Mr Crediton came to dinner that evening, and met his daughter with
suppressed but evident emotion, such as made Kate muse and wonder. “I
knew he liked me, to be sure,” she said afterwards to Mrs Mitford; “I
knew he would miss me horribly; but I never expected him, you know, to
look like that.”
“Like what, my dear?”
“Like crying,” said Kate, with a half-sob. They had left the gentlemen
in the dining-room, and were straying round the garden in the twilight.
Mr Crediton had been late, and had delayed dinner, and even the long
June day had come to a close, and darkness was falling. The garden
was full of the scent of roses, though all except the light ones were
invisible in the darkness; tall pyramids of white lilies stood up here
and there like ghosts in the gloom, glimmering and odorous; and the
soft perfume of the grateful earth, refreshed by watering and by softer
dew, rose up from all the wide darkling space around. “I think it must
be because it is a rectory garden that it is so sweet,” said Kate, with
a quick transition. By reason of being an invalid, she was leaning on
Mrs Mitford’s arm.
“Are you fond of rectories?” said her kind companion. “But you might
see a great many without seeing such a spot as Fanshawe Regis. It is a
pretty house, and a good house; and, my dear, you can’t think what a
pleasure it is to me to think that when we go, it will pass to my John.”
“Oh!” said Kate; and then, after a pause, “Has he quite made up his
mind to be a clergyman?” she said.
“Yes, indeed, I hope so,” said his unsuspecting mother. “He is so well
qualified for it. Not all the convenience in the world would have made
me urge him to it, had I not seen he was worthy. But he was made to be
a clergyman--even the little you have seen of him, my dear----”
“You forget I have only seen him to-day,” said Kate; “and then I don’t
know much about clergymen,” she went on, demurely. “I have always
thought, you know, they were people to be very respectful of--one can’t
laugh with a clergyman as one does with any other man; indeed I have
never cared for clergymen--please don’t be angry--they have always
seemed so much above me.”
“But a good man does not think himself above any one,” said Mrs
Mitford, falling into the snare. “The doctor might stand upon his
dignity, if any one should; but yet, Kate, my dear, he was quite
content to marry an ignorant little woman like me.”
“Do you think clergymen ought to marry?” said Kate, with great
solemnity, looking up in her face.
Mrs Mitford gave a great start, and fell back from her young
companion’s side. “Kate!” she cried, “you never told me you were High
Church!”
“Am I High Church? I don’t think so; but one has such an idea of a
clergyman,” said Kate, “that he should be so superior to all that. I
can’t understand him thinking of--a girl, or any such nonsense. I feel
as if he ought to be above such things.”
“But, my dear, after all, a clergyman is but a man,” said Mrs Mitford,
suddenly driven to confusion, and not knowing what plea to employ.
“Should he be just a man?” asked Kate, with profound gravity.
“Shouldn’t they be examples to all of us? I think they should be kept
apart from other people, and even look different. I should not like to
be intimate--not very intimate, you know--with a clergyman. I should
feel as if it was wrong--when they have to teach us, and pray for us,
and all that. Your son is not a clergyman yet, or I should never have
ventured to speak to him as I did to-day.”
“But, you dear simple-minded child,” cried Mrs Mitford, half delighted
with such an evidence of goodness, half confused by the thought of
how this theory might affect her boy, “that is all very true; but
unless they became monks at once, I don’t see how your notion could
be carried out; and the experience of the Roman Catholics, dear, has
shown us what a dreadful thing it is to make men monks. So that, you
see, clergymen must mix in the world; and I am quite sure it is best
for them to marry. When you consider how much a woman can do in a
parish, Kate, and what a help she is, especially if her husband is very
superior----”
“I don’t know, I am sure,” said Kate; “perhaps, in that case, you know,
women should be the clergymen. But I do think they should be put up
upon pedestals, and one should not be too familiar with them. Marrying
a clergyman would be dreadful. I don’t know how any one could have the
courage to do it. I suppose people did not look at things in that light
when you were young?”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs Mitford, with a little warmth; “there were no
High Church notions in my days. One thought one was doing the best
one could for God, and that one had one’s work to do as well as one’s
husband. And, my dear,” said the good woman, dropping into her usual
soft humility, “I think you would think so, too, if you knew what the
parish was when I came into it. Not that I have done much--not near so
much, not half so much, as I ought to have done--but still, I think----”
“As if I ever doubted that!” cried Kate; “but then--not many are like
you.”
