John, A Love Story; Vol. 2 of 2

There is nothing so hard in human experience as to fit in the exceptional moments of life into their place, and bring them into a certain harmony with that which surrounds them; and in youth it is doubly hard to understand how it is that the exceptional can come only in moments. When the superlative either of misery or happiness arrives, there is nothing so difficult to an imaginative mind as to descend from that altitude and allow that the commonplace must return, and the ordinary resume its sway. And perhaps, more than any other crisis, the crisis of youthful passion and romance is the one which it is most difficult to come down from. It has wound up the young soul to an exaltation which has scarcely any parallel in life; even to the least visionary, the event which has happened--the union which has taken place between one heart and another--the sentiment which has concentrated all beauty and lovableness and desirableness in one being, and made that being his--is something too supreme and dazzling to fall suddenly into the light of common day. John Mitford was not matter of fact, and the situation to him was doubly exciting. It was attended, besides, by the disruption of his entire life; and though he would readily have acknowledged that the rest of his existence could not be passed in those exquisite pangs and delights--that mixture of absolute rapture in being with her, and visionary despair at her absence--which had made up the story of his brief courtship; yet there was in him a strong unexpressed sense that the theory of life altogether must henceforward be framed on a higher level--that a finer ideal was before him, higher harmonies, a more perfect state of being; instead of all which dreams, when he came to himself he was seated on a high stool, before a desk, under the dusty window of Mr Crediton’s bank, with the sound of the swinging door, and the voices of the public, and the crackle of notes, and the jingle of coin in his ears, and a tedious trade to learn, in which there seemed to him no possible satisfaction of any kind! When John had said--in that golden age which already seemed centuries past--that a clergyman’s was the only work worth doing, he had meant, that it was the only work for mankind in which a man could have any confidence. He had said so, while in the same breath he had expressed his want of absolute belief; and the one sentiment had not affected the other. But here he found himself in a sphere where it did not matter to any one what he believed--where he was utterly out of the way of influencing other people’s thoughts, and had none of that work within reach which seems almost indispensable to men of his training--work which should affect his fellow-men. So long as he knew that two and two make four, that seemed to be all the knowledge that was required of him. With a sense of surprise which almost stupefied him, he found that all the careful education of his life was as nought to him in his new sphere. If it did not harm him--which sometimes he thought it did--at least it was totally useless. The multiplication table was of more use than Homer or Virgil; and John’s mind was the mind of a scholar, not of an active thinker, much less doer. He was the kind of man that dwells and lingers upon the cadence of a line or the turn of a sentence--a man not always very sure which were the most real--the men and women in his books, or those he pushed against in the public ways. “We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” Fancy a man with such words in his mouth finding himself all at once a dream among dreams, gazing vaguely over a counter at the public, feeling himself utterly incapable of any point of encounter with that public such as his education and previous training suggested, except in the way of counting out money to them, or adding up the sums against them. What a wonderful, wonderful change it was! And then to come down to this from that exaltation of love’s dream--to jump into this, shivering as into an ice-cold bath, out of all the excitement of youthful plans and fancies, visions of the nobler existence, ecstasy of first betrothal! The shock was so immense that it took away his breath. He sat all silent, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy for days together, and then got his hat and walked back to the shabby little rooms he had taken on the outskirts of Camelford, stupefied, and not knowing what he was about. What was he to do when he got there? He ate his badly-cooked and painfully-homely meal, and then he would sit and stare at his two candles as he stared at the public in the bank. He did not feel capable of reading--what was the good of reading? Nothing that he had within his reach could be of any use to him in his new career, and his mind was not in a fit condition for resuming any studies or seeking out any occupation for itself. When Kate made inquiries into his life on the Sunday evenings, he found it very difficult to answer her. What could he say? There was nothing in it which was worth describing, or which it would have given her, he thought, anything but pain to know.

“But tell me, have you nice rooms--is there a nice woman to look after you?” Kate would say. “If you don’t answer me I shall have to go and see them some day when you are at the bank. I will say you are my--cousin, or something. Or perhaps if I were to tell the truth,” she added, softly, with her favourite trick, almost leaning her head against his arm, “it would interest her, and she would take more pains.”

“And what would you say if you said the truth?” said foolish John. Poor fellow! this was all he had for his sacrifice, and naturally he longed for his hire, such as it was.

