Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex
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Title: Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex
Author: R. D. Blackmore
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KIT AND KITTY: A STORY OF WEST MIDDLESEX ***
KIT AND KITTY
LONDON:
PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD.,
ST. JOHN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL ROAD, E.C.
KIT AND KITTY
A Story of West Middlesex
BY
R. D. BLACKMORE
AUTHOR OF LORNA DOONE, SPRINGHAVEN, CHRISTOWELL, ETC.
“Si tu Caia, ego Caius.”
_NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION_
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
_Limited_
St. Dunstan’s House
FETTER LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.
1894
[_All rights reserved_]
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_Crown 8vo. 6s. each in handsome uniform cloth binding._
ALICE LORRAINE.*
CLARA VAUGHAN.*
LORNA DOONE.*
CHRISTOWELL.*
CRADOCK NOWELL.*
CRIPPS THE CARRIER.*
MARY ANERLEY.*
TOMMY UPMORE.
SPRINGHAVEN.
KIT AND KITTY.
_Volumes marked * can be had in boards, 2s.; cloth, 2s. 6d. each._
Crown 4to. about 530 pp., with very numerous full-page
and other Illustrations, cloth extra, gilt edges,
31_s._ 6_d._, very handsomely bound in vellum, 35_s._,
an _Edition de Luxe_ of LORNA DOONE. Beautifully
illustrated Edition. (A choice presentation volume.)
SPRINGHAVEN: a Tale of the Great War. By R. D.
BLACKMORE, author of ‘Lorna Doone.’ With 64
Illustrations by ALFRED PARSONS and F. BARNARD. Square
demy 8vo. cloth extra, gilt edges, price 12_s._ and
7_s._ 6_d._
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY,
_Limited_,
St. Dunstan’s House, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.—UNCLE CORNY 1
II.—MY KITTY 3
III.—THE TIMBER-BRIDGE 7
IV.—PEACHES, AND PEACHING 12
V.—A LITTLE TIFF 18
VI.—THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE 22
VII.—DE GUSTIBUS 29
VIII.—BAD COUNSEL 37
IX.—A DOG VIOLATE 42
X.—AN UPWARD STROKE 50
XI.—THE FINE ARTS 55
XII.—AN EMPTY PILE 61
XIII.—MY UNCLE BEGINS 67
XIV.—AND ENDS WITH A MORAL 74
XV.—MORAL SUPPORT 82
XVI.—TRUE LOVE 89
XVII.—TRUE FATHER 96
XVIII.—FALSE MOTHER 102
XIX.—DOE DEM. ROE 109
XX.—AUNT PARSLOW 115
XXI.—A TULIP BLOOM 122
XXII.—COLDPEPPER HALL 128
XXIII.—AT BAY, AND IN THE BAY 135
XXIV.—HARO! 141
XXV.—ON THE SHELF 149
XXVI.—A DOWNY COVE 155
XXVII.—OFF THE SHELF 162
XXVIII.—OUT OF ALL REASON 168
XXIX.—A FINE TIP 175
XXX.—BASKETS 183
XXXI.—THE GIANT OF THE HEATH 189
XXXII.—A DREAM 199
XXXIII.—URGENT MEASURES 206
XXXIV.—TWO TO ONE 214
XXXV.—UNDER THE GARDEN WALL 216
XXXVI.—FROST IN MAY 229
XXXVII.—COLD COMFORT 233
XXXVIII.—NONE 241
XXXIX.—ON TWO CHAIRS 248
XL.—JOB’S COMFORT 256
XLI.—TRUE COMFORT 262
XLII.—BEHIND THE FIDDLE 268
XLIII.—THE GREAT LADY 275
XLIV.—MET AGAIN 282
XLV.—ROGUES FALL OUT 288
XLVI.—TONY TONKS 296
XLVII.—TOADSTOOLS 303
XLVIII.—THE DUCHESS 310
XLIX.—CRAFTY, AND SIMPLE 317
L.—A POCKETFUL OF MONEY 325
LI.—NOT IN A HURRY 332
LII.—A WANDERING GLEAM 338
LIII.—A BAD NIGHT 343
LIV.—PRINCE’S MANSION 350
LV.—RELIEF OF MIND 356
LVI.—ANOTHER TRACE 359
LVII.—A VAIN APPEAL 366
LVIII.—UNCLE CORNY’S LOVE-TALE 373
LXIX.—A COOL REQUEST 381
LX.—ALIVE IN DEATH 387
LXI.—ZINKA 396
LXII.—HASTE TO THE WEDDING 402
LXIII.—THERE SAT KITTY 408
LXIV.—A MENSÂ ET TORO 414
LXV.—HER OWN WAY 420
LXVI.—ONE GOOD WISH 427
KIT AND KITTY.
CHAPTER I.
UNCLE CORNY.
MY name is Christopher Orchardson, of Sunbury in Middlesex; and I have
passed through a bitter trouble, which I will try to describe somehow,
both for my wife’s sake and my own, as well as to set us straight again
in the opinion of our neighbours, which I have always valued highly,
though sometimes unable to show it. It has not been in my power always
to do the thing that was wisest, and whenever this is brought up
against me, I can make no answer, only to beg those who love blame to
look at themselves, which will make their eyes grow kinder, before they
begin to be turned on me.
For five and twenty years of life I went on very happily, being of an
unambitious sort, and knowing neither plague nor pain, through the
strength of my constitution and the easiness of my nature. Most of
my neighbours seemed to live in perpetual lack of something, and if
ever they got it they soon contrived to find something more to hanker
for. There were times when I felt that I must be a fool, or to say the
least a dullard, for slackness of perception, which kept me satisfied
with the life I had to live. But two things may be pleaded well in my
excuse on this account; in the first place, all my time was spent among
creatures of no ambition—trees, and flowers, and horses, and the like,
that have no worry; and what was even to the purpose more, I had no
money to enlarge its love.
For my Uncle Cornelius—better known to all who had dealings with him as
“Corny, the topper”—took care of me, and his main care was to make me
useful, as an orphan should be. My father had been his elder brother,
and had married rashly a lady of birth and education far above his own,
but gifted with little else to help her, unless it were sweetness of
disposition, and warmth of heart, and loveliness. These in a world like
ours are not of much account for wearing; and she had no chance to wear
them out, being taken away quite suddenly. My life was given at the
cost of hers, and my father, after lingering for a few months, took his
departure to look for her.
Old people said that my Uncle Corny had been very fond of my mother,
looking up to her in his youthful days, as a wonder of grace and
goodness. And even now when he spoke about her, as I have known him to
do after a tumbler of grog, his hard grey eyes would glisten softly,
like the vinery glass of an afternoon, when a spring cloud passes over
it. But none the more for that did he ever plant a shilling in my
youthful hand. This proves his due estimate of money as a disadvantage
to the young.
My uncle possessed an ancient garden, which had once belonged to a
monastery; and the times being better than now they are, he was enabled
to work it so that he made fair living out of it. We lived in an
ancient cottage in the fine old village of Sunbury, or rather to the
westward of that village, and higher up the river. Our window looked
upon the Thames, with nothing more than the Shepperton Road, and the
slope of the bank to look over. What with water-works, grand villas,
the railway, and other changes, the place is now so different that a
native may scarcely know it. But all was thoroughly simple, quiet, and
even dull to lazy folk, in the days of which I am speaking.
My parents had managed to leave me so, or had it so managed by a higher
power, that from my very infancy I was thrown upon Uncle Corny. He was
a masterful man indeed, being of a resolute disposition, strong body,
and stout sentiments. There was no mistaking his meaning when he spoke,
and he spoke no more than a man is bound to do, for his own uses. Those
who did not understand his nature said a great deal against him, and he
let them say it to the width of their mouths. For he felt that he was
good inside, and would be none the better for their meddling.
He was now about threescore years of age, and wished himself no
younger, having seen enough of the world to know that to pass through
it once is quite enough. Few things vexed him much, except to find
his things sold below their value; and that far less for the love of
money than from the sense of justice. But when he was wronged—as all
producers, being one to a thousand, must be—he was not the man to make
a to-do, and write to the papers about it. All he did was to drive his
stick into the floor, and look up at the ceiling. For his own part he
was quite ready to be proved in the wrong, whenever he could see it;
and whatever may be said, I can answer for it, there are more men now
than can be counted in a year, who are under Uncle Corny’s mark; while
an hour would be ample for the names of those who would dare to look
over my uncle’s head, when he comes to be judged finally.
All this is too much of a preface for him. His manner was always to
speak for himself, and he must become somebody else, ere ever he would
let his young nephew do it for him.
CHAPTER II.
MY KITTY.
THE shape of a tree is not decided by the pruner only. When the leader
is stopped, with an eye towards the wind, and the branches clipped to a
nicety of experience and of forethought, and the happy owner has said
to it—“Now I defy you to go amiss this season”—before he is up in the
morning perhaps, his lecture is flown, and his labour lost.
My wise Uncle Corny had said to me, more times than I can
remember—“Kit, you are a good boy, a very good boy, and likely to be
useful in my business by-and-by. But of one thing beware—never say a
word to women. They never know what they want themselves; and they like
to bring a man into the same condition. What wonderful things I have
seen among the women! And the only way out of it is never to get into
it.”
In answer to this I never said a word, being unable to contradict,
though doubtful how far he was right. But it made me more shy than I
was already, while at the same time it seemed to fill me with interest
in the matter. But the only woman I had much to do with went a long way
to confirm my Uncle’s words. This was no other than Tabitha Tapscott,
a widow from the West of England, who did all our cleaning and cooking
for us, coming into the house at six o’clock in the summer, and seven
in the winter time. A strange little creature she appeared to me, so
different from us in all her ways, making mountains of things that we
never noticed, and not at all given to silence.
Once or twice my Uncle Corny, after a glass of hot rum and water (which
he usually had on a Saturday night, to restore him after paying wages)
had spoken, in a strange mysterious style, of having “had his time,”
or as he sometimes put it—“paid his footing.” It was not easy to make
out his drift, or the hint at the bottom of it; and if any one tried
to follow him home, sometimes he would fly off into rudeness, or if in
a better vein, convey that he held his tongue for the good of younger
people. Such words used to stir me sadly, because I could get no more
of them.
However, I began to feel more and more, as youth perhaps is sure to do
when it listens to dark experience, as if I should like almost to go
through some of it on my own behalf. Not expecting at all to leave it
as a lesson for those who come after me, but simply desiring to enter
into some knowledge of the thing forbidden. For I knew not as yet that
there is no pleasure rich enough to satisfy the interest of pain.
It was on the first Sunday of September in the year 1860, that I first
left all my peaceful ways, and fell into joy and misery. And strangely
enough, as some may think, it was in the quiet evening service that
the sudden change befell me. That summer had been the wettest ever
known, or at any rate for four and forty years; as the old men said,
who recalled the time when the loaves served out to their fathers and
mothers stuck fast, like clay, upon the churchyard wall. Now the river
was up to the mark of the road, and the meadows on the other side were
lakes, and even a young man was well pleased to feel a flint under
his foot as he walked. For the road was washed with torrents, and all
the hedges reeking, and the solid trunks of ancient elms seemed to be
channelled with perpetual drip.
But the sun began to shine out of the clouds, at his very last
opportunity; and weak and watery though he looked, with a bank of haze
beneath him, a soft relief of hope and comfort filled the flooded
valley. And into our old western porch a pleasant light came quivering,
and showed us who our neighbours were, and made us smile at one
another.
As it happened now, my mind was full of a certain bed of onions, which
had grown so rank and sappy, that we had not dared to harvest them.
And instead of right thoughts upon entering church, I was saying to
myself—“We shall have a dry week, I do believe. I will pull them
to-morrow, and chance it.” This will show that what now befell me came
without any fault of mine.
For just as the last bell struck its stroke, and the ringer swang down
on the heel of it, and the murmur went floating among the trees, I drew
back a little to let the women pass, having sense of their feeling
about their dresses, which is to be respected by every man. And in
those days they wore lovely flounces, like a bee-hive trimmed with
Venetian blinds. They had learned a fine manner of twitching up these,
whenever they came to steps and stairs; and while they were at it, they
always looked round, to make sure of no disarrangement. My respect for
them made me gaze over their heads, as if without knowledge of their
being there at all. Yet they whispered freely to one another, desiring
to know if their ribands were right for the worship of the Almighty.
Now as I gazed in a general style, being timid about looking
especially, there came into my eyes, without any sense of moment, but
stealing unawares as in a vision, the fairest and purest and sweetest
picture that ever went yet from the eyes to the heart. To those who
have never known the like, it is hopeless to try to explain it; and
even to myself I cannot render, by word or by thought, a mere jot of
it. And many would say, that to let things so happen, the wits for the
time must be out of their duty.
It may have been only a glance, or a turn of the head, or the toss of
a love-lock—whatever it was, for me the world was a different place
thereafter. It was a lovely and gentle face, making light in the gloom
of the tower arch, and touched with no thought of its own appearance,
as other pretty faces were. I had never dreamed that any maiden could
have said so much to me, as now came to me without a word.
Wondering only about her, and feeling abashed at my own footsteps, I
followed softly up the church, and scarcely knew the button of our own
pew door. For Uncle Corny owned a pew, and insisted upon having it,
and would allow no one to sit there, without his own grace and written
order. He never found it needful to go to church on his own account,
being a most upright man; but if ever he heard of any other Christian
being shown into his pew, he put on his best clothes the next Sunday
morning, and repaired to the sacred building, with a black-thorn staff
which had a knob of obsidian. Such a thing would now be considered
out of date; but the church was the church, in those more established
times. Here I sat down in my usual manner, to the best of my power,
because I knew how my neighbours would be watching me; and saying my
prayers into the bottom of my hat, I resolved to remember where I was,
and nothing else. But this was much easier said than done; for the
first face I met, upon looking round, was that of Sam Henderson the
racer, the owner of the paddocks at Halliford, a young man who thought
a great deal of himself, and tried to bring others to a like opinion.
He was not altogether a favourite of mine, although I knew nothing
against him; for he loved showy colours, and indulged in large fancies
that all the young women were in love with him. Now he gave me a nod,
although the clergyman was speaking, and following the turn of his eyes
I was vexed yet more with his behaviour. He was gazing, as though with
a lofty approval, and no sort of fear in his bright black eyes, at the
face which had made me feel just now so lowly and so worthless.
In the Manor pew, which had been empty nearly all the summer—for the
weather had driven our ladies abroad—there she sat, and it made me feel
as if hope was almost gone from me. For I could not help knowing that
Mrs. Sheppard, who arranged all the worshippers according to their
rank, would never have shown the young lady in there, unless she had
been of high standing. And almost before I was out of that thought
my wits being quicker than usual, it became quite clear to me, who
she was—or at any rate who was with her. From the corner of the pew
there came and stood before her, as if to take general attention off,
a highly esteemed and very well dressed lady, Mrs. Jenny Marker. This
was the “lady housekeeper,” as everybody was bound to call her who
hoped to get orders, at Coldpepper Hall, herself a very well bred and
most kind-hearted woman, to all who considered her dignity. Having
always done this, I felt sure of her good word, and hoping much too
hastily that the young lady was her niece, I made it feel perhaps less
presumptuous on my part, to try to steal a glance at her, whenever luck
afforded.
Herein I found tumultuous bliss, until my heart fell heavily. I was
heeding very scantily the reading of the minister, and voices of the
clerk and faithful of the congregation, when suddenly there came the
words,—“the dignity of Princes.” And then I knew, without thinking
twice, that this young lady could never have won the dignity of the
Manor-pew, unless she had been a great deal more than the niece
of Jenny Marker. In a moment, too, my senses came to back up this
perception, and I began to revile myself for thinking such a thought
of her. Not that Mrs. Marker was of any low condition, for she wore
two rings and a gold watch-chain, and was highly respected by every
one; but she cheapened all the goods she bought, even down to an old
red herring, and she had been known to make people take garden-stuff
in exchange for goods, or else forego her custom. The memory of these
things grieved me with my own imagination.
I was very loth to go—as you will see was natural—without so much as
one good look at the sweet face which had blessed me; but everything
seemed to turn against me, and the light grew worse and worse. Moreover
Sam Henderson stared so boldly, having none of my diffidence, that Mrs.
Marker came forward sharply, and jerked the rings of the red baize
curtain, so that he could see only that. At this he turned red, and
pulled up his collar, and I felt within myself a glow of good-will for
the punching of his head. And perhaps he had grounds for some warm
feeling toward me, for the reason that I being more to the left could
still get a glimpse round the corner of the curtain, which acted as a
total drop of scenery for him.
When the sermon was finished in its natural course, the sky was getting
very dark outside, and the young men and women were on best behaviour
to take no advantage of the gloom in going out. For as yet we had no
great gas-works, such as impair in the present generation the romance
and enlargement of an evening service. So that when we came forth, we
were in a frame of mind for thinking the best of one another.
CHAPTER III
THE TIMBER BRIDGE.
BY this time it had become clear to me, that whatever my thoughts
were and my longings—such as those who are free from them call
romantic—there was nothing proper for me to do, except to turn in at
our own little gate, and be satisfied with my own duty inside. And
this I was truly at the point of doing, although with very little
satisfaction, when the glancing of the twilight down the road convinced
me of a different duty. To the westward there happened just here to
be a long stretch of lane without much turn in it, only guided and
overhung partly with trees, and tufts of wild hops which were barren
this year. And throughout this long course, which was wavering with
gloom, a watery gleam from the west set in, partly perhaps from the
flooded river, and partly from the last glance of sunset.
My hand was just laid upon our wicket-latch, and my mind made up for no
thinking, when the figure of some one in the distance, like a call-back
signal, stopped me. I had not returned, you must understand, by the
shortest possible way from church, which would have taken me to Uncle
Corny’s door opposite the river; but being a little disturbed, perhaps,
and desiring to walk it off quietly, had turned up to the right towards
the Halliford lane, to escape any gossip, and come back through our
garden. And where I stood now, there was a view by daylight of nearly
half a mile of lane, and the timber bridge across the brook.
The lane was not quite straight, but still it bent in such an obliging
manner, first to the left and then back to the right, that anything
happening upon its course would be likely to come into view from our
gate. And I saw as plainly as could be, although beyond shouting
distance, a man with his arms spread forth, as if to stop or catch
anybody going further, and nearer to me the forms of women desirous
to go on, but frightened. It is not true that I stopped to think for
one moment who those women were; but feeling that they must be in the
right, and the man in the wrong as usual, without two endeavours I was
running at full speed—and in those days that was something—merely to
help the right, and stop the wrong. And in less time than it takes to
tell it, I was one of the party. Then I saw that the ladies were Mrs.
Marker, and the lovely young maiden, who had been with her in church.
“Oh, Master Orchardson, you will take our part,” Mrs. Marker cried, as
she ran up to me; “you will take our part, as every good man must. That
bad man says that we shall not cross the bridge, without—without—oh, it
is too dreadful!”
“Without paying toll to me—this is kissing-bridge, and the wood is now
kissing the water. ’Tis a dangerous job to take ladies across. Kit,
you are come just in time to help. Let us have toll at the outset, and
double toll upon landing, my boy. You take my lady Marker, Kit, because
she is getting heavy; and I will take Miss Fairthorn.”
Sam Henderson spoke these words as if we had nothing to do but obey
him. Perhaps as a man who was instructing horses, he had imbibed too
much of the upper part. At any rate, I did not find it my duty to fall
beneath his ordering. And as if to make me stand to my own thoughts,
the sweetest and most pitiful glance that had ever come to meet me,
came straight to my heart from a shadowy nook, where the beautiful maid
was shrinking.
“Sam Henderson, none of this rubbish!” I shouted, for the roar of the
water would have drowned soft words. “It is a coward’s job to frighten
women. A man should see first what the danger is.”
Before he could come up to strike me, as his first intention seemed
to be, I ran across the timbers, which were bowing and trembling with
the strain upon the upright posts, as well as the wash upon their
nether sides. And I saw that the risk was increasing with each moment,
for the dam at the bottom of Tim Osborne’s meadow, not more than a
gunshot above us, was beginning to yield, and the flood checked by it
was trembling like a trodden hay-rick. Upon this I ran back, and said,
“Now, ladies, if cross you must, you must do it at once.”
“Kit, you are a fool. There is no danger,” Sam Henderson shouted
wrathfully. “Who is the coward that frightens ladies now? But if you
must poke in your oar without leave, you go first with Mother Marker,
and I will come after you, with the young lady.”
The maiden shrank back from his hand, and I saw that good Mrs. Marker
was pained by his words. “Mother Marker will go first,” she said, “but
with no thanks to you, Mr. Henderson.”
Her spirit was up, but her hands were trembling, as I took her
Prayer-book from them.
“I may be a fool, but I am not a cub,” I answered with a gaze that made
Henderson scowl; “I would rather frighten ladies than insult them. Now,
Mrs. Marker, give me one of your nice little hands, and have no fear.”
