IT puzzled Kate very much next morning to find that Huntley had not reappeared. It was not in the nature of things that she could avoid thinking about him, and wondering over and over again what he could mean,—whether he was mystifying her—but that was impossible; or if it was really, actually true? And the fact was that she went down-stairs a little earlier than usual, with a great curiosity in her mind as to how Fred would look, and whether she should see any traces in his face of last night’s agitation. When she had taken this trouble, it may be supposed that it was hard upon her to find Fred absent; and she “did not like”—a new expression in Kate’s vocabulary—to ask what had become of him. She caught herself looking at the door anxiously every time it opened, but he did not come. Some one at last relieved her anxiety by asking the point-blank question, “What has become of Huntley? has he gone away?” It was an idea which never had occurred to Kate. She looked up in blank dismay at the suggestion, and met her father’s eye fully fixed upon her, and trembled, and felt that in two minutes more she must cry—not for Fred, but because he was decidedly an exciting new plaything, and he had gone away.
“Yes, he has gone away,” said Mr Crediton, “this morning, before some of us were out of bed. I have his farewells to make. He did not know it would be necessary for him to go when he left us last night.”
“I hope there is nothing the matter at Westbrook,” said one of Fred’s intimates; but Kate did not say a word. The room swam round her for one moment. Gone away! Was it so serious as that, then? The self-possessed Fred, had matters been so grave with him that flight was his only refuge? She was so startled that she did not know what to think. She was sorry, and surprised, and fluttered, and excited, all in a breath. She did not pay any attention to the conversation for some minutes, though she was sufficiently mistress of herself to take the usual part in it, and to go on dispensing cups of tea. Gone away! It was very fine, very honourable, very provoking of him. She had meant to bring him down to his level very kindly and skilfully, and cure him of all hopes, while still she kept him bound in a certain friendly chain. And now he had cut it all short, and taken the matter into his own hands. It cannot be denied that Kate was a little vexed at the moment. No doubt, if she had been left alone she would have got over it in the course of the day, and recovered her composure, and thought no more of Fred Huntley than she had done two days ago; but she was not destined to be left to herself. The first thing that happened was that Mr Crediton remained in the breakfast-room till everybody was gone, and called her to him. The most indulgent of fathers was looking somewhat stern, which was a thing of itself which utterly puzzled as well as dismayed the girl whom he had scarcely ever thwarted in the whole course of her life.
“Kate,” he said, “you took no notice when I said Fred Huntley had gone away—so I suppose he told you why it was?”
“He never said a word to me of going away, papa,” faltered Kate.
“But you know the cause? and I hope it will be a warning to you,” said Mr Crediton. “I have seen this going on for some days, and I meant to have spoken to you. A girl in your position has no right to distinguish a man as you did poor Fred.”
“But, dear papa,” cried Kate, feeling very penitent yet very much flattered—as if somebody had paid her a very nice compliment, she said afterwards—“you cannot think it was my fault; I only talked to him like the rest. If I talked to him a little more, it was about—Mr Mitford. And he knew all the time. How was I to suppose it could come to any harm?”
“Don’t let me hear of any other man being taken in by your confounded confidences—about Mr Mitford,” said her father, with an amount of rudeness and contemptuous impatience, such as perhaps had never been shown to Kate before in all her life.
“Papa!” she cried, indignant, drawing herself up; but Mr Crediton only said “Pshaw!” and went off and left her standing by herself, not knowing whether to cry or to be very angry, in the great empty room. He was wroth, and he was disposed rather to heighten than to subdue the expression of it. He wanted her to feel the full weight of his displeasure, rather a little more than less. For Fred Huntley would have suited him well enough for a son-in-law, if it was necessary to have such an article. He had distinguished himself already, and was likely still more to distinguish himself. He was thought of by the borough authorities as the new Member for Camelford. He was very well off, and could do everything that was right and meet in the way of providing for his bride. He was in her own sphere. “Confound that Mitford!” Mr Crediton said to himself as he left his daughter. It was bad enough to contemplate the possibility of ever resigning his child to John’s keeping; but to throw aside a man he liked for him, exaggerated the offence. He went out, kicking Kate’s favourite Skye terrier on his way, as angry men are apt to do. “As if it was poor Muffy that had done it!” Kate said, with the tears springing to her eyes. When she was thus left she called her injured terrier to her, and hugged it, and had a good cry. “You did not do it, did you, Muffy?” she said. “Poor dear dog! what had you to do with it? If a man chooses to be silly, are we to be kicked for it, Muffy mio? Papa is a great bear, and everybody is as unkind as they can be; and oh, I am so sorry about poor Fred!”
