Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
open. When his eyes got back to Miggs, they rested on her; fascinated.
‘To think,’ cried Miggs with hysterical joy, ‘that Mr Joe, and dear
Miss Dolly, has raly come together after all as has been said and done
contrairy! To see them two a-settin’ along with him and her, so pleasant
and in all respects so affable and mild; and me not knowing of it, and
not being in the ways to make no preparations for their teas. Ho what a
cutting thing it is, and yet what sweet sensations is awoke within me!’
Either in clasping her hands again, or in an ecstasy of pious joy, Miss
Miggs clinked her pattens after the manner of a pair of cymbals, at this
juncture; and then resumed, in the softest accents:
‘And did my missis think--ho goodness, did she think--as her own Miggs,
which supported her under so many trials, and understood her natur’
when them as intended well but acted rough, went so deep into her
feelings--did she think as her own Miggs would ever leave her? Did she
think as Miggs, though she was but a servant, and knowed that servitudes
was no inheritances, would forgit that she was the humble instruments
as always made it comfortable between them two when they fell out,
and always told master of the meekness and forgiveness of her blessed
dispositions! Did she think as Miggs had no attachments! Did she think
that wages was her only object!’
To none of these interrogatories, whereof every one was more
pathetically delivered than the last, did Mrs Varden answer one word:
but Miggs, not at all abashed by this circumstance, turned to the
small boy in attendance--her eldest nephew--son of her own married
sister--born in Golden Lion Court, number twenty-sivin, and bred in the
very shadow of the second bell-handle on the right-hand door-post--and
with a plentiful use of her pocket-handkerchief, addressed herself to
him: requesting that on his return home he would console his parents for
the loss of her, his aunt, by delivering to them a faithful statement
of his having left her in the bosom of that family, with which, as his
aforesaid parents well knew, her best affections were incorporated; that
he would remind them that nothing less than her imperious sense of duty,
and devoted attachment to her old master and missis, likewise Miss Dolly
and young Mr Joe, should ever have induced her to decline that pressing
invitation which they, his parents, had, as he could testify, given her,
to lodge and board with them, free of all cost and charge, for evermore;
lastly, that he would help her with her box upstairs, and then repair
straight home, bearing her blessing and her strong injunctions to mingle
in his prayers a supplication that he might in course of time grow up
a locksmith, or a Mr Joe, and have Mrs Vardens and Miss Dollys for his
relations and friends.
Having brought this admonition to an end--upon which, to say the truth,
the young gentleman for whose benefit it was designed, bestowed little
or no heed, having to all appearance his faculties absorbed in the
contemplation of the sweetmeats,--Miss Miggs signified to the company in
general that they were not to be uneasy, for she would soon return; and,
with her nephew’s aid, prepared to bear her wardrobe up the staircase.
‘My dear,’ said the locksmith to his wife. ‘Do you desire this?’
‘I desire it!’ she answered. ‘I am astonished--I am amazed--at her
audacity. Let her leave the house this moment.’
Miggs, hearing this, let her end of the box fall heavily to the floor,
gave a very loud sniff, crossed her arms, screwed down the corners of
her mouth, and cried, in an ascending scale, ‘Ho, good gracious!’ three
distinct times.
‘You hear what your mistress says, my love,’ remarked the locksmith.
‘You had better go, I think. Stay; take this with you, for the sake of
old service.’
Miss Miggs clutched the bank-note he took from his pocket-book and held
out to her; deposited it in a small, red leather purse; put the purse
in her pocket (displaying, as she did so, a considerable portion of some
under-garment, made of flannel, and more black cotton stocking than is
commonly seen in public); and, tossing her head, as she looked at Mrs
Varden, repeated--
‘Ho, good gracious!’
‘I think you said that once before, my dear,’ observed the locksmith.
‘Times is changed, is they, mim!’ cried Miggs, bridling; ‘you can spare
me now, can you? You can keep ‘em down without me? You’re not in wants
of any one to scold, or throw the blame upon, no longer, an’t you, mim?
I’m glad to find you’ve grown so independent. I wish you joy, I’m sure!’
With that she dropped a curtsey, and keeping her head erect, her ear
towards Mrs Varden, and her eye on the rest of the company, as she
alluded to them in her remarks, proceeded:
‘I’m quite delighted, I’m sure, to find sich independency, feeling sorry
though, at the same time, mim, that you should have been forced into
submissions when you couldn’t help yourself--he he he! It must be great
vexations, ‘specially considering how ill you always spoke of Mr Joe--to
have him for a son-in-law at last; and I wonder Miss Dolly can put
up with him, either, after being off and on for so many years with a
coachmaker. But I HAVE heerd say, that the coachmaker thought twice
about it--he he he!--and that he told a young man as was a frind of his,
that he hoped he knowed better than to be drawed into that; though she
and all the family DID pull uncommon strong!’
Here she paused for a reply, and receiving none, went on as before.
