A DAY or two after this visit John found himself at Fernwood.
It was not perhaps a judicious step for any of them. He came still suffering—and, above all, still marked by his sufferings—among a collection of strangers to whom the bank, and the fire, and the value of the papers he had saved, were of the smallest possible consequence, and who were intensely mystified by his heterogeneous position as at once the betrothed of Kate Crediton and a clerk in her father’s bank. Then there was a sense of embarrassment between him and Mr Crediton which it was impossible either to ignore or to make an end of—John had done so much for the man who was so unwilling to grant him anything in return. He had not only saved the banker’s daughter, but his papers, perhaps his very habitation, and the bulk of all he had in the world, and Mr Crediton was confused by such a weight of obligations. “I must take care he don’t save my life next,” he said to himself; but, notwithstanding this weight of gratitude which he owed, he was not in the least changed in his reluctance to pay. To give his child as salvage-money was a thing he could not bear to think of; and when he looked at John’s pale face among the more animated faces round him, Mr Crediton grew wellnigh spiteful. “That fellow! without an attraction!”—he would say to himself. John was not handsome; he had little of the ready wit and ready talk of society; he did not distinguish himself socially above other men; he was nobody to speak of—a country clergyman’s son without a penny. And yet he was to have Kate! Mr Crediton asked himself why he had ever consented to it, when he saw John’s pale face at his table. He had done it—because Kate had set her heart upon it—because he thought Kate would be fickle and change her mind—because—he could scarcely tell why; but always with the thought that it would come to nothing. He would not allow, when any one asked him, that there was an engagement. “There is some nonsense of the kind,” he would say, “boy and girl trash. I take it quietly because I know it never can come to anything. He saved her that time her horse ran away with her, and it is just a piece of romantic gratitude on her part. If I opposed it I should make her twice as determined, and therefore I don’t oppose.” He had said as much to almost everybody at Fernwood, though neither of the two most immediately concerned were aware. And this was another reason why the strangers were mystified, and could not make out what it meant.
As for Kate, though she had been so anxious for his coming, it cannot be said that it made her very happy; for the first time the complications of the matter reached her. She was not, as when she had been at Fanshawe, a disengaged young lady able to give up her time to her lover, but, on the contrary, the mistress of the house, with all her guests to look after, and a thousand things to think of. She could not sit and talk with him, or walk with him, as she had done at the Rectory. He could not secure the seat next to her, or keep by her side, as, in other circumstances, it would have been so natural for him to do. He got her left hand at table the first day of his arrival, and was happy, and thought this privilege was always to be his; but, alas! the next day was on the other side, unable so much as to catch a glimpse of her. “I am the lady of the house. I have to be at everybody’s beck and call,” she said, trying to smooth him down. “On the contrary, you ought to do just what you please,” said foolish John; and he wandered about all day seeking opportunities to pounce upon her—for, to be sure, he cared for nobody and nothing at Fernwood but Kate, and he was ill and sensitive, and wanted to be cared for, even petted, if that could have been. He could not go out to ride with the rest of the party on account of his injured hand, but Kate had to go, or thought she must, leaving him alone to seek what comfort was possible in the library. No doubt it was very selfish of John to wish to keep her back from anything that was a pleasure to her, but then he was an eager, ardent lover, who had been much debarred from her society, and was set on edge by seeing others round her who were more like her than he was. To be left behind, or to find himself shut out all day from so much as a word with her, was one pang; but to find even when he was with her, that he had little to say that interested her, and to see her return to the common crowd as soon as any excuse occurred to make it possible, was far harder and struck more deep. He would sit in a corner of the drawing-room and look and listen while the conversation went on. They talked about the people they knew, the amusements they had been enjoying, the past season and the future one, and a hundred little details which only persons in their own “set” could understand. John himself could have talked such talk in college rooms or the chambers of a friend, but he would have thought it rude to continue when strangers were present; but the fashionable people did not think it rude. And even when he was leaning over her chair whispering to her, he could note that Kate’s attention failed, and could see her face brighten and her ear strain to hear some petty joke bandied about among the others. “Was it Mr Lunday that said that? it is so like him,” she said once in the very midst of something he was saying. And poor John’s heart sank down—down to his very boots.
