DINNER falling in a time of excitement like that which I have just described, with its suggestions of perfect calm and regularity, the unbroken routine of life, has a very curious effect upon agitated minds. John Mitford felt as if some catastrophe must have happened to him as he sat alone at his side of the table, and looked across at Kate, who was a little troubled too, and reflected how long a time he must sit there eating and drinking, or pretending to eat and drink; obliged to keep at that distance from her—to address common conversation to her—to describe the boating, and the wood, and all that had happened, as if it had been the most ordinary expedition in the world. Kate was very kind to him in this respect, though perhaps he was too far gone to think it kind. She took upon herself the weight of the conversation. She told Mrs Mitford quite fluently all about the boat and her bad steering, and all the accidents that had happened, and how John had jumped into the water. “I know you will never forgive me if he has caught cold,” Kate said, glibly, with even a mischievous look in her eye; “but I must tell. And I do hope you changed your stockings,” she said, leaning across the table to him with a smile. It was a mocking smile, full of mischief, and yet there was in it a certain softened look. It was then that poor John felt as if some explosion must take place, as he sat and restrained himself, and tried to look like a man interested in his dinner. Nobody else took any notice of his agitation, and probably even his mother did not perceive it; but Jervis the butler did, as he stood by his side, and helped Mr John to potatoes. He could not dissimulate the shaking of his hand.
“My dear, I should never blame you,” said Mrs Mitford, with a little tremor in her voice; “he is always so very rash. Of course you changed, John?”
“Oh, of course,” he said, with a laugh, which sounded cynical and Byronic to his audience. And then he made a violent effort to master himself. “Miss Crediton thought the river was rather pretty,” he added, with a hard-drawn breath of agitation, which sounded to his mother like the first appearance of the threatened cold.
“Jervis,” she said, mildly, “will you be good enough to fetch me the camphor from my cupboard, and two lumps of sugar? My dear boy, it is not nasty; it is only as a precaution. It will not interfere with your dinner, and it is sure to stop a cold.”
John gave his mother a look under which she trembled. It said as plainly as possible, you are making me ridiculous; and it was pointed by a glance at Kate, who certainly was smiling. Mrs Mitford was quick enough to understand, and she was cowed by her son’s gravity. “Perhaps, on second thoughts,” she said, faltering, “you need not mind, Jervis. It will do when Mr John goes to bed.”
“The only use of camphor is at the moment when you take a cold,” said Dr Mitford; “identify that moment, and take your dose, and you are all safe. But I have always found that the great difficulty was to identify the moment. Did you point out to Miss Crediton the curious effect the current has had upon the rocks? I am not geological myself, but still it is very interesting. The constant friction of the water has laid bare a most remarkable stratification. Ah! I see he did not point it out, from your look.”
“Indeed I don’t think Mr John showed me anything that was instructive,” said Kate, with a demure glance at him. At present she was having it all her own way.
“Ah! youth, youth,” said Dr Mitford, shaking his head. “He was much more likely to tell you about his boating exploits, I fear. If you really wish to understand the history and structure of the district, you must take me with you, Miss Crediton. Young men are so foolish as to think these things slow.”
“But then I am going away to-morrow,” said Kate, with a little pathetic inflection of her voice. “And perhaps Mrs Mitford will never ask me to come back again. And I shall have to give up the hope of knowing the district. But anybody that steers so badly as I do,”—Kate continued, with much humility, but doubtful grammar, “it is not to be wondered at if the gentleman who is rowing them should think they were too ignorant to learn.”
“Then the gentleman who was rowing you was a stupid fellow,” said the Doctor. “I never had a more intelligent listener in my life; but, my dear young lady, you must come back when the Society is here. Their meeting is at Camelford, and they must make an excursion to the Camp.”
