Kit and Kitty: Book II/II E-Book

R. D. Blackmore

• Herausgeber: R. D. Blackmore
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

“NEVER wur any luck in a wadding, as wur put off from app’inted day. For why? Why, because it be flying in the vace of the Lard, as hath app’inted ’un.”

Leseprobe

Kit and Kitty

Book II/II

By

R. D. Blackmore

CHAPTER XXXIV.TWO TO ONE.

“Never wur any luck in a wadding, as wur put off from app’inted day. For why? Why, because it be flying in the vace of the Lard, as hath app’inted ’un.”

Knowing that Tabby was very often right in her prophecies, and could prove them right—even when they were wrong—as most prophets can, I begged her not to say a word about that to my darling; because she was a little superstitious, although sprung from the very highest form of science. But science very seldom keeps its dates; and to make them tally, we had postponed our day from Tuesday even till Thursday. For Captain Fairthorn had written again, to say that he could not be with us on the Tuesday, but was almost sure that he could manage it, if we would only leave it till two days later. My uncle had frowned and said—“Not a single hour. If his wheels and his wires are more to him than his only child, let him stop with them. But you must leave it to Kitty. Such a question is for her.”

Vexed as I was, I could not deny this. And she pleaded so well, though with reason on her side, that we vented our anger on the absent man, and only our affection and good will on her.

But the one who made the greatest grievance of it was my aunt, Miss Parslow. She had hurried her dressmaker to the verge of mutiny, and made her sit up (either in person, or by deputy) two whole nights, and she felt that she would have to pay deeply for this, and now here it was all needless! “I have the greatest mind not to come at all,” she wrote; “and if it were for anything but pure compassion, you may be quite sure that I would wash my hands of you. Men manage everything in this world, even the things that they understand least; and you will see what comes of it. If I come on Thursday, I shall be quite unprepared; though I should have been in perfect readiness on Tuesday.”

This was a hard saying; but we agreed that she knew what she meant, and could explain it to her liking. And seeing that the ladies were now so full of reason, I thought that I would have another try at Miss Coldpepper.

I had ventured to call upon that lady once, while the preparations were in full swing; but she had said that she was not at home, and of course she must know best, though I had seen her walking in her great Camelia-house. My Uncle Cornelius had been of opinion that, even if she would not honour our church with her presence, she could scarcely escape from the duty of sending her former visitor and favourite something very handsome as a wedding present. A silver tea-service was the least thing he could think of, but unluckily the last thing that occurred to her as needful. She had made it a grievance, as she wanted one, that Miss Fairthorn should have dared to go to Widow Cutthumb’s, when everybody in the village knew how shockingly the widow had behaved to Mrs. Marker.

But all this appeared to me to be very small talk now; for I was in a generous and large condition, such as is only too apt to credit all fellow-creatures with the like expansion. It should never be said of me, that any petty pride had prevented me from holding out the olive-branch—whether to be gilded, or even to be peeled—at a time when I was hoping to be crowned with myrtle. Scorning all considerations of a silver teapot, I went to Coldpepper Manor, and rang gently.

“Missus will see you this time,” said my friend Charles, who had tasted our strawberries many a time, when he durst not steal any more at home; “she is all agog about you, sir, though she shams to know nothing. Happiness to you and dear Miss Kitty, sir!”

The least I could do was to give him half a crown, for he had always appeared to me to be a worthy fellow. He slipped it into his hornet-coloured waistcoat, and bawled out, “Mr. Christopher Orchardson,” as if I had come in a coach and four.

“I am pleased to see you, Mr. Orchardson,” said the lady of the Hall, as I made a low bow; “take a chair, and tell me what you are doing. I never hear anything that happens in the village.”

I am not at all certain what reply I made, being fluttered by the force of habit in her stately presence. But she was better pleased by this, than she would have been by any assumption of ease and self-command.

“Although I hear so little, a report has reached me,” she went on with a smile which was not at all disdainful, “that you are about to marry Kitty Fairthorn. If so, you are a wonderfully fortunate young man.”

“It would add very greatly to our happiness, madam,” I ventured to say, though with some misgivings, “if you would be kind enough to give us your good wishes. Miss Fairthorn has not been to call upon you, because—because she was not sure that you would wish it. And she is acting entirely without the consent of her step-mother, who is your sister. I hope you will not think the worse of her for that. The lady has never been very kind to her.”

