Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

“I shall go home first,” I said, “and see that all is right. Kitty has got a bit for me to eat; and perhaps she will come down with me, in about an hour’s time, if she is not too tired. You go and have your supper, uncle.”

With this, I set off, having long been uneasy, partly perhaps at what Tabby had said, and partly at having been so long from home. But I whistled a tune, and went cheerfully along, for the night was beautiful, and the trees, still piled with blossom, rose against the starry sky, like cones of snow.

Our door was wide open, which surprised me just a little, for my wife was particular about that. Then I went into the passage, and called – “Kitty, Kitty!” but heard no sweet voice say, “Yes, dear!” Neither did any form more sweet than words of kindest greeting come. And my step rang through the passage with that hollow sound which an empty house seems to feel along every wall. With a terrible thumping in my breast, I turned into our little parlour, and struck against a straggling chair. There was no light burning, the window was wide open, the curtains undrawn, the room felt like a well, and the faint light from the sky upon the table showed that no supper-cloth was laid. Shouting for Kitty, in a voice of fear which startled myself, I groped my way to the mantelpiece where the matches stood. They were in a little ornament which we had brought from Baycliff; my trembling hand upset it, and they fell upon the rug. I picked up half a dozen, I struck them anyhow on the grate, and lit a small wax candle which we had considered rather grand. The room was in good order, there was nothing to tell any thing; but I knew that it had not been occupied for hours.

“She is gone,” I exclaimed, though with no one to hear me; “my Kitty is gone. She is gone for ever.”

I lit the fellow-candle, and left it burning on the table, while I hurried to the kitchen, though I knew it was in vain. The kitchen fireplace was gray with cold ashes; there was not a knife and fork nor a plate set out, and the white deal table had no cooking-cloth upon it. Then I gave up calling “Kitty,” as I had been doing all along, till I ran upstairs to our pretty bedroom; and there I called for her once more. When there came no answer, I fell upon the bed, and wondered whether I was mad.

All my wits must have left me in the bitterness of woe. I seemed even to accept it as a thing to be expected, not to want to know the reason, but to take it like death. Who I was, I knew not for the time, nor tried to think; but lay as in a blank of all things, only conscious of a misery I could not strive against. I did not even pray to die; for it seemed to make no difference.

Then up I got, with some sudden change, and the ring of my heel on the floor, as I struck it without measuring distance, now echoed in my brain; and anger sent anguish to the right-about. “This is the enemy’s work,” I cried; “it serves me right for not wringing their necks, for their cursed tricks at Hounslow. So help me God, who has made them and me, I will send them to Him, this time.”

My strength was come back, and the vigour of my limbs, and the iron control of every nerve. Until the sense of wrong had touched me, I was but a puling fool. I had felt that all my life was gone, with her who was the spring of it, and that nothing lay before me, but to put up my legs and moan. But praised be the Lord, who has given us that vivid sense of justice which of all His gifts is noblest, here I stood, a man again; ready to fight the Devil, and my brethren who are full of him.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

COLD COMFORT

In the calm May night, I left my desolate home, to learn the cause and meaning of its desolation. Some men might have doubted whether it was worth their while to trace the dark steps of their own reproach. From what I had seen even now, I knew that my wife had left me of her own accord. There was not the smallest sign of struggle, or disorder, anywhere; nothing whatever to suggest that any compulsion had been used, or even that any stranger’s foot had crossed our humble threshold. Of this I should learn more by daylight; and I took care not to slur the chance, by even treading the little path that led to the old door in the wall. There was a grass edging to that path, betwixt it and a row of espalier apple trees in full bloom now; and along that grass I made my way, with a bull’s-eye lamp in my hand, as far as the leaden-coloured door, of which old Tabby had asked a few hours ago. Without stepping in front of that door, I threw the strong light upon it, and perceived at once that it had been opened recently. It was now unbolted and unlocked, and kept shut only by the old thumb-latch. This I lifted, and stepped outside, keeping close to the post, so as not to meddle with any footprints, within or without. Then I cast my light on the dust outside, for the weather had lately been quite dry; and there I saw distinctly the impress of my darling’s foot. I could swear to it among ten thousand, with its delicate springy curves; for her feet in their boots had the shapely arch and rise of a small ox-tongue; and ladies did not wear peg-heels then, to make flat feet seem vaulted.

