Read Ebook: John A Love Story; vol. 1 of 2 by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 488 lines and 63207 words, and 10 pages

"Oh, miss! it's dreadful, that is," cried Lizzie. "It's enough to make you cry just to look at her face. Some days she'll go across to the school as many as three times--and down to the village among all the poor folks. Mother aint Church like me, miss," the girl continued, with a little apologetic curtsy; "she was born like in Zion, she says, and she can't make up her mind not to leave it; and it aint to be expected as poor missis should be fond of Zion folks. But when any of the lads are in trouble she never minds church nor chapel. Mother says she's a bit proud as her own lad is one as never gets into no trouble--and the like of him haven't got the same temptations, mother says. But I always say as it's kind of missis, all the same."

"Oh, miss, don't you be afeared," cried Lizzie, with bright confidence--"he aint going away. It sounds funny, but he's going to be the new curate, is Mr John."

"Oh!!" Kate gave a little cry of disappointment and dismay. "Is he a clergyman? I never thought of that."

"Not yet, miss," said Lizzie, "but they say as he's going up to the bishop at Michaelmas or thereabouts, and then we'll have him here for curate, and missis will be as glad as glad."

It was a great event to Kate, and also to the kitchen at Fanshawe Regis, when "Miss Parsons" came from Camelford with her young mistress's "things." Kate had never been ill in her life before, and she had not been very ill or suffering much even now, so that the feeling of state and dignity and superiority to the rest of the world was unmixed by any severe reminiscence of pain. It gave her quite a thrill of pleasure to see her pretty dresses again. She had been allowed to get up to lie on the sofa by the window, and look out at the roses, but only in her dressing-gown, which was very pretty, no doubt, and very cool, but not so pleasant as all those fresh summer costumes with their floating ribbons. She lay on her sofa, and watched Parsons unpack them with lively interest. "But I should like to know what you mean me to do with them all," she said. "Here are enough for all the summer; and how long do you suppose I am going to stay? Perhaps a week--there are a dozen gowns at least."

"Fond of me!" said Kate, with a sudden blush, which surprised herself intensely. "You goose! nobody has seen me but Mrs Mitford--and she will be very glad to get rid of so much trouble, I should think."

"Please finish your unpacking as soon as you can," she said, with severe politeness, to Parsons. "Take out half--that will do. I stay here a week only. And make haste, please, for I am tired of all this fuss."

"Be quiet, please, and get done and go away," cried Kate. "You will make me ill again, if you don't mind."

And then, considerably ruffled and put out, she turned her head to the window. Mrs Mitford had scrupulously kept "the gentlemen"--her husband and her son--out of the flower-garden, on which Kate's windows looked. She did not think a young lady in a dressing-gown a fit spectacle for any eyes but her own; but Kate was almost well, and her hostess had relaxed a little. As she looked out now she saw through the venetian blinds two figures in the distance walking slowly along a sheltered walk. It could only be John whom his mother was leading on in that way. Her head was almost resting against his arm as she looked up and talked to him. She leant upon him with that pleasant sense of support and help which makes weakness sweet; there was even in her attitude a something which Kate perceived dimly by instinct, but could not have put in words; that delicious sense of surprise, and secret, sacred, humorous consciousness of the wonder there was in it--the sweet jest of being thus supported by her baby, her child, he whom she had carried in her arms--was it yesterday?--which a man's mother enjoys privately all to herself. Somehow a little envy stole over Kate as she looked at them. She was very fond of her father; but yet it was not such happiness to be with him as it was for this other woman to be with her boy. The young creature thirsting for everything that was sweetest in life would have liked to have that too. To be sure she could not be John's mother, or anybody's mother, and would have laughed with inextinguishable laughter at herself for the thought, had she realised it. But still she envied Mrs Mitford, feeling that kind woman to have thus appropriated a joy beyond her reach--and what do women want with joys at that age? Should not all be concentrated in one sweetest draught for the rose lips, so dewy and soft with youth? Kate would have repudiated such a sentiment, of course; and yet this was what breathed unconsciously in her heart. She went to bed with a little spiteful feeling against Mrs Mitford. Had not she made a clergyman of her boy on purpose to spite Kate? If he had been a gravedigger his mother would loved him just the same; it would have made no difference to her. If he had been ugly, and weakly, and half his size, his mother would have liked him quite as well; which were all so many offences against Kate, and evidences of her inferiority. She wanted to have her own delights and the other woman's delights too. She wanted to be young and to be old; to have a lover's adoration and a son's worship, and every other variety that love can take. It so spited her that she cried when she went to bed, and then burst out laughing at her own folly, and was as silly as you can conceive it possible to be--perhaps more silly than after nineteen any one could conceive.