“And you will come and stay with us, Dr Mitford,” said Kate, coaxingly; “now, promise. It will be something to look forward to. You shall have the room next the library, that papa always keeps for his learned friends, he says. And if Mrs Mitford would be good, and let the parish take care of itself, and come too——”
“Oh hush! my dear; we must not look forward so far,” said Mrs Mitford, with a little cloud upon her face. She had found out by this time that John was in trouble, and she had no heart to enter into any discussion till she knew what it was. And then she opened out suddenly into a long account of the Fanshawe family, apropos de rien. Mrs Fanshawe had been calling that afternoon, and they had heard from their granddaughter, Cicely, who was abroad for her health—for all that family was unfortunately very delicate. And poor Cicely would have to spend the winter at Nice, the doctor said. Kate bent her head over her plate, and ate her grapes (the very first of the season, which Mr Crediton’s gardener had forced for his young mistress, and sent to Fanshawe Regis to aid her cure), and listened without paying much attention to the story of Cicely Fanshawe’s troubles. Nobody else took any further part in the conversation after Mrs Mitford had commenced that monologue, except indeed the Doctor, who now and then would ask a question. As for the two young people, they sat on either side of the table, and tried to look as if nothing had happened. And Kate, for one, succeeded very well in this laudable effort—so well that poor John, in his excitement and agitation, sank to the depths of despair as he twisted one of the great vine-leaves in his fingers, and watched her furtively through all the windings of his mother’s story. He said to himself, it is nothing to her. Her mind is quite unmoved by anything that has happened. She could not have understood him, John felt—she could not have believed him. She must have thought he was saying words which he did not mean. Perhaps that was the way among the frivolous beings to whom she was accustomed; but it was not the way with John.
While the mother was giving that account of the young Fanshawes, and the father interposing his questions about Cicely’s health, their son was working himself up into a fever of determination. He eyed Kate at the other side of the table, with a certain rage of resolution mingling with his love. She should not escape him like this. She should answer him one way or another. He could bear anything or everything from her except this silence; but that he would not bear. She should tell him face to face. He might have lost the very essence and joy of life, but still he should know downright that he had lost it. This passion was growing in him while the quiet slumberous time crept on, and all was told about Cicely Fanshawe. Poor Cicely! just Kate’s age, and sent to Nice to die; but that thought never occurred to the vehement young lover, nor did it occur to Kate, as she sat and ate her grapes, and gave little glances across the table, and divined that he was rising to a white heat. “I must run off to my own room, and say it is to do my packing,” Kate said to herself, with a little quake in her heart; and yet she would rather have liked—behind a curtain or door, out of harm’s way—to have heard him say what he had to say.
Mrs Mitford was later than usual of leaving the table—and she took Kate by the arm, being determined apparently to contrarier everybody on this special evening, and made her sit down on the sofa by her in the drawing-room. “My dear, I must have you to myself for a little while to-night,” she said, drawing the girl’s hands into her own. And then she sat and talked. It seemed to Kate that she talked of everything in heaven and earth; but the old singing had come back to her ears, and she could not pay attention. “Now he is coming,” she said to herself; “now I shall be obliged to sit still all the evening; now I shall never be able to escape from him.” By-and-by, however, Kate began to feel piqued that John should show so little eagerness to follow her. “Yes, indeed, dear Mrs Mitford, you may be sure I shall always remember your kindness,” she said, aloud. But in her heart she was saying in the same breath, “Oh, very well; if he does not care I am sure I do not care. I am only too glad to be let off so easy;” which was true, and yet quite the reverse of true.