By the side of that comely footprint were the marks of a coarser and commonplace shoe, short and square, and as wide as it was long, probably the sign pedal of a clod-hopping country boy, or lad. Of these there were some half-dozen, as if the boy had stamped about as he entered, and repeated the process when he returned. “I will examine these carefully, when the sun is up,” thought I; “I must see to other matters now.”

So I hurried at once, by the shortest track, to the lower corner of the gardens, where my uncle Corny lived. Tabby Tapscott was gone home, and the house all dark and fast asleep, for I must have lost an hour in my agony on the bed, besides all the other time wasted. At last my thunderous knocks disturbed even the sound sleep of the grower; and he flung up a window, and looked out, with a nightcap over his frizz of white hair.

“It is no time for anger,” I replied to his hot exclamations; “come, and let me in. I want your advice. I am ruined.”

My uncle was thoroughly good at heart; when he came down with a light, and saw the ghost he had let in, he was very little better than his visitor. He shook, as if old age were come upon him suddenly, while I tried to tell my tale.

“My Kitty gone, and gone of her own accord!” he cried, as if he, and not I, had lost her. “Man, you must be mad. Are you walking in your sleep?”

“God send that I may be! But when shall I awake?”

The old man’s distress, and his trembling anguish, let loose all the floods of mine; I fell against the wall, where he hung his hats and saws, and sobbed like a woman who has lost her only child.

“Come, come,” he said; “we shall both be ashamed of this. Your darling is not dead, my boy; but only lured away by some d – d trick. Don’t blame yourself, or her. I will answer for her, sooner than I would for myself in this bad world. You shall have her back again, Kit; you shall have her back again. There is a God, who never lets us perish, while we stick to Him.”

“I have not stuck to Him. I have stuck to her.” The truth of my words came upon me like a flash. It was the first time I had even thought of this.

“Never mind. He knows; and He meant it so,” my uncle replied with some theology of his own; “no man will be punished for doing what the Bible orders. You’ll see, my dear boy, it will all come right. You will live to laugh at this infernal trick. And I hope to the Lord, that I shall be alive to grin with you. Cheer up, old fellow. What would your Kitty think, to see you knock under to a bit of rigmarole? You must keep up your spirits for poor Kitty’s sake.”

To see an old man show more pluck than a young one, and to take in a little of his fine faith, set me on my pins again, more than any one would believe; and I followed him into his kitchen, where the remnants of the fire were not quite dead.

“Now blow it up, Kit,” he said; “and put a bit of wood in. Tabby always leaves it in this cupboard. Ah, that was a fine tree, that old Jargonel! It lived on its bark, I believe, for about a score of years, and you helped to split it up, when you were courting Kitty. You shall court her again, my boy, and have another honeymoon, as they’ve cut yours short in this confounded way. Now, make a good fire, while I put my breeches on. You look like a ghost, that has never had a bit to eat. And I don’t suppose you have touched a morsel to speak of, since breakfast. ‘Never say die’ is my motto, Kit. We’ll be at the Police-office, by three o’clock. We can do nothing till then, you know.”

Even as he spoke, his ancient cuckoo sang out one o’clock; and I obeyed his orders, and even found a little comfort in the thought, that Kitty would have smiled to see my clumsy efforts; for she was very knowing about making fires up. When I had contrived to eat a bit of something, which my uncle warmed up for me, though I never knew what it was, he gave me a glass of old ale, and took a drop himself; and we talked of our calamity, until it was time to go. He asked me whether anything within the last few days could be called to mind that bore at all upon this sudden mystery. Whether any jarring words, however little thought of, had passed between my wife and me, as is sometimes the case, even when a couple are all in all to one another. But I could remember none, nor any approach to such a thing; and I had never seen a frown upon my darling’s forehead.

Then he told me what he had heard about his former tenant, Harker, the man whom he ejected by a fumigating process, much more successful than the ejectment of the frost. It was nothing more than this, and even this perhaps a piece of idle village gossip. Old Arkerate had taken much amiss his tardy expulsion, for he meant to live rent-free through winter, and had been heard to say that he would be – something anticipatory perhaps of his final doom – if that blessed young couple should be in his house very long. For he knew a trick worth two of that. And if he had been smoked out, hang them, they should be burned out.

