IT would be vain to attempt to give any panorama of Kate’s thoughts when she had finally taken refuge in her room, and shut out even her maid. The first fire of the season was chirruping in the grate, and there were a good many candles about, for Kate was fond of a great deal of light. She threw herself into her favourite easy-chair by the fire, and clasped her hands across her forehead, and tried very hard to think. There are many girls, no doubt, who would have felt that Fred Huntley had insulted them by such a declaration, with his full knowledge of all the previous circumstances. But Kate could not cut the knot in that summary manner. He was not insulting her. Before he had said a word, had not she herself taken that alternative into consideration? It was but this very day that she had made that half-envying comparison between herself and the problematical Mrs Fred Huntley; and people do not make such comparisons without some faint notion that a choice might be possible. Besides, Kate was not the kind of girl to be insensible to the reason of the matter. It was perfectly true what Fred Huntley had said. In every way in which the question could be looked at, he was more suitable to her than John. And he would be a great deal easier to get on with. He would not ask so much; he would be quite content with what she could give: whereas the question was, would John ever be content? And Fred would satisfy Mr Crediton, and make everything easy; and nobody knew better than Kate how unlikely it was that John could ever satisfy her father, or that their marriage should take place by anything less than a miracle. The reader will think that she was thus giving up the whole question, but this was not the fact. She was as far from giving John up as she had been a month before, when she went to see him in Camelford; but she had a candid mind, and could not help considering the question on its merits.
And then it would be impossible to deny that she had a kindness for Fred. He had been very “nice” all this autumn—very attentive and assiduous, and anxious to smooth her path for her. To be sure he had not been quite disinterested; but then, when is a man disinterested? One does not expect it of them, Kate reflected; in short, perhaps one prefers, on the whole, that they should look for a reward, to be given or withheld as the idol wills. This sense of power was very strong in Kate’s mind. She liked to think that her hand could dispense life and death; and though the alternative was very thrilling, and made her heart beat loudly, and the blood rush to her face, yet it was not exactly a painful feeling. And then she was very sweet-tempered and sympathetic: it was hard for her to make up her mind to disappoint and grieve any one. She would be sincerely sorry for the man she was obliged to refuse; and if she could have managed it so that Madeline Winton, or any other nice girl with whom she was intimate, should have suited the taste of that man, it would have been a great relief to her. This thought flashed across her mind more than once in her disquietude; a fact which sufficiently shows how different were the feelings with which she regarded the two candidates for her favour. Such a transfer of affection would have been out of the question with John; but it would not be out of the question with Fred.
Then Kate took to thinking of his earnestness, of the look almost of passion in his face. Fred Huntley to look at any woman like that—to say that he was being driven mad—to plead with such humility! No doubt it was a very astounding thought, almost more extraordinary than any amount of devotion from John, who was a passionate being by nature. And then it would be so easy to get on with Fred! he would understand without difficulty those tastes and habits to which John could never do more than assent with a sigh. What a dilemma it was for a girl to be placed in! Kate had clasped her hands over her eyes that she might think the better, and let her fire go out, and was stopped in her cogitations by the chill which stole over her. When she roused herself up the hearth was quite black, and seemed to be giving forth cold instead of warmth—and the candles were all burning silently, with now and then a little twinkling of the small steady flames, as if they were sharers in her secret, and knew more about it than she did. She crept to bed very cold and disturbed and uncomfortable, saying to herself now, Poor John! and now, Poor Fred! with painful impartiality. I think, for my own part, that it said wonders for her real faithfulness that she was thus impartial in her thoughts; for Fred was so much more eligible in every way, so much more suitable, more likely to please everybody, more easy to get on with, that there must have been a wonderful balance of feeling on the other side to keep the scales even. John was a very troublesome, unmanageable lover; he ruffled her by his passion, his fondness, his susceptibilities. She could not marry him except by the sacrifice of many things that were very important to her, and after going through all the agonies of a long, stormy, much-interrupted engagement; whereas everything was smooth and pleasant on the other side. And yet her heart, if it stood tolerably even between them, had not yet swayed one step further off than the middle from her uncomfortable lover; which, considering all Fred’s unmistakable advantages, surely said a great deal for Kate.
