CHAPTER XXV.

ON THE SHELF.

THAT season, there was no Christmas-tide for me; no “Happy New Year,” to wish to others, and be wished; nor even so much as a Valentine’s Day, to send poems to girls, and get caricatures. In the leeward of the wild storm, I had been saved by a merciful power from the frost of death, and by constant care and indefatigable skill, I was slowly brought back into the warmth of life. But strong as I was, and of tough and active frame, with habits of temperance and exercise, there was no making little of the mischief done; and I could not have survived it, if I had been a clever fellow. For one of the most racking and deadly evils of all that beset the human frame was established in mine, and there worked its savage will. When I was just beginning to get warm again, and to ask where I was, and to stretch my tingling joints, symptoms of rheumatic fever showed, and for weeks and for months it ran its agonizing course. The doctor did all that any man could do; and my uncle went up to his cupboard in the wall by the head of his bed, and brought down a leather bag, and looked at it fondly, and then looked at me.

“It was put by for a rainy day; and there can’t be a rainier day than this,” he said with some drops in his own eyes, as Tabby told me afterwards. “Let the business go to the dogs, if it will. Where’s the use of keeping up, with no one to keep up for? Dr. Sippets, I never thought to see this day. Fetch the best man in London, and let him cheat me, if he will.”

If I had been at all a clever fellow, my mind would have stayed with me, and worried out my heart, when dreadfully pushed to carry on its proper work, with the lowering and the heightening, and the quivering of the pulse. But being just a simple mind, that took its cue from body, and depended on the brain for motion, and the eyes for guidance, when these went amiss it quite struck work; and never even asked who its master was. Thus it came to pass that Kitty’s sweet and tender letters lay upon a shelf but a yard or two away, and no hand was yet stretched out for them.

At last there came a letter sent in special trouble, as was plain from many signs upon it, and from the mode of its delivery. For Mrs. Wilcox came herself, the roads being once more passable, and perceiving how things were in the house had a long talk with my uncle. This good woman, as I may have said, was much attached to Miss Fairthorn, and had promised to take charge of my replies, and even to give me tidings of her, if anything happened to disable her from writing. But no provision had been made for any default on my part, as I was supposed to be free, and strong, and sure to come when called for.

“The poor young thing has been in such a taking,” Mrs. Wilcox told my uncle, “at not having so much as a single line from your poor nephew, you see, sir. You may put it to yourself how you would feel to be looking and looking for letters about business; and this is worse than business to young folk; they goes on as if it was all the world to them. And Miss Kitty always did have such an uncommon tender heart; you never see the like of it in all your life. What was she to conclude except that Mr. Kit had throwed her over, and perhaps taken up with some of them country girls down here. It wasn’t, you see, sir, as if he had written once, and told her he meant to stick fast to her. And yet she couldn’t bring her mind for to believe that such a nice young gent would be guilty of such conduct; and of course she knows right well how bootiful she is, though you never see her look that sort of way, as young ladies with a quarter of her good looks does. I declare to you, sir, when I was in the ’bus, holding of this bag exactly as you see me now, I felt that I could scratch out both his eyes, tall and strong as he is by Miss Kitty’s account. Bless her gentle heart, what a way she will be in, when she hears she have thought ill of him undeserving. Though a relief, sir, on the whole, for I believe she never done it; and better be in a snow-drift than belong to another woman.”

“You are a remarkably sensible lady,” said my uncle, desiring to make the best of things. “But I do not like to open poor Kit’s letters; and there are six of them already on a bracket by his bed, waiting till he comes round a bit. You must understand, Mrs. Wilcox, what this means. He isn’t off his head, exactly, but—you know that we all get a little abroad, when we lie on our backs so long as not to know our legs.”

“I do, sir, I do. I can feel it all through me, by means of what happened to my own husband. Ah, he was a man—could take a scuttle full of coals, and hold it out straight, the same as you might march up the aisle on a Sunday, with your hat right for’ard, to show that it was brushed and shining. But poor Wilcox, he went away at last, with a tub of clothes in his lungs, and the same may occur to the best of us; mayn’t it, Mr. Orchardson? But if you feel a delicate sort of feeling about breaking open the young lady’s letter, and the young gent from the snow-drift is still looking at his legs, I can tell you a good bit of what is going on; though I never was one, and Wilcox knew it, for hearkening so much as a word they say, when the women have done with their teas, and the men stand against the low green palings, with a pot, and a pipe as long as their shirt-sleeves.

“Well, sir, it do appear that two bad ones has turned up, over and above the one always there, which I will not name, consequent upon fear. One was Sir Cumberance Hotchpots, or some such name, proving to be a wicked man from the North; and the other was her brother, as ought to be all over, according to the flesh of marriage, sir. Donovan Bulwrag is his name, but every one prefer to call him ‘Downy.’ A hulking young man is my opinion of him; and it has been my lot to behold a good many. You may see it on the tables, sir, that come down from the Mount, going into church any Sunday, that such is forbidden by the law of Moses, for any Christian man to marry. Their father is one, and their mother is one; and they have no right to make a pair of them. You holds on with that, sir, as a respectable man, who has trodden his way in the world, is bound to do?”

