Some time passed after this eventful evening before Kate had any
opportunity of making the assault upon John’s principles which she
proposed to herself. There were some days of tranquil peaceful country
life, spent in doing nothing particular--in little walks taken under
the mother’s eye--in an expedition to St Biddulph’s, the whole little
party together, in which, though Dr Mitford took the office of cicerone
for Kate’s benefit, there was more of John than of his father. This
kind of intercourse which threw them continually together, yet never
left them alone to undergo the temptation of saying too much, promoted
the intimacy of the two young people in the most wonderful way. They
were each other’s natural companions, each other’s most lively
sympathisers. The father and the mother stood on a different altitude,
were looked up to, respected perhaps, perhaps softly smiled at in the
expression of their antiquated opinions; but the young man and the
young woman were on the same level, and understood each other. As for
poor John, he gave himself up absolutely to the spell. He had never
been so long in the society of any young woman before; his imagination
had not been frittered away by any preludes of fancy. He fell in love
all at once, with all his heart and strength and mind. It was his first
great emotion, and it took him not at the callow age, but when his mind
(he thought) was matured, and his being had reached its full strength.
He was in reality four-and-twenty, but he had felt fifty in the gravity
of his thoughts; and, with all the force of his serious nature, he
plunged into the extraordinary new life which opened like a garden of
Paradise before him. It was all a blaze of light and splendour to his
eyes. The world he had thought a sombre place enough before, full of
painful demands upon his patience, his powers of self-renunciation,
and capacity of self-control. But now all at once it had changed to
Eden. And Kate, of whom he knew so little, was the cause.
She, too, was falling under this natural fascination. She was very
much interested in him, she said to herself. It was so sad to see such
a man, so full of talent and capability, immolate himself like this.
Kate felt as if she would have done a great deal to save him. She
represented to herself that, if he had felt a special vocation for the
Church, she would have passed on her way and said nothing, as became a
recent acquaintance; but when he was not happy! Was it not her duty, in
gratitude to her preserver, to interfere according to her ability, and
deliver him from temptation? Yes! she concluded it was her duty with
a certain enthusiasm; and even, if that was necessary, that she would
be willing to do something to save him. She would make an exertion in
his behalf, if there was anything she could do. She did not, even to
herself explain what was the anything she could do to influence John
one way or another. Such details it is perhaps better to leave in
darkness. But she felt herself ready to exert herself in her turn--to
make an effort--what, indeed, if it were a sacrifice?--to preserve him
as he had preserved her.
It was only on what was to be the day before her departure that Kate
found the necessary opportunity. About a mile from Fanshawe Regis was a
river which had been John’s joy all his life; and on Kate’s last day,
he was to be permitted the delight of introducing her to its pleasures.
Mrs Mitford was to have accompanied them, but she had slackened much
in her ferocity of chaperonage, and had grown used to Kate, and not so
much alarmed on her account. And it was a special day at the schools,
and her work was more than usual. “My dear, if you wish it, of course I
will go with you,” she said to her young guest; “and you must not think
me unkind to hesitate--but you are used to him now, and you will be
quite safe with John. You don’t mind going with John?”
“Oh, I don’t mind it at all,” said Kate, with a little blush, which
would have excited John’s mother wonderfully two days before. But
custom is a great power, and she had got used to Kate. So Mrs Mitford
went to her parish work, and the two young people went out on their
expedition. They had nearly a mile to walk across fields, and then
through the grateful shade of a little wood. It was a pretty road, and
from the moment they entered the wood, the common world disappeared
from about the pair. They walked like a pair in romance, often silent,
sometimes with a touch of soft embarrassment, in that silent world,
full of the flutter of leaves and the flitting of birds, and the
notes of, here and there, an inquiring thrush or dramatic blackbird.
Boughs would crackle and swing suddenly about them, as if some fairy
had swung herself within the leafy cover: unseen creatures--rabbits
or squirrels--would dart away under the brushwood. Arrows of sunshine
came down upon the brown underground. The leaves waved green above
and black in shadow, strewing the chequered path. They walked in an
atmosphere of their own, in dreamland, fairyland, by the shores of old
romance; the young man bending his head in that attitude of worship,
which is the attitude of protection too, towards the lower, slighter,
weaker creature, who raised her eyes to his with soft supremacy. It was
hers to command and his to obey. She had no more doubt of the loyalty
of her vassal than he had of her sweet superiority to every other
created thing. And thus they went through the wood to the river,--two
undeveloped lives approaching the critical point of their existence,
and going up to it in a dream of happiness, without shadow or fear.