“Kitty was quite right in not coming here; it would have placed me in an unpleasant position. I have not seen much of my sister for years. But I cannot enter into such matters. And you have done right in coming to me thus. Certainly you both have my good wishes. And though Kitty might have looked for a much higher marriage—I may say that without any disrespect to you—I believe that she will be happier in a very simple life. You will understand that I cannot be present—under the peculiar circumstances. Neither will you expect me to receive Kitty here, when she is Mrs. Orchardson; she is no relative of mine, and she has chosen her own path. But I like her none the less, and you may tell her that. She has plenty of proper pride, and would resent my patronage. I was told that the wedding was to be to-day. Why have you put it off? You are unwise.”

She looked as if she knew something which would alarm me, if declared; but I did not presume to ask about it, and simply told her the cause of the delay.

“You may expect him; but you will not see him,” she answered, as if she knew more than we did; “don’t put it off another day, if you wish it to be at all. But it is no affair of mine. Good morning to you.”

I returned in an anxious state of mind, for she had clearly dismissed me, that I might ask no questions. And instead of going straight to my uncle’s house, I hurried to that of the widow, to make sure that my darling was safe, and all due care observed. After what had been already done to Kitty, how could I tell that there was no plot yet in store? My bodily strength was restored by this time, and I felt myself a match for almost any man; and surely intense and incessant devotion must vanquish unholy pursuit and vile designs. All we knew of our enemies at present was that they had retired from the scene of their defeat, and locked up the cottage where they had felt so sure of victory. But my Uncle Cornelius had good reason for believing that his premises were watched; and a couple of his men had been tempted to drink by some mysterious stranger, who showed the greatest interest in our ways, and works, and manners. And the worst of it was that the river (being almost at our doors, and not frequented then as it is now) afforded such a space for roguish travel, that there ought to be a paling put up against it, with tenter-hooks, and wire-netting on the top, if any man desired to keep his garden to himself. For the people who come up, as they get away from London, seem to claim the country more and more, and to think that it was made for nothing else except to be a change for them; and they reason that as a river must have banks, those banks are a part of it, and the whole belongs to them.

My beloved (who was both my banks, and the channel of all my life as well) had not been left alone all this time, with only Widow Cutthumb to amuse her. Otherwise she would have had a sorry time; for that widow had but two subjects of discourse—the merits of her late husband, and the scarcity of all vegetables. But a very sharp young lady, Miss Gertrude Triggs, about three years older than my Kitty, being in need of country air after an attack of nettle-rash, had kindly consented to come and occupy the best room at Widow Cutthumb’s. At first I was uneasy, for if Kitty were to catch that complaint, after all her other troubles, was she likely to look well upon the bridal day? But Dr. Sippets said that he would warrant no infection; and so Miss Triggs came and occupied. And certainly she helped to set off the complexion, upon which it was impossible to imagine any rash. At first, I was not fond of Miss Triggs, for she had too much sting in her words and ways; and I made no allowance for what she had been through. And to my mind women should never try to sting, being apt to get the worst of it (as even do the bees), and intended more by nature to do the honey-making. But my poor ideas have always been old-fashioned; and I am sorry (for the sake of others) that it should be so.

But when I came to understand Gerty Triggs, and to value her real friendship for my dear one, I acknowledged (as a man should do) that I had been a gaby. Not only had she protected Kitty at school, and even lent her under-clothing when she got no supplies from her step-mother, but she had actually made an inroad into Bulwrag Castle, to try a round with the great lady herself, on behalf of the innocent captive. She was rapidly discomfited, of course; she had resolved to show the truth, but she was quickly shown the door; and though she maintained that she had triumphed, it may have been in logic, but it was not so in fact; and the result to herself had been this nasty nettle-rash. However, as she got over that, and put the air of our garden upon her cheeks, I began to esteem her, and to find her rather pretty.

It was settled by the laws of nature that she should be bridesmaid; and Uncle Corny found another not connected much with trade, yet able to provide her own outfit. My uncle said, though not to Kitty—for he was quite a gentleman to her throughout—that he could not discover any call on him to fit everybody up with gew-gaws. It was her father’s place, if he wanted things to be done in proper style, to come and see to them himself, or at any rate to send directions, and the money to have them carried out. Instead of that, he had left everything to us, kept us in trouble about the day, and perhaps driven off Miss Parslow and her twenty thousand pounds. It was plain that he thought it a higher duty to fit out his ship than his only child. Considering all this, Uncle Corny was only surprised at his own generosity; but when I joined him in that surprise, he cut me very short, and asked what I knew about him. It was natural enough that he should be cross; and I told him so, which only made him worse.

