Mr Dennis having despatched this piece of business without any personal
hurt or inconvenience, and having now retired into the tranquil
respectability of private life, resolved to solace himself with half an
hour or so of female society. With this amiable purpose in his mind,
he bent his steps towards the house where Dolly and Miss Haredale were
still confined, and whither Miss Miggs had also been removed by order of
Mr Simon Tappertit.
As he walked along the streets with his leather gloves clasped
behind him, and his face indicative of cheerful thought and pleasant
calculation, Mr Dennis might have been likened unto a farmer ruminating
among his crops, and enjoying by anticipation the bountiful gifts of
Providence. Look where he would, some heap of ruins afforded him rich
promise of a working off; the whole town appeared to have been ploughed
and sown, and nurtured by most genial weather; and a goodly harvest was
at hand.
Having taken up arms and resorted to deeds of violence, with the great
main object of preserving the Old Bailey in all its purity, and the
gallows in all its pristine usefulness and moral grandeur, it would
perhaps be going too far to assert that Mr Dennis had ever distinctly
contemplated and foreseen this happy state of things. He rather looked
upon it as one of those beautiful dispensations which are inscrutably
brought about for the behoof and advantage of good men. He felt, as
it were, personally referred to, in this prosperous ripening for the
gibbet; and had never considered himself so much the pet and favourite
child of Destiny, or loved that lady so well or with such a calm and
virtuous reliance, in all his life.
As to being taken up, himself, for a rioter, and punished with the
rest, Mr Dennis dismissed that possibility from his thoughts as an idle
chimera; arguing that the line of conduct he had adopted at Newgate,
and the service he had rendered that day, would be more than a set-off
against any evidence which might identify him as a member of the crowd.
That any charge of companionship which might be made against him by
those who were themselves in danger, would certainly go for nought. And
that if any trivial indiscretion on his part should unluckily come out,
the uncommon usefulness of his office, at present, and the great demand
for the exercise of its functions, would certainly cause it to be winked
at, and passed over. In a word, he had played his cards throughout, with
great care; had changed sides at the very nick of time; had delivered
up two of the most notorious rioters, and a distinguished felon to boot;
and was quite at his ease.
Saving--for there is a reservation; and even Mr Dennis was not perfectly
happy--saving for one circumstance; to wit, the forcible detention of
Dolly and Miss Haredale, in a house almost adjoining his own. This was
a stumbling-block; for if they were discovered and released, they could,
by the testimony they had it in their power to give, place him in a
situation of great jeopardy; and to set them at liberty, first extorting
from them an oath of secrecy and silence, was a thing not to be thought
of. It was more, perhaps, with an eye to the danger which lurked in this
quarter, than from his abstract love of conversation with the sex, that
the hangman, quickening his steps, now hastened into their society,
cursing the amorous natures of Hugh and Mr Tappertit with great
heartiness, at every step he took.
When he entered the miserable room in which they were confined, Dolly
and Miss Haredale withdrew in silence to the remotest corner. But Miss
Miggs, who was particularly tender of her reputation, immediately fell
upon her knees and began to scream very loud, crying, ‘What will become
of me!’--‘Where is my Simmuns!’--‘Have mercy, good gentlemen, on my
sex’s weaknesses!’--with other doleful lamentations of that nature,
which she delivered with great propriety and decorum.
‘Miss, miss,’ whispered Dennis, beckoning to her with his forefinger,
‘come here--I won’t hurt you. Come here, my lamb, will you?’
On hearing this tender epithet, Miss Miggs, who had left off screaming
when he opened his lips, and had listened to him attentively, began
again, crying: ‘Oh I’m his lamb! He says I’m his lamb! Oh gracious, why
wasn’t I born old and ugly! Why was I ever made to be the youngest of
six, and all of ‘em dead and in their blessed graves, excepting
one married sister, which is settled in Golden Lion Court, number
twenty-sivin, second bell-handle on the--!’
‘Don’t I say I an’t a-going to hurt you?’ said Dennis, pointing to a
chair. ‘Why miss, what’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know what mayn’t be the matter!’ cried Miss Miggs, clasping her
hands distractedly. ‘Anything may be the matter!’
‘But nothing is, I tell you,’ said the hangman. ‘First stop that noise
and come and sit down here, will you, chuckey?’
