CHAPTER XIX. Lady Winton she was like me when she was a girl, and I shall be like her when I am an old lady. You know it is so." And she paused a moment just beside him, with her hand on Lady Winton's chair, and looked into John's pale face as he rose at her appeal. Something was wrong. Kate was not sure what. Lady Winton, perhaps, had been annoying him with questions, or Fred Huntley with criticism. It did not occur to her that she herself could be the offender. She looked into John's face, meaning to say a thousand things to him with her eyes, but his were blank, and made no reply. "She was prettier than you are, Kate," said Lady Winton, with a smile. NEXT morning John packed himself up before he saw any one. He had not slept all night. It is true that the incidents of the past evening had been trifling enough not of sufficient consequence to affect, as his sudden departure might do, the entire complexion of his life. It was only as a climax, indeed, that they were of any importance at all; but as such, they had wound him up to a point of resolution. The present state of affairs, it was evident, could not go on. Had he been a mere idle man of society, he said to himself, in whose life this perpetual excitement might supply a painful-pleasant sensation, then it might have been possible; but he could not, love "Nay," said John, unawares. He had as he might, wear away his existence in not meant to enter into the talk — but to watching a girl's face, or waiting for such look at her standing there before him in her moments of her society as she might be fresh morning dress, in all her perfection able to give him. It was impossible: of youth and sweetness, and to believe that better to go away where he should never anybody had ever been more lovely, was see her again; better to give up for ever all impossible. At that moment, when he was the joys of life, than wear out every vestige about to leave her, he could have bent down of manliness within him in this hopeless and kissed the hem of her dress. It way. He had been born to higher uses seemed the only fitting thing to do, but it and better purposes surely, or where was could not be done before all these people. the good of being born at all? According- Kate was more and more perplexed what ly he prepared all his belongings for instant he could mean. His eyes which had been departure. He did not enter on the ques- blank, lighted up all in a moment, and tion, what should come after, or whether spoke things to her which she could not unany result would follow. He was not break-derstand. What was the meaning of the ing off anything, he said to himself. Kate was still dearer to him than anything in earth or heaven, he acknowledged with a sigh; but unless perhaps time or Providence might arrange the terms of their intercourse on a more possible footing, that intercourse for the present must be suspended. He "When one's friends begin to discuss could not go on. With this resolution in one's looks, don't you think it is best to his mind he went down-stairs; and looked withdraw?" she said. "Oh, thanks, Madso pale, that he attracted the attention of eline, for doing my duty. It is so wretched to the lady who sat next to him at the break-be late. Please, somebody, have some tea." fast-table, where Kate, who was so often late, had not yet appeared. pathos in them the melancholy, the dumb appeal that almost made her cry? She gave a little laugh instead, much fluttered and disturbed in her mind the while, and nodded her head and went on to her seat at the head of the table. 66 And then the ordinary talk came in and swept this little episode out of sight. "I am afraid you are ill," she said; "I When breakfast was over, and one after fear your arm pains you more than usual. another the guests began to disperse to their I think I knew your mother, Mr. Mitford, morning occupations, Kate, turning round a thousand years ago. Was not she a Miss to accompany one of the last to the mornOlive, of Burton? Ah, yes! I remembering room, where all the embroidery and the one of the prettiest girls I ever saw. I practising and the gossip went on, had her think you are a little like her," said uncomfortable thoughts brought back in a this benevolent woman, with a slight hesita- moment by the sight of John standing right tion. And then there was a titter at the in her way, holding out his hand. I am table, in which John did not feel much dis- obliged to go away," he said, in the most posed to join. calm tone he could muster. "Good-bye, Miss Crediton; and thanks, many thanks." Going away!" cried Kate, standing still in her amazement. Going away! Has anything happened at Fanshawe Regis Your mother -or Dr. Mitford-?" "Oh no," cried Kate, who had just come in; it is not him that is like Mrs. Mitford, but me. I allow he is her son, but that does not matter. I was at Fanshawe Regis ever so long in summer. Mr. John, tell 66 46 They are both well," he said. "I am not going to Fanshawe, only back to the town to my work. Good-bye." "I must hear about this," said Kate, abruptly. Please don't wait for me, Madeline; I want to speak to Mr. Mitford. Go on, and I will join you. Oh, John, what does it mean?" she cried, turning to her lover, almost without waiting until the door had closed on her companion. By this time everybody was gone, and the two were left alone in the great empty room where five minutes ago there had been so much sound and movement. They were standing in front of one of the deeply-recessed windows, with the light falling direct upon them as on a stage. He held out his hand again and took hers, which she was too much disturbed to give. "It is nothing," he said, with a forlorn sort of smile, except just that I must go away. Don't let that cloud your face, dear. I can't help myself. I am obliged to go." "Is any one ill?" she cried; " is that the reason? Oh, John, tell me! are you really obliged to go? Or is it - anything we have done?" "No," he said, holding her hand in his. It is my fault. It does not matter. It is that I cannot manage this sort of life. No blame to you, my darling. Don't think I am blaming you. When I am back at my work, things will look different. I was not brought up like you. You must pardon me as you would pardon me for being ignorant and not knowing another language; but it is best I should go away." "John!" she cried, the tears coming with a sudden rush into the clear wondering eyes that had been gazing at him so intently, "what have I done?" Nothing nothing," he said, stooping over her hand and kissing it again and again. There is only myself to blame. I can't take things, I suppose, as other people do. I am exacting and inconsiderate and Never mind, dear. I must go away; and you will not remember my faults when I am gone." 66 66 no, no! I must not be conquered this time. My love, it will be best for both of us. I cannot go on seeing you always within my reach and always out of my reach. I would have you always like this- always here- always mine; but I can't have you; and I have no strength to stand by at a distance and look on. Do you understand me now? I shall go away so much happier because of this five minutes. Good-bye." "But, John!" she cried, clinging to him, "don't go away; why should you go away? I will do anything you please. I will make a change; don't go and leave me. I want you to be here." 66 You break my heart!" he cried; "but I cannot be here. What use is it to you? And to me it is distraction. Kate! don't ask me to stay." "But it is of use to me," she said, with a flush on her face, and an expression unlike anything he had seen before - an uneasy look, half of shame and half of alarm. Then she turned from him a little, with a slight change of tone. "It is a strange way of using me," she said, looking steadfastly at the carpet, after my going to you, and all; not many girls would have gone to you as I did; you might stay now when I ask you for my sake." 66 "I will do anything in the world for your sake," he said; "but Kate, it does you no good, you know. It is an embarrassment to you," John went on, with a half groan escaping him, "and it is distraction to me." Then followed a pause. She drew her hand away from his with a little petulant movement. She kept her eyes away from him, not meeting his, which were fixed upon her. Her face glowed with a painful heat; her little foot tapped the carpet. "Do you mean that — other things too ?" she said; and twisted her fingers together, and gazed out of the window, waiting for what he had to say. are to be over Such a question comes naturally to the mind of a lover whenever there is any fretting of his silken chain; and accordingly it was not novel to John's imagination it struck upon his heart as if it had been a blow. "Surely not surely not," he answered, hastily; "not so far as I am con cerned." But I never thought you had any faults," cried Kate. You speak as if it were me. I never have found fault with you, John — nor asked anything more— - I know I am silly. Tell me, and scold And then they stood again for how me, and forgive me. Say as papa does - long? side by side, not looking at each it is only Kate. I know I did not mean it. other, waiting a chance word to separate or Oh, John, dear, if I beg your pardon, to reunite them. Should she be able to though I don't know what I have done- "bear her first rebuff? she, a spoiled child, nor 64 You have done nothing," he cried in despair. "Oh, my Kate! are you my Kate? or are you a witch coming into my arms to distract me from everything? No, to whom everybody yielded? Or could she all in a moment learn that sweet philosophy of yielding in her own person, which makes all the difference between sorrow and un 66 his rooms looked to him like a place of rest, where he could go and hide himself and be at peace. But as soon as he had entered them, it was Fernwood that grew lovely in the distance, where Kate was, where there were blessed people who would be round her all day long, and the stir of life, and a thousand pleasant matters going on. He was weary and sick of bimself, and sick of the world. Could he sit down and read a novel in the light of that October day - or what was he to do? The end was that he took his portman station of Fanshawe touched his cap, and announced his intention of carrying Mr. John's portmanteau to the Rectory. He felt it strange that the poor fellow should remember him. Surely it was years since he had been there before. happiness? Everything - the world itself seemed to hang in the balance for that moment. Kate terminated it suddenly, in her own unexpected way. She turned on him all at once, with all the sweetness restored to her face and her voice, and held out her hand: 66 Neither shall it be so far as I am concerned," she said. Since you must go, good-bye, John!" And thus it came to an end. When he was on his way back to Camelford, and the visit to Fernwood, with all its pains and pleasures, and the last touch of her hand, were all things of the past, John asked him-teau, which had not been unpacked, and self, with all a lover's ingenuity of self-tor- threw it into a passing cab, and went off to ment, if this frank sweetness of reply was the railway. He had not gone home since enough? if she should have let him go so he came to his clerkship in the bank, and easily? if there was not something of relief that was three months since. It seemed in it? He drove himself frantic with these the only thing that was left for him to do questions, as he made his way back to his now. He went back along the familiar road poor little lodgings. Mr. Crediton had with something of the feelings of a prodigal looked politely indifferent, rather glad than approaching his home. It seemed strange otherwise, when he took his leave. "Go-to him when the porter