Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

He was not a man who lived extravagantly; he was rather of the mean and close-fisted order, even in his self-indulgence. From what had been said at Sam Henderson’s dinner, it would seem that he had fallen into certain racing debts; but I could not believe that these were crippling him, for he generally managed to work them off, and come out with a balance in his favour. But there was another thing in the background, of which I had no knowledge yet; and when I speak of it now, it must be understood that I do so from later information.

That account in the Globe, which the clergyman showed me, had been followed by further particulars in the Journals of the following day, and by one or two extracts from private letters brought to England by the Simon Pure. But the ships had been parted by a sudden gale, after a very brief interview, and some despatches, which were not quite ready, had lost their chance of delivery. There was nothing of interest to me, except what I had seen at first; and no letter from the Captain to my wife arrived by post, which surprised me for the moment. But that was explained by the likelihood that he might have been hurried with official reports, while intending to send his private letters with them, and thus had lost the chance of despatching either. And as any such letter must have missed its mark, there was no great disappointment.

But the Simon Pure landed near Liverpool, as I came to know long afterwards, an unhappy and afflicted man, welcome to no person and to no place on the face of the habitable globe. An elderly man of great bodily strength, and bulk of frame, and large stature, he had better have gone beneath the earth—as the father of poets has it—than linger on it, lonesome, loathsome, shunned, abominated, and abhorred.

His sins had been many, and his merits few; he had lived for his own coarse pleasures only; he had never done good to man, woman, or child; yet he might have called any man worse than himself, who refused to grieve for his awful grief—for this man was a leper.

The captain of the Simon Pure was humane as well as resolute. This Spaniard, as he called himself, had lurked under a tarpaulin, till the boat of the Archytas was far away, and the gale began to whistle through the shrouds and chains. Then he came forth and showed himself, holding forth his hands, defying the sailors to throw him overboard. For a month he had been treated well by the crew of the exploring ship, who were all picked men of some education, and ready to listen to reason. He had managed to quit them without their knowledge, and cast his lot among a less enlightened crew.

The boldest feared to touch him, but with nautical skill they encoiled him in ropes from a distance, and were just beginning their yo-heave-oh chant, when the captain rushed up and dashed them right and left. With his own hand he unbound the leper, and led him forward, and allotted him a place on the forecastle, where none might come near him, except to bring him food, and where he must abide, if he cared to live. His chief desire was to get back to England, and finding himself well on the way for that, he indulged in strange antics, and shouted and roared, as if all the ship belonged to him. When the moon was high—for the moon appears to have strange power over those outcasts—the sailors were afraid to keep the deck, with his wild songs flowing aft to them; for he had belonged to a colony of Indian lepers, and had learned their poetry.

As soon as the ship was in the Mersey, he contrived to be quit of her. Perhaps he was afraid that his condition would be made known to the authorities, who might find it their duty to observe him, though they could not legally confine him. At any rate he escaped any such trouble, by dropping into a boat, and landing on the south side of the river. A purse had been made for him by the sailors, not a very heavy one, for they were short of cash, but enough to carry him to London—at once the fountain and the cesspool of diseased humanity.

Donovan Bulwrag had been unable, after his recovery, to put up with the control and order of his mother’s house in Kensington. He had taken private rooms again, in a little street near Berkeley Square; and though his mother was not well pleased, she had now to contend with a will as strong as her own, and even firmer. He must have his own way in this, he must be indulged at every cost, rather than driven to mutiny when all depended on him. If once he were married to Lady Clara, all would be wealth and prosperity. She had hoped to see it done ere now, but a wicked chance had crossed her.

It was nearly twelve o’clock one night, towards the end of February; and Bulwrag, having returned from his club much earlier than usual, was sitting by the fire in his dressing-gown, with a cigar in his mouth and a bottle of very old Cognac on the table. He was not in a pleasant humour, for the luck had been against him, and foreseeing worse he had come away, for he was growing superstitious.

He was dwelling gloomily on the dull necessity before him—the “brilliant prospect,” his mother called it, but he disliked his intended bride; and this good thing (alone perhaps) may be said in his favour—he was not wholly mercenary. I would fain hope, though without much faith, that he may have felt some true regret at the cruel wrong he had done me—for verily the expiation was nigh.