FOR some days after the fire, John continued in a sadly uncomfortable state both of body and mind. The two, indeed, were not dissimilar. He was much burnt, though superficially, and suffered double pangs from the stinging, gnawing, unrelaxing pain. His spirit was burnt too—scorched by sudden flames; stiff and sore all over, like his limbs, with points of exaggerated suffering here and there,—a thing he could not take his thoughts from, nor try to forget. He was very unmanageable by his attendants, was with difficulty persuaded to obey the doctor’s prescriptions, and absolutely refused to lay himself up. “The end’ll be as you’ll kill yourself, sir, and that you’ll see,” said his landlady. “Not much matter either,” John murmured between his teeth. He was smarting all over, as the poor moth is which flies into the candle. It does the same thing over again next minute, no doubt; and so, probably, would he: but in the mean time he suffered much both in body and mind. He would not keep in bed, or even in-doors, notwithstanding the doctor’s orders; and it was only downright incapacity that kept him from appearing in the temporary offices which had been arranged for the business of the bank. Mr Crediton had come in from Fernwood at once to look after matters; but on that day John was really ill, and so had escaped the visit which otherwise would have been inevitable. Mr Whichelo came that evening to bring his principal’s regrets. “He was very much cut up about not seeing you,” said the head-clerk. “You know your own affairs best, and I don’t wish to be intrusive; but I think you would find it work better not to keep him at such a distance.”
“I keep Mr Crediton at a distance!” said John, with a grimace of pain.
“You do, Mr Mitford. I don’t say that he is always what he might be expected to be; but, anyhow, no advances come from your side.”
“It is not from my side advances should come,” John said, turning his face to the wall with an obstinacy which was almost sullen; while at the same time he said to himself at the bottom of his heart, What does it matter? These were but the merest outward details. The real question was very different. Did a woman know what love meant?—was it anything but a diversion to her—an amusement? was what he was asking himself; while a man, on the other hand, might give up his life for it, and annul himself, all for a passing smile—a smile that was quite as bright to the next comer. Such thoughts were thorns in John’s pillow as he tossed and groaned. They burned and gnawed at his heart worse than his outward wounds; and there were no cool applications which could be made to them. He did not want to be spoken to, nor to have even the friendliest light thrown upon the workings of his mind. To be let alone—to be left to make the best of it—to be allowed to resume his work quietly, and go and come, and wait until the problem had been solved for him, or until he himself had solved it,—it seemed to John that he wished for nothing more.
“That may be,” said Mr Whichelo; “but all the same you don’t take much pains to conciliate him—though that is not my business. A man who has had a number of us round him all his life always anxious to conciliate—as good men as himself any day,” the head-clerk added, with some heat, “but still in a measure dependent upon his will for our bread—it takes a strong head to stand such a strain, Mr Mitford. An employer is pretty near a despot, unless he’s a very good man. I don’t want to say a word against Mr Crediton——”
“Much better not,” said John, with another revulsion of feeling, not indisposed to knock the man down who ventured to thrust in his opinion between Kate’s father and himself; and Mr Whichelo for the moment was silent, with a half-alarmed sense of having gone too far.
“He is very grateful to you for your promptitude and energy,” he continued: “but for you these papers must have been lost. It would have been my fault,” said Mr Whichelo, with animation, yet in a low tone. There was even emotion in his words, and something like a tear in his eye. If he had been a great general or a distinguished artist, his professional reputation could not have been more precious to him. But John was preoccupied, and paid no attention. He did not care for having saved Mr Whichelo’s character any more than Mr Crediton’s money, though he had, indeed, risked his life to do it. He had been in such a mood that to risk his life was rather agreeable to him than otherwise, not for any “good motive,” but simply as he would have thrust his burnt leg or arm into cold water for the momentary relief of his pain.
“Don’t let us talk any more about it,” he said; “they are safe, I suppose, and there is an end of it. But how I got out of that place,” he added, turning himself once more impatiently on his uneasy bed, “is a mystery to me.”
“You have your friend to thank for that,” said his companion, with the sense that now at last a topic had been found on which it would be safe to speak.
“My—what?” cried John, sitting suddenly upright in his bed.
“Your—friend,—the gentleman who was with you. Good God! this is the worst of all,” cried poor Whichelo, driven to his wits' end.
And, indeed, for a minute John’s expression was that of a demon. He had some cuts on his forehead, which were covered with plaster; he was excessively pale; one of his arms was bandaged up; and when you have added to all these not beautifying circumstances the dim light thrown upon the bed under its shabby curtains, and the look of horror, dismay, and rage which passed over the unhappy young fellow’s face, poor Mr Whichelo’s consternation may be understood. “My—friend!” he repeated, with a groan. He could not himself have given any reason for it; but it seemed at the moment to be the last and finishing blow.
