Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex

by R. D. Blackmore

“It will not do,” Mrs. Wilcox interrupted, as if she were once more in office as nurse. “Of law I know nothing, sir, and you do; as you was pleased to tell me yesterday. If her father was at home, and sanctioned it, no doubt it might be in your jurisdiction”—the good lady was proud of her law, and repeated—“it might be in your jurisdiction, sir. But without any sign of that, where should we be? Pulled up for conspiracy against the realm, and nothing for me, but to put my shutters up.”

“I fear that you are right, ma’am,” replied my uncle, “though I don’t care twopence for the law sometimes, when I feel better law inside me. But it is the young lady we must think of first. We must let her do nothing to injure herself. Have patience, my dear. They may torment you in the house, but they cannot take you out of it, and marry you to anybody, against your own will and pleasure. Your will and pleasure is to have our Kit; and with the will of the Lord, you shall do so.”

“I suppose I must go back. There seems nothing else to do;” Miss Fairthorn spoke very sadly, looking from one to the other, and trying to be cheerful. “But if the worst comes to the worst, will you find a place for me, Uncle Corny? I have got a little money my dear father gave me; and they shall take away my life, before they get it.”

“Bravo, well said indeed, my dear!” This alone was needed to confirm my uncle in his high opinion of her. “What a wife you will make for a steady young man! Yes, my dear child, I will find you a place, and you shan’t pay sixpence for it. And none but your father shall take you away, unless the Lord Chancellor comes himself to fetch you.”

“Thank you. Then I shall know what to do. I am not so much afraid of them, now I know that Kit is true. I shall say to myself—‘What is this to put up with, after all that he has borne for me?’ Give him my best love, and tell him to get well, and sit by the window, and look out for me. Good-bye, Uncle Corny; I will not attempt to thank you. Good-bye, nurse. I don’t deserve such friends. They may do what they like now, and I shall only laugh.”

“She deserves the best friends, and she shall have them too,” Mr. Orchardson said, as soon as she was gone, with little Ted to see the way clear for her; “that’s what I call a downright good girl, without a bit of humbug in her. A fig for their science! Will it ever produce such a fine bit of nature as that is? Now tell me, as far as you can, Mrs. Wilcox, what is it they want to do with her, why they torment her so, and what we can do to stop it?”

My uncle laid his watch on the table, because he wished to be home before dark, and the days, though drawing out nicely, were not very long. He knew that the lady with whom he had to deal, instead of putting things into small compass, would fetch a large compass about them, whose radius would only be lengthened by any disturbance or hurry on his part. So he merely placed his watch as a silent, or at least a comparatively quiet witness, and reproof; but the scheme failed, as it deserved to do. All he obtained by it was a lesson, which he often repeated afterwards—never set a watch to go against a woman’s tongue; it puts her on her mettle to outgo it; and one wants winding, but the other never does.

Mrs. Wilcox had not so very much to tell, but she found a vast quantity to say, and never said it twice to the same effect. Stripped of her embellishments, reflections, divergencies, and other little sallies, it was something as follows.

Captain Fairthorn had been called away to see to the fitting of some ship near Glasgow, with engines of a special kind, and large coal-storage, so that she might keep at sea for months together—seven years the lady said, but that looked like a lady’s tale. And there were to be wonderful appliances, such as had never been heard of, on board her, as well as every kind of scientific instrument, all under the Professor’s own direction. If ever a man was in his own element, this was the man, and the time and place were there. No wonder that he forgot all other things below the moon; and it was much to his credit that before he started, he insisted on a promise from his wife and two step-daughters, that his dear child Kitty should be treated kindly, and harassed by none of them while he was away. Upon that condition only, would he send them every month a handsome sum out of the liberal payment he was to receive for his services. And he thought himself very firm, and most sagacious—even suspicious it might be—in providing that before he drew each cheque, he should have by post a line from his own daughter, to this effect—“I am very happy, and every one is most kind to me.”

Unluckily his suspicions were not very shrewd; for he forgot that there were pens and ink and fingers at Bulwrag Park, quite apart from Kitty’s, well able to afford him that assurance in her name, for the gift of forgery was in the family; and his daughter was not to distract him with letters, so long as he knew that she was comfortable.