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 be 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.
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