The Son of His Father; vol. 2/3

‘We must be honest, whatever else,’ he said. ‘Come and let us have it out at once.’

‘Oh, Jack!’ cried the other culprit. They were no longer the enchanted prince and princess. Aunt Mary’s face, severe as fate already, shone terrible upon them from the window, and there was no escape.

CHAPTER XV.

A FAMILY CONCLAVE.

‘Never, never, never!’ cried Mrs. Egerton. She was red with excitement and wrath. Her matronly presence, generally so dignified and friendly and calm, grew into that of an angry Juno, swelling and expanding in indignation and resentment till the passion seemed to fill the room. And this all the more that no one shared, or at least appeared to share, her agitation. John stood before her humble enough, red too, with pain and mortification, yet not giving way; a culprit, but defending himself. Elly stood at the back of her aunt’s chair, astonished, not sufficiently recovered from her surprise at her reception to have yet taken her part in the controversy. The two other persons present were Percy and Mr. Cattley, who had both been there when the lovers, in the flush of their first happiness and pain, with all the solemnity the occasion demanded, came in to make their confession. Percy, at least, it might be supposed, would have been on his aunt’s side: but, instead of standing by her as he ought, he had turned his back upon her and stood gazing out of the window at nothing, with a degree of trouble and embarrassment in every line of that back which would have awakened a thousand apprehensions in the bosom of Aunt Mary, had she at that moment had any eyes for him, or been aware of anything except the demand just made upon her, which had carried her altogether out of herself.

Mr. Cattley sat near her, with his eyes cast down and a very serious face, twiddling his thumbs with great gravity. It is not to be supposed that intimate as he was, and having been so long a constant visitor at the rectory, he had not seen Mrs. Egerton angry before. But it was a sight he did not like, and especially the present cause of her anger was distressful to him. He had just come from Susie, and the atmosphere of peace which was around her, and he was fond of John, and his heart rebelled against this summary denial of a young love, which was a thing he respected from the bottom of his heart.

‘Never, never, never!’ cried Mrs. Egerton, ‘how can you ask it? How could you ever think—you, a boy I have always been so kind to— Too kind! I have made you like one of our own boys. And now you come and ask me for—— Who are you, John Sandford? What does anyone know about you or your family? No, I am not saying a word against his grandparents. They were dear old people and I was very fond of them, but not, not—— And they would have been as indignant as I am. What! John, their boy, to put himself on the same level, and think—actually think—that he would be accepted by the rector’s daughter! Oh, Jack! I never expected anything of the kind from you.’

‘I feel all that,’ said John, ‘I know it all. What you say is quite true.’

‘It is a fine thing to say that—when you come and do it all the same. Who are you, to propose for Elly? What do we know about you, or your means, or your family.’

Upon this Elly started from the shelter of Mrs. Egerton’s chair.

‘His family!’ she said, as all girls do in the same circumstances. ‘We know himself: and that is of more consequence than all the families in the world.’

‘I say, Elly, shut up,’ said her brother, turning half round.

Mrs. Egerton turned to him who offered this succour with eagerness.

‘Percy understands,’ she said, ‘he has more interest in it than anyone except myself, and he knows the world and that such things can’t be. They can’t be. Ask anybody. Ask your own connections, Jack; ask—— Mr. Cattley.’ She made a little pause before she said this, and gave a glance at the curate seated there with downcast eyes. Her voice faltered a little, but not with trouble this time. It was a sort of half smile which fluttered across the current of her speech. ‘He is romantic,’ she said, ‘but even he will tell you such connections can’t be.’

‘I will not shut up,’ said Elly, ‘I am the person most interested. If you send Jack away, if he is such a fool,’—something in the freedom of sisterhood was still in her feelings towards her lover. ‘If you get the better of him, if you bully him or over-persuade him to go away, who is it that will suffer? Not you, Aunt Mary, nor Percy, nor anybody but me. Jack and I have always been the two who stood together,’ cried the girl, the tears glistening in her eyes like dew under sunshine. ‘You know, Mr. Cattley! The others went away, they fell into their mannish, stupid Oxford ways, but Jack and I have always stood fast. Jack! if you let them master you, if you let them send you away——’

She raised her hand, clenched into a small, rosy, but not unpowerful fist, threatening fate in general, and the evil ways of the world. Love had only come, in Elly’s mind, to strengthen the partnership, the comradeship that existed before. If he could be driven to desert her, if he could be such a fool! She could not help taking the tone still of the one girl among these boys, the girl whose standard of what was right and true was more absolute than theirs—less modified by possibility or circumstance—and who flamed with instant wrath upon any who would betray or fall away from that uncompromising rule.

‘My dear Elly,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘that’s a very different matter. That was when you were at school.’

‘To be sure,’ said Mrs. Egerton: ‘and Jack was a boy who might have been anyone’s companion. Oh, so he is now, do you think I doubt that? But, when boys and girls grow up, other questions come in. You can only marry in your own class. It is no rule of mine: it is a settled principle. Nothing but trouble ever comes of it when you marry out of your own sphere.’

John had borne all the discussion well. He had stood firmly enough, not shrinking, while he was torn to pieces and defended and defied. Now he spoke.

‘Perhaps I am wrong,’ he said, ‘but all that one reads and sees seems to show that for a settled principle that’s not so strong as it once was. If a man is well off, people make a difference.’

‘If you mean to say that I am thinking of a mercenary marriage for Elly——’ said Mrs. Egerton.

John took no notice of this interruption. He went on with what he was saying.

‘Now, I mean to be well off,’ he said. ‘I am doing well already, and I mean to get on. What does it matter what my grandfather was, if I am able to live as gentlemen do, and to think as gentlemen do, and to maintain—those who belong to me.’ He would not say ‘my wife—’ but he held his head high, as if with the pride of having done so, and looked at Elly; and one quick, bright flash of happiness and consciousness went over both faces at the same moment. ‘I am only an engineer,’ he said, ‘but it’s a fine profession, and when one succeeds one grows rich. And I mean to succeed. My grandfather was not one to be ashamed of, whatever he was. And if it is said that I’m not a gentleman,’ said John, with another darker flush of self-assertion, ‘it’s an insult to Mr. Cattley, and even to this house where I have been allowed to come, and where such an idea was never hinted at before.’

‘Oh, Jack!’ cried Mrs. Egerton horrified, clasping her hands in deprecation. ‘I never said that. I never thought it. It is only that you are not in the same sphere.’

‘Would you say so if I were at the head of my firm?’ said John, ‘if I were making thousands a year; if I had works going on all over the world? I shall be if you will give me time. Would you say then that I was not of the same sphere?’

‘Yes,’ said Elly, quick as lightning, taking the words with fine scorn out of her aunt’s mouth; ‘for, of course, it would not be likely then that you would come to a poor little village to ask for a country girl like me.’