“Yes,” said Mr Whichelo, “so they told me. He found you lying in the passage with the engines playing upon you, and dragged you out. It was very lucky for you he was there.”
John fell back in his bed with a look of utter weariness and lassitude. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But is anybody such a fool as to think that I should have died with the engines playing on me? Nonsense! He need not have been so confoundedly officious: but it don’t matter, I tell you,” he added, angrily; “don’t let us speak of it any more.”
“My dear Mr Mitford,” said Mr Whichelo, “I don’t wish to interfere; but I am the father of a family myself, with grown-up sons, and I don’t like to see a young man give way to wrong feeling. The gentleman did a most friendly action. I don’t know, I am sure, if you would have died—but—he meant well, there can be no doubt of that.”
“Confound him!” said John between his closed teeth. Mr Whichelo was glad he could not quite hear what it was; perhaps, however, he expected something worse than “confound him”—for a sense of horror crept over him, and he was very thankful that he had no closer interest in this impatient young man than mere acquaintanceship—a man who was going in for the Church! he said to himself. He sat silent for a little, and then got up and took his hat.
“I hear you have to be kept very quiet,” he said; “and as it is late, I will take my leave. Good evening, Mr Mitford; I hope you will have a good night; and if I can be of any use——”
“Good-night,” said John, too much worn to be able to think of politeness. And when Mr Whichelo was gone the doctor came, who gave him a great deal of suffering by way of relieving him. He bore it all in silence, having plenty of distraction afforded him by his thoughts, which were bitter enough. “Doctor,” he said, sitting up all at once while his injured arm was being bandaged, “answer me one question: I hear I was found lying somewhere with the engines playing on me; could I have died like that?”
“You might—in time,” said the doctor, with a smile, “but not just for as long as the fire lasted; unless you had taken cold, which you don’t appear to have done, better luck.”
“But there was no other danger?”
“You could not have been burnt alive with the engines playing on you,” said the doctor. “Yes, of course there was danger: the roof might have fallen in, which it did not—thanks, I believe, to your promptitude; or even if the partition had come down upon you, it would have been far from pleasant; but I should think you have had quite enough of it as it is.”
“I want to make sure,” said the patient, with incomprehensible eagerness, “not for my own sake—but—there never was any real danger? you can tell me that.”
“One can never say as much,” was the answer. “I should not myself like to lie insensible in a burning house, close to a partition which fell eventually. At the least you might have been crippled and disfigured for life.”
A groan burst from John’s breast when he found himself alone on that weary lingering night. How long it seemed!—years almost since the excitement of the fire which had sustained him for the moment, though he was not aware of it. He put his hand up to his eyes, and found that there were tears in them, and despised himself, which added another thorn to his pillow. He had nobody to console him; nobody to keep him from brooding over the sudden misery. Was it a fit revenge of fate upon him for his feeling of right in regard to Kate? He had felt that he had a right to her because he had saved her life. Was it possible that he had taken an ungenerous advantage of that? He went back over the whole matter, and he said to himself that, had he loved a girl so much out of his sphere, without this claim upon her, he would have smothered his love, and made up his mind from the beginning that it was useless. But the sense that he had saved her life had given him a sense of power—yes, of ungenerous power—over her. And now he himself had fallen into the same subjection. Another man had saved his life; or, at least, was supposed by others, and no doubt would himself believe that he had done so. Fred Huntley, whom she had taken into her confidence, to whom she had described the state of the affairs between them, whose advice almost she had asked on a matter which never should have been breathed to profane ears—Fred Huntley had saved his life. He groaned in his solitude, and put up his hand to his eyes, and despised himself. “I had better cry over it, like a sick baby,” he said to himself, with savage irony; and oh to think that was all, all he could do!
