IT was late in the afternoon when John reached Camelford. He had stopped to rest at a roadside public-house, where he ate and drank, as a man might do in the exhaustion of grief coming home from a funeral. He had sat before the rustic door, and watched the carts that went slowly past with heavy wheels, and the unfrequent passengers; and he had felt very much as if he had been at a funeral. It was a long walk, and he was very footsore and weary when he reached his lodgings. He was out of training, and the fire and his accident had impaired his strength, and his heart was not light enough to give him any assistance. When he shut himself once more into his little parlour, he was so much worn out that he had no strength to do anything. He had meant to return only for the sake of the portmanteau, which imagination represented to him lying open on the floor of his bedroom, all packed, which it was a comfort to think of; but after his twenty-miles walk he had no longer the energy to gather his little possessions together. He laid his aching limbs on the sofa and tried to rest. But it was very hard to rest; he wanted to be in motion all the time; he did not feel able to confront the idea of spending all the gloomy evening alone in that dreary little room. Home, home, his mind kept saying. It would not be cheerful at home. He did not know how he was to bear the stillness, and his mother’s cry of wonder, and his father’s questionings. But yet a necessity was upon him to go on and make an end of the whole matter. After his first pause of weariness, he sprang up and rang his bell, and told his landlady he was going away. “Get my bill ready, please,” he said; “and if you will put my things together for me, and send for a cab for the eight o’clock train——” “Lord, sir, I hope it aint nothing in the rooms! they’re nice rooms as ever could be, and as comfortable as I could make them, or any woman,” she said. John comforted her amour propre as well as he could, with a tale of circumstances that compelled his departure, and felt as if he had been addressing a public meeting when his short colloquy was over. Never in his life before had he been so tired—not ill nor sad to speak of—but tired; so fatigued that he did not know what to do with himself. But it was still only four o’clock, and there were four hours to be got through, and a great deal to do. He got his writing things together with as much difficulty as if they had been miles apart, and threw himself on the sofa again, and wrote. The first letter was to Mr Crediton, and over that the pen went on fluently enough.
“DEAR SIR,—I think it right to let you know at once—as soon as I am perfectly sure of my own mind—that I feel obliged to relinquish the post you kindly gave me three months ago in the bank. Early training, and the habits belonging to a totally different kind of life, have at last made the position unbearable. I am very sorry, but it is better to stop before worse come of it, if worse could come. I do not suppose that the suddenness of my resolution can put you to any inconvenience, as I saw, on visiting the bank this morning, that my place had been already filled up. I meant to have seen you, but found it impracticable. I hope you will accept my apologies for any abruptness that there may be in this letter, and regrets that I have not been able better to make use of the opportunity you afforded me——”
Here John came to a stop—opportunity for what? Opportunity of winning your confidence—opportunity of gaining an acquaintance with business—of proving myself worthy of higher trust? He could not adopt any of these expressions. The shorter the letter, the least said, the better. He broke off abruptly without concluding his sentence. He had very little to thank Mr Crediton for; but yet he could not, with any regard to justice, blame him. Kate’s father, though he had done little for, had done nothing absolutely against him. It was not Mr Crediton he found fault with—Mr Crediton was very justifiable; and was it, could it be, that he was about to find fault with Kate?
He began to write to her half-a-dozen times at least. He began indignantly—he began tenderly,—he upbraided—he remonstrated—his pen ran away with him. He had meant to use one class of words, and under his very eyes it employed another. He wrote her ever so many letters. He set before her all his passion—all his readiness to sacrifice himself—all the tortures he had suffered at the window of the bank seeing her come and go and having no share in her life. He told her what a chill blank had come over him at Fernwood—how he had felt that he was nothing to her. He told her what he had seen that morning. He was eloquent, pathetic, overwhelming. His own heart felt as if it must burst while he wrote; but as he read over each completed page, John had still so much good sense left that he dragged his stiff limbs from the sofa and put it in the fire. It was thus he occupied almost all the time he had to wait; and it was only just before his cab came to the door that he put into its envelope this letter, in which it will be seen he neither remonstrated nor upbraided, nor even gave her up. He could not give her up, and how could he accuse her? He accuse Kate! If she was guilty her heart would do that—if not—— But alas! the latter alternative was impossible; only for “utter courtesy,” for utter tenderness, he could not blame the woman he loved.
“I do not know how to write,” he said, “though you tell me to write. Dear Kate, dearest Kate—you will always be dearest to me.—This may pass over, and be to you as the merest dream; but to me it must always be the centre and heart of my life. I don’t know what to say to you. I have not written, not out of lack of love, but lack of hope. If I could think I was any way necessary to you—if I could feel you wanted me—but your sweet life is so complete; and what is mine to be tacked on to it? I don’t know what to say. Silence seems the best. Dear! dearest! you are so bright that my heart fails me when I look at you. I drop down into the shade, and there seems nothing left for me but to keep still. I try to rouse myself with the thought of what you say—that you want me to write, that you are anxious—anxious about me! And you mean it, dear—you mean it, I know; but the words have a soft meaning to you different from their meaning to me. And you have no need of me, Kate. I feel it, and that takes the words out of my mouth, and all the courage out of my heart.
