It is sad, but it is true. Everything might still have gone off pretty quiet, had it not been for religion, or rather pseudo-religion. There were in the city vast numbers of workmen of the lowest class from Ireland, and when the watchwords “Orangemen” and “Papists” are mentioned, everyone will understand. Fights occurred hourly—a grand battle-royal was imminent. The grey rats did all they could to foster the animosity, and got up sham quarrels to set fire to the excited passions of the mob. Their game was riot, in order that they might plunder. While the fools were fighting and the wise men trying to put them down, the grey rats meant to make off with all they could get.
Aymer, having by this time made for himself some little reputation for intelligence and quick observation, was sent out by the committee, of which Broughton was chairman, to watch the temper of the people; to penetrate into all the corners and out-of-the-way places; to hang on the skirts of the crowd and pick up their hopes and wishes, and to make reports from time to time as anything struck him. He was even to bring in the lampoons and squibs that were circulated, and, if possible, to spy out the secret doings of the other party—a commission which gave him liberty to roam. He wished to be gone, but this was better than the close office-work. He should see something of life; he should see man face to face. (In gilded salons and well-bred society it is only the profile one sees—the full face is averted.) He put on his roughest suit, took his notebook, and strolled out into the city.
The first thing he had to report was that an insinuation which had been spread abroad against Baskette was actually working in his favour. It had been thrown out that he was upon too familiar terms with a certain lady, singer and actress, the fame of whose wonderful beauty was sullied with suspicions of her frailty. With a certain section of the people, who prided themselves upon being “English to the backbone,” this was resented as unfair. With a far larger portion it was at once believed, and, amid sly nods and winks, taken as another proof that Baskette was one of themselves.
Aymer wandered about the city; he saw its horrors, its crime. At such a period the sin, the wickedness and misery which commonly lurks in corners, came out and flaunted in the daylight. A great horror fell upon him—a horror of the drunkenness, the cursing, the immorality, the fierce brutishness. He shuddered. Not that he was himself pure, but he was sensitive and quick to understand, to see beneath the surface. He was of an age when the mind deals with broad generalities. If this was the state of one city only—then, poor England!
His imagination pictured a time when this monster might be uppermost. One night he ascended the tower of a great brewery and looked down upon the city, all flaring with gas. Up from the depth came the shouting, the hum of thousands, the tramp of the multitudes. He looked afar. The horizon was bright with blazing fires—the sky red with a crimson and yellow glow. Not a star was visible, a dense cloud of smoke hid everything. The iron furnaces shot forth their glowing flames, the engines puffed and snorted. He thought of Violet and trembled: when the monster was let loose, what then?
He descended and wandered away he knew not exactly whither, but he found himself towards midnight mixed in a crowd around the police station. Jammed in amid the throng he was shoved against the wall, but fortunately a lamppost preserved him from the crush. However, he could not move. The gaslight fell upon the wall and lit up the proclamations of “V.R.”—the advertisements of missing and lost, the descriptions of persons who were wanted, etc.
One sheet, half-defaced with the wind and rain and mud splashed against it, caught his eye—
“Escaped,” so ran the fragment, “from … mingham Asylum, a lunatic of homicidal tendencies … Stabbed a warder … killed his wife by driving a nail into her head … Is at large. His description—Long grey hair, restless eye, peculiar ears, walks with a shambling gait, and has a melancholy expression of countenance. Plays fantastic airs upon a tin whistle, and is particularly fond of tinkering.”
A new bill, “Two Hundred Pounds Reward,” for the apprehension of a defaulting bank manager, blotted out the rest.
But Aymer had read enough. A sickening sensation seized him—this horrible being loose upon society, tinkering, playing upon a tin whistle, and driving nails into women’s heads! In his ears sounded the din of tremendous shouts, “Baskette forever!” and he saw a carriage go by from which the horses had been taken, and in which a man was standing upright, with his hat off, bowing. It was Marese Baskette returning from an evening meeting, and dragged in his carriage by the mob to his hotel.
Aymer caught a glance of his dark eye flashing with triumph, and it left an unpleasant impression upon him. But the shouts rose up to the thick cloud of smoke overhead—“Baskette forever! Baskette forever!”
“Oh! my love,” wrote Aymer to Violet, “this is, indeed, an awful place. I begin to live in dread of my fellow-creatures. Not for worlds—no, not for worlds, would I be the owner of this city (as so many are striving to be), lest I should be held, partly at least, responsible hereafter for its miseries, its crimes, its drunkenness, its nameless, indefinable horrors.”
These words, read by what afterwards happened, are remarkable. Aymer’s last vision of Stirmingham was the same man drawn again in his carriage amid tenfold louder shouts than before, “Baskette forever!” He headed the poll by over 1000 votes.
The grey rats were triumphant.
