Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

“‘I can see a great ship coming over the sea, no smoke to it, only white white sails. And in the front of it I can see a beautiful young woman, looking towards England with tears in her eyes. The ship is sailing fast, but her heart is flying faster; and she never looks back, and answers no one, only to ask how much longer it will be.’

“‘And how much longer will it be?’ we both asked her, because it was the very thing that you would want to know.

“‘I cannot say, perhaps three, four weeks. The sun is very hot, and there is a black cloud before them. Perhaps it will swallow them up; I cannot tell. No there is a great bird with long white wings; it will take them through the cloud, and they will be safe. There, it is all sliding from me, like a mist! But I can see her eyes still, and they are full of tears and smiles.’

“Not another word could we get out of her, Kit. There were tears on her own cheeks, when she opened her eyes, and she did not know a single word she had been saying.”

“I wish you had asked her where the ship was to land, and what was the name of it, and how she came there, and whether it would be any good for me to go to meet it, and who it was the lady was thinking of all the while, and how long the storm that was before them was to last, and whether the people on board – ”

“Come, Kit, that is all the thanks we get. Major, do you hear him? No, the chap is fast asleep. Between you and me, Kit, he has had a drop too much. But a man in a small way doesn’t win five hundred, every day of his life, you know. By-the-way, I heard that Downy was hard hit again. But Pots took my tip, and has pocketed a thousand. Why, you never congratulated me, my boy. I shall throw up the book now, and invest it in my place. But we must be off, or Sally will blow up. Such a spread! You had better come. Cinny walks into the dining-room, and drinks a bottle of champagne, and there will be some rattling good chaps there.”

“There may be a thousand, Sam; but none better than yourself. I congratulate and thank you, Sam, with all my heart. Few fellows would have thought of a friend at such a time. But excuse me; I can’t come to-night, indeed I can’t. I want to think of this all by myself. You say that this beautiful queen is never wrong. And what a heart she must have, what a fine heart, Sam! I should like to have seen the tears on her lovely cheeks.”

“Oh, I say! Come, come, Kit. But she has never been known to be wrong, my dear fellow. All the tribe call her – well, I can’t pronounce the name, but it means something like ‘the infallible divine.’ And she does it all so simply! There is no humbug about her. Come along, Major; why, you must be starved.”

I was partly ashamed of my own superstition; yet I could not help saying to myself – “They believe it; and they are ten times cleverer than I shall ever be.”

CHAPTER LXII.

HASTE TO THE WEDDING

Things were not going very smoothly now with Mr. Donovan Bulwrag. Three of the four months allowed him by his father had passed already; yet no date was fixed, or seemed likely to be fixed, for the great event which was to make a wealthy man of him. The old man was urgent, and could not be brought to postpone his revenge to the convenience of his son, for he had learned already that this chip of the old block was of a grain quite as crooked and cross-fibred as his own. His violent and vindictive heart was burning for the day when he should trample on the pride of the woman who had been his ruin, and had married again and lived in luxury, while putrid fish was his diet. Neither was revenge his only motive. Some provision must be made for him, something better than two pounds a week, and a wretched den in London, as soon as ever he chose to apply to his aged father’s men of business; and this he could not do (without upsetting all his plans) until he had revealed himself to that haughty woman.

“If you choose to make your own son a beggar, and to turn your daughters into the streets – you must. That is all I can say. I can do no more. I lost a lot of money to-day, all through you. I should never have invested sixpence, but for you. It does seem a little too hard upon a fellow, when he is doing all he knows to please a man who never helped him.”

It was on the night of the Derby day, and father and son were holding their usual weekly interview in the Green Park. The older man was much better dressed and cleaner than he had been; but the other kept at a prudent distance, and took care to smoke throughout the time. He had looked into books, and found that the disorder is sometimes contagious, and sometimes not.