Percy had been standing all this time with his back to the belligerents, looking fixedly out of the window. His back was as uncertain and embarrassed a back as ever man had. It gave his aunt no support at all. There was something in the aspect of his shoulders shrugged up to his ears, and his elbows sunk with the plunging of his hands into his pockets, that took all courage out of her. Percy, who had been so much more strenuous on this question than Aunt Mary herself, who had undertaken to speak to John! And now, here he stood, taking no notice, gazing out of the window! When it came to this point, however, he turned round, not looking at anyone, his eyebrows pulled down over his eyes.

‘I say,’ he remarked, slowly, ‘what is the good of all this now? It’s gone too far to be stopped like this. You should have made an end of it long ago. I warned you when he came first. You had no call to have him here. It was folly to begin with, and it’s nonsense now. You wouldn’t let him marry Elly if he could, and he couldn’t if you did let him. What’s the good of going on? It’s all true that both of you say. If he was rich enough you’d have him like a shot. But you can’t have him now, and he knows it, and so do we all. Why, even my father would make a stand. It’s a pity they’ve had this talk, but it can’t be helped now. The best thing for him to do is to go right away.’

‘Away!’ cried Elly and John in a breath, making a simultaneous step towards each other. Percy was the little one of the family. He was much shorter than John, and even than Elly, whose female garments and hair upon the top of her head gave her the advantage. He came drifting between them, still with his hands in his pockets.

‘I like good family and that sort of thing,’ said Percy, ‘but I never said it required that to make a gentleman. Handsome is as handsome does. There are things a fellow can do, and things he can’t do,’ said this young man.

‘I know what he means, Elly,’ said John, ‘and I believe he’s right, though I never thought Percy would stand my friend. I’ll go, Mrs. Egerton: he’s right. I’ll not even hold Elly to what she has said—(though I know the sky will fall before she’ll desert me,’ he exclaimed, in an aside). ‘But I’ll not say another word. I’ll go.’

The ladies looked at him with a little gasp of surprise, Elly standing with her lips apart as if she had begun to speak and stopped herself, Mrs. Egerton drawing a sudden long breath. She was astonished by the sudden quick turn this youthful argument had taken. Percy, her champion, her inspirer even, had seemed to take the other side, and yet had routed the enemy. It was altogether amazing and incomprehensible, almost disappointing: for Mrs. Egerton had felt that John would take a great deal of arguing with, and she had some belief in her own powers. The scene was a curious one. Percy, standing between the two with his hands in his pockets and his head down, looked more as if some wind had blown him there than as if he had been taking an active part in such a controversy. Mr. Cattley, still sitting passive near Mrs. Egerton’s table, had now lifted his head and was looking on, while John, all firm and strong in his new resolution, had become the centre of the group.

‘I thought I might have had a week more,’ said John, with a touch of pathos which went to the hearts of both the ladies, ‘after all these years! But I won’t, Elly. I won’t waste another moment. What do I want with holidays when there’s you at the end? Mrs. Egerton, good-bye. You’ve been awfully kind to me. And I know you’re right. I’m not a match for her. I’ll never be good enough—but I’ll be rich enough one day, please God.’

‘John, you take away my breath. Why should you go off like this, like a flash of lightning?—and there’s your sister just arrived. Dear me,’ cried Mrs. Egerton, ‘just give this nonsense up, it will be far more reasonable, and take your holiday out.’

‘Must you go, Jack?’ said Elly, quite subdued.

‘If it is only your sister that would detain you,’ said Mr. Cattley, clearing his throat. ‘She will find friends, I am sure. We shall all be glad to do our best for her, if she chooses to stay.’

‘Oh! we’ll look after that. We’ll see to Miss Sandford,’ Percy said.

Mrs. Egerton’s under lip dropped with an almost awe of the miracle happening before her eyes. Mr. Cattley even, her own particular slave! She gave him a look and then turned to Percy: then went off suddenly into an unexpected and, as appeared, quite uncalled-for laugh.

‘Elly,’ she said, ‘the gentlemen are taking it all into their own hands——’

And she who had so much good-humoured, affectionate contempt for the gentlemen, who had followed her lead with such docility for many a day! She did not recover from her astonishment even when John shook hands with her hastily, and hurried off as if he meant to begin collecting those thousands this very day. She had not spirit enough even, save very feebly in a scarcely audible voice, to call back Elly, who hurried after him and who paid no attention to that faint call. She did nothing but stare at the two curates as the sound of the quick young footsteps went downstairs and died away, and then became audible again, going out and through the garden, the gate swinging and clicking after them. Then she said, ‘Elly has gone with him!’ in an appeal and protest to earth and heaven.

‘It can’t be helped,’ said Percy, with a wave of his hand.

Elly followed John out without saying a word, going after him quite solemnly: the colour had gone out of her face, her steps were subdued as if in subjection to his. No fear had been in Elly’s mind. She had been accustomed to find most things yield to her, and she did not see in this new event so great an additional gravity that she should have been brought to a stop in her life, or made to contemplate the idea of failure. Even now she would have fallen back upon the supreme consciousness of her importance in the house, and her father’s incapability of resisting anything she desired, had not that short but most conclusive colloquy between John and Percy confused all her ideas and silenced the words on her lips. Aunt Mary, it is true, was more strenuous in her resistance, more determined than Elly had any idea of; but the girl, who knew the ways of her own race and kind, knew well that even Aunt Mary, after a great deal of impassioned argument, going over and over again every feature of the case, would end by exhausting everything against it, and coming round to the conviction that there was nothing so interesting in life as the young pair and their hopes, and that, however she might shake her head over it, her happiness was involved in Elly’s. That was the strong point of which Elly was quite conscious. Her own happiness was a matter too important to the household to be permanently risked in any way.

But a few words from Percy, for whom she had no veneration, whom she rather scorned in his new sacerdotal assumptions, had changed all this! Elly was confused by the suddenness of the revolution, and did not understand it, nor did she quite understand the hasty, resolute step with which John went on, not observing, apparently, that he was walking out before her. Not that she minded that; it seemed, on the contrary, quite natural. She liked him to forget that he needed to stand on any punctilio with her. The wonderful thing was that Percy had done it all, and that a change had been wrought in John himself by that little curate. There was, then, a freemasonry among them, too. She walked on beside her lover, breathless, finding it a little difficult to keep up with him; and at length, when her mind began to get into working order again, broke the silence with a question.

‘Jack, what are you going to do?’

Whereupon he stopped all at once, and turned round upon her.

‘Elly! to think that I should have been thinking so much of you as almost to forget you were there! Percy’s right, that’s the truth. I must go away. I couldn’t be such a hound as to upset you and put you out with them, when there’s nothing more possible for the moment. I’ve got to go and work it out.’

