WHEN Walter came back, having ordered a meal such as was most easily procurable in those regions, that is to say, tea and stale bread and fresh oatcakes and a dish of ham and eggs, he found Kitty waiting for him in a fever of impatience. She had one of the blacksmith’s big register-books opened out upon the table, and her eyes were dancing with excitement. She rushed to meet him and caught him by the arm.
‘Wat!’ she said, ‘oh, how soon can we get back?’
‘Get back!’ he cried; ‘but we are not going back.’
‘Oh yes, but we are, as quick as we can fly. Go and order the horses this minute—oh, I forgot, it’s a train! Can’t we have a train directly? When is there a train?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Kitty, what do you mean? But we are married! You can’t be going to turn your back upon me.’
‘Oh, fiddlesticks!’ said Kitty, in her excitement; ‘who talks of turning their back? I’ve found out something that will make mamma jump; it makes me jump to begin with!’ exclaimed the girl, performing a dance on the floor. ‘They’ll never say a word to us. They’ll be struck dumb with this. Look! look!’
Walter looked with great surprise, without the slightest conception of what it could be to which his attention was called. His eyes wandered along the page, seeing nothing. A long array of names: what could there be in these to call for all this commotion? Kitty pushed him aside in her excitement. She laid her finger upon one short signature written very small. He read it, and turned and looked at her aghast.
‘Kitty! what do you mean? Who is it? It can’t—it can’t be——’
‘Well!’ cried Kitty, ‘and who could it be? “Joan Blencarrow”—there’s only one person of that name in all the world.’
‘Good heavens!’ Walter cried. He had more feeling than she had, for he stood aghast. Mrs. Blencarrow! He seemed to see her suddenly in all her dignity and splendour, as he had seen her standing receiving her guests. Kitty jumped with excitement, but Walter was appalled.
‘Mrs. Blencarrow! I can’t believe it! I don’t believe it!’ he said.
‘What does it matter whether you believe it or not, for there it is?’ said Kitty, triumphant. ‘Oh, what a state mamma will be in! She will never say a word to us. She will pay no attention, any more than if we had been out for a walk. Oh, how she will like to pull down Mrs. Blencarrow!—she that was always so grand, and people thinking there was nobody like her. And all this time—three years——’
Kitty’s eyes danced with delight. To think that she should be the one to find out such a wonderful secret intoxicated her with satisfaction and pleasure.
‘Kitty,’ said Walter, with hesitation, ‘we have found it out by accident.’
‘Oh, don’t say we! I’ve found it out. It would never have come into your head to look at the books.’
‘Well, you then. You have found it out by accident, and when we’re happy ourselves, why should we try to make other people miserable? Kitty!’ He put his arm round her, and pleaded with his lips close to her ear.
‘Oh, nonsense!’ she said; ‘all men are taken in like that; but I can’t let her off; I won’t let her off. Why, it wouldn’t be right!’
‘There are some people who would think what we are doing wasn’t right,’ said Walter.
‘Oh, you coward,’ cried Kitty, ‘to turn round on me when we haven’t been married an hour! As if it was my doing, when you know that but for you——’
‘I am not turning round on you. I never said it was your doing. Kitty, darling, don’t let us quarrel. You know I never meant——’
‘I shall quarrel, if I like,’ cried Kitty, bursting into tears; and they had it out, as they had already done a hundred times, and would a hundred more, enjoying it thoroughly. It suddenly occurred to Walter, however, as the little episode drew near a close, that the ham and eggs must be ready, and he threw in an intimation to this effect with very telling results. Kitty jumped up, dried her eyes, straightened her hat, and declared that she was dying of hunger.
‘But whatever happens, and however serious things may be, you always will go on,’ she said.
He was magnanimous, being very hungry too, and restrained the retort that was trembling on his tongue, that it was she who would go on; and they flew across to the little alehouse, arm in arm, and enjoyed their ham and eggs even more than they had enjoyed their quarrel.
They found out that the next train ‘up’ was not till eleven o’clock, which set their minds at rest, for they had meant to go to London before Kitty’s mind had been all unsettled by that discovery. Walter had begun to hope she had forgotten all about it, when she suddenly jumped up from the table—not, however, before she had made a very satisfactory meal.