"Oh, miss! you'll catch your death," cried Parsons, not indeed knowing why, but delivering the first missile of offence that came to her hand. But Parsons was far from being a person of spirit, or able to cope with her young mistress. She stood helplessly by, protesting, but making no effort to resist, except the passive one of giving no assistance. Kate flew at her dress with a sense of novelty which gave it an additional charm. She buttoned herself into it with a certain delight. "Oh, how nice it is to feel one has something on!" she cried, tossing her wrapper to the other side of the room; and she fastened her belt, and tied her ribbons, and did everything for herself with a sweep of enthusiasm. The reader has only seen her as an invalid, and Kate was very well worth looking at. She was a little over the middle height; her figure was very slender and pliant and graceful--upright, yet bending as if with every breeze. Her hair was warm sunny brown hair; her eyes were dark-violet blue, large, and limpid, and full of a startled sweetness, like the eyes of a fawn. They had the child's look of surprise at the fair world and wonderful beings among which it finds itself, which has always so great a charm; and with that blue ribbon in her pretty hair, and the clear blue muslin dress, she was like a flower. And then she had that glory of complexion which we are so fond of claiming as specially English. Nothing could be more delicate or more lovely than the gradations of colour in her face--her lips a rich rose, her cheeks a little paler--a soft rose-reflection upon her delicate features and white throat. It was not "the perfect woman nobly planned" which came to your mind at sight of so pretty a creature. She was a Greuze--an article of luxury, worth quantities of money, and always delightful to look at--an ornament to any chamber, the stateliest or the simplest. She might have been placed in a palace or in a cottage, and would not have looked out of place in either; and there was enough beauty in her to decorate the place at once, and make up for all lack of colour or loveliness besides. But what she might have beyond the qualities of the Greuze the spectator could not tell. What harm or good she might have it in her to do--what might be the result even of this first unexpected appearance of hers in the house which she had taken by storm--it was impossible to predict. It could not but be either for good or evil; but, looking into the lovely, flower-like face, into her surprised sweet eyes, the most keen observer would have been baffled. She was full of childish delight in the novelty--a half-mischievous, half-innocent pleasure in the anticipation of producing some effect in the quiet unsuspicious house; but that was all that could be made out. She stood before the glass for a minute contemplating her perfected toilette with the highest satisfaction. She looked like a wreath of that lovely evanescent convolvulus, which is blue and white and rose all at once. "Am I nice?" she said to the bewildered Parsons; who replied only by a bewildered exclamation of "Oh, miss!" and then Kate turned, poising herself for one moment on her heel in uncertainty. She took one of John's roses and placed it in her belt; and then, with a little wave of her handkerchief, and, as it were, flourish of trumpets, she opened her door and stepped forth into the unknown.

Here let us pause for a moment. To step for the first time into a new country is thrilling to the inexperienced traveller; but to put your foot into a new house,--a place which is utterly strange to you, and yet which you are free to penetrate through as if it were your own--to take your chance of stumbling against people whom you know intimately and yet have no acquaintance with--to set out on a voyage of discovery into the most intimate domestic shrines, with no light but that of your own genius to guide you,--is more thrilling still. Kate stepped briskly over the threshold of her own room, and then she paused aghast at her own audacity. The cold silence of the unknown hushed her back as if she had been on an expedition into the arctic regions. She paused, and her heart gave a loud beat. Should she retire into the ascertained and lawful place from which Parsons was watching with a face of consternation, or should she go on? But no! never!--put it in Parson's power to taunt her with a retreat--that could not be! She gave another little wave of her handkerchief, as if it had been her banner, and went on.

But it must be avowed that when she was out of sight of Parsons and her own room, Kate paused again and panted, and clung to the banisters, looking down the broad, handsome staircase. She could see down into the hall, with all its closed doors, looking so silent, so strange, so suggestive. She did not know what she would find there; and nobody knew her or expected her. A distant sound from the kitchen, Lizzie's hearty, youthful laugh, struck with a consolatory sound upon her ear. But alas! she was not bound to the kitchen, where she had friends, but to investigate those closed doors, with such wonders as might be within. She clung to the great polished oak banister for a moment, feeling her heart beat; and then, "courage!" cried Kate, and launched herself into the unknown world below stairs.