‘To work what out—to go away when you might stay a week longer? Aunt Mary is not everybody. I will speak to my father,’ cried Elly, in the light of a new impulse. It was not at all a usual thing for anyone to think of going directly to the rector, but yet in a great emergency it might be done.

‘No,’ said John. ‘Now that Mrs. Egerton knows, and all of them, it’s honest, Elly; that’s all I want. Don’t let us ask anything more. They shall never say I bound you to a nobody when you might have done so much better. You’re free, Elly; but you’ll stick to me all the same I know.’

‘Till I die—and after,’ she said, raising her face, which was a little pale, but ennobled with great and solemn feeling. She added after a moment, falling back to a more natural level, ‘But I can’t understand, all the same, why you should hurry off like this—why, for something that Percy said, Percy! you should change all in a moment and go and leave me.’

‘I’m going after you,’ said John. ‘You’re perhaps a long way off, Elly, but the road’s clear, and I shall be a little bit nearer to you every step I take. I’ll be a little bit nearer every day, please God. I’ve got the ball at my feet, Elly. I’ve never had time to tell you about it, to show you. There’s all the plans and calculations made out. Perhaps it needn’t be so very long. I am not going to lose a day, not a day.’

‘What is it, Jack? Something like what we used to talk of? oh, how silly we were! about the lighthouse——?’

‘It’s not a lighthouse, but the biggest job—Elly, it was you who put me up to it from the very first. It’s your work as well as mine, and it’s for you. And I’ve got the ball at my feet and the road’s clear.’

CHAPTER XVI.

SUSIE’S SHARE.

She did not quite know what to make of it all. First there was John arriving like a whirlwind, rushing upstairs to pack up his things, telling her he was going away at once, with Elly following, wistful, not quite understanding, it seemed, yet full of suppressed excitement. Susie suspected how it was, though she had not been told, and she had all a young woman’s interest in her brother’s love-story, and did not see any incompatibility as Percy and Mrs. Egerton did, but thought it very natural, as they had known each other all their lives. She was too kind to question Elly when she came into the parlour while John rushed upstairs. The girl it was evident was much excited, sitting down one moment, getting up again, turning over the books on the table, looking out of the window, distracted, and not knowing what to do with herself, listening to the sound of his movements upstairs. Susie felt that he must be throwing his things into his portmanteau in the most dreadful confusion, and longed to run up and pack them for him, but did not venture to leave her visitor, or indeed to interfere. And it was not till some time had passed, and the tramping overhead became more and more lively, as if John was stamping upon his portmanteau to get it to close (which was exactly what he was doing) that Susie took it upon her to inquire.

‘I wonder why he is going away in such a hurry. Do you know, Miss Spencer, if he has had any telegram, any news?—if he is wanted at the office?’

‘Oh, Susie,’ said Elly, bursting forth all at once, ‘don’t call me Miss Spencer. I’m going to marry him as soon as we can; and it is because of that and Aunt Mary that he is going away.’

‘Because of that; but I should have thought—’ Here Susie paused in some perplexity, and looked her young companion in the face.

‘You should have thought he would have stayed longer, instead of hurrying away? Oh, so should I! but boys understand each other, it appears, just as you and I would do. It was Percy who said something to him. Percy is not a bit clever; and it was slangy and only half intelligible to me. “There are some things a fellow can do, and some he can’t,” that was all Percy said; and Jack just jumped up as if he had been stung and darted away. Aunt Mary was scolding, indeed,’ said Elly, glad of the opportunity of unburdening herself; ‘but what of that? she would have come round in time.’

‘Perhaps he thought they did not like it,’ Susie said.

‘What of that?’ said Elly, ‘when I tell you they would have come round in time!’ Then she cried, ‘Oh, forgive me, Susie, if I am not civil. I am so mixed up! So happy one moment, and then so perplexed, and not knowing anything about it. I thought I had it all in my own hands. So I have, with a little time. Papa never resists me long, and as for Aunt Mary, she was coming round even when she was making the most fuss. When all at once this thing happens between the boys, and Jack pays no more attention to me.’

With this she began to cry a little, merely by way of distraction to fill up the time, for Elly was not at all given to crying. There was a sound in the midst of it as if John were coming downstairs, and then Elly immediately cried, ‘Hush!’ as if Susie had been the guilty person, and dried her eyes. But John did not come downstairs. He was still to be heard stamping and moving about overhead. And presently Elly resumed.

‘He must be making a dreadful mess of his things,’ she said, with a tone of resignation. ‘So does Dick when he packs for himself, but Percy never. Percy is always neat—and yet to think it was he who said that!’ There was again a little pause, both listening to every sound upstairs, Susie, puzzled and disturbed, not knowing what to say, while Elly, altogether absorbed in this new relationship, which was at once authoritative and subject, could neither think nor speak of anything but Jack. There was not much of the confused rapture of a newly-developed love about her. Even at the first moment there had been something of the familiar sway of a sister in Elly’s treatment of John, and now she was anxious, bewildered, not knowing what to make of him, feeling that he had gone out of her ken into a region influenced by a man’s motives, not a woman’s, which are different. Elly gave presently a glance at the clock, and took out her watch and compared it, then gave a sigh of relief. ‘He is too late,’ she said, ‘thank goodness, for this train. He must wait till night now,’ whereupon she became more composed, and her excitement calmed down.

But Susie did not know what to say in this curious position of affairs. To take this pretty young stranger into her arms and talk to her of all John’s excellencies, and kiss her and cry over her with pleasure, as is the wont of a young man’s admiring and sympathetic sister with his love, seemed out of place with Elly, whom she scarcely knew, who seemed to know John better than she did, and who, in place of the emotional stage, was in the anxious one, rather regarding John as a wife does who is concerned about how her husband is going to act in a certain position of affairs which affects their well-being, than as a rapturous girl ready to find everything her lover does half divine. There was care instead of ecstacy on Elly’s brow, and that little conflict of opinion which must take place sometimes between all properly endowed minds, even in the closest relationship, was in full force. She resumed after a time the discussion in which Susie could not take an active part.

‘Don’t you think,’ she said, ‘that instead of starting off like this, to make his fortune—as if a fortune could be made in a day!—it would have been more sensible to wait and give them a little time?’

‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Susie, diffidently. ‘You are so young. You didn’t mean to—— to marry all at once, even if your papa gave his consent.’

‘Oh, no,’ cried Elly, with a blush and a laugh. ‘Oh, no; why, Jack’s only just come of age.’

Susie accepted this information meekly.

‘Then, he had got your consent?’ she said.

