Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

I promised him a pound, if it should prove to be of value, or a crown if I could make no use of it; and although it could help me but little for the future, I considered it worth the larger sum, when I had heard the whole of it; because it cleared up so many little points which had puzzled me up to that moment. This man Harker, by his own confession, had been employed for weeks to keep close watch upon us, and report all our doings to Bulwrag. That demon discovered that this low fellow bore a grudge against us, because of his expulsion from the cottage; and what better spy could he wish for than one who had lived in the place, and knew every twig and stone? It is awful for a simple man (who lives without much thought, and says and does everything without looking round) to find that all his little doings have been watched, by an eye that was anything except the eye of God. We had kept a very distant sort of outlook upon Bulwrag; but that was different altogether, and as a rogue he must long have been accustomed to it. To think that in our gardens (where every tree knew me, and the line of every shadow was known to me) I could not even move without somebody behind me, was enough to scatter all delight, and simplicity, and carelessness.

Harker told me all about the secret of the door into Love Lane. I knew that it was bolted, I was sure it had been bolted, I could almost swear that it had not been opened by any honest person from the inside, for a long time before Kitty vanished through it. It ought to have been locked as well, of course; as Tabby Tapscott (who had the true feminine knack of hitting a blot) observed. But now all that became plain as a pikestaff. That sneak of a Harker knew a dodge for undoing the bolt from the outside, by tapping on a sprung piece of tongued board, when the bolt (which was loose in the socket) would glide back.

I remembered what appeared to be a pretty turn of Kitty’s, when I asked her to come and take a walk in Love Lane. “Not unless you seem to want it, my dear. We have our love inside, and it is not a gloomy lane.” For she always loved fruit-trees, and fair alleys, and the way one looks up at the sky through balls of gold.

However, that sort of thing was out of Harker’s line; and I asked him a few questions, with a sovereign in my hand; at which he kept glancing, as a dog of better manners assures his master that he loves the hand ever so much more than the tit-bit inside it. He told me—for his mind was made up now—that he had suspected Bulwrag’s scheme, but had nothing to do with the final stroke, except that he had opened the road for it. I conjured him by all that he valued—if he valued anything besides himself—to tell me where my dear wife was likely to be now, if indeed she were in the world at all.

He had no fine feeling to be appealed to, and having had a bad wife—his own fault, I dare say—could not at all enter into my concern. But he took a great weight from my heart by declaring that there was no fear of Kitty being made away with.

“’Tis a bit of revenge, and nothing more,” he said; “the man is so deep and slippery that you can never circumvent him. You are a baby altogether to him. Although he employed me for weeks together, he never let me into any one of his devices. He never does anything as you expect it. When you find out this, if you live long enough to do it, you will find it come contrary to all your guesses. If you ask what I think is the best way, I will tell you. But it might be quite wrong for all that, you know.”

“Very well,” he said, when I had asked most earnestly, and promised him five pounds, if it turned out well; “you just do this, and see what comes of it. Collect all your money, and get your uncle to sell a good piece of his land for building, they are talking of that sort of thing, you know; and there is sure to be a railway by-and-by, and the old Topper’s land is the best in the parish. Then when you have raised a thousand pounds, take it in a bag, or a purse with open meshes, and lay it on his table—not too near him, mind—and then be very humble, and say, ‘Mr. So and So, you have beaten me out and out, and I give in. You shall have all this, and I’ll cry quits, and give you any undertaking you require, as soon as I get my wife back again.’ It is my belief, Master Kit, that you would have her in a week; for that sort of man will do anything for money.”

This was altogether a new view to me, and I began to suspect things immediately. Possibly this man had even been sent to propose a bargain in this sly way. I could raise the thousand pounds, by selling out what I possessed; and my wife was worth more than all the money in the world, or even than my own life to me. But my pride, and sense of right, swelled against the low idea; and I knew that even Kitty would condemn so vile a bargain.

“If that is the only way to do it, it will never be done,” I answered sternly; “but tell me one thing—did you see her go? Did you see the man who came to fetch her?”

“No. It was managed too well for that. They got all they could out of me, and trusted me no further. I did not even know that it was going to be done. I was ordered off to Hampton, on that very day.”