“Oh yes, my dear! a great many,” said Mrs Mitford, with a smile of
pleasure. “Even Mr Crediton’s pretty Kate, though he says she is a
wilful little puss--if it came to be her fate to marry a clergyman----”
“That it never can be,” said Kate; “oh, dear, no! In the first place,
papa would hate it; and, in the next place, I should--hate it myself.”
“Ah! my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, feeling, nevertheless, as if she had
received a downright blow, “that all depends upon the man.”
They had come round in their walk to the path which led past the
dining-room windows, where the blinds were but half dropped and the
lights shining, and sounds of voices were audible as the gentlemen sat
over their wine. It was the two elder men only who were talking--Dr
Mitford’s precise tones, and those of Mr Crediton, which sounded, Kate
thought, more “worldly.” John was taking no part in the conversation.
Some time before, while they had still been at a little distance, Kate
had seen him under the blind fidgeting in his chair, and listening
to the sound of the footsteps outside. She knew as well that he was
longing to join his mother and herself as if he had said it, and looked
at him with an inward smile and philosophical reflection, whether a man
who gave in so easily could be worth taking any trouble about. And yet,
perhaps, it was not to Kate he had given in, but to the first idea of
woman, the first enchantress whom he could make an idol of. “He shall
not make an idol of me,” she said to herself; “if he cares for me, it
must be as _me_, and not as a fairy princess.” This thought had
just passed through her mind when she answered Mrs Mitford, which she
did with a little nod of obstinacy and elevation of her drooping head.
“I am sure everything would not depend on the man, so far as I am
concerned,” she said. “Men are all very well, but you must take
everything into account before you go and sacrifice yourself to them.
One man is very much like another, so far as I can see. One doesn’t
expect to meet a Bayard nowadays.”
“But why not, my dear?” said Mrs Mitford. “There are Bayards in the
world as much as there ever were. I am sure I know one. If it had been
the time for knights, he would have been a Bayard; and as it is not the
time for knights, he is the very best, the truest, and tenderest! No
one ever knew him to think of himself. Oh, my dear! there are some men
whose circumstances you never would think of--not even you.”
“But I am very worldly,” said Kate, shaking her head; “that is how I
have been brought up. If I cared for anybody who was poor, I should
give him no rest till he got rich. If I did not like his profession, or
anything, I should make him change it. I don’t mean to say I approve of
myself, and, of course, you can’t approve of me, but I _know_ that
is what I should do.”
“I think we had better go in and have some tea,” said Mrs Mitford, with
a half-sigh. There was some regret in it for the heiress whom John had
manifestly lost, for it was certain that a girl with such ideas would
never touch John’s heart; and there was some satisfaction, too, for she
should have her boy to herself.
“It is so sweet out here,” said Kate, with gentle passive opposition,
“and there are the gentlemen coming out to join us--at least, there is
your son.”
“John is so fond of the garden,” said Mrs Mitford, with another little
sigh. She felt disposed to detach Kate’s arm from her own, and run
to her boy and warn him. But politeness forbade such a step, and his
mother’s wistful eyes watched his tall figure approaching in the
darkness--approaching unconscious to his fate.
“We were talking of you,” said Kate, with a composure which filled
Mrs Mitford with dismay,” and about clergymen generally. I should be
frightened if I were you--one would have to be so very, very good.
Don’t you ever feel frightened when you think that you will have to
teach everybody, and set everybody a good example? I think the very
thought would make me wicked, if it were me.”
“Should it?” said John,--and his mother thought with a little dread
that he looked more ready to enter into the talk than she had ever seen
him before; “but then I don’t understand how you could be wicked if you
were to try.”