But then Kate did not see the watcher outside the window in the darkness, who saw all that was going on, and bided his time, though he trembled with impatience and excitement. Not knowing he was there, she came to have a very disdainful feeling about him as the moments passed on. To ask such a question as that, and never to insist on an answer! Well, he might be very nice; but what should she do with a man that took so little pains to secure his object. Or was it his object at all? He might be cleverer than she had taken him for; he might be but playing with her, as she had intended to play with him. Indignant with these thoughts, she rose up when Mrs Mitford’s last words came to a conclusion, and detached herself, not without a slight coldness, from that kind embrace. “I must go and see to my things, please,” she said, raising her head like a young queen. “But, my dear, there is Parsons,” said Mrs Mitford. “Oh, but I must see after everything myself,” replied Kate, and went away, not in haste, as making her escape, but with a certain stateliness of despite. She walked out of the room in quite a leisurely way, feeling it beneath her dignity to fly from an adversary that showed no signs of pursuing; and even turned round at the door to say something with a boldness which looked almost like bravado. He will come now, no doubt, and find me gone, and I hope he will enjoy the tête-à-tête with his mother, she mused, with a certain ferocity; and so went carelessly out, with all the haughtiness of pique, and walked almost into John Mitford’s arms!
He seized her hand before she knew what had happened, and drew it through his arm, first throwing a shawl round her, which he had picked up somewhere, and which, suddenly curling round her like a lasso, was Kate’s first indication of what had befallen her. “I have been watching you till I am half wild,” he whispered in her ear. “Oh come with me to the garden, and say three words to me. I have no other chance for to-night.”
“Oh, please, let me go. I must see to my packing—indeed I must,” cried Kate, so startled and moved by the suddenness of the attack, and by his evident excitement, that she could scarcely keep from tears.
“Not now,” said John, in her ear—“not now. I must have my answer. You cannot be so cruel as to go now. Only half an hour—only ten minutes—Kate!”
“Hush! oh hush!” she cried, feeling herself conquered; and ere she knew, the night air was blowing in her face, and the dark sky, with its faint little summer stars, was shining over her, and John Mitford, holding her close, with her hand on his arm, was bending over her, a dark shadow. She could not read in his face all the passion that possessed him, but she felt it, and it made her tremble, woman of the world as she was.
“Kate,” he said, “I cannot go searching for words now. I think I will go mad if you don’t speak to me. Tell me what I am to hope for. Give me my answer. I cannot bear any more.”
His voice was hoarse; he held her hand fast on his arm, not caressing, but compelling. He was driven out of all patience; and for the first time in her life Kate’s spirit was cowed, and her wit failed to the command of the situation.
“Let me go!” she said; “oh, do let me go! you frighten me, Mr John.”
“Don’t call me Mr John. I am your slave, if you like; I will be anything you please. You said just now we belonged to each other; so we do. No, I can’t be generous; it is not the moment to be generous. I have a claim upon you—don’t call me Mr John.”
“Then what shall I call you?” Kate said, with a little hysterical giggle. And all at once, at that most inappropriate moment, there flashed across her mind the first name she had recognised his identity by. My John—was that the alternative? She shrank a little and trembled, and did not know whether she should laugh or cry. Should she call him that just as an experiment, to see how he would take it?—or what else could she do to escape from him out of this dark place, all full of dew, and odours, and silence, into the light and the safety of her own room? And yet all this time she made no attempt to withdraw her hand from his arm. She wanted something to lean on at such a crisis, and he was very handy for leaning on—tall, and strong, and sturdy, and affording a very adequate support. “Oh, do let me go!” she burst out all at once. “It was only for your own good I spoke to you; I did not mean—this. Why should you do things for me? I don’t want—to make any change. I should like to have you always just as we have been—friends. Don’t say any more just yet—listen. I like you very very much for a friend. You said yourself we were like brother and sister. Oh, why should you vex me and bother me, and want to be anything different?” said Kate, in her confusion, suddenly beginning to cry without any warning. But next moment, without knowing how it was, she became aware that she was crying very comfortably on John’s shoulder. Her crying was more than he could bear. He took her into his arms to console her without any arrière pensée. “Oh, my darling, I am not worth it,” he said, stooping over her. “Is it for me—that would never let the wind blow on you? Kate! I will not trouble you any more.” And with that, before he was aware, in his compunction and sympathy, his lips somehow found themselves close to her cheek. It was all to keep her from crying—to show how sorry he was for having grieved her. His heart yearned over the soft tender creature. What did it matter what he suffered, who was only a man? But that Kate should cry!—and that it should be his fault! He felt in his simplicity that he was giving her up for ever, and his big heart almost broke, as he bent down trembling, and encountered that soft warm velvet cheek.
