“If you want me,” she said, with a faint accent of inquiry, and gave Mrs Mitford a soft little kiss. “I think mamma must have been like you,” she said in apology, a remark which confused John’s mother, and made her feel guilty. For it was not kindness to this motherless creature that moved her, but the maternal passion which paused at nothing which could give pleasure to her boy.
John was standing in the open window hesitating whether he should plunge out into the darkness, when he heard the voices of the two ladies coming down-stairs, and all the room immediately filled with radiance and splendour. In a moment he was back again, standing, hovering over Kate, who sank into an easy-chair close to the light, and gave herself up to the delights of the promised cup of tea. He did not say a dozen words to her all the rest of the evening, but he was happy; and she lying back at her ease, with the consciousness of an admiring audience, chattered and sipped, and was happy too. It did not occur to Kate that every word she said was being closely criticised by the woman who had gone to seek her, who was basking in the pleasant rays of her youth, and smiling at all her nonsense and chatter, and looking so wistfully at her by times. She thought she had made a conquest of Mrs Mitford too, and was pleased and proud. “I cannot be just a little flirt and a stupid,” Kate was saying to herself, “for Mrs Mitford is fond of me too.” And with this pleasant sense of having an utterly indulgent audience, she rattled on more freely than she had ever before found it possible to do at Fanshawe. And Mrs Mitford made secret notes of all the nonsense, and laid up in her memory everything that was said. And then the Doctor came in from his study, and the bell was rung, and the servants appeared dimly, and sat down in a row against the further wall where it was dark; and they had prayers. Mrs Mitford was scrupulous about having a shade over the lamp—she thought it was good for the eyes—so that there was one brilliant spot round the table, and all the rest was dim and vague, darkness deepening into the corners, and intensifying to a centre in the great window full of night, the open abyss into the garden all sweet with roses and lilies, through which there puffed by times a breath of summer wind. Now that the tea-things were removed, it was Dr Mitford’s white head, and his open book, and the whiter hand which was laid upon it, that were the foremost objects in the room; and in the middle distance among the shadows was Mrs Mitford; and at the back, like ghosts, the maids and the man. Kate joined very devoutly in the prayers, and felt glad she had come down-stairs. “How good they are, how quiet it is, how nice to have prayers! and oh, what sweetness in the air!” she said to herself, when she ought to have been praying. It was novel to her, and the composition of the picture was so pretty. And they were all so kind—fond of her, indeed. Kate went back to her room, when all was over, with a soft complacency and satisfaction with herself possessing her heart.
CHAPTER VII.
The next afternoon John and Kate were on the lawn, with Mrs Mitford sitting by, when Fred Huntley suddenly rode in at the gate. The two young people had no particular inclination for croquet, but the lawn had been mowed, and Mrs Mitford had given up her schools for one day, and seated herself outside the drawing-room window to countenance their intercourse. She did not take any part in their talk, but knitted with as much placidity as she could command, having reasoned with herself all the night through, and finally made up her mind that it would be better for her to take no part, but let things take their course. “If I try to influence her, she will think I have interested motives; and if I try to influence him, my boy will turn against me,” she had said to herself piteously, shedding a few silent tears under cover of the night; and her decision had been, that she would only stand by and look on, that was all. For the first time in his life John’s mother felt herself incapable of helping, or guiding, or being of any service to her boy. She had to see him face the danger, and say nothing—the danger on one hand of being secularised, and his heart turned to frivolity; and on the other, of having that heart broken. Which was the worse his mother could scarcely tell.
So these two were trifling, each with a mallet, and talking, and getting more and more interested in each other, when Fred Huntley, as I have said, rode suddenly in upon them. He gave a very keen knowing glance at the two on the lawn, as he passed them to pay his respects to Mrs Mitford. Was it her doing? was it their own doing? Fred caught the secret of the situation as a well-trained man of the world would naturally do. He had first a natural impulse to interfere; and then he paused and stopped himself, and declared to himself that he would not spoil sport. He was a man to whom generous thoughts came not, as is natural, by impulse, but upon thought. And after all, why should he meddle with them? If she married John, it would be a good thing for John, and, most likely, for her too—and why should I interfere? said Fred, without a doubt of his capability to do so; so he went and talked to Mrs Mitford, while the two on the lawn pursued their languid sport. “I hate him,” Kate had said on his arrival; “let us pretend we have begun a game;” and John was but too happy—too much delighted, by the suggestion. So they kept the lawn to themselves, and trifled and talked, while Fred chatted with the chaperone over her knitting. He had come to make the apologies of his family, expecting to find an assemblage of ladies with John in the midst, the one island of black among clouds of muslin. The ladies in Fanshawe Regis were not even young, and consequently it was a relief to him to see one pretty figure only, and the mother sitting by; and he did his best to make himself agreeable, having, as it happened, a more interesting subject than “le beau temps et la pluie.”
“I hear John has been distinguishing himself,” he said; and though he did not in the least intend it, there was something in his tone which made Mrs Mitford flush red to the edge of her hair, and raise herself stiffly on her seat. The truth was, John had been in competition with Fred more than once at college, and had not been held to have distinguished himself—which naturally drove his mother to arms at the first word.
“Not anything particular that I am aware of,” she said, drawing herself up stiffly; “he always is the best son and the kindest heart in the world.”
“But about Miss Crediton,” said Fred.
“Oh, that was a mere accident,” said John’s mother. “You see he can’t help having a warm heart, and being so big and strong.”