again, subsided, came once more, grew
louder, fainter--swelled into a roar. It was on the road, and varied with its
windings. All at once it burst into a distinct sound--the voices, and the
tramping feet of many men.
It is questionable whether old John Willet, even then, would have thought of
the rioters but for the cries of his cook and housemaid, who ran screaming
upstairs and locked themselves into one of the old garrets,--shrieking dismally
when they had done so, by way of rendering their place of refuge perfectly
secret and secure. These two females did afterwards depone that Mr Willet in his
consternation uttered but one word, and called that up the stairs in a
stentorian voice, six distinct times. But as this word was a monosyllable,
which, however inoffensive when applied to the quadruped it denotes, is highly
reprehensible when used in connection with females of unimpeachable character,
many persons were inclined to believe that the young women laboured under some
hallucination caused by excessive fear; and that their ears deceived them.
Be this as it may, John Willet, in whom the very uttermost extent of
dull-headed perplexity supplied the place of courage, stationed himself in the
porch, and waited for their coming up. Once, it dimly occurred to him that there
was a kind of door to the house, which had a lock and bolts; and at the same
time some shadowy ideas of shutters to the lower windows, flitted through his
brain. But he stood stock still, looking down the road in the direction in which
the noise was rapidly advancing, and did not so much as take his hands out of
his pockets.
He had not to wait long. A dark mass, looming through a cloud of dust, soon
became visible; the mob quickened their pace; shouting and whooping like
savages, they came rushing on pell mell; and in a few seconds he was bandied
from hand to hand, in the heart of a crowd of men.
'Halloa!' cried a voice he knew, as the man who spoke came cleaving through
the throng. 'Where is he? Give him to me. Don't hurt him. How now, old Jack! Ha
ha ha!'
Mr Willet looked at him, and saw it was Hugh; but he said nothing, and
thought nothing.
'These lads are thirsty and must drink!' cried Hugh, thrusting him back
towards the house. 'Bustle, Jack, bustle. Show us the best-- the very best--the
over-proof that you keep for your own drinking, Jack!'
John faintly articulated the words, 'Who's to pay?'
'He says "Who's to pay?"' cried Hugh, with a roar of laughter which was
loudly echoed by the crowd. Then turning to John, he added, 'Pay! Why, nobody.'
John stared round at the mass of faces--some grinning, some fierce, some
lighted up by torches, some indistinct, some dusky and shadowy: some looking at
him, some at his house, some at each other--and while he was, as he thought, in
the very act of doing so, found himself, without any consciousness of having
moved, in the bar; sitting down in an arm-chair, and watching the destruction of
his property, as if it were some queer play or entertainment, of an astonishing
and stupefying nature, but having no reference to himself--that he could make
out--at all.
Yes. Here was the bar--the bar that the boldest never entered without special
invitation--the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed ground: here it was,
crammed with men, clubs, sticks, torches, pistols; filled with a deafening
noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; changed all at once into a bear-garden,
a madhouse, an infernal temple: men darting in and out, by door and window,
smashing the glass, turning the taps, drinking liquor out of China punchbowls,
sitting astride of casks, smoking private and personal pipes, cutting down the
sacred grove of lemons, hacking and hewing at the celebrated cheese, breaking
open inviolable drawers, putting things in their pockets which didn't belong to
them, dividing his own money before his own eyes, wantonly wasting, breaking,
pulling down and tearing up: nothing quiet, nothing private: men
everywhere--above, below, overhead, in the bedrooms, in the kitchen, in the
yard, in the stables--clambering in at windows when there were doors wide open;
dropping out of windows when the stairs were handy; leaping over the bannisters
into chasms of passages: new faces and figures presenting themselves every
instant--some yelling, some singing, some fighting, some breaking glass and
crockery, some laying the dust with the liquor they couldn't drink, some ringing
the bells till they pulled them down, others beating them with pokers till they
beat them into fragments: more men still--more, more, more--swarming on like
insects: noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans,
plunder, fear, and ruin!
Nearly all the time while John looked on at this bewildering scene, Hugh kept
near him; and though he was the loudest, wildest, most destructive villain
there, he saved his old master's bones a score of times. Nay, even when Mr
Tappertit, excited by liquor, came up, and in assertion of his prerogative
politely kicked John Willet on the shins, Hugh bade him return the compliment;
and if old John had had sufficient presence of mind to understand this whispered
direction, and to profit by it, he might no doubt, under Hugh's protection, have
done so with impunity.
