Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

It had not been thought worth while to take any lodgings for me in the place, as I could not be spared throughout the week from the busy fruit season at Sunbury. Whenever I found time to run down to Baycliff, I could get a bed at the inn, and spend the day with my aunt and her delicate charge. This suited me also much better, because I did not like to be long away from the neighbourhood of London, where, as I always felt somehow, the strange mystery of my life must be cleared up, if it ever were so.

Mrs. Perowne was a very nice person, and deeply interested in our affairs. Kitty and I had lodged with her for a week, and although we could not afford to take her best rooms, she treated us exactly like first-floor people, and would have kept us for nothing, as she assured us, if only she could have afforded it. And now it rejoiced me to do her a good turn, by inducting my aunt at three guineas a week, which was nothing for her to think twice of. Six of the Leatherhead dogs came down for the refreshment of their systems, and Miss Golightly was delighted with them, and spent half the day on the sands scratching their heads. The weather was all that could be wished, for we were come to the end of September now; and the summer as a whole had done its utmost to atone for the atrocities of the year before.

Mrs. Perowne and Miss Parslow now were as good friends as any two people can be, with money coming weekly between them. And they never spent less than an hour a day in talking of my loss and wondering. Till it chanced that the landlady called to mind a little thing that happened after we had left her, and to which she had paid no attention at the time. But my aunt considered it of some importance, and begged her to tell me all about it, the very next Saturday I should come down.

“Well, Mr. Kit,” she said, upon the Sunday morning, for, I had been too late on Saturday to see them; “it may have been a week after you were gone, or it may have been no more than one day, but at any rate there came to this house a very quiet gentleman, not over young, about fifty you might say, and not over tall, but about half-way between five feet and six feet, and he asked for you—Mr. Orchardson by name, and then the new Mrs. Orchardson. And when our Jenny told him that you were gone, he sighed, Jenny says—though you never must be certain of anything that Jenny says—just as if he had lost his pocket-book. And then he asked for me, and he was shown up here, the drawing-room floor being vacant, as you may remember; and I came up to see him, but I happened to be a little flustered, about having all the house on my hands so. And when I found that he was not even looking out for lodgings, perhaps I was a little short with him. But whether or no, he did not push on with his questions as some people do. But he took up his hat, and begged me to excuse him for intruding upon my valuable time, and away he went with a very solid walk, and I was sorry afterwards.”

“But what was he like? Can you at all describe him? Even his dress would help a little.” I thought it most likely that this was the man who had come for my Kitty in Philip Moggs’ boat, and taken her doubtless in Clipson’s cab from Shepperton to Woking Road.

“I think I should know him, if I saw him again; but I won’t be quite sure,” replied Mrs. Perowne; “he was a gentleman I should say decidedly, though not in a fashionable cut of clothes; and I think he had gray hair, though I won’t be sure, because so many people have that now. He looked highly educated, and his voice was very nice, and he wore a broad hat with a cord to it.”

“Why, it must be the Professor himself,” exclaimed my aunt; “according to all I have heard of him, and according to your description, Kit. He came to see how you were getting on, and whether you and Kitty had fought yet.”

“Oh, that reminds me of a curious thing; and I thought it so odd,” said the landlady; “he did seem to think that you must have quarrelled, or at least that there was something unpleasant between you, I remember now that he did quite well, because I was astonished at such an idea. For if ever there was a young couple suited—intended by the Lord for one another—”

“It cannot have been the Professor,” I broke in, “for the simple reason that he must already have left the shores of England. We had a telegram from Falmouth proving that. And her father would never for a moment have imagined that Kitty and I had fallen out already. What did this man say, to show that he supposed it?”

“Well, I don’t know that he did exactly that; but he inquired particularly about your health, or rather I should say your state of mind, as if you were not quite—you know what I mean—as if you were rather flighty, sir.”