Читать книгу Kit and Kitty - R. D. Blackmore - Страница 17

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All through the following day, we were forced to be hard at work, whether we liked it or not, gathering a large lot of early apples, such as Keswick, Sugarloaf, and Julien, which would have been under the trees by this time in an early season. But this, through the chill and continual rain of the time that should have been summer, was the latest season within human memory; which (like its owners) is not very long. And now a break-up of the weather was threatened, at which we could not grumble, having now enjoyed ten days without any rain—a remarkable thing in much better years than this. And in this year it truly was a God-send, helping us to make some little push, before the winter closed over us, and comforting us to look up to Heaven, without being almost beaten down. The people who live in great cities, where they need only go a few yards all day long, and can get beneath an awning or an archway, if a drop of rain disturbs their hats, give the weather ten bad words for every one we give it; though we are bound to work in it, and worse than that, have our livelihood hanging upon it. Not that we are better pleased than they; only that our more wholesome life, and the strength of the trees, and the unexhausted air, perhaps put into us a kinder spirit to make the best of things that are ordered from above.

Few things in the manner of ordinary work become more wearisome after a while than the long-continued gathering of fruit. The scent, which is delightful to those who catch a mere whiff of it in going by, becomes most cloying and even irksome to those who have it all day in their nostrils. And the beauty of the form and colour too, and the sleek gloss of each fine sample, lose all their delight in the crowd of their coming, and make us even long to see the last of them. Every man of us, even Uncle Corny, to whom every basket was grist for the mill, felt heartily glad when streaky sunset faded softly into dusk, when flat leaf looked as round as fruit, and apples knocked our heads instead of gliding into the ready hand.

“Now mind one thing,” said my uncle with a yawn, when after a supper of liver and bacon knowingly fried by Mrs. Tabby, his pipe was between his teeth and all his other needs were toward; “if I go on with my tale to-night, I am likely enough to leave out something which may be the gist of it. For I feel that sleepy, after all this job, that I can scarcely keep my pipe alight. However, you have worked well to-day, and shown no white feather for your sweetheart’s sake; and of course you want to know most about her, and how she comes into this queer tale. Poor young thing, she smiles as sweetly, as if she trod a path of roses, instead of nettles, and briars, and flint! Ah, I suppose she forgets her troubles, whenever she looks at you, my lad.” This made my heart beat faster than any words of his tale I had heard till now.

“As if she cared for me! As if it were possible for any one to imagine that she would ever look twice at me! Uncle Corny, I thought you were a wiser man.” I hoped that this might lead him on.

“To be sure, I was making a mistake,” he answered, looking as if it were just the same thing. “When I said you, I meant of course Sam Henderson, the racing man. That’s the young fellow that has her heart. How beautifully she smiled when I mentioned him, and blushed when I said he was the finest fellow anywhere round Sunbury, and the steadiest, and the cleverest.

“No, no, Kit; it’s all my fun. You needn’t be looking at the carving-knife. You know how I hate Sam Henderson, a stuck-up puppy, and a black-leg too, according to my ideas. A girl who respects herself, as your Kitty does, would have nothing to say to him. But she might to a fine young gardener perhaps.

“Well, I have told you all about the first marriage and the widowhood of that precious Monica Coldpepper. What fools men are—what wondrous fools! Here was a widow, not over young, with a notorious temper, and no money, or none of her own at any rate, and hampered with three children—let me tell you their names while I think of it, Euphrasia, Donovan, and Geraldine—there’s no duty to pay on a name, you know. Now would not any one have sworn that a woman like that might wear the weeds, until she had stormed herself to death? Not a bit of it, my lad; she married again, and she married the cleverest man in London; and more than that, she got every farthing of his property settled upon her, although the poor man had a child of his own! And I am told that she might have had a dozen other men.

“She was still a fine woman certainly, for it must have been some twelve years ago; and she is a fine woman to this very day, according to those who have seen her; which I hope I may never do, for reasons I will not go into. But beside her appearance, what one thing was there to lead a sane man to marry her? And a man who had lost a sweet-tempered wife, a beautiful, loving, and modest woman, as like your Kitty as two peas! Sometimes I feel sorry for him, when I think of his former luck; and sometimes I am glad that he is served out, for making such a horrible fool of himself. Nearly any other man would have hung himself, for the lady has gone from bad to worse, and is now a thorough termagant; but this man endures her as if she were his fate. Do you know who he is? You must know now.”

