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

“Sam, it shall never come off;” I cried, with a stamp which made the glasses jingle, and the stirrup-irons that hung on the wall rattle as if a mad horse were between them. “I would rather see that innocent young creature in her coffin than married to such a low brute. Why, even if she married you, Sam, although it would be a terrible fall, she would have a man, and an honest one comparatively to deal with. But as to the Crumbly Pot, as you call him – ”

“Well, old fellow, you mean well,” replied Henderson with tranquillity; “though your compliments are rather left-handed. But you may look upon me, Kit, as out of the running. I was taken with the girl, I won’t deny it. But she didn’t take to me, and she took to you. And between you and me, I am as sure as eggs that she hasn’t got sixpence to bless herself. That wouldn’t suit my book; and I am no plunger.”

“She wants no sixpence to bless herself. She is blest without a halfpenny. And a blessing she will be to any man who deserves her, although there is none on the face of this earth – ”

“Very well, very well – stow all that. A woman’s a dark horse, even to her own trainer. But I’ve met with just as fine a bit of stuff, a lovely young filly down at Ludred. She’s the only daughter of the old man there; and if ever I spotted a Derby nag, he has got the next one in his string this moment. I have not quite made up my mind yet; but I think I shall go in for her. At any rate I’m off with the Fairthorn lay. Why, there’s a cuss of a woman to deal with there, who’d frighten a dromedary into fits, they say. I wonder if old Pot knows about it. But Pot shan’t have her, if I can help it; and you may trust me for knowing a thing or two. Come, let’s strike a bargain, Kit, and stick to it like men. Will you help me with the Ludred job, if I do all I can for you in the Fairthorn affair? Give me your hand on it, and I am your man.”

I told him that I did not see at all how I could be of any service to him, in his scheme on the young lady he was thinking of. But he said that I could help him as much as I liked; for a relative of mine lived in that village, an elderly lady, and highly respected, as she occupied one of the best houses in the place; and more than that, it belonged to her. It was some years now since I had seen her, but she had been kind to me when I was at school; and Sam proposed that I should look her up, and give a bright account of him, and perhaps do more than that; for the young lady visited at her house, and valued her opinion highly. I now perceived why Henderson had become so friendly, and was able to trust him, as he had a good motive. Moreover I had heard of his “lovely filly,” and even seen her when she was a child; and I knew that her father (the well-known Mr. Chalker) had made a good fortune in the racing business, and perhaps would be apt to look down upon Sam, from the point of higher standing and better breeding. Being interested now in all true love, I readily promised to do all I could, and then begged for Sam’s counsel in my own case.

“Take the bull by the horns;” he said with his usual briskness. “Never beat about the bush; that’s my plan, Kit. Go up, and see the governor, and say, – ‘I love your daughter; I hear she is awfully sat upon at home, and doesn’t even get her corn regular. She has taken a great liking to me; I know that. And although I am not a great gun, and am terribly green, my Uncle Corny is a warm old chap; and I shall have all his land and money, when he croaks. You see, governor, you might do worse. And as for old Pot, if you knew the old scamp, you’d sooner kill your girl than let him have her. Why, he can’t even square his bets; and all his land in Lincolnshire is collared by the Moseys. Hand her to me, and I’ll make her a good husband, and you shall come to our place, and live jolly, when you can’t stand your devil of a wife no longer.’ Kit, I’ll write it down for you, if you like. You say all that to him, exactly as I said it; and if you don’t fetch him, turn me out to grass in January.”

I was much amused that Henderson should call me “green,” and yet be in earnest with such absurdity as this; which I recommended him (since he had such faith in it) to learn by heart, and then repeat, with the needful alterations, to the gentleman whose daughter he was anxious now to win. However, though indignant and frightened sadly at the news about that vile baronet, I was pleased on the whole with Sam’s behaviour, though not with his last words; which were these, as he left me at the top of the village, and he uttered them with much solemnity – “I say, who stole the dog? Talk of angels, after that!”

If any one had told me, so lately as last week, that Sam and myself would be sworn allies upon matters of the deepest interest, within fifty years of such a prophecy, I should have considered him as great a liar as the greatest statesman of the present period prove themselves daily out of their own mouths. Although I had not then the benefit of knowing how the most righteous of mankind deceive us, I knew well enough that the world is full of rogues, for no man can visit Covent Garden twice without having that conviction forced upon him. And Sam Henderson’s quiet grins at my “greenness” naturally led me to ponder just a little upon the possibility of his trafficking upon it. However, I am glad to say, and still hold to it, that neither then, nor even in my later troubles, which were infinitely deeper than any yet recounted, did I ever pass into the bitter shadow through which all men are beheld as liars.

The difficulty was to know what to do next. If I did nothing, which was the easiest thing to do – and a course to which my bashfulness and ignorance inclined me – the foulest of all foul wrongs might triumph; the sweetest and most lovable of all the fair beings, who are sent among the coarser lot to renew their faith in goodness, might even by virtue of her own excellence become a sacrifice to villainy. I knew that my darling had that strong sense of justice, without which pure gentleness is as a broken reed; and I felt that she also had a keen perception of the good and the bad, as they appear in men. But, alas! I knew also that she loved her father before any one on earth, and almost worshipped him, which he deserved for his character at large, but not so entirely for his conduct to herself. He was always kind and loving to her when the state of things permitted it; but the bent of his nature was towards peace, and in the strange home, which had swallowed him, there was no peace, either by day or night, if he even dared to show that he loved his own child. The blackest falsehoods were told about her, and the lowest devices perpetually plied – as I discovered later on – to estrange the father from the daughter, and rob them of their faith in one another. But this part of her story I mean to pass over with as light a step as possible, for to dwell on such matters stirs the lower part of nature, and angers us without the enlargement of good wrath. We must try to forgive, when we cannot forget, and endeavour not to hope – whenever faith allows us – that the cruel and inhuman may be basted with red pepper for more than a millennium of the time to come.

But as yet I had none of this clemency in me. Youth has a stronger and far more militant sense of justice than middle age. I was fired continually with indignation, and often clenched my fists, and was eager to rush at a wall with no door in it, when my uncle’s tale and Sam’s confirmation came into my head like a whirlwind. “What a fool I am, what a helpless idiot!” I kept on muttering to myself; “the murder will be done before I move.”

I could see no pretext, no prospect whatever, no possibility of interference; and my uncle (to whom I confided my misery) could only shake his head, and say – “Very bad job, my boy. You must try to make the best of it.”