John: A Love Story - Volume 2 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXX.

KATE had never gone anywhere alone before. She was nothing but one big beating heart, beating so that the little body that contained it could scarcely breathe, when she slipped down the back-stairs and out at the side-door. She put on a great waterproof cloak, one of those garments which are next thing to the domino of the drama as a means of disguise, and a black hat, and a great veil tied over her face as fashion permits. A mask could not have been a greater protection. She was, indeed, masked from head to foot, and except by her gait or outline of her figure could not have been recognised. It seemed to her as if the beating of her heart must have been heard through all the house, bringing everybody out to see what such a noise meant; but it was not so. In her proper person, and with her pretty face open to the light, Kate Crediton was as courageous as any girl could be, and that is saying a great deal; but masked and cloaked as she was, and running away, she was all over abject terror. She trembled when the railway porter came to tell her about the train; her voice was scarcely audible when she got her ticket; she shrank away to the farthest corner, and hid herself for the few horrible moments that she had to wait. And no words can express the sense of guilt and fear and forlorn loneliness with which she contemplated all the varieties of the journey which she had undertaken. To get out of the carriage by herself at Camelford, to steal across the crowded railway station, a little shrinking black figure in the lamplight, to take another ticket, and have herself put into another train, and then to look forward to the long walk in the dark, the country road, the stillness and loneliness and suspicious looks of everybody who should meet her! Her own opinion was that two or three times over she had nearly died of it; and, to tell the truth, she was not far wrong. The weather had grown milder, but she shivered in her excitement; and it was very cloudy and damp, with occasional showers, and little light in the pale sky. How was she to do it? And what reception was she likely to meet with at the end? And her father, what would his feelings be? All these things seized upon Kate, and caught her in their clutches, and hung about her like ghosts as she pursued her lonely journey. Sometimes her natural courage made an effort to assert itself, but the courage of a girl of nineteen is but little able to sustain her under the sense of secrecy and flight and loneliness and the darkest of country roads.

When she had arrived at the conclusion of her journey, the poor child set out half-a-dozen times from the little lighted station which was as an oasis in the desert of darkness, and as many times crept back again to the shelter of the friendly lights. She leant against the paling of the station-master’s cottage opposite the window, where there was protection, and cried. Darkness that she could feel crept and rustled about her; and silence, which she could feel too, penetrated to her very soul. She did not dare to ask the porter who had looked at her so curiously, to go with her. He might kill her on the road, and leave her lying there all covered by the darkness, to be found out when it was too late. Kate cried over this picture of herself. They would all be sorry then; they would be grieved that they had driven her desperate; and there was one that would never, never recover it all his life. Oh that he were only there now with his strong arm to support her—oh John, John, John! And all this time his heart was aching too, thinking she had forsaken him. Where was he? Like herself out somewhere in the night full of despairing thoughts. And here was still this dreadful passage to be crossed before she could even hear of him where he was.

At Fanshawe the scene was very different. Mrs Mitford was seated by the lamp, with her basket by her full of things to mend; but her hands had fallen into her lap, and there were signs of agitation in her face. There was a fire burning at the other end of the room, which gave it a different aspect, but she had not yet given up her summer-seat, and the window was open as of old. In the shade behind the lamp, some one was walking up and down—up and down, filling the room with a sense of restlessness and restraint. The two were talking in hushed tones as if something had happened. And not long before, Dr Mitford had flung away out of the room in anger which could scarcely find strong enough expression, “You should have thought of all this sooner. What! leave the bank? Quarrel with your good fortune and all your prospects! No, I have no patience. He has behaved like a fool, and ought to be treated as such,” the Doctor had cried. He was ashamed of his son and of sundry little brags of his own, which John’s fine prospects had called from him; and he did not know how to face the Fanshawes and all the rest of the parish, and allow that John had thrown all his advantages away. He had been struggling, as a weak hot-tempered man is apt to struggle, against the inevitable, that whole day: he had been endeavouring to drive John back to a sense of his duty, to Camelford and the bank. “If you had taken my advice you never would have gone into it,” he cried; “but now that the sacrifice has been made, to draw back! I have no patience with such folly.” John had not said a word in self-defence. He said, “I have been a fool; it is quite true, mother,” when Mrs Mitford tried to defend him: and the day had been wretched enough to all concerned. What was he going to do with himself now he had come home? Did he think he could be kept in idleness at his time of life? Such were the galling questions that had been put to John all day long. He had made little answer, and his mother believed he was as much in the dark as she was herself. And naturally, though she could not have taunted her boy as her husband did, still the question was to her, as to him, a very serious one. He could not live at home doing nothing. He had thrown away one hope for the future, and now another; and what was he to do?

