Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

“Ladies, and gents, she kept pacing up and down, like a Beelzebub more than a mortal woman, raving and ranting to such a degree, that a crowd of people came and looked over the gate, and they began to cry, ‘Bravo, Rous!’ ‘Go it, old lady!’ ‘Hit him hard, he ain’t got no friends’ – and all that stuff; you know how free and easy a London crowd is. Then she marched up to the gate, and looked at them, and they fell away ashamed, and she walked into the house. But have her way she will, before the sun goes down. She has sworn it, and she never breaks her oath.”

“It is no concern of ours,” said my uncle very sensibly; “what have we to do with such family quarrels? What made you come to us, Mrs. Wilcox?”

“Two things, sir; in the first place, you know more of the law than any gentleman I know. You remember how you told me that last winter, and every word you said came true as gospel. And what is more than that, poor Miss Jerry, and Miss Frizzy backed her up in that same, she says to me – ‘Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, do try to get that nice young man from Sunbury, that married poor Kitty Fairthorn. He has more power over mother than any one on earth. She is afraid of him, that’s the truth, though she’d box my ears if she heard me say so. ‘There might be time enough,’ she says, ‘if you’d set off directly, and I’ll pay all expenses.’ Well, I thought it must come from Heaven that I should be thinking of the uncle, and she of the nephew; and so come, both gents, I beg of you; there’ll be murder between them, if you don’t; for the police can’t interfere, you know.”

“Kit, let us go,” said my Uncle Corny, as some new idea struck him; “we cannot interfere of course, but we can see the end of it.”

Kitty was very much against my going, and I would not have left her, unless Miss Parslow had promised to stay with her, until our return, although it would compel her to send back the fly, and beg a bed for the night from her old friend Sally.

My uncle took a big stick, and so did I; and in a quarter of an hour we started in the tax-cart, with Mrs. Wilcox on the cushion. I was the driver, and my uncle sat behind, for there was no room for three of us, all rather broad, in front. And certainly I was the calmest of the three, for the good lady was in a dreadful fright and fret; and my uncle sat heavily, with his chin upon his stick, taking no notice of the roads or streets, but dwelling on the distance of bygone sorrow. The wrong he had suffered was greater than mine in one way, and less in another; greater, because it was incurable; lighter, because less cold-blooded and crafty, and not inflicted on him through his own wife. But I, with my Kitty recovered, and still in the new delight of that recovery, had triumphed already in the more important part, and was occupied rather with contempt than hatred. And it seemed to me too an extraordinary thing, and the last I should ever have predicted, that I should be entreated by the daughters of that most naughty and headstrong woman, to come and exert for her own good my imaginary power over her.

We put up our cart at the Bricklayer’s Arms, where Ted had been pot-boy – or potman he called himself – and then we all hurried towards Bulwrag Park. The midsummer sun had just gone down; and as the red light glanced along the broad stately roads, I thought of the words of that violent lady – “before the sun goes down, I will have my way.”

We passed between some posts into the open space, coveted vainly by builders, where the old Scotch firs (which had been my Kitty’s landmark) still waved their black pillows against the western sky. Then a number of people came rushing by us, driven by that electric impulse, which flashes through the human heart that human life is passing. With the contagion of haste we began to run.

“Can’t come in. Nobody allowed past this rope.”

A posse of policemen had drawn a cord across the road, outside the old gate, because that was a very poor obstacle; and now I dare say there were a hundred people pushing; and in five minutes there would be a thousand.

I said, “I am Professor Fairthorn’s son-in-law, and the two young ladies have sent for me. And Mrs. Wilcox is an old servant of the family, who was sent in haste to fetch me.”

They dropped the rope at this, and let us in; being reasonable, as the police are generally, unless you rub their coats up the wrong way of the cloth.

But what a sight we had, when once we turned the corner! Having never been brought up in battle-fields, but only where apples and pears grow, I found myself all abroad, and felt my legs desirous to go away from one another. But my uncle laid hold of me, and said – “This is what it comes to. The man, who has been a man, may look on at the Devil.”

Mrs. Wilcox turned back; for her nerves were rheumatic; but they would not let her pass the rope again. I was looking round, and saw it, with a desire to do the same; but my uncle had me by the collar, and I knew that he was right, though I would rather not have known it.

“Stop, and see the works of God,” he said. And I answered – “No, I would rather not, if this is a sample of them.”

For before the front door there were things going on, which made it impossible to let that house after it came into our possession, even to a most enlightened widow from America – or at any rate she took it, and then threw it up again. There were as good as three corpses laid out upon the lawn, with a doctor attending upon each and two policemen; and one of them also had a magistrate.

Uncle Corny drew me forward, as I shrank behind the bay-tree, where Kitty had been with me, when the great snow began. “You are only fit for a turtle-dove. Where is your gall?” he whispered.