‘Oh, yes,’ cried Elly, with fervour, ‘of course he had that all the time.’ And then the girl was seized with a little fit of that laughter which is so near tears. She grasped Susie suddenly by the arm. ‘Do you know,’ she cried, flaming celestial rosy red, ‘what happened when he went away? We kissed each other! I was only sixteen. It was four years ago. And I have sometimes thought that he never understood what had happened. But, of course, after that, when Jack asked me——’ She could not grow more crimson than she had done before, and her eyes filled with that golden dew of happiness and tears which makes the dullest eyes swim in light. This lovely softening and revolution in the girl’s face touched Susie. She put her arms timidly round her and kissed her cheek, to which Elly replied by flinging herself upon the conforting bosom of this new friend to whom she had now a right.

‘We’re sisters, don’t you know,’ she said. ‘I’ve only had Aunt Mary till now, and Aunt Mary’s so much older. Yes, of course, of course, he had my consent.’

‘Then what did he want more?’ said Susie, in her ear. ‘Dear, I’m of Mr. Percy’s opinion too. He has got to go away and do what he can to make it agreeable to your people. That is the only thing he could do—unless he had kept away altogether,’ Susie added, ‘which would perhaps have been the wisest way.’

At which Elly sprang up, and, seizing her comforter by both arms, shook her, first with wild indignation, then bursting again into the agitated laughter which belonged to her state.

‘Oh, you cruel—oh, you barbarous——’ she cried, and kissed her between. Then they started apart and turning round appeared demurely, seated close to each other in silence and attention, when John came in hurriedly with a bag in his hand pushing open the door.

It was of no use, however, as he was obliged to acknowledge. The night train which did not pass till midnight was the only one possible. As a matter of fact he did not go till next morning, subdued in his ardour of departure by a whole afternoon spent in the society of Elly, with whose freedom for that day nobody interfered. And indeed the afternoon was passed in a somewhat strange way, in the parlour which was so connected with all the associations of John’s youthful life, where he and she bending over the table with their heads close together went over the plans, of which John made a sketch for Elly’s benefit, of the great scheme which he was convinced was to make his fortune. It was, let us say, the drainage of the Thames valley, than which there is no more urgently wanted piece of engineering, nor one which would bring a young man more fame and money.

John drew rude plans and diagrams of all kinds, while Elly looked on. He became enthusiastic in his descriptions, laying out everything before her, the manner in which the waste was to be carried away so as to do good and not harm, how floods were to be prevented, how the low-lying lands near the river were to be protected and utilised. John’s eyes glowed as he set it all forth, and Elly said, ‘I see!’ ‘I understand,’ with sympathetic emotion and many a lyric of praise; but whether she did really see so clearly as she said, remains, perhaps, open to doubt. She believed, at all events, which comes to the same thing, and without being at all humbled or troubled by her inability to fathom the expedients or comprehend the calculations. At sixteen she would not have given in so easily. She would have worked out the diagrams, and compelled herself to know what it was all about. But now she saw, after a sort, through John’s eyes and was satisfied. He got perhaps more applause than was good for him from Elly, who he honestly believed followed all his elucidations, and from Susie, who understood none of them, and did not pretend to know anything save that he was very clever, the cleverest of engineers, a conclusion which, with deprecations, John was not perhaps altogether unwilling to accept. In this way they spent a few hours of such happiness as comes but rarely in youthful life. It was better than the more emotional rapture of the young lover’s paradise, for it had so many finer elements in it to their own happy consciousness. Their life was to be built upon this grand work, which was a work which would save life, which would increase comfort, which would make wealth, not only to themselves but to others. It was the plan which had ‘pleased their childish thought.’ It was Elly’s dream, which she had transferred with all her girl’s enthusiasm to the steady working brain, full of impulses more lasting than hers, and a training infinitely stronger, which had made that suggestion into a reality.

Thus the personality of each was flattered and charmed with the scheme that seemed to be in some sort the production of both. And Susie, who could not possibly claim any share, sat by and admired and applauded. She was as much delighted as they were. She had the additional advantage of being able to feel how clever they both were, how good it was that John was to have a wife who understood him, who would go with him in everything. Susie sat and beamed upon them from the heights of unselfish enthusiasm and delight, not with any effort to understand. Her mind had no need of that. Her part was to admire and love, which was easy, and suited her best.

Susie made no objections about remaining behind, when John thus rushed away. She was pleased with the village, the quietness, the retirement, the new friends; and, as has been said, she had never been so much made of, never met with so many attentions all her life. The old gardener and his wife whom John had managed to pick up again, and instal as guardians of the house, according to his old dream, were in the first place her devoted servants, telling her all manner of stories about her grandparents, which were very pleasant to Susie; and then she had visits from everybody to comfort or to explain to her. Mrs. Egerton came, full of anxiety, appealing to her as a person of sense to say whether she did not think her brother far too young to take the serious engagements of life upon him—whether it was not a pity for a young man to tie a millstone round his own neck—whether she had ever seen an engagement turn out well that had been formed so indefinitely, where there was no likelihood of a conclusion to it for years? This was the tone Mrs. Egerton had now taken up: and indeed she was too much of a gentlewoman at any time to have troubled Susie with any hint of the inequality in family and circumstances, which she had pointed out so distinctly to John. And then Elly would come with her letters, to ask what news Susie had, and to talk about Jack and herself—herself and Jack, and what they had done when they were ‘young,’ and what now they meant to do.

Percy too had got a habit of ‘looking in’ when he came in from his rounds in the parish. He tried to interest Susie in parish work, and, indeed, did get from her a wonderful deal of information and help in the matter of the cottage hospital which he and the parish doctor were so anxious to get up— Percy, in order to get the sick poor to some small extent provided for, the doctor with perhaps the less virtuous motive of studying disease. She gave him a great deal of help, but that did not altogether account for the constant visits he paid her, nor the deferential tone in which he spoke, and the respect with which he received all her little opinions. On the subject of hospitals, it was true, Susie knew more than anyone else in the whole parish: but on others her opinions were timid and not at all self-assured. Yet with what respect this young man, who put aside Elly’s much more convinced and enlightened views, listened to the little which Miss Sandford had to say! He almost frightened Susie by the earnestness of his attention, frightened her, flattered her, in the end amused her very much, and made her laugh to herself in private at the new position she held, quoted and looked up to as in all her life she had never been before. Susie could not tell why. She was older than he was, and she understood his kind better than he understood hers, and had not in reality as much reverence for the type of curate as he had. But yet he came every day, and told her more about himself and his own life and thoughts than any one else knew, and brought her books which he was anxious she should read and tell him her opinion of, even going so far as to mark passages, in the eagerness of his desire to know what she thought on this and that point. It was not possible that Percy should refrain from all remark about John in these many and prolonged interviews, but the tenderness with which he treated Susie’s brother was very different from the uncompromising views he had held on that subject before Susie appeared at Edgeley. He gave her to understand that if he interfered at all it was wholly in John’s interest.

