AT BAY, AND IN THE BAY.
EVERY one, who can call to mind that year of bad weather, 1860,
will bear me out in saying that it showed no weakness, no lack of
consistency to the last. Rain and chill were the rule of the summer,
snow and severe cold the order of the winter. In the beginning of
December, the earth was sodden, and the rivers thick with flood. Then
the sky was amassed with fog, and the trees hung low with trembling
drip, and even the humble weeds and grass were bearded with a glaucous
reek, not crisp nor bright as of rime or frost, but limp, and dull,
and bleary. Having never seen such a thing till now, I could not tell
what to make of it; but Uncle Corny, who had been compelled for years
to watch the weather, said—“Up with all the winter apples, and the Glou
Morceau, and Beurré Rance, up with them all to Covent Garden, or we
shall have them frozen on the shelves. Or even if we can keep the frost
out, we shall have the van snowed up. Things looked just as they do
now, in December, 1837, only the ground was not so wet. Go down to the
barges, and order in ten tons of coal, we shall want it all, and twenty
chaldrons of gas-coke. The frost will last till February, and fuel will
cost a rare price then.”
I was inclined to laugh at this as a bold and rash prediction; but it
was more than verified by the weather that set in upon the eighteenth
of December, not with any sudden change, but the cold growing more
decided. By this time Honeysuckle Cottage was thoroughly cleansed, and
in good trim, painted, and papered, and neatly furnished, with Tabby
put in to keep it warm, but only permitted to use one room. And I used
to go there every day, and sit in the little parlour, reading the only
letter I had yet received from one who was more to me than words. It
was written in a small clear hand, and dated on the very day after my
visit to her, and the purport of it was to comfort me and persuade me
to wait with all endurance, until I should have leave to come again.
And long as the time had seemed, and dreary, and empty of all except
distant hope, I had done my best to get through it, with the courage of
a man, and the faith of love.
“It is for my dear father’s sake,” she wrote, “that I am compelled to
ask you this. There has been a fearful scene which even his sweet
endurance and wonderful temper could scarcely carry him through,
without sad injury to his health and work. His heart is not very
strong, and though he tries to laugh these troubles off, or despise
them as below his notice, to me it is plain that they worry and wear
him, a great deal more than he deigns to show. And I know that he
bitterly reproaches himself, although he so rarely speaks of it, for
having been so deluded as to place nearly all his property in the power
of those who should only have a part. When he looks at me and sighs,
I know exactly what he is thinking of; and it is my place to save him
from all that can be avoided of strife and ill-treatment. A more placid
and peaceful man never lived, yet comfort and peace are denied him.
In a few weeks he will leave home again—if this house can be called
a home—and then I should like to see you, dear, with his permission
before he goes; because I am not afraid for myself, and I may have to
settle what is to be done, if a certain gentleman should come back,
and try to force his visits upon me, while my father is away. If this
should happen, you shall hear at once, unless I am locked up, as I used
to be sometimes. Do not write; she takes every letter; and it would
only cause more misery. We must trust in Heaven, and in one another;
for I know that you love me, as I love you.”
This very faithful and sensible letter was beginning to grow threadbare
now, or rather was returning to its original state of thread, with
my constant handling. And it left me in a sore predicament, which
became sorer, as time went on, and no other tidings reached me. It was
grievous to reflect, that with better policy, and judicious flattery,
I might perhaps have contrived to get a scrap or two of information
even from the stately lady of the Hall, or at any rate through Mrs.
Marker. But that good housekeeper shunned me now, probably under strict
orders; or if ever I managed to bring her to bay, she declared that
she knew nothing; and perhaps this was true, for the choleric sisters
held little communication. As a last resource, I got Mrs. Tapscott
to promise her niece the most amiable tips for every bit of tidings
she could bring; but nothing came of that, and by this time verily
my condition of mind was feverish. In vain I consulted that oracle
of the neighbourhood—Uncle Corny; for an oracle he was now become,
partly through making good figures of his fruit, partly through holding
tongue and shaking head, and partly no doubt by defeating the lawyers,
and smoking out “Old Arkerate.” But all I could win from this oracle
was—“Go up, and get in at the window.”
I was ready to get in at any window—big enough for my head to pass—if
only I could have found Kitty inside, and quick to forgive me for
coming. But to talk is all very fine, and old men make it do for
everything; to act is the province of the young, who have not found out
how vain it is.
