“If a young man, with the best education England can give, and friends to consult, who, I flatter myself, are not idiots, cannot see what to do, it does not say much for his sense,” said Dr Mitford, with some indignation. “I suppose by all this I am to understand that you are tired of the office drudgery and beginning to repent——”

“I don’t know that I have anything to repent of,” said John, who under this questioning began to get rebellious, as sons are wont to do.

“I advise you to make up your mind,” said Dr Mitford, not without a half-tone of contempt. “I never thought you were adapted for business. If experience has shown you this, it is best to take steps at once. You might not like, perhaps, to return to your original destination——”

“Father, this discussion is quite unnecessary,” said John, growing red. “I am not tired of office drudgery. No trade, I suppose, is very delightful just at first; and when one begins to think for one’s self, there are many questions that arise in one’s mind. Yes, mother, I am quite ready. I have been waiting for you this half-hour.”

“But not if your papa wants you, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, in her white shawl, standing smiling upon them at the door.

“I can look after the Shakespeare when I come in,” said John. That was exactly where Kate had stood peeping—Kate, who, when she was old, would be just such another woman. Would she grow so by his side? Could it ever be that she would come, in all the soft confidence of proprietorship, and look in upon him as his mother did? All at once it flashed upon him that such a thing might have been, in this very place, in this very way, had he kept his traditionary place. He might have been the Rector, putting up his folios, and she the Lady Bountiful of the parish, as his mother was. This flashed across his mind at the very moment when he was asking what use it was, and feeling that a life spent in doing good was as much thrown away as a life spent in making money. Strange inconsistency! And then he went and took the basket, with its little vials of wine and carefully-packed dainties, out of his mother’s hand.

Dr Mitford watched them going away with feelings more odd and strange than he recollected to have experienced for years. He waited till the door was closed, and then he turned abruptly to his books; but these were not satisfactory for the moment, and by-and-by he gave them up and walked impatiently to the window, and saw his wife’s white shawl disappear from the garden gate, with her tall boy by her side shadowing over her in the October sunshine. “His mother!” Dr Mitford said to himself, with a certain snort of wonder and offence—and then went back to his writing-table, and wrote a note to accompany his article to Sylvanus Urban, who was a more comprehensible personage on the whole than either wife or son.

CHAPTER XXV.

John remained rather more than a fortnight at home. His arm healed and his health improved during this interval of quiet. But he did not relieve his mind by any disclosure of his feelings. Indeed, what was there to disclose? He asked himself the question ten times in a day. He had come to no breach with Kate, he had not quarrelled with her father; he had, on the contrary, increased his claims upon Mr Crediton by actual service; and the something which had sprung up between Kate and himself was like a wall of glass or of transparent ice, changing nothing to outward appearance. He spent his time in an uneasy languor, sometimes roused to positive suffering, but more generally in mere discomfort, vague as his thoughts were, as his prospects were, as all the world was to him. It seemed even a thing of the past that his feelings should be very vehement about that or any other subject. He had gone through a great deal of active pain, but now it seemed all to be passive, and he only a kind of spectator. A host of questions had widened out like circles in the water round the central question. What was life worth? was it any great matter how it was spent? The banker among his manifold concerns, or Mr Whichelo among the clerks, or the Rector of Fanshawe Regis in his library—did it matter to any mortal creature which was which? The one was laying up money which a great fire or a scoundrel at the other end of the world might make an end of in a moment; the other was laughed at behind his back, and outwitted by the young men whom he thought he had so well in hand; and the third—what was the parish the better for Dr Mitford? And yet John had to face the matter steadily, as if it were of the greatest importance, and decide which of these pretences at existence he would adopt. He got no letter during this curious interval. The outer world kept silence and did not interfere with his ponderings. Heaven and earth, and even Kate and his mother, left him to take his own way.

