WhenJohn rushed away in the manner that has been described, Montressor and the other were left together looking at each other blankly. They said nothing so long as the sound of voices without betrayed that he was still there. They sat listening, looking at each other, in silence, till the sound of his footsteps had died away upon the stony pavement, and the quiet street had relapsed into its usual stillness. The look which they exchanged was like that of two convicted criminals waiting breathless till the steps of the avenger had died away. Montressor, at least, had done the young fellow no wrong, but he felt that he had somehow unconsciously, involuntarily, been the means of bringing trouble upon him. He feltlike a culprit whispering to his fellow-conspirator when he said,
‘May,’ in a low voice, as if he might be overheard, ‘what does it all mean?’
May looked up at him from where he sat by the table, leaning his forehead upon his hands. He shook his head, but he did not make any reply.
‘May, we’re old friends. I never turned me back upon ye, though many did. I’ve always felt an interest in where ye were, and how your time was running on. I hadn’t much in me power, but many didn’t do that.’
‘Nobody did it,’ said May. ‘I’m like a martyr, a saint, in that, if in nothing else, Montressor; everyone forsook me. I had not a soul to inquire whether I was living or dead, but you.’
‘Hush, May, me poor fellow!—your wife and family——’
‘Do you know what they did? They disappeared, and left no sign of themselves anywhere. They must have changed their name; they sent a sum of money for me, but not a word. I came out not knowing if anyone belonging to me was living or dead, or where they were, orwhat had become of them. My wife may be at the end of the world for anything I know.’
‘May be dead,’ said the other, ‘that’s more likely.’
The convict shook his head.
‘It must have been she who sent me the money. I had a mind not to take it at first. Like a bone to a dog to keep him from following you. I thought for half-an-hour I wouldn’t take it: but after all,’ he said, with a low laugh, ‘money’s not a bad thing in itself. It’s a make-up for many things—when you can get nothing else.’
‘Me poor soul! if you’ve sinned you’ve suffered,’ said Montressor, with a sigh of sympathy.
The other laughed again.
‘There’s something to be said on both sides. What’s sin? It’s a thing that takes different aspects according to your point of view. And you may say what’s suffering too? That is a pang to one person which would be the course of nature to another. My friend Joe never expected to have any welcome on the other side of the gates at Portland; not he. He was content to get out of it, to go where he pleased, toget drunk comfortably next night with nobody to interfere. He had no ridiculous expectations. What you call suffering to me was bliss to Joe.’
Montressor did not know what to reply; nothing in his own life, and not all the expedients of the theatre could furnish him with a fit answer. He tried to throw into his face and the solemn shake of his head, something which he ought to feel.
‘All other things are according to your point of view,’ the other went on; ‘but money’s absolute. It’s always a good thing in its way. I took it, and I consoled myself that on the whole—that on the whole—— But children have a droll sort of hold upon you,’ he said, quickly, with a broken laugh. ‘I always felt I’d give a great deal to know what had become of my little boy.’
Montressor stretched out his hand, and took hold of May’s across the table. Both nature and the theatre helped him here.
‘Me poor friend!’ he said.
‘He was a delightful little chap. It might be because I was partial, you know—but I think there never was a finer little chap. I used togo upstairs, when I came in late, and fetch him out of his bed, out of his sleep, his mother said, and looked death and destruction at me—but it never did him any harm. I shouldn’t wonder if he remembered it now. I think I see him in his white nightgown, with his two eyes shining, his hair all ruffled up, his little bare feet.’ His voice ran off in a low, sobbing cough. ‘I never saw such a little chap:—never a bit afraid, though I wasn’t very steady sometimes when I carried him downstairs.’
There was a pause. Montressor had no stage precedent before him to teach him how to act in such an extraordinary crisis: but Nature began to make a hundred confused suggestions, which at first he could scarcely understand. The stillness seemed to throb and thrill around them, when this monologue ceased, demanding something from the actor, he could not tell what; some help which he did not know how to give, scarcely what it was.
‘Me poor friend!’ he said once more. ‘You’ve done wrong, but wrong has been done to you. And this little chap, ye think ye’ve found him? Ye think he’s turned out to be this—this nobleyoung fellow here? If ye have an interest in him one way, I’ve got an interest in him in another, for he saved the life of me chyild—of me Edie,’ the actor added, as in the theatre he would have said these touching words, ‘who is the prop of me old age, and the pillar of me house.’
May, who had been roused out of his musings by the question, fell back into them as Montressor prolonged his speech, and now made no reply. The other continued:
‘Me interest in him is strong. I’d save him any trouble, or disturbance, or distress—anything that was to humble him, or to shame him, or to put a stop to him making his way. I’d do that, whatever it might cost me—that I would, for me chyild’s sake.’
‘Your chyild?’ said May, with an imitation of the actor’s pronunciation, which Montressor scarcely perceived, but which tickled the speaker in the extraordinary lightness of his heart or temper. He laughed, and then took up the conversation, changing his tone.
‘A child’s a strange thing. It’s yourself in a kind of way, and yet it’s nicer than yourself.The naughtier it is, the nicer it is. It’s endless fun. I don’t know,’ he said, with a wave of his hand, ‘what the relationship is when it exists between you and somebody that, so to speak, is as old as yourself.’
‘Me poor May! but that’s a thing that can’t be.’
‘Myself, for instance,’ continued the philosopher. ‘I’m father to a child, not to a man. My little chap, if he had lived, would be—— I don’t know,’ he added, after a pause, ‘that I’d be very sorry to hear he had died.’
‘Hush, May!’ said the other, with an outcry of dismay. ‘I wouldn’t believe ye. Ye can’t mean it, whatever ye may say.’
‘Why can’t I mean it? My little chap belongs to me, whatever happens. He had always a smile and a kiss for his father; he was never afraid of me; he never looked at me stern, like his mother. Now, if he should happen to have grown into—something like this young fellow here——’
‘Ye would be a lucky man, not a luckier man in all England: a brave boy of whom any father might be proud.’
‘Ah!’ said the vagrant, with a long-drawn breath, which ended in a faint laugh, ‘and would he, do you think, be proud of me?’
There was another silence, for Montressor was daunted, and felt once more that even the resources of his profession failed him; and May went on, after the telling interval of that pause.
‘A young fellow that is the pink of respectability, that never took a drop too much, nor went an inch out of the way in all his life! Lord, Montressor, think what it would be to be set down for life, to be overlooked by a fellow like that! to see in his eyes what he thought of you! I’m a poor wretch that can’t live without a laugh. I couldn’t, you know, if I were, as people used to say, within the ribs of death. I’ve made the best of things, and reasoned them out, and got a little fun out of them wherever I was. I know what would happen well enough. When I talked to him the other day, I was a sort of a strange beast to him that he was very sorry for. It nearly brought the tears into his eyes to hear me talk. I could almost tell you what he was thinking. “Poor beggar!” he was thinking, “it’s all wrong and horrible, butif it gives him a little consolation in his misery——” He was awfully kind.’
