Читать книгу: «Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex», страница 37
CHAPTER LXVI.
ONE GOOD WISH
There must have been a fearful scene, about an hour before we reached that spot. Two powerful wills were in collision – one hard as steel, the other trenchant and resistless as red-hot iron. For many days the conflict had been gathering force and fury, as the rising wind collects its power, before the outbreak of the storm.
The mother was resolved to pierce the mystery of her crafty son. The son was equally resolute to keep his fatal secret. And the father, turbulent and headstrong, wrapped in his own vindictive mood, cared not when the outbreak came, but looked forward to it grimly.
It had been impossible for Downy, as he had naturally foreseen, to keep entirely to himself the presence of a stranger in the house. Although the room was far away from the part his mother occupied, and darkened for the Professor’s use, and secluded by thick shrubbery, it soon became needful for the jailor to secure a confederate. With some misgivings, he took the sour-faced woman into his confidence, knowing her to be close and faithful, as well as clever and resourceful. But unluckily for himself he did not trust the woman wholly. Skinner, as she was called in the household, did not know the real import of the plan she aided. Falsehood was her master’s nature, and he did no despite to it, by relapsing into truth. He told her a chapter of lies; and she had no inkling that the stowaway, whose face she was never allowed to see, was the husband of her mistress.
Thus she was not on her guard so strictly as she would have been, had she known the truth. To learn the existence of a secret is to be halfway towards it; and the pride as well as curiosity of the mistress was soon afoot. But the room was securely locked, and vain was any prowling round it; till indignation and sense of outrage grew no longer bearable.
After that public outbreak of passion, which had scared the cook, and Mrs. Wilcox, the lady of the house retreated to her room, and was taken or feigned to be taken ill. Her son was sent for, in great haste, and found her prostrate, and broken down, scarcely able to speak, and quite unlikely to attack his stronghold again. His sisters implored him to take a cab, and follow the course of the only doctor who could relieve these perilous pains; and after seeing to his locks and bolts, he departed on that mission.
No sooner had the front gate swung behind him, than up jumped the feeble sufferer, wrote a few lines to the nearest blacksmith, and sent the boy in buttons to take them, with orders not to lose a moment. In a quarter of an hour the blacksmith and his foreman were at the obnoxious door, with sledge-hammer, crowbar, cold chisel, and wrench.
Some one within seemed inclined to help them, for they heard a heavy bolt shot back; but the door was fastened on the outside also with a heavy chain and padlock. The smith laid hold of this chain with his pincers, and so kept the padlock against the post, where a few swinging blows from the foreman shattered it, like an egg-shell. In a minute they cast the door back on its hinges, and a narrow dark passage was before them.
“Let no one follow me,” said the lady of the house; “but wait till I return to you.” She closed the heavy door behind her, and passed through the gloom to an inner door. This was neither locked nor bolted, and she turned the handle and entered.
The room was lofty, but very dark. Not only the bulk of the ilex-tree, but close blinds, fixed in the window-frame, obscured the fading sunlight. The lady marched in with a haughty air; she would soon let this poor vagrant know who was the owner of this house and who the gutter-squatter. But suddenly she stopped, and speech was flown from her tongue to her eyes; she could only stare.
Against the high mantlepiece, whose black marble covered with dust was as dull as slate, a tall and bulky man was leaning, peacefully smoking a long cigar. The cigar was fixed between two strips of muslin, concealing the chin, lips, and nose, if any. A slouched hat, with a yellow feather in it, covered the hairless crown; and only the knotted forehead, and the fierce red eyes, showed that here was a human face alive.
But the massive cast of figure, and the attitude, and slouch and even some remembrance of the fierce red glance, told the haughty woman who it was that stood before her. In a moment, fury changed to fear, and triumph became trembling. Without a word she turned to fly; but a great muffled hand was laid on her.
“No hurry, faithful wife! You have insisted upon seeing me. Come to the light, and you shall have that pleasure.”
The great figure swept her to the window with one arm, while she vainly strove to cry, or even to fall upon her knees. Then throwing back the blind, the leper drew her closer to him, and tearing off his swathings held her so that she must gaze at him.
“This is your work. Are you pleased with it? True love is never changed by trifles. Embrace me, my gentle one. You always were so loving. How you will rejoice to show a wife’s affection, and to tend me daily; for I mean to leave you never more. Monica, gentle, loving Monica, whisper your true love where my ears used to be.”
With the mad strength of horror, she dashed from his arms, and away through the passage, and would have escaped – for the poor cripple could only limp in pursuit – if she had not closed the outer door. By the time she had opened, he was upon her, and they staggered together across the broad walk, when their son from the gate rushed up to them.
“Oh, save me, save me from that beast!” she cried.
“Off, and get back to your den!” shouted Downy.
“A nice son, to part his own parents!” As the old man spoke, he struck his son in the face with his maimed right hand, while he clung to his wife with the other.
Then Donovan Bulwrag, in a fury of the moment, drew his revolver, and shot his father through the heart.