‘They would never be allowed to marry now; indeed, I don’t suppose they ever thought of that; and it seemed best for them not to let him lose his time here, and disturb his mind—don’t you think so, Miss Sandford? A fine fellow like Jack, with everything before him.’

‘But they say,’ said Susie, in her modest way, ‘that nothing is so good for a young man. It gives him something to look forward to, and a motive in his work. John is so much younger than I am. I feel more like a mother to him—’

‘And so do I to Elly,’ said the young man, with great gravity, ‘who is just like that, much younger than I. And next to our own family I take an interest in Jack. He has done so well, and will do still better, I feel sure. And then he will understand what I meant. Miss Sandford, won’t you come to the edge of the common and see the sunset? It is going to be glorious. I’ll bring you home afterwards, and then, perhaps you will give a look at this which I brought to show you. I should so much like to know what you think.’

Sometimes Susie assented to this proposal, and would walk out pleasantly in the light of the declining sun, to see the sky all golden and purple over the common, and all those peaceful sights of a country life, which are so wonderful and delightful to town-bred folk. She had no lack of companions, of escorts, of attendants at any time, and the air, that was so sweet and fresh, blowing over miles of green and blossoming country, and the friendly life of the village, and the tranquillity of the little house, and its sweet old-fashioned garden, was a refreshment to her beyond anything that heart could conceive. She thought regretfully of her mother, going on all the time with that stern routine which was all charity and succour yet at the same time business of the severest and most uncompromising kind. But Susie knew that the sweet rest she was taking would not be a possibility to her mother, and that the hospital was what suited Mrs. Sandford best. And she could not but think of John, whose name was on everybody’s lips, and who had gone off with such an impulse of energy and faith in himself and his future: but afterwards returned again with a great deal of pleasure to the life around, which breathed so full of quiet and friendliness, and every pleasant thing.

She had another frequent visitor whom she received with almost more pleasure and sense of grateful esteem than any, and that was Mr. Cattley, who had not half so much to say as Percy, and yet seemed to feel in Susie’s parlour—the room which he had known so well in other times, when it was full of the ways of the old people, but which now was Susie’s parlour as if it never had belonged to anyone else—something of the same sweet calm and refreshment which the village life and quiet brought to her. Mr. Cattley knew the village as well as Susie knew the hospital: he wanted something more to refresh his spirit: and on the eve of going away from Edgeley, and breaking up all the old habits which had been his life for years, this new habit and association were more pleasant to him than it was easy to believe anything could be. He liked to sit and watch her, moving about, or sitting at work, or perhaps only looking up with a little interchange of simple talk. He told her when he got more familiar how long he had been here, and how little inclination he had to go away; and then he told her of his new parish, and its great unlikeness to this, and how reluctant he was to plunge into it, feeling as if he were about to plunge into a new world.

‘It will not seem so when you get used to it,’ Susie would say.

‘No, most likely not. It is the getting used to it that is the difficulty,’ he would reply: and looked at her in an anxious way, as if the sight of her made a difference. He did not himself understand yet what the difference was.

When Percy came and found Mr. Cattley there, the new curate made it apparent in his manner that he thought the old one very much out of place. He would say,

‘Oh, I thought this was your day for the schools: but, of course, it is not important to keep that up now you are going away;’ or ‘I thought you said you would take the almshouses this evening. If I had known you were not going I should have gone, for the old people don’t like to be disappointed:’ which was half-amusing to Mr. Cattley, but not pleasant, as the pupil’s attempts to instruct his former master seldom are. But what the old curate felt most of all was when the young man said to him: ‘I thought you had some business with Aunt Mary! I know she was looking for you.’

When this was said, Mr. Cattley took up his hat and rose from his chair, giving Susie a glance which she did not understand—and perhaps neither did he: and Percy would settle himself in his chair to remain, while Mr. Cattley went away.

CHAPTER XVII.

JOHN’S RESOLUTION.

John’s feelings as he returned to town were very different indeed from those with which he had left London. Everything then was enveloped in a vague pleasure of expectation, a delightful doubt which was not fear. He did not know what he was to meet, how he was to be received, what changes had passed upon his old home and surroundings. All that was unascertained, in every way doubtful, making his heart beat with uncertainty, with expectation, and a pleasant mist of possibilities. But since then all had become clear—so clear! dazzling even in the distinctness of the light: and he himself had been suddenly lifted from youthful obscurity, and compelled, as he felt, to distinguish himself, to bring out all his powers without delay, to prove what he was. He was not afraid of this compulsion: it exhilarated him rather with the delightful consciousness that he was equal to the undertaking, able for all that was demanded from him; proud and glad to be forced to the front where he knew he could hold his place. But still it was a tremendous change—one that subdued him with its greatness even while it exhilarated and inspired him. Life had altered altogether. It had become a thing laid down on grand and noble lines, much greater and firmer than anything he had thought of, yet perhaps, by reason of being no longer vague, not such an altogether splendid and dazzling possibility. He saw before him what he was going to do. He was not going to conquer kingdoms, to deliver princesses, to subdue the nations like an old knight of romance, which is what in the mists of the morning every ambitious youth still feels possible, though the nineteenth century makes it expedient for them to laugh at all such fancies. John too had seen visions in which he enacted the part of St. George and encountered a modern dragon, with Elly looking on; and the dream had been sweet.

But he saw things differently now. He was going to slay no dragon. There was not indeed any monster to slay. What he had to do was to mature as rapidly as possible his plans, the great scheme which had occupied so much of his thoughts for months past, which he had been working out on paper, and building his future upon. It was, after all, the slaying of a dragon in the only practicable nineteenth century way; and perhaps the mediæval dragon meant nothing more than a great public danger which the knight-errant had to face and subdue and kill, or reform into an amiable and sociable monster, as could be done to the great river, which, a tyrant and destroyer sometimes, was at others the delight and help of man. All these ideas passed through his head as the train plunged along, with little interludes of lover-like dreaming and surprises of softer thoughts. He would recall to himself Elly on the common, as she looked when she had given herself to him, and next moment would be running over long lines of calculations in his mind, calculations made over and over again, which it was a satisfaction to prove and reprove, lest there should lurk any weak points in them. How to perfect them in every final detail, to carry them to the firm, to demonstrate the greatness of the undertaking, the impossibility of failure—which, indeed, would at once be plain and evident to those skilled eyes, was to be his occupation now. After that everything would be plain sailing enough, he felt. He had meant to delay a little, to wait until he was himself a little more mature. But what did that matter, after all? He was only all the more adapted to superintend and carry out the work for being so young as he was. Young as he was he was a fully trained engineer, and already works of some importance had been committed to his hands. He was equal to any fatigue and any exertion in the carrying out of this, and there could be no doubt that he was the only fit person to work his own plan to completion. As a matter of fact he had no doubt about anything, either in the plan itself, or his capability of executing it, or its instant and entire acceptance by those who had so long been looking for something of the kind.