‘He’s the kindest heart I ever came across,’ cried the actor, with an exaggeration which was very allowable in the circumstances, ‘and liberal as the day, and never forgets a friend.’
This May dismissed again with a wave of his hand as something outside of the question.
‘He was awfully kind. It looked like what you call the voice of nature on the stage, Montressor. One doesn’t often come across it anywhere else. Do you know he picked me up dr—— well, as the policemen say, a little the worse for liquor—in the street? Think of it, a young man that is the flower of respectability—that never consorted with the wicked. And after seeing me unadorned like that, and knowing where I came from, which Joe did his best to publish, taking me in, establishing me here, and giving me his papers to copy! By the way, I’m a little sorry about these papers,’ he went on. ‘Perhaps it was stretching a point to take them away—convey the wise it call—though they weren’t his, strictly speaking, you know; he hadn’t paid for them or made anybargain; but still a Puritanical person might say—— It was all that sophist Joe, a casuist born, though he doesn’t know a rule of logic. And then the ridiculous name of those engineer people caught my fancy. Spender & Diggs, don’t you know; it’s grotesque. That tempted me. But, perhaps, after all, it was stretching a point—the jury might say it was a breach of trust. I think I’ll go and get them back.’
‘Me friend!’ cried Montressor, ‘there I see ye as I always liked to see ye—generous, whatever else.’
‘Yes,’ said May, with some complacency, ‘I flatter myself I always was that; but few people knew the line to take with me. The talk has always been about justice. As if justice was a thing to be defined! If every man had his deserts, which of us would be uppermost, I wonder? Not those fellows in scarlet that sentence other men, or the pettifogging shopkeepers on a jury that know about as much of justice—— I think I’ll go and get those papers back.’
‘Come on; I’ll go with ye—I’ll stand by ye in a righteous cause!’ cried Montressor, starting to his feet.
‘Gently,’ said May, looking at him with mild eyes, leaning back in his chair. ‘It’s too late to-day. I’ll go to-morrow as soon as I’m up; and as for that old casuist Joe——’
‘What’s Joe, or any other man,’ said Montressor, ‘in comparison with what’s generous, me friend, and kind? Here’s a young man, and as fine a young man as ye’ll see, that’s been good to ye—even if there’s nothing more in it.’
‘Even if there’s nothing more in it,’ said May, in his mellow, melting voice. ‘And there may be more in it, Montressor. There may be little Johnnie in it, God bless him, my nice little chap!’
‘Me friend,’ said Montressor, with enthusiasm, ‘there may be little Johnnie in it, grown up to be a credit to all that belongs to him, to be the prop of your old age and the blessin’ of your life, like me own Edie—to thank ye for saving him from ruin, to bless ye——’
‘Hold hard!’ said the other. ‘Montressor, my good fellow, your eloquence is carrying you away. Thank me for saving him from ruin! It was hauling me up for stealing his papers that he was thinking of——’
‘But not,’ cried John’s advocate, ‘not sincehe knew—not since it began to dawn upon him, poor boy——’
The convict put out his hand—and the actor stopped short in his appeal. They sat silent once more, looking at each other with thoughts that were too deep for speech. It was May who took up the broken sentence at last.
‘Ay,’ he said, ‘when it began to dawn upon him, poor boy, that the man he had picked up out of the streets, the man he had been so charitable to, the man he had trusted and that had betrayed him, the convict from Portland, was his father! Good Lord! Think of this happening to a proud, virtuous, self-conceited, right-minded, well-behaved young prig like that!’ He burst into something that sounded like a laugh, and yet was more miserable than any outcry of despair. ‘Think of that, Montressor,’ he said again, after a moment. ‘That’s stranger than any of your stage effects. Poor young beggar! all made up of pride and honour and rectitude, and all that, and as ambitious as Alexander to boot.’ He got up for a moment and stood by the table and looked round him. ‘I think I’ll go away. I think I’ll go rightaway and take myself out of the boy’s road. What would be the good of torturing him, and making him try to be respectful to his father? He’d be respectful—and awfully disagreeable,’ he added, with a lighter laugh. ‘I’ll not wait for him any longer. I’ll go right away.’
‘Me noble friend! it’s your true heart that speaks!’ cried Montressor, seizing him by the arm. ‘Me house is open to you, May, and me heart—come with me.’
May looked round upon the room, the fire of his sentiment dying out, the habitual twinkle coming back to his eye.
‘It’s a dreadfully respectable little place,’ he said. ‘Tidy—not a thing out of order. Could you imagine a comfortable pipe and glass here? And I know how he would look at me. It makes a difference when it’s a relation. A poor man off the streets is the sort of thing you can be kind to without derogation—but not a—father. I’m not the sort of father for a man. A little boy like my little chap wouldn’t mind; but a fine, respectable young man! And women don’t mind so much—that is, some women. Howold is your Edie, Montressor, and what sort of a girl?’
‘Sixteen, and an angel,’ said the actor, ‘and dances like one: and she’s the prop of me house.’
‘Sixteen—you must take me to Edie. Sixteen’s too young to ask many questions: and when it dances besides! But you’ve got a wife?’
‘She’s an angel too, May.’
‘It’s you that are lucky, Montressor. I wonder if I’ve still got a wife? She was a sort of an arch-angel, don’t you know, too high-minded, too grand for the like of me. I wonder if she’s alive. Yes, she must be alive. Nobody but she would have sent me that money without a word. Perhaps, Montressor, it’s her he’s gone to consult.’
‘Never mind, me friend. Let’s think no more of them. Let’s go away.’
‘It will be so,’ said May, as if speaking to himself; ‘his mother—that master of his said. Confound all jealous masters, he will cause me a deal of trouble getting those things back. Ay, the mother! she’ll tell him everything, she’llnot spare the old riotous good-for-nothing—his father!’ Here the voice changed. ‘A father like me,’ he added, ‘isn’t for a young man, Montressor; you’re right in what you say. I’d do for a boy, a little fellow like my own little chap. He and I could go away together where nobody ever heard of us. Get a little farm in the country, perhaps, and a spade, and—that sort of thing: and the poor little beggar would never know. But for a man that is respectability itself, and all that—— No, no, you’re right, Montressor. Take me to your angel that dances, and the other one—what does she do?—perhaps she sings.’ He burst forth into a tremulous, broken laugh. ‘Two angels—instead of my own little chap. You’re right, Montressor. Don’t let us wait for the poor boy that’s coming back broken-hearted. Who knows, if I weren’t such a good-for-nothing, if I weren’t such a reckless fool, I might be broken-hearted too.’
