‘I can’t hope that you will understand me—in that respect,’ she said, with a little wave of her hand dismissing the subject. If she did not repent of her evil expectations, she was at least a little ashamed of them, and desired no recurrence to the subject. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘this is an account of all my incomings and outgoings for the last four years.’
‘I don’t want to see them,’ said John. ‘I am sure you have always done what was best for me.’
‘And, for the future, here is the statement of what you have at your disposal. Surely, at least, you will look at that.’
‘Mother,’ said John, ‘if it is anything worth counting, couldn’t you take it, and get a little rest? All this upon your shoulders from year to year, never any ease or repose, must wear you out. Why don’t you give up, and take Susie to see a little of the world—of course I don’t know if there’s enough for that,’ he added, hastily, with momentary confusion.
‘Mother, didn’t I tell you!’ said Susie, a flush of pleasure rising over her face.
‘It was not necessary for anyone to tell me. There never was any want of generosity,’ said Mrs. Sandford, in a sort of aside. And then she added, ‘Thank you, John. It is very good of you to make the offer: but I’m used to the hospital, and I’m not used to rest. I don’t think I should like it. And my father and mother would like you to have the full enjoyment of your own. There is not very much, but it will always be a comfortable addition to what you can make. There is about two hundred a year, everything put together. And I have as much—that is to say, Susie will have as much as soon as she makes up her mind to do anything independent—in the way of marriage or—any other way.’
At this, Susie turned away with another flush of agitation and embarrassment. Susie was now twenty-six, a mature young woman. And perhaps by times there had come across her mind desires such as maturity brings, to adopt some independent career for herself. It was apparent even to John’s eyes, which were not by any means acute in respect to the doings of others, that there had been moments recently in which the idea of marriage had been in consideration between the mother and daughter, but he had never been told anything about it, nor who the suitor was. And there had also been floating ideas in Susie’s head of joining a sisterhood, and thus consecrating herself to the service of the sick, to whom she was now a volunteer and unofficial ministrant. But nothing had come of that any more than the other. She was in a state of mental commotion, awaiting that development which nature craves, and uneasy, feeling herself no longer a girl to be swayed by the natural law of obedience and submission, but old enough to decide and act for herself: save only that she could not decide how to act. Her mother’s words seemed to her a reproach. She turned away; then, coming back again with an effort, laid one hand upon John’s arm and one upon Mrs. Sandford.
‘Mother,’ she said. ‘We’re both honest, both John and me. He can do for himself, and I, so far as I can see, will never be able to make up my mind to do anything for myself. Why won’t you take us at our word, and take grandfather’s money, and, for the first time in your life, rest?’
The three were all very different. John, perhaps, in his confidence of young manhood, and that consciousness of being entirely a satisfactory person, which cannot fail to have a certain influence on a young man’s way of looking both at himself and others, was now the one most like his mother—and yet he was not like her. While Susie, with her soft eyes, her soft manner, her little flutter of indecision, was as unlike as possible in sentiment, though her features were almost identical with those of the self-controlled and serious woman, with so many responsibilities on her head, and so distinct a grasp of them all, whom she was imploring to take up that softer task, to retire, and accept the generosity of her children and repose from her labours. Mrs. Sandford looked the tallest of the three, not indeed in fact, though she was taller for a woman than John was for a man—but certainly in nature, in sentiment, in the impression which her still graceful, slight figure, her head carried high, her general air of authority, gave. She looked from one to another with a smile, in which there was (to Susie) indulgent toleration of miscomprehension, to John, a little indifference to what he might think at all.
‘Circumstances alter everything,’ she said; ‘if I were really an old woman wanting rest I might take it from you. But I am not. I am as able for my work as either of you. I like it, and if you gave me your money you might have to wait a long time before it came back to you. All these things are against Susie’s proposal. And as for John——’
He looked at her with the opposition in his eyes which had never been quenched since the moment they had met at the little station at Edgeley, on the day his grandmother died.
‘What of John?’ he said.
‘Only that nobody at your age can say what chances a few days may bring forth; what occasion there may be for the support of the little fortune he has a right to, however little it may be. Let us leave this subject for something that will interest you more. John, your grandfather’s house has not been sold, though I had thought it better to do so, had the opportunity occurred. But, as it happens, the opportunity has never occurred. It is yours, now, to do what you like with it, and the tenant who has been in it is going away. I have thought that perhaps you would like to go—and see for yourself what is best to be done. You have still friends there: and you have had few holidays—few amusements.’
There was a certain compunction in her voice—but John could not observe what there was in her voice, for the sudden haze of recollection, and all the old images and thoughts that came back and enveloped him in an atmosphere so different from this. The old house so little and peaceful, the old couple by the fire, the garden full of sunshine with the old gardener pottering about, and the old lady with her tender smile, gathering the flowers. It was not that he remembered all these long past and half-forgotten things. They returned to him as if the sphere of living had rolled round, and he had come to the former times once more. How strange out of the matron’s room in this huge London hospital, out of the engineer’s busy surroundings, the office, the plans, the succession of big undertakings and journeys all over the world, to return back in a moment to that tranquil living once again! He was roused from this momentary realisation of the past, by Susie’s soft voice saying, with a wistful tone in it, ‘I should like to go with you, John.’
CHAPTER VIII.
A NIGHT ADVENTURE.