Next morning John insisted on getting up, in utter disobedience to his doctor. He had his arm in a sling, but what did that matter? and he had still the plaster on the cuts on his forehead. He tried to read, but that was not possible. He wrote to his mother as best he could with his left hand, telling her there had been a fire, and that he had burned his fingers pulling some papers out of it—“nothing of the least importance,” he said. And when he had done that he paused and hesitated. Should he write to Kate? He had not done it for several days past. It was the longest gap that had ever occurred in their correspondence. His heart yearned a little within him notwithstanding all its wounds; yet after he had taken up the pen he flung it down again in the sickness of his heart. Why should he write? She must have heard all about it from Fred Huntley and from her father. She had heard, no doubt, that Fred had saved his life—and she had taken no notice. Why should she take any notice? It did not humiliate a woman to be under such an obligation, but it did humiliate a man. John rose and stalked about his little room, which scarcely left him space enough for four steps from end to end. He stared out hopelessly at the window which looked into the little humble suburban street with its tiny gardens; and then he went and stared into the little glass over the mantelpiece, which was scarcely tall enough to reflect him unless he stooped. A pretty sight he was to look at; three lines of plaster on his forehead, marks of scorching on his cheek, dark lines of pain under his eyes, and the restless, anxious, uneasy expression of extreme suffering on his scarred face. He was not an Adonis at the best, poor John, and he was conscious of it. What was there in him that she should care for him? She had been overborne by his claim of right over her. It had been ungenerous of him; he had put forth a plea which never ought to be urged, and which another man now had the right of urging over himself. With a groan of renewed anguish he threw himself down on the little sofa, and leaned his head and his folded arms on the table at which he had been writing his mother’s letter. He had nothing to fall back upon: all his life and hopes he had given up for this, and here was what it had come to. He had no capability left in his mind but of despair.
It was, no doubt, because he was so absorbed in his own feelings and unconscious of what was passing, that he heard nothing of any arrival at the door. He scarcely raised his head when the door of his own little sitting-room was opened. “I want nothing, thanks,” he said, turning his back on his officious landlady, he thought. She must have come into the room more officious than ever, for there was a faint rustling sound of a woman’s dress, and that sense of some one in the room which is so infallible; but John only turned his back the more obstinately. Then all at once there came something that breathed over him like a wind from the south, something made up of soft touch, soft sound, soft breath. “John, my poor John!” said the voice; and the touch was as of two arms going round that poor wounded head of his. It was impossible—it could not be. He suffered his hands to be drawn down from his face, his head to be encircled in the arms, and said to himself that it was a dream. “Am I mad?” he said, half aloud; “am I losing my head?—for I know it cannot be.”
“What cannot be? and why should not it be?” said Kate, in his ear. “Oh, you unkind, cruel John! Did you want me to break my heart without a word or a message from you? Not even to see papa! not to send me a single line! to leave me to think you were dying or something, and you not even in bed. If I were not so glad, I should be in a dreadful passion. You horrid, cruel, brave, dear old John!”
He did not know what to think or say. All his evil thoughts slid away from him unawares, as the ice melts. There was no reason for it; but the sun had shone on them, and they were gone. He took hold of, and kept fast in his, the hands that had touched his aching head. “I do not think it is you,” he said; “I am afraid to look lest it should not be you.”
“I know better than that,” said Kate; “it is because you will not let me see your face. Poor dear face!” cried the impulsive girl, and cried a little, and dropped a sudden, soft, momentary kiss upon the scorched cheek. That was her tribute to the solemnity of the occasion. And then she laughed half hysterically. “John, dear, you are so ugly, and I like you so,” she said; and sat down by him, and clasped his arm with both her hands. John’s heart had melted into the foolishest tenderness and joy by this time. He was so happy that his very pain seemed to him the tingling of pleasure. “I cannot think it is you,” he said, looking down upon her with a fondness which could find no words.
“I have come all this way to see him,” she cried, “and evidently now he thinks it is not proper. Look, I have brought Parsons with me. There she is standing in the window all this time, not to intrude upon us. Do you think I am improper now?”
“Hush!” he said, softly; “don’t blaspheme yourself. Because I cannot say anything except wonder to feel myself so happy——”
“My poor John, my poor dear old John!” she said, leaning the fairy head against him which ought to have had a crown of stars round it instead of a mite of a bonnet. Kate took no thought of her bonnet at that moment. She sat by his side, and talked and talked, healing his wounds with her soft words. And Parsons drew a chair quietly to her and sat down in the window, turning her back upon the pair. “Lord, if I was to behave like that,” Parsons was saying to herself, “and somebody a-looking on!” And she sat and stared out of the window, and attracted a barrel-organ, which came and played before her, with a pair of keen Italian eyes gleaming at her over it from among the black elf-locks. Parsons shook her head at the performer; but her presence was enough for him, and he kept on grinding “La Donna é Mobile” slowly and steadily, through her thoughts and through the murmuring conversation of the other two. Neither Kate nor John paid any attention to the music. They had not heard it, they would have said; and yet it was strange how the air would return to both of them in later times.
“I see now you could not write,” said Kate; “but still you have scribbled something to your mother. I think I might have had a word too. But I did not come to scold you. Oh, that horrid organ-man, I wish he would go away! You might have sent me a message by papa.”
“I did not see him,” said John.
“Or by Fred Huntley. You saw him, for he told me—— John! what is the matter? Are you angry? Ought I not to have come?”