‘Me poor friend!’ the actor cried, ‘as long as I have a roof over me head, come; it’s but a poor place, but ye’ll be welcome. Montressor’s door is never shut against trouble and sorrow. And when ye see me Edie dance—and she’lldance to ye as if ye were a crowned head—ye’ll forget everything.’
‘Ah, I’ll forget everything,’ said the other; he added, musing, ‘I’ll do that easy, whether or no.’
Johnleft the hospital, he scarcely knew when, and could not tell how. He had forgotten, though he never could for a moment forget, that he had left waiting for him the two men, the man who—— Remember him!—it seemed to John an impossibility that ever again, even if he lived a hundred years, he could forget what had been revealed to him that day, or the look of the man’s face, who suddenly in a moment had lifted the veil of his own childish life, and made the playful, sweet recollection which had never died out of his mind an instrument of torture.
He was conscious when he came out from under the shadow of the great building inwhich his mother’s life was spent, and found himself on the bridge with the clear vacancy of the river on each side of him, that the afternoon had waned, that the sun was going down, and that a sentiment of the coming evening, with its rest and quietness, was already in the air. But that a long time had elapsed since in hot haste and excitement he had crossed that bridge, going to demand from his mother an explanation of this horror, he could not tell. It was a moment, an age, he could not tell which. Despair had been in his soul, mingled with a passionate determination that this thing should not be, when he went: but he was still and silent as he returned. He had not received either explanation or proof. His mother’s panic was proof enough on one side, as were the few words that he had said on the other. These words alone were unanswerable, unforgettable. If the convict had vanished from his eyes unnamed, John felt that his fond recollection of that child in his night-gown was enough to have proved all the terrible story. For who could know it but himself and one other, himself and his father?
His father! What a name that was, full of tenderness, full of honour, a name that could neither be obliterated nor transferred, nor lost in forgetfulness. A man’s father is his father for ever, whatever circumstances may arise. John, the son of——: is not that the primitive description, the first distinction of every man, the thing which gives him standing among his fellows? The mother may or may not have a name of her own, a reputation of her own—what does it signify? John, the son of Emily Sandford!—oh no, that was not his natural description. He was John, the son of Robert May. And Robert May was the convict whom he had picked up in the street, of whom he had been so kindly indulgent, so contemptuously tolerant.
John did not follow this train of thought. It gleamed before him as he went along, that was all; and once more he paused on the middle of the bridge, remembering how he had done so before at the different crises of his life. How he had smiled not so many days ago, on his birthday, when he passed over it and thought of his own boyish despair at seventeen, and theimpulse he had felt to rush away, and cut all the ties that bound him, and go off to the ends of the world to struggle out a career for himself all alone. At twenty-one he had looked out over the same parapet, on what seemed the same outgoing sails, and had laughed to himself in high self-complacence and content at that foolish petulance of his youth. It was not yet three weeks ago—but then he had felt himself the master of his own fate with prosperity and hope in every circumstance of his life—the ball at his foot as he had said. Not three weeks ago! and now here he stood a ruined man, crushed by disgrace and humiliation, and made to appear as if in his own person he deserved that doom—the son of his father!—doing what he had always been expected to do, betraying those who trusted in him. John grasped the stony parapet and looked—oh no, with no idea of self-destruction—that was an impossible as it was a contemptible mode of escape: but with a bitter indignant persuasion that his early plan would have been the best, and that to have gone away beyond the knowledge of any who had ever heard his name—away into the unknown, fatherless, motherless, friendless—would have been after all the most expedient for him, the only wise thing to do.
A convict: a convict! He went on afterwards setting his teeth, saying this to himself. It was not a thing that could be thought over calmly: his thinkings got into mere repetition to himself of these words, which seemed to circle about him like the flies in the air as he walked on. A convict! There was not the slightest reason to doubt it: it proved itself: no man but one could have held in his imagination and recollection that old innocent picture which had been John’s so long. The pretty innocent little picture that might have come out of a child’s book, with its little spice of innocent wrongness, the baby disorder, the mutinous pleasure of it! It had been sweet to his memory for years—and now all at once it became horrible, a thing his heart grew sick to think of.
John felt that to few people could it be so horrible as it was to him. Honour and integrity, and noble meaning, and a high scorn of everything base had been the very air he breathed. He had stood on this foundation as some peoplestand on wealth, and some on family and connections. The other pupils in the office had in many cases possessed a foundation of that other kind: but, as for John, he had always stood high on those personal qualities, on the fact that no reproach could be brought against him, and that whatever records were brought to light he never could be shamed. That very morning when he set out to go to the office, puzzled about the loss of the copy, but fearing nothing, feeling in all heaven and earth no shadow of anything to fear, with his papers in his pocket, there was not so much as that cloud like a man’s hand to warn him. And yet he had been on the eve of irremediable and ruinous disgrace. Only to think of it—this morning with a spotless reputation and every prognostic in his favour: and now—a convict’s son!
When the soul is overcome in this way with sudden trouble, how constantly does the sufferer feel that the blow has been administered skilfully in that way of all others which cuts most deeply. There were many other kinds of suffering which John could have borne, he thought, patiently enough—but this! Shame! It wasthe defeat of all his efforts, the keen and poignant contradiction of all he had striven after. And he was wise enough to know that the first impulse of indignant resistance and that cry of despair with which a man protests that he cannot and will not bear what has befallen him—were alike futile. There it was, not to be got over; and bear it he must, whatever ensued.
In this maze of dreadful thought, he came home to the little rooms in which his virtuous and austere young life had been passed, not knowing in the least what he was going to do, feeling only that he must acknowledge the—man—the convict—acknowledge him, and thus give him more or less the command of his life. John had been in a fever of excitement and suspense when he went away. He was now calm enough, quite quiet and resolute, though he had as yet no plan of action. He walked quickly, absorbed in himself and the consequences to himself, without thinking of what might have happened on the other side; not able, indeed, without a sinking sensation, to think of the other side at all—and pushed open the door which was unlatched. Probably he had left it so when hewent out, he could not tell. He did not remember indeed anything about how he had come out. Mr. Barrett’s appearance and every secondary circumstance had disappeared from his mind; yet he woke, as he felt the door give way under his hand, to the idea that he must have left it so. It is not a thing to do in London, not even in a quiet little street out of the way. Probably he had done it in his madness in the first shock of his dismay.