Nevertheless when the true day came, which I always recall with gratitude and wonder at a grace so far beyond my merits, everybody behaved as if there were nothing but peace and good will in the world. We received a telegram quite early that the ship was ordered to sail that day, and the Captain could only send his blessing. Kitty shed some tears, but all the rest of us were pleased, because it fulfilled our predictions. And my uncle was proud to give the bride away, and at the same time to keep her, as he neatly said.

Miss Parslow came over in style, with a mass of white flowers piled high on the seat before her, and wearing her silver gray silk dress, which set her off to great advantage. And she presented the bride with a silver basket, fit either for flowers or fruit, and containing a very neat cheque for a hundred guineas. Sam Henderson acted as my best man, and did everything better than I did, for I scarcely knew my right hand from my left. Mrs. Wilcox was present, and so was Mrs. Rowles, without whom we should never have been there, and Selsey Bill of course, and every man who possessed a top hat in the parish. And to our amazement, Miss Coldpepper was sitting in her curtained pew, although she had said that she would not come. And after the service she kissed my Kitty, and said that she would give her something by-and-by.

What my darling wore I have not the least idea, or at least I had not on that day, though I came to know too well afterwards. But all the men said, and nearly all the women too, that she was the fairest, and sweetest, and most lovely of all the brides ever seen in Sunbury, which was no little thing to say; for our village is celebrated in that way. And she behaved with such grace and goodness, that it seemed as if those blessings must be multiplied upon her.

Several women cried to think that she should look so Christian after all the treatment that she had received—for Mrs. Rowles declared that she had been in a wire cage—and if I were to try to straighten half the crooked tales they told, I never should find any time for a separate word with Kitty.

Only I remember that when she came and kissed me in her simple, and loving, and bewitching way, I saw the gleam of tears in her deep blue eyes; and when I asked (without words) what it was, she answered,—

“I should have liked to have one kiss from father.”

This proof of her tenderness increased my adoration; for an affectionate daughter must become a loving wife. Then I took away my treasure to be mine alone; and Kit and Kitty, for the time, are one.

CHAPTER XXXV.UNDER THE GARDEN WALL.

Not much time could we have together in the land of Goshen, where the boils and blains of the ungodly world are not yet sprinkled in the radiant air. Uncle Corny gave us for our honeymoon one week—which has often proved much longer than the silver cord would stretch—but we, intending all our lives to be of sparkling sweetness, cared very little where we spent the hours, if only with each other. And perhaps we scarcely deserved to be in a place so calmly beautiful, not so far away as to take a cliff of money to get there, and yet having fine brave crags of its own. Perhaps it may be found in ancient charts as Baycliff, although it is such a quiet, homely place, without any railway to advertise it, and I have seen some maps which were too good to give the name. But they could not annihilate it by such petty silence; and a pleasant seaside village is like a pleasing woman; the less it is talked about the more it keeps its charms.

For my part, I could not see the need of going back in such hot haste to Sunbury, dearly as I loved that desirable village. For here were many things that we could never have there, the level space and leisure of the many-coloured sea, the majesty of cliffs white-browed with centuries of tempest, the gliding of white sails across the gleaming ruffle of the cove, and the crisp, elastic sands that kept the fairy trace of Kitty’s feet close to my great clumsy prints.

“Let us steal another week,” I said; “it is but a fleeting holiday, and we shall never know such a time again.”

But my beloved, growing dearer every day, if that could be, gave good advice, against her own delight, that we should not begin our married life with selfishness. We had been so kindly treated that we must not slur our gratitude, and forget our duties in our joys.

“And I want to see our little home,” she said, to make the best of it; “the house that is to be all our own; where I shall keep you in order, Kit, and make you as happy as the day is long.”

So with many a backward glance, we left that bower of bliss, and returned to the world of work and action. And when we found what had been done, to welcome and to please us, we could not help confessing that our virtue was well rewarded. For Honeysuckle Cottage looked as bright and fresh as sunrise, and the first half of May is not the time to find much fault with nature. The earth was damp and clammy yet, in places where the wind and sun could not get fairly into it; and the spring was late and shivered still among the gaps it had to stop. For one might look through a big tree yet, and see a lamp in the road beyond it; and many of those that were being scarfed wore spangles rather than patins. And people, who pay little heed, might stop in doubt—if they stopped at all—and wonder if what they saw coming might prove in the end to be a blossom or a leaf.

