Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

“And I hope you won’t think of it again,” I said, in great haste that the idea might not go into his mind, for it would be hard work to get it out again; “I should hope you know better, Uncle Corny! Would the Devil think of paying such a price as Phil Moggs gets, and hire a four-wheeler to Woking Road Station?”

“You are right, Kit. He will have full value for his money; and he never could have stood the smoke I made. He gets too much of that at home. But Tonks says now that he doubts if Bulwrag did it. What are we coming to? Are we all to start again, as if we had never spent twopence over it? Tonks has been with him a deal too much. When two fellows get together so, they can’t smell one another.”

“I judge just the same as if I never saw him. He isn’t one to get over a fellow with his looks, nor his manner neither. Mr. Orchardson, you are quite wrong there. I go by observation, and nothing else.”

“And what has come of your observations?” My uncle still despised Mr. Tonks, and he hated to be told that he was wrong, especially when I heard it.

“A good deal,” said Tonks, leaning back in his chair and collecting his ideas; “a good deal, if you place confidence in me; without which I act for nobody. I don’t pretend to be any wonder. But when I take a man’s money, I am true to him. I have plenty of other jobs I can take to. Throw me over, if you choose, and have done it.”

“No, Tony Tonks, we will not do that. I believe that you are doing all you know; and I am a reasonable man. Now tell us all that you have to tell.”

“Well, there isn’t very much, but it may come to something more, especially with what you have just found out. The worst of it is that he is getting shy of me, and I dare not say things as I did. I told him that I wanted to run down, to take stock of Henderson’s place down here, and I asked him if he knew the neighbourhood, and whether we should take a trap and run down together. If I could get him to that, I might pick up a lot of things, in a careless and casual way, you know. But he was much too fly for any game of that sort; and it almost seemed to me as if he smelled a rat. Then I got on to him about the scientific codgers, thinking to lead up to the old Professor and the cruise he is going on about the bottom of the sea, and the place for laying cables, and a lot of things like that. But that wouldn’t serve; and so I tried another lay. We were talking of old Pots, and I said, ‘Oh, by-the-bye, was it true that the old fool was sweet upon some girl, some girl with a lot of money, who pitched him over?’ And he said, ‘What a joke! I should like to hear of that. Tell us the story, Bowles, if you know it.’ Bowles is the name he knows me by, you see; for it would not do for me to turn up as Tonks.

“In fact I got no hold upon him, as I thought I should have done; for he knows how to make people useful and no more; and I saw that he would drop me as soon as he had learned all the little useful things I know at cards and pool. Of course I was not swell enough for him to introduce me to his ‘family circle,’ as the ladies call it. And as for getting him to take a drop too much, and then working him skilfully, as can be done with most fellows, – well, I am pretty tough, but if I took the water and he the brandy, I believe I should be drunk before he was. His head is too big for any barrel to upset it.

“I was pretty near despairing, I can tell you, Mr. Orchardson, though I never have been beaten yet, and don’t want to begin it; when a little bit of accident, the merest casual accident, put me further forward than a month of work might do. You may be pretty sure, without my saying, that my appearance is not distinguished enough – although I have gone arm in arm with bigger nobs than he is, and real gentlemen some of them – but not swell enough to be seen in Downy Bulwrag’s company, in Piccadilly, or the Park, or high and mighty places. No no, not for Joe, as the poet quotes it.

“But he is not at all above allowing me the honour of his society, when I can be of service to him, and no one is likely to say – ‘Who’s that?’ And there is one particular house of his – never mind where, that has nothing to do with it – at which he always likes to have me, and treats me quite as his honoured friend. And there we were on Monday night, tickling the pigeons, as you might say, which is only what they expect of us. He can beat me now in my own inventions, not from any superior skill, but because he is the coolest hand ever seen, and nothing puts him out of tune.

“He had won all along the board that night, and his pockets were full of money; but instead of being up, as a decent fellow would be, he took all his luck in a cold-blooded way, just as if it were nothing to what he deserved. That is never the right way to get any more. You must never do that, Mr. Orchardson.”

“Sir, I never gamble; and I want no lesson.” My uncle spoke severely; he thought it due to me to do so.