The house-keeping lady put forth one hand, with a tender look at it,
because it had been praised, and then she put forth one brave foot,
and I was only afraid of her going too fast. The water splashed up
between the three-inch planks, for the lady was of some substance; but
she landed very well, and back I ran to see about her young companion.
“I will not go with you sir; I will go alone. You do not behave like
a gentleman,” she was crying in great distress, as I came up, and Sam
Henderson had hold of both her hands. This enraged me so that I forgot
good manners, for I should not have done what I did before a lady. I
struck Sam heavily between the eyes, and if I had not caught him by the
collar, nothing could have saved him from falling through the bush,
into the deep eddy under the planks. As soon as I had done it, I was
angry with myself, for Sam was not a bad fellow at all, when in his
best condition. But now there was no time to dwell upon that, for the
flood was arising and rolling in loops, like the back of a cat who has
descried a dog.
“Now or never, Miss,” I cried; “the dam has given; in a minute, this
bridge will be swept clean away.”
She showed such bright sense as I never saw before, and never can hope
to see in anybody else, however they may laugh through want of it.
Without a word, or even a glance at me, she railed up her dress into a
wondrous little circle, and gave me a hand which I had not the strength
to think of, for fear of forgetting all the world outside. Taking it
gently in my coarse hard palm, I said, “Come,” and she came like an
angel.
As I led her across, all my gaze was upon her; and this was a good
thing for both of us. For a scream from Mrs. Marker and a dreadful
shout from Sam—who came staggering up to the brink and caught the
handrail, just as we were shaking upon the middle dip—these, and a
great roar coming down the meadows, would probably have taken all
my wits away, if they had been within me, as at ordinary times. But
heeding only that which I was holding, I went in a leisurely and steady
manner which often makes the best of danger, and set the maiden safe
upon the high stone at the end, and turned round to see what was coming.
Before I had time to do this, it was upon me, whirling me back with a
blow of heavy timber, and washing me with all my best clothes on into
the hedge behind the lane. Then a rush of brown water, like a drove of
wild cattle leaping on one another’s backs, went by, and the bridge was
gone with it, like a straw hat in the wind. But the stone upon which
the young lady stood was unmoved although surrounded, and I made signs
to her—for to speak was useless—to lay hold of a branch which hung over
her head. As she did so, she smiled at me, even in that terror; and I
felt that I would go through a thousandfold the peril for the chance of
being so rewarded.
Suddenly, as suddenly as it had mounted, the bulk of the roaring flood
fell again, and the wreck of the handrail and some lighter spars of the
bridge hung dangling by their chains. And soon as the peril was passed,
it was hard to believe that there had been much of it. But any one
listening to Mrs. Marker, as she came down the hill when it was over,
must have believed that I had done something very gallant and almost
heroic. But I had done nothing more than I have told; and it is not
very likely that I would make too little of it.
“Brave young man!” cried Mrs. Marker, panting, and ready to embrace me,
if I had only been dry; “you have saved our lives, and I would say it,
if it were my last moment. Miss Kitty, I never saw such valour. Did you
ever, in all your life, dear?”
“Never, dear, never! Though I had not the least idea what this
gentleman was doing, till he had done it. Oh, he must be sadly knocked
about. Let me come down, and help him.”
“He put you up there, and he shall fetch you down. Nobody else has the
right to do it. Mr. Orchardson, don’t be afraid; assist her.”
Now this shows how women have their wits about them, even at moments
most critical. The housekeeper had fled with no small alacrity,
when the flood came roaring; and now with equal promptitude she had
returned, and discovered how best to reward me.
“I think you might give me a hand,” said the young lady, still mounted
on the high stone with our parish-mark, upon which by some instinct I
had placed her.
“I cannot; I am trembling like an aspen-leaf,” Mrs. Marker replied,
though she looked firm enough; “but our gallant preserver is as strong
as he is brave. Don’t be afraid of his touching you, because he is a
little damp, Miss Kitty.”
This was truly clever of her, and it stopped all reasoning. With
a glance of reproach, the maiden gathered her loosened cloak more
tightly, and then gave me both her hands and sprang; and I managed it
so that she slid down into my arms. This was not what she intended, but
there was no help for it, the ground being very slippery after such a
flood. She seemed lighter than a feather, and more buoyant than a cork;
though some of that conclusion perhaps was due to my impressions. Be
that either way, I could never have believed that anything so lovely
would be ever in my hold; and the power of it drove away my presence
of mind so badly, that I was very near forgetting the proper time for
letting go.
And this was no wonder, when I come to think about it; the only wonder
was that I could show such self-command. For the breath of her lips was
almost on mine, and her blushes so near that I seemed to feel their
glow, and the deep rich blue of her eyes so close that they were like
an opening into heaven. My entire gift of words was gone, and I knew
not what I did or thought.
But suddenly a shout—or a speech if one could take it so—of vulgar
insolence and jealousy most contemptible, broke on my lofty condition.
Sam Henderson had been left in black dudgeon on the other side of the
water, and the bridge being swept away, he could not get at us. We had
forgotten all about him; however, he had managed to run away, when the
great billow came from the bursting of the sluice; and now he showed
his manners and his thankfulness to God, by coming to the bank and
shouting, while he grinned, and clapped his hands in mockery,—
“Kit and Kitty! Kit and Kitty! That’s what I call coming it strong;
and upon a Sunday evening! Mother Marker, do you mean to put up with
that? See if I don’t tell your Missus. Kit and Kitty! O Lord, oh Lord!
’Tis as good as a play, and we don’t get much of that sort of fun in
Sunbury. Holloa! What the deuce—”
His speech was ended, for I had caught up a big dollop of clod from the
relics of the flood, and delivered it into his throat so truly that his
red satin fall and mock-diamond pin—which were tenfold more sacred to
him than the Sabbath—were mashed up into one big lump of mud, together
with the beard he cherished. Labouring to utter some foul words, he
shook his fist at me and departed.
CHAPTER IV.
PEACHES, AND PEACHING
THERE seem to be many ways of taking the very simplest fact we meet
and if any man was sure to take things by his own light, it was my
good Uncle. When a friend, or even a useful neighbour, offered a free
opinion, my Uncle Cornelius would look at him, say never a word, but
be almost certain to go downright against that particular view. One of
his favourite sayings was, “Every man has a right to his own opinion,”
although he was a strict Conservative—and of that right he was so
jealous, that he hated to have his opinions shared. And this was a very
lucky thing for me, as I cannot help seeing and saying.
For the very next morning, a neighbour came in (when I was gone
prowling, I need not say where), and having some business, he told
Tabby Tapscott to show him where her master was most likely to be
found. This gentleman was Mr. Rasp, the baker, who kept two women, a
man, and a boy, and did the finest trade in Sunbury. And what he wanted
now was to accept my Uncle’s offer, at which he had hum’d and hawed a
week ago, of ten sacks of chat potatoes at fifteen pence a bushel, for
the purpose of mixing with his best white bread. By the post of that
morning Mr. Rasp had heard from the great flour-mills at Uxbridge, that
good grindings were gone up six shillings a quarter, and sure to be
quoted still higher next week, by reason of the cold, wet harvest. But
he did not intend to tell Uncle Corny this.
That excellent gardener was under his big wall, which had formed
part of the monastic enclosure, and was therefore the best piece of
brickwork in the parish, as well as a warm home and sure fortress to
the peach and nectarine. This wall had its aspect about S.S.E., the
best that can be for fruit-trees, and was flanked with return walls
at either end; and the sunshine, whenever there seemed to be any,
was dwelling and blushing in this kind embrace. The summers might be
bitter—as they generally are—but if ever a peach donned crimson velvet
in the South of England out of doors, it was sure to be sitting upon
this old red wall and looking out for Uncle Corny.
Mr. Cornelius Orchardson, as most people called him when they tried
to get his money, glanced over his shoulder when he heard the baker
coming, and then began to drive a nail with more than usual care. Not
that he ever drove any nail rashly, such an act was forbidden by his
constitution; but that he now was in his deepest calm, as every man
ought to be in the neighbourhood of a bargain. His manner was always
collected and dry, and his words quite as few as were needful; and he
never showed any desire to get the better of any one, only a sense
of contentment, whenever he was not robbed. This is often the case
with broad-shouldered people, if they only move quietly and are not
flurried; and my good Uncle Corny possessed in his way every one of
these elements of honesty.
“Good morning, Mr. Orchardson!” said Rasp the baker. “What a pleasure
it is to see a glimpse of sun at last! And what a fine colour these red
bricks do give you!”
“As good as the bakehouse,” said my Uncle shortly. “But look out where
you are treading, Rasp. I want every one of them strawberry-runners.
What brings you here? I am rather busy now.”
“Well, I happened to see as your door was open, so I thought I’d just
jog your memory, to have them potatoes put up in the dry, while I’ve
got my copper lighted.”
“Potatoes! Why, you would not have them, Rasp. You said fifteen pence a
bushel was a deal too much, and potatoes were all water such a year as
this. And now I’ve got a better customer.”
“Well, it don’t matter much either way,” said the baker; “but I always
took you, Mr. Orchardson, to be a man of your word, sir—a man of your
word.”
“So I am. But I know what my words are; and we came to no agreement.
Your very last words were—‘A shilling, and no more.’ Can you deny that,
Rasp?”
“Well, I didn’t put it down, sir, and my memory plays tricks. But I
told my wife that it was all settled; and she said, ‘Oh, I do like to
deal with Mr. Orchardson, he gives such good measure.’ So I brought
round the money in this little bag, thirty-seven shillings and
sixpence. Never mind for a receipt, sir; everybody knows what you are.”
“Yes, so they do,” answered Uncle Corny; “they’d rather believe me than
you, Master baker. Now how much is flour gone up this morning, and
floury potatoes to follow it? Never a chat goes out of my gate, under
one and sixpence a bushel.”
“This sort of thing is too much for me. There is something altogether
wrong with the times. There is no living to be made out of them.”
Mr. Rasp shook his head at the peaches on the wall, as if they were
dainties he must not dare to look at.
“Rasp, you shall have a peach,” declared my Uncle Corny, for he was
a man who had come to a good deal of wisdom; “you shall have the
best peach on the whole of this wall, and that means about the best
in England. I will not be put out with you, Rasp, for making a fine
effort to cheat me. You are a baker; and you cannot help it.”
If any other man in Sunbury was proud of his honesty, so was Rasp;
and taking this speech as a compliment to it, he smiled and pulled a
paper-bag from his pocket, to receive the best peach on the wall for
his wife.
“What a difference one day’s sun has made! At one time I doubted if
they would colour, for it is the worst summer I have known for many
years. But they were all ready, as a maiden is to blush, when she
expects her sweetheart’s name. With all my experience, I could scarcely
have believed it; what a change since Saturday! But ‘live and learn’ is
the gardener’s rule. _Galande_, the best peach of all, in my opinion,
is not yet ripe; but _Grosse Mignonne_ is, and though rather woolly in
a year like ’57, it is first-rate in a cool season. Observe the red
spots near the caudal cavity—why bless my heart, Rasp, I meant that for
your wife!”
“My wife has a very sad toothache to-day, and she would never forgive
me if I made it worse. But what wonderful things they are to run!”
This baker had a gentle streak of juice in either runnel of his chin,
which was shaped like a well-fed _fleur-de-lis_; and he wiped it all
dry with the face of the bag, upon which his own name was printed.
“I knows a good thing, when I sees it; and that’s more than a woman in
a hundred does. Don’t believe they can taste, or at least very few of
them. Why, they’d sooner have tea than a glass of good beer! Howsoever,
that’s nought to do with business. Mr. Orchardson, what’s your lowest
figure? With a wall of fruit coming on like them, sixpence apiece and
some thousands of them, you mustn’t be hard on a neighbour.”
My Uncle sat down on his four-legged stool (which had bars across the
feet, for fear of sinking, when the ground was spongy), and he pulled
his bag of vamp-leather to the middle of his waistcoat, and felt for a
shred and a nail. He had learned that it never ends in satisfaction, if
a man grows excited in view of a bargain, or even shows any desire to
deal. Then he put up his elbow, and tapped the nail in, without hitting
it hard, as the ignorant do.
“Come, I’ll make a fair offer,” the baker exclaimed, for he never let
business do justice to itself; “an offer that you might call handsome,
if you was looking at it in a large point of view. I’ll take fifty
bushels at fifteen pence, pick ’em over myself, for the pigs and the
men; and if any crusty people turn up, why here I am!”
“Rasp, you make a very great mistake,” said my Uncle, turning round
upon his stool, and confronting him with strong honesty, “if you
suppose that I have anything to do with the use you make of my
potatoes. I sell you my goods for the utmost I can get, and you take
good care that it is very little. What you do with them afterwards is
no concern of mine. I owe you no thanks, and you know me not from Adam
the moment you have paid me. This is the doctrine of free-trade—you
recognize everything, except men.”
“Tell you what it is,” replied the baker; “sooner than vex you, Mr.
Orchardson, I’ll give sixteen pence all round, just as they come out of
the row. Who could say fairer than that now?”
“Eighteen is the money. Not a farthing under. From all that I can hear,
it will be twenty pence to-morrow. Why, here’s another fine peach fit
to come! I shall send it to your wife, and tell her you ate hers.”
The gardener merrily nailed away, while the baker was working his hands
for nothing. “You would never do such a thing as that,” he said; “a
single man have no call to understand a woman; but he knows what their
nature is, or why did he avoid them? My wife is as good a woman as can
be; but none of them was ever known to be quite perfect. If it must be
eighteen, it must—and I’ll take fifty.”
“Ah, couldn’t I tell you a bit of news?” said the baker, as he
counted out the money. “You are such a silent man, Mr. Orchardson,
that a man of the world is afraid of you. And the young fellow, your
own nevvy—well, he may take after you in speech, but not about the
ladies—ah, you never would believe it!”
“Well, then, keep it to yourself, that’s all. I don’t want to hear a
word against young Kit. And what’s more—if I heard fifty, I wouldn’t
believe one of them.”
“No more wouldn’t I. He’s as steady a young fellow as ever drove a
tax-cart. And so quiet in his manners, why, you wouldn’t think that
butter—”
“His mother was a lady of birth and breeding. That’s where he gets his
manners from; though there’s plenty in our family for folk that deserve
them. Out with your news, man, whatever it is.”
“Well, it don’t go again him much,” the baker replied, with some
fear—for my Uncle’s face was stern, and the wall-hammer swung in his
brown right hand; “and indeed you might take it the other way, if he
had done it all on his road home from church. You know the bridge over
the Halliford brook, or at least where it was, for it’s all washed
away, as you heard very likely this morning. What right had your nevvy
there, going on for dark?”
My Uncle was a rather large-minded man; but without being loose, or
superior. “Rasp, if it comes to that,” he said, “what right have you
and I to be anywhere?”
“That’s neither here nor there,” answered the baker, having always been
a man of business; “but wherever I go, I pay my way. However, your Kit
was down there, and no mistake. What you think he done? He punched Sam
Henderson’s head to begin with, for fear of him giving any help, and
then he jumped into the water, that was coming like a house on fire
from Tim Osborne’s dam, and out of it he pulled Mother Marker, and the
pretty young lady as had been in church.”
“Kit can swim,” said my Uncle shortly. “It is a very dangerous trick to
learn, being bound to jump in, whenever any one is drowning. Did the
women go in, for him to pull them out?”
“Ah, you never did think much of them, Mr. Corny; but you never had no
inskin experience. Take ’em all round, they are pretty nigh as good
as we are. But they never jumped in—no, you mustn’t say that. They
were bound to go home, and they were doing of it, till the flood took
their legs from under them. Mrs. Marker have been, this very morning,
conversing along of my good missus, and was likely to stop when I was
forced to come away, and you should hear her go on about your Kit! And
nobody knows if she has any friends. I am told when her time comes to
go to heaven, she will have the disposal of four hundred pounds.”
“You be off to your wife!” cried Uncle Corny; “Mrs. Marker is quite a
young woman yet, but old enough to have discovered what men are. Go to
your work, Rasp. I hate all gossip. But I am glad that Kit thrashed Sam
Henderson.”
CHAPTER V.
A LITTLE TIFF.
EVERYBODY knows, as he reads his newspaper, that nothing has ever
yet happened in the world with enough of precision and accuracy to
get itself described, by those who saw it, in the same, or in even
a similar manner. No wonder then that my little adventure—if I have
any right to call it mine—presented itself in many different lights,
not only to the people among whom it spread, but even to the few who
were present there and then. Mrs. Jenny Marker’s account of what had
happened was already very grand that Sunday eve; but as soon as she had
slept and dreamed upon it, her great command of words proved unequal
to the call made at the same moment by the mind and heart. Everybody
listened, for her practice was to pay every little bill upon a Monday
morning; and almost everybody was convinced that she was right.
“Miraculous is the only word that I can think of,” she said to Mrs.
Cutthumb, who sold tin-tacks and cabbages; “not a miracle only of the
sandy desert, but of the places where the trees and waters grow.”
“The Jordan perhaps you means, Mrs. Marker, ma’am? Or did you please to
have in your mind the Red Sea?”
“They were both in my mind, and both come uppermost at the same moment,
Mrs. Cutthumb. But the best authorities inform us now that we must not
look for more than we can understand. Yet I cannot understand how Kit
Orchardson contrived after pulling me out to pull out our Miss Kitty.
But look, here he comes! Why, he is everywhere almost. He seems to
swing along so. His uncle ought to work him harder. Not that he is
impudent. No one can say that of him. Too bashful for a man, in my
opinion. But he seems to have taken such a liking to me; and I must be
his senior by a considerable time. I will go into your parlour, my dear
Mrs. Cutthumb, and then I can look out for our poor Miss Kitty—ah, she
is so very young, and no one to stand up for her!”
“Excuse me, Miss Marker, if you please,” said Mrs. Cutthumb; “but
if I may make so bold to say, you are very young yourself, Miss, in
years, though not in worship. And to be run away with from school is
a thing that may occur to any girl when bootiful. But concerning of
Miss Kitty—bless her innocent young face!—what you was pleased to say,
ma’am, is most surprising.”
“No, Mrs. Cutthumb, very far from that, when you come to consider what
human nature is. I never could do such things myself; I never could
sleep easy in my bed if I thought that they ever could be imputed to
me. But when we look at things it is our duty to remember that the
world is made up of different people from what we are.”
“What experience you have had, ma’am, and yet keeping your complexion
so! Ah, if my poor Cutthumb could have kept away from the imperial!
But he said it were the duty of a Briton, and he done it. Sally, get
away into the back yard with your dolly. I beg your pardon, ma’am, for
interrupting you of your words so.”
“Well, one thing I make a point of is,” Mrs. Marker continued with a
gentle frown, “never to enter into any domestic affairs, though without
any bias of any sort, out of doors. We all have enough, as you know,
Mrs. Cutthumb, and sometimes more than we can manage, to regulate our
own histories. Miss Coldpepper is a remarkable lady, so very, so highly
superior; but her niece, our Miss Kitty, does not seem as yet to take
after her in that particular; and scarcely to be wondered at, when you
remember that she is not her niece at all of rights. But this is not a
question to interest you much, nor any one outside of what I might call
the Coldpepper domesticity.”
“What superior words you always do have, as it were, in your muff, Mrs.
Marker! But if you please to mean, Miss—being still so young I slips
into it naturally—the Coldpepper Manor, why I was born upon it, and so
was my parents before me. And that makes it natural, as you might say,
and proper for me to have a word to say about them. I remember all the
Coldpeppers since I was that high; and it shall never go no further.”
“There is nothing to conceal. You must never fancy that of them. The
Coldpeppers always were a haughty race, and headstrong; but bold, and
outspoken, and defying of their neighbours. It was bad for any one
who crossed them: you know that, if you remember old Squire Nicholas.
But Miss Kitty Fairthorn is not a Coldpepper. You see you don’t know
everything about them, Mrs. Cutthumb. The captain had been married
before he ever saw Miss Monica.”
“Lor’, Mrs. Marker, you quite take my breath away! And yet I might
have known it, I was bound almost to know it, the moment one comes to
reflection. ‘Kitty’s’ not a name at all becoming to the rank of the
Manor of Coldpepper. I’ve been wondering about it many’s the time;
Arabella and Monica sounds something like; but Kitty isn’t fit, except
for women that has to get their own livelihood. Well, it eases my mind
that she is not a Coldpepper.”
“No, Mrs. Cutthumb; but she is a Fairthorn; and from all I hear the
Fairthorns are much better known, in the great world of London, than
our Coldpeppers. Captain Fairthorn is a man who has discovered more
than the whole world knew in our fathers’ days. He can make a bell ring
in John o’ Groat’s house, he can blow up a cliff at the Land’s End from
London, he knows every wrinkle at the bottom of the sea, he can make a
ghost stand at eight corners of the room.”
“Can he save his own soul, ma’am?” the greengrocer asked in a solemn
voice, being a strict Wesleyan. “Them vanities, falsely called Science
nowadays, is the depth of the snare of the Evil One. A learned man
knows all the bottom of the sea, and leaves his own child to be drowned
in a brook, without it was for young Kit Orchardson. Can he save his
own soul, Mrs. Marker, ma’am?”