And then Kate had a hundred things to do in concert with her other guests. She sang with one, and John did not sing, and had to look on with the forlornest thoughts, while a precious hour would pass, consumed by duet after duet and such talk as the following:—“Do you know this?” “Let us try that.” “I must do something to amuse all those people,” she would say, when he complained. She was not angry with him for complaining, but always kind and sweet, and ready, if she gave him nothing else, to give him one of her pretty smiles.
“But I shall be gone directly, and I have not had ten minutes of you,” he said, bitterly.
“Oh, a great deal more than ten minutes,” said Kate; “you unkind, exacting John! When I was at Fanshawe I had all my time on my hands, and nobody but you to think of;—I mean, no other claims upon me. Don’t you think it hurts me as much as any one, when they all crowd round me, and I see your dear old face, looking so pale and glum, on the outside? Please don’t look so glum! You know I should so much, much rather be with you.”
“Should you?” said John, mournfully. Perhaps she believed it; but he found it so very hard to believe. “Dear, I don’t mean to be glum, and spoil your pleasure,” he said, with a certain pathetic humility; “perhaps I had better go and get to my work again, and wait for the old Sunday nights when you come back.”
“That will look as if you were angry with me,” she said. “Oh, John, I thought you would understand! You know I can’t do what I would do with all these people in the house. What I should like would be to nurse you and take care of you, and be with you always; but what can I do with all these girls and people? I hate them sometimes, though they are my great friends. Don’t go and make me think you are angry. It is that that would spoil my pleasure. Look here! come and get your hat, and bring me a shawl; there is time for a little walk before the dinner-bell rings.”
And then the poor fellow would be rapt into paradise for half an hour under shadow of the elm-trees, which were beginning to put on their bright-coloured garments. His reason told him how vain this snatch of enjoyment was, and gave him many a warning that he was spending his life for nought, and giving his treasure for what was not bread; but at such moments John would not listen to the voice of reason. Her hands were on his arm—her head inclining towards him, sometimes almost touching his sleeve—her eyes raised to his—her smile and her sweet kind words all his own. She was as kind as if she had been his mother—as tender and affectionate and forbearing with him. “Don’t be so cross and so exacting. Because I am fond of you, is that any reason why you should tyrannise over me?” said Kate, with a voice as of a dove close to his ear. And how could he answer her but with abject protestations of penitence and ineffable content?
“It is because I hunger for you—and I have so little of my darling,” said repentant John; “what do I care for all the world if I have not my Kate?”
“But you have your Kate, you foolish boy,” she said; “and what does anything matter when you know that? Do I ever distrust you? When I see you talking to somebody at the very other end of the drawing-room, just when I am wanting you perhaps, I don’t make myself wretched, as you do. I only say to myself, Never mind, he is my John and not hers; and I am quite happy—though I am sure a girl has a great deal more cause to be uneasy than a man.”
And when John had been brought to this point, he would swallow such a speech, and would not allow himself to ask whether it was possible that his absence at the other end of the drawing-room could make Kate wretched. Had he put the question to himself, no doubt Reason would have come in; but why should Reason be allowed to come in to spoil the moments of happiness which came so rarely? He held the hands which were clasped on his arm closer to his side, and gave himself up to the sweetness. And he kept her until ever so long after the dressing-bell had pealed its summons to them under the silent trees. It was the stillest autumn night—a little chill, with a new moon which was just going to set as the dining-room was lighted up for dinner—and now and then a leaf detached itself in the soft darkness, and came down with a noiseless languid whirl in the air, like a signal from the unseen. One of these fell upon Kate’s pretty head as she raised it towards her lover, and he lifted the leaf from her hair and put it into his coat. “I will give you a better flower,” said Kate; “but oh, John, I must go in. I shall never have time to dress. Well——then, just one more turn: and never say I am not the most foolish yielding girl that ever was, doing everything you like to ask—though you scold me and threaten to go away.”