“It is too late in life for you to begin,” Tonks proceeded affably; “and your hands are too hard, Mr. Orchardson. But as I was saying, we came down the stairs, and slipped out very quietly. It was one of those little streets off Soho, where a man who knows London like the lines of his own hand may lose himself in half a minute, by one wrong turning. The night was very dark, and all the publics shut up long ago, and not a light was to be seen, except a dull lamp here and there. But we were quite used to this sort of thing, and felt no sort of fear, though we knew that we were passing through a den of robbers; and a man who has a lot of money in his pockets is inclined to fancy somehow that every stranger knows it.

“Suddenly, as we went by a narrow reeking archway, a fellow sprang out of it immediately behind us. Before I could turn, I heard a crash, and there he lay, sent backward by a heavy blow from Bulwrag’s fist. I thought that he was killed, for the blow had been tremendous; such as I have seen, when they meant business in the prize-ring. But luckily for him, the fellow wore a hard-rimmed hat, which lay behind him doubled up, while he rolled over, gasping.

“‘Not much got out of that,’ said Downy, looking at his knuckles; ‘the sooner we slope the better, Bowles; or there will be a rumpus.’

“‘We can’t go, before we see whether you have killed him. You hit him hard enough to kill an ox,’ I answered.

“‘Killed myself more likely. Just look at my hand. The fellow can’t be hurt much. What had he on his hat-front? Don’t pick him up. He’ll be better where he is.’

“But seeing no one up or down the street, I disobeyed him, and drew the stunned man into the shadow of the archway, and set him with his head against the bricks, while Bulwrag showed much more concern about his hat.

“‘Here it is – a metal thing! I shall keep it. Put his hat on again, Bowles; and let him meditate. We don’t want to cut a shine at Bow Street. Let’s be off!’

“I was rising to go, for I hate the police-courts, and the man was evidently coming round, and could do very well without us. But before we could leave him, he stretched out his hand, and said, ‘Captain, Captain, for God’s sake stop a minute. I have got something for you most important. I didn’t go to rob you, but to tell you something.’

“You may be sure that I was pretty wide awake at this; but of course I took care not to show it. And I saw by a shadow on the line of wall that Bulwrag had raised one hand, probably to his lips.

“‘Right!’ said the man, who was on his legs now, but sidled away into a darker place; ‘let the other gent go. I was to tell you by yourself. I daren’t come to your place, but you must come to mine.’

“‘Out with it! I never keep any secrets,’ Bulwrag replied, just to humbug me. ‘Unless it concerns other people, and then – Well perhaps, Bowles, you wouldn’t mind going to your den. Stop, let me speak to you a moment outside.’

“He took me away, while the man stopped there; and I saw that his object was to prevent me from finding out any more about that fellow. I was forced to let him have his way that far, and to play a waiting game with him.

“‘Some bosh or other,’ he whispered roughly; ‘I think I know who the fellow is, and all about it. A gamekeeper’s daughter down in Hampshire – always wanting money. Stop, you may as well take most of this, for fear of my being too soft-hearted. There, leave me five; that’s as much as I can spare. Good-night! Very much obliged. See you to-morrow.’

“‘You had better mind what you are about,’ I said; ‘he owes you a grudge, and you are in a slummy part, you know. I’ll come with you, if you like, and wait outside.’

“‘You had better not wait at all. I am apt to mistake people, as you have seen already?’

“This was a threat; and as such I took it, walking off with a dignity which must have vexed him. However, as soon as I was round the corner, I slipped a pair of rubber socks, that I always carry with me, over my boots, and put myself on duty in other ways; so that if he met me in the shadow, or even ten yards from a lamp, he would have little chance of knowing me. And in less than two minutes I was back again; not in the archway, of course, but at a place from which I could make out part of what was going on there. For I knew that there was something up quite out of the common way with him. Now how did I know that? Can either of you tell me?”

“Why, of course, by his knocking that fellow down,” my uncle replied sagaciously; “that was a bit of by-play, I suppose.”