“A thing may be very imperfect, very unsatisfactory, not much good that one can see; and yet it may be the best thing in the world.”

This was what John said, breaking the stillness after a long interval; and he paused in his walk and stood still in the shaded part of the room, behind his mother’s chair.

“I don’t know what you mean, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford. “How can a thing be unsatisfactory and yet the best thing in the world? And oh, my own boy, what has that to do with you and me?”

“It has a great deal to do with you and me,” he said, behind her chair. “I could not answer my father’s questions. It was hard enough to listen to them and keep my patience; but, mother, dear, I can’t shut my heart to you. I am not going to live upon you in idleness. I am going back to the work you have trained me for all my life.”

“John!” said his mother, with a bewildered cry of joy. She held out her arms to him, and he came and knelt down by her, and they held each other close. “Oh my boy, my boy, my son!” she murmured over him, as she had murmured over his cradle. She could find no other words; but as for John, his decision was no joy to him. He had nothing to say to add to the importance of the moment. Thus it must be, and there was a sense of repose in his mind now that he had decided. It was not so great a work, perhaps, as she thought; but still it was the best in the world; and whether hopefully or sadly, what did it matter? a man could do his duty in it. There was no more to be said.

“But oh, John,” said Mrs Mitford, raising her head at last with tears of mingled joy and pain in her eyes, “that will make but little difference now, so far as this world is concerned. It will not make your poor papa less angry, as it would have done three months ago. Mr Fanshawe has promised the living to his nephew. It is a family living, you know; and it was only because they were so fond of us—I mean of your papa—that you were to have it; and I was so happy always to think you would take up our work. My dear boy! if you are thinking of Fanshawe, that is all over now.”

“So much the better, mother,” said John; “I was not thinking of Fanshawe. I will take a curacy in a town where there is plenty of work to do, and fight the devil if I can. People say there is no devil; but I think I know better. We can fight him still, please God!”

“God bless my boy! God bless my dearest boy!” cried the mother, with a poignant thrill of delight and disappointment. It was the desire of her heart that was being given to her; but yet so strangely transmogrified, so warped out of the fashion in which she had prayed for it, that it was hard to tell whether it was most pain or joy. And it was after this moment of agitation that her hands had fallen into her lap, though she had a great deal of work to do; and that John had resumed his walk with a relieved mind on the dark side of the room. He was relieved, and yet his heart was so heavy that it made his step heavy too. It sounded like the meditative pace of some old man burdened with care, instead of the elastic step of youth.

And then, as silence, unbroken except by that step, came over them again, there fell into the quiet a sudden little sharp sound like the click of a latch. Mrs Mitford only heard it, and pricked up her ears with the quick alarm of a dweller in the country. “I wonder if the garden-gate is locked,” she said, softly; “it ought to be locked, now the nights are so dark.”