How it happened I cannot tell. He did not mean it, and she did not mean it. But certainly Kate committed herself hopelessly by crying there quite comfortably on his shoulder, and suffering herself to be kissed without so much as a protest. He was so frightened by his own temerity, and so surprised at it, that even had she vindicated her dignity after the first moment, and burst indignant from his arms, John would have begged her pardon with abject misery, and there would have been an end of him. But somehow Kate was bewildered, and let that moment pass; and after the surprise and shock which his own unprecedented audacity wrought in him, John grew bolder, as was natural. She was not angry; she endured it without protest. Was it possible that in her trouble she was unconscious of it? And involuntarily John came to see that boldness was now his only policy, and that it must not be possible for her to ignore the facts of the case. That was all simple enough. But as for Kate, I am utterly unable to explain her conduct. Even when she came to herself, all she did was to put up her hands to her face, and to murmur piteously, humbly, “Don’t! oh, please, don’t!” And why shouldn’t he, when that was all the resistance she made?
After this, the young man being partly delirious, as might have been expected, it was Kate who had to come to the front of affairs and take the lead. “Do, please, be rational now,” she said, shaking herself free all in a moment. “And give me your arm, you foolish John, and let us take a turn round the garden. Oh, what would your mother say if she knew how ridiculous you have been making yourself? Tell me quietly what it is you want now,” she added, in her most coaxing tone, looking up into his face.
Upon which the bewildered fellow poured forth a flood of ascriptions of praise and pæans of victory, and compared Kate, who knew she was no angel, to all the deities and excellences ever known to man. She listened to it all patiently, and then shook her head with gentle half-maternal tolerance.
“Well,” she said, “let us take all that for granted, you know. Of course I am everything that is nice. If you did not think so you would be a savage; but, John, please don’t be foolish. Tell me properly. I have gone and given in to you when I did not mean to. And now, what do you want?”
“I want you,” he said; “have you any doubt about that? And, except for your sake, I don’t care for anything else in the world.”
“Oh, but I care for a great many things,” said Kate. “And, John,” she went on, joining both her hands on his arm, and leaning her head lightly against it in her caressing way, “first of all, you have accepted my conditions, you know, and taken my advice?”
“Yes, my darling,” said John; and then somehow his eye was caught by the lights in the windows so close at hand, the one in the library, the other in the drawing-room, where sat his parents, who had the fullest confidence in him; and he gave a slight start and sigh in spite of himself.
“Perhaps you repent your bargain already,” said impetuous Kate, being instantly conscious of both start and sigh, and of the feeling which had produced them.
“Ah! how can you speak to me so,” he said, “when you know if it was life I had to pay for it I would do it joyfully? No; even if I had never seen you I could not have done what they wanted me. That is the truth. And now I have you, my sweetest——”
“Hush,” she said, softly, “we have not come to that yet. There is a great deal, such a great deal, to think about; and there is papa——”
“And I have so little to offer,” said John; “it is only now I feel how little. Ah! how five minutes change everything! It never came into my mind that I had nothing to offer you—I was so full of yourself. But now!—you who should have kingdoms laid at your feet—what right had a penniless fellow like me——”
“If you regret you can always go back,” said Kate, promptly; “though, you know, it is a kind of insinuation against me, as if I had consented far too easy. And, to tell the truth, I never did consent.”
Here poor John clutched at her hand, which seemed to be sliding from his arm, and held it fast without a word.
“No, I never did consent,” said Kate. “It was exactly like the savages that knock a poor girl down and then carry her off. You never asked me even—you took me. Well, but then the thing to be drawn from that, is not any nonsense about giving up. If you will promise to be good, and do everything I tell you, and let me manage with papa——”
“But it is my business to let him know,” said John. “No, my darling—not even for you. I could not skulk, nor do anything underhand. I must tell him, and I must tell them——”
“Then you will have your way, and we shall come to grief,” said Kate; “as if I did not know papa best. And then—I am not half nor quarter so good as you; but in some things I am cleverer than you, John.”
