Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

As to that, Tonks had made vain inquiries of the station-porters, and booking clerks. It was so long ago by this time, that even those who might have noticed them had forgotten. They had passed into the station, that was very well established; but after that nothing at all could be discovered, and there the clue broke hopelessly.

After hearing all these things, I became sadly downcast. They reminded me of that dreadful night when the snowdrifts overwhelmed me. I seemed to be walking in the same sort of maze, continually struggling to get forward, and perpetually driven back, seeming to walk with all my might, yet by a stronger power to stand still. And losing all confidence in myself, I asked Tony Tonks what he thought of it, just as if he had been the great oracle that smelled the turtle soup of Crœsus, without even longing for a taste of it.

“It all turns out just according to my views,” replied Tonks, as if he saw his views running like the gravy, which he had been saving up to drink out of the spoon; “the same as I have expressed all along, and find them confirmed more by all I discover. Any one who puts two and two together could swear that Downy Bulwrag is at the bottom of the mischief, though he has taken uncommonly good care not to show his nose in it. I am rather inclined to think that the lady is on the Continent. They are more likely to have gone down the line than up. If they had meant to go to town, what should have taken them to Woking? Supposing they were shy of the Windsor line, Surbiton would have been their place, or Weybridge. Though of course they might have thought Woking road safer, so that we must not reason too much by that. By the way, can the lady speak French at all? That might make a difference to her.”

“I am not at all sure,” I replied after thinking; “for we never happened to talk of that. She was at a good school for a little time; and then that hateful woman, her stepmother, took her away when she was doing well, and sent her to a wretched place at £20 a year. She can read French, I know, because I asked her something; but I doubt whether she can speak it.”

“Then that’s where she is. I begin to smell a rat. He took her from Southampton, depend upon it. And now I twig some bit of meaning in that copper saint. The south of France – that’s where she is.”

“But why in the south of France, more than any other part?” I thought that he was jumping rather fast to his conclusions.

“Well, it might be Italy, or Spain,” he answered, with a fine generosity; “I can’t say very much about it. But a brother of mine was at sea, till he was drowned, and he traded a good deal from the south of France; and he had one of those things in his hat, because of being struck by lightning. They get it very bad in those waters, he declared; but I can’t call to mind the name of the saint that stops it. Of course I have no faith in such stuff, though there might be nothing to laugh at, after all I have seen about horses. But there it is. They stick those things up, as an officer’s coachman mounts a cockade; and bad luck it was for Master Downy’s knuckles. His hand was like a pease-pudding yesterday. His flesh is always of a yellow nature, like a Cochin China’s. Shouldn’t wonder a bit, if he got lockjaw.”

“Not till I have settled with him.” It made me forget the Rev. Peter, and all his style of regarding things, when people spoke as if right and wrong had an equal claim upon the Lord in heaven.

CHAPTER LII.

A WANDERING GLEAM

My uncle, however, was not like that. He had suffered too largely from rogues himself, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, to have any calm way of considering them.

“Either a man is honest through and through, or else he is a thief all over. It is humbug to talk as if a fellow didn’t know when he is stealing, or when he is not. He knows it pretty sharp when it is done to him; and he puts it short, as he has a right to do. And then he turns the corner, and he wipes his mouth, and serves others with the dose that made him sputter. To cheat the man that cheated you, is Christian enough; but not to pass it on to other people. Ask Mr. Golightly what he thinks about it.”

That pious clergyman would scarcely have been satisfied even with my uncle’s view of Christian conduct, although he was moderate in his expectations of us, after all his experience of our doings. This made it very pleasant to be with him frequently; and for my part I am certain that I never could have lasted through all this gloom, and suspense, and indignation, without his example and quiet comfort. All that we had found out, at Shepperton and at Woking, I owed to him, or at any rate to my acquaintance with him; and although it might not seem as yet to carry me much further, still I found some happiness in knowing that little, and hope of learning more from it. And now I went to him about another question, which I could not settle for myself.

It may be remembered that Tabby Tapscott, who came to attend to my uncle’s house, had more than once given me good advice; and some may have set me down as ungrateful for keeping her out of sight since my great disaster, as if she were of no importance. But the real truth is, that I had sought her counsel almost every time I saw her, and had found much comfort from it, because she was so scornful. For the little woman tossed her head, and shot forth her under-lip, as if she could not trust herself to speak, so thoroughly was her mind made up. She looked upon all that had happened as the fruits of a foul conspiracy on the part of man against woman, and she scarcely held me guiltless. And she had no patience with me, because I would not do the proper thing, to find out all about it. Until I did that, she would say no more, but leave me to listen to a set of zanies. Why on earth I refused was more than she could understand; and she went so far as to declare, once or twice, that I could not be in earnest about getting Kitty back, or I would have done it long ago. She herself had known a girl, of Westdown parish in the North of Devon, who found out all about her sweetheart’s murder, and got two men hanged for committing it.

The means were certainly simple enough, if anything would come of them. The bereaved one must let the full moon pass for as short a time as possible; and then, at twelve of the middle-day, go to the dress last worn by the lost one, and take something from the left side pocket, or failing that cut a piece out. Then he might carry on as he pleased, until it came to bed-time, and then do as follows. Under the pillow on his left-hand side, he must place whatever he had taken from the dress, and then instead of his common prayers, pray in the following manner —

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,Bring me back my love that’s gone.Bring her white, or bring her red,According as she is ’live or dead.”

Then he must throw the window up, or out, if it was a lattice, and look at the moon which would then be up (for he was supposed to keep good hours, as all gentle lovers should); and after that he must lie down, with his left ear on the pillow, and repeat the Doxology – which Tabby called the “Doxy” – until it made him go to sleep. Then, as sure as he was a living man – or in the other case a living woman – the lost one would appear at midnight, and tell him all about it. Only he, or she, must ask no questions, and above all offer no contradiction.

Now, I have never been superstitious; though some of the wisest men I have met with seem at times to be so; and I laughed at all this stuff of Tabby’s, although I had found her truthful. Then I asked her to go through it all for me; but she stared at my stupidity; “As if her would come nigh me!” she said. “It is the love as does it, and the angels to the back of it.”

But when she kept on so about it, and assured me that much wiser people than I, and a long sight better – as she was good enough to say – had tried this plan and been set up by it; I began to think that it could do no harm, and if it afforded her any pleasure – why, no one else need hear of it. Except that the sin of witchcraft is most strongly denounced in the Bible; and many might think that this proceeding savoured of that character. However, if the Church of England could be brought to sanction it, the Powers of the air might do their worst; for our church is built upon a rock.

The Rev. Peter Golightly said, when I opened out this case to him, that he was a little surprised to find me listening to such nonsense. I told him that it was very far from my desire to do so; but if it was likely to ease the minds of others, it might be my duty to go on with it. At this he laughed, and did not say, but seemed perhaps to mean it, that I was not bound to make a fool of myself, because my brother fools wished it. However, I was not going to be argued down about it; and I put the question point-blank to him, whether there was any sin in it. He could not say that there was any; but being more on his mettle now, declared that it was rank folly, and insisted very strongly on the superiority of prayer. There I had him on the nail; for what was this but a mode of prayer, invoking also those holy writers, who alone have taught us the use of prayer? He shook his head, as if unconvinced; but his daughter called him away just then, and I did not care to renew the subject, feeling that now I had his permission; which he might recall, if argued with.

The moon was full at six o’clock in the morning, as Uncle Corny said; and he always knew everything about her, except the weather she would bring. And at noon I went to my dear wife’s frock, the one she had worn on the very day before she disappeared from me. She had kept them on a row of hooks – for we were not rich in wardrobes – with a scarf of something drawn along to keep the dust from settling. It had been one of my sorest jobs to unhang them very reverently, remembering when she had worn them last, and how my arm had been round them. For she had a very pretty way of coming up in the morning (when her hair was done, and her collar on) for me to tell her how she looked, and to see that all her strings were right But now these empty dresses lay, all folded, and locked in the bottom drawer.

I may be soft beyond most people – although it is a fault more shared than shown – but when I had spread that simple frock upon the bed, which I never entered now, and passing both hands down the bosom, clumsily searched (as a man must do) for the mouth of the little pocket, and then could only get three fingers in – all the strength of my resolve to be quite firm and manly quivered on my lips, and melted in the haze that crept across my eyes. A tiny notebook, with a pencil, and a silver thimble, a little house-wife, and a button meant to be sewn on my coat, two or three jujubes (which she kept to pop into my mouth, because she fancied I was hoarse sometimes) nothing for herself, but all for me, or for my service; and then a little scrap of paper, my last scribble from the garden – “Darling, not till nine o’clock” – as I took them one by one, all seemed fragrant with her sweetness, and holy from her loving hand.

I could not bring myself to go through Tabby’s rigmarole that night; for my mind was full of larger thoughts, neither would I go upstairs into the lonely bedroom; but I gazed for some time at the moon, as people when in sorrow do, by some mysterious instinct. And then I placed a pillow, instead of the roll of mat beneath my head, and under it my dear wife’s house-wife, and her pretty thimble, not for that night only, but as my companions henceforth; and therewith I cast myself on the hard church-cushion, and thought of her. Before very long, I fell asleep, having done a good day’s garden-work at sundry jobs that were sadly in arrear.

But Tabby’s jingle was still in my head, moving without my will or wish, as a mouse comes in the wainscote; and with the moon shining into the room, one of my last reflections was that I had been very lucky in yielding to no witchcraft. Not that there could be anything to frighten me in my darling, “whether white, or whether red;” by which the old chant seemed to mean, whether she might be in the bloom of health, or the wan hue of the winding-sheet. In either case she would love me still; and that was the thing I cared most to know.

Suddenly, I sat up and looked. The old church clock was striking slowly, and the sleepy sound loitered on the drowsy air. The moon was gliding calmly on her southern road, and being in her humble summer state, she could scarcely top the big pear-tree which stood before my window. The room was full of light and shade, in bars, in patches, and in triangles, with no strong contrast in and out, but fused, like silver-wire netting, or water parted by the weir-posts, and rejoining under them. And there, in this faint flow of light and wavering ebb of shadow, I saw my Kitty, sitting calmly, and gazing at me steadfastly.

No surprise or fear whatever crossed my mind – which seems to show that I was not altogether wide awake; but I waited for her to say something, while she kept on looking at me. I had left off wearing a nightcap ever since I went to Hampton School; not that I ever slept there, but because the boys had laughed at it. My Uncle Corny always said that this was tempting Providence; and now I tried to put up my hands, but they would not go, and I sat and gazed, being a little surprised, but not amazed, as some people might have been. Then Kitty put up her hand to me, showing the palm of it quite rosy, as it always had been; and I saw that her dress was the one in the drawer; but that did not surprise me.

“Darling, you must be patient still. I am thousands of miles away from you;” she spoke as quietly as if she were saying – “The tea is not quite drawn yet,” and I received it as quietly. “There is a good reason for my going; and you know it better than I do. Only, be happy till I come back; for whatever you feel, I feel. When I come home, we shall never part again.”

This was a little too much for me, high and tragical as it seemed.

“I want you now. Oh Kitty, Kitty, don’t run away again!” I cried; and over went both my Windsor chairs, as I sprang up, to fling my arms round her.

But when I came to the place where she had been, lo, there was no one! Everything was cold and hard; instead of her soft warm figure, all I embraced was a kitchen towel; and the handle of a gridiron came between my vainly opened lips.

CHAPTER LIII.

A BAD NIGHT

Nevertheless, that vision, if it was a vision, cheered me. The more I thought of it, the more I felt that it meant something; and though free as any man can be from human superstition, here I found a special mercy, showing that I was not quite abandoned and forsaken. But I took good care not to make myself the laughing-stock of any one. Neither Uncle Corny, nor Henderson (who was now come back from his honeymoon), nor even Tabby Tapscott, who might well claim the best right of all, ever heard a word of it. To Mr. Golightly alone I spoke at all about the matter, and he, instead of laughing at me, took it very gravely.

