CHAPTER XVIII.
A day or two after this visit John found himself at Fernwood.
It was not perhaps a judicious step for any of them. He came still suffering—and, above all, still marked by his sufferings—among a collection of strangers to whom the bank, and the fire, and the value of the papers he had saved, were of the smallest possible consequence, and who were intensely mystified by his heterogeneous position as at once the betrothed of Kate Crediton and a clerk in her father’s bank. Then there was a sense of embarrassment between him and Mr Crediton which it was impossible either to ignore or to make an end of—John had done so much for the man who was so unwilling to grant him anything in return. He had not only saved the banker’s daughter, but his papers, perhaps his very habitation, and the bulk of all he had in the world, and Mr Crediton was confused by such a weight of obligations. “I must take care he don’t save my life next,” he said to himself; but, notwithstanding this weight of gratitude which he owed, he was not in the least changed in his reluctance to pay. To give his child as salvage-money was a thing he could not bear to think of; and when he looked at John’s pale face among the more animated faces round him, Mr Crediton grew wellnigh spiteful. “That fellow! without an attraction!”—he would say to himself. John was not handsome; he had little of the ready wit and ready talk of society; he did not distinguish himself socially above other men; he was nobody to speak of—a country clergyman’s son without a penny. And yet he was to have Kate! Mr Crediton asked himself why he had ever consented to it, when he saw John’s pale face at his table. He had done it—because Kate had set her heart upon it—because he thought Kate would be fickle and change her mind—because—he could scarcely tell why; but always with the thought that it would come to nothing. He would not allow, when any one asked him, that there was an engagement. “There is some nonsense of the kind,” he would say, “boy and girl trash. I take it quietly because I know it never can come to anything. He saved her that time her horse ran away with her, and it is just a piece of romantic gratitude on her part. If I opposed it I should make her twice as determined, and therefore I don’t oppose.” He had said as much to almost everybody at Fernwood, though neither of the two most immediately concerned were aware. And this was another reason why the strangers were mystified, and could not make out what it meant.
As for Kate, though she had been so anxious for his coming, it cannot be said that it made her very happy; for the first time the complications of the matter reached her. She was not, as when she had been at Fanshawe, a disengaged young lady able to give up her time to her lover, but, on the contrary, the mistress of the house, with all her guests to look after, and a thousand things to think of. She could not sit and talk with him, or walk with him, as she had done at the Rectory. He could not secure the seat next to her, or keep by her side, as, in other circumstances, it would have been so natural for him to do. He got her left hand at table the first day of his arrival, and was happy, and thought this privilege was always to be his; but, alas! the next day was on the other side, unable so much as to catch a glimpse of her. “I am the lady of the house. I have to be at everybody’s beck and call,” she said, trying to smooth him down. “On the contrary, you ought to do just what you please,” said foolish John; and he wandered about all day seeking opportunities to pounce upon her—for, to be sure, he cared for nobody and nothing at Fernwood but Kate, and he was ill and sensitive, and wanted to be cared for, even petted, if that could have been. He could not go out to ride with the rest of the party on account of his injured hand, but Kate had to go, or thought she must, leaving him alone to seek what comfort was possible in the library. No doubt it was very selfish of John to wish to keep her back from anything that was a pleasure to her, but then he was an eager, ardent lover, who had been much debarred from her society, and was set on edge by seeing others round her who were more like her than he was. To be left behind, or to find himself shut out all day from so much as a word with her, was one pang; but to find even when he was with her, that he had little to say that interested her, and to see her return to the common crowd as soon as any excuse occurred to make it possible, was far harder and struck more deep. He would sit in a corner of the drawing-room and look and listen while the conversation went on. They talked about the people they knew, the amusements they had been enjoying, the past season and the future one, and a hundred little details which only persons in their own “set” could understand. John himself could have talked such talk in college rooms or the chambers of a friend, but he would have thought it rude to continue when strangers were present; but the fashionable people did not think it rude. And even when he was leaning over her chair whispering to her, he could note that Kate’s attention failed, and could see her face brighten and her ear strain to hear some petty joke bandied about among the others. “Was it Mr Lunday that said that? it is so like him,” she said once in the very midst of something he was saying. And poor John’s heart sank down—down to his very boots.
And then Kate had a hundred things to do in concert with her other guests. She sang with one, and John did not sing, and had to look on with the forlornest thoughts, while a precious hour would pass, consumed by duet after duet and such talk as the following:—“Do you know this?” “Let us try that.” “I must do something to amuse all those people,” she would say, when he complained. She was not angry with him for complaining, but always kind and sweet, and ready, if she gave him nothing else, to give him one of her pretty smiles.
“But I shall be gone directly, and I have not had ten minutes of you,” he said, bitterly.
“Oh, a great deal more than ten minutes,” said Kate; “you unkind, exacting John! When I was at Fanshawe I had all my time on my hands, and nobody but you to think of;—I mean, no other claims upon me. Don’t you think it hurts me as much as any one, when they all crowd round me, and I see your dear old face, looking so pale and glum, on the outside? Please don’t look so glum! You know I should so much, much rather be with you.”
“Should you?” said John, mournfully. Perhaps she believed it; but he found it so very hard to believe. “Dear, I don’t mean to be glum, and spoil your pleasure,” he said, with a certain pathetic humility; “perhaps I had better go and get to my work again, and wait for the old Sunday nights when you come back.”
“That will look as if you were angry with me,” she said. “Oh, John, I thought you would understand! You know I can’t do what I would do with all these people in the house. What I should like would be to nurse you and take care of you, and be with you always; but what can I do with all these girls and people? I hate them sometimes, though they are my great friends. Don’t go and make me think you are angry. It is that that would spoil my pleasure. Look here! come and get your hat, and bring me a shawl; there is time for a little walk before the dinner-bell rings.”
And then the poor fellow would be rapt into paradise for half an hour under shadow of the elm-trees, which were beginning to put on their bright-coloured garments. His reason told him how vain this snatch of enjoyment was, and gave him many a warning that he was spending his life for nought, and giving his treasure for what was not bread; but at such moments John would not listen to the voice of reason. Her hands were on his arm—her head inclining towards him, sometimes almost touching his sleeve—her eyes raised to his—her smile and her sweet kind words all his own. She was as kind as if she had been his mother—as tender and affectionate and forbearing with him. “Don’t be so cross and so exacting. Because I am fond of you, is that any reason why you should tyrannise over me?” said Kate, with a voice as of a dove close to his ear. And how could he answer her but with abject protestations of penitence and ineffable content?