The Rectory at Fanshawe Regis was a very good house. Indeed it was the old manor-house of the Fanshawes, which had been thus appropriated at the time when the great castle was built, which had eventually ruined the race. Dr Mitford and his son were both in the library on the morning of Kate's descent. It was the most picturesque room in the house. It was, indeed, a kind of double room, one end of it being smaller than the other, and contracted by two pillars which stood out at a little distance from the walls, and looked almost like a doorway to the larger end, which was the Doctor's especial domain. It was clothed with books from ceiling to floor, and the contraction made by the pillars framed in the apartment behind, giving a certain aspect of distance to the fine interior. There was a great old-fashioned fireplace at the very end, with a projecting oak canopy, also supported by pillars, and to the right of that a broad, deeply recessed Elizabethan window, throwing a full side light upon the Doctor's writing-table, at which he sat absorbed, with his fine white head shining as in a picture. When Kate opened the door cautiously and looked in at this picture, she was so moved by a sense of her own temerity, and by involuntary, half-childish fright lest she should be scolded or punished for it, that it was at least a minute before she took in the scene before her; and even then she did not take it all in. She never even glanced at the foreground--at the other Elizabethan window, with coloured shields of painted glass obscuring the sunshine, in which sat another reader, who raised his eyes at the sound of the opening door with a surprise which it would be difficult to describe. There were three of them all in the same room, and none was aware of the scrutiny with which each was severally regarded. It was like a scene in a comedy. Kate peeping frightened at the door, growing a little bolder as she perceived herself unnoticed, gazing at Dr Mitford's white head over his books and papers, and gradually getting to see the fun of it, and calculate on his start of amazement when he should look up and see her. And opposite to her, in the anteroom, John Mitford at his table, with eyes in which a kindred laughter began to gleam, one hand resting upon his open book, arrested in his work, his looks bent upon the pretty spy, who was as unconscious of his presence as his father was of hers. When John stirred in his seat and suddenly directed Kate's attention to him, she gave a little jump and a cry, and turned round and fled in her amazement. She did not even take time to look and recognise him, but flew from the door, letting it swing after her in a sudden panic. She had found the position very amusing when she was peeping at his unsuspecting father--but to be spied upon in her turn! Kate burst away and fled, taking the first passage she saw. "What's that, eh?" cried Dr Mitford. "I'll go and see, sir," said John, dutifully; and he got up with beautiful promptitude, and followed the runaway. He saw the gleam of her blue dress down the passage, and followed her before she could draw breath. It was the most curious meeting, for two well-bred persons who did not know each other, and yet were already so deeply connected with each other. Kate, all one desperate blush, turned round when she heard his step and faced him, trembling with shame and fear, and a little weakness--for this violent exercise was not quite in accordance with her weak condition. She scorned to run away farther, and clutched at such remnants of dignity as she could muster. "Mr John Mitford, I am sure," she said, making him a stately little curtsy, and swallowing at once her fright and her laughter as best she could.

"I am so glad to see you down-stairs," said John. The mirth went out of his face when he saw her embarrassment. "Come into the drawing-room and rest--it is the coolest room in the house," he added, opening the door. It was very good of him, Kate felt; but she burst into a peal of nervous laughter as soon as she had got into the shelter of the shaded room; and then had to exert all her strength to keep from tears.

"I only wish you had stayed," said John, who would himself have felt very awkward but for her confusion; "but my mother will be back presently from the village, and then we can show you the house. I am afraid you are tired. Can I get you anything? I am so sorry my mother is out."

"Oh, never mind," she said; "I am quite comfortable, now I am here. I don't want anything, thanks. Never mind me. If you are busy, don't take the trouble to stay. You know I am at home, though I never was here before."

"Oh, pray don't wait," said Kate; "I shall be quite comfortable. There are plenty of books here, and I can go to the garden if I get tired." Then there was a little pause. John never budged, standing thus in the height of awkwardness before her--wishing for his mother--wishing for anything to happen to deliver him, and yet feeling a charm in the position, which was very amazing to him. Kate, for her part, began to recover. She forgot the impression which had been made upon her by that unknown something in his face, and gradually came back to herself. She sat on the sofa playing with the picture-books on the table beside it, very demure; with cast-down eyes; and he balancing himself on one foot, not knowing what to make of himself, watching her anxiously for guidance. Kate resisted as long as she could, and then burst into a peal of unsteady laughter, in which John, very much surprised, did not find himself able to share.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she cried, when she could command her voice, "for being silly. I don't know, I am sure, why I should laugh, only it is all so funny. I don't know you in the least, and yet I know you quite well; and I have been living in the house ever so long, and yet go about like a thief, peeping in at the doors. It is all so very odd. I can't tell what to make of it. And you who are looking at me so puzzled--you saved my life!" cried Kate, with another burst of laughter. She had never been so ashamed of herself before, but she could not help it. The whole business was so droll. He kept standing, balancing himself in the funniest way, looking down upon her with the strangest incomprehension--and he had saved her life! Though she was ashamed, she could not restrain herself. She laughed till the tears came into her eyes, more and more stimulated thereto by the gravity and astonishment with which he regarded her. As for John, he tried to laugh at first, but finally settled into quiet, and looked at her with an amazed and wondering observation, as if it was a new species that had thus come suddenly under his eyes.

