It was perhaps well, on the whole, for the comfort of all the party,
that Mr Crediton had behaved so very badly on the first announcement of
this news. His self-betrayal put him on his guard. It recalled him to a
sense of needful restraint, and that the Mitfords were not, after all,
people to be treated with contempt. He was very serious and somewhat
stiff during the luncheon, which was sufficiently trying to all the
party, but he was not uncivil. Of John he took no notice at all after
the first formal recognition, but to Mrs Mitford and the Doctor he was
studiously polite, making them little speeches of formal gratitude.
“I find my child perfectly recovered, thanks to your kind care,” he
said. “I can never sufficiently express my deep sense of obligation
to you.” This speech called up an angry flush on John’s cheek, but
not a word was spoken by any of the party to imply that there was any
stronger bond than that of kindness between Kate and the people who had
been so good to her. The two young people were made to feel that they
were secondary altogether. The thoughts of their elders might, indeed,
be occupied about them, but they themselves were struck out of the
front of the action, and relegated to their natural place. Mr Crediton
carried this so far that, when luncheon was over, he turned to Dr
Mitford and asked to speak with him, altogether ignoring the existence
of Dr Mitford’s son. But John had risen, and had taken matters into his
own hands.
“May I ask you to see me first, Mr Crediton?” he said. “There are some
things of which I am most anxious to speak to you at once.”
Mr Crediton rose too, and made John a little formal bow. “I am at your
service,” he said; and Dr Mitford stood up, looking somewhat scared,
and listened; no doubt feeling himself, in his turn, thrust aside.
“I must not interfere,” he said, with a kind of ghastly smile, “and I
take no responsibility in what my son is going to say; but if you will
both come to my library----”
“I should prefer speaking to Mr Crediton alone,” said John. And then
it seemed that his father shrank like a polite ghost, and gave way to
the real hero of the situation. Mrs Mitford shrank too, joining in her
husband’s involuntary gesture; and John marched boldly out, leading
the way, while Mr Crediton followed, and the Doctor went after them,
shrugging his shoulders with a faint assumption of indifference. It
seemed as if some magician had waved a wand, and the three gentlemen
disappeared out of the room, leaving Mrs Mitford and Kate looking
at each other. And there they sat half stupefied, with their hearts
beating, till Jervis came in to clear the table, and looked at them
as a good servant looks, with suspicious watchful eyes, as if to say,
What is it all about, and what do you mean by it, sitting there after
your meal is over, and giving yourselves up to untimely agitations,
disturbing Me? Mrs Mitford obeyed that look as a well-brought-up woman
always does. She said, “Come, Kate! what can you and I be thinking of?”
and led the way into the drawing-room. She did this with an assumption
of liveliness and light-heartedness which was overdoing her part. “We
need not take the servants into our confidence, at least,” she said,
sitting down by her work-table, and taking out her knitting as usual.
But it was a very tremulous business, and soon the needles dropped
upon her knee. Kate, too, attempted to resume the piece of worsted
work she had been doing, and to look as if nothing had happened; but
her attempt was even more futile. When they had sat in this way silent
for some five minutes, the girl’s agitation got the better of her. She
threw the work aside, and ran and threw herself at Mrs Mitford’s feet.
“Oh, mamma, say something to me!” she cried; “I feel as if I could not
breathe. And I never had any mother of my own.”
Then John’s mother lost the composure for which she had been
struggling. Her heart was not softened to Kate personally at that
climax of all the trouble which Kate had brought upon her, but she
could not resist such an appeal; and she too could scarcely breathe,
and wanted companionship in her trouble. It was hard to take into
her heart the girl who was the occasion of it all; but yet Kate was
suffering too. Mrs Mitford fell a-crying, which was the first natural
expression of her feelings, and then she laid her hand softly on Kate’s
head, and by degrees allowed herself to be taken possession of. They
were just beginning to talk to each other, to open their hearts, and
enter into all those mutual explanations which women love, when Kate’s
quick youthful eyes caught sight of two black figures in the distance
among the trees on the other side of the blazing summer lawn. She broke
off in the middle of a sentence, and gave a low cry, and clutched
at Mrs Mitford’s gown. “They are there!” cried Kate, with a gasp of
indescribable suspense. And Mrs Mitford, when she saw them, began to
cry softly again.
“Oh, what is he saying to my boy?” cried the agitated woman, wringing
her hands. To see the discussion going on before their eyes gave the
last touch of the intolerable to their anxiety.