At length the band began to reassemble outside the house, and to call to
those within, to join them, for they were losing time. These murmurs increasing,
and attaining a high pitch, Hugh, and some of those who yet lingered in the bar,
and who plainly were the leaders of the troop, took counsel together, apart, as
to what was to be done with John, to keep him quiet until their Chigwell work
was over. Some proposed to set the house on fire and leave him in it; others,
that he should be reduced to a state of temporary insensibility, by knocking on
the head; others, that he should be sworn to sit where he was until to-morrow at
the same hour; others again, that he should be gagged and taken off with them,
under a sufficient guard. All these propositions being overruled, it was
concluded, at last, to bind him in his chair, and the word was passed for
Dennis.
'Look'ee here, Jack!' said Hugh, striding up to him: 'We are going to tie
you, hand and foot, but otherwise you won't be hurt. D'ye hear?'
John Willet looked at another man, as if he didn't know which was the
speaker, and muttered something about an ordinary every Sunday at two o'clock.
'You won't be hurt I tell you, Jack--do you hear me?' roared Hugh, impressing
the assurance upon him by means of a heavy blow on the back. 'He's so dead
scared, he's woolgathering, I think. Give him a drop of something to drink here.
Hand over, one of you.'
A glass of liquor being passed forward, Hugh poured the contents down old
John's throat. Mr Willet feebly smacked his lips, thrust his hand into his
pocket, and inquired what was to pay; adding, as he looked vacantly round, that
he believed there was a trifle of broken glass--
'He's out of his senses for the time, it's my belief,' said Hugh, after
shaking him, without any visible effect upon his system, until his keys rattled
in his pocket. 'Where's that Dennis?'
The word was again passed, and presently Mr Dennis, with a long cord bound
about his middle, something after the manner of a friar, came hurrying in,
attended by a body-guard of half-a-dozen of his men.
'Come! Be alive here!' cried Hugh, stamping his foot upon the ground. 'Make
haste!'
Dennis, with a wink and a nod, unwound the cord from about his person, and
raising his eyes to the ceiling, looked all over it, and round the walls and
cornice, with a curious eye; then shook his head.
'Move, man, can't you!' cried Hugh, with another impatient stamp of his foot.
'Are we to wait here, till the cry has gone for ten miles round, and our work's
interrupted?'
'It's all very fine talking, brother,' answered Dennis, stepping towards him;
'but unless--' and here he whispered in his ear-- 'unless we do it over the
door, it can't be done at all in this here room.'
'What can't?' Hugh demanded.
'What can't!' retorted Dennis. 'Why, the old man can't.'
'Why, you weren't going to hang him!' cried Hugh.
'No, brother?' returned the hangman with a stare. 'What else?'
Hugh made no answer, but snatching the rope from his companion's hand,
proceeded to bind old John himself; but his very first move was so bungling and
unskilful, that Mr Dennis entreated, almost with tears in his eyes, that he
might be permitted to perform the duty. Hugh consenting, be achieved it in a
twinkling.
'There,' he said, looking mournfully at John Willet, who displayed no more
emotion in his bonds than he had shown out of them. 'That's what I call pretty
and workmanlike. He's quite a picter now. But, brother, just a word with
you--now that he's ready trussed, as one may say, wouldn't it be better for all
parties if we was to work him off? It would read uncommon well in the
newspapers, it would indeed. The public would think a great deal more on us!'
Hugh, inferring what his companion meant, rather from his gestures than his
technical mode of expressing himself (to which, as he was ignorant of his
calling, he wanted the clue), rejected this proposition for the second time, and
gave the word 'Forward!' which was echoed by a hundred voices from without.
'To the Warren!' shouted Dennis as he ran out, followed by the rest. 'A
witness's house, my lads!'
A loud yell followed, and the whole throng hurried off, mad for pillage and
destruction. Hugh lingered behind for a few moments to stimulate himself with
more drink, and to set all the taps running, a few of which had accidentally
been spared; then, glancing round the despoiled and plundered room, through
whose shattered window the rioters had thrust the Maypole itself,--for even that
had been sawn down,--lighted a torch, clapped the mute and motionless John
Willet on the back, and waving his light above his head, and uttering a fierce
shout, hastened after his companions.
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