CHAPTER XXXIX.

ON TWO CHAIRS.

FOR as much as three weeks I had been full of pride, in taking my Kitty about everywhere—even by the seaside, where I knew very little, but luckily she knew less, in spite of her scientific origin—and asking her to look about and see things with her own eyes; and if she could not make them out, to call me in to help her. This had been rash on my part; for a man may be gaping about, for his lifetime, and die after all with his mouth wide open; and not a word come from it, to help the people left behind, but only to unsettle them, and put them in a flutter; as gnats skip into another dance, at every new breath across them. But Kitty had really put some questions far outside my knowledge (as a child may, who hangs on his grandfather’s thumb), and I had promised to look up those points and deliver an opinion, when I had one. All this came into my mind, like a chill, when I had to trace her dear steps, away from me, away from me.

Let seventy times seven wise men say that no man with a grain of wisdom could have a spark of faith in women, because they never know their own mind—little as there is of it to know—I still abode in my own faith, and let them quote old saws against the sturdy holdfast of true love. I felt as sure of my Kitty’s heart, as I did of my own, and more so; for she never would have borne to hear a hundredth part of the things against me, which I had to listen to against her. And the cowards, who vent their own craven souls in slander of those who cannot face them, had a fine time of it now, and rejoiced in the misery they were too small to feel. Such things might sour a weakling, who depends upon what other people think; but I found enough of manhood coming up in me, as time went on, to make me stick to my own trust, and let outer opinions touch my home, no more than the shower that runs down the glass.

At first, however, it was dreadful work. Everybody seemed to be against me, not with any unkindness, but by way of worldly wisdom. “Don’t you dwell too much upon it.” “A runaway wife isn’t worth running after.” “Never you mind; but get another; try the people you know, with their friends in the place.” These were the counsels I received, with a nod of my head, and no reply.

But I could not see things as others saw them. I spent the first day of my lonely life, in wandering through the crooked lanes, and working out every track and turn which my darling could have taken, in the dark mystery of her flight from me. Very often I thought that she must come back; and there was scarcely a hill that I did not run up, persuading myself that when the top was gained, there I should descry her in the distance beyond, weary, and dragging her feet along, but eager at sight of me to make a rush and fall into my longing arms. How many a corner I turned, believing that it must be the last between her and me; and how many a footpath stile I sat on, hiding my eyes that she might catch me unawares, as at blind-man’s buff, and throw her warm arms round my neck, and kiss me into shame of my mistrust, and tell me that she never could have doubted me, whatever I had done, or whatever people said!

And then, when it grew too dark to see even my own love in the shadow of the lanes, and the last note of the wedded thrush (who sings to the sparkle of the stars in May) was hushed by a call from his nest, and followed by the first clear trill of the nightingale—

“Who tells the deeper tale of night With passion too intense for light,”

—weary, and with little heart for loneliness and doubt and woe, yet I could not be quite sure that when I opened our own door some one might not run out hotly, and give me no time to speak, but hold me lip to lip, and breast to breast, with scarcely room for a tear between us.

It is the emptiness that follows such full hope that does the harm to the powers of endurance. When no one came to meet me, and the cold rooms showed grey lines of shade, with no dear life to cross them, I used to fall away, and feel my heart go down, like the water of a sink, when the plug is taken out of it. There was nothing more for it to do. My wretched life was not worth the fuss of pumping and of labouring; better to give in at once, and have no more pain to drain it.

“You are killing yourself up here, my boy; this will never do,” said Uncle Corny. “Bother the women; what a pest they are! Try to be like that ancient fellow—I can never remember his name, but they call him the father of history. You told me about him, when you went to the Grammar-school at Hampton. And it was so wise that I paid for another half-year for you to read him. You know better than I do; but I think there had been a lot of carrying off of pretty girls between two countries, and they were going to fight about them. But he says that they had no call to do it; for men of discretion would let them go, and make no fuss about them. Because it was manifest that the women would never have been carried off, unless they themselves had wished it. I don’t suppose you could do it now; but if you can, bring down the book, and read it to me this evening. It would do you a deal more good than to hold your tongue, and eat your heart out.”

“I hate to hear of that rubbish,” I replied; “they were a lot of good-for-nothings. To talk of my Kitty in that sort of way would drive me mad, Uncle Corny. If you have nothing better to say than that, you had better go home to Tabby.”

“Well, perhaps they will come and carry Tabby off. I believe she would go for a new bonnet; and I don’t know what I should do if she did. But shut up this place, Kit, and come back to the old quarters. You want company, my boy; and I’d rather let old Harker in again than have you here killing yourself like that, and sleeping in the kitchen on two chairs; if you ever get any sleep at all.”

“I will never leave this house,” I said; “and I won’t even be smoked out of it. When Kitty comes back, she will come here first; and there is no telling how soon she may want me. You only bother me with all this stuff.”