It was not until the last morning of his stay that Mrs Mitford said anything to John on the subject. She had gone down to breakfast a little earlier than usual, perhaps, with a little innocent stealthy intention of looking at the letters, and making sure what there was for her boy; and there was one little letter lying by John’s plate which made his mother’s heart beat quicker. Yes; at last it was evident Kate had written to him; and if there had been any quarrel or misunderstanding, here surely must be the end of it. She watched for his appearance with speechless anxiety; and of course he was late that morning, as was to be expected. And it was very easy to see by his indifferent air that he was not looking for any letter. When he perceived it he gave a little start, and his mother pretended to be very much occupied with the coffee. He read it twice over from beginning to end, which was not a long process, for it only occupied one page of a small sheet of note-paper; and then he put it into his pocket and began to eat his breakfast and talk just as usual. Mrs Mitford, anxious and wondering, was brought to her wits' end.

“You had better order the phaeton, John,” said Dr Mitford, “if you are going by the twelve train.”

“I need not go till the evening,” said John; “and my mother means to walk there with me; don’t you, mamma?”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs Mitford, smiling upon him. She had been looking forward to this last heartrending pleasure, and thinking that then he would perhaps tell her something, if indeed there was anything to tell.

“Then let the phaeton take your portmanteau and bring your mother home,” said the Doctor, “if you insist on taking her such a long walk. For my part I can never see the good of such expeditions. It is much better to say good-bye at home.”

“But I like the walk,” said Mrs Mitford, eagerly; and the Doctor, who did not quite approve of the pair and their doings, shook his head, and gathered up his papers (he had no less than two proof-sheets to correct, and a revise, for he was very particular), and went off to his work. “You will find me in the library whenever I am wanted,” he said, as he withdrew. He thought his wife was spoiling her son, as she had spoiled him when he was ten years old, and he did not approve of it; but when a woman is so foolish, what can the most sensible of men and fathers do?

And then the mother and son were left alone, with that letter in John’s pocket which might explain so much of the mystery. But he did not say a word about it, nor about Kate, nor anything that concerned his happiness; and when Mrs Mitford talked of his new shirts and stockings (which was the only other subject she found herself capable of entering upon), he talked of them too, and agreed in her remarks about the negligence of washerwomen, and all the difficulty of keeping linen a good colour in a town. “As for your socks, my poor boy, I never saw such mending,” she said, almost with the tears in her eyes. “I must take it all out and darn it over again as it ought to be. When darning is nicely done, I never think the stocking looks a bit the worse; but how any woman could drag the two edges together like some of these, I can’t understand.”

“It is always hard work dragging edges together,” said John, getting up from the table. “I think I’ll go and say good-bye to old Mrs Fanshawe, mother. It is too long a walk for you.”

“I could not go there and to the station too,” said Mrs Mitford, “and I ought not to neglect the schools because I am so happy as to have my own boy. Yes, dear; go and see the old people: you must keep up the old ties for our sakes, even though they are to be broken off so far as the Rectory goes;” and she smiled at him and gave a little nod of her head dismissing him, by way of concealing that she wanted to cry. She did cry as soon as he was gone, and had scarcely time to dry her eyes when Jervis came in to clear the table. Mrs Mitford snubbed him on the spot, with a vehemence which took that personage quite by surprise. “I observe that Mr John’s things have not been laid out for him properly, as they ought to have been,” she said, suddenly, snapping his nose off, as Jervis said. “I trust I shall find everything properly brushed and folded to-day. It is a piece of negligence, Jervis, which I don’t at all understand.” “And Missis give her head a toss, and walks off as if she was the queen,” said the amazed man-of-all-work when he got to the kitchen, and was free to unburden himself. After this Mrs Mitford had another cry in her own room, and put on her bonnet and went across to the schools, wondering through all the lessons and all the weary chatter of the children,—Oh, what was the matter with her boy? oh, was he unhappy? had they quarrelled? must not his mother know?

