The Orange Girl Part 41

'Oh! your character!' said the woman. 'A pretty character you've got!

How long since you had a character at all, I should like to know?

Destroy your character? I will destroy your life--your life--your life--vile impudent drab--I shall take your life. You shall learn what it means to turn against your friends.'

'Come,' said one of the men, 'you've shown us where she was. No more jaw. Now leave us. Go. You have had your revenge.'

'Not yet--not till I see her in the cart. That is the only revenge that will satisfy me.'

Jenny looked at her with a kind of pity. 'Poor soul!' she said, gently.

'Do you think the man is worth all this revenge? Do you think he cares for you? Do you think you will care about him after a day or two? What do you think you will get by all the revenge possible? More of his love and fidelity? Who gave you that black eye? Will you make him any happier in his prison--will you make him any fonder?'

'Oh!' the woman gasped and caught her breath. 'Revenge? If I can find your mother and your sister I will kill them both with a pair of scissors.' She improved this prophecy by a few decorative adjectives.

'As for you, this will teach you to turn against your own folk--the poor rogues--you belong to us: and you turn against us. To save a man that belongs to other folk. Ha! The rope is round your neck already! Ha! I see you swinging. Ho!' She stopped and gasped again, being overcome with the emotion of satisfied revenge.

'Perhaps,' I said weakly, 'this good woman would take a guinea and go away quietly?'

'No! No!' she replied, 'not if you stuffed my pockets full of guineas.

You've put my man in prison. They say he'll stand in pillory and p'r'aps be killed--the properest man in St. Giles's. They kill them sometimes in the pillory,' she shuddered, 'but p'r'aps they'll let him off easy. As for you, my fine Madame--you that look so haughty--you, the orange girl--you'll be hanged--you'll be hanged!' She screamed these words dancing about and cracking her fingers like a mad woman. Never before had I seen a woman so entirely possessed by the fury of love's bereavement. Do not imagine that I have set down her actual words--that I could not do--nor the half of what she said. And all for such a lover!

for a footpad and highway robber; for a brute who beat her, kicked her, and knocked her down; a low, dirty villain, who made her fetch and carry and work for him; who had no tenderness, or any good thing in him at all. Yet he was her man; and she loved him; and she would be revenged for him. This woman, I say, was like a tigress bereft of her cubs. Had it not been for the constable who stood between and for myself who stood beside, she would have flown at poor Jenny with nail and claw and, indeed, any other weapon which Nature had given to woman. I saw two women fighting once for a man: 'twas in the King's Bench Prison; they were pulled apart after one had been disfigured for life by the other's teeth. This woman wanted only permission to rush in and do likewise. But the constable kept her back with his strong arm.

'Come,' he said, 'enough said. What's the use of crying and shrieking?

You'll all be hanged in good time--all be hanged. What else are you fit for? And a blessed thing it is for you that you will be hanged. That's what I say. If you only knew it. Madame,' he said very respectfully, 'I must ask leave to take you before his wors.h.i.+p.' He held out his hand: the hand of Law in all her branches from Counsel to thief taker is always held out. I gave him half a guinea.

The woman was still standing beside us, shaking and trembling under the agitation of the late storm. 'Here you,' said the officer, 'we've had enough of your filthy tongue. Get off with you. Go, I say.' He stepped forward with a menacing gesture. Among these women a blow generally follows a word. She turned and walked away. I followed her with my eyes.

Her shoulders still heaved; her fingers worked: from time to time she turned and shook her fist: and though I could not hear I am certain she was talking to herself.

'Where are we going?' Jenny asked, humbly.

'To Sir John Fielding's, Bow Street, Madame. Lord! what signifies what a madwoman like that says? She's lost her man and she's off her head.'

'How are we to get there?'

'Well, Madam, there is no coach to be got this side the High Street. If I may make so bold there's the boats at the Horseferry. We can drop down the river more quickly than over London Bridge.'

Jenny made no remark. She sat in the boat with bent head, her cheeks still flaming.

'I am thinking, Will. Don't speak to me just at present.'

The boat carried us swiftly down the river.

'I am thinking,' she repeated, 'what is best to do. Will, I had quite forgotten the things.' I could not understand a word of what she said.

'I know now what I have to do. It's a hard thing to do, but it's the best.'

She explained no more, and we presently arrived at the Savoy Stairs and took a coach to Bow Street Police Court. It was only six weeks since I was there last, but on what a different errand!

The blind magistrate took our case and called for the evidence.

First, the woman who had delivered Jenny into the hands of the law deposed that she was a respectable milliner by trade; that she was accidentally in the neighbourhood of the Black Jack about midnight three nights before, when she became aware of something which excited her curiosity and interest. The landlady of the tavern and her daughter Doll were carrying between them a box full of something or other. She followed them, herself unseen. They walked down Denmark Street into Hog's Lane, and carried their box into a garden, the door of which was open: for greater certainty of knowing the place again she marked the door in the corner with a cross. Then the two women came out and returned to the Black Jack. All night long they were carrying things from the tavern to the garden gate; sometimes in boxes, sometimes in their arms; there were silk mantles and satin frocks and embroidered petticoats, very fine. That work kept them all night. Now, knowing the old woman to be a notorious fence, she was certain that these were stolen goods, and that they were removing them for safety to this house probably unknown to the master and the mistress; that in the morning when it was light she went back to the place and found that the garden-door was the back-door of the premises known as the Soho Square a.s.sembly Rooms kept by a Madame Vallance.'

'Well? what then?' asked Sir John.