“Not it. That was all done, bone fiddles – as we say. I knew it by the pile of cash he gave me to hold for him. Oh, he is a deep file, and all there at any moment. He had clearly formed a low opinion of your humble servant, and thought that I should bolt with all the rhino, and be seen no more. And it could be no trifle that made him risk the sum of five and forty pounds.”

“Forty-five pounds!” I exclaimed; “how strange! Why that was the very sum” – But here I stopped, for I did not wish to go into that question with him.

“Yes, forty-five pounds, when I came to count it. I could not tell how much it was, at the moment; but I felt that it was a tidy lump of cash, and I jumped at his motive in handing it to me. But he reckoned altogether without his host there. Well, when I came back, there they were, still at it. I could not hear a word of what they said, for I was forced to keep my distance. But I guessed that the skunk would take him somewhere, for what he had said beforehand, and then my wits would come into play. And sure enough he did, for in about two minutes they both came out, and looked up and down the street, to make sure that they were not followed. Seeing no one, they set off, at a good quick step, and I took the right style to be after them.

“They turned so many corners, and went through so many alleys, that no other man in the world could have kept them in sight, as I did, without blundering on them. We passed through many places I knew nothing of; but at last I stowed them in a quiet little den, not very far from Drury Lane. Here the fellow went down a steep narrow staircase, and knocked at a door that was like a cellar-flap. Downy stopped outside; which I thought was very wise of him, while the other went in, and for some time disappeared. But Downy came back to the entrance for fresh air, or perhaps to be certain that he was not watched. And I gave myself up for lost; but most luckily an empty truck or barrow stood against the wall, and I just slipped under it in time. I could have touched him with my hand, but the place was very dark; and he went back without twigging me.

“I have had many narrow shaves, but none to beat that. He would have killed me with a blow, and in a hole like that, I should soon have been under the flagstones. I had no time to be in a funk till it was over; but then I began to shiver horribly, and my nerves were not fit to be trusted any more.

“I knew this; and thinking of it made them worse, for I have a wife and seven children to look after. All I cared for now was to get away, for I had run the chap to earth, and could put my hand upon him.

“There was no chance of overhearing any of their talk, even if they had any; and if they once discovered me, even though I might escape, there would be no chance of learning more. I could find the hole again, for I had seen ‘Coke Yard’ daubed with a tar-brush on a patch of whitewash, and wherever I have once been I can always go again. So when Bulwrag turned back towards the door, I made ready to slip round the corner.

“But before I could do so, I heard the door creak, and the fellow with the broken hat came out again. I heard him say – ‘Now, you’ll believe me, Captain. I’d be glad of the price of a new hat, afore you go.’ What it was he gave to Downy, I could hardly see, but it looked like a packet of papers, or letters, or something done up in paper. Downy gave him something, and he said – ‘That all? Ain’t much for such news;’ and then Downy gave him more. ‘Daren’t come to your place. You come here,’ he says, ‘if you want any more – say next Saturday night; ask for Migwell Bengoose, and say Cluck.’ That was the name so far as I could catch it. But I was bound to be off, for Bulwrag was coming. And you may depend upon it that I did not stop to chat with him.”

CHAPTER LI.

NOT IN A HURRY

We were all pretty sure that this discovery of Tony’s concerned us deeply, and might lead to something, if followed up at once with luck and skill. But we thought it more important that he should go first to Woking Road, and inquire further into the story of Joe Clipson’s cab, which he was sure to do much better than myself; for he could make himself look like a brother cabman, without any trouble.

He had little more to tell us about the Coke Yard yet, for he had to feel his way very tenderly there, and must wait for opportunities. And Bulwrag (who was never very sweet of temper, though, unlike his mother, he could curb himself) had been more like a bear than a cultivated Christian, since he got that cut across his knuckles. As our sympathies were not with the sufferer, Tony made us laugh by his description of the want of resignation in a case so trifling.

“Here it is,” cried Bulwrag, after hopping round the room, as soon as his poultice began to draw; “look at this scurvy Saint! He is made of copper. Why the devil couldn’t he have a Saint made of gold?”