“Ah! but I do,” said Kate, “and I could not bear it. Do you really like
being a clergyman? you who are so young and--different. I can fancy it
of an old gentleman like Dr Mitford; but you----”
“I am not a clergyman yet,” said John, with a half-audible sigh.
“And Dr Mitford is not so old,” said his mother, “though I suppose
everybody who is over twenty looks old to you; but Miss Crediton means
that you must feel like a clergyman, my dear boy, already. I am sure
you do!”
“I don’t see how you can be so sure,” said John; and perhaps for the
first time in his life he felt angry with his mother. Why should she
answer for him in this way when he was certainly old enough and had
sense enough to answer for himself? He was a little piqued with her,
and turned from her towards the young stranger, whom he had spoken to
for the first time that day. “I am secular enough at present,” he said;
“you need not be sorry for me. There is still time to reflect.”
“It is never any good reflecting,” said Kate; “if you are going in for
anything, I think you should do it and never mind. The more one thinks
the less one knows what to do.”
“And oh, my dear, don’t jest about such subjects!” said Mrs Mitford.
“Don’t you recollect what we are told about him that puts his hand to
the plough and looks back?”
“And is turned into a pillar of salt?” said Kate, demurely. “Mr John,
that would never do. I should not like to see you turned into a pillar
of salt. Let us think of something else. How sweet it is out here in
the dark! The air is just raving about those roses. If you could not
see them, you would still know they were there. I like an old-fashioned
garden. Is that a ghost up against the buttress there, or is it another
great sheaf of lilies? If I had such a garden as this, I should never
care to go anywhere else.”
“My dear, I hope you will come here as often as you like,” said Mrs
Mitford, with hospitable warmth; and then she thought of the danger to
John, and stopped short and felt a little confused. “The Huntleys are
friends of yours, are not they?” she went on, faltering. “When you are
with them, it will be so easy to run over here.”
“Oh, indeed, I should much rather come here at first hand, if you will
have me,” said Kate, frankly. “I don’t think I am fond of the Huntleys.
They are nice enough, but---- And, dear Mrs Mitford, I would rather go
to you than to any one, you have been _so_ good to me--that is, if
you like me to come here.”
“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs Mitford, half touched, half troubled, “if I
could think there was any amusement for you----”
“Whether there may be amusement or not, there must always be a welcome.
I am sure, mother, that is what you meant to say,” said John, with a
certain suppressed indignation in his tone, which went to his mother’s
heart.
“Oh yes,” she said, more and more confused; “Miss Crediton knows
that. If she can put up with our quietness--if she does not mind the
seclusion. We have not seen so much of the Huntleys as we ought to have
seen lately, but when they are here----”
“I had much rather come when you were quite quiet. I love quiet,” said
deceitful Kate, putting her face so close to her friend’s shoulder as
almost to touch it in a caressing way she had. Mrs Mitford trembled
with a presentiment of terror, and yet she could not resist the soft
half-caress.
“My dear child!” she cried, pressing Kate’s arm to her side. And John
loomed over them both, a tall shadow, with a face which beamed through
the darkness; they looked both so little beside him--soft creatures,
shadowy, with wavy uncertain outlines, melting into the dark, not clear
and black and well defined like himself--moving softly, with a faint
rustle in the air, which might almost have been wings. His mother
and---- what was Kate to him? Nothing--a stranger--a being from a
different sphere; yet, at the same time, the one creature in all the
world upon whom he had a supreme claim, whose life he had fought for,
and rescued out of the very jaws of death.
After this they went in with eyes a little dazzled by the sudden change
into the drawing-room, where the lamps were lighted, and the moths came
sweeping in at the open window, strange optimists, seeking the light at
all costs. Kate threw herself down in a great chair, in the shadiest
corner, her white dress giving forth (poor John thought) a kind of
reflected radiance, moon-like and subdued. She sank down in the large
wide seat, and gave a little yawn. “I’m so tired,” she said; “I think I
shall make papa carry me up-stairs.”