“Well, if I was to go by guesswork, I should say that he has not got
very much of that to call his own. You know what Miss Monica was;
although she has been such a time away from Sunbury. She took her
first husband in spite of her father, and the second without a word to
anybody. She had a son and two daughters by the Honourable Tom Bulwrag,
and within a year after him she carried off poor Captain, who is now
called Professor Fairthorn. But there, I am told, though I never set
eyes on him, being made up of telegraphs and batteries, and magnesia,
and a thing they call hiderography, he is hardly ever at home for a
week together, and knows more about the ocean’s bed than about his own.
And a lucky thing for him; for wouldn’t she be a nagger, if ever she
could get the opportunity?”
“That seems to be most unnatural, and against the will of the
Almighty,” Mrs. Cutthumb replied after serious thought, “that a lady
should wish to reprove her husband, and yet find no ear to put it into.
With all his inventions for doing away distance, he ought to be able to
manage it.”
“It would make no difference, if he did, and could she expect him to
pay for it? His mind is so taken up when he is at home, that she might
as well go on at the bedpost. And if he was to open up his wires, it
would be at his discretion to receive it all. This makes her rather
harsh, as you can understand, with any one that has no help for it. And
our poor Miss Kitty being always in the way, and a rival as it were to
her own children, oh she does know what pepper is, hot and cold, and
every colour!”
“Poor lamb! And she do look so innocent and sweet, and so deserving of
a real mother. No father to look after her, by your own account, ma’am,
and a step-mother doing it according to her liking. Why don’t she run
away, such a booty as she is?”
“She is too sweet-tempered and well-principled for that. And she thinks
all the world of her father; all the more, no doubt, because he cannot
attend to her. His time is too precious for him to mind his daughter.
Not that he is money-making—far the other way. Those great discoverers,
as I have heard say, are the last to discover the holes in their
pockets. Money, Mrs. Cutthumb has been too long discovered for him to
take any heed of it. And that makes another source of trouble in the
household. To think of our sending the big carriage and two footmen, to
find a young lady in the third class at Feltham! I took care to keep it
from Miss Coldpepper.”
“Oh, it would have been shocking,” cried the widow with her hands up.
“Why, the third class ain’t good enough for a dead pig to drain in,
any ways on the South-Western line. Well, ma’am, and how did Miss
Coldpepper take it?”
“Of these things I never speak out of the house. We are liable to err,
the very best of us, I believe, and I know it from my own feelings.
Those last twenty boxes of Star matches we had from you, Mrs. Cutthumb,
were stars, and no mistake. Shooting stars they should be labelled.
They go off like a cannon, I have had to pay for three new aprons, and
it was a mercy they didn’t set the house afire.”
“Oh, they hussies—they never know how to strike them; and your Miss
Coldpepper, she does change so often. Never so much as a month, ma’am,
without some of them giving warning.”
“That is no concern of yours, Mrs. Cutthumb. If you speak in this low
style of Coldpepper Manor, it will have to withdraw its custom, ma’am,
from your—your little establishment.”
Mrs. Jenny Marker, as she spoke thus, gathered in her jacket, which
was plaited with blue velvet,—because she was proud of her figure, or
at least so some people said who could not well get at her pockets—and
although she meant no more by this than to assert her own dignity,
Mrs. Cutthumb, with all the fine feelings of a widow, was naturally
hurt, and showed it. And strange enough to say, though it seems such a
trifle, what ensued made a very great difference to me.
“I am truly grieved, madam,” she said with a curtsey, “that my little
house, which is the best I can afford, and my little shop, which was
set up for me by very kind neighbours as owned no manors, when it
pleased the Almighty to afflict me lo, and deprive me of a good man who
could always pay his sent, and never would allow me to be put upon—”
“A model husband, no doubt, Mrs. Cutthumb; except as I fancy you
observed just now, for his devotion to the imperial pint,—or perhaps I
should say gallon.”
“May you never have a worse, if you ever catches any! And high time
in life, ma’am, for you, Miss Jenny Marker, or Mrs. whichever you may
be, and nobody in Sunbury knows the bottom of it, to be thinking a
little now of your soul, ma’am, and less of your body, and the other
things that perish. You draw in your cloak, ma’am, or it isn’t a cloak,
nothing so suitable and sensible as that, just as if my poor goods
wasn’t good enough to touch it! Perhaps that’s the reason why you beats
them down so. I beg you to remember, Jenny Marker, that I consider
myself as good as you are, madam, though I am not tricked out with
gew-gaws and fal-lals. And what I eats, I earns, ma’am, and not the
bread of servitude.”
“That will do, my good woman. I never lose my temper; though I have
never been insulted before like this, even by the lowest people. Send
in your little bill, this very afternoon, if one of your wonderful
neighbours will be good enough to make it out for you, as you have
never been taught to write, poor thing! But whoever does it must not
forget to deduct the price of three rotten French eggs.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE.
WHILE that bitter war was raging, I enjoyed a peaceful and gentle
season. It happened that I had come up our village, on a matter of
strict business, at a time of day not at all unlikely to be the very
time of day mentioned over-night, as the one that would suit Mrs.
Marker and Miss Fairthorn for doing a little business in our village.
This might be explained, without any imputation on any one I have the
pleasure of knowing, for all of them will admit at once that it needs
no explanation. It is enough to say, that when I had the honour of
seeing two ladies safe home last night, after pulling them out of the
flood—as they both maintained, though never in it—no little gratitude
had been expressed, and much good-will had been felt all round. And it
would have been hard upon that state of things, if any “Good-bye” had
been said for ever.
For my part, although I had no great fear of being knocked on the head
by Sam Henderson, it might have seemed haughty and even unfeeling, if
I had insisted too strongly upon my ability to take care of myself.
Therefore I allowed them to consider me in peril; and to this I was
partly indebted perhaps for the opportunity of meeting them on Monday.
It is true that I had not learned half as much, about matters of the
deepest interest to me, as Mrs. Cutthumb, without any claim to such
knowledge, was now possessed of; but this might fairly be expected, for
women have always been convinced that men have no right to know half as
much as themselves. “Let him find it out, I am not going to tell him,”
is their too frequent attitude, while they feel it a duty to their own
sex to pour out almost everything.
However, I have no desire to complain, and perhaps it is better thus;
for if we knew all of their affairs, we might think less about them.
And I was in a very deep condition of interest and wonder, not only
from the hints I had received, but also from the manifold additions of
my fancy. In fact, it was far more than I could do, to confine my heart
to its proper work when I saw those two ladies come to do a little
shopping.
At that time, there were only about a dozen of the houses, in the
narrow street that runs along the river, which allowed the importance
of selling to compete with the necessity of dwelling. And the few, that
did appear inclined to do a little trade, if coaxed into it, were half
ashamed of their late concession to the spirit of the age. No man had
yet appeared who shatters the ancestral sense of congruity, who routs
up the natives, as a terrier bullies mastiffs, and scarcely even leaves
them their own bones. And it may be maintained, that people got things
better, and found them last longer than they ever do now. And this was
only natural, because it always took a much longer time to buy them.
This enabled me to take my time about my own business, without any risk
of being left behind by the lady housekeeper and her fair companion.
From time to time I assured myself by a glance between flower-pots,
or among drapery, that my quest was not gone astray, that as yet I
had not lost all that I cared to see, and that I could keep in my own
background, while thinking of things far beyond me.
It never had been my manner yet to be much afraid of anything; not
that I stood at all upon my valour, but simply because, to the best of
my knowledge, I had no enemy anywhere. Yet now, very much to my own
surprise, instead of proper courage, I was full of little doubts, and
more misgivings than I can at all describe, and even a tendency to run
away, and try to forget the very thing I was longing for. And I knew
for a certainty that if the matter came to the very best opportunity, I
was quite sure to do my very worst, and cut a despicable figure, to my
own undoing.
I tried to recover myself, by doing a few strokes of business on my
own account, going into the butcher’s, and complaining sadly that he
now weighed the foot in with the leg of mutton—a privilege only to
be claimed by lamb—but he said that it now was ordained by nature,
and asked how I expected a poor sheep to walk. I knew that his logic
would not go upon all-fours, but my wits were so loose that I let it
pass; and at that very moment I discovered, betwixt the hearts of two
bullocks, something very near my own. Miss Kitty Fairthorn had been set
free by Mrs. Jenny Marker, while the housekeeper was driving a bargain
in soft goods, unfit for young comprehension. After that, she was to go
on for a talk with Widow Cutthumb, and meanwhile the young lady might
look at the river, which was now rolling grandly in turbulent flood.
It was rather a shy and a delicate thing for me to go also in that
direction; and the butcher (who never confined his attention to his own
mutton) was as sure as could be to come out of his door, and look all
up the lane. For Sunbury people, as long as I have known them, take a
deep interest in one another’s doings; and all the more so, when they
happen to perceive that their sympathy is not requested. Wherefore I
hurried back to ask another question, as if there were nothing in my
mind but meat, and then turned up an alley, which would lead me round
the back of some houses to the Halliford Road further on.
There were many things now that I might have done, more sensible haply
than what I did. I might have gone home, and had bread and cheese,
and a glass of mild ale with Uncle Corny; or if that had seemed a
little too ignoble, why not wander along the upper road, and thence
survey, as from a terrace—which used to be the origin of the word
“contemplate”—the many distant mazes of the flooded river, the trees
along the margin bowing over their foundations, the weak smile of
autumnal sunshine over the wrongs of its own neglect, and perhaps in
the foreground a slender figure, standing as if it were nothing in the
mass?
However, what I did was to go straight on towards the one in the world
who was all the world to me. By what process of reason, or unreason, or
pure stupid heart, I was come in such haste to this state of mind, is
more than I can explain to any, and I did not even try to explain it to
myself. There was my condition, right or wrong; and those who cannot
understand it may be proud of their cool wisdom; and I without harm may
be sorry for them.
She wore a grey cloak looking wonderfully simple, yet gathered in
small at her beautiful waist, and trimmed at the skirts, and over two
little pockets, with a soft blue fur called Vicunha. And she carried a
little muff of the same material, and the strings of her hat (which was
like a sea-shell) were also of a blue tint very sweetly matching. But
the blue that was sweetest and richest of all was that of her large,
soft, loving eyes, than which it is impossible for any poet to imagine
anything in heaven more lovely.
However, I shall not go on any more about her, though things may slip
out unawares; and without being rude, I may say plainly, that I have
a right to keep such matters to myself. For a short time, I was at a
loss for the commonest presence of mind, and stood wondering; hoping
that she would turn round, and yet fearing that she might think I had
no business there. Her whole attention was taken up, as I knew by her
attitude—for already I seemed to have a gift of understanding her—not
with any thought of people near her, but with the grandeur of the
rolling flood, and the breadth of quiet lake beyond it. She was saying
to herself—so far as I could tell—“What is the use of such a little dot
as I am, and what is the value of my little troubles, when the mighty
world goes on like this, and all I can do would not make a wrinkle and
scarcely a flutter on the vast expanse?”
Then suddenly, an if in dread of her own thoughts, she turned round and
saw me within a landyard of her. As if she had been taken in a rosy
fog—for we are all ashamed of large thoughts, when caught in them—she
coloured to the tint of one of Uncle Corny’s peaches, though without
any of the spots he was so proud of; and then she drew one hand from
her blue muff, and I found it so soft and warm and precious, that I
almost forgot to let it go again.
“Oh, how I am surprised to see you here!” she said, as if my general
place of residence was the moon; and probably I looked as if it should
be so.
“And I am even more amazed to see you here,” I answered without any of
my wits to help me, “but I came to do a little bit of business with the
butcher. He has been doing things he had no right to do.”
“I have often been told that they are inclined to take advantage,” she
replied, with a look which convinced me at once that she would make
a first-rate housekeeper, for what butcher could resist it? “My dear
father would have much trouble with them, if, if—I mean if he were at
all allowed to have it. But he is always so full of great things.”
“Oh, what a happy man he must be! I have heard that he is the most
clever, and learned, and one of the most celebrated men in London.”
I may not have heard all that, but still I was perfectly justified in
saying it, for it made her talk; and every time she spoke, her voice
sounded sweeter than it did the time before.
“You have been told the truth; it is acknowledged universally,” she
went on as if there were no fame to equal his, and with a sparkle in
her blue eyes, as if a star had flashed in heaven; “there seems to be
nothing that he does not know, and nothing that he does not improve by
his knowledge, and make useful for—I mean for the world at large. How
I can be his child, and yet so stupid and slow-witted, is a thing that
amazes me, and I am trying always not to think of it.”
“I am sure you are not stupid. I am sure you are very quick-witted. I
never saw any one half so clever, and accomplished, and ladylike, and
gentle, and”—“lovely” was the word I was about to use; but she stopped
me, with a smile that would have stopped a rushing bull.
“I am showing my quick wits now,” she said, presenting the charm of her
hand again, “by never even thanking you for all you did last evening.
I was thinking before you appeared, that but for you I should probably
be tossing in these wild waters now, or probably carried down as far as
London Bridge, without a chance even of being buried. And it made me so
sad, when I remembered that it would make no difference to any one.”
“How can you say such a dreadful thing?” I exclaimed with great
indignation, for her eyes that had been so full of light were darkened
with sadness, and turned away; “it is not true that I saved you in the
least, though I wish that I had; I should deserve to live for ever; but
you speak as if no one in the world had any love for the sweetest, and
best, and most lovely creature in it.”
This was going rather far, I must confess; not that any word of it
was at all exaggerated, or even approached the proper mark; but that
it might seem a little early, on the part of one who had never had
the pleasure of beholding the lady, till the previous afternoon. The
remembrance of this was very awkward to me, and I was wild with myself,
but could not stop the mischief now.
“Will you oblige me, Mr. Orchardson,” she asked, as gently as if I had
shown no folly, “by just looking down or up the village, to see if Mrs.
Marker is coming. She was to have been here ten minutes ago; and we
have to make a long round now, since the bridge on the lower road is
washed away. I ought not to trouble you; but I never know exactly where
I am in country places, although I love the country so.”
This was more than I deserved; for a good box on the ears was the
proper reward for my frowardness, and I should have been less abashed
by it. “I am a bigger cad than Sam Henderson himself,” I whispered with
a timid glance at her. But she seemed at a loss to know what my meaning
was; and so with a deep but very clumsy bow, I departed to do her
bidding.
Before I had taken many steps, there appeared the lady housekeeper in
the distance, walking with great dignity, perhaps to console herself
for the insolence of that Widow Cutthumb. Of this I knew nothing as
yet, though it was plain that something unrighteous had disturbed
her. And this made my humble demeanour more soothing and persuasive
to her upright mind. After shaking her hand very warmly and paying
a well-deserved compliment to her fine colour, I ventured to implore
a little favour, which the sight of our garden wall sparkling in the
sunshine, for it was newly topped with broken glass, suggested by some
good luck to me.
“Oh, if you would only come,” I said, “and see my Uncle’s trees
to-morrow! They are at their very best this week, before we begin to
gather largely. The pears are hanging down, so that we have had to prop
the branches, and the plums are as thick as eggs together, when the hen
is sitting; only instead of being pale, some are of the richest gold,
and some of a deep purple, like—like that magnificent amethyst you
wear; and the peaches on the wall—you might almost compare these to a
lady’s cheeks, when a gentleman tells her of her beauty—”
“Really, Mr. Orchardson, you are quite a poet!”
“And when you get tired of looking at them, and tasting the ripest,
all you have to do is to come into the vinery, and sit beneath the
leaves, and look all along it, wherever the clusters leave any room to
look, until you don’t know which you like the best, the appearance of
the black or the white ones, because so much depends upon the light.
And then Uncle Corny comes with a pair of scissors, and says—‘Ma’am,
that is not the way to look at it. The proof of the pudding is in the
eating,’ and he hands you in a vine-leaf, being careful where he cuts
it, a jet-black shoulder of Black Hamburgh, and an amber-coloured
triplet of White Muscat.”
“Mr. Orchardson, you are making my mouth water, if a vulgar expression
may be allowed to one who eats the bread of servitude.” I wondered
to hear her speak thus, though I saw that she had been aggrieved by
somebody. “And if you will be at home to-morrow afternoon, perhaps
I might obtain permission to leave my mistress for an hour or two.
I might walk down about four o’clock, when I have finished all the
blacking of the boots.”
Something with a spiteful tang to it was rankling in her mind, as I
perceived; but having no right to ask, I just lifted my hat and gazed
at her gold chain and broach. Then a tear or two, started by her own
words, came forth, and she looked at me softly.
“You would add to the favour of your invitation,” she said with a smile
which made me look at something else, “if you would include in it Miss
Kitty Fairthorn. Poor thing! She is put upon very sadly, and it would
be such a treat for her. They see so little of the beauties of nature
in London.”
“I am sure my Uncle will be most happy;” I answered as if I were not
sure about myself.
CHAPTER VII.
DE GUSTIBUS.
NOW my Uncle Cornelius Orchardson (a stout and calm fruit-grower,
called in contumely “Corny the topper” by strangers who wanted his
growth for nothing) professed and even practised a large contempt for
gossip. Nevertheless it was plain enough that his feelings were hurt,
if a thing went on, which he was bound in politeness to know, and yet
was not offered any tidings of it. With such people it is always wiser,
if you have done anything against their wishes, to let them know all
the particulars at once; and so to have it out and be done with it. And
I was beginning to love him now, which as a boy I had done but little,
inasmuch as he never gave way to me. Obstinate as he was, and sometimes
hot—if one tried to play tricks with him—I was not much afraid of Uncle
Corny, although so dependent upon him. For I knew him to be a just man
in the main, and one who kept no magnet of his own to fetch down the
balance to his own desires. Yea, rather he would set the beam against
himself, when it trembled in doubt of its duty.
With the hasty conclusions of youth, I believed that because he was now
an old bachelor, though able to afford a wife many years ago, he had
taken and held to an adverse view of the fairer and better half of the
human race. And his frequent counsels to me to keep out of their way
confirmed my conviction. The course of time proved that I was wrong in
this, as in many other matters of my judgment; and my rule, if I had to
begin again, would be to think the best of every man, till he compels
me otherwise. But the worst of Uncle Corny was that he never cared to
vindicate himself.
His countenance also was in keeping with this manner, and the build of
his body and the habit of his gait. His figure was tall, yet wide and
thick, and his face very solid and ample. He had never been comely by
line and rule, yet always very pleasant for an honest man to look at,
and likely to win the good word of a woman. Because there was strength
and decision in his face, and a power of giving full meaning to his
words, which were generally short and to the purpose. And especially he
was gifted with a very solid nose, not of any Roman or Grecian cast,
but broadly English, and expansive, and expressive, and sometimes even
waggish when he told an ancient tale.
Knowing that he would be quite sure to hear of my adventures soon, even
if he had not heard already—for Sunbury is a fine place for talk—and
trusting to his better feelings (which were always uppermost after
a solid supper, when he stirred his glass of hot rum and water, and
had his long pipe lit for him), I began upon him that very night with
what my mind was full of. For Tabby Tapscott was now gone home, after
looking at me rather queerly.
“What a knowledge of the world you have, Uncle Corny!” I exclaimed at
the end of his favourite tale concerning Covent Garden; “your advice
must be worth more than the counsel of the cleverest lawyer in London.”
“More honest at least, and no fee to pay,” he answered rather testily,
for he hated all humbug and compliments. “What have you been at, young
man? Is it my advice, or my aid, you want?”
“A little of both; or a lot of one, and a little of the other. I
have made the acquaintance of a sweet young lady, the gentlest,
and loveliest, and most graceful, and modest, and elegant, and
accomplished, and lofty-minded, and noble-hearted, and—and—”
“Angelic, angelic is the word, Kit—don’t begrudge it; it saves such a
lot of the others.”
“Yes, angelic,” I replied with firmness; “and even that is not half
good enough. You know nothing of such matters, Uncle Corny.”
“Then what is the use of my advice? You had better go to Tabby
Tapscott.”
This threw me out a little; but I would not be brow-beaten.
“If you have no wish to hear any more about her, and compare her to
an old creature like Tabby, all I can say is that I am sorry for your
taste, very sorry for your taste, Uncle Corny.”
“Well, well, go on, Kit. Let us have it all, while we are about it.
Rasp the baker told me something. He has brought down a girl from
London who can make short bread and maids of honour. No wonder you fell
in love with her.”
“You may try to provoke me, but you shall not succeed; because you
know no better. What will you say when I tell you the young lady is the
niece of Miss Coldpepper of Coldpepper Manor?”
I looked at Uncle Corny with a glance of triumph; and then stood up, to
breathe again, after my own audacity. But instead of being terrified,
he took it very coolly.
“Well, a cat may look at a king,” said he, pursuing his pipe with his
usual discretion; “and I suppose you have only looked at her; though
somebody said you pulled her out of our watercress brook.”