John walked home to his lodging full of many thoughts. It cannot be unpleasant to anyone to find himself in possession of something unexpected, which can be called even a little fortune. Two hundred a year is not much, but it is a steady backing for a young man, bent, as John was, on making his way as well in money and worldly affairs as in matters of higher meaning. He appreciated the advantage, being full of good sense and practical faculty, and felt his foot the lighter on the pavement, and his spirit the more buoyant for it. Everything bore a very different aspect to him from the day when in his desolate boyhood he had discovered with a pang that he had no right even to what might eventually belong to him, nothing to do with it all, no power to keep the old house in monumental rest and quiet, in memory of its departed inhabitants; which had been his first thought. He was aware now that nothing could have been more foolish than such an idea, and that the despite and despair which filled his bosom at that time were boyish, childish, unworthy. He felt ashamed, now that he was a man in full independence, having surmounted all these miseries, of the petulance, the bitterness, the misery of the boy. He had thought then that his grievances were beyond enduring, that happiness was over for him, that the shadow of the injustice and unkindness with which he had been treated would never pass away from his life. He could not but smile at that fond impression as he walked home with light elastic step, everything so clear round him, his head full of fine undertakings, his heart at ease. A faint sense of shame as of having perhaps been unjust to his mother, only subdued his self-satisfaction. When he recollected the days in which it had been difficult to think of her save as Emily, a flush of self-annoyance, of self-condemnation went over him; and yet it had been natural that he should have that feeling. Now he had, like everybody else, a high respect for his mother. She filled her position with a dignity which elevated it. She was universally respected. He could not but feel that she was a woman worthy of all honour: and he had the satisfaction of knowing that she, who had begun with so much distrust and suspicion, had been forced to respect him. They had mutually achieved each other’s respect, and there was a certain friendliness between them. This was the furthest extent however to which John’s domestic affections had gone. He was fond, very fond of Susie: she was always sweet, always nice, pleasant to talk to, pleasant to look at, ever kind. But who could imagine the matron’s sitting-room to be home? It had never been home, or taken any homelike aspect to the boy; to the man it was the lodging of his nearest relations, just as his rooms, wherever they might be, were his own lodging—nothing more. Home did not exist in his world, save in imagination and memory. He was free of all such ties as he walked on this particular night, which was a night in May, from the one place of residence to the other. His own rooms were better than those with the horse-hair and red and blue covers of his boyhood. They had not even any associations in their favour, from that growing time. They had not been the scene of those evening studies which had made him what he was. They were more comfortable, in a better situation, but absolutely unconnected with anything save the most material side of life.
His life itself was much the same as his lodging. It was full of pleasant activity, and exercise, and employment. He had nothing to disturb him. He had been for some time earning quite enough for his needs, though he was still so young. But he did not feel young, having been upon the world, so to speak, so long, and having lived so much alone. His mind was full of engineering, of calculations, of expedients for carrying his road or his railway over a certain difficult pass, for getting the span of his bridge exact, for taking advantage of the geological formations of the country in which some special piece of work was going on, utilising the clay to make bricks, the wood for sleepers, to save time and the money of the firm. With these thoughts were mingled swift glances at many a problem, passing gleams of insight and understanding, but little that was more interesting; his heart had been quenched in his youth, and all that belonged to it pushed out of place. The process had been a hard one, and he had suffered much while it was going on: but it had been accomplished more than anyone would have thought possible who had known of John Sandford’s youthful life between the two old people who loved him in their old home. He was a man now, and as nearly living by the mind alone, and for the pursuits of the intelligence and reason without any softer intermixture, as any man of his age could be.
Yet, as he went along over the bridge with the fresh air blowing in his face, full of plans and purposes mostly theoretical or material, and with that buoyant consciousness of well-being and well-doing, of merit and the reward of merit in his whole being, little breaks of sentiment came in. Edgeley, which he had not seen so long, the dear, little old house which most likely would seem so shrunken and small, the rectory where he had been so familiar, and Elly—Elly who had kissed him so sedately when he bade her good-bye. A little quiver of silent laughter went over him now at the thought of that simple token of half-childish affection. It was strange to think how Elly would receive him when he went back—not with a kiss, that was certain. Would it be with the same friendship as of old? There had been changes at Edgeley, yet not anything to make a break in the perfection of the picture. Mr. Cattley had lately (and against his will, John felt sure) been promoted to a living; and Percy was coming as curate in his stead. Percy, the curate! that made him laugh within himself once more. He wondered if Percy would be as of old when he was one of the other boys—or if he would think John Sandford, the young engineer, not good enough for the close relations of schoolboy times. John smiled at this, with the smile of conscious worth, not likely to be moved one way or another by what Percy might think. But it would be curious to go back in so different a guise and position to that old familiar scene. He was glad to think of taking Susie for a holiday anywhere, but perhaps if truth were to be told he would rather have taken her anywhere else than there. With home she had no associations. She would interfere, even though she was too gentle, too unassuming, to interfere consciously, with a scene she had nothing to do with, and into which her image had never come. And he dismissed that mild image somewhat summarily from his thoughts. After all, she would be no more than a bystander. The interest of this revival of old associations lay entirely with himself.
He had to pass the office on the way to his rooms. It was in Great George Street, and all was very quiet, not very well lighted by the lamps, silent and vacant, with scarcely a light anywhere in the windows. There was a lamp, however, near Messrs. Barrett’s door, and he saw, for some time before he came up, a figure seated on the steps. What was anyone doing there? With a keen sense of proprietorship in the place, and a determination to have no loiterers about, John went up to the door. As it happened it was not one figure but two, dimly made visible by the lamp, one sitting half-erect propped up against the door, the other bending over him, calling him, shaking him occasionally.
‘Come along, can’t ye: take my arm, you’ll soon get your legs again. Get up, don’t ye ’ear me? This ain’t a place to stay.’
‘Let me alone,’ moaned the other, feebly, ‘I can go no further.’
‘Come along,’ cried the first. ‘Hi, mate! Don’t you go off to sleep, it’s dreadful bad for you. Take hold of my arm and come along. They won’t let you stay quiet here.’
John came up in time to hear some murmurings of this talk. He went forward briskly, with distinct determination to secure public order and quiet.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, in a voice which, though it was peremptory, was too fresh and cheerful to be terrible. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s my mate as is uneasy on his legs,’ explained a man, whose face was not visible, and who did not seem to have much greater command of his legs than his mate; and he added, hastily, ‘It ain’t drink. A man that likes his glass as well as ’ere another is my mate, but it’s strangeness like. He’s’—here he turned round, put his hand before his mouth, and whispered hoarsely, with alcoholic breath—‘he’s out o’——, out o’ quod after fourteen year. Lord bless us, it’s you!’