The river ran through the wood for about a mile; but as it is a law
of English nature that no stream shall have the charm of woodland on
both sides at once, the northern bank was a bit of meadowland, round
which ran, at some distance, a belt of trees. Kate recovered a little
from the spell of silence as she took into her hands the cords of the
rudder, and looked on at her companion’s struggle against the current.
“It must be hard work,” she said. “How is it you are so fond of taking
trouble, you men? They say it ruins your health rowing in all those
boat-races and things--all for the pleasure of beating the other
colleges or the other university; and you kill yourselves for that! I
should like to do it for something better worth, if it were me.”
“But if you don’t get the habit of the struggle, you will want training
when you try for what is better worth,” said John. “How one talks! I
say _you_, as if by any chance you could want to struggle for
anything. Pardon the profanity--I did not mean that.”
“Why shouldn’t I want to struggle?” said Kate, opening her eyes very
wide. “I do, sometimes--that is, I don’t like to be beaten; nobody
does, I suppose. But hard work must be a great bore. I sit and look at
my maid sometimes, and think, after all, how much superior she is to
me. There she sits, stitching, stitching the whole day through, and it
does not seem to do her any harm--whereas it would kill one of us. And
then I order this superior being about--me, the most useless wretch!
and she gets up from her work to do a hundred things for me which I
could quite well do for myself. Life is very odd,” said the young
moralist, pulling the wrong string, and sending the boat high and dry
upon a most visible bank of weeds and gravel. “Oh, Mr John, I am sure I
beg your pardon! What have I done?”
“Nothing of the least importance,” said John; and while Kate sat
dismayed and wondering, he had plunged into the sparkling shallow
stream, and pushed the fairy vessel off into its necessary depth of
water. “Only pardon me for jumping in in this wild way and sprinkling
your dress,” he said, as he took his seat and his oars again. Kate was
silent for the moment. She gazed at him with her pretty eyes, and her
lips apart, wondering at the water-god; from which it will be clear to
the reader that Kate Crediton was unused to river navigation, and the
ways of boating men.
“But you will catch your death of cold, and what will your mother
say?” said Kate; and this danger filled her with such vivid feminine
apprehensions, that it was some time before she could be consoled.
And then the talk ran on about a multitude of things--about nothing
in particular--while the one interlocutor steered wildly into all the
difficulties possible, and the other toiled steadily against the
current. It was a rapid, vehement little river, more like a Scotch or
Welsh stream than a placid English one; and sometimes there were snags
to be avoided, and sometimes shallows to be run upon, so that the
voyage was not without excitement, with such a pilot at the helm.
But when John turned his little vessel, and it began to float down
stream, the dreamy silence of the woodland walk began to steal over the
two once more. “Ah! now the work is over,” Kate said, with a little
sigh; “yes, it is very nice to float--but then one feels as if one’s
own will had nothing to do with it. I begin to understand why the other
is the best.”
“I suppose they are both best,” said John--which was not a very
profound observation; and yet he sighed too. “And then it is so much
easier in everything to go with the stream, and to do what you are
expected to do.”
“But is it right?” said Kate, with solemnity. “Ah! now I know what
you are thinking about. I have so wanted to speak to you ever since
_that_ night. Don’t you think that doing what you are expected to
do would be _wrong_? I have thought so much about it----”
“Have you?” said John; and a delicious tear came to the foolish
fellow’s eye. “It was too good of you to think of me at all.”
“Of course I could not help thinking of you,” said Kate, “after what
you said. Perhaps you will not think my advice of much value; but I
don’t think--I don’t really think you ought to do it. I feel that it
would be wrong.”
“There is no one in the world whose advice would be so much to me,”
cried foolish John. “My sight is clouded by--by self-interest, and
habit, and a thousand things. I have never opened my heart to any one
but you--and how I presumed to trouble you with it I can’t tell,” he
went on, gazing at her with fond eyes, which Kate found it difficult to
meet.
“Oh, that is natural enough. Don’t you remember what you said?” she
answered, softly; “what you did for me--and that moment when you said
we might have died;--we should be like--brother and sister--all our
lives.”
“Not that,” said John, with a little start; “but---- Yes, I hold by
my claim. I wish I had done something to deserve it, though. If I had
known it was you----”
“How could you possibly know it was me when you did not know there
was such a person as me in the world?” said Kate. “Don’t talk such
nonsense, please.”