‘Oh, what a fool I am!’ cried Kitty. ‘I never paid any attention to the man!’
‘What man?’
‘Why, the man she was married to, you goose! A woman can’t be married all by herself. It was a long name—Everard something. I didn’t know it, or I should have paid more attention. Haven’t you finished yet?—for I must run this instant——’
‘Where, Kitty?’
‘Why, to look up the book again!’ she cried.
‘I wish you’d give this up,’ said Walter. ‘Do, to please me. We’ve got all we wish ourselves, and why should we worry other people, Kitty?’
‘If you have got all you wish, I have not. I want to please them—to make them do something for us; and when a thing like this turns up—the very thing!—why, mamma will hug us both—she will forgive us on the spot. She’ll be so pleased she’ll do anything for us. I don’t know about Mrs. Lawrence——’
‘It won’t do us any good with my mother,’ said Walter, with a thrill of dread coming over him, for he did not like to think of his mother and that terrible trustee.
‘By the way,’ cried Kitty, with a pirouette of delight, ‘it’s I that am Mrs. Lawrence now, and she’s only the Dowager. Fancy turning a person who has always made you shake in your shoes into the Dowager! It’s too delightful—it’s worth all the rest.’
Walter did not like this to be said about his mother. He had deceived and disappointed her, but he was not without a feeling for her.
‘That is all nonsense,’ he said. ‘It is not as if I had come into the property and my mother had to turn out; for everything is hers. I hope you don’t mind being Mrs. Walter, Kitty, for my sake.’
Kitty considered a moment whether she should be angry, but concluded that it was too soon after the last quarrel, and would be monotonous and a bore, so she caught up his hat instead and thrust it into his hand.
‘Come along,’ she said; ‘come along. We have sat a long time over breakfast, and there is no time to lose; I must make out the other name in that book.’
But here the young lady met with an unexpected check, for the blacksmith stopped them as they entered his house, striding towards them from the kitchen, where he, too, had finished a very satisfactory meal.
‘What will ye be wanting?’ he said. ‘Ye will maybe think I can unmarry ye again? but it’s not possible to do that.’
‘We don’t want to be unmarried,’ said Kitty; ‘we want just to look at the book again, to see a name.’
‘What book?’
‘The register-book that is in that room,’ said Walter; ‘my wife,’ and he gave Kitty’s arm a squeeze, ‘saw a name——’
‘My book!’ The blacksmith stood in the doorway like a mountain, not to be passed by or pushed aside. ‘I’ll have no one spying into the names in my book.’
‘I don’t want to spy,’ said Kitty;’ it’s somebody I know.’
But the big man would hear no reason; he looked at the little couple before him, so young and so silly, as if he had been a bishop at least.
‘I couldn’t refuse to marry ye,’ he said; ‘I hadn’t the right. But if I had followed my own lights, I would just have sent ye home to your parents to be put back in the nursery; and ye shall see no books of mine, nor tell tales upon other folk.’
And nothing could move him from this resolution. Kitty nearly cried with vexation when they got into the train again; her own escapade dwindled into something quite secondary.
‘It was so silly of me not to make sure of the name. I am sure the first name was Everard, or something like that. And what a brute that man is, Walter! If you had really loved me as you say, you would have pushed him away or knocked him down.’
‘Why, he was six times as big as me, Kitty!’
‘What does that matter,’ she said, ‘when it’s for the sake of someone you love?’
But perhaps this is rather a feminine view.
There had been, as may be supposed, a great commotion in The Leas when it was found that Kitty’s room was vacant in the morning. A girl’s absence is more easily discovered than a boy’s. Mrs. Lawrence thought that Walter had gone off for the day to see some of his friends, and would come back to dinner, as he had done many times before; and though she was angry with him for leaving his work, she was not anxious. But a young lady does not make escapades of this sort; and when it was discovered that Kitty’s best things had disappeared, and her favourite locket, and that she had evidently never gone to bed in a proper and legitimate way, the house and the neighbourhood was roused. Mrs. Bircham sent off messengers far and near; and Mr. Bircham himself, though an easy-minded man, went out on the same errand, visiting, among other places, Blencarrow, where all the gaiety of a Christmas party was still going on, and the boys were trying with delight the first faint film of ice upon the pond to see when it would be likely to bear. Then, after a hasty but late luncheon, he had gone to see whether Mrs. Lawrence knew anything about the fugitive; and Mrs. Bircham, at her wits’ end, and not knowing what to do, was alone in the drawing-room at The Leas, pondering everything, wishing she had Kitty there to shake her, longing to pour forth floods of wrath; but at the same time chilled by that dread of something having happened which will come in even when a mother is most enraged. She was saying to herself that nothing could have happened—that it must be that young Lawrence—that the girl was an idiot—that she washed her hands of her—that she would have nothing to do with them—that, oh, if she had only thought to lock her up in her bedroom and stop it all!
