Kitabı oku: «Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex», sayfa 13
“But her bain’t coom home;” answered Tabby with all reason. “Her would ’a coom home, if so be her worn’t drowned in the znow, I tull ’e, sir. No more coortin’ for Measter Kit, in this laife. A’ may do what a’ wool, in kingdom coom.”
“Stuff!” cried my uncle, not caring to discuss this extreme test of my constancy. “He has stopped at some house on the road, or up there. Perhaps the Professor would not let him go, when he saw how bad the weather was. There is nothing to be done, till the post comes in; though I am not sure that the post will be able to get in. If the letters are not here by ten o’clock, I shall go to Hampton to look for them. They are pretty sure to get that far.”
The morning was fine, though bitterly cold after that very heavy fall; and people began to get about again, though the drifts were too deep in many places for a carriage to pass till they had been cleared. My uncle set out on foot for Hampton, and there found the mail cart just come in. The postmaster was in a state of flurry, and would not open the Sunbury bag, but sent it on by special messenger, as the cart could get no further. My uncle had the pleasure of walking with it as far as our post-office; and after all that there was nothing for him. “Well, a man must eat,” was his sound reflection. “I shall have a bit of dinner, and consider what to do.”
It was getting on for two o’clock, as they told me, when a man who had come from the Bear at Hanworth, upon some particular business in our village, knocked at my uncle’s door on his return, to say that I had forgotten (which was the truth) to pay for what I had the night before. He was also to ask how I got home, because I looked “uncommon dickey,” as he beautifully expressed it. In half an hour every man in Sunbury, owning a good pair of legs, and even a number of women and boys, set forth to search the roads and fields, for it was hard sometimes to tell which was which, in the direction of Hanworth. This was no small proof of the good-will and brave humanity of our neighbourhood; for any of these people might have lost themselves in the numb frost, and the depth of drift; and there were signs of another storm in the north-east.
My uncle, with a big shovel on his shoulder, and a bottle of brandy in his pocket, put a guinea upon me at first, and then two, and then jumped to five pounds, and even ten, as the hope of discovery waned; and at last, when some had abandoned the search, and others were muffling themselves against the new snowstorm, he mounted a gate and with both hands to his mouth shouted – “Five and twenty pounds for my nephew Kit – dead or alive; twenty-five pounds reward to any one who finds Christopher Orchardson.”
This may appear a great deal of money for anybody to put me at (except my own mother, if I had one), and the people who heard it were of that opinion, none of them being aware perhaps that the reward would come out of my mother’s property, which had no trustees to prevent it. And for many years afterwards, if I dared to think anything said or done by my uncle was anything short of perfection, the women, and even the men would ask – as if I were made of ingratitude – “Who offered five and twenty pounds for you?”
And they felt the effect of it now so strongly that a loud hurrah went along the white plain, and several stout fellows who were turning home turned back again, and flapped themselves, saying, “Never say die!” With one accord a fresh pursuit began, though perhaps of a ghost even whiter than the snow; and taking care to keep in sight of one another, they began to poke more holes, wherever they could poke them. For some had kidney-bean sticks, and some had garden forks, and some had sharp pitch-forks from the stable; and if they had found me, I had surely been riddled, and perhaps had both my eyes poked out. But the Lord was good to me once more, and I escaped being trussed, as I might have been.
For just when it was growing dark, and another bitter night was setting in, with spangles of hard snow driving, as they said, like a glazier’s diamond into their eyes, and even the heartiest man was saying that nothing more could be done for it; through the drifting of the white, and the lowering of the gray, a high-mettled horse came churning. It was beautiful, everybody thought, to see him scattering the snow like highway dust, flinging from his nostrils scornful volumes, with his great eyes flashing like a lighthouse in the foam. Men huddled aside, lest he should spurn them like a drift, for his courage was roused, and he knew no fear, but gloried in the power of his leap and plunge.
“Giving it over, are you all?” Sam Henderson shouted, as he drew the rein, and his favourite stallion Haro stood, and looked with the like contempt at them. “Then a horse and dog shall shame your pluck.”
From beneath the short rough cloak he wore, a pair of sharp eyes shone like jewels, and two little ears pricked up like thorns.
“Spike is the best man here,” said Sam, as the wiseacres crowded round him. “All you have done is to spoil the track. Keep behind me, and let me see things for myself.”
My uncle, who never had been fond of Sam, said something disdainful and turned away; but Henderson, without even looking at him, rode on, and the best men followed him. He took them almost to the Bear Hotel, watching both sides of the road, as he went, and still keeping his dog before him. Then he turned back, and said, “Keep you all on my left. None of you tread any gap on the right. I saw the place as I came along. When the moon gets clear, we shall find him.”
The snow-cloud in the east began to lift, and the moon came out with a bronzy flush, as my uncle told me afterwards, and the broad expanse of snow was flickered with wan light and with gliding shades. Then all came back to the place where Sam, being mounted and able to command the slope, had discovered certain dimples – for they were nothing more – which might be the trace of footsteps snowed over. Here he gave his horse to be held, and leaving the road with his little Scotch terrier Spike, scooped the light surface from one of the marks, and found a hard clot beneath it. He put the dog’s nose in, and patted him, and Spike gave a yelp, as if a rat were in prospect.
“Let him alone. Don’t say a word to him,” cried Sam, as our people grew eager. “He don’t want you to teach him his business. If you knew your own half as well, there’d be less money in London than in Sunbury. Keep back, I say, all of you.”
The little dog led them across a broad meadow, two or three hundred yards from the highway, yet in a straighter line towards Sunbury, and nearly in the track of an old foot-path. Then he stopped in a dip, where a great rise of snow, like a surge of ground-swell, swung away from them, and combed over into the field beyond without breaking, like the ground-swell frozen. They said that it was a most beautiful sight, such as they never had seen before, and could scarcely hope to see again in one lifetime; reminding them of the great wax-works, when the wax is being bleached, at Teddington. But they could not stop to look at it; and the little dog went round, and dived into the tunnel on the further side.
Presently he yapped, as if in hot chase of a rabbit; and an active young fellow jumped through the great wave, and was swallowed up, leaving his hat behind. Then they heard him crying faintly, “Here he is! Come round, and dig us out to this side.”
It is a strange thing, and I have not the smallest remembrance of having done it; but I must have dragged my frozen body through the hedge, in the cope of life with death, and got on the leeward side of a stiff bulwark of newly bill-hooked ashplant, which stopped the sweep of drift, and served to cast it like the lap of a counterpane over me. In the bottom where I lay there was scarcely any snow, but a soft bed of fallen leaves, upon which they found me lying like a gate-post flung by, to season.
“Dead as a doornail!” said Rasp the baker.
“Stiff as a starfish!” cried Pluggs the grocer, who had spent his last holidays at the seaside.
“Ay, and colder than a skinned eel!” added Jakes, the barrowman.
But my uncle said – “Out with you, coward lot of curs! Our Kit shall outlive every one of you. The Lord hath not put him in that nest for nothing.”
Then Sam Henderson pulled off his cloak, like the Good Samaritan, and threw it over me. And taking me by the shoulders, with my uncle at the feet, he helped to bear my stiff body back to the road; where they set me upon Haro, with my head upon his mane; and the young man who had jumped into the drift was sent ahead, to fetch Dr. Sippets to my uncle’s house.
CHAPTER XXV.
ON THE SHELF
That season, there was no Christmas-tide for me; no “Happy New Year,” to wish to others, and be wished; nor even so much as a Valentine’s Day, to send poems to girls, and get caricatures. In the leeward of the wild storm, I had been saved by a merciful power from the frost of death, and by constant care and indefatigable skill, I was slowly brought back into the warmth of life. But strong as I was, and of tough and active frame, with habits of temperance and exercise, there was no making little of the mischief done; and I could not have survived it, if I had been a clever fellow. For one of the most racking and deadly evils of all that beset the human frame was established in mine, and there worked its savage will. When I was just beginning to get warm again, and to ask where I was, and to stretch my tingling joints, symptoms of rheumatic fever showed, and for weeks and for months it ran its agonizing course. The doctor did all that any man could do; and my uncle went up to his cupboard in the wall by the head of his bed, and brought down a leather bag, and looked at it fondly, and then looked at me.
“It was put by for a rainy day; and there can’t be a rainier day than this,” he said with some drops in his own eyes, as Tabby told me afterwards. “Let the business go to the dogs, if it will. Where’s the use of keeping up, with no one to keep up for? Dr. Sippets, I never thought to see this day. Fetch the best man in London, and let him cheat me, if he will.”
If I had been at all a clever fellow, my mind would have stayed with me, and worried out my heart, when dreadfully pushed to carry on its proper work, with the lowering and the heightening, and the quivering of the pulse. But being just a simple mind, that took its cue from body, and depended on the brain for motion, and the eyes for guidance, when these went amiss it quite struck work; and never even asked who its master was. Thus it came to pass that Kitty’s sweet and tender letters lay upon a shelf but a yard or two away, and no hand was yet stretched out for them.
At last there came a letter sent in special trouble, as was plain from many signs upon it, and from the mode of its delivery. For Mrs. Wilcox came herself, the roads being once more passable, and perceiving how things were in the house had a long talk with my uncle. This good woman, as I may have said, was much attached to Miss Fairthorn, and had promised to take charge of my replies, and even to give me tidings of her, if anything happened to disable her from writing. But no provision had been made for any default on my part, as I was supposed to be free, and strong, and sure to come when called for.
“The poor young thing has been in such a taking,” Mrs. Wilcox told my uncle, “at not having so much as a single line from your poor nephew, you see, sir. You may put it to yourself how you would feel to be looking and looking for letters about business; and this is worse than business to young folk; they goes on as if it was all the world to them. And Miss Kitty always did have such an uncommon tender heart; you never see the like of it in all your life. What was she to conclude except that Mr. Kit had throwed her over, and perhaps taken up with some of them country girls down here. It wasn’t, you see, sir, as if he had written once, and told her he meant to stick fast to her. And yet she couldn’t bring her mind for to believe that such a nice young gent would be guilty of such conduct; and of course she knows right well how bootiful she is, though you never see her look that sort of way, as young ladies with a quarter of her good looks does. I declare to you, sir, when I was in the ’bus, holding of this bag exactly as you see me now, I felt that I could scratch out both his eyes, tall and strong as he is by Miss Kitty’s account. Bless her gentle heart, what a way she will be in, when she hears she have thought ill of him undeserving. Though a relief, sir, on the whole, for I believe she never done it; and better be in a snow-drift than belong to another woman.”
“You are a remarkably sensible lady,” said my uncle, desiring to make the best of things. “But I do not like to open poor Kit’s letters; and there are six of them already on a bracket by his bed, waiting till he comes round a bit. You must understand, Mrs. Wilcox, what this means. He isn’t off his head, exactly, but – you know that we all get a little abroad, when we lie on our backs so long as not to know our legs.”
“I do, sir, I do. I can feel it all through me, by means of what happened to my own husband. Ah, he was a man – could take a scuttle full of coals, and hold it out straight, the same as you might march up the aisle on a Sunday, with your hat right for’ard, to show that it was brushed and shining. But poor Wilcox, he went away at last, with a tub of clothes in his lungs, and the same may occur to the best of us; mayn’t it, Mr. Orchardson? But if you feel a delicate sort of feeling about breaking open the young lady’s letter, and the young gent from the snow-drift is still looking at his legs, I can tell you a good bit of what is going on; though I never was one, and Wilcox knew it, for hearkening so much as a word they say, when the women have done with their teas, and the men stand against the low green palings, with a pot, and a pipe as long as their shirt-sleeves.
“Well, sir, it do appear that two bad ones has turned up, over and above the one always there, which I will not name, consequent upon fear. One was Sir Cumberance Hotchpots, or some such name, proving to be a wicked man from the North; and the other was her brother, as ought to be all over, according to the flesh of marriage, sir. Donovan Bulwrag is his name, but every one prefer to call him ‘Downy.’ A hulking young man is my opinion of him; and it has been my lot to behold a good many. You may see it on the tables, sir, that come down from the Mount, going into church any Sunday, that such is forbidden by the law of Moses, for any Christian man to marry. Their father is one, and their mother is one; and they have no right to make a pair of them. You holds on with that, sir, as a respectable man, who has trodden his way in the world, is bound to do?”
“Yes, Mrs. Wilcox, I hold to it strongly,” said my uncle, “if I understand you. Do you mean to tell me, that this young man – ”
“There is the facts, sir, and none of my telling. I was always a very bad hand at telling, though Wilcox he used to say otherwise, when he might be overcome in argument. But facts or no facts, the truth is as I tell you. This Mr. Donovan have come home, from Germany, or some such foreign parts; and whatever his meaning is, that is what it comes to – Miss Kitty can’t have no peace with him. And a yellow young man, Mr. Orchardson; as yellow as a daffodil, his hair, and beard, and eyes.”
“I don’t care a fig what his colour may be,” cried my uncle, being now on his high ropes; “he must be a black blackguard, and nothing else, if he dares to take advantage of a girl he should protect. Poor Kitty, what a pretty kettle of fish she is in! You need not tell me, ma’am, I can see it all. I have always had a gift in that way. Though I have not had so very much to do with women, for which I thank the Lord, every night of my life, I understand their ways, as well as if I had been one of them.”