Meanwhile John strode across the country to Fanshawe to bid the old squire and his old wife good-bye. He went, as the crow flies, over the stubble, and by the hedge-sides, never pausing to draw breath. Not because he was excited by his departure, or by the letter in his pocket, or by any actual incident. On the contrary, he was quite still, like the day, which was a grey autumn morning, with wistful scraps of blue on the horizon, and a brooding, pondering quiet in the air. All is over for the year, nature was saying to herself. Shall there be another year? shall old earth begin again, take in the new seeds, keep the spring germs alive for another blossoming? or shall all come to a conclusion at last, and the new heavens and the new earth come down out of those rolling clouds and fathomless shrill breaks of blue? John was in much the same mood. Kate’s little note in his pocket had a kind of promise in it of the new earth and the new heaven. But was it a solid, real promise, or only a dissolving view, that would vanish as he approached it? and might not an end be better, and no more delusive hopes? Mrs Fanshawe was very kind when he got to the hall. She told him of poor Cecily, just nineteen (Kate’s age), who was dying at Nice, and cried a little, and smiled, and said, “Oh, my dear boy, it don’t matter for us; we can’t be long of going after her.” But though she was reconciled to that, she made a little outcry over John’s leave-taking. “Going so soon! and what will your poor mother say?” cried the old lady. “I am afraid you think more of one smile from Miss Crediton than of all your old friends; and I suppose it is natural,” she added, as she shook hands with him. Did he care more for Kate’s smile than for anything else? He walked home again in the same dead sort of way, without being able to answer even such a question. He did not care for anything, he thought, except, now that he was at Fanshawe, to get away; and probably when he got to Camelford his desire would be to get back again, or to Fernwood, or to anywhere, except just the place where he happened to be.

It was evening when he set out to go to the station, with his mother leaning on his arm. The evening comes early in October, and it was necessary that she should get back to dinner at seven. Twilight was coming on as they walked together along the dewy road, where the hedgerows were all humid and chill with the dew, which some of these nights would grow white upon the leaves before any one knew, and make winter out of autumn. A sort of premonition of the first frost was in the air; and the hawthorns were very rusty and shabby in their foliage, but picked out here and there by red flaming bramble-leaves, which warmed up the hedgerows notwithstanding the damp. The mother and son walked slowly, to spin out the time as long as might be. To be sure they might, as Dr Mitford said, have just as well talked indoors; but then the good Doctor knew nothing about that charm of isolation and unity—the silent world all round about, the soft, harmonious motion, the tender contact and support. They could speak so low to each other without any fear of not being heard. They could look at each other if they would, yet were not compelled to any meeting of the eyes. There is no position in which it is so difficult to disagree, so natural to confide and trust. Mrs Mitford’s very touch upon her son’s arm was in itself a caress. My dear, dear boy, her eyes said as she looked at him. She had carried him in those soft arms, and now it was her turn to lean upon him. This thought was always in her mind when she leant upon John’s arm.

“I should not wonder,” she said, cunningly, leading up to her subject with innocent pretences of general conversation, “if we had frost to-night.”

“The air is very still, and very cold: it is quite likely,” said John, assenting, without much caring what he said.

“And actually winter is coming! after this wonderful summer we have had. What a summer it has been! I don’t remember such a long stretch of bright weather since the year you went first to school. I was so glad of the first frost that year, thinking of Christmas. You will come home for Christmas, John,” said Mrs Mitford, suddenly, with a tighter clasp of his arm.

“I cannot tell, mother. I don’t seem to realise Christmas,” said John.

“Well, dear, I won’t press you for any promise; but you know it will be a very poor Christmas without you. Life itself feels poor without my boy. There! I did not mean to have said it; but I am a foolish woman, and it is quite true.”

“Life is so poor in any case. I don’t know how it can matter one way or another,” said John, with a shrug of his shoulders. He was not touched so much as impatient; and unconsciously he quickened his pace and drew her on with him, faster than it was easy for her to go.

“We are in plenty of time for the train,” Mrs Mitford said; “not so quick, if you please, my dear. Oh, John, it is so strange to hear you say that life is poor! Have you nothing to tell me, my own boy? I have never asked a question, though you may think my heart has been sore enough sometimes. What is the matter? won’t you tell me now?”

“There is nothing to tell—nothing is the matter,” said John.

“But you are not happy, my dear boy. Do you think your mother could help seeing that? Oh, John, what is it? Is it her father? Do you feel the change? It must be something about Kate?”

“It is nothing at all, mother,” said John, with hasty impatience; and then it suddenly occurred to him that he was going away into utter solitude, and that here was the only being in the world to whom he could even partially open his heart. She felt the change of his voice, though she had no clue to the fitfulness of his thoughts. “It is quite true,” he continued, “there is nothing to tell; and yet all is not well, mother. I can’t tell you how or why. I am jangled somehow out of tune—that is all; there is nobody to blame.”

