NEXT morning John packed himself up before he saw any one. He had not slept all night. It is true that the incidents of the past evening had been trifling enough—not of sufficient consequence to affect, as his sudden departure might do, the entire complexion of his life. It was only as a climax, indeed, that they were of any importance at all; but as such, they had wound him up to a point of resolution. The present state of affairs, it was evident, could not go on. Had he been a mere idle man of society, he said to himself, in whose life this perpetual excitement might supply a painful-pleasant sensation, then it might have been possible; but he could not, love as he might, wear away his existence in watching a girl’s face, or waiting for such moments of her society as she might be able to give him. It was impossible: better to go away where he should never see her again; better to give up for ever all the joys of life, than wear out every vestige of manliness within him in this hopeless way. He had been born to higher uses and better purposes surely, or where was the good of being born at all? Accordingly he prepared all his belongings for instant departure. Kate was still dearer to him than anything in earth or heaven, he acknowledged with a sigh; but unless perhaps time or Providence might arrange the terms of their intercourse on a more possible footing, that intercourse for the present must be suspended. He could not go on. With this resolution in his mind he went down-stairs; and looked so pale, that he attracted the attention of the lady who sat next to him at the breakfast-table, where Kate, who was so often late, had not yet appeared.
“I am afraid you are ill,” she said; “I fear your arm pains you more than usual. I think I knew your mother, Mr Mitford, a thousand years ago. Was not she a Miss Olive, of Burton? Ah, yes! I remember—one of the prettiest girls I ever saw. I think——you are a little like her,” said this benevolent woman, with a slight hesitation. And then there was a titter at the table, in which John did not feel much disposed to join.
“Oh no,” cried Kate, who had just come in; “it is not him that is like Mrs Mitford, but me. I allow he is her son, but that does not matter. I was at Fanshawe Regis ever so long in summer. Mr John, tell Lady Winton she was like me when she was a girl, and I shall be like her when I am an old lady. You know it is so.”
And she paused a moment just beside him, with her hand on Lady Winton’s chair, and looked into John’s pale face as he rose at her appeal. Something was wrong—Kate was not sure what. Lady Winton, perhaps, had been annoying him with questions, or Fred Huntley with criticism. It did not occur to her that she herself could be the offender. She looked into John’s face, meaning to say a thousand things to him with her eyes, but his were blank, and made no reply.
“She was prettier than you are, Kate,” said Lady Winton, with a smile.
“Nay,” said John, unawares. He had not meant to enter into the talk—but to look at her standing there before him in her fresh morning dress, in all her perfection of youth and sweetness, and to believe that anybody had ever been more lovely, was impossible. At that moment, when he was about to leave her, he could have bent down and kissed the hem of her dress. It seemed the only fitting thing to do, but it could not be done before all these people. Kate was still more and more perplexed what he could mean. His eyes, which had been blank, lighted up all in a moment, and spoke things to her which she could not understand. What was the meaning of the pathos in them—the melancholy, the dumb appeal that almost made her cry? She gave a little laugh instead, much fluttered and disturbed in her mind the while, and nodded her head and went on to her seat at the head of the table.
“When one’s friends begin to discuss one’s looks, don’t you think it is best to withdraw?” she said. “Oh, thanks, Madeline, for doing my duty. It is so wretched to be late. Please, somebody, have some tea.”
And then the ordinary talk came in and swept this little episode out of sight.
When breakfast was over, and one after another the guests began to disperse to their morning occupations, Kate, turning round to accompany one of the last to the morning room, where all the embroidery and the practising and the gossip went on, had her uncomfortable thoughts brought back in a moment by the sight of John standing right in her way, holding out his hand. “I am obliged to go away,” he said, in the most calm tone he could muster. “Good-bye, Miss Crediton; and thanks, many thanks.”
“Going away!” cried Kate, standing still in her amazement. “Going away! Has anything happened at Fanshawe Regis—— Your mother—or Dr Mitford——?”
“They are both well,” he said. “I am not going to Fanshawe, only back to the town to my work. Good-bye.”
“I must hear about this,” said Kate, abruptly. “Please don’t wait for me, Madeline; I want to speak to Mr Mitford. Go on, and I will join you. Oh, John, what does it mean?” she cried, turning to her lover, almost without waiting until the door had closed on her companion. By this time everybody was gone, and the two were left alone in the great empty room where five minutes ago there had been so much sound and movement. They were standing in front of one of the deeply-recessed windows, with the light falling direct upon them as on a stage. He held out his hand again and took hers, which she was too much disturbed to give.
“It is nothing,” he said, with a forlorn sort of smile, “except just that I must go away. Don’t let that cloud your face, dear. I can’t help myself. I am obliged to go.”
