Barnaby Rudge | Page 5

drew.
The Maypole--by which term from henceforth is meant the house, and
not its sign--the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends
than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag

chimneys, out of which it seemed as though even smoke could not
choose but come in more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it
in its tortuous progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty.
The place was said to have been built in the days of King Henry the
Eighth; and there was a legend, not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept
there one night while upon a hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain
oak-panelled room with a deep bay window, but that next morning,
while standing on a mounting block before the door with one foot in
the stirrup, the virgin monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an
unlucky page for some neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful
folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole customers, as
unluckily there always are in every little community, were inclined to
look upon this tradition as rather apocryphal; but, whenever the
landlord of that ancient hostelry appealed to the mounting block itself
as evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the
same place to that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by
a large majority, and all true believers exulted as in a victory.
Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or
untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps
as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes
happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age. Its
windows were old diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken and
uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with
massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and
grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the more favoured
customers smoked and drank--ay, and sang many a good song too,
sometimes--reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which,
like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the
mansion.
In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests for
many a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole
colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were
more pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and out-buildings than
anybody but the landlord could reckon up. The wheeling and circling
flights of runts, fantails, tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite

consistent with the grave and sober character of the building, but the
monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some among
them all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest. With
its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging
out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were
nodding in its sleep. Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fancy to
detect in it other resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it was
built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and
discoloured like an old man's skin; the sturdy timbers had decayed like
teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to comfort it in
its age, wrapt its green leaves closely round the time-worn walls.
It was a hale and hearty age though, still: and in the summer or autumn
evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak and
chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its
lustre, seemed their fit companion, and to have many good years of life
in him yet.
The evening with which we have to do, was neither a summer nor an
autumn one, but the twilight of a day in March, when the wind howled
dismally among the bare branches of the trees, and rumbling in the
wide chimneys and driving the rain against the windows of the
Maypole Inn, gave such of its frequenters as chanced to be there at the
moment an undeniable reason for prolonging their stay, and caused the
landlord to prophesy that the night would certainly clear at eleven
o'clock precisely,--which by a remarkable coincidence was the hour at
which he always closed his house.
The name of him upon whom the spirit of prophecy thus descended
was John Willet, a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which
betokened profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined
with a very strong reliance upon his own merits. It was John Willet's
ordinary boast in his more placid moods that if he were slow he was
sure; which assertion