“I could see that, my dear,” she said, looking wistfully at him; “but is that all you have to say to your mother, John?”

“There is nothing more to say,” he repeated. “I cannot tell you, I can’t tell myself what is the matter. There is nothing the matter. It is a false position somehow, I suppose—that is all.”

“In the bank, John?”

“In the bank, and in the house, and in the world, mother,” he cried, with sudden vehemence. “I don’t seem able to take root anywhere; everything looks false and forced and miserable. I can neither go on nor go back, and I stagnate standing still. Never mind; I suppose it is just an experience like any other, and will have to be borne.”

Then there passed through Mrs Mitford’s mind as quick as lightning that passage about those who put their hand to the plough and draw back. But she restrained herself. “I suppose it is just the great change, my dear,” she said, faltering, yet soothing him, “and all that you have given up—for you have given up a great deal, John. I suppose your time is not your own now, and you can’t do what you like? And sitting at a desk—you who used to be free to read, or to walk, or to go on the river, or to help your papa, or see your friends—it must make a great difference, John.”

“Yes, I suppose that is what it is,” he said, feeling that he had successfully eluded the subject, and yet celebrating his success with a sigh.

“But I hope it is made up to you in another way,” Mrs Mitford said, suddenly, looking up into his face. He thought he had got off, but she did not mean to let him off. She was a simple little woman, but yet not so simple but what she could employ a legitimate artifice, like the rest of her kind. “You had a letter from Kate this morning, dear. I saw her little handwriting. I suppose she makes up for everything, John?”

They were drawing near the station, and she spoke fast, partly from that reason, partly to make her attack the more potent, and to leave him no time to think. But he answered her a great deal more readily than she had expected.

“Is it fair upon a girl to expect her to make up for all that?” he asked. “Mother, I ask myself sometimes, if she gave up her own life for me as I have done for her—no, not altogether for her—could I make it up to her? Is it fair or just to expect it? Life means a great deal, after all—more than just what you call happiness. You will think I am very hard-hearted; but, do you know, it almost appears to me sometimes as if a man could get on better without happiness, if he had plenty of work to do, than he could without the work, with only the happiness to comfort him. Is it blasphemy, mother? Even if it is, you will not be too hard upon me.”

Mrs Mitford paused a little to think over her answer; and perhaps anybody who takes an interest in her will be shocked to hear that she was rather—glad—half-glad—with a kind of relief at her heart. “John,” she said, “I don’t know what to say. I am—sorry—you have found it out, my dear. Oh, I am very sorry you have found it out—for it is hard; but, do you know, I fear it is true.”

“I wonder how my mother found it out,” he said, looking down upon her with that strange surprise which moves a child when it suddenly suspects some unthought-of conflict in the settled immovable life which it has been familiar with all its days, and accepted as an eternal reality. He had propounded his theory as the very worst and very saddest discovery in existence, and lo! she had accepted it as a truism. It bewildered John so that he could not add another word.

“One finds everything out if one lives long enough,” she said, hastily, with a nervous smile. “And, my dear, this is what I always thought—this is why I always disapproved of this bank scheme. You were hurried into it without time to think. And now that you find it does not answer, oh, my boy, what is to be done? You should not lose any time, John. You should come to an understanding with Mr Crediton and Kate——”

Heavy as his heart was, John could not but smile. “You go so fast, mother dear, that you take away my breath.”

“So fast! what can be too fast, when you are unhappy, my dear? One can see at a glance that you are unhappy. Oh, John, come back! Believe me, my own boy, the only comfort is doing God’s work; everything else is unsatisfactory. Oh, my dear, come home! If I but saw you taking to the parish work, and coming back to your own life, I should care for nothing more—nothing more in this world.”

“Softly, softly,” said John. “My dear mother, I was not thinking of the parish work—far, very far from it. I cannot tell you what I was thinking of. I may find what I want in the bank after all. Here is the train, and James waiting for you with the phaeton. Let me put you in before I go away.”

“But oh, John, if it cannot be for the present—if you cannot come back all at once—now that your mind is unsettled, dear, oh think it carefully over this time, and consider what I say.”