Tonks replied that perhaps the individual with the hat could not afford a golden Saint to sit upon the brim; and the copper perhaps had done him a much better turn than gold, both in saving his head from the crushing blow, and avenging it on the smiter. For the wound looked very angry, and it might be even dangerous. But what made him wear such a Saint at all?

“How the deuce can I tell why they wear such rubbish?” Bulwrag had answered crustily. “Those foreign sailors are such fools. You know more about him than I do.”

This was by no means true as yet, though Tonks hoped to make it so, if allowed his own time about it. And he told us quite earnestly, and as I believe sincerely, that he never had felt, not his mind alone, but his heart, more deeply engaged in solving the merits of the darkest horse in the leariest stable, than they both were now in getting to the very bottom of this affair about my Kitty. And though I did not altogether like his way of putting it, when the meaning is good we must not quarrel with the manner in which other people look at things.

So we treated him well and put him up for the night; and the following morning I drove him by way of Weybridge to Woking Road Station, or as near thereto as we could get without any one observing us. Then I went back to Weybridge, so as to meet him at that station, and hear all he had to say, before he took another train for London.

Nothing could have been better managed. I borrowed a badge from Sims the flyman, and a spotted yellow neckerchief, and a broken whip, and Tony lounged into the inn-yard, as if he had left his cab down at the blacksmith’s by the bridge. As I saw him in the distance I said to myself that nature must have meant him for the driver of a cab, for he put his knee out and turned his heels in, and carried his elbows, as if he had been born so. Any brotherhood of good will and lofty feeling, such as that of cabmen essentially is, must welcome him at once, and make him free of any knowledge it possessed that would bring in nothing.

And so it proved, when he rejoined me by the two o’clock train at Weybridge. “What have you ordered?” he asked; and I replied, —

“Chump chops, new potatoes, and pickled onions.”

“Couldn’t be better,” he was good enough to say; “but have in the pewter first. Blest if I believe there’s anything to parch the throat like a jolly good lie, and if I’ve told one, I’ve told fifty. Dinner first, business afterwards.”

That I should consent to this will show how thoroughly I had been drilled by long endurance and fretful discipline. Perpetual disappointment too, and the habit which hope had now acquired of falling without a blow – just like an over-matched prize-fighter – as well as a sense of evil fortune, drove me sometimes almost into the apathy of a fatalist. And so I let Tony Tonks munch on, and even joined him in that process.

“I wish I had got that to do again,” he said, as at last he laid down knife and fork; “I don’t often do so well as that. The air of these commons is uncommon sharp, sharper even than the Heath is. But you have been very patient, and I won’t keep you any longer. I found out all they knew back there, and it only cost a shilling. I don’t know that it is worth much more; for it carries us very little further. But so far as it goes, it is plain enough. I had it from Joe Clipson, the man who drove them; and no secret was made of the affair to him.”

Now the story, as he had it, comes to this. Some one got out at Woking Road Station, on the afternoon of May 15th, it might have been an up or it might have been a down train, Clipson could not say, for two trains came in together, and the man had no luggage of any sort. The date could be fixed by several things, and there could not be any doubt about it. And the time when two trains meet there in the afternoon is 4.15; which comes pretty close to our figures.

This man carried nothing but a little bag, a little black leather bag, such as nine people out of ten have. There were three cabs, or flies as they called them there, waiting in the station yard; for it is their busiest time of the day, and he chose Clipson’s, because the horse looked freshest, and told him to drive to Shepperton, without saying a word about the fare.

Clipson had not been in that part long, and he had scarcely heard of Shepperton, which is severed from all those Surrey places by the unbridged river. But it seemed to him a pleasant thing to start without any fettering as to money, and the man who engaged him seemed very free of that, in a style that said – “Never stand out for a shilling.” And he seems to have acted up to this; although it is scarcely ever done, except with a true friend’s money. But Clipson did not care whose it was, if he might be allowed to go home with it.

The day was very bright and pleasant – exactly as I remembered it – with plenty of light in the air, but no heat, and no flies to make horses grieve that they cannot swear. Clipson remembered how cold it grew, even before the sun went down, and he tucked a sack under his calves as he came home, because he had promised Mrs. Clipson so, and his word was more tender in absence.

