“I could try, miss,” said Lizzie, somewhat frightened, drying her eyes.
“Try!—to make me a dress!” cried Kate, her eyes dancing with fun and comic horror. “But, Lizzie, I will try and find a place for you as housemaid, if you like.”
“I don’t care for that, miss,” said Lizzie, disconsolately; “what I want is to better myself. And I know I could, if I were to try. When I’ve tried hard at anything, I’ve allays done it. And, please, I don’t know what Miss Parsons is, as she should be thought that much of—I could do it if I was to try.”
“Then you had better try, I think,” said Kate, with severe politeness, “and let me know when you have succeeded; but in the mean time I will take my gloves, which you are spoiling. I have no more time to talk just now.”
Poor Lizzie found herself left behind, when she had hoped the argument was just beginning. Kate ran down with her gloves in her hand, half annoyed, half amused. The girl was so ready to transplant herself anywhere—to reach out her rash hands to new tools, and to take upon her a succession of unknown duties, that Kate was quite subdued by the thought. “How foolish!” she said to herself. “When she has been brought up to one thing, why should she want to try another? It is so silly. What stupids servants are! If I had been brought up a housemaid, I should have remained a housemaid. And to be willing to leave her good mistress and her home and all her past life—for what?” said Kate, moralising. Had she but known what a very similar strain of reasoning was going on in Mrs Mitford’s mind! “To give up his home, and all his associations, and his prospects in life, and the work God had provided for him—for what?” John’s mother was musing. The school, and the old women in the village, and all her parish work, had slid out of her thoughts. She had shut herself up in her own room, and was brooding over it—working the sword in her wound, and now and then crying out with the pain. And Dr Mitford in his study paused from time to time in the midst of his paper, and wished with a glum countenance that Mr Crediton’s visit was well over, and made up little speeches disowning all complicity in the business; and John had gone down to the river, to the foot of those cliffs where Kate’s horse was carrying her when he saved her, and, with his fishing-rod idle in his hand, tried also to prepare himself for that awful interview with Kate’s father, and for the final argument with his own which must follow. He was in the first day of his lover’s paradise, and had just tasted the sweetness of mutual consultation over those interests and prospects which were now hers as well as his. And he was very happy. But all the same he was wretched, feeling himself torn asunder from his life—feeling that he had lost all independent standing, and had alienated the hearts which loved him most in the world. All this followed upon the privilege of saving Miss Crediton’s life, and her month’s residence at Fanshawe Regis. Was it Kate’s fault? Nobody said so in words, not even Mrs Mitford; and Kate went to meet her father with such a sense of splendid virtue and disinterestedness as never before had swelled her bosom. She was full of the energy and exhilaration which attends the doing of a good action. “I have saved him,” she said to herself, “as he saved me. I have prevented him going and making a sacrifice of himself. He would never have had the courage to stand up for himself without me.” Moved by this glow of delightful complacency, she set out upon the road to the station; and it was not till she heard the jingle of the phaeton in the distance that a thrill of nervousness ran over Kate, and she felt the magnitude and importance of what she was about to do.
Mr Crediton probably was thinking of quite other things—at least, he did not recognise her, though she stood against the green hedgerow in her light summer dress, making signs with her parasol. It was only when the groom drew up that he observed the pretty figure by the roadside. “What, Kate!” he cried, with a flush of pleasure, and jumped out of the phaeton to greet her. “But there is no room for another,” he said, looking comically at the respectable vehicle, when he had kissed his child, and congratulated her on her improved looks—“what is to be done?”
“I wanted to have driven the pony to the station,” said Kate, “but Dr Mitford would not let me. Now you must walk home with me, papa—it is not a mile. James, you may drive on, and say we are coming. Dr Mitford thought the pony would be too much for me,” she added, demurely. “He is so funny, and so precise about everything.” Then Kate remembered suddenly that it was very contrary to her interest to depreciate any of the Mitford family, and changed her tone—“but so nice—you cannot think, papa, how kind, how good they have all been to me: they have made me like their own child.”
“So much the better, my dear,” said Mr Crediton. “I am very grateful to them. I am sure they are very good sort of people. But I hope, Kate, you are not sorry to be going home?”
“I am not sorry to see you, papa,” cried Kate, clasping his arm with both her hands. And then she leaned her head towards him in her caressing way. “Dear papa! I have so much to tell you,” she went on, faltering in spite of herself.
“If you have much to tell me, you must have used your time well,” said Mr Crediton, smiling upon her the smile of fond paternal indulgence. “And I daresay the items are not very important. But you have got back your roses and your bright eyes, my pet, and that is of more consequence than all the news in the world.”
“Papa,” said Kate, moved to a certain solemnity, “you would not say so if you knew what I am going to say. Do you remember what you said to me the morning you left? and I thought it was such nonsense;—but,” here she gave his arm a tender little squeeze between her two clinging hands, “I suppose it was you that knew best.”
“What did I say to you the morning I left?” said Mr Crediton, quite unsuspicious. He was pleased she should remember, pleased she should think he knew best. But he could scarcely realise his saucy Kate in this soft adoring creature, and he put his own hand caressingly upon the two little hands. “Mrs Mitford must have done you a great deal of good,” he added, with a soft laugh; “you did not use to be quite so retentive of what I said.”
“Oh, but papa, if you would only remember!” said Kate. “Papa,” she resumed, faltering, and drooping her head, “it came true—all your warning about—John.”
Mr Crediton gave a start, as if he had been shot. “About—John. What does this mean?” he cried, becoming alarmed. “What is it? I remember most things that concern you, but I don’t recollect anything particular I said.”
