THIS moment of dismay, however, passed over, as the moments of delight did, without bringing about any absolute revolution in John’s life. The next day Mr Crediton took occasion to be more than ordinarily civil, repenting of his bad humour, and Kate stopped short before his window as she rode by to wave her hand to him. A man cannot build the comfort of his life permanently on such trifles; but there is a moment when the wave of a girl’s hand as she passes is enough to strengthen and exhilarate his heart. So the crisis blew over as the others had done, and the routine went on. John set his teeth, and confronted his position with all its difficulties, making a desperate effort. A woman might bear such a trial, and live through it; but it is hard upon a man, when he is no longer a boy, to be called upon to give up everything, to change the entire current of his occupations, and make an unquestionable descent in the social scale, for love, without even giving him its natural compensations. An imprudent marriage is a different thing, for then the consequences are inevitable when once the step has been taken, and have to be borne, will he nill he. But to make love his all—the sole object and meaning of his life—there was in this a certain humiliation which by turns overwhelmed John’s fortitude and courage. It was indeed almost a relief to him, and helped him to bear his burden more steadily when the annual removal of the family to Fernwood took place, and Kate vanished from before his eyes. She cried when she parted with him that last Sunday, and John felt a serrement du cœur which almost choked him; but still, at the same time, when it was over and she was gone, life on the whole became easier. He made an effort to interest himself in his brother clerks, and enter into their life; but what was a humiliation to John was to them such a badge of superiority that he could make but little of that. He was Mr Crediton’s future son-in-law, probably their own future employer, in the eyes of the young men around him, who accepted his advances with a deference and half-concealed pride which threw him back again upon himself. He had no equals, no companions. To be sure there were plenty of people in Camelford who would have been glad to receive Dr Mitford’s son, but he had no desire for the ordinary kind of society. And it is not to be described with what pleasure he saw Fred Huntley, a man whom he had never cared for heretofore, push open the swinging door of the bank, and peer round the place with short-sighted eyes. “Mr Mitford, if you please,” Fred said, perhaps rather superciliously, to the clerk who was John’s superior, expecting, it was clear, to be ushered into some secret retirement where the principals of the bank might be. When John rose from his desk, Huntley gazed at him with unfeigned astonishment. “What! you here!” he said; and opened his eyes still wider when John turned round and explained to Mr Whichelo that he was going out, and why. “You don’t mean to say they stick you at a desk like that, among all those fellows?” Fred said, as they left the bank together; which exclamation of wonder revived the original impatience which use and wont by this time had calmed down.
“Exactly like the other fellows,” said John; “and quite right too, or why should I be here?”
“Then I suppose you are—learning—the business,” said Fred. “Old Crediton must mean you to be his successor. And that is great luck, though I confess it would not have much charm for me.”
“It is very well,” said John, “I have nothing to complain of. If I can stick to it I suppose I shall earn some money sooner or later, which is a great matter, all you people say.”
“Of course it is a great matter,” said Fred. “You told that old fellow you were going out in a wonderful explanatory way, as if you thought he mightn’t like it. Can’t you stay and have something with me at the hotel? I have to be here all night, much against my will, and I should spend it all alone unless you’ll stay.”
“Thanks; it does me good to see a known face. I’ll stay if you’ll have me,” said John; and then, as it was still daylight, they took a preparatory stroll about the streets of Camelford. The inn was in the High Street, not very far from the bank and the Crediton mansion. The young men walked about the twilight streets talking of everything in earth and heaven. It was to John as if they had met in the depths of Africa or at a lonely Indian station. He had never been very intimate with Fred Huntley, but they were of the same class, with something like the same training and associations, and the exile could have embraced the new-comer, who spoke his own language, and put the same meaning to ordinary words as he did. It was a long time before he even noticed the inquiring way in which Huntley looked at him, the half-questions he now and then would put sharply in the midst of indifferent conversation, as if to take him off his guard. John was not on his guard, and consequently the precaution was ineffectual; but after a while he observed it with a curious sensation of surprise. It was not, however, till they had dined, and were seated opposite to each other over their modest bottle of claret, that they fairly entered upon personal affairs.
