John, A Love Story; vol. 1 of 2

by Mrs. Oliphant

Meanwhile John, poor fellow, went out after they had all gone up-stairs, and had a long walk by himself in the night, to tone himself down a little from the exaltation of the moment in which he had told her that he and she had almost died together. There was the strangest subtle sweetness to himself in the thought. To have actually died with her, and for her, seemed to him, in his foolishness, as if it would have been so sweet. And then he felt that he had opened his heart to her, and that she knew all his thoughts. He had told them to her in all their inconsistency, in all their confusion, and she had understood. So he thought. He went out in the fervour of his youth through the darkling paths, and brushed along the hedges, all crisp with dew, and said to himself that henceforth one creature at least in the world knew what he meant. His feelings were such as have not been rare in England for half a century back. He had been trained, as it were, in the bosom of the Church, and natural filial reverence, and use and wont, had blinded him to the very commonplace character of its labours as fulfilled by his father. His father was—his father; a privileged being, whose actions had not yet come within the range of things to be discussed. And the young man’s mind was full of the vague enthusiasm and exaltation which belong to his age. Ideally, was not the work of a Christian priest the only work in the world? A life devoted to the help and salvation of one’s fellow-creatures for here and for hereafter—no enterprise could be so noble, none so important. And must he relinquish that, because he felt it difficult to pronounce with authority, “without doubt he shall perish everlastingly”? Must he give up the only purely disinterested labour which man can perform for man—the art of winning souls, of ameliorating the earth, of cleansing its hidden corners, and brightening its melancholy face? No, he could not give it up; and yet, on the other hand, how could he utter certain words, how make certain confessions, how take up that for his faith which was not his faith? John’s heart had been wrung in many a melancholy hour of musing with this struggle, which was so very different from Kate’s conception of his difficulties. But now there stole into the conflict a certain sweetness—it was, that he was understood. Some one stood by him now, silently backing him, silently following him up,—perhaps with a shy hand on his arm; perhaps—who could tell?—with a shy hand in his, ere long. It did not give him any help in resolving his grand problem, but it was astonishing how it sweetened it. He walked on and on, not knowing how far he went, with a strange sense that life was changed—that he was another man. It seemed as if new light must come to him after this sudden enhancement of life and vigour. Was it true that there were two now to struggle instead of one? John was not far enough gone to put such a question definitely in words to himself, but it lingered about the avenues of his mind, and sweet whispers of response seemed to breathe over him. Two, and not one! and he was understood, and his difficulties appreciated; and surely now the guiding light at last must come.

His mother heard him come in, as she lay awake thinking of him, and wondered why he should go out so late, and whether he had shut the door, and thanked heaven his father was fast asleep, and did not hear him; for Dr Mitford would have become alarmed had he heard of such nocturnal walks—first, for John’s morals, lest he should have found some unlawful attraction in the village; and, second, for the plate, if the house was known to be deprived of one of its defenders. His anxious mother, though she had thought of little else since his birth except John’s ways and thoughts, had yet no inkling of anything deeper that might be in his mind. That he might love Kate, and that Kate might play with him as a cat plays with a mouse—encourage him for her own amusement while she stayed at Fanshawe Regis, and throw him off as soon as she left—that was Mrs Mitford’s only fear respecting him. It was so painful that it kept her from sleeping. She could not bear to think of any one so wounding, so misappreciating, her boy. If she but knew him as I know him, she would go down on her knees and thank God for such a man’s love, she said to herself in the darkness, drying her soft eyes. But how was his mother—a witness whose impartiality nobody would believe in—to persuade the girl of this? And Mrs Mitford was a true woman, and ranked a “disappointment” at a very high rate among the afflictions of men. And it was very, very grievous to her to think of this little coquette trifling with her son, and giving the poor boy a heartbreak. She was nearly tempted half-a-dozen times to get up and throw her dressing-gown about her, and make her way through the slumbering house, and through the ghostly moonlight which fell broadly in from the staircase-window upon the corridor, to Kate’s room, to rouse her out of her sleep, and shake her, and say, “Oh you careless, foolish, naughty little Kate! You will never get the chance of such another, if you break my boy’s heart.” It would have been very, very foolish of her had she done so; and yet that was the impulse in her mind. But it never occurred to Mrs Mitford that when he took that long, silent, dreary walk, he might be thinking of something else of even more importance than Kate’s acceptance or refusal. She had watched him all his life, day by day and hour by hour, and yet she had never realised such a possibility. So she lay thinking of him, and wondering when he would come back, and heard afar off the first faint touch of his foot on the path, and felt her heart beat with satisfaction, and hoped he would lock the door; but never dreamed that his long wandering out in the dark could have any motive or object except the first love which filled his heart with restlessness, and all a young man’s passionate fears and hopes. Thank heaven! his father slept always as sound as a top, and could not hear.

