For some days after the fire, John continued in a sadly uncomfortable
state both of body and mind. The two, indeed, were not dissimilar.
He was much burnt, though superficially, and suffered double pangs
from the stinging, gnawing, unrelaxing pain. His spirit was burnt
too--scorched by sudden flames; stiff and sore all over, like his
limbs, with points of exaggerated suffering here and there,--a thing
he could not take his thoughts from, nor try to forget. He was very
unmanageable by his attendants, was with difficulty persuaded to obey
the doctor’s prescriptions, and absolutely refused to lay himself up.
“The end’ll be as you’ll kill yourself, sir, and that you’ll see,”
said his landlady. “Not much matter either,” John murmured between
his teeth. He was smarting all over, as the poor moth is which flies
into the candle. It does the same thing over again next minute, no
doubt; and so, probably, would he: but in the mean time he suffered
much both in body and mind. He would not keep in bed, or even in-doors,
notwithstanding the doctor’s orders; and it was only downright
incapacity that kept him from appearing in the temporary offices which
had been arranged for the business of the bank. Mr Crediton had come
in from Fernwood at once to look after matters; but on that day John
was really ill, and so had escaped the visit which otherwise would have
been inevitable. Mr Whichelo came that evening to bring his principal’s
regrets. “He was very much cut up about not seeing you,” said the
head-clerk. “You know your own affairs best, and I don’t wish to be
intrusive; but I think you would find it work better not to keep him at
such a distance.”
“I keep Mr Crediton at a distance!” said John, with a grimace of pain.
“You do, Mr Mitford. I don’t say that he is always what he might be
expected to be; but, anyhow, no advances come from your side.”
“It is not from my side advances should come,” John said, turning his
face to the wall with an obstinacy which was almost sullen; while at
the same time he said to himself at the bottom of his heart, What
does it matter? These were but the merest outward details. The real
question was very different. Did a woman know what love meant?--was it
anything but a diversion to her--an amusement? was what he was asking
himself; while a man, on the other hand, might give up his life for it,
and annul himself, all for a passing smile--a smile that was quite as
bright to the next comer. Such thoughts were thorns in John’s pillow as
he tossed and groaned. They burned and gnawed at his heart worse than
his outward wounds; and there were no cool applications which could
be made to them. He did not want to be spoken to, nor to have even
the friendliest light thrown upon the workings of his mind. To be let
alone--to be left to make the best of it--to be allowed to resume his
work quietly, and go and come, and wait until the problem had been
solved for him, or until he himself had solved it,--it seemed to John
that he wished for nothing more.
“That may be,” said Mr Whichelo; “but all the same you don’t take
much pains to conciliate him--though that is not my business. A man
who has had a number of us round him all his life always anxious to
conciliate--as good men as himself any day,” the head-clerk added, with
some heat, “but still in a measure dependent upon his will for our
bread--it takes a strong head to stand such a strain, Mr Mitford. An
employer is pretty near a despot, unless he’s a very good man. I don’t
want to say a word against Mr Crediton----”
“Much better not,” said John, with another revulsion of feeling, not
indisposed to knock the man down who ventured to thrust in his opinion
between Kate’s father and himself; and Mr Whichelo for the moment was
silent, with a half-alarmed sense of having gone too far.
“He is very grateful to you for your promptitude and energy,” he
continued: “but for you these papers must have been lost. It would
have been my fault,” said Mr Whichelo, with animation, yet in a low
tone. There was even emotion in his words, and something like a tear in
his eye. If he had been a great general or a distinguished artist, his
professional reputation could not have been more precious to him. But
John was preoccupied, and paid no attention. He did not care for having
saved Mr Whichelo’s character any more than Mr Crediton’s money, though
he had, indeed, risked his life to do it. He had been in such a mood
that to risk his life was rather agreeable to him than otherwise, not
for any “good motive,” but simply as he would have thrust his burnt leg
or arm into cold water for the momentary relief of his pain.
“Don’t let us talk any more about it,” he said; “they are safe, I
suppose, and there is an end of it. But how I got out of that place,”
he added, turning himself once more impatiently on his uneasy bed, “is
a mystery to me.”
“You have your friend to thank for that,” said his companion, with the
sense that now at last a topic had been found on which it would be safe
to speak.
“My--what?” cried John, sitting suddenly upright in his bed.
“Your--friend,--the gentleman who was with you. Good God! this is the
worst of all,” cried poor Whichelo, driven to his wits' end.
And, indeed, for a minute John’s expression was that of a demon. He
had some cuts on his forehead, which were covered with plaster; he was
excessively pale; one of his arms was bandaged up; and when you have
added to all these not beautifying circumstances the dim light thrown
upon the bed under its shabby curtains, and the look of horror, dismay,
and rage which passed over the unhappy young fellow’s face, poor Mr
Whichelo’s consternation may be understood. “My--friend!” he repeated,
with a groan. He could not himself have given any reason for it; but it
seemed at the moment to be the last and finishing blow.