It may have been a very low default on my part. But when my worst enemy lies on the ground, I would rather lift him up, than walk over him. My uncle was of sterner stuff, or less live softness – for his injury had been more deadly. He tried to drag me forward; but I would not budge, though I might make a beggar of myself by that refusal.

“Are you afraid to look at death, you white-livered young fool?” he whispered, and his face was black with the pitch of fury.

“I have been through ten times worse than death,” I answered, looking at him steadfastly; “and the lesson I have learned is mercy.”

Before he could answer, with the bitterness of justice, which to him was greater, two young women ran across the grass, and they both caught hold of me and shrieked. I could not make out what they said, because it was mixed up with sobs, and they cried both together; but I left myself to them, and they drew me on to the place where their mother lay stretched upon the walk, with a medical man bending over her.

“Dr. Wiggins?” he asked; and I answered, “No, not a doctor at all.” And he said, “Clear out; I shall take the four ounces on my own responsibility.”

“A friend of the family. A true friend of the family,” Miss Jerry exclaimed, to my great surprise; but he answered – “Then let him get out of the way; and the sooner you go away too, the better.”

The sour-faced woman, a faithful retainer, was supporting the poor lady’s head on a cushion; and I scarcely allowed myself a glance at the proud face, now so deathly. But that one glance told me for ever what all human pride must come to.

“Oh, come and see Downy! He can’t be dead too. Oh, come, and forgive him before he is dead.”

Which of the girls said this I know not. But I took up my hat, which I had thrown on the grass, and followed them to their brother.

There lay the man who had robbed me of my wife, the cold-blooded, godless miscreant, robbed by his own hand for ever of all hope of due repentance. Within a few yards of him lay his poor father, dead as a stone, and cold as ice, slain by the wickedness he had begotten, shot through the heart by his heartless son.

Donovan Bulwrag looked at me. He was sensible still; though before the waning light upon his ghastly face should vanish, light and darkness would be one to him. He knew me, and I am grieved to say, for his own poor sake, that he hated me still. He had not heard of Kitty’s return, I suppose, having been so absorbed in his own affairs, and he muttered through the red foam that streaked his lying lips – for he had fired the ball through the roof of his mouth —

“How like – darling Kitty – run away – with officer?”

“She is with me. Her father found out your tricks, and sent her home. She is well and very happy. She ran away with no officer.”

“Let him alone, sir; don’t excite him,” said the surgeon who was stooping over him. “I must have you removed if you come near him.” Then with another turn of thought he said, – “If there has been ill-will between you, make it up; he cannot last half an hour. Will you take his hand if he wishes it?”

“With pleasure; but I know that he does not wish it. Do you wish me to take your hand, Mr. Bulwrag? If you do, look at me, and nod your head.”

To my amazement, the dying man turned his eyes on me, and nodded his head. His eyes were clouded with the approach of death, and I saw very little expression in them. Then he moved his left hand feebly towards me, while the other dropped, as if through exhaustion, to the ground. My right hand lay in his clammy palm, and bending forward, I watched his face for some token of good will and penitence.

Suddenly a red glare as of lightning filled his eyes, his features worked horribly, and his great teeth clashed as he tried to jerk me towards him. Luckily for me I was poised upon both feet. At the flash of his eyes I sprang aside, a redder flash blinded me, and a roar rang in my ears, and upon the bosom of the dying man lay the short thick curl, the love-lock Kitty was so fond of playing with. The ball had passed within an inch of my temple, and my forehead was black with the pistol-smoke.

“Narrow shave,” said the doctor, “that will be his last act. I hope he will have life enough to know that it has failed. I had not the least idea he had got that revolver under his coat-flap. What are the police about? It’s not my place to see to a thing of that sort. And he might have shot me while he was about it! There he goes! I thought so. Serve him right.”

The great head fell back, and the square chin dropped, a dull glaze spread upon the upturned eyes, a wan gray haze as of icy vapour crept across the relaxing face, and Donovan Bulwrag was gone to render an account of his doings in the flesh.

Mrs. Wilcox ran up with a sob, and fetched the heavy eyelids downward. “Poor young man! He have run his course. I hope he has gone to heaven,” she said.

But my Uncle Corny looked at me, and at the fallen pistol. “I wish him only his due,” he said; “and I hope he has gone to the Devil.”

CHAPTER LXVI.

ONE GOOD WISH

There must have been a fearful scene, about an hour before we reached that spot. Two powerful wills were in collision – one hard as steel, the other trenchant and resistless as red-hot iron. For many days the conflict had been gathering force and fury, as the rising wind collects its power, before the outbreak of the storm.

The mother was resolved to pierce the mystery of her crafty son. The son was equally resolute to keep his fatal secret. And the father, turbulent and headstrong, wrapped in his own vindictive mood, cared not when the outbreak came, but looked forward to it grimly.

