“I need not go till the evening,” said John; “and my mother means to walk there with me; don’t you, mamma?”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs Mitford, smiling upon him. She had been looking forward to this last heartrending pleasure, and thinking that then he would perhaps tell her something, if indeed there was anything to tell.
“Then let the phaeton take your portmanteau and bring your mother home,” said the Doctor, “if you insist on taking her such a long walk. For my part I can never see the good of such expeditions. It is much better to say good-bye at home.”
“But I like the walk,” said Mrs Mitford, eagerly; and the Doctor, who did not quite approve of the pair and their doings, shook his head, and gathered up his papers (he had no less than two proof-sheets to correct, and a revise, for he was very particular), and went off to his work. “You will find me in the library whenever I am wanted,” he said, as he withdrew. He thought his wife was spoiling her son, as she had spoiled him when he was ten years old, and he did not approve of it; but when a woman is so foolish, what can the most sensible of men and fathers do?
And then the mother and son were left alone, with that letter in John’s pocket which might explain so much of the mystery. But he did not say a word about it, nor about Kate, nor anything that concerned his happiness; and when Mrs Mitford talked of his new shirts and stockings (which was the only other subject she found herself capable of entering upon), he talked of them too, and agreed in her remarks about the negligence of washerwomen, and all the difficulty of keeping linen a good colour in a town. “As for your socks, my poor boy, I never saw such mending,” she said, almost with the tears in her eyes. “I must take it all out and darn it over again as it ought to be. When darning is nicely done, I never think the stocking looks a bit the worse; but how any woman could drag the two edges together like some of these, I can’t understand.”
“It is always hard work dragging edges together,” said John, getting up from the table. “I think I’ll go and say good-bye to old Mrs Fanshawe, mother. It is too long a walk for you.”
“I could not go there and to the station too,” said Mrs Mitford, “and I ought not to neglect the schools because I am so happy as to have my own boy. Yes, dear; go and see the old people: you must keep up the old ties for our sakes, even though they are to be broken off so far as the Rectory goes;” and she smiled at him and gave a little nod of her head dismissing him, by way of concealing that she wanted to cry. She did cry as soon as he was gone, and had scarcely time to dry her eyes when Jervis came in to clear the table. Mrs Mitford snubbed him on the spot, with a vehemence which took that personage quite by surprise. “I observe that Mr John’s things have not been laid out for him properly, as they ought to have been,” she said, suddenly, snapping his nose off, as Jervis said. “I trust I shall find everything properly brushed and folded to-day. It is a piece of negligence, Jervis, which I don’t at all understand.” “And Missis give her head a toss, and walks off as if she was the queen,” said the amazed man-of-all-work when he got to the kitchen, and was free to unburden himself. After this Mrs Mitford had another cry in her own room, and put on her bonnet and went across to the schools, wondering through all the lessons and all the weary chatter of the children,—Oh, what was the matter with her boy? oh, was he unhappy? had they quarrelled? must not his mother know?
Meanwhile John strode across the country to Fanshawe to bid the old squire and his old wife good-bye. He went, as the crow flies, over the stubble, and by the hedge-sides, never pausing to draw breath. Not because he was excited by his departure, or by the letter in his pocket, or by any actual incident. On the contrary, he was quite still, like the day, which was a grey autumn morning, with wistful scraps of blue on the horizon, and a brooding, pondering quiet in the air. All is over for the year, nature was saying to herself. Shall there be another year? shall old earth begin again, take in the new seeds, keep the spring germs alive for another blossoming? or shall all come to a conclusion at last, and the new heavens and the new earth come down out of those rolling clouds and fathomless shrill breaks of blue? John was in much the same mood. Kate’s little note in his pocket had a kind of promise in it of the new earth and the new heaven. But was it a solid, real promise, or only a dissolving view, that would vanish as he approached it? and might not an end be better, and no more delusive hopes? Mrs Fanshawe was very kind when he got to the hall. She told him of poor Cecily, just nineteen (Kate’s age), who was dying at Nice, and cried a little, and smiled, and said, “Oh, my dear boy, it don’t matter for us; we can’t be long of going after her.” But though she was reconciled to that, she made a little outcry over John’s leave-taking. “Going so soon! and what will your poor mother say?” cried the old lady. “I am afraid you think more of one smile from Miss Crediton than of all your old friends; and I suppose it is natural,” she added, as she shook hands with him. Did he care more for Kate’s smile than for anything else? He walked home again in the same dead sort of way, without being able to answer even such a question. He did not care for anything, he thought, except, now that he was at Fanshawe, to get away; and probably when he got to Camelford his desire would be to get back again, or to Fernwood, or to anywhere, except just the place where he happened to be.
It was evening when he set out to go to the station, with his mother leaning on his arm. The evening comes early in October, and it was necessary that she should get back to dinner at seven. Twilight was coming on as they walked together along the dewy road, where the hedgerows were all humid and chill with the dew, which some of these nights would grow white upon the leaves before any one knew, and make winter out of autumn. A sort of premonition of the first frost was in the air; and the hawthorns were very rusty and shabby in their foliage, but picked out here and there by red flaming bramble-leaves, which warmed up the hedgerows notwithstanding the damp. The mother and son walked slowly, to spin out the time as long as might be. To be sure they might, as Dr Mitford said, have just as well talked indoors; but then the good Doctor knew nothing about that charm of isolation and unity—the silent world all round about, the soft, harmonious motion, the tender contact and support. They could speak so low to each other without any fear of not being heard. They could look at each other if they would, yet were not compelled to any meeting of the eyes. There is no position in which it is so difficult to disagree, so natural to confide and trust. Mrs Mitford’s very touch upon her son’s arm was in itself a caress. My dear, dear boy, her eyes said as she looked at him. She had carried him in those soft arms, and now it was her turn to lean upon him. This thought was always in her mind when she leant upon John’s arm.
“I should not wonder,” she said, cunningly, leading up to her subject with innocent pretences of general conversation, “if we had frost to-night.”