“Do you find the life suit you?” said Fred, abruptly. “I beg your pardon if I am too inquisitive; but of course it must be a great change.”
“I am not sure that it suits me particularly,” said John; but the glance which accompanied the question had been very keen and searching, and somehow, without knowing it, a sense of suspicion ran through him; “I don’t suppose any life does until one is thoroughly used to it. Routine is the grand safeguard in everything—and perhaps more than in anything else to a clerk in a bank.”
“But that is absurd,” said Fred. “How long do you and Mr Crediton mean to keep up the farce? a clerk in the bank betrothed to his daughter—it is too good a joke.”
“I don’t see the farce,” said John, “and neither, I suppose, does Mr Crediton; he is not given to joking. Now tell me, Huntley, before we go any further, is it the dear old people at home who have asked you to come and look after me? was it—my mother? She might have known I would tell her at first hand anything there was to tell.”
At this speech Fred Huntley became very much confused, though he did not look like a man to be easily put out. He grew red, he cleared his throat, he shuffled his feet about the carpet. “Upon my word you mistake,” he said; “I have not seen either Mrs Mitford or the Doctor since you left.”
“Then who has sent you?” said John.
“My dear fellow, you have grown mighty suspicious all at once. Why should any one have sent me? may not I look up an old friend for my own pleasure? surely we have known each other sufficiently for that.”
“You might,” said John, “but I don’t think that is the whole question, and it would be best to tell me at once what you want to know—I am quite willing to unfold my experiences,” he said, with a forced smile; and then there was a pause——
“The fact of the matter is,” said Fred Huntley, after an interval, with an attempt at jocularity, “that you are an intensely lucky fellow. What will you say if I tell you that I have just come from Fernwood, and that if any one sent me it was Kate Crediton, wishing for a report as to your health and spirits—though it is not so long since she has seen you, I suppose?”
“Kate Crediton?” said John, haughtily.
“I beg your pardon: my sisters are intimate with her, you know, and I hear her called so fifty times in a day—one falls into it without knowing. Hang it! since you will have it, Mitford, Miss Crediton did speak to me before I left. She heard I was coming to Camelford, and she came to me the night before—last night, in fact—and told me you were here alone, and she was uneasy about you. I wish anybody was uneasy about me. She wanted to know if you were lonely, if you were unhappy—half a hundred things. I hope you don’t object to her anxiety. I assure you it conveyed a very delightful idea of your good fortune to me.”
“Whatever Miss Crediton chose to say must have been like herself,” cried John, trembling with sudden passion, “and no doubt she thought you were a very proper ambassador. But you must be aware, Huntley, that ladies judge very differently on these points from men. If you please we will not go further into that question.”
“It was not I who began it, I am sure,” said Fred; and another pause ensued, during which John sat with lowering brows, and an expression no one had ever seen on his face before. “Look here, Mitford,” said Fred, suddenly, “don’t go and vex yourself for nothing. If any indiscretion of mine should make dispeace between you——”
“Pray don’t think for a moment that such a thing is likely to happen,” said John.
“Well—well—if I am too presumptuous in supposing anything I say to be likely to move you;” Huntley went on, with a restrained smile—“but you really must not do Miss Crediton injustice through any clumsiness of mine. It came about in the most natural way. She was afraid there had been some little sparring between her father and yourself, and was anxious, as in her position it was so natural to be——”
“Exactly,” said John. “Are you on your way home now, or are you going back to Fernwood? I should ask you to take a little parcel for me if you were likely to be near Fanshawe. How are the birds? I don’t suppose I shall do them much harm this year.”
“Oh, they’re plentiful enough,” said Huntley; “my father has the house full, and I am not much of a shot, you know. They would be charmed to see you if you would go over for a day or two. I mean to make a run to Switzerland, myself. Vaughan has some wonderful expedition on hand—up the Matterhorn, or something—and I should like to be on the spot.”
“Shall you go up with him?” said John.
“Not I, but I should like to be at hand to pick up what remains of him if he comes to grief—and to share his triumph, of course, if he succeeds,” Fred added, with a laugh—“a friend’s privilege. Are you going?—it is scarcely ten o’clock.”
