John stood aghast, and watched his father go out at the door, impatient and contemptuous of the explanation it had cost him so much to make. And when he turned to his mother, expecting her sympathy, she was standing by him transformed, with a gleam of fire in her eyes such as he had never seen there; a flush on her face, and her hand held up with indignant, almost threatening, vehemence.
“How could you do it?” she cried—“how could you have the heart to do it? To us that have had no thought but for you! Look what sacrifices we have made all your life that you should have everything. Look how your father has worked at his papers—and all that we have done to secure your prosperity. And for the sake of a silly girl you had never seen a month ago! Oh, God forgive me! what shall I do?”
And she sank down on her chair and covered her face, and burst into angry weeping. It was not simple sorrow, but mortification, rage, disappointment—a combination of feelings which it was impossible for John to identify with his mother. She had been defending him but a moment before. It had given him a sense of the most exquisite relief to find her on his side. He had turned to her without doubt or fear, expecting that she would cry a little, perhaps, and lament over him, and be wistfully respectful of his doubts, and tender of his sufferings. And to see her confronting him, flushed, indignant, almost menacing! His consternation was too great for words. “Mother,” he said, faltering, “you are mistaken—indeed you are mistaken!” and stopped short, with mingled resentment and humiliation. Why should Kate be supposed to have anything to do with it? And yet in his heart he knew that she had a great deal to do with it. Her—but not her fortune, as his father thought. Curse her fortune! John, who had always been so gentle, walked up and down the room like a caged lion, with a hundred passions in his heart. He was wild with mortification, and with that sense of the intolerable which accompanies the first great contrariety of a life. Nothing (to speak of) had ever gone cross with him before. But now his mother herself had turned against him—could such a thing be possible?—and the solid earth had been rent away from under his feet.
Neither of them knew how long it was before anything more was said. Mrs Mitford sobbed out her passion, and dried her tears, and remained silent; and so did John, till the air seemed to stir round him with wings and rustlings as of unseen spectators. It was only when it had become unbearable that he broke the silence. “Mother,” he said, with a voice which even to his own ears sounded harsh and strange, “you have always believed me till now. When I tell you that this has been in my heart ever since I left Oxford—and while I was at Oxford—and that I have always refrained from telling you, hoping that when the time of decision came I might feel differently—will you refuse to believe me now?”
Mrs Mitford was incapable of making any reply. “Oh, John,” she said—“oh, my boy!” shaking her head mournfully, while the tears dropped from her eyes. She did not mean to imply that she would not believe him. Poor soul! she did not very well know what she meant, except utter confusion and misery; but that was the meaning which her gesture bore to him.
“I have done nothing to deserve this,” he said, with indignation. “You have a right to be as severe upon me as you like for disobeying your wishes, but you have no right to disbelieve your son.”
“Oh, John, what is the use of speaking?” said Mrs Mitford. “Disbelieve you! why should I disbelieve you? The best thing is just to say nothing more about it, but let me break my heart and take no notice. What am I that I should stand in your way? Your father will get the better of it, for he has so many things to occupy him; but I will never get the better of it. Don’t take any notice of me; the old must give up, whatever happens—I know that—and the young must have their day.”
“Yes; the young must have their day,” said John, severely; and then his heart smote him, and he came and knelt down by his mother’s side. “But why should you be in such despair?” he said. “Mother, I am not going away from you. Though I should not be curate of Fanshawe Regis, may not we all be very happy together?—as happy in a different way? Mother, dear, I thought you were the one to stand by me, whoever should be against me.”
“And so I will stand by you,” she sobbed, permitting him to take her hand and caress it. “Nobody shall say I do not stand up for my own boy. You shall have your mother for your defender, John, if it should kill me. But oh, my heart is broke!” she cried, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Now and then even a boy’s mother must think of herself. All my dreams were about you, John. I have not been so happy, not so very happy, in my life. Other women have been happier than me, and more thought of, that perhaps have done no more than I have. But I have always said to myself, I have my John. I thought you would make it up to me; I thought my happiness had all been saving up—all waiting till I was growing old, and needed it most. Don’t cry, my dear. I would not have you cry, you that are a man, as if you were a girl. Oh, if I had had a girl of my own, I think I could have borne it better. But she would have gone off and married too. There, there! I am very selfish speaking about my feelings. I will never do it again. What does anything matter to me if you are happy? My dear, go to bed now, and don’t take any more notice. It was the shock, you know. In the morning you will see I shall have come to myself.”