CHAPTER XXXIX.
ON TWO CHAIRS
For as much as three weeks I had been full of pride, in taking my Kitty about everywhere – even by the seaside, where I knew very little, but luckily she knew less, in spite of her scientific origin – and asking her to look about and see things with her own eyes; and if she could not make them out, to call me in to help her. This had been rash on my part; for a man may be gaping about, for his lifetime, and die after all with his mouth wide open; and not a word come from it, to help the people left behind, but only to unsettle them, and put them in a flutter; as gnats skip into another dance, at every new breath across them. But Kitty had really put some questions far outside my knowledge (as a child may, who hangs on his grandfather’s thumb), and I had promised to look up those points and deliver an opinion, when I had one. All this came into my mind, like a chill, when I had to trace her dear steps, away from me, away from me.
Let seventy times seven wise men say that no man with a grain of wisdom could have a spark of faith in women, because they never know their own mind – little as there is of it to know – I still abode in my own faith, and let them quote old saws against the sturdy holdfast of true love. I felt as sure of my Kitty’s heart, as I did of my own, and more so; for she never would have borne to hear a hundredth part of the things against me, which I had to listen to against her. And the cowards, who vent their own craven souls in slander of those who cannot face them, had a fine time of it now, and rejoiced in the misery they were too small to feel. Such things might sour a weakling, who depends upon what other people think; but I found enough of manhood coming up in me, as time went on, to make me stick to my own trust, and let outer opinions touch my home, no more than the shower that runs down the glass.
At first, however, it was dreadful work. Everybody seemed to be against me, not with any unkindness, but by way of worldly wisdom. “Don’t you dwell too much upon it.” “A runaway wife isn’t worth running after.” “Never you mind; but get another; try the people you know, with their friends in the place.” These were the counsels I received, with a nod of my head, and no reply.
But I could not see things as others saw them. I spent the first day of my lonely life, in wandering through the crooked lanes, and working out every track and turn which my darling could have taken, in the dark mystery of her flight from me. Very often I thought that she must come back; and there was scarcely a hill that I did not run up, persuading myself that when the top was gained, there I should descry her in the distance beyond, weary, and dragging her feet along, but eager at sight of me to make a rush and fall into my longing arms. How many a corner I turned, believing that it must be the last between her and me; and how many a footpath stile I sat on, hiding my eyes that she might catch me unawares, as at blind-man’s buff, and throw her warm arms round my neck, and kiss me into shame of my mistrust, and tell me that she never could have doubted me, whatever I had done, or whatever people said!
And then, when it grew too dark to see even my own love in the shadow of the lanes, and the last note of the wedded thrush (who sings to the sparkle of the stars in May) was hushed by a call from his nest, and followed by the first clear trill of the nightingale —
“Who tells the deeper tale of night
With passion too intense for light,”
– weary, and with little heart for loneliness and doubt and woe, yet I could not be quite sure that when I opened our own door some one might not run out hotly, and give me no time to speak, but hold me lip to lip, and breast to breast, with scarcely room for a tear between us.
It is the emptiness that follows such full hope that does the harm to the powers of endurance. When no one came to meet me, and the cold rooms showed grey lines of shade, with no dear life to cross them, I used to fall away, and feel my heart go down, like the water of a sink, when the plug is taken out of it. There was nothing more for it to do. My wretched life was not worth the fuss of pumping and of labouring; better to give in at once, and have no more pain to drain it.
“You are killing yourself up here, my boy; this will never do,” said Uncle Corny. “Bother the women; what a pest they are! Try to be like that ancient fellow – I can never remember his name, but they call him the father of history. You told me about him, when you went to the Grammar-school at Hampton. And it was so wise that I paid for another half-year for you to read him. You know better than I do; but I think there had been a lot of carrying off of pretty girls between two countries, and they were going to fight about them. But he says that they had no call to do it; for men of discretion would let them go, and make no fuss about them. Because it was manifest that the women would never have been carried off, unless they themselves had wished it. I don’t suppose you could do it now; but if you can, bring down the book, and read it to me this evening. It would do you a deal more good than to hold your tongue, and eat your heart out.”
