“I should not be worth my salt,” said John, with an attempt at a laugh.
“Very far from that; you are only too good for us—too good for us, that is all. It seems a shame, with your education, to see you making entries that any lad could make. But of course, Mr Mitford, you occupy a very different position. We are all aware of that.”
“A false position,” said John. “Don’t disturb the young fellow for me. No, I have not come back to work. I want to see Mr Crediton if I can. You don’t expect him to-day? nor to-morrow? Then I must see him somewhere else——”
“At Fernwood,” said Mr Whichelo; “you can always see him at Fernwood.”
“Very well,” said John. He felt as if he had got his orders when these words were said. Of course it was to Fernwood he must go to see if any comfort was to be had there. Fanshawe threw no light upon what he ought to do, neither did Camelford; and Fernwood was the only place that remained. He shook hands with Mr Whichelo again, and went out with a certain alacrity. The junior at his desk in the window no longer troubled him. Yes; no doubt the boy would sit there, and see Kate come and go, and take no thought. The beautiful Miss Crediton, with all her gaieties and splendour, would be nothing to him: far better that he should fill that corner and make his entries, than that John should sit there consuming his heart. Fernwood was ten miles off, but it was a bright day, and to walk there was the best thing he could do. It gave him time to think, and it kept up a certain rhythm of movement and action about him which prevented him from thinking—and that on the whole was the best. The long road spun along like a thread, lengthening and lengthening as he went on, moving as if off a wheel, with half-stripped trees and falling leaves, and brown hedges, and here and there the russet glory of a bramble-branch trailing over the humid grass. Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel, he seemed to hear some one singing as he went on and on; and the gleaming line of path spun out, circling out of the horizon on one side, back into it on the other, and there seemed no reason why it should ever come to any pause. His brain was giddy, and spun, too, as the road did. He went on with a buzzing in his ears, as if he too were on the wheel, and was winding, winding, and revolving with it, now up, now down, going on and on. What the end was, or if there was any end, he did not seem to know. It was the measured chant, the circles woven by mystic feet, never ending, still beginning. He had come to the very park of Fernwood before he roused himself from this strange dreamy sense of movement. It was a brilliant autumn, and already the beech-trees and the oaks were dressed in a hundred colours. The gentlemen of the party would of course be among the covers—and the ladies—— Here John paused, and began to ask himself what his meaning was. Was it Kate he had come to see? was it into her hands that once more, once again, like a fool, he was going to put his fate?
He stopped, and leaned upon a great beech, which stood with a little forest of juniper-bushes round it, withdrawn from the road. It was on the outskirts of the park, just where two paths met—one starting off into the wilder tangled ground beyond the open; the other leading up towards the house on a parallel with the avenue which John had just left. He was crossing through the brushwood to gain this footpath, when he stopped there against the beech-tree to collect himself, feeling giddy. It was a huge beech, with a trunk vast enough to have hidden a company of people, and great russet branches sweeping down, and the juniper in circles, like the stones of the Druids, making a sort of jungle round it. Was it an evil or a good fate that brought him there at that moment of all others? He had scarcely stopped, and the sound of his foot crushing down the juniper could not have ceased in the still air, when his eye caught a gleam of colour and some moving figures passing close to him on the other side of the beech. He stood like one bewildered when he saw that it was Kate. She was walking along slowly at a very meditative pace, with her head drooping and her eyes cast down, so far occupied with her thoughts that she neither heard nor saw nor suspected the presence of any observing bystander. And she was not alone. Walking by her side, with his eyes upon her, was Fred Huntley. She was gazing on the ground, but he was gazing at her. Her face was abstracted and full of thought; but his was eager, flushed with wishes and hopes and expectation. They were not saying anything to each other. John did not hear a word as they went slowly past; but imagine how it must have felt to wake up out of a feverish haze of doubt and inquietude and unreality, and suddenly open his eyes on such a sight! He stood spell-bound, scarcely venturing to breathe, and heard the rustle and sweep of her dress over the grass, and her sometimes faltering, unsteady step, and Huntley’s foot, that rang firm upon the path. Their very breathing seemed to come to him in the air, and the faint violet scent, which was Kate’s favourite perfume, and the movement and rustle of her going. They passed as if they had been a dream, and John held his breath, and all his life concentrated itself into his eyes. Her figure detached itself so against the still autumnal landscape, her grey dress, the blue ribbons that fluttered softly about her, the soft ruffled feathers, lightly puffed up against the wind in her hat—and the man by her side, with his eyes so intent upon her. It was an affair of a moment, and they were gone; and as soon as they had passed out of hearing, and were about to disappear among the trees, they began to talk. He heard their voices, but could not tell what they said; but the voices were low, toned to the key of that still landscape, and of something still more potential than the landscape; and John turned from the scene, which was stamped on his memory as if in lines of fire, and looked himself as it were in the face, feeling that this at last was the truth which had burst upon him, scattering to the wind all his dreams.