“No; was it possible that there was once a time when I did not know
that there was you in the world? What a cold world it must have
been!--how sombre and miserable!” cried the enthusiast. “I can’t
realise it now.”
“Oh, please!--what nonsense you do talk, to be sure!” cried Kate; and
then she gave her pretty head a little shake to dissipate the blush
and the faint mist of some emotion that had been stealing over her
eyes, and took up the interrupted strain. “Now that you do know there
is a me, you must pay attention to me. I have thought over it a great
deal. You must not do it--indeed you must not. A man who is not quite
certain, how can he teach others? It would be like me steering--now
there! Oh, I am sure, I beg your pardon. Who was to know that nasty
bank would turn up again?’
“Never mind,” said John, when he had repeated the same little
performance which had signalised their upward course; “that is
nothing--except that it interrupted what you were saying. Tell me again
what you have thought.”
“But you never mean to be guided by me all the same,” said Kate,
incautiously, though she must have foreseen, if she had taken a moment
to think, that such a remark would carry her subject too far.
“Ah! how can you say so--how can you think so?” cried John, crossing
his oars across the boat, and leaning over them, with his eyes fixed
upon her, “when you must know I am guided by your every look. Don’t be
angry with me. It is so hard to look at you and not say all that is
in my heart. If you would let me think that I might--identify myself
altogether--I mean, do only what pleased you--I mean, think of you as
caring a little----”
“I care a great deal,” said Kate, with sudden temerity, taking the
words out of his mouth, “or why should I take the trouble to say so
much about it? I consider that we are--brother and sister; and that
gives me a sort of right to speak. Stay till I have done, Mr John.
Don’t you think you could be of more use in the world, if you were in
the world and not out of it? Now think! Looking at it in your way, no
doubt, it is very fine to be a clergyman; but you can only talk to
people and persuade them, you know, and don’t have it in your power
to do very much for them. Now look at a rich man like papa. He does
not give his mind to that, you know. I am very sorry, but neither he
nor I have had anybody to put it in our heads what we ought to do--but
still he does some good in his way. If you were as rich as he is, how
much you could do! You would be a good angel to the poor people. You
could set right half of those dreadful things that Mrs Mitford tells us
of, even in the village. You could give the lads work, and keep them
steady. You could build them proper cottages, and have them taught
what they ought to know. Don’t shake your head. I know you would be the
people’s good angel, if you were as rich as papa.”
Poor John’s countenance had changed many times during this address.
His intent gaze fell from her, and returned and fell again. A shade
came over his face--he shook his head, not in contradiction of what she
said so much as in despondency; and when he spoke, his voice had taken
a chill, as it were, and lost all the musical thrill of imagination
and passion that was in it. “Miss Crediton,” he said, mournfully, “you
remind me of what I had forgotten--the great gulf there is between you
and me. I had forgotten it, like an ass. I had been thinking of you
not as a rich man’s daughter, but as---- And I, a poor aimless fool,
not able to make up my mind as to how I am to provide for my own life!
Forgive me--you have brought me to myself.”
“Now I should like to know what that has to do with it,” cried Kate,
with a little air of exasperation--exasperation more apparent than
real. “I tell you I want you to be rich like papa, and you answer me
that I remind you I am a rich man’s daughter! Well, what of that? I
want you to be a rich man too. I can’t help whose daughter I am. I did
not choose my own papa--though I like him better than any other all the
same. But I want you to be rich _too_, you understand; for many
reasons.”
“For what reasons?” said John, lighting up again. She had drooped
her head a little when she said these last words. A bright blush had
flushed all over her. Could it be that she meant---- John was not vain,
and yet the inference was so natural; he sat gazing at her for one long
minute in a suggestive tremulous silence, and then he went faltering,
blundering on. “I would be anything for your sake--_that_ you
know. I would be content to labour for you from morning to night. I
would be a ploughman for your sake. To be a rich man is not so easy;
but if you were to tell me to do it--for you--I would work my fingers
to the bone; I would die, but I should do it--for you. Am I to be rich
for you?”
“Oh, fancy! here we are already,” cried Kate, in a little tremor,
feeling that she had gone too far, and he had gone too far, and
thinking with a little panic, half of horror, half of pleasure, of the
walk that remained to be taken through the enchanted wood. “How fast
the stream has carried us down! and yet I don’t suppose it can have
been very fast either, for the shadows are lengthening. We must make
haste and get home.”
“But you have not answered me,” he said, still leaning across his oars
with a look which she could not face.