“I hate to hear of that rubbish,” I replied; “they were a lot of good-for-nothings. To talk of my Kitty in that sort of way would drive me mad, Uncle Corny. If you have nothing better to say than that, you had better go home to Tabby.”
“Well, perhaps they will come and carry Tabby off. I believe she would go for a new bonnet; and I don’t know what I should do if she did. But shut up this place, Kit, and come back to the old quarters. You want company, my boy; and I’d rather let old Harker in again than have you here killing yourself like that, and sleeping in the kitchen on two chairs; if you ever get any sleep at all.”
“I will never leave this house,” I said; “and I won’t even be smoked out of it. When Kitty comes back, she will come here first; and there is no telling how soon she may want me. You only bother me with all this stuff.”
“Well, I will not be hard upon you, Kit; because the Lord has done that quite enough. But you have not got a bit of religion in you, after all the teaching I have given you.”
This was very fine from Uncle Corny, who never even went to church, except to keep other people out of his pew. And he rubbed his nose as he said it; as he always did, when he had gone too far.
“There is a very good man wants to see you,” he went on a little nervously, for I knew that he had been leading up to something; “and a man to whom you are bound to listen, because he was the one who married you, and therefore understands all the subject, matrimony, women, and the doctrines of the Church. The Reverend Peter Golightly wishes to have a little talk with you.”
“And I wish to have none with him. He is a very good and kind-hearted man. But I could not bear to hear his voice, after – after what he did for me, and Kitty.”
“I was afraid there would be that objection,” my uncle answered kindly; “but you will get over that by-and-by, my boy. And it would be rude not to see him, for he takes the greatest interest in your case. He has been disappointed himself, I believe; though of course he did not tell me so. He is too much a man for that sort of thing. I shall go and hear him preach some day, unless our vicar comes back again. They tell me that he does a lot of good, and he preached against robbing orchards once, although he has only got one apple tree, and it is eaten up with American blight. There’s another fellow wants to see you too – not much of the parson about him. He can tell you things you ought to know; and being about as he always is, I wonder you have not been to see him. Not that I care for Sam Henderson; but he is not so bad as he used to be. He is going to be married next month; and I’ll be bound he won’t let his wife – ”
“Run away from him – you were going to say. Perhaps he will not be able to help himself. Well, I will see him, if he likes to come. I shall be back by nine o’clock. It is very kind of him to wish it. But send up a bottle of whisky, uncle. I have no drink of any sort in the house; and Sam is nothing without his glass, although he never takes very much. I must give him something, if he comes.”
“And take a drop yourself, my boy, if only for a little change. I don’t hold with cold water, when a fellow is so down; though it is better than the opposite extreme. I suppose, by-the-bye, that your Kitty has not taken – ”
“Uncle Corny!” I cried, in a voice that made him jump; “what next will you imagine? She never touched anything, not even beer; though I often tried to make her take a glass. She had seen too much of that, where she was.”
“All right, Kit. But you are getting very cross; which is not the proper lesson of affliction, as the Reverend Peter might express it. Well, I’ll send little Bill up, with the bottle and a corkscrew. I don’t suppose you know where to find anything now. That’s the worst of married life even for three weeks. But I have got a plan I mean to tell you of to-morrow.”
When I came back, a little after dark, having finished that hopeless wandering which I went through every evening now, there was Sam Henderson, sitting on an empty flower-pot outside my door, with a cigar in his mouth. He might have gone inside, for I left the front door open all day long and all night too, unless the weather prevented it, for I had nothing to be robbed of now; at least nothing that I cared about, except Kitty’s clothes, which I had locked out of sight. And it seemed to be delicate and kind of Sam, to sit here in discomfort, instead of walking in. And he showed another piece of good taste and good will, which could hardly be expected from so blunt and rough a man – he said not a word about his own bright prospects, until I inquired about them.
But he shook my hand in a very friendly way, and left me to begin upon the matter which had brought me to my present state. And for some time I also avoided that.
