“Oh, dear mamma, could not Charley and I ride over to Englebourn? I do so long to see Katie.”
“No, dear; it is much too far for you. We will drive over in a few days' time.”
And so saying, Mrs. Porter wished Tom good night, and led off her daughter.
Tom went slowly up stairs to his room, and, after packing his portmanteau for the carrier to take in the morning, threw up his window and leant out into the night, and watched the light clouds swimming over the moon, and the silver mist folding the water-meadows and willows in its soft cool mantle. His thoughts were such as will occur to any reader who has passed the witching age of twenty; and the scent of the heliotrope-bed in the flower-garden below, seemed to rise very strongly on the night air.
CHAPTER XXXII—A CRISIS
In the forenoon of the following day, Tom rode slowly along the street of Englebourn towards the Rectory gate. He had left Barton soon after breakfast, without having been able to exchange a word with Mary except in the presence of her mother, and yet he had felt more anxious than ever before at least to say good bye to her without witnesses. With this view he had been up early, and had whistled a tune in the hall, and held a loud conversation with the boys, who appeared half dressed in the gallery above, while he brushed the dilapidated white hat to let all whom it might concern know that he was on the move. Then he had walked up and down the garden in full view of the windows till the bell rang for prayers. He was in the breakfast room before the bell had done ringing, and Mrs. Porter, followed by her daughter, entered at the same moment. He could not help fancying that the conversation at breakfast was a little constrained, and particularly remarked that nothing was said by the heads of the family when the boys vociferously bewailed his approaching departure, and tried to get him to name some day for his return before their holidays ended. Instead of encouraging the idea, Mrs. Porter reminded Neddy and Charley that they had only ten days more, and had not yet looked at the work they had to do for their tutor in the holidays. Immediately after breakfast Mrs. Porter had wished him good bye herself very kindly, but (he could not help thinking), without that air of near relationship which he had flattered himself was well established between himself and all the members of the Porter family; and then she had added, “Now Mary, you must say good bye; I want you to come and help me this morning.” He had scarcely looked at her all morning, and now one shake of the hand and she was spirited away in a moment, and he was left standing, dissatisfied and uncomfortable, with a sense of incompleteness in his mind, and as if he had had a thread in his life suddenly broken off, which he could not tell how to get joined again.
However, there was nothing for it but to get off. He had no excuse for delay, and had a long ride before him; so he and the boys went round to the stable. On their passage through the garden, the idea of picking a nosegay and sending it to her by one of the boys came into his head. He gathered the flowers, but then thought better of it and threw them away. What right, after all, had he to be sending flowers to her—above all, flowers to which they had attached a meaning, jokingly it was true; but still a meaning? No, he had no right to do it; it would not be fair to her, or her father or mother, after the kind way in which they had all received him. So he threw away the flowers, and mounted and rode off, watched by the boys, who waved their straw hats as he looked back just before coming to a turn in the road which would take him out of sight of the Manor House. He rode along at a foot's pace for some time, thinking over the events of the past week; and then, beginning to feel purposeless, and somewhat melancholy, urged his horse into a smart trot along the waste land which skirted the road. But, go what pace he would, it mattered not; he could not leave his thoughts behind; so he pulled up again after a mile or so, slackened his reins, and, leaving his horse to pick his own way along the road, betook himself to the serious consideration of his position.
The more he thought of it, the more discontented he became, and the day clouded over as if to suit his temper. He felt as if within the last twenty-four hours he had been somehow unwarrantably interfered with. His mother and Mrs. Porter had both been planning something about him, he felt sure. If they had anything to say, why couldn't they say it out to him? But what could there be to say? Couldn't he and Mary be trusted together without making fools of themselves? He did not stop to analyze his feelings towards her, or to consider whether it was very prudent or desirable for her that they should be thrown so constantly and unreservedly together. He was too much taken up with what he chose to consider his own wrongs for any such consideration.—“Why can't they let me alone?” was the question which he asked himself perpetually, and it seemed to him the most reasonable one in the world, and that no satisfactory answer was possible to it, except that he ought to be, and should be let alone. And so at last he rode along Englebourn street, convinced that what he had to do before all other things just now was to assert himself properly, and show everyone, even his own mother, that he was no longer a boy to be managed according to anyone's fancies except his own.
He rode straight to the stables and loosed the girths of his horse, and gave particular directions about grooming and feeding him, and stayed in the stall for a few minutes rubbing his ears and fondling him. The antagonism which possessed him for the moment against mankind perhaps made him appreciate the value of his relations with a well-trained beast. He had not been in Englebourn for some years, and the servant did not know him, and answered that Mr. Winter was not out of his room and never saw strangers till the afternoon. Where was Miss Winter, then? She was down the village at Widow Winburn's, and he couldn't tell when she would be back, the man said. The contents of Katie's note of the day before had gone out of his head, but the mention of Betty's name recalled them, and with them something of the kindly feeling which had stirred within him on hearing of her illness. So, saying he would call later to see his uncle, he started again to find the widow's cottage, and his cousin.