“Whose fault is it that I have never helped you?” the cripple asked disdainfully. “Don’t walk so fast; my feet are not like yours. You make me even pay for my cab both ways. I came to please you. You shall pay for my cab. And you shall pay for it a little further too. I demand to be established on the premises. You have plenty of room; and as you said once, it can be done without any one the wiser. How can I tell that she won’t run away, the moment you are married? And I want to be where I can see my daughters. In a lonely rambling, ramshackle house like that, you could put me up easily. Why, I saw the very place, when I went round there after dark. Who ever goes near the Captain’s workshops? Three of them quite away from all the other rooms. I only want one, and I will have it. It would save me ten shillings a week, as well as cab fare. They won’t take me anywhere, in the vilest den, for less than that, when they see what I am. Christian country isn’t it? Why, the Pulcho Indians are better Christians than you are. Get that room ready by this day week.”

“If I do, you must give me another month’s grace. It will be a terrible risk to take. Every one watches us so about there; we have gained such a reputation.”

“And I shall increase it, my son, as soon as known. Your mother never cared what was thought of her by any one. She will now have a fine case to defy the public with. I go into that room, this day week. My goods are not as manifold as they were. I had twelve horses at my command at San Luis. Ah, we all have our ups and downs. I am on the up scale now.”

Downy was very loth to receive his father so. He knew that it might be done safely enough, if the old man would only be cautious and discreet. But that was the very point he was sure to fail in. He would have been a great man by this time, perhaps a Dictator of three sprawling States, if his prudence had been equal to his strong will and valour. Some day his history may be written; and if it should be done with any skill, the reader will be likely to conclude that he has come across yet another instance of good material thrown away.

“I don’t like it,” said the dutiful son; “why can’t you stay where you are, till it is over?” That is to say, his own wedding-day.

“Because I believe that you will make her bolt. At least, nobody can make her do anything unless she chooses. But if she heard of me, she would bolt like a shot. And a nice fool I should be after that. It is no good arguing. In I go, this day week; or else I leave my card at the front door.”

Donovan Bulwrag contended vainly. His father was as stubborn as himself, and a hundred-fold as reckless. What had this afflicted mortal to be afraid of now? His sense of paternity must have been strong, and the staple of his nature something better than hardware, that he should have lain still so long in his misery, poverty, and ignominy, rather than assert himself, and shock the public, and destroy his son’s last hope of high position.

Downy showed more than his usual craft, in this difficult crisis of his fortunes. He extorted from his father, before he let him in, a pledge that he would keep himself out of sight, and never move without his leave, for at least another month. The room in which he stored him was cold, and dark, and damp, and entirely out of view from all the people of the house; yet quite like a palace to the poor old man, after all the low dens he had been lurking in. He was smuggled in at night, and had to wait upon himself, receiving all his food from his son’s hands alone. The window had been fitted with dark wooden blinds, for some of the Professor’s experiments, and the obscurity was deepened by the great ilex tree.

The Earl of Clerinhouse, though one of the wealthiest men of the day, lived a very quiet life. His health was not strong, and he hated all display, and had no turn for sporting, or gambling, or politics, or any other form of noise and push. He cared not for books, or art, or agriculture, or women, or the drama, or the pleasures of the table. He was satisfied to take the world as he found it, and to keep himself out of it, whenever he could. Not for the sake of saving money, for no one could charge him with avarice; and when he saw good to be done, he did it in the most generous and even lavish style. The few who knew him intimately loved him deeply for his gentleness, simplicity, and good will; and often it was said of him, and not untruly, that he had never spoken harshly to any human being.

His father had been a great city man, keen, energetic, and enterprising; but though the present Earl retained his interest in great houses founded by his father, he never concerned himself about the money-market, and entered into no speculations. The one ray of romance in his quiet life had fallen across it when he was quite young. When the bright suns of Sunbury were in their zenith, he had been dazzled and smitten for a while by the lustre of Miss Monica. Happily for him, his suit was vain; he had too little “go” in him to suit her taste; and he married a lady better fitted for him, who left him a widower with one daughter. But the arrogant beauty retained and asserted – when it became of importance to her – a certain strange influence upon his tranquil mind.