“Oh, never mind just now,” she cried; “let us land, please, and not
drift farther down. You are paying no attention to where the boat
is going. There! I knew an accident would happen,” cried Kate, with
half-mischievous triumph, running the boat into the bank. She thought
nothing now of his feet getting wet, as he stepped into the water
again to bring it to the side that she might land. She even sprang
out and ran on, telling him to follow her, while he had to wait to
secure the boat, and warn the people at the forester’s cottage that
he had left it. Kate ran on into the wood, up the broad road gradually
narrowing among the trees, where still the sunshine penetrated like
arrows of gold, and the leaves danced double, leaf and shadow, and the
birds carried on their ceaseless interluding, and the living creatures
stirred. She ran on mischievously, with a little laugh at her companion
left behind. But that mood did not long balance the influence of the
place. Her steps slackened--her heart began to beat. All at once she
twined her arms about a birch to support herself, and, leaning her head
against it, cried a little in her confusion and excitement. “Oh, what
have I done? what shall I say to him?” Kate said to herself. Was she
in love with John that she had brought him to this declaration of his
sentiments? She did not know--she did not think she was--and yet she
had done it with her eyes open. And in a few minutes he would be by
her side insisting on an answer. “And what shall I say to him?” within
herself cried Kate.
But when John came up breathless, she was going along the road very
demurely, without any signs of emotion, and glanced at him with the
same look of friendly sovereignty, though her heart was quailing within
her. He joined her, breathless with haste and excitement, and for a
moment neither spoke. Then it was Kate who, in desperation, resumed the
talk.
“You must tell me what you think another time,” she said, with an air
of royal calm. “Perhaps what I have said has not been very wise; but
I meant it for good. I meant, you know, that the man of action can
do most. I meant---- But, please, let us get on quickly, for I am so
afraid we shall be too late for dinner. Your father does not like to
wait. And you can tell me what you think another time.”
“What I think has very little to do with it,” said John. “It
should be what you think--what you ordain. For you I will do
anything--everything. Good heavens, what a nuisance!” cried the young
man.
At this exclamation Kate looked up, and saw,--was it Isaac’s
substitute--the ram caught in the thicket?--Fred Huntley riding
quietly towards them, coming down under the trees, like somebody in
romance. “It is Mr Huntley,” said Kate, with a mental thanksgiving
which she dared not have put into words. “It is like an old ballad.
Here is the knight on the white horse appearing under the trees just
when he is wanted--that is, just when you were beginning to tire of my
society; and here am I, the errant damosel---- What a nice picture it
would make if he were only handsome, which he is not! But all the same,
his horse is white.”
“And I suppose I am the magician who is to be discomfited and put to
flight,” said John, with a grim attempt at a smile.
And here Kate’s best qualities made her cruel. “You are--whatever
you please,” she said, turning upon him with the brightest sudden
smile. She could not bear, poor fellow, that his feelings should be
hurt, when she felt herself so relieved and easy in mind; and John,
out of his despondency, went up to dazzling heights of confidence and
hope. Fred, riding up, saw the smile, and said to himself, “What!
gone so far already?” with a curious sensation of pique. And yet he
had no occasion to be piqued. He had never set up any pretensions to
Kate’s favour. He had foreseen how it would be when he last saw them
together. It was something too ridiculous to feel as if he cared. Of
course he did not care. But still there was a little pique in his rapid
reflection as he came up to them. And they were all three a little
embarrassed, which, on the whole, seemed uncalled for, considering the
perfectly innocent and ordinary circumstances, which the boating-party
immediately began with volubility to explain.
“We have been on the river,” said Kate. “Mr Mitford so kindly offered
to take me before I went away. And we hoped to have Mrs Mitford with
us; but at the last moment she could not come.”
I daresay not, indeed, Fred Huntley said in his heart; but he only
looked politely indifferent, and made a little bow.
“Perhaps it was better she did not, for the boat is very small,” said
John, carrying on the explanation. Was it an apology they were making
for themselves? And so all at once, notwithstanding Kate’s romance
about the knight on the white horse, all the enchantment disappeared
from the fairy wood. Birds and rabbits and squirrels, creatures of
natural history, pursued their common occupations about, without any
fairy suggestions. It was only the afternoon sun that slanted among the
trees, showing it was growing late, and not showers of golden arrows.
The wood became as commonplace as a railroad, and Kate Crediton related
to Fred Huntley how she was going home, and what was to happen, and how
she hoped to meet his sisters at the Camelford ball.