at the little roadside ing to leave us?" Mr. Crediton had said. “I am very sorry; I hope it is not any bad news. But perhaps you are right, and perfect quiet will be better for your arm. Never mind about business -you must take your own time. If you see Whichelo, tell him I mean to come in on Saturday. I am very sorry you have given us so short a visit. Good-bye." Such was Mr. Crediton's farewell; but the young man made very little account of that. Mr. Crediton's words or ways were not of so much importance to him as one glance of Kate's eye. What she meant by her dismay and distress, and then by the sudden change, the sweet look, the good-bye so kindly, gently said, was the question he debated with himself; and naturally he had put a hundred interpretations upon it before he reached the end of his journey. It was still but mid-day when he reached the little melancholy shabby rooms which were his home in Camelford. The place might be supportable at night, when he came in only for rest after the day's labours, though even then it was dreary enough; but what could be thought of it in the middle of a bright autumn day, when the young man came in and closed his door, and felt the silence hem him in and enclose him, and put seals, as it were, to the grave in which he had buried himself. Full day, and nothing to do, and a little room to walk about in, four paces from one side to the other and a suburban street to look out upon, with blinds drawn over the windows, and plants shutting out the air, and an organ grinding melancholy music forth along each side of the way: could he stay still and bear it? When he was at Fernwood And this feeling grew as John walked slowly along the quiet country road that led to his home. Everything he passed was associated with thoughts which were as much over and past as if they had happened in a different existence. He had walked along by these hedgerows pondering a thousand things, but scarcely one that had any reference to, any relation with, his present life. He had been a dreamer, planning high things for the welfare of the world; he had been a reformer, rousing, sometimes tenderly, sometimes violently, the indifferent country from its slumbers; sometimes, even, retiring to the prose of things, he had tried to realize the details of a clergyman's work, and to fit himself into them, and ask himself how he should perform them. But never, in all these questionings, had he thought of himself as a banker's clerk -a man working for money alone, and the hope of money. It was so strange that he did not know what to make of it. As he went on, the other John, his former self, seemed to go with him and which was the real man, and which the phantom, he could not tell. All the quiet country lifted prevailing hands, and laid hold on him as he went home. It looked so natural-and he, what was he? But the country, too, had changed as if in 3 dream. He had left it in the full blaze of June, and now it was October, with the leaves in autumn glory, the fields reaped, the brown stubble everywhere, and now and | she had lived fifty years doing good and not then in the clear blue air the crack of a evil to every soul around her, and what had sportsinan's gun. All these things had she in return? A husband, who thought she borne a different aspect once to John. He was a very good sort of ignorant foolish littoo had been a little of a sportsman, as was tle woman on the whole, and very useful in natural; but the dog and the gun did not the parish, and handy to keep off all interharmonize with the figure of a banker's ruptions and annoyances; and a son who clerk. The women on the road, who stared had gone away and abandoned her at the at him, and curtsied to him with a smile of first chance-disappointed all her hopes, recognition, confused him, he could not tell left her alone, doubly alone, in the world. why. It was strange that everybody should "It is her hour for the school, the dearest recognize him he who did not recognize little mother," he said to himself, with the himself. tears coming to his eyes; she never fails, though we all fail her;" but even as the words formed in his mind he perceived that the room into which he was gazing was not empty. There she sat, thrown back into And as he approached the Rectory, a vague sense that something must have happened there, came over him. It was only three days since he had received a letter from his mother full of those cheerful de-a chair; her work was lying on the floor at tails which it cost her, though he did not her feet; but John had never seen such an know it, so much labor and pain to write. air of weariness and lassitude in his mother He tried to remind himself of all the pleas- before. He recognized the gown she had ant every-day gossip, and picture of things on, the basket of work on the table, all the serene and unchangeable which she had sent still life round her; but her he could not rechim; but still the nearer he drew and the ognize. She had her hands crossed loosely more familiar everything became, the more in her lap, laid together with a passive inhe felt that something must have happened. difference that went to his heart. Could He went in by the little garden-gate, which she be asleep? but she was not asleep; for opened noiselessly, and made his way after a while one of the hands went softly through the shrubbery, to satisfy himself up to her cheek, and something was brushed that no cloud of uttermost calamity had off, which could only be a tear. He could fallen upon the house. It was actually a scarcely restrain the cry that came to his relief to him to see that the blinds were up lips; but at that moment the door, which he and the windows open. It was a warm could not see, must have opened, for she genial autumn day, very still, and somewhat gave a start, and roused herself, and turned pathetic, but almost as balmy as summer. to speak