The old man fell on his back a corpse, while the mother was dashed on the grass, and lay senseless. Donovan looked at them both, gave a laugh, put the muzzle in his mouth, and shot himself.
I have no intention to moralize – as a man always says when he begins to do it – but there ended three misguided lives; for although Mrs. Bulwrag recovered slowly some of her bodily health and vigour, her mind was never restored to life again. That hectoring will, and domineering spirit, lapsed into the weakness of a weanling child; and if ever the memory of those haughty days returned, it waned into a shudder, or an abject smile. When Captain – or as he now is called Sir Humphrey Fairthorn came home from his celebrated enterprise, he made due provision in a private asylum for the lady who could no longer pick his pockets. The marriage settlements fell to the ground, with the downfall of the marriage, and six acres of “the most magnificently situated building land in London,” returned to the heritage of Kitty’s mother.
When my uncle and myself came sadly home from that shocking and distressing scene, the power of it lay upon us still, so that we did not care to speak.
“Thank God,” said my wife, as she fell upon my breast, after trying to sponge off the blaze from my temple, which would take some days to heal; “thank God that he is dead at last!”
Those are the only words of hers I have ever felt displeased with. At the moment they seemed harsh to me; by reason of the pity, which the eye engenders, but the tongue cannot advance. If she had come from that piteous sight, her heart would have been too soft for this.
“It is a good job for everybody else, and a bad one for him,” said Uncle Corny; “he is gone where he addressed himself. He labelled himself – ‘To the Devil with care – to be delivered immediately.’ And then he goes and acts as his own porter. You need not look sentimental, Kit. What is England coming to? Lord bless my heart the stuff they talk about ‘the sanctity of human life!’ A good man’s life belongs to God, and a bad one’s to the Devil. And they have got themselves to thank for it.”
A very broad saying is seldom deep; but the general vote was against me. And all being on the right side, of course, they backed it up with buttresses.
“Think of that poor man,” said Kitty, who was always first to see things; “from what you say of his sad condition, and his size, and figure, I am quite sure it is the afflicted prisoner we rescued from the savages. You may talk of things not being guided by a Higher Power, and you may look black if it is hinted that a man shouldn’t shoot his father, and then try to kill my darling Kit; but what can you say, when it comes to light, that but for his own wicked plot, the cruelest and the wickedest that ever entered human heart – or brain, for he never could have owned a heart – if it had not been for that, no doubt, he would have married a lovely girl – though some may call her too pale and thin – and probably have stolen all her money, and no doubt broken her poor heart, as he did his utmost to break mine? And then in the very stroke of death, he tries to murder Kit again! Oh, how can I be sorry that we are safe from him at last?”
“Kitty is right,” Miss Parslow said; “Kit would have killed that man, if he caught him shooting Kitty. And that would have been the very next thing he would have done, if the Lord had spared him.”
To this I could make no reply; for verily I believe it would have been.
“Take your wife home,” said Uncle Corny, who always saw the right thing to do; “she is much excited. Avoid this subject, until you can speak of it calmly. Thank God for all His goodness to you; and let her nurse your wounded hair.”
This made Kitty laugh and pout; and without another word I led her home.
I led my Kitty home, without any fear of losing her again, until, by the will of One who loves us, we bid each other a brief farewell. We live at Honeysuckle Cottage still, and wish to go no further, adding to it, as little growers, like roses, cluster round us. We might lead a gayer and noisier life, if that were to our liking; but we have seen enough of the world to know how nice it is, at a distance. Whatever the greatest people do I can read to Kitty in the evening; and she smiles or sighs in the proper places, without neglecting our own affairs. The puff of the passing world comes to us, like that of a train in the valley; or even as the whiff of a smoker in the lane comes over our wall with a delicate waft, albeit his tobacco is not first-rate.
Moreover we like to be, where pleasant friends drop in, and say – “What a sweet calm is here!” And where Uncle Corny still toddles up at supper-time every evening, and lays his now quivering hand upon the curls of his sturdy Godson Cornelius, and says, “You shall have all this place, my boy; for your rogue of a father is too rich to want it, with all that property in London. Let him grow houses, while you grow trees. Keep the old place on, if you can; and sell your own fruit, if you want to get the money.”
Inditing of the higher fruit, that suffers no decay, and is meted in no earthly measure, the Rev. Peter Golightly enters, followed by his blooming daughter. He blesses all the little ones; and so does she, by kissing them with her pure sweet lips.
“That’s right, Miss Bessy, keep your lips in practice;” exclaims Uncle Corny in his rough old style; and a healthy blush mantles where the hectic colour was; for the gentle young lady has won the heart of the vicar – not of Bray, but a parish very near it.
But which of them all can be thought of twice, with Kitty looking at me? My words must be plentiful indeed, if one can be spared for any other. Yet for two good reasons I will not attempt to praise her. Being a busy man I must forego all hopeless efforts; and again what would success be? Simply that, which according to the proverb, is “no recommendation.”
So all who are well disposed can wish me nothing more complete than this, that I may live with her long enough to discover some defect in her. And in return I will inflict no moral but that of all true love – let every Kit be constant to his better self – his Kitty.