John made no answer, he had not even remarked the sound; but his mother held her breath and listened with some uneasiness. Nothing followed for many minutes. Stillness as perfect as the darkness seemed to settle outside; but yet what was that?—a step upon the gravel? Mrs Mitford gave a nervous start, and then commanded herself. She had so often thought she heard steps on the gravel. “I think the window should be shut—it grows so chilly,” she went on; but she spoke very low, and still John took no notice. His step went on and on like a kind of chorus. Even his mother, although so near him, saw but a shadowy something walking up and down, and did not derive all the comfort she might have done from his presence. She would have risen to close the window herself, but a certain terror prevented her; and he took no notice, being absorbed in his own thoughts.

At last Mrs Mitford’s nervousness got the better of her. She put out her hand and caught him as he passed behind her chair. “John,” she said, in a whisper, “listen. I think I hear some one in the garden. Hark! I am sure that was a step on the path.”

“It is only fancy, mother,” said John.

“But hush, hark!” she said, holding him fast; and he stood behind her chair, a mere shadow, and they listened, holding their breath. Silence, rustling, creeping, full of secret stirs and movements; and then there was a louder rustle, and a little trembling frightened voice, like a lost child, cried “Mamma!” The voice seemed to come out of the rose-bushes close to the window, plaintive, complaining, feeble, like a voice in a dream—“Mamma!”

“Oh, who is that?” cried Mrs Mitford, all trembling. “Is it a spirit? Who is it that calls me mamma?”

John stood still, spellbound. He could not move, nor believe his ears. And then his mother rose up, though she could scarcely stand. “Nobody calls me mamma but one,” she cried; “only Kate! Oh my good Lord, something has happened to Kate!”

And then, all at once, the darkness stirred, and a little black figure formed itself out of the night, and glided into the window. Was it a ghost? was it she, killed by unkindness, come to pay them a visit on her way to heaven? The mother and son thought so for one dreadful moment. Her face was as pale as death; her dress all black as the night out of which she came. Mrs Mitford gave a wild shriek, of which she was not sensible, and fell back on her son, who held her, and gazed and gasped. But Kate did not think it strange. It was natural his mother should shrink from her, she thought, and she did not see John in the shadow. She was not thinking of John then. She came in with her little soft quiet step, and threw herself down at Mrs Mitford’s knee.

“Yes, it is me,” she said; “it is Kate. Mamma, save me; oh take me in and save me! I have nobody to come to but you. They want me to be untrue to my John,” she cried, suddenly, with a shrill break in her voice; “and he has deserted me. Oh, mamma, whom can I come to but you?”

John dropped his mother into her chair. He made one stride round the table, and clutched at the kneeling creature. He took her up in his arms like a child, and turned her wan face to him, holding it in his hand. He was almost rough with her in the anguish of his eagerness. “It is Kate,” he said, with an unintelligible cry, and kissed her, and burst out weeping with a great sound, which seemed to fill the whole house. “It is Kate!” raining down kisses upon her hair and her upturned face; and so stood with her little figure lifted in his arms, mad with the wonder and the misery and the joy—till suddenly the pale little face drooped unconscious, and she hung a dead weight on his arm. “I have killed her now,” he cried out, with a sharp voice of anguish, and stayed his kisses and sobs to look at her lying motionless upon his breast.

“It is nothing; she has fainted,” cried Mrs Mitford, who had been slowly coming to herself, and whom this emergency fully roused. “Lay her down on the sofa; bring me some water; ring the bell. Oh my poor child! how she must have suffered! how pale she is! Don’t touch her, John; let her lie still. Oh Kate, call me mamma again, my darling! Softly, softly; take off her cloak. Water, Lizzie; and keep quiet. Now she will soon come to herself.”

But it was some time before Kate came to herself; and the whole house was roused by the news which Lizzie, between the production of two bottles of water, flashed into the kitchen. Dr Mitford came and looked at her as she lay, pale and motionless as if she were dead, on the sofa. He walked round it, and took off his spectacles, and looked upon the strange scene with a puckered and careful brow. “Have you sent for the doctor? Have you loosed her stays?” he asked his wife. “They say it is often because of tight stays;” and then he shook his head at the sight. Mrs Mitford was kneeling by the side of the sofa, bathing Kate’s forehead. And John stood at the foot, watching with an anxiety which was uncalled for, and out of all proportion to so common an accident. But how was he to tell, in the great excitement of that wonderful moment, that she was only fainting and not dead?

