13. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 483-534

Chapters 53-58

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Macbeth put it this way:  

I am in blood 
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

Dickens puts it this way: "the sense of having gone too far to be forgiven, held the timid together no less than the bold." So the rioters continue to do their mischief:  "They all hoped and believed, in greater or less degree, that the government they seemed to have paralysed, would, in its terror, come to terms with them in the end, and suffer them to make their own conditions." 


Gashford goes to The Boot in search of Hugh, but finds only Barnaby and Dennis. The latter claims he doesn't know where Hugh has gone, but he arrives shortly, with Barnaby welcoming him eagerly. Gashford gives them the news that the King in Council has offered a reward of five hundred pounds "to any one who will discover the person or persons most active in demolishing those chapels." He also announces that the rioters who were arrested have been arraigned, and that there are witnesses against them, "Among others, a gentleman who saw the work going on in Warwick Street; a Catholic gentleman; one Haredale." Hugh tries to shush Gashford, but Barnaby has overheard the name and turns around in surprise. Hugh is able to distract him, however, by urging him to get on guard, and especially to make sure that nobody finds what's under his bed. The name fades "from his memory, like breath from a polished mirror." 


Gashford is most concerned that the witnesses should be intimidated, and particularly Haredale, but Hugh needs no persuading, especially as he has been in communication with Sir John Chester about doing harm to Haredale -- as Gashford knows and alludes to in several references to "your friend." He reiterates: "No mercy, no quarter, no two beams of his house to be left standing where the builder placed them!" Hugh and Dennis hurry out, and Gashford goes to Gordon's house to watch as the rioters make their way to their various targets: Catholic chapels and homes. The group including Sim Tappertit, Dennis, and Hugh is the last to pass by. As Hugh goes by, he acknowledges a spectator on the other side of the street: Sir John. "Gashford had seen him recognise Hugh with the air of a patron." Then a carriage with a woman in it drives up, she and Sir John talk for a minute "in which it was apparent that he was vastly entertaining on the subject of the mob, he stepped lightly in, and was driven away." 


Gashford has his dinner and paces impatiently, and finally climbs upstairs and goes out on the roof, where he sits looking toward the east. 

"'Nothing but gloom in that direction, still!' he muttered restlessly. 'Dog! where is the redness in the sky, you promised me!'" 


At the Maypole, John Willet and his friends Cobb, Parkes, and Daisy are arguing about the riots. Willet maintains, "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!" The others insists that there have been riots and destruction of churches and houses, but Willet is adamant: "'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?'" Solomon Daisy admits that the Warren is "a goodish way out of London" and that "some of the Catholic gentlefolks have actually sent trinkets and suchlike down here for safety -- at least so the story goes." Willet pooh-poohs even this: "The story goes that you saw a ghost last March. But nobody believes it."


And so the three friends decide to set out for London to see for themselves. Willet refuses even to shake their hands when they leave. After they have gone, he falls asleep, and when he wakes it is nighttime. Then he hears a sound "very faint and distant" that comes and goes and then gets louder and louder until "it burst into a distinct sound -- the voices, and the tramping feet of many men." His cook and housemaid are terrified and run "screaming upstairs" where they lock "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." Willet shouts angrily at them but he uses only "one word, and called that up the stairs in a stentorian voice, six distinct times." The word is "a monosyllable, which, however inoffensive when applied to the quadruped it denotes, is highly reprehensible when used in connection with females of unimpeachable character." (The only word that comes to my mind that both applies to a quadruped and is "reprehensible" is "bitch." Even a veiled allusion to that word seems awfully daring in Dickens's day. And since there are two women in question, wouldn't the word have to be "bitches," which is not a monosyllable? Little help here?) 


Left alone in the Maypole, "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." He doesn't wait long before the mob attacks and manhandles him, but Hugh intervenes and tells them not to hurt him. And the surprise of the mob and of Hugh's presence in it seems to undo Willet completely: "Mr Willet looked at him, and saw it was Hugh; but he said nothing and thought nothing." From here on he seems to be stunned.

He sits "in an arm-chair, ... watching the destruction of his property, as if it were some queer play or entertainment." The Maypole is laid waste by the mob, "swarming on like insects: noise, smoke, light, darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plunder, fear, and ruin!" Through it all, even though Hugh is among the most destructive of the rioters, he nevertheless protects Willet from bodily harm, "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." 


Finally, the mob starts to move on toward their main goal, the Warren, and there is a debate about what to do with Willet, including burning down the inn with him in it. Hugh overrules all the ideas except tying him to his chair and leaving him there, and Dennis is sent for some rope. Dennis, however, is under the impression that they want the rope for his usual professional duty "and raising his eyes to the ceiling, looked all over it, and round the walls and cornice, with a curious eye." Hugh is surprised when he realizes what Dennis has in mind -- we are reminded that Hugh "was ignorant of his calling" -- and simply binds Willet to the chair, to Dennis's disappointment. 

Traumatized into a waking stupor, Willet sits in the middle of his ruined inn.

John saw this desolation, and yet saw it not. He was perfectly contented to sit there, staring at it, and felt no more indignation or discomfort in his bonds than if they had been robes of honour. So far as he was personally concerned, old Time lay snoring, and the world stood still.

Finally he hears a footstep and a man in "a large, dark, faded cloak, and a slouched hat" appears. It's the mysterious stranger, of course, though his identity won't be mysterious much longer. He asks which way the mob went, and when Willet nods in the opposite direction, the man says he's lying. Then he realizes that Willet is not in his right mind and refrains from striking him. He empties the remaining liquor in a cask into his mouth and voraciously eats some bread and meat that has been left behind. Finally, he asks again where the mob went, and Willet points him in the right direction. But just as he rushes out, an alarm bell begins to ring and "a bright and vivid glare streamed up, which illumined, not only the whole chamber, but all the county." But it's the bell rather than the brightness of the fire that terrifies the man. "He clutched his hair, and stopped his ears, and travelled madly round and round.... There was murder in its every note -- cruel, relentless, savage murder -- the murder of a confiding man, by one who held his every trust."

