CHAPTER I.
UNCLE CORNY
My name is Christopher Orchardson, of Sunbury in Middlesex; and I have passed through a bitter trouble, which I will try to describe somehow, both for my wife’s sake and my own, as well as to set us straight again in the opinion of our neighbours, which I have always valued highly, though sometimes unable to show it. It has not been in my power always to do the thing that was wisest, and whenever this is brought up against me, I can make no answer, only to beg those who love blame to look at themselves, which will make their eyes grow kinder, before they begin to be turned on me.
For five and twenty years of life I went on very happily, being of an unambitious sort, and knowing neither plague nor pain, through the strength of my constitution and the easiness of my nature. Most of my neighbours seemed to live in perpetual lack of something, and if ever they got it they soon contrived to find something more to hanker for. There were times when I felt that I must be a fool, or to say the least a dullard, for slackness of perception, which kept me satisfied with the life I had to live. But two things may be pleaded well in my excuse on this account; in the first place, all my time was spent among creatures of no ambition – trees, and flowers, and horses, and the like, that have no worry; and what was even to the purpose more, I had no money to enlarge its love.
For my Uncle Cornelius – better known to all who had dealings with him as “Corny, the topper” – took care of me, and his main care was to make me useful, as an orphan should be. My father had been his elder brother, and had married rashly a lady of birth and education far above his own, but gifted with little else to help her, unless it were sweetness of disposition, and warmth of heart, and loveliness. These in a world like ours are not of much account for wearing; and she had no chance to wear them out, being taken away quite suddenly. My life was given at the cost of hers, and my father, after lingering for a few months, took his departure to look for her.
Old people said that my Uncle Corny had been very fond of my mother, looking up to her in his youthful days, as a wonder of grace and goodness. And even now when he spoke about her, as I have known him to do after a tumbler of grog, his hard grey eyes would glisten softly, like the vinery glass of an afternoon, when a spring cloud passes over it. But none the more for that did he ever plant a shilling in my youthful hand. This proves his due estimate of money as a disadvantage to the young.
My uncle possessed an ancient garden, which had once belonged to a monastery; and the times being better than now they are, he was enabled to work it so that he made fair living out of it. We lived in an ancient cottage in the fine old village of Sunbury, or rather to the westward of that village, and higher up the river. Our window looked upon the Thames, with nothing more than the Shepperton Road, and the slope of the bank to look over. What with water-works, grand villas, the railway, and other changes, the place is now so different that a native may scarcely know it. But all was thoroughly simple, quiet, and even dull to lazy folk, in the days of which I am speaking.
My parents had managed to leave me so, or had it so managed by a higher power, that from my very infancy I was thrown upon Uncle Corny. He was a masterful man indeed, being of a resolute disposition, strong body, and stout sentiments. There was no mistaking his meaning when he spoke, and he spoke no more than a man is bound to do, for his own uses. Those who did not understand his nature said a great deal against him, and he let them say it to the width of their mouths. For he felt that he was good inside, and would be none the better for their meddling.
He was now about threescore years of age, and wished himself no younger, having seen enough of the world to know that to pass through it once is quite enough. Few things vexed him much, except to find his things sold below their value; and that far less for the love of money than from the sense of justice. But when he was wronged – as all producers, being one to a thousand, must be – he was not the man to make a to-do, and write to the papers about it. All he did was to drive his stick into the floor, and look up at the ceiling. For his own part he was quite ready to be proved in the wrong, whenever he could see it; and whatever may be said, I can answer for it, there are more men now than can be counted in a year, who are under Uncle Corny’s mark; while an hour would be ample for the names of those who would dare to look over my uncle’s head, when he comes to be judged finally.
All this is too much of a preface for him. His manner was always to speak for himself, and he must become somebody else, ere ever he would let his young nephew do it for him.
CHAPTER II.
MY KITTY
The shape of a tree is not decided by the pruner only. When the leader is stopped, with an eye towards the wind, and the branches clipped to a nicety of experience and of forethought, and the happy owner has said to it – “Now I defy you to go amiss this season” – before he is up in the morning perhaps, his lecture is flown, and his labour lost.
My wise Uncle Corny had said to me, more times than I can remember – “Kit, you are a good boy, a very good boy, and likely to be useful in my business by-and-by. But of one thing beware – never say a word to women. They never know what they want themselves; and they like to bring a man into the same condition. What wonderful things I have seen among the women! And the only way out of it is never to get into it.”
In answer to this I never said a word, being unable to contradict, though doubtful how far he was right. But it made me more shy than I was already, while at the same time it seemed to fill me with interest in the matter. But the only woman I had much to do with went a long way to confirm my Uncle’s words. This was no other than Tabitha Tapscott, a widow from the West of England, who did all our cleaning and cooking for us, coming into the house at six o’clock in the summer, and seven in the winter time. A strange little creature she appeared to me, so different from us in all her ways, making mountains of things that we never noticed, and not at all given to silence.
Once or twice my Uncle Corny, after a glass of hot rum and water (which he usually had on a Saturday night, to restore him after paying wages) had spoken, in a strange mysterious style, of having “had his time,” or as he sometimes put it – “paid his footing.” It was not easy to make out his drift, or the hint at the bottom of it; and if any one tried to follow him home, sometimes he would fly off into rudeness, or if in a better vein, convey that he held his tongue for the good of younger people. Such words used to stir me sadly, because I could get no more of them.
However, I began to feel more and more, as youth perhaps is sure to do when it listens to dark experience, as if I should like almost to go through some of it on my own behalf. Not expecting at all to leave it as a lesson for those who come after me, but simply desiring to enter into some knowledge of the thing forbidden. For I knew not as yet that there is no pleasure rich enough to satisfy the interest of pain.
It was on the first Sunday of September in the year 1860, that I first left all my peaceful ways, and fell into joy and misery. And strangely enough, as some may think, it was in the quiet evening service that the sudden change befell me. That summer had been the wettest ever known, or at any rate for four and forty years; as the old men said, who recalled the time when the loaves served out to their fathers and mothers stuck fast, like clay, upon the churchyard wall. Now the river was up to the mark of the road, and the meadows on the other side were lakes, and even a young man was well pleased to feel a flint under his foot as he walked. For the road was washed with torrents, and all the hedges reeking, and the solid trunks of ancient elms seemed to be channelled with perpetual drip.
But the sun began to shine out of the clouds, at his very last opportunity; and weak and watery though he looked, with a bank of haze beneath him, a soft relief of hope and comfort filled the flooded valley. And into our old western porch a pleasant light came quivering, and showed us who our neighbours were, and made us smile at one another.
As it happened now, my mind was full of a certain bed of onions, which had grown so rank and sappy, that we had not dared to harvest them. And instead of right thoughts upon entering church, I was saying to myself – “We shall have a dry week, I do believe. I will pull them to-morrow, and chance it.” This will show that what now befell me came without any fault of mine.
For just as the last bell struck its stroke, and the ringer swang down on the heel of it, and the murmur went