By-and-by, slowly and feebly, Kate opened her eyes. “Yes,” she said, and at the first whisper of her voice they all crowded round with eager ears: “yes; I am not dead, papa, though I think I ought to have been dead! Was it the horse that took fright? Did it happen just now? I thought it was long ago. But here she is putting the water on my forehead, and there are his eyes looking at me—such kind eyes! And she calls him her John. But I feel as if he were my John too. Is this now, or is it long ago? Mamma!”

“My darling!” said Mrs Mitford, with her lips on Kate’s cheek.

“Are you my mamma? I can’t remember. Or was it just to-day it all happened, and he saved me and you took me in? Ah, no! there is Dr Mitford, and Lizzie, and I have only been dreaming or something; for if it was the first day I should not have known who they were. And I can sit up,” said Kate, making a feeble effort to raise herself. She got half up on her elbow, and looked round upon them all with a face like death, and the feeblest of smiles. And then she sank back, and said pettishly, “John need not stand there as if it were that first day. If I were he, and there was somebody lying here who had been very unkind to me, I would come and give her a kiss, and say 'I am not angry, Kate.'”

John was on his knees by the sofa before she had done speaking; and everybody in the room wept except Dr Mitford, who shook his head and went as far as the mantelpiece, where he stood and warmed himself, and could not but mark how foolish most people were: but still even he was too curious to go back to his study and his work, which would have been the most reasonable thing to do.

The doctor came presently, having been summoned in haste, and decided that Kate must be put to bed and kept very quiet. She was lying with her arm round John’s neck in the candour of reconciliation, terribly pale, but quite at ease. “May I have my old room?” she said, “and will you stay with me, mamma? I have not brought a thing, not so much as a pocket-handkerchief.” Kate was Kate again, notwithstanding the dreadful ordeal through which she had passed.

When the unlooked-for visitor had been installed again, an invalid, in the room from which she had sallied forth to invade and transmogrify life at Fanshawe, Mrs Mitford was called outside to speak to John. She found him with his hat in his hand, ready to go out. “I must go to Fernwood instantly,” he said; “I shall be in time for the last train from Camelford. Her father must know without delay.”

“Do you suppose he does not know?” cried Mrs Mitford. Such an idea had not occurred to her dutiful mind. “But, my dear, surely to-morrow will do.”

“I don’t think I should lose an hour in letting him know she is in safety. Mother, you will not leave her; you will be very, very good to her—for my sake.”

“Oh, my dear, and for her own too,” said Mrs Mitford, with tears. “Listen, she is calling me. She cannot bear me out of her sight.”

Upon which John took his mother in his arms, and kissed her as he had not done for long, and hurried out with tears in his eyes, and a heart as light as a feather. How the whole world had changed! He looked up at the light in her window as he sped along towards the station, and his whole being melted in a flood of tenderness. She was not a lady of romance—not a peerless princess above all soil of human weakness—but one that did wrong and was sorry, and would do wrong again, perhaps, and yet win a hundred tender pardons. Her very sin against him was only another sweetness. But for that she would never have come to him, never have thrown herself thus upon his love. John skimmed along the dark road which Kate had trod so dolefully, scarcely feeling that he touched the ground. He was too happy even to think. It seemed to be only about two minutes till he was in Camelford, the lights flashing past him through the night. He went across the station hastily towards the platform, which was swarming with the crowd that always made a rush for the last train. The London train, which was the one that passed Fanshawe, left in about a quarter of an hour, and John was aware that it would be impossible for him to get back that night. But midway between the two, among the porters and the luggage, and all the prosaic details of the place, he ran against some one who called him sharply by his name. And then his shoulder was clutched and himself brought to a sudden standstill. It was Mr Crediton in search of Kate.

