Kit and Kitty: A Story of West Middlesex. Blackmore Richard Doddridge

pleasure, and shouts that almost drowned the smothered howls from within, when the carriage came upon them, and very nearly served them right. “Let them have the whip,” cried the lady with due feeling, when the footman had jumped down and reported all the facts; but the ring-leaders had vanished, and the boys who tasted lash were some innocent little ones who had only helped in shouting. “Hand him in to me,” was her next order; and the poor trembling animal saw pity in her eyes, and gave her face a timid lick, which made his fortune. No claimant being found for him, the lady took him home, and aptly called him “Regulus,” which the servants very promptly converted into “Ragless,” reasoning well that the Italian greyhound wore a coat, but this dog had none, save the bristles wherewith Nature had endowed him. In the course of time he superseded every other dog, and probably every human being, in the affection of Miss Coldpepper.

      If the early portion of his life had been unhappy, fortune had now made him ample amends, and he should have been in amity with all mankind. But whether from remembrance of his youthful woes, or cynical perception of our frailties and our frauds, Regulus never acquired that sweetness, which we look for in dogs, so much more than in ourselves. His standard of action was strict duty beyond doubt, but a duty too strictly limited, and confined to two persons – himself, and his mistress. With the rest of creation he was cheerfully at war, though tolerably neutral towards the cook, when she could bid high enough for his consideration. These things made him deeply respected.

      In person however, he was not quite a dog to arouse any vast enthusiasm. He belonged to the order of the wiry-coated terriers, if he was a terrier at all; for in him all the elements were so duly mingled, that Nature could only proclaim him a dog. The colour of ginger and that of cinnamon were blended together in his outward dog; and he went on three legs, quite as often as on four, as much from contempt of the earth perhaps as from feelings of physical economy. There was nothing base about him; he had fine teeth, and he showed them, but never made insidious assault on anybody. When he meant to bite, he did it quickly, and expressed his satisfaction afterwards.

      To seduce such a sentry, was an enterprise worthy of him, who in sweet love’s service, and dispensing its mournful melodies, enchanted the son of Echidna. And it may have been this sense of difficulty, and a sporting desire to conquer it, which led me to follow up the joke, and try my hand at a job, which had beaten the deepest dog-stealers of Seven Dials.

      All day long, I hoped to get at least a glimpse, or if bad luck would not allow that, to hear at any rate something of that young lady, without whom my life must grow old and barren. For this was no school-boy affair of the fancy, nor even a light skit of early manhood, such as fifty young fellows have out of fifty-one, and go their way quickly after some other girl. I had never been given to such fugitive sport; I was now in the prime of my years almost, and though I might have looked at maidens, and thought what pretty things they were, none had ever touched my heart till now. And “touched” is by no means the proper word to use; it should be said plainly, that all my heart was occupied, and possessed to its deepest fibre by a being far better, and sweeter, and nobler than its outer and bodily owner; and that this must abide so to its very latest pulse; as you will truly find, if you care to hear about it.

      Not a word came to me about those things which destroyed all my attention to any other; and the dusk had stopped work – which was my only comfort – and I sat all alone that Wednesday evening trying to get through a little bread and cheese, but glancing more often from our old window at the gloomy rush of the river, which was still in high flood though some little abated. Uncle Corny was gone, to try to get some money from people who had thriven on his hard-won fruit, and Mrs. Tabby Tapscott had left the house early, upon some business of her own. The house-door was open, for we had not many rogues, till the railway came some years afterwards; and the evening was of those that smell of beehives, and cornstacks, and horses upon their way home. At last, when I had made up my mind to be forgotten by every one, in came Tabby, as bright as a bun.

      “Oh fai, oh fai!” she cried; “whatever be ’e doing of? Atin’ no zupper, and zittin’ as if ’e was mazed a’most. Look ’e zee what the Lord hath zent ’e! I was vorced to go arl the way to Hampton for ’un, for year of they long tongues to Zunbury. If this wun’t vetch Measter Ragless, arl I can zay is her bain’t a dog. Putt ’un down in zellar, when I’ve larned ’e how to use ’un.”