“Is any one ill?” she cried; “is that the reason? Oh, John, tell me! are you really obliged to go? Or is it—anything—we have done?”
“No,” he said, holding her hand in his. “It is all my fault. It does not matter. It is that I cannot manage this sort of life. No blame to you, my darling. Don’t think I am blaming you. When I am back at my work, things will look different. I was not brought up to it, like you. You must pardon me as you would pardon me for being ignorant and not knowing another language; but it is best I should go away.”
“John!” she cried, the tears coming with a sudden rush into the wondering eyes that had been gazing at him so intently, “what have I done?”
“Nothing—nothing,” he said, stooping over her hand and kissing it again and again. “There is only myself to blame. I can’t take things, I suppose, as other people do. I am exacting and inconsiderate and—— Never mind, dear, I must go away; and you will not remember my faults when I am gone.”
“But I never thought you had any faults,” cried Kate. “You speak as if it were me. I never have found fault with you, John—nor asked anything more—nor—— I know I am silly. Tell me, and scold me, and forgive me. Say as papa does—it is only Kate. I know I did not mean it. Oh, John, dear, if I beg your pardon, though I don’t know what I have done——”
“You have done nothing,” he cried, in despair. “Oh, my Kate! are you my Kate? or are you a witch coming into my arms to distract me from everything? No, no, no! I must not be conquered this time. My love, it will be best for both of us. I cannot go on seeing you always within my reach and always out of my reach. I would have you always like this—always here—always mine; but I can’t have you; and I have no strength to stand by at a distance and look on. Do you understand me now? I shall go away so much happier because of this five minutes. Good-bye.”
“But, John!” she cried, clinging to him, “don’t go away; why should you go away? I will do anything you please. I will—make a change; don’t go and leave me. I want you to be here.”
“You break my heart!” he cried; “but I cannot be here. What use is it to you? And to me it is distraction. Kate! don’t ask me to stay.”
“But it is of use to me,” she said, with a flush on her face, and an expression unlike anything he had seen before—an uneasy look, half of shame and half of alarm. Then she turned from him a little, with a slight change of tone. “It is a strange way of using me,” she said, looking steadfastly at the carpet, “after my going to you, and all; not many girls would have gone to you as I did; you might stay now when I ask you—for my sake.”
“I will do anything in the world for your sake,” he said; “but, Kate, it does you no good, you know. It is an embarrassment to you,” John went on, with a half-groan escaping him, “and it is distraction to me.”
Then there followed a pause. She drew her hand away from his with a little petulant movement. She kept her eyes away from him, not meeting his, which were fixed upon her. Her face glowed with a painful heat; her little foot tapped the carpet. “Do you mean that—other things—are to be over too?” she said; and twisted her fingers together, and gazed out of the window, waiting for what he had to say.
Such a question comes naturally to the mind of a lover whenever there is any fretting of his silken chain; and accordingly it was not novel to John’s imagination—but it struck upon his heart as if it had been a blow. “Surely not—surely not,” he answered, hastily; “not so far as I am concerned.”
And then they stood again—for how long?—side by side, not looking at each other, waiting a chance word to separate or to reunite them. Should she be able to bear her first rebuff? she, a spoiled child, to whom everybody yielded? Or could she all in a moment learn that sweet philosophy of yielding in her own person, which makes all the difference between sorrow and unhappiness? Everything—the world itself—seemed to hang in the balance for that moment. Kate terminated it suddenly, in her own unexpected way. She turned on him all at once, with the sweetness restored to her face and her voice, and held out her hand: “Neither shall it be so far as I am concerned,” she said. “Since you must go, good-bye, John!”
And thus it came to an end. When he was on his way back to Camelford, and the visit to Fernwood, with all its pains and pleasures, and the last touch of her hand, were things of the past, John asked himself, with a lover’s ingenuity of self-torment, if this frank sweetness of reply was enough? if she should have let him go so easily? if there was not something of relief in it? He drove himself frantic with these questions, as he made his way back to his poor little lodgings. Mr Crediton had looked politely indifferent, rather glad than otherwise, when he took his leave. “Going to leave us?” Mr Crediton had said. “I am very sorry; I hope it is not any bad news. But perhaps you are right, and perfect quiet will be better for your arm. Never mind about business—you must take your own time. If you see Whichelo, tell him I mean to come in on Saturday. I am very sorry you have given us so short a visit. Good-bye.” Such was Mr Crediton’s farewell; but the young man made very little account of that. Mr Crediton’s words or ways were not of so much importance to him as one glance of Kate’s eye. What she meant by her dismay and distress, and then by the sudden change, the sweet look, the good-bye so kindly, gently said, was the question he debated with himself; and naturally he had put a hundred interpretations upon it before he reached his journey’s end.
