“There is nothing more to say,” he repeated. “I cannot tell you, I can’t tell myself what is the matter. There is nothing the matter. It is a false position somehow, I suppose—that is all.”
“In the bank, John?”
“In the bank, and in the house, and in the world, mother,” he cried, with sudden vehemence. “I don’t seem able to take root anywhere; everything looks false and forced and miserable. I can neither go on nor go back, and I stagnate standing still. Never mind; I suppose it is just an experience like any other, and will have to be borne.”
Then there passed through Mrs Mitford’s mind as quick as lightning that passage about those who put their hand to the plough and draw back. But she restrained herself. “I suppose it is just the great change, my dear,” she said, faltering, yet soothing him, “and all that you have given up—for you have given up a great deal, John. I suppose your time is not your own now, and you can’t do what you like? And sitting at a desk—you who used to be free to read, or to walk, or to go on the river, or to help your papa, or see your friends—it must make a great difference, John.”
“Yes, I suppose that is what it is,” he said, feeling that he had successfully eluded the subject, and yet celebrating his success with a sigh.
“But I hope it is made up to you in another way,” Mrs Mitford said, suddenly, looking up into his face. He thought he had got off, but she did not mean to let him off. She was a simple little woman, but yet not so simple but what she could employ a legitimate artifice, like the rest of her kind. “You had a letter from Kate this morning, dear. I saw her little handwriting. I suppose she makes up for everything, John?”
They were drawing near the station, and she spoke fast, partly from that reason, partly to make her attack the more potent, and to leave him no time to think. But he answered her a great deal more readily than she had expected.
“Is it fair upon a girl to expect her to make up for all that?” he asked. “Mother, I ask myself sometimes, if she gave up her own life for me as I have done for her—no, not altogether for her—could I make it up to her? Is it fair or just to expect it? Life means a great deal, after all—more than just what you call happiness. You will think I am very hard-hearted; but, do you know, it almost appears to me sometimes as if a man could get on better without happiness, if he had plenty of work to do, than he could without the work, with only the happiness to comfort him. Is it blasphemy, mother? Even if it is, you will not be too hard upon me.”
Mrs Mitford paused a little to think over her answer; and perhaps anybody who takes an interest in her will be shocked to hear that she was rather—glad—half-glad—with a kind of relief at her heart. “John,” she said, “I don’t know what to say. I am—sorry—you have found it out, my dear. Oh, I am very sorry you have found it out—for it is hard; but, do you know, I fear it is true.”
“I wonder how my mother found it out,” he said, looking down upon her with that strange surprise which moves a child when it suddenly suspects some unthought-of conflict in the settled immovable life which it has been familiar with all its days, and accepted as an eternal reality. He had propounded his theory as the very worst and very saddest discovery in existence, and lo! she had accepted it as a truism. It bewildered John so that he could not add another word.