He turned without a word, and walked back to Camelford. There seemed no more doubt or power of question in his mind. He did not even feel as if any painful accident had happened to him; only that it was all over—finished and past, and the seal put to the grave of his dreams. He even walked back with more assured steps, with less sense of a burden on his shoulders and a yoke about his neck. It had been very sweet and very bitter, delightsome and miserable, while it lasted; but now it was over. And it never occurred to him that the conclusion which he thus accepted so summarily was as unreasonable as the beginning. No; the time of dreaming was over, he thought, and now at last there stood revealed to him the real and the true.
CHAPTER XXVII.
It was late in the afternoon when John reached Camelford. He had stopped to rest at a roadside public-house, where he ate and drank, as a man might do in the exhaustion of grief coming home from a funeral. He had sat before the rustic door, and watched the carts that went slowly past with heavy wheels, and the unfrequent passengers; and he had felt very much as if he had been at a funeral. It was a long walk, and he was very footsore and weary when he reached his lodgings. He was out of training, and the fire and his accident had impaired his strength, and his heart was not light enough to give him any assistance. When he shut himself once more into his little parlour, he was so much worn out that he had no strength to do anything. He had meant to return only for the sake of the portmanteau, which imagination represented to him lying open on the floor of his bedroom, all packed, which it was a comfort to think of; but after his twenty-miles walk he had no longer the energy to gather his little possessions together. He laid his aching limbs on the sofa and tried to rest. But it was very hard to rest; he wanted to be in motion all the time; he did not feel able to confront the idea of spending all the gloomy evening alone in that dreary little room. Home, home, his mind kept saying. It would not be cheerful at home. He did not know how he was to bear the stillness, and his mother’s cry of wonder, and his father’s questionings. But yet a necessity was upon him to go on and make an end of the whole matter. After his first pause of weariness, he sprang up and rang his bell, and told his landlady he was going away. “Get my bill ready, please,” he said; “and if you will put my things together for me, and send for a cab for the eight o’clock train——” “Lord, sir, I hope it aint nothing in the rooms! they’re nice rooms as ever could be, and as comfortable as I could make them, or any woman,” she said. John comforted her amour propre as well as he could, with a tale of circumstances that compelled his departure, and felt as if he had been addressing a public meeting when his short colloquy was over. Never in his life before had he been so tired—not ill nor sad to speak of—but tired; so fatigued that he did not know what to do with himself. But it was still only four o’clock, and there were four hours to be got through, and a great deal to do. He got his writing things together with as much difficulty as if they had been miles apart, and threw himself on the sofa again, and wrote. The first letter was to Mr Crediton, and over that the pen went on fluently enough.
“Dear Sir,—I think it right to let you know at once—as soon as I am perfectly sure of my own mind—that I feel obliged to relinquish the post you kindly gave me three months ago in the bank. Early training, and the habits belonging to a totally different kind of life, have at last made the position unbearable. I am very sorry, but it is better to stop before worse come of it, if worse could come. I do not suppose that the suddenness of my resolution can put you to any inconvenience, as I saw, on visiting the bank this morning, that my place had been already filled up. I meant to have seen you, but found it impracticable. I hope you will accept my apologies for any abruptness that there may be in this letter, and regrets that I have not been able better to make use of the opportunity you afforded me——”