CHAPTER V.--IS OF A DECIDEDLY WARLIKE CHARACTER.

The place of rendezvous for the “gallant defenders of the British constitution,” as Leicester had designated the little party, was a cigar shop in the immediate vicinity of the building in which the meeting was to be held. On their arrival they perceived that the shop was already occupied by several young men, who were lounging over the counter, bandying jests and compliments with a ringleted young lady, who appeared thoroughly self-possessed and quite equal to the part she had to perform, having through all her pretty coquetries a shrewd eye to business, and reserving her most fascinating smiles for the most inveterate smokers.

As Grandeville entered the shop, which he did with a most lordly and dignified air, he was welcomed with general acclamation.

“All hail, Macbeth!” exclaimed a thin young man, with a white greatcoat and a face to match, throwing himself into a tragedy attitude.

“Most noble commander!” began another of the group. “Most illustrious De Grandeville! how is----”

“Your anxious mother?” interrupted a short, muscular little fellow, with as rich a brogue as ever claimed Cork for its county.

“Hush! be quiet, Pat; we have no time for nonsense now, man,” cried a tall youth with a profusion of light curling hair, a prominent hooked nose, a merry smile, and a pair of wicked grey eyes, which appeared to possess the faculty of looking in every direction at once. “You are late, De Grandeville,” he added, coming forward.

“Ar--no, sir; five minutes good by the Horse Guards. Ar--I should have been here sooner, but I have been--ar--recruiting, you see. Mr. Bracy, Mr. Frere, Mr. Arundel--you know Leicester?”

“Delighted to see such an addition to our forces,” replied Bracy, bowing; then shaking hands with Leicester, he added in an undertone, “Walk with me when we start; I have a word to say to you.” Leicester nodded in assent, and then proceeded to accost others of the party with whom he was acquainted.

“Ar--now, gentlemen, will you please to attend to orders?” began Grandeville, raising his voice.

“Hear, hear!” cried the pale young man, faintly.

“We’ll do it betther if you’d be houldin’ yer tongue, maybe,” interposed the hero from Cork, who, being interpreted, was none other than Lieutenant McDermott of the Artillery, believed by the Commander-in-Chief to be at that very moment on duty at Woolwich.

“Ar--you are to divide yourselves into three or four bodies.”

“Faith, we must get blind drunk, and see double twice over then, before we can do that,” remarked the son of Erin argumentatively.

“Now, Paddy, be quiet,” said Bracy, soothingly; “you know you never got so far in your arithmetic as vulgar fractions, so you can’t be supposed to understand the matter.”

A somewhat forcible rejoinder was drowned by Grandeville, who continued, in his most sonorous tone: “Ar--you will then proceed to the hall of meeting, and make your way quietly to the right side, as near the platform as possible. There--keep together, and attract as little attention as you can, and Mr. Bracy will transmit such directions to you as circumstances may render advisable. Do you all clearly understand?”

A general shout of assent, varied by a muttered “Not in the slightest degree,” from McDermott, was followed by the order, “Then march!” and in another moment the party were _en route_. The pale young man, who was in his secret soul rather alarmed than otherwise, had attached himself firmly to Frere, with whom he was slightly acquainted, and who he thought would take care of him, so Lewis was left to pair off with Leicester.

As they proceeded, the latter began: “Depend upon it, there’s some trick in all this, probably intended for Grandeville’s benefit; that fellow Bracy is one of the most inveterate practical jokers extant, and he seems particularly busy to-night; he’s a clerk in the Home Office, and Grandeville believes in him to an immense extent; but here he comes. Well, Bracy, what is it, man?”

“Is your friend safe?” inquired Bracy aside, glancing at Lewis as he spoke.

“The most cautious man in London,” was the reply, “and one who appreciates our noble commander thoroughly; so now allow us a peep behind the scenes.”

“Well, the matter stands thus,” returned Bracy. “I was walking with Duke Grandeville one night about three weeks ago, when we chanced to encounter the good folks coming away from one of these meetings; they were nothing very formidable--a fair sample of young Newgate Street, youthful patriots from Snow Hill, embryo republicans of St. Paul’s Churchyard, Barbican, and other purlieus of Cockaignia, led by a few choice spirits--copying clerks, who hide their heroism from the light of day in lawyers’ offices, booksellers’ shopmen from the Row, who regard themselves as distinguished literary characters, and prate of the sovereignty of the press, and the like. Well, as might be expected, they discoursed most ferociously, and the Duke, overhearing some of their conversation, was deeply scandalised, and fancied he had discovered a second Cato Street conspiracy. The thing appeared to promise fun, so I encouraged him in the idea, and we attended the next meeting, when they talked the usual style of radical clap-trap. Everything was an abuse--the rich were tyrants, the poor slaves, and property required transferring (_i.e_., from its present possessors to themselves); they knew they never should be kings, so they cried down monarchy; but they trusted that, with strong lungs and good-luck, they might become paid delegates, therefore they clamoured for a republic. There was much noise, but no talent; sanguinary theories were discussed, which they had neither minds nor means to enable them to carry out; in short, the place is one of those innocent sedition shops which act as safety valves to carry off popular discontent, and ensure the health and vigour of the British constitution. Of course, however, Grandeville did not see it in that point of view, and from that night forth he became positively rabid on the subject; so it entered the heads of some of us that we might improve the occasion by persuading him that he might, through me, communicate information to the Home Office (I need scarcely tell you that it never reached the authorities there), and we have led him on sweetly and easily, till he positively believes that he is to be at the Hall to-night as an accredited government agent, with full powers to suppress the meeting, and I know not what else.”

“But surely you’ll get into a fearful row,” urged Leicester.

“We are safe for a bit of a shindy, no doubt,” was the cool reply; “in fact I do not consider that the thing would go off properly without it, so I brought an Irishman with me to render it inevitable; but I have bribed a doorkeeper, and let the worst come to the worst, we can easily fight our way out.”

“To be sure we can,” exclaimed Lewis, “lick a hundred such fellows as you have described. This is glorious fun; I would not have missed it for the world.”

Bracy glanced at him for a moment with a look of intense approval, then shaking him warmly by the hand, he said, “Sir, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance; your sentiments do you honour, sir. Are you much accustomed to rows of this nature, may I ask?”

“I have been resident in Germany for the last three years,” was the reply; “and although they have a very fair notion of an _émeute_ after their own fashion, they don’t understand the use of the fist as we do.”

“There are two grand rules for crowd-fighting,” returned Bracy. “First, make play with your elbows, Cockneys’ ribs are as sensitive as niggers’ shins; secondly, if it comes to blows, strike at their faces, and never waste your strength; but when you _do_ make a hit, drop your man if possible; it settles him, and frightens the rest. Here we are!” So saying, he turned into a kind of passage which led to an open door, through which they passed into the body of the hall.

It was a large room with a vaulted ceiling, and appeared capable of holding from five to six hundred persons. At the farther end of it was a platform, raised some feet, and divided from the rest of the hall by a stout wooden railing. The room was lighted with gas, and considerably more than half filled. Although the majority of the audience appeared to answer the description Bracy had given of them, yet along the sides of the apartment were ranged numbers of sturdy artisans and craftsmen, amongst whom many a stalwart form and stern determined visage might be detected.

“There are some rather awkward customers here to-night,” whispered Leicester. “If we chance to get black eyes, Arundel, we must postpone our visit to the General to-morrow.”

“The man that gives me a black eye shall have something to remember it by, at all events,” returned Lewis quickly.

“Hush! that fellow heard you,” said Leicester.

Lewis glanced in the direction indicated, and met the sinister gaze, of a tall, heavy-built mechanic, in a rough greatcoat, who frowned menacingly when he found that he was observed. Lewis smiled carelessly in reply, and proceeded after Bracy up the room. When he had passed, the man, still keeping his eye upon him, quitted his seat and followed at some little distance. On reaching the upper end of the room they perceived Grandeville and two or three others, among whom was McDermott, on the platform, while Frere and the rest of their party had congregated on and near a flight of five or six steps leading to it from the body of the hall.

“Bravo, Grandeville!” observed Bracy, in an undertone, to Leicester. “Do you mark that! he has secured a retreat--good generalship, very. I shall have to believe in him if he goes on as well as he has commenced. Hark! they are beginning to give tongue.”

As he concluded, a little fat man came forward and said a good deal about the honour which had been done him in being allowed the privilege of opening the evening’s proceedings, to which he appended a long and utterly incomprehensible account of the objects of the meeting. His zeal was evident, but Nature had never intended him for an orator, and the chances of life had fitted him with a short husky cough, so that nobody was very sorry when he ceded the rostrum to his “esteemed friend, if he might be allowed to say so (which he was), Jabez Broadcom.” This Jabez Broadcom was evidently a great gun, and his coming forward created no small sensation. He was a tall, gaunt-looking man, with straight weak hair and an unhealthy complexion; but his great feature, in every sense of the word, was his mouth.

It _was_ a mouth, not only for mutton, but for every other purpose to which that useful aperture could be applied; at present it was to be devoted to the task of conveying its owner’s mighty thoughts, in appropriate language, to the eager listeners who surrounded him.

This gentleman then, having, by dint of drawing in his lips and thrusting them out again, and rolling his eyes so fearfully as to suggest a sudden attack of English cholera, got up his steam to the required height, proceeded to inform the assembly that they were, individually and collectively, free and enlightened citizens of the great metropolis of Europe, prepared to recognise their sacred rights, and resolved to go forth as one man to assert and maintain them. Having imparted this information (through his nose, for the greater effect), he began to ask himself a species of Pinnock’s Catechism, so to speak, which ran somewhat after the following fashion:--

“And why am I here to-night? Because I love profit? No. Because I love personal distinction? No. Because I love my country? Yes. Because I would not see her children slaves? Yes. Because purse-proud oppressors, revelling in their wealth, trample on the honest poor man? Yes.”

Having said by heart several pages of this, in which he was exceedingly well up, and which he rattled off most fluently, he continued--

“But such tyranny shall not always be tolerated. British freemen, whose proud boast it is that they have never borne a foreign yoke, shall no longer crouch beneath a despotic rule at home. The atrocious barbarities of a brutal poor-law, which taxes honest householders to furnish salaried ruffians with power to drag the half-eaten crust from the famished jaws of helpless poverty----”

(A slight sensation was here occasioned by McDermott mentioning for the benefit of the meeting in general, and the orator himself in particular, his conviction that the last sentence was “very pretty indeed,” together with a polite inquiry as to whether he could not be so kind as to say it again. Peace being restored after sundry shouts of “Turn him out!”)

“Shame!” etc., the orator resumed--

“Let them build their bastiles, let them tear the wife from her husband, the mother from her child; let them crowd their prison-houses with the honest sons of labour whom their brutality has forced into crime--the poor man need never dread starvation while the hulks hunger and the gallows gapes for him--but a day of retribution is at hand; let the tyrants tremble beneath their gilded roofs--those unjust usurpers of the soil--the poor man’s bitterest foes, the landed gentry, as they arrogantly style themselves, must be cut off and rooted out.”

“Pretty strong, that!” observed Bracy, in a whisper.

“Ar--this won’t do, you know!” returned Grandeville, in an equally low voice. “I must, really--ar--interfere.”

“Better hear him out,” rejoined Bracy, “and then get up and address them yourself.” To which suggestion, after a slight remonstrance, the former agreed; but such a shining light as Mr. Jabez Broadcom was not to be put out as quickly as they desired; he was the great card of the evening, and knew it, and prolonged his speech for a good three-quarters of an hour, during which time he theoretically dethroned the Queen, abolished the Lords and Commons, seated a National Convention in St. Stephen’s, and made all the rich poor, and the poor both rich and happy, whilst he practically rendered himself so hoarse as to be nearly inaudible; for which gallant exertions in the cause of liberty he received the tumultuous applause of the meeting, together with Lieut. McDermott’s expressed conviction that he was “a broth of a boy entirely,” together with an anxious inquiry, “whether his mother had many more like him.”

When Broadcom retired from the rostrum there appeared some misunderstanding and confusion as to his successor; taking advantage of which, Grandeville looked at Bracy, who nodded, adding, “Now’s your time! Go in, and win;” then, catching a cadaverous-looking individual who was about to advance by the shoulders, and twisting him round, he exclaimed, “Now, my man, stand out of the way, will you? This gentleman is going to address the company.” He next thrust Grandeville forward, and patting him encouragingly on the back, left him to his own devices. That heroic gentleman, having bowed to his audience with much grace and dignity, waved his hand to command attention, and began as follows:--

“Ar--listen to me, my friends! Ar--hem--I am prepared to admit--that is, it is impossible to deny--that many great and serious evils exist in the complicated social fabric of this glorious country. The vast increase of population----”

“Owing to the introduction of chloroform,” suggested Bracy.

“Though slightly checked by----”

“The alarming consumption of Morrison’s Pills,” interposed the Irishman----

“The wise facilities afforded for emigration,” continued Grandeville, not heeding these interruptions, “is one chief cause of the poverty and distress which, though greatly exaggerated by the false statements of evil-disposed and designing persons (groans and cries of ‘Hear!’), are to be found even in this metropolis, beneath the fostering care of an enlightened and paternal government (increasing murmurs of dissatisfaction). But if you believe that these evils are likely to be redressed by such measures as have been pointed out to you this evening, or that anarchy and rebellion can lead to any other result than misery and ruin--ar--I tell you, that you are fearfully mistaken! Ar--as a man, possessed of--ar--no inconsiderable influence--and ar--intimately connected with those powers against which you are madly arraying yourselves, I warn you!”

Here the excitement and dissatisfaction, which had been rapidly increasing, reached a pitch which threatened to render the speaker inaudible; and amid cries of “Who is he?”--“an informer!”--“government spy!”--“turn him out!”--“throw him over!” several persons rose from their seats and attempted to force their way on to the platform, but were kept back by Lewis and others of Grandeville’s party, who, as has been already mentioned, had taken possession of the flight of steps, which afforded the only legitimate means of access from the body of the hall.

Undisturbed by these hostile demonstrations, Grandeville continued, at the top of his voice,--“I warn you that you are provoking an unequal struggle,--that you are bringing upon yourselves a fearful retribution. Even now I am armed with authority to disperse this meeting--to----”

What more he would have added the reader is not fated to learn, for at this moment the man in the rough greatcoat, who had followed Lewis from the entrance of the room, exclaiming, “Come on, we are not going to stand this, you know; never mind the steps,” seized the railing of the platform, and drawing himself up, sprang over, followed by several others. In an instant all was confusion. Grandeville, taken in some degree by surprise, after knocking down a couple of his assailants, was overpowered, and, amid cries of “throw him over,” hurried to the edge of the platform; here, grasping the rail with both hands, he struggled violently to prevent the accomplishment of their purpose.

“Come along, boys! we must rescue him,” exclaimed Bracy; and suiting the action to the word, he bounded forward, and hitting right and left, reached the scene of conflict. Lewis and the others, abandoning the steps, followed his example, and the row became general. For some minutes the uproar was terrific; blows were given and received; blood began to flow from sundry noses; and certain eyes that had begun the evening blue, brown, or grey, as the case might be, assumed a hue dark as Erebus. As for Lewis, he knocked down one of the fellows who had hold of Grandeville; then he picked up the Irishman, who of course had singled out and attacked the biggest man in the crowd (none other indeed than the rough-coated patriot, who appeared a sort of leader among them), and been immediately felled by him to the ground; then he assisted Frere in extricating the pale-faced youth from three individuals of questionable honesty, who were availing themselves of the confusion to empty his pockets; as he did so he felt himself seized with a grasp of iron, and turning his head, found he was collared by the gigantic leader. A violent but ineffectual effort to free himself only served to convince him that in point of strength he was no match for his antagonist, who, regarding him with a smile of gratified malice, exclaimed, “Now then, young feller, I’ve been a-waiting to get hold of you. How about a black eye now?” As he spoke he drew him forward with one hand and struck at him savagely with the other. Avoiding the blow by suddenly dodging aside, Lewis closed with his adversary, and inserting his knuckles within the folds of his neckcloth, tightened it, until in self-defence, and in order to avoid strangulation, the fellow was forced to loosen his grasp of Lewis’s collar. The instant he felt himself free, Lewis, giving the neckcloth a final twist, and at the same time pressing his knuckles into the man’s throat, so as for the moment almost to throttle him, stepped back a couple of paces, and springing forward again before the other had time to recover himself, hit up under his guard and succeeded in planting a stinging and well-directed blow exactly between his eyes; this, followed by a similar application rather lower on the face, settled the matter. Reeling backwards, his antagonist lost his footing and fell heavily to the ground, dragging one of his companions down with him in a futile attempt to save himself. The fall of their leader threw a damp on the spirits of the others; and although those in the rear were still clamorous with threats and vociferations, the members of the crowd in more immediate proximity to the little party showed small inclination to renew the attack.

“Now’s our time for getting away,” said Bracy. “Make a bold push for the door.”

“Ar--I should say,” rejoined Grandeville, one of whose eyes was completely closed from the effects of a blow, and whose coat was hanging about him in ribands, “let us despatch one of our party for the police and military, and stand firm and maintain our ground till they come up, then capture the ringleaders and clear the room.”

“Nonsense,” said Leicester, who, despite his regard for his wardrobe, had behaved most spiritedly during the skirmish. “We shall all be murdered before they appear; besides” (he added aside to Bracy), “it will be making much too serious a business of it; we should get into some tremendous scrape.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Bracy; then turning to Grandeville, he added, “I don’t think my instructions would bear us out if we were to go any further. Remember, we were only to make a pacific demonstration.”

“And faith, if breaking heads, and getting a return in kind, comes under that same denomination, it’s a pretty decent one we’ve made already, ’pon me conscience,” put in McDermott, wiping away the blood that was still trickling from a cut in his forehead.

While these remarks were bandied from one to another, the party had contrived to make their way from the platform, and were now in the body of the room, striving to push through the crowd towards the side door. This at every step became more and more difficult, till at length they were so completely hemmed in that further progression became impossible, and it was evident that a fresh attack upon them was meditated. Fortunately, however, they were not far from the point of egress, and Bracy, having caught the eye of his ally the doorkeeper, who was on the alert, exclaimed, “Now, Grandeville, we must fight our way through these fellows and gain the door; there’s nothing for it but a spirited charge. You and I, Frere and his friend, and Paddy had better go first as a sort of wedge.”

“Ar--head the column and break the enemy’s ranks, ar--yes, are you all ready? Charge!”

As he gave the word they rushed forward in a compact body, and knocking down and pushing aside all who opposed them, succeeded in reaching the door. Here a short delay occurred while Bracy and his friend were opening it, and several of their late antagonists, irritated at the prospect of their escape, incited the others to attack them, so that before their egress was secured even the Irish lieutenant had had fighting enough to satisfy him, and the pale young man, having long since given himself up as a lost mutton, actually fainted with fear and over-exertion, and was dragged from under the feet of the combatants and carried out by Frere and Lewis, but for whom his mortal career would then and there have ended.

How, as they emerged into the street, a party of the police arrived and caused more confusion and more broken heads; and how Grande-ville and the Irishman on the one hand, and sundry Chartists, with Lewis’s late antagonist among them, on the other, were jointly and severally taken into custody and marched to the station-house, where they spent the night; and how Leicester contrived just in the nick of time to catch an intelligent cab, into which he, Lewis, Frere, and the fainting victim with the pallid physiognomy compressed themselves, and were conveyed rapidly from the scene of action, it boots not to relate: suffice it to say that a certain barrel of oysters, flanked by a detachment of pint bottles of stout, which had taken up their position on Frere’s dining-table during the absence of its master, sustained an attack about half-past eleven o’clock that night which proved that the mode in which their assailants had passed the evening had in no way impaired their respective appetites.