“You forget I am a man of business nowadays,” said John, with an uncomfortable smile; and then they stood over the table, facing but not looking at each other; a suppressed resentment and excitement possessing one, which he was doing his utmost to restrain—and the other embarrassed, with a mixture of charitable vexation and malicious pleasure in the effect he had produced.
“I’ll walk with you,” said Huntley; for to shake hands and separate at this moment would have been something like an irredeemable breach—and that, for two men belonging to the same county, and almost the same set, was a thing to be avoided. John had not sufficient command of himself to make any effusive reply, but he did not object; and presently they were in the street walking side by side and discoursing on every subject except the one in their minds. They had not walked very far, however, before some indefinable impulse made John turn back to cast a glance at the bank—the scene of his daily penance—and the vacant house that stood beside it. They were a good way down the street, on the opposite side. He gave a slight start, which his companion perceived, but offered no explanation of it. “Let us turn back a little, I have forgotten something,” he said. Huntley, who had no particular interest where they went, turned as he was desired, and was just debating with himself whether, all the due courtesies having been attended to, he might not go into his hotel as they passed it, and leave John at peace to pursue his sullen way. But it occurred to him that John made a half-perceptible pause at the door of the “Greyhound,” as if inviting him to withdraw, and this movement decided the question. “Confound the fellow! I’m not going to be dismissed when he pleases,” Fred said to himself; and so went on, not knowing where he went.
“I thought so!” cried John, suddenly, in the midst of some philosophical talk, interrupting Fred in the middle of a sentence—and he rushed across the street to the bank, to his companion’s utter consternation. “What is the matter?” cried Fred. John dashed at the closed door, ringing the bell violently, and beating with his stick upon the panels. Then he called loudly to a passing policeman—“Knock at the house!” he cried. “Fire! fire! Huntley, for heaven’s sake, fly for the engines!—they will let me in and not you, or I should go myself—don’t lose a moment. Fire! fire!”
“But stop a little,” cried Huntley in dismay, plucking at John’s arm; and what with the sound of the knocking and the peals of the bell which sounded sepulchrally in the empty place, he scarcely could hear his own voice. “Stop a moment—you are deceiving yourself; I see no signs of fire.”
“You run!” cried John, hoarsely, turning to the policeman, “or you—five pounds to the man who gets there first! Signs!—Good God! the wretches are out. We must break open the door.” And he beat at it, as if he would beat it in, with a kind of frenzy; while Huntley stood stupefied, and saw two or three of the bystanders, who had already begun to collect, start off with a rush to get the fire-engines. “There’s nobody in the house either, sir, or else I can’t make ’em hear,” said the policeman, coming up to John for his orders. “Then we must break in,” cried John. “There’s a locksmith in the next street: you fly and fetch him, my good fellow. And where shall we get some ladders? There is a way of getting in from the house if we were once in the house.”
“Not to make too bold, sir,” said the policeman, “I’d like to know afore breaking into folks' houses, if you had any title to do the like. You’re not Mr Crediton, and he aint got no son——”
John drew himself to his full height, and even then in his excitement glanced at Huntley, who kept by his side, irresolute and ignorant, not knowing what to do. “I am closely connected with Mr Crediton,” he said; “nobody can have a better right to look after his affairs; and he is away from home. Get us ladders, and don’t let us stand parleying here.”