He had thus so much to think of, that when the quickening of speed, the suburban stations whirling by, and all the signs which announce a near arrival at the end of a journey, made it clear that London was at hand, he was half sorry, and felt that he had not had half time enough for all he had to think about. He gathered up the two primary subjects of his thoughts as he did the books and newspapers which he had not read, being concerned with more pressing matters, and jumped out of the carriage with his bag in his hand with the sense that he had not a moment to lose. It was a long train, and there were a great many passengers, porters running about after the luggage, a crowd of cabs waiting; and in the hurry John strode along, intending to mount up upon the knife-board of an omnibus which passed the end of the street in which his lodgings lay. But it was not fated that he should do this so simply as he intended.

As he made his way through the crowd he met with an unexpected interruption. Some one called him two or three times in a voice which he remembered at once as somehow familiar, though he did not understand it for the moment. It was like a voice in a dream calling to him, though not by his own name? Was it not his own name? With a slight start he remembered it and what it meant.

‘Mr. May— John May!’ cried the voice which became breathless with the hurrying of its owner towards him. John looked round, and saw close to him a figure which he had not seen for a long time; a tall man, taller than ever in consequence of his increased leanness and meagreness, with a tall hat, more shiny than ever by reason of extreme wear and shabbiness, and the glaze of poverty. John had seen very little of Montressor since the time when he had first made his acquaintance, on his arrival in town. From time to time a chance meeting in the streets had made it apparent to him that the poor actor’s hopes that his affairs would take a turn and that fortune once more would favour him, were not likely to be realised, as also that there were agencies at work which were likely to keep him down more than any spite of fortune. John, in his studious boyhood, keeping himself clear from all distraction, was not likely to be tolerant of any moral weakness of that description, and he had avoided the chance acquaintance who had come so suddenly into his life, but yet had never failed when a meeting occurred to greet him kindly, and to ask after the child whom he had saved from injury. Now and then when Montressor’s face looked more gaunt, and his clothes were more poverty-stricken and his talk more big than usual, John would send a present to the little girl, which he could see was eagerly accepted. There were times even when he would meet the poor actor two or three weeks in succession lingering about the end of the street where his lodgings were, and John had an understanding that the wolf was at the door, and that the five shillings he sent to buy little Edie a doll were probably of use for more serious needs: then perhaps for months or an entire year he would see the shabby figure in that hat which was always shiny, and the clothes which were always threadbare, no more.

For one thing, John, in his serious young manhood, had altogether outgrown the boyish petulance which had induced him to call himself May. Whatever had been the cause of his mother’s abandonment of that name, he felt sure it must have been a just cause. He had gradually grown into a respect which was not either sympathy or filial feeling for his mother and her decisions, and the hot boyish opposition to all she desired, which once boiled in his veins, was there no longer. In the gravity of twenty-one, which felt like ten years more after his studious and serious youth, he was willing to confess that he had been very foolish at the moment of grief and passion when he had left home and the tender care of the old grandparents, to enter upon life. And the sight of Montressor, and his appeal to him by the name which he had assumed for that moment only, always brought an acute pang of recollection and shame.

And yet he had never informed the actor that his name for ordinary purposes was not May. Something withheld him from any such confession—indeed, for that and other reasons he made his interview with the actor as brief as possible when he met him, and was glad to buy him off with that five shillings for Edie, though he had not always been rich enough to spare it easily. To-day he felt the call after him of ‘Mr. May— John May,’ more disagreeable than ever. There was no telling who might hear the respectable John Sandford addressed by that name, and explanations are always difficult. He turned sharply round upon his doubtful acquaintance, raising his hand to stop the call.

‘Do you want me?’ he said, in a tone which perhaps was somewhat sharp, too.

‘Me young friend, I am delighted to see you,’ said Montressor; ‘it is ages since we have met. Let me help to carry your things, me excellent young hero—for such ye are ever to me. The chyild is well, and always remembers her deliverer—in her prayers, me dear May, in her prayers.’

‘Poor little Edie! I am very glad to hear she is well, and I hope you are as busy as I am,’ said John, with an uneasy smile. ‘I scarcely have a moment I can well call my own,’ a statement which was largely influenced by his desire to get away from any prolonged interview now. To tell the truth, Montressor, gaunt and shabby in his shiny hat, was not the sort of person with whom a highly respectable young man would care to be seen standing amid the crowds of a railway station in London, in what was still the full light of day.

‘Ah, me dear young fellow, ye’ve got a solid occupation by the hand, thank ye’r stars for it; not a slippery standing upon the slopes of Art; be thankful for it,’ said Montressor, with the air of consoling one of the inferior classes for his disadvantages. ‘In me own profession, though ye may mount up to the skies, ye are likewise exposed to all the tricks of fortune, that jade: and malice and spite may drive ye down to the depths, where, alas! Montressor is now.’

‘I am very sorry,’ said John, ‘but you had an engagement?’

‘I had—an engagement: but the conspiracy that’s pursued me from me youth has once more coiled its meshes about me feet. Ah!’ cried Montressor, with a sort of hissing through his teeth, ‘if I could but hold the heads of that hydra in me hands and crush them for ever! But let us not speak of that,’ he continued, with a fling over his shoulder of some imaginary burden. ‘Let’s not speak of that: it disturbs the pleasure of this friendly meeting and does no good, John, when, me dear young friend, it’s a pleasure beyond telling among all our own troubles to see an example of success and prosperity in you.’

‘Yes, I have got on very well,’ said John, half mollified, half impatient; ‘but I have a great deal to do. I am rushing home now to see after some plans.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ said Montressor, ‘for though I’m not the well-known man I once was, me young friend, to be seen with Montressor will do ye no harm.’

‘I’m not going to walk—further than the omnibus.’

‘Then I’ll go as far. It’s not friendship moves me this time, me young friend, though for friendship to my chyild’s deliverer I’d go further still. I told ye I knew a man of your name, a poor fellow that got into trouble long ago. He’s been in seclusion, poor man, for his country’s good, don’t ye know? Poor devil! and he’s what the French call a good devil, too, poor wretch—a kyind creature—one that would give ye a share of his last crust—ay, and do a thing for any man that asked him, without considering if it was according to the law or not.’

‘That’s awkward,’ said John, ‘a man should draw the line at that. It doesn’t do to go against the law.’

‘No, it doesn’t do—that’s what it is. The case may be as bad as ye please, hard or unjust or—— but ye mustn’t go against it. That’s what poor May can’t be got to see, poor devil: and he is terrible poor, and he’s got no friends.’