“Yes, papa; you warned me about—John. But it has not quite come true,” she added, lowering her voice, and leaning on him, with her head against his arm; “or rather, it has come more than true. Papa, don’t be angry. I came out on purpose to tell you. They are in a dreadful state about it. It is making poor Mrs Mitford quite ill. She thinks you will think they had some hand in it, but indeed they had not. Papa, dear, promise me you will not be angry. I—I am—engaged—to John.”
Mr Crediton was a very decorous, respectable man, not addicted to outbursts of passion, but at this wonderful announcement he swore a prodigious oath, and drew his arm away from her, giving her unawares a thrust aside which made her reel. Kate was so bewildered, so frightened, so dismayed by this personal touch that she blushed crimson the one moment, and the next began to cry. She stood gazing at him, with the big tears dropping, and the most piteous look in her eyes. “Oh, papa, don’t kill me!” she cried, in her consternation, sinking into the very hedge, in horror of his violence. Mr Crediton was so excited that he paid no attention to her cry of terror. “The d——d scoundrel!” he cried. “What! come in like this behind my back and rob me—take advantage of my sense of obligation—curse him! Curse them all! That’s your pious people!” And the man raved and blasphemed for five minutes at least, as if he had been his own groom, and not a respectable gentleman with grey hairs on his head, and the cares of half the county in his hands.
All this time Kate was too frightened to speak; but she was not the kind of girl to be long overwhelmed by such a fit of passion. She shrank back farther into the hedge, and grew as white as her dress, and trembled a good deal, and could not utter a word. But gradually her courage returned to her. Her heart began to thump less wildly against her breast, but rose and swelled instead with a force which was half self-will and half a generous sense of injustice. When Mr Crediton came to himself—which he did all at once with some very big words in his mouth, and his hand clenched in the air, and his face blazing with fury—he stopped short all at once, and cast an alarmed look at his daughter. Good heavens! he, a respectable man, to utter such exclamations, and in Kate’s presence! He came to himself all in a moment, and metaphorically fell prostrate before her with confusion and shame.
“Well,” he said, half fiercely, half humbly, “it is not much wonder if a man should forget himself. How do you dare to stand there and face me, and put such a thing into words?”
“Papa, I am very much surprised,” said Kate, her courage rising to the occasion. “I could not have believed it. It is best it should be me, and not a stranger, for what would any stranger have thought? But all the same, I am very sorry that it was me. I shall never be able to forget that I saw you look like that, and heard you say—— Ah!” said Kate, shutting her eyes. He thought she was going to faint, and got very much frightened; but nothing could be further from Kate’s mind than any intention of fainting. She sat down, however, on the grass, and leaned her elbows on her knees, and hid her face in her hands. And the unhappy father, conscious of having so horribly committed himself, stood silent, and did not know what to say.
Then, after a moment, she raised her head and looked him in the face. “Papa,” she said, “the people you have been abusing are waiting over there to welcome you to their house. They don’t like your coming, because they have a feeling what will happen; and they are very very vexed with their son for falling in love with me; and, poor fellow! I think he is vexed with himself, though he could not help it. What are you going to do? Are you going to swear at Dr Mitford, whose son saved your only child’s life, and whose wife saved it over again by her kindness, because they love me now as well? Are you going to drive me mad, and make me that I don’t care what I do? I am not so good as John is,” she said, with a half-sob; “if you cross me I will not be humble. I will go wrong, and make him go wrong too. You cannot change my mind by swearing at me, papa. What are you going to do?”
Yes, that was the question. It was very easy to storm and swear, with nobody present but his daughter. But Dr Mitford was as good a man as Mr Crediton, and as well known in the county, though he was not so rich. And John had saved Kate’s life at the risk of his own; and she had been taken in, and nursed, and brought back to perfect health; and there was no single house in the world to which Mr Crediton lay under such a weight of obligations. Was he to turn his back upon the house, and ignore all gratitude? Was he to go and insult them, or what was he to do? He was very angry, furious with Kate and her bold words, yet cowed by her in a way most wonderful to behold. “We had better walk back to the station; you are able enough for that, or at least you look so,” he said.
“That will show how highly you esteem my life,” said Kate, “though even that would be better than insulting them to their face.”
“By Jove!” said Mr Crediton, under his breath; and he took a few rapid turns up and down the road, with a perplexity which it would be impossible to describe. At last he came to a stop opposite Kate, who was watching him anxiously, without appearing to take any notice; and she felt that the fit was over. He came back to her very sternly, speaking with none of its usual softness in his voice.
“Kate,” he said, “you have spoken in a very unpardonable, very impertinent, way to me, but perhaps I have been wrong too. Of course I am not going to transgress the laws of civility. My opinion is not changed, but I hope I can be civil to my worst enemy. Get up, and let us go to the Rectory; it is the only thing we can do.”
Kate rose without a word, and put her hand upon her father’s arm, and the two stalked into Fanshawe Regis like two mutes following a funeral. They neither looked at each other, nor uttered a syllable to each other, but walked on side by side, feeling as if mutual hatred, and not love, was the bond between them. But yet in her inmost heart Kate felt that nothing was lost. The communication had been made, and the worst was over—perhaps even something had been gained.
It was perhaps well, on the whole, for the comfort of all the party, that Mr Crediton had behaved so very badly on the first announcement of this news. His self-betrayal put him on his guard. It recalled him to a sense of needful restraint, and that the Mitfords were not, after all, people to be treated with contempt. He was very serious and somewhat stiff during the luncheon, which was sufficiently trying to all the party, but he was not uncivil. Of John he took no notice at all after the first formal recognition, but to Mrs Mitford and the Doctor he was studiously polite, making them little speeches of formal gratitude. “I find my child perfectly recovered, thanks to your kind care,” he said. “I can never sufficiently express my deep sense of obligation to you.” This speech called up an angry flush on John’s cheek, but not a word was spoken by any of the party to imply that there was any stronger bond than that of kindness between Kate and the people who had been so good to her. The two young people were made to feel that they were secondary altogether. The thoughts of their elders might, indeed, be occupied about them, but they themselves were struck out of the front of the action, and relegated to their natural place. Mr Crediton carried this so far that, when luncheon was over, he turned to Dr Mitford and asked to speak with him, altogether ignoring the existence of Dr Mitford’s son. But John had risen, and had taken matters into his own hands.
