With passion too intense for light,”
—weary, and with little heart for loneliness and doubt and woe, yet I could not be quite sure that when I opened our own door some one might not run out hotly, and give me no time to speak, but hold me lip to lip, and breast to breast, with scarcely room for a tear between us.
It is the emptiness that follows such full hope that does the harm to the powers of endurance. When no one came to meet me, and the cold rooms showed grey lines of shade, with no dear life to cross them, I used to fall away, and feel my heart go down, like the water of a sink, when the plug is taken out of it. There was nothing more for it to do. My wretched life was not worth the fuss of pumping and of labouring; better to give in at once, and have no more pain to drain it.
“You are killing yourself up here, my boy; this will never do,” said Uncle Corny. “Bother the women; what a pest they are! Try to be like that ancient fellow—I can never remember his name, but they call him the father of history. You told me about him, when you went to the Grammar-school at Hampton. And it was so wise that I paid for another half-year for you to read him. You know better than I do; but I think there had been a lot of carrying off of pretty girls between two countries, and they were going to fight about them. But he says that they had no call to do it; for men of discretion would let them go, and make no fuss about them. Because it was manifest that the women would never have been carried off, unless they themselves had wished it. I don’t suppose you could do it now; but if you can, bring down the book, and read it to me this evening. It would do you a deal more good than to hold your tongue, and eat your heart out.”
“I hate to hear of that rubbish,” I replied; “they were a lot of good-for-nothings. To talk of my Kitty in that sort of way would drive me mad, Uncle Corny. If you have nothing better to say than that, you had better go home to Tabby.”
“Well, perhaps they will come and carry Tabby off. I believe she would go for a new bonnet; and I don’t know what I should do if she did. But shut up this place, Kit, and come back to the old quarters. You want company, my boy; and I’d rather let old Harker in again than have you here killing yourself like that, and sleeping in the kitchen on two chairs; if you ever get any sleep at all.”
“I will never leave this house,” I said; “and I won’t even be smoked out of it. When Kitty comes back, she will come here first; and there is no telling how soon she may want me. You only bother me with all this stuff.”
“Well, I will not be hard upon you, Kit; because the Lord has done that quite enough. But you have not got a bit of religion in you, after all the teaching I have given you.”
This was very fine from Uncle Corny, who never even went to church, except to keep other people out of his pew. And he rubbed his nose as he said it; as he always did, when he had gone too far.
“There is a very good man wants to see you,” he went on a little nervously, for I knew that he had been leading up to something; “and a man to whom you are bound to listen, because he was the one who married you, and therefore understands all the subject, matrimony, women, and the doctrines of the Church. The Reverend Peter Golightly wishes to have a little talk with you.”