‘I HAVE heerd say, mim, that the illnesses of some ladies was all
pretensions, and that they could faint away, stone dead, whenever they
had the inclinations so to do. Of course I never see sich cases with my
own eyes--ho no! He he he! Nor master neither--ho no! He he he! I HAVE
heerd the neighbours make remark as some one as they was acquainted
with, was a poor good-natur’d mean-spirited creetur, as went out
fishing for a wife one day, and caught a Tartar. Of course I never to my
knowledge see the poor person himself. Nor did you neither, mim--ho no.
I wonder who it can be--don’t you, mim? No doubt you do, mim. Ho yes. He
he he!’
Again Miggs paused for a reply; and none being offered, was so oppressed
with teeming spite and spleen, that she seemed like to burst.
‘I’m glad Miss Dolly can laugh,’ cried Miggs with a feeble titter. ‘I
like to see folks a-laughing--so do you, mim, don’t you? You was always
glad to see people in spirits, wasn’t you, mim? And you always did your
best to keep ‘em cheerful, didn’t you, mim? Though there an’t such a
great deal to laugh at now either; is there, mim? It an’t so much of a
catch, after looking out so sharp ever since she was a little chit, and
costing such a deal in dress and show, to get a poor, common soldier,
with one arm, is it, mim? He he! I wouldn’t have a husband with one arm,
anyways. I would have two arms. I would have two arms, if it was me,
though instead of hands they’d only got hooks at the end, like our
dustman!’
Miss Miggs was about to add, and had, indeed, begun to add, that,
taking them in the abstract, dustmen were far more eligible matches than
soldiers, though, to be sure, when people were past choosing they must
take the best they could get, and think themselves well off too; but her
vexation and chagrin being of that internally bitter sort which finds no
relief in words, and is aggravated to madness by want of contradiction,
she could hold out no longer, and burst into a storm of sobs and tears.
In this extremity she fell on the unlucky nephew, tooth and nail, and
plucking a handful of hair from his head, demanded to know how long she
was to stand there to be insulted, and whether or no he meant to help
her to carry out the box again, and if he took a pleasure in hearing his
family reviled: with other inquiries of that nature; at which disgrace
and provocation, the small boy, who had been all this time gradually
lashed into rebellion by the sight of unattainable pastry, walked off
indignant, leaving his aunt and the box to follow at their leisure.
Somehow or other, by dint of pushing and pulling, they did attain the
street at last; where Miss Miggs, all blowzed with the exertion of
getting there, and with her sobs and tears, sat down upon her property
to rest and grieve, until she could ensnare some other youth to help her
home.
‘It’s a thing to laugh at, Martha, not to care for,’ whispered the
locksmith, as he followed his wife to the window, and good-humouredly
dried her eyes. ‘What does it matter? You had seen your fault before.
Come! Bring up Toby again, my dear; Dolly shall sing us a song; and
we’ll be all the merrier for this interruption!’
Chapter 81
Another month had passed, and the end of August had nearly come, when Mr
Haredale stood alone in the mail-coach office at Bristol. Although but a
few weeks had intervened since his conversation with Edward Chester and
his niece, in the locksmith’s house, and he had made no change, in the
mean time, in his accustomed style of dress, his appearance was greatly
altered. He looked much older, and more care-worn. Agitation and anxiety
of mind scatter wrinkles and grey hairs with no unsparing hand; but
deeper traces follow on the silent uprooting of old habits, and severing
of dear, familiar ties. The affections may not be so easily wounded as
the passions, but their hurts are deeper, and more lasting. He was now a
solitary man, and the heart within him was dreary and lonesome.
He was not the less alone for having spent so many years in seclusion
and retirement. This was no better preparation than a round of social
cheerfulness: perhaps it even increased the keenness of his sensibility.
He had been so dependent upon her for companionship and love; she had
come to be so much a part and parcel of his existence; they had had so
many cares and thoughts in common, which no one else had shared; that
losing her was beginning life anew, and being required to summon up the
hope and elasticity of youth, amid the doubts, distrusts, and weakened
energies of age.
The effort he had made to part from her with seeming cheerfulness and
hope--and they had parted only yesterday--left him the more depressed.
With these feelings, he was about to revisit London for the last time,
and look once more upon the walls of their old home, before turning his
back upon it, for ever.
The journey was a very different one, in those days, from what the
present generation find it; but it came to an end, as the longest
journey will, and he stood again in the streets of the metropolis. He
lay at the inn where the coach stopped, and resolved, before he went
to bed, that he would make his arrival known to no one; would spend but
another night in London; and would spare himself the pang of parting,
even with the honest locksmith.
Such conditions of the mind as that to which he was a prey when he lay
down to rest, are favourable to the growth of disordered fancies, and
uneasy visions. He knew this, even in the horror with which he started
from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the
presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it
were, the witness of his dream. But it was not a new terror of the
night; it had been present to him before, in many shapes; it had haunted
him in bygone times, and visited his pillow again and again. If it had
been but an ugly object, a childish spectre, haunting his sleep, its
return, in its old form, might have awakened a momentary sensation of
fear, which, almost in the act of waking, would have passed away. This
disquiet, however, lingered about him, and would yield to nothing. When
he closed his eyes again, he felt it hovering near; as he slowly sunk
into a slumber, he was conscious of its gathering strength and purpose,