“Yes,” said Mr Whichelo, “so they told me. He found you lying in the
passage with the engines playing upon you, and dragged you out. It was
very lucky for you he was there.”
John fell back in his bed with a look of utter weariness and lassitude.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But is anybody such a fool as to think
that I should have died with the engines playing on me? Nonsense! He
need not have been so confoundedly officious: but it don’t matter, I
tell you,” he added, angrily; “don’t let us speak of it any more.”
“My dear Mr Mitford,” said Mr Whichelo, “I don’t wish to interfere; but
I am the father of a family myself, with grown-up sons, and I don’t
like to see a young man give way to wrong feeling. The gentleman did
a most friendly action. I don’t know, I am sure, if you would have
died--but--he meant well, there can be no doubt of that.”
“Confound him!” said John between his closed teeth. Mr Whichelo was
glad he could not quite hear what it was; perhaps, however, he expected
something worse than “confound him”--for a sense of horror crept over
him, and he was very thankful that he had no closer interest in this
impatient young man than mere acquaintanceship--a man who was going in
for the Church! he said to himself. He sat silent for a little, and
then got up and took his hat.
“I hear you have to be kept very quiet,” he said; “and as it is late,
I will take my leave. Good evening, Mr Mitford; I hope you will have a
good night; and if I can be of any use----”
“Good-night,” said John, too much worn to be able to think of
politeness. And when Mr Whichelo was gone the doctor came, who gave
him a great deal of suffering by way of relieving him. He bore it all
in silence, having plenty of distraction afforded him by his thoughts,
which were bitter enough. “Doctor,” he said, sitting up all at once
while his injured arm was being bandaged, “answer me one question: I
hear I was found lying somewhere with the engines playing on me; could
I have died like that?”
“You might--in time,” said the doctor, with a smile, “but not just for
as long as the fire lasted; unless you had taken cold, which you don’t
appear to have done, better luck.”
“But there was no other danger?”
“You could not have been burnt alive with the engines playing on you,”
said the doctor. “Yes, of course there was danger: the roof might have
fallen in, which it did not--thanks, I believe, to your promptitude; or
even if the partition had come down upon you, it would have been far
from pleasant; but I should think you have had quite enough of it as it
is.”
“I want to make sure,” said the patient, with incomprehensible
eagerness, “not for my own sake--but--there never was any real danger?
you can tell me that.”
“One can never say as much,” was the answer. “I should not myself like
to lie insensible in a burning house, close to a partition which fell
eventually. At the least you might have been crippled and disfigured
for life.”
A groan burst from John’s breast when he found himself alone on that
weary lingering night. How long it seemed!--years almost since the
excitement of the fire which had sustained him for the moment, though
he was not aware of it. He put his hand up to his eyes, and found that
there were tears in them, and despised himself, which added another
thorn to his pillow. He had nobody to console him; nobody to keep him
from brooding over the sudden misery. Was it a fit revenge of fate
upon him for his feeling of right in regard to Kate? He had felt that
he had a right to her because he had saved her life. Was it possible
that he had taken an ungenerous advantage of that? He went back over
the whole matter, and he said to himself that, had he loved a girl so
much out of his sphere, without this claim upon her, he would have
smothered his love, and made up his mind from the beginning that it was
useless. But the sense that he had saved her life had given him a sense
of power--yes, of ungenerous power--over her. And now he himself had
fallen into the same subjection. Another man had saved his life; or, at
least, was supposed by others, and no doubt would himself believe that
he had done so. Fred Huntley, whom she had taken into her confidence,
to whom she had described the state of the affairs between them, whose
advice almost she had asked on a matter which never should have been
breathed to profane ears--Fred Huntley had saved his life. He groaned
in his solitude, and put up his hand to his eyes, and despised himself.
“I had better cry over it, like a sick baby,” he said to himself, with
savage irony; and oh to think that was all, all he could do!
