“Trusting you!” It was curious how much more impressive his voice was, coming out of the darkness. His awkwardness, his diffidence, everything that made him look commonplace in the daylight, had disappeared. Kate felt a little thrill, half of excitement, half of pride. Yes, he would trust her, though nobody else (he said) in all the world. It was not John that thus moved her; it was the sense of being the one selected and chosen—one out of a hundred—one out of the world—which is the sweetest flattery which can be addressed to man or woman. She looked up to him, though he could not see her, raising that face which John already felt was the sweetest in the world. And he bent over her, and her little hand trembled on his arm, and the darkness wrapped them round and round, so that they could not see each other’s faces—the very moment and the very circumstances which make it sweet to confide and to be confided in. It was not yet ten days since he had seen her first, and she had not as yet shown the least trace of a character likely to understand his, and yet he was ready to trust her with the deepest secrets of his heart.
“It is not that,” said John. “I am sure you are not the one to bid a man forsake his duty that he might rise in the world. If I were as sure about everything I ought to believe as—as my father is, I should go into the Church joyfully to-morrow.”
“Should you?” said Kate, feeling chilled in spite of herself.
“I should; and you would approve me for doing so, I know,” he said, earnestly. “But don’t think me worse than I am, Miss Crediton. I am not a sceptic nor an infidel, that you should draw away from me. Yes, you did, ever so little—but if it had only been a hair-breadth, I should have felt it. It is not so much that I doubt—but I can’t feel sure of things. My father is sure of everything; that is the superiority of the older generations. They knew what they believed, and so they were ready to go to the stake for it——”
“Or send other people to the stake,” said Kate. The conversation was getting so dreadfully serious that she turned it where she could to the side of laughter; but it was not possible in this case.
“Yes, I know,” he said, softly, altogether ignoring her lighter tone; “the one thing implies the other. I acknowledge it does; we are such confused creatures. But as for me, I could neither die for my belief nor make any one else die. I don’t feel sure. I say to myself, how do you know he is wrong and you are right? How do I know? But you see my father knows; and most of the old people in the village are just as certain as he. Is it because we are young, I wonder?” said John.
“Oh, don’t speak like that—pray don’t. Why should it be because we are young?”
“That I can’t tell,” said John, in the darkness. “It might be out of opposition, perhaps, because they are so sure—so sure—cruelly sure, I often think. But when a man has to teach others, I suppose that is how he ought to be; and my very soul shrinks, Miss Crediton——”
“Yes?”
“You will not say anything to my mother? She has brought me up for it, and set her heart on it, and I would not fail her for the world.”