Then there was a pause; he had drawn his arm away out of her clasping hands, and all at once the tingling which was like pleasure became pain again, and gnawed and burned him as if in a sudden endeavour to overcome his patience. And yet it was so difficult to look down upon the flushed wondering face, the eyes wide open with surprise, the bewildered look, and remain unkind to her. For it was unkind to pull away the arm which she was clasping with both her hands. He felt himself a barbarian, and yet he could not help it. Huntley’s name was like a shot in the heart to him. And the organ went on with its creaks and jerks, playing out its air. “That organ is enough to drive one wild,” he said, pettishly, and felt that he had committed himself, and was to blame.
“Is it only the organ?” said Kate, relieved. “Yes, is it not dreadful? but I thought you were angry with me. Oh, John, I don’t think I could bear it if I thought you were really angry with me.”
“My darling! I am a brute,” he said, and put the arm which he had drawn so suddenly away round her. He had but one—the other was enveloped in bandages and supported in a sling.
“Does it hurt?” said Kate, laying soft fingers full of healing upon it. “I do so want to hear how it all happened. Tell me how it was. They say the bank might all have been burned down if you had not seen it, and papa would have lost such heaps of money. John, dear, I think you will find papa easier to manage now.”
“Do you think so?” he said, with a faint smile; “but that is buying his favour, Kate.”
“Never mind how we get it, if we do get it,” cried Kate. “I am sure I would do anything to buy his favour—but I cannot go and save his papers and do such things for him. Or, John, was it for me?” she said, lowering her voice, and looking up in his face.
“No, I don’t think it was for you,” he answered, rather hoarsely; “and it was not for him. I did it because I could not help it, and to escape from myself.”
“To escape from yourself! Why did you want that?” she said, with an innocent little cry of astonishment. It was clear she was quite unaware of having done him any wrong.
“Kate, Kate,” he said, holding her close, “you did not mean it; but why did you take Fred Huntley into your confidence—why did you speak to him about you and me?”
She gave him a wondering look, and then the colour rose into her cheek. “John!” she said, in a tone of amazement, “what is this about Fred Huntley? Are you jealous of him—jealous of him? Oh, I hope I am not quite so foolish as that.”
Was that all she was going to say? No disclaimer of having given him her confidence, nothing about her part in the matter, only about his. Was he jealous? the question sank into John’s heart like a stone.
“I don’t know if I am jealous,” he said, with a falter in his voice, which went to Kate’s impressionable heart. “It must be worse to me than it is to you, or you would not ask me. To have said anything to anybody about us, Kate!”
“I see,” she said, holding away from him a little; “I see,”—and was silent for two seconds at least, which felt like two hours to them both. And the man went on playing “La Donna é Mobile,”—and Parsons, very red in the face, kept shaking her head at him, but did not attempt to leave her post. Then Kate turned and lifted her pretty eyes, full of tears, to her lover’s face, and spoke in his very ear. “John, it was very silly of me, and thoughtless, and nasty, I see. But I have had nobody to tell me such things. I have never had a mother like you; I say whatever comes into my head. John! I am so sorry——”
Could he have let her say any more? he ended the sweet confession as lovers use; he held her to him, and healed himself by her touch, by her breath, by the softness of her caressing hands. He forgot everything in the world but that she was there. She had meant no harm, she had thought no harm. It was her innocence, her ignorance, that had led her into this passing error, and foolish John was so happy that all his sufferings passed from his mind.
“His old remembrances went from him wholly,
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.”
Everything smiled and brightened before him; the organ-grinder stopped and found out from poor Parsons’s perpetual gesticulations that pennies were not to be expected; and something soft and tranquil and serene seemed to steal into the room and envelop the two, who were betrothing themselves over again, or so they thought. “Papa says you are to come to Fernwood. You must come and let me nurse you,” Kate whispered in his ear. “That would be too sweet,” John whispered back again; and then she opened the note to his mother and wrote a little postscript to it, with his arm round her, and his poor scarred face over her shoulder watching every word as she wrote it. “He looks so frightful,” Kate wrote, “you never saw any one so hideous, dear mamma, or such a darling [don’t shake my arm, John]. I never knew how nice he was, nor how fond I was of him, till now.”
This was how the day ended which had been begun in such misery; for it was nearly dusk when Kate left him with the faithful Parsons. “Indeed you shall not come with me,” she said, “you who ought to be in bed——” but, notwithstanding this protest and all his scars, he went with her till they came within sight of the bank, where the carriage was standing. Of course it did him harm, and the doctor was very angry; but what did John, in the delight of his heart, care for that?