This interview made the evening bearable for John; and it was all the more bearable to him, though it is strange to say so, because Fred Huntley had returned, and sat next him at dinner. He had hated Fred for some days, and was not yet much inclined towards him; but still there was a pleasure in being able to talk freely to some one, and to feel himself, to some extent at least, comprehended, position and all. He was very dry and stiff to Huntley at first, but by degrees the ice broke. “I have never seen you since that night,” said Fred. “My heart has smote me since for the way in which I left you, lying on those door-steps. In that excitement one forgets everything. But you bear considerable marks of it, I see.”
“Nothing to signify,” said John; and Fred gave him a nod, and began to eat his soup with an indifference which was balm to the other’s excited feelings. Finding thus that no gratitude was claimed of him, John grew generous. “I hear it was you who dragged me out; and I have never had a chance of thanking you,” he said.
“Thanking me—what for? I don’t remember dragging any one out,” said Fred. “It was very hot work. I did not rush into the thick of it, like you, to do any good; but I daresay I could give the best description of it. Have they found out how much damage was done?—but I suppose the bank is still going on all the same.”
“Banks cannot stop,” said John, “unless things are going very badly with them indeed.”
“That comes of going in for a special study,” said Huntley; “you always did know all about political economy, didn’t you? No, it wasn’t you, it was Sutherland—never mind; if you have not studied it theoretically, you have practically. I often think if I had gone in for business it would have been better for me on the whole.”
“You have less occasion to say so than most men,” said John.
“Because we are well off?—or because I have got my fellowship, and that sort of thing? I don’t know that it matters much. A man has to work—or else,” said Fred, with a sigh, swallowing something more than that entrée, “he drifts somehow into mischief whether he will or no.”
Did he cast a glance at the head of the table as he spoke, where Kate sat radiant, dispensing her smiles on either hand? It was difficult to imagine why he did so, and yet so it seemed. John looked at her too, and for the moment his heart failed him. Could he say, as she herself had suggested, “After all, she is my Kate and no one’s else,” as she sat there in all her splendour? What could he give her that would bear comparison? Of all the men at her father’s table, he was the most humble. At that moment he caught Kate’s eye, and she gave him the most imperceptible little nod, the brightest momentary glance. She acknowledged him when even his own faith failed him. His heart came bounding up again to his breast, and throbbed and knocked against it, making itself all but audible in a kind of shout of triumph. Then he turned half round to his companion, with heightened colour, and an animation of manner which was quite unusual to him. He found Huntley’s eyes fixed upon his face, looking at him with grave, wondering, almost sympathetic interest. Of course Fred’s countenance changed as soon as he found that it was perceived, and sank into the ordinary expressionless look of good society. He was the spectator looking on at this drama, and felt himself so much better qualified to judge than either of those more closely concerned.
“How do you like Fernwood?” Huntley began, with some precipitation. “It is rather too full to be pleasant while you are half an invalid, isn’t it? Does your arm give you much pain?”
“It is very full,” said John, “and one is very much alone among a crowd of people whom one does not know.”
“You will soon get to know them,” said Fred, consolingly; “people are very easy to get on with nowadays on the whole.”
“I am going away on Thursday,” said John.
“What! the day after to-morrow? before your arm is better, or—anything different? Do you know, Mitford, I think you stand a good deal in your own light.”
“That may be,” John said, hotly, “but there are some personal matters of which one can only judge for one’s self.”
Fred made no answer to this; he shrugged his shoulders a little as who should say, It is no business of mine, and began to talk of politics and the member for Camelford, about whose election there were great searchings of heart in the borough and its neighbourhood. An inquiry was going on in the town, and disclosures were being made which excited the district. The two young men turned their thoughts, or at least their conversation, to that subject, and seemed to forget everything else; but whether the election committee took any very strong hold upon them, or if they were really much interested about the doings of the Man in the Moon, it would be hard to say.