Next morning John insisted on getting up, in utter disobedience to his
doctor. He had his arm in a sling, but what did that matter? and he
had still the plaster on the cuts on his forehead. He tried to read,
but that was not possible. He wrote to his mother as best he could
with his left hand, telling her there had been a fire, and that he
had burned his fingers pulling some papers out of it--“nothing of the
least importance,” he said. And when he had done that he paused and
hesitated. Should he write to Kate? He had not done it for several
days past. It was the longest gap that had ever occurred in their
correspondence. His heart yearned a little within him notwithstanding
all its wounds; yet after he had taken up the pen he flung it down
again in the sickness of his heart. Why should he write? She must
have heard all about it from Fred Huntley and from her father. She
had heard, no doubt, that Fred had saved his life--and she had taken
no notice. Why should she take any notice? It did not humiliate a
woman to be under such an obligation, but it did humiliate a man. John
rose and stalked about his little room, which scarcely left him space
enough for four steps from end to end. He stared out hopelessly at the
window which looked into the little humble suburban street with its
tiny gardens; and then he went and stared into the little glass over
the mantelpiece, which was scarcely tall enough to reflect him unless
he stooped. A pretty sight he was to look at; three lines of plaster
on his forehead, marks of scorching on his cheek, dark lines of pain
under his eyes, and the restless, anxious, uneasy expression of extreme
suffering on his scarred face. He was not an Adonis at the best, poor
John, and he was conscious of it. What was there in him that she should
care for him? She had been overborne by his claim of right over her. It
had been ungenerous of him; he had put forth a plea which never ought
to be urged, and which another man now had the right of urging over
himself. With a groan of renewed anguish he threw himself down on the
little sofa, and leaned his head and his folded arms on the table at
which he had been writing his mother’s letter. He had nothing to fall
back upon: all his life and hopes he had given up for this, and here
was what it had come to. He had no capability left in his mind but of
despair.
It was, no doubt, because he was so absorbed in his own feelings and
unconscious of what was passing, that he heard nothing of any arrival
at the door. He scarcely raised his head when the door of his own
little sitting-room was opened. “I want nothing, thanks,” he said,
turning his back on his officious landlady, he thought. She must have
come into the room more officious than ever, for there was a faint
rustling sound of a woman’s dress, and that sense of some one in the
room which is so infallible; but John only turned his back the more
obstinately. Then all at once there came something that breathed over
him like a wind from the south, something made up of soft touch, soft
sound, soft breath. “John, my poor John!” said the voice; and the
touch was as of two arms going round that poor wounded head of his.
It was impossible--it could not be. He suffered his hands to be drawn
down from his face, his head to be encircled in the arms, and said to
himself that it was a dream. “Am I mad?” he said, half aloud; “am I
losing my head?--for I know it cannot be.”
“What cannot be? and why should not it be?” said Kate, in his ear.
“Oh, you unkind, cruel John! Did you want me to break my heart without
a word or a message from you? Not even to see papa! not to send me a
single line! to leave me to think you were dying or something, and
you not even in bed. If I were not so glad, I should be in a dreadful
passion. You horrid, cruel, brave, dear old John!”
He did not know what to think or say. All his evil thoughts slid away
from him unawares, as the ice melts. There was no reason for it; but
the sun had shone on them, and they were gone. He took hold of, and
kept fast in his, the hands that had touched his aching head. “I do not
think it is you,” he said; “I am afraid to look lest it should not be
you.”
“I know better than that,” said Kate; “it is because you will not let
me see your face. Poor dear face!” cried the impulsive girl, and cried
a little, and dropped a sudden, soft, momentary kiss upon the scorched
cheek. That was her tribute to the solemnity of the occasion. And then
she laughed half hysterically. “John, dear, you are so ugly, and I like
you so,” she said; and sat down by him, and clasped his arm with both
her hands. John’s heart had melted into the foolishest tenderness and
joy by this time. He was so happy that his very pain seemed to him the
tingling of pleasure. “I cannot think it is you,” he said, looking down
upon her with a fondness which could find no words.
“I have come all this way to see him,” she cried, “and evidently now he
thinks it is not proper. Look, I have brought Parsons with me. There
she is standing in the window all this time, not to intrude upon us. Do
you think I am improper now?”
“Hush!” he said, softly; “don’t blaspheme yourself. Because I cannot
say anything except wonder to feel myself so happy----”
“My poor John, my poor dear old John!” she said, leaning the fairy
head against him which ought to have had a crown of stars round it
instead of a mite of a bonnet. Kate took no thought of her bonnet at
that moment. She sat by his side, and talked and talked, healing his
wounds with her soft words. And Parsons drew a chair quietly to her and
sat down in the window, turning her back upon the pair. “Lord, if I
was to behave like that,” Parsons was saying to herself, “and somebody
a-looking on!” And she sat and stared out of the window, and attracted
a barrel-organ, which came and played before her, with a pair of keen
Italian eyes gleaming at her over it from among the black elf-locks.
Parsons shook her head at the performer; but her presence was enough
for him, and he kept on grinding “La Donna é Mobile” slowly and
steadily, through her thoughts and through the murmuring conversation
of the other two. Neither Kate nor John paid any attention to the
music. They had not heard it, they would have said; and yet it was
strange how the air would return to both of them in later times.
“I see now you could not write,” said Kate; “but still you have
scribbled something to your mother. I think I might have had a word
too. But I did not come to scold you. Oh, that horrid organ-man, I wish
he would go away! You might have sent me a message by papa.”
“I did not see him,” said John.
“Or by Fred Huntley. You saw him, for he told me---- John! what is the
matter? Are you angry? Ought I not to have come?”