John, too, started a little as the blear face became visible to him in the wavering light of the lamp, which a brisk air was blowing about. He had nearly made the same exclamation. He stepped back a pace, and said, curtly,
‘Yes, it’s me: you had better move on, you and your mate, before the policeman comes.’
‘Give us a bob,’ said the man, ‘for the sake o’ old times. Lor’, to think I should ha’ seen you so long ago, and al’ays when I was engaged in what ye may call a good work. Give us a bob, sir, for luck, and because what I’m doing is charity. He hasn’t got his legs, poor beggar. He’s dazed like, and a little drop o’ drink’s done for him. He couldn’t get no furder. Thinks he’s got home and a-going to turn in and make himself comfortable; that’s what he thinks.’
And there was a harsh laugh. Of all places to be taken for home, where a man might make himself comfortable, the steps leading up to that securely-closed door, to the empty and dark house in which there was nothing but business, no human habitation, not even the possible succour of a poor housekeeper—was about the most terrible and extraordinary. John looked at the almost unconscious figure of the man leaning up against the door, gaming a certain support from the recess it formed and the corner of the woodwork, with a pity in which there was a sort of derision, too. Could any wretchedness and friendlessness be greater than that which sought refuge in the doorway of an empty, black, and echoing office? The poorest cottage would have represented something more human.
‘Look here,’ said John, ‘you know as well as I do that he can’t stop here. Can’t you get him away? Don’t you live somewhere where you can take him—if—if he’s a friend of yours?’
‘No, I don’t live nowhere,’ said the man. ‘The likes of me don’t live more one place nor another. We likes change we do: but give me a bob and I’ll soon get him a lodging. I don’t say it’ll be so easy getting him there, for he ain’t used to the streets, and he’s dazed like, and a little drop of drink, a matter of nothing, a thimbleful’s done for him. Young chap,’ added the man, sinking his voice, ‘that man was born a gentleman, talks like you do when he’s hisself, and knows a lot. But when a man once goes over the traces that don’t do nothing for him, not a bit. Young ’un, you mind what I say.’
There was a tipsy gravity about this admonition which, blended with the pity and the horror, took away all inclination to laugh, although the situation was miserably ludicrous too.
‘This is the third time I’ve seen you,’ said John. ‘Last time you were working at a foundry.’
‘For a little bit,’ said the man, ‘but I’m not one to settle nowhere, that’s the truth. You see I never had no start to speak of, not like him there. I’ve al’ays been about the streets. It don’t make much difference in the end, if once you take to them sort of ways. See, there’s the p’liceman coming on, marching as if he was a whole regiment. Hi, mate! Wake up, there’s a good fellow. Wake up, I tell you. Ye can’t go to sleep on a doorstep. Hi, mate! I say.’
‘What’s the matter, sir?’ said the policeman, coming up; and at the same time a cab, driving along without a fare, drew up to see if anything which might produce a shilling or an excitement was going on in this dark corner. The policeman threw the light of his lantern upon the face of the man who, half asleep, half stupefied, leaned up against the corner of the door. Notwithstanding the dazed condition in which the unfortunate man was, the face was not in the least like that of his miserable companion or his kind. It was clear-cut in features and mild in expression, a sort of humorous smile about the mouth, the air as of a man taking his ease in the attitude with which he leaned back upon the hard support of the door. White eyelids, which seemed to conceal large and somewhat prominent eyes, with very light eyelashes, showed the extremely fair complexion, which exposure had browned and reddened in the lower part of his face. He was dressed in decent clothes of an old-fashioned cut. Altogether, he was much more like the victim than the mate of the hoarse ruffian, who kept bawling in his ears, and from time to time shaking him roughly by the arm.
‘I can’t tell you,’ said John; ‘I found the two on the steps of the office to which I belong. I can’t have them here. What can be done? The other man looks—respectable, don’t you think?’
‘I say, clear out of there,’ said the policeman, whose inspection of John’s first acquaintance had not been satisfactory. ‘Let’s have a look at the gentleman. Well, he’s had too much to drink, sir, so far as I can see. He is not one as I’ve ever seen about. He is a bit queer to look at. Them clothes is droll, to say the least, but decent enough so far as I can see.’
He was guarded, as became an official and representative of the law.
‘They’re fourteen years old,’ said the other man, ‘and that makes a difference in clo’es an’ most other things. He’s put them on to-day for the first time for fourteen year. Look at ’im. He’s come out o’ quod, poor beggar, and did not know nobody, and happened on me. I knew ’im onst, it don’t matter where. I’ve been taking him about for old acquaintance sake. And he’s dazed like, and no command over his legs, and a little drop o’ drink done for him. I call him my mate, along o’ this that we’ve been together in the same place. But he’s a born gentleman, as ye’d see if once you heard him talk: only not being used to it—a little drop of drink——’
‘You’ve been and hocussed him,’ said the policeman, with a sudden grasp of the man’s arm.
‘No, by—— No,—— my soul, if I ever——’ said the fellow, pouring out a flood of ready oaths.
The hoarse profanity, the entreaties and remonstrance of the rude voice, which made a clamour in the air of the night, roused the slumberer in the doorway to a state of half consciousness. He raised himself a little, and blinking at the light of the lantern with large, mild, light-coloured eyes, which were humorous and genial even in their stupefied condition, began to address the group around him with a smile.
‘It’s only—Joe,’ he said; ‘there’s not much harm in—Joe. He’s a—a—confirmed offender and all that. Never could get a—ticket; but he’s faithful, faithful—not bad company—on the whole. I take Joe—under my protection. I’ve a little money. Let him have—a comfortable bed—like mine,’ he added, falling back again with a smile full of good humour, yet not without a touch of ridicule in it, which seemed more conscious than the speaker was, and which touched the little group around with a curious mixture of feeling, subduing the tone even of the policeman, who looked at John with a bewildered air.
‘I could take him to the station, sir,’ he said, paying no attention to the exclamations of Joe, who evidently felt himself entirely rehabilitated and restored to the good opinions of his fellows by this strange statement: ‘he’d be safe enough there.’
‘It seems a pity,’ said John.