The coaxing tone in which he said these latter words might have failed
in its object, if he had not accompanied them with sundry sharp jerks of
his thumb over one shoulder, and with divers winks and thrustings of his
tongue into his cheek, from which signals the damsel gathered that he
sought to speak to her apart, concerning Miss Haredale and Dolly. Her
curiosity being very powerful, and her jealousy by no means inactive,
she arose, and with a great deal of shivering and starting back, and
much muscular action among all the small bones in her throat, gradually
approached him.
‘Sit down,’ said the hangman.
Suiting the action to the word, he thrust her rather suddenly and
prematurely into a chair, and designing to reassure her by a little
harmless jocularity, such as is adapted to please and fascinate the sex,
converted his right forefinger into an ideal bradawl or gimlet, and
made as though he would screw the same into her side--whereat Miss Miggs
shrieked again, and evinced symptoms of faintness.
‘Lovey, my dear,’ whispered Dennis, drawing his chair close to hers.
‘When was your young man here last, eh?’
‘MY young man, good gentleman!’ answered Miggs in a tone of exquisite
distress.
‘Ah! Simmuns, you know--him?’ said Dennis.
‘Mine indeed!’ cried Miggs, with a burst of bitterness--and as she said
it, she glanced towards Dolly. ‘MINE, good gentleman!’
This was just what Mr Dennis wanted, and expected.
‘Ah!’ he said, looking so soothingly, not to say amorously on Miggs,
that she sat, as she afterwards remarked, on pins and needles of
the sharpest Whitechapel kind, not knowing what intentions might be
suggesting that expression to his features: ‘I was afraid of that. I saw
as much myself. It’s her fault. She WILL entice ‘em.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ cried Miggs, folding her hands and looking upwards with
a kind of devout blankness, ‘I wouldn’t lay myself out as she does; I
wouldn’t be as bold as her; I wouldn’t seem to say to all male creeturs
“Come and kiss me”’--and here a shudder quite convulsed her frame--‘for
any earthly crowns as might be offered. Worlds,’ Miggs added solemnly,
‘should not reduce me. No. Not if I was Wenis.’
‘Well, but you ARE Wenus, you know,’ said Mr Dennis, confidentially.
‘No, I am not, good gentleman,’ answered Miggs, shaking her head with an
air of self-denial which seemed to imply that she might be if she chose,
but she hoped she knew better. ‘No, I am not, good gentleman. Don’t
charge me with it.’
Up to this time she had turned round, every now and then, to where Dolly
and Miss Haredale had retired and uttered a scream, or groan, or laid
her hand upon her heart and trembled excessively, with a view of keeping
up appearances, and giving them to understand that she conversed with
the visitor, under protest and on compulsion, and at a great personal
sacrifice, for their common good. But at this point, Mr Dennis looked
so very full of meaning, and gave such a singularly expressive twitch
to his face as a request to her to come still nearer to him, that
she abandoned these little arts, and gave him her whole and undivided
attention.
‘When was Simmuns here, I say?’ quoth Dennis, in her ear.
‘Not since yesterday morning; and then only for a few minutes. Not all
day, the day before.’
‘You know he meant all along to carry off that one!’ said Dennis,
indicating Dolly by the slightest possible jerk of his head:--‘And to
hand you over to somebody else.’
Miss Miggs, who had fallen into a terrible state of grief when the first
part of this sentence was spoken, recovered a little at the second,
and seemed by the sudden check she put upon her tears, to intimate
that possibly this arrangement might meet her views; and that it might,
perhaps, remain an open question.
‘--But unfort’nately,’ pursued Dennis, who observed this: ‘somebody else
was fond of her too, you see; and even if he wasn’t, somebody else is
took for a rioter, and it’s all over with him.’
Miss Miggs relapsed.
‘Now I want,’ said Dennis, ‘to clear this house, and to see you righted.
What if I was to get her off, out of the way, eh?’
Miss Miggs, brightening again, rejoined, with many breaks and pauses
from excess of feeling, that temptations had been Simmuns’s bane. That
it was not his faults, but hers (meaning Dolly’s). That men did not see
through these dreadful arts as women did, and therefore was caged
and trapped, as Simmun had been. That she had no personal motives to
serve--far from it--on the contrary, her intentions was good towards
all parties. But forasmuch as she knowed that Simmun, if united to any
designing and artful minxes (she would name no names, for that was not
her dispositions)--to ANY designing and artful minxes--must be made
miserable and unhappy for life, she DID incline towards prewentions.