“It is meant to encourage you,” he said; “and you should be thankful. Many even of the true believers have their doubts, as is natural, whether our little earthly course is guided by a higher hand; or whether in the light of full instruction we are left to work it out. But I venture to think with the men of old, that all things are ordered for us. You have had a bitter trial, such as befalls very few so young; and you have borne it well, my friend. Sometimes you have been gloomy and downcast, but never bitter. A more mysterious affliction I have never witnessed, and you know well how my heart is with you, though I seldom speak of it. ‘Bear and be strong’ is the true watchword, and you have kept it nobly. I pray that I may live to see you in your happiness again; and you may without presumption hold that this has been vouchsafed you, as a token of approval, and a signal to encourage you.”

So I tried to take it, though it seemed but meagre comfort. And I wished that I had broken my knees again, before I jumped up in such haste, and spoiled the chance of learning more. My darling seemed to have finished; but if I had only waited, very likely she would have begun again, as women generally do. Of geography I had little knowledge, except as taught at a grammar-school, and then it went some three inches down the “World as known to the ancients.” I doubted whether the south of France could be “thousands of miles” from Sunbury, though that might be a poetical expression, and no lady is expected to be accurate. And what was meant by the declaration, that I knew better than she did the reason of her quitting me? That looked as if I had done something wrong; and an inspired vision should have known that I had never even glanced at any other woman. Thinking of all this, I was puzzled, almost as much as comforted.

In the next thing that occurred I found a further element of puzzle, but none at all of comfort. It was now the usual thing for me, being in bachelor condition, to turn into my Uncle Corny’s house, at the time he was having his early dinner. Not that it mattered much to me; only that I was able thus to save myself from bread and cheese, and secure a little nourishment.

I was doing this to the best of my ability, without observing it, when in came Tony Tonks, as if he was running away from the bailiff. One of my firm convictions was that thin men never panted; but that impression, like all others, now required revising. Tony Tonks was in such a state, alike of mind and body, that neither could at all work out the meaning of the other.

We happened to have a little bit of boiled beef and young carrots; and my uncle was just helping me to a scutcheon of gristle at the corner. For he liked to keep a level cut, and he found me fitter now than he was, for the horny places. But Tony was in such a state, that when his knife and fork were laid, he said, “Not a bit for me, sir.”

My uncle looked at him as if he were troubled with his ears again, as he had been last winter. “Certainly, a nice bit,” he said; “and close to the bone accordingly. We buy it fresh, and we pickle it. At this time of year, the butchers make it leather with saltpetre.”

Tony saw that his face was stern; and to escape acrimony, he took my plate with all upon it that should have been for my inside. To this sort of thing I am too much accustomed to remonstrate.

“Not a word, till you have finished,” my uncle spoke decisively; “I have known a man who cut his throat, by talking too much at dinner-time.”

Mr. Tonks looked not unlikely to commit this error; but after yielding to my uncle’s orders he seemed better. Then he crossed his knife and fork, which is a very defiant thing to do, and said as if he shot a pea at us – “I am come to throw up my appointment.”

My uncle did not speak at first. When people took him suddenly, he would not be disturbed by any contagious gush of suddenness. And he waited for Tony to go on, instead of being pushed by him.

“What I mean is” – Tonks continued, seeing that he might as well go slowly – “I have done the best I can; and there is nothing more to be made of it. I can make out all about a horse, because he is straightfor’ard. But about a man is a different thing; and I shall go back to my business.”

“Have you been frightened?” asked my uncle, looking at him steadily.

“Not a bit of it. What is there to frighten me, or any one? In the eye of the law, we are all equal. The man who killed me would swing as high as if he had killed Prince Albert.”

“But that would not bring you back to life. You have been frightened, Tony Tonks; and it is useless to deny it.”

“Well, my life is as much to me as the greatest man’s that ever lived. ‘Frightened’ is not the proper word. Only I look things in the face, and weigh the rusk against the risk; and I find the last come heavier. And I am wanted now for the Leger nags. I am worth ten pounds a week at least, so I wish to say good-bye to you.”

