It was a fine bright night, and for all her lowness of spirits Dolly
kept looking up at the stars in a manner so bewitching (and SHE knew
it!) that Joe was clean out of his senses, and plainly showed that if
ever a man were--not to say over head and ears, but over the Monument
and the top of Saint Paul’s in love, that man was himself. The road was
a very good one; not at all a jolting road, or an uneven one; and yet
Dolly held the side of the chaise with one little hand, all the way. If
there had been an executioner behind him with an uplifted axe ready
to chop off his head if he touched that hand, Joe couldn’t have helped
doing it. From putting his own hand upon it as if by chance, and taking
it away again after a minute or so, he got to riding along without
taking it off at all; as if he, the escort, were bound to do that as an
important part of his duty, and had come out for the purpose. The most
curious circumstance about this little incident was, that Dolly didn’t
seem to know of it. She looked so innocent and unconscious when she
turned her eyes on Joe, that it was quite provoking.
She talked though; talked about her fright, and about Joe’s coming up to
rescue her, and about her gratitude, and about her fear that she might
not have thanked him enough, and about their always being friends from
that time forth--and about all that sort of thing. And when Joe said,
not friends he hoped, Dolly was quite surprised, and said not enemies
she hoped; and when Joe said, couldn’t they be something much better
than either, Dolly all of a sudden found out a star which was brighter
than all the other stars, and begged to call his attention to the same,
and was ten thousand times more innocent and unconscious than ever.
In this manner they travelled along, talking very little above a
whisper, and wishing the road could be stretched out to some dozen times
its natural length--at least that was Joe’s desire--when, as they were
getting clear of the forest and emerging on the more frequented road,
they heard behind them the sound of a horse’s feet at a round trot,
which growing rapidly louder as it drew nearer, elicited a scream from
Mrs Varden, and the cry ‘a friend!’ from the rider, who now came panting
up, and checked his horse beside them.
‘This man again!’ cried Dolly, shuddering.
‘Hugh!’ said Joe. ‘What errand are you upon?’
‘I come to ride back with you,’ he answered, glancing covertly at the
locksmith’s daughter. ‘HE sent me.’
‘My father!’ said poor Joe; adding under his breath, with a very
unfilial apostrophe, ‘Will he never think me man enough to take care of
myself!’
‘Aye!’ returned Hugh to the first part of the inquiry. ‘The roads are
not safe just now, he says, and you’d better have a companion.’
‘Ride on then,’ said Joe. ‘I’m not going to turn yet.’
Hugh complied, and they went on again. It was his whim or humour to
ride immediately before the chaise, and from this position he constantly
turned his head, and looked back. Dolly felt that he looked at her, but
she averted her eyes and feared to raise them once, so great was the
dread with which he had inspired her.
This interruption, and the consequent wakefulness of Mrs Varden, who had
been nodding in her sleep up to this point, except for a minute or
two at a time, when she roused herself to scold the locksmith for
audaciously taking hold of her to prevent her nodding herself out of
the chaise, put a restraint upon the whispered conversation, and made
it difficult of resumption. Indeed, before they had gone another mile,
Gabriel stopped at his wife’s desire, and that good lady protested she
would not hear of Joe’s going a step further on any account whatever. It
was in vain for Joe to protest on the other hand that he was by no means
tired, and would turn back presently, and would see them safely past
such a point, and so forth. Mrs Varden was obdurate, and being so was
not to be overcome by mortal agency.
‘Good night--if I must say it,’ said Joe, sorrowfully.
‘Good night,’ said Dolly. She would have added, ‘Take care of that man,
and pray don’t trust him,’ but he had turned his horse’s head, and was
standing close to them. She had therefore nothing for it but to suffer
Joe to give her hand a gentle squeeze, and when the chaise had gone on
for some distance, to look back and wave it, as he still lingered on
the spot where they had parted, with the tall dark figure of Hugh beside
him.
What she thought about, going home; and whether the coach-maker held as
favourable a place in her meditations as he had occupied in the morning,
is unknown. They reached home at last--at last, for it was a long way,
made none the shorter by Mrs Varden’s grumbling. Miggs hearing the sound
of wheels was at the door immediately.