“Yes, I have known it, since you began; and from what other people said, I suspected it before.” As I answered thus, I was thinking how this condition of things would affect my chance.

“You don’t seem at all astonished, Kit;” my uncle went on with some disappointment at losing his sensation. “You young folk have so little sense, that you make it a point of honour never to be surprised by anything. If anybody had told me, without my knowing it already, that a man of great intellect, like Professor Fairthorn, would make such a fool of himself, and then submit to have no life of his own, I should have said it was a crazy lie. But there is the truth, my boy, not to be got over; and far worse than at first sight appears. A man who robs himself may be forgiven; but not a man who robs his children. It is the difference between suicide and murder.

“Very likely, you are surprised that I, who have not a sixpence at stake, and not even a friend involved in the matter, should get so hot about it, as I can’t help being. There are plenty of viragoes in the world; there are plenty of good men who cower before them, for the sake of their own coward peace; also there are robberies in abundance, of children who cannot defend themselves, and of people who can—so far as that goes. And ninety-nine men in a hundred would say—‘Well, this is no concern of mine. It is a very sad and shameful thing, but it does not touch my bread and cheese. Great is truth, and it will prevail; and I hope I may live to see it.’ But, Kit, my boy, the worst wrong of all was mine. A deadlier wrong has been done to me, than of money or lands, or household peace. My life has been wrecked by that devil of a woman, as if it were a toy-boat she sunk with her slipper. I did not mean to tell you—an old man cannot bear to talk of such things to young people. Is your whole heart set upon your Kitty?”

I had never seen my uncle so disturbed before; and, to tell the plain truth, I was frightened by it. Sometimes I had seen him in a little passion, when he found a man he trusted robbing him, or the dealers cheated him beyond the right margin, or some favourite plant was kicked over; but he never lost his power then of ending with a smile, and a little turn of words would change his temper. But this was no question of temper now. His solid face was hardened, as if cast in stone; not a feature of it moved, but his grey curls trembled in the draught, and his hand upon the table quivered. I answered that my whole heart was set upon my Kitty, but I knew that I should never win her.

“If she is true to you, you shall. That is, if you behave as a man should do;” he spoke very slowly, and with a low voice, almost as if talking to himself; “if you are wise enough to let no lies, or doubts, or false pride come between you. There is no power but the will of God, that can keep asunder a man and woman who have given their lives to each other. All the craft, and falsehood, and violence of the world melt away like a mist, if they stand firm and faithful, and abide their time. But it must hold good on both sides alike. Both must disdain every word that comes from lying lips, from the lips of all, whether true or false, except one another. Remember, that is the rule, my lad, if rogues and scoundrels, male or female, come between you and the one you love. It has been a black streak in my life. It has kept me lonely in the world. Sometimes it seems to knock me over still. I have not spoken of it for years; and I cannot speak of it even now any more—not any more.”

He rose from his chair, and went about the room, as if it were his life, in which he was searching for something he should never find. To turn his thoughts, and relieve my own, I took a clean pipe and filled it; and began to puff as if I liked it, although in those days I seldom smoked. This had been always a reproach against me; for a smoker seems to love a contribution to his cloud.

“Well done, Kit, you are a sensible fellow;” said my uncle, returning to his usual mood. “Tobacco is the true counterblast to care. You take up your pipe, and I will take up my parable, without going into my own affairs. I never told you how that confounded woman—the Lord forgive me if I bear malice, for I trust that He shares it with me—how she contrived to hook the poor Professor, and, what is still worse, every farthing of his money.

“Not that I believe, to give the devil his due, that she sought him first for the sake of his money. He had not very much of that—for it seldom goes with brains that stamp their own coinage—but through his first wife, a beautiful and loving woman, he owned a nice house with large premises, in a rich part of London, or rather of the outskirts, where values were doubling every year, as the builders began to rage round it. Also he had about five thousand pounds of hers, which was not under settlement, and perhaps about the same amount of his own, not made by himself (for he had no gift of saving) but coming from his own family. Altogether he was worth about twenty thousand pounds; which he justly intended for his only child.