She got up in the morning with a headache, and without having come to any decision. The thought of meeting Fred calmly before the eyes of all those people, as if nothing had passed, had a curious kind of excitement in it. It was not her fault; and yet she looked forward to meeting him with a certain flutter of semi-agitation, which was not diminished by the fact that he was more assiduous in his attentions than he had ever ventured to be before, or had any right to be. After breakfast Mr Crediton sent to her to go to him in the library, which was a very alarming summons. She grew pale in the midst of her companions when it was delivered to her. “Kate, I know you are going to be scolded,” said one of them; “I declare she is trembling. Fancy Kate being frightened for her papa.” “I am sure she deserves to be scolded,” said an elder young lady, gravely. “Do I?” cried poor Kate; and she went away half crying, for it was hard upon her to be blamed. She could not bear it, even when she was indifferent to her censors. It hurt her—she who had always been petted by all the world. She went away as near crying as it is consistent with the dignity of a young lady of nineteen to be; and if either of the two had crossed her path and proposed instant elopement, I almost think she would have consented. But John was at Fanshawe, separated from her by more than distance; and Fred’s good angel had not whispered to him to throw himself at that moment in her way.
Mr Crediton received her with a certain solemnity, and with a very grave countenance. He made her sit down opposite to him, and looked her in the face. “Kate,” he said, “I have sent for you to have some very serious talk with you. You have got yourself into a grave dilemma, and I think you want my advice.”
Kate was very much frightened, but she was not a girl to lose her head even at such a crisis. She faced the foe courageously, though her cheek grew pale. “I must always be the better for having your advice, papa,” she said; “but I don’t know of any dilemma. Everything is exactly as it was.”
“I don’t see how that can be,” said Mr Crediton, quietly. “Kate, Fred Huntley has been with me this morning. He is perfectly honourable and straightforward in his mode of action, but I am not so sure about you. He tells me he has asked you to marry him—and notwithstanding that he has got no definite answer, he thought it right to come to me.”
“Answer!” cried Kate; “what answer could I give? He knew I was engaged as well as you do. Is it my fault, papa? Can I keep a man from making a fool of himself? He knew of my engagement as well as you.”
“Yes,” said Mr Crediton; “and he knew that John Mitford went away hurriedly after a three-days' visit, and that there has been no communication between you for some time. Oh, I am not the culprit. I don’t examine your letters. It appears you told him; and, as a justification of what he has done, he repeated it to me.”
“Then it was very, very nasty of him,” said Kate, with tears in her eyes; “and I will never tell him anything again as long as I live.”
“I hope at least you won’t talk to him on this subject,” said her father, gravely. “I have let you have your own way heretofore, Kate. I have given Mr Mitford the best chance I could of proving what was in him; and if you like to persevere, I shall not interfere. But if you don’t care to persevere, it is a different matter. Huntley seems to think you will not. Wait a little, please, till I have said what I have to say. There cannot be a moment’s doubt as to which of the two I should prefer for a son-in-law. Fred Huntley has distinguished himself already, though he is so young. He could surround you with every luxury and give you a good position, and everything that heart can desire. And he suits me. He is thoroughly sensible, and full of good feeling; but he is not highflown. I should get on a great deal better with him than I ever could do with Mitford; and, I believe, so would you.”
“Papa!” This exclamation was not surprise, but a deprecating, pleading, remonstrating protestation. She made him no further answer, one way or another; but only looked in his face with wistful eyes.
“I believe you would,” said Mr Crediton, stoutly. “You must have felt already, however you may hesitate to say it, that in certain matters this whole business is a great blunder. I am not saying a word against Mitford. We have the greatest reason to be grateful to him. But, Kate, great mistakes have been made out of gratitude—the very gravest mistakes; and you may be sure that your engagement is to him a very equivocal advantage. He feels it, though he cannot be the first to speak.”
“What does he feel? how do you know?” cried Kate; and there came such a sudden chill over her, that the very blood in her veins seemed frozen—a sensation she had never experienced before in all her life.