I agreed with my uncle that such stuff as this was not worth repeating, especially as nothing of the kind had come to pass; and yet again it appeared suspicious that the door through which my dear wife had vanished should be the very one which old Harker had used for his special entrance and exit; while he had even been jealous of any attempt on the part of the owners to use it. But my uncle and myself were uncommonly poor hands at anything akin to spying. Our rule had always been to accept small fibs (such as every man receives by the dozen daily) without passing them through a fine sieve; which if any man does, he will have little time for any other employment.

“Take this big stick, Kit; I brought it for the purpose,” said my uncle, when I had knocked a dozen times in vain, at the door of Sergeant Biggs, our head policeman; “it is the toughest bit of stuff I have ever handled. It will go through the panel of the door, before it breaks. Don’t be afraid, my boy; take both hands; but let me get out of the way, before you swing it. Ah, that ought to bring him out. But we must make allowance for the strength of his sleep, because he has such practice at it, all day long.”

Our police force at that time consisted of two men, Sergeant Biggs the chief officer, and Constable Turnover; very good men both, and highly popular. They were not paid by any means according to their merits; and we always got up a Christmas-box for them, which put them on their honour not to make a fuss for nothing. It is wise of every place to keep its policemen in good humour; otherwise it gets a shocking name, without deserving it.

“Coming, master, coming. Don’t you be in such a hurry,” we heard a very reasonable voice reply at last. “Got one leg into these here breeches, and can’t get in the other, ’cos they wasn’t made for me. Ah, there goes that blessed stair into my bad leg again! They promised to mend it, last Lady Day twelve-month; but mend it they won’t, till I’ve got a running sore. Now, gents both, what can I do for you? Always at the post of duty. That’s the motto of the Force. Why, bless me, if it isn’t Mr. Orchardson! Any delinquents in your garden, sir?”

“Ever so much worse than that,” replied my uncle; “Biggs, are you wide awake? A dreadful thing has happened. Where is Turnover? We shall want you both at once.”

“On duty, sir; patrolling – unless he have turned in. But he’s very good for that, when I looks after him. Which I do pretty sharp, as he knows to his credit. A very active constable is Turnover. But come inside, Mr. Orchardson. Don’t stand out in the cold, sir.”

There was a streak of dawn among the trees towards Hampton, and the white frost-fog had rolled up from the river; and I saw that a dark cloud was gathering in the south. The change that my uncle had foretold was coming even sooner than he had expected it.

We went inside; and Sergeant Biggs, who had a light, pulled on a coat, and sat down in state before a railed desk, on which a square book was lying. Then he turned the brass cover off the ink, and squared his elbows.

“Now, sir, the particulars, if you please. We must make entry, afore we does nothing. You were quite right in coming to head-quarters, Mr. Orchardson. Let me see; May the fourteenth, isn’t it?”

“No, Biggs, no. It is morning now; and yesterday was the fifteenth of May.”

“Quite right, sir. Here it is upon the Standard. May 16th, 1861, 3.30 a.m. by office clock. Information received from Cornelius Orchardson, of the Fruit-Gardens, Sunbury. Everything ready, sir. Please to go ahead.”

“Kit, you tell him. You know most about it. Scratch out ‘Cornelius;’ and put ‘Christopher,’ Biggs.”

Sergeant Biggs did not like to disfigure his book. However, he was a most obliging man. “Stay, sir, stay,” he exclaimed: “I can do it better and neater than that is. ‘Cornelius Orchardson, of the Fruit-Gardens, Sunbury, and his nephew Christopher Orchardson.’ That meets the point exactly. Now then, gentlemen, fire away. And I will reduce it into proper form.”

Chafing at all this rigmarole, which was sending another good hour to waste, I poured out my tale in a very few words, and had the satisfaction of seeing at last an expression of amazement gathering and deepening on the large fat countenance of Sergeant Biggs.

“Why this beats everything as was ever done in Sunbury, since Squire Coldpepper’s daughter ran away! And in the same family, too, as you might say! How long ago was that? Why, let me see.” He was going to refer to some books, and took off his horn spectacles first to consider where they were.