‘It do seem a pity,’ agreed the guardian of the night. ‘He don’t look a bad sort, though he’s been in trouble.’
Those who have been ‘in trouble’ come more natural to policemen than to those more prejudiced members of society who have no connection with the criminal classes. They stood round, looking at the unconscious, slumbering face supported against the blackness of the door, and lighted up still with the lingering remains of that conscious, self-ridiculing smile.
Now John’s old lodgings which he had abandoned, as he rose in the world, were near, and he felt a great melting of the heart over this man, whose face was so full of better things, yet who in all the world seemed to have only the wretched vagrant Joe, hoarse and ragged and miserable, to stand his friend. He was somewhat apt to act upon impulse, though his impulses were seldom of this reckless kind.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘a house where he might have a lodging: but how to get him there—for it does not seem possible to rouse him.’
‘Here you are, sir,’ cried the cabman from behind, who was almost as hoarse as Joe. ‘I’ll take the gentl’man. If the bobby will lend us a hand to get him into the cab——’
‘Lor’, I’ll get him on his feet in a moment,’ cried Joe. And presently by the help of John, the policeman affording such assistance as his lantern could supply, the half-smiling, half-sleeping unfortunate was got into the cab and slowly driven away, John following as in a dream. He had responded to Joe’s hoarse entreaty for ‘a bob,’ and he had bestowed another upon the unsoliciting but not unexpectant policeman. He was glad when he shook them all off, and found himself alone again, following the slow movement of the cab, which crept along keeping him within sight. What was this responsibility he was taking upon his shoulders? He laughed to himself after a moment at the curious sense of something new, something of undefined importance to which he was committing himself. What was it, after all, finding a night’s shelter in a decent house for a friendless being who could not concern him after, to whom he was but acting the part of the Samaritan? What more was there to say?
CHAPTER IX.
GOING BACK.
It was with some difficulty that John persuaded his old landlady to take in his unfortunate protégé. But the woman had a great respect for the young man who had done so well, and allowed herself finally to be induced to do a charity, which was what he assured her it would be, at a rate of payment double that which she could have procured in the ordinary way. He went home with a curious commotion in his heart. The incident was quite new in his experience. He had never been deaf to the appeals of charity. When any of the men at the works got hurt, when there was sickness or death among them, John was known to be always ready to contribute what he could for the comfort of the sufferers or the relief of the widow. This was almost the only manner in which it had come in his way to help his fellow-creatures. To enter of his own accord into schemes of beneficence had not occurred to him. He had shrunk even from the undertakings which Percy Spencer, when in London, had told him of, in which young men were working for the poor. John, though he was not at all humble-minded in ordinary ways, had a certain diffidence and modesty in this. He had not been conscious of any capacity in himself to exercise ‘a good influence.’ He knew too much and too little to take it up in good faith as these young men did—too much of himself, too little of the others. What he could do to help an individual who came in his way, or whom he knew, he did quietly, and this chiefly in material ways; paying rent, sending for a doctor, helping to set up a little shop, or buy a mangle. This he could do; but he could not ‘exercise a good influence:’ or, at all events, he was timid and did not try. He paid doubly and beforehand for the hesitations and alarms of his old landlady, who took in with so much doubt this poor gentleman, who was not in a condition to take care of himself, and promised to make up for any damage he might do, should she suffer by her charity; but John did not feel any desire to talk, or to give him good advice.
The man was got not without difficulty to bed. His aspect to the young man seemed quite different from that of the ordinary sinners in the same way, whom he had seen often enough. He had a confused look of kindness and that jovial good-nature which appears in the Bacchanalian literature of the past, not like the sodden misery of drunkenness in the present time. Perhaps this social vice, which is so terrible in its consequences, has changed its characteristics, like other things. The man seemed to have the merry twinkle in his eyes when he opened them now and then, the humorous consciousness as of a bizarre and irresponsible condition which was not culpable, which belonged to an age when indulgence was common and supposed to be a venial fault, and associated with all sorts of fun and good-fellowship. Tipsiness bears no such aspect now: it is dull, sodden, miserable, a shame to see. The victim in the present case was as different as possible from the brutal drunkards, the wretched, pale, self-conscious sinners of a higher sphere, whom John had beheld with scorn from his eminence of youthful virtue. His eyes were not blear and sodden, as the eyes of such offenders are now-a-days, the gleam of mirth in them had no guilty look. ‘If you think I don’t see how ridiculous it all is, you are mistaken,’ they seemed to say.
To think that John should ever have been moved to an almost sympathetic amusement by the looks of a man whom he had picked up in a state of intoxication in the street—to think that he should have been so much touched by his appearance as to pick the man up, to transport him to this familiar place, to exert himself so distinctly on behalf of an ex-convict, a criminal, a drunkard! How was it? he could not tell: and yet, after he had seen the unhappy man lying quietly asleep, John went away with a curious emotion in his heart. For one thing, the being to whom we have been kind, whom we have effectually served, always acquires an interest to the mind; our own consciousness of bounty, of charity, still more of mercy, throwing a favourable light on the recipient of it. And John said to himself that to have left a man who had at least the remains of something better about him, who had come out of prison perhaps with the intention of leading a different life, in the hands of such a coarse ruffian as Joe, was a thing which no one would willingly do. It was found, too, by the curiosity of the landlady, who emptied the poor man’s pockets in order that John might see that all was safe, that he had a considerable sum of money in his possession, which was a very strong reason why he should not be handed over in a helpless condition to the tender mercies of a penniless frequenter of the streets. John would not look over the contents of his protégé’s pocket. He saw and counted the money at the woman’s request, but the other things he folded away in a sealed packet, with that high sense of the sacredness of personal belongings which is peculiarly strong in youth.