“I will tell you, old chap,” he said at last, in reply to my anxious question, “exactly what I think, though it is not good for much, being altogether out of my own line. I think you have been awfully wronged, as abominably wronged as any fellow ever was, on the face of this earth – which is saying a good bit, mind you. Knowing what a lot of infernal rogues there are to be found at every corner, and much more often than decent fellows, I am never brought up standing by any black job; though the ins and outs of it may floor me. The Professor is a soft man, isn’t he? He has shown it in many ways, although he is so clever. You would call him a soft man, wouldn’t you?”
“Well,” I said, wondering how this could bear upon it, “I suppose he is rather of the credulous order, as most good men are, who measure others by themselves. But he had left England long before. So that can have little to do with it.”
“Right you are, as concerns himself. But I am a believer in breed, my friend. And the longer I live, the more true I find it come. A credulous father, if you prefer the word, is likely to be blest with a credulous child, and your wife took after her father more closely in the inner, because she didn’t in the outer woman. At least, I can’t say from my own eyes, knowing nothing of old Blowpipes, but I understand she did not favour him in the flesh.”
“Not exactly,” I answered, with a little smile, as I thought of the loveliness of Kitty’s face; “but she was like him a little just here and there.”
“A little won’t do. My old Trunnion, who croaked in the great frost that almost settled you, my boy, has a son of his old age, Commodore, who will be heard of towards July at the market, scarcely a bit like him in the face, except in one tuck of his nostril, and a tuft of five hairs over his near eye. But do you think I could not swear to him by his ways and tricks, and his style of coming up? That’s the time to know what a horse thinks of you; and I tell you this colt thinks exactly as his father did; and all the more because he isn’t like him in the face. There must be the likeness somewhere.”
“Yes, I have heard you say that many times before, and I daresay you are right enough about it. But what has that to do with – what has happened to me?”
“Just everything, stupid. Your wife being soft – or credulous, if you like it better – she sucks in a lot of lies against you. The dose comes from somebody she believes in, not her old enemies, of course. Her dignity will not allow her to complain – women are always horribly dignified when jealous – and off she goes, without a word, leaving you to your own conscience which will more than give you the tip for it. She’ll come back by-and-by, when she has punished you enough; and then of course you’ll have to swear, etc., etc. She’ll call herself all sorts of names. And there’ll be nobody like you, till next time. You’ll see if that isn’t at the bottom of all this.”
“Not likely,” I answered with some wrath. “In the first place, my Kitty would never believe a word of such stuff against me, and there is no such thing as jealousy in her nature.”
“You know best. But I thought I heard something from the man round the corner at Ludred.”
“That was a different thing altogether,” I said quickly, although the remembrance struck me, as it had not done before; “and in the next place, if she could be so absurd, she would be the last person in the world to go away without a word, without even giving me a chance of taking my own part. No, that theory will never do. My Kitty was the most just, as well as the kindest darling ever born.”
“You don’t know what they are sometimes. How can you expect to know more about them than they do about themselves? Yesterday, just by way of something, I asked Sally what she would do, if she ever turned up jealous. ‘I would grind my ring-finger off,’ she said, ‘with these two teeth, I would, Sam’ – for she has got uncommon grinders – ‘and I would make my rival swallow it.’ Now, Sally has been well broken in, remember, and no vice in the family; at any rate since her great grand-dam; but her eyes showed that she would do it!”
“There is no ferocity in Kitty,” I answered with a lofty air; “I know nothing about race-horses, and very little about women. But women are only men in a better form, more gentle, more just, and more loving. They never give way to such fury as we do – ”
“The Professor’s wife, for instance, Kit. She never gives way to her temper, does she? Oh dear, no. Even if she has any temper to give way to. A sucking dove – too mild to suck, if her sister wants the pigeon’s milk before her.”
“She is the exception that proves the rule. And I doubt whether even she would be so, if she did not suck too much of stronger liquor. And I will tell you another thing, Master Sam, as you have put me up to this; and you have a right to know everything now, that you may understand the case. It knocks your theory on the head. Only I must have your solemn promise that no one shall ever hear of it.”