‘Here they are, Simmun! Here they are!’ cried Miggs, clapping her
hands, and issuing forth to help her mistress to alight. ‘Bring a
chair, Simmun. Now, an’t you the better for it, mim? Don’t you feel more
yourself than you would have done if you’d have stopped at home? Oh,
gracious! how cold you are! Goodness me, sir, she’s a perfect heap of
ice.’
‘I can’t help it, my good girl. You had better take her in to the fire,’
said the locksmith.
‘Master sounds unfeeling, mim,’ said Miggs, in a tone of commiseration,
‘but such is not his intentions, I’m sure. After what he has seen of you
this day, I never will believe but that he has a deal more affection
in his heart than to speak unkind. Come in and sit yourself down by the
fire; there’s a good dear--do.’
Mrs Varden complied. The locksmith followed with his hands in his
pockets, and Mr Tappertit trundled off with the chaise to a neighbouring
stable.
‘Martha, my dear,’ said the locksmith, when they reached the parlour,
‘if you’ll look to Dolly yourself or let somebody else do it, perhaps it
will be only kind and reasonable. She has been frightened, you know, and
is not at all well to-night.’
In fact, Dolly had thrown herself upon the sofa, quite regardless of
all the little finery of which she had been so proud in the morning, and
with her face buried in her hands was crying very much.
At first sight of this phenomenon (for Dolly was by no means accustomed
to displays of this sort, rather learning from her mother’s example to
avoid them as much as possible) Mrs Varden expressed her belief that
never was any woman so beset as she; that her life was a continued scene
of trial; that whenever she was disposed to be well and cheerful, so
sure were the people around her to throw, by some means or other, a damp
upon her spirits; and that, as she had enjoyed herself that day, and
Heaven knew it was very seldom she did enjoy herself so she was now to
pay the penalty. To all such propositions Miggs assented freely. Poor
Dolly, however, grew none the better for these restoratives, but rather
worse, indeed; and seeing that she was really ill, both Mrs Varden and
Miggs were moved to compassion, and tended her in earnest.
But even then, their very kindness shaped itself into their usual course
of policy, and though Dolly was in a swoon, it was rendered clear to
the meanest capacity, that Mrs Varden was the sufferer. Thus when
Dolly began to get a little better, and passed into that stage in which
matrons hold that remonstrance and argument may be successfully applied,
her mother represented to her, with tears in her eyes, that if she had
been flurried and worried that day, she must remember it was the common
lot of humanity, and in especial of womankind, who through the whole
of their existence must expect no less, and were bound to make up their
minds to meek endurance and patient resignation. Mrs Varden entreated
her to remember that one of these days she would, in all probability,
have to do violence to her feelings so far as to be married; and that
marriage, as she might see every day of her life (and truly she did) was
a state requiring great fortitude and forbearance. She represented to
her in lively colours, that if she (Mrs V.) had not, in steering her
course through this vale of tears, been supported by a strong principle
of duty which alone upheld and prevented her from drooping, she must
have been in her grave many years ago; in which case she desired to know
what would have become of that errant spirit (meaning the locksmith), of
whose eye she was the very apple, and in whose path she was, as it were,
a shining light and guiding star?
Miss Miggs also put in her word to the same effect. She said that indeed
and indeed Miss Dolly might take pattern by her blessed mother, who,
she always had said, and always would say, though she were to be hanged,
drawn, and quartered for it next minute, was the mildest, amiablest,
forgivingest-spirited, longest-sufferingest female as ever she could
have believed; the mere narration of whose excellencies had worked such
a wholesome change in the mind of her own sister-in-law, that, whereas,
before, she and her husband lived like cat and dog, and were in the
habit of exchanging brass candlesticks, pot-lids, flat-irons, and other
such strong resentments, they were now the happiest and affectionatest
couple upon earth; as could be proved any day on application at Golden
Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, second bell-handle on the right-hand
doorpost. After glancing at herself as a comparatively worthless vessel,
but still as one of some desert, she besought her to bear in mind that
her aforesaid dear and only mother was of a weakly constitution and
excitable temperament, who had constantly to sustain afflictions in
domestic life, compared with which thieves and robbers were as nothing,
and yet never sunk down or gave way to despair or wrath, but, in
prize-fighting phraseology, always came up to time with a cheerful
countenance, and went in to win as if nothing had happened. When Miggs
finished her solo, her mistress struck in again, and the two together
performed a duet to the same purpose; the burden being, that Mrs Varden
was persecuted perfection, and Mr Varden, as the representative of
mankind in that apartment, a creature of vicious and brutal habits,
utterly insensible to the blessings he enjoyed. Of so refined a
character, indeed, was their talent of assault under the mask of
sympathy, that when Dolly, recovering, embraced her father tenderly,
as in vindication of his goodness, Mrs Varden expressed her solemn hope
that this would be a lesson to him for the remainder of his life,
and that he would do some little justice to a woman’s nature ever
afterwards--in which aspiration Miss Miggs, by divers sniffs and
coughs, more significant than the longest oration, expressed her entire
concurrence.