And then he went home with the consciousness of having done a good action, which is also peculiar to his age, making his heart and step still more buoyant. It was a sort of seal to all his well-being, to his majority, to his new and complete independence. On this first day of perfect manhood (as he thought) to have served a fellow-creature, to have perhaps delivered a soul out of pressing danger, anyhow to have secured the poor man’s safety and that of his money till he should be fit to look after himself. Poor old fellow, what a pity! Was it possible he could have nobody to take care of him? And what, with that cheerful, humorous face so full of good temper and geniality, could he have done to merit imprisonment for fourteen years? John, whose conscious life was almost included in that term, shivered as he thought of it. To be shut up in prison for fourteen years, and then to come out of it, and find no friendly face, no hand to meet his, but only those of Joe!
Next day, however, John was sent away to look after some work which was going on at a distance, and when that was completed the time had arrived when his leave of absence began, and he was free to go to Edgeley. The press of work, and then the rush of other interests and commotion, drove the poor man whom he had succoured out of his mind. He had intended vaguely to go to Mrs. Bentley’s to inquire after him when he returned to town; but with the visit to Edgeley before him, and all the rising of things new and old in his mind, it was not wonderful if this momentary interest failed. A vague surprise that the man himself had taken no notice, also went across the surface of his thoughts, but this he soon perceived was somewhat unreasonable, since there was little ground for thinking that he was at all aware who his helper was, or whether in reality anything had been done for him. John had scarcely time indeed to think of the matter at all, until he was travelling, in the seclusion of a railway-carriage to Edgeley, a moment in which all the omissions and forgetfulness of an immediate past are apt to come into our heads. But they did not last long in John’s. He was going—back. He could not call it home, after four years—having in the meantime no knowledge, save by letters at long intervals, as to what the changes were which he might find there. Susie had excused herself from accompanying him, but had promised to follow in a day or two, and John had secured for himself a lodging at Mrs. Sibley’s, where Mr. Cattley still was. The very names gave him a thrill of feeling: to pronounce them lightly again as everyday matters seemed so strange. The first return after a long absence is not like any other. When it becomes a matter of use and wont to go and come, the mind gets accustomed to the thought that life goes on in many places at a time, almost entirely unaffected by its own presence and absence. But to John the village had been suspended in a sort of crystal of memory since ever he left, and, although he knew this was impossible, he half expected he should find it so suspended, only to be restored to the current of a progressive existence on his return.
He travelled by night, as busy men do, and he could almost have believed that this fancy was real, when he arrived in the early morning and found the houses still half asleep, opening their eyes and shutters, awaking to life as he came back. He had put his portmanteau on the omnibus (which was something new; there had been no omnibus when he left), and walked across the common in the early glory of the morning, everything so fresh and sweet around him. The hedgerow on the one side, and the tufts of bushes and low trees on the other, were all glistening with the early dew. There were many fine things in London, and the trees in the parks were looking their best and freshest in the May weather, but John reflected that either there was no dew there, or else it fell when nobody knew, or—a still less poetical explanation, it became so black with the soot in it that it was more like ink than dew upon the leaves. But here it was a sort of elixir of life, so pure and glistening, every drop like a little heaven. He walked on slowly, willing to put off the realisation of the world he had known so well, now that he found this world so near to him. A thousand nameless odours seemed to be going up to heaven: the smell of the fresh earth, of the growing grass, of the heather that began to push upward in strong green bushes, of the gorse unfolding its honey blossoms, of the sweet briar in the hedge: and along with all these an indefinite sweetness of the morning which could not be explained, which was partly physical and partly spiritual, a sweetness that went into the very soul. John could not but remember the many times he had come along this way: but his recollections were winterly, or they were pictures of the night, when the village lights had been shining, and the common lost in the darkness. Above all he recollected the silent drives he had taken with his mother to and fro, when he had met her for the first time, when he had disowned her and called her Emily, a memory which made his cheek burn and sting; but it was not his fault. He did not think of her as Emily any longer. He respected her and all she said and did: but his heart was not much nearer to her than when he had sat by her side with his head turned the other way, in a concentrated still opposition to her and all her ways.
These recollections and reflections chilled him a little as he walked along; but soon happier thoughts came. The scenes of his old life began to pass before him like a succession of pictures. Mr. Cattley’s room, with all the books lying about, and the two photographs, her own and John’s, which Elly had fastened over the curate’s mantelpiece when they ended their lessons—would they still be there in the same place? and how had Mr. Cattley made up his mind to go away? and how was it possible to imagine Percy at the reading-desk and in the pulpit as Mr. Cattley’s successor? This thought made John laugh. And then he seemed to see the rectory garden rolling out before him, and Elly and himself coming so very quietly down the walk after that kiss which had been such a solemnity. Would she recollect that, and grow red (as John felt himself to do all alone in the soft, uninquisitive light of the May morning), when she met him again? and had she remembered what she had said about the pear-tree and her algebra, which she was to study there? She was never very good at her algebra: that was the very best thing she could have been doing when she wanted to think of John. He came along smiling, thinking of all that, not of the old house and the old people, which were too sacred, which were put off to a time when he should be less conscious of the curiosity and amusement and wonder of coming back to the old place, and seeing it awake, as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ must have seen the world awake round her, rubbing its eyes and stretching forth after years of suspended animation, taking up once more its natural life.
The ‘Green Man’ stood open, but not with the dissipated air, the look of tremendous wickedness and riot which it once had borne. He thought it an innocent-looking little village alehouse now, with no harm about it: and Johnson, blinking over his early pipe at the door, no monster at all, not even bloated, but very much like other men. Mrs. Box had finished taking down her shutters, and the perambulator stood at her door just as of old, and the milkman was coming along with his shining cans, looking up and shading his eyes from the sun, as he looked in obedience to a question from the woman he was serving, as to who the gentleman was who was crossing the road towards Mrs. Sibley’s. ‘One o’ Mr. Percy’s friends,’ the milkman said, by way of maintaining his character for universal knowledge, yet not committing himself. It was curious to John to see that nobody recognised him, neither the porter at the station nor the postman whom he met, and whom he felt so strong an inclination to stop and ask for the letters as of old. He felt pleased, and yet a little troubled and somewhat desolate. The great difference there must be in him he took for granted must be to his advantage: and yet it was dismal to pass like a stranger through a place which he knew so well.
