_ZERO'S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB_. {182}
I dined by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in a privatechamber at St. James's Hall. You have seen the man: it was M'Guire, themost chivalrous of creatures, but not himself expert in our contrivances.Hence the necessity of our meeting; for I need not remind you whatenormous issues depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine. I set ourlittle petard for half an hour, the scene of action being hard by; andthe better to avert miscarriage, employed a device, a recent invention ofmy own, by which the opening of the Gladstone bag in which the bomb wascarried, should instantly determine the explosion. M'Guire was somewhatdashed by this arrangement, which was new to him: and pointed out, withexcellent, clear good sense, that should he be arrested, it wouldprobably involve him in the fall of our opponents. But I was not to bemoved, made a strong appeal to his patriotism, gave him a good glass ofwhisky, and despatched him on his glorious errand.
Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester Square: a spot,I think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake of the dramatist, stillvery foolishly claimed as a glory by the English race, in spite of hisdisgusting political opinions; but from the fact that the seats in theimmediate neighbourhood are often thronged by children, errand-boys,unfortunate young ladies of the poorer class and infirm old men--allclasses making a direct appeal to public pity, and therefore suitablewith our designs. As M'Guire drew near his heart was inflamed by themost noble sentiment of triumph. Never had he seen the garden socrowded; children, still stumbling in the impotence of youth, ran to andfro, shouting and playing, round the pedestal; an old, sick pensioner satupon the nearest bench, a medal on his breast, a stick with which hewalked (for he was disabled by wounds) reclining on his knee. GuiltyEngland would thus be stabbed in the most delicate quarters; the momenthad, indeed, been well selected; and M'Guire, with a radiant provision ofthe event, drew merrily nearer. Suddenly his eye alighted on the burlyform of a policeman, standing hard by the effigy in an attitude of watch.My bold companion paused; he looked about him closely; here and there, atdifferent points of the enclosure, other men stood or loitered, affectingan abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the shrubs, feigning to talk,feigning to be weary and to rest upon the benches. M'Guire was no childin these affairs; he instantly divined one of the plots of theMachiavellian Gladstone.
A chief difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain nervousnessin the subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour of some design drawsnear, these chicken-souled conspirators appear to suffer some revulsionof intent; and frequently despatch to the authorities, not indeedspecific denunciations, but vague anonymous warnings. But for thispurely accidental circumstance, England had long ago been an historicalexpression. On the receipt of such a letter, the Government lay a trapfor their adversaries, and surround the threatened spot with hirelings.My blood sometimes boils in my veins, when I consider the case of thosewho sell themselves for money in such a cause. True, thanks to thegenerosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very comfortablestipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary which puts me quite beyondthe reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts; M'Guire, again, ere hejoined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now, thank God!receives a decent income. That is as it should be; the patriot must notbe diverted from his task by any base consideration; and the distinctionbetween our position and that of the police is too obvious to be stated.
Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been divulged; theGovernment had craftily filled the place with minions; even the pensionerwas not improbably a hireling in disguise; and our emissary, withoutother aid or protection than the simple apparatus in his bag, foundhimself confronted by force; brutal force; that strong hand which was acharacter of the ages of oppression. Should he venture to deposit themachine, it was almost certain that he would be observed and arrested; acry would arise; and there was just a fear that the police might not bepresent in sufficient force, to protect him from the savagery of the mob.The scheme must be delayed. He stood with his bag on his arm, pretendingto survey the front of the Alhambra, when there flashed into his mind athought to appal the bravest. The machine was set; at the appointedhour, it must explode; and how, in the interval, was he to be rid of it?
Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that patriot. There hewas, friendless and helpless; a man in the very flower of life, for he isnot yet forty; with long years of happiness before him; and nowcondemned, in one moment, to a cruel and revolting death by dynamite!The square, he said, went round him like a thaumatrope; he saw theAlhambra leap into the air like a balloon; and reeled against therailing. It is probable he fainted.
When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.
'My God!' he cried.
'You seem to be unwell, sir,' said the hireling.
'I feel better now,' cried poor M'Guire: and with uneven steps, for thepavement of the square seemed to lurch and reel under his footing, hefled from the scene of this disaster. Fled? Alas, from what was hefleeing? Did he not carry that from which he fled along with him? andhad he the wings of the eagle, had he the swiftness of the ocean winds,could he have been rapt into the uttermost quarters of the earth, howshould he escape the ruin that he carried? We have heard of living menwho have been fettered to the dead; the grievance, soberly considered, isno more than sentimental; the case is but a flea-bite to that of him whoshould be linked, like poor M'Guire, to an explosive bomb.