“Oh, Kate, I am a bad woman!” said Mrs Mitford; “I could hate you, and
I could hate your father, for bringing all this trouble on my John.”
“I don’t wonder,” cried Kate, in her passion; and then she made an
effort to conquer herself. “Papa cannot eat him,” she added, with a
little harsh laugh of emotion. “I have had the worst of it. He will
never say to John what he said to me.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Oh, nothing!” she cried, recollecting herself. “He is my own papa;
he has a right to say what he likes to me. It is John who is speaking
now--that is a good sign. And when he chooses, and takes the trouble,
John can speak so well; he is so clever. I never meant to have let him
do all this, and give everybody so much trouble; but when he began to
talk like _that_, what was I to do?”
“Oh, Kate!” cried the mother, with her eyes full of tears, “we are so
selfish--we never thought of that! How were you to resist him more
than the rest of us? My dear boy--he had always such a winning way!”
“John is speaking still,” said Kate. “Mamma, I think things must be
coming round. There--papa has put his hand on his arm. When he does
that he is beginning to give in. Oh, if we could only hear what they
say!”
“He is so earnest in all he does,” said Mrs Mitford. “Kate! listen to
what I am going to say to you. If this ever comes to anything----”
“Of course it will come to something,” cried Kate. “I am not so good
as John. If papa were to stand out, I should just wait till I was
one-and-twenty; and then, if John pleased---- Now they are turning back
again. Oh, will they never be done? It is just like men, walking and
talking, walking and talking for ever, and us poor women waiting here.”
“But, Kate, listen to me,” said Mrs Mitford, solemnly; “if it ever
comes to anything, you must be very very careful with my John. Look
at his dear face, how it shines with feeling! He loves you so--he
would put himself under your father’s feet. I feel as if I could tell
you the very words he is saying. And you--you have been brought up so
differently. If you were tempted to be careless, and forget his ways of
thinking, and prefer society and the world----”
“I see how it is,” said Kate, with a mournful cadence in her voice--she
did not turn her head, for her eyes were still intently fixed on the
distant figures out of doors; “I see how it is--you don’t think I am
the right girl for John.”
“I did not say so,” said Mrs Mitford, humbly; “how can I tell? I can’t
divine what is in my own boy’s heart, and how can I divine yours? But I
will love you for his sake. Oh, Kate! if you are good to him----”
Here the conversation came to a sudden pause; for the two who were
outside were seen to turn in the direction of Dr Mitford’s study, and
to enter the house, which made the crisis come nearer, as it were.
Neither of the two ladies could have told how the afternoon passed.
Every sound that went through the house seemed to them significant.
Sometimes a door would open or shut, and paralyse them for the moment.
Sometimes a sound as of a single step would be heard in one of the
passages, and then Mrs Mitford and Kate would rise up and flush
crimson, and listen as if they had not been listening all the time.
“Now they are coming!” one or the other would say, with a gasp, for the
waiting affected their very breathing. Except on these occasions, they
scarcely exchanged two words in half an hour. From time to time Kate
looked at her watch, and made a remark under her breath about the hour.
“It is too late for the four o’clock train,” she said; and then it was
too late for the mail at half-past five; and all this time not a word
came out of the stillness to relieve their anxiety. The bees buzzed
about the garden, and the sun shone and shone as if he never could
weary of shining, and blazed across the monotonous lawn and vacant
paths, which no step or shadow disturbed. Oh the burden of the silence
that lay upon that whole smiling world outside, where not even a leaf
would move, so eager was nature to have the first word of the secret!
When Mrs Mitford’s needles clicked in her tremulousness, Kate glanced
up with eyes of feverish reproach; and when Kate’s scissors fell, the
room echoed with the sound, and Mrs Mitford felt it an injury. Thus
the long, weary, languid afternoon passed on. When Jervis began to
stir with his preparations for dinner, and to move about his pantry,
with clink and clang of glass and silver, laying the table, the sounds
were to them like the return of a jury into their box to the anxious
wretches waiting for their verdict. Dinner was coming, that augustest
of modern ceremonies, and the ladies felt instinctively that things
must now come to a decision. And accordingly, it was just after Jervis
had carried his echoing tray out of the pantry to the sideboard when
the door of the study at last opened, and steps were heard coming along
the passage--Dr Mitford’s steps, creaking as they came, and another
footstep, which Kate knew to be her father’s. Not John! The ladies sat
bolt upright, and grew red and grew pale, and felt the blood tingle
to their finger-points. And then they looked at each other, and asked,
silently, “Where has he gone?”