“I should say, of course, that you were a nearer one still, and a dearer one,” said Kate, with a soft little laugh; “what else? but oh, John, is it not very different? That dear Fanshawe Regis, and your mother, and everything you have been used to. Is it not very, very different?” she cried, expecting that he would tell her how much more blessed were his poor lodgings and close work when brightened by the hope of her.

“Yes, it is very different,” he said, in a dreamy, dreary tone. The summer was stealing on; it was August by this time, and the days were shortening. And it was almost dark, as dark as a summer night can be, when they strayed about the garden in the High Street, which was so different from the Rectory garden. There were few flowers, but at the farther end some great lime-trees, old and vast, which made the gravel-path look like a woodland road for twenty paces or so. She could not see his face in the dark, but there was in his voice nothing of that inflection which promised a flattering end to the sentence. Kate was a little chilled, she did not know why.

“But you don’t--grudge it?” she said, softly. “Oh, John, there is something in your voice--you are not sorry you have done so much?--for nothing but me?”

“Sorry!” he said, stooping over her--“sorry to be called into life when I did not know I was living! But, Kate, if it were not for this, that is my reward for everything, I will not deny that there is a great difference. I should have been working upon men the other way; and one gets contemptuous of money. Never mind, I care for nothing while I have you.”

“I never knew any one that was contemptuous of money,” said Kate, gravely; “people here say money can do everything. That is why I want you to be rich.”

“Dear,” he said, holding her close to him, “you don’t understand, and neither did I. I don’t think I shall ever be rich. How should I, a clerk in a bank? Your father does not show me any favour, and it is not to be expected he should. Who am I, that I should try to steal his child from him? Since I have been here, Kate, there are a great many things that I begin to understand----”

“What?” she said, as he paused; raising in the soft summer dark her face to his.

“Well, for one thing, what a gulf there is between you and me!” he said; “and how natural it was that your father should be vexed. And then, Kate--don’t let it grieve you, darling--how very very unlikely it is that I shall ever be the rich man you want me to be. I thought when we spoke of it once that anything you told me to do would be easy; and so it would, if it was definite--anything to bear--if it was labouring night and day, suffering tortures for you----”

Here Kate interrupted him with a little sob of excitement, holding his arm clasped in both her hands: “Oh, John, do I want you to suffer?” she cried. “You should have everything that was best in the world if it was me----”

“But I don’t know how to grow rich--I don’t think I shall ever know,” said John, with a sigh. Up to this moment he had restrained himself and had given no vent to his feelings, but when the ice was once broken they all burst forth. The two went on together up and down under the big lime-trees, she gazing up at him, he bending down to her, as they had done in the old garden at Fanshawe when he confided his difficulties to her. He had thrust off violently that series of difficulties, abandoning the conflict, but only to let a new set of difficulties seize upon him in still greater strength than the former. And the whole was complicated by a sense that it was somehow her doing, and that a complaint of them was next to a reproach of her. But still it was not in nature, his mouth being thus opened, that John could refrain.

“I seem to be always complaining,” he said--“one time of circumstances, another time of myself; for it is of myself this time. Many a fellow would be overjoyed, no doubt, to find himself in the way of making his own fortune, but you can’t think how little good I am. I suppose I never was very bright. If you will believe me, Kate, not only shall I never make any fortune where your father has placed me, but I am so stupid that I cannot see how a man may rise out of such a position, nor how a fortune is to be made.”

“But people do it,” said Kate, eagerly; “one hears of them every day. Of course I don’t know how. It is energy or something--making up their minds to it; and of course though papa may look cross he must be favourable to you. John, you know he must. If I thought he was not, I should make him--I don’t know what I should not make him do----”

“You must not make him do anything,” said John. “You may be sure I don’t mean to give in--I shall try my best, and perhaps there may be more in me than I think. I suppose it is seeing you, and being so far apart from you, that is the worst. Except to-night--if the Sundays came, say three times in a week----”

“I don’t think I should like that,” said Kate; “but seriously, you know, don’t you like to see me?--are you--jealous?” she asked, with a little laugh. The talk had been too grave for her, and she was glad to draw it down to a lower sphere.

“If I were,” he said, with a sudden glow of passion, “I should go away. I have never faced that idea yet; but if I were--jealous, as you say----”

“What?” she cried, with the curiosity of her kind, clinging to him in the fondest proximity, yet half pleased to play with her keen little dagger in his heart.