It had been impossible for Downy, as he had naturally foreseen, to keep entirely to himself the presence of a stranger in the house. Although the room was far away from the part his mother occupied, and darkened for the Professor’s use, and secluded by thick shrubbery, it soon became needful for the jailor to secure a confederate. With some misgivings, he took the sour-faced woman into his confidence, knowing her to be close and faithful, as well as clever and resourceful. But unluckily for himself he did not trust the woman wholly. Skinner, as she was called in the household, did not know the real import of the plan she aided. Falsehood was her master’s nature, and he did no despite to it, by relapsing into truth. He told her a chapter of lies; and she had no inkling that the stowaway, whose face she was never allowed to see, was the husband of her mistress.

Thus she was not on her guard so strictly as she would have been, had she known the truth. To learn the existence of a secret is to be halfway towards it; and the pride as well as curiosity of the mistress was soon afoot. But the room was securely locked, and vain was any prowling round it; till indignation and sense of outrage grew no longer bearable.

After that public outbreak of passion, which had scared the cook, and Mrs. Wilcox, the lady of the house retreated to her room, and was taken or feigned to be taken ill. Her son was sent for, in great haste, and found her prostrate, and broken down, scarcely able to speak, and quite unlikely to attack his stronghold again. His sisters implored him to take a cab, and follow the course of the only doctor who could relieve these perilous pains; and after seeing to his locks and bolts, he departed on that mission.

No sooner had the front gate swung behind him, than up jumped the feeble sufferer, wrote a few lines to the nearest blacksmith, and sent the boy in buttons to take them, with orders not to lose a moment. In a quarter of an hour the blacksmith and his foreman were at the obnoxious door, with sledge-hammer, crowbar, cold chisel, and wrench.

Some one within seemed inclined to help them, for they heard a heavy bolt shot back; but the door was fastened on the outside also with a heavy chain and padlock. The smith laid hold of this chain with his pincers, and so kept the padlock against the post, where a few swinging blows from the foreman shattered it, like an egg-shell. In a minute they cast the door back on its hinges, and a narrow dark passage was before them.

“Let no one follow me,” said the lady of the house; “but wait till I return to you.” She closed the heavy door behind her, and passed through the gloom to an inner door. This was neither locked nor bolted, and she turned the handle and entered.

The room was lofty, but very dark. Not only the bulk of the ilex-tree, but close blinds, fixed in the window-frame, obscured the fading sunlight. The lady marched in with a haughty air; she would soon let this poor vagrant know who was the owner of this house and who the gutter-squatter. But suddenly she stopped, and speech was flown from her tongue to her eyes; she could only stare.

Against the high mantlepiece, whose black marble covered with dust was as dull as slate, a tall and bulky man was leaning, peacefully smoking a long cigar. The cigar was fixed between two strips of muslin, concealing the chin, lips, and nose, if any. A slouched hat, with a yellow feather in it, covered the hairless crown; and only the knotted forehead, and the fierce red eyes, showed that here was a human face alive.

But the massive cast of figure, and the attitude, and slouch and even some remembrance of the fierce red glance, told the haughty woman who it was that stood before her. In a moment, fury changed to fear, and triumph became trembling. Without a word she turned to fly; but a great muffled hand was laid on her.

“No hurry, faithful wife! You have insisted upon seeing me. Come to the light, and you shall have that pleasure.”

The great figure swept her to the window with one arm, while she vainly strove to cry, or even to fall upon her knees. Then throwing back the blind, the leper drew her closer to him, and tearing off his swathings held her so that she must gaze at him.

“This is your work. Are you pleased with it? True love is never changed by trifles. Embrace me, my gentle one. You always were so loving. How you will rejoice to show a wife’s affection, and to tend me daily; for I mean to leave you never more. Monica, gentle, loving Monica, whisper your true love where my ears used to be.”

With the mad strength of horror, she dashed from his arms, and away through the passage, and would have escaped – for the poor cripple could only limp in pursuit – if she had not closed the outer door. By the time she had opened, he was upon her, and they staggered together across the broad walk, when their son from the gate rushed up to them.

“Oh, save me, save me from that beast!” she cried.

“Off, and get back to your den!” shouted Downy.

“A nice son, to part his own parents!” As the old man spoke, he struck his son in the face with his maimed right hand, while he clung to his wife with the other.

Then Donovan Bulwrag, in a fury of the moment, drew his revolver, and shot his father through the heart.

The old man fell on his back a corpse, while the mother was dashed on the grass, and lay senseless. Donovan looked at them both, gave a laugh, put the muzzle in his mouth, and shot himself.