In our little house I had the bud, the blossom, and the fruit combined. The bud of youth scarce come to prime, the blossom of fair womanhood, and the fruit of sweet and golden peace, not sleepy, but sprightly flavoured. It was a fair view from the window, but inside ten times as fair, without the chance of adverse weather nipping hope and bright content.

An ancient writer (whom I had just been scholar enough to understand, when he is easy, in his native tongue) assures us that this perfect state is never long allowed by Heaven. According to him, and others whom he considers wiser than himself, all the powers that govern man are stung with envy when they see him happier than he ought to be. Generally they take good care to have no occasion for this grudge; but when, by any slip of theirs, a mortal has attained such pitch of comfort and prosperity, there is no peace in Olympus, till this robber of delight is crushed. And the more he has flourished and rejoiced, the deeper shall his misery be.

Having only thirty shillings a week, without counting our presents which had been put by, and paying five and sixpence out of that for the rent and rates of our small Paradise, we scarcely can have affronted Heaven by any gorgeous insolence. And without daring to impugn the wisdom of true philosophers, I venture still to hold by that which we find in larger and nobler Writ, that when the Heavenly Power stoops to cut off our brief happiness, it is to make it more abiding, where there is no brevity.

But we did not think of such things then; and who would be sad enough to say that we were bound to do so? Care would come quite soon enough, we did not care to beckon him. He must have been a doleful wight, and born with black crape round his eyes, who could have looked at my merry Kitty, without catching her bright smile. In the morning, when I went to work, I carried it with me like a charm, and whenever I came back at night, it put my memory to the blush.

For we had settled with one accord, that until I had overtaken the large arrears of work which had lapsed behind through my long illness and absence, there should be no time lost by any return for early dinner. And this was better for my wife too, inasmuch as she had only Polly Tompkins to assist her, the eldest daughter of Selsey Bill, a very clean and tidy girl, but of small experience in cookery. I was busy at a long peach-wall, not the red-brick one, but further down, and the trees being large and sadly out of order, patient as well as skilful hands were required urgently. There was a very fine crop yet unthinned, feeble wood to be removed, robber shoots to be docked or tamed, green-fly to be dipped or dusted, and all the other crying needs of neglected trees to be made good. And Kitty used to appear exactly as the old church clock struck one, with a basket of bread and meat, a pint of ale, and a pipe filled by her own fair hands, which she used to light for me, and then trip home, singing merrily among the trees, to see to the business of the afternoon.

Dare anybody tell me that a wife like this would leave her dear husband of her own accord, without a word, without a letter, leave him to wonder, and mourn, and rage, and despair of his own life and hers? Yet this is what all the world believed, and impressed upon me, till my spirit failed.

“Now this is all very fine,” exclaimed my uncle, as he came round the corner of the wall one day, and caught me in the very act of hugging Kitty, as she was preparing to light my pipe. She was looking up and laughing, and pretending to pull my hair, when the deepening of her blush showed that an enemy was nigh. “This is all very fine; but how long will it last? How many quarrels have you had already? I suppose you are making up one of them now.”

“Uncle Corny, you are a disgrace,” cried Kitty, “a disgrace to the name of humanity. Mayn’t I even whisper in my husband’s ear, without being accused of quarrelling? We have never had a single word. Have we, Kit?”

“Then perhaps you will now. Here’s a telegram for you. I was going to send Kit home with it. But as you are so uncommonly close together, why, it saves the trouble. Hope some of your enemies are dead, my dear.”

“Hush! Don’t be so wicked,” she said, as she handed it to me, and I opened it with my pruning-knife, and held it for her to read first. But this required our united efforts, for it was badly written, as so often happens, and some of the words were run together. At last we made it out as follows:—

“Spoke All Kites off Scilly May 7th. Captain Fairshort desires love and best wishes to his daughter. Will be away two years perhaps. From Jenkins, s.s. Hibernia, Falmouth.”

“All Kites!” said my uncle, who had read some of the Georgics, as rendered by Dryden with lofty looseness, but never a line of Horace; “what a name for a ship, if it is a ship! Kitty, my dear, is that the proper word?”

“No, Uncle Corny, it should be Archytas. I am not sure who he was, but rather think that he must have been a king of Sparta.”

“I know who he was,” I said, to show how much I had learned at Hampton, though I never was much of a hand at Horace, and had only found this out in the dictionary; “a great man of science, who measured the seas, and the sand, and all that, but could not get to heaven, because nobody would throw a pinch of dust upon his body. And he lay upon the shore, imploring somebody to do it.”

“If he could call out, he could have done it for himself,” replied my uncle, who was not poetical. “Serve him right, at any rate, for having such a name. But I hope that your father won’t do that, my dear.”

“I think it was very kind of him, when he could not help going, and was far away at sea, to get this kind captain of a ship they met, if we understand it properly, to send me this farewell message from the deep. And it makes my mind ever so much more comfortable, because I shall have another message by-and-by, I dare say. If he meets one ship he must meet others: and I shall always have a good idea where he is, and have my mind relieved, when there has been a stormy night. Thank you, Uncle Corny, you have brought me pleasant news. Kit, it is high time for you to go on with your wall.”

In this sort of way, by making the best of everything, and thanking everybody, even if they did not mean to do her any good, she established in a week a sweet dominion, not over us, but within us. My uncle, though he liked to have his little cut at her—for old men treat young ladies as chicks to be carved—got into the habit of coming up every night of his life to have his pipe at Honeysuckle Cottage. It may seem very ungrateful of me, and I now feel ashamed when I think of it, but after being hard at work all day, and having a bit of cold duck under the wall, I thought that I might have been allowed when I came home to tell my dear wife all my thoughts about her, and how many times I had hammered my thumb-nail through that. But there Uncle Corny sat, carrying on, as if I had cut off my tongue with my pruning-knife!

Kitty used to laugh, and ask me who was jealous now. But I answered, with good reason, that the case was widely different. Miss Sally Chalker never crossed her legs, and sat with a long pipe blowing over a supper-table, neither did she go on talking, as if I were nobody; but rather put me foremost, even when Kitty herself was present, and asked what my opinion was, before she gave her own almost.

However, I made the best of my uncle’s conduct at our cottage; for it was not only my duty, but my important interest to do so. What was to become of us if Uncle Corny (who might be called a huffy man, and stuck to a huff, whenever he contracted it) should take it into his head that I was not what he used to take me for? I know that he was full of truth and justice, according to his own view of them; but if anything went against his liking, so did truth and justice. So I had to sink my opinions often, even when they agreed with his, for he never liked to have them put into any other language than his own. Kitty was clever enough to see this, and she always praised me afterwards; but it went against one’s sense of right, that she might say exactly what I had said, and from her lips it became true wisdom, when it had been simple silliness from mine. But Kitty smiled at him, and laughed at me, and went into his heart more deeply every time she filled his pipe.

Then a new anxiety arose, and Uncle Corny had more than he could do to lay down the law for his own affairs. The wind went into the east, with a hard blue sky, and not a cloud in it. We had passed the date of the “icy Saints,” as they are called in Germany, when a cold wave of air is said to flow over hundreds of leagues of smiling land, and smite it all into one dark frown. If I can remember, without an almanac, that date is about the seventh of May; but I have never found it quite so punctual here; and according to my observation, the bloom of England hovers in nightly peril, from the middle of April to the very end of May. It is one of the many sad things we meet, but can only fold our hands and watch, that for nearly six weeks of the year, and in early seasons even more, through all our level southern lands, the fruit-crop trembles on the hazard of a single night’s caprice. The bright sun and the lovely day delude the folk who know no better; these are the very things that lead to the starry night, and the quiet cold, and the white sheet over the grass at five a.m., and the black death following. The barren grower walks between his rows of wounded blossom; there is little harm to be seen at first, some of the petals are as fair as ever, others are just tipped with brown; and perhaps his wife runs up and says—“Oh, you need not be in a fright, my dear; why, they all look as well as ever.”

But he, with deeper wisdom, and the smile of prophetic silence, pulls out his budding-knife, and nips the fairest truss he can find of bloom. Then he lays it in his palm, and haply with keen edge bisects the pips. A keener edge has been there before him; a little black line passes up from the baby stalk to the pistil. The ovary is dead and shrunken, though the anthers still may be tipped with pink. Never shall a fruit grow there, to swell and stripe itself with sun, to flood a plate with sprightly juice, and in its dissolution hear some sweet voice say—“Oh, I never did taste such a lovely pear!”