This time it was no longer the jurymen. It was the judge himself,
coming solemn with his verdict. The gentlemen came into the room one
behind the other, Mr Crediton looking worn and tired, and even Dr
Mitford’s white tie grown limp with suspense and emotion. But it was he
who was the first to speak.
“I am sorry to have left you so long by yourselves,” he said, with a
little air of attempted jauntiness, which sat very strangely on him,
“and to have kept Mr Crediton away from you; but we had a great deal
to talk over, and business, you know, must be attended to. My dear,
it was business of a very momentous kind. And now, Miss Kate,” said
the Rector, turning upon her, and holding out both his hands--he
smiled, but his smile was very limp, like his tie, and even his hands,
though not expressive generally, trembled a little--“now, Miss Kate,
for the first time I feel at liberty to speak to you. You must have
thought me very hard and cold the other night; but now I have your
father’s permission to bid you welcome to my family,” Dr Mitford went
on, smiling a ghastly smile; and he stooped over her and kissed her
forehead, and held her hands, waving them up and down as if he did not
know what to do with them. “I don’t know why my son has not come to be
the first to tell you. Everything is settled at last!”
“Where is John?” cried Mrs Mitford, with her soft cheeks blazing. And
her husband dropped Kate’s hands as if they had burned him, and they
all paused and looked at each other with an embarrassment and restraint
which nobody could disguise.
“To do him justice, I don’t think he felt himself equal to a grand
tableau of family union and rapture,” said Mr Crediton. “Mrs Mitford,
I don’t pretend to be overjoyed. I don’t see why we should make any
pretences about it. They have done a very foolish thing, and probably
they will repent of it----”
But this was more than John’s mother could bear. “One of them, I am
sure, will never have any reason to repent of it,” she said, with
irrepressible heat, not thinking of the double meaning that her words
might bear.
“I hope it may be so,” Mr Crediton said, and shook his head. And
there was again a silence, and Kate sat with all her veins swelling
as if they would burst, and her heart beating in her very throat, and
nobody taking any further notice of her. What was it to any of them in
comparison with what it was to her? and yet nobody even looked at her.
It seemed so utterly incredible, that for the moment she was stunned
and dumb, and capable of nothing but amazement.
“No,” said her father again, after a pause; “I don’t pretend to be
overjoyed. We have had a great deal of talk, and the talk has not been
agreeable. And, Mrs Mitford, if I am to judge by your looks, I should
say you were no more happy at the thought of losing your son than I am
at that of losing my daughter--in so foolish a way.”
“Let us hope it may turn out better than we think,” said Dr Mitford;
and then came the inevitable pause, which made every sentence sound so
harsh and clear.
“There is certainly room for the hope,” said Mr Crediton; “fortunately
it must be a long time before anything comes of it. Your son seems to
have quite relinquished the thought of going into the Church.”
“Have you settled that too?--is it all decided? Oh, Dr Mitford,
you have been hasty with him!” cried John’s mother. “I told you if
you would but take time enough, and go into things with him, and
explain----”
“I don’t think explaining would have done much good,” said Mr Crediton.
“It rarely does, when a young fellow has got such an idea into his
head. The only thing is, that when a boy changes once he may change
twice--when he is older, and this fever-fit, perhaps, may be over----”
“Oh, can you sit and hear this?” cried Kate, springing to her feet.
“Oh, papa, how can you be so wicked and so rude? Do you think John is
like that--to take a fancy and give it over? And you are his mother,
and know him best, and you leave him to be defended by me!”
“Kate, my dear!” cried Mrs Mitford, hastening to her, “you make me
hate myself. You understand my boy--you stand up for him when his own
flesh and blood is silent. And I love you with all my heart! And I will
never, never grudge him to you again!”
And the two women rushed into each other’s arms, and clung together in
a passion of tears and mutual consolation; while the men, for their
part, looked grimly on, vanquished, yet finding a certain satisfaction
in their sense of superiority to any such folly. Mr Crediton sat down,
with the hard unsympathetic self-possession of a man who has still a
blow to deliver; and poor Dr Mitford walked up and down the room, aware
of what was yet to come. But in the mean time the victims over whom the
stroke was lowering had delivered themselves all at once from their
special misery. The ice had broken between them. John, who had divided
them, became all at once their bond of union. “Mamma, if you will
stand by me I can do anything,” Kate whispered, with her lips upon
Mrs Mitford’s cheek. “My own child!” John’s mother whispered in reply;
and thus the treaty was made which was to set all other diplomacies at
nought.