“Yes, Mrs. Wilcox, I hold to it strongly,” said my uncle, “if I understand you. Do you mean to tell me, that this young man—”

“There is the facts, sir, and none of my telling. I was always a very bad hand at telling, though Wilcox he used to say otherwise, when he might be overcome in argument. But facts or no facts, the truth is as I tell you. This Mr. Donovan have come home, from Germany, or some such foreign parts; and whatever his meaning is, that is what it comes to—Miss Kitty can’t have no peace with him. And a yellow young man, Mr. Orchardson; as yellow as a daffodil, his hair, and beard, and eyes.”

“I don’t care a fig what his colour may be,” cried my uncle, being now on his high ropes; “he must be a black blackguard, and nothing else, if he dares to take advantage of a girl he should protect. Poor Kitty, what a pretty kettle of fish she is in! You need not tell me, ma’am, I can see it all. I have always had a gift in that way. Though I have not had so very much to do with women, for which I thank the Lord, every night of my life, I understand their ways, as well as if I had been one of them.”

“Then you must be a wonderful man, sir, indeed. The most wonderful I ever come across.” Mrs. Wilcox smoothed her dress, as if to ask what was inside it, but reserved her own opinion as to what was not.

“I mean it,” said my Uncle, who grew stronger always, whenever called in question. “It may not be the general thing; but so it is with me. And now I would venture to ask you, ma’am, what you consider the next thing to do.”

“Well,” replied the lady, highly flattered by request for advice from such an oracle, “if I were a strong man and a very clever one, I know what I should do at once. I should go up and fetch her away from them all, and let none of them come anigh her.”

“And what would you say, ma’am, supposing you had done it, when you found yourself served, the next morning perhaps, with a warrant for abduction of a maiden under age, and then committed for trial as a criminal? What would you say to that, Mrs. Wilcox?”

“I should say that the laws was outrageous, and made for the encouragement of vice and wickedness. And I should put it in the newspapers, right and left, till the public came and broke down the doors of the jail, and got up a public subscription for me.”

“Where is her father? What is he about?” My uncle thought it waste of time to argue after that. “Her father is the only person who can interfere. Has he been knocked on the head, and killed by one of his own battering rams?” Mr. Orchardson’s knowledge of scientific matters was more elementary than even mine.

“Not to my knowledge, sir; though like enough that will be the end of him. He have gone to the ends of the earth, I believe, to arrange for going ever so much further in the Spring. There is no help to be got from him, sir, now, if there ever was any chance of it. The poor young lady is delivered as a lamb between two lions to devour her, with a tigress patting them on the back, and holding her down while they carry it out. What will Mr. Kit say, if you allow it, sir?”

“You may be quite sure that I will never allow it, though at present I cannot see what to do. You have quicker wits than we have, ma’am; I ask you again, is there anything you can think of? Has her father any friends who would take her in?”

“Not one, to my knowledge,” answered Mrs. Wilcox, after counting on her finger-tips some names that she had heard of; “that dreadful creature have contrived to make every lady in the land afraid of her. And the poor Professor only knows the learned men, and the learneder they are the less they cares for one another. ’Tis the learning that is at the foot of all this trouble. You must see it so yourself, sir, when you come to think about it.”

“And the law, Mrs. Wilcox, the law is still worse. She is not of age, you see; and her father has placed her, or at any rate left her, in the charge of that woman, whom he has been fool enough to marry. If my nephew were in health, I should say to him at once, ‘Take the bull by the horns, or at least take the young lady, get a licence, and marry her, and defy those people. Her father’s consent has been given; and if he chooses to leave her in that helpless state, you must rescue her, and have no shilly-shallying. But for me to come and take her, is another pair of shoes. It might ruin her fair name, as well as get me into trouble; and what could I do with her, when I had got her?”

“You are right, sir; I see it all as clearly as you put it. But will you come up, and have a talk with her? A word from you would go as far as ten from me. And it would make her feel so much less forsaken like. I could manage to get her down to my little place, and the news I have got for her about poor Mr. Kit will set her up in one way, while it knocks her down in another. Oh, how she have cried, to think that he could be so false to her, because she wouldn’t believe a single word of it, all the blessed time! And now, if I can send my little Ted to her to-night—the sharpest little chap he is, in all the brick and mortar trade; he have never lost a sixpence, sir, from all them roaring navvies—though you might not think it, it will brisk her up amazingly. There is nothing so hagonizing to the female spirit, sir, as to find itself forsaken by the other sex. And your nephew, Master Kit, he mustn’t think of dying yet; no cough about him, sir, nor nothing in the kidneys, only got a chill from being frozen to a hicicle, and his head upon the moon, which goes for nothing. Lor’, sir, the number of young men comes every day, from the best part of London, too, according to my Ted, a-staring at the great works round our way, which is to be the fashion in a few more years, and not a head among them fit to go upon a donkey! It doesn’t matter what’s the matter with the head, one item, sir, in these times now upon us and increasing daily. Keep your spirits up, sir, and I shall tell Miss Kitty. A young man, as is all right, except inside his head, isn’t no more to complain of than a cuckoo-clock, that have left off striking, and keeps better time for that. What time did you say the last ’bus at Hampton was, sir? If I was to lose it, wherever should I be? And a good step from here to Hampton, too.”

“I will send you to Hampton, in the spring-cart, Mrs. Wilcox,” said my uncle, warmly joining in her estimate of the age; “and to-morrow, if the roads permit, I shall hope to call upon you, about eleven o’clock; and if you can manage to get Miss Fairthorn to meet me, why, it may be a little comfort to her, and we may be able perhaps to see what can be done for her.”