Sam gave me his pledge; and I knew that he would keep it, for he was well inured to control his tongue. Then I told him, although it went much against the grain, of the disappearance of our stock of money.
“That beats me; at least for the present,” he replied; “it don’t seem to square with anything. Throws me out of my stride, and makes me cross my legs. But I don’t believe she ever took it. How can you tell that she took it, poor chap? If she collared that tin, she will never come back. Was there nobody else could have taken it? The Peelers, for instance, you know what they are? They had the run of the house. I have known a lot of cases – ”
“No, it is impossible that they can have touched it. The lock had not been tampered with. The key was in its place, and the last place they would have searched for it. And I know by the state of the drawer, that no hand but my wife’s had been inside it.”
“Then you had better not call her your wife any more.” Sam Henderson spoke very sternly; and then, looking at my face, went on more kindly, and with a huskiness in his voice, “You have been unlucky, old chap, as unlucky as any fellow I ever came across, except an old man at New York races once. It was not about money his bad luck was; or I would not compare it with yours, my dear boy. Sorry as I was for your trouble, Kit, I thought it could all be cured, till now. And it can be cured even now, dear Kit; but only as we cure the grief of death. I need not tell you to be a man; for I see that you have been one all along. After what you have told me, I understand your behaviour thoroughly. Before that, I was angry with you, and a little ashamed of you, to tell the truth, for moping here in this way. I thought, ‘Why the deuce doesn’t he go up and shake the truth out of that old rogue Hotchpot, or that bigger villain, Downy Bulwrag?’ But now I see that you could only stay at home, and trust to time to comfort you. And you must weed out, as I would a filly with three legs, a bad lot, a woman who – ”
“Stop, Sam,” I cried, “don’t say a word that would make me hate you. Though all appearances are so black, I will never for a moment lose my faith in Kitty. Nobody knows her, as I do. If I never see, or hear of her again, I will say to my last breath, and feel to my last pulse, that she has been deceived, not by me, but about me; and that I have never been deceived in her.”
“Well, old chap, all that I can say is, that you deserve a better wife than was ever yet born. And if your opinion of your wife is true, why, this affair beats any job on the turf, that I ever heard of; and I have heard of a smart few. But I shall keep my eyes open, Kit, and we’ll try to pull it off. I pick up a lot of things you would never think of; and there’s daylight at the bottom of the best tarred sack. Come and see me to-morrow. It will be a little change. And I can show you a young ’un that will take the shine out of all Chalker’s. If you want a pot of money, I can tell you where to get it.”
CHAPTER XL.
JOB’S COMFORT
I did not want any pot of money. And even if I had been filled with that general desire, Henderson’s suggestion would have had no charm for me. But I resolved to do a much wiser thing – to stick to my work, with head and hands, and let the heart come after them, if it could, as it grew wiser. The police had made nothing of my case, although they had done their best, no doubt. Whoever had compassed my wife’s departure – for I would not call it “flight” – had managed it with much craft; and luck (according to the ancient proverb) had shown a kinsman’s love for craft. The lane, at the back of our lonely cottage, was little frequented, except on Sundays, and then in the evening only, for that study of mutual tastes and feelings, which is known as “keeping company.” For this it was a popular resort, and therefore (as usual) called “Love Lane,” by blushing youth and maiden. At other times its chief use was to give access to some meadow-land, and its chief wayfarers were four cows, a donkey, and a nanny-goat, belonging to Farmer Osborne. But it wound into divers other lanes, towards Hampton, Tangley Park, and Bedfont, and through some of them to Feltham Station, on the London and South-Western line. That was one of the places where I had made first inquiry; but Sergeant Biggs had been before me, and so he had at Twickenham. And in fact he had sought far and near, and been put upon false scent sometimes, but had hit on nothing genuine.
Whatever any man may say, or even think, or dream of, the opinions of his fellow-men go into his mind, and work there. No one is certain what he believes; or at any rate how he believes it. And the harder he toils to establish his faith, the more apt he is to undermine it. His best plan is never to argue about whatever he longs to trust in; or if his good friends will not let him alone, he should choose for his disputant the sceptic. This will build him up a good deal; not because he has convinced the other man, but because he knows that he must have done so, if the other had been gifted with reason.