“It is quite clear what he feels,” said Mr Crediton; “he feels that you are out of his sphere. He sees what kind of a life you live here, and he is bewildered. How is he to give you all that, or a shadow of it? It is not difficult to divine what he feels; and the thought makes him half morose, as he was when he was here. He cannot bear to lose you, I believe; and yet he is gradually making up his mind that he must lose you. Poor fellow! I for one am very sorry for him; and unless you open a way to him out of it, I don’t see what he is to do.”
“Papa,” said Kate, with her cheeks flaming, “if he has ever given you any reason to think that he wants to be out of it, you have only to let me know.”
“I don’t want to be unjust,” said Mr Crediton, “to him or to any one. He has never spoken to me on the subject. It is not likely he should. No man could come to your father, Kate, and say, 'I have made a mistake.' I should kick him out of the house, probably, however glad I might be to hear it. And John Mitford is not the man to do anything of the kind; but his feelings may be easily divined for all that.”
Kate sat silent, with her eyes cast down, and twisted her handkerchief in her fingers. Her cheeks were burning, her eyes hot, her heart beating loud. Perhaps it might be true. While she had been calmly comparing her two lovers, feeling herself elevated in a sweet supremacy over them, and free to make her choice, it was possible that her chain had become bondage to one of them. He had gone away hurriedly, it was true. He had spoken very strangely when he went away, and he had not written to her for two long weeks. So long, indeed, had he kept silence, that she had written to him making a kind of appeal. These facts, no doubt, strengthened every word her father said, and gave to them a certain appearance of reality. Her cheeks burned, and seemed to scorch all the moisture out of her eyes; and yet she felt that only the strongest effort kept her from bursting into tears. It was a kind of relief to her when the door opened, and a man came in with Mr Crediton’s letters. At least they prevented the necessity of any answer. She sat absorbed in her own thoughts, examining closely, as if it were a matter of the last importance, the embroidered cipher on her handkerchief, while her father was thus occupied. Kate took no notice how many letters he read—they were nothing to her; nor did she observe the keen glance upward which he gave at her when he had read the first he opened. She did not even remark that the crackling of the paper ceased, and there was an interval of complete stillness. When he spoke to her she started, and came back as if from a long distance. “Yes, papa,” she said, mechanically, without lifting her eyes.
“I did not think it would have come so soon,” said Mr Crediton; “and it is very strange that it should have come at this moment. He has decided the question for himself, Kate, as, one time or other, I thought he would. Look here.”
It was John’s letter he pushed across the table to her, with a feeling that it had arrived at the very moment it was wanted, at the handiest moment. And Mr Crediton was glad; but at the same time he was struck with a little compunction when he saw how eagerly Kate clutched at it, and how the colour went and came on her face. She read it without a pause, flashing her eye over its contents in a way very different from Mr Crediton’s deliberate reading. She had grown breathless in her eagerness. She threw it down on the table, yet did not leave her hold of it, and stretched across to look at the little heap of letters which remained before him. “There must be one for me,” she cried; “of course he must have explained all this in his letter to me.” When she saw that there was none for her, she rose hurriedly and rang the bell, her father all the while looking on with an amazement which he could not express in words. Was this Kate, this hasty excited creature, full of anxiety and suspense? “Go and see if there are any letters for me,” she said, imperiously, to the servant who answered the bell. She would not believe it; she stood angry and feverish, leaning against the mantelpiece with John’s letter in her hand. “The letters have been taken up-stairs, ma’am, but there are none for you,” said the man, re-entering with a tray in his hand on which were several bundles of papers carefully separated. She rushed across the room to look at them. There were half-a-dozen at least for Fred Huntley, and some for the other members of the party who were out shooting, but nothing for Miss Crediton. Kate dismissed the servant with a little wave of her hand and walked back to the fire, and stooped down over it to warm herself. She was utterly dismayed, and the ground seemed suddenly cut away from under her very feet. Her heart beat so that she could not speak a word. Was it true, then, all this that had been said to her? Her father turned his chair towards her, and the sight of his child thus stupefied with sudden pain, and half incredulous of the shock she had just received, went to his heart. But yet in his heart he believed it was best for him to drive the stroke home, and not to soothe her by suggestions that the explanation might yet come, such as occurred to him in the first softening of his thoughts.