Then there was a pause; he had drawn his arm away out of her clasping
hands, and all at once the tingling which was like pleasure became
pain again, and gnawed and burned him as if in a sudden endeavour
to overcome his patience. And yet it was so difficult to look down
upon the flushed wondering face, the eyes wide open with surprise,
the bewildered look, and remain unkind to her. For it was unkind to
pull away the arm which she was clasping with both her hands. He felt
himself a barbarian, and yet he could not help it. Huntley’s name was
like a shot in the heart to him. And the organ went on with its creaks
and jerks, playing out its air. “That organ is enough to drive one
wild,” he said, pettishly, and felt that he had committed himself, and
was to blame.
“Is it only the organ?” said Kate, relieved. “Yes, is it not dreadful?
but I thought you were angry with me. Oh, John, I don’t think I could
bear it if I thought you were really angry with me.”
“My darling! I am a brute,” he said, and put the arm which he had drawn
so suddenly away round her. He had but one--the other was enveloped in
bandages and supported in a sling.
“Does it hurt?” said Kate, laying soft fingers full of healing upon it.
“I do so want to hear how it all happened. Tell me how it was. They say
the bank might all have been burned down if you had not seen it, and
papa would have lost such heaps of money. John, dear, I think you will
find papa easier to manage now.”
“Do you think so?” he said, with a faint smile; “but that is buying his
favour, Kate.”
“Never mind how we get it, if we do get it,” cried Kate. “I am sure
I would do anything to buy his favour--but I cannot go and save his
papers and do such things for him. Or, John, was it for me?” she said,
lowering her voice, and looking up in his face.
“No, I don’t think it was for you,” he answered, rather hoarsely; “and
it was not for him. I did it because I could not help it, and to escape
from myself.”
“To escape from yourself! Why did you want that?” she said, with an
innocent little cry of astonishment. It was clear she was quite unaware
of having done him any wrong.
“Kate, Kate,” he said, holding her close, “you did not mean it; but why
did you take Fred Huntley into your confidence--why did you speak to
him about you and me?”
She gave him a wondering look, and then the colour rose into her cheek.
“John!” she said, in a tone of amazement, “what is this about Fred
Huntley? Are you jealous of him--jealous of _him_? Oh, I hope I
am not quite so foolish as that.”
Was that all she was going to say? No disclaimer of having given him
her confidence, nothing about her part in the matter, only about his.
Was he jealous? the question sank into John’s heart like a stone.
“I don’t know if I am jealous,” he said, with a falter in his voice,
which went to Kate’s impressionable heart. “It must be worse to me than
it is to you, or you would not ask me. To have said anything to anybody
about us, Kate!”
“I see,” she said, holding away from him a little; “I see,”--and was
silent for two seconds at least, which felt like two hours to them
both. And the man went on playing “La Donna é Mobile,”--and Parsons,
very red in the face, kept shaking her head at him, but did not attempt
to leave her post. Then Kate turned and lifted her pretty eyes, full of
tears, to her lover’s face, and spoke in his very ear. “John, it was
very silly of me, and thoughtless, and nasty, I see. But I have had
nobody to tell me such things. I have never had a mother like you; I
say whatever comes into my head. John! I am so sorry----”
Could he have let her say any more? he ended the sweet confession as
lovers use; he held her to him, and healed himself by her touch, by her
breath, by the softness of her caressing hands. He forgot everything
in the world but that she was there. She had meant no harm, she had
thought no harm. It was her innocence, her ignorance, that had led her
into this passing error, and foolish John was so happy that all his
sufferings passed from his mind.
“His old remembrances went from him wholly,
And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.”
Everything smiled and brightened before him; the organ-grinder stopped
and found out from poor Parsons’s perpetual gesticulations that pennies
were not to be expected; and something soft and tranquil and serene
seemed to steal into the room and envelop the two, who were betrothing
themselves over again, or so they thought. “Papa says you are to come
to Fernwood. You must come and let me nurse you,” Kate whispered in his
ear. “That would be too sweet,” John whispered back again; and then
she opened the note to his mother and wrote a little postscript to it,
with his arm round her, and his poor scarred face over her shoulder
watching every word as she wrote it. “He looks so frightful,” Kate
wrote, “you never saw any one so hideous, dear mamma, or such a darling
[don’t shake my arm, John]. I never knew how nice he was, nor how fond
I was of him, till now.”
This was how the day ended which had been begun in such misery; for it
was nearly dusk when Kate left him with the faithful Parsons. “Indeed
you shall not come with me,” she said, “you who ought to be in bed----”
but, notwithstanding this protest and all his scars, he went with
her till they came within sight of the bank, where the carriage was
standing. Of course it did him harm, and the doctor was very angry; but
what did John, in the delight of his heart, care for that?