And now I was more convinced than ever, by the firm convictions of my uncle, and Sam, that they both were quite wrong, and that I was quite right. If they had only said that there might be some mistake, something that admitted of a simple explanation, and with patience on our part must receive it, in that case the chances are that I should have been doubtful whether they had any grounds for putting it in that way. But when they came and put it – without asking my opinion – in the very opposite way to that, and the opposite one to what I wanted to believe, their conclusion was a spring-board to send me heels over head to the counter one.
My good Aunt Parslow had been over twice, and held very long talks with Uncle Corny; but I had simply refused to take part in them. To go into all the pros and cons, and hear one say this, and the other say that; all assuming in the calmest manner that they knew at least ten times as much about my poor self, and my richer self, as both of us put together knew, in our most conscientious moments – grateful as I was, I offered them that view of gratitude, which alone can make a slow shot at her fleeting speed – the instantaneous process. In the twenty-four millionth part of a moment, all her legs have spurned the wind, and the fool who thought to chronicle her, finds her dust upon his glass.
Herein I was not just, or fair; and I have lived to be ashamed of it. But up to this present time of search, I have not come across the man, who continued to be just and fair, while a wrong that went to the bottom of his soul was fresh, and hot, and turbid. Such men there may be, of vast philosophy, or profound religion; but I have never met them yet; and if I do, I shall be afraid of them.
Thus I waited, day by day, slowly quitting hold of hope, hardening myself to do without her, by incessant work of hand. In this I took no pride or pleasure, as a mill finds none in perpetual grind; but from morning twilight till evening dusk, I laboured among the lonely trees. My uncle begged me to go to London, if only for a little change and stir, as the strawberry season came, and he began to use his stand again. But I felt myself unfit for this, and knew that in my present vein, I should only do a mischief to him, among his ancient customers. For a happy face and a cheerful spirit do best among the buyers; and a bit of chaff, or a turn of slang, will sometimes help a lame market through. I knew a man once, a mere carter he was, who had never been near “Common Garden” before, but was sent up by a neighbouring grower, as a last resource, when his salesman fell ill. A mere bumpkin he was, and he wore a smock-frock, and cord trousers tied below the knee; but his round, merry face, and broad country brogue, and native simplicity and twinkling eyes, took the humour of the crowd; and he sold out all his lot at top prices, by looking as fresh as his fruit, before anybody else had got rid of a dozen.
“Well, if you won’t go up, you won’t,” my uncle said to me one day; “but you will break down, going on like this. I like a young fellow to work; but I can’t abide for him to do nothing else, and never think twice of his victuals. And you are spoiling your own chance altogether, in another and a very important affair. Your Aunt Parslow took a great fancy to you, and she meant to come down handsome when she dies. She told me that, almost in so many words. And now you are setting her quite against you. You know how you behaved, the last time she came over.”
“I could not endure her perpetual talk. You can’t say that I was rude to her. But I don’t want her money. What good is it to me? I wish she had never given us a farthing.”
“It is nasty rubbish to talk like that, Kit; and every one will turn against you. You used to have such a lot of common sense. Well, perhaps you were not exactly rude to her; or at least you did not mean to be. But there is nothing ruder, as women look at it, than to let them have all the talk to themselves; although they insist upon it, if you don’t. You must not interrupt them, of course; but still you must say enough to show that you are listening, and that you think highly of what they are saying; though of course you knew it all, before they began. Instead of that, what did you do? You crossed your legs; women never like that, when they are talking to you, any more than a lap-dog who wants to jump up. I don’t know why it is; but they never can bear it. And you did worse than that. The clock struck five, and you began to count it. You young fellows never behave well to ladies.”
“I am sure I did not mean to offend her, uncle. I never thought twice of what I was doing.”
“Exactly. And you should have thought of nothing else, while you seemed to think only of what she was saying. But I want you to do me a favour, Kit. I suppose you don’t wish to offend me too?”