“This time,” John said to himself, when he had bidden his mother good-bye and had thrown himself into a corner of the railway carriage with his face towards Camelford—“think it carefully over this time.” The words filled him with strange shame. He had made one disruption in his life, it was evident, without sufficient care or thought. Was he one of the wretched vacillators so contemptible to a young man, who are always changing, and yet never come to any settled determination? His cheeks flushed crimson, though he was all alone, as the thought came into his mind. No; this time he must make no hasty change; this time, at least, no false position must be consented to. He must put Kate out of his mind, and every vain hope and yearning after what people call happiness. Happiness! most people managed to do without it; even—could it be possible?—his mother managed to do without it; for happiness, after all, is not life. This time there must be no mistake on that head.

It was night when he reached his lodging; and his mind was as doubtful and his thoughts as confused and uncertain as when he had left it. He went into his dreary little parlour, and had his lamp lighted, and sat down in the silence. He had come back again just as he went away. The decision which he had to make seemed to have been waiting for him here—waiting all these days—and faced him the moment he returned. What was he going to do? He sat down and listened to the clock ticking, and to now and then an unfrequent step passing outside, or the voice of his landlady talking in the little underground kitchen. His portmanteau, which he had brought in with him, was on the floor just by the door. The thought came upon him in his unrest to seize it again in his hand, and rush out and jump into the first cab, and go back to Fernwood; not that he expected any comfort at Fernwood, but only that it was the only other change possible to him. If he arrived there late at night, when nobody expected him, and went in suddenly without any warning, what should he see? The impulse to make the experiment was so strong upon him that he actually got up from his seat to obey it, but then came to himself, and sat down again, and took out Kate’s little letter. It was very short, and there was nothing in it to excite any man. This was all that Kate said:—

That was all. There was nothing in it to open any fresh fountain in his breast. He folded it up carefully and slowly into its envelope, and put it back into his pocket. Write to her! why should he write? It was not as if he wanted to upbraid her, or to point out any enormity she had done. She had not done anything; and what could he say? The future was so misty before him, and his own heart so languid, that her appeal made no impression upon him. Why should he do it? But he stopped again just before he put the letter in his pocket, and gave another glance at his portmanteau. Should he go, and carry her his answer, and judge once again what was the best for her and for himself? He gave up that fancy when the clock struck eight slowly in his ears. It was too late to go to Fernwood that night; and yet there were hours and hours to pass before he could throw himself on his bed with any chance of sleeping; and he had no business to occupy him, or work to do—and how was this long, slow, silent night to be hastened on its tardy wing? John rose at last, with a kind of desperation, and went out. He had nowhere to go, having sought no acquaintances in Camelford. There was nobody in the place that he cared to see, or indeed would not have gone out of his way to avoid; but the streets were all lit up, and some of them were noisy enough. John wandered through them in the lamp-light with strange thoughts. He seemed to himself like a man who had lost his way in the world. He was like Dante when he stood in the midst of his life and found that he had missed the true path. To go on seemed impossible; and when he would have turned back, how many wild beasts were in the way to withstand him! Was there anybody, he wondered, who could lead him back that long, long roundabout way through Hell and Purgatory and Heaven? With such a question in his mind, he wandered into places such as he had never entered before; he watched the people in the streets, and went after them to their haunts. A strange phantasmagoria seemed to pass before his eyes, of dancers and singers, and stupid crowds gaping and looking on, amid smoke and noise and sordid merrymaking. He heard their rude jests and their talk, and loud harsh peals of laughter; he listened to the songs they were listening to with the rough clamour of applause in which there was no real enjoyment. He followed them mutely—a solitary, keen-eyed spectator—into the places where they danced, and where they drank, and where they listened to those songs, with a strange sense of unreality upon him all the while. They were as unreal as if they had been lords and ladies yawning at a State ball. And then all at once John found himself in a dreary half-lighted room, in the midst of a Wesleyan prayer-meeting, where half-seen people, like ghosts in the halflight, were calling to God to have mercy upon them. He gazed at the prayer-meeting as he did at the music-hall, wondering what all the people meant. Would they go on like that till death suddenly came and turned the performance into a reality at last? He had no Virgil to guide him, no Donna sceso del cielo to be his passport everywhere. And he scarcely knew what were the doubts he wanted to be solved. “Now I shall sleep at last,” was all he said to himself as he went in when the night was far advanced, having spent it in visiting many places where Dr Mitford’s son should not have entered. Was he taking to evil ways? or was there any chance that he could solve his own problem by means such as these?