“My darling!” he said, “of course you feel it. I feel it so much for you, Kate, that I could almost grieve, though I know it to be for the best. Make up your mind at once to think no more of him. It will be better for you both. It is a shock, but you must have been prepared for the shock. You have trifled with Fred Huntley’s feelings for a long time, as you ought not to have done had you not been more or less prepared for this. And, Kate, there is no reason why you should not reward him now.”
“Reward him! when it is he who has done it,” said Kate, under her breath.
“That is not the case; you must be aware that is not the case. I have watched you all too closely to believe in that. You have done it yourself, Kate; and, if you would believe me, this is the very best thing that could have happened. The slight must hurt, of course, at first——”
“Slight! papa, do you know what you are saying? It is worse than a slight. Oh, how shall I bear it?” said Kate, crushing up John’s letter in her clenched hands.
“So I think, my dear,” said Mr Crediton, quietly. “I could not have supposed Mitford capable of anything of the kind. But it is best that he should have done it in this decisive way—better than hanging you up for months, or years, if he had his way. And the very best answer I can make is to tell him that—that you have listened to Fred. My dear, don’t turn away so impatiently. You have used him very badly if you mean anything else. He is very fond of you, poor fellow! And, Kate, I can’t tell how deeply, how much, it would gratify your father,” he added, putting his arm round her, and drawing her close to him. Kate had gone through all the stages of passion—she had been agitated, disturbed, startled, driven into amazement and indignation and rage. She was trembling all over with excitement; and now, in the course of nature, it was time for tears to come to relieve her hot eyes. She felt herself drawn into her father’s arms, and then the storm broke forth. She could never lose her father, whoever she might lose. She leant her head upon him, and covered her face with her hands, and sobbed upon his breast. “Papa, let me stay with you: I care for nothing but you,” she cried, with a broken voice like a child’s; and he heard her heart beating in the pain of this first grand emergency, like some violent imprisoned thing labouring to escape out of its cage.
“My poor child!” he said, holding her close. He was glad of it, and yet it hurt him too because it hurt his daughter. At that moment he could almost have called John back, pleased as he was to have him gone. He held her close, patting her softly with his hand, saying nothing till the outburst was over; and then, when he felt her stir in his arms and lean less heavily against him, he bent down and kissed her and spoke.
“My own Kate,” he said, “take your father’s advice for once. Let it be you to make the change, and not him. Let me call poor Huntley and make him happy. You like him, though you may not think it: you have chosen his society more than that of any one here. Do you think I have not watched you? and I know. My dear, your delicacy is wounded, your feelings have had a great shock; but you will soon learn it is for the best, and Fred will make you happier than you ever could have been. Let me call the poor fellow now.”
“No, no, not now,” cried Kate, with her face hidden—“not now. Papa, it is with you I want to stay.”
“With me and with Fred,” said Mr Crediton. “He will be a son to me, Kate. He will not take you away from me. It is what I have wished for years. You will make us both very happy, my darling,” her father went on pleading. “Let me call him now.”
“Oh, papa, let me go! He is out,” said Kate, in a kind of despair, raising herself from his arms. She wanted to get away to be by herself, to think what it all meant, and scarcely knew or understood what she said.
“He cannot be far off. Let me go and find him,” said Mr Crediton; “you would make me so happy, Kate.”
“Oh, papa, don’t kill me!—not now. I would do anything to make you happy; but not now—I cannot bear any more.”
“Then, my darling, I will not press you; but later—when you have had time to think—say at five o’clock; come to me at five o’clock. You have made him very wretched and treated him very badly, and me too; but you will make it up to us, my own Kate?”
“Please let me go,” she said, wearily, drawing herself out of his arms, and making visible a face which was no longer flushed and beautiful, but very pale, scared, marked with tears, and reluctant to face the light.
“You shall go,” said her father, tenderly, leading her to the door. “But remember at five o’clock—promise that you will come at five o’clock.”
“Whenever you please—what does it matter?” sighed poor Kate. He repeated the hour again in his anxiety, but she paid no attention. She ran up-stairs as soon as she had escaped from him, a little palefaced woe-begone ghost. Some one met her on the stairs, but she did not stop to see who it was. She did not even care to have her emotion perceived, as she would have done under other circumstances. She did not care for anything but getting to a shelter and hiding herself, and asking somebody (was it herself or some hidden counsellor she should find there?) what did it all mean?