“Sir, I have had two delightful talks with her; and I mean to have
another to-morrow. Not that I have any hope—of course, I am well aware—”
“That you are unworthy to worship her shoe-string, and lie down for her
peg-heels to tread on. If she likes you, I don’t see why you shouldn’t
have her. By-and-by, I mean, when you get a little wiser. But has the
girl got any money?”
“I hope not; I hope not, from the bottom of my heart. It would be yet
another obstacle. She is as high above me, as the heaven is above the
earth, without—without even a penny in her pockets.”
“Flies all the higher, because her pockets are so light.” He spoke with
a jocosity, which appeared to me most vulgar. “Don’t look as if you
longed to knock me over, Kit. By the way, I heard that you had floored
Sam Henderson. If so, you deserve the best maid that ever looked into
a looking-glass. What do you want me to do, my lad? I know a little of
those people.”
I wondered what people he meant, but feared to ask him for the moment,
lest I might lose the chance of getting the favour I had set my heart
on. “It is a very simple thing,” I said, “and need not take your time
up. Mrs. Marker is longing to see your garden; and if she may come
to-morrow afternoon, she will bring the young lady, and I can show them
round. You need not stir a step, or even turn your head.”
“It is quite enough to have one head turned. They may come, if they
choose, but they must not bother me. Hand me the jar of tobacco, Kit,
and be off to the books, instead of spooning.”
My uncle might easily have taken a more ample and cordial view of
the question; still I was pleased not to find him worse, and ordered
our crock-boy on the Tuesday morning to fetch a little round while
he ate his breakfast, and leave a note for Mrs Marker at the lodge
of the Coldpepper grounds, near the dairy, which the housekeeper
visited early. And then I went to gather, and basket a quarter of
Keswick codlin and Quarantines. This occupied all the forenoon, and
what with seeing that they were picked aright, and sorted into firsts
and seconds, and fairly packed, with no rubbish at the bottom, into
bushel-baskets, and yet presented smiling with their eyes upward to
meet the gaze of the purchaser, the day went so fast that it was
dinner-time, before I could sit down, and dwell upon my heart. Then at
a reproachful glance from Selsey Bill, our orchard foreman, who had
heard the church clock strike one, and felt it to the depths of his
capable stomach, I set three fingers to my teeth, and blew the signal,
which is so welcome to the men who have lived upon nothing but hope,
ever since half-past eight o’clock.
It is not to be denied, however, that I had taken pretty sharp
advantage of being well mounted from time to time on the upper rungs
of a ladder, which gave me command of the Halliford Road—the higher
road, I mean, for the lower now was stopped and except to carts and
carriages—in such a manner that none could come from that part of the
world, without my knowledge. Seeing only a pedlar and some few women
(highly interesting to themselves no doubt, but not concerning my state
of mind), I went in to dine with Uncle Corny, and took care to eat none
of his onions.
“What cheeks you have got, Kit!” he cried with a laugh; “and it is
not from eating too much dinner. You have stolen the colour of my
Quarantines. Eat, boy, eat; or how will you pull through it? No more
visits from young ladies, if you are to go off your head like this.
You have put the new mustard-spoon into the salt. A pretty muddle, I’m
afraid, among my apples.”
Being always very dutiful, I let him have his grumble; and presently he
lit his pipe, and made off for the packing-shed, though the load was
not going till to-morrow night. Then I put myself into a little better
trim, feeling that the best I did could never make me fit to look round
the corner of a wall at somebody. Although I was considered in our
village a smart and tidy and well-built young fellow, and one of the
girls at the linendraper’s had sent me a Valentine last spring, said to
be of her own composition, beginning—“Thou noble and majestic youth,
Thy curls and thy ruddy cheeks proclaim the truth, That whenever I
think of thee, I have a sigh, And if thou provest false, I shall jump
into the Thames and die!” But it was in vain for me to think of this at
present; it gave me no support at all worth having; and even a book of
poetry, which I put into my pocket, might just as well have been the
list of pots and pans from Turnham Green.
Before I could get into any real courage, there came a gentle double
knock, as if from the handle of a parasol, at the green door near the
corner of the wall, and then a little laugh; and then a sweet voice
said, “Oh, Jenny, don’t you think we had better go back? Are you sure
that Auntie said that I might come?” In dread of further doubts, I ran
up promptly, and opened the door, and brought them in, and locked it.
“This young lady,” began Mrs. Marker, as if they were come for
her sake only, “has never seen any fruit-garden, fruit-orchard,
fruit-establishment, or whatever the proper name is. And I thought
perhaps before she goes back to London, this would enlarge her store
of knowledge; and her father, who is a very learned man, might like
to hear her account of it. Now keep your eyes open, Miss Kitty, and
see all. You would fancy that she noticed nothing, Mr. Orchardson, by
the way she goes on, and her quietness. And yet when you come to talk
afterwards, it turns out that nothing has escaped her blue eyes; and
she can tell ten times as much as I can, and I am considered pretty
accurate too. But we must pay our respects to your Uncle, Mr. Cornelius
Orchardson. I always like to do the proper thing. Business first, and
pleasure afterwards.”
“He will smile, when he hears how you have put it. He is very busy now
at the packing-shed. But he told me to take you wherever you liked; and
he will come down, when he has made out his list. On the left you have
the peach-wall, and on the right the plums; and the figs are getting
very ripe down this alley. We very seldom eat much fruit ourselves,
because we have such a lot of it. But we always long to get ladies’
opinions, because of the delicacy of their taste.”
“It is a perfect shame,” said Mrs. Marker, while making up her mind
what to begin with, “that, in such a Paradise, there should be no
lady, to give you the knowledge of good and evil. I brought a silver
knife with me, in case of being tempted. Not that I mean to taste
anything of course, unless my opinion should be absolutely required.
My constitution is not strong, Mr. Kit; and I am compelled to be very
careful.”
I knew what was meant by that, having heard it often. “You shall have
nothing, madam, but the very best,” I answered; “for we never throw
away an opportunity like this. What shall we offer first for your
judgment?”
“Kitty, what do you say?” She turned as if in doubt. “You know, my
dear, how careful we must be. This young lady, Mr. Kit, allows me to
call her ‘Kitty,’ in our private moments. Kit and Kitty—what a very
strange coincidence!”
I could not help looking at the beautiful Miss Fairthorn; and to my
eyes she became more beautiful than ever. For a deep blush spread upon
her lovely cheeks, and she turned away, and said, “I leave it quite to
you.”
If Mrs. Marker had been planning all the morning how to get the best
of the tasting to herself, and to render her judgment supreme, she
could hardly have hit upon a better device than this. For her young
companion became so nervous and so much confused, and I myself so
diffident and deeply occupied, that our only object was to fill the
lady housekeeper’s mouth, and keep it running over with nothing worse
than fruit. Now and then I ventured to steal a glance at the one with
whom my heart was filled, as if to ask whether she would ever forgive
me for my sad name of Kit. But her eyes were afraid to encounter mine;
or if by any chance they did so, the light that was in them wavered
like a timid gleam pursued by cloud. To relieve this trouble, I began
to chatter vague nonsense to the other visitor, who was falling to in
earnest.
“Everything is out of time this year, and nothing up to character.
There has been no sunshine on this wall, until you ladies shone upon
it; and what amazes me most is to find that anything has any colour
at all. Here is a Grosse Mignonne now, a week ago as green as a leek,
and covered now with downy crimson, except just where a leaf has made
a pale curve across it, like the pressure of a finger on your cheek.
Taste it, Mrs. Marker; you are not getting on at all.”
“Let me see, that makes seven, I think. I shall have lost my taste
before we get among the gages. Thank you, I am sure. Oh, how lovely,
and delicious! Luscious perhaps is the better expression. There goes
ever so much more juice on my dress. I ought to have brought a bib, Mr.
Kit; and I will, if I ever come again. But would not you say it was
just the least thought woolly?” She had never heard of such a thing
before, but I had taught her, and she was growing critical. “Kitty
dear, you are tasting nothing. Don’t you consider that just an atom
woolly?”
“Very likely it is. I don’t know enough to say. But I never remember
tasting wool, with so fine a flavour in it.”
Perhaps I was not in a proper mood to judge; but verily this appeared
to me to show an inborn aptitude for taking the management of the
fruit, and the government of the grower. To exaggerate is altogether
out of my nature, and I find it a great mistake to be ecstatic; but in
spite of all that, I would have given every sixpence allowed me by my
Uncle Corny—who was always afraid of allowing me too much—if only I
could have conveyed to this exquisite judge my opinion of her sentence.
But that blessed discovery of Mrs. Marker’s about the everlasting
fitness of our names,—upon which I had been dwelling in my heart, long
before her stupid slowness blurted it—this, I say, had acted in a very
awkward manner upon a mind infinitely higher than hers; and yet I hoped
humbly that it might suggest something, which might be for the best, if
let alone.
Things being so, it was not at all amiss that a loud voice reached us
from the clipped yew-hedge, which was set across to break the north
winds here—“Kit, where the deuce are you gone mooning? I thought you
would have come up with the ladies, long ago.”
“Here we are, looking from a distance at your peaches. Oh, Mr.
Orchardson, how lovely they do seem!” Mrs. Marker lost her dignity by
giving me a wink, believing as she did—and many others thought the
same—that I was next to nobody in these gardens, and my Uncle a tiger
over every fruit he grew.
“We have had as many peaches as we can eat, sir,” I said, without any
wish to contradict her, but simply to show the position I held.
“Ladies will excuse my present plight;” he had no coat on, and his
sleeves were tucked up, showing a pair of thick brown arms. “My peaches
are very poor this year, and many have split their stones, and rot
instead of ripening. We have not had such a season since 1852. I hope
you will not judge us by the wretched things you see. But come on a
little further, and try something else. All fruit is water, such a year
as we have had. But possibly I may find a plum or two worth eating.”
“Allow me the pleasure, sir,” said Mrs. Marker, who always insisted on
proper forms, “of introducing you to Miss Fairthorn, the only daughter
of Captain, or as he now is considered, Professor Fairthorn—a gentleman
of the highest scientific tendencies.”
“To be sure,” said Uncle Corny, as he took his hat off, and smiled with
surprise at her beauty; “I knew Captain Fairthorn, years ago, and a
very noble man he is. I have very good cause to remember him—but I will
not trouble you with that now. Mrs. Marker, if you would just turn this
corner—take care of your most becoming bonnet, young lady”—this pleased
the good housekeeper more than twenty plums,—“our trees are not as
sensitive as we are.”
His urbanity amazed me, for I never could have thought a good man
could be so inconsistent; and I said to myself that after all there
is something irresistible in women. So I ventured to sidle up to Miss
Fairthorn, as he led the way with his convoy, and asked her what she
thought of him.
“Oh, I think he is so nice,” she replied smiling at me, as if she was
pleased with my question; “so upright, and manly, and such a fine
countenance. No wonder, I’m sure, that his fruit is good.”
“Did you notice how much he was surprised at you, at your very pretty
dress, and exceedingly sweet smile, and most ladylike appearance, and
silvery voice, and lovely—lovely way of holding your parasol?”
“How can you talk such nonsense, Mr. Orchardson? And your Uncle appears
such a sensible man! Dear me, we are losing all the wise things he can
say. Let us hurry on—it was this way, I think.”
“No, no! Don’t you hear their voices down this path? Not twenty yards
off, if it were not for these trees. Oh, do let me carry your parasol.
You will want both hands to get along. Before you know where we are, we
shall be in the broad road. Oh, I am so sorry—it was all my fault. You
must let me undo the mischief I have done. May I show you how well I
understand all roses?”
By good luck, combined with some little skill of mine, her simple yet
wholly adorable frock was captured in three places by gooseberries
whom I envied. I expected great delight from this. But she showed at
once the sweetness of her temper, and her height above me. Instead of
blushing stupidly, she smiled, and said—“Thank you, I will do it for
myself. You can hardly be expected to understand such things.”
CHAPTER VIII.
BAD COUNSEL.
THERE are very few things that have the power to please us both in
heart and mind, even when they have the will to do it, which is very
seldom. Great events in our lives flash by without a word, and scarcely
seem to give us time to chuckle, or to sob, till afterwards. But the
little turns of time are more indulgent, and pass us with a sauntering
foot, more often dull than lightsome.
For the moment, I was glad to find that my Uncle Cornelius, in his
plain way, had taken a liking to my love. But I gave him little credit
for it, inasmuch as it seemed impossible to me that he could do
otherwise. Such was my petty jealousy that I did not even want to hear
him praise her, except in my own words. But he, in his solid way, would
take his own view of her character—as if he knew anything about it!
“I don’t care a farthing about all that,” I cried, when he had spoken
of some things, which tell the longest.
“I can see she is very quiet, and full of home affections,” he
persisted, as if I were a boy at school, and he were holding the
spelling book; “she is not extravagant, nor fond of waste; that I
saw by the way she went through a ‘Huling’s Superb,’ with a hole in
it. I could scarcely have done it any better myself. And she was
really grieved, which the lady-housekeeper had not the sense to be,
by the freedom—she called it recklessness—with which I picked those
Jeffersons, to find one in tip-top condition. And then when I offered
to make some tea, the housekeeper who had been stuffing for hours only
asked if the water was boiling. But your sweetheart began to buckle up,
and asked who could touch tea, after such delicious things.”
“Buckle up, indeed! Uncle Corny, you are outrageous. She had got
no such thing as a buckle near her. Her waist is done round with a
narrow blue ribbon, the colour of the sky, as her eyes are. And I will
thank you not to call her my sweetheart, if you please. I shall never
have such luck. And it sounds so common. There ought to be a better
expression for it. And such things are not made to be talked of.”
“Very well! You won’t hear me say another word. It will all come to
nothing; that’s one comfort. She goes back to London on Friday; and
you will very soon console yourself with Rasp’s young woman. I am told
that she has fine black eyes; and I am not sure that black don’t beat
blue ones, after all.”
This was so disgusting that I went away, and worked till dusk at a
heavy piece of trenching; and when it was dusk I lay in wait for three
felonious boys who came from Hampton, almost every evening, prowling
for our apples. I caught all three, and trounced them well—which is the
only proper plan—and the sound of their wailings, as they went home,
restored my faith in justice. For I had given them their choice—“a
licking or a summons”—and they said very justly, “Oh, a licking, if
you please, sir.” The world has now come to such a pass, that a father
would summon me for assault, if I so discharged his duty for him; but
thirty years ago a bit of common sense survived.
But in spite of that little satisfaction, I could not get much sleep
that night, for rolling, and pondering, and twisting in and out, the
tangle and the burden of a troubled mind. Turn it as I might, there was
no opening through it for another view of that perfect creature, with
whom my whole life seemed to flow. Terrible, terrible was the truth
that she would leave us all on Friday, and be swallowed up and no more
seen, in that great earthquake, London. A thousand wild ideas, and
schemes, for stealing yet one more interview, and countless crazy hopes
that she herself might try to compass it, all came thrilling through
my restless brain, but not one would stop there. None had any shape
or substance, such as could be worked upon, and brought to likelihood
of success. This was Tuesday night; last Saturday night how different
everything had been! Then I had only cared to know, that things in the
ground were doing well, that all the fruit which required gathering got
its due, and looked its best on its way to be devoured, that every man
pocketed his wages in good time to spend them, and that there was a
little hope of the weather taking up at last. Now there had been three
days without rain, and with touch of autumnal sunshine; heaven began
to look bright again, and the earth (which, like the dwellers therein,
lives only aright in view of it) was beginning to lift her sodden
crust, and fetch once more her storm-trampled breath and issue anew the
genial green in the midrib of mouldy foliage. In a word, the summer
which had failed the year, for want of a smile to lead it, was breaking
out at this last moment, better late than never.
Possessed as I was with my own troubles, and only a flickering
sunshine, I could not resist the contagious lightness of cheerful faces
all around. The workmen, who do (in spite of all British reserve,
and manly selfishness) take a deep interest in their employer’s
welfare, and stand up for him bravely, when any one abuses him,
except themselves—every man of them laid heel to spade, or hoisted
ladder on shoulder, with new briskness; because they could say to one
another—“The old buffer, who carries on this place, has fought against
long odds like a man; and now things look as if they was taking a
little turn in his favour.”
On the Wednesday morning glum however was my mind, and grim my face,
and Uncle Corny made some jokes, which may have seemed very good to
him. Our breakfast things were set as usual, and our breakfast cooked
and served by Mrs. Tabby Tapscott, that sage widow from the village,
whom we were often pleased to laugh at for her Devonshire dialect.
Also for her firm conviction, that nothing in these outlandish parts,
and none of our biggest men, were fit to compare with the products of
the West. There was one point however on which we gladly confessed the
truth that was in her—she could fry potatoes, not leathery chips, nor
the cake of pulpy fatness, but the crisp yet melting patin of brown
gold, so as none of the East may fry them. She turned them out of the
frying-pan upon a willow-pattern plate, and the man deserved to wear
the willow, who could think of weeping near them.
Now this good woman, who was a “cure,” as the slang boys of our village
said, took (though I knew it not as yet) a tender interest in my
affairs. For the last day or two, I had observed that she glanced at me
rather strangely, and once or twice behind my Uncle’s back, she had put
her finger on her lips, and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder, as
if to say—“Come and have a quiet word with me.”
But my frame of mind had appeared to me too noble and exalted to be
shared with her, until it was come to such a pitch that any aid would
be welcome.
This morning, as half of her fine work remained on my plate neglected,
she could no longer contain herself, but pinched my sleeve and
whispered, while my Uncle was going to the window, “Come out in
gearden, I want to spake to ’e.”
“Speak away,” I answered, “there is nothing to stop you, Mrs.
Tapscott;” but she looked at me and muttered that I was just a fool,
and she had a mind to have nought to do with me.
By the common law of nature, this made me long to hear what on earth
she could have to say, and I gave her the chance, while she washed up
the things, to see where I was, and to come out if she pleased. She
might do exactly as she pleased, for I did not intend to encourage her.
She came out, and began without asking me.
“I can’t abide to zee ’e look so crule weist and peaky. The toorn of
your nose bain’t the zame as her was, and you don’t zim at home with
your vittels, Measter Kit. Lor’ bless ’e, I been droo the zame my zen,
and I knaws arl about ’en.”
At first I was inclined to walk away; but it would have been shabby
to be rude to her, and a look of good-will and kindly pity was in her
hard-worn eyes and face. “What can you have to say to me?” I asked.
“You be young, and I be old,” she took my coat to stop me; “you be
peart and nimble, and I be a’most crippled with rheumatics and rumbago.
But the Lord hath made us arl alike, though He have given us different.
I knows as wull what ails ’e now, as if it arl coom droo my own heart.
And what you be zaying to yourzelf is—‘How be I to goo on with it’?”
This was a wonderfully accurate description of my present state of
mind. I looked at Mrs. Tapscott, with the admiration she deserved, and
said—“Well then, how be I to goo on with it?”
“I’ve athought ’un out,” she made answer bravely; “what you be bound
to do, Measter Kit, is never to let she goo back to Lunnon, wi’out
zettling zummat.”
Here was the whole of it in a nutshell. But how was I to settle
anything?
“Oh, Tabby, dear Tabby!” I cried, with some loss of dignity, but much
gain of truth; “how can I even get the chance of saying a word to her
again? This is Wednesday, and she goes back on Friday, and perhaps
she never comes again, and there are millions of people between us.
Everybody knows what Miss Coldpepper is, as proud as Punch, and as
stiff as starch. If I even dared to go near the house, she’d just tell
the gamekeeper to shoot me.”
“Wull, a young man as have vallen in love must take his chance of
shot-guns. But if so be you latts her goo awai wi’out so much as
anoother ward, you desarves to have no tongue in the head of ’e.”
“How easy it is to talk!” I replied, making ready to leave her, and
think by myself. “But how hard and impossible, Tabby, to find any
chance of doing anything. I must make up my mind not to see her any
more; but to think of her always, as long as I live.”
“Boddledicks!” cried Mrs. Tapscott, her favourite interjection of
contempt—what it meant we knew not, and probably not she. “Boddledicks,
where be the brains of they men? I could tull ’e what to do in half
a zecond, lad, to vetch old Coldpepper, and the young leddy too, and
every mortial ’ooman in thic there ouze, to hum eartr’e, the zame as if
they zighted ’e a burning to the muckpit, with all their Zunday vainery
under thee arm.”
I looked at Tabby Tapscott with some surprise; for she was giving
greater force to her description by using leg and arm as if she bore a
share in all of it. And the vigour of her countenance made me smile.
But the old woman laughed with a superior air. “Tak’th a bit o’ time,
for volks with slow brains to vollew my maind up—don’t her now? Goo up
to ’ouze, young man, and stale old Ragless.”
“Steal old Regulus!” I cried in great amazement, “why, what good on
earth would that do me? And if it would do any good, how am I to manage
it? I have not been brought up to that profession.”