Being touched up therefore on every side—for even old Tabby made sniffs
at me, and Selsey Bill winked, in a manner that meant—“Would there ever
have been seventeen young Selseys, if I had hung fire as you do?”—and
my Uncle said quietly, between two puffs—“In for a penny in for a
pound; that used to be the way when I was young”—being stirred up more
deeply by my own heart, which was sadly unquiet within me, I set off at
last, without a word, and not even a horse to help me.
The frost had set in, that mighty frost which froze the Thames down to
Kingston Bridge, and would have frozen it to London Bridge, except for
one pause at the end of the year, and the rush of so much land-water.
The ground was already as hard as iron, but no snow had fallen to
smother it up. The walking was good, and the legs kept going to keep
one another and the whole affair alive. There must have been a deal
of ground soon overcome between them; for they were not out of Uncle
Corny’s gate till Sunbury clock struck three, and they knocked against
the gate of Bulwrag Park, when the twilight still hung in the sky. And
this had been done against a bitter east wind, with a low scud of snow
flying into the teeth, and scurfing the darkening road with gray.
Here it was needful to reflect a little; for to think against the drift
of air is worthless, for anything weaker than a six-wheeled engine. I
found a little shelter from the old Scotch firs, and halted in their
darkness, and considered what to do. The house, about a hundred yards
away, looked cold, and grim, and repellent, and abhorrent, except
for one sweet warmth inside. The dark shrubs before it were already
powdered with the gathering crust of snow; and the restless wind was
driving cloudy swirls of white along and in under the laps of blue
slate. So far as I could see, one chimney only was issuing token of
some warmth inside. I had scarcely shivered yet in the fierce cold of
the road, and the open tracks where no road was; but I shuddered with a
deep thrill of anguish and dismay, as I watched that bleak house, with
the snow flitting round it, the bitter frost howling in every wild
blast, and not a scrap of fire to keep my sweet love’s body warm.
“If they have not quite starved her, since her father left,” I said to
myself, being sure that he was gone, “they will not lose this chance
of freezing her to death. I have heard what they do in such weather.
They keep her where the water-jugs burst, and the ice is on the pillow,
while they roast themselves by a roaring fire. May they roast for ever!”
Slow as I am of imagination, this picture had such an effect upon
me, that I caught up my stick which had stood against the tree, and
determined to knock the front door in, if they would not admit me
decently. But glancing back first, to be sure of having the place to
myself, I beheld through the wind-hurried flakes an advancing figure.
Two looks were enough; it was my darling, bending to the wind, but
walking bravely, and carrying a basket in her ungloved hand. Her little
thin cloak, and summer hat—for they had given her no other—were as
white as the ground itself with snow, and so were the clusters of her
rich brown hair, which time shall whiten by the side of mine. But her
large blue eyes and soft rosy cheeks were glistening bravely through
the fleecy veil, and a smile of resolve to make the best of all things
showed little teeth whiter than any snowflake. Through the brunt of the
storm she had not descried me, until she was suddenly inside my arms.
Then she dropped her basket in the snow, and looked up at me, and tried
hard to be vexed. But nature and youth were too many for her, and she
threw her glad arms round my neck, and patiently permitted me to leave
no snow either on her face or in her curls.
“Oh, Kit, if they should see us from the house!” she whispered; and I
said,—
“They had better not, or they shall have this stick.”
However, for fear of any rashness about that, I led her with a smooth
and easy pace—for she could move beautifully with my arm round her,
which no clumsy girl could do—to a snug little nook, where a large
bay tree broke the power of the wind, and screened the snow. Here we
found a low branch upon which we could sit, with the fragrant leaves
to shelter us; and ever since that when I smell a bayleaf, I can never
help thinking of my love, even when it is in pickled mackerel.
When I had told her a thousand times of my delight at finding her,
and she, with a hundred blushes perhaps, had begged me to show it
judiciously, I asked where she had been in such dreadful weather, and
what she had got in the basket. “Two bottles of brandy,” she answered
as coolly as if it had been a cowslip ball; “from the Bricklayers’ Arms
I had to fetch them, because nobody else would go out in the storm.”
“What!” I cried, looking at her pure and bashful eyes, “do you mean to
say that you are sent alone to a common public-house, where the navvies
go?”
“Oh, they never say anything to me, dear Kit. But I cannot bear to go,
when there are noisy people there. And I believe that my father would
be angry if he knew it. It has only happened once or twice, when the
weather was very bad.”
“Does she ever send her own daughters there?” I asked as mildly as I
could, for Kitty was trembling at my natural wrath, and stern manner.
“Oh no! She would not like to send them at all, even if they would go,
which is very doubtful. But she says that my place is to be useful; and
she never can do without brandy long. She gets tired of wine in the
evening.”