The drawing-room was very bright and very gay that evening—like a scene in a play, John was tempted to think. There was a great deal of music, and he sat in his corner and looked and saw everything, and would have been amused had he felt no special interest in it. Kate was in the very centre of it all, guiding and directing, as it was natural she should be. The spectator in the corner watched her by the piano, now taking a part, now accompanying, now throwing herself back into her chair with an air of relief when something elaborate had been set agoing, and whispering and smiling behind her fan to some favoured being, though never to himself. At one moment his vague pain in watching her rose to a positive pang. It was when Fred Huntley was the person with whom she talked. He was stooping down over her, leaning on the back of a chair, and Kate’s face was raised to him and half screened with her fan. Their talk looked very confidential, very animated and friendly; and it seemed to John (but that must have been a mistake) that she gave him just the tips of her fingers as she dismissed him. Fred rose from the chair on which he had been half kneeling with a little movement of his head, which Kate reciprocated, and went off upon a meandering passage round the room. She had given him some commission, John felt—to him, and not to me, he said bitterly in his heart, and then tried to comfort himself, not very successfully, with the words she had taught him, “After all, she is my Kate and not his.” Was she John’s? or was it all a dream and phantasmagoria, that might vanish in an instant and leave no trace behind? He covered his eyes with his hand for a second in the sickness of jealous love with which he was struggling; but when he looked up again, found that a new revelation waited him, harder than anything he had yet had to undergo. It was that Fred Huntley was approaching himself, and that the mission with which Kate, giving him the tips of her fingers, had intrusted the man to whom of all others he felt most antagonistic, concerned himself. Fred managed the business very cleverly, and would have taken in any unsuspicious person; but John, on the contrary, was horribly suspicious, looking for pricks at all possible points. The ambassador threw himself into a vacant chair which happened to be handy, and stretched himself out comfortably in it, and said nothing for a minute. Then he yawned (was that, too, done on purpose?) and turned to John. “Were you asleep, Mitford?” he said; “I don’t much wonder. It’s very amusing, but it’s very monotonous night after night.”
“I have not had so much of it as you have, to get so tired,” said John.
“Well, perhaps there is something in that; and, after all, there are some nice people here. The worst for a new-comer,” said Fred, poising himself lazily in his chair, “is, that everybody has made acquaintance before he comes; and till he has been here for some time and gets used to it, he is apt to feel himself left out in the cold. Of course you can’t have any such sensations in this house—but I have felt it; and Ka—Miss Crediton, though she is an admirable hostess, can’t be everywhere at once.”
“But she can send ambassadors,” said John, with a faint attempt at a smile.
“Oh yes; of course she can send ambassadors,” said Huntley, confused, “when she has any ambassadors to send. I wanted to ask you, Mitford, about that archæological business your father takes so much interest in. I hear they are to visit Dulchester——”
“Did she tell you that?” said John. “My dear fellow, say to me plainly, I have been sent to talk to you and draw you out. That is reasonable and comprehensible, and I should not be ungrateful. But never mind my father. Let us talk since we are required to do so. When are you likely to be at Westbrook? I want to go home one of these days; and my mother would like to see you, to thank you——”
“To thank me for what?” said Fred, with much consternation.
“For dragging me out of that fire. I don’t say for saving my life, for it did not come to that—but still you have laid me under a great obligation,” said John, with a setting together of his teeth which did not look much like gratitude; and then he rose up suddenly and went away out of his corner, leaving Huntley alone there, and not so happy as his wont. As for John himself, he was stung to exertions quite unusual to him. He went and talked politics, and university talk, and sporting talk, with a variety of men. He did not approach any of the ladies—his heart was beating too fast for that; but he stood up in the doorway and against the wall wherever the men of the party most congregated. And he never so much as looked at the creature who was at once his delight and his torment during all the long weary tedious evening, which looked as if it never would come to an end and leave him at peace.