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----”
Here John came to a stop--opportunity for what? Opportunity of
winning your confidence--opportunity of gaining an acquaintance with
business--of proving myself worthy of higher trust? He could not adopt
any of these expressions. The shorter the letter, the least said, the
better. He broke off abruptly without concluding his sentence. He had
very little to thank Mr Crediton for; but yet he could not, with any
regard to justice, blame him. Kate’s father, though he had done little
for, had done nothing absolutely against him. It was not Mr Crediton
he found fault with--Mr Crediton was very justifiable; and was it,
could it be, that he was about to find fault with Kate?
He began to write to her half-a-dozen times at least. He began
indignantly--he began tenderly,--he upbraided--he remonstrated--his pen
ran away with him. He had meant to use one class of words, and under
his very eyes it employed another. He wrote her ever so many letters.
He set before her all his passion--all his readiness to sacrifice
himself--all the tortures he had suffered at the window of the bank
seeing her come and go and having no share in her life. He told her
what a chill blank had come over him at Fernwood--how he had felt that
he was nothing to her. He told her what he had seen that morning. He
was eloquent, pathetic, overwhelming. His own heart felt as if it must
burst while he wrote; but as he read over each completed page, John
had still so much good sense left that he dragged his stiff limbs from
the sofa and put it in the fire. It was thus he occupied almost all
the time he had to wait; and it was only just before his cab came to
the door that he put into its envelope this letter, in which it will
be seen he neither remonstrated nor upbraided, nor even gave her up.
He could not give her up, and how could he accuse her? He accuse Kate!
If she was guilty her heart would do that--if not---- But alas! the
latter alternative was impossible; only for “utter courtesy,” for utter
tenderness, he could not blame the woman he loved.
“I do not know how to write,” he said, “though you tell me to write.
Dear Kate, dearest Kate--you will always be dearest to me.--This may
pass over, and be to you as the merest dream; but to me it must always
be the centre and heart of my life. I don’t know what to say to you.
I have not written, not out of lack of love, but lack of hope. If I
could think I was any way necessary to you--if I could feel you wanted
me--but your sweet life is so complete; and what is mine to be tacked
on to it? I don’t know what to say. Silence seems the best. Dear!
dearest! you are so bright that my heart fails me when I look at
you. I drop down into the shade, and there seems nothing left for me
but to keep still. I try to rouse myself with the thought of what you
say--that you want me to write, that _you are anxious_--anxious
about me! And you mean it, dear--you mean it, I know; but the words
have a soft meaning to you different from their meaning to me. And you
have no need of me, Kate. I feel it, and that takes the words out of
my mouth, and all the courage out of my heart.
“I was at Fernwood to-day, and saw you, though you did not see me. You
were walking in the little footpath near the avenue. Ah, Kate! but for
that I think I could have gone to you, and said some things I cannot
write. Do not be grieved in your kind heart because I am leaving
Camelford. It was a mistake, but I was to blame. I am going home,
and I don’t quite know what I shall do; but time, perhaps, will make
the way clear. Dearest, if ever you should want me--but how should
you want me? God bless you! I have no claim to make, nor plea to put
forth; but I am always and ever yours--always and for ever, whatever
may happen--yours and yours only to command,
“JOHN MITFORD.”
He put the two letters into their envelopes, and sealed and put
them into the post with his own hand as he went to the station. He
carried all his possessions with him--not merely the portmanteau;
and he was dead tired--so tired that he would have passed Fanshawe
station and gone on perhaps to London--for he had dropt asleep in the
train--but for the guard, who knew him. When he found himself on the
little platform at Fanshawe, chilly and stupid as a man is who has
just awakened from sleep, the only strong feeling in his mind was an
overwhelming desire to get to bed. He did not seem capable of realising
that he had got home again, after his disastrous voyage into the
world--he only thought of going to sleep; and it was not his mother’s
wondering welcome he was thinking of, or the questions they would ask
him, but a pleasant vision of his own room, with the fire burning in
the grate, and the white fragrant sheets opened up and inviting him to
rest. He felt half asleep when he crossed the threshold of the Rectory,
and walked into the drawing-room to his mother, who gave a shriek of
mingled delight and alarm at so unlooked-for an apparition. “John, you
are ill; something has happened,” Mrs Mitford cried out, in an agony
of apprehension. “I am only sleepy, mother,” he said. That was all
he could say. He sat down and smiled at her, and told her how tired
he was. “Nothing particular has happened, except in my own mind,” he
added, when he came to himself a little, “and not much even there. I
am awfully tired. Don’t ask me anything, and don’t be unhappy. There
is nothing to be unhappy about. You shall know it all to-morrow. But
please, mother, let me go to bed.”
“And so you shall, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford; “but, oh, my own boy,
what is the matter? What can I say to your papa? What is it? Oh, John,
I know there is something wrong.”
“Only that I shall go to sleep here,” he said, “and snore--which you
never could endure. There is nothing wrong, mamma, only I have walked
twenty miles to-day, and I am very tired. I have come home to be put to
bed.”
“Then you are ill,” she said. “You have caught one of those dreadful
fevers. I see it now. Your eyes are so heavy you can scarcely look at
me. You have been in some of the cottages, or in the back streets,
where there is always fever; but Jervis shall run for the doctor.”
“A fire in Mr John’s room directly, Jervis--directly, mind; and some
boiling water to make him a hot drink--he has caught a bad cold. Oh, my
dear, you are sure that is all? And, John, you have really, really come
home--to stay? You don’t mean to stay?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” he said. “I have left Camelford. I have
come back like a piece of bad money. But, mother, don’t ask me any
questions to-night.”
“Not one,” she answered promptly; and then besieged him with her
eyes--“Twenty miles, my dear boy! what a long walk! no wonder you are
tired. But what put it into your head, John? Never mind, my dear. I
did not mean to ask any more questions. But, dear me! where could you
want to go that was twenty miles off? That is what bewilders me.”
“You shall hear all about it to-morrow,” said John, rising to his
feet. He was so tired that he staggered as he rose, and his mother
turned upon him eyes in which another kind of fear flashed up. She grew
frightened at his weakness, and at the pale smile that came over his
face.
“Yes, my dear, go to bed--that will be the best thing,” she said,
looking scared and miserable. And it went to John’s heart to see the
painful looks she gave him, though it was with a mixture of indignation
and amusement that he perceived the new turn her thoughts had taken. He
could not but laugh as he put his arm round her to say good-night.
“It is not that either,” he said; “you need not mistrust me. Staying in
Camelford will not answer, mother. I must find some other way. And I
have had a long walk. I am better now that my head is under my mother’s
wing. Good-night.”
“I will bring you your hot drink, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford. She
followed him in her great wonder to the foot of the stairs, and watched
him go up wearily with his candle, and then she returned and made the
hot drink, and carried it up-stairs with her own hands. Was it all
over?--was he hers again?--her boy, with nobody else to share him? “If
he only escapes without a heartbreak, I shall be the happiest woman in
the world,” she said to herself, as she went down-stairs again, wiping
tears of joy out of her eyes. Without a heartbreak! while John laid his
head on the familiar pillow and felt as if he had died. He had no heart
any longer to break. He must have something to do, and no doubt he
would get up next day and go and do something, if it was only working
in the garden; but as for the heart, that which gives all the zest and
all the bitterness to life, that was dead. His life was over and ended,
and it seemed to him as if he could never come alive again.