Next morning John was allowed to go in under his mother’s charge to Kate’s room, where she sat up in her bed, still pale, but growing red as a rose at the sight of him, wrapt in Mrs Mitford’s dressing-gown. The kind woman had a little doubt whether it was quite right; but as she was present every moment of the time, and heard every word they said, there could not be any great harm done: and it was right that she should know all that her father had said. “Must I go back to-day? am I able?” she said, with supplication in her eyes, looking at Mrs Mitford; but soon was quite diverted from that subject by hearing of John’s appointment for that morning to meet her father at the bank.
“I wonder what different arrangements he will make,” she said, looking up in her lover’s face, and pressing in her little hand the big fingers which held hers. Her face grew solemn gazing up at him. If she could but have gone with him, stood by him, made sure that there would be nothing to vex him. Kate had been down to the lowest depths last night, and had sought help, and knew herself incapable of giving it; but in the morning Kate was a different woman, and longed to interfere and defend her own, and take into her hands once more the guidance of affairs.
The mother and the son looked at each other, and then Mrs Mitford spoke. “My dear,” she said, faltering, “I hope you will not be much disappointed. You can see yourself that the other way did not bring a blessing. Kate, before you came last night, John had made up his mind to be a clergyman after all.”
As for John, he took both her hands in his and watched with unspeakable anxiety the expression of her face. But Kate drew her hands away and listened, not looking at him,—not taking in at first, he thought, the meaning of what was said. Then all at once she sat upright and threw her arms round his neck. I am not sure that she ought to have been so demonstrative; but she was. “I am so glad!” she cried—“I am so glad! Oh, you dear old John, that will set everything right!”
“But, Kate,” remonstrated Mrs Mitford, utterly bewildered by this inconsistency, “you used to say——”
“Mamma,” said Kate, solemnly, pushing her lover away from her, “I know I was meant, from the first moment I was born, to be a clergyman’s wife.”
To this solemn protestation what could anybody reply?
And the curious fact was that it turned out quite true. It was her natural business in this world to manage everybody—the parish and the poor, and a whole little kingdom; and it was something utterly new and delightful, and gave full scope for all her powers. Mr Crediton resisted, as was natural, and the Fanshawes held out a little about the nephew to whom they had promised the living; and John had his own difficulties, of which, after all this, he spoke but little: but everything came right in the end. My own belief is that a curacy in a town would have been a great deal better for him to begin with, and that was his own opinion; but nobody else was of the same mind: and even in the country, in the village, there is scope enough to show, as John said, that though the work may be sadly imperfect, sadly unsuccessful and unsatisfactory, it was still the best that is to be had in this imperfect world.
And I hope they will be very happy, now all their troubles (as people say) are over. But it is very hard to make any prediction on such a subject, and one cannot help feeling as Mr Crediton felt, and as Kate herself even was so candid as to allow, that but for that very confusing condition called Love, which puts out so many calculations, Fred Huntley would have been a much more suitable match for her after all.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH