CHAPTER LXXVIII.
Gray on the House Tops.—Specimens of the Rising Generation.—The Old Attic.
Gray’s situation on the house tops was as far from being safe as it was far from pleasant, for the rapidly advancing daylight, he felt conscious, would very soon make him a prominent object to the whole liberty of Westminster, if he found not some means of descending.
His standing upon the parapets, and in the gutters, along which he crawled, was insecure in the extreme, and his nervousness, from repeated slips which nearly precipitated him into the street, increased each moment, so that he began to feel that, unless he got refuge speedily somewhere, he should meet with a fatal and disastrous accident. His idea was to get in at some attic window, and so make his way into the street through the house; but this, although the only possible means that he could think of, for rescuing him from his very precarious situation, was fraught with dangers and difficulties; for who would allow a man to get in at an attic window, and walk undisturbed through their house into the street?
Jacob Gray, groaned as he thought of this, and wrung his hands in despair. “I cannot fight my way out,” he muttered. “There is but one remote chance for me, and that is to get into some house where there are no men. I may succeed in alarming females, so that they may be glad to let me go in peace, but what a slender hope is that.”
“There he goes!“ shouted a baker’s boy at this moment, looking up and pointing at Gray, who nearly fell into the street with the suddenness of the alarm.
Several chance passengers now stopped, and pointed Gray out to others; so that his situation was becoming every moment more precarious.
“Stop thief! There he goes!” shouted the boy again, setting down his basket of bread, and resolved, as boys always are under such circumstances, to see the affair out.
“Who is it?” cried several.
“Guy Fawkes,” said the boy.
There was a laugh among the crowd, which was rapidly increasing; and now an old lady put her head out of the window of the house on the parapet of which was the trembling Jacob Gray, and inquired, in an angry tone, what was the matter, and particularising the baker’s boy as a young ruffian, wanted to know how he had collected the crowd opposite the house.
The boy with the peculiar wit of his “order” placed his hand to his ear, affecting not to have heard the old lady, upon which, to the great amusement of the crowd, she screamed out—,
“Oh, you villain, I heard you call me a guy, but I’ll speak to your master, I will, you wretch.”
“You’ll make yerself ill, mum,” said the boy, “if yer hexerts yer old lungs so.”
The old lady shook her fists at him, and the crowd roared with laughter.
Jacob Gray could see that the mob was very much amused at something, but what it could be he had no means of knowing, for the same obstacle, in the shape of a projecting parapet, which prevented the old lady from seeing him, also prevented him from seeing her. He endeavoured to crawl round an angle of a roof and escape, observation while the altercation was going on; but neither the baker’s boy nor a sweep who had joined his persecutors, would permit such a thing for a moment, and they at once called out,—
“There he goes—there he goes!”
“What do you mean?” screamed the old lady to the sweep.
“There’s a poll parrot, mum, a-top o’ your house,” replied the sweep.
“A what?” screamed she leaning as far out of the window as she could, and looking up.
“Mind yer eye, mum,” shrieked the baker’s boy, and amid a perfect roar of laughter, the old lady withdrew her head in a moment.
“You—you little abominable miscreant,” she cried, “I’ll come down to you!”
“Thank you, mum.”
“There’s a man on the roof,” said some one near.
“A man?”
“Yes; just on the corner of the parapet.”
“Preserve us,” cried the old lady, leaning out of the window again and looking.
“Lean out as far as you can, mum,” cried the sweep.
“I am,” said the old lady.
“A little further, then, and you’ll see him.”
Here was another laugh, and Jacob Gray, with a great effort, succeeded in turning the corner of the roof just as the old lady produced a tremendous rattle, which she began springing violently at the window, to the rapturous delight of the crowd below.
“He’s gone into Smith-street,” cried several of the throng, and a rush round the corner was made to keep Jacob Gray in sight.
When he got round the corner of the roof which had cost him so much trouble, the first thing that poor Jacob Gray did was to fall over a pail that was set out at an attic window, into a dirty drain full of black slimy mud, interspersed here and there with delicate streaks of green and blue. When he recovered from the shock of his fall, his first thought was to rise as quickly as possible, but his second was to lie where he was, as by so doing he was hidden by the parapet from the gaze of those in the street.
But Jacob Gray was not at all aware of the ready invention and cunning of boys in the streets of London, and it was with a curse that, if curses were effective as implements of death would have destroyed both the sweep and the baker’s boy he heard the latter suggest,—
“Oh, he is in the drain—I know he is—give us a stone, and I’ll hit him.”
“If ever,” muttered Gray, “I come across you, and I shall know your confounded cracked voice again, I’ll wring your neck.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a good-sized stone came down upon him with a very disagreeable plump. It had been thrown by the boy with that accuracy that boys acquire in throwing stones from the abundance of practice that they have in that polite accomplishment.
“Well, my covey, did it hit you?” cried the boy then in a very insulting tone.
Gray looked up from among the mud, and he saw that the attic window was open. It was very low, and he thought he might crawl in without being seen; at all events it was better than being pelted with stones in a gutter,—and having satisfied himself that the attic was empty, he partially rose from the gutter, and had the satisfaction, such as it was, of gliding over the window-sill without being seen.
This was one object gained at all events, and he stood the picture of misery and wretchedness, gazing around him upon the scantily furnished room, in which there was nothing but a small bed made upon a board laid across trussels, and one rickety chair.
Exhausted, dispirited, and weak, Jacob Gray sat down upon the chair, but it seemed as if in small matters as well as great, the fates would never have done persecuting him, for he had not noticed that his chair was minus a leg, and the consequence was that Jacob Gray came down on the floor with a great noise, which was more than sufficient to alarm anybody in the house.
He in an agony of apprehension rose instantly, and flew to the window, but then the risk of traversing house tops in broad daylight, which it now very nearly was, came across him, and he recoiled from the window, feeling that in all probability, his least danger lay in remaining where he was, and endeavouring to excite by some spurious tale the compassion of the persons of the house.
His heart, however, felt sick and faint as he waited in trembling expectation of some one coming; and as minute after minute rolled onwards, leaving him still alone, he felt it would be a relief to his mind if they would come at once, and not leave him on the rack of apprehension.
His senses became powerfully acute to the least noise, and once or twice he fancied he heard a creaking noise upon the staircase, as if some one was coming cautiously up to capture him. This feeling grew each moment until it became awfully intolerable, and he trembled so excessively that he could not, as he wished open the door to see if any one was upon the stairs.
A dreadful apprehension came across his mind that whoever was coming might be armed with, perhaps, a blunderbuss, which might, on the moment of his appearance, be discharged in his, Jacob Gray’s, face, and so finish his career at once by a death of agony. The moment this apprehension began to haunt him he looked around him for some place of temporary concealment, and observing a cupboard at one end of the room, he glided cautiously towards it, resolving to take refuge within it until he should hear, by the voices of those who might be coming, what might probably be their station in life and their intentions.
The cupboard door was only fastened with a button, and Jacob Gray turned cautiously. The door, from the pressure of something inside, immediately came wide open. A cry of terror burst from Jacob Gray, as a dead body apparently frightfully mangled, fell at his feet.