“The case is just this,” I said, wishing to let off my wrath, that I
might speak of more pleasant things; “she revels upon your father’s
money, and squanders it on her children’s whims; she locks him up in a
corner of his own house, makes a slave of his only child, starves and
beats her, and degrades her by sending her for drink to a pot-house. A
young lady—the best, and the sweetest, and noblest—”
I was obliged to stop, in fear of violence. But my dear one became
all the dearer to me, as I thought of her misery and patience. If my
Uncle Cornelius tried to “put upon” me, was I ever known to put up
with it? And consider the difference betwixt an uncle, who fed me, and
kept me, and allowed me money—or at any rate promised to do so—and a
vile stepmother, who ruined the father, and starved and bullied and
disgraced the child! Truly we learn to forget right and wrong; as our
country has learned in these latter days.
“No one can degrade me, but myself,” Miss Fairthorn answered gently,
and without any thought of argument. “But I will not go again, if you
think it wrong. I have been so accustomed to run errands for her, that
I never gave a thought to the difference at first, and having done it
once, I could not say ‘no’ the next time. But I know it is not nice;
and I will never go again, now that I know you object to it, dear. You
won’t be angry, when I have given you my promise?”
“To send an angel to a public-house”—but I said no more about it, for
the angel sighed, and put her hand into mine, to be forgiven. Then I
asked her, with my wrath turning into jealous pangs, about that old
villain, who had dared to imagine that his wealth—if he had any—or at
any rate his position, could bridge over the gulf between virtue and
vice, loveliness and ugliness, sweet maidenhood and sour decrepitude of
bad living. Of these things I could not speak to her; but her modesty
shrank, without knowing why.
“That poor old gentleman has been very ill,” she answered in her clear
and silvery voice, which made me thrill, like music. “He went to see
to some business in Lincolnshire, and was laid up for weeks with ague.
But he is to come back when the weather permits. If he had appeared,
I would have let you know, for I should have been frightened, with my
father not at home. But I am sorry to say there is some one coming,
more formidable to me than Sir Cumberleigh is. You will think I am full
of dislikes, dear Kit, but I do dislike that Downy so. He is her son
Donovan, her only son; and she worships him—if she worships anything.”
I had heard of this Donovan Bulwrag more than once, but knew very
little about him, except that, unless he was much belied, he combined
the vices of both his parents. But my duty was now to reassure my
Kitty, and leave her in good spirits, so far as that was possible.
Though every minute of her company was as precious as a year of life
to me, I was fearful of keeping her longer in the cold, and insuring a
very hot reception from her foes. Of the latter, however, she had not
much dread, being so inured to ill usage, that a little more or less
was not of much consideration. But her cloak was threadbare, and her
teeth began to chatter, as the keen wind shook the tree above us, and
scattered the snow upon our shoulders.
In a few words we arranged to be no longer without frequent news of
one another; for I told her very truly, that without this luck I must
have gone home in utter misery, unless I had forced my way to her; and
with equal sincerity she replied, that she did not know what she could
have done, for the time had been dreary and desolate. Then she promised
to write to me every week, not long love-letters, for of those there
was no need with our pure faith in one another, and her opportunities
would be but brief; yet so as to let me know that she was safe, and not
persecuted more than usual. These letters she must post with her own
hand, and my answers she must call for at a little shop kept by an old
servant of the Captain’s, who would not betray her. If possible, she
would write on Saturdays, so that I might get the letter on a Sunday
morning; and if anything were added to her troubles, I might come, and
try to let her know of it through Mrs. Wilcox, who kept the little
shop she had spoken of. With this I was obliged to be content for the
present; much as I longed for a bolder course, she would not leave her
father, without his full consent.
“But you shall have something to remember me by, and something too
that came from him,” she whispered, as her fears began to grow again.
“He gave me a watch on my last birthday, a beautiful watch with a blue
enamel back, and Kitty done in little diamonds. She said that it was
much too good for me, and she gave it to Geraldine, her youngest girl.
But oh, I cheated them out of something, because I felt that they were
cheating me. They never knew that he had given me a gold key for it,
a lovely little key with a star in the centre. Here it is, see how it
sparkles in the dusk! Take it, my dear, and wear it always, and you
will think it is the key of my heart, Kit, which you managed to steal
down at Sunbury so. You must not give me anything in return. Not now at
least; perhaps some day you may.”
It was now so dark that I ventured to lead her, and carry her basket to
the little side-door, for that part of the house was dark and empty.
Then she gave me a sweet farewell, with one little sob to strengthen
it; and the snow whirled into her glistening eyes, and a shiver ran
through me, when she was gone.