Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge — A Tale Of The Riots Of Eighty

Gashford, the secretary, was taller, angularly made, highshouldered, bony, and ungraceful. His dress, in imitation of his superior, was demure and staid in the extreme; his manner, formal and constrained. This gentleman had an overhanging brow, great hands and feet and ears, and a pair of eyes that seemed to have made an unnatural retreat into his head, and to have dug themselves a cave to hide in. His manner was smooth and humble, but very sly and slinking. He wore the aspect of a man who was always lying in wait for something that WOULDN'T come to pass; but he looked patient—very patient—and fawned like a spaniel dog. Even now, while he warmed and rubbed his hands before the blaze, he had the air of one who only presumed to enjoy it in his degree as a commoner; and though he knew his lord was not regarding him, he looked into his face from time to time, and with a meek and deferential manner, smiled as if for practice.

Such were the guests whom old John Willet, with a fixed and leaden eye, surveyed a hundred times, and to whom he now advanced with a state candlestick in each hand, beseeching them to follow him into a worthier chamber. “For my lord,” said John—it is odd enough, but certain people seem to have as great a pleasure in pronouncing titles as their owners have in wearing them—'this room, my lord, isn't at all the sort of place for your lordship, and I have to beg your lordship's pardon for keeping you here, my lord, one minute.”

With this address, John ushered them upstairs into the state apartment, which, like many other things of state, was cold and comfortless. Their own footsteps, reverberating through the spacious room, struck upon their hearing with a hollow sound; and its damp and chilly atmosphere was rendered doubly cheerless by contrast with the homely warmth they had deserted.

It was of no use, however, to propose a return to the place they had quitted, for the preparations went on so briskly that there was no time to stop them. John, with the tall candlesticks in his hands, bowed them up to the fireplace; Hugh, striding in with a lighted brand and pile of firewood, cast it down upon the hearth, and set it in a blaze; John Grueby (who had a great blue cockade in his hat, which he appeared to despise mightily) brought in the portmanteau he had carried on his horse, and placed it on the floor; and presently all three were busily engaged in drawing out the screen, laying the cloth, inspecting the beds, lighting fires in the bedrooms, expediting the supper, and making everything as cosy and as snug as might be, on so short a notice. In less than an hour's time, supper had been served, and ate, and cleared away; and Lord George and his secretary, with slippered feet, and legs stretched out before the fire, sat over some hot mulled wine together.

“So ends, my lord,” said Gashford, filling his glass with great complacency, “the blessed work of a most blessed day.”

“And of a blessed yesterday,” said his lordship, raising his head.

“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.”