Part 32 (1/2)

”Yes,” said she, kindly. ”How glad you must be! To have done so splendidly too--you must feel that you have realised a magnificent dream.”

”No,” said John. ”I cannot say I do. I have done the thing I meant to do, or I have good reason to believe that I have; but I have not realised my dream. I shall never write any more odes, Mrs. G.o.ddard.”

”Why not? Oh, you mean to me, Mr. Short?” she added with something of her old manner. ”Well, you know, it is much better that you should not.”

”Perhaps so,” answered John rather sadly. ”I don't know. Frankly, Mrs.

G.o.ddard, did not you sometimes think I was very foolish last Christmas?”

”Very,” she said, smiling at him kindly. ”But I think you have changed. I think you are more of a man, now--you have something more serious--”

”I used to think I was very serious, and so I was,” said John, with the air of a man who refers to the follies of his long past youth. ”Do you remember how angry I was when you wanted me to skate with Miss Nellie?”

”Oh, I only said that to teaze you,” Mrs. G.o.ddard answered. ”I daresay you would be angry now, if I suggested the same thing.”

”No,” said John quietly. ”I do not believe I should be. As you say, I feel very much older now than I did then.”

”The older we grow the more we like youth,” said Mary G.o.ddard, unconsciously uttering one of the fundamental truths of human nature, and at the same time so precisely striking the current of John's thoughts that he started. He was wondering within himself why it was that she now seemed too old for him, whereas a few short months ago she had seemed to be of his own age.

”How true that is!” he exclaimed. Mrs. G.o.ddard laughed faintly.

”You are not old enough to have reached that point yet, Mr. Short,” she said. ”Really, here we are moralising like a couple of old philosophers!”

”This is a moralising season,” answered John. ”When we last met, it was all holly-berries and Christmas and plum-pudding.”

”How long ago that seems!” exclaimed the poor lady with a sigh.

”Ages!” echoed John, sighing in his turn, but not so much for sadness, it may be, as from relief that the great struggle was over. That time of anxiety and terrible effort seemed indeed very far removed from him, but its removal was a cause of joy rather than of sadness. He sighed like a man who, sitting over his supper, remembers the hard fought race he has won in the afternoon, feeling yet in his limbs the ability to race and win again but feeling in his heart the delicious consciousness that the question of his superiority has been decided beyond all dispute.

”And now you will stay here a long time, of course,” said Mrs. G.o.ddard presently.

”I am stopping at the Hall, just now,” said John with a distinct sense of the importance of the fact, ”and after a week I shall stay here a few days. Then I shall go to London to see my father.”

”No one will be so glad as he to hear of your success.”

”No indeed. I really think it is more for his sake that I want to be actually first,” said John. ”Do you know, I have so often thought how he will look when I meet him and tell him I am the senior cla.s.sic.”

John's voice trembled and as Mrs. G.o.ddard looked at him, she thought she saw a moisture in his eyes. It pleased her to see it, for it showed that John Short had more heart than she had imagined.

”I can fancy that,” she said, warmly. ”I envy you that moment.”

Presently the squire came over to where they were sitting and joined them; and then Mrs. Ambrose spoke to John, and Nellie came and asked him questions. Strange to say John felt none of that annoyance which he formerly felt when his conversations with Mrs. G.o.ddard were interrupted, and he talked with Nellie and Mrs. Ambrose quite as readily as with her.

He felt very calm and happy that night, as though he had done with the hard labour of life. In half an hour he had realised that he was no more in love with Mrs. G.o.ddard than he was with Mrs. Ambrose, and he was trying to explain to himself how it was that he had ever believed in such a palpable absurdity. Love was doubtless blind, he thought, but he was surely not so blind as to overlook the evidences of Mrs. G.o.ddard's age.

All the dreams of that morning faded away before the sight of her face, and so deep is the turpitude of the best of human hearts that John was almost ashamed of having once thought he loved her. That was probably the best possible proof that his love had been but a boyish fancy.

What the little party at the vicarage would have been like, if John's presence had not animated it, would be hard to say. The squire and Mr.

Ambrose treated Mrs. G.o.ddard with the sort of paternal but solemn care which is usually bestowed either upon great invalids or upon persons bereaved of some very dear relation. The two elder men occasionally looked at her and exchanged glances when they were not observed by Mrs.

Ambrose, wondering perhaps what would next befall the unfortunate lady and whether she could bear much more of the excitement and anxiety to which she had of late been subjected. On the whole the conversation was far from being lively, and Mrs. G.o.ddard herself felt that it was a relief when the hour came for going home.