“The Captain arose under her rebuke, and looked at her with calm curiosity, as if she were part of his experiment. He had never seen a case of such groundless fury, and could scarcely believe that it was real. Her blazing eyes were fixed on his, and her figure seemed to tower, in her towering rage. Such folly however could not frighten him; and he smiled, as if looking at a baby, while he handed her the cane.
“‘You laugh at me, do you? You think I am your slave?’ she cried as she swung the cane round her head, and he fully expected the benefit. ‘Because I am a poor weak woman, I am to be trampled on in my own house, and come on my knees, at these shameful hours, to hold all your gallipots and phials for you. Look, this is the way I serve your grand science! There go a few of them, and there, and there! How do you like that, Professor? – Oh, oh, oh!’
“At the third sweep of the cane among his chemical treasures, she had dashed on the floor, among many other things, a small stoppered bottle full of caustic liquid, and a fair dose had fallen on her instep, which was protected by nothing but a thin silk stocking. Screeching with pain, she danced round the room, and then fell upon a chair, and began to tear her hair, in a violent fit of hysterics.
“‘It is painful for the moment; but there is no serious harm,’ said the Captain, as he rang the bell for her own attendant; ‘fortunately the contents of that bottle were diluted, or she might never have walked again; if indeed such a style of progress is to be called walking. It is most unwise of any tiro to interfere with these little inquiries. I was very near a fine result; and now, I fear, it is all scattered.’
“The next day he did, what he should have done some months ago. He took the copy of his marriage-settlement to a good solicitor, and found, to his sad astonishment, that the boasts of the termagant were too true. Under the provisions of that document – as atrocious a swindle as was ever perpetrated – he could be turned out of his own house, and the property he intended for his own child was at the mercy of her stepmother.
“From the lawyer he got not a crumb of comfort. The settlement was his own act and deed; there was no escaping from it. It had been prepared by the lady’s solicitors; and he had signed it without consideration. All very true; but he should have considered, and marriage was a consideration, in the eye of the law, and a binding one. If the Professor wished, the solicitor would take Counsel’s opinion, whether there might be any chance of obtaining redress from Equity. But he felt sure, that to do so would only be a waste of money. It was a most irregular thing, that in such an arrangement, one side only should be represented; but that was the fault of the other side, which surrendered its own interests. In fact, it was a very fine instance of confidence in human nature; and human nature had been grateful enough to make the most of the confidence offered.
“If you did not know what the Professor is, you might suppose, Kit, that he was overcome, and overwhelmed with the result of his own neglect and softness. Not a bit of it; in a week’s time, he had mended all his broken apparatus; and the only difference to be noticed was, that he never began work without locking the door. His treatment of his wife was the same as ever. He bore no ill-will, or at any rate showed none, on account of that strong explosion; and he took thenceforth all her fits of fury as gusts of wind, that had got in by mistake. It is impossible for any woman to make a man of that nature unhappy. He would have been happier, I dare say, and have done much more for the good of the world, if he had married a peaceful woman; but I know very little of those matters. Only, as you have an ordinary mind, be sure that you marry a sweet-tempered woman. To bed, my boy, to bed! We must be up right early.”
CHAPTER XV.
MORAL SUPPORT
In spite of all said to the contrary, I believe that young people, upon the whole, are more apt to ponder than the old folk are. At least, if to ponder means – as it should – to weigh in the balance of pros and cons the probable results of their own doings. The old man remembers the time he has lost, in thinking thoughts that came to naught; and he sees that if they had come to much, that much would have been very little now. The young man has plenty of time on his hands, and believes he is going to do wonders with it, and makes a bright map of his mighty course in life. And this is the wisest thing that he can do.
But when he falls in love, alas! his ripe wisdom is seldom applied to himself. Like a roguish grocer, with a magnet in his counter, he brings the scale down to his own liking; but he differs from him, in that he cheats himself.
Being very wise in my own eyes, I pondered very carefully my next step; not with any thought of retiring, but with a firm resolve to advance in the strongest and most effective manner. My Uncle’s long story, instead of damping, had added hot fuel to my ardour, and compassion had lent a deeper tone to passion. Tender pictures arose before me of my angelic Kitty, starved, and tortured, and snubbed, and trampled, and (worst of all perhaps to a female body) shabbily, and grotesquely dressed. Such a woman as my uncle had described was enough to drive the largest-minded man to fury, and to grind the sweetest of her own sex, into fragments of misery and despair. The one crumb of comfort I could pick up, was that such cruelty must make my darling pine all the more for tender love, and long perpetually for some refuge, however humble it might be. But the point of all points was – how should I get at her?
All these things were passing through my mind for about the thousandth time – yet all in vain – as I came back from Chertsey, on old Spanker’s back, a day or two later in that same week. Old Spanker was as good a horse as ever tasted corn; and when we got together, we always seemed to fall into very much the same vein of thought. Not that Spanker had any love troubles, but plenty of other cares and considerations, which brought him into tune with me, as we jogged along. If anything went amiss on our premises, Spanker seemed to find it out, not one of us knew how, and to feel a friendly sadness for us, though it never affected his appetite. So warm was his interest in our affairs, that whenever he took a load to Covent Garden, the proper thing always was to let him know how it had been disposed of; and Selsey Bill declared that he came home with his ears pricked forward, or laid back, according as the prices had been up or down. But Selsey Bill, with seventeen hungry children, was himself as sympathetic as almost any horse.
It was very nigh dark; for the days were drawing in, being nearly come to the equinox, and the weather breaking up, as we had foreseen. Indeed but for that, I should not have been here, for my uncle would never have sent me to Chertsey, if the fruit had been fit to be gathered to-day. “Never gather any fruit when it is wet, except a horse-chestnut,” he used to say; “and you may find the flavour of that improved.” But the rain had not been so very heavy, only just enough to hang on things and make them sticky; and now there was a strong wind getting up, which was likely to fetch down a hundred bushels.
The river was no longer in high flood, though still over its banks, and turbulent; and I had not to ride through great stretches of water, as our roads require one to do, even if they let him pass at all, when the Thames comes down at its utmost. When I was a lad in 1852, we could scarcely go anywhere without swimming. And now, without floods, I very nearly had to swim; for old Spanker stopped as suddenly as if he had been shot, in a dark place, where there was a ditch beside the road; and I, riding carelessly and mooning on my grievances, was as loose on his back as my hat on my head. I just saved myself from flying over his ears, and then flourished my whipstock, for I thought it was a footpad.
“Don’t be a fool, Kit. You have done a little too much of that to me already.”
The voice was well known to me, and the glimmering light showed the figure of Sam Henderson. He had a contemptuous manner of putting his heels on the earth, with his toes turned up and out; as if the world were not worth riding, except with a reckless attitude. But I was vexed to be pulled up like this, and nearly cast out of the saddle. Therefore I said something of his own sort.
“Young man, you don’t value my good intentions; and you are not at all charmed with my new dodge, for fetching a horse up before he can think. You saw I never touched your bridle. Well, never mind that. I’m not going to teach you. How are things going on, at your crib, my boy?”
“Famously;” I answered, for it was not likely that I should discourse of my troubles to him. “Nothing could be better, Mr.