“Not your papa, my dear,” said Mrs Mitford, who, to tell the truth, was
a little matter-of-fact; “not your papa. He does not look very strong,
and it would be too much for him. The servants can do it; or perhaps
John----”
John started up, and came forward with his eyes lit up, half with
eagerness, half with fun. He had held her in his arms before, but she
had not been conscious of that. “Oh, please!” cried Kate, in alarm, “I
did not mean it; I only said it in fun--for want of something else to
say.”
“That is Kate’s general motive for her observations,” said Mr Crediton,
who had just then come in with Dr Mitford; “and heaven knows it is
apparent in them! but if I don’t carry her up-stairs, I must carry her
home. She must have been no end of a trouble to you.”
“Oh no--not yet, I hope,” said Mrs Mitford, still with some confusion.
She cast a rapid glance over the situation. In less than three months
John was going up for ordination. After that, she reflected, his mind
would be settled, and such an interruption would do him less harm.
“But I feel it is very selfish trying to keep her when, I daresay, you
have a great many pleasant engagements,” she went on, with diplomatic
suavity; “and we are so quiet here. Only you must bring her back
again, Mr Crediton--that you must promise me--in autumn, or at
Christmas the very latest----”
She caught John’s eye, and faltered and stopped short; and then, of all
people in the world, it was Dr Mitford who interposed.
“I should say it was the doctor who had to be consulted first,” he
said. “After an illness I make it a principle never to move till I have
consulted my medical man. This is a rule which I never transgress, my
dear, as you know--and we must do the same by our young friend. You can
decide after he has been here.”
“But the fact is, Kate, if you don’t come at once you will come to an
empty house,” said her father. “I have to go up to town on election
business, and I should like to be here to take my girl home.”
“Then she shall wait till you come back,” said Dr Mitford; “and now
that is settled, if you will come with me to my library I will show you
the old charter I was speaking of. It is the earliest of the kind I
have ever seen. You will find it very curious. It grants the privilege
of sanctuary to all the Abbey precincts”--he went on, as he opened the
door for his guest, talking all the way. They could hear the sound of
his voice going along the oak passage which led to the library, though
they could not make out the words; and somehow it seemed to have a kind
of soporific effect upon the party left behind, who sat and gazed at
each other, and listened as if anxious to catch the last word.
“What is all settled?” cried Kate, who was the first to break the
silence. “Oh, please, am I to take sanctuary in the Abbey precincts, or
what is to be done with me? I should so like to know!”
“Mr Crediton has consented that you should stay,” cried John, eagerly.
Kate took no more notice of him than if he had been a cabbage, but bent
forward to Mrs Mitford, ignoring all other authority. And what could
that good woman do, who was not capable of hurting the feelings of a
fly?
“My dear,” she said, faltering, “what would be the use of going home
when your papa is going away? Much better stay with me, if you can
make up your mind to the quiet. We are so very quiet here.”
“But you said Christmas,” said Kate, who was a little mortified, and
did not choose to be unavenged.
“I said--I was thinking--I meant you to understand---- Oh! what is
it, Lizzie?” cried Mrs Mitford, eagerly, as the maid came to the
door. “Widow Blake?--oh yes, I am coming;” and she went away but too
gladly to escape the explanation. Then there was nobody left in the
drawing-room but Kate alone with John.
The girl turned her eyes upon him with their surprised ingenuous look,
and then with profound gravity addressed him: “Mr John, tell me--you
know what is best for her better than I do. Is it not convenient to
have me now?”
“Convenient!” cried the young man; “how is such a word to be applied to
you? It could never be but a delight to all of us----”
“Oh, hush, hush,” said Kate; “don’t pay me any compliments. You know I
am only a stranger, though somehow I feel as if you all belonged to
me. It is because your mother has been so kind; and then--you saved my
life.”
“That was nothing,” cried John; “I wish it had cost me something, then
I might have felt as if I deserved----”
“What? my thanks?” she said, softly, playing with him.