All these horrors threatened now, in spite of the lateness of the spring. In a forward spring, they more than threaten, they come down and smash everything. But being now so late, we began to have some confidence, misplaced as it might be, in the meaning of the sky. And now for the wind to go back to the east (after living there so many months, that it ought to be downright sick of it), and the sun to go down red and clear, like a well-grown turnip-radish, and the stars to come out small and sharp like a lot of glaziers’ diamonds, and the mercury in the thermometer to drop, as if the bulb had been tapped about six o’clock, and scarcely a breath of wind to stir the fans of radiation—it was more than enough to make any grower fetch a groan at the day when himself was grown.

But my uncle was not of the groaning order, neither did he even hang himself; as one of our very best neighbours did, when he saw his thermometer at twenty-two degrees, one radiant May morning; but his wife, who could enter into his feelings, cut him down with a gooseberry-knife, and enabled him to grow out of it. My uncle used to read the gardening papers; which always bloom with fine advice; and one of them had lately been telling largely how, in Continental vineyards, these cold freaks of heaven are met by the sacrificial smoke of earth. To wit, a hundred pyres are raised of the rakings and refuse of the long vine-alleys, and ready for kindling on the frosty verge. Then a wisp of lighted straw is applied to each, when the sparkling shafts of frost impend, and a genial smoke is wafted through, and Sagittarius has his eyes obscured. I told my uncle that this was rubbish, at least as regarded our level lands; though it might be of service upon a hillside. That if there were wind enough to spread the smoke, there must also be enough to prevent the hoar-frost, which alone need be feared at this season. But he told me to stick to what I understood; for these scientific things were beyond me, and my business was to tend the fires.

But in spite of all this brave talk, he was afraid of casting a slur upon his old experience by a new experiment. For the British workman disdains new ideas, and there was not a man upon our place but would say that the governor was turned cranky, if he got any inkling of this strange scheme.

“I shall have all the stuff put there,” said Uncle Corny, “ready for lighting, when they are gone. Those thick-heads will never suspect that I want to do anything more than burn up the weeds, as we generally do at this time of the year. Then as soon as we see the danger coming, you and I will go out and attend to it, my boy. Not that I place any great faith in it, although it seems very sensible, to those who understand the principles, which young fellows cannot be supposed to do. At any rate, I mean to try it. It can do no harm, if it does no good. You need not say another word; but do just what I tell you. I wasn’t born yesterday, as you ought to know by this time.”

I knew that well; for it takes many years to root a man into such obstinacy. As a rule, I was much more inclined to give fair trial to anything new than he was, and much more ready to risk money on it. But this would cost nothing, except a little work, and that I could not grudge him. So I told my dear wife not to be uneasy, if I did not come home till after dark some night, for our doings depended of course upon the weather; and the quarter of young pear-trees, which my uncle meant to smoke, was the furthest part almost of all the premises from Honeysuckle Cottage. Kitty smiled, and said she would come down and see it, and roast a potato or two for our supper, and we would go home together, when the work was done, and make Uncle Corny come with us. Alas, how differently it all turned out!

CHAPTER XXXVI.FROST IN MAY.

It was on Wednesday, the fifteenth of May, as fine a day as ever shone from heaven, that my Uncle Corny came up to our cottage, soon after we had finished breakfast. I had done my two hours of early work, according to agreement, and was ready to start for the long day now, and do my best among the trees, until it should be “blind-man’s holiday.” It had been arranged between my wife and me that I was not to expect her with my noonday meal, but should carry it with me, because she was to be busy at home with a grand turn-out. We had now been home from our bridal trip, for ten days of bliss and perfect peace, and Kitty had declared that it was high time to give our little rooms a thorough cleaning. So far as I could see, they might go another month as they were, and be all the better for it; but in all such matters the wife is supreme, and the wise man never attempts to gainsay, but only hopes to find some of his property surviving. I had always been most particular about scraping my shoes and then rubbing them on the mat, not as some men do, like a dog’s feet scratching, but attending to the welting, and the heels, and toes, until they were as clean as a dinner plate. This trifle I mention, because some women said that we had a misunderstanding about the mud I brought in.