The rioters, meanwhile, have breached the iron fence around the Warren and surrounded the house, "knocking violently at the doors, and calling to those within, to come down and open them on peril of their lives." No one answers, and they begin to break in, having raided the garden tool-shed for axes, hoes and other implements to use as weapons, and spreading fire from torch to torch so that "at least two-thirds of the whole roaring mass bore, each man in his hand, a blazing brand." Hugh and those closest to him concentrate on the turret where he had met Haredale in the company of John Willet. 

There are a few servants with arms in the hall, but they are so outnumbered that they pretend to be among the rioters and make their escape, "with the exception of one old man who was never heard of again, and was said to have had his brains beaten out with an iron bar ... and to have been afterwards burnt in the flames." The rampaging mob begins to destroy and set fire to everything, including one another, "kindling the building in so many parts that some had no time for escape, and were seen, with drooping hands and blackened faces, hanging senseless on the window-sills to which they had crawled, until they were sucked and drawn into the burning gulf." 

Although the alarm bell rang for a long time, no one came to fight the fire. "Some of the insurgents said that when it ceased, they heard the shrieks of women, and saw some garments fluttering in the air, as a party of men bore away no unresisting burdens." Finally, Hugh gives the signal to disperse, but not everyone is ready to leave.

There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled in it with their hands as if in water; and others who where retrained by force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing. On the skull of one drunken lad -- not twenty, by his looks -- who lay upon the ground with a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof came streaming down in a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his head like wax.

John Willet's friends from the Maypole have continued their journey toward London, hearing reports of continued destruction along the way, and being warned that they should wear blue cockades in their hats if they want to escape harm. As they get nearer to the city, they see "No Popery" chalked on almost every door. 

At a tollbooth a horseman rides up from the city and calls for the gate to be opened. The gatekeeper comes out and notices that the sky is lighted up by another fire. "At this, the three turned their heads, and saw in the distance -- straight in the direction whence they had come -- a broad sheet of flame, casting a threatening light upon the clouds." The horseman, who is Haredale, realizes what is on fire and urges the gatekeeper to open the gate. The gatekeeper recognizes and urges him not to go -- "You will be murdered" -- or at least to wear a blue cockade to protect himself, handing him the one from his own hat. When the three friends join in urging him to do so, Haredale recognizes Solomon Daisy, and asks him to come with him. Daisy gets on the horse behind him and they ride on till they reach the Maypole. 

They find the destruction at the inn and the demented Willet still bound to the chair. Daisy is distraught "That the Maypole bar should come to this, and we should live to see it!" But Willet stares "at him with an unearthly glare, and display[s], by every possible symptom, entire and complete unconsciousness." Daisy asks if they beat him, and finally Willet seems to come to his senses: "If they'd only had the goodness to murder me, I'd have thanked 'em kindly." As Haredale is untying the ropes, Willet says, "let's go and pitch ourselves in the nighest pool of water as is deep enough to hold us; for our day is over!" 

Haredale asks if he had seen Emma, but Willet says no. "'They rode away, I trust in Heaven, before these dreadful scenes began,' said Mr Haredale, who, between his agitation, his eagerness to mount his horse again, and the dexterity with which the cords were tied, had scarcely yet undone one knot." Then Willet asks them, "either of you gentlemen -- see a -- a coffin anywheres, did you?" He tells them, "a dead man called a little time ago, on his way yonder. I could have told you what name was on the plate, if he had brought his coffin with him, and left it behind." 

Haredale realizes the significance of what Willet is saying, and hurries off with Solomon Daisy in tow. When they reach the house, Haredale draws his sword and they search all around the house for signs of life. He calls the names of his servants but gets no response. They stop at the foot of the turret where "a part of the staircase still remained, winding upward from a great mound of dust and cinders." Then they hear a faint noise, and Haredale covers Daisy's mouth and signals for him to stay there and be silent. Then he enters the turret with his sword drawn. Daisy stays below and watches, "And now a figure was dimply visible; climbing very softly; and often stopping to look down." Daisy looks at a place illuminated by the moonlight where if the figure continues to ascend it will appear. When it finally does, and looks around, "The horror-stricken clerk uttered a scream that pierced the air, and cried, 'The ghost! The ghost!'" Then Haredale appears and grabs the figure by the throat. 

"Villain!" cried Mr Haredale, in a terrible voice.... "Dead and buried, as all men supposed through your infernal arts, but reserved by Heaven for this -- at last -- at last -- I have you. You, whose hands are red with my brother's blood, and that of his faithful servant, shed to conceal your own atrocious guilt -- You, Rudge, double murderer and monster, I arrest you in the name of God, who has delivered you into my hands. No. Though you had the strength of twenty men," he added, as the murderer writhed and struggled, "you could not escape me or loosen my grip tonight!" 

 Barnaby has stood guard at The Boot, with Grip as his companion. (Has anyone else wondered about Grip all this time? Where was he when Barnaby was in the middle of the mob, or ransacking a church?) Now Grip is busying himself with "scattering the straw, hiding under it such small articles as had been casually left about, and haunting Hugh's bed, to which he seemed to have taken a particular attachment." He has also learned to say "No Popery!" 


Lord George Gordon and John Grueby ride up. Gordon talks with Barnaby a while, and listens as he explains that Grip is "my brother, Grip is -- always with me -- always talking -- always merry -- eh, Grip?" Unfortunately, Gordon doesn't know what to make of Barnaby, and when he asks Grueby, the servant says Barnaby is mad. This bothers Gordon, perhaps because he himself is mad, and he gets angry at Grueby, who says, "look at his dress, look at his eyes, look at his restless way, hear him cry 'No Popery!' Mad, my lord.... Stark, staring, raving, roaring mad." Gordon turns on him: "You are an ill-conditioned, most ungrateful fellow, ... a spy, for anything I know.... You will leave me to-night -- nay, as soon as we reach home. The sooner the better." 


Grueby accepts this verdict, knowing that Gashford is in part behind it, but he is concerned about Barnaby, too. "He had better get to a place of safety if he can, poor creature." He tells Barnaby, "I think, young man, ... that the soldiers may turn out and take you; and that if they do, you will certainly be hung by the neck till you're dead -- dead -- dead. And I think you had better go from here, as fast as you can. That's what I think." But Barnaby retorts with, "Let them come! Gordon for ever!" Which pleases Gordon, of course: "This a madman!" he says to Grueby. And to Barnaby, "I am proud to be the leader of such men as you." It's a case of the mad leading the mad. Gordon rides off, "glancing angrily round to see that his servant followed." Grueby does follow, "but not before he had again warned Barnaby to retreat." 