“In everything, dear,” he said, with one of those ecstatic smiles peculiar to his state of folly, though in the darkness Kate did not get the benefit of it. “I never have, never will compare myself to my darling. It is all your goodness letting me—all your sweetness and humility and——”
“Please don’t,” said Kate, “please stop—please don’t talk such nonsense. Oh, I hope I shall never behave so badly that you will be forced to find me out. But now about papa. It must be me to tell him; you may come in afterwards, if you like. I know what I shall do. I will drive the phaeton to the station to meet him. I will be the one to tell him first. John, I know what I am talking of, and I must have my own way.”
“Are you out there, John, in the dark? and who have you got with you?” said Mrs Mitford’s voice suddenly in their ears. It made them jump apart as if it had been the voice of a ghost. And Kate, panting, blazing with blushes in the darkness, feeling as if she never could face those soft eyes again, recoiled back into the lilies, and felt the great white paradise of dew and sweetness take her in, and busk her round with a garland of odour. Oh, what was she to do? Would he be equal to the emergency? Thus it will be seen that, though she was very fond of him, she had not yet the most perfect confidence in the reliability of her John.
“Yes, mother, I am here,” said John, with a mellow fulness in his voice which Kate could not understand, so different was it from his usual tone, “and I have Kate with me—my Kate—your Kate; or, at least, there she is among the lilies. She ought to be in your arms first, after mine.”
“After yours!” His mother gave a little scream. And Kate held up her head among the flowers, blushing, yet satisfied. It was shocking of him to tell; but yet it settled the question. She stood irresolute for a moment, breathing quick with excitement, and then she made a little run into Mrs Mitford’s arms. “He has made me be engaged to him whether I will or not,” she said, half crying on her friend’s shoulder. “He has made me. Won’t you love me too?”
“O Kate!” was all the mother could say. “O my boy! what have you done?—what have you done? John, her father is ten times as rich as we are. He will say we have abused his trust. Oh! what shall I do?”
“Abused his trust indeed!” said Kate. “John, you are not to say a word; she does not understand. Why, it was I who did it all! I gave him no peace. I kept talking to him of things I had no business with; and he is only a man—indeed he is only a boy. Mamma, won’t you kiss me, please?” said Kate, all at once sinking into the meekest of tones; upon which Mrs Mitford, quite overcome, and wanting to kiss her son first, and with a hundred questions in her mind to pour out upon him, yet submitted, and put her arm round the stranger who was clinging to her and kissed Kate—but not with her heart. She had kissed her a great deal more tenderly only yesterday, just to say good-night; and then the three stood silent in the darkness, and the scene took another shape, and John’s beatitude was past. The moment the mother joined them another world came in. The enchanted world, which held only two figures, opened up and disappeared like a scene at a theatre; and lo! there appeared all round a mass of other people to whom John’s passion was a matter of indifference or a thing to be disapproved. Suddenly the young pair felt themselves standing not only before John’s anxious mother, but before Mr Crediton, gloomy and wretched; before Dr Mitford, angry and mortified; before the whole neighbourhood, who would judge them without much consideration of mercy. John’s reflections at this moment were harder to support than those of Kate, for he knew he was giving up for her sake the vocation he had been trained to, and the awful necessity of declaring his resolution to his father and mother was before him. Whereas the worst that could be said of Kate was that she was a little flirt, and had turned John Mitford’s head—and she had heard as much before. But, notwithstanding, they were both strangely sobered all in a moment as they stood there, fallen out of their fairy sphere, by Mrs Mitford’s side.
“My dears, I must hear all about this after,” she said, with a kind of tremulous solemnity, “but in the mean time you must come in to tea. Whatever we do, we must not be late for prayers.”