CHAPTER XXVI.
A DOWNY COVE.
It could hardly be expected that my Uncle Corny should grow very miserable about this matter. He knew that young people of the ordinary cast tumble into love and tumble out again, with perhaps a little running of the eyes and nose, and a hat crushed on the head, or a ribbon saturated; but nothing that penetrates the skin, far less puts a “tub of clothes,” as Mrs. Wilcox said, into the lungs. And it would not have been reasonable to demand of him, that he should believe in any grand distinction between the case of Kitty and myself, and that of any other couple he might come across, in a life whose main nucleus was Covent Garden. That which chiefly moved him, as he told me in the end, and as I might have known without his telling, was the iron sense of justice, gilded haply at the corners, and crowned with a little touch of chivalry. To his sturdy sense of right it seemed a monstrous thing, that an innocent girl, and such a lovely girl, should be locked away from all who were longing to help her, and left at the mercy of two bad men.
Therefore he donned his Sunday clothes, though he grumbled a good deal at having to do it, and without a word to me, put old Spanker in the shafts, and drove away alone in the green spring-cart, with a face which made all the village say to one another, that he must have a County-court job on his hands. Dr. Sippets, who came to see me every day, had by this time supplied such a row of medicine-bottles, that we glazed a new wall with them forty yards long, for he would not allow a farthing on their return, though he put them in the bill at twopence halfpenny apiece; and that glazing brought him even more than that much again, from the number of boys’ fingers which he had to dress. For he was a skilful, as well as zealous man, and did his utmost for his patients and his family.
He had now begun to “exhibit” mustard oil externally, as well as zinc, and especially sulphur inside; till the sulphur began to ooze through my pores, as if I had been a tea rose suffering from mildew. Then Tabby had to rub me with the mustard oil; and the more I groaned, the surer she became of its effect. With this vigorous treatment I began to rally, and even heard Uncle Corny depart, and contrived to steal a peep at him behind the window curtain. But they told me some fib about his errand.
When he put up his horse, somewhere near Holland Park, he had not far to walk to find Mrs. Wilcox, who received him with great cordiality. And she sent her little Ted, who proved to be the very boy that had guided me among the brickfields, with a note which he managed to convey to Miss Fairthorn. “Rumpus going on,” he said when he came back; “they makes more rumpus in that house, than a score of navvies over one red herring. But cooky’s not a bad sort; she’ll give it to her.”
It was nearly an hour before Miss Fairthorn came, and then she was so nervous, and down-hearted, that they scarcely knew what to do with her. At first she had quite forgotten Uncle Corny, having never seen him in his best clothes at home, and being distracted with sorrow and ill usage. For as yet Mrs. Wilcox had been unable to get a word with her about the visit of the day before. Gradually, however, she began to understand what had happened, and why she had not heard from me.
“Then he has not forgotten me, after all!” she said, in a tone that made her old nurse sob, and my uncle look out of the window. “Something told me all along, that he could not forget me, any more than I could do such a thing to him. But you say that he is ill, that he has long been ill; and perhaps he will never be well any more. Tell me the truth, I would rather know it. Is he dead, is he dead, Mr. Orchardson?”
“No, my dear, thank the Lord, he is all alive, and getting ever so much better every day. He went off his head, just a little for a time; and he did not know me from the man in the moon; and what do you think was the word that was on his tongue, all day, and all night too for that matter? Guess, and I’ll tell you if you are right.”
“Oh, I know what it was! It began with a K, and it was not a very long word, was it? It was ‘Kitty.’ Don’t tell me that it was anything but ‘Kitty.’”