A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his liver:suppose it were the hour already. He stopped as though he had been shot,and plucked his watch out. There was a howling in his ears, as loud as awinter tempest; his sight was now obscured as if by a cloud, now, as by alightning flash, would show him the very dust upon the street. But sobrief were these intervals of vision, and so violently did the watchvibrate in his hands, that it was impossible to distinguish the numberson the dial. He covered his eyes for a few seconds; and in that space,it seemed to him that he had fallen to be a man of ninety. When helooked again, the watch-plate had grown legible: he had twenty minutes.Twenty minutes, and no plan!
Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now observed a littlegirl of about six drawing near to him, and as she came, kicking in frontof her, as children will, a piece of wood. She sang, too; and somethingin her accent recalling him to the past, produced a sudden clearness inhis mind. Here was a God-sent opportunity!
'My dear,' said he, 'would you like a present of a pretty bag?'
The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take it. She hadlooked first at the bag, like a true child; but most unfortunately,before she had yet received the fatal gift, her eyes fell directly onM'Guire; and no sooner had she seen the poor gentleman's face, than shescreamed out and leaped backward, as though she had seen the devil.Almost at the same moment a woman appeared upon the threshold of aneighbouring shop, and called upon the child in anger. 'Come here,colleen,' she said, 'and don't be plaguing the poor old gentleman!' Withthat she re-entered the house, and the child followed her, sobbing aloud.
With the loss of this hope M'Guire's reason swooned within him. Whennext he awoke to consciousness, he was standing before St.Martin's-in-the-Fields, wavering like a drunken man; the passers-byregarding him with eyes in which he read, as in a glass, an image of theterror and horror that dwelt within his own.
'I am afraid you are very ill, sir,' observed a woman, stopping andgazing hard in his face. 'Can I do anything to help you?'
'Ill?' said M'Guire. 'O God!' And then, recovering some shadow of hisself-command, 'Chronic, madam,' said he: 'a long course of the dumb ague.But since you are so compassionate--an errand that I lack the strength tocarry out,' he gasped--'this bag to Portman Square. Oh, compassionatewoman, as you hope to be saved, as you are a mother, in the name of yourbabes that wait to welcome you at home, oh, take this bag to PortmanSquare! I have a mother, too,' he added, with a broken voice. 'Number19, Portman Square.'
; I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of voice; for thewoman was plainly taken with a certain fear of him. 'Poor gentleman!'said she. 'If I were you, I would go home.' And she left him standingthere in his distress.
'Home!' thought M'Guire, 'what a derision!' What home was there for him,the victim of philanthropy? He thought of his old mother, of his happyyouth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion; of the possibilitythat he might not be killed, that he might be cruelly mangled, crippledfor life, condemned to lifelong pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surelydeafened. Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter's peril; but evenwaiving death, have you realised what it is for a fine, brave young manof forty, to be smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all themusic of life, and from the voice of friendship, and love? How little dowe realise the sufferings of others! Even your brutal Government, in theheyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound thepatriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, andto erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible adoom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but withthe fear before it of the withering scorn of the good.
But I wander from M'Guire. From this dread glance into the past andfuture, his thoughts returned at a bound upon the present. How had hewandered there? and how long--oh, heavens! how long had he been about it?He pulled out his watch; and found that but three minutes had elapsed.It seemed too bright a thing to be believed. He glanced at the churchclock; and sure enough, it marked an hour four minutes faster than thewatch.
Of all that he endured, M'Guire declares that pang was the most desolate.Till then, he had had one friend, one counsellor, in whom he plenarilytrusted; by whose advertisement, he numbered the minutes that remained tohim of life; on whose sure testimony, he could tell when the time wascome to risk the last adventure, to cast the bag away from him, and taketo flight. And now in what was he to place reliance? His watch wasslow; it might be losing time; if so, in what degree? What limit couldhe set to its derangement? and how much was it possible for a watch tolose in thirty minutes? Five? ten? fifteen? It might be so; already, itseemed years since he had left St. James's Hall on this so promisingenterprise; at any moment, then, the blow was to be looked for.
In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his pulses settleddown; and a broken weariness succeeded, as though he had lived forcenturies and for centuries been dead. The buildings and the people inthe street became incredibly small, and far-away, and bright; Londonsounded in his ears stilly, like a whisper; and the rattle of the cabthat nearly charged him down, was like a sound from Africa. Meanwhile,he was conscious of a strange abstraction from himself; and heard andfelt his footfalls on the ground, as those of a very old, small, debileand tragically fortuned man, whom he sincerely pitied.