‘Oh, Kitty, Kitty! where are you, child?’ she cried nervously at the conclusion of all.
There was a rustle and a little rush, and Kitty ran in, flinging herself upon her knees upon the hearthrug, and replied:
‘Here I am—here I am, mamma!’
Mrs. Bircham uttered a shriek. She saw Walter behind, and the situation in a moment became clear to her.
‘You young fools!’ she said; ‘you disobedient, ungrateful children—you——’
‘Oh, mamma, one moment. We have been to Gretna Green—Walter and me!’
‘How dared you, sir?’ said Mrs. Bircham, turning upon the hapless lover—‘how dared you steal my innocent child away? And then you come here to triumph over us. Begone, sir—begone, sir, out of my house; begone out of my house!’
Kitty jumped up off her knees and caught Walter by the arm.
‘He does not go a step without me,’ she cried. ‘But, mamma, if you would have a moment’s patience, you would not think any more about it. We were going to London; but I came back, though I knew you would scold, to tell you. Listen to me one moment,’ cried Kitty, running all the words into one; ‘it’s something about Mrs. Blencarrow.’
Mrs. Bircham had her hands raised, presumably to draw down the curse of heaven upon the pair, but at this name she paused; her countenance changed.
‘Mrs. Blencarrow?’ she gasped, and could say no more.
‘You never heard such a thing in your life!’ cried Kitty. She dropped Walter’s arm, and came forward in front of him. ‘Mamma, I saw her name in the register; there it is—anyone can see it: Joan Blencarrow—there couldn’t be another person with such a name.’
‘In the register? What—what do you mean?’
‘Mamma, I mean that Mrs. Blencarrow is married—to somebody else. She’s been married these three years. I read her name this very day. It’s in the register at Gretna Green.’
Mrs. Bircham staggered back a few steps and dropped into a chair.
‘Married!’ she cried. ‘Mrs. Blencarrow married!’
‘Three years ago,’ cried Kitty glibly. ‘Fifth January—I saw the date—three years ago!’
Mrs. Bircham sat with her hands clasped and her eyes glaring, ‘as if,’ Kitty said afterwards, ‘they would come out of her head.’ She uttered a succession of cries, from little shrieks to breathless exclamations. ‘Married!—Mrs. Blencarrow! Oh, oh, Kitty! Oh, good heavens!—Mrs. Blencarrow! Three years ago—the time she went off to Scotland to see her sister. Oh, oh, Kitty! In the register! Get me a glass of water, or I think I shall die.’
Walter disappeared for the water, thinking that after all his mother-in-law was a good-hearted woman, and didn’t feel as Kitty said she would; but when he returned, his admiration of Mrs. Bircham turned into admiration for his wife, for Kitty and her mother, sitting close as if they were the dearest friends, were laying their heads together and talking both at the same time; and the horror and amazement in Mrs. Bircham’s face had given way to the dancing of a malicious light in her eyes, and a thrill of eagerness all over her.
‘I am not at all surprised,’ she was saying when Walter came in. ‘I felt sure something of the kind would come to light sooner or later. I never would have trusted her—not a step beyond what I saw. I felt sure all wasn’t right in that house. What a mercy, Kitty, that you saw it!’
‘Wasn’t it a mercy, mamma!’
Kitty gave her young husband a look aside; she had made her peace with her news. But Mrs. Bircham thought of nothing—neither of her daughter’s escapade, nor her own just anger—of nothing but this wonderful news, and what would be the best thing to do.