It was still but mid-day when he reached the little melancholy shabby rooms which were his home in Camelford. The place might be supportable at night, when he came in only for rest after the day’s labours, though even then it was dreary enough; but what could be thought of it in the middle of a bright autumn day, when the young man came in and closed his door, and felt the silence hem him in and enclose him, and put seals, as it were, to the grave in which he had buried himself. Full day and nothing to do, and a little room to walk about in, four paces from one side to the other—and a suburban street to look out upon, with blinds drawn over the windows, and plants shutting out the air, and an organ grinding melancholy music forth along each side of the way: could he stay still and bear it? When he was at Fernwood his rooms looked to him like a place of rest, where he could go and hide himself and be at peace. But as soon as he had entered them, it was Fernwood that grew lovely in the distance, where Kate was, where there were blessed people who would be round her all day long, and the stir of life, and a thousand pleasant matters going on. He was weary and sick of himself, and sick of the world. Could he sit down and read a novel in the light of that October day—or what was he to do?
The end was that he took his portmanteau, which had not been unpacked, and threw it into a passing cab, and went off to the railway. He had not gone home since he came to his clerkship in the bank, and that was three months since. It seemed the only thing that was left for him to do now. He went back along the familiar road with something of the feelings of a prodigal approaching his home. It seemed strange to him when the porter at the little roadside station of Fanshawe touched his cap, and announced his intention of carrying Mr John’s portmanteau to the Rectory. He felt it strange that the poor fellow should remember him. Surely it was years since he had been there before.
And this feeling grew as John walked slowly along the quiet country road that led to his home. Everything he passed was associated with thoughts which were as much over and gone as if they had happened in a different existence. He had walked along by these hedgerows pondering a thousand things, but scarcely one that had any reference to, any relation with, his present life. He had been a dreamer, planning high things for the welfare of the world; he had been a reformer, rousing, sometimes tenderly, sometimes violently, the indifferent country from its slumbers; sometimes, even, retiring to the prose of things, he had tried to realise the details of a clergyman’s work, and to fit himself into them, and ask himself how he should perform them. But never, in all these questionings, had he thought of himself as a banker’s clerk—a man working for money alone, and the hope of money. It was so strange that he did not know what to make of it. As he went on, the other John, his former self, seemed to go with him—and which was the real man, and which the phantom, he could not tell. All the quiet country lifted prevailing hands, and laid hold on him as he went home. It looked so natural—and he, what was he? But the country, too, had changed as if in a dream. He had left it in the full blaze of June, and now it was October, with the leaves in autumn glory, the fields reaped, the brown stubble everywhere, and now and then in the clear blue air the crack of a sportsman’s gun. All these things had borne a different aspect once to John. He too had been a little of a sportsman, as was natural; but the dog and the gun did not harmonise with the figure of a banker’s clerk. The women on the road, who stared at him, and curtsied to him with a smile of recognition, confused him, he could not tell why. It was so strange that everybody should recognise him—he who did not recognise himself.
And as he approached the Rectory, a vague sense that something must have happened there, came over him. It was only three days since he had received a letter from his mother full of those cheerful details which it cost her, though he did not know it, so much labour and pain to write. He tried to remind himself of all the pleasant everyday gossip, and picture of things serene and unchangeable which she had sent him; but still the nearer he drew and the more familiar everything became, the more he felt that something must have happened. He went in by the little garden-gate, which opened noiselessly, and made his way through the shrubbery, to satisfy himself that no cloud of calamity had fallen upon the house. It was a warm genial autumn day, very still, and somewhat pathetic, but almost as balmy as summer. And the drawing-room window stood wide open as it had done through all those wonderful June days when John’s life had come to its climax. The lilies had vanished that stood up in great pyramids against the buttresses; even their tall green stalks were gone, cut down to the ground; and there were no roses, except here and there a pale monthly one, or a half-nipped, half-open bud. John paused under the acacia-tree where he had so often placed Kate’s chair, and which was now littering all the lawn round about with its leaflets—to gain a glimpse, before he entered, of what was going on within. The dear, tender mother! to whom he had been everything—all her heart had to rest on. What had she to recompense her for all the tender patience, all the care and labour she took upon herself for the sake of her Saviour and fellow-creatures! Her son, who had taken things for granted all this time as sons do, opened his eyes suddenly as he stood peeping in like a stranger, and began to understand her life. God never made a better, purer woman; she had lived fifty years doing good and not evil to every soul around her, and what had she in return? A husband, who thought she was a very good sort of