‘I am very sorry, Mr. Montressor: but I don’t see that I can do any good.’

‘No, but being of the same name you might find a way. Me young friend, t’would be a real charity. For the thing is he has a family, but don’t know where to find ’em. It’s a pitiful story: and you’re of the same name. Now give me a little of your attention, me young benefactor, for that ye are and always have been. It isn’t much that’s in Montressor’s power now. But, look ye, if I could find this poor devil’s friends and put him in kind hands, I’d be happy with the sense that I’d done one good action: and, me dear May, oh, me dear young May——!’

‘What does it matter,’ said John, ‘that I’m of the same name? What can I do? I could give you a few shillings for him, that’s all I could do.’

‘The shillings,’ said Montressor, ‘are not wanted yet. There’s money enough as yet. But if his own friends were to take him back he might be kept from harm, and where he is he’ll be in trouble again before a month’s out. Me dear friend, among the Mays ye belong to isn’t there one that’s gone wrong? Isn’t there one that’s disappeared out of ken. Think, me boy, me dear boy, it’s the saving of a fellow-creature, it’s the delivering of a soul!’

The actor stood still in the middle of the pavement to say this in his most impressive tone, and John perforce stood still with him, his bag in his hand, his coat on his arm, and confusion and annoyance in his face.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I know nobody. I’ve—no relations of that name. Pray let me go. I’ve a tremendous evening’s work before me. I can’t really, so far as I’m aware, be of the least use to your friend.’

‘Think it over,’ said Montressor, ‘think it over. Ye’ve too good a heart not to help if ye can. Think it over, me dear May. I will tell me wife and me chyild I have seen ye, which is what they always hear with pleasure—with pleasure,’ he said, with emphasis.

The actor looked very poor, very thin, very bare of everything. His appearance suddenly struck John as they stood side by side in the crowded street. The omnibus was already in sight, bearing down upon him with its freight of men. John was very eager to escape, to get to his own business, to plunge into the plans which he so confidently expected were to bring him fame and fortune. But it suddenly occurred to him what a contrast to his own confident youth was this poor man at the other end of life, who had made his try and failed: and who out of the depths of his poverty and downfall, was pleading for another who had failed more bitterly than himself. The pathos of it struck John in the midst of his impatience to escape from it, and his natural youthful disinclination to have painful matters which he had nothing to do with, thrust upon him like this. He hated it, he was impatient of it, he longed to escape and feel himself in face of his own success which he held to be so certain; but a certain glistening wistfulness in the actor’s eye, and his reluctance to be left behind, and the shabbiness of his garb and aspect altogether, moved John’s heart in spite of himself. The young man adopted that expedient which is so general, with which most of us are so willing to buy off distress and free ourselves from the sight of misery. He took out one of his few sovereings—for though he was sufficiently well off he did not abound in money—from his waistcoat pocket.

‘I have not seen Edie for a long time,’ he said, ‘and she must want much bigger dolls now than the one she used to be so fond of. Will you give her this for me, and tell her to buy something with it. And I’ll come and see her soon. Here’s my omnibus. I am sorry I can’t do anything for your friend. Good-bye.’

‘God bless ye,’ said the actor. ‘Ye’re always the same fine fellow. Edie will bless ye, me brave boy. But think over the other case that I’ve told ye of. Think it over, and good-bye, and be sure ye come. We’ll look for ye, and Edie—— Good-bye. Good-bye!’

John did not care that even the people on the omnibus should see the shiny hat which was waved to him with so much enthusiasm. But there was nobody he knew, and presently, as he bowled along, his former thoughts came back to him and he himself forgot this interruption which was only momentary. Montressor’s friend, whose name was May, attracted but little his preoccupied mind. There had, indeed, been a time when it might have excited him, when he had been so anxious about the mystery of his childhood that anyone bearing that name would have roused his attention. But that phase was altogether over. If he ever thought of his boyish visit to Liverpool, and the mayor whose name was May, and all the anxiety he was in to affiliate himself somehow, it was with a smile of mingled self-ridicule and shame. Nothing now could make him anything but John Sandford, which was as truly his name as any name could be, which he had made known as that of a young man sure to rise, one who had the ball at his foot and before whom the way was clear.

He was doomed to interruptions, however, that evening. He had just settled down to his work after a hearty meal, laying out his papers upon the table and disposing himself to a last inspection of all his calculations and diagrams, when his landlady, a woman who had the greatest respect for John, tapped seriously, with a tap that evidently meant something, at the door. She came in, when John bade her enter, with a grave face.

‘Mr. Sandford,’ she said, ‘there has been two men here asking for you as are not your sort at all. One is like a poor gentleman as has got into trouble, and the other’s no better than a rough off the streets. They’ve been here twice asking to see you. I don’t know if they’ve anything to do with the works. Once they was both the worse for liquor. I don’t like to have such folks seen at my door.’

‘I know nothing about them,’ said John. ‘I certainly expected no such visitors. Did they say what they wanted?’

‘They wanted the gentleman as lived here. When I asked if it was Mr. Sandford, the old gentleman, he gave a sort of a cry, but he was that weak on his legs he could not be very clear in his head, I don’t think: and then they commenced again, and they said as you’d been kind to them, and they wanted to see you. And if you’ll peep out of the window behind the curtain you’ll see them coming along the street. And kind or not kind, Mr. Sandford (though I know you’re a good-hearted young gentleman), they ain’t the sort of folks, take my word for it, to be coming to a respectable house.’

John glanced from the window, as he was told: and there he saw approaching the two men whom he had encountered on the steps of the office the night before he went to Edgeley—the tramp whom he had already come in contact with several times before, and the man who had gone to sleep against the closed door, and whom he had rescued and taken to safe lodgings for the night. He had forgotten the adventure in the press of other thoughts, but now it came all fresh to his mind.

‘Oh, these men,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do know them, though I don’t know who they are. If they want to see me, let them come in, Mrs. Short, for once.’

‘If I were you, sir, I’d send them half-a-crown, and say as you were too busy, and better they should come no more.’

‘Well, I am very busy,’ said John. He hesitated for a moment, looking at his papers, thinking the half-crown would be well expended: and then another sentiment moved him which he could not explain to himself, a curiosity, a melting of the heart. Here was some other direful failure; a crash still worse than Montressor’s and Montressor’s friend—while he, John Sandford, was so strong in youthful success. ‘No,’ he said, ‘poor souls, I’ll see them. Let them come in, this once.’

CHAPTER XVIII.

A PHILOSOPHER.

‘Don’t you funk it,’ said Joe, ‘if any one’ll help you, he’ll do it. This gentleman,’ he added, addressing John, who was looking at them across the table covered by his papers, with a slightly impatient look, ‘is my mate, sir, as I told you on; him as you was so kind to, t’other night. He wanted for to thank you for all your kindness: and there’s—there’s another thing or two——’

‘I suppose he can tell me himself what he wants,’ said John.