"I am very glad you are so much amused," he said at last, quite seriously, poor fellow, without the slightest ironical meaning. Was she by any possibility a little fool, giggling like a baby at the gravest matters? or was it some deeper sense in her of the phantasmagoria of life which had called forth this curious outburst of incomprehensible laughter? Laughter is one of the most subtle and least comprehensible of things. It may express folly, levity, mere amusement--or it may express that deep sense of the humour which lies at the bottom of most earthly transactions, which is possible only to very rare spirits. Gazing at Kate with his eyes full of romance, he could not tell which it was, but felt it most probable that it was the latter, the depths being more natural to him than the shallows. "I don't wonder that you laugh," he added, after a pause, in the grave way which was so quaint to Kate. "It is like a thing that happened in a dream."

At this strange comment she looked up at him, puzzled in her turn. Did he mean something? or was he laughing as she had been? But there was no laugh on John's face; and suddenly it occurred to her that the eyes with which he was looking at her were those same eyes which she had seen, as in a vision, at the foot of the sofa, on the day of her accident. They were full of wonder, and anxiety, and alarm then; they were only serious and perplexed, and anxious to understand her now: but yet they were the same eyes; and the whole scene flashed back upon Kate's impatient mind, and changed her mood in a moment. A sudden cloud, almost like that which comes over a child's face when it is about to cry, enveloped her. "Ah!" she cried, suddenly, "I remember you now. I remember your eyes!"

"My eyes!" cried John, growing scarlet with amazement.

"Yes, your eyes. The day it all happened, you know--though I am sure I don't know even now what did happen. When I came to myself, I suppose--the first thing I was conscious of was a pair of eyes looking at me. They had no body to them," said Kate, with a sudden moisture coming into her own--"they looked so anxious, so unhappy, about me. I see now it was you. How awfully good of you to care!"

"Was it so long?" said Kate, with that intense wistful interest which youth feels in itself.

"Ah!" he cried, despising himself, "there you go above me, as is natural. It is like you to think it would not have mattered for yourself--only for those who loved you, and the desolate world it would have left them. It is like you to think of that."

"How can you tell it is like me," said Kate, "when you don't know me? I was thinking of papa, and of your mother, not of anything so fine as a desolate world."

"You were thinking like a true woman," said the young man, gazing at her with all the romance of a mother's only son in his unsophisticated eyes.

This was all very well for the moment, but Kate had dispersed the real impression which she had actually felt by uttering it, and it was too early in their acquaintance to plunge into romance; so she changed the subject skilfully. "Please don't abuse women," she said. "I know it is the fashion--and most girls rather like to give in to it, and think it is clever to like men's society best. But I am fond of women, though, perhaps, you will think it weak of me. If I had to choose, I should rather have all women than all men--though, of course, one likes a mixture best."

"I never saw you sitting there in the corner," cried Kate. "I thought I had it all my own way. It was so stupid of me. You must have thought what a stupid she is, peeping, and never perceiving that she is found out. I can't tell you how ashamed I was when I saw you. Did you think I was a thief, or a mad woman, or what did you think?"

"After all it did not require a very close application of your mind to guess that," she said, half piqued; and then yawned softly, and then opened a book, and looked at two of the pictures,--and then added, "How long Mrs Mitford is of coming home!"

