JOHN remained rather more than a fortnight at home. His arm healed and his health improved during this interval of quiet. But he did not relieve his mind by any disclosure of his feelings. Indeed, what was there to disclose? He asked himself the question ten times in a day. He had come to no breach with Kate, he had not quarrelled with her father; he had, on the contrary, increased his claims upon Mr Crediton by actual service; and the something which had sprung up between Kate and himself was like a wall of glass or of transparent ice, changing nothing to outward appearance. He spent his time in an uneasy languor, sometimes roused to positive suffering, but more generally in mere discomfort, vague as his thoughts were, as his prospects were, as all the world was to him. It seemed even a thing of the past that his feelings should be very vehement about that or any other subject. He had gone through a great deal of active pain, but now it seemed all to be passive, and he only a kind of spectator. A host of questions had widened out like circles in the water round the central question. What was life worth? was it any great matter how it was spent? The banker among his manifold concerns, or Mr Whichelo among the clerks, or the Rector of Fanshawe Regis in his library—did it matter to any mortal creature which was which? The one was laying up money which a great fire or a scoundrel at the other end of the world might make an end of in a moment; the other was laughed at behind his back, and outwitted by the young men whom he thought he had so well in hand; and the third—what was the parish the better for Dr Mitford? And yet John had to face the matter steadily, as if it were of the greatest importance, and decide which of these pretences at existence he would adopt. He got no letter during this curious interval. The outer world kept silence and did not interfere with his ponderings. Heaven and earth, and even Kate and his mother, left him to take his own way.
It was not until the last morning of his stay that Mrs Mitford said anything to John on the subject. She had gone down to breakfast a little earlier than usual, perhaps, with a little innocent stealthy intention of looking at the letters, and making sure what there was for her boy; and there was one little letter lying by John’s plate which made his mother’s heart beat quicker. Yes; at last it was evident Kate had written to him; and if there had been any quarrel or misunderstanding, here surely must be the end of it. She watched for his appearance with speechless anxiety; and of course he was late that morning, as was to be expected. And it was very easy to see by his indifferent air that he was not looking for any letter. When he perceived it he gave a little start, and his mother pretended to be very much occupied with the coffee. He read it twice over from beginning to end, which was not a long process, for it only occupied one page of a small sheet of note-paper; and then he put it into his pocket and began to eat his breakfast and talk just as usual. Mrs Mitford, anxious and wondering, was brought to her wits' end.
“You had better order the phaeton, John,” said Dr Mitford, “if you are going by the twelve train.”
“I need not go till the evening,” said John; “and my mother means to walk there with me; don’t you, mamma?”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs Mitford, smiling upon him. She had been looking forward to this last heartrending pleasure, and thinking that then he would perhaps tell her something, if indeed there was anything to tell.
“Then let the phaeton take your portmanteau and bring your mother home,” said the Doctor, “if you insist on taking her such a long walk. For my part I can never see the good of such expeditions. It is much better to say good-bye at home.”
“But I like the walk,” said Mrs Mitford, eagerly; and the Doctor, who did not quite approve of the pair and their doings, shook his head, and gathered up his papers (he had no less than two proof-sheets to correct, and a revise, for he was very particular), and went off to his work. “You will find me in the library whenever I am wanted,” he said, as he withdrew. He thought his wife was spoiling her son, as she had spoiled him when he was ten years old, and he did not approve of it; but when a woman is so foolish, what can the most sensible of men and fathers do?
And then the mother and son were left alone, with that letter in John’s pocket which might explain so much of the mystery. But he did not say a word about it, nor about Kate, nor anything that concerned his happiness; and when Mrs Mitford talked of his new shirts and stockings (which was the only other subject she found herself capable of entering upon), he talked of them too, and agreed in her remarks about the negligence of washerwomen, and all the difficulty of keeping linen a good colour in a town. “As for your socks, my poor boy, I never saw such mending,” she said, almost with the tears in her eyes. “I must take it all out and darn it over again as it ought to be. When darning is nicely done, I never think the stocking looks a bit the worse; but how any woman could drag the two edges together like some of these, I can’t understand.”
“It is always hard work dragging edges together,” said John, getting up from the table. “I think I’ll go and say good-bye to old Mrs Fanshawe, mother. It is too long a walk for you.”
