Richard Blackmore - Kit and Kitty - A Story of West Middlesex

“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.”

In spite of all said to the contrary, I believe that young people, upon the whole, are more apt to ponder than the old folk are. At least, if to ponder means – as it should – to weigh in the balance of pros and cons the probable results of their own doings. The old man remembers the time he has lost, in thinking thoughts that came to naught; and he sees that if they had come to much, that much would have been very little now. The young man has plenty of time on his hands, and believes he is going to do wonders with it, and makes a bright map of his mighty course in life. And this is the wisest thing that he can do.

But when he falls in love, alas! his ripe wisdom is seldom applied to himself. Like a roguish grocer, with a magnet in his counter, he brings the scale down to his own liking; but he differs from him, in that he cheats himself.

Being very wise in my own eyes, I pondered very carefully my next step; not with any thought of retiring, but with a firm resolve to advance in the strongest and most effective manner. My Uncle’s long story, instead of damping, had added hot fuel to my ardour, and compassion had lent a deeper tone to passion. Tender pictures arose before me of my angelic Kitty, starved, and tortured, and snubbed, and trampled, and (worst of all perhaps to a female body) shabbily, and grotesquely dressed. Such a woman as my uncle had described was enough to drive the largest-minded man to fury, and to grind the sweetest of her own sex, into fragments of misery and despair. The one crumb of comfort I could pick up, was that such cruelty must make my darling pine all the more for tender love, and long perpetually for some refuge, however humble it might be. But the point of all points was – how should I get at her?