“No, but to have saved you--for I did save you; though it did not cost
me anything,” he said, regretfully; “and that is what I shall grudge
all my life.”
“How very droll you are!” said Kate, after a long look at him, in which
she tried to fathom what he meant without succeeding; “but never mind
what it cost you. My opinion is, that, after such a thing as that,
people become a sort of relations--don’t you think so? and you are
bound to tell me when I ask you. Please, Mr John, is it convenient for
your mother to have me now?--should I stay now? I shall be guided by
what you say.”
He gave an abrupt idiotic laugh, and got up and walked about the room.
“Of course you must stay,” he said; “of course it is convenient. What
could it be else? It would be cruel to leave us so abruptly, after all.”
“Well, I am very comfortable,” said Kate; “I shall like it. The only
thing was for your mother. If she should not want me to stay--but
anyhow, the responsibility is upon you now; and so, as Dr Mitford says,
as we have settled that, tell me what we are going to do.”
“To do?” said John, with open eyes.
“To amuse ourselves,” said Kate; “for I am a stranger, you know. How
can I tell how you amuse yourselves in this house?”
“We don’t amuse ourselves at all,” said John; and as he had been coming
nearer and nearer, now he drew a chair close to her sofa, and sat down
and gazed at her with a new light in his face. He laughed, and yet his
eyes glowed with a serious fire. He was amused and surprised, and yet
the serious nature underneath gave a certain meaning to everything.
He took the remark not as the natural expression of a frivolous,
amusement-loving creature, but as a sudden, sweet suggestion which
turned to him all at once the brighter side of life. “I think we have
rather supposed that amusement was unnecessary--that it was better,
perhaps, not to be happy. I don’t know. In England, I suspect, many
people think that.”
“But you are happy--you must be happy,” said Kate. “What! with this
nice house, and such a nice dear mother--and Dr Mitford too, I mean, of
course--and just come from the university, which all the men pretend to
like so much. I do not believe you have not been happy, Mr John.”
“I am very happy now,” said John Mitford, with a dawning faculty
for saying pretty things of which he had been himself totally
unconscious. He did not mean it as a compliment; and when Kate gave
the faintest little shrug of her pretty shoulders, he was bewildered
and discouraged. The words were commonplace enough to her, and they
were not commonplace but utterly original to him. He was happy, and it
was she who had made him so. It never occurred to the young man that
any fool could say as much, it was so simply, fully true in his case.
And he sat and glowed upon her with his new-kindled eyes. Yes, it was
true what she said--she was a stranger, and yet she belonged to them;
or rather, she belonged to him. He might not be worthy of it. He had
done nothing to deserve it, and yet through him her life had come back
to her. He had saved her. He was related to her as no man else in the
world was. Her life had been lost, and he had given it back. His mind
was so full of this exulting thought that he forgot to say anything;
and as for Kate, she had to let him gaze at her, with amusement at
first, then with a blush, and with a movement of impatience at the last.
“Mr John,” she said, turning her head away, and taking up a book to
screen her, “I am sure you don’t mean to be disagreeable; but--did you
never--see--a girl before?”
“Good heavens! what a brute I am!” cried poor John; and then he added
humbly, “no, Miss Crediton, I never saw--any one--before.”
Upon which Kate laughed, and he, taking courage, laughed too,
withdrawing his guilty eyes, and blazing red to his very hair. And
when Mrs Mitford came back, she could not but think that on the whole
they had made a great deal of progress. The two fathers were in the
library for a long time over that charter, and Kate’s merry talk soon
beguiled the yielding mother. When the tea came, she sat apart and
made it, and watched the young ones with her tender eyes. It seemed
to her that she had never seen her boy so happy. “She must have been
making fun of me with all that about the clergymen,” Mrs Mitford said
to herself; “and but for that, what could I desire more?” And she
thought of John’s happiness with such a wife, and of Kate’s fortune,
and of what a blessing it would be if it could be brought about; and
sighed--as indeed most people do when it appears to them as if their
prayers were about to be granted, and nothing left to them more to
desire.