“I call you a coward, and a sneak,” said my uncle, getting his wrath up; “and it serves us altogether right for dealing with such a fellow. I could not bear it from the first; but I listened to other people, as I am always much too apt to do. You won’t have your spy-money, I can tell you, for any day since Saturday.”

“Ah, but I’ve got it,” answered Mr. Tonks, who seemed well accustomed to reproaches; “it was paid in advance, you must remember. I have cashed it, and mean to stick to it.”

“I don’t quite see how that can be,” said my uncle, with great sagacity; “you must be making some mistake. You can never have got so in front of us.”

“Ah, but I have, old cock, I have. All expenses paid; and here is my five-pound note, as safe as eggs.” He tapped his pocket, in a manner quite unworthy of an experienced tout.

“Very kind of you to show us. We will have it back.” My uncle seized him by the waist, and planted him on the table. “Leave him to me, Kit. He won’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt him, if he is quiet.”

He pinned the spy’s arms with one of his, and took the note from his waistcoat pocket, while the poor man struggled vainly. Then he set him again on the floor, and said. “You should learn to be more just, my friend.”

“Highway robbery!” shouted Tonks.

“High table, you mean,” said my uncle.

“I’ll fetch the police. I’ll give you in charge. I’ll take out a warrant. I’ll – ”

“You won’t do anything of the sort. Sit down, and reason quietly. You have broken contract; and if you were one of my workmen, I would pay you nothing. But as you are a poor little jackanapes, and did your best for us, I believe, until you got into this blue funk, you shall have half of this money, Tonks, to pay your way back to your proper work. But only on one condition – that you tell us what has scared you so.”

“Well,” answered Tonks very sulkily; “I always do what is fair and right. But you can’t expect a man to go with his life in his hand, to please you. Fact of it is I got into grief by following up that Migwell Bengoose, or whatever his name is. I told you that I was bound to do it, before Downy went to see him again, unless I could get any chance, you know, of seeing what was in that packet. And I got no chance at all of that, though I did my best in Bulwrag’s rooms, whenever I went to see him. But his hand, in spite of all the doctor’s work got swollen as big as a horse’s head pretty nearly; and his temper became that frightful, that I scarcely durst go nigh him, and of course there was nothing to watch, when he could scarcely get about at all. Naturally I did my best to make something out of his grumbles; but he would not have it, and at last he says, ‘Bowles, what the devil are you always after me for? It ain’t from friendly affection,’ he says, ‘and I can’t pick up anything now, you see. If you want to spy into family affairs, I’ve got one hand left,’ he says, ‘and that’s enough for you.’

“Well, that was pretty plain, you know. And worse than that, in comes the doctor, and says he will not answer for his life, unless he goes into some place where he can be properly nursed and tended. So Downy makes his mind up in two minutes, gives up his rooms in Dover Street, and goes back to Bulwrag Park, as they call it, for his mother to coddle and comfort him. And there they’ve got a hospital nurse, and a wheel-chair, and I don’t know what all; and much too grand of course for me to go near with a binocle. ‘You’d better come and see my mother, Bowles, when you want any further information,’ Downy said to me, with his frightful grin, like a yellow mangle-wuzzle, ‘ah, she does like answering questions – light and sweetness, that’s her nature!’

“So I was shut off, as you may suppose; and I pretty soon found out what made him so suspicious. He discovered somehow that I had been living, for the first week, you know, not afterwards, at good mother Wilcox’s place near by, and they look upon her as an enemy, no doubt, having been nurse to the young lady they have stolen. If you try any more watching work up there, you must not make that the head-quarters, for they keep a look-out there, you may depend. But I don’t see what more you have now to watch. The lady is out of England, you may take that for certain; most likely she is snug in some lunatic asylum, or nunnery perhaps, or monastery” – Mr. Tonks was not well versed in such matters – “either in the South of France, or somewhere on the Continent; and unless you can lay hold of Downy Bulwrag, and put him on the rack (as they do in Spain) until he squeaks out all the truth, there’s no chance of your being much the wiser. I mean, of course, unless she escapes, or comes to herself, or whatever it may be, and tells you all about it with her own lips; and that is not very likely. They know what they are about, a great deal better than you do.”