ignorant foolish little woman on the whole, and very useful in the parish, and handy to keep off all interruptions and annoyances; and a son who had gone away and abandoned her at the first chance—disappointed all her hopes, left her alone, doubly alone, in the world. “It is her hour for the school, the dearest little mother,” he said to himself, with the tears coming to his eyes; “she never fails, though we all fail her;” but even as the words formed in his mind he perceived that the room into which he was gazing was not empty. There she sat, thrown back into a chair; her work was lying on the floor at her feet; but John had never seen such an air of weariness and lassitude in his mother before. He recognised the gown she had on, the basket of work on the table, all the still life round her; but her he could not recognise. She had her hands crossed loosely in her lap, laid together with a passive indifference that went to his heart. Could she be asleep? but she was not asleep; for after a while one of the hands went softly up to her cheek, and something was brushed off, which could only be a tear. He could scarcely restrain the cry that came to his lips; but at that moment the door, which he could not see, must have opened, for she gave a start, and roused herself, and turned to speak to somebody. “I am coming, Lizzie,” John heard her answer in a spiritless, weary tone; and then she rose and put away her work, and took up her white shawl, which was lying on the back of a chair. She liked white and pretty bright colours about her, the simple soul. They became her, and were like herself. But when she had wrapped herself in the shawl, which was as familiar to John as her own face, his mother gave a long weary sigh, and sat down again as if she could not make up her mind to move. He had crept quite close to the window by this time, moved beyond expression by the sight of her, with tears in his eyes, and unspeakable compunction in his heart. “What does it matter now?” she said to herself, drearily. She had come to be so much alone that the thought was spoken and not merely thought. When John stepped into the room a moment after, his mother stood and gazed at him as if he had risen out of the earth, and then gave a great cry which rang through all the house, and fell upon his neck. Fell upon his neck—that was the expression—reaching her arms, little woman as she was, up to him as he towered over her; and would not have cared if she had died then, in the passion of her joy.
“Mother, dear, you are trembling,” John said, as he put her tenderly into her chair and knelt down beside her, taking her hands into his. “I should not have been so foolish startling you; but I could not resist the temptation when I saw you here.”
“Joy does not hurt,” said Mrs Mitford. “I have grown so silly, my dear, now I have not you to keep me right; and it was a surprise. There—I don’t in the least mean to cry; it is only foolishness. And oh, my poor John, your arm!”
“It is nothing,” he said; “it is almost well. Never mind it. I am a dreadful guy, to be sure. Is that what you are looking at, mamma mia?” In his wan face and fire-scorched hair she had not known her child.
“Oh, John, that you could think so,” she said, in her earnest matter-of-fact way. “My own boy! as if I should not have known you anywhere, whatever you had done to yourself. It was not that. John, my dear?”
“What, mother?”
“I was looking to see if you were happy, my dearest, dearest boy. Don’t be angry with me. As long as you are happy I don’t mind—what happens—to me.”
John laid his head down on his mother’s lap. How often he had done it!—as a child, as a lad, as a man—sometimes after those soft reproofs which were like caresses—sometimes in penitence, when he had been rebellious even to her; but never before as now, that her eyes might not read his heart. He did it by instinct, having no time to think; but in the moment that followed thought came, and he saw that he must put a brave face on it, and not betray himself. So he raised his head again, and met her eyes with a smile, believing, man as he was, that he could cheat her with that simulation of gladness which went no further than his lips.
“What could I be but happy?” he said; “but not to see you looking so pale, and trembling like this, my pretty mamma. You are too pretty to-day—too pink and too white and too bright-eyed. What do you mean by it? It must be put a stop to, now I have come home.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, with tremulous eagerness. He was not happy; he might deceive all the world, she said to herself, but he could not deceive his mother. He was not happy, but he did not mean her to know it, and she would not betray her knowledge. So she only trembled a little more, and smiled pathetically upon him, and kissed his forehead, and shed back the hair from it with her soft nervous hands. “Coming home has such a sound to me. It used to mean the long nice holidays; and once I thought it meant something more; but now——”
“Now it means a week or two,” he said; “not much, but still we can make a great deal out of it. And the first thing must be to look after your health, mother. This will never do.”
“My health will mend now,” she said, with a smile; and then, afraid to have been supposed to consent to the fact that her health had need of mending—“I mean I never was better, John. I am only a little—nervous—because of the surprise; the first thing is to make you enjoy your holiday, my own boy.”
“Yes,” he said, with a curious smile. Enjoy his holiday!—which was the escape of a man beaten from the field on which he had failed in his first encounter with fate. But I will not let her know that, John said to himself. And I must not show him that I see it, was the reflection of his mother. This was how they met again after the great parting which looked like the crisis of their lives.