The policeman looked at him for a moment, and then moved leisurely across the street to seek the ladders, while in the mean time the two young men stood in front of the blind house with all its shuttered windows, and the closed door which echoed hollow to John’s assault. The dark front so jealously bolted and barred, all dangers without shut out, and the fiery traitor within ravaging at its leisure, drove John wild, excited as he was to begin with. “Good heavens! to think we must stand here,” he said, ringing once more, but this time so violently that he broke the useless bell. They heard it echo shrilly through the silent place in the darkness. “Mr White the porter’s gone out for a walk—I seed him,” said a boy; “there aint no one there.” “But I see no signs of fire,” cried Fred. Just then there came silently through the night air a something which contradicted him to his face—a puff of smoke from somewhere, nobody could tell where; and all at once through the freshness of the autumn night the smell of fire suddenly breathed round them. Fred uttered one sharp exclamation, and then stood still, confounded. As for John, he gave a spring at the lower window and caught the iron bar and swung himself up. But the bar resisted his efforts, and there was nothing for it but to wait. When the ladders were at last visible, moving across the gloom, he rushed at them, without taking time to think, and snatching one out of the slow hands of the indifferent bearers, placed it against the wall of the house, while Fred stood observing, and was up almost at the sill of an unshuttered window on the upper floor before Huntley could say a word. Then Fred contented himself with standing outside and looking on. “One is enough for that sort of work,” he said half audibly, and fell into conversation with the policeman, who stood with an anxious countenance beside him. “I hope as the gentleman won’t hurt himself,” said the policeman. “I hope it’s true as he’s Mr Crediton’s relation, sir. Very excited he do seem, about not much, don’t you think, sir? And them engines will be tearing down, running over the children before a man knows.”
“Do you think there is not much danger, then?” said Fred.
“Danger!” cried the man—“Lord bless you! if it was a regular fire don’t ye think as I’d have noticed it, and me just finished my round not half an hour since? But it’s hawful negligent of that fellow White. I knew as he’d been going to the bad for some time back, and I’m almost glad he’s catched; but as for fire, sir——”
At this moment another puff of smoke, darker and heavier, came in a gust from the roof, and the policeman putting his eye to the keyhole, fell back again exclaiming vehemently, “By George! but it is a fire, and the gentleman’s right,” and sprang his rattle loudly. The crowd round gave a half-cheer of excitement, and up full speed rattled the fire-engines, clearing the way, and filling the air with clangour. At the same moment arrived a guilty sodden soul, wringing his hands, in which was a big key. “Gentlemen,” he cried, “I take you to witness as I never was out before. It’s an accident as nobody couldn’t have foreseen. It’s an accident as has never happened before.” “Open the door, you ass!” cried Huntley; and then the babel of sounds, the gleams of wild light, the hiss of the falling water, all the confused whirl of circumstance that belongs to such a moment swept in, and took all distinct understanding even from the self-possessed perceptions of Fred.
As for John, when he found himself in the silent house which he had entered from the window, he had no time to think of his sensations. He had snatched the policeman’s lantern from his hand ere he made his ascent, and went hastily stumbling through the unknown room, and down the long, echoing stairs, as through a wall of darkness; projecting before him the round eye of light, which made the darkness if possible more weird and mystical. His heart was very sore; it pained him physically, or at least he thought it did, lying like a lump of lead in his breast. But he was glad of the excitement which forced his thoughts away from himself. To unbolt the ponderous doors at either end of the passage which led into the bank, took him what seemed an age; but at last he succeeded in getting them open. A cloud of smoke enveloped him as he went in, and all but drove him back. He burst through it with a confused sense of flames and suffocation, and blazing sheets of red, that waved long tongues towards him to catch him as he rushed through them; but, notwithstanding, he forced his way into Mr Crediton’s room, where he knew there were valuable papers. He thought of nothing as he rushed through the jaws of death; neither of Kate, nor of his past life, nor of his home, nor of any of those things which are supposed to gleam upon the mind in moments of supreme danger. He thought only of the papers in Mr Crediton’s room. Unconsciously he formed an idea of the origin of the fire, as, panting, choked, and scorched, he gathered, without seeing them, into his arms the box of papers, and seized upon everything he could feel with his hands upon the table. He could see nothing, for his eyes were stinging with the smoke, and scorched with the flames. When he had grasped everything he could feel, with his senses failing him, he pushed blindly for the door, hoping, so far as he had wit enough to hope anything, that he might reach the front of the house, and be able to unloose its fastenings before he gave way. By this time there was a roaring of the fire in his ears; an insufferable smell of burning wood and paint; all his senses were assailed, even that of touch, which recoiled from the heated walls against which he staggered trying to find the door. At last the sharp pain with which he struck violently against it, cutting open his forehead, brought him partially to himself. He half-staggered half-fell into the passage, dropping upon his knees, for his arms were full, and he had no hand to support himself with. Then all at once a sudden wild gust of air struck him in the face from the other side; the flames, with (he thought) a cry, leaped at him from behind, and he fell prostrate, clasping tight the papers he had recovered, and knew no more.