“May I ask you to see me first, Mr Crediton?” he said. “There are some things of which I am most anxious to speak to you at once.”
Mr Crediton rose too, and made John a little formal bow. “I am at your service,” he said; and Dr Mitford stood up, looking somewhat scared, and listened; no doubt feeling himself, in his turn, thrust aside.
“I must not interfere,” he said, with a kind of ghastly smile, “and I take no responsibility in what my son is going to say; but if you will both come to my library——”
“I should prefer speaking to Mr Crediton alone,” said John. And then it seemed that his father shrank like a polite ghost, and gave way to the real hero of the situation. Mrs Mitford shrank too, joining in her husband’s involuntary gesture; and John marched boldly out, leading the way, while Mr Crediton followed, and the Doctor went after them, shrugging his shoulders with a faint assumption of indifference. It seemed as if some magician had waved a wand, and the three gentlemen disappeared out of the room, leaving Mrs Mitford and Kate looking at each other. And there they sat half stupefied, with their hearts beating, till Jervis came in to clear the table, and looked at them as a good servant looks, with suspicious watchful eyes, as if to say, What is it all about, and what do you mean by it, sitting there after your meal is over, and giving yourselves up to untimely agitations, disturbing Me? Mrs Mitford obeyed that look as a well-brought-up woman always does. She said, “Come, Kate! what can you and I be thinking of?” and led the way into the drawing-room. She did this with an assumption of liveliness and light-heartedness which was overdoing her part. “We need not take the servants into our confidence, at least,” she said, sitting down by her work-table, and taking out her knitting as usual. But it was a very tremulous business, and soon the needles dropped upon her knee. Kate, too, attempted to resume the piece of worsted work she had been doing, and to look as if nothing had happened; but her attempt was even more futile. When they had sat in this way silent for some five minutes, the girl’s agitation got the better of her. She threw the work aside, and ran and threw herself at Mrs Mitford’s feet. “Oh, mamma, say something to me!” she cried; “I feel as if I could not breathe. And I never had any mother of my own.”
Then John’s mother lost the composure for which she had been struggling. Her heart was not softened to Kate personally at that climax of all the trouble which Kate had brought upon her, but she could not resist such an appeal; and she too could scarcely breathe, and wanted companionship in her trouble. It was hard to take into her heart the girl who was the occasion of it all; but yet Kate was suffering too. Mrs Mitford fell a-crying, which was the first natural expression of her feelings, and then she laid her hand softly on Kate’s head, and by degrees allowed herself to be taken possession of. They were just beginning to talk to each other, to open their hearts, and enter into all those mutual explanations which women love, when Kate’s quick youthful eyes caught sight of two black figures in the distance among the trees on the other side of the blazing summer lawn. She broke off in the middle of a sentence, and gave a low cry, and clutched at Mrs Mitford’s gown. “They are there!” cried Kate, with a gasp of indescribable suspense. And Mrs Mitford, when she saw them, began to cry softly again.
“Oh, what is he saying to my boy?” cried the agitated woman, wringing her hands. To see the discussion going on before their eyes gave the last touch of the intolerable to their anxiety.
“Oh, Kate, I am a bad woman!” said Mrs Mitford; “I could hate you, and I could hate your father, for bringing all this trouble on my John.”
“I don’t wonder,” cried Kate, in her passion; and then she made an effort to conquer herself. “Papa cannot eat him,” she added, with a little harsh laugh of emotion. “I have had the worst of it. He will never say to John what he said to me.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Oh, nothing!” she cried, recollecting herself. “He is my own papa; he has a right to say what he likes to me. It is John who is speaking now—that is a good sign. And when he chooses, and takes the trouble, John can speak so well; he is so clever. I never meant to have let him do all this, and give everybody so much trouble; but when he began to talk like that, what was I to do?”
“Oh, Kate!” cried the mother, with her eyes full of tears, “we are so selfish—we never thought of that! How were you to resist him more than the rest of us? My dear boy—he had always such a winning way!”
“John is speaking still,” said Kate. “Mamma, I think things must be coming round. There—papa has put his hand on his arm. When he does that he is beginning to give in. Oh, if we could only hear what they say!”
“He is so earnest in all he does,” said Mrs Mitford. “Kate! listen to what I am going to say to you. If this ever comes to anything——”
“Of course it will come to something,” cried Kate. “I am not so good as John. If papa were to stand out, I should just wait till I was one-and-twenty; and then, if John pleased—— Now they are turning back again. Oh, will they never be done? It is just like men, walking and talking, walking and talking for ever, and us poor women waiting here.”
“But, Kate, listen to me,” said Mrs Mitford, solemnly; “if it ever comes to anything, you must be very very careful with my John. Look at his dear face, how it shines with feeling! He loves you so—he would put himself under your father’s feet. I feel as if I could tell you the very words he is saying. And you—you have been brought up so differently. If you were tempted to be careless, and forget his ways of thinking, and prefer society and the world——”
“I see how it is,” said Kate, with a mournful cadence in her voice—she did not turn her head, for her eyes were still intently fixed on the distant figures out of doors; “I see how it is—you don’t think I am the right girl for John.”
“I did not say so,” said Mrs Mitford, humbly; “how can I tell? I can’t divine what is in my own boy’s heart, and how can I divine yours? But I will love you for his sake. Oh, Kate! if you are good to him——”
Here the conversation came to a sudden pause; for the two who were outside were seen to turn in the direction of Dr Mitford’s study, and to enter the house, which made the crisis come nearer, as it were. Neither of the two ladies could have told how the afternoon passed. Every sound that went through the house seemed to them significant. Sometimes a door would open or shut, and paralyse them for the moment. Sometimes a sound as of a single step would be heard in one of the passages, and then Mrs Mitford and Kate would rise up and flush crimson, and listen as if they had not been listening all the time. “Now they are coming!” one or the other would say, with a gasp, for the waiting affected their very breathing. Except on these occasions, they scarcely exchanged two words in half an hour. From time to time Kate looked at her watch, and made a remark under her breath about the hour. “It is too late for the four o’clock train,” she said; and then it was too late for the mail at half-past five; and all this time not a word came out of the stillness to relieve their anxiety. The bees buzzed about the garden, and the sun shone and shone as if he never could weary of shining, and blazed across the monotonous lawn and vacant paths, which no step or shadow disturbed. Oh the burden of the silence that lay upon that whole smiling world outside, where not even a leaf would move, so eager was nature to have the first word of the secret! When Mrs Mitford’s needles clicked in her tremulousness, Kate glanced up with eyes of feverish reproach; and when Kate’s scissors fell, the room echoed with the sound, and Mrs Mitford felt it an injury. Thus the long, weary, languid afternoon passed on. When Jervis began to stir with his preparations for dinner, and to move about his pantry, with clink and clang of glass and silver, laying the table, the sounds were to them like the return of a jury into their box to the anxious wretches waiting for their verdict. Dinner was coming, that augustest of modern ceremonies, and the ladies felt instinctively that things must now come to a decision. And accordingly, it was just after Jervis had carried his echoing tray out of the pantry to the sideboard when the door of the study at last opened, and steps were heard coming along the passage—Dr Mitford’s steps, creaking as they came, and another footstep, which Kate knew to be her father’s. Not John! The ladies sat bolt upright, and grew red and grew pale, and felt the blood tingle to their finger-points. And then they looked at each other, and asked, silently, “Where has he gone?”
This time it was no longer the jurymen. It was the judge himself, coming solemn with his verdict. The gentlemen came into the room one behind the other, Mr Crediton looking worn and tired, and even Dr Mitford’s white tie grown limp with suspense and emotion. But it was he who was the first to speak.
“I am sorry to have left you so long by yourselves,” he said, with a little air of attempted jauntiness, which sat very strangely on him, “and to have kept Mr Crediton away from you; but we had a great deal to talk over, and business, you know, must be attended to. My dear, it was business of a very momentous kind. And now, Miss Kate,” said the Rector, turning upon her, and holding out both his hands—he smiled, but his smile was very limp, like his tie, and even his hands, though not expressive generally, trembled a little—“now, Miss Kate, for the first time I feel at liberty to speak to you. You must have thought me very hard and cold the other night; but now I have your father’s permission to bid you welcome to my family,” Dr Mitford went on, smiling a ghastly smile; and he stooped over her and kissed her forehead, and held her hands, waving them up and down as if he did not know what to do with them. “I don’t know why my son has not come to be the first to tell you. Everything is settled at last!”
“Where is John?” cried Mrs Mitford, with her soft cheeks blazing. And her husband dropped Kate’s hands as if they had burned him, and they all paused and looked at each other with an embarrassment and restraint which nobody could disguise.
“To do him justice, I don’t think he felt himself equal to a grand tableau of family union and rapture,” said Mr Crediton. “Mrs Mitford, I don’t pretend to be overjoyed. I don’t see why we should make any pretences about it. They have done a very foolish thing, and probably they will repent of it——”
But this was more than John’s mother could bear. “One of them, I am sure, will never have any reason to repent of it,” she said, with irrepressible heat, not thinking of the double meaning that her words might bear.
“I hope it may be so,” Mr Crediton said, and shook his head. And there was again a silence, and Kate sat with all her veins swelling as if they would burst, and her heart beating in her very throat, and nobody taking any further notice of her. What was it to any of them in comparison with what it was to her? and yet nobody even looked at her. It seemed so utterly incredible, that for the moment she was stunned and dumb, and capable of nothing but amazement.
“No,” said her father again, after a pause; “I don’t pretend to be overjoyed. We have had a great deal of talk, and the talk has not been agreeable. And, Mrs Mitford, if I am to judge by your looks, I should say you were no more happy at the thought of losing your son than I am at that of losing my daughter—in so foolish a way.”
“Let us hope it may turn out better than we think,” said Dr Mitford; and then came the inevitable pause, which made every sentence sound so harsh and clear.
“There is certainly room for the hope,” said Mr Crediton; “fortunately it must be a long time before anything comes of it. Your son seems to have quite relinquished the thought of going into the Church.”
“Have you settled that too?—is it all decided? Oh, Dr Mitford, you have been hasty with him!” cried John’s mother. “I told you if you would but take time enough, and go into things with him, and explain——”
“I don’t think explaining would have done much good,” said Mr Crediton. “It rarely does, when a young fellow has got such an idea into his head. The only thing is, that when a boy changes once he may change twice—when he is older, and this fever-fit, perhaps, may be over——”
“Oh, can you sit and hear this?” cried Kate, springing to her feet. “Oh, papa, how can you be so wicked and so rude? Do you think John is like that—to take a fancy and give it over? And you are his mother, and know him best, and you leave him to be defended by me!”
“Kate, my dear!” cried Mrs Mitford, hastening to her, “you make me hate myself. You understand my boy—you stand up for him when his own flesh and blood is silent. And I love you with all my heart! And I will never, never grudge him to you again!”
And the two women rushed into each other’s arms, and clung together in a passion of tears and mutual consolation; while the men, for their part, looked grimly on, vanquished, yet finding a certain satisfaction in their sense of superiority to any such folly. Mr Crediton sat down, with the hard unsympathetic self-possession of a man who has still a blow to deliver; and poor Dr Mitford walked up and down the room, aware of what was yet to come. But in the mean time the victims over whom the stroke was lowering had delivered themselves all at once from their special misery. The ice had broken between them. John, who had divided them, became all at once their bond of union. “Mamma, if you will stand by me I can do anything,” Kate whispered, with her lips upon Mrs Mitford’s cheek. “My own child!” John’s mother whispered in reply; and thus the treaty was made which was to set all other diplomacies at nought.
“I think it is a great pity,” said Mr Crediton again, “but of course, in the turn that circumstances have taken, I must help him as best I can. It is not very much I can do, for you are aware when a young man changes his profession all in a minute, it is a difficult thing to provide for him. And he did not seem to have any clear idea what to do with himself. Probably you will feel it is not equal to your son’s pretensions, Mrs Mitford—but I have offered him a clerkship in my bank.”
“A clerkship in your bank!” cried Mrs Mitford, petrified. She withdrew a little from Kate in her consternation, and sat down and gazed, trying to take in and understand this extraordinary piece of news.
“Papa, you cannot mean it,” cried Kate, vehemently. “Oh, are you papa, or somebody come to mock us? A clerkship in the bank—for Dr Mitford’s son—for—John!”
“John is no doubt possessed of many attractions,” said Mr Crediton, in his hardest tones, “but I am only an ordinary mortal, and I cannot make him Prime Minister. When a man throws himself out of his proper occupation, he must take what he can get. And he has accepted my offer, Kate. He is not so high-flown as you are; and I can assure you a man may do worse than be a clerk in my bank.”
“It is a most honourable introduction to commerce,” said Dr Mitford, coming forward very limp and conciliatory; “and commerce, as I have often said, is the great power of the nineteenth century. My dear, it is not what we expected—of course it is very different from what we expected; but if I put up with it—— It cannot be such a disappointment to you as it is to me.”
Mrs Mitford turned away with an impatient cry. Her very sense of decorum failed her. Though she had kept up the tradition of her husband’s superiority so long that she actually believed in it, yet on this point he was not superior. She was driven even out of politeness, the last stronghold of a well-bred woman. She could not be civil to the man who had thus outraged her pride and all her hopes. She sat and moaned and rocked herself, saying, “My boy! my boy!” in a voice of despair.
“He is saying it only to try us,” cried Kate. “He is not cruel. Papa, you have always been so good to me! Oh, he does not mean it. It is only—some frightful—joke or other. Papa, you don’t mean what you say?”
“I do mean what I say,” said Mr Crediton, abruptly; “and when I say so, I think I may congratulate both Mrs Mitford and myself that, whatever foolish thing our children may make up their minds to do, they cannot do it very soon. We have had enough of this nonsense for the present, Kate. Dr Mitford is so kind as to ask us to stop for dinner. We must wait now for the nine o’clock train.”
And just then Jervis, curious but unenlightened, rang the first bell. And what are all the passions and all the struggles of the heart compared to Dinner, invincible potentate? Mrs Mitford and Kate gathered themselves together meekly at the sound of that summons. Against it they did not dare to remonstrate. They gave each other a silent kiss as they parted at the door of Kate’s room, but they could not resist nor trifle with such a stern necessity. “Where was John?” they asked themselves, as each stood before her glass, trying as best she could to clear away the trace of tears, and to hide from their own eyes and from the sharp eyes of the servants all signs of the crisis they had been going through. Kate had to retain her morning dress, as she had still a journey before her; but she was elaborate about her hair, by way of demonstrating her self-possession. “Papa has put off till the nine o’clock train; and it is so tiresome of him, making one go down to dinner like a fright,” she said to Parsons, trying to throw dust in the eyes of that astute young woman. As if Parsons did not know!
As for John, he had been wandering about stupefied ever since that amazing conclusion had been come to, in such a state of confusion that he could not realise what had happened. Kate was to be his. That was the great matter which had been decided upon. But notwithstanding his passionate love for Kate, this was not what bulked largest in his mind. The world somehow had turned a somersault with him, and he could not make out whether he had lighted on solid earth again, or was still whirling in the dizzy air. His past life had all shrivelled away from him as if it had never been. His sensations were those of a man who has rolled over some tremendous precipice; or who wakes out of a swoon to find himself lying on some battle-field. He was very sore and battered and beaten, tingling all over with bruises; and the relative position of the world, and everything in it, to himself was changed. It might be the same sky and the same soil to others, but to him everything was different. Kate was to be his; but that was in the future. And for the present he was to begin life, not in any noble way for the service of others, but as a clerk in Mr Crediton’s bank.
Mr Crediton’s bank was in the High Street of Camelford—a low-roofed, rather shabby-looking office, with dingy old desks and counters, at which the clerks sat about in corners, all visible to the public, and liable to constant distraction. The windows were never cleaned, on principle, and there were some iron bars across the lower half of them. Mr Crediton’s own room was inside—you had to pass through the office to reach it; and the banker, when he chose to open his door, was visible to the clerks and the public at the end of the dingy vista, just as the clerks, and the public entering at the swing-door, and sometimes the street outside, were to him. The office was a kind of lean-to to the house, which was much loftier, more imposing, and stately; and Mr Crediton’s room communicated with his dwelling by a dark passage. The whole edifice was red brick, and recalled the age of the early Georges, or even of their predecessor Anne—a time when men were not ashamed of their business, but at the same time did it unpretendingly, and had no need during office hours of gilding or plate-glass. The house had a flight of steps up to it almost as high as the top of the office windows, and a big iron horn to extinguish links, and other traces of a moderate antiquity. Up to these steps Kate Crediton’s horse would be led day after day, or her carriage draw up, in very sight of the clerks behind their murky windows. They kept their noses over their desks all day, in order that a butterfly creature, in all the brilliant colours of her kind, might flutter out and in in the sunshine, and take her pleasure. That was perhaps what some of them thought. But, to tell the truth, I don’t believe many of them thought so. Even Mr Whichelo, the head clerk, whose children were often ailing, and who had a good deal of trouble to make both ends meet, smiled benign upon Kate. Had she been her own mother, it might have been different; but she was a creature of nineteen, and everybody felt it was natural. The clerks, with their noses at the grindstone, and her father sombre in the dingy room, working hard too in his way—all to keep up the high-stepping horses, the shining harness, the silks and velvets, and the high supremacy of that thing like a rosebud who sat princess among them,—after all, was it not quite natural? What is the good of the stem but to carry, and of the leaves and thorns but to protect, the flower?
But it may be supposed that John Mitford’s feelings would be of a very strange description when he found himself dropped down in Mr Crediton’s office, as if he had dropped from the skies. He was the junior clerk, and did not know the business, and his perch was behind backs, not far from one of the windows from which he could see all Kate’s exits and entrances. He saw the public, too, coming and going, the swing-door flashing back and forward all day long, and on Saturdays and market-days caught sometimes the wondering glances of country folks who knew him. He sat like a man in a dream, while all these things went on around him. How his life had changed! What had brought him here? what was to come of it? were questions which glided dreamily through John’s brain from time to time, but he could give no answer to them. He was here instead of at Fanshawe Regis; instead of serving the world and his generation, as he had expected to do, he was junior clerk in a banker’s office, entering dreary lines of figures into dreary columns. How had it all come about? John was stupefied by the fall and by the surprise, and all the overwhelming dreary novelty; and accordingly he sat the day through at first, and did what he was told to do with a certain apathy beyond power of thinking; but that was a state of mind, of course, which could not last for ever. Yet even when that apathy was broken, the feeling of surprise continued to surmount all other feelings. He had taken this strange step, as he supposed, by his own will; nobody had forced or even persuaded him. It was his own voluntary doing; and yet how was it? This question floated constantly, without any power on his part to answer it, about his uneasy brain.
He was close to Kate, sitting writing all day long under a roof adjoining the very roof that sheltered her, with herself before his eyes every day. For he could not help but see her as she went out and in. But still it was doubtful whether there was much comfort in those glimpses of her. Mr Crediton had not been unkind to him; but he had never pretended, of course, to be deeply delighted with the unexpected choice which his daughter had made. “If I consent to Kate’s engagement with you,” he had said, “it must be upon my own conditions. It is likely to be a long time before you can marry, and I cannot have a perpetual philandering going on before my eyes. She might like it, perhaps, for that is just one of the points upon which girls have no feeling; but you may depend upon it, it would be very bad for you, and I should not submit to it for a moment. I don’t mean to say that you are not to see her, but it must be only at stipulated times. Thus far, at least, I must have my own way.” John had acquiesced in this arrangement without much resistance. It had seemed to him reasonable, comprehensible. Perpetual philandering certainly would not do. He had to work—to acquire a new trade foreign to all his previous thoughts and education—to put himself in the way of making money and providing for his wife; and he too could see as well as her father that to be following her about everywhere, and interrupting the common business of life by idle love-making, however beatific it might be, was simply impossible. To be able to look forward now and then to the delight of her presence—to make milestones upon his way of the times in which he should be permitted to see her, and sun himself in her eyes,—with that solace by the way, John thought the time would pass as the time passed to Jacob—as one day; and he accordingly assented, almost without reluctance.
But he did not know when he consented thus to the father’s conditions that Kate would be flashing before him constantly under an aspect so different from that in which he had known her. The engagement, though it made such an overwhelming difference to him, made little difference to Kate. She had come home to resume her usual life—a life not like anything that was familiar to him. Poor John had never known much about young ladies. He had never become practically aware of the place which amusement holds in such conditions of existence—how, in fact, it becomes the framework of life round which graver matters gather and entwine themselves; and it was a long time before he fully made the discovery, if, indeed, he did ever make it. Society could scarcely be said to exist in Fanshawe Regis; and those perpetual ridings and drivings and expeditions here and there—those dinners and dances—those afternoon assemblages—the music and the chatter, the va et vient, the continual flutter and movement, confounded the young man. He tried to be glad at first that she had so much gaiety, and felt very sorry for himself, who was shut out from all share in it. And then he got a little puzzled and perplexed. Did this sort of thing go on for ever? Was there never to be any break in it? Kate herself unconsciously unfolded to him its perennial character without the remotest idea of the amazement she was exciting in his mind. So far as John’s experience went, a dance, or even a dinner-party, or a croquet-party, or a picnic, were periodical delights which came at long intervals; but they were the common occupations of life to Kate. He felt that he could have lived and worked like Jacob for twice seven years, had his love been living such a life as Rachel did by his side—going out with the flocks, tending the lambs, drawing water at the fountain, smiling shy and sweet at him from the tent-door. These were the terms in which his imagination put it. Had he seen Kate trip by the window as his mother did with her little basket, or trip back again with a book, after his own ideal of existence, his heart would have blessed her as she passed, and he himself would have returned to his ledger and worked twice as hard, and learned his duties twice as quickly; but to see her flash away from the door amid a cavalcade of unknown riders—to see her put into her carriage by some man whom he longed to kick on the spot—to watch her out of sight going into scenes where his imagination could not follow her, was very hard upon John. And thus to see her every day, and yet never, except once a-week or so, exchange words with her! Against his will, and in spite of all his exertions, this sense of her continual presence, and of her unknown friends, and life which was so close to him, and yet so far from him, absorbed his mind. When he should have been working his office work he was thinking where could she have gone to-day? When he ought to have been awakening to the interests of the bank, he was brooding with a certain sulkiness quite unnatural to him over the question, who that man could be who put her on her horse? It is impossible to describe how all this hindered and hampered him, and what a chaos it made of his life.
And even Kate herself found it very different from what she had anticipated. She sent in a servant for him several times at first; and once, when she had some little errand in the town, had the audacity to walk into the bank in her proper person and call her lover from his desk. “Please tell Mr Mitford I want him,” she said, looking Mr Whichelo full in the face, with an angelical blush and smile; and when he came to her, Kate turned to him before all the clerks, who were watching with a curiosity which may be imagined. “Oh John,” she said, “come with me as far as Paterson’s. It is market-day, and I don’t like to walk alone.” Of course he went, though he had his work to do. Of course he would have gone whatever had been the penalty. The penalty was that Mr Crediton gave Kate what she called “a dreadful scold.” “It was like a fishwoman, you know,” she confided to John afterwards. “I could not have believed it of papa; but I suppose when people are in a passion they are all alike, and don’t mind what they say.”
“It is because he grudges you to me,” said poor John, with a sigh, “and I don’t much wonder;” upon which Kate clasped her two pretty hands on his arm, and beguiled him out of all his troubles. This was on one of the Sunday evenings which it was his privilege to spend with her. Mr Crediton was old-fashioned, and saw no company on Sundays, and that was the day on which John was free to come to spend as much of it as he pleased with his betrothed. At first he had begun by going to luncheon, and remaining the whole afternoon in her company; but very soon it came to be the evening only which was given up to him. Either it was that Mr Crediton made himself disagreeable at luncheon, or that he thrust engagements upon Kate, reminding her that she had promised to read to him, or copy letters for him, or some altogether unimportant matter. Mr Crediton, though he was so much the best off of the party that he had thus the means of avenging himself, was not without grievances too; indeed, had he been consulted, he would probably have declared himself the person most aggrieved. His only child was about to be taken from him, and her society was already claimed by this nameless young man, without any particular recommendation, whom in her caprice she preferred. The Sunday afternoons had been the banker’s favourite moment; he had nothing to do, and his doors were shut against society, and his child was always with him. No wonder that he used all the means in his power to drive back the enemy from that sacred spot.
And Mr Crediton had means in his power,—unlike Mrs Mitford, who sat, more alone than he, by her bedroom window all the hours when she was not at church, and wiped noiselessly again and again the tears out of her eyes. John’s mother suffered more from this dreary change than words could say. She had not the heart to sit down-stairs except when it was necessary for that outline of family life consisting of prayers and meals, which, to Dr Mitford’s mind, filled up all possible requirements. Mrs Mitford did not tell her husband what she was thinking. There seemed no longer any one left in the world who cared to know. And she could not punish Kate as Mr Crediton could punish John. Probably she would not have done it if she could, for to punish Kate would have been to punish him too; but oh, she sometimes thought to herself, if her horse had only run away with her before somebody else’s door, this might never have been!
Thus it will be seen that this pretty young lady and that first caprice for the subjugation of John which came into her mind before she had seen him, in the leisure of her convalescence, had affected the friends of both in anything but a happy way. Indeed nobody except perhaps Kate herself got any good out of the new bond. To her, who at the present moment was not called upon to make any sacrifice or give up anything, the possession of John, as of some one to fall back upon, was pleasant enough. She had all her usual delights and pleasures, lived as she had always lived, amused herself as of old, was the envy of her companions, the ringleader in all their amusements, the banker’s only, much-indulged, fortunate child; and at the same time she had John to worship her on those Sunday evenings which once had been rather dull for Kate. When Mr Crediton dozed, as he sometimes did after dinner, or when he was busy with the little private pieces of business he used to give himself up to on Sunday evenings, there was her lover ready to bow down before her. It was the cream and crown of all her many enjoyments. Everybody admired, petted, praised, and was good to Kate—and John adored her. She looked forward to her Sunday ramble round the old-fashioned garden, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the moonlight, with an exquisite sense of something awaiting her there which had a more subtle, penetrating, delicious sweetness than all the other sweets surrounding her. And she felt that he was happy too as soon as she had placed her little hand on his arm—and forgot that there was anything in his lot which could make him feel that he had bought his happiness dearly. Kate was young, and knew nothing about life, and therefore was unconsciously selfish. She was happy, without any drawback to her happiness; and so, naturally and as a matter of course, she took him to be, forgetting that he had purchased that hour on the Sunday evenings by the sacrifice of all the prejudices and all the habits and prospects and occupations of his life. This unconsciousness was one from which she might awaken any day. A chance word might open her eyes to it, and show her, to her own disgust and confusion, the immense price he was paying for so transitory a delight; but at present nothing had awakened such a thought in her mind, and she was the one happy among the five most intimately concerned.
Next after Kate in contentment with the new state of affairs was Dr Mitford, who saw a prospect of a very satisfactory “settlement in life” for his son, though he did not feel any very great satisfaction in the preliminaries. It was a pain to him, though a mild one, that John had abandoned the Church and become a clerk in a banker’s office. It was a pain, and a little humiliation too, for everybody in Fanshawe Regis, and even the neighbouring clergymen, shook their heads and were very sorry to hear it, and wounded Dr Mitford’s pride. But, after all, that was a trifling drawback in comparison with the substantial advantage of marrying so much money as was represented by Kate Crediton. “And fond of her too,” he would say to himself in his study when he paused in one of his articles and thought it over. But yet the articles were interrupted by thinking it over as they had never been used to be. It gave him a passing twinge now and then, but it was he who suffered the least after Kate.