As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a medium, itseemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped intohis mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street hard by,where he might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked. Thither,then, he bent his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above thepavement; and there, in the mouth of the entry, he found a man in asleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing a straw. He passed him by, and twicepatrolled the entry, scouting for the barest chance; but the man hadfaced about and continued to observe him curiously.
Another hope was gone. M'Guire reissued from the entry, still followedby the wondering eyes of the man in the sleeved waistcoat. He once moreconsulted his watch: there were but fourteen minutes left to him. Atthat, it seemed as if a sudden, genial heat were spread about his brain;for a second or two, he saw the world as red as blood; and thereafterentered into a complete possession of himself, with an incrediblecheerfulness of spirits, prompting him to sing and chuckle as he walked.And yet this mirth seemed to belong to things external; and within, likea black and leaden-heavy kernel, he was conscious of the weight upon hissoul.
I care for nobody, no, not I, And nobody cares for me,
he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the passengersstared upon him on the street. And still the warmth seemed to increaseand to become more genial. What was life? he considered, and what he,M'Guire? What even Erin, our green Erin? All seemed so incalculablylittle that he smiled as he looked down upon it. He would have givenyears, had he possessed them, for a glass of spirits; but time failed,and he must deny himself this last indulgence.
At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a hansom cab;jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of the Embankment, whichhe named; and as soon as the vehicle was in motion, concealed the bag ascompletely as he could under the vantage of the apron, and once more drewout his watch. So he rode for five interminable minutes, his heart inhis mouth at every jolt, scarce able to possess his terrors, yet fearingto wake the attention of the driver by too obvious a change of plan, andwilling, if possible, to leave him time to forget the Gladstone bag.
At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he hailed; thecab was stopped; and he alighted--with how glad a heart! He thrust hishand into his pocket. All was now over; he had saved his life; nor thatalone, but he had engineered a striking act of dynamite; for what couldbe more pictorial, what more effective, than the explosion of a hansomcab, as it sped rapidly along the streets of London. He felt in onepocket; then in another. The most crushing seizure of despair descendedon his soul; and struck into abject dumbness, he stared upon the driver.He had not one penny.
'Hillo,' said the driver, 'don't seem well.'
'Lost my money,' said M'Guire, in tones so faint and strange that theysurprised his hearing.
The man looked through the trap. 'I dessay,' said he: 'you've left yourbag.'
M'Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking on that blackcontinent at arm's length, withered inwardly and felt his featuressharpen as with mortal sickness.
'This is not mine,' said he. 'Your last fare must have left it. You hadbetter take it to the station.'
'Now look here,' returned the cabman: 'are you off your chump? or am I?'
'Well, then, I'll tell you what,' exclaimed M'Guire; 'you take it foryour fare!'
'Oh, I dessay,' replied the driver. 'Anything else? What's _in_ yourbag? Open it, and let me see.'
'No, no,' returned M'Guire. 'Oh no, not that. It's a surprise; it'sprepared expressly: a surprise for honest cabmen.'
'No, you don't,' said the man, alighting from his perch, and coming veryclose to the unhappy patriot. 'You're either going to pay my fare, orget in again and drive to the office.'
It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that M'Guire spied the stoutfigure of one Godall, a tobacconist of Rupert Street, drawing near alongthe Embankment. The man was not unknown to him; he had bought of hiswares, and heard him quoted for the soul of liberality; and such was nowthe nearness of his peril, that even at such a straw of hope, he clutchedwith gratitude.
'Thank God!' he cried. 'Here comes a friend of mine. I'll borrow.' Andhe dashed to meet the tradesman. 'Sir,' said he, 'Mr. Godall, I havedealt with you--you doubtless know my face--calamities for which I cannotblame myself have overwhelmed me. Oh, sir, for the love of innocence,for the sake of the bonds of humanity, and as you hope for mercy at thethrone of grace, lend me two-and-six!'
'I do not recognise your face,' replied Mr. Godall; 'but I remember thecut of your beard, which I have the misfortune to dislike. Here, sir, isa sovereign; which I very willingly advance to you, on the singlecondition that you shave your chin.'
M'Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the cabman, callingout to him to keep the change; bounded down the steps, flung the bag farforth into the river, and fell headlong after it. He was plucked from awatery grave, it is believed, by the hands of Mr. Godall. Even as he wasbeing hoisted dripping to the shore, a dull and choked explosion shookthe solid masonry of the Embankment, and far out in the river a momentaryfountain rose and
disappeared.