It gave him an extraordinary check in the height of his concentrated self-control, to find everything empty when he came in. There was no trace even that anyone had ever been there. The respectable little sitting-room looked exactly as it had done ever since he knew it—the chairs put back in their places, theStandardcarefully folded upon the table where he had left it in the morning, no appearance anywhere that anything had happened since then. He stood still for a moment with a gasp of dismay, wondering whether he had only dreamt all this, if it had been a mere nightmare, a feverish vision. Could he but persuade himself that this was so, that he was the same JohnSandford he had been in the morning, with the ball still at his foot! For the moment a wild hope gleamed across him; but it was only for a moment. He sat down and stared about him, wondering to see everything the same. All the same! yet altogether changed, as no external convulsion could have changed it: an earthquake would have been nothing in comparison. If a bomb had suddenly exploded upon the decent carpet among the inoffensive furniture, and shattered the innocent house to pieces, what would that have been in comparison? These were the ridiculous thoughts that came across his mind, and almost made him laugh in the first revulsion of feeling, which was disappointment and relief, and yet was nothing at all. For what did it matter? The thing had been, and could not be wiped out. It existed and could never be swept away. Ignore it if he could, forget it even if he could, there all the same it would be. He could not be rid of it ever, for ever. He sat silent awhile realising this, and then rose and went to ring the bell: but, before he could touch it, he was startled by a tap at the door.
It was only his landlady who came in—but she had her best cap on, and looked as if she had something to say. She was embarrassed, and turned round and round on her finger a ring which was too big for her.
‘If you please, Mr. Sandford——’ she began.
‘Yes? I left two—people here. Do you know where they have gone?’
‘That’s why I made so bold as to come in, Mr. Sandford. I don’t like saying of it, sir. You have always been a gentleman as I’ve been glad to have in my house.’
‘Yes. What message did they leave? Where have they gone? I came back expecting to find them here.’
‘I never was fond of young gentlemen,’ said Mrs. Short, taking out her handkerchief. ‘They pay well, as a rule, and they don’t give much trouble, being out all day: but I’ve always been afraid of them. They’re chancy-like—you don’t know what they may do, or who they may bring.’
‘Another time,’ said John, ‘if you’ve anything to say to me—but atpresent I want to know what message—— Did they say where they were going?’
‘The gentlemen said nothing to me, nor to no one. They just scuttled out of the house, leaving all the chairs about. I thank my goodness gracious stars that I can’t see nothing gone: but, Mr. Sandford—I’ve a great respect for you, sir, as a gentleman that can take care of yourself when many can’t, and always tidy, and keeps no bad company, leastways never did till now——’
John only half understood what she was saying, but he caught at the words bad company, and replied, with a faint laugh,
‘I’ve been very particular about that, have I not?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir: to do you justice, you’ve been very particular. And that makes me feel it all the more. Do you know, Mr. Sandford, who’s been out and in ofmyhouse all these days, sitting in my parlour, like he was the master? Oh, don’t tell me, sir, as you knew all the time! A man as has just come out of prison, a man as has just served out his time, and that was fourteenyears. Mr. Sandford, don’t tell me as you knew!’
‘Yes,’ said John; ‘I knew; but I didn’t know——’ here he stopped and gazed at her, quieted he could not tell by what sentiment, and feeling as if the words hung suspended in the air which he ought to have said. ‘I didn’t know he was—my father’—that was what he had intended to say.
‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ the woman said. ‘You’ve always been most regular, paying to the day, and always civil, and a pleasure to serve you; but I can’t do with that sort of visitors in my house. I can’t, sir; I’ve got my character to think of. I’ve told Betsy, if they come again, to shut the door in their face. And, Mr. Sandford, it’s a week’s notice, please, sir. I don’t doubt but you can easy suit yourself. There are folks that think nothing of their character so long’s they get a good let: and except for this I haven’t got a word, not a word, to say against you.’
John stared at her blankly, taking her meaning with difficulty into his mind: then gradually perception came to him.
‘You want me,’ he said, ‘to go away?’
‘Yes, sir, that’s what it’s come to,’ the woman said, clearing her throat.
John kept his eyes upon her—trying to intimidate her, she thought; in reality, trying to fathom her, to make out what she meant—then he burst into a sudden laugh.
‘To go away—for what? Because I am—in trouble, because my life is not so happy as it has been. Well, it is a good reason enough. Yes, Mrs. Short, I’ll go.’
‘You—in trouble, sir!’ The woman’s voice rose into a sort of shriek. ‘Oh, Mr. Sandford, what have you done? you that were always so respectable. Can’t you put it right? Oh, Mr. Sandford, I never thought of that. How much is it? Tell your ma, sir, and, whatever it costs her, she’ll set it right.’
John found himself strangely amused by all this. It came into the midst of his misery like a scrap of farce to relieve his strained bosom by laughter. He knew well enough, too, the phraseology and ways of thinking of his landlady, and he tried to understand the idea he had suggested to her imagination; and half tokeep up the joke, though it was a poor one, half because he was incapable of explanations, he made no other reply.
‘Oh, Mr. Sandford,’ she cried again, coming up to him, laying her hand on his arm, ‘excuse me if I make too free; but tell your ma, sir, for the love of God. She’ll not let you come to shame for a bit of money. Oh, no, no, no! I can tell by myself. I never breathed a word of it to any mortal, but my Tom was once—he was once—I never knew how it could have been, for a better boy never was. It was some temptation of the devil, sir, that’s what it was. I saw the boy was miserable, but I couldn’t get a word out of him—till at last one night I went down on my knees, and I got hold of him where he was sitting with his head in his hands, and forced it from him. It was a good bit of money, sir. I’ll not say but it kept me low a long time: but what was that in comparison with my Tom’s credit, and his situation, and his whole life? He would have fled the country next day, if I hadn’t got it out of him that night. Now, Mr. Sandford, haven’t I a rightto speak? Oh, for God’s sake, go out before you sleep and tell your ma!’
‘Mrs. Short, you are a good woman. It’s not what you think. I am not in debt, nor is it money that troubles me. And my mother knows; I’ve told her. Thank you for speaking. I’ll go as soon as I have found another set of rooms, or perhaps I may go abroad. But, anyhow, I’ll clear out within the week since you wish it.’
‘Your mother knows?’ said Mrs. Short, with a tremble in her voice.
‘Yes—everything,’ said John, with a smile and a sigh.
‘And about these—men? If so be as she knows—and you’ll promise to see them no more——’
‘I can’t give any promise,’ said John, shaking his head. But he looked her in the face, in a way, Mrs. Short thought, that those who are falling into bad company and evil ways never do. He was not afraid to meet her eye. She shook her head standing over him, feeling that the problem was one which it was aboveher power to solve. She said at last, in a subdued tone:
‘If you’ve told your ma—she wouldn’t countenance what was wrong. Oh, Lord, I wish I knew what to do for the best. Mr. Sandford, if it’s really true that your ma knows, I’ll take back my warning, sir, and we’ll try again. But oh, you’re young, and you don’t know how quick things go when you take the wrong road. Oh, Mr. Sandford, though you’ve had so much of your liberty, you’re very young still!’
‘Do you think so?’ said John, with a faint smile. He felt a hundred: there seemed no spring of youth or hope left in him. Then he said suddenly, with an almost childlike appeal to human kindness: ‘I’ve had no food all day. Go and get me something to eat like a kind soul. I’ve had no dinner or anything.’
‘No dinner!’ she said, with an outcry of distress. This seemed something so dreadful, such a breach of all natural laws, that it swept away every lesser emotion. And John, too, though he had said this not because he was hungry, felt a little quiver in his own lip as he realised the extraordinary fact. He had had no dinner!Such a thing had perhaps never happened before in his whole life.
In the evening, when he sat alone with no company but his lamp, having eaten and refreshed himself (and to his own great wonder he was quite hungry when food was set before him, though he did not think he could have tasted a morsel), John heard a soft step pass two or three times close to his window. The street was very quiet after dark, and there was so much significance in the persistent re-passing, so close as if the passer-by meant to look in at the sides of his blind, that his attention was roused. He looked out cautiously, but saw no one. His heart began to beat high—who could it be but one person? John recollected suddenly the soft tread, the cautious, carefully-poised foot, as of one used to moving about steadily, to wearing shoes such as indoor dwellers wear. It came over him with a sickening sensation that a tread so soft would be useful to those who lived by preying upon others: and then a bitter self-reproach seized him: for the unfortunate who had suddenly become so interesting to him, was not, he said to himself, after all a common thief that he shouldthink such horrible injurious things of him. While he was watching, listening, he heard all at once a ring at the door. The stealthy visitor had made up his mind at last. John stood waiting, breathless, in a miserable confusion of feeling, not knowing how he was to meet with, how he was to speak to the man who was his father, when the door opened. But it was not May who came in; it was a figure more unexpected, more startling, the tall dark shadow of a veiled woman, who, putting back part of the shade from her face as she entered noiselessly, presented the grave countenance of his mother, disturbed by unusual excitement to John’s astonished eyes.
Mrs. Sandfordlooked round upon the tidy little sitting-room, but with eyes of alarm that sought in the curtains and shadows for some apparition she feared, and not as a woman looks at the dwelling-place of her child. She had never been here before. Susie had visited him from time to time with a woman’s interest in his surroundings, but his mother never. It was all strange to her as if he had been a stranger. She gave that keen look round which noted nothing except what was its object, that there was nobody to be seen.
‘Is he here?’ she said, in a low voice of alarm, without any greeting or preface. Caresses did not pass between these two eitherat meeting or at parting, and there was no time to think even of the conventional salutation now.
‘No, he is not here.’
She sat down with a sigh of relief, and put back altogether the heavy gauze veil which had enveloped her head.
‘Is he coming back? Are you—— Tell them to admit no one, no one! while I am here.’
‘I do not think you need fear; he is not coming back.’
She leaned back in her chair with relief. It was the same chair in whichthe otherhad been sitting when John had left the room in the afternoon. This recollection gave him a curious sensation, as if two images, which were so antagonistic had met and blended in spite of themselves.
‘I don’t know what I said to you this afternoon; I was so taken by surprise: and yet I was not surprised. I—expected it: only not that it should have happened to you. It is better,’ she continued, after a pause, ‘that it should have happened to you.’
‘Perhaps,’ said John; ‘I may be better ableto bear it—but why did I have no warning that such a thing could be.’
‘Oh, why?’ said she, with a quick breath of impatience—rather as demanding why he should ask than as allowing the possibility of giving an explanation. She loosened her long black cloak and put it back from her shoulders, and thus the shadows seemed to open a little, and the light to concentrate in her pale, clear face. It is but rarely, perhaps, that children observe the beauty of their mothers, and never, save when it is indicated to them by the general voice, or by special admiration. John had never thought of Mrs. Sandford in this light; but now it suddenly struck him for the first time that she had been, that she was, a woman remarkable in appearance, as in character, with features which she had not transmitted to her children, no common-place, comely type, but features which seemed meant for lofty emotions, for the tragic and impassioned. She had not been in circumstances, so far as he had seen her, to develop these, and her lofty looks had fallen into rigidity, and the austereness of rule and routine. Sometimes they had melted whenshe looked at Susie, but no higher aspect than that of a momentary softening had ever animated her countenance in his ken. Now it was different. Her fine nostrils moved, dilating and trembling, with a sensitiveness which was a revelation to her son; her eyes shone; her mouth, which was so much more delicate than he had been aware, closed with an impassioned force, in which, however, there was the same suspicion of a quiver. Her face was full of sensation, of feeling, of passion. She was not the same woman as that austere and authoritative one whom he had all this time known. When he returned from giving the order which she asked, that nobody should be admitted, he found her leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed, which seemed to make the rest of her face, which was all quivering with emotion, even more expressive than before.
‘I thought that I had not told you enough—that you deserved explanations, which, painful, most painful as they are, ought to be given to you now. I suppose I told you very little to-day?’
‘Nothing, or next to nothing,’ he replied.
‘I suppose—I wanted to spare myself,’ she said, with a faint quiver of a smile.
‘Mother,’ cried John, ‘I will take it for granted. Why should you make yourself wretched on my account? And, after all, when the fact is once allowed, what does it matter? I know all that I need to know—now.’
‘Perhaps you are right, John. You know what I would have died to keep from your knowledge, if it were not folly and nonsense to use such words. Much, much would be spared in this world if one could purchase the extinction of it by dying. I know that very well: it is a mere phrase.’
He made no reply, but watched with increasing interest the changes in her face.
‘It was thought better you should not know. What good could it have done you? A father dead is safe; he seems something sacred, whatever he may have been in reality.Ithought, I don’t shrink from the responsibility, that it was better for you; and my father agreed with me, John.’
‘Grandmother did not,’ he said, quickly; ‘now I know what she meant.’
‘Then,’ she said, ‘now that you know, you can judge between us.’
She made no appeal to his affection. She was not of that kind. And John was sufficiently like her to pause, not to utter the words that came to his lips. He seemed once more to see himself in his boyhood, so full of ambition and pride and confidence. After awhile he said,
‘It is much for me to say, but I think I approve. If it is hard upon me as a man, what would it have been when I was a boy?’
‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that you see it in that light;’ and then she paused, as if concluding that part of the subject. She resumed again, after a moment: ‘I took every precaution. We disappeared from the place, and changed our name. My father and mother changed their home, broke the thread—I left no clue that I could think of.’ She stopped again and cleared her throat, and said, with difficulty, ‘Does he think he has any clue?’