“I think it is a great pity,” said Mr Crediton again, “but of course,
in the turn that circumstances have taken, I must help him as best I
can. It is not very much I can do, for you are aware when a young man
changes his profession all in a minute, it is a difficult thing to
provide for him. And he did not seem to have any clear idea what to
do with himself. Probably you will feel it is not equal to your son’s
pretensions, Mrs Mitford--but I have offered him a clerkship in my
bank.”
“A clerkship in your bank!” cried Mrs Mitford, petrified. She withdrew
a little from Kate in her consternation, and sat down and gazed, trying
to take in and understand this extraordinary piece of news.
“Papa, you cannot mean it,” cried Kate, vehemently. “Oh, are you papa,
or somebody come to mock us? A clerkship in the bank--for Dr Mitford’s
son--for--John!”
“John is no doubt possessed of many attractions,” said Mr Crediton,
in his hardest tones, “but I am only an ordinary mortal, and I cannot
make him Prime Minister. When a man throws himself out of his proper
occupation, he must take what he can get. And he has accepted my offer,
Kate. He is not so high-flown as you are; and I can assure you a man
may do worse than be a clerk in my bank.”
“It is a most honourable introduction to commerce,” said Dr Mitford,
coming forward very limp and conciliatory; “and commerce, as I have
often said, is the great power of the nineteenth century. My dear,
it is not what we expected--of course it is very different from what
we expected; but if _I_ put up with it---- It cannot be such a
disappointment to you as it is to me.”
Mrs Mitford turned away with an impatient cry. Her very sense of
decorum failed her. Though she had kept up the tradition of her
husband’s superiority so long that she actually believed in it, yet on
this point he was not superior. She was driven even out of politeness,
the last stronghold of a well-bred woman. She could not be civil to
the man who had thus outraged her pride and all her hopes. She sat and
moaned and rocked herself, saying, “My boy! my boy!” in a voice of
despair.
“He is saying it only to try us,” cried Kate. “He is not cruel. Papa,
you have always been so good to me! Oh, he does not mean it. It is
only--some frightful--joke or other. Papa, you don’t mean what you say?”
“I do mean what I say,” said Mr Crediton, abruptly; “and when I say so,
I think I may congratulate both Mrs Mitford and myself that, whatever
foolish thing our children may make up their minds to do, they cannot
do it very soon. We have had enough of this nonsense for the present,
Kate. Dr Mitford is so kind as to ask us to stop for dinner. We must
wait now for the nine o’clock train.”
And just then Jervis, curious but unenlightened, rang the first bell.
And what are all the passions and all the struggles of the heart
compared to Dinner, invincible potentate? Mrs Mitford and Kate gathered
themselves together meekly at the sound of that summons. Against it
they did not dare to remonstrate. They gave each other a silent kiss
as they parted at the door of Kate’s room, but they could not resist
nor trifle with such a stern necessity. “Where was John?” they asked
themselves, as each stood before her glass, trying as best she could
to clear away the trace of tears, and to hide from their own eyes and
from the sharp eyes of the servants all signs of the crisis they had
been going through. Kate had to retain her morning dress, as she had
still a journey before her; but she was elaborate about her hair, by
way of demonstrating her self-possession. “Papa has put off till the
nine o’clock train; and it is so tiresome of him, making one go down to
dinner like a fright,” she said to Parsons, trying to throw dust in the
eyes of that astute young woman. As if Parsons did not know!
As for John, he had been wandering about stupefied ever since that
amazing conclusion had been come to, in such a state of confusion that
he could not realise what had happened. Kate was to be his. That was
the great matter which had been decided upon. But notwithstanding
his passionate love for Kate, this was not what bulked largest in his
mind. The world somehow had turned a somersault with him, and he could
not make out whether he had lighted on solid earth again, or was still
whirling in the dizzy air. His past life had all shrivelled away from
him as if it had never been. His sensations were those of a man who has
rolled over some tremendous precipice; or who wakes out of a swoon to
find himself lying on some battle-field. He was very sore and battered
and beaten, tingling all over with bruises; and the relative position
of the world, and everything in it, to himself was changed. It might
be the same sky and the same soil to others, but to him everything was
different. Kate was to be his; but that was in the future. And for the
present he was to begin life, not in any noble way for the service of
others, but as a clerk in Mr Crediton’s bank.