The other man stood crushing his hat between his hands, looking at John with deprecating eyes, in which there lurked a smile, as though he was conscious how ludicrous it was that he should be thus introduced under the patronage of this strange companion. He said now,

‘That might be a little hard. But I can at least thank you, sir, for the kindness of the other night.’

‘It was nothing,’ said John, confusedly. ‘Won’t you sit down? It was very surprising to see a—a person like you——’

‘In such circumstances and such company, you would say? For the circumstances—yes; but, for the company, it’s the best this world can give any man, the company of a faithful friend. Joe’s not very polished, and if he’s clever it’s perhaps not in a laudable way: but he’s faithful. I believe he’ll never forsake me, sir. He’s as faithful as if I were a prince and he a knight. A poor pair of nobilities we’d make. You needn’t say so. I can see it in your eyes.’

‘I hope he is as faithful as you think,’ said John, ‘but——’

‘But me no buts,’ said the stranger, ‘if I give up Joe, I give up everything. I have nothing but Joe to trust to. Oh, yes, he’s faithful: for if he weren’t I should sink into ruin altogether. Don’t say anything against him—he’s all I have.’

The speaker gave John a look—which he thought more pathetic than anything he had ever seen, and which went at once to his heart—a look which betrayed a knowledge of Joe and of all that was in John’s mind concerning him, and of the unstable foundation on which his confidence reposed. The pathos and the wistfulness and the humour that were in it betrayed to John’s mind the existence of a sort of passionless self-conscious despairing, such as he had never glimpsed at before, or believed in the possibility of. Joe was this poor wretch’s only prop, but in his heart he knew Joe better than anyone else, and was half-amused in the depths of his desolation that he himself should still be capable of this human clinging to the only being who stood by him. This was what his eyes said to John’s. Joe’s faithfulness was a sort of woeful jest to him, yet his poor sheet-anchor, too.

‘Have you no relations?’ John said; he could not tell why, for what right had he to question this unfortunate man?

‘Relations,’ said the other, ‘are not fond of a man in my circumstances. You know where I’ve come from, I believe, sir, and what I am. May I ask you what made you so kind to me—the other night?’

John looked at Joe, who stood behind looking on, his eyes prowling round in a sort of hungry investigation. The other had drawn a chair to the table, and seated himself, but Joe stood looking about him, like a predatory animal examining if perhaps there might be something to devour.

‘Would your friend mind,’ said John, ‘if I were to ask him to step into the hall?’

The stranger gave a keen glance towards the door.

‘If there is nothing of value there,’ he said, quickly; then, with a change of his tone, ‘Joe, my good fellow, take a little walk outside. I seem to want to have a sentinel or I can’t rest. Just go and walk about a bit outside.’

Joe gave another predatory glance around, and then with a nod of his head withdrew.

‘I’ll come back,’ he said, ‘in ’alf an ’our. If I walks about, some bobby or other will be after me. They don’t never let a poor fellow alone.’

The stranger gave John one of his humorous looks.

‘Such is the effect of prejudice,’ he said.

It was impossible that any position could be more strange. This unknown criminal, this discharged convict, of whom all that John knew was that he was a convict, and had no friend but Joe, seated himself opposite to the young man familiarly at John’s own table, with a twinkle in his eye and a grotesque sense of all that was ludicrous in his own circumstances which was entirely bewildering to a young man not used to mental phenomena of any kind. The man was dressed in clothes of an old-fashioned cut (most likely such as had been quite fashionable and appropriate, John thought, in the days when he was shut up in prison), but still perfectly correct and respectable, and there was in his aspect nothing of that unfamiliarity with comfort and decency which was evident in his companion. This person drew in his chair to John’s table with the ease and freedom of one to whom a tidy bourgeois parlour was usual and natural. Perhaps he might have been accustomed to better places—certainly not to worse. How the episode of the prison had affected him, John wondered vaguely, but at all events there was nothing visible of that association. He was able to make a good-humoured joke of it—a joke which concealed, was it philosophy, was it despair? He settled into seriousness, however, as the door closed upon Joe, though the smile was never far from his eyes—and repeated, with a slight curiosity,

‘You were very kind—that night. To find myself in a decent house, in a soft bed, was wonderful. I couldn’t help wondering why you should take such an interest in me.’

The eyes which were so expressive gave a wistful, almost imploring look in John’s face, as if the man had some suspicion, or rather hope, that John’s motive was other than that of mere charity. The young man was bewildered by this look, and by a something, he could not tell what, that was sympathetic and familiar in the air of the stranger. Sympathetic! and he was one of the criminal class, a returned convict! John’s mind was full of confusion, perplexed beyond measure by the influence which he felt to affect him in spite of himself. But, though he was angry with himself for yielding to it, he could not resist his strange companion’s eyes.

‘It does not seem becoming in me, at my age, to speak so to a man of yours,’ he said. ‘But when I saw you, helpless, with no one but that—ruffian——’

The twinkle lit up again in the eyes of the other; he put up his hand in deprecation.

‘Be gentle,’ he said, ‘with poor Joe.’

How was it possible to maintain the air of a virtuous superior with this smiling criminal? John was more and more abashed and embarrassed.

‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that if you had time to look out—for your real friends——’

‘It was simple charity, then?’ said the man, with a faint sigh: and then he smiled again. ‘At least it was a kind thought. You wanted to deliver me from the evil connections into which you thought I had fallen, in coming out, for lack of better. It was a very kind thought.’

John felt himself draw a long breath, almost a gasp of astonishment and relief and utter confusion of mind. He had felt himself the benefactor, doing indeed a very kind action, something that perhaps not many men would have done: and he was altogether taken aback by this generous appreciation of his good motive.

‘You were right enough,’ said the other, ‘quite right if I had been a more hopeful subject. But you’re too young to know all the ins and the outs of it. I have no real friends. Joe may, or may not, be faithful, poor fellow, but he’s the only human creature who sticks to me, and I am used to him. It was a kind thought on your part, but one that couldn’t come to anything. I partially divined it, so I left the place. I could not enjoy the clean sheets and the tidy room under false pretences; no less thanks to you, my young friend.’

‘But——’ said John, ‘you are not surely going to let yourself sink? you, a man evidently of education, of sense, of understanding——’

‘Sink—to what? Can one sink any deeper? I had all these things when I went—wrong, as people say. If they did not prevent me then, how do you think they are going to stop me now?’

John could do nothing but gasp and draw his breath, and stare at this calm statement. The speaker, after a moment’s pause, looked at him closely, and said,

‘You knew nothing at all about me then, what I had done or where I had been?’