John could not make any reply. How his heart veered from side to side!—sometimes all with her in her pride and passion, sometimes touched with a sudden softening recollection ofthe man with his sophistries, his self-reconciliating philosophy, his good humour, and his almost childish, ingratiating smile.
‘I don’t see how he can have found out anything. I have never lost sight of him—that was easy enough. He has had whatever indulgences, or alleviations of his lot were permitted. I left money in the chaplain’s hand for him when the time came for his coming out. I did not trust the chaplain even with any clue.’
The balance came round again as she spoke, and John remembered how, in this very room, the same story had been told to him from the other side, and he had himself cried out, indignantly, ‘Could you not find them? Was there no clue?’
He said now, breathlessly, ‘Did you think that right?’
‘Right!’ She paused with a little gasp, as if she had been stopped suddenly in her progress by an unexpected touch. ‘Could there be any question on the subject?’
‘Did Susie think it right?’
‘Susie!’ She paused again with impatience. ‘Susie is one of those women who are all-forgiving, and who have no judgment of right and wrong.’
‘And you never hesitated, mother!’
‘Never,’ she said, a faint colour like the reflection of a flame passing over her pale face. ‘Why should I hesitate? Could there be a question? Alas! Fate has done it instead of me: but could I—I, your mother, bring such a wrong upon you of my own free will? Don’t you think I would rather have died—to use that foolish phrase again—I use it to mean the extremity of wish and effort,—rather than have exposed you to know, much less to encounter—? Don’t let us speak of it,’ she said, giving her head a slight nervous shake, as if to shake the thought far from her. ‘Upon that subject I never had a doubt.’
‘And yet he was a man, like other men: and his children at least were not his judges. Most men who have children have something, somebody to meet them after years of separation.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘He did not blame anybody. Knowing nothing about it but that he was a wretched poor criminal, and that this was his story, I, who wasone of the offenders without knowing, was very indignant.’
‘You were very indignant!’
‘Yes, mother; I thought it cruel. My heart ached for the man; fourteen years of privation and loneliness, and not a soul to say “Welcome” when he came back into the cold world.’
‘He had money, which buys friends—the kind of friends he liked.’
She had changed her attitude, and sat straight up, her eyes shining, the lines of her face all moving, rising up enraged and splendid in her own defence.
‘It seemed to have gone to his heart—the abandonment—and it went to mine, merely to hear the story told.’
‘I bow,’ she said, ‘to the tenderness of both your hearts! I always felt there was a certain likeness. I act on other laws:—to bring a convict back into my family, to shame my young, high-minded, honourable son, whose path in life promised no difficulty; to shame my gentle child who has all a woman’s devotion to whoever suffers or seems to suffer; I don’t speak of myself. For myself, I would die a hundredtimes (that phrase again!) rather than be exposed—— No, no, no—nothing, nothing would have induced me to act otherwise. You don’t know what it is—you don’t know whatheis. Fate, I will not say God, has baffled my plans: but do not let him come near me, for I cannot bear it. I will rather leave everything and go away—to the end of the world.’
John had in his heart suffered all that a proud and pure-minded young man can suffer from the thought of what and who his father was: and he had felt his heart sicken with disgust, turning from him and loathing him. But when his mother spoke thus a sudden revulsion of feeling arose in him. He could not hear him so assailed. A sudden partisanship, that family solidarity which is so curious in its operations, filled his mind. He felt angry with her that she attacked him, though she said no more than it had been in his own heart to say.
He replied, with some indignation in the calmness of his words:
‘I think you may save yourself trouble on that account. I have not seen him again. When I came back he was gone. They had not waitedfor me. They left no message. I don’t know where to find him.’
‘Gone?’ she said. ‘Gone——?’
‘Yes, mother. He delivered me from the difficulty, the misery in which I was coming back, with the intention of saying—what it is so hard to say to a man who—may be one’s—father.’ John grew pale, and then grew red. The word was almost impossible to utter, but he brought it forth at last. ‘But he did not wait for my hesitation or difficulties. He relieved me. They were gone without leaving a sign.’
‘Who do you mean by they?’
‘He had a friend,’ John answered, faltering, ‘a friend who is my friend too. An actor, Montressor.’
‘Montressor!’ said Mrs. Sandford, with something like a scream. Then she covered her eyes suddenly with her hand. ‘Oh, what scenes, what scenes that name brings back to me! they were friends, as such men call friendship. They encouraged each other in all kinds of evil. Montressor! and how came he to be a friend of yours?’
‘It is an old story, mother: I daresay youhave forgotten. It was entirely by chance. Susie knows. I will make a confession to you,’ he said, with a sudden impulse. ‘I was very unhappy, and full of resentment towards everybody——’
‘Towards me,’ she said, quietly, ‘I remember very well. That was the time when you said I was Emily, and would not have me for your mother.’
She smiled at the boyish petulance, as a mother thus outraged has a right to smile: and perhaps it was natural she should remember it so. But it was not the moment to remind him. He smiled too, but his smile was not of an easy kind.
‘I was altogether wrong,’ he said, ‘I confess it. When I met this man, I called myself—by the name which seemed to come uppermost in that whirl of trouble. I said I was John May.’
She was silent for a time, not making any reply, her anger not increased, as he thought it would be: for, indeed, her mind was too full to be affected by things which at ordinary times would have moved her much.
‘And so,’ she said, after a time, ‘that was how he found you out. I will not call it fate—it seems like God. And yet, for such a childish, small offence, it was a dreadful penalty. Poor boy! you thought to revenge yourself a little more on me—and instead you have brought upon your own head—this——’
In the silence that followed—for what could John reply?—there came a slight intrusion of sound from the house. Some one went out or came in downstairs, a simple sound, such as in the natural state of affairs would not even have roused any attention. It awakened all the smouldering panic in Mrs. Sandford’s face. She started, and caught John by the arm.
‘What’s that? What’s that? It is some one coming—he is coming back.’
‘No, mother. It is the people below.’
‘Where is he?’ she cried, huskily, recovering herself, yet not loosing John’s arm. ‘Where is he? Where does he live?—not here, don’t say he is here.’
‘I don’t know where he lives. He has never told me, and he left no message, no address.’
‘No address,’ she said. ‘You don’t know wherehe lives, to stop him, but he knows where you live, to hold you in his power. I will meet him in the face when I go out from your door.’
The horror in her looks was so great that John tried to soothe her.
‘There is no reason to fear that. He went away, though I had asked them to wait. Perhaps he will come no more.’