“Well, I will not be hard upon you, Kit; because the Lord has done that quite enough. But you have not got a bit of religion in you, after all the teaching I have given you.”

This was very fine from Uncle Corny, who never even went to church, except to keep other people out of his pew. And he rubbed his nose as he said it; as he always did, when he had gone too far.

“There is a very good man wants to see you,” he went on a little nervously, for I knew that he had been leading up to something; “and a man to whom you are bound to listen, because he was the one who married you, and therefore understands all the subject, matrimony, women, and the doctrines of the Church. The Reverend Peter Golightly wishes to have a little talk with you.”

“And I wish to have none with him. He is a very good and kind-hearted man. But I could not bear to hear his voice, after—after what he did for me, and Kitty.”

“I was afraid there would be that objection,” my uncle answered kindly; “but you will get over that by-and-by, my boy. And it would be rude not to see him, for he takes the greatest interest in your case. He has been disappointed himself, I believe; though of course he did not tell me so. He is too much a man for that sort of thing. I shall go and hear him preach some day, unless our vicar comes back again. They tell me that he does a lot of good, and he preached against robbing orchards once, although he has only got one apple tree, and it is eaten up with American blight. There’s another fellow wants to see you too—not much of the parson about him. He can tell you things you ought to know; and being about as he always is, I wonder you have not been to see him. Not that I care for Sam Henderson; but he is not so bad as he used to be. He is going to be married next month; and I’ll be bound he won’t let his wife—”

“Run away from him—you were going to say. Perhaps he will not be able to help himself. Well, I will see him, if he likes to come. I shall be back by nine o’clock. It is very kind of him to wish it. But send up a bottle of whisky, uncle. I have no drink of any sort in the house; and Sam is nothing without his glass, although he never takes very much. I must give him something, if he comes.”

“And take a drop yourself, my boy, if only for a little change. I don’t hold with cold water, when a fellow is so down; though it is better than the opposite extreme. I suppose, by-the-bye, that your Kitty has not taken—”

“Uncle Corny!” I cried, in a voice that made him jump; “what next will you imagine? She never touched anything, not even beer; though I often tried to make her take a glass. She had seen too much of that, where she was.”

“All right, Kit. But you are getting very cross; which is not the proper lesson of affliction, as the Reverend Peter might express it. Well, I’ll send little Bill up, with the bottle and a corkscrew. I don’t suppose you know where to find anything now. That’s the worst of married life even for three weeks. But I have got a plan I mean to tell you of to-morrow.”

When I came back, a little after dark, having finished that hopeless wandering which I went through every evening now, there was Sam Henderson, sitting on an empty flower-pot outside my door, with a cigar in his mouth. He might have gone inside, for I left the front door open all day long and all night too, unless the weather prevented it, for I had nothing to be robbed of now; at least nothing that I cared about, except Kitty’s clothes, which I had locked out of sight. And it seemed to be delicate and kind of Sam, to sit here in discomfort, instead of walking in. And he showed another piece of good taste and good will, which could hardly be expected from so blunt and rough a man—he said not a word about his own bright prospects, until I inquired about them.

But he shook my hand in a very friendly way, and left me to begin upon the matter which had brought me to my present state. And for some time I also avoided that.

“I will tell you, old chap,” he said at last, in reply to my anxious question, “exactly what I think, though it is not good for much, being altogether out of my own line. I think you have been awfully wronged, as abominably wronged as any fellow ever was, on the face of this earth—which is saying a good bit, mind you. Knowing what a lot of infernal rogues there are to be found at every corner, and much more often than decent fellows, I am never brought up standing by any black job; though the ins and outs of it may floor me. The Professor is a soft man, isn’t he? He has shown it in many ways, although he is so clever. You would call him a soft man, wouldn’t you?”

“Well,” I said, wondering how this could bear upon it, “I suppose he is rather of the credulous order, as most good men are, who measure others by themselves. But he had left England long before. So that can have little to do with it.”

“Right you are, as concerns himself. But I am a believer in breed, my friend. And the longer I live, the more true I find it come. A credulous father, if you prefer the word, is likely to be blest with a credulous child, and your wife took after her father more closely in the inner, because she didn’t in the outer woman. At least, I can’t say from my own eyes, knowing nothing of old Blowpipes, but I understand she did not favour him in the flesh.”

“Not exactly,” I answered, with a little smile, as I thought of the loveliness of Kitty’s face; “but she was like him a little just here and there.”

“A little won’t do. My old _Trunnion_, who croaked in the great frost that almost settled you, my boy, has a son of his old age, _Commodore_, who will be heard of towards July at the market, scarcely a bit like him in the face, except in one tuck of his nostril, and a tuft of five hairs over his near eye. But do you think I could not swear to him by his ways and tricks, and his style of coming up? That’s the time to know what a horse thinks of you; and I tell you this colt thinks exactly as his father did; and all the more because he isn’t like him in the face. There must be the likeness somewhere.”