Meanwhile John strode down the avenue in a very different frame of mind. The bees that had buzzed in Kate's ears when she saw him first had come into his now, and hummed and hummed about him, confusing his mind hopelessly. He had held her once for one moment in his arms, fighting a desperate battle for her with death and destruction. Such a thing might have been as that they should have perished together, and been thus associated for evermore in an icy virginal union of death. If it had been so! the romance and the pathos charmed the foolish young fellow. And now here she was by his side, this creature whose life he had saved--who was his, as it were, by that very act, and belonged to him, whatever any one might say against it. All the same, she was nothing to him. She laughed when she mentioned lightly that strange bond. He had given her her life over again when she had lost it. It was his life, notwithstanding her laughter; and yet he did not know her, and she might pass away and leave no trace. But no--that was impossible. The trace was ineffaceable, he said to himself, and all that might come hereafter would never obliterate the fact that he had given her back her life, and that therefore that life belonged to him. It was not love at first sight, nor indeed any kind of love, which had smitten John; but he felt as if his claims were being ignored and laughed at, and yet were so real. She belonged to him, and yet she was nothing to him. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of." This was the favourite principle of John Mitford's thoughts, and he let it take such possession of him on the strength of the curious connection and non-connection between himself and Kate, that he went along under the trees, crossing the sunshine, with the fumes of that talk in his head, like a man walking in his sleep. Mrs Mitford was coming up the avenue in her grey gown and white shawl, a point of brightness in the long green vista. She had a basket on her arm, and looked like the fairy godmother with miraculous gifts for the house. The way in which her white shawl blazed out and toned down as she passed from the light to the shade, and from the shade to the light, was wonderful. Half of the trees were lime-trees, and threw such silken dainty greennesses and softened tones of shadow upon that pretty apparition; and perhaps the bees in John's ears were only those which made the entire atmosphere harmonious, with that mingling of scent and sound which is the very crown of summer and June. There is no telling how pleased he was to see that white figure. There are moments, though perhaps few sons would confess it, in which a man's mother is more shield to him than she even is to a girl. He could stay in the room without embarrassment if she were there. He would know what to say, or at least she would know what to lead him to say. She would save him from being thrust into the front of the conversation, and left to bear the brunt of it, which he was not equal to in his present state. The unknown heroine was her guest, and became at once natural and a matter of course in her presence. After-times, perhaps, might bring other necessities, but this was the most important now.

"Mother, we want you," said John; "give me your basket, and make haste. Miss Crediton has come down-stairs."

"Miss Crediton!" cried his mother, with a gasp. "Oh, the impatient naughty child! to take advantage as soon as I was out of the way. And have you made acquaintance with her, John?"

"Yes," he said, succinctly, taking the basket from his mother's hand.

"Yes--is that all? But how did you introduce yourself, and what did she say, and what do you think of her? Oh dear, dear! I am afraid you must have been looking very forbidding, and frightened poor Kate--why was I away?"

"I don't think I frightened her," said John; "at least she laughed. I know I never laugh when I am frightened. She is all by herself in the big drawing-room. Take my arm, and come as quick as you can; she ought not to be left alone."

"Pretty, certainly," said the young man, as if he had been speaking of a cabbage-rose, and with looks as steady as if his heart had not been working like a steam-engine, pumping warmth and life and waves of wild fancy through all his veins.

"Mamma mia, I never see anybody so pretty now," said John, caressingly. "Perhaps if Miss Crediton lives thirty years longer, and keeps on improving every day, she may get somewhere near you at last. She has the roses and lilies, but not the same sweet eyes."

"Foolish boy," said Mrs Mitford; "her eyes are far nicer than ever mine were. Mine were only brown, like most other people's--and Kate's are the loveliest blue, and that expression in them! I thought my son would know better, if nobody else did."

"But perhaps if your son did know better, it would be the worse for him," said John, without looking at her. He put his hands into his pockets again, and stared straight before him, and attempted a little weak distracted sort of whistle as he went on; and then a strange thrill ran all over the little woman by his side. She had been dreaming of it--planning it secretly in her mind for all these days--thinking how nice a thing it would be for John, who was not one to get riches for himself, or acquire gain in this selfish world. And now, what if it had come true? What if her son, who was all hers, had at this moment, in this innocent June morning, while she, all unsuspecting, was comforting the village people--strayed off from her side for ever--taken the first step in that awful divergence which should lead him more and ever more apart into his own life, and his own house, and the arms of the wife who should supersede his mother? She bore it bravely, standing up, with a gasp in her throat and a momentary quiver of her lips and eyelids, to receive the blow. And he never knew anything about it, stalking on there with his shadow creeping sideways behind him, and his hands buried deep in his pockets; not a handsome figure, take him at his best, but yet all the world to the mother who bore him--and perhaps not much less, should she be such a woman as his mother was, to the coming wife. But surely that could never be Kate!

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?"

"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.

"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."

"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?"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet