Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

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.