Now as Kitty had declared that there must be a turn-out for she was wonderfully fond already of our little home, I had never even asked whether it would not do next week—as many men do, and get a sharp reply—but feeling quite certain that she must know best, made up my mind accordingly. Only I suggested that she ought to have Mrs. Tompkins in to help her, instead of her daughter, our Polly, who was as nice a girl as could be, but scarcely knew the door-knocker from the boiler-tap. I suspect (perhaps basely) that my darling was afraid that she would have to play second fiddle, if Mrs. Tompkins came; but be that as it may, she would not have her; and simply asked, “How much did I give you back on Monday, dear?” The sum had been ninepence halfpenny, a handsome residue of the fifteen shillings, which under her own scheme of finance, she had drawn from our revenue for the week’s consumption. I had said that she ought to take a pound at least, but she stuck to her figure, and would have shown a balance even more considerable, if Uncle Corny had not dropped in with such geniality for supper. “Your frugality is beyond belief,” said I.

“Halloa!” cried Uncle Corny, as he came in after breakfast, without even scraping his boots, and carrying a suckering iron, which he poked into a rose—or at least we had determined that it must be a rose—of our new and artistic paper—“signs of it already! I expected it last week. Going to have a turn-out, and knock everything to pieces.”

“But we don’t carry long iron hoes,” answered Kitty, pointing to the rose which he had suckered off the wall; and he laughed and shook hands, and said, “I had better hold my tongue.”

I quite agreed in this, for he always got the worst of it, when he attempted to make light of Kitty; she never said anything rude, but contrived to roll him up in his own rudeness. And perhaps it was the liberty of saying what she pleased, after so many years of snubbing—for the freedom of their voice must be fresh air to women—which had now set her up in a liveliness of health, such as no one had ever seen her show before. For instance, she had always had a soft, clear colour, not to be quenched by her step-mother’s slaps, nor even by anxiety about her own Kit; but now ever since she had married me, there was a richness of bloom on her cheeks, and a delicate gloss you might almost call it, such as may be seen in a Tea rose only, when it has been thoroughly well managed. And now she was wearing her pink chintz wrapper, which showed the perfection of her form, with little sprigs of flowers climbing up it, just as if they vied with one another, for the honour and delight of clinging closer into her. I thought that I had never seen her look so lovely; and she knew what I thought, and her soft eyes sparkled.

“Can’t stop while you look at one another; should have to stop all day, if it came to that.” Uncle Corny was crisp in his style, this morning, because of the frost he expected; “Now, Mrs. Kit, don’t expect him, till you see him. He will have to keep the fires up, till ten o’clock, for all I know; and Tabby will have something good for supper at my place. If you can come too, it will be all the better; but after all this kick-up of dust, you will be tired. I never can understand why women are always dusting; they only make more.”

“We are not going dusting; that shows how little you know about it, Uncle Corny,” my Kitty replied with proper spirit; “we are going to have a fine good cleaning, such as you give your wall-trees with the engine. You insist upon keeping your trees clean; but you don’t care how dirty your boards are.”

“Boards don’t grow,” my uncle replied, as if that shut her up altogether.

“Yes, they grow dirty,” she answered in his own short style; and he only said, “Come along, Kit.”

But he turned back, and kissed her; for he loved her dearly. And both he and I were glad of it, when we talked about it afterwards.

Then, as he started with his swinging walk, for he was proud of his flat back and sound joints, my dear wife came to the door, and threw her round white arms about my neck. She had turned up her sleeves, to show the earnest purpose in her figure, and her scolloped apron, trimmed with pink, came nestling into my waistcoat.

“We have never been apart so long, my pet, since our wedding-day,” she whispered, and her eyes looked wistful; “don’t expect me down there now; for I don’t think that he wants me much. And I shall have something ready for you, and your new pipe filled, my dear, the one I gave you at Baycliff. I shall be lonely, I dare say; but I shall have the clock to tell me when you are certain to be home again. And it is high time for us to learn to do without one another.”

People talk of presentiments, as if nothing could happen without them. I only know that I had none; but it almost seemed as if she had some, being of a quicker mind than I. And I was glad for many a long day that I kissed her with true tenderness, and looking back caught one sweet smile from the corner where the white lilac stood.

All that day I was hard at work, attending to what I had in hand, with enough of mind to do it well, or at least as well as in me lay. And these things, when they suit the nature both enlarge and purify it; so that a man who takes delight in all these little turns of life, although he may be tried and harassed by the pest of plaguesome insects, and the shifts of weather, yet shall do his own heart good, by doing good to what he loves. Neither shall he find himself in the humour to believe half the evil that he hears of his old friends; or even to be sure when he goes to his letter-box, that the bill which he finds there a month after he has paid it, may not have been sent in again by pure mistake.