Mrs. Sibley, however, who expected him, knew John, and received him with an enthusiastic welcome, and in due time so did Mr. Cattley, who hurried downstairs, half-dressed, to grasp his old pupil by the hand.
‘Is it possible that it is you, John? I doubt, really, whether I should have known you. You have grown a great deal, and got a very manly look. Are you really only twenty-one? I should have thought you four or five years older if I had not known.’
‘I’ve been knocking a great deal about the world,’ said John.
He was pleased to be supposed to look older, like most lads of his age.
‘Yes, I know. I’ve always looked up on the map where you were, to tell Elly. She likes to see the exact place and find out all about it. You’ve not—no; of course you cannot have seen Elly since you came?’
‘I have come straight from the station,’ said John. ‘I did not so much as see anyone stirring at the windows in the rectory as I passed.’
‘I am surprised at that,’ said the curate. ‘She was so anxious to be the first to see you. She had half a mind to go to the station. But I thought it better not, and on the whole so did she, for Percy—that is to say, he is apt to take fancies in his head.’
‘What fancy could he take into his head?’ John asked, ‘that could concern me?’
The curate cleared his throat, and after a moment changed the subject as well as he could.
‘You find me still here, John, though perhaps I should have gone before now. For my part I daresay I should have stayed on all my life: but when Percy got old enough to hold the curacy it seemed to be thought that I should go.’
‘I am sure they will all miss you dreadfully,’ said John.
‘Do you think so?’ said Mr. Cattley, with doubt in his tone. He sighed a little, but then cheered up again. ‘Well, perhaps it is true that I ought to go. I’ve been here a long time, and perhaps, as Mr. Egerton says, if I delay longer—but I’m a man of use and wont, John, perhaps too much so—perhaps too much so.’ Mr. Cattley sighed softly again, then roused himself, and added, with sudden briskness, ‘But you must want your breakfast—of course after travelling all night you want your breakfast. Mrs. Sibley, I hope you have been thinking of Mr. John’s breakfast—for you know he has been travelling all night.’
‘It’s quite ready, sir,’ said Mrs. Sibley, ‘and a pleasure it is, sir, if you’ll excuse me saying it, to see him again.’
‘Why should I excuse you saying it? It is the most natural thing in the world to say. We all think it a pleasure. And tell me, John,’ said the curate, ‘do you find this night travelling suit you? I know business people think it saves time, but it seems to me to knock you up next day.’
‘I have been so used to it,’ said John. ‘I don’t mind. I can sleep nearly as well as if I were in bed. In some places where I have been, all the best trains go by night, and in America, where the distances are so great, you have to make up your mind to travel night and day.’
‘Dear me, what a traveller you have grown,’ said Mr. Cattley. ‘It is astonishing to look at you and to think you have been in America and at the ends of the earth.’
John laughed a little and settled his collar, and felt the superiority of his position.
‘I have been about a great deal,’ he said, with conscious modesty. He could not but feel that he was coming back in the way he had wished and anticipated, with colours flying and drums beating, and the certainty of having done not only as well as anyone could have done, but far better than could have been expected. Mr. Cattley unwillingly going away to his living, and Percy stepping into the post which had been kept thus warm for him, were fulfilling the ordinary law of nature. But John might just as well have done nothing in particular, have contented himself with holding his place and no more. He sat down at the table in the old bow-windowed room, where all his early education had been given him, with a still warmer thrill of self-approval. It is so seldom that one can feel one’s self to have done more than one’s duty. The two little photographs were still over the mantelpiece where Elly had placed them. The room was exactly the same as it had always been: yet in himself what a difference! But the difference in his case was all for the better. It was not perhaps altogether the same with Mr. Cattley. And with the others, too, how would it be?
CHAPTER X.
THE WELCOME.
‘Hullo, Jack, is this really you?’
The speaker was the Rev. Percy Spencer, as completely arrayed a curate as could be found in all the parishes of England. John sprang up from his seat, and contemplated him with an amused scrutiny which suddenly ended in a burst of laughter. Percy did not refuse to join a little, but only a little, in the laugh, conscious of the difference between his long clerical coat and high waistcoat, and the soft hat he held in his hands, and those gayer garments, resplendent ties and canes in the height of the fashion, which had distinguished him in his university days. John had not seen him since he had assumed the severe simplicity of this priestly garb, and he was willing to allow a momentary merriment; but he soon resumed the little air of seriousness and responsibility which became his position.
‘I daresay,’ he said, ‘you find me a little changed; so I am. It makes a vast difference on a man, on his feelings as well as on his clothes, when he becomes a priest. But, all the same, I’m delighted to see you, and I hope Cattley has given you a good breakfast after your journey.’
Cattley! John, notwithstanding that he felt himself rather a fine fellow, had preserved, probably because of having been so far removed from the scene of them, all the traditions and reverential usages of his youth, and to have called his old tutor Cattley would have been no more possible to him than to have thrown stones at the old church-tower which presided over the village. Percy, too, thought himself a fine fellow, a much finer fellow than John, and the young layman naturally saw the absurd aspect of that conviction in the person of the young priest.
‘I am very well,’ he said, ‘I have had a capital breakfast, and everything here looks delightful and like itself—even Mr. Cattley; only you and I have changed, I think.’
‘You’re not so big as you promised to be,’ said Percy, with satisfaction. ‘I thought you’d have grown twice that height. Dick is six foot, don’t you know. That’s all very well for one in a family, but you can’t go on doing it. I suppose you’re going now to see—Aunt Mary? You’re expected, of course. Cattley, there’s a good fellow, do put me up a little to the manners and customs of Feather Lane.’
‘If I go now will it be too early for—the ladies?’ said John, ‘as I see you’ve got business on hand.’
‘Oh, not at all; no business in particular; only I’m taking hold of the work, and Cattley is giving it up. Things are a little different, don’t you know, from what they were when he took it up. I daresay I shall have to make changes,’ Percy said.
‘Every new man does that,’ said mild Mr. Cattley, ‘and undoes them again two or three times probably before he finds the right way.’