Thus the crisis which John thought was to decide everything for him
passed off in bathos and commonplace. He walked on beside the other
two, who did all the talking, eating his heart. Had she been playing
with him, making a joke of his sudden passion? But then she would give
him a glance from time to time which spoke otherwise. “There is still
an evening and a morning,” John said to himself; and he stood like a
churl at the Rectory gate, and suffered Huntley to ride on without the
slightest hint of a possibility that he should stay to dinner. Such
inhospitable behaviour was not common at Fanshawe Regis. But there are
moments in which politeness, kindness, neighbourly charities, must all
give way before a more potent feeling, and John Mitford had arrived
at one of these. And his heart was beating, his head throbbing, all
his pulses going at the highest speed and out of tune--or, at least,
that was his sensation. Kate disappeared while he stood at the gate,
shutting it carefully upon Fred, and heaven knows what frightful
interval might be before him ere he could resume the interrupted
conversation, and demand the answer to which surely he had a right!
John’s mind was in such a whirl of confusion that he could not realise
what he was about to do. If he could have thought it over calmly, and
asked himself what right he had to woo a rich man’s daughter, or even
to dream of bringing her to his level, probably poor John would not
only have stopped short, but he might have had resolution enough to
turn back and leave his father’s door, and put himself out of the
reach of temptation till she was safe in her own father’s keeping.
He had strength enough and resolution enough to have made such a
sacrifice, had there been any time to think; but sudden passion had
swept him up like a whirlwind, and conquered all his faculties. He
wanted to have an answer; an answer--nothing more. He wanted to know
what she meant--why it was that she was so eager with him to bring his
doubtfulness to a conclusion. If he took her advice, what would follow?
There was a singing in his ears, and a buzzing in his brain. He could
not think, nor pause to consider which was right. There was but one
thing to do--to get his answer from her; to know what she meant. And
then the Deluge or Paradise--one thing or the other--would come after
that, but were it Paradise, or were it the Flood, John’s anchors were
pulled up, and he had left the port. All his old prospects and hopes
and intentions had vanished. He could no more go back to the position
in which he had stood when he first opened his heart to Kate than he
could fly. Fanshawe Regis, and his parents’ hopes, and the old placid
existence to which he had been trained, all melted away into thin air.
He was standing on the threshold of a new world, with an unknown wind
blowing in his face, and an unknown career before him. If it might
be that she was about to put her little hand in his, and go with him
across the wilderness! But, anyhow, it was a wilderness that had to be
traversed; not those quiet waters and green pastures which had been
destined for him at home.
“How late you are, John!” his mother said, meeting him on the stair.
She was coming down dressed for dinner, with just a little cloud over
the brightness of her eyes. “You must have stayed a long time on the
river. Was that Kate that has just gone up-stairs?”
“Miss Crediton went on before me. I had to stop and speak to Huntley at
the gate.”
“You should have asked him to stay dinner,” said Mrs Mitford. “My dear,
I am sure you have a headache. You should not have rowed so far, under
that blazing sun. But make haste now. Your papa cannot bear to be kept
waiting. I will tell Jervis to give you five minutes. And, oh, make
haste, my dear boy!”
“Of course I shall make haste,” said John, striding past--as if ten
minutes more or less could matter to anybody under the sun!
“It is for your papa, John,” said Mrs Mitford, half apologetic, half
reproachful; and she went down to the drawing-room and surreptitiously
moved the fingers of the clock to gain a little time for her boy.
“Jervis, you need not be in such a hurry--there are still ten minutes,”
she said, arresting the man-of-all-work who was called the butler at
Fanshawe, as he put his hand on the dinner-bell to ring it; and she
was having a little discussion with him over their respective watches,
when the Doctor approached in his fresh tie. “The drawing-room clock
is never wrong,” said the deceitful woman. And no doubt that was why
the trout was spoiled and the soup so cold. For Kate did not hurry
with her toilette, whatever John might do; and being a little agitated
and excited, her hair took one of those perverse fits peculiar to
ladies’ hair, and would not permit itself to be put up properly. Kate,
too, was in a wonderful commotion of mind, as well as her lover. She
was tingling all over with her adventure, and the hair-breadth escape
she had made. But had she escaped? There was a long evening still
before her, and it was premature to believe that the danger was over.
When Kate went down-stairs, she had more than one reason for being so
very uncomfortable. Dr Mitford was waiting for his dinner, and John
was waiting for his answer; she could not tell what might happen to
her before the evening was over, and she could scarcely speak with
composure because of the frightened irregular beating of her heart.