Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

But I found the right glass with his help, and swallowed the hot brown draught without knowing it. Then I asked him the time, and he said, “Nigh on ten o’clock. You take my advice, and have a bed here. Well, wilful will, and woeful won’t, when it’s too late to mend it.” He cast this at me as I said “Good night,” and without sitting down, staggered out again.

I believe that even now I should have reached home safely, not having so very much further to go, if the roads had been wide and straight as they were thus far. But two things were very much against me now, and both of them made a great difference. I had turned from the main road into twisting narrow lanes, and my course was across the wind instead of right before it. Without that strong wind at my back I could scarcely have reached Hanworth by that time, though it seemed a very long time to take from Notting Hill, compared with the usual rate of walking. But now the fierce wind was on my left side quite as often as behind me, and it drove me from my line, as I grew more feeble, and knocked my weary legs into one another. Moreover, it seemed to go through me twice as much, and to rattle me like splinter shaken up, and to drive the spikes of snow to my heart almost.

If I had walked as in a dream before, I was moving as in a deep sleep now. I had some sort of sense of going on for ever, as a man has a knowledge of his own snoring; and I have some weak remembrance of beating with my hands—for my stick must have gone away long ago—to keep off a blanket that was smothering me. Then I seemed to be lifted, and set down somewhere, and it did not matter where it was. And what happened after that was not to me, but to people who told me of it afterwards.

For my Uncle Corny went to bed that night, in a very bad worry of mind, and fitter to grumble at the Lord than to say his prayers. Not from anxiety about his nephew, who was sure to turn up somehow; but because he had frightful misgivings about his glass, and his trees, and his premises at large. The roof of his long vinery was buckled in already, when he went with a lantern to look at it; and many of his favourite apple-trees, which he loved to go and gaze at on a Sunday, were bowed with the wind and the snow, and hanging in draggles, like so much mistletoe. He never swore much at the weather; because it seemed like swearing at heaven, and he had found it grow worse under that sort of treatment. But our Tabby Tapscott (who feared to go home, and tried to sleep on two chairs in the kitchen) declared that he used some expressions that night, which were quite enough to account for anything.

In the morning, however, there was no fault to find with him, as soon as he had done a good hour’s work in the deep snow and the nipping wind, and improved his circulation by convincing everybody that he was still as young as he ever was. He relieved the laden trees, wherever it was wise to do so, and with the back of a hay-rake fetched the white incumbrance from the glass, and stamped his feet and shook his coat, and had a path swept here and there, and told himself and Selsey Bill, that a good old-fashioned winter was the thing to send all prices up. But when he sat down to breakfast, he kept looking at the door, as if for me; and at last he said to Mrs. Tapscott, who was shaking in her apron—“Why, where’s that lazy Kit again? Is he frozen to his pillow? Go and give him a good rattle up. He deserves cold victuals, and he shall have nothing else.”

“Her bain’t coom home,” replied Tabby, looking as crossly as she dared at him. “Much you care for the poor boy, measter. I rackon the znow be his winding-shate. No more coortin’ for he, this zide of kingdom coom, I’d lay a penny.”

“Kit not come home! Kit out all night, and you let me go on with my trees and roofs! But you know where he is, or you would not take it so, and you snoring away by the kitchen fire. None of your secrets about him. Where is Kit?”

“The Lord A’mighty know’th where a’ be.” Poor Tabby began to whine and cry. “The zecret be with Him, not me. A’ wor to coom home, but her never didn’t. A vaine job for e’e to zake for ’un. Vaind un dade as a stone, I reckon.”

“Nonsense! Kit can take care of himself. He is the strongest young fellow for miles and miles, and accustomed to all sorts of weather. What’s a bit of snow to a young man like Kit? You women always make the worst of everything.”

“But her bain’t coom home;” answered Tabby with all reason. “Her would ’a coom home, if so be her worn’t drowned in the znow, I tull ’e, sir. No more coortin’ for Measter Kit, in this laife. A’ may do what a’ wool, in kingdom coom.”