Poor Mrs Mitford! how bitter it would have been to her could she have realised that Kate was lying awake also, and heard him come in, and knew what he was thinking of better than his mother did! “Poor boy!” Kate murmured to herself, between asleep and awake, as she heard his step; “I must speak to him seriously to-morrow.” There was a certain self-importance in the thought; for it is pleasant to be the depositary of such confidences, and to know you have been chosen out of all the world to have the secret of a life confided to you. The difference was that Kate, after this little speech to herself, fell very fast asleep, and remembered very little about it when she woke in the morning. But Mrs Mitford’s mind was so full that she could neither give up the subject nor go to sleep. As for the Doctor, good man, he heard nothing and thought of nothing, and had never awakened to the fact that John was likely to bring any disturbance whatever into his life. Why should anything happen to him more than to other people? Dr Mitford would have said; and even the love-story would not have excited him. Thus the son of the house stole in, in the darkness, with his candle in his hand, through the shut-up silent dwelling, passing softly by his mother’s door not to wake her, with the fresh air still blowing in his face, and the whirl of feeling within, uncalmed even by fatigue and the exertion he had been making. And the two women waked and listened, opening their eyes in the dark that they might hear the better:—a very, very usual domestic scene; but the men who are thus watched and listened for are seldom such innocent men as John.

CHAPTER IX.

Some time passed after this eventful evening before Kate had any opportunity of making the assault upon John’s principles which she proposed to herself. There were some days of tranquil peaceful country life, spent in doing nothing particular—in little walks taken under the mother’s eye—in an expedition to St Biddulph’s, the whole little party together, in which, though Dr Mitford took the office of cicerone for Kate’s benefit, there was more of John than of his father. This kind of intercourse which threw them continually together, yet never left them alone to undergo the temptation of saying too much, promoted the intimacy of the two young people in the most wonderful way. They were each other’s natural companions, each other’s most lively sympathisers. The father and the mother stood on a different altitude, were looked up to, respected perhaps, perhaps softly smiled at in the expression of their antiquated opinions; but the young man and the young woman were on the same level, and understood each other. As for poor John, he gave himself up absolutely to the spell. He had never been so long in the society of any young woman before; his imagination had not been frittered away by any preludes of fancy. He fell in love all at once, with all his heart and strength and mind. It was his first great emotion, and it took him not at the callow age, but when his mind (he thought) was matured, and his being had reached its full strength. He was in reality four-and-twenty, but he had felt fifty in the gravity of his thoughts; and, with all the force of his serious nature, he plunged into the extraordinary new life which opened like a garden of Paradise before him. It was all a blaze of light and splendour to his eyes. The world he had thought a sombre place enough before, full of painful demands upon his patience, his powers of self-renunciation, and capacity of self-control. But now all at once it had changed to Eden. And Kate, of whom he knew so little, was the cause.

She, too, was falling under this natural fascination. She was very much interested in him, she said to herself. It was so sad to see such a man, so full of talent and capability, immolate himself like this. Kate felt as if she would have done a great deal to save him. She represented to herself that, if he had felt a special vocation for the Church, she would have passed on her way and said nothing, as became a recent acquaintance; but when he was not happy! Was it not her duty, in gratitude to her preserver, to interfere according to her ability, and deliver him from temptation? Yes! she concluded it was her duty with a certain enthusiasm; and even, if that was necessary, that she would be willing to do something to save him. She would make an exertion in his behalf, if there was anything she could do. She did not, even to herself explain what was the anything she could do to influence John one way or another. Such details it is perhaps better to leave in darkness. But she felt herself ready to exert herself in her turn—to make an effort—what, indeed, if it were a sacrifice?—to preserve him as he had preserved her.

It was only on what was to be the day before her departure that Kate found the necessary opportunity. About a mile from Fanshawe Regis was a river which had been John’s joy all his life; and on Kate’s last day, he was to be permitted the delight of introducing her to its pleasures. Mrs Mitford was to have accompanied them, but she had slackened much in her ferocity of chaperonage, and had grown used to Kate, and not so much alarmed on her account. And it was a special day at the schools, and her work was more than usual. “My dear, if you wish it, of course I will go with you,” she said to her young guest; “and you must not think me unkind to hesitate—but you are used to him now, and you will be quite safe with John. You don’t mind going with John?”

“Oh, I don’t mind it at all,” said Kate, with a little blush, which would have excited John’s mother wonderfully two days before. But custom is a great power, and she had got used to Kate. So Mrs Mitford went to her parish work, and the two young people went out on their expedition. They had nearly a mile to walk across fields, and then through the grateful shade of a little wood. It was a pretty road, and from the moment they entered the wood, the common world disappeared from about the pair. They walked like a pair in romance, often silent, sometimes with a touch of soft embarrassment, in that silent world, full of the flutter of leaves and the flitting of birds, and the notes of, here and there, an inquiring thrush or dramatic blackbird. Boughs would crackle and swing suddenly about them, as if some fairy had swung herself within the leafy cover: unseen creatures—rabbits or squirrels—would dart away under the brushwood. Arrows of sunshine came down upon the brown underground. The leaves waved green above and black in shadow, strewing the chequered path. They walked in an atmosphere of their own, in dreamland, fairyland, by the shores of old romance; the young man bending his head in that attitude of worship, which is the attitude of protection too, towards the lower, slighter, weaker creature, who raised her eyes to his with soft supremacy. It was hers to command and his to obey. She had no more doubt of the loyalty of her vassal than he had of her sweet superiority to every other created thing. And thus they went through the wood to the river,—two undeveloped lives approaching the critical point of their existence, and going up to it in a dream of happiness, without shadow or fear.