But the great joy of Miggs’s heart was, that she not only picked up
a full account of what had happened, but had the exquisite delight of
conveying it to Mr Tappertit for his jealousy and torture. For that
gentleman, on account of Dolly’s indisposition, had been requested to
take his supper in the workshop, and it was conveyed thither by Miss
Miggs’s own fair hands.
‘Oh Simmun!’ said the young lady, ‘such goings on to-day! Oh, gracious
me, Simmun!’
Mr Tappertit, who was not in the best of humours, and who disliked Miss
Miggs more when she laid her hand on her heart and panted for breath
than at any other time, as her deficiency of outline was most apparent
under such circumstances, eyed her over in his loftiest style, and
deigned to express no curiosity whatever.
‘I never heard the like, nor nobody else,’ pursued Miggs. ‘The idea of
interfering with HER. What people can see in her to make it worth their
while to do so, that’s the joke--he he he!’
Finding there was a lady in the case, Mr Tappertit haughtily requested
his fair friend to be more explicit, and demanded to know what she meant
by ‘her.’
‘Why, that Dolly,’ said Miggs, with an extremely sharp emphasis on the
name. ‘But, oh upon my word and honour, young Joseph Willet is a brave
one; and he do deserve her, that he do.’
‘Woman!’ said Mr Tappertit, jumping off the counter on which he was
seated; ‘beware!’
‘My stars, Simmun!’ cried Miggs, in affected astonishment. ‘You frighten
me to death! What’s the matter?’
‘There are strings,’ said Mr Tappertit, flourishing his bread-and-cheese
knife in the air, ‘in the human heart that had better not be wibrated.
That’s what’s the matter.’
‘Oh, very well--if you’re in a huff,’ cried Miggs, turning away.
‘Huff or no huff,’ said Mr Tappertit, detaining her by the wrist. ‘What
do you mean, Jezebel? What were you going to say? Answer me!’
Notwithstanding this uncivil exhortation, Miggs gladly did as she was
required; and told him how that their young mistress, being alone in
the meadows after dark, had been attacked by three or four tall men, who
would have certainly borne her away and perhaps murdered her, but for
the timely arrival of Joseph Willet, who with his own single hand put
them all to flight, and rescued her; to the lasting admiration of his
fellow-creatures generally, and to the eternal love and gratitude of
Dolly Varden.
‘Very good,’ said Mr Tappertit, fetching a long breath when the tale was
told, and rubbing his hair up till it stood stiff and straight on end
all over his head. ‘His days are numbered.’
‘Oh, Simmun!’
‘I tell you,’ said the ‘prentice, ‘his days are numbered. Leave me. Get
along with you.’
Miggs departed at his bidding, but less because of his bidding than
because she desired to chuckle in secret. When she had given vent to
her satisfaction, she returned to the parlour; where the locksmith,
stimulated by quietness and Toby, had become talkative, and was disposed
to take a cheerful review of the occurrences of the day. But Mrs
Varden, whose practical religion (as is not uncommon) was usually of the
retrospective order, cut him short by declaiming on the sinfulness of
such junketings, and holding that it was high time to go to bed. To bed
therefore she withdrew, with an aspect as grim and gloomy as that of the
Maypole’s own state couch; and to bed the rest of the establishment soon
afterwards repaired.