It was half an hour later when Fred Huntley, venturing into the narrow hall of the burning house after the first detachment of firemen had entered with their hatchets, found some one lying drenched with water from the engines, and looking like a calcined thing that would drop to powder at a touch, against the wall. The calcined creature moved when it was touched, and gave signs of life; but every one by this time had forgotten John in the greater excitement of the fire; and it had not occurred to Huntley even, the only one who knew much about him, to ask what had become of him. He was dragged out, not very gently, to the steps in front; and there, fortunately for John, was the porter who had been the cause of all the mischief, and who stood outside wringing his hands, and getting in everybody’s way. “Look after him, you!” cried Fred, plunging in again to the heart of the conflict. Some of the clerks had arrived by this time, and were anxiously directing the fire-engines to play upon the strong room in which most of the valuables of the bank were placed. Fred Huntley was not noticeably destitute of courage, but he was more ready to put himself in the front when the pioneers had passed before, and there were plenty of followers to support him behind. He took the command of affairs while John lay moaning, scorched, and drenched on the wet step, with people rushing past him, now and then almost treading on him, and pain gradually rousing him into consciousness. They had tried to take his charge from him and he had resisted, showing a dawn of memory. When the water from the hose struck him again in the face, he struggled half up, and sat and looked round him. “Good Lord, Mr Mitford!” said Mr Whichelo, the chief cashier, discovering him with consternation. “Take me somewhere,” gasped John; “and take care of these,” holding out his innocent booty. Mr Whichelo rushed at him eagerly. “God bless you!” he cried; “it was that I was thinking of. How did you get it? have you been into the fire and the flames to fetch it, and saved my character?” cried the poor man, hysterically. “Hold your tongue, and take me somewhere!” cried John; and the next moment his senses had once more forsaken him, and he knew nothing about either blaze or flame.
The after incidents of the night, of which John was conscious only by glimpses, were—that he was carried to the inn opposite, his treasures taken from his arms and locked carefully away, and the doctor brought, who examined him, and shook his head, and said a great deal about a shock to the nerves. John was in one of his intervals of consciousness when this was said, and raised himself from the strange distance and dreaminess in which he seemed to be lying. “I have had no shock to my nerves,” he said. “I’m burnt and sore and soaking, that’s all. Plaster me or mend me somehow.” And this effort saved him from the feverish confusion into which he was falling. When he came to himself he felt that he was indeed sore all over, with minute burns in a hundred places about his person; his hair and his eyelashes scorched off, and his skin all blistered and burning. Perhaps it was the pain which kept him in full possession of his faculties for all the rest of the night. Then he felt it was not the fire he had cared for, nor the possible loss, but only the pure satisfaction of doing something. When they told him the fire was got under, the strong room saved, and that nothing very serious had happened, the news did not in the least excite him. He had asked as if he was profoundly concerned, and he was scarcely even interested. “Pain has often that effect,” he heard the doctor say. “This kind of irritating, ever-present suffering, absorbs the mind. Of course he cares. Tell him again, that the news may get into his mind.” And then somebody told him again, and John longed to cry, What the devil is that to me! but restrained himself. It was nothing to him; and the burning on his skin was not much: it was nothing indeed to the burning in his heart. She had discussed with another matters which were between themselves. She had sent another to report on his looks and his state of mind; there was between her and another man a secret alliance which he was not intended to know. The blood seemed to boil in John’s veins as he lay tossing through the restless night, trying in vain to banish the thought from him. But the thought, being intolerable, would not be banished. It lay upon him, and tore at him as the vultures tore Prometheus. She had discussed their engagement with Fred Huntley; taken him into her confidence—that confidence which should have been held sacred to another. John was thrown back suddenly and wildly upon himself. His heart throbbed and swelled as if it would break, and felt as if hot irons had seared it. He imagined them sitting together, talking him over. He even fancied the account of this accident which Huntley would give. He would be at her ear, while John was banished. He denied that it had been a shock to his nerves; and yet his nerves had received such a shock as he might never recover in his life.