CHAPTER XXVI.

Next morning John did not permit himself any musings; he got up with the air of a man who has something to do for the first time for many weeks. There was nobody to do anything for him in his poor lodging; no Jervis to unpack his things and put them in order. He had opened his portmanteau to take out what he wanted from it, but he had not unpacked it. It stood open with all its straps undone, and everything laid smooth by the careful hands at home, and John closed it once more and left it in readiness to be removed again when he went out. It was quite early in the October morning, which was bright, and sharp, and frosty, with patches of white rime lying in the unsunned corners, and great blobs of cold dew hanging from the branches of the suburban trees. “My mother has had her frost,” John could not help saying to himself, as he went out. And all the world was astir, looking as unlike that feverish, noisy world which had smoked and cheered at the music-halls last night, as could be supposed. When he saw the people moving about so briskly in the sharp, clear air, he could not but ask himself, were they the same? Was that the man who had thumped with hands and feet, and roared open-mouthed, at the imbecility of the comic song? or was that he who led the chorus of exclamations at the prayer-meeting? John was in so strange a state of mind that the one was to him very much as the other, both phantoms—one coarsely making believe to be amused, the other coarsely pretending to pray. He went to the bank first, where all the clerks had just settled down in the first freshness of morning work. He went in at the swinging doors with the early public, and stood outside the counter looking for some one to address himself to. In his first glance round he saw that his place at the desk in the window from which he had so often watched Kate was filled by another; which was a small matter enough, and yet went through him with a sudden thrill, adding firmness to the resolution which began to form in his mind. After a moment Mr Whichelo rose from his desk, and came forward, holding out his hand, to meet him. “How are you, Mr Mitford? I hope I see you quite recovered: how is the arm?” said Mr Whichelo, with bustling cordiality; and John had to pause to explain how it was that he was able to do without his bandages, and no longer required to wear the injured arm in a sling.

“Mr Crediton has not come in to-day. I don’t suppose we are likely to see him to-day; but you must know better than we do, Mr Mitford, for I suppose you have just come from Fernwood?”

“No, it is some time since I left Fernwood. I have been at home,” said John.

“Dear me!” said the head clerk, raising his eyebrows. Mr Whichelo thought there was no such place as Fernwood in the kingdom, and was naturally astonished that any man could relinquish its delights. But then he added, with condescending moral approval, “And quite right, too, Mr Mitford; when there is anything the matter with you, there is no place like home.”

Then there was a momentary pause; the public were coming and going, in small numbers as yet, but still enough to keep the doors swinging and the clerks at the counter employed. But Mr Whichelo and John stood in the centre, between the two lines of desks, taking no notice of the public. John would have known quite well what to say to Mr Crediton had he found him there, but it was more difficult with his head clerk.

“Ah, I see,” said Mr Whichelo; “you always had a very quick eye, Mr Mitford—you perceive the change we have made.”

“I perceive you have filled up my place,” said John.

“No, no—not filled up your place; I have put in a junior temporarily to do the work. My dear Mr Mitford,” said the head clerk, with a smile, “if you were only an ordinary employé like one of the rest——”

“I should not be worth my salt,” said John, with an attempt at a laugh.

“Very far from that; you are only too good for us—too good for us, that is all. It seems a shame, with your education, to see you making entries that any lad could make. But of course, Mr Mitford, you occupy a very different position. We are all aware of that.”

“A false position,” said John. “Don’t disturb the young fellow for me. No, I have not come back to work. I want to see Mr Crediton if I can. You don’t expect him to-day? nor to-morrow? Then I must see him somewhere else——”

“At Fernwood,” said Mr Whichelo; “you can always see him at Fernwood.”