'Your wors.h.i.+p, the next day was the trial of that gentleman there for robbing the Bishop and the Captain. I was in the Old Bailey, sir, and the gentleman would have been brought in guilty and hanged, as many a better man than he has suffered it without a whisper or a snivel--but this woman here--this Madame Vallance who is nothing in the world but Jenny Wilmot the actress--who was an Orange Girl at Drury Lane once--and is the daughter of the old woman that keeps the Black Jack.'

'The Black Jack!' said Sir John. 'The mob wrecked that house last night.'

'And the other house too. They would have set it on fire, your Honour,'

said the girl, 'but the soldiers came up and stopped them. More's the pity.'

'Have a care, woman,' said the magistrate, 'or I shall commit you for taking part in the riot. Go on with your evidence if you have any more.'

She gave her evidence in a quick impetuous manner. It was like a cataract of angry burning words.

'It was in the garret that I found the things; I knew them at once. I'd been down in Mother Wilmot's cellars. Oh! I knew them at once. Jenny's got the stolen goods, I said. And so she had. So she had, your Honour, and oh! let her deny it--let her deny it--if she can.'

'You found property in the garret which you identified as stolen. Pray how did you know that fact?'

'Because it came from Mother Wilmot's cellars.'

'That does not prove it to be stolen.'

'Well, Sir, I happened to know some respectable people who had been robbed of late, and I made bold to tell them of it; and they found their own things, and here the worthy respectable gentlemen are to testify.'

'I will hear them presently.' Then Sir John began to ask the woman a few questions which mightily disconcerted her. If, he asked, she was a respectable milliner, where did she work? If she was a respectable woman, what was she doing in front of St. Giles's Church at midnight? If she were a respectable woman, how did she come to know the landlady of the Black Jack and her daughter? How was it she found herself in the garrets at all? At what time was she in the garrets? How did she come to know the people who had lost property of late? In a word he made the woman confess who she was and what she was. And he then, to her confusion and amazement, committed her for trial for taking part in the riots. So she was put aside, and presently consigned to Newgate with other rioters taken in the fact. In the end she was imprisoned and whipped. Still her evidence proved the deposit of goods in the garrets.

The worthy gentlemen to whom she referred were three or four respectable tradesmen of Holborn. They deposed, one after the other, how they had suffered of late much from depredations which prevented them from exposing their goods at their doors; that this woman had called to warn them of certain things found by the rioters in the garrets of the Soho Square a.s.sembly Rooms; that they went to see the things by permission of the guard of soldiers: that they found certain things of their own, which they identified by private marks upon them.

The evidence was concluded. 'Madame,' the magistrate said, 'you have heard the evidence. What have you to say? If you desire to call evidence for the defence I will remand the case. You can produce, perhaps, your mother and sister, though I confess, they are not likely to appear.'

'They got away yesterday, to avoid the fury of the mob, Sir. This woman is angry because I have proved her lover to be guilty of perjury.'

'That is evident. On the other hand, your house contained the stolen goods; your mother was seen taking them into the house. The circ.u.mstances are such as to make it evident that your mother desired a place of safety. It is proper to show that you were not an accomplice of the removal and the reception in your house.'

'I submit, Sir, that I can only prove this by calling my mother as witness, and, Sir, you have yourself acknowledged that she is not likely to appear.'

'Then, Madame, I can only ask you for anything you may say in defence.'

'Sir, I shall say nothing.'

This reply amazed me beyond anything. I expected her to deny indignantly any knowledge of the matter, and to declare that the things had been brought into the house without her knowledge. She would say nothing.

Then Sir John committed her for trial. I placed her in a coach with such heaviness of heart as you may imagine and we drove to Newgate. Jenny was well remembered by the turnkeys, to whom she had been generous and even profuse, in my case. Turnkeys are never astonished, but the appearance of Madame was perhaps an exception to this general rule. However, on payment of certain guineas she was placed, alone, in the best cell that the woman's side could boast.

'Jenny!' I cried when we were alone. 'For G.o.d's sake what does it mean?

Why did you not deny knowledge of the whole business? What have you to do with stolen goods? Even supposing that your mother took them there, what has that got to do with you?'

'I shall tell the whole truth to you, Will, and only to you. But you may tell Alice. From you I will keep no secrets.'

'Oh! Jenny, it is for me--for me--that you have fallen into all this trouble. What shall I do? What shall I do?' I looked round the mean, bare, and ugly walls of the cell. 'Twas a poor exchange from the private room in the Square. And all for me!

'What did your boy tell you this morning, Will? That Jenny never regrets--never repents--what she has done for you. She would do it all over again--over again--a hundred thousand times over again.' She buried her face in her hands for a moment. 'Twas not in woman's nature to restrain the tears. Then she sprang to her feet. 'What? you think I am going to cry because the woman has done this? At least she is coming to Newgate as well. Now, Will. I must tell you the truth. It was most important to get the evidence of my mother and of Doll. They connected Probus with the conspiracy. They helped to identify the two princ.i.p.al witnesses. Well, I had to buy their evidence. They made me pay a pretty price for it. As for Doll, you wouldn't believe what a grasping creature she is. That comes of keeping the slate. I had to compensate them for the loss of their daily takings at the Black Jack. I paid them for their stock of liquors--we saw the mob drinking it up last night: I paid them for their furniture and their clothes. I gave them money to get out of London with, and to keep them until they can get another tavern; they got money from me on one pretence or the other till I thought they were resolved on taking all I had. And when I had paid for everything and thought they were settled and done with there arose the question of the stolen goods. And I really thought the whole business was ruined and undone.'

'What question?'