“Where are you going?” he asked, imperiously. But John had begun to tell his tale without waiting to be questioned. “I am on my way to Fernwood,” he said, “to let you know. Mr Crediton, Kate is with my mother.” And then there was a pause, and the two looked into each other’s faces. They confronted each other in the midst of the most ordinary prose of life, one the victor, the other the vanquished, with supreme triumph on one side and mortification on the other. John could afford to be friendly and humble, being the conqueror, but Mr Crediton in the darkness set his teeth.

“Well,” he said, with a long-drawn breath, “things being as they are, perhaps on the whole that is best.”

“Mr Crediton,” said John, “you cannot expect me to say I am sorry. God knows how happy and proud I am; but yet I can understand how you should be reluctant to give her to me——”

“Reluctant!” cried her father, between his set teeth; and then he stopped short, and made a supreme effort. “What are you going to do?” he said. “Your train is just starting—unless I can offer you a bed for the night.”

“Will not you come to Fanshawe with me?”

“It is useless now. I am glad she is safe—that was all I wanted to know,” said Kate’s father, with a thrill of pain in his voice. He stood still a moment longer, gazing blankly at John without seeing him, and then added, “Of course after this there is nothing more to be said.”

“I think not,” said John, humbly. It is so easy to be humble when one has the victory. He looked wistfully at his adversary, longing to say something friendly, something comforting. “There is nothing in the world I would not do for her happiness,” he added. “I would have given her up; but I thank God that is over now.”

“Of course it is over,” said Mr Crediton. “If you choose to return to the bank different arrangements shall be made. Of course I have nothing for it but to acquiesce now;” and he turned away his head and stood mute, in an attitude which went to John’s heart.

“I am sorry you don’t like me,” he said, involuntarily; “but when you see her happy—as please God she shall be happy——”

“That will do,” said Mr Crediton, waving his hand; “you will lose your train—good-night.” He turned and moved a few steps away and then came back again. “If your mother will be so good as to bring up my child to me as soon as she is able—to-morrow if she is able—I shall be much obliged to her; and in the morning, if you like, I shall be glad to see you at the bank.”

“I will come,” said John; and then he asked more humbly than ever, “Will you send no message to Kate?”

“Message! what message could I send her? I have been the most indulgent of fathers, and she deceives me. I have kept her as the apple of my eye, and she runs away from me to you. What does she know of you that she should put you before me?” cried the father, with sudden passion: and then he stopped again with that sense of the vanity and uselessness of all passion which comes natural to a man of the world. “Tell her I am glad she has taken no harm, and that I expect her to be at home at Fernwood when I return to-morrow,” he added, in his hardest, calmest voice: “good-night.”

If there had been anybody there strict to interpret the bye-laws of the railway company, no doubt John Mitford would have suffered for it—for he made a spring into the train when it was fairly off, aided and abetted by a Fanshawe guard, who shouted “Here you are, sir!” in defiance of all by-laws. Mr Crediton went back to his house in Camelford, to the great amazement of the housekeeper, and sat half through the night thinking it over, trying to make the best of it. There was nothing further to be said. From the moment when Kate’s little note was delivered to him by the frightened Parsons before dinner, he had felt that the matter was settled and could not be reopened. “Papa, he has not given me up, and I will not give him up, and my heart is broken, and I am going to Mrs Mitford at Fanshawe,” was what Kate said. It had been supposed by Fred Huntley and himself that her failure at five o’clock was the result of her headache, or of a little perversity, and it was not till just before dinner that the note was found on her dressing-table. Mr Crediton sat at the foot of his table and made-believe to eat his dinner, and explained that Kate had a bad headache; and as soon as the ladies had left the table made some excuse of urgent business and hastened to Camelford. He had handed the note to Fred first, who received it after the first shock as became a man of the world. “I will stay and do what I can to amuse the people to-night,” he said, “and to-morrow morning I will go. Thanks for all you would have done for me. Perhaps we pressed her too hard at the last.”