“Very well,” said John. He felt as if he had got his orders when these words were said. Of course it was to Fernwood he must go to see if any comfort was to be had there. Fanshawe threw no light upon what he ought to do, neither did Camelford; and Fernwood was the only place that remained. He shook hands with Mr Whichelo again, and went out with a certain alacrity. The junior at his desk in the window no longer troubled him. Yes; no doubt the boy would sit there, and see Kate come and go, and take no thought. The beautiful Miss Crediton, with all her gaieties and splendour, would be nothing to him: far better that he should fill that corner and make his entries, than that John should sit there consuming his heart. Fernwood was ten miles off, but it was a bright day, and to walk there was the best thing he could do. It gave him time to think, and it kept up a certain rhythm of movement and action about him which prevented him from thinking—and that on the whole was the best. The long road spun along like a thread, lengthening and lengthening as he went on, moving as if off a wheel, with half-stripped trees and falling leaves, and brown hedges, and here and there the russet glory of a bramble-branch trailing over the humid grass. Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, he seemed to hear some one singing as he went on and on; and the gleaming line of path spun out, circling out of the horizon on one side, back into it on the other, and there seemed no reason why it should ever come to any pause. His brain was giddy, and spun, too, as the road did. He went on with a buzzing in his ears, as if he too were on the wheel, and was winding, winding, and revolving with it, now up, now down, going on and on. What the end was, or if there was any end, he did not seem to know. It was the measured chant, the circles woven by mystic feet, never ending, still beginning. He had come to the very park of Fernwood before he roused himself from this strange dreamy sense of movement. It was a brilliant autumn, and already the beech-trees and the oaks were dressed in a hundred colours. The gentlemen of the party would of course be among the covers—and the ladies—— Here John paused, and began to ask himself what his meaning was. Was it Kate he had come to see? was it into her hands that once more, once again, like a fool, he was going to put his fate?

He stopped, and leaned upon a great beech, which stood with a little forest of juniper-bushes round it, withdrawn from the road. It was on the outskirts of the park, just where two paths met—one starting off into the wilder tangled ground beyond the open; the other leading up towards the house on a parallel with the avenue which John had just left. He was crossing through the brushwood to gain this footpath, when he stopped there against the beech-tree to collect himself, feeling giddy. It was a huge beech, with a trunk vast enough to have hidden a company of people, and great russet branches sweeping down, and the juniper in circles, like the stones of the Druids, making a sort of jungle round it. Was it an evil or a good fate that brought him there at that moment of all others? He had scarcely stopped, and the sound of his foot crushing down the juniper could not have ceased in the still air, when his eye caught a gleam of colour and some moving figures passing close to him on the other side of the beech. He stood like one bewildered when he saw that it was Kate. She was walking along slowly at a very meditative pace, with her head drooping and her eyes cast down, so far occupied with her thoughts that she neither heard nor saw nor suspected the presence of any observing bystander. And she was not alone. Walking by her side, with his eyes upon her, was Fred Huntley. She was gazing on the ground, but he was gazing at her. Her face was abstracted and full of thought; but his was eager, flushed with wishes and hopes and expectation. They were not saying anything to each other. John did not hear a word as they went slowly past; but imagine how it must have felt to wake up out of a feverish haze of doubt and inquietude and unreality, and suddenly open his eyes on such a sight! He stood spell-bound, scarcely venturing to breathe, and heard the rustle and sweep of her dress over the grass, and her sometimes faltering, unsteady step, and Huntley’s foot, that rang firm upon the path. Their very breathing seemed to come to him in the air, and the faint violet scent, which was Kate’s favourite perfume, and the movement and rustle of her going. They passed as if they had been a dream, and John held his breath, and all his life concentrated itself into his eyes. Her figure detached itself so against the still autumnal landscape, her grey dress, the blue ribbons that fluttered softly about her, the soft ruffled feathers, lightly puffed up against the wind in her hat—and the man by her side, with his eyes so intent upon her. It was an affair of a moment, and they were gone; and as soon as they had passed out of hearing, and were about to disappear among the trees, they began to talk. He heard their voices, but could not tell what they said; but the voices were low, toned to the key of that still landscape, and of something still more potential than the landscape; and John turned from the scene, which was stamped on his memory as if in lines of fire, and looked himself as it were in the face, feeling that this at last was the truth which had burst upon him, scattering to the wind all his dreams.