“Yes, I have heard you say that many times before, and I daresay you are right enough about it. But what has that to do with—what has happened to me?”

“Just everything, stupid. Your wife being soft—or credulous, if you like it better—she sucks in a lot of lies against you. The dose comes from somebody she believes in, not her old enemies, of course. Her dignity will not allow her to complain—women are always horribly dignified when jealous—and off she goes, without a word, leaving you to your own conscience which will more than give you the tip for it. She’ll come back by-and-by, when she has punished you enough; and then of course you’ll have to swear, etc., etc. She’ll call herself all sorts of names. And there’ll be nobody like you, till next time. You’ll see if that isn’t at the bottom of all this.”

“Not likely,” I answered with some wrath. “In the first place, my Kitty would never believe a word of such stuff against me, and there is no such thing as jealousy in her nature.”

“You know best. But I thought I heard something from the man round the corner at Ludred.”

“That was a different thing altogether,” I said quickly, although the remembrance struck me, as it had not done before; “and in the next place, if she could be so absurd, she would be the last person in the world to go away without a word, without even giving me a chance of taking my own part. No, that theory will never do. My Kitty was the most just, as well as the kindest darling ever born.”

“You don’t know what they are sometimes. How can you expect to know more about them than they do about themselves? Yesterday, just by way of something, I asked Sally what she would do, if she ever turned up jealous. ‘I would grind my ring-finger off,’ she said, ‘with these two teeth, I would, Sam’—for she has got uncommon grinders—‘and I would make my rival swallow it.’ Now, Sally has been well broken in, remember, and no vice in the family; at any rate since her great grand-dam; but her eyes showed that she would do it!”

“There is no ferocity in Kitty,” I answered with a lofty air; “I know nothing about race-horses, and very little about women. But women are only men in a better form, more gentle, more just, and more loving. They never give way to such fury as we do—”

“The Professor’s wife, for instance, Kit. She never gives way to her temper, does she? Oh dear, no. Even if she has any temper to give way to. A sucking dove—too mild to suck, if her sister wants the pigeon’s milk before her.”

“She is the exception that proves the rule. And I doubt whether even she would be so, if she did not suck too much of stronger liquor. And I will tell you another thing, Master Sam, as you have put me up to this; and you have a right to know everything now, that you may understand the case. It knocks your theory on the head. Only I must have your solemn promise that no one shall ever hear of it.”

Sam gave me his pledge; and I knew that he would keep it, for he was well inured to control his tongue. Then I told him, although it went much against the grain, of the disappearance of our stock of money.

“That beats me; at least for the present,” he replied; “it don’t seem to square with anything. Throws me out of my stride, and makes me cross my legs. But I don’t believe she ever took it. How can you tell that she took it, poor chap? If she collared that tin, she will never come back. Was there nobody else could have taken it? The Peelers, for instance, you know what they are? They had the run of the house. I have known a lot of cases—”

“No, it is impossible that they can have touched it. The lock had not been tampered with. The key was in its place, and the last place they would have searched for it. And I know by the state of the drawer, that no hand but my wife’s had been inside it.”

“Then you had better not call her your wife any more.” Sam Henderson spoke very sternly; and then, looking at my face, went on more kindly, and with a huskiness in his voice, “You have been unlucky, old chap, as unlucky as any fellow I ever came across, except an old man at New York races once. It was not about money his bad luck was; or I would not compare it with yours, my dear boy. Sorry as I was for your trouble, Kit, I thought it could all be cured, till now. And it can be cured even now, dear Kit; but only as we cure the grief of death. I need not tell you to be a man; for I see that you have been one all along. After what you have told me, I understand your behaviour thoroughly. Before that, I was angry with you, and a little ashamed of you, to tell the truth, for moping here in this way. I thought, ‘Why the deuce doesn’t he go up and shake the truth out of that old rogue Hotchpot, or that bigger villain, Downy Bulwrag?’ But now I see that you could only stay at home, and trust to time to comfort you. And you must weed out, as I would a filly with three legs, a bad lot, a woman who—”

“Stop, Sam,” I cried, “don’t say a word that would make me hate you. Though all appearances are so black, I will never for a moment lose my faith in Kitty. Nobody knows her, as I do. If I never see, or hear of her again, I will say to my last breath, and feel to my last pulse, that she has been deceived, not by me, but about me; and that I have never been deceived in her.”

“Well, old chap, all that I can say is, that you deserve a better wife than was ever yet born. And if your opinion of your wife is true, why, this affair beats any job on the turf, that I ever heard of; and I have heard of a smart few. But I shall keep my eyes open, Kit, and we’ll try to pull it off. I pick up a lot of things you would never think of; and there’s daylight at the bottom of the best tarred sack. Come and see me to-morrow. It will be a little change. And I can show you a young ’un that will take the shine out of all Chalker’s. If you want a pot of money, I can tell you where to get it.”