“This was pretty handsome, as you would say, and he took care not to imperil it, by any of his patents, or other wasteful ways. He had been for many years in the Royal Navy, and commanded at one time a new-fangled ship, with iron sheathings, or whatever they are called, which are now superseding the old man-of-war. Here he had seemed to be in his proper element, for he knew the machinery and all that, as well as the makers did, and much better than any of the engineers on board; and he might have been promoted to almost anything, except for his easy-going nature. He had not the sternness, and strength of will, which were needful in his position; and though everybody loved and respected him, the discipline of the ship in minor matters fell abroad, and he was superseded.

“This cut him to the quick, as you may suppose; for he still was brooding over the loss of his first dear wife, which had befallen him, while he was away on some experimental cruise. Between the two blows, he was terribly out of heart, and came back to his lonely London house, in the state of mind, which is apt to lay a man at the mercy of a crafty and designing woman. Unhappily he was introduced just then to Mrs. Bulwrag; and she fell in love with him, I do believe, as far as she was capable of doing it. Though she might have flown, and had been flying at higher game in a certain sense, she abandoned all others, and set the whole strength of her will, which was great, upon conquering him. She displayed the most tender and motherly interest in his little darling daughter; she was breathless with delight at his vast scientific attainments, and noble discoveries; she became the one woman in all the world, who could enter into his mind, and second his lofty ideas for the grandeur of humanity. Unluckily they were so far apart in their natures, that no collision yet ensued, which might have laid bare her true character, and enforced the warnings of his many friends. Not to make too long a story of it, she led him to the matrimonial altar—as the papers call it—without any solicitor for his best man, but a very sharp one behind her. With the carelessness of a man of genius, added to his own noble faith in woman, he had signed a marriage settlement, which gave her not only a life-interest in all his property, but a separate power of disposal by assignment, which might be exercised at any time. And the trustees were old allies of hers, who were not beyond suspicion of having been something even more than that.

“However, she loved her dear Professor—as she insisted on calling him—for a certain time, with the fervour of youth, though she must have been going on for forty, and she led him about in high triumph, and your Kitty was sent to a poor boarding-school. ‘The Honourable Mrs. Bulwrag-Fairthorn,’ as, in defiance of custom, she engraved herself, became quite the fashion among a certain lot, and aspired to climb yet higher. For if she has a weakness, it is to be among great people, and in high society. She changed the name of the poor Professor’s house at South Kensington to ‘Bulwrag Park,’ she thought nothing of paying thirty pounds for a dress, and she gave large parties all the night long. Meanwhile he went about his work, and she took possession of every halfpenny he earned, and spent it on herself and her children. Her boy and two girls were pampered and indulged, while Kitty was starved and threadbare.

“You have seen the sort of man he is—simple, quiet, and unpretending, full of his own ideas and fancies, observing everything in the way of nature, but caring very little for the ways of men. He kept himself out of the whirl she lived in, and tried to believe that she was a good, though rather noisy woman. But suddenly all his good-will was shattered, and he nearly shared the same fate himself.

“He was sitting up very late one night, in the little room allowed to him for the various tools, and instruments, and appliances, and specimens, and all that sort of thing, which were the apple of his eye; and by a special light of his own devising he was working up the finish of some grand experiment, from which he expected great wonders, no doubt. I don’t know how many kinds of acid he had got in little bottles, and how many—I don’t know what their names are, but something of a kail, like ‘Ragged Jack;’ and how many other itemies—as Tabby Tapscott calls them—the Lord only knoweth, who made them; and perhaps the men have got beyond even Him. At any rate, there he was, all in his glory; and he would have given ten years of his life, to be let alone for an hour or two. But suddenly the door flew open, as if with a strong kick; and the shake, and the draught, set his flames and waters quivering. He looked up with his mild eyes, and beheld a Fury.

