Chapter 16
A series of pictures representing the streets of London in the night,even at the comparatively recent date of this tale, would present to theeye something so very different in character from the reality which iswitnessed in these times, that it would be difficult for the beholder torecognise his most familiar walks in the altered aspect of little morethan half a century ago.
They were, one and all, from the broadest and best to the narrowest andleast frequented, very dark. The oil and cotton lamps, though regularlytrimmed twice or thrice in the long winter nights, burnt feebly at thebest; and at a late hour, when they were unassisted by the lamps andcandles in the shops, cast but a narrow track of doubtful light upon thefootway, leaving the projecting doors and house-fronts in the deepestgloom. Many of the courts and lanes were left in total darkness; thoseof the meaner sort, where one glimmering light twinkled for a score ofhouses, being favoured in no slight degree. Even in these places, theinhabitants had often good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soonas it was lighted; and the watch being utterly inefficient and powerlessto prevent them, they did so at their pleasure. Thus, in the lightestthoroughfares, there was at every turn some obscure and dangerous spotwhither a thief might fly or shelter, and few would care to follow; andthe city being belted round by fields, green lanes, waste grounds, andlonely roads, dividing it at that time from the suburbs that have joinedit since, escape, even where the pursuit was hot, was rendered easy.
It is no wonder that with these favouring circumstances in full andconstant operation, street robberies, often accompanied by cruel wounds,and not unfrequently by loss of life, should have been of nightlyoccurrence in the very heart of London, or that quiet folks should havehad great dread of traversing its streets after the shops were closed.It was not unusual for those who wended home alone at midnight, tokeep the middle of the road, the better to guard against surprise fromlurking footpads; few would venture to repair at a late hour to KentishTown or Hampstead, or even to Kensington or Chelsea, unarmed andunattended; while he who had been loudest and most valiant at thesupper-table or the tavern, and had but a mile or so to go, was glad tofee a link-boy to escort him home.
There were many other characteristics--not quite so disagreeable--aboutthe thoroughfares of London then, with which they had been longfamiliar. Some of the shops, especially those to the eastward of TempleBar, still adhered to the old practice of hanging out a sign; and thecreaking and swinging of these boards in their iron frames on windynights, formed a strange and mournful concert for the ears of thosewho lay awake in bed or hurried through the streets. Long stands ofhackney-chairs and groups of chairmen, compared with whom the coachmenof our day are gentle and polite, obstructed the way and filled theair with clamour; night-cellars, indicated by a little stream of lightcrossing the pavement, and stretching out half-way into the road, andby the stifled roar of voices from below, yawned for the reception andentertainment of the most abandoned of both sexes; under every shed andbulk small groups of link-boys gamed away the earnings of the day; orone more weary than the rest, gave way to sleep, and let the fragment ofhis torch fall hissing on the puddled ground.
Then there was the watch with staff and lantern crying the hour, andthe kind of weather; and those who woke up at his voice and turned themround in bed, were glad to hear it rained, or snowed, or blew, or froze,for very comfort's sake. The solitary passenger was startled by thechairmen's cry of 'By your leave there!' as two came trotting pasthim with their empty vehicle--carried backwards to show its beingdisengaged--and hurried to the nearest stand. Many a private chair,too, inclosing some fine lady, monstrously hooped and furbelowed, andpreceded by running-footmen bearing flambeaux--for which extinguishersare yet suspended before the doors of a few houses of the bettersort--made the way gay and light as it danced along, and darker and moredismal when it had passed. It was not unusual for these running gentry,who carried it with a very high hand, to quarrel in the servants' hallwhile waiting for their masters and mistresses; and, falling to blowseither there or in the street without, to strew the place of skirmishwith hair-powder, fragments of bag-wigs, and scattered nosegays. Gaming,the vice which ran so high among all classes (the fashion being ofcourse set by the upper), was generally the cause of these disputes;for cards and dice were as openly used, and worked as much mischief, andyielded as much excitement below stairs, as above. While incidents likethese, arising out of drums and masquerades and parties at quadrille,were passing at the west end of the town, heavy stagecoaches and scarceheavier waggons were lumbering slowly towards the city, the coachmen,guard, and passengers, armed to the teeth, and the coach--a day or soperhaps behind its time, but that was nothing--despoiled by highwaymen;who made no scruple to attack, alone and single-handed, a whole caravanof goods and men, and sometimes shot a passenger or two, and weresometimes shot themselves, as the case might be. On the morrow, rumoursof this new act of daring on the road yielded matter for a few hours'conversation through the town, and a Public Progress of some finegentleman (half-drunk) to Tyburn, dressed in the newest fashion, anddamning the ordinary with unspeakable gallantry and grace, furnished tothe populace, at once a pleasant excitement and a wholesome and profoundexample.
Among all the dangerous characters who, in such a state of society,prowled and skulked in the metropolis at night, there was one man fromwhom many as uncouth and fierce as he, shrunk with an involuntary dread.Who he was, or whence he came, was a question often asked, but whichnone could answer. His name was unknown, he had never been seen untilwithin about eight days or thereabouts, and was equally a stranger tothe old ruffians, upon whose haunts he ventured fearlessly, as to theyoung. He could be no spy, for he never removed his slouched hat to lookabout him, entered into conversation with no man, heeded nothing thatpassed, listened to no discourse, regarded nobody that came or went.But so surely as the dead of night set in, so surely this man was in themidst of the loose concourse in the night-cellar where outcasts of everygrade resorted; and there he sat till morning.