“Come along, Biggs. No time for that,” cried my uncle impatiently; “we want you to come and examine the place at once. It was useless for us to go up, till daylight. There are footsteps for you to examine, and the doors.”

“Now this here will be all over London, afore the clock strikes twelve to-day. Ah, you may stare, gentlemen; and we don’t tell how we do it. But such is our organization, and things are brought to such perfection now – ”

“Come along, Biggs. Why, it’s pouring with rain! I knew the white frosts were sure to bring it. But I did not expect it till the afternoon. And it sounds like hail – shocking thing for all my blossom.”

“I’ll be with you, Mr. Orchardson, in about ten minutes. But I must put my toggery to rights first, you see. Sergeant Biggs does not think much of himself; but Sunbury does, and it would stare to see him go on duty without any waistcoat or stock, or even a pair of braces on. By-the-bye, gents, have you been to Tompkins’ house?”

This was about the first sensible thing he had said; and I answered that we had not been there yet; but would go there at once, as it was not far out of our course, and we would rejoin him at the cottage. I had thought more than once in the long hours of that night of going to see the girl Polly, but was loth to knock up a hard-working household for nothing, and felt sure that Polly could throw no light upon the matter: as she always left our cottage about five in the afternoon.

And so it proved when we saw her now. For she could only stare, and exclaim, “Oh Lor’!” having most of her wits, which were not very active, absorbed in hard work, and the necessity of living. And the more I examined her, the more nervous she became, fancying that she was undergoing trial, and perhaps likely to be hanged for the loss of her young mistress.

“I never see nawbody take her away: nor nawbody come anigh the house, all the time as I were in it. Mother knows I didn’t.” This she said over and over again.

“Nobody says that you did, Polly,” I answered as gently as possible; “but did you see anything to make you think, that your mistress meant to go away, when you were gone?”

“I don’now what she was athinking of. She never told me nort about it. No, I never see nawbody take her away. It isn’t fair, nor true, to say so.”

“But, my good child, nobody supposes that you did. Nobody is blaming you in the least. Nobody thinks that you saw her go away. But can’t you tell us whether you saw anything to show that she was likely to go away?”

“Yes, I saw a big black crow come flying right over the roof about one o’clock; and then I knowed as some one was agoing, ’live or dead. But I never told her, feared to frighten her. Lord in heaven knows I didn’t.”

“And did you see anything else go by? A cat, or a dog, or a man or a woman, or anything else that did not usually come? Or did you hear any steps, anywhere near the house, or see anything more than usual?”

Polly shook her head, as if I was putting a crushing weight of thought on the top of it. And then she began to cry again, and her mother came up to protect her. She had cried when she heard that her mistress was gone; and she must not be allowed to cry again, or no one could tell what would come of it.

“Sweetie, tell the whole truth now. Got no need to be frightened. If perlice does come, they can’t do nothing at all to you, my dear. Seventeen children have I had, and none ever put thumb on the Bible.”

Mrs. Tompkins did not mean that her family failed to search the Scriptures, but that they had never been involved in criminal proceedings; nay, not even as witnesses.

“Well then, I think as I did see summat,” replied Polly under this encouragement. I would not have pressed her as I did, unless I had felt pretty sure that she was keeping something back. “It worn’t nothin’ to speak of much, nor yet to think upon, at the time.”

“Well, out with it, deary, whatever it was. All you have to do, is to speak the truth, and leave them as can put two and two together, to make out the meaning of it.”

Thus adjured, Polly, after one more glance to be sure that no policeman was coming, told her tale. It was not very much, but it might mean something.