      From beneath her shawl she produced a little box, which she opened in triumph, and the room was filled at once with a very peculiar odour quite unknown to me. It was pungent rather than pleasant, and it made me sneeze as well as laugh.

      “You be up there by vaive o’clock, when the daisies’ eyes be openin’, and goo to the zide door I tould ’e of” – Mrs. Tapscott knew all the household ways at Coldpepper Hall, through a niece of hers who was kitchen-maid, “and vang this by the coord out o’ heelin’, wi’out titchin’ of ’un with thy vingers, and drag ’un athort the grass and the pilm to backzide o’ the zhrubbery, and then you step out o’ zight in a lew cornder. Ould dog be put out at zix o’clock riglar, and ’tis liable he’ll hurn straight to ’e. Then let ’un ate a hummick, and kitch ’un up vittily, and pop ’un into barg, and carr ’un home here, and I’ll zhow ’e what to do with ’un. But mind as her don’t scammel ’e. Her be turble itemy.”

      She gave me many other minute directions, and made me laugh so that my spirits rose, with the hope of an interesting little farce, to relieve the more tragic surroundings. I undertook briskly to play my part, looking on the matter as a harmless joke; though I came to think in course of time that the cruel theft I suffered from might partly be a just requital for this wicked robbery. And yet it was absurd and senseless, to make such comparison.

      Without disturbing Uncle Corny, who slept very heavily, I was up before daylight on the Thursday morning, and set out with the box and bag on my felonious enterprise. Coldpepper Hall, or Manor, as it was called indifferently, stood back upon some rising ground at a distance from the river, and was sheltered well by growth of trees. There was nothing very grand about it, and it leaned on stucco more than stone; but there was plenty of room both within and without, and any one getting inside the doors might say to himself, with some comfort flowing into him – “I am sure that I need never be in any hurry here.”

      The sun meant to get up a little later on, when I jumped the palings of this old demesne, at a place where of right there should have been a footpath, but the owner of the Manor had stopped it long ago, perceiving the superior claims of quietude. Nobody had cared to make a fuss about it, but enough of ancestral right remained to justify me in getting over. Every window of the house was still asleep, and I gazed at it with humble reverence, not as the citadel of the Coldpeppers, but as the shrine of my sacred love. Then I chose a place of ambush in a nest of hollies, and approaching the sallyport of Regulus, drew a slow trail from it across the dewy grass to my lurking-place, and there waited calmly.

      Sweet visions of love from the ivory gate now favoured me with their attendance, partly perhaps because love had not allowed me to sleep out my sleep. Far as I am from any claim to the merits of a classical education, I had been for some years, off and on, as a day boy at Hampton Grammar-school, and could do a bit of Virgil pretty well, and an ode or two of Horace. Whenever Uncle Corny came across a Latin name he would call for me; and take it altogether, I had long been considered the most learned young man in Sunbury. Even now I remembered, though most of it was gone, the story of the Nymph who placed her son in ambuscade for Proteus, and the noble description of Regulus on parole, waving off the last kiss of his wife and babes. Grimly he set his manly visage on the ground; and my Regulus was doing the very same thing now.

      Fat Charles had opened the door with a yawn, and sent forth that animal of Roman type, to snuff the morning air, and perform his toilet, and pay his orisons in general. Luxurious days had told their tale; it was too plain that Capua had corrupted Sabine simplicity. Regulus moved with a listless air, his desire to find whom he might bite lay dormant, and no sense of iniquity pricked his ears, or lifted the balance of his tail. “Let the world wag,” was the expression of his eyes, “I get whatever I want in it, and would wag to it also, if I were not too fat.” It appeared too certain that if I meant to catch him, I should have to go and bag him where he stood.

      But suddenly down went his nose, and his bristles flew up, and every line of his system grew stiff as wire.