Kate had never been very unhappy before all her life, and she did not know how to be very unhappy. She pulled all the blinds down impatiently, thinking it was wicked that the day should be so bright, and then threw herself upon her little white bed. It was not that she wanted to lie down, or to be in darkness, but only that the crisis was so strange, and she felt it necessary to conform to it. She had been thinking of John when she rose that morning, but thinking of him in such a different way, measuring him with Fred Huntley, then asking herself if it would be most for her own good to keep him or to put him aside. And lo! in a moment, here were the tables turned. He had not even the grace to deliberate or give her warning what he was going to do, but did it on the moment. She could not even upbraid him, for he had gone without saying where he was. He had plucked himself out of her fingers while she had been weighing him, balancing him. Was it not a just punishment? But he did not know that, and she had done nothing, so far as he was aware, that could give him any warrant to treat her so summarily. She lay there and shut her eyes, and rocked herself, and moaned a little. And then she opened them very wide, lay still, and gazed at the drawn blinds with her heart fluttering loudly, scarcely able to keep still with mortification and suppressed rage. Yes, he might give her up; but if he had word sent to him that she was engaged to Fred Huntley, he would feel it—oh, he would feel it! trust him for that. And Kate repeated to herself with feverish eagerness, “At five o’clock.” She longed for the hour to come that she might give him this return-blow; and then she turned and rocked herself and moaned again, feeling such a dreadful pain—a pain she could not account for in her perverse little heart.
When the bell rang for luncheon Parsons came into the room, bouncing, as Kate thought, with her ribbons and her black silk apron, humming a song to herself. “Goodness gracious me!” she cried, suddenly restraining her sprightly steps when she became conscious of her mistress’s presence. “I did not know as you were here, Miss,” said Parsons; “I beg your pardon, I am sure. Is it a headache, Miss?”
“Oh, go away and don’t bother me; don’t you see I am not fit to talk to anyone?” cried Kate.
“If it’s a bad headache, Miss, there is nothing like lying down, and to bathe the head with a little eau-de-Cologne and water. It’s what I always do when I have the headache,” said Parsons, bustling and pouring out into a basin the pungent fragrant water. Kate allowed herself to be ministered to without any visible impatience. She did not feel so abandoned by the world when even her maid was by her. And the eau-de-Cologne, she thought, did her a little good.
“That is the bell for lunch, Miss,” said Parsons; “and master will be in such a way! Shall I go and tell him you have the headache very bad—or what shall I say?”
“Never mind him,” said Kate, faintly; “what does it matter about them and their lunch? Oh, Parsons, I am so very miserable!” sobbed the poor girl. No, she did not mean to betray herself; but still a little sympathy, though not enough to touch the very skirts of her grievance, she must have.
“Are you indeed, Miss?” said Parsons. “I am sure I’m very, very sorry; but if it’s only the headache it can’t last. There, I’ll put a wet handkerchief on your poor head; perhaps that will do it good.”
“It is too deep for anything to do me good,” said Kate; but she suffered the handkerchief to be placed on her forehead, and put up with all those mysterious manipulations of the pillow and the hair and the patient which are orthodox in the circumstances. She lay with her eyes closed and the wet kerchief on her forehead, and her hair spread over the pillow, making her face look all the paler in comparison; her pretty mouth drawn down at the corners, her pale lips and closed eyelids, a very image of youthful misery. Her heart was broken, she thought; and oh, how her head ached!
“Did you get your letters, Miss?” said Parsons softly, drawing out her bright hair, and bending over her sympathetically. But Parsons recoiled in another moment, giving the hair a tug in her consternation, as Kate suddenly stood before her, all blazing and glaring like an avenging angel, with one hand grasping her shoulder and the other clenched menacing in her face.
“My letters!—oh, you wicked miserable woman, it is you who have made me so unhappy! My letters! what do you know of them?” cried Kate.
“Lord, Miss!” said Parsons in dismay, backing before her. And then she began to cry. “I thought as you’d rather I brought ’em up-stairs. You weren’t in the drawing-room, nor nowhere to be seen. I meant it for the best,” cried Parsons, backing to the wall with such a terror of the clenched hand as was quite out of proportion to the powers of that little weapon of offence.
