Part 45 (2/2)
”Come along to Mackaye's,” said Crossthwaite. ”I'll see to the bottom of this. Be hanged, but I think the fellow's a cursed _mouchard_--some government spy!”
”Spy is he, thin? Och, the thief o' the world! I'll stab him! I'll murther him! an' burn the town afterwards, all the same.”
”Unless,” said I, ”just as you've got your precious combustible to blaze off, up he comes from behind the corner and gives you in charge to a policeman. It's a villanous trap, you miserable fool, as sure as the moon's in heaven.”
”Upon my word, I am afraid it is--and I'm trapped too.”
”Blood and turf! thin, it's he that I'll trap, thin. There's two million free and inlightened Irishmen in London, to avenge my marthyrdom wi' pikes and baggonets like raving salviges, and blood for blood!”
”Like savages, indeed!” said I to Crossthwaite, ”And pretty savage company we are keeping. Liberty, like poverty, makes a man acquainted with strange companions!”
”And who's made 'em savages? Who has left them savages? That the greatest nation of the earth has had Ireland in her hands three hundred years--and her people still to be savages!--if that don't justify a revolution, what does? Why, it's just because these poor brutes are what they are, that rebellion becomes a sacred duty. It's for them--for such fools, brutes, as that there, and the millions more like him, and likely to remain like him, and I've made up my mind to do or die to-morrow!”
There was a grand half-truth, distorted, miscoloured in the words, that silenced me for the time.
We entered Mackaye's door; strangely enough at that time of night, it stood wide open. What could be the matter? I heard loud voices in the inner room, and ran forward calling his name, when, to my astonishment, out past me rushed a tall man, followed by a steaming kettle, which, missing him, took full effect on Kelly's chest as he stood in the entry, filling his shoes with boiling water, and producing a roar that might have been heard at Temple Bar.
”What's the matter?”
”Have I hit him?” said the old man, in a state of unusual excitement.
”Bedad! it was the man Power! the cursed spy! An' just as I was going to slate the villain nately, came the kittle, and kilt me all over!”
”Power? He's as many names as a pickpocket, and as many callings, too, I'll warrant. He came sneaking in to tell me the sogers were a' ready to gie up their arms if I'd come forward to them to-morrow. So I tauld him, sin' he was so sure o't, he'd better gang and tak the arms himsel; an' then he let out he'd been a policeman--”
”A policeman!” said both Crossthwaite and Kelly, with strong expletives.
”A policeman doon in Manchester; I thought I kenned his face fra the first.
And when the rascal saw he'd let out too much, he wanted to make out that he'd been a' along a spy for the Chartists, while he was makin' believe to be a spy o' the goovernment's. Sae when he came that far, I just up wi' the het water, and bleezed awa at him; an' noo I maun gang and het some mair for my drap toddy.”
Sandy had a little vitriol in the house, so we took the combustible down into the cellar, and tried it. It blazed up: but burnt the stone as much as the reader may expect. We next tried it on a lump of wood. It just scorched the place where it lay, and then went out; leaving poor Kelly perfectly frantic with rage, terror, and disappointment. He dashed up-stairs, and out into the street, on a wild-goose chase after the rascal, and we saw no more of him that night.
I relate a simple fact. I am afraid--perhaps, for the poor workmen's sake, I should say I am glad, that it was not an unique one. Villains of this kind, both in April and in June, mixed among the working men, excited their worst pa.s.sions by bloodthirsty declamations and extravagant promises of success, sold them arms; and then, like the shameless wretch on whose evidence Cuffy and Jones were princ.i.p.ally convicted, bore witness against their own victims, unblus.h.i.+ngly declaring themselves to have been all along the tools of the government. I entreat all those who disbelieve this apparently prodigious a.s.sertion, to read the evidence given on the trial of the John Street conspirators, and judge for themselves.
”The pet.i.tion's filling faster than ever!” said Crossthwaite, as that evening we returned to Mackaye's little back room.
”Dirt's plenty,” grumbled the old man, who had settled himself again to his pipe, with his feet on the fender, and his head half way up the chimney.
”Now, or never!” went on Crossthwaite, without minding him; ”now, or never!
The manufacturing districts seem more firm than ever.”
”An' words cheap,” commented Mackaye, _sotto voce_.
”Well,” I said, ”Heaven keep us from the necessity of ulterior measures!
But what must be, must.”
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