Walter Besant

“ As for your curate’s girl, I warrant her innocence and her being ‘above suspicion’—indeed!—to be pretty hypocrisy and pretence. As if any woman was above suspicion!”
“Oh!” said Nancy, as a parting shot, “nobody, I assure you, ever thought Miss Peggy Baker or any of her friends above suspicion. Let us do you, dear miss, so much justice. You shall not find us ungrateful or unmindful of the benefits you have conferred, or are about to confer, upon us. Malice and spite, when they are impotent, are amusing, like the tricks of a monkey in a cage, or a bear dancing at a stake.” ”

“ I replied. “Dear madam, you do not understand. If I get not Lord Chudleigh for my husband, I will never have any man. If I cannot be his slave, then will I be no man’s queen. For oh! I love the ground he walks upon; the place where he lodges is my palace, his kind looks are my paradise; I want no heaven unless I can hold his hand in mine.”
I refrain from setting down all I said, because I think I was like a mad thing, having in my mind at once my overweening love, my repentance and shame, and my terror in thinking of what my lord would say when he heard the truth. ”

“ Kitty shook her head again. She was truly grateful; there was no one so kind as her ladyship; but she must go to London as her father bade her.
“Why,” cried Sir Robert, “the child is right. Let her go. But if she is unhappy with her friends, or if she is in any trouble, let her know where to look for help.”
“There may be cousins,” said madam, “who will find thee too pretty for their own faces, and would keep thee at home with the towels and dusters and napkins. I would not have our Kitty a Cinderella—though house-service is no disgrace to a gentlewoman. ”

“ At that moment Lady Levett arrived with her party. I think Sir Robert saw our distress and my guardian’s anxiety to appear at her ease, for he kindly took Mrs. Esther by the hand, and led her, as if she were the greatest lady in the assembly, to the upper end, while Nancy and I followed after.
“O Kitty!” she whispered; “there is no one half so beautiful as you—no one in all the room! How the men stare! Did they never see a pretty woman before? Wait in patience for a little, ye would-be lovers, till your betters are served. Peggy Baker, my dear, you will burst with envy. ”

“ I am but a woman, and there is nothing in the world—except the love of my husband and my children—that I think more precious than my past beauty.
Soothed, then, by my uncle’s flatteries, comforted by his promises, and terrified by his admonitions, I fell in a very few days into the dreams by which youth beguiles the cares of the present. My husband, Lord Chudleigh, would go his own way and never ask after me; I should go mine as if he did not exist; some time or other we should leave the Liberties of the Fleet, and go to live near Lady Levett and my dear Nancy. ”

“ Kitty had found favour in the sight of this dethroned king. He loved the maid: her freshness, her rosy cheeks, her youth, her innocence pleased him, I suppose. We know not, we women, for what qualities there are in us that we are loved by men, so that they will commit so many follies for our sake.
“Thou art such a girl, sweet Kitty,” he said to me, one day, “so pretty and so good, as would tempt a man wallowing contentedly in the pigsties of the world, to get up, wash himself, and go cleanly, for thy sake. ”

“ The lad was still sound asleep; his cheeks less red, and his breathing lighter.
“His head will ache,” said the Doctor. “I fear he is unaccustomed to punch. When he wakes his limbs will feel like lead: his throat will feel like a limekiln; his tongue will be furred like the back of a squirrel; his eyes will be hot and heavy, as if he had a fever; his hand will shake like the hand of a palsied man; he will totter when he tries to walk. Ah! cursed drink! Time was when I, who am now as seasoned as a port-wine cask, or a keg of Nantz, would feel the same when I awoke after such a night. ”

“ What joy of being Lady Chudleigh, when I had to pick my way home through the dirty and crowded market, thinking of the pain and grief this wicked thing would cause my ladies when they learned it, of the shame with which my father’s soul would have been filled had he known it, and the wrath of Lady Levett when she should hear it! “Oh, Kitty!” I thought, “how miserably art thou changed in four short months! In the happy fields at home, everything (save when the rustics swore at their cattle) breathed of religion and virtue; in this dreadful place, everything leads to profligacy and crime. ”

“ This is the story of Kitty Pleydell: how she came to London, and lived in the Rules of the Fleet: how she was made to go through the form of a marriage: how she left the dreadful, noisy, wicked place: how she went to Epsom: how Lord Chudleigh fell in love with her, to her unspeakable happiness; and how she told him her great secret. The rest, which is the history of a great and noble man married to a wife whose weakness was guided and led by him in the paths of virtue, discretion and godliness, cannot be told. ”

“ I said: “Kitty, my dear, the man you want above all other men to fall in love with you has done it; at least, it seems so. He seeks you perpetually; he talks to you; he singles you out from the rest; he is jealous; his eyes follow you about; he sends fruit and flowers to you; he gives an entertainment, and calls you the Queen of the Feast; he presses your hand and kisses your fingers. What more, Kitty, would you have?”
On the other hand, I thought: “If he falls in love with you, being already married, as he believes, to another woman, he commits a sin against his marriage vows. ”

“ As I went through, I heard voices whispering: “Where is Lord Chudleigh? where is Sir Miles? How pale she looks!” and so forth; comments of the crowd which has no heart, no pity, no sympathy. It came out to-day to look upon a woman to whom a great insult had been offered with as little pity as to-morrow it would go to see a criminal flogged from Newgate to Tyburn, or a woman whipped at Bridewell, or a wretched thief beaten before the Alderman, or a batch of rogues hanged. They came to be amused. Amusement, to most people, is the contemplation of other folks’ sufferings. ”

“ I was to be the consenting party to inflict shame and humiliation upon my lord. This was too much. Humiliation for him? Why, it was for myself, and my whole thoughts were how to save him, how to set him free. The Doctor expected me to triumph over him. Why, what did he know of a woman in love? To triumph over a man for whose dear sake she would lay down her life to save him from humiliation!
It was certain to my heart that my lord already felt for me that warmth of affection which impels a man to make a woman his wife. ”

“ I was a simple country clergyman’s daughter, whose proper place would be in his mother’s still-room; a daughter of one of those men whose very vocation, for the most part, awakens a smile of pity or contempt, according as they are the sycophants of the squire whose living they enjoy, or the drudges of their master the rector whose work they do. It was not in reason to think that Lord Chudleigh——Would to Heaven he had not come to Epsom Wells at all! Then, when the Doctor chose the day for revealing the truth, I might have borne the hatred and scorn which now, I thought, would kill me. ”