“I zeed a man to Barrinarbor, vaive and vorty year agone, the most
wonnerful cliver chap, I ever zee. He coom a-coortin’ of me, the taime
as I wor ruckoned the purtiest maid in arl the parish of Westdown. But
I wadn’t have none of ’un, because a’ wor so tricksy. Howsomever I
didn’t zay ‘noo’ to wance, for a’ wor the most wonnerful chap I ever
zee. The Lord had been and given he every zort o’ counsel. A’ could
churm a harse out of any vield or linhay, a’ could mak’ the coos hurn
to ’un, when the calves was zuckin’, a’ could vetch any dog a’ took
a vancy to from atwane his owner’s legs or from’s own zupper. And
a’ zhowed me a trick or two I han’t vorgotten yet. I could tull ’e
purty smart how to vetch old Ragless, and kape ’un so long as you was
mainded.”
Now I might have paid little attention to this, and indeed had begun
to reject the suggestion of a stratagem far below the dignity of love,
till suddenly a queer dream came to my remembrance, a dream of last
Sunday night, the very night after that little adventure at the timber
bridge. In that enchanting vision, I had seen Miss Fairthorn smiling
as she came to me, through a lovely meadow enamelled with primrose,
and cowslip, and bluebell, herself of course the fairest of all the
flowers. And when I approached her, behold, she was led by this same
dog, old Regulus, who conducted her gracefully to my longing arms, by
means of the long gold chain which had reposed on the stately bosom
of Mrs. Jenny Marker. I am not superstitious—as everybody vows when
recounting his dreams—but still it did seem strange.
“Lave it arl to me,” Mrs. Tapscott went on, as she saw my hesitation.
“Nort for ’e to do, but to gie me a zhillin’, vor to buy the stuff, and
nobody no wiser. Then goo avore zunrise, and vetch old Ragless. Putt
’un in a barg, and keep ’un znug in thic there old root-ouze. My stars
and garters, what a bit o’ vun ’twill be!”
CHAPTER IX.
A DOG VIOLATE.
A GREAT observer of these latter days has advised us to abstain from
deep research into the origin of our own names. Otherwise we might
become convinced of a lamentable want of lofty tone among those,
without whom we could not have been here, to show our superiority. A
vein of fine thought is at once set flowing; but for “Ragless” it would
have flowed in vain, as dogs have no surname to dwell upon.
His case was a strange one, and not without interest. Nobody in our
parish had any knowledge of his ancestry, although he had won very high
repute by biting many people who got over it. Any other dog would have
become the victim of an injudicious outcry; but “Ragless,” by making
some other good bites, established his legal right to do it, and was
now considered a very wholesome dog, though he might have a temper of
his own. But even if he had, who was to blame?
Some seven, or it may have been eight years since, Miss Coldpepper was
“rolling in her carriage” down Feltham hill, when the coachman pulled
up very sharply, and just in time to save mishap. All the boys in the
village were let loose from school, and with one accord had found a
genial pastime, which they were pursuing with the vigour of our race.
They had got a poor dog, with no father, or mother, or even policeman
to defend him, and they had put him in a barrel near a garden-gate, and
tacked in the head so that no escape was left. This being done to their
entire satisfaction, what remained except to roll him down the hill?
And this they were doing with a lofty sense of pleasure, and shouts
that almost drowned the smothered howls from within, when the carriage
came upon them, and very nearly served them right. “Let them have the
whip,” cried the lady with due feeling, when the footman had jumped
down and reported all the facts; but the ring-leaders had vanished, and
the boys who tasted lash were some innocent little ones who had only
helped in shouting. “Hand him in to me,” was her next order; and the
poor trembling animal saw pity in her eyes, and gave her face a timid
lick, which made his fortune. No claimant being found for him, the lady
took him home, and aptly called him “Regulus,” which the servants very
promptly converted into “Ragless,” reasoning well that the Italian
greyhound wore a coat, but this dog had none, save the bristles
wherewith Nature had endowed him. In the course of time he superseded
every other dog, and probably every human being, in the affection of
Miss Coldpepper.
If the early portion of his life had been unhappy, fortune had now
made him ample amends, and he should have been in amity with all
mankind. But whether from remembrance of his youthful woes, or cynical
perception of our frailties and our frauds, Regulus never acquired that
sweetness, which we look for in dogs, so much more than in ourselves.
His standard of action was strict duty beyond doubt, but a duty
too strictly limited, and confined to two persons—himself, and his
mistress. With the rest of creation he was cheerfully at war, though
tolerably neutral towards the cook, when she could bid high enough for
his consideration. These things made him deeply respected.
In person however, he was not quite a dog to arouse any vast
enthusiasm. He belonged to the order of the wiry-coated terriers, if he
was a terrier at all; for in him all the elements were so duly mingled,
that Nature could only proclaim him a dog. The colour of ginger and
that of cinnamon were blended together in his outward dog; and he went
on three legs, quite as often as on four, as much from contempt of the
earth perhaps as from feelings of physical economy. There was nothing
base about him; he had fine teeth, and he showed them, but never made
insidious assault on anybody. When he meant to bite, he did it quickly,
and expressed his satisfaction afterwards.
To seduce such a sentry, was an enterprise worthy of him, who in sweet
love’s service, and dispensing its mournful melodies, enchanted the
son of Echidna. And it may have been this sense of difficulty, and a
sporting desire to conquer it, which led me to follow up the joke, and
try my hand at a job, which had beaten the deepest dog-stealers of
Seven Dials.
All day long, I hoped to get at least a glimpse, or if bad luck
would not allow that, to hear at any rate something of that young
lady, without whom my life must grow old and barren. For this was no
school-boy affair of the fancy, nor even a light skit of early manhood,
such as fifty young fellows have out of fifty-one, and go their way
quickly after some other girl. I had never been given to such fugitive
sport; I was now in the prime of my years almost, and though I might
have looked at maidens, and thought what pretty things they were, none
had ever touched my heart till now. And “touched” is by no means the
proper word to use; it should be said plainly, that all my heart was
occupied, and possessed to its deepest fibre by a being far better, and
sweeter, and nobler than its outer and bodily owner; and that this must
abide so to its very latest pulse; as you will truly find, if you care
to hear about it.
Not a word came to me about those things which destroyed all my
attention to any other; and the dusk had stopped work—which was my
only comfort—and I sat all alone that Wednesday evening trying to get
through a little bread and cheese, but glancing more often from our
old window at the gloomy rush of the river, which was still in high
flood though some little abated. Uncle Corny was gone, to try to get
some money from people who had thriven on his hard-won fruit, and Mrs.
Tabby Tapscott had left the house early, upon some business of her own.
The house-door was open, for we had not many rogues, till the railway
came some years afterwards; and the evening was of those that smell of
beehives, and cornstacks, and horses upon their way home. At last, when
I had made up my mind to be forgotten by every one, in came Tabby, as
bright as a bun.
“Oh fai, oh fai!” she cried; “whatever be ’e doing of? Atin’ no zupper,
and zittin’ as if ’e was mazed a’most. Look ’e zee what the Lord hath
zent ’e! I was vorced to go arl the way to Hampton for ’un, for year
of they long tongues to Zunbury. If this wun’t vetch Measter Ragless,
arl I can zay is her bain’t a dog. Putt ’un down in zellar, when I’ve
larned ’e how to use ’un.”
From beneath her shawl she produced a little box, which she opened in
triumph, and the room was filled at once with a very peculiar odour
quite unknown to me. It was pungent rather than pleasant, and it made
me sneeze as well as laugh.
“You be up there by vaive o’clock, when the daisies’ eyes be openin’,
and goo to the zide door I tould ’e of”—Mrs. Tapscott knew all the
household ways at Coldpepper Hall, through a niece of hers who was
kitchen-maid, “and vang this by the coord out o’ heelin’, wi’out
titchin’ of ’un with thy vingers, and drag ’un athort the grass and the
pilm to backzide o’ the zhrubbery, and then you step out o’ zight in a
lew cornder. Ould dog be put out at zix o’clock riglar, and ’tis liable
he’ll hurn straight to ’e. Then let ’un ate a hummick, and kitch ’un up
vittily, and pop ’un into barg, and carr ’un home here, and I’ll zhow
’e what to do with ’un. But mind as her don’t scammel ’e. Her be turble
itemy.”
She gave me many other minute directions, and made me laugh so that
my spirits rose, with the hope of an interesting little farce, to
relieve the more tragic surroundings. I undertook briskly to play my
part, looking on the matter as a harmless joke; though I came to think
in course of time that the cruel theft I suffered from might partly
be a just requital for this wicked robbery. And yet it was absurd and
senseless, to make such comparison.
Without disturbing Uncle Corny, who slept very heavily, I was up before
daylight on the Thursday morning, and set out with the box and bag on
my felonious enterprise. Coldpepper Hall, or Manor, as it was called
indifferently, stood back upon some rising ground at a distance from
the river, and was sheltered well by growth of trees. There was nothing
very grand about it, and it leaned on stucco more than stone; but there
was plenty of room both within and without, and any one getting inside
the doors might say to himself, with some comfort flowing into him—“I
am sure that I need never be in any hurry here.”
The sun meant to get up a little later on, when I jumped the palings
of this old demesne, at a place where of right there should have
been a footpath, but the owner of the Manor had stopped it long ago,
perceiving the superior claims of quietude. Nobody had cared to make a
fuss about it, but enough of ancestral right remained to justify me in
getting over. Every window of the house was still asleep, and I gazed
at it with humble reverence, not as the citadel of the Coldpeppers,
but as the shrine of my sacred love. Then I chose a place of ambush in
a nest of hollies, and approaching the sallyport of Regulus, drew a
slow trail from it across the dewy grass to my lurking-place, and there
waited calmly.
Sweet visions of love from the ivory gate now favoured me with their
attendance, partly perhaps because love had not allowed me to sleep
out my sleep. Far as I am from any claim to the merits of a classical
education, I had been for some years, off and on, as a day boy at
Hampton Grammar-school, and could do a bit of Virgil pretty well,
and an ode or two of Horace. Whenever Uncle Corny came across a
Latin name he would call for me; and take it altogether, I had long
been considered the most learned young man in Sunbury. Even now I
remembered, though most of it was gone, the story of the Nymph who
placed her son in ambuscade for Proteus, and the noble description of
Regulus on parole, waving off the last kiss of his wife and babes.
Grimly he set his manly visage on the ground; and my Regulus was doing
the very same thing now.
Fat Charles had opened the door with a yawn, and sent forth that animal
of Roman type, to snuff the morning air, and perform his toilet, and
pay his orisons in general. Luxurious days had told their tale; it was
too plain that Capua had corrupted Sabine simplicity. Regulus moved
with a listless air, his desire to find whom he might bite lay dormant,
and no sense of iniquity pricked his ears, or lifted the balance of
his tail. “Let the world wag,” was the expression of his eyes, “I get
whatever I want in it, and would wag to it also, if I were not too
fat.” It appeared too certain that if I meant to catch him, I should
have to go and bag him where he stood.
But suddenly down went his nose, and his bristles flew up, and every
line of his system grew stiff as wire. He had lit on my trail near a
narrow flower-border, and it presented itself with a double aspect.
Was it the ever-fresh memory of a cat—not a cat of every-day life of
course, but a civet-cat, a musk-cat, a cat of poetic, or even fabulous
perfume? Or was it the long-drawn sweetness of a new ambrosial food,
heaven-sent to tempt his once lively, but now vainly wept-for appetite?
Whatever it might be, the line of duty was marked, and beyond evasion.
Those of our race who have made a study of dogs, for the sake of
example, declare that the best and most noble of them follow quest with
their noses well up in the air. Regulus failed in this test of merit;
he spread his nostrils affably within an inch of where the worms lay,
pricked his hairy ears, which were of divers colours, and with the
stump of his tail as the loftiest point of his person, ran a bee-line
towards me. In accordance with his fame, I made ready for a bite; but
to my surprise he paused, when he came point-blank upon me, and seemed
taken aback, as with some wholly new emotion. Regardful of the teaching
of my Nymph, I offered him a portion of the magic sop, and while he was
intent upon it slipped a stout potato-sack over his head, tumbled him
in with a push in the rear, and shouldered him.
Taking the path across the fields, I got home without meeting any one,
and found Tabby waiting for me near the root-house, which was simply
the trunk of a grand old oak, with a slab of elm fitted as a door to
it. No one was likely to visit this old storehouse at the present time
of year, and the loudest wailing of the largest dog might be carried on
in the strictest privacy. But I meant him to be happy there, and so he
was—to some extent.
For he seemed to resign himself, as if recalling his early adventure
in the barrel, and regarded his later prosperity as a dream; and
probably the charm of the drug he had swallowed acted benignly upon his
nerves. At any rate he allowed himself to be secured by a chain and a
fold-pitcher, and even licked my hand instead of snarling and showing
his teeth. Every arrangement was made for his comfort, and he lay down
as happy as a lotus-eater.
After breakfast, I took a little turn in the village, and there had
the pleasure of seeing fat Charles, the Coldpepper footman, nearly
trying to run, and looking sadly out of breath. He carried a leading
strap, with no dog to it, and under his arm was a bundle of papers.
As I approached him with kind inquiries, he drew forth his roll and
requested me to read, while he was recovering his breath a little. My
face must have turned as red as his—for this was the first theft I ever
committed, except of some apples from a rival grower, a curmudgeon who
would not tell us what they were—and I felt very queer as I read the
following, written in round hand and with many capitals.
“Reward of one guinea!—Lost, stolen, or strayed, a large brindled
terrier, known as ‘Regulus,’ the property of Miss Coldpepper of
Coldpepper Manor. He is very hard of hearing, and a little fond of
snapping. Any person bringing him home will receive the above reward,
and no questions asked. Any one detaining him will be prosecuted, with
the utmost rigour of the law.”
Charles had a score perhaps of these placards, written in sundry hands,
and spelt in divers manners, as if all the household had been set to
work.
“Oh, Mr. Kit,” he cried, for every one called me that; “there is the
devil to pay, up to the ’All, and no mistake! And all of it blamed on
me, as innocent as the babe unborn, and more so, for only obeying of my
horders. What did I do, but just turn the brute out—for a brute he is
and no mistake, though wholesome in his bite, because it is his nature
to; and no one round these parts would be tough enough in the legs to
come forrard with a view of making off with him—then I shut the door
to, for his quarter hour airing, as laid down in written horders issued
every night. And my hair stood on end when he never come back, the same
as his does, when he flies at you.”
“But surely, Charles, some of you must have some suspicion?” I asked,
with astonishment at my own vice, and wondering what I should come to,
though not far enough gone as yet to look at him; “why should the dog
go from such a good home?”
“Because he’ve had enough of it, or we of him at any rate. He ain’t
been stolen, sir; the dog have that knowledge of the world, that all
Seven Dials couldn’t lay a tack to him. And everybody knows what our
Missus is. A guinea! Who’d steal a dog for a guinea? Let alone a dog
who’ll make a pepper-caster of you. No, no, I always said Old Nick
would come for ’un, some blessed morning; and I’m jiggered if he
haven’t! But bless my soul, you mustn’t keep me loitering like this,
sir. Mother Cutthumb wouldn’t have one, to stick up in her dirty old
window, Lord knows why. Do’e take one, and stick on your Uncle’s wall;
or a couple if you will, that’s a dear young man. There’ll be thirty
more ready, by eleven o’clock.”
It occurred to me that some of them perhaps had been written by a
certain lovely warm hand, which had the most delicious way with it that
could ever be imagined of stealing in and out of muff or glove, and of
coming near another hand (as coarse as a crumpet) in a sort of way that
seemed to say—“Now wouldn’t you like to touch me?”
“Who on earth can have written all these?” I asked. “Mr. Charles, why
you must have done most of them yourself.”
“Never a blessed one; Lord save you, I’ve a’ been on my poor legs, all
the morning! Every maid that could fist a few was ordered in. But the
young leddy fisted them four at the bottom.”
Making due allowance for his miscreant coarseness, I slipped away the
lowest four, and two others; those two I stuck up on the outer face of
Uncle Corny’s red-brick wall; but the other four never were exhibited
to the public, nor even to myself, except as a very private view. And
every one of them belongs to me at the present moment. The footman
thanked me warmly for this lightening of his task, and hurried on
towards Rasp the baker, and the linendraper.
So far as my memory serves, Uncle Corny got very little work out of
me that day. I was up and down the village, till my conscience told
me that my behaviour might appear suspicious; and I even beheld the
great lady herself, driving as fast as her fat steeds could travel, to
get her placards displayed all around in the villages towards London.
Although she was not very popular, and the public seemed well pleased
with her distress, I felt more than half inclined to take her dear love
back, and release him at his own door after dark. But Tabby Tapscott
said, and she had a right to speak,—“Don’t ’e be a vule now, Measter
Kit. Carr’ the job droo, wanst ’a be about ’un.” And just before dark
I met Mrs. Marker, and somebody with her, who made my heart jump. They
had clearly been sent as a forlorn hope, to go the round of the shops
where the bills had been posted. I contrived to ask tenderly whether
the dog was found.
“Not he, and never will be,” replied the housekeeper. “There are so
many people who owe the cur a grudge. Why, he even flies at me, if I
dare to look at him. Miss Kitty, tell Mr. Kit what your opinion is.”
“I fear indeed that somebody must have shot him with an air-gun. I am
very fond of dogs, when they are at all good dogs; but very few could
praise poor Regulus, except—except as we praise mustard. And I heard of
a case very like it in London.”
Her voice was so silvery sweet, and she dropped it (as I thought) so
sadly at that last word, that I could not help saying, although I was
frightened at my own tone while I said it,—
“Surely you are not going back to-morrow? Do say that you are not going
to leave us all to-morrow.”
Before she could answer, the housekeeper said sharply—“She was to have
gone to-morrow, Mr. Orchardson. But now Miss Coldpepper has made up her
mind to send for Captain Fairthorn the first thing to-morrow, unless
she recovers the dog meanwhile. Not that he knows anything about dogs,
but he is so scientific that he is sure to find out something. Good
night, sir! Come, Kitty, how late we are!”
Is it needful to say that Regulus indued a tunic of oak that night?
CHAPTER X.
AN UPWARD STROKE.
THE character of Captain Fairthorn—better known to the public now as
Sir Humphrey Fairthorn, but he had not as yet conferred dignity upon
Knighthood—will be understood easily by those who have the knowledge
to understand it. But neither Uncle Corny, nor myself—although we were
getting very clever now at Sunbury—could manage at all to make him
out at first, though it must have been a great deal easier then, than
when we came to dwell upon him afterwards. All that he said was so
perfectly simple, and yet he was thinking of something else all the
time; and everything he did was done as if he let someone else do it
for him. I cannot make any one understand him, for the plainest of all
plain reasons—I could never be sure that I myself understood him. And
this was not at all because he meant to be a mystery to any one; for
that was the last thing he would desire, or even believe himself able
to be. The reason that kept him outside of our reason—so far as I can
comprehend it—was that he looked at no one of the many things to be
feared, to be desired, to be praised, or blamed, from the point of view
we were accustomed to.
I had thought that my Uncle Cornelius (though he was sharp enough
always, and sometimes too sharp, upon me and my doings) was upon the
whole the most deliberate and easy-going of mortals; but a mere glance
at Professor Fairthorn showed how vastly the breadth of mankind was
beyond me. To look at his face, without thinking about him, was enough
to compose any ordinary mind, and charm away any trivial worries; but
to listen to his voice, and observe him well, and meet his great eyes
thoughtfully, and to catch the tranquility of his smile, this was
sufficient to make one ashamed of paltry self-seeking and trumpery
cares, and to lead one for the moment into larger ways. And yet he was
not a man of lofty visions, poetic enthusiasm, or ardent faith in the
grandeur of humanity. I never heard him utter one eloquent sentence,
and I never saw him flush with any fervour of high purpose. He simply
seemed to do his work, because it was his nature, and to have no more
perception of his influence over others, than they had of the reason
why he owned it. So far as we could judge, he was never thinking of
himself; and that alone was quite enough to make him an enigma.
Now people may suppose, and very naturally too, that my warm admiration
of the daughter impelled me to take an over-lofty view of the father.
People would be quite wrong, however, for in that view I was not alone;
every one concurred, and even carried it still further; and certainly
there was no personal resemblance to set me on that special track.
Professor—or as I shall call him henceforth, because he preferred it,
Captain Fairthorn—was not of any striking comeliness. His face was very
broad, and his mouth too large, and his nose might be said almost to
want re-blocking, and other faults might have been found by folk who
desire to talk picturesquely. But even the hardest of mankind to please
(in everything but self-examination) would have found no need, and
small opportunity, for improvement in his eyes and forehead. I know my
own stupidity, or at least attempt to do so, when it is not altogether
too big; yet I dare to deny that it had anything to do with the charm I
fell under in this man’s presence. And this is more than proved by the
fact that Uncle Corny—as dry an old Grower as was ever frozen out—could
resist the large quietude of our visitor, even less than I could.
For the Captain had been sent for, sure enough, about a little business
so far below his thoughts. And when he came into our garden, to thank
us for all we had done towards discovery of the thief, and especially
to thank me for my valiant services to his daughter, it is no
exaggeration at all to say that I wished the earth would hide me from
his great grey eyes. Under their kindly and yet distant gaze, I felt
what a wretched little trickster I had been; and if he had looked at me
for another moment, I must have told him everything, for the sake of
his forgiveness. But he, unhappily for himself, if he could be unhappy
about little things, measured his fellow-men by his own nature, and
suspected nothing until it had been proved. And at that very moment, he
caught sight of something, which absorbed him in a scientific zeal we
could not follow.
“A young tree dead!” he exclaimed; “and with all its foliage hanging!
Three other young trees round it injured on the sides towards it. When
did you observe this? Had you that storm on Saturday?”
“Yes, sir, it did rain cats and dogs,” my Uncle answered after
thinking. “We said that it might break the long bad weather; and it
seems to have done it at last, thank the Lord. There was a lot of
lightning, but not so very nigh.”
“Then no trees were struck from above, not even that old oak, which
seems to have been struck some years ago? May I cross the border, and
examine that young tree? Thank you; have you ever known a case like
this before?”
They passed very dangerously near the old oak; and I trembled, as
that villain of a Regulus showed his base want of gratitude by a
long howl; but luckily neither of them heard it. I went to the door,
and threatened him with instant death, and then followed to hear
the discussion about the tree. “You have known it before,” Captain
Fairthorn was saying; “but not for some years, and if you remember
right, not when the storms were particularly near. I have heard of
several similar cases, but never had the fortune to see one till now.
You perceive that the life is entirely gone. The leaves are quite
black, but have a narrow yellow margin. Forgive me for troubling you,
Mr. Orchardson, but when did you notice this condition of the tree?”
“Well, sir, it kept on raining up till dark on Saturday; and I did not
chance to come by here on Sunday. But on Monday morning it was as you
see it now—gone off all of a heap, and no cause for it. As healthy a
young tree as you would wish to look at—a kind of pear we call Beurré
Diel. Dead as a door-nail, you can see. Kit, get a spade, and dig it up
for Professor.”
“Thank you, not yet. I was going home to-night, but this is a matter I
must examine carefully. That is to say, with your kind permission. We
use big words, Mr. Orchardson, that sound very learned; and we write
very positively from other people’s observation. But one case, that
we have seen with our own eyes, and searched into on the spot to the
utmost of our power, is worth fifty we have only read of. You will
think me very troublesome, I greatly fear; and of gardening matters I
know less than nothing. But you will oblige me more than I can say, if
you will let me come again, and try to learn some little. You know what
has killed this tree, I presume.”
“No, sir, I have not got any sense at all about it,” my Uncle answered
stoutly; “’Tis the will of the Lord, when a tree goes off; or if it is
the doing of any chap of mine, he goes off too, and there’s an end of
it. Something amiss with these roots, I take it.”
His boots were tipped with heavy iron, and he was starting for a good
kick at the dead young tree, when I ran between, and said, “Uncle, let
it stay just as it is, for a day or two. It can’t draw anything out of
the ground; and this gentleman would like to examine it, as it is.”
“Young gentleman, that is the very point.” Captain Fairthorn, as he
spoke, looked kindly at me; “if I could be permitted to have my own
way, I would have a little straw shaken round it to-night, as lightly
as may be, without any foot coming nearer than can be helped to it.
That will keep the surface as it is, from heavy rain, or any other
accident. Then if I may be indulged in my crotchets, I would bring my
daughter, who draws correctly, to make a careful sketch and colour
it. And after that is done, and I have used my treble lens at every
point of divergence, I would ask as a very great favour to be allowed
to open the ground myself, and trace the roots from their terminal
fibres upwards. I would not dare to ask all this for my own sake, Mr.
Orchardson; but because we may learn something from it of a thing as
yet little understood—what is called the terrestrial discharge. We get
more and more into big words, you see. You have known trees destroyed
in this way before. It only happens on certain strata.”
“It has happened here, sir, for generations,” said my Uncle, trying
hard to look scientific. “The thunderstorm blight is what we call it.
We call anything a blight, when the meaning is beyond us. Seems as if
some trees was subject to it. I never knew an apple-tree took this way.
But pear-trees have been so, times out of mind, though never none but
the younger ones. A few years agone, I can’t say how many, seventeen
young pear-trees were killed outright, ten in one part of the grounds,
and seven in another, and not a mark to be found on one of them. All as
dead as door-nails when we come to look at them. A blight, or a blast,
that’s what we call it. And there’s nothing to do but to plant another.”
“A truly British view of the question,” Captain Fairthorn answered
with his sweet smile, which threw me into a glow by its likeness to a
smile yet lovelier; “I wish I could tell you how I feel for the English
fruit-grower in his hard struggle with the climate, the dealers, and
the foreign competition. It is a hard fight always, much worse than the
farmers; and a season like this is like knocking a drowning man on the
head. And yet you are so brave that you never complain!”
The truth of these words, and the tone of good will, made a deep
impression upon both of us, especially upon my Uncle, who had to find
the money for everything.
“No, sir, we never complain,” he replied; “we stand up to the seasons
like our own trees, and we keep on hoping for a better time next year.
But there are very few that know our difficulties, and folk that can
scarcely tell a pear from an apple go about the country, spouting and
writing by the yard, concerning of our ignorance. Let them try it,
is all I say, let them try it, if they are fools enough. Why bless
my heart, there’s a fellow preaching now about sorting of apples, as
if we had not done it before he sucked his coral! But I won’t go on
maundering—time will show. Glad to see you, sir, at any time, and if
I should happen to be about the grounds, my nephew Kit will see to
everything you want. What time shall we see you to-morrow, sir?”
We were walking to the gate by this time, and Captain Fairthorn pulled
out his watch. I observed that he had a true sailor’s walk, and a
sailor’s manner of gazing round, and the swing of his arms was nautical.
“What a time I have kept you!” he exclaimed with simple wonder; “and I
have forgotten altogether my proper business. I was to have tried some
special means, for recovering the dog we were speaking of. Unless he
is heard of to-night, I shall have little time to spare to-morrow. I
am bound to do all I can for my good hostess. But to think that a dog,
and a dog of no benevolence—according to my daughter—should stand in
the way of this most interesting matter! However, I will do my best all
the morning, and try to be with you by eleven o’clock. If I cannot come
then, you will know what the cause is. But even for the best of dogs, I
must not drop the subject. Now I thank you most heartily. Good-night!”
“What a wonderful man!” was my Uncle’s reflection; “to know all about
trees, and thunderstorms, and dogs, and Covent Garden! And yet to let a
woman twist him round her thumb, and tread on his child, and turn his
pockets inside out! Come along, Kit, I am pretty nigh starved.”
And this wonderful man added yet another crown to his glory that very
same night, as I heard. For to him, and his wisdom, was set down the
credit of a joyful and extraordinary event.
A young man, slouching with a guilty conscience and a bag on his back,
might have been seen—if his bad luck had prevailed—approaching a fine
old mansion craftily, when the shadows stole over the moon, if there
was one. Then an accurate observer might have noticed a quadruped of
somewhat downcast mien issuing with much hesitation from a sack, and
apparently reluctant to quit his guardian, who had evidently won his
faithful heart. But receiving stern orders to make himself scarce, he
might next be seen gliding to a gloomy door, uplifting wistfully one
ancient paw scraping at the paint where it had been scraped before,
and then throwing his head back, and venting his long-pent emotions
in a howl of inexpressible sadness. The door was opened, the guardian
vanished with suspicious promptitude, lights were seen glancing in a
long range of windows, an outbreak of feminine voices moved the air,
and after a shrill and unnatural laugh, came a sound as of hugging, and
a cry of—“Run, for your life, for his liver, Jane!”
CHAPTER XI.
THE FINE ARTS.
WHEN the butter that truly is butterine, and the “Cheddar” of the Great
Republic, are gracefully returned to our beloved grocer, with a feeble
prayer for amendment, what does he say? Why, the very same thing that
he said upon the last occasion—“Indeed! all our customers like it
extremely; it is the very thing we have had most praise for; and this
is the very first complaint.”
In like manner I received for answer (when I fain would have sent back
to that storekeeper Love a few of the sensations I had to pay for) that
everybody praised them, and considered them ennobling, and was only
eager once again to revel in their freshness. And to tell the truth,
when my own time came for looking calmly back at them, I became one of
the larger public, and would have bought them back at any price, as an
old man regards his first caning.
However I did not know that now, and could not stop to analyze my own
feelings, which might for the moment perhaps be described as deep
longings for a height never heard of. All the every-day cares, and
hide-bound pothers of the people round me, were as paltry pebbles below
my feet; and I longed to be alone, to think of one other presence, and
only one.
Uncle Corny, in his downright fashion, called me as mad as a March
hare; but I was simply sorry for him, and kept out of his way, and
tried to work. Tabby Tapscott became a plague, by poking common jokes
at me; and the family men on the premises seemed to have a grin among
themselves, when my back was turned. The only man I could bear to work
with, was the long one we called “Selsey Bill,” because he came from
that part of Sussex, and resembled that endless projection. He was
said to have seventeen lawful children—enough to keep any man silent.
Moreover he was beyond all doubt the ugliest man in the parish; which
may have added to my comfort in his mute society, as a proof of the
facility of wedlock. The sharp click of his iron heel on the treddle of
his spade, the gentle sigh that came sometimes, as he thought of how
little he would find for supper, and the slow turn of his distorted
eyes as he looked about for the wheelbarrow—all these by some deep law
of nature soothed my dreamy discontent.
But what was there fairly to grumble at? If I chose to cast my eyes
above me, and set my affections out of reach, reason could not be
expected to undo unreason. And hitherto, what luck had led me, what
good fortune fed me with the snatches of warm rapture! Even my own
wickedness had prospered, and never been found out. Surely the fates
were on my side, and the powers of the air encouraged me.
What a lovely morning it was now, for the fairest of beings to walk
abroad, and for me to be walking in the same direction! Although the
earth was sodden still, and the trees unripe with summer drip, and the
autumnal roses hung their sprays with leathery balls, instead of bloom;
yet the air was fresh, and the sky bright blue, and the grass as green
as in the May month; and many a plant, that is spent and withered after
a brilliant season, was opening its raiment to tempt the sun, and
budding into gems for him to polish. The spring, that had forgotten
tryst with earth this year, and been weeping for it ever since, was
come at last, if only for one tender glance through the russet locks of
autumn. Why should not man, who suffers with the distresses of the air
and earth, take heart again, and be cheerful with them; ay, and enjoy
his best condition—that of loving, and being loved?
There was enough to tempt the gloomiest, and most timid mortal, to make
his venture towards such bliss, when Kitty Fairthorn, blushing softly,
and glancing as brightly as the sunshine twinkles through a bower of
wild rose, came along to me alone, where I stood looking out for her
father. Although I had been thinking bravely all the things set down
above, not one of them kept faith, or helped me to the courage of their
reasoning. Instead of that, my heart fell low, and my eyes (which had
been full of hope) would scarcely dare to render to it the picture of
which it held so many, yet never could manage to hold enough. She saw
my plight, and was sorry for it, and frightened perhaps both of that
and herself.
“It is so unlucky,” she said, without looking any more than good
manners demanded at me; “last night I began to think that all was going
to be quite nice again; for that very peculiar dog, that my aunt is
so strongly attached to, just came back; as if he had only gone for a
little airing on his own account, and so as to have all the road to
himself. He was as fat as ever, but oh so gentle! And his reputation
is not quite that. Perhaps you have heard of him. He seems to be well
known.”
“I think I have heard of him. Why, of course it must be the dog that
was mentioned in the hand-bills! We had two of them upon our wall. Mrs.
Marker was speaking of him, when you passed on Thursday, only I could
not attend to _her_.”
“Then you ought to have done so,” she replied, as if without any idea
of my inner thought; “for there has been the greatest excitement about
it. But I suppose, inside these walls, and among these trees and lovely
flowers, you scarcely know what excitement is.”
“Don’t I, then? Oh, I wish I didn’t!” I replied with a deeply sad look
at her; “it is you, who are so much above all this, who can have no
idea what real—real—a sort of despair, I mean, is like. But I beg your
pardon; you mustn’t notice me.”
“How can I help being sorry for you?” she asked very softly, when our
eyes had met. “You have been so good to me, and saved my life. But of
course I have no right to ask what it is. And I know that the crops
are always failing. And now you have a dear little tree quite dead. My
father has sent me, to try to make a careful drawing of it, because it
was struck by some extraordinary lightning. And the worst of it is,
that he has been called away, and can hardly be back till the evening.
He has invented a new conductor, for ships of the Navy, that are to
have iron all over and under them, and therefore want protecting. He
had a letter from the Admiralty this morning.”
“Oh dear, what a pity! What a sad loss!” I replied. “I am afraid it
will take us so much longer, without having him here to direct us. And
I doubt if my Uncle Cornelius will be able to be with us, half the
time.”
“Oh that is just what I was to say!” her tone was demure, but her
glance quite bright; “on no account am I to interfere with the valuable
time of Mr. Orchardson. Indeed I shall not trouble any one. If I may
only be shown the poor tree, and then be allowed to fetch a chair, or
a stool, or even a hassock, and then be told where to find some clear
water, and perhaps be reminded when the time is one o’clock, I am sure
I shall do beautifully.”
“You are certain to do beautifully; there is no other way that you
could do. No one shall be allowed to disturb you; I should like to see
any one dare to come near you except—except—”
“Except Mrs. Tapscott. You see I have heard of her. And it is so kind
of you to think of her. Then I shall be quite happy.”
“Mrs Tapscott indeed! No, except me myself. I shall lock that
chattering woman in the back kitchen, or how could you ever do a
stroke? I am sure it will take you a very long time. There are three
other trees that you ought to draw, if you wish to show exactly what
the lightning did. I hardly see how you can finish to-day. If you
leave off at one o’clock, it will be utterly impossible. And my Uncle
Cornelius will be in such a rage, if you think of going back without
anything to eat.”
“How very kind everybody is down here! It is the very nicest place I
ever have been in. It will be so miserable to go away. I am not at all
accustomed to such kindness.” Her lovely eyes glistened as she began
to speak, and a tear was in each of them as she turned away. I felt as
if I could have cried myself, to see such an innocent angel so sad.
But I durst not ask any questions, and was bound to go on as if I knew
nothing.
“What a little drawing-block you have!” I said; “you ought to have one
at least twice that size. Do let me lend you one. I have three or four;
and you can choose which you like of them. And my pencils too, and my
colour-box. There are none to be had in the village. If you will rest
a moment in this little harbour, I will get them all, and a chair for
you.”
It did not take me long to let Tabby Tapscott know, that if she dared
even to look out of the window, she would mourn for it all the rest of
her life; moreover that she must not let anybody know in what direction
I was gone, even if his Grace of C. G. himself came down, to grant
us the best stall he had for ever. Tabby winked with both eyes, and
inquired if I took her for a “vule, or a zany, or a coochey hosebird,”
and said she would have “zummut good for nummatin,” by one o’clock. And
as I hurried back to the bower, there came almost into my very hand
the loveliest _Souvenir d’un Ami_ rose that ever lifted glossy pink,
to show the richer glow within. This rose I cut with the tender touch
which a gardener uses boldly, and laid it on my drawing-block, so that
each exquisite tinge and fringe and curve of radiant leaflet, as well
as the swanlike bend of stalk and soft retirement of sepal, led up to
the crowning beauty of the bloom above them.
“I never saw anything to equal that,” said one who might outvie the
whole; “who can have taught you, Mr. Kit, such knowledge of what is
beautiful?”
She had called me by my village-name; and more than that, she had let
me know that she looked upon me as a rustic. I saw my advantage, and
was deeply hurt, that she might make it up again.
“You are right,” I answered, turning back, as if in sad abasement;
“Miss Fairthorn, you are right indeed in supposing that I know nothing.
However, I am able to carry a chair, and to wait upon you humbly. Let
us go to the tree; and at one o’clock, I will venture to come, and tell
the time.”
“Oh, I never meant it at all like that! I could never have imagined you
would take me up so. I seem to say the wrong thing always, as I am told
every day at home. I hoped that it was not true; but now—now, I have
given offence to you, you, who have been so good to me. I could never
attempt to draw to-day. I will tell my father that I was rude to you,
and he will send somebody else to do it.” I felt that this would have
served me right; but I was not in love with justice.
“I implore you not to do that,” I said; “really that would be too
hard upon me. Why should you wish to be hard upon me? I am trying to
think what I have done to deserve it. You are worse than the ground
lightning.”
“Then I suppose I killed your trees. I am not going now to be silly any
more. Tell me what to do, to show that you have quite forgiven me. You
know that I never meant to vex you.” She looked at me so sweetly, that
I could only meet her eyes.
“I declare it will be one o’clock, before I have done a thing. What
will my father say? And I must be so careful. I am sure that you could
do it better, better much than I can. Will you do it, while I go and
look for Mr. Orchardson? I like him very much, and his fruit is so
delicious. No, you won’t relieve me? Well, shake hands, and be good
friends again. May I have this lovely rose, to give my father something
beautiful, when he comes back from London?”
I saw that she was talking fast, that my prudence might come back to
me. She knew as well from my long gaze, that I loved her, and must
always love her, as I to the bottom of my heart knew it. And she did
not seem offended at me, only blushed, and trembled, just as if some
important news were come (perhaps by telegraph), and she wondered while
she opened it.
For me this was enough, and more almost than I could hope for—to let
her keep this knowledge in her mind, and dwell upon it; until if happy
angels came—as they gladly would—to visit her, the sweetest of them all
might fan it, with his wings, into her heart.
“Halloa, Kit my lad!” cried Uncle Corny, when he came to dinner, and
my darling was gone with her sketch half done, and I had only dared
to hover near her. “Sweetheart been here, they tell me. What a leary
chap you are! When I heard Cap’en was gone to Town, I thought it was
all over. I’ve been wanting you up at packing-shed, for the last
three hours. No more good work left in you. That’s what come of sweet
hearting.”
“Uncle Corny, if you must be vulgar, because you have no proper sense
of things, the least you can do is not to holloa, as if you were
driving a truck of rags and bones.”
“Hoity, toity! Here’s a go! One would think there had been no courting
done, since Adam and Eve, till your time. Too hot to hold—that’s my
opinion. And as for rags and bones, young fellow, that’s just about
what it will come to. The girl won’t have sixpence, by what I hear;
though there’s lots of tin in the family. I know a deal more than you
do about them. Don’t pop the question without my leave.”
What a way to put it!
CHAPTER XII.
AN EMPTY PILE.
ALTHOUGH no token had passed between us, and no currency been set
up, of that universal interchange, which my Uncle and Tabby termed
“courting,” I felt a very large hope now, that the goods I had to
offer,—quiet as they were, and solid, without any spangle—were on
their way to be considered, and might be regarded kindly. For while I
knew how poor I was, in all the more graceful attributes, and little
gifted with showy powers of discourse, or the great world’s glitter,
void moreover of that noble cash which covers every other fault, yet
my self-respect and manhood told me that I was above contempt. Haughty
maidens might, according to their lights, look down on me; let them
do so, it would never hurt me; I desired no haughtiness. That which
had taken my heart, and led it, with no loss to its own value, was
sweetness, gentleness, loving-kindness, tender sense of woman’s nature,
and the joy of finding strength in man. For though I am not the one
to say it, I knew that I was no weakling, either in body, or in mind.
Slow of wit I had always been, and capable only of enjoying the greater
gifts of others; but as I plodded on through life, I found it more and
more the truth, that this is the better part to have. I enjoy my laugh
tenfold, because it is a thing I could never have made for myself.
But for a long time yet to come, there was not much laughter before
me. One of the many griefs of love is, that it stops the pores of
humour, and keeps a man clogged with earnestness. At the same time, he
becomes the Guy, and butt for all the old jokes that can be discharged
by clumsy fellows below contempt. None of these hit him, to any good
purpose, because he is ever so far above them; but even the smell of
their powder is nasty, as a whiff across his incense.
For eight and forty hours, it was my good fortune to believe myself
happy, and thereby to be so; though I went to church twice on Sunday,
without seeing any one except the parson, who was very pleasant. But
suddenly on Monday a few words were uttered; and I became no better
than a groan.
“Her be gan’,” were the words of Mrs. Tapscott.
“Tabby, what the Devil do you mean?” I asked, though not at all
accustomed to strong language.
“I tull ’e, her be gan’. Thee never zee her no more. Step-moother
’a been down, and vetched her.” Tabby herself looked fit to cry;
although there was a vile kind of triumph in her eyes, because she had
prophesied it.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I asked slowly, and as if I were preparing
to destroy her, “that Miss Fairthorn has been taken away, without even
saying ‘Good-bye’ to me?”
“Can’t tull nort about no Good-bais. Her maight ’a left ’un for ’e. Her
be gan to Lunnon town, and no mistake. Zeed the girt coach myzell, and
the maid a-crying in her.”
Without thinking properly what I was about, I clapped on a hat, and
laid hold of a big stick, and set forth upon the London road; not
the Hampton road which runs along the river, but the upper road from
Halliford, which takes a shorter course through Twickenham. Tabby ran
after me, shouting—“Be ’e mazed? If ’e could vlai, ’e could never
overget her. Be gan’ dree hour, or more, I tull ’e.”
But in spite of that fearful news, I strode on. And I might have
gone steadily on till I got to London—for there was the track of the
wheels quite plain, the wheels of Miss Coldpepper’s heavy carriage—if
I had not met our “Selsey Bill,” the Bill Tompkins whom I may have
mentioned. My Uncle had sent him to Twickenham, I think, to see about
some bushel-baskets; and he was swinging home with a dozen on his head,
which made his columnar height some fifteen feet; for he was six and
three quarters, without his hat.
In reply to my fervid inquiries, he proceeded, in a most leisurely yet
impressive manner, to explain that he had not met the carriage, because
it had passed him on his way to Twickenham, and might be expected back
by now; as Miss Coldpepper never allowed her horses to go beyond
Notting-Hill Gate, whence her guests must go on other wheels into
London. I took half of his baskets (for he was too long to be strong)
and so returned to my uncle’s gate with half a dozen “empties” on my
head, and a heart more empty than the whole of them.
This was almost a trifle compared to the grief that befell me later
on—which has left its mark on me till I die—for though cast down
terribly, I was not crushed, and no miserable doubts came to rend me in
twain. Though my darling was gone, I could tell where she was, or at
any rate could find out in a day or two. And it was clear that she had
been carried off against her will; otherwise how could our Tabby see
her crying? It is a shameful and cruel thing, and of the lowest depths
of selfishness, to rejoice at the tears of an angel; and I did my very
utmost to melt into softest sympathy. To be certain of the need for
this, I examined Mrs. Tapscott most carefully as to the evidence.
“I zeed ’un wi’ my own heyesight; girt big drops,” she said, “the zize
of any hazzlenits. Rackon, thee mouth be wattering, Master Kit, vor to
kiss ’un awai.”
This may have been true, but was not at all the proper way to express
it. The only thing wrong on my part was, that a lively thrill of
selfish hope ran down the veins of sympathy. She wept—she wept! Why
should she weep, except at having left behind her some one whom she
would most sadly miss? Could it be Miss Coldpepper? Happily that was
most unlikely, from the lady’s character. Mrs. Marker? No, I think
not—a very decent sort of woman, but not at all absorbing. Uncle Corny?
Out of the question. A highly excellent and upright man; but a hero of
nails, and shreds, and hammers, and green-baize aprons, and gooseberry
knives. Ah, but Uncle Corny has a nephew—
“Kit, I am sorry for you, my boy;” he came up to me, as I was thinking
thus, even before he went to his tobacco-jar; “you are hard hit, my
lad; I can see it in your face; and you shall have no more chaff from
me. Very few girls, such as they are now, deserve that any straight
and honest young chap, like you, should be down in the mouth about
them. But your mother did, Kit, your mother did. And I am not sure but
that this Miss Fairthorn does; though you can’t judge a girl by her
bonnet. But I am not going to be overcobbed like this. If you have set
your heart upon the girl, and she on you,—so be it, Amen! You shall be
joined together.”
My Uncle came up, as he spoke, and looked with friendly intentions at
me, and yet with a medical gaze and poise, which inclined me to be
indignant. “It takes two parties to make an agreement,” I said, neither
gratefully nor graciously.
“S’pose I don’t know that, after all the robberies taken out of me? But
I know what I say, and I tell you, that if your mind is set upon this
matter, you shall have it your own way. Only first of all, be sure that
you know your mind. Few people do, in this ‘age of invention’—as they
call it, without inventing much, except lies—if you are sure that you
know your mind, speak out, and have done with it.”
I stood up and looked at him, without a word. All my gratitude for his
good-will was lost in my wrath at his doubt of my steadfastness.
“Very well,” he said, “you need not stare, as if you were thunder and
lightning. When you think about it, you will see that I was right; for
this is no easy business, Kit, and not to be gone into, like a toss for
sixpence. I have spoiled you, ever since you were a child; because you
had no father, and no mother. You have had your own way wonderfully;
and that makes it difficult for you to know your mind.”
If that were the only obstacle, I ought to have the finest knowledge
of my mind; for the times had been very far asunder, when I had been
allowed to follow my own way. But I knew that Uncle Corny took the
other view, and he had this to bear him out, that he always managed
that my way should be his way. It was not the time to argue out that
question now; and one of my ways most sternly barred was that of going
counter to him in opinion. So I only muttered that he had been very
good to me.
“I have,” he continued; “and you are bound to feel it. Five shillings
a week you have been receiving, ever since you could be trusted to lay
in a tree; as well as your board and lodging, and your boots, and all
except tailoring. Very well, if you set up a wife, you will look back
with sorrow on these days of affluence. But to warn you is waste of
words, in your present frame. Only I wish you to hear both sides. I
have no time now; but if you like to come to me, when I have done up my
books, I will tell you a little story.”
This I promised very readily; not only to keep him on my side, but
because I saw that he knew much, not generally known in Sunbury, of
the family matters which concerned my love, and therefore myself, even
more than my own. And while he was busy with his books, which he kept
in a fashion known only to himself, I strolled down the village in
the feeble hope of picking up some tidings. It was pleasant to find,
without saying much, that our neighbours felt a very keen and kind
interest in our doings. There was scarcely a woman who was not ready to
tell me a great deal more than she knew; and certainly not one who did
not consider me badly treated. Miss Fairthorn, by her sweet appearance
and gentle manner, had made friends in every shop she entered; and the
story of her sudden and compulsory departure became so unsatisfactory,
that deep discredit befell our two policemen. But the only new point
I discovered, bearing at all upon my case, was gained from Widow
Cutthumb. This good lady was now in bitter feud with the house of
Coldpepper, although she made it clear that the loss of their custom
had nothing to do with it, being rather a benefit than otherwise.
She told me, with much dramatic force, some anecdotes of Miss Monica,
the younger daughter of Squire Nicholas, and a daughter by no means
dutiful. She had married, against her father’s wish, the Honourable
Tom Bulwrag, a gambler, and a drunkard, and, if reports were true,
a forger. As this appears in my Uncle’s tale, it need not have been
referred to, but to show that the lady’s early records were not fair
among us. After impressing upon me the stern necessity of silence,
as to these and other facts, Mrs. Cutthumb ended with a practical
exhortation, dependent upon the question whether I had a spark
of manhood in me. I replied that I hoped so, but as yet had few
opportunities for testing it.
“Then, Mr. Kit,” she proceeded, with her head thrown back and one fat
hand clenched, “there is only one thing for you to do—to run away with
the young lady. Don’t stop me, if you please, Master Kit; you have
no call to look as if I spoke treason. Better men than you has done
it; and better young ladies has had to bear it. It is what the Lord
has ordained, whenever He has made two innocent young people, and the
wicked hold counsel together against them. You go home, and dwell upon
it. Sure as I am talking to you now, you’ll be sorry till your dying
day, if you don’t behave a little spirity. Do you think I would ever
give such advice to a wild young man with no principles, to a fellow I
mean like Sam Henderson? But I know what you are well enough; and every
girl in Sunbury knows. ’Tis not for me to praise you to your face; but
you are that solid and thick-built, that a woman might trust you with
her only daughter. And that makes you slow to look into women. If I may
be so bold to ask, how do you take the meaning of it for that sweet
Miss Kitty to be fetched home so promiscuous?”
“Mrs. Cutthumb,” I answered, with a penetrating look, to show her that
she underrated me, “I fear it must be that some mischief-maker has
written up to say that I, that I—you know what I mean, Mrs. Cutthumb.”
“Yes, sir, and you means well so far, and everything straight-forrard;
but you ain’t got near the heart of it, Master Kit; nor your Uncle
neither, I’ll be bound. Wants a woman’s wits for that.”
“What on earth do you mean? It is bad enough. I don’t see how even a
woman can make it any worse than it is. Speak out what you mean, since
you have begun.”
“Well, sir, it is no more than this, and you mustn’t be put out by it.
Suppose there is another young gent in the case—a young gent in London,
they means her to marry.”
The goodnatured woman looked so knowing, that I thought she must have
solid proof; and perhaps the deed was done already. I tried to laugh,
but could only stare, and wonder what was coming next.
“Oh, Master Kit,” she went on with her apron to her eyes, or she was
kind of heart, “you used to come, and play down here, when your head
wasn’t up to the counter. And I had my Cutthumb then, and he gave you a
penny, because you was so natural. Don’t you be struck of a heap like
that, or I shall come to think that all women is wicked. It was only a
bad thought of my own. I have nothing to go by, if I were to die this
minute; and the same thought might come across any one. Don’t think no
more about it, there’s a dear young man. Only keep your eyes open, and
if you can manage to come across that stuck-up Jenny Marker, the least
she can do, after saving her life, is to tell you all she knows, and to
take your part. But don’t you believe more than half she says. I never
would say a single word against her, there’s no call for that, being
known as she is to every true woman in Sunbury; but if she’s not a
double-faced gossiping hussy, as fancies that a gold chain makes a lady
of her, and very likely no gold after all, why I should deserve to be
taken up, and there’s no one has ever said that of me.”
Here Mrs. Cutthumb began to cry, at the thought of being taken to the
station; and I saw that time alone could comfort her, yet ventured to
say a few earnest words, about her position and high character. And
presently she was quite brisk again.
“Why bless my heart,” she said, looking about for a box of matches on
the onion shelf; “I ought to have stuck up my candle in the window,
pretty well half an hour agone. Not that no customer comes after dark,
nor many by daylight for that matter. Ah, Master Kit, I am a poor
lone widow; but you are the nicest young man in Sunbury; and I wish
you well, with all my heart I do. And mind one thing, whatever you
do; if you ever carries out what I was saying, here’s the one as will
help you to it, in a humble way, and without much money. A nice front
drawing-room over the shop, bedroom, and chamber-suit to match. Only
twelve shillings a week for it all, and the use of the kitchen fire for
nothing. And the window on the landing looks on the river Thames, and
the boats, and the barges, and the fishermen. Oh, Mr. Kit, with Mrs.
Kitty now and then, it would be like the Garden of Eden.”
CHAPTER XIII.
MY UNCLE BEGINS.
THAT last suggestion was most delicious, but it came too late to
relieve the pang of the horrible idea first presented. I could not help
wondering at my own slow wit, which ought to have told me that such a
treasure as my heart was set upon, must have been coveted long ere now,
by many with higher claims to it. Was it likely that I, a mere stupid
fellow, half a rustic, and of no position, birth or property, should
be preferred to the wealthy, accomplished, and brilliant men, who were
sure to be gathering round such a prize? Black depression overcame me;
even as the smoke of London, when the air is muggy, falls upon some
country village, wrapping in funereal gloom the church, the trees, the
cattle by the pond, and the man at the window with his newspaper. I
could not see my way to eat much supper, and my Uncle was crusty with
me.
“Can’t stand this much more,” he said, as he finished the beer that was
meant for me; “a plague on all girls, and the muffs as well that go
spooning after them! Why, the Lord might just as well never have made
a Williams pear, or a cat’s-head codlin. S’pose you don’t even want to
hear my story; you don’t deserve it anyhow. Better put it off, till you
look brighter, for there isn’t much to laugh at in it, unless it is the
dunder-headed folly of a very clever man.”
However, I begged him to begin at once; for he had hinted that his tale
would throw some light on the subject most important in the world to
me; so I filled him five pipes that he might not hunt about, and made
his glass of rum and water rather strong, and put the black stool for
his legs to rest on, and drew the red curtains behind his head, for the
evening was chilly, and the fire cheerful.
“Like to do things for myself,” he muttered, while accepting these
little duties. “Nobody else ever does them right, though meaning it
naturally for the best. Well, you want to hear about those people; and
you shall hear all I know, my lad; though I don’t pretend to know half
of all; but what I know I do know, and don’t talk at random, like the
old women here. We’ll take them in branches—male and female—until they
unite, or pretend to do it; but a very poor splice; the same as you
see, if you send for Camelias to Portugal, a great clumsy stick-out
at the heel of the graft, and the bark grinning open all along. Bah!
There’s no gardeners like Englishmen, though we run ’em down for fear
of boasting. Did you ever hear why Professor Fairthorn would ever so
much rather be called ‘Captain,’ though ‘Professor’ sounds ever so much
better?”
“Perhaps he has a legal right to be called ‘Captain,’ but not to the
other title. I have heard that hundreds of people call themselves
Professors, without any right to do it. And I am sure he would never
like to be one of them.”
“That has got nothing to do with it. He has held some appointment that
gave him the right to the title, if he liked it. The reason is that his
wife always calls him ‘Professor’; and so it reminds him of her. Ah,
don’t you be in this outrageous hurry for a wife of your own, Master
Kit, I say. For all I know, the Captain may have been as wild for her,
some time, as you are for your Kitty. What can you say to that, my lad?”
“Why, simply that you don’t know at all what you are talking about,
Uncle Corny. My Miss Fairthorn is not that lady’s daughter, and is not
to be blamed for the whole of her sex, any more than you are for the
whole of yours.”
“There is something in that, when one comes to see it,” my Uncle
replied; for his mind was generally fair, when it cost him nothing.
“But you must not keep on breaking in like this, or you won’t have
heard half of it, this side of Christmas. Well, I was going to take
them according to their sexes, the same as the Lord made them. And
first comes the lady, as she hath a right to do, being at the bottom of
the mischief.
“When I was a young man, thirty year or more agone, there used to be a
lot of talk about the two handsome Miss Coldpeppers, of the Manor Hall
down here. There used to be a lot also of coaches running, not so much
through Sunbury, which lay to one side of the road, though some used to
pass here on their way to Chertsey; and there was tootle-tootle along
father’s walls, three or four times a day. But the most of them went
further back, along the Staines and Windsor road, where the noise was
something wonderful; and it’s my opinion that these Railway things will
never be able to compare with it. They may make as much noise for the
time, but it seems to be over, before the boys can holloa.
“Lots of young sparks, and bucks, and dandies, and Corinthians, and
I forget what else, but all much finer than you can see now, used to
come down by the coaches then, some of them driving, some blowing the
horn, some upon the roof like merry-Andrews, making fools of themselves
as we should call it now, and not be far wrong either. They were much
bigger men than I see now, in their size, and their way of going on,
and their spirits, and their strength of life, and likewise in their
language. And the manners of the time were as different as can be, more
frolicsome like, and more free and jovial; and they talked about the
ladies, and to them also, ten times as much as they do now; and things
were altogether merrier for them that had the money, and no worse for
them that hadn’t got it, so far as I can see. Ah, there was something
to be done in growing then—pineapples ordered at a guinea a pound, and
grapes at fifteen shillings, though of course you didn’t always get
your money. I’m blest if I won’t have another glass of rum and water.
“Well, old Squire Nicholas, as they call him now, was as proud as Punch
of his two fine daughters, and expected them to marry at least an earl
apiece, by their faces and fine figures. And they went about with great
folk in Town, and to Court, and all that sort of thing, looking fit to
marry the King almost, in their velvets, and their satin furbelows. The
eldest daughter was Arabella, our Miss Coldpepper to this day, and the
other was Miss Monica; as fine a pair of women as the Lord ever made.
But for all that, see what they come to!
“There was no love lost between them even then, jealous of one another
no doubt, like two cats over a fish-bone. Some said that one was the
handsomer of them, and some said the other. There was a good bit of
difference between them too, though any fool could tell they were
sisters. Such eyes and noses as you won’t see now, and hair that would
fall to their knees, I’ve been told, and complexions as clear as a
white-heart cherry, and a cock of the chin, and a lordly walk—they
deserved the name they went by in London, ‘the two Bright Suns of
Sunbury.’ But after all, what good came of it? One is an old maid, and
the other—well, not very likely to go to heaven, though she hasn’t had
much of that yet on earth. Kit, I have seen a deal of women, as much
as is good for any mortal man; and I tell you the first thing, and the
second, and the third, and the whole to the end of the chapter of them
depends upon their tempers. Ah, those two beauties were beauties at
that; but Miss Monica ever so much the worse.
“It seems that they both might have married very well, if it had not
been for that stumbling-block. Many young women go on so soft, and eye
you so pleasant, and blush so sweet, that you’d fancy almost there
was no such thing as a cross word, or a spitfire look, or a puckered
forehead in their constitution; and angels is the name for them, until
it is too late to fly away. But these two Misses had never learned how
to keep their tempers under for a week together; and it seems that
they never cared enough for any one to try to do it. Till there came
a man with a temper ten times as bad as both of theirs put together;
and then they fell in love with him hot and hearty. This was a younger
son of Lord Roarmore, a nobleman living in North Wales, or Ireland—I
won’t be certain which—and he was known as the Honourable Tom Bulwrag.
He used to drive the Windsor coach from London down to Hounslow; for
the passengers could stand him, while the stones and air were noisy;
but there he was forced to get down from the box; for nothing that
lived, neither man, nor horse, nor cow in the ditch, could endure this
gentleman’s language, when there was too much silence to hear it in.
“I suppose he was quiet among the ladies, as many men are, who can
speak no good. And perhaps our two ladies fell in love with him,
because he was a bigger sample of themselves. Not that they ever used
swearing words, only thought them, as it were, and let other people
know it. Any way, both of them took a fancy to him, though their father
would not hear of it; for the gentleman was not wealthy enough to have
any right to such wickedness. Perhaps that made them like him all the
more, for they always flew in the face of Providence. And for doing of
that, they both paid out, as generally happens here, that we may see it.
“So far as I can tell, and I had better chances of knowing than any
one else outside the house, everything was settled for the Honourable
Tom to run away to Bath with Miss Arabella, with special licence, and
everything square. But whether she was touched in heart about her
father (whose favourite she had always been), or whether her lover
came out too strong in his usual style, or whether her sister Monica
had egged her on to it, sure enough she blazed out into such a fury,
just when they were starting, and carried on so reckless, that the
Honourable Tom, who had never quite made up his mind, was frightened
of what she would be by-and-by, and locked her in a tool-house at the
bottom of the grounds, and set off with Miss Monica that same hour,
changing the name in the licence, and married her.
“Without being too particular, you might fairly suppose that a job
of this kind was not likely to end well. Miss Monica had taken with
her one—what shall I say? Certainly not servant, nor attendant, nor
inferior in any way—”
My uncle here seemed to feel a certain want of power to express
himself; and I knew that he was beating about the bush of the one and
only one romance of his dry and steady life. He turned away, so that I
could not see his eyes, and I did not wish to look at them.
“Well, that is neither here nor there,” he continued, after pushing
more tobacco into a pipe too full already; “but she took away a young
lady of this neighbourhood, to whom she appeared to be much attached,
and who alone had any power to control her furious outbreaks, just
because she always smiled at them, as soon as they were over. The
sweet-tempered girl could never quite believe that the Fury was in
earnest, because it was so far beyond her own possibilities; and the
woman of fury did a far worse thing than the wrecking of her own stormy
life, she also wrecked a sweet, and gentle, loving, and reasonable
heart. Never mind that; it often happens, and what does the selfish
Fury care? Miss Monica became, as I have said, the Honourable Mrs.
Bulwrag, and then she reaped the harvest she had sown.
“For in the first place Viscount Roarmore, being a hot-headed man
likewise, stopped every farthing of his son’s allowance, and said—‘Go
to your new father. Your pretty cousin Rose, with five thousand pounds
a year, was ready to marry you, in spite of all your sins, and you had
promised to marry her. You have taken one of those two girls, who were
called the “Bright Suns of Sunbury,” till people found out what they
were, and called them the two “Raging Suns.” Now rage her down, if you
can, and you ought to be more than a match for a woman. In any case,
expect no more from me.’
“Then the young man came to Squire Nicholas, and screwed himself
down to eat humble pie. But the Squire said, ‘Sir, you have married
my daughter without asking my leave, and against it. I still have a
dutiful daughter left. She is my only one henceforth.’ Then the young
man broke into the strongest language ever yet heard at Coldpepper
Hall, although it had never been weak in that line. He was very soon
shown the outside of the door, and got drunk for the night at the ‘Bell
and Dragon.’
“Then began the rough-and-tumble work between those two—the hugging
and the hating, the billing and the bullying, the kissing and the
kicking, all and every up and down of laughing, sobbing, scratching,
screeching, that might be in a wild hyena’s den. How they contrived to
hold together so long as they did, Heaven only knows, or perhaps the
opposite place to Heaven. There must have been some fierce love between
them, some strange suitability; as if each perceived the worst part of
himself or herself in the other, and flew to it, as well as flew at it.
What kept them together was a mystery; but what kept them alive was a
darker one. Without friends, or money, or credit, or visible robbery,
they fought on together, for five or even six years, now here and now
there. Three children they had, and fought over them of course, and
perhaps began to teach them to fight each other, at least so far as
example goes.
“But suddenly this queer union was broken up for ever. Mr. Bulwrag
did something which risked his neck; he believed that Squire Nicholas
was bound to contribute to the support of his grandchildren, and he
made him do his duty, without knowing it. Then, having arranged for a
three-days’ start, he was well upon his voyage before pursuit began.
It is not very easy to catch a man now, when he has a good start, and
knows the world; but five and twenty years ago, it was generally given
up as a bad job; unless the reward was astounding. No reward was
offered, and the Honourable Tom was next heard of from South America,
where there seemed to be a lot of little States, which never allow
their civil wars to abate their wars with one another. This condition
of things was exactly to his taste; his courage and strong language
made their way; he commanded the forces of one great Republic, with the
title of ‘Marshal Torobelle,’ and he promised to send some money home
in the last letter ever received from him.
“His deserted wife said after that, that she truly would believe in
everything, if she ever saw a ten-pound note from her beloved husband.
But she never was put to the trial, for the next news was that he
was dead. He had found it much to his advantage to learn to swear in
Spanish; and being proud of this, because he had little other gift
of lingo, he tried it upon a young Spanish officer, who did not take
it cordially. After parade, they had a private fight, and Marshal
Torobelle could swear no more, even in his native language. His
friends, for he seems to have been liked out there, wrote a very kind
letter in bad French, telling how grand he had been, and how faithful,
but grieving that he had left no affairs, to place them in a state to
remember him. Then the Marshal’s widow bought expensive mourning, for
he had left with her a thousand pounds of the proceeds of his forgery,
and wrote to his father, Lord Roarmore.
“Kit, I have found that one can generally tell what a man will do, in
certain cases, from a rough outline of his character. What a woman will
do, no man can tell, though he fancies he knows her thoroughly. My Lord
Roarmore was a violent man, and hot more than hard in his resolution.
And he took it very kindly that his son, when driven hard, had forged
the name of the father-in-law, and not of the father, as he might have
done. He was beginning to relent already, and finding it too late,
naturally relented altogether. He talked of his noble and gallant son,
and although himself in difficulties, bravely settled five hundred
pounds a year upon the widow and the little ones.
“I dare say you are surprised, my lad, that I should have come to know
so much of this unhappy story; more I believe than is even known by
the lady’s own sister—our Miss Coldpepper. Women are slower to forgive
than men, and slower in beginning to be forgiven. Arabella has never
forgiven her sister for running away with her lover; and Monica has
never forgiven her sister for making such a fuss about it. They may try
to pull together, when it suits their purpose; but the less they see
of one another, the greater the chance of their reconciliation. But I
am not come to the poor Captain yet; and, bless my heart, it is ten
o’clock! What a time to stay up about other people’s business! If you
want to hear the rest, you must have it to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XIV.
AND ENDS WITH A MORAL.
ALL through the following day, we were forced to be hard at work,
whether we liked it or not, gathering a large lot of early apples, such
as Keswick, Sugarloaf, and Julien, which would have been under the
trees by this time in an early season. But this, through the chill and
continual rain of the time that should have been summer, was the latest
season within human memory; which (like its owners) is not very long.
And now a break-up of the weather was threatened, at which we could
not grumble, having now enjoyed ten days without any rain—a remarkable
thing in much better years than this. And in this year it truly was a
God-send, helping us to make some little push, before the winter closed
over us, and comforting us to look up to Heaven, without being almost
beaten down. The people who live in great cities, where they need
only go a few yards all day long, and can get beneath an awning or an
archway, if a drop of rain disturbs their hats, give the weather ten
bad words for every one we give it; though we are bound to work in it,
and worse than that, have our livelihood hanging upon it. Not that we
are better pleased than they; only that our more wholesome life, and
the strength of the trees, and the unexhausted air, perhaps put into us
a kinder spirit to make the best of things that are ordered from above.
Few things in the manner of ordinary work become more wearisome after a
while than the long-continued gathering of fruit. The scent, which is
delightful to those who catch a mere whiff of it in going by, becomes
most cloying and even irksome to those who have it all day in their
nostrils. And the beauty of the form and colour too, and the sleek
gloss of each fine sample, lose all their delight in the crowd of their
coming, and make us even long to see the last of them. Every man of us,
even Uncle Corny, to whom every basket was grist for the mill, felt
heartily glad when streaky sunset faded softly into dusk, when flat
leaf looked as round as fruit, and apples knocked our heads instead of
gliding into the ready hand.
“Now mind one thing,” said my uncle with a yawn, when after a supper
of liver and bacon knowingly fried by Mrs. Tabby, his pipe was between
his teeth and all his other needs were toward; “if I go on with my
tale to-night, I am likely enough to leave out something which may be
the gist of it. For I feel that sleepy, after all this job, that I can
scarcely keep my pipe alight. However, you have worked well to-day,
and shown no white feather for your sweetheart’s sake; and of course
you want to know most about her, and how she comes into this queer
tale. Poor young thing, she smiles as sweetly, as if she trod a path
of roses, instead of nettles, and briars, and flint! Ah, I suppose she
forgets her troubles, whenever she looks at you, my lad.” This made my
heart beat faster than any words of his tale I had heard till now.
“As if she cared for me! As if it were possible for any one to imagine
that she would ever look twice at me! Uncle Corny, I thought you were a
wiser man.” I hoped that this might lead him on.
“To be sure, I was making a mistake,” he answered, looking as if
it were just the same thing. “When I said you, I meant of course
Sam Henderson, the racing man. That’s the young fellow that has her
heart. How beautifully she smiled when I mentioned him, and blushed
when I said he was the finest fellow anywhere round Sunbury, and the
steadiest, and the cleverest.
“No, no, Kit; it’s all my fun. You needn’t be looking at the
carving-knife. You know how I hate Sam Henderson, a stuck-up puppy, and
a black-leg too, according to my ideas. A girl who respects herself, as
your Kitty does, would have nothing to say to him. But she might to a
fine young gardener perhaps.
“Well, I have told you all about the first marriage and the widowhood
of that precious Monica Coldpepper. What fools men are—what wondrous
fools! Here was a widow, not over young, with a notorious temper, and
no money, or none of her own at any rate, and hampered with three
children—let me tell you their names while I think of it, Euphrasia,
Donovan, and Geraldine—there’s no duty to pay on a name, you know. Now
would not any one have sworn that a woman like that might wear the
weeds, until she had stormed herself to death? Not a bit of it, my lad;
she married again, and she married the cleverest man in London; and
more than that, she got every farthing of his property settled upon
her, although the poor man had a child of his own! And I am told that
she might have had a dozen other men.
“She was still a fine woman certainly, for it must have been some
twelve years ago; and she is a fine woman to this very day, according
to those who have seen her; which I hope I may never do, for reasons
I will not go into. But beside her appearance, what one thing was
there to lead a sane man to marry her? And a man who had lost a
sweet-tempered wife, a beautiful, loving, and modest woman, as like
your Kitty as two peas! Sometimes I feel sorry for him, when I think
of his former luck; and sometimes I am glad that he is served out, for
making such a horrible fool of himself. Nearly any other man would have
hung himself, for the lady has gone from bad to worse, and is now a
thorough termagant; but this man endures her as if she were his fate.
Do you know who he is? You must know now.”
“Yes, I have known it, since you began; and from what other people
said, I suspected it before.” As I answered thus, I was thinking how
this condition of things would affect my chance.
“You don’t seem at all astonished, Kit;” my uncle went on with some
disappointment at losing his sensation. “You young folk have so little
sense, that you make it a point of honour never to be surprised by
anything. If anybody had told me, without my knowing it already, that
a man of great intellect, like Professor Fairthorn, would make such a
fool of himself, and then submit to have no life of his own, I should
have said it was a crazy lie. But there is the truth, my boy, not to
be got over; and far worse than at first sight appears. A man who robs
himself may be forgiven; but not a man who robs his children. It is the
difference between suicide and murder.
“Very likely, you are surprised that I, who have not a sixpence at
stake, and not even a friend involved in the matter, should get so hot
about it, as I can’t help being. There are plenty of viragoes in the
world; there are plenty of good men who cower before them, for the sake
of their own coward peace; also there are robberies in abundance, of
children who cannot defend themselves, and of people who can—so far as
that goes. And ninety-nine men in a hundred would say—‘Well, this is no
concern of mine. It is a very sad and shameful thing, but it does not
touch my bread and cheese. Great is truth, and it will prevail; and I
hope I may live to see it.’ But, Kit, my boy, the worst wrong of all
was mine. A deadlier wrong has been done to me, than of money or lands,
or household peace. My life has been wrecked by that devil of a woman,
as if it were a toy-boat she sunk with her slipper. I did not mean to
tell you—an old man cannot bear to talk of such things to young people.
Is your whole heart set upon your Kitty?”
I had never seen my uncle so disturbed before; and, to tell the plain
truth, I was frightened by it. Sometimes I had seen him in a little
passion, when he found a man he trusted robbing him, or the dealers
cheated him beyond the right margin, or some favourite plant was kicked
over; but he never lost his power then of ending with a smile, and a
little turn of words would change his temper. But this was no question
of temper now. His solid face was hardened, as if cast in stone; not a
feature of it moved, but his grey curls trembled in the draught, and
his hand upon the table quivered. I answered that my whole heart was
set upon my Kitty, but I knew that I should never win her.
“If she is true to you, you shall. That is, if you behave as a man
should do;” he spoke very slowly, and with a low voice, almost as if
talking to himself; “if you are wise enough to let no lies, or doubts,
or false pride come between you. There is no power but the will of
God, that can keep asunder a man and woman who have given their lives
to each other. All the craft, and falsehood, and violence of the world
melt away like a mist, if they stand firm and faithful, and abide their
time. But it must hold good on both sides alike. Both must disdain
every word that comes from lying lips, from the lips of all, whether
true or false, except one another. Remember, that is the rule, my lad,
if rogues and scoundrels, male or female, come between you and the one
you love. It has been a black streak in my life. It has kept me lonely
in the world. Sometimes it seems to knock me over still. I have not
spoken of it for years; and I cannot speak of it even now any more—not
any more.”
He rose from his chair, and went about the room, as if it were his
life, in which he was searching for something he should never find. To
turn his thoughts, and relieve my own, I took a clean pipe and filled
it; and began to puff as if I liked it, although in those days I seldom
smoked. This had been always a reproach against me; for a smoker seems
to love a contribution to his cloud.
“Well done, Kit, you are a sensible fellow;” said my uncle, returning
to his usual mood. “Tobacco is the true counterblast to care. You take
up your pipe, and I will take up my parable, without going into my own
affairs. I never told you how that confounded woman—the Lord forgive
me if I bear malice, for I trust that He shares it with me—how she
contrived to hook the poor Professor, and, what is still worse, every
farthing of his money.
“Not that I believe, to give the devil his due, that she sought him
first for the sake of his money. He had not very much of that—for it
seldom goes with brains that stamp their own coinage—but through his
first wife, a beautiful and loving woman, he owned a nice house with
large premises, in a rich part of London, or rather of the outskirts,
where values were doubling every year, as the builders began to rage
round it. Also he had about five thousand pounds of hers, which was not
under settlement, and perhaps about the same amount of his own, not
made by himself (for he had no gift of saving) but coming from his own
family. Altogether he was worth about twenty thousand pounds; which he
justly intended for his only child.
“This was pretty handsome, as you would say, and he took care not to
imperil it, by any of his patents, or other wasteful ways. He had
been for many years in the Royal Navy, and commanded at one time a
new-fangled ship, with iron sheathings, or whatever they are called,
which are now superseding the old man-of-war. Here he had seemed to
be in his proper element, for he knew the machinery and all that, as
well as the makers did, and much better than any of the engineers on
board; and he might have been promoted to almost anything, except for
his easy-going nature. He had not the sternness, and strength of will,
which were needful in his position; and though everybody loved and
respected him, the discipline of the ship in minor matters fell abroad,
and he was superseded.
“This cut him to the quick, as you may suppose; for he still was
brooding over the loss of his first dear wife, which had befallen him,
while he was away on some experimental cruise. Between the two blows,
he was terribly out of heart, and came back to his lonely London house,
in the state of mind, which is apt to lay a man at the mercy of a
crafty and designing woman. Unhappily he was introduced just then to
Mrs. Bulwrag; and she fell in love with him, I do believe, as far as
she was capable of doing it. Though she might have flown, and had been
flying at higher game in a certain sense, she abandoned all others, and
set the whole strength of her will, which was great, upon conquering
him. She displayed the most tender and motherly interest in his
little darling daughter; she was breathless with delight at his vast
scientific attainments, and noble discoveries; she became the one woman
in all the world, who could enter into his mind, and second his lofty
ideas for the grandeur of humanity. Unluckily they were so far apart in
their natures, that no collision yet ensued, which might have laid bare
her true character, and enforced the warnings of his many friends. Not
to make too long a story of it, she led him to the matrimonial altar—as
the papers call it—without any solicitor for his best man, but a very
sharp one behind her. With the carelessness of a man of genius, added
to his own noble faith in woman, he had signed a marriage settlement,
which gave her not only a life-interest in all his property, but a
separate power of disposal by assignment, which might be exercised at
any time. And the trustees were old allies of hers, who were not beyond
suspicion of having been something even more than that.
“However, she loved her dear Professor—as she insisted on calling
him—for a certain time, with the fervour of youth, though she must have
been going on for forty, and she led him about in high triumph, and
your Kitty was sent to a poor boarding-school. ‘The Honourable Mrs.
Bulwrag-Fairthorn,’ as, in defiance of custom, she engraved herself,
became quite the fashion among a certain lot, and aspired to climb yet
higher. For if she has a weakness, it is to be among great people, and
in high society. She changed the name of the poor Professor’s house
at South Kensington to ‘Bulwrag Park,’ she thought nothing of paying
thirty pounds for a dress, and she gave large parties all the night
long. Meanwhile he went about his work, and she took possession of
every halfpenny he earned, and spent it on herself and her children.
Her boy and two girls were pampered and indulged, while Kitty was
starved and threadbare.
“You have seen the sort of man he is—simple, quiet, and unpretending,
full of his own ideas and fancies, observing everything in the way of
nature, but caring very little for the ways of men. He kept himself
out of the whirl she lived in, and tried to believe that she was a
good, though rather noisy woman. But suddenly all his good-will was
shattered, and he nearly shared the same fate himself.
“He was sitting up very late one night, in the little room allowed
to him for the various tools, and instruments, and appliances, and
specimens, and all that sort of thing, which were the apple of his
eye; and by a special light of his own devising he was working up the
finish of some grand experiment, from which he expected great wonders,
no doubt. I don’t know how many kinds of acid he had got in little
bottles, and how many—I don’t know what their names are, but something
of a kail, like ‘Ragged Jack;’ and how many other itemies—as Tabby
Tapscott calls them—the Lord only knoweth, who made them; and perhaps
the men have got beyond even Him. At any rate, there he was, all in
his glory; and he would have given ten years of his life, to be let
alone for an hour or two. But suddenly the door flew open, as if with a
strong kick; and the shake, and the draught, set his flames and waters
quivering. He looked up with his mild eyes, and beheld a Fury.
“‘What do you mean by this?’ she cried. ‘Here I come home from Lord
Oglequince’s, where you left me to go by myself, as usual; and on my
red Davenport I find this! A fine piece of extravagance! Whose money is
it?’
“‘Well, Monica, it was not meant to go to you,’ the Professor replied;
for he saw what it was, a bill of about three pounds, for a cloak,
and a skirt, and a hat, or some such things, which his daughter’s
school-mistress had written for, because the poor girl was unfit to
be seen with the rest. ‘My dear, I will pay it, of course. You have
nothing to do with it. It was put on your desk by mistake altogether.’
“‘Oh, then you mean to do it on the sly! To spend on this little
upstart of yours the money that belongs to my poor children. Whose
house is this? Whose chair are you sitting on—for of course you never
have the manners to rise, when a lady comes to speak to you? Do you
think you will ever make a penny, by all your trumpery dibbles and
dabbles? I hate the sight of them, and I will not allow them. Hand me
that cane, with the sponge at the end.’
“The Captain arose under her rebuke, and looked at her with calm
curiosity, as if she were part of his experiment. He had never seen a
case of such groundless fury, and could scarcely believe that it was
real. Her blazing eyes were fixed on his, and her figure seemed to
tower, in her towering rage. Such folly however could not frighten
him; and he smiled, as if looking at a baby, while he handed her the
cane.
“‘You laugh at me, do you? You think I am your slave?’ she cried as
she swung the cane round her head, and he fully expected the benefit.
‘Because I am a poor weak woman, I am to be trampled on in my own
house, and come on my knees, at these shameful hours, to hold all your
gallipots and phials for you. Look, this is the way I serve your grand
science! There go a few of them, and there, and there! How do you like
that, Professor?—Oh, oh, oh!’
“At the third sweep of the cane among his chemical treasures, she had
dashed on the floor, among many other things, a small stoppered bottle
full of caustic liquid, and a fair dose had fallen on her instep, which
was protected by nothing but a thin silk stocking. Screeching with
pain, she danced round the room, and then fell upon a chair, and began
to tear her hair, in a violent fit of hysterics.
“‘It is painful for the moment; but there is no serious harm,’ said the
Captain, as he rang the bell for her own attendant; ‘fortunately the
contents of that bottle were diluted, or she might never have walked
again; if indeed such a style of progress is to be called walking. It
is most unwise of any tiro to interfere with these little inquiries. I
was very near a fine result; and now, I fear, it is all scattered.’
“The next day he did, what he should have done some months ago. He took
the copy of his marriage-settlement to a good solicitor, and found,
to his sad astonishment, that the boasts of the termagant were too
true. Under the provisions of that document—as atrocious a swindle
as was ever perpetrated—he could be turned out of his own house, and
the property he intended for his own child was at the mercy of her
stepmother.
“From the lawyer he got not a crumb of comfort. The settlement was his
own act and deed; there was no escaping from it. It had been prepared
by the lady’s solicitors; and he had signed it without consideration.
All very true; but he should have considered, and marriage was a
consideration, in the eye of the law, and a binding one. If the
Professor wished, the solicitor would take Counsel’s opinion, whether
there might be any chance of obtaining redress from Equity. But he
felt sure, that to do so would only be a waste of money. It was a most
irregular thing, that in such an arrangement, one side only should
be represented; but that was the fault of the other side, which
surrendered its own interests. In fact, it was a very fine instance of
confidence in human nature; and human nature had been grateful enough
to make the most of the confidence offered.
“If you did not know what the Professor is, you might suppose, Kit,
that he was overcome, and overwhelmed with the result of his own
neglect and softness. Not a bit of it; in a week’s time, he had mended
all his broken apparatus; and the only difference to be noticed was,
that he never began work without locking the door. His treatment of his
wife was the same as ever. He bore no ill-will, or at any rate showed
none, on account of that strong explosion; and he took thenceforth all
her fits of fury as gusts of wind, that had got in by mistake. It is
impossible for any woman to make a man of that nature unhappy. He would
have been happier, I dare say, and have done much more for the good of
the world, if he had married a peaceful woman; but I know very little
of those matters. Only, as you have an ordinary mind, be sure that you
marry a sweet-tempered woman. To bed, my boy, to bed! We must be up
right early.”
CHAPTER XV.
MORAL SUPPORT.
IN spite of all said to the contrary, I believe that young people, upon
the whole, are more apt to ponder than the old folk are. At least, if
to ponder means—as it should—to weigh in the balance of pros and cons
the probable results of their own doings. The old man remembers the
time he has lost, in thinking thoughts that came to naught; and he sees
that if they had come to much, that much would have been very little
now. The young man has plenty of time on his hands, and believes he
is going to do wonders with it, and makes a bright map of his mighty
course in life. And this is the wisest thing that he can do.
But when he falls in love, alas! his ripe wisdom is seldom applied to
himself. Like a roguish grocer, with a magnet in his counter, he brings
the scale down to his own liking; but he differs from him, in that he
cheats himself.
Being very wise in my own eyes, I pondered very carefully my next step;
not with any thought of retiring, but with a firm resolve to advance
in the strongest and most effective manner. My Uncle’s long story,
instead of damping, had added hot fuel to my ardour, and compassion
had lent a deeper tone to passion. Tender pictures arose before me of
my angelic Kitty, starved, and tortured, and snubbed, and trampled,
and (worst of all perhaps to a female body) shabbily, and grotesquely
dressed. Such a woman as my uncle had described was enough to drive the
largest-minded man to fury, and to grind the sweetest of her own sex,
into fragments of misery and despair. The one crumb of comfort I could
pick up, was that such cruelty must make my darling pine all the more
for tender love, and long perpetually for some refuge, however humble
it might be. But the point of all points was—how should I get at her?
All these things were passing through my mind for about the thousandth
time—yet all in vain—as I came back from Chertsey, on old _Spanker’s_
back, a day or tw
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