I have no intention to moralize – as a man always says when he begins to do it – but there ended three misguided lives; for although Mrs. Bulwrag recovered slowly some of her bodily health and vigour, her mind was never restored to life again. That hectoring will, and domineering spirit, lapsed into the weakness of a weanling child; and if ever the memory of those haughty days returned, it waned into a shudder, or an abject smile. When Captain – or as he now is called Sir Humphrey Fairthorn came home from his celebrated enterprise, he made due provision in a private asylum for the lady who could no longer pick his pockets. The marriage settlements fell to the ground, with the downfall of the marriage, and six acres of “the most magnificently situated building land in London,” returned to the heritage of Kitty’s mother.

When my uncle and myself came sadly home from that shocking and distressing scene, the power of it lay upon us still, so that we did not care to speak.

“Thank God,” said my wife, as she fell upon my breast, after trying to sponge off the blaze from my temple, which would take some days to heal; “thank God that he is dead at last!”

Those are the only words of hers I have ever felt displeased with. At the moment they seemed harsh to me; by reason of the pity, which the eye engenders, but the tongue cannot advance. If she had come from that piteous sight, her heart would have been too soft for this.

“It is a good job for everybody else, and a bad one for him,” said Uncle Corny; “he is gone where he addressed himself. He labelled himself – ‘To the Devil with care – to be delivered immediately.’ And then he goes and acts as his own porter. You need not look sentimental, Kit. What is England coming to? Lord bless my heart the stuff they talk about ‘the sanctity of human life!’ A good man’s life belongs to God, and a bad one’s to the Devil. And they have got themselves to thank for it.”

A very broad saying is seldom deep; but the general vote was against me. And all being on the right side, of course, they backed it up with buttresses.

“Think of that poor man,” said Kitty, who was always first to see things; “from what you say of his sad condition, and his size, and figure, I am quite sure it is the afflicted prisoner we rescued from the savages. You may talk of things not being guided by a Higher Power, and you may look black if it is hinted that a man shouldn’t shoot his father, and then try to kill my darling Kit; but what can you say, when it comes to light, that but for his own wicked plot, the cruelest and the wickedest that ever entered human heart – or brain, for he never could have owned a heart – if it had not been for that, no doubt, he would have married a lovely girl – though some may call her too pale and thin – and probably have stolen all her money, and no doubt broken her poor heart, as he did his utmost to break mine? And then in the very stroke of death, he tries to murder Kit again! Oh, how can I be sorry that we are safe from him at last?”

“Kitty is right,” Miss Parslow said; “Kit would have killed that man, if he caught him shooting Kitty. And that would have been the very next thing he would have done, if the Lord had spared him.”

To this I could make no reply; for verily I believe it would have been.

“Take your wife home,” said Uncle Corny, who always saw the right thing to do; “she is much excited. Avoid this subject, until you can speak of it calmly. Thank God for all His goodness to you; and let her nurse your wounded hair.”

This made Kitty laugh and pout; and without another word I led her home.

I led my Kitty home, without any fear of losing her again, until, by the will of One who loves us, we bid each other a brief farewell. We live at Honeysuckle Cottage still, and wish to go no further, adding to it, as little growers, like roses, cluster round us. We might lead a gayer and noisier life, if that were to our liking; but we have seen enough of the world to know how nice it is, at a distance. Whatever the greatest people do I can read to Kitty in the evening; and she smiles or sighs in the proper places, without neglecting our own affairs. The puff of the passing world comes to us, like that of a train in the valley; or even as the whiff of a smoker in the lane comes over our wall with a delicate waft, albeit his tobacco is not first-rate.

Moreover we like to be, where pleasant friends drop in, and say – “What a sweet calm is here!” And where Uncle Corny still toddles up at supper-time every evening, and lays his now quivering hand upon the curls of his sturdy Godson Cornelius, and says, “You shall have all this place, my boy; for your rogue of a father is too rich to want it, with all that property in London. Let him grow houses, while you grow trees. Keep the old place on, if you can; and sell your own fruit, if you want to get the money.”

Inditing of the higher fruit, that suffers no decay, and is meted in no earthly measure, the Rev. Peter Golightly enters, followed by his blooming daughter. He blesses all the little ones; and so does she, by kissing them with her pure sweet lips.

“That’s right, Miss Bessy, keep your lips in practice;” exclaims Uncle Corny in his rough old style; and a healthy blush mantles where the hectic colour was; for the gentle young lady has won the heart of the vicar – not of Bray, but a parish very near it.

But which of them all can be thought of twice, with Kitty looking at me? My words must be plentiful indeed, if one can be spared for any other. Yet for two good reasons I will not attempt to praise her. Being a busy man I must forego all hopeless efforts; and again what would success be? Simply that, which according to the proverb, is “no recommendation.”

So all who are well disposed can wish me nothing more complete than this, that I may live with her long enough to discover some defect in her. And in return I will inflict no moral but that of all true love – let every Kit be constant to his better self – his Kitty.

THE END