Such, she added, was her free confessions. But as this was private
feelings, and might perhaps be looked upon as wengeance, she begged the
gentleman would say no more. Whatever he said, wishing to do her duty
by all mankind, even by them as had ever been her bitterest enemies, she
would not listen to him. With that she stopped her ears, and shook her
head from side to side, to intimate to Mr Dennis that though he talked
until he had no breath left, she was as deaf as any adder.
‘Lookee here, my sugar-stick,’ said Mr Dennis, ‘if your view’s the same
as mine, and you’ll only be quiet and slip away at the right time, I
can have the house clear to-morrow, and be out of this trouble.--Stop
though! there’s the other.’
‘Which other, sir?’ asked Miggs--still with her fingers in her ears and
her head shaking obstinately.
‘Why, the tallest one, yonder,’ said Dennis, as he stroked his chin, and
added, in an undertone to himself, something about not crossing Muster
Gashford.
Miss Miggs replied (still being profoundly deaf) that if Miss Haredale
stood in the way at all, he might make himself quite easy on that score;
as she had gathered, from what passed between Hugh and Mr Tappertit when
they were last there, that she was to be removed alone (not by them, but
by somebody else), to-morrow night.
Mr Dennis opened his eyes very wide at this piece of information,
whistled once, considered once, and finally slapped his head once and
nodded once, as if he had got the clue to this mysterious removal, and
so dismissed it. Then he imparted his design concerning Dolly to Miss
Miggs, who was taken more deaf than before, when he began; and so
remained, all through.
The notable scheme was this. Mr Dennis was immediately to seek out from
among the rioters, some daring young fellow (and he had one in his eye,
he said), who, terrified by the threats he could hold out to him, and
alarmed by the capture of so many who were no better and no worse than
he, would gladly avail himself of any help to get abroad, and out of
harm’s way, with his plunder, even though his journey were incumbered
by an unwilling companion; indeed, the unwilling companion being
a beautiful girl, would probably be an additional inducement and
temptation. Such a person found, he proposed to bring him there on
the ensuing night, when the tall one was taken off, and Miss Miggs had
purposely retired; and then that Dolly should be gagged, muffled in a
cloak, and carried in any handy conveyance down to the river’s side;
where there were abundant means of getting her smuggled snugly off in
any small craft of doubtful character, and no questions asked. With
regard to the expense of this removal, he would say, at a rough
calculation, that two or three silver tea or coffee-pots, with something
additional for drink (such as a muffineer, or toast-rack), would more
than cover it. Articles of plate of every kind having been buried by the
rioters in several lonely parts of London, and particularly, as he
knew, in St James’s Square, which, though easy of access, was little
frequented after dark, and had a convenient piece of water in the midst,
the needful funds were close at hand, and could be had upon the shortest
notice. With regard to Dolly, the gentleman would exercise his own
discretion. He would be bound to do nothing but to take her away,
and keep her away. All other arrangements and dispositions would rest
entirely with himself.
If Miss Miggs had had her hearing, no doubt she would have been greatly
shocked by the indelicacy of a young female’s going away with a stranger
by night (for her moral feelings, as we have said, were of the tenderest
kind); but directly Mr Dennis ceased to speak, she reminded him that he
had only wasted breath. She then went on to say (still with her fingers
in her ears) that nothing less than a severe practical lesson would save
the locksmith’s daughter from utter ruin; and that she felt it, as it
were, a moral obligation and a sacred duty to the family, to wish that
some one would devise one for her reformation. Miss Miggs remarked, and
very justly, as an abstract sentiment which happened to occur to her
at the moment, that she dared to say the locksmith and his wife would
murmur, and repine, if they were ever, by forcible abduction, or
otherwise, to lose their child; but that we seldom knew, in this world,
what was best for us: such being our sinful and imperfect natures, that
very few arrived at that clear understanding.
Having brought their conversation to this satisfactory end, they parted:
Dennis, to pursue his design, and take another walk about his farm; Miss
Miggs, to launch, when he left her, into such a burst of mental anguish
(which she gave them to understand was occasioned by certain tender
things he had had the presumption and audacity to say), that little
Dolly’s heart was quite melted. Indeed, she said and did so much to
soothe the outraged feelings of Miss Miggs, and looked so beautiful
while doing so, that if that young maid had not had ample vent for her
surpassing spite, in a knowledge of the mischief that was brewing, she
must have scratched her features, on the spot.