She got over her crying, however, and her regrets, and made herself very agreeable to a great many people for the rest of the day, and petted Muffy very much, and took no notice of her father, who, poor man, had compunctions; but by the time that evening arrived, Kate began to feel that the loss of Fred was a very serious loss indeed. He had timed his departure very cleverly. If Madeline Winton had still been there, it might have been bearable; for she would have had some one to open her heart to, notwithstanding that even to Madeline she had not been able to speak of John as she had indulged herself in doing to her “friend”—John’s friend; somehow that was not the title which she now thought of giving to Fred Huntley. He had suddenly sprung into individuality, and held a distinct place of his own in her mind. Poor Fred! could it be possible that he was so fond of her! he who was not at all a tragical sort of personage, or one likely to do anything very much out of the way for love. What could he find in her to be fond of? Kate said to herself. He was not like John, who was ignorant of society. Fred Huntley had seen heaps of other girls who were very pretty and very nice; and why was it that he had set his affections upon herself, Kate, whom he could not have? It seemed such a pity, such a waste of effort. “Madeline might have had him, perhaps,” she said to herself, reflecting pensively in her easy-chair with her fan at her lips to conceal their movement. Madeline as yet had no lover, and she was very nice, and rather pretty too. And it would have been perfectly suitable, “instead of coming making a fuss over me; and he can’t have me,” Kate added always within herself, with a sigh of suffering benevolence. It was hard he could not have her when he wanted her so very much. It was hard that everybody should not have everything they wanted. And it was odd, yet not unpleasant, that he should thus insist upon throwing away his love upon herself, who could not accept it, instead of giving it to Madeline, who might have accepted. How perverse the world was!
Thus Kate reflected as she sat and mused the evening after he had gone. She was heartily sorry to cross Fred, and felt the most affectionate sympathy for him, poor fellow! It was so nice of him to be fond of her, though she could not give him any return. And if he had stayed and talked it over, instead of running away, Kate thought of a hundred things she could have said to him, as to the unreasonableness of falling in love with herself, and the good sense of transferring his love to Madeline. Somehow she did not quite expect he would have taken her advice; but still, no doubt, she would have set it before him in a very clear light, and got him to hear reason. And then he was very pleasant to talk to, and more amusing than anybody else at Fernwood. This feeling had never crept over her in respect to John. When he went away, she was sorry because he left her half in displeasure, and “had not enjoyed himself;” but she could not persuade herself that she had missed his company, missed a hundred things he would have said to her, as she did now. She was in reality almost relieved to be quit of the passionate eyes which followed her everywhere, and the demand which he made upon her for her society, for her very inmost self. But Fred made no such claims. Fred took what he could get, and was happy in it. He spared her trouble, and watched to see what her wants were, and was always ready to talk to her or to leave her alone, as her mood varied. Poor Fred! she sighed, feeling very, very sorry for him, with a half-tenderness of pity which young women accord only to those who are their personal victims. Perhaps she exaggerated his sufferings, as it was natural to do. She sat and mused over him all that evening with her fan half concealing her face. “My dear, I am afraid you have a headache,” one of the elder ladies said to her; and Kate acquiesced with a faint little smile. “It is the weather,” she said, softly; and the old lady, taking her cue, sat down beside her, and discussed the same. “The changes are the worst,” she said—“the thermometer at sixty one day, and next day below the freezing-point. And then, in an English house, it is so difficult to keep cold out.”
“I hope your room is warm,” Kate said suddenly, remembering her hostess-ship. “You must tell me if you find it chilly. There is such a difference in some of the rooms!”
“It is according to their aspect,” said the old lady; “mine is very comfortable, I assure you. It is you young ones that expose yourselves to so many changes. If I were you, I would wrap up very warm, and keep indoors for a day or two. There is nothing like keeping in an equitable temperature. I have no confidence in anything else.”
“Thanks,” Kate said, with a feeling of dreariness. Instead of Fred’s conversation this was a poor exchange. And she grew more and more sorry for him, and more and more compassionate of herself as the evening stole on. Several of the people who interested her most had left within the last few days. There was but the moderate average of country-house visitors left; people who were not remarkable for anything—neither witty, nor pretty, nor particularly entertaining—and yet not to be complained of in any way. She did her duty to them as became Mr Crediton’s daughter, and was very solicitous to know that they were comfortable and had what they liked; but she missed Madeline, she missed Lady Winton, she missed her acrid old godfather, who was said to be fond of nobody but Kate; and, above all, she missed Fred Huntley—poor Fred!