‘Do me one favour, John,’ she cried, grasping his arm closer; ‘do this one thing for me. Before he can come home again, before he can find you out, this very night, if you are safe so long, leave this place. Find somewhere else to live in. Oh! you shall have no trouble. I will find you a place; but leave this, leave it now at once. Leave him no clue. What? he has left you none, you say? Why should you hesitate? Come away with me, John. For the love of God! and if you have learned to feel any respect or any pity for your mother—for the poor woman whom once you called Emily—— John, think what it was to me that you should call me Emily, that you should refuse me the name of mother. And yet you were my boy, for whom I had denied myselfthat you might take no harm. Oh, if you have anything to make up to me for that, do it now. Come away with me to-night, leave this place, let him find no clue, no clue!’
Something of this was said almost in dumb show, her voice giving way in her passion of entreaty. She had clasped his arm in both her hands as her excitement grew. Her breath was hot on John’s cheek. There was something in the clasp of her hands, in the force of her passionate determination, that made him feel like a child in her hold.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘what would be the use? Do you think I could disappear? If ever that was possible, it isn’t now. Whoever wants to find me, if not here, will find me at the office, or wherever I may be working. I can’t sink down through a trap-door into the unknown; that might be on the stage but not in real life. How could one like me, with work to do for my living, and employers and people that know me, disappear?’
A remnant, perhaps, of John’s own self-esteem, which had been so bitterly pulled down by the incidents of this day, awoke again. Itwas only the insignificant who could obliterate themselves and leave no clue. For him to do it was impossible. It was but a melancholy pride, but it was pride still.
‘He will not go to the office after you. He knows none of your friends. If you leave this, and give no address, he will perhaps not seek for you, for that would be a great deal of trouble. He never liked trouble. We should gain time at least to think what should be done. John, do what I ask you! Come away with me to-night. I will manage everything. You shall have no trouble. John!’
‘Mother,’ he cried, taking her hands into his, ‘at the end, when all is said that can be said, he is our father, Susie’s and mine. We can’t leave him alone to perish. We can’t forsake him. Mother, now that I know the truth, I know it, and there is an end. I can’t put it out of my mind again. I thought my father was dead, but he is not dead, he is alive. It can never be put out of sight again. It may be bitter enough, terrible enough, but we can’t put it out of our minds. There it is—he is alive.He is my business more than anything else. There can be no choice for Susie and me.’
She had been trying to free her hands while he spoke. She wrung them out of his hold now, thrusting him from her.
‘I might have known,’ she said, trembling with anger and misery, ‘I might have known! Susie, too. What does it matter that I have protected you, saved you, guarded you? I am not your business, I or my comfort—but he—he—— What will you do with him? where will you take him? If he comes here, the woman of this house will not bear it long, I warn you. What will you do, John? Will you take him to your village among the people you care for? Where will you take him? What will you do with him, John?’
‘My village?’ John said. And there came over him a chill as of death. His face grew ashy pale, his limbs refused to support him longer; he sank into the vacant chair, and leaned his head, which swam, on his two hands, and looked at his mother opposite to him with eyes wild with sudden dismay and horror: all theday long amid his troubles he had not thought of that. His village! And must he tell this dreadful story there? and unfold all the new revelations of failure, betrayal, disgrace—and of how he had no name, and only shame for an inheritance? Must he tell it allthere?
Susiehad been nearly a month in Edgeley, and a new faculty had developed in her—a faculty that lies dormant for a life long with many people, and that is impossible to others—the faculty of living in the country. She had never known what that was. Not only in town, in the midst of London, but in the strange, rigid, conventional, severely-regulated life of the great hospital, she had spent all the most important years of her life, and thought she knew no other way. Had she been interrogated on the subject, Susie would have said that the country might be very good for a change—it was, as everybody knew, the very place for convalescents; where people ought to be sent to getwell: but for those who were well to start with, oh no! This she would have said in all good faith, in that serene unacquaintance with what she rejected, which is the panoply of the simple mind.
But when she got to the country, almost the first morning Susie woke up in the quiet, in the clear air, and kind, mild sunshine which beamed out of the skies like a smile of God, and had no stony pavement to rebound from and turn into an oven—with a soft rapture such as all her life she had never known before. She had thought she liked the crowd, the stir, the perpetual call upon her, and what people called the life, which was nowhere so vigorous, so intent, so full of change, as in town. But in a moment she became aware that all this was a mistake, and that it was for the country she had been born. This had been a delightful revelation to Susie. And there had followed quickly another revelation, which never is unimportant in a young woman’s life, but which in her peculiar existence had been somehow eluded: and this was her own possession of that feminine power and influence of which books are full, but which Susie hadnot seen much of in ordinary life. Sometimes, indeed, there had happened cases in which a young doctor had somehow been transported beyond the line of his duties, by some one, perhaps a sister, most probably a young lady on probation, or one who was playing at nursing, as some will. And this had been at once wrong, which gave it piquancy as an incident, and amusing. But such incidents were very rare; people in the hospital being too busy to think of anything of the kind. Susie had been, without knowing, the object of one or two dawning enthusiasms of this description. In one case she had perhaps vaguely suspected the possibility: but Mrs. Sandford gave neither opportunity nor encouragement, and the thing had blown over.
Now, however, it had fully dawned upon her that she herself, tranquil and simple in early maturity, no longer a girl, as she said to herself, nor in the age of romance, had come to that moment of sovereignty which sooner or later falls to most women, notwithstanding all statistics—the power of actually affecting, disposing of, the life of another. It does not always turn out to be of profound importance in a man’s life thathe has been refused by a certain woman. But for the time, at least, both parties feel that it is of great importance: and the result of acceptance, colouring and determining the course of two lives, cannot be exaggerated. Susie discovered, first with amusement, afterwards with a little fright, that the visits of Percy Spencer and of Mr. Cattley were not without meaning. The two curates, who were so different! Their position gave them a certain right to come, and her position as a stranger and a temporary inhabitant exempted her, so far, at least, as she was aware, from the remarks and criticisms to which another young woman living alone might have been subject. But Susie had nobody to interfere, no duenna, not even a well-trained maid to say not at home. These visitors came in with a little preliminary knock at the parlour door without asking if it was permitted—without any formality of announcement. The door of the house was always open, and Sarah in the kitchen would have thought it strange indeed to be interrupted in her morning work by anyone ringing at the bell.
A month is a long time when it is passed inthis land of intimacy. Susie was asked frequently to the rectory, not always with Mrs. Egerton’s free will—but there are necessities in that way which ladies in the country cannot ignore: and it was very rarely that a day passed without a meeting in the village street, if no more—at some cottage where Susie had made herself useful, but most frequently in her own little sanctuary, in the parlour so familiar to both these gentlemen, so much more familiar to them than to her. At first they were continually meeting there, and their meetings were not pleasant. For Percy did his best to exasperate Mr. Cattley by a pretended deference to his old age and antiquated notions, or by the elevation of his own standard of churchmanship over the mild pretensions of the clergyman who did not call himself a priest. And Mr. Cattley would retaliate by times with a middle-aged contempt for boyish enthusiasms, by assuring his young friend that by-and-by he would see things in a different light.