“Give them to me,” cried Kate; “draw up the blinds—make haste and throw this wet thing away. My letters, my letters!—oh, if you only knew what harm you have done! Give them to me——”
She sat down on the sofa under the window, which, after being veiled so carefully, now poured in upon her all the light of the full sunshiny October day. There was a note from Madeline Winton, a notification about millinery from Camelford, something else equally unimportant, and the letter from John, which she ought to have had three hours ago. She paused as she took it up, and turned to Parsons, who was still fluttering about the room in her alarm: “Go away,” said Kate, solemnly; “you can say I have a headache and am lying down; and, please, don’t come near me any more to-day.”
“Let me come and dress you, Miss, as usual. Oh, goodness gracious me! as if I meant any harm.”
“You need not stop to cry,” said Kate, severely; “but go away. You wicked woman! I owe all my trouble to you.”
And then as soon as she was alone she read John’s letter—the letter he had written in his desolate room before he left Camelford. It went to Kate’s heart. She read it and she cried, and she kissed the insensible paper, and her load seemed lifted off her mind. She had been miserable half an hour ago, and now she was happy. It was such an answer to all her questionings as nothing else could have given. She cried, and the colour came back to her cheek and the light to her eyes. “I am not the bank,” she said to herself, with a return of her old levity. “It is not me he means to give up; he must never, never give up me.” And then she kissed the letter again. She had never done such a thing all her life; but she did it now without stopping to think, and she read over the end of it, “yours, and only yours, whatever may happen,” with a gush of warmth and gladness at her heart. “Dear John! poor John! he is so fond of me. Why is he so fond of me?” she said to herself with sweet tears. And then all at once it struck her as with a great chill that there was more than mere fondness in this letter of John’s. “If you should ever want me.” “This may pass over and be to you as if it had never been.” How could that be? Was not he hers and she his as of old?
Just then there came a knock to the door, and two little notes were handed in to her. Another cold thrill went over her as she saw them. One was from her father, and the other from Fred Huntley. “My dear, I am grieved your head aches,” wrote the first, “but I don’t wonder. Keep quite quiet till five, and then come down to the library and make two men very happy. My pretty Kate! Your fond father,
J. C.”
The other was shorter still. “I dare not think or speak, or allow myself to be glad till I see you,” said the other; “but my fate is in your sweet hands.” Such were the communications that were brought to her from the outer world. Kate gazed at them with open mouth and eyes aghast. Then it all came to her mind. She had promised to go to these men and satisfy them, to give Fred Huntley her hand and her promise, and put her seal to it, that her love for John was over for ever. And yet the touch of her mouth was wet upon John’s dear letter, and she hated Fred Huntley as she had never hated any one in her whole life. She sat with the daylight pouring in upon her, and those tokens of fate about her, and despair in her pale and ghastly face. Kate to be ghastly, who had never known what such a word meant! She was getting a wild look like a creature driven to bay. Now and then when she heard the sound of a voice or step in the house—people coming up-stairs or down, somebody passing along the long passage—she gave a shiver, as a hare might shiver at the baying of the hounds. She sat motionless, it seemed to her for hours, in this torpor, and then it was Fred’s voice that roused her. He was down below in front of the house, talking to some one, and she could hear him through the open window. “I am going to the stables to look at the new horses,” he said, “but I shall be back before five o’clock.” Five o’clock! There was a ring in his voice of conscious triumph. He was coming back to take possession of his victim. At that moment, as Kate sat with the trembling of despair upon her, there suddenly rang out upon her ear the sound of the railway bell at the station, which was always considered such a nuisance at Fernwood. The railway itself was a great convenience, only a quarter of a mile from the lodge gates; but the bell and the whistle and the rumbling of the train were very objectionable. When Kate heard it she roused herself with a low cry. She thrust John’s letter into her dress, and tore the others up in little pieces, and then she sat still, with bright awakened eyes for half an hour more. By that time her resolution was formed. She was miserable and impatient of her misery, and every way of escape seemed shut off except this one, and it was something to do which soothed her excitement. It was not with any such thought that she had sent Parsons away. Nothing had been settled in her mind, o