‘I hope,’ said Percy, ‘I shan’t be so long about it as that; but if you’re ready, Jack, I’ll step along with you. You mightn’t find Aunt Mary by yourself. She’s busier than ever in the parish, more busy than she has any occasion to be; but ladies seldom attain the juste milieu.’
Mr. Cattley’s eyes flashed a little at this, but he only permitted himself to say,
‘You must give up those pretty speeches about ladies if you mean to do much good in the parish. Shall I see you back to dinner, John?’
‘They’re sure to keep him to lunch,’ said Percy, not sorry to pay back to ‘Old Cattley’ an answering prick: for the curate, in deference perhaps to Mrs. Sibley, had always continued to call his mid-day meal his dinner. ‘Hadn’t you better come too? Aunt Mary will want both of you; and then you can tell her yourself when you are going away. I hope I can give as good as I get,’ said this young ecclesiastic, as he led the way out of the house. ‘Old Cattley is too much of a good thing with his advices and his prophecies, as if we had not learnt a thing or two since his time. And he doesn’t want to go, don’t you know, not a bit. He has hung on here years longer than he ought to have done. My father did not mind waiting till I was ready to step in; but an old fellow like that is quite out of date for a curate. I’ll have a great deal of trouble to work the parish into what’s wanted now.’
‘Perhaps I don’t know what’s wanted now,’ said John, with some suppressed resentment. ‘I always thought Mr. Cattley the model of everything a clergyman should be.’
‘That’s a very nice little speech,’ said the Rev. Percy; ‘but, bless your heart, he’s not a churchman at all—not a bit of him. Even Aunt Mary sees it now. He’s so much her slave, that she has always stuck to him, but I think even she sees it now.’
There was a little pause, and then John said, falteringly,
‘I hope Mrs. Egerton is quite well?’
‘Oh! she’s well enough, thanks. She’s grown stout. Ladies of her age generally do. She likes to mess about in the parish, and Cattley has always given in to her: but I mean to put my foot down, and make an end of that sort of thing. I shall have it entirely in my hands, of course; for my father, you know, doesn’t trouble himself much to interfere.’
‘And I hope the rector is—quite well?’ said John.
‘Oh, thanks, he’s well enough.’
There was not a word of Elly on the one side nor the other. John felt a chill, so far as he was concerned, which he could not himself understand. He had been so full of her, thinking more of her than of all the rest of the village put together. And now he did not even inquire for her! He walked along the road under the fresh green of the trees, while Percy entered more largely into all the new things he was about to do. John did not take very much interest in it. It would have pleased him a great deal more to hear the simplest thing about her whose name he had not ventured to pronounce. It was but a short way between Mr. Cattley’s door and the rectory, but Percy had managed to unfold a great many of his plans, and show clearly enough that he meant to turn the parish upside down, before they reached the door. John, to tell the truth, gave but a very distracted attention. His eyes were inspecting the house, every window and opening. It seemed so strange that she should not at least be looking out for him somewhere, expecting him. Elly! Why, she had been about the same as a sister. She had been more than his sister: she had been his comrade and play-fellow: and to think that he had not the courage to ask for her, and that she did not so much as look out of a window to see whether he was coming! It was neither possible nor natural that such a thing should be.
Percy’s voice ran on in a sort of complacent sing-song, while this thought took possession of John’s mind. What did he care for what the fellow was going to do in the parish? His self-assurance was intolerable to John, notwithstanding that he himself, in his way, was quite as much disposed to think well of his own new methods, and despise his elders, as Percy could do. But that is a thing which looks much less natural in another than it does in our own case. And John’s suspense and surprise were becoming more and more highly wrought. Could it be possible that Elly was not at home, that she was absent just when he looked for her, that she might perhaps never have heard that he was coming? This thought roused a great anger in his mind—he jumped at it with a flash of sudden conviction. She had never received his letter. She had never heard——
When suddenly the door opened, and some one came out, meeting them: a young lady nearly as tall as John, with brown hair of a warm shade, plaited in endless coils round the back of her head, with a stately carriage, a long white dress almost touching the ground; but, what was far better than all the rest, two hands held out.
‘After all, I was the first to see you,’ she cried. ‘Oh, Jack, did he tell you? I was looking over the garden-wall when you passed: but you never looked up. Oh, Jack, welcome home!’
And this was Elly! He took the hands she held out to him, and grasped them tight, and stared at her, but with changing looks, and the most extraordinary revolution going on in his mind. So this was Elly! He felt himself grow red, he felt himself stare; he was speechless, and had not a word to say. He had a kind of certainty that he must be disappointing to her, and that she expected him, naturally, to say something. But he could not find a word to say.
At last she tried to draw her fingers out of his clasp, and grew red, and laughed.
‘I daresay it is my fault. My hands are not so solid as they used to be. You—you hurt me a little, Jack!’
He dropped them as if they had been on fire, and burst into excuses.
‘How horrible of me!—how disgusting. As if I oughtn’t to have known. As if I shouldn’t have been sure——’ And here John’s voice seemed to die away in his throat, and he stood, now averting his eyes, now giving her a sudden shame-faced glance, crimson covering his face, and shame and perturbation his soul.
Why should he have been so much ashamed? and why should the sight of Elly have discomposed him so? Who can tell? It was a climax, and it was at the same time a contradiction. That Elly! How was he ever to suppose she would grow to be like that? And yet of course that was just how she must have grown, he said to himself—or rather, which is truer, himself said to him—as he stood staring, lost in disappointment and trouble, and self-disgust and delight. And the strange thing was, that she too grew confused and embarrassed under his gaze. She had been, perhaps, to tell the truth, a little embarrassed from the first, not knowing how to get the first meeting over, anxious to get it over, and have the new system of intercourse begun.