He was not only a spectre at their licentious feasts; a something in themidst of their revelry and riot that chilled and haunted them; but outof doors he was the same. Directly it was dark, he was abroad--never incompany with any one, but always alone; never lingering or loitering,but always walking swiftly; and looking (so they said who had seen him)over his shoulder from time to time, and as he did so quickening hispace. In the fields, the lanes, the roads, in all quarters of thetown--east, west, north, and south--that man was seen gliding on like ashadow. He was always hurrying away. Those who encountered him, saw himsteal past, caught sight of the backward glance, and so lost him in thedarkness.
This constant restlessness, and flitting to and fro, gave rise tostrange stories. He was seen in such distant and remote places, at timesso nearly tallying with each other, that some doubted whether there werenot two of them, or more--some, whether he had not unearthly means oftravelling from spot to spot. The footpad hiding in a ditch had markedhim passing like a ghost along its brink; the vagrant had met him on thedark high-road; the beggar had seen him pause upon the bridge to lookdown at the water, and then sweep on again; they who dealt in bodieswith the surgeons could swear he slept in churchyards, and that theyhad beheld him glide away among the tombs on their approach. And as theytold these stories to each other, one who had looked about him wouldpull his neighbour by the sleeve, and there he would be among them.
At last, one man--he was one of those whose commerce lay among thegraves--resolved to question this strange companion. Next night, whenhe had eat his poor meal voraciously (he was accustomed to do that, theyhad observed, as though he had no other in the day), this fellow satdown at his elbow.
'A black night, master!'
'It is a black night.'
'Blacker than last, though that was pitchy too. Didn't I pass you nearthe turnpike in the Oxford Road?'
'It's like you may. I don't know.'
'Come, come, master,' cried the fellow, urged on by the looks of hisco
mrades, and slapping him on the shoulder; 'be more companionable andcommunicative. Be more the gentleman in this good company. There aretales among us that you have sold yourself to the devil, and I know notwhat.'
'We all have, have we not?' returned the stranger, looking up. 'If wewere fewer in number, perhaps he would give better wages.'
'It goes rather hard with you, indeed,' said the fellow, as the strangerdisclosed his haggard unwashed face, and torn clothes. 'What of that? Bemerry, master. A stave of a roaring song now'--
'Sing you, if you desire to hear one,' replied the other, shaking himroughly off; 'and don't touch me if you're a prudent man; I carryarms which go off easily--they have done so, before now--and make itdangerous for strangers who don't know the trick of them, to lay handsupon me.'
'Do you threaten?' said the fellow.
'Yes,' returned the other, rising and turning upon him, and lookingfiercely round as if in apprehension of a general attack.
His voice, and look, and bearing--all expressive of the wildestrecklessness and desperation--daunted while they repelled thebystanders. Although in a very different sphere of action now, they werenot without much of the effect they had wrought at the Maypole Inn.
'I am what you all are, and live as you all do,' said the man sternly,after a short silence. 'I am in hiding here like the rest, and if wewere surprised would perhaps do my part with the best of ye. If it's myhumour to be left to myself, let me have it. Otherwise,'--and herehe swore a tremendous oath--'there'll be mischief done in this place,though there ARE odds of a score against me.'
A low murmur, having its origin perhaps in a dread of the man and themystery that surrounded him, or perhaps in a sincere opinion on the partof some of those present, that it would be an inconvenient precedent tomeddle too curiously with a gentleman's private affairs if he saw reasonto conceal them, warned the fellow who had occasioned this discussionthat he had best pursue it no further. After a short time the strangeman lay down upon a bench to sleep, and when they thought of him again,they found he was gone.
Next night, as soon as it was dark, he was abroad again and traversingthe streets; he was before the locksmith's house more than once, butthe family were out, and it was close shut. This night he crossed LondonBridge and passed into Southwark. As he glided down a bye street, awoman with a little basket on her arm, turned into it at the other end.Directly he observed her, he sought the shelter of an archway, andstood aside until she had passed. Then he emerged cautiously from hishiding-place, and followed.
She went into several shops to purchase various kinds of householdnecessaries, and round every place at which she stopped he hovered likeher evil spirit; following her when she reappeared. It was nigh eleveno'clock, and the passengers in the streets were thinning fast, when sheturned, doubtless to go home. The phantom still followed her.
She turned into the same bye street in which he had seen her first,which, being free from shops, and narrow, was extremely dark. Shequickened her pace here, as though distrustful of being stopped, androbbed of such trifling property as she carried with her. He crept alongon the other side of the road. Had she been gifted with the speed ofwind, it seemed as if his terrible shadow would have tracked her down.
At length the widow--for she it was--reached her own door, and, pantingfor breath, paused to take the key from her basket. In a flush and glow,with the haste she had made, and the pleasure of being safe at home,she stooped to draw it out, when, raising her head, she saw him standingsilently beside her: the apparition of a dream.
His hand was on her mouth, but that was needless, for her tongue cloveto its roof, and her power of utterance was gone. 'I have been lookingfor you many nights. Is the house empty? Answer me. Is any one inside?'
She could only answer by a rattle in her throat.
'Make me a sign.'
She seemed to indicate that there was no one there. He took the key,unlocked the door, carried her in, and secured it carefully behind them.