“Certainly not. Because you are reasonable, and have always been so good to me. I will do anything to oblige you, Uncle Corny.”
“And by doing it, you will oblige yourself. You are wearing your fingers to the bone, and all the flesh off your other bones, by this confounded stubbornness. I hate to hear the tap of your hammer almost, much as I used to like it. Now, just take old Spanker to-morrow afternoon, and drive over to your aunt’s at Leatherhead, with a basket of strawberries I promised her. She doesn’t know what a good strawberry is; eleven people out of a dozen don’t; any more than a babe that just opens his mouth. She has plenty of her own, I know; but none worth the trouble of eating. To-morrow will be Saturday. You can stop till Monday; and it will do you a lot of good, and set you up again almost. There is nothing like a woman in a case like yours. You let her talk on, and you never contradict her, and she says to herself – ‘Well, I have done him good!’ And so she has; not the way she meant it; but by making you think that they are all alike, and not a bit of solid sense among them. And it is not only that, but you are pleased to think how much better you know things than they do; though you don’t say one word to their fifty. Whenever I am bothered, or cheated, or insulted, I get a nice woman to talk to me; and it is as good as a pipe of the best birdseye; which you can have at the same time, if you know how to do it.”
“You seem to look at things for your own advantage only,” I answered, because I thought these views low; “however I will do as you wish; and Sunday is a dreadful day for me here, without any work. I thought last Sunday would never end; and not being a woman, I could not come and comfort you.”
I was pleased with this rap at him; because I could not see what business he had with nice women, and so on; whether they came to his house to talk with him, or whether he went to have his pipe at theirs, as he had almost let out by his last words. For there never was a woman who could stop him of a pipe in his own house – that was certain. But that he should talk of my being stubborn, amused me, every time I thought of it. Verily if I had a splinter of that substance in me, he was the oak from which it came; and he might have spared enough to roof a church, without anybody asking how he was.
Now he wrote to my aunt that I was coming, according to her proposal, and he made Tabby Tapscott come up to the cottage, and pack up a few things for me, inasmuch as I had no one now to do it. And he had his best strawberries picked in the morning, before the sun margarined them, and kept in a cold place till I was ready, and then packed so that no heat could get at them. And as Spanker had not been to London for three days, he was sure to strike out at a merry pace, when he found himself free of the country. For I never saw a horse that liked to go to London; any more than a man loves a cemetery.
Spanker was as gay as May, as soon as he knew where he was going; and he roused up each hill with a rush from the other, which showed a deep sense of Mechanics. Nobody would have believed his age, even if he had told it truly; which he had strong human reason for not attempting, having found his teeth filed quite early.
What with the brisk air of those hills, and the soft turn of the valleys, and the gaiety of the time of year, a quantity of heaviness went from me, and a vein of health flowed in. Not that I ever said to myself – as people of inconstant nature do, – “There are better fish in the sea,” etc.; or, “If she be not fair to me;” or even so much as, “Care killed the cat.” My mood was neither independent nor defiant, and I felt as respectful towards women as ever. It was only that more hope came inside me, from seeing so much in the world outside; and perhaps more faith in the Lord, because He was doing His best so largely. However, I never thought twice about that, and must claim no credit for it.
Aunt Parslow was not very gracious at first, though she could not find fault with the strawberries. She pretended that she had some quite as good; though she declared herself to be most grateful. But as soon as I said, “Send for some of your own; that will be the true proof of the pudding, aunt,” she discovered that her own were not quite at their best just now, and in fact they had been so good, that the slugs and the blackbirds could not resist them. This showed very little self-command on their part; for there was not a good fruit among them, as I found out on Sunday, the beds being a mixture of some twenty kinds, growing in great tussocks, and for the most part barren, which was just as well.
I let my aunt have her own way, as a man should let all women do, except those of his own household; and by-and-by she became more pleasant, especially when she had discovered – as she did at dinner-time – that my present state of health required a bottle of her dry champagne. Being compelled myself, I thought it just to use coercion too, and had the satisfaction soon of finding her much more ladylike. Her coldness towards me passed away, and when we had clinked our glasses twice, we resumed our proper footing.