He said that his fare seemed to know a good bit about the principles of the road – that was the word he used for it – as if he had learned it from a map, or description which somebody had rubbed into him. But he was not in any way up to the corners, which show – as Joe said, and with some reason too – whether a man understands what he is at properly. But he knew where he was at Chertsey Bridge, and he waved his hand at the first turn to the right.

Being a Surrey man, from some outlandish part in that straggling country, Clipson was not at all comfortable upon our side of the river. To a certain extent, and with much better reason, I feel the same thing as regards them; though I admit (without thinking twice about it) that there are plenty of good people there, and especially my Aunt Parslow. But Clipson, although he depended for his livelihood upon a railway station, did not like going into unknown places, especially with a horse who might come down and stop there; for there was only one sound knee out of sixteen that were washed in the yard every Saturday; but that one belonged to Clipson.

His horse was a clipper, by his own account; and nobody could tell how good he was, because he never had been called upon to do his best. Still it was a toughish journey for him; and Mr. Clipson could not see, taking the state of the roads into account, and the distance, and the waiting, how he could charge less than five and twenty shillings; and if asked to go again he would not do it for the money. For he waited four hours, as he vowed, and I daresay it may have been three, at the public-house, which is a sharp pull from the house of Phil Moggs at the waterside.

For these details I did not care so much (although they were full of interest) as I cared to know who the man was that employed him, and how he behaved, and whether he looked good, and above all how my darling Kitty seemed to take things, and what she said, and whether she was weeping all the way about myself. The cabman had paid no attention at all to this part of the question, and could give no more account of Kitty, than if she had been a portmanteau, or inside one. Tony Tonks had never asked (as a man of kind nature would have done) whether my dear had a handkerchief in her hand, or whether she seemed to gulp down a sob, or how she looked up at the evening-star, or even what the condition of her eyes was! For him it was quite enough to learn, that the “young ’ooman looked down in the mouth like.” Well, that is the way the world goes on.

About that I cared to make no fuss; for it even seemed a pleasure to me that none but myself should know these things; remembering as I did, that no one ever could cry as my Kitty could. For I never could understand how it was, that having so very little practice as she had (in spite of many opportunities), she could yet make anybody feel as if all the world was woe, the moment there appeared a gleam of trouble in her soft eyes. I am tolerably hard, and Uncle Corny harder still – from having lived so much longer – but either of us would rather have had a 64lb. box of strawberries drop from the tail of the van upon the tender places of both feet, than let a single word fall from us, even in the hottest moment, to bring a cloud into those tender eyes. However, all people are not like us; and perhaps she never let that cabman see what was the matter with her; for she was proud, as well as gentle.

Moreover the man was hungry, and that makes a world of difference. The kindest man that was ever born cannot be expected fairly to feel for his fellow-creatures, when he is yearning after animals. The heart being full of beef and mutton, because there are none in the stomach, how can any room be left for creatures of less relish? This explanation may be unsound; but at any rate the cabman did not melt at Kitty’s weeping.

And now two questions of prime importance rose in following out this tale. It was evident from two accounts, both that of Moggs the boatman and of Clipson the cab-driver, that no kind of compulsion had been used to make Kitty go with them. It was plain that she went of her own accord, deeply grieved – as the boatman’s story showed – but resigned and patient. In the first place, then, who was the man that had done all this to fetch her? And again, when they got to Woking Station, whither did they journey thence?

As to the first point Tony Tonks had found out little more than I did. The cabman said that he believed he would know the gent again if he saw him, but there was nothing very particular about him to notice. He seemed to be elderly, and rather short, but very sharp and active. His clothes were dark, and he wore a short cloak, not much longer than a policeman’s cape. He did not sit at the young lady’s side, but on the front seat opposite to her, and he did not seem to be talking to her much. It was quite dark when they left Shepperton, and it must have been ten o’clock when they arrived, or later; for the horse was a little lame from standing still so long. They did not seem to be in any hurry, and as they had no luggage, except a couple of light bags, he did not follow them on to the platform, and could not pretend to say which way they went, for there were three more down-trains after that, and four or it might be five to London.