Barnaby continues his patrol. Late in the afternoon, some men arrive to warn the inmates of The Boot that soldiers are on their way, and everybody but Barnaby and an old woman clears out. Five minutes later the soldiers arrive. One of them is the man whom Barnaby knocked off his horse with his flagstaff at Westminster. There are two civilians as well. Barnaby is ordered to surrender, but he stands in the doorway holding his flagpole crosswise. The soldiers move in, and Barnaby fends them off with his pole until finally he is struck with the butt of a gun and taken prisoner. 


Then an officer expresses surprise: Grip "had plucked away the straw from Hugh's bed, and turned up the loose ground with his iron bill.... Golden cups, spoons, candlesticks, coined guineas -- all the riches were revealed." Barnaby is marched away by four soldiers with fixed bayonets: "those cold, bright, sharp, shining points turned towards him: the mere looking down at which, now that he was bound and helpless, made the warm current of his life run cold." 


He is taken to a barracks where a double guard is set for him. He dozes for a while and then hears two men talking about him. One is a sergeant and the other is a civilian called Tom Green. The sergeant is protesting that the magistrates have not given the military the authority to quell the riots: "Here's a proclamation. Here's a man referred to in that proclamation. Here's proof against him, and a witness on the spot. Damme! Take him out and shoot him, sir. Who wants a magistrate?" Tom Green asks when Barnaby goes before Sir John Fielding, the presiding magistrate. The sergeant says eight p.m., but he expects that when Barnaby is committed to Newgate Prison, the soldiers will be attacked by the mob and forced to retreat because the magistrates haven't given them order to fire on the rioters. 


Barnaby peeks out at the men, and sees that Tom Green "was a gallant, manly, handsome fellow, but he had lost his left arm." His bearing suggests that he had once been a soldier. And he says, "it makes a man sorrowful to come back to old England, and see her in this condition." Then when the sergeant says that they have a bird in the guard-house that "bawls 'No Popery,' like a man -- or like a devil, as he says he is," Tom Green starts to go take a look at the bird when Barnaby calls out that it's his friend Grip: "He's the only friend I have left now." And he begs them not to hurt him. The sergeant taunts him with a threat to kill the bird and him as well, and Barnaby angrily replies, "Kill anything you can, and so revenge yourself on those who with their bare hands untied could do as much to you!" Barnaby rarely sounds "idiotic," but here he breaks character entirely, at least until he begins to cry, and mutter, "Good bye, Grip -- good bye, dear old Grip!" He has noticed that the one-armed man seemed sympathetic, but he does nothing to help him at this point. 


Barnaby is taken to Bow Street, where "a blind gentleman" -- i.e., Fielding, who was Henry Fielding's half-brother -- sends him to Newgate. As the sergeant had predicted, the mob attacks the soldiers taking him to the prison, but they succeed in getting him there. A "set of heavy irons" are riveted on him and he is taken to a cell. There he is joined by "Grip, who, with his head drooping and his deep black plumes rough and rumpled, appeared to comprehend and to partake, his master's fallen fortunes." 

8. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 297-342

Chapters 31-35

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Barricaded in his room, Joe waits to be confronted by his father for his assault on Cobb, but when morning comes, he climbs out of his window and leaves, looking "up at the old Maypole, it might be for the last time." He reaches the Black Lion pub in London, where he learns that a recruiting sergeant is signing men up. The recruiter is eager to have him, but Joe wants to wait until that evening, so that he has time to talk to Dolly. The recruiter promises that if he does sign, he'll leave London the next day: "You'll go abroad -- a country where it's all sunshine and plunder -- the finest climate in the world." That sounds to Joe exactly like what he wants. "Needs must when the devil drives; and the devil that drives me is an empty pocket and an unhappy home."

By evening, he has spent all his money on food, while waiting for a time when Mrs. Varden usually goes out to a lecture. He finds Dolly alone (or so he thinks).

Dolly welcomes him in her father's workshop, but when he tells her he is there "to say good-bye -- to say good-bye for I don't know how many years; perhaps for ever. I am going abroad," she reacts coldly. "Dolly released her hand and said, 'Indeed!' She remarked in the same breath that it was a fine night, and in short, betrayed no more emotion than the forge itself." Unfortunately for Joe, "that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains." She is expecting to be wooed, not to be forced to confront reality.

Joe had small experience in love affairs, and had no notion how different young ladies are at different times; he had expected to take Dolly up again at the very point where he had left her after that delicious evening ride, and was no more prepared for such an alteration than to see the sun and moon change places.

So even though he now declares, "I love you dearly, with all my heart and soul; with as much truth and earnestness as ever man loved woman in this world, I do believe," Dolly is expecting more. She "was a coquette by nature, and a spoilt child," convinced that "The coachmaker would have been dissolved in tears, and ... done all kinds of poetry." The truth of what she has done by not begging him to stay is slow to hit her. After he has left, she waits for him to come back, looks out into the street, waits some more and then "went upstairs humming a tune, bolted herself in, laid her head down on her bed, and cried as if her heart would break."

After she has gone, Sim comes out from his hiding place in triumph, admires his legs in the mirror, and proclaims, "Tremble, Willet, and despair. She's mine! She's mine!"

Joe goes to the recruiting sergeant and signs up, and the next morning, "The party embarked in a passage-boat bound for Gravesend, whence they were to proceed on foot to Chatham; the wind was in their favour, and they soon left London behind them; a mere dark mist -- a giant phantom in the air."

Dickens announces the parallel father-son story, that of Edward and John Chester, with "Misfortunes, saith the adage, never come singly."

Phiz underscores a point: Notice the picture of Abraham sacrificing Isaac above John Chester.

John and Edward Chester are dining together, the father trying to cheer up the son. But when Edward calls him "father," John protests, "for Heaven's sake don't call me by that obsolete and ancient name. Have some regard for delicacy. Am I grey, or wrinkled, do I go on crutches, have I lost my teeth, that you adopt such a mode of address? Good God, how very coarse!" And Edward only makes it worse when he protests, "I was about to speak to you from my heart, sir." For John, the heart is only "the centre of the blood-vessels and all that sort of thing.... How can you be so very vulgar and absurd? These anatomical allusions should be left to gentlemen of the medical profession. They are really not agreeable in society.... Men are sometimes stabbed to the heart, shot to the heart; but as to speaking from the heart, or to the heart, or being warm-hearted, or cold-hearted, or broken-hearted, or being all heart, or having no heart -- pah! these things are nonsense, Ned."

Edward, perhaps to put an end to his father's lecture, says, "No doubt." But John continues, narrowing his focus to Emma: "No doubt in your mind she was all heart once. Now she has none at all." Edward protests that though she appears to have changed, it was "by vile means, I believe." John insists, "She supposed you to be rich, or at least rich enough; and found you poor. Marriage is a civil contract; people marry to better their worldly condition and improve appearances; it is an affair of house and furniture, of liveries, servants, equipage, and so forth. The lady being poor and you poor also, there is an end of the matter." Dickens certainly wants us to believe that this is John Chester's heartless materialism, and therefore to be dismissed, but modern readers may find some uncomfortable truths in it. And then he goes on to a revelation:

"Edward, my father had a son, who being a fool like you, and, like you, entertaining low and disobedient sentiments, he disinherited and cursed one morning after breakfast. The circumstance occurs to me with a singular clearness of recollection this evening. I remember eating muffins at the time, with marmalade. He led a miserable life (the son, I mean) and died early; it was a happy release on all accounts; he degraded the family very much." 

This would seem to be a significant revelation to Edward: that he had an uncle who went astray. Perhaps his father is only making it up as a warning, but in a novel filled with hints and secrets, such as the identity of the mysterious stranger who robbed Edward and threatens Mrs. Rudge, or the parentage of Hugh and John Chester's motive for his intense scrutiny of Hugh's face, it also give the reader a license to speculate. But only for a moment, for John now responds to his son's plea for an audience to his concerns with a bitter dismissal: "if, in short, you are resolved to take your own course, you must take it, and my curse with it."

Now it's Edward's turn to surprise us: "'The curse may pass your lips,' said Edward, 'but it will be but empty breath. I do not believe that any man on earth has greater power to call one down upon his fellow -- least of all, upon his own child -- than he has to make one drop of rain or flake of snow fall from the clouds above us at his impious bidding." This is the kind of skepticism about melodramatic devises such as paternal curses that we would normally expect from John Chester, not from Edward. But John Chester naturally knows how to turn it back on his son: "You are so very irreligious, so exceedingly undutiful, so horribly profane.... Return to this roof no more, I beg you. Go, sir, since you have no moral sense remaining; and go to the Devil, at my express desire. Good day."

Edward leaves, "and turned his back upon the house for ever." So with both Joe and Edward cast adrift upon the world, Dickens now jumps ahead five years, from 1775 to 1780. 

It's a night of terrible weather, and Joe Willet, Tom Cobb, and Phil Parkes are waiting for their companion, Solomon Daisy, in the coziness of the Maypole kitchen. Dickens makes much of the contrast between the warm, quiet interior and the cold, windy night outside, so much so that it's almost an inversion of the disjunction between nature and humanity that we saw earlier when John Chester was making his way inattentively through a beautiful spring day. It is half past ten at night, and Willet is snoring -- although he is awake: "his breathing was pretty much the same, awake or asleep, saving that in the latter case he sometimes experienced a slight difficulty in respiration" (which we would call apnea).

Over the chimney there is a poster of "a youth of tender years running away very fast." After Joe's disappearance, Willet had distributed these, offering a reward of five pounds, but he "obstinately peristed, despite the advice and entreaties of his friends, in describing his son as a 'young boy;' and furthermore as being from eighteen inches to a couple of feet shorter than he really was," with the result that he has had delivered to him "at various times and at a vast expense, ... some five-and-forty runaways varying from six years old to twelve."

Finally a cry is heard outside and Solomon Daisy enters, terror-stricken and for a moment unable to speak. Willet decides the way to get him to tell them what has happened is to bully him: "Tell us what's the matter, sir, ... or I'll kill you.... How dare you look like that?" Finally Daisy is able to tell them "to lock the house-door and close and bar the shutters of the room, without a moment's loss of time." They follow his advice, and he begins to moan, "Why did I leave this house to-night! On the nineteenth of March -- of all nights in the year, on the nineteenth of March!" This is the anniversary of the murder of Reuben Haredale, twenty-seven years ago. He tells them that he realized that he had forgotten to wind the clock in the church, and he went to do it, even though the storm was raging outside, and no one else was about. When he got there, he realized it was the nineteenth of March, and "at the very same moment, I heard a voice outside the tower -- rising from among the graves." It was the kind of cry one might give "if something dreadful followed us in a dream, and came upon us unawares; and then it died off: seeming to pass quite round the church."

When he opened the church door to leave, "there crossed me -- so close, that by stretching out my finger I could have touched it -- something in the likeness of a man. It was bare-headed to the storm. It turned its face without stopping, and it fixed its eyes on mine. It was a ghost -- a spirit." He falls back weakly as the others demand "Whose?" but only Willet hears the answer: "'Gentlemen,' said Mr Willet after a long pause, 'you needn't ask. The likeness of a murdered man. This is the nineteenth of March.'"

Receiving this news, they all vow to keep it to themselves. But after they leave, Willet decides that he has to share this information with Geoffrey Haredale as soon as possible. So he summons Hugh, who complains about going out at midnight in a storm, but whom Willet needs to lead him through the darkness to the Warren. When they reach it, the place is dark except for a light in one of the towers, which Willet realizes is "Mr Reuben's own apartment, God be with us! I wonder his brother likes to sit there, so late at night -- on this night too." Hugh scoffs at this: "Is it less warm or dry, because a man was killed there?" Willet begins "to think it just barely possible that he was something of a dangerous character, and that it might be advisable to get rid of him one of these days."

Haredale lets them in, and they climb the stairs to the room, though Haredale asks Hugh to wait outside. "He has an evil eye," he tells Willet. After Willet tells him what Solomon Daisy saw, Haredale says it was a good idea to keep it secret, though he regards the story as "a foolish fancy on he part of this weak-brained man, bred in his fears and superstition. But Miss Haredale, though she would know it to be so, would be disturbed by it if it reached her ears."

When Willet prepares to leave, Haredale offers Hugh a drink, and when he gives it to him, Hugh "threw part of it upon the floor." Willet scolds him, but Hugh says, "'I'm drinking a toast... to this house and its master.' With that he muttered something to himself, and drank the rest, and setting down the glass, preceded them without another word." Willet is "scandalised" by this. And when they leave, Willet notices that Haredale's "face had changed so much and grown so haggard since their entrance, that he almost seemed another man."

Willet and Hugh take to the road again, but are suddenly almost run down by three men on horseback. They stop and ask if this is the road to London. "'If you follow it right, it is,' replied Hugh roughly." The man who asked calls Hugh's manner "churlish," but Willet assures them it is, and then scolds Hugh for provoking "three great neck-or-nothing chaps, that could keep on running over use, back'ards and for'ards, till we was dead, and then take our bodies up behind 'em, and drown us ten miles off." When he informs the men that London is thirteen miles away, they decide it's too far to ride that night, and ask for an inn, which Willet is happy to answer.

One of the men then asks if Willet has "one excellent bed, landlord? Hem! A bed that you can recommend -- a bed that you are sure is well aired -- a bed that has been slept in by some perfectly respectable and unexceptionable person?" And he launches into a long speech about how "forty thousand men of this our island in the wave (exclusive of women and children) rivet their eyes and thoughts on Lord George Gordon; and every day, from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same, pray for his health and vigour." And so on. He insists that only Gordon needs the bed: "Let me sleep on a chair -- the carpet -- anywhere. No one will repine if I take cold or fever." And as for the third man, "Let John Grueby pass the night beneath the open sky -- no one will repine for him."

Willet, "who had never heard so many words spoken together at one time, or delivered with such volubility and emphasis as by the long-winded gentleman," assures them that he has accommodations for all three of them. And we learn that the three men are Gordon, his secretary Gashford ("the long-winded gentleman"), and his servant, John Grueby. Gordon says they will follow Willet and Hugh to the Maypole, but Grueby doesn't like Hugh's looks and insists on riding ahead with him. As they proceed, Hugh sizes Grueby up:

He was a square-built, strong-made, bull-necked fellow, of the true English breed; and as Hugh measured him with his eye, he measured Hugh, regarding him meanwhile with a look of bluff disdain. He was much older than the Maypole man, being to all appearance five-and-forty; but was one of those self-possessed, hard-headed, imperturbable fellows, who, if they are ever beaten at fisticuffs, or other kind of warfare, never know it, and go on coolly till they win.

Which is pretty much what happens now, as Hugh decides to challenge Grueby on his skill with a cudgel, waving his about and receiving a blow on the head from the butt end of Grueby's whip. Grueby comments, "You wear your hear too long; I should have cracked your crown if it had been a little shorter." Hugh meditates on escalating the combat, but backs down, recognizing that he was dealing with "a customer of almost supernatural toughness."

 Willet shows them to the Maypole, where he observes that Gordon is "about the middle height, of a slender make, and sallow complexion, with an aquiline nose, and long hair of a reddish brown, combed perfectly straight and smooth about his ears, and slightly powdered, but without the faintest vestige of a curl." He is "not yet thirty," and "his face ... was thin and mild, and wore an air of melancholy; but it was suggestive of an indefinable uneasiness." Gashford "was taller, angularly made, high-shouldered, bony, and ungraceful.... 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." (Dickens will do this better when he creates Uriah Heep, though "lying in wait for something that wouldn't come to pass" is quite wonderful.)

When they are settled in, Gordon and Gashford look back on what Gashford calls "the blessed work of a most blessed day," and Gordon prompts the secretary to tell him how he moved the Protestants of Suffolk: "They cried to be led against the Papists, they vowed a dreadful vengeance on their heads, they roared like men possessed." He goes on to say, "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 an 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.'"

Gordon seems to be under Gashford's spell. He even asks, "But -- dear Gashford -- did I really say all that?" Gashford assures him he did, and he reminds him that he, Gashford, had been "stricken by the magic of his eloquence in Scotland but a year ago, [and] abjured the errors of the Romish church." Gordon continues to be in something of a daze, and to need Gashford's reassurance. He has "a heightened colour" and puts a "fevered hand" on Gashford's shoulder; "struggling through his Puritan's demeanour, was something wild and ungovernable which broke through all restraint." Meanwhile, Gashford is taking more than his share of the mulled wine.

Willet and Grueby arrive to show "the deluded lord into his chamber." Gashford falls asleep by the fire, only to be awakened by Grueby, who is concerned about his master's state of mind: "'Between Bloody Marys, and blue cockades, and glorious Queen Besses, and no Popery, and Protestant associations, and making of speeches,' pursued John Grueby, ... 'my lord's half off his head.... One of these evenings, when the weather gets warmer and Protestants are thirsty, they'll be pulling London down, -- and I never heard that Bloody Mary went as far as that.'"  

7. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 259-297

Chapters 26-30

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Gabriel Varden tells Geoffrey Haredale that he isn't surprised at Mrs. Rudge's decision to forgo her annuity and disappear: He has, after all, witnessed her strange behavior earlier: "I say, in the passage of her house one evening after dark, the highwayman who robbed and wounded Mr Edward Chester, and on the same night threatened me." Moreover, he tells Haredale, she prevented him from apprehending the stranger. Haredale wonders if she has secretly married again: "Suppose she married incautiously -- it is not improbably, for her existence has been a lonely and monotonous one for many years -- and the man turned out a ruffian, she would be anxious to screen him, and yet would revolt from his crimes." Moreover, he wonders if it's possible that Mrs. Rudge had deceived them all along, "that this connection was formed in her husband's lifetime, and led to his and my brother's --"

Gabriel interrupts to protest: "Five-and-twenty years ago, where was there a girl like her? A gay, handsome, laughing, bright-eyed damsel!" He had courted her, and although he thinks she was too good for Rudge, he also thinks she was too good for himself. Haredale retreats from his suspicions, admitting that Varden's characterization of Mary Rudge is correct.

Varden has accompanied Haredale to the meeting at Mrs. Rudge's, but when they arrive they discover only John Chester at the house. He tells them that, as part of his plan to separate Edward and Emma, he has bought off Mrs. Rudge and Barnaby, giving them money and sending them away. "She appointed to see you here to-night, I know, but found it inconvenient, and couldn't wait. Here is the key of the door. I am afraid you'll find it inconveniently large; but as the tenement is yours, your good-nature will excuse that, Haredale, I am certain!"

Chester leaves Varden and Haredale, who are furious at this turn of events, but goes to Varden's house, where he is greeted by Sim Tappertit, who once again reminds Chester of the name of his enemy: Joseph Willet.  Sim admits Chester to the parlor, where Mrs. Varden, Dolly, and Miggs are sitting. Chester pretends to mistake Mrs. Varden for Dolly and to be amazed when Miggs cries out, "If he an't been and took Missis for her own daughter." Then he insists that Dolly must be Mrs. Varden's sister. "'My daughter, indeed, sir,' returned Mrs V., blushing with great juvenility." Dolly, however, has the sense to see through this flattery, and notes that "there was a broad, bold look of admiration in Mr Chester's face, refined and polished though it sought to be, which distressed her very much."

Chester goes on to pretend to piety when he sees Mrs. Varden's copy of the Protestant Manual: "My favourite book, dear madam." (So much for Lord Chesterfield's letters.) He lays it on thick, aware that "as hollow vessels produce a far more musical sound in falling than those which are substantial, so it will oftentimes be found that sentiments which have nothing in them make the loudest ringing in the world, and are the most relished.... Even Dolly ... could not help owning within herself that he was the sweetest-spoken gentleman she had ever seen."

He now presses his advantage by asking Mrs. Varden if he can speak with her privately, and they withdraw to an upstairs sitting-room. There he works his charm first to dissuade her from further support of Edward in his courting of Emma: "there are grave and weighty reasons, pressing family considerations, and apart even from these, points of religious difference, which interpose themselves, and render their union impossible; utterly im-possible." He tells her, moreover, that Edward "is bound by his duty to me, by his honour, by every solemn tie and obligation, to marry some one else." Of course, he doesn't specify that there is a particular "some one else" he is bound to marry, for there isn't. But naturally Mrs. Varden takes it that way, which instantly brands Edward in her mind as a cad.

On the other hand, Mrs. Varden feels a twinge where Emma is concerned: "if you take Miss Emma's lover away, sir, what becomes of the poor thing's heart then?" He assures her, "A marriage with my son, whom I should be compelled to disown, would be followed by yeas of misery; they would be separated, my dear madam, in a twelvemonth." And now he plays his trump card: He has heard that Dolly has been in the company of "a young man (I am sorry to say, a dissolute fellow, of very indifferent character) of whom I have heard Ned speak -- Bullet was it -- Pullet -- Mullet --" She identifies him as Joe Willet, and Chester goes in for the kill: "Suppose this Joseph Willet now, were to aspire to the affections of your charming daughter, and  were to engage them." Mrs. Varden is indignant at the thought.

And having achieve his goal (and Sim Tappertit's as well), Mr. Chester takes his leave. Only Dolly is not completely seduced: "For all his politeness and pleasant speaking, I am pretty sure he was making game of us, more than once." Mrs. Varden is so shocked by this that she bursts into tears.

It has to be said here that although Dickens's characters are really just caricatures, he plays with them so skillfully that a reader can't help becoming indignant at John Chester's villainy, Mrs. Varden's credulousness, and the predicament into which he has cast Dolly, Joe, Edward and Emma.

Chester retires to "a noted coffee-house in Covent Garden" where he gloats (and stiffs the waiter). Then he returns home where he finds Hugh asleep on the staircase. While Hugh sleeps, Chester bends over and examines his face closely, observing the sleeping man "with a searching eye." The only reason for this action would seem to be that Chester has some suspicions about Hugh's identity, his true parentage. Finally he wakes Hugh, who tells him that he has had a "curious" dream in which Chester was a part. "'I hope it may never come true, master." It is "a comfort," he says, that we're not where I thought we were.' He looked round him as he spoke, and in particular looked above his head, as though he half expected to be standing under some object which had had existence in his dream." Dickens doesn't tell us what the object is: the gallows, perhaps?

They go into Chester's drawing room, where Hugh explains that he's there because Edward had tried to see Emma but was unsuccessful, so he left a "letter or some message" for Joe to deliver to her. But John Willet forbade Joe from delivering it: "He says (that's the old one does) that none of his people shall interfere and get him in trouble." Chester calls John Willet "a jewel ... and the better for being a dull one." Dolly also wrote Emma a message to tell her that she had lost the letter she was supposed to give to Edward, which Joe was also forbidden to deliver. Joe gave it to Hugh to deliver, but he now hands it over to Chester.

But to Hugh's surprise, Chester doesn't burn this letter as he did the one from Emma to Edward. Again he chides Hugh for breaking the law: "Don't you know that the letter you brought to me, was directed to my son who resides in this very place? And can you descry no difference between his letters and those addressed to other people?" Chester tells Hugh that he will deliver it, and asks when Emma usually walks in the garden at the Warren. Hugh tells him, and Chester cautions him not to show signs around other people that they have any prior acquaintance other than the casual one of Maypole servant and Maypole guest.

Hugh departs, and after reflecting "the plot thickens," Chester goes to bed and falls asleep, "but had not slept long when he started up and thought that Hugh was at the outer door, calling in a strange voice, very different from his own, to be admitted." He gets up and looks out, and even calls Hugh's name, but no one is there. Finally he falls asleep again. The plot thickens, indeed.

The next day Chester rides to the Warren to see Emma. Dickens uses the journey to moralize: "The thoughts of worldly men are for ever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain." So it is that Chester rides through a beautiful spring day, "so fair a world" redolent with "hope and promise," but takes no notice of it. He has "no greater thought of the day or the scene through which he moved, than that he was fortunate (being choicely dressed) to have such favourable weather. He smiled very complacently at such times, but rather as if he were satisfied with himself than with anything else."

