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

“Oh, they hussies – they never know how to strike them; and your Miss Coldpepper, she does change so often. Never so much as a month, ma’am, without some of them giving warning.”

“That is no concern of yours, Mrs. Cutthumb. If you speak in this low style of Coldpepper Manor, it will have to withdraw its custom, ma’am, from your – your little establishment.”

Mrs. Jenny Marker, as she spoke thus, gathered in her jacket, which was plaited with blue velvet, – because she was proud of her figure, or at least so some people said who could not well get at her pockets – and although she meant no more by this than to assert her own dignity, Mrs. Cutthumb, with all the fine feelings of a widow, was naturally hurt, and showed it. And strange enough to say, though it seems such a trifle, what ensued made a very great difference to me.

“I am truly grieved, madam,” she said with a curtsey, “that my little house, which is the best I can afford, and my little shop, which was set up for me by very kind neighbours as owned no manors, when it pleased the Almighty to afflict me lo, and deprive me of a good man who could always pay his sent, and never would allow me to be put upon – ”

“A model husband, no doubt, Mrs. Cutthumb; except as I fancy you observed just now, for his devotion to the imperial pint, – or perhaps I should say gallon.”

“May you never have a worse, if you ever catches any! And high time in life, ma’am, for you, Miss Jenny Marker, or Mrs. whichever you may be, and nobody in Sunbury knows the bottom of it, to be thinking a little now of your soul, ma’am, and less of your body, and the other things that perish. You draw in your cloak, ma’am, or it isn’t a cloak, nothing so suitable and sensible as that, just as if my poor goods wasn’t good enough to touch it! Perhaps that’s the reason why you beats them down so. I beg you to remember, Jenny Marker, that I consider myself as good as you are, madam, though I am not tricked out with gew-gaws and fal-lals. And what I eats, I earns, ma’am, and not the bread of servitude.”

“That will do, my good woman. I never lose my temper; though I have never been insulted before like this, even by the lowest people. Send in your little bill, this very afternoon, if one of your wonderful neighbours will be good enough to make it out for you, as you have never been taught to write, poor thing! But whoever does it must not forget to deduct the price of three rotten French eggs.”

While that bitter war was raging, I enjoyed a peaceful and gentle season. It happened that I had come up our village, on a matter of strict business, at a time of day not at all unlikely to be the very time of day mentioned over-night, as the one that would suit Mrs. Marker and Miss Fairthorn for doing a little business in our village. This might be explained, without any imputation on any one I have the pleasure of knowing, for all of them will admit at once that it needs no explanation. It is enough to say, that when I had the honour of seeing two ladies safe home last night, after pulling them out of the flood – as they both maintained, though never in it – no little gratitude had been expressed, and much good-will had been felt all round. And it would have been hard upon that state of things, if any “Good-bye” had been said for ever.

For my part, although I had no great fear of being knocked on the head by Sam Henderson, it might have seemed haughty and even unfeeling, if I had insisted too strongly upon my ability to take care of myself. Therefore I allowed them to consider me in peril; and to this I was partly indebted perhaps for the opportunity of meeting them on Monday. It is true that I had not learned half as much, about matters of the deepest interest to me, as Mrs. Cutthumb, without any claim to such knowledge, was now possessed of; but this might fairly be expected, for women have always been convinced that men have no right to know half as much as themselves. “Let him find it out, I am not going to tell him,” is their too frequent attitude, while they feel it a duty to their own sex to pour out almost everything.

However, I have no desire to complain, and perhaps it is better thus; for if we knew all of their affairs, we might think less about them. And I was in a very deep condition of interest and wonder, not only from the hints I had received, but also from the manifold additions of my fancy. In fact, it was far more than I could do, to confine my heart to its proper work when I saw those two ladies come to do a little shopping.

At that time, there were only about a dozen of the houses, in the narrow street that runs along the river, which allowed the importance of selling to compete with the necessity of dwelling. And the few, that did appear inclined to do a little trade, if coaxed into it, were half ashamed of their late concession to the spirit of the age. No man had yet appeared who shatters the ancestral sense of congruity, who routs up the natives, as a terrier bullies mastiffs, and scarcely even leaves them their own bones. And it may be maintained, that people got things better, and found them last longer than they ever do now. And this was only natural, because it always took a much longer time to buy them.

This enabled me to take my time about my own business, without any risk of being left behind by the lady housekeeper and her fair companion. From time to time I assured myself by a glance between flower-pots, or among drapery, that my quest was not gone astray, that as yet I had not lost all that I cared to see, and that I could keep in my own background, while thinking of things far beyond me.

It never had been my manner yet to be much afraid of anything; not that I stood at all upon my valour, but simply because, to the best of my knowledge, I had no enemy anywhere. Yet now, very much to my own surprise, instead of proper courage, I was full of little doubts, and more misgivings than I can at all describe, and even a tendency to run away, and try to forget the very thing I was longing for. And I knew for a certainty that if the matter came to the very best opportunity, I was quite sure to do my very worst, and cut a despicable figure, to my own undoing.

I tried to recover myself, by doing a few strokes of business on my own account, going into the butcher’s, and complaining sadly that he now weighed the foot in with the leg of mutton – a privilege only to be claimed by lamb – but he said that it now was ordained by nature, and asked how I expected a poor sheep to walk. I knew that his logic would not go upon all-fours, but my wits were so loose that I let it pass; and at that very moment I discovered, betwixt the hearts of two bullocks, something very near my own. Miss Kitty Fairthorn had been set free by Mrs. Jenny Marker, while the housekeeper was driving a bargain in soft goods, unfit for young comprehension. After that, she was to go on for a talk with Widow Cutthumb, and meanwhile the young lady might look at the river, which was now rolling grandly in turbulent flood.

It was rather a shy and a delicate thing for me to go also in that direction; and the butcher (who never confined his attention to his own mutton) was as sure as could be to come out of his door, and look all up the lane. For Sunbury people, as long as I have known them, take a deep interest in one another’s doings; and all the more so, when they happen to perceive that their sympathy is not requested. Wherefore I hurried back to ask another question, as if there were nothing in my mind but meat, and then turned up an alley, which would lead me round the back of some houses to the Halliford Road further on.

There were many things now that I might have done, more sensible haply than what I did. I might have gone home, and had bread and cheese, and a glass of mild ale with Uncle Corny; or if that had seemed a little too ignoble, why not wander along the upper road, and thence survey, as from a terrace – which used to be the origin of the word “contemplate” – the many distant mazes of the flooded river, the trees along the margin bowing over their foundations, the weak smile of autumnal sunshine over the wrongs of its own neglect, and perhaps in the foreground a slender figure, standing as if it were nothing in the mass?