to somebody. "I am coming, LizAnd the drawing-room window stood wide zie," John heard her answer in a spiritless, open as it had done through all those won- weary tone; and then she rose and put away derful June days when John's life had come her work, and took up her white shawl, which to its climax. The lilies had vanished that was lying on the back of a chair. She liked stood up in great pyramids against the but- white and pretty bright colours about her, tresses; even their tall green stalks were the simple soul. They became her, and gone, cut down to the ground; and there were like herself. But when she had were no roses, except here and there a pale wrapped herself in the shawl, which was as monthly one, or a half-nipped, half-open familiar to John as her own face, his mother bud. John paused under the acacia-tree gave a long weary sigh, and sat down again where he had so often placed Kate's chair, as if she could not make up her mind to and which was now littering all the lawn move. He had crept quite close to the winround about with its leaflets-to gain a dow by this time, moved beyond expresglimpse, before he entered, of what was sion by the sight of her, with tears in his going on within. The room was in the shade, eyes, and unspeakable compunction in his and at first it was difficult to make out any heart. "What does it matter now? "she thing, The dear, tender mother! to whom said to herself, drearily. She had come to he had been everything all her heart had be so much alone that the thought was to rest on. What had she to recompense spoken and not merely thought. When her for all the tender patience, all the care John stepped into the room a moment after, and labour she took upon herself for the his mother stood and gazed at him as if sake of her Saviour and fellow-creatures! he had risen out of the earth, and then gave Her son, who had taken things for granted a great cry which rang through all the all this time as sons do, opened his eyes house, and fell upon his neck. Fell upon suddenly as he stood peeping in like a his neck-that was the expression - reachstranger, and began to understand her life. ing her arms, little woman as she was, up God never made a better, purer woman; to him as he towered over her; and would VOL. XVII. 753 LIVING AGE. - not have cared if she had died then, in the passion of her joy. 66 simulation of gladness which went no further than his lips. "What could I be but happy?" he said; 'Mother, dear, you are trembling," John said, as he put her tenderly into her chair," but not to see you looking so pale, and and knelt down beside her, taking her hands into his. "I should not have been so foolish startling you; but I could not resist the temptation when I saw you here." "Joy does not hurt," said Mrs. Mitford. "I have grown so silly, my dear, now I have not you to keep me right; and it was a surprise. There-I don't in the least mean to cry; it is only foolishness. And oh, my poor John, your arm.” "It is nothing," he said; "it is almost well. Never mind it. I am a dreadful guy, to be sure. Is that what you are looking at, mamma mia?" In his wan face and fire-scorched hair she had not known her child. 66 trembling like this, my pretty mamma. You are too pretty to-day-too pink and too white and too bright-eyed. What do you mean by it? It must be put a stop to, now I have come home." 66 'What does that mean?" she asked, with tremulous eagerness. He was not happy; he might deceive all the world, she said to herself, but he could not deceive his mother. He was not happy, but he did not mean her to know it, and she would not betray her knowledge. So she only trembled a little more, and smiled pathetically upon him, and kissed his forehead, and shed back the hair from it with her soft nervous hands. Coming home has such a sound to me. It used to mean the long nice holidays; and once I thought it meant something more; but now — 66 'Oh, John, that you could think so," she said, in her earnest matter-of-fact way. "My own boy! as if I should not have known you anywhere, whatever you had done to yourself. It was not that. John," not much, but still we can make a great my dear ?" "What, mother ? " "I was looking to see if you were happy, my dearest, dearest boy. Don't be angry with me. As long as you are happy I don't mind-what happens to me. "Now it means a week or two," he said; deal out of it. And the first thing must be to look after your health, mother. This will never do." nervous because of the surprise; the first thing is to make you enjoy your holiday, my own boy." "Yes," he said, with a curious smile. Enjoy his holiday! - which was the escape of a man beaten from the field on which he had failed in his first encounter with fate. But I will not let her know that, John said to himself. And I must not show him that I see it, was the reflection of his mother. This was how they met again after the great parting which looked like the crisis of their lives. drive a compositor crazy, with punctuation which seems to have been shaken over the paper from a pepper-box,· who has just sense to do all this, but doesn't know enough to stick the product of his ingenuity into the fire. This ghoul - this chiffonier- this tumble-bug —is a weariness to the soul of an editor and an imposition upon good nature. May the Lord smite him! Of all contributors to newspapers, the great-rography that would disgrace a schoolboy and est bore is the man with just enough classical knowledge to hunt through Webster's big dictionary and unearth Greek and Latin roots, to which he fastens Saxon stems- to fish up old forgotten and unused idioms from books of quotation to invent a bastard terminology that may serve to delude the unlearned reader into the belief that the writer has a great smattering of art and to wearily bundle all these misty absurdities together, and bind them with a chi San Francisco News-Letter. |