Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

“Ay!” said Egremont, “there is a great question for you and Lady Firebrace to ponder over. This is a lesson for you fine ladies, who think you can govern the world by what you call your social influences: asking people once or twice a-year to an inconvenient crowd in your house; now haughtily smirking, and now impertinently staring, at them; and flattering yourselves all this time, that to have the occasional privilege of entering your saloons and the periodical experience of your insolent recognition, is to be a reward for great exertions, or if necessary an inducement to infamous tergiversation.”

It was night: clear and serene, though the moon had not risen; and a vast concourse of persons were assembling on Mowbray Moor. The chief gathering collected in the vicinity of some huge rocks, one of which, preeminent above its fellows, and having a broad flat head, on which some twenty persons might easily stand at the same time, was called the Druid’s Altar. The ground about was strewn with stony fragments, covered tonight with human beings, who found a convenient resting-place amid these ruins of some ancient temple or relics of some ancient world. The shadowy concourse increased, the dim circle of the nocturnal assemblage each moment spread and widened; there was the hum and stir of many thousands. Suddenly in the distance the sound of martial music: and instantly, quick as the lightning and far more wild, each person present brandished a flaming torch, amid a chorus of cheers, that, renewed and resounding, floated far away over the broad bosom of the dusk wilderness.

The music and the banners denoted the arrival of the leaders of the people. They mounted the craggy ascent that led to the summit of the Druid’s Altar, and there, surrounded by his companions, amid the enthusiastic shouts of the multitude, Walter Gerard came forth to address a torchlight meeting.

His tall form seemed colossal in the uncertain and flickering light, his rich and powerful voice reached almost to the utmost limit of his vast audience, now still with expectation and silent with excitement. Their fixed and eager glance, the mouth compressed with fierce resolution or distended by novel sympathy, as they listened to the exposition of their wrongs, and the vindication of the sacred rights of labour⁠—the shouts and waving of the torches as some bright or bold phrase touched them to the quick⁠—the cause, the hour, the scene⁠—all combined to render the assemblage in a high degree exciting.

“I wonder if Warner will speak tonight,” said Dandy Mick to Devilsdust.

“He can’t pitch it in like Gerard,” replied his companion.

“But he is a trump in the tender,” said the Dandy. “The Handlooms looks to him as their man, and that’s a powerful section.”

“If you come to the depth of a question, there’s nothing like Stephen Morley,” said Devilsdust. “ ’Twould take six clergymen any day to settle him. He knows the principles of society by heart. But Gerard gets hold of the passions.”

“And that’s the way to do the trick,” said Dandy Mick. “I wish he would say march, and no mistake.”

“There is a great deal to do before saying that,” said Devilsdust. “We must have discussion, because when it comes to reasoning, the oligarchs have not got a leg to stand on; and we must stop the consumption of exciseable articles, and when they have no tin to pay the bayonets and their b⁠⸺⁠y police, they are dished.”

“You have a long head, Dusty,” said Mick.

“Why I have been thinking of it ever since I knew two and two made four,” said his friend. “I was not ten years old when I said to myself⁠—It’s a pretty go this, that I should be toiling in a shoddy-hole to pay the taxes for a gentleman what drinks his port wine and stretches his legs on a Turkey carpet. Hear, hear,” he suddenly exclaimed, as Gerard threw off a stinging sentence. “Ah! that’s the man for the people. You will see, Mick, whatever happens, Gerard is the man who will always lead.”

Gerard had ceased amid enthusiastic plaudits, and Warner⁠—that hand-loom weaver whom the reader may recollect, and who had since become a popular leader and one of the principal followers of Gerard⁠—had also addressed the multitude. They had cheered and shouted, and voted resolutions, and the business of the night was over. Now they were enjoined to disperse in order and depart in peace. The band sounded a triumphant retreat; the leaders had descended from the Druid’s Altar; the multitude were melting away, bearing back to the town their high resolves and panting thoughts, and echoing in many quarters the suggestive appeals of those who had addressed them. Dandy Mick and Devilsdust departed together; the business of their night had not yet commenced, and it was an important one.

They took their way to that suburb whither Gerard and Morley repaired the evening of their return from Marney Abbey; but it was not on this occasion to pay a visit to Chaffing Jack and his brilliant saloon. Winding through many obscure lanes, Mick and his friend at length turned into a passage which ended in a square court of a not inconsiderable size, and which was surrounded by high buildings that had the appearance of warehouses. Entering one of these, and taking up a dim lamp that was placed on the stone of an empty hearth, Devilsdust led his friend through several unoccupied and unfurnished rooms, until he came to one in which there were some signs of occupation.

“Now, Mick,” said he, in a very earnest, almost solemn tone, “are you firm?”

“All right, my hearty,” replied his friend, though not without some affectation of ease.

“There is a good deal to go through,” said Devilsdust. “It tries a man.”

“You don’t mean that?”

“But if you are firm, all’s right. Now I must leave you.”

“No, no, Dusty,” said Mick.

“I must go,” said Devilsdust; “and you must rest here till you are sent for. Now mind⁠—whatever is bid you, obey;