He had never liked Donovan Bulwrag, and shrank from entrusting his treasure to him. For his daughter Clara was the treasure of his life, the only object for which he cared to preserve his feeble vitality. Lady Clara, now in her twentieth year, resembled her father almost too closely. She was gentle, simple, and unpretending, apt to think the best of everybody, and to yield to a will more robust than her own. She was likely to make a most admirable wife for a strong and good man, who would cherish her; but with a coarse, unfeeling husband, she was certain to pine away and die; for her mind was very sensitive, and her constitution weak.

Seeing little of the world, and knowing less about it, this graceful and elegant girl had been induced, partly by the mother’s heroic commendations, to fix her affections upon Downy Bulwrag. How any girl could like that fellow it is hard to say; there was something so disgusting in his countenance to me, and his slow, deliberate, sarcastic speech, as if he thought over every word he uttered, and passed it through his mind to make it nasty. However, she considered him a hero; and so he was – a hero of cold cunning, and hot wickedness.

“You have at him, and I will have at her,” said this hero to his mother, as they drove to Berkeley Square; “it can’t go on like this. Why, I scarcely dare go out. Why, the fellows at the Fan-tail were talking all about me, when I dropped in for an hour last night. I knew it by the way they began about the weather, and that ass of a Grogan whispered – ‘Hush! here he is.’ I shall tell her I am off to Nova Zembla next week; and you lay it on thick about what Dr. Medley said. Work the old muff upon that tack, and about the feeble heart-action, and the nervous system, and all that stuff. But let me have the little doll all to myself.”

Mrs. Fairthorn sighed, for she had quick perception, and some good behind all her badness. “I fear that the little doll is too good for you,” she answered; and he smiled at her.

How they managed it, matters little; but they thought they had managed it rarely well. No doubt they told lies pat as puddings, and plentiful as blackberries. Tho Lord, who settles all things well – as we sometimes find out in the end – allowed them this little bit of triumph, to increase their discomfiture. But after all, I have no ill will, and am sorry that they had so much.

“How beautifully everything has gone off, Don!” said the lady, when she had settled her stately form in the watered silk again; “you see what a little tact can do. I put it as a favour to that poor thing. The objections have come from those wretched lawyers. The poor Earl would not hear a word about the money. I can’t think what I have been about, not to take the bull by the horns long ago. But the fault was yours. I could never trust you. Well, I was never more pleased in my life. It will be in the Morning Post to-morrow. Did you see how the poor Earl looked at me? I can wind him round my finger.”

“The Professor may go to the bottom with his trawl; and then who knows what might happen?” Donovan spoke with a bitter smile; he had never entirely forgiven his mother for her second marriage.

“Don’t be so shocking, Don. I am ashamed of you. Well, a month is not very long to wait; and there is a great deal to see to. Fizzy and Jerry will be bridesmaids, of course, and I must not be quite a dowdy. How that pest of a Dulcamara will ko-tow! She threatened me with the Queen’s Bench yesterday. I am not sure that I shall give her any order. I should like to break her heart, and I know how to do it. If I put the whole into Madame Fripré’s hands, Dulcamara would never look up again. But her cut is so inferior to Dulcamara’s. Well, I need not make my mind up, until to-morrow.”

“I think you had better keep the whole thing quiet, and pull it off without any fuss at all. The Earl hates pomps and vanities, so does Clara, and so do I. We had better have no humbug.”

“And be married at a registry office, I suppose. None of that mean, shabby work for me. Everything shall be left in my hands, and I’ll see that things are done properly. If it was only to vex your Aunt Arabella, after her trumpery rudeness to you, I should insist upon decency and comfort. I know how to cut her to the heart, and I intend to do it. The very day before the wedding, I shall write – ‘Dearest Arabella, – We have been disappointed at the last moment by the dear Duchess of Coventry. Her Grace is afflicted with a bilious attack. Would you mind taking her place to-morrow, and excuse the brevity of this invitation?’ I should like to see her passionate face, when she gets that.”

“Don’t be a fool, mother. You know, after all, you and I are the proper heirs to her estates, though she can dispose of them as she likes. She dislikes us; but she is an upright woman. It would be mad to offend her fatally.”

“She has cheated me out of house and land. There is no primogeniture among women. I simply did the thing she was going to do. She has rolled in money, and let me roll in the dirt. None of her posthumous benevolence for me! You will never see me grovelling at that woman’s feet.”