“I was at Fernwood to-day, and saw you, though you did not see me. You were walking in the little footpath near the avenue. Ah, Kate! but for that I think I could have gone to you, and said some things I cannot write. Do not be grieved in your kind heart because I am leaving Camelford. It was a mistake, but I was to blame. I am going home, and I don’t quite know what I shall do; but time, perhaps, will make the way clear. Dearest, if ever you should want me—but how should you want me? God bless you! I have no claim to make, nor plea to put forth; but I am always and ever yours—always and for ever, whatever may happen—yours and yours only to command,
“JOHN MITFORD.”
He put the two letters into their envelopes, and sealed and put them into the post with his own hand as he went to the station. He carried all his possessions with him—not merely the portmanteau; and he was dead tired—so tired that he would have passed Fanshawe station and gone on perhaps to London—for he had dropt asleep in the train—but for the guard, who knew him. When he found himself on the little platform at Fanshawe, chilly and stupid as a man is who has just awakened from sleep, the only strong feeling in his mind was an overwhelming desire to get to bed. He did not seem capable of realising that he had got home again, after his disastrous voyage into the world—he only thought of going to sleep; and it was not his mother’s wondering welcome he was thinking of, or the questions they would ask him, but a pleasant vision of his own room, with the fire burning in the grate, and the white fragrant sheets opened up and inviting him to rest. He felt half asleep when he crossed the threshold of the Rectory, and walked into the drawing-room to his mother, who gave a shriek of mingled delight and alarm at so unlooked-for an apparition. “John, you are ill; something has happened,” Mrs Mitford cried out, in an agony of apprehension. “I am only sleepy, mother,” he said. That was all he could say. He sat down and smiled at her, and told her how tired he was. “Nothing particular has happened, except in my own mind,” he added, when he came to himself a little, “and not much even there. I am awfully tired. Don’t ask me anything, and don’t be unhappy. There is nothing to be unhappy about. You shall know it all to-morrow. But please, mother, let me go to bed.”
“And so you shall, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford; “but, oh, my own boy, what is the matter? What can I say to your papa? What is it? Oh, John, I know there is something wrong.”
“Only that I shall go to sleep here,” he said, “and snore—which you never could endure. There is nothing wrong, mamma, only I have walked twenty miles to-day, and I am very tired. I have come home to be put to bed.”
“Then you are ill,” she said. “You have caught one of those dreadful fevers. I see it now. Your eyes are so heavy you can scarcely look at me. You have been in some of the cottages, or in the back streets, where there is always fever; but Jervis shall run for the doctor.”
“A fire in Mr John’s room directly, Jervis—directly, mind; and some boiling water to make him a hot drink—he has caught a bad cold. Oh, my dear, you are sure that is all? And, John, you have really, really come home—to stay? You don’t mean to stay?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” he said. “I have left Camelford. I have come back like a piece of bad money. But, mother, don’t ask me any questions to-night.”
“Not one,” she answered promptly; and then besieged him with her eyes—“Twenty miles, my dear boy! what a long walk! no wonder you are tired. But what put it into your head, John? Never mind, my dear. I did not mean to ask any more questions. But, dear me! where could you want to go that was twenty miles off? That is what bewilders me.”
“You shall hear all about it to-morrow,” said John, rising to his feet. He was so tired that he staggered as he rose, and his mother turned upon him eyes in which another kind of fear flashed up. She grew frightened at his weakness, and at the pale smile that came over his face.
“Yes, my dear, go to bed—that will be the best thing,” she said, looking scared and miserable. And it went to John’s heart to see the painful looks she gave him, though it was with a mixture of indignation and amusement that he perceived the new turn her thoughts had taken. He could not but laugh as he put his arm round her to say good-night.
“It is not that either,” he said; “you need not mistrust me. Staying in Camelford will not answer, mother. I must find some other way. And I have had a long walk. I am better now that my head is under my mother’s wing. Good-night.”
“I will bring you your hot drink, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford. She followed him in her great wonder to the foot of the stairs, and watched him go up wearily with his candle, and then she returned and made the hot drink, and carried it up-stairs with her own hands. Was it all over?—was he hers again?—her boy, with nobody else to share him? “If he only escapes without a heartbreak, I shall be the happiest woman in the world,” she said to herself, as she went down-stairs again, wiping tears of joy out of her eyes. Without a heartbreak! while John laid his head on the familiar pillow and felt as if he had died. He had no heart any longer to break. He must have something to do, and no doubt he would get up next day and go and do something, if it was only working in the garden; but as for the heart, that which gives all the zest and all the bitterness to life, that was dead. His life was over and ended, and it seemed to him as if he could never come alive again.