“ ‘What do you mean by this?’ she cried. ‘Here I come home from Lord Oglequince’s, where you left me to go by myself, as usual; and on my red Davenport I find this! A fine piece of extravagance! Whose money is it?’

“ ‘Well, Monica, it was not meant to go to you,’ the Professor replied; for he saw what it was, a bill of about three pounds, for a cloak, and a skirt, and a hat, or some such things, which his daughter’s school-mistress had written for, because the poor girl was unfit to be seen with the rest. ‘My dear, I will pay it, of course. You have nothing to do with it. It was put on your desk by mistake altogether.’

“ ‘Oh, then you mean to do it on the sly! To spend on this little upstart of yours the money that belongs to my poor children. Whose house is this? Whose chair are you sitting on—for of course you never have the manners to rise, when a lady comes to speak to you? Do you think you will ever make a penny, by all your trumpery dibbles and dabbles? I hate the sight of them, and I will not allow them. Hand me that cane, with the sponge at the end.’

“The Captain arose under her rebuke, and looked at her with calm curiosity, as if she were part of his experiment. He had never seen a case of such groundless fury, and could scarcely believe that it was real. Her blazing eyes were fixed on his, and her figure seemed to tower, in her towering rage. Such folly however could not frighten him; and he smiled, as if looking at a baby, while he handed her the cane.

“ ‘You laugh at me, do you? You think I am your slave?’ she cried as she swung the cane round her head, and he fully expected the benefit. ‘Because I am a poor weak woman, I am to be trampled on in my own house, and come on my knees, at these shameful hours, to hold all your gallipots and phials for you. Look, this is the way I serve your grand science! There go a few of them, and there, and there! How do you like that, Professor?—Oh, oh, oh!’

“At the third sweep of the cane among his chemical treasures, she had dashed on the floor, among many other things, a small stoppered bottle full of caustic liquid, and a fair dose had fallen on her instep, which was protected by nothing but a thin silk stocking. Screeching with pain, she danced round the room, and then fell upon a chair, and began to tear her hair, in a violent fit of hysterics.

“ ‘It is painful for the moment; but there is no serious harm,’ said the Captain, as he rang the bell for her own attendant; ‘fortunately the contents of that bottle were diluted, or she might never have walked again; if indeed such a style of progress is to be called walking. It is most unwise of any tiro to interfere with these little inquiries. I was very near a fine result; and now, I fear, it is all scattered.’

“The next day he did, what he should have done some months ago. He took the copy of his marriage-settlement to a good solicitor, and found, to his sad astonishment, that the boasts of the termagant were too true. Under the provisions of that document—as atrocious a swindle as was ever perpetrated—he could be turned out of his own house, and the property he intended for his own child was at the mercy of her stepmother.

“From the lawyer he got not a crumb of comfort. The settlement was his own act and deed; there was no escaping from it. It had been prepared by the lady’s solicitors; and he had signed it without consideration. All very true; but he should have considered, and marriage was a consideration, in the eye of the law, and a binding one. If the Professor wished, the solicitor would take Counsel’s opinion, whether there might be any chance of obtaining redress from Equity. But he felt sure, that to do so would only be a waste of money. It was a most irregular thing, that in such an arrangement, one side only should be represented; but that was the fault of the other side, which surrendered its own interests. In fact, it was a very fine instance of confidence in human nature; and human nature had been grateful enough to make the most of the confidence offered.

“If you did not know what the Professor is, you might suppose, Kit, that he was overcome, and overwhelmed with the result of his own neglect and softness. Not a bit of it; in a week’s time, he had mended all his broken apparatus; and the only difference to be noticed was, that he never began work without locking the door. His treatment of his wife was the same as ever. He bore no ill-will, or at any rate showed none, on account of that strong explosion; and he took thenceforth all her fits of fury as gusts of wind, that had got in by mistake. It is impossible for any woman to make a man of that nature unhappy. He would have been happier, I dare say, and have done much more for the good of the world, if he had married a peaceful woman; but I know very little of those matters. Only, as you have an ordinary mind, be sure that you marry a sweet-tempered woman. To bed, my boy, to bed! We must be up right early.”