John, A Love Story; vol. 2 of 2

by Mrs. Oliphant

J. C.”

The other was shorter still. “I dare not think or speak, or allow myself to be glad till I see you,” said the other; “but my fate is in your sweet hands.” Such were the communications that were brought to her from the outer world. Kate gazed at them with open mouth and eyes aghast. Then it all came to her mind. She had promised to go to these men and satisfy them, to give Fred Huntley her hand and her promise, and put her seal to it, that her love for John was over for ever. And yet the touch of her mouth was wet upon John’s dear letter, and she hated Fred Huntley as she had never hated any one in her whole life. She sat with the daylight pouring in upon her, and those tokens of fate about her, and despair in her pale and ghastly face. Kate to be ghastly, who had never known what such a word meant! She was getting a wild look like a creature driven to bay. Now and then when she heard the sound of a voice or step in the house—people coming up-stairs or down, somebody passing along the long passage—she gave a shiver, as a hare might shiver at the baying of the hounds. She sat motionless, it seemed to her for hours, in this torpor, and then it was Fred’s voice that roused her. He was down below in front of the house, talking to some one, and she could hear him through the open window. “I am going to the stables to look at the new horses,” he said, “but I shall be back before five o’clock.” Five o’clock! There was a ring in his voice of conscious triumph. He was coming back to take possession of his victim. At that moment, as Kate sat with the trembling of despair upon her, there suddenly rang out upon her ear the sound of the railway bell at the station, which was always considered such a nuisance at Fernwood. The railway itself was a great convenience, only a quarter of a mile from the lodge gates; but the bell and the whistle and the rumbling of the train were very objectionable. When Kate heard it she roused herself with a low cry. She thrust John’s letter into her dress, and tore the others up in little pieces, and then she sat still, with bright awakened eyes for half an hour more. By that time her resolution was formed. She was miserable and impatient of her misery, and every way of escape seemed shut off except this one, and it was something to do which soothed her excitement. It was not with any such thought that she had sent Parsons away. Nothing had been settled in her mind, or even thought of, till Fred Huntley’s voice and the railway bell thus succeeded each other. In circumstances so desperate there is nothing like a sudden inspiration. Four o’clock! the big clock sounded from the stables, and a succession of fairy chimes rang from all the rooms of the house. Four! and no more time to think—for there was not another moment to lose.

CHAPTER XXX.

Kate had never gone anywhere alone before. She was nothing but one big beating heart, beating so that the little body that contained it could scarcely breathe, when she slipped down the back-stairs and out at the side-door. She put on a great waterproof cloak, one of those garments which are next thing to the domino of the drama as a means of disguise, and a black hat, and a great veil tied over her face as fashion permits. A mask could not have been a greater protection. She was, indeed, masked from head to foot, and except by her gait or outline of her figure could not have been recognised. It seemed to her as if the beating of her heart must have been heard through all the house, bringing everybody out to see what such a noise meant; but it was not so. In her proper person, and with her pretty face open to the light, Kate Crediton was as courageous as any girl could be, and that is saying a great deal; but masked and cloaked as she was, and running away, she was all over abject terror. She trembled when the railway porter came to tell her about the train; her voice was scarcely audible when she got her ticket; she shrank away to the farthest corner, and hid herself for the few horrible moments that she had to wait. And no words can express the sense of guilt and fear and forlorn loneliness with which she contemplated all the varieties of the journey which she had undertaken. To get out of the carriage by herself at Camelford, to steal across the crowded railway station, a little shrinking black figure in the lamplight, to take another ticket, and have herself put into another train, and then to look forward to the long walk in the dark, the country road, the stillness and loneliness and suspicious looks of everybody who should meet her! Her own opinion was that two or three times over she had nearly died of it; and, to tell the truth, she was not far wrong. The weather had grown milder, but she shivered in her excitement; and it was very cloudy and damp, with occasional showers, and little light in the pale sky. How was she to do it? And what reception was she likely to meet with at the end? And her father, what would his feelings be? All these things seized upon Kate, and caught her in their clutches, and hung about her like ghosts as she pursued her lonely journey. Sometimes her natural courage made an effort to assert itself, but the courage of a girl of nineteen is but little able to sustain her under the sense of secrecy and flight and loneliness and the darkest of country roads.

When she had arrived at the conclusion of her journey, the poor child set out half-a-dozen times from the little lighted station which was as an oasis in the desert of darkness, and as many times crept back again to the shelter of the friendly lights. She leant against the paling of the station-master’s cottage opposite the window, where there was protection, and cried. Darkness that she could feel crept and rustled about her; and silence, which she could feel too, penetrated to her very soul. She did not dare to ask the porter who had looked at her so curiously, to go with her. He might kill her on the road, and leave her lying there all covered by the darkness, to be found out when it was too late. Kate cried over this picture of herself. They would all be sorry then; they would be grieved that they had driven her desperate; and there was one that would never, never recover it all his life. Oh that he were only there now with his strong arm to support her—oh John, John, John! And all this time his heart was aching too, thinking she had forsaken him. Where was he? Like herself out somewhere in the night full of despairing thoughts. And here was still this dreadful passage to be crossed before she could even hear of him where he was.

At Fanshawe the scene was very different. Mrs Mitford was seated by the lamp, with her basket by her full of things to mend; but her hands had fallen into her lap, and there were signs of agitation in her face. There was a fire burning at the other end of the room, which gave it a different aspect, but she had not yet given up her summer-seat, and the window was open as of old. In the shade behind the lamp, some one was walking up and down—up and down, filling the room with a sense of restlessness and restraint. The two were talking in hushed tones as if something had happened. And not long before, Dr Mitford had flung away out of the room in anger which could scarcely find strong enough expression, “You should have thought of all this sooner. What! leave the bank? Quarrel with your good fortune and all your prospects! No, I have no patience. He has behaved like a fool, and ought to be treated as such,” the Doctor had cried. He was ashamed of his son and of sundry little brags of his own, which John’s fine prospects had called from him; and he did not know how to face the Fanshawes and all the rest of the parish, and allow that John had thrown all his advantages away. He had been struggling, as a weak hot-tempered man is apt to struggle, against the inevitable, that whole day: he had been endeavouring to drive John back to a sense of his duty, to Camelford and the bank. “If you had taken my advice you never would have gone into it,” he cried; “but now that the sacrifice has been made, to draw back! I have no patience with such folly.” John had not said a word in self-defence. He said, “I have been a fool; it is quite true, mother,” when Mrs Mitford tried to defend him: and the day had been wretched enough to all concerned. What was he going to do with himself now he had come home? Did he think he could be kept in idleness at his time of life? Such were the galling questions that had been put to John all day long. He had made little answer, and his mother believed he was as much in the dark as she was herself. And naturally, though she could not have taunted her boy as her husband did, still the question was to her, as to him, a very serious one. He could not live at home doing nothing. He had thrown away one hope for the future, and now another; and what was he to do?

“A thing may be very imperfect, very unsatisfactory, not much good that one can see; and yet it may be the best thing in the world.”

This was what John said, breaking the stillness after a long interval; and he paused in his walk and stood still in the shaded part of the room, behind his mother’s chair.

“I don’t know what you mean, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford. “How can a thing be unsatisfactory and yet the best thing in the world? And oh, my own boy, what has that to do with you and me?”

“It has a great deal to do with you and me,” he said, behind her chair. “I could not answer my father’s questions. It was hard enough to listen to them and keep my patience; but, mother, dear, I can’t shut my heart to you. I am not going to live upon you in idleness. I am going back to the work you have trained me for all my life.”