“I could not go there and to the station too,” said Mrs Mitford, “and I ought not to neglect the schools because I am so happy as to have my own boy. Yes, dear; go and see the old people: you must keep up the old ties for our sakes, even though they are to be broken off so far as the Rectory goes;” and she smiled at him and gave a little nod of her head dismissing him, by way of concealing that she wanted to cry. She did cry as soon as he was gone, and had scarcely time to dry her eyes when Jervis came in to clear the table. Mrs Mitford snubbed him on the spot, with a vehemence which took that personage quite by surprise. “I observe that Mr John’s things have not been laid out for him properly, as they ought to have been,” she said, suddenly, snapping his nose off, as Jervis said. “I trust I shall find everything properly brushed and folded to-day. It is a piece of negligence, Jervis, which I don’t at all understand.” “And Missis give her head a toss, and walks off as if she was the queen,” said the amazed man-of-all-work when he got to the kitchen, and was free to unburden himself. After this Mrs Mitford had another cry in her own room, and put on her bonnet and went across to the schools, wondering through all the lessons and all the weary chatter of the children,—Oh, what was the matter with her boy? oh, was he unhappy? had they quarrelled? must not his mother know?
Meanwhile John strode across the country to Fanshawe to bid the old squire and his old wife good-bye. He went, as the crow flies, over the stubble, and by the hedge-sides, never pausing to draw breath. Not because he was excited by his departure, or by the letter in his pocket, or by any actual incident. On the contrary, he was quite still, like the day, which was a grey autumn morning, with wistful scraps of blue on the horizon, and a brooding, pondering quiet in the air. All is over for the year, nature was saying to herself. Shall there be another year? shall old earth begin again, take in the new seeds, keep the spring germs alive for another blossoming? or shall all come to a conclusion at last, and the new heavens and the new earth come down out of those rolling clouds and fathomless shrill breaks of blue? John was in much the same mood. Kate’s little note in his pocket had a kind of promise in it of the new earth and the new heaven. But was it a solid, real promise, or only a dissolving view, that would vanish as he approached it? and might not an end be better, and no more delusive hopes? Mrs Fanshawe was very kind when he got to the hall. She told him of poor Cecily, just nineteen (Kate’s age), who was dying at Nice, and cried a little, and smiled, and said, “Oh, my dear boy, it don’t matter for us; we can’t be long of going after her.” But though she was reconciled to that, she made a little outcry over John’s leave-taking. “Going so soon! and what will your poor mother say?” cried the old lady. “I am afraid you think more of one smile from Miss Crediton than of all your old friends; and I suppose it is natural,” she added, as she shook hands with him. Did he care more for Kate’s smile than for anything else? He walked home again in the same dead sort of way, without being able to answer even such a question. He did not care for anything, he thought, except, now that he was at Fanshawe, to get away; and probably when he got to Camelford his desire would be to get back again, or to Fernwood, or to anywhere, except just the place where he happened to be.
It was evening when he set out to go to the station, with his mother leaning on his arm. The evening comes early in October, and it was necessary that she should get back to dinner at seven. Twilight was coming on as they walked together along the dewy road, where the hedgerows were all humid and chill with the dew, which some of these nights would grow white upon the leaves before any one knew, and make winter out of autumn. A sort of premonition of the first frost was in the air; and the hawthorns were very rusty and shabby in their foliage, but picked out here and there by red flaming bramble-leaves, which warmed up the hedgerows notwithstanding the damp. The mother and son walked slowly, to spin out the time as long as might be. To be sure they might, as Dr Mitford said, have just as well talked indoors; but then the good Doctor knew nothing about that charm of isolation and unity—the silent world all round about, the soft, harmonious motion, the tender contact and support. They could speak so low to each other without any fear of not being heard. They could look at each other if they would, yet were not compelled to any meeting of the eyes. There is no position in which it is so difficult to disagree, so natural to confide and trust. Mrs Mitford’s very touch upon her son’s arm was in itself a caress. My dear, dear boy, her eyes said as she looked at him. She had carried him in those soft arms, and now it was her turn to lean upon him. This thought was always in her mind when she leant upon John’s arm.
“I should not wonder,” she said, cunningly, leading up to her subject with innocent pretences of general conversation, “if we had frost to-night.”
“The air is very still, and very cold: it is quite likely,” said John, assenting, without much caring what he said.
“And actually winter is coming! after this wonderful summer we have had. What a summer it has been! I don’t remember such a long stretch of bright weather since the year you went first to school. I was so glad of the first frost that year, thinking of Christmas. You will come home for Christmas, John,” said Mrs Mitford, suddenly, with a tighter clasp of his arm.
“I cannot tell, mother. I don’t seem to realise Christmas,” said John.
“Well, dear, I won’t press you for any promise; but you know it will be a very poor Christmas without you. Life itself feels poor without my boy. There! I did not mean to have said it; but I am a foolish woman, and it is quite true.”
“Life is so poor in any case. I don’t know how it can matter one way or another,” said John, with a shrug of his shoulders. He was not touched so much as impatient; and unconsciously he quickened his pace and drew her on with him, faster than it was easy for her to go.
“We are in plenty of time for the train,” Mrs Mitford said; “not so quick, if you please, my dear. Oh, John, it is so strange to hear you say that life is poor! Have you nothing to tell me, my own boy? I have never asked a question, though you may think my heart has been sore enough sometimes. What is the matter? won’t you tell me now?”