He turned without a word, and walked back to Camelford. There seemed no more doubt or power of question in his mind. He did not even feel as if any painful accident had happened to him; only that it was all over—finished and past, and the seal put to the grave of his dreams. He even walked back with more assured steps, with less sense of a burden on his shoulders and a yoke about his neck. It had been very sweet and very bitter, delightsome and miserable, while it lasted; but now it was over. And it never occurred to him that the conclusion which he thus accepted so summarily was as unreasonable as the beginning. No; the time of dreaming was over, he thought, and now at last there stood revealed to him the real and the true.

CHAPTER XXVII.

It was late in the afternoon when John reached Camelford. He had stopped to rest at a roadside public-house, where he ate and drank, as a man might do in the exhaustion of grief coming home from a funeral. He had sat before the rustic door, and watched the carts that went slowly past with heavy wheels, and the unfrequent passengers; and he had felt very much as if he had been at a funeral. It was a long walk, and he was very footsore and weary when he reached his lodgings. He was out of training, and the fire and his accident had impaired his strength, and his heart was not light enough to give him any assistance. When he shut himself once more into his little parlour, he was so much worn out that he had no strength to do anything. He had meant to return only for the sake of the portmanteau, which imagination represented to him lying open on the floor of his bedroom, all packed, which it was a comfort to think of; but after his twenty-miles walk he had no longer the energy to gather his little possessions together. He laid his aching limbs on the sofa and tried to rest. But it was very hard to rest; he wanted to be in motion all the time; he did not feel able to confront the idea of spending all the gloomy evening alone in that dreary little room. Home, home, his mind kept saying. It would not be cheerful at home. He did not know how he was to bear the stillness, and his mother’s cry of wonder, and his father’s questionings. But yet a necessity was upon him to go on and make an end of the whole matter. After his first pause of weariness, he sprang up and rang his bell, and told his landlady he was going away. “Get my bill ready, please,” he said; “and if you will put my things together for me, and send for a cab for the eight o’clock train——” “Lord, sir, I hope it aint nothing in the rooms! they’re nice rooms as ever could be, and as comfortable as I could make them, or any woman,” she said. John comforted her amour propre as well as he could, with a tale of circumstances that compelled his departure, and felt as if he had been addressing a public meeting when his short colloquy was over. Never in his life before had he been so tired—not ill nor sad to speak of—but tired; so fatigued that he did not know what to do with himself. But it was still only four o’clock, and there were four hours to be got through, and a great deal to do. He got his writing things together with as much difficulty as if they had been miles apart, and threw himself on the sofa again, and wrote. The first letter was to Mr Crediton, and over that the pen went on fluently enough.

Here John came to a stop—opportunity for what? Opportunity of winning your confidence—opportunity of gaining an acquaintance with business—of proving myself worthy of higher trust? He could not adopt any of these expressions. The shorter the letter, the least said, the better. He broke off abruptly without concluding his sentence. He had very little to thank Mr Crediton for; but yet he could not, with any regard to justice, blame him. Kate’s father, though he had done little for, had done nothing absolutely against him. It was not Mr Crediton he found fault with—Mr Crediton was very justifiable; and was it, could it be, that he was about to find fault with Kate?

He began to write to her half-a-dozen times at least. He began indignantly—he began tenderly,—he upbraided—he remonstrated—his pen ran away with him. He had meant to use one class of words, and under his very eyes it employed another. He wrote her ever so many letters. He set before her all his passion—all his readiness to sacrifice himself—all the tortures he had suffered at the window of the bank seeing her come and go and having no share in her life. He told her what a chill blank had come over him at Fernwood—how he had felt that he was nothing to her. He told her what he had seen that morning. He was eloquent, pathetic, overwhelming. His own heart felt as if it must burst while he wrote; but as he read over each completed page, John had still so much good sense left that he dragged his stiff limbs from the sofa and put it in the fire. It was thus he occupied almost all the time he had to wait; and it was only just before his cab came to the door that he put into its envelope this letter, in which it will be seen he neither remonstrated nor upbraided, nor even gave her up. He could not give her up, and how could he accuse her? He accuse Kate! If she was guilty her heart would do that—if not—— But alas! the latter alternative was impossible; only for “utter courtesy,” for utter tenderness, he could not blame the woman he loved.