A week had passed, somewhat weakening this impression, when Fred returned, quite as suddenly as he went away. He was seen walking up the avenue when the party were at luncheon, and Kate’s heart gave a little jump at the sight of him. “Why, there is Huntley come back again!” some one cried, but he did not make his appearance at lunch; and it was only when he came into the drawing-room before dinner that Kate had any opportunity of seeing what change had been wrought in him by the discovery of his sentiments towards herself. Fred was playing a part; but, like every other actor in life who plays his part well, had come to believe in it himself, and to feel it real. He came up to her with a certain confused but melancholy frankness. “Miss Crediton,” he said, “I am afraid you cannot like to see me, but I have come about business. I would not for the world, for any other reason, have brought what must be an annoyance upon you.” And then Kate had lifted to him a pair of very sympathetic, almost tender, eyes.
“Indeed I don’t know why I should not like to see you,” she said, quietly. “You have always been very kind to me.”
“Kind!” he had answered, turning away with a gesture of impatience, and not another word passed between them until the evening was almost over, and all opportunity past. He was so slow, indeed, to take advantage of any opportunity, that Kate felt half angry—wondering had the man quite got over it? had he ever meant anything? But at the very last, when she turned her head unthinking, all at once she found his eyes upon her, and that he was standing close by her side.
“I suppose I must not ask for my old situation,” he said, softly. “I have been a fool and forfeited all my advantages because I could not win the greatest. You used to speak to me once—of the subject most interesting to yourself.”
“I don’t think it would be in the least interesting to you now, Mr Huntley,” said Kate, not without a little pique in her voice.
“Ah, you don’t know me,” he said. “I think I could interest myself in anything that was interesting to you.”
And then there was silence, in which Kate began to feel her heart beat, and wondered if this man could be an oyster, or if he could really be so inconceivably fond of her as to be thus concerned in all that concerned her happiness. It sounded like something in a romance; and yet Kate knew enough of life and society to know that romance sometimes gave but a very colourless picture of the truth.
“I hope you have heard lately,” he went on, with a voice which was elaborately and yet not unnaturally subdued—for, as has been said, Fred had fully entered into the rôle he was playing—“and that all is going well.”
Kate blushed, perhaps, more violently than she had ever blushed in her life before. If he were making this sacrifice of his feelings for her, surely she ought to be true and sincere with him; but what she had to say was mortifying to her pride. She looked at him stooping over her, and tried to read his face, and asked herself, with a simplicity that is natural to the sophisticated, whether here, once for all, she had found the friend who is equal to utter self-abnegation, and of whom in books one sometimes reads. A more simple-minded girl, probably, would not have looked for so self-sacrificing a lover, but Kate had been brought up with a persuasion of her own power to sway everybody to her will. “Mr Huntley,” she said, hurriedly, “I don’t think I ought to speak to you on such a subject; but, indeed, I feel anxious, and I don’t know what to do.”
“Then do speak to me,” he said, bending over her. “Do you think I care what happens to myself if I can be of use to you?”
There are sentiments of this heroic description which we would see the fallacy of at once if addressed to others, which yet seem natural spoken to ourselves. And Kate had always been so important to everybody about her. She looked up at him again, she faltered, she half turned away, and then, after all, she spoke.
“I don’t know why I should tell you. I don’t know what it means. I have not heard a single word from him, Mr Huntley, since he went away.”
A sudden gleam of light came into Fred’s eyes, but he was looking down, and she only saw a ghost of it under his lowered eyelids. “That is very strange,” he said.
“Do you think he can be ill? Do you think anything can have happened?” asked Kate.
“He is not ill, he is at home at Fanshawe, and his burns are getting better. I saw him yesterday,” said Fred.
“At home! and he never told me. Oh, how unkind it is! It used to be every other day, and now it is nearly a fortnight. But why should you care?” cried Kate, really moved with sharp mortification, and not quite aware what she said.
“I care a great deal,” he said, very low, and sighed. And Kate’s heart was sore, and she was angry, and wounded, and for almost the first time in her life felt that she had a little pride in her nature. Did the other despise her to whom she had given her heart? Did he think she was not worthy even of courtesy? though other people were so far from thinking so. Kate’s impatient heart began to beat high with anger and with pain.