Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

I answered that I really did not know; and this was the truth, though I blamed myself for it. When first she began to be so much to me, I had noticed how neat and becoming her cloak was, and her hat, and a little tender muff, which held a still tenderer pair of hands. But now that she was all the world to me, and more, I seemed to have no sense of her apparel, but to be filled with herself alone, as if her existence came into mine. I did not tell him that because he would have cried “Stuff!”

But he understood my meaning, so far as to tell me of a case he had known some years ago. A friend of his had married a lovely girl, who had not a penny to bless herself with, and he was most deeply attached to her. But although he was very well off for money, and not at all of a stingy turn, for a long time it never came into his head that his wife had only two gowns, two bonnets, and one cloak. She was too proud to ask him for money; and instead of doing that, went on and on, wearing out all her poor things, until they were scarcely fit to be looked at. And many bitter tears she shed, as she darned, and patched, and let pieces in, convinced more and more, as the light shone through, that her husband must hate her to keep her like that. And perhaps it would have ended in the ruin of them both, for some villain was making love to her, when, luckily a sister of his came to see them, and scolded him roundly for his blind neglect. “Why, bless her heart!” he cried, opening his eyes; “I never see Mary’s clothes—I see Mary.”

“Now mind you are not such a jackanapes as that;” my Uncle drew the moral, as he rubbed his hands, for he loved to have his stories laughed at; “when you have got your Kitty, and I don’t see why you should not, be sure that you praise her dresses and bonnets; not quite so much perhaps as you praise herself, but still every time you can think of it. Women like that sort of thing, somehow. I can hardly tell you why; for if any man praised my coat or my hat, I should be vexed with him, unless it was to say that I had got them dirt-cheap. But perhaps the reason is that a woman’s clothes are a part of her mind and her body too, a sort of another self to her.”

“How on earth do you know such a lot about women?” I asked, though I thought that he did not know much. “One would think you had been married for forty years! What woman can have taught you all these things!”

“Mind your own business,” my Uncle answered sharply. “You will have quite enough to do with that, as things appear at present. You have made play with this pretty girl, and you have booked your place with her father. Also you have got over me, who meant to have nothing to do with it. And you have given that hateful woman a Roland for her Oliver. But I will go bail that you have no idea whose shoulders will bear the brunt of it. Who should you say was the trump-card now?”

“The learned Professor,” I replied; “the man who could kill that woman with a wire, if he were not so magnanimous. The man who knows everything in this world, except how to manage his own household. He will stand up for me, and I shall win.”

“So you shall, my boy; you are quite right there. But it won’t be done through him, I can tell you; or you would have a precious time to wait. It shall be done through a small market-gardener—as she had the cheek to call me—and she may grind her teeth, and slap her husband. Very few people know what I am; because I don’t care what they think of me. But I see the proper thing to do, and I mean to begin to-morrow. Now go to bed, and dream as you do all day. You’ll be no good to me, till you’ve had too much of Kitty.”

Being weary in body and in mind, I slept until Tabby called out that the breakfast was ready. For this I expected to be well upbraided, as my uncle was always afoot with the sun; but to my surprise he was not come home, and I kept his rasher hot for him. At last he came in, and sat down without a word beyond his short “Good morning, Kit!” His appetite was fine, and his face most cheerful; though his gray curls appeared a little grimy, and his coat had a smell more peculiar than pleasant.

“Shall have to go under the pump again,” he said, as he pushed away his plate; “but it won’t matter now till dinner-time. That twitch does make such a sticky smoke, with the sow-thistles whelmed down over it. But the wind was the right way, and took it very level. Bless my soul, how he did cough, and how he ran from one room to another! ’Twas enough to kill American blight a’most, let alone what they call a ‘human.’ But it’s high time to rouse them up again, my lad; bring one of them runner-sticks, and lend a hand. If he don’t bolt by dinner-time, we’ll try a little sulphur. I would have done it sooner, if it had not been for the Dutch Honeysuckle, and blue creeper.”

Wondering what this device could be, I took a kidney-bean stick and followed him. He marched at a great pace, with a pitchfork on his shoulder, down a long alley of pears and apples; on which, though the leaves hung very late from the wetness of the season, the chill air of some frosty mornings had breathed divers colours. Then we came into an open break, which I had helped to plant with potatoes in the spring, and here were a score of bonfires burning, or rather smoking furiously. Beyond them was “Honeysuckle Cottage,” belonging to my uncle, and standing at the north end of his grounds, against a lane which led to Hanworth.