“There is nothing to tell—nothing is the matter,” said John.
“But you are not happy, my dear boy. Do you think your mother could help seeing that? Oh, John, what is it? Is it her father? Do you feel the change? It must be something about Kate?”
“It is nothing at all, mother,” said John, with hasty impatience; and then it suddenly occurred to him that he was going away into utter solitude, and that here was the only being in the world to whom he could even partially open his heart. She felt the change of his voice, though she had no clue to the fitfulness of his thoughts. “It is quite true,” he continued, “there is nothing to tell; and yet all is not well, mother. I can’t tell you how or why. I am jangled somehow out of tune—that is all; there is nobody to blame.”
“I could see that, my dear,” she said, looking wistfully at him; “but is that all you have to say to your mother, John?”
“There is nothing more to say,” he repeated. “I cannot tell you, I can’t tell myself what is the matter. There is nothing the matter. It is a false position somehow, I suppose—that is all.”
“In the bank, John?”
“In the bank, and in the house, and in the world, mother,” he cried, with sudden vehemence. “I don’t seem able to take root anywhere; everything looks false and forced and miserable. I can neither go on nor go back, and I stagnate standing still. Never mind; I suppose it is just an experience like any other, and will have to be borne.”
Then there passed through Mrs Mitford’s mind as quick as lightning that passage about those who put their hand to the plough and draw back. But she restrained herself. “I suppose it is just the great change, my dear,” she said, faltering, yet soothing him, “and all that you have given up—for you have given up a great deal, John. I suppose your time is not your own now, and you can’t do what you like? And sitting at a desk—you who used to be free to read, or to walk, or to go on the river, or to help your papa, or see your friends—it must make a great difference, John.”
“Yes, I suppose that is what it is,” he said, feeling that he had successfully eluded the subject, and yet celebrating his success with a sigh.
“But I hope it is made up to you in another way,” Mrs Mitford said, suddenly, looking up into his face. He thought he had got off, but she did not mean to let him off. She was a simple little woman, but yet not so simple but what she could employ a legitimate artifice, like the rest of her kind. “You had a letter from Kate this morning, dear. I saw her little handwriting. I suppose she makes up for everything, John?”
They were drawing near the station, and she spoke fast, partly from that reason, partly to make her attack the more potent, and to leave him no time to think. But he answered her a great deal more readily than she had expected.
“Is it fair upon a girl to expect her to make up for all that?” he asked. “Mother, I ask myself sometimes, if she gave up her own life for me as I have done for her—no, not altogether for her—could I make it up to her? Is it fair or just to expect it? Life means a great deal, after all—more than just what you call happiness. You will think I am very hard-hearted; but, do you know, it almost appears to me sometimes as if a man could get on better without happiness, if he had plenty of work to do, than he could without the work, with only the happiness to comfort him. Is it blasphemy, mother? Even if it is, you will not be too hard upon me.”
Mrs Mitford paused a little to think over her answer; and perhaps anybody who takes an interest in her will be shocked to hear that she was rather—glad—half-glad—with a kind of relief at her heart. “John,” she said, “I don’t know what to say. I am—sorry—you have found it out, my dear. Oh, I am very sorry you have found it out—for it is hard; but, do you know, I fear it is true.”
“I wonder how my mother found it out,” he said, looking down upon her with that strange surprise which moves a child when it suddenly suspects some unthought-of conflict in the settled immovable life which it has been familiar with all its days, and accepted as an eternal reality. He had propounded his theory as the very worst and very saddest discovery in existence, and lo! she had accepted it as a truism. It bewildered John so that he could not add another word.
“One finds everything out if one lives long enough,” she said, hastily, with a nervous smile. “And, my dear, this is what I always thought—this is why I always disapproved of this bank scheme. You were hurried into it without time to think. And now that you find it does not answer, oh, my boy, what is to be done? You should not lose any time, John. You should come to an understanding with Mr Crediton and Kate——”
Heavy as his heart was, John could not but smile. “You go so fast, mother dear, that you take away my breath.”
“So fast! what can be too fast, when you are unhappy, my dear? One can see at a glance that you are unhappy. Oh, John, come back! Believe me, my own boy, the only comfort is doing God’s work; everything else is unsatisfactory. Oh, my dear, come home! If I but saw you taking to the parish work, and coming back to your own life, I should care for nothing more—nothing more in this world.”
“Softly, softly,” said John. “My dear mother, I was not thinking of the parish work—far, very far from it. I cannot tell you what I was thinking of. I may find what I want in the bank after all. Here is the train, and James waiting for you with the phaeton. Let me put you in before I go away.”
“But oh, John, if it cannot be for the present—if you cannot come back all at once—now that your mind is unsettled, dear, oh think it carefully over this time, and consider what I say.”
“This time,” John said to himself, when he had bidden his mother good-bye and had thrown himself into a corner of the railway carriage with his face towards Camelford—“think it carefully over this time.” The words filled him with strange shame. He had made one disruption in his life, it was evident, without sufficient care or thought. Was he one of the wretched vacillators so contemptible to a young man, who are always changing, and yet never come to any settled determination? His cheeks flushed crimson, though he was all alone, as the thought came into his mind. No; this time he must make no hasty change; this time, at least, no false position must be consented to. He must put Kate out of his mind, and every vain hope and yearning after what people call happiness. Happiness! most people managed to do without it; even—could it be possible?—his mother managed to do without it; for happiness, after all, is not life. This time there must be no mistake on that head.
It was night when he reached his lodging; and his mind was as doubtful and his thoughts as confused and uncertain as when he had left it. He went into his dreary little parlour, and had his lamp lighted, and sat down in the silence. He had come back again just as he went away. The decision which he had to make seemed to have been waiting for him here—waiting all these days—and faced him the moment he returned. What was he going to do? He sat down and listened to the clock ticking, and to now and then an unfrequent step passing outside, or the voice of his landlady talking in the little underground kitchen. His portmanteau, which he had brought in with him, was on the floor just by the door. The thought came upon him in his unrest to seize it again in his hand, and rush out and jump into the first cab, and go back to Fernwood; not that he expected any comfort at Fernwood, but only that it was the only other change possible to him. If he arrived there late at night, when nobody expected him, and went in suddenly without any warning, what should he see? The impulse to make the experiment was so strong upon him that he actually got up from his seat to obey it, but then came to himself, and sat down again, and took out Kate’s little letter. It was very short, and there was nothing in it to excite any man. This was all that Kate said:—
“DEAREST JOHN,—Why don’t you write to me? You used to write almost every day, and now here is a full fortnight and I have not heard from you. I think it so strange. I hope you are not ill, nor anybody belonging to you. It makes me very anxious. Do write.
—Ever your affectionate
KATE.”
That was all. There was nothing in it to open any fresh fountain in his breast. He folded it up carefully and slowly into its envelope, and put it back into his pocket. Write to her! why should he write? It was not as if he wanted to upbraid her, or to point out any enormity she had done. She had not done anything; and what could he say? The future was so misty before him, and his own heart so languid, that her appeal made no impression upon him. Why should he do it? But he stopped again just before he put the letter in his pocket, and gave another glance at his portmanteau. Should he go, and carry her his answer, and judge once again what was the best for her and for himself? He gave up that fancy when the clock struck eight slowly in his ears. It was too late to go to Fernwood that night; and yet there were hours and hours to pass before he could throw himself on his bed with any chance of sleeping; and he had no business to occupy him, or work to do—and how was this long, slow, silent night to be hastened on its tardy wing? John rose at last, with a kind of desperation, and went out. He had nowhere to go, having sought no acquaintances in Camelford. There was nobody in the place that he cared to see, or indeed would not have gone out of his way to avoid; but the streets were all lit up, and some of them were noisy enough. John wandered through them in the lamp-light with strange thoughts. He seemed to himself like a man who had lost his way in the world. He was like Dante when he stood in the midst of his life and found that he had missed the true path. To go on seemed impossible; and when he would have turned back, how many wild beasts were in the way to withstand him! Was there anybody, he wondered, who could lead him back that long, long roundabout way through Hell and Purgatory and Heaven? With such a question in his mind, he wandered into places such as he had never entered before; he watched the people in the streets, and went after them to their haunts. A strange phantasmagoria seemed to pass before his eyes, of dancers and singers, and stupid crowds gaping and looking on, amid smoke and noise and sordid merrymaking. He heard their rude jests and their talk, and loud harsh peals of laughter; he listened to the songs they were listening to with the rough clamour of applause in which there was no real enjoyment. He followed them mutely—a solitary, keen-eyed spectator—into the places where they danced, and where they drank, and where they listened to those songs, with a strange sense of unreality upon him all the while. They were as unreal as if they had been lords and ladies yawning at a State ball. And then all at once John found himself in a dreary half-lighted room, in the midst of a Wesleyan prayer-meeting, where half-seen people, like ghosts in the halflight, were calling to God to have mercy upon them. He gazed at the prayer-meeting as he did at the music-hall, wondering what all the people meant. Would they go on like that till death suddenly came and turned the performance into a reality at last? He had no Virgil to guide him, no Donna sceso del cielo to be his passport everywhere. And he scarcely knew what were the doubts he wanted to be solved. “Now I shall sleep at last,” was all he said to himself as he went in when the night was far advanced, having spent it in visiting many places where Dr Mitford’s son should not have entered. Was he taking to evil ways? or was there any chance that he could solve his own problem by means such as these?