At the rehearsal of her wrongs, her violent temper rose and swelled, as a dog’s wrath waxes with his own bark. She stood up in the carriage, and crushed her head dress. This doubled her fury, and she turned upon her son.

“And you – I should like to know what you are doing in my house – my house, if you please, not yours. You think I know nothing about it, do you? No more of it! From this very hour, you drop your disgraceful bachelor ways, or I fetch the police and rout out those rooms. Now, remember what I say. When I say a thing, I do it.”

“You are altogether wrong. There is nothing of the sort;” Downy answered in a stern voice that cowed her; “to the last day of your life, you will repent it, if you dare to go meddling there.”

“Dare is not a word to use to me,” she answered in a sullen tone, and closed her lips. If she feared any one in the world she feared her own son Donovan. The difference between her will and his was as that between a torrent and the sea. Hers was force, and his was power. Sometimes she was sorry for her haste and fury; but in him there was no repentance.

He left her to herself, and said no more. In one thing they were much alike. Neither of them had great faith in words, whether used to them or by them. Having little faith in what they heard, they expected little for what they said. It was no affront to either of them, but an act of justice, to doubt every word of their mouths, because their mouths were wells of leasing.

“You will have to clear out, poor old chap;” said Downy that night to his father, whom he now regarded with rough affection, as well as fitful pity. “All settled now, about you know what. In three weeks or so, I shall have to slope. Who would bring you your grub, but your dutiful son? What is it about the ravens? And worse than that – she has smoked you already. In spite of all pledges, you have been out at night.”

“Who could stay mewed up, night and day? Let her smoke what she likes; I have got a pipeful for her.”

“Yes, and for me, and yourself too. Bedlam, or hospital, or workhouse for us all, if she finds you here, before the job is done. After that, have it out, when you like. No dutiful son interferes between his parents. If this is broken off, there will be no shilling left, for you to have sixpence out of.”

It may fairly be hoped that he had some other plan, though as yet he durst not mention it, for saving them both from the awful meeting of which he spoke so lightly.

“How am I to know that it is settled even now? You have put me off so many times. I might as well be on the Simon Pure again.”

“I will show it you to-morrow in the paper, announced for an early day – and it needs be an early one.”

“Sorry to doubt you. Not at all a truthful family. Three weeks more, my son; and that’s every hour. Let her come spying, if she likes. She never could keep her nose out of anything, or perhaps I shouldn’t be quite as I am. I am sorry for my lady; I only hope the pleasure will be mutual.”

CHAPTER LXIII.

THERE SAT KITTY

While these things thus were growing near me, as I learned soon afterwards, in our place there was no sign yet of anything encouraging. My Uncle Corny, who had always vowed that he never would bet a farthing, was now in a highly grumbling state, because he had not backed Nutmeg-grater.

“A horse bred and born in our own fields – a colt I have seen through the hedge fifty times, without caring to count his legs almost, and he goes and wins five thousand pounds, and how much do I get? Not a penny. I think it was very unkind of Sam; unnatural, and not neighbourly, to let Ludred get all the good of that, and not a threepenny bit come to Sunbury!”

“Now, Uncle Corny, you talk of justice, and every one calls you a superior man;” I said, with the desire to mollify him, but the method misdirected; “how many times have I heard Sam Henderson tell you to put a bit of money on that horse? But you said – ‘None of your gambling for me!’ And now, because the horse has won, you think you have been ill-treated!”

“Kit, you stick to your own affairs. What do you know about things like this? I want none of their dirty money. I pay my way, by honest work. They are a set of rogues, all together. You never see anything clearly now. Your wits are always gone wool-gathering. Why, your own Aunt Parslow won a box of gloves. And you are satisfied with my getting nothing.”

It was true that my wits were wool-gathering now, but they travelled a long way for nothing. Ever since Sam, and Major Monkhouse, brought me the story of that strange vision, it seemed to be dwelling in my brain, and driving every solid sense out of it. All day long, and all night too, the same thing was before me – a ship with white sails piled on one another, like a tower of marble arches, the blue water breaking into silver at her steps, and upon the forefront a figure standing, with arms extended and bright eyes yearning, and red lips opened to say – “here I am!”