“Then you must be a wonderful man, sir, indeed. The most wonderful I ever come across.” Mrs. Wilcox smoothed her dress, as if to ask what was inside it, but reserved her own opinion as to what was not.
“I mean it,” said my Uncle, who grew stronger always, whenever called in question. “It may not be the general thing; but so it is with me. And now I would venture to ask you, ma’am, what you consider the next thing to do.”
“Well,” replied the lady, highly flattered by request for advice from such an oracle, “if I were a strong man and a very clever one, I know what I should do at once. I should go up and fetch her away from them all, and let none of them come anigh her.”
“And what would you say, ma’am, supposing you had done it, when you found yourself served, the next morning perhaps, with a warrant for abduction of a maiden under age, and then committed for trial as a criminal? What would you say to that, Mrs. Wilcox?”
“I should say that the laws was outrageous, and made for the encouragement of vice and wickedness. And I should put it in the newspapers, right and left, till the public came and broke down the doors of the jail, and got up a public subscription for me.”
“Where is her father? What is he about?” My uncle thought it waste of time to argue after that. “Her father is the only person who can interfere. Has he been knocked on the head, and killed by one of his own battering rams?” Mr. Orchardson’s knowledge of scientific matters was more elementary than even mine.
“Not to my knowledge, sir; though like enough that will be the end of him. He have gone to the ends of the earth, I believe, to arrange for going ever so much further in the Spring. There is no help to be got from him, sir, now, if there ever was any chance of it. The poor young lady is delivered as a lamb between two lions to devour her, with a tigress patting them on the back, and holding her down while they carry it out. What will Mr. Kit say, if you allow it, sir?”
“You may be quite sure that I will never allow it, though at present I cannot see what to do. You have quicker wits than we have, ma’am; I ask you again, is there anything you can think of? Has her father any friends who would take her in?”
“Not one, to my knowledge,” answered Mrs. Wilcox, after counting on her finger-tips some names that she had heard of; “that dreadful creature have contrived to make every lady in the land afraid of her. And the poor Professor only knows the learned men, and the learneder they are the less they cares for one another. ’Tis the learning that is at the foot of all this trouble. You must see it so yourself, sir, when you come to think about it.”
“And the law, Mrs. Wilcox, the law is still worse. She is not of age, you see; and her father has placed her, or at any rate left her, in the charge of that woman, whom he has been fool enough to marry. If my nephew were in health, I should say to him at once, ‘Take the bull by the horns, or at least take the young lady, get a licence, and marry her, and defy those people. Her father’s consent has been given; and if he chooses to leave her in that helpless state, you must rescue her, and have no shilly-shallying. But for me to come and take her, is another pair of shoes. It might ruin her fair name, as well as get me into trouble; and what could I do with her, when I had got her?”
“You are right, sir; I see it all as clearly as you put it. But will you come up, and have a talk with her? A word from you would go as far as ten from me. And it would make her feel so much less forsaken like. I could manage to get her down to my little place, and the news I have got for her about poor Mr. Kit will set her up in one way, while it knocks her down in another. Oh, how she have cried, to think that he could be so false to her, because she wouldn’t believe a single word of it, all the blessed time! And now, if I can send my little Ted to her to-night – the sharpest little chap he is, in all the brick and mortar trade; he have never lost a sixpence, sir, from all them roaring navvies – though you might not think it, it will brisk her up amazingly. There is nothing so hagonizing to the female spirit, sir, as to find itself forsaken by the other sex. And your nephew, Master Kit, he mustn’t think of dying yet; no cough about him, sir, nor nothing in the kidneys, only got a chill from being frozen to a hicicle, and his head upon the moon, which goes for nothing. Lor’, sir, the number of young men comes every day, from the best part of London, too, according to my Ted, a-staring at the great works round our way, which is to be the fashion in a few more years, and not a head among them fit to go upon a donkey! It doesn’t matter what’s the matter with the head, one item, sir, in these times now upon us and increasing daily. Keep your spirits up, sir, and I shall tell Miss Kitty. A young man, as is all right, except inside his head, isn’t no more to complain of than a cuckoo-clock, that have left off striking, and keeps better time for that. What time did you say the last ’bus at Hampton was, sir? If I was to lose it, wherever should I be? And a good step from here to Hampton, too.”
“I will send you to Hampton, in the spring-cart, Mrs. Wilcox,” said my uncle, warmly joining in her estimate of the age; “and to-morrow, if the roads permit, I shall hope to call upon you, about eleven o’clock; and if you can manage to get Miss Fairthorn to meet me, why, it may be a little comfort to her, and we may be able perhaps to see what can be done for her.”