He stops at the Maypole, where Hugh comes out to assist him at the same time that John Willet appears. Willet is "rather surprised by the quickness with which he appeared," and treats Hugh harshly. Then, after Chester observes that Hugh is "an active fellow," Willet orders Hugh to perform a trick for him: to hang Willet's wig from the weathercock, which Hugh does with "inconceivable rapidity" and then vaults on his horse and leaves. "There never was such a chap for flinging himself about and never hurting his bones," Willet comments. Chester asks about Joe, and Willet informs him, "My son, sir, is upon his patrole." This confuses Chester, "who naturally thought that being on patrole, implied walking about somewhere." Chester, it turns out, means that Joe is "on parole," or as he explains, "He is upon patrole of honour, sir, not to leave the premises," to keep him from "doing anything unpleasant in opposing your desires."

Chester makes his way to the Warren, where he finds Emma taking her walk and accosts her, introducing himself as "the father of him whom you honour and distinguish above all other men." She is a little alarmed, but he assures her, "Edward is well -- quite well. It is of him I wish to speak, certainly; but I have no misfortune to communicate." Then he says, "You have heard me described as cold-hearted, calculating, selfish --" But she assures him that neither Edward nor her uncle has ever spoken of him that way. Of her uncle she says, "It is not his nature to stab in the dark, nor is it mine to love such deeds." This is the opening Chester needs so he can proclaim, "apostrophising the air; 'it is this frank, ingenuous, noble nature, Ned, that you can wound so lightly. Shame -- shame upon you, boy!'"

She is angered at this, but he proceeds to flatter her in preparation for saying, "Miss Haredale, you are deceived; you are deceived by your unworthy lover, and my unworthy son." He gives her Dolly's note, claiming, "It reached my hands by chance, and by mistake, and should have accounted to you (as I am told) for my son's not answering some other note of yours." She responds to this as he hoped she would, as "something so very candid, so scrupulously honourable, so very truthful and just," and bursts into tears. He comforts her, and moves in for the kill:

"Edward seeks to break with you upon a false and most unwarrantable pretence. I have it on his own showing; in his own hand.... There lies on his desk at this present moment, ready for transmission to you, a letter, in which he tells you that our poverty -- our poverty; his and mine, Miss Haredale -- forbids him to pursue his claim upon your hand; in which he offers, voluntarily proposes, to free you from your pledge; and talks magnanimously (men do so, very commonly, in such cases) of being in time more worthy of your regard -- and so forth."

He puts it more bluntly: Edward, he says "not only jilts you ... but affects to make a merit and a virtue of the act."

Just as she is falling for this line, her uncle appears and demands an explanation for his presence. She leaves them, and Chester tells Haredale that he was informing Emma that his son has written a letter breaking off with her, "a boyish, honest, sentimental composition, which remains as yet in his desk, because he hasn't had the heart to send it.... If she receives Ned's letter by to-morrow noon, you may date their parting from to-morrow night." Haredale informs Chester that he is sorry he ever got involved with him. "When I am most remorseful for this treachery, I will think of you and your marriage, and try to justify myself in such remembrances, for having torn asunder Emma and your son, at any cost." We now learn that Haredale had been in love with the woman whom Chester married, or as Chester puts it, as he leaves Haredale, he "could not keep his mistress when he had won her, and threw me in her way to carry off the prize; I triumph in the present and the past." Chester also draws his sword, thinking how much he would enjoy crossing swords with Haredale, but puts the sword away and became "his unruffled self again."

Joe Willet, meanwhile, is suffering from his father's treatment more than ever, and John Willet's "Maypole cronies" aid and abet his harshness, praising him as "a father of the good old English sort" and claiming "that there were no new-fangled notions or modern ways in him; that he put them in mind of what their fathers were when they were boys," and so on. "In short, between old John and old John's friends, there never was an unfortunate young fellow so bullied, badgered, worried, fretted, and brow-beaten; so constantly beset, or made so tired of his life, as poor Joe Willet."

When Chester reaches the Maypole and his horse is brought out, Joe goes to help him, but is reined in by his father: "No breaking of patroles. How dare you come out of the door, sir, without leave?" But Joe also notices "the smile upon their visitor's face, and observes the pleasure his disgrace afforded him." He goes in and lays his head on his arms on a table and reflects that "but for Dolly, who I couldn't bear should think me the rascal they would make me out to be if I ran away, this house and I should part to-night."

That evening, the usual company of Willet's friends are at the Maypole, and Tom Cobb provokes Joe with another admonition to "obey his father in all things." Joe tells him, "don't talk to me," but Cobb sneers at him for talking back.

Crowding into one moment the vexation and the wrath of years, Joe started up, overturned the table, fell upon his long enemy, pummelled him with all his might and main, and finished by driving him with surprising swiftness against a heap of spittoons in one corner; plunging into which, head foremost, with a tremendous crash, he lay at full length among the ruins, stunned and motionless.

Joe goes to his room and barricades the door with furniture, then thinks, "The Maypole and I must part company. I'm a roving vagabond -- she hates me for evermore -- it's all over!"

1. Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens, pp. 1-58

Charles Dickens: A Note by Angus Calder; Introduction, by G.W. Spence; Preface; Chapter 1

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Dickens originally committed to bringing out Barnaby Rudge in a three-volume edition, but "He needed a close relation with his reading public as a stimulus to his creative power, and this was not provided by the method of publishing a novel complete in three volumes.... [E]ventually it was decided that Barnaby Rudge should follow The Old Curiosity Shop in weekly serialization in Master Humphrey's Clock." The first installment appeared in February 1841 and ran through November. But Dickens found weekly serialization difficult in a historical novel with such complexity and decided that his next novel would be published monthly.

The novel sets up two opposing views of the past in its opening pages:

In the dreamy gables of the Maypole and its snug bar, the past is seen as a solace, a charm, and a burden. In contrast, in the neighbouring great house, the Warren, where a double murder has been committed, the past is a nightmare.

For the character of Barnaby, Dickens drew on Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian and the madwoman Madge Wildfire, but also on Wordsworth: "Like Wordsworth's Idiot Boy, he has a devoted mother, distressed by cares that he is free from, and, like him too, he feels a 'glee' in the presence of Nature that the careworn cannot experience.... It would be a mistake to see Barnaby simply as another variant of the outraged innocent, like Nell and Smike. He is not only a victim of evil, but also a participator in it, though innocent because of his idiocy."

Although the focus of the novel is on the Gordon Riots of 1780, Dickens found parallels in the labor movement known as Chartism in his own day.