I went to the post, three times a day, for we now had three deliveries, and who could wait for old Bob’s slow round? And often in the middle of a mutton-chop, which Tabby would grind into my listless mouth, at a shadow on the window, or the creaking of a door, I was up, and had my hat on, and was listening in the lane.

Any one would laugh at the foolish things I did. I kept the kettle boiling, day and night, until there was a hole in it, and I had to buy another; I dusted all the chairs three times a day; I kept a bunch of roses on the window-sill, and cut a fresh tea-rose, every morn and evening, to go into Kitty’s bosom, when she should appear. I ordered a cold chicken every day from Mr. Rasp, and garnished it with parsley, and handed it over with a sigh to Mrs. Tompkins, when nobody came to taste it; and I made Polly Tompkins sleep with a string round her arm, and the end hanging out of the window. Every man on the place swore that I was cracked, except Selsey Bill, who stuck a spade up at my door.

“Afore the rust cometh down the blade of that there tool, you’ll be a happy man, Master Kit,” he said; and as he spoke, his little squinny eyes were bright with something that removes the rust of human nature’s metal.

At last I was truly getting genuinely cracked. Another week of burning hope and weltering dejection, of tossing to the sky and tumbling to the depths of darkness, must have left my dull brain empty of the little gift God put in it.

When a whole month had expired from the day when hope awoke, reason fell upon me like a flail, and hope was chaff. I made my usual preparations, with a bitter grin at them, and set the roses in the window, with contempt of their loveliness.

“The last time of all this tomfoolery,” I said; “to-morrow I shall work hard again. Everything is lies, and tricks, and rot. Kitty has taken up with some fellow, and they are laughing at me in some gambling-den. I have a great mind to smash it up altogether. I shall sleep where that Regulus slept to-night. Much good I did by stealing him. Hard work is the only thing worth doing.”

It was the first time that I had ever dared to think such a shameful thing of my pure wife; and I hope that I did not think it now, but said it by the devil’s prompting. If any one had said it in my hearing, he would have said little else for another month. And I could have knocked my own self on the head, with great pleasure, when I came to think of it.

We laugh very nicely – when they cannot hear us – at women, for not knowing their own minds; but no woman ever born, since they began to bear us, could have gainsayed herself, as a man did, that day. I wandered about and lay under trees, for now it was the 15th of June, and the weather warm and sunny; then I climbed up trees and watched the river, and the roads, and even the meadow-path, where the cows were, and the mushrooms grew. Then I went and had a talk with Widow Cutthumb, and when she began to run down the race of women, I went so much further, that she grew quite sharp, and extolled them, and put all the blame upon us. It was waste of time to reason with her; so I let her have her own way, as they always do.

Then I went to the butcher’s, and saw a fine sweet-bread, the very thing for any one just come from a long journey, and perhaps a little giddy from the rolling of a ship. With a sigh of despair I pulled out half a crown, and made him lend me a basket and a clean white napkin. Then I could not run home with it quick enough, for it seemed as if some one would be dying without it; but as soon as I got to our door, I set it down, and could not bring myself even to enter the house. Away I went, and got into the loneliest place I could find; and being rather light of head from grief and want of food, fell over an old apple-trunk, and fell asleep beside it.

When I awoke, the sun was set; and the men (who were now working overtime, to be ready for the strawberries) were all gone home with their frails upon their backs, and their little ones coming down the road to meet them. Dizzily I pushed my way into a grassy alley, and sauntered homeward, wishing only to go home for ever.

The front-door was open, which did not surprise me, for I often left it so, and the basket containing the sweet-bread was gone, and the roses were moved from the window. The sound of my boots did not ring as it used, and the air seemed less empty, and softer. In a stupefied hurry, I opened the door of the parlour – and there sat Kitty!

Kitty looking at me, with a strange and timid look. As if she were not certain that I would be glad to see her. As if she doubted whether I could love her any more; as if her soul in earth and heaven hung on the next moment.