After a while, however, they fell into a system, arranging their comings and goings with a mutual and jealous care in order thatthey might not meet. And they both gave Susie a great deal of information about themselves. She sat, and smiled, and listened, not without a subdued pleasure in that power which she had discovered later than usual, and which even this mutual antagonism made more flattering. Percy was full of schemes in which he demanded her interest.
‘Everything has gone on here in the old-fashioned way,’ he said, ‘in the famous old let-alone way. Aunt Mary has pottered about: she is the only one that has done anything. My father never had any energy. He would have let anyone take the reins out of his hands. And she has done it; and she has always had old Cattley under her thumb. He has not dared to say his soul was his own. To see him sit and stare and worship her used to be our fun when we were boys. Jack must have told you.’
‘No, never. John saw nothing that was not perfect. He worshipped all of you, I think.’
‘Some of us too much, perhaps—not me, I am certain,’ said Percy. ‘But old Cattley was the greatest joke, Miss Sandford. How you would have laughed!’ (Susie, however,did not laugh at all at this suggestion, but sat as grave as a judge, with her eyes bent on her sewing.) ‘But nothing could have been more unecclesiastical,’ Percy continued, recovering his gravity. ‘It was the first thing I had to do in getting the parish into my hands. Aunt Mary had to be put down.’
‘Has she been put down?’ said Susie, laughing a little in her turn.
‘I flatter myself, completely,’ said the young man. ‘She has learned to keep her own place, which is everything. My father gives no trouble; he sees how things have been neglected, and he is quite willing that I should have it all in my own hands. I hope, especially if I have your help, Miss Sandford, to have the cottage hospital and all the improvements of which we have talked carried out. If I might hope that you would set it going——’
‘But would not that be like your aunt’s interference over again, with no right at all,’ Susie said.
‘No one can have any right—save what is given them by the clergy. And you are not my aunt—very different! How I should loveto delegate as much as is fit of my authority to you!’ He paused a moment, with a sigh and tender look, at which Susie secretly laughed, but outwardly took no notice. Then he added: ‘Aunt Mary would have no delegation. She interferes as if she thought she had a right to do it—a pretension not tenable for a moment. But to entrust the woman’s part—to find an Ancilla Domini, dear Miss Sandford, in you!’
Mr. Cattley was not so lively as this. He would sit for a long time by the little work-table which had belonged to old Mrs. Sandford, and say very little. He would sometimes relate to Susie something about her grandparents, and talk of the pretty old lady with her white hands.
‘They were here when I first came,’ he would say. ‘I was a little lonely when I came. I was one of the youngest of an immense family. My people were glad to get rid of us, I think, especially the young ones, who were of no great account. And my mother was dead. Edgeley was very pleasant to me. I was taken up at the rectory as if I had been a son of the house. And nobody can tell what she—what they all—were to me.’
Mr. Cattley coughed a little over theshe, to make it look as if it were a mistake, changing it intothey.
‘Mrs. Egerton,’ said Susie, with a directness which brought a little colour to the old curate’s cheek, ‘must have been very pretty then.’
‘To me she is beautiful now,’ he said, fervently, ‘and always will be. I am not of the opinion that age has anything to do with beauty. It becomes a different kind. It is not a girl’s or a young woman’s beauty any longer, but it is just as beautiful. You will forgive me, Miss Sandford——’
‘I have nothing to forgive,’ said Susie, but she said it with a little heat. ‘I like people to be faithful,’ she added, perhaps indiscreetly.
Mr. Cattley did not answer for some time. And then he said:
‘I am going away now, and another life is beginning. I have been rather a dreamer all my life, but I must be so no longer. I begin to feel the difference. I think, if you will not be offended, that it is partly youwho have taught me——’
‘I!’ cried Susie, with something like fright. ‘I don’t know how that could be——’
‘Nor I either,’ he said, with a smile which Susie felt to be very ingratiating. ‘You have not intended it, nor thought of it, but still you have done it. There is something that is so real in you, if I may say so—a sweet, practical truth that makes other people think.’
‘You mean,’ said Susie, with a blush, ‘that I am very matter-of-fact?’
‘No, I don’t mean that. I suppose what I mean is, that I have been going on in a kind of a dream, and you are so living that I feel the contrast. You must not ask me to explain. I’m not good at explaining. But I know what I mean. I wish you knew Overton, Miss Sandford.’
‘Yes,’ said Susie, simply, ‘I should like to know it—when do you go?’
He smiled vaguely.
‘That is what I can’t tell,’ he said. ‘I should be there now. When doyougo, Miss Sandford?’
‘I don’t know that either,’ she said, with a blush of which she was greatly ashamed. ‘Isuppose I ought to go now: but the country life is pleasant, far more than I could have thought, after living so long in town.’
‘You have always lived in town?’
‘As long as I can remember,’ said Susie.
‘That is perhaps what makes one feel that you are living through and through. It must quicken the blood. Now I,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘am a clodhopper born. I love everything that belongs to the country, and nothing of the town—except——’ he said, and laughed and looked at her with pleasant, mild, admiring eyes.
‘You must make an exception,’ said Susie, ‘or you will seem to say that you dislike me.’
He shook his head at that with a smile—as if anything so much out of the question could be imagined by no one. It was all very simple, tranquil, and sweet, nothing that was impassioned in it, perhaps a little too much of the middle-aged composure and calm. But Susie liked the implied trust, the gentle entire admiration and appreciation. It might not be romantic, perhaps, but she had a feeling that she might go to Overton or anywhere putting her hand in that of this mild man. If there was a little prick offeeling in respect to Mrs. Egerton, who had been so long the object of his devotion, that was soothed by the natural triumphant confidence of youth in its own unspeakable superiority over everyone who was old: and to Susie at twenty-six (though that, she was willing to allow, was not very young) a woman of forty-eight was a feminine Methusaleh, and certainly not to be feared.
Nothing more had been said; and these two were tranquilly sitting together; she at her work, he close to her little table, in a pleasant silence which might have been that of the profoundest calm friendship, or the most tranquil domestic love. And it might have ended in nothing more than was then visible—a great mutual confidence and esteem: or it might end at any moment in the few words which would suffice to unite these two lives into one for all their mortal duration. But as they sat there silently, in that intense calm fellowship, the ears of both were caught by the sound of hurried footsteps approaching, so quick, so precipitate, that it was not possible to dissociate them from the idea of calamity.