Chartism developed as a result of the disillusionment that befell the working classes after the Reform Act [of 1832], and it sought a political means for the remedy of social ills. The people's Charter was a demand for further constitutional reform, its principal point being universal manhood suffrage.... Above all, it was combined with agitation, with which Dickens must have had some sympathy, against the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. But he must have been alarmed by the extremist faction of Chartists, who advocated the use of "physical force" and imitated the gestures of the French Revolution.

Although the historical distance sets Barnaby Rudge apart from the novels set in his own time, just as it does his other historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities, the novel nevertheless coheres with Dickens's view of social ills: "The fundamentally wrong condition of society, Dickens suggests, has created the wrong disposition of the people, which the cry of 'No Popery' resolves into savagery with an ease that is surprising only to the imperceptive.... [A]s a study of the human condition it is more complex and ambiguous than Bleak House though to some readers this complexity may seem to betray a confusion of ideas." For that matter, Dickens sometimes gets the history wrong: The Catholic Relief Act "was passed in 1778, though Dickens supposes that in 1780 the Protestant Association was petitioning Parliament, not to repeal it, but to refrain from passing it."

In his Preface, Dickens singles out two major themes of the novel: religious bigotry and capital punishment. The Gorden Riots, though "shameful," "teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful." And who are we in an age beset by fundamentalisms of all denominations to argue with that? As for the death penalty, Dickens has in mind particularly the expansion of it in the later eighteenth century to cover all sorts of petty crime, citing in particular that of a woman whose husband had been impressed into the navy, leaving her the sole support of two small children. She was hanged for stealing some cloth from a draper's shop.

The parish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary; and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of shopkeepers in Ludgate Street.

The novel begins in March 1775 at an inn called the Maypole on "the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London." As Spence suggests in his introduction, this is the England of nostalgia, "an old building with more gable ends than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out of which it seems as though even smoke could not choose but come in more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous progress." The age of the Maypole is unknown, and is said to date to the reign of Henry VIII and that Queen Elizabeth had slept there. The exact age is unimportant, however: it was "perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older." The point is that it has roots.

The landlord is John Willet, "a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which betokened profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined with a very strong reliance upon his own merits ... one of the most dogged and positive fellows in existence -- always sure that what he thought or said or did was right, and ... that anybody who said or did or thought otherwise must be inevitably and of necessity wrong."

One of the guests in the room is a stranger "who sat apart from the regular frequenters of the house, and wearing a hat flipped over his face, which was still further shaded by the hand on which his forehead rested, looked unsociable enough." Another is "a young man of about eight-and-twenty" who seems preoccupied with something. Also there are a small man, whose name we find out later is Solomon Daisy, who is "the parish-clerk and bell-ringer of Chigwell, a village hard by," Tom Cobb, "the general chandler and post-office keeper," and Phil Parkes, a ranger.

Of course, it's the stranger who attracts the most interest. He takes off his hat, revealing "the hard features of a man of sixty or thereabouts, much weatherbeaten and worn by time." He also has a deep scar in his face.

The group is waited on by Joe Willet, the landlord's son, "a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty, whom it pleased his father still to consider a little boy, and to treat accordingly." When the stranger finally speaks to ask about a house "a mile or so from here," it is Joe who identifies it as the Warren. When the stranger asks who owns it, Joe glances at the preoccupied young man before identifying the owner as Geoffrey Haredale, "and a worthy gentleman too -- hem!" The cough is an attempt to warn the stranger not to pursue the subject, and when the stranger persists in asking about the young woman he saw getting into a carriage as he passed across the grounds of the Warren, Joe tries to distract him and change the subject, a sensitive one to the young man also seated in the room. But the stranger continues, and asks if the young woman is Haredale's daughter. Informed that Haredale is single, the stranger remarks, "Single men have had daughters before. Perhaps she may be his daughter, though he is not married." Joe warns the stranger again, but the man addresses himself directly to the young man who is obviously upset by his questions; the stranger  asks why.

The young man doesn't answer but pays his bill and leaves, accompanied by Joe, who goes along to light his way. When Joe returns he says the young man is in love with Miss Haredale, who "has gone to a masquerade up in town, and he has set his heart upon seeing her!" But his father chides him for talking too much, and the others support him. Joe indignantly protests, "'if you mean to tell me that I'm never to open my lips --' 'Silence, sir!' roared his father. 'No, you never are. When your opinion's wanted, you give it.'" He turns to the stranger and tells him that Miss Haredale is Geoffrey Haredale's niece. The stranger asks if her father is alive, and Willet tells him, "he is not alive, and his is not dead -- ... Not dead in a common sort of way." The stranger demands to know what he means, and he turns to Solomon Daisy to tell the story.

Daisy begins to tell it but interrupts to ask what day it is. It's the nineteenth of March, and everyone agrees "that's very strange." Daisy goes on to say that Geoffrey Haredale's elder brother, Reuben, was the owner of the Warren twenty-two years ago. His wife had recently died and their daughter was "scarcely a year old." Reuben Haredale left the Warren for a while and went to London, but returned a few months later with his daughter, "two women servants, and his steward, and a gardener." The rest of the servants were expected the next day.

That night, Daisy says, he was supposed to go toll the bell at 12:30 to announce the death of a man. "It was just such a night as this; blowing a hurricane, raining heavily, and very dark." Daisy had the creeps, and remembered all the ghost stories he had heard. But at the moment he went to ring the bell, he heard another bell ring. He went home in a hurry after ringing his bell, and next day learned that Reuben Haredale had been found murdered, "and in his hand was a piece of the cord attached to an alarm-bell outside the roof, which hung in his room and had been cut asunder, no doubt by the murderer, when he seized it." A large amount of money was missing from a cash box, and both the steward and the gardener had disappeared. A body identified as that of the steward, Mr. Rudge, was found months later, "at the bottom of a piece of water in the grounds, with a deep gash in the breast where he had been stabbed with a knife." He was identified by his clothes, a watch, and a ring. It was assumed that he had been killed in his room, where there were traces of blood, by the gardener, who has never been found. The murder took place on March 19, 1753, and Daisy is convinced that "on the nineteenth of March in some year, sooner or later, that man will be discovered."