“You are a good fellow, Fred,” said Mr Crediton; “God bless you! I can never forget how well you have behaved. You can scarcely feel it more than I do,” he added, with something rising in his throat. Huntley wrung his hand, but shook his head a little and did not speak. They were in the wrong, and Fred had been almost a traitor; but yet they had their feelings too, and he felt it more than the father did—who had not lost her, and would come round and forgive—more than anybody could have supposed Fred Huntley would feel anything. The people in the drawing-room said to each other how pale he was. “Is it all because Kate has a headache?” they asked each other; but he did his best to replace the missing host, and went off in the morning without saying a word to anybody. “I am not much of a good fellow,” he said to himself bitterly, “but still I am not such a cad as to shriek out when I am beaten; and I am beaten, worse luck!” Thus Fred Huntley disappeared and was seen no more.

Next morning John was allowed to go in under his mother’s charge to Kate’s room, where she sat up in her bed, still pale, but growing red as a rose at the sight of him, wrapt in Mrs Mitford’s dressing-gown. The kind woman had a little doubt whether it was quite right; but as she was present every moment of the time, and heard every word they said, there could not be any great harm done: and it was right that she should know all that her father had said. “Must I go back to-day? am I able?” she said, with supplication in her eyes, looking at Mrs Mitford; but soon was quite diverted from that subject by hearing of John’s appointment for that morning to meet her father at the bank.

“I wonder what different arrangements he will make,” she said, looking up in her lover’s face, and pressing in her little hand the big fingers which held hers. Her face grew solemn gazing up at him. If she could but have gone with him, stood by him, made sure that there would be nothing to vex him. Kate had been down to the lowest depths last night, and had sought help, and knew herself incapable of giving it; but in the morning Kate was a different woman, and longed to interfere and defend her own, and take into her hands once more the guidance of affairs.

The mother and the son looked at each other, and then Mrs Mitford spoke. “My dear,” she said, faltering, “I hope you will not be much disappointed. You can see yourself that the other way did not bring a blessing. Kate, before you came last night, John had made up his mind to be a clergyman after all.”

As for John, he took both her hands in his and watched with unspeakable anxiety the expression of her face. But Kate drew her hands away and listened, not looking at him,—not taking in at first, he thought, the meaning of what was said. Then all at once she sat upright and threw her arms round his neck. I am not sure that she ought to have been so demonstrative; but she was. “I am so glad!” she cried—“I am so glad! Oh, you dear old John, that will set everything right!”

“But, Kate,” remonstrated Mrs Mitford, utterly bewildered by this inconsistency, “you used to say——”

“Mamma,” said Kate, solemnly, pushing her lover away from her, “I know I was meant, from the first moment I was born, to be a clergyman’s wife.”

To this solemn protestation what could anybody reply?

And the curious fact was that it turned out quite true. It was her natural business in this world to manage everybody—the parish and the poor, and a whole little kingdom; and it was something utterly new and delightful, and gave full scope for all her powers. Mr Crediton resisted, as was natural, and the Fanshawes held out a little about the nephew to whom they had promised the living; and John had his own difficulties, of which, after all this, he spoke but little: but everything came right in the end. My own belief is that a curacy in a town would have been a great deal better for him to begin with, and that was his own opinion; but nobody else was of the same mind: and even in the country, in the village, there is scope enough to show, as John said, that though the work may be sadly imperfect, sadly unsuccessful and unsatisfactory, it was still the best that is to be had in this imperfect world.

And I hope they will be very happy, now all their troubles (as people say) are over. But it is very hard to make any prediction on such a subject, and one cannot help feeling as Mr Crediton felt, and as Kate herself even was so candid as to allow, that but for that very confusing condition called Love, which puts out so many calculations, Fred Huntley would have been a much more suitable match for her after all.

THE END.