‘Well, Sandford,’ said Percy, ‘you seem to find my sister as much changed as you found me? Where’s Aunt Mary, Elinor? Of course she is full of curiosity to see the great conqueror that is to be——’
‘Of course she wants to see Jack, if that is what you mean,’ said Elly. She made a little pause before his name, and grew red as she said it, which was wonderful, confusing, extraordinary beyond measure to John, who did not know what to make of it all, neither of himself nor of her, nor of Percy, who called him Sandford and Elly Elinor. Something had happened; something had changed in a way he had not thought of nor anticipated: and he did not know whether he was most happy or unhappy at the change. He followed Elly in, looking at her, at her tallness, her slimness, the sweep of her long dress, her shining coils of hair, not tossing on her shoulders any longer in those tumbled curls, every one of which had seemed to have an independent life of its own, but so smooth and orderly in endless plaits. He was not quite sure if he was walking on solid ground or floating after her upon the golden morning air in which her white figure seemed to float glorified. He had to shake himself out of this dream, as Mrs. Egerton came out with hands outstretched, and the rector in the background, who never took much notice, added a word of welcome. They were both exactly the same, the lady a little stouter, as her nephew had said; and the house was the same, restoring his balance a little by means of its steady unalterableness, every ornament in its habitual place, nothing changed.
So long as he did not look at Elly, John felt the giddiness go off, and his head got steady again. He was taken into Mrs. Egerton’s room and had to give an account of himself, which, stimulated by her questions, he did in great detail. Elly kept a little behind, out of sight, as this examination went on. Perhaps she had guessed by sympathy or otherwise that the sight of her made John’s head go round. Mrs. Egerton was immensely interested in John’s account of himself, but it seemed by-and-by to pall upon Percy, who went out declaring that he must go to his work and that ‘Old Cattley’ was waiting for him, a phrase which John thought did not please Mrs. Egerton any more than it pleased himself. Percy added a word to his sister as he went out.
‘Isn’t this your day for the schools, Nell?’ which that young lady did not receive with much greater favour. There was a little pause of joint disapproval as he disappeared. In John’s opinion Percy had grown insufferable in his new developement: my sister, Elinor, Nell—all these names, as applied to Elly, were equally intolerable. The pretensions of this new-made priest were more than any man could put up with, John felt, not being at all aware that in himself there were elements of self-complacency very clear to spectators too.
‘I suppose you are not going to the schools to-day, Elly?’ Mrs. Egerton said.
‘No, Aunt Mary, I never said I would go always;—and it is not every day that—Jack comes home.’
These words were delivered with a little suddenness and a tone as of defiance, but Mrs. Egerton did not take up the glove.
‘Percy would like to keep us all to our duties,’ she said, with an ease which made the success of that effort very doubtful, ‘but we don’t at present see our way to absolute obedience. Since you are not going to the schools, sit down, Elly, and keep still. No doubt you distract John’s attention, fluttering about like that. I am sure you do mine.’
John did not say anything. It distracted him still more when she came at her aunt’s order and sat down within sight, and let him see how carefully she was listening, and what interest she took in his narrative—which henceforward became a very broken affair, chiefly elicited by questions to which he replied. He had all the desire in the world to interest and satisfy Elly, but his own interest in all her looks and movements was so great, and his anxiety not to lose a word she said, that the desire was baulked even by its very warmth. Perhaps Mrs. Egerton perceived the ground of the disturbance in the young man’s mind, for she came suddenly to the present, after he began to waver in his narrative of the past.
‘And so,’ she said, ‘you have come to settle about the old house, John? Have you been there yet?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not yet. I did not care to go at once. Being with Mr. Cattley was like old times, without the pain of contrast.’
‘Ah! and that’s a pleasure you will not have very long. I am glad you keep to the “Mr. Cattley,” John. I expect to hear Percy call me Mary tout court one of these days. I am glad some of you boys have a little sense of what is befitting. Mr. Cattley is going, you know.’
‘I am sorry, Mrs. Egerton: and yet I suppose——’
‘One ought to be glad? That is just my feeling. One ought to be glad. He never would have—married or done anything else that is necessary at his age, or asserted himself and his independence, here. But come, tell me: you are going to settle about the old house. Do you mean to sell it, or to let it, or what do you mean to do?’
‘I want to do a silly thing,’ said John.
‘Well! out with it. What is your silly thing? You young men are all so admirably sensible and awake to your own interests. I am rather glad to hear of anything that can be called so.’
‘I should like,’ he said, ‘to keep the house in my own hands. My sister is coming to join me presently.’
‘But you couldn’t stay here—at your age, and getting on so well in your profession.’
‘Oh, no! But it used to be a dream of mine to keep it up in the old way. Would it be very silly? Susie could come when she pleased, and my mother if she pleased. It would be something to think of and come back to.’
‘But then you would require to furnish it and keep some one in it.’
John looked at Elly, and she at him. It was almost the first time that their glances had met. There was a flash of private communication, confidential, charged with intelligence: and then over both the young faces there came something like a flame, a flush of recollection and emotion. That had been their last interview: and how much there was in it which it was confusing to recall now.
‘What are you looking at each other for, you two?’
‘You know, Aunt Mary!’ It was the first time Elly had spoken. ‘The two dear old chairs. Jack, they have been in my room ever since. Often and often I have wondered if they knew. I have taken such care of them. When you take them back, it will seem like losing old friends.’
‘Oh! yes, I remember,’ said Mrs. Egerton. She looked from one to another with a slightly roused look; perhaps she had not been alarmed before. She saw a little excitement in both faces, an unusual colour and light in their eyes, which showed more feeling than was at all necessary. And in the atmosphere altogether there was a sort of electricity, something that was different from the everyday calm.
The watchful family guardian was startled. She had not thought there was any danger. When Percy had fumed and indulged in whatever is the clerical substitute for swearing, and declared that he would not allow any nonsense between that fellow and Elly, his aunt had put him down with calm decision, and an assurance that nothing of the kind was possible. That look produced a change as rapid as itself in Mrs. Egerton’s frame of mind.
‘Do you know,’ she said, with no perceptible change from the maternal kindness of her previous tone, ‘I think it would be rather a silly thing. It would bind you to this little place quite out of the way, with which you have, so to speak, no family connection, for none of your people have belonged here; and you would entail upon yourself a considerable expense, for you can’t furnish a house with two old chairs, whatever may be their associations. I don’t think I would do it, if I were you.’