“’Twur about four o’clock, I believe, and all the things was put back again after mucksing out the rooms, when missus said to me, ‘You run, Polly, and pick a little bit of chive down the walk there. I don’t want much,’ she says, ‘but what there is must be good, and just enough to cover a penny-piece, after I’ve chopped it up and put it together. I wants to have everything ready,’ she says, ‘just to make a homily when my husband comes home. I have got plenty of parsley in that cup,’ she says, ‘but he always likes a little bit of chive, to give it seasoning. And be sure you pick it clean,’ she says, ‘and it musn’t be yellow at the tip, or dirty, because if the grit gets in,’ she says, ‘it’s ever so much worse than having none at all.’ So I says, ‘All right, ma’am, I knows where it is; and you shall have the best bit out of all the row.’ ‘You’re a good girl,’ she says, ‘don’t be longer than you can help, and you shall have a cup of tea, Polly, before you go home, because you’ve worked very well to-day; nobody could ’a doed it better,’ says she. Well, I took a little punnet as was hanging in the kitchen, not to make it hot in my hands, you see, and I went along the grass by the gooseberry bushes, – you knows the place I mean, mother; and there was the chives, all as green as little leeks. As I was a-stooping over them, with my back up to the sky, all of a sudden I heer’d a sort of creak like, as made me stand up and look to know where it come from. And then I seed the old door, as used to be bolted always, opening just a little way, in towards me, though I was a good bit off; and then the brim of a hat come through, and I sings out, ‘Who’s there, please?’ There wasn’t no nose or eyes a-coming through the door yet; nor yet any legs, so far as I could see; but only that there brim, like the brim of a soft hat; and I couldn’t say for certain whether it were brown or black. ‘Nothing here to steal,’ I says, for I thought it wor some tramp; and then the door shut softly, and I was half a mind to go and see, whether there was any one out in the lane. But it all began to look so lonely like, and I was ordered not to stop, and so I thought the best thing was to go back, and tell the missus. But something came that drove it out of my mind altogether. For when I got back to the house she says, ‘Don’t you lose a minute, Polly, that’s a good girl. Run as far as Widow Cutthumb’s, and fetch half a dozen eggs. I thought I had four, and I have only got three,’ she says, ‘and I can’t make a homily for two people of three eggs. And my husband won’t eat a bit, unless I has some,’ she says.

“So I was off quick stick to Widow Cutthumb’s; and there, outside the door, I seen that Bat Osborne, the most owdacious boy in all Sunbury. ‘Halloa!’ says he, ‘Poll, you do look stunnin’. Got a baker’s roll a-risin’, by the way you be a-pantin’! Give us a lock of your hair, again’ the time when we gets old,’ he says. And afore I could give him a box on his ear, out he spreads his fingers, some way he must have learned – for I never could ’a doed it myself, no, that I couldn’t – and away goes all my black-hair down over all my shoulders, just the same as if it was Sunday going on for three years back. That vexed I were, I can assure you, Mr. Kit – well, mother knows best how I put it up that very same morning for the cleaning, and our Annie to hold the black pins for me – but get at him I couldn’t, to give him one for himself. He were half across the street, afore I could see out; and he hollered out some imperence as made all the others grinny. But I’ll have my change, afore next Sunday week, I will.

“When I got back, Mr. Kit, you may suppose, all about the door and the hat-brim was gone clean out of my mind, as if it never was there; and I come away home, without a word about it, and never thought of it nother, till I lay awake in bed and heered our own door creak, when father went to spy the weather. But oh, if I had only thought about it, Mr. Kit, perhaps missus mightn’t never ’a been took off!”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

NONE

At this beginning of my great trouble, I used to be worried, more than common sense would warrant, by the easy way in which other people took my distress, even while I was among them. If anything occurred to make them laugh, they laughed with all their hearts at things, in which I could perceive no joke at all. I dare say they were right, and I was wrong; but I felt that I should not have laughed at all, if the tables had been turned upon them, as I wished they had been. That is to say, if they had been in bitter grief, and I had been standing outside to help them. For the policemen I could make all allowance, because they must get seasoned by their profession, even as the lawyers do; but it did seem a little bit unnatural at first, that some men, to whom I would gladly have lent my last shilling but one, if they had wanted it, should be ready to put their hands into their pockets, not to feel if there was anything there for my good, but to enable them to enjoy a broad grin at leisure, if the least bit of laughable nature turned up. But one thing I will say for the women, there was scarcely so much as a smile among them; they could understand what I had lost, and they knew (perhaps from self-examination) that a good wife is not to be got every day.

The heavy cloud had been pouring down rain in volumes and hail in lines, when with Selsey Bill, and Mrs. Bill, and Polly lagging after us under a broken umbrella, my uncle and myself came to Honeysuckle Cottage and found Sergeant Biggs and Constable Turnover, with their oilskin capes running like a tiled roof, and their faces full of discipline.