As for Mr Crediton, there was a certain sullen wrath in his mind which he seldom suffered to have expression, yet which plagued him like a hidden wound. To think that for this lout, this country lad, his child should, as it were, have jilted him, made light of all his wishes, shown a desire to separate herself from him and the life which he had fenced round from every care, and made delightful with every indulgence that heart could desire! He had gone out of his way to contrive pleasures for her, and to surround her with everything that was brilliant and fair like herself. She was more like a princess than a banker’s daughter, thanks to his unchanging, unremitting thoughtfulness; and this was how she had rewarded him the very first opportunity she had. Mr Crediton was very sore and wroth, as fathers are sometimes. Mothers are miserable and lonely and jealous often enough, heaven knows! but the fathers are wroth with that inextinguishable wonder—how the love-making of some trumpery young man should, in a day or two, or a week or two, obliterate their deeper love and all the bonds of nature—which lies as deep in the heart as does the young impulse which calls it forth. Mr Crediton was angry, not so much, except at moments, with Kate, as with the world, and nature, and things in general—and John. He could not cross or thwart his child, but he would have been glad in his heart if something had happened to the man whom his child loved. Such sentiments are wicked, and they are very inconsistent—but they exist everywhere, and it would be futile to deny them; and the consequence was, that Mr Crediton was much less happy after his daughter’s engagement, and put up with it by an effort; and, while John had his moment of delight on those Sunday evenings, was, for his part, anything but delighted. It even made him less good a man. He sat and fretted by himself, and found it very difficult to occupy his mind with any other subject. It vexed him to think of his Kate thus hanging on a stranger’s arm. Of course he had always known that she must marry some time, but he had thought little of it as an approaching calamity; and then it had appeared certain that there would be a blaze of external advantage, and perhaps splendour, in any match Kate could make, which perhaps, prospectively at least, would lessen the blow. If it had exalted her into the higher circles of the social paradise, he felt as if the deprivation to himself would have been less great. But here there was nothing to make amends—no salve to his wounded tenderness. Poor John! Mr Crediton had the justice now and then to feel that John was paying a hard price for his felicity. “Serve the fellow right,” he said, and almost hated him; and pondered, with a sourd sense of cruelty and wrong-doing, how he might be got rid of and removed out of the way.
Mrs Mitford, for her part, was simply unhappy, without hoping to mend matters, or thinking any more than she could help about the cause. She had lost her boy. To be sure it is what most mothers have to look forward to; but she, up to the very last, had been flattering herself that she should not be as most mothers. It had seemed so clear that his lot was cast at home, where surely his duty was; and the change had this double aggravation to her, that she had expected him not only to make her personally happy, but to carry on and develop the work of her life. It was she who had been for all these years the real spiritual head of Fanshawe Regis. Dr Mitford had done the “duty,” and had preached the sermons, but every practical good influence, every attempt to mend the rustic parish, to curb its characteristic vices, or develop its better qualities, had come from his wife. And she had laboured on for years past, with the conviction that her son would perfect everything she began; that he would bring greater knowledge to it, and a more perfectly trained mind, and all the superior understanding which such humble women hold to be natural to a man. When she had to give up this hope, it seemed to her at first as though the world had come to an end. What was the use of doing anything more, of carrying on the plans which must now die with her? The next new curate would probably care nothing about her schemes, and even might set himself to thwart her, as new curates sometimes do when a clergywoman is too active in a parish. And she was sick of the world and everything in it. The monotony of her life, from which all the colour seemed to have died out in a moment, suddenly became apparent to her, and all the failures, and obstructions, and hindrances which met her at every side. What could she do, a weak woman, she said to herself, against all the powers of darkness, as embodied in Fanshawe Regis? Would it not be best to resign the unprofitable warfare and sink back into quiet, and shut out the mocking light?
Poor Mrs Mitford! wherever she went the people asked her questions about Mr John. Was he not to be a clergyman after all? Was it along o’ his lass that wouldn’t let him do as he wished? What was it? His mother came home with her heart wearied by such inquiries, and sick with disappointment and misery. And she would go up to the room in which he was born, and cry, and say to herself that she never never could encounter it again. And oh, how dreary it was sitting down-stairs for the few moments which necessity and Dr Mitford required, in those summer nights when the moths were flying by scores in at the open window, and dimness reigned in all the corners, and the lamp shone steady and clear on the table! In all the obscurity round her, her son was not lurking. He was not ready to step in by the open window as he had done so often. He was with Kate Crediton, giving up his whole heart and soul to her; and his father and mother rang for the servants, and had prayers, as though they had never had any children. What a change, what a change it was! Mrs Mitford knew that it was impossible to thwart providence, let its plans be ever so unsatisfactory; but oh, she said to herself, why did not Kate’s accident happen close to the Huntleys, or to any house but hers? Other boys were not so romantic, not so tender-hearted; and other mothers had heaps of children, and could not brood over the fortunes of every individual among them, as Mrs Mitford, with an ache of helpless anger at herself, knew that she brooded over John’s. But all was in vain. She could not mend matters now. She could not mend her own bleeding, aching heart. And after all, the only thing possible was to go back to her work, whatever might come of it, and do her best. She could bear anything, she thought, but those Sunday nights—moments which had once been so sweet, and were now so solitary. She said not a word to any one, and tried hard to keep herself from thinking; and she wrote kind, cheerful little letters to her boy, who, for his part, was so very good in writing regularly—so unlike most young men, as she told the people. But after she had finished those cheery, pleasant, gossiping letters, with all the news of the parish in them, Mrs Mitford would sit down and have a good cry. Oh what a change there was! how silent the house was, how ghostly the garden where she was always thinking she heard his step! The servants came in and went out again, and the father and the mother would sit together softly without a word, as if they had no child. Thus it will be seen that, of all concerned, it was Mrs Mitford who suffered most; but that none was satisfied, or felt the slightest approach of anything like happiness in the new state of affairs, unless, indeed, it might be Kate.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.