Then there followed a pause. She drew her hand away from his with a little petulant movement. She kept her eyes away from him, not meeting his, which were fixed upon her. Her face glowed with a painful heat; her little foot tapped the carpet. “Do you mean that—other things—are to be over too?” she said; and twisted her fingers together, and gazed out of the window, waiting for what he had to say.
Such a question comes naturally to the mind of a lover whenever there is any fretting of his silken chain; and accordingly it was not novel to John’s imagination—but it struck upon his heart as if it had been a blow. “Surely not—surely not,” he answered, hastily; “not so far as I am concerned.”
And then they stood again—for how long?—side by side, not looking at each other, waiting a chance word to separate or to reunite them. Should she be able to bear her first rebuff? she, a spoiled child, to whom everybody yielded? Or could she all in a moment learn that sweet philosophy of yielding in her own person, which makes all the difference between sorrow and unhappiness? Everything—the world itself—seemed to hang in the balance for that moment. Kate terminated it suddenly, in her own unexpected way. She turned on him all at once, with the sweetness restored to her face and her voice, and held out her hand: “Neither shall it be so far as I am concerned,” she said. “Since you must go, good-bye, John!”
And thus it came to an end. When he was on his way back to Camelford, and the visit to Fernwood, with all its pains and pleasures, and the last touch of her hand, were things of the past, John asked himself, with a lover’s ingenuity of self-torment, if this frank sweetness of reply was enough? if she should have let him go so easily? if there was not something of relief in it? He drove himself frantic with these questions, as he made his way back to his poor little lodgings. Mr Crediton had looked politely indifferent, rather glad than otherwise, when he took his leave. “Going to leave us?” Mr Crediton had said. “I am very sorry; I hope it is not any bad news. But perhaps you are right, and perfect quiet will be better for your arm. Never mind about business—you must take your own time. If you see Whichelo, tell him I mean to come in on Saturday. I am very sorry you have given us so short a visit. Good-bye.” Such was Mr Crediton’s farewell; but the young man made very little account of that. Mr Crediton’s words or ways were not of so much importance to him as one glance of Kate’s eye. What she meant by her dismay and distress, and then by the sudden change, the sweet look, the good-bye so kindly, gently said, was the question he debated with himself; and naturally he had put a hundred interpretations upon it before he reached his journey’s end.
It was still but mid-day when he reached the little melancholy shabby rooms which were his home in Camelford. The place might be supportable at night, when he came in only for rest after the day’s labours, though even then it was dreary enough; but what could be thought of it in the middle of a bright autumn day, when the young man came in and closed his door, and felt the silence hem him in and enclose him, and put seals, as it were, to the grave in which he had buried himself. Full day and nothing to do, and a little room to walk about in, four paces from one side to the other—and a suburban street to look out upon, with blinds drawn over the windows, and plants shutting out the air, and an organ grinding melancholy music forth along each side of the way: could he stay still and bear it? When he was at Fernwood his rooms looked to him like a place of rest, where he could go and hide himself and be at peace. But as soon as he had entered them, it was Fernwood that grew lovely in the distance, where Kate was, where there were blessed people who would be round her all day long, and the stir of life, and a thousand pleasant matters going on. He was weary and sick of himself, and sick of the world. Could he sit down and read a novel in the light of that October day—or what was he to do?
The end was that he took his portmanteau, which had not been unpacked, and threw it into a passing cab, and went off to the railway. He had not gone home since he came to his clerkship in the bank, and that was three months since. It seemed the only thing that was left for him to do now. He went back along the familiar road with something of the feelings of a prodigal approaching his home. It seemed strange to him when the porter at the little roadside station of Fanshawe touched his cap, and announced his intention of carrying Mr John’s portmanteau to the Rectory. He felt it strange that the poor fellow should remember him. Surely it was years since he had been there before.
And this feeling grew as John walked slowly along the quiet country road that led to his home. Everything he passed was associated with thoughts which were as much over and gone as if they had happened in a different existence. He had walked along by these hedgerows pondering a thousand things, but scarcely one that had any reference to, any relation with, his present life. He had been a dreamer, planning high things for the welfare of the world; he had been a reformer, rousing, sometimes tenderly, sometimes violently, the indifferent country from its slumbers; sometimes, even, retiring to the prose of things, he had tried to realise the details of a clergyman’s work, and to fit himself into them, and ask himself how he should perform them. But never, in all these questionings, had he thought of himself as a banker’s clerk—a man working for money alone, and the hope of money. It was so strange that he did not know what to make of it. As he went on, the other John, his former self, seemed to go with him—and which was the real man, and which the phantom, he could not tell. All the quiet country lifted prevailing hands, and laid hold on him as he went home. It looked so natural—and he, what was he? But the country, too, had changed as if in a dream. He had left it in the full blaze of June, and now it was October, with the leaves in autumn glory, the fields reaped, the brown stubble everywhere, and now and then in the clear blue air the crack of a sportsman’s gun. All these things had borne a different aspect once to John. He too had been a little of a sportsman, as was natural; but the dog and the gun did not harmonise with the figure of a banker’s clerk. The women on the road, who stared at him, and curtsied to him with a smile of recognition, confused him, he could not tell why. It was so strange that everybody should recognise him—he who did not recognise himself.
And as he approached the Rectory, a vague sense that something must have happened there, came over him. It was only three days since he had received a letter from his mother full of those cheerful details which it cost her, though he did not know it, so much labour and pain to write. He tried to remind himself of all the pleasant everyday gossip, and picture of things serene and unchangeable which she had sent him; but still the nearer he drew and the more familiar everything became, the more he felt that something must have happened. He went in by the little garden-gate, which opened noiselessly, and made his way through the shrubbery, to satisfy himself that no cloud of calamity had fallen upon the house. It was a warm genial autumn day, very still, and somewhat pathetic, but almost as balmy as summer. And the drawing-room window stood wide open as it had done through all those wonderful June days when John’s life had come to its climax. The lilies had vanished that stood up in great pyramids against the buttresses; even their tall green stalks were gone, cut down to the ground; and there were no roses, except here and there a pale monthly one, or a half-nipped, half-open bud. John paused under the acacia-tree where he had so often placed Kate’s chair, and which was now littering all the lawn round about with its leaflets—to gain a glimpse, before he entered, of what was going on within. The dear, tender mother! to whom he had been everything—all her heart had to rest on. What had she to recompense her for all the tender patience, all the care and labour she took upon herself for the sake of her Saviour and fellow-creatures! Her son, who had taken things for granted all this time as sons do, opened his eyes suddenly as he stood peeping in like a stranger, and began to understand her life. God never made a better, purer woman; she had lived fifty years doing good and not evil to every soul around her, and what had she in return? A husband, who thought she was a very good sort of ignorant foolish little woman on the whole, and very useful in the parish, and handy to keep off all interruptions and annoyances; and a son who had gone away and abandoned her at the first chance—disappointed all her hopes, left her alone, doubly alone, in the world. “It is her hour for the school, the dearest little mother,” he said to himself, with the tears coming to his eyes; “she never fails, though we all fail her;” but even as the words formed in his mind he perceived that the room into which he was gazing was not empty. There she sat, thrown back into a chair; her work was lying on the floor at her feet; but John had never seen such an air of weariness and lassitude in his mother before. He recognised the gown she had on, the basket of work on the table, all the still life round her; but her he could not recognise. She had her hands crossed loosely in her lap, laid together with a passive indifference that went to his heart. Could she be asleep? but she was not asleep; for after a while one of the hands went softly up to her cheek, and something was brushed off, which could only be a tear. He could scarcely restrain the cry that came to his lips; but at that moment the door, which he could not see, must have opened, for she gave a start, and roused herself, and turned to speak to somebody. “I am coming, Lizzie,” John heard her answer in a spiritless, weary tone; and then she rose and put away her work, and took up her white shawl, which was lying on the back of a chair. She liked white and pretty bright colours about her, the simple soul. They became her, and were like herself. But when she had wrapped herself in the shawl, which was as familiar to John as her own face, his mother gave a long weary sigh, and sat down again as if she could not make up her mind to move. He had crept quite close to the window by this time, moved beyond expression by the sight of her, with tears in his eyes, and unspeakable compunction in his heart. “What does it matter now?” she said to herself, drearily. She had come to be so much alone that the thought was spoken and not merely thought. When John stepped into the room a moment after, his mother stood and gazed at him as if he had risen out of the earth, and then gave a great cry which rang through all the house, and fell upon his neck. Fell upon his neck—that was the expression—reaching her arms, little woman as she was, up to him as he towered over her; and would not have cared if she had died then, in the passion of her joy.
“Mother, dear, you are trembling,” John said, as he put her tenderly into her chair and knelt down beside her, taking her hands into his. “I should not have been so foolish startling you; but I could not resist the temptation when I saw you here.”
“Joy does not hurt,” said Mrs Mitford. “I have grown so silly, my dear, now I have not you to keep me right; and it was a surprise. There—I don’t in the least mean to cry; it is only foolishness. And oh, my poor John, your arm!”