“How you are mooning!” said my Uncle Corny, who often pretended to be rougher than he was; “that bottom branch should be at least three inches lower. And do you call that leader straight? Why, I call it a ram’s horn. How often must I tell you, that to make sure of your work, you must step back, and see how it looks across the border? And here’s a great batch of scale left to hatch at its leisure. A pretty wife spoiled the best gardener I ever knew. You have been thinking of Kitty, all the blessed day, I see. But put away your nail-bag, and let the net down from the coping. What do you suppose the thermometer is now?”

“Well, perhaps about forty,” I replied, looking round, for the sun was gone down in a rich red sky, and the air was very shrewd, and my fingers getting cold.

“Thirty-six already, and will be thirty very soon; and twenty-two at four o’clock, as sure as I’m a sinner. If we only pull through this, we shall be all right. There’s a change of weather coming within twenty-four hours. Come and have a glass of ale; and then we’ll go and do the bonfires. When we have done, Tabby will give us a hot chop, and then you will be home, before Kitty breaks her heart.”

I knew that our bloom, which was now beyond its prime, had escaped very narrowly the night before, and would be in still greater peril to-night; for these frosts always strengthen, until there comes a change. So while he set off with his five-tined fork, I ran to the house for my glass of beer (which I really wanted after that long day), and another box of matches, for he thought that his were damp. And when Mrs. Tapscott handed me the ale, she asked in a tone which made me feel uncomfortable—

“Have’e got the gearden door locked vast?”

“What garden door do you mean?” I inquired. “There are two gates, and there are three doors, Tabby. And what makes you ask, in that ominous voice?”

“Dun’now what hominous manes,” she replied; “but I knows what door manes, and so ought you. Old lead-coloured door, to the back of your ouze.”

“Well, I suppose it must be locked. It always is. None of our men go that way, you know. But what makes you put such a question to-night?”

“Dun’now, no more than the dead,” she answered, “only come into my head, as such things will. Heer’d zummat down town, as zet me a-thinking. You zee her be locked, when you goes home.”

Before I could ask her what she had heard, the sound of my uncle’s impatient shout came through the still air; and I hurried off to help him, for he had more than he could well do by himself.

It was deep dusk now, and the night was falling fast. Venus, on duty as the evening star, shone with unusual size and sparkle, above the faint gleam which had succeeded the yellow glow after the red sundown. And a little white vapour was rising here and there, where the low ground leaned into the gentle slope; but there was not enough of air on the move to draw the slow mist into lines, or even to breathe it into any shape at all.

“Now look sharp!” exclaimed Uncle Corny, who was not at all concerned with Nature’s doings, except as they concerned his pocket.

“I understand things; and you don’t. You will see, if you know north from south, that I have arranged all this in a most scientific manner. Here are fifty piles on the eastern side of all these Bonlewin, and fifty on the north. The wind must be either north or east, when it freezes. We light up, according to the direction of the wind.”

He wetted one finger at his lips, and held it up according to some old woman’s nostrum for discovering what way the wind blows. And I said—“But supposing there is no wind at all?”

“Very well. It doesn’t matter what way it is;” he had made up his mind, and meant to have it out. “You are full of objections, because you know nothing. There is no cure for that, but to do as you are told. You begin at that corner, and let the air go through. I shall take this line, and see who does it best.”

“You could never have smoked that Old Arkerate out, in this sort of weather,” I said; and he laughed, as he always did, when that triumph was recalled.

“I heard something about him, the other day,” he shouted, as he was going down the row of piles; “but I can’t stop to tell you now. Remind me at supper.”

In spite of all that we both could do, and of all his long preparations, not a whiff of smoke would go near the trees, but all went up as straight as the trees themselves. And I laughed very heartily—the last hearty laugh I was to enjoy for many a day, at the excuses Uncle Corny made for the fume that would only come into his mouth. But he would not confess himself beaten; too genuine a Briton was he for that. He stamped about, and used strong words, and even strove with his broad-flapped hat, to waft the smoke, which was as stubborn as himself, into the track it should take; till I told him that he was like the wise man of Gotham, who shovelled the sunshine into his barn. Then he laughed, and said,—

“Well, it will be all right, by-and-by. As the frost draws along, this blessed smoke must come with it. You never understand the true principles of things. Just come in and have some supper, and we will have another look at it. You must never expect a thing to work at first. Other people have done it, and I mean to do it. It is nothing but downright obstinacy. Ah there, it begins to go right already! All it wants is a little common sense and patience.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVII.COLD COMFORT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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