CHAPTER XIII.
WHAT THE PARISH THOUGHT.
‘I WANT to know who this woman is,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘She seems to take the control of everything. They tell me that poor Mr. Sandford does not venture to call his soul his own, and John goes about as if all the life was cowed out of him. Who is she, Mr. Cattley? don’t you know?’
The curate was seated in the drawing-room of the rectory, which was to him the place most near to Paradise. It was twilight of the wintry day, and almost dark, the blaze from the fire dancing upon the walls and making glad Mr. Cattley’s heart. He loved, above everything in the world, to sit and talk by that uncertain light. Elly, who at sixteen was old enough to have been the object of his devotion, was sitting close against the great window of the room, which looked upon the lawn and waving trees, with a book in her arms. She was making use of the very last rays of the daylight, which were not strong enough for older eyes, and was altogether enrapt in the book, and unconscious of what was going on behind her, though now and then a word would come to her and she would return across the short distance of several centuries to reply; for she was deep in the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ and inattentive to everything else, except, as we have said, when something which interested her, something upon which she was ready with a word, came uppermost and flashed across the keen young faculties which found it no matter of difficulty to be in two places at a time.
‘I suppose I ought to know,’ said the curate, ‘for I have spoken to her three or four times. Whoever she is, she looks a lady and talks—with great sense at least; but more than that I know nothing, not even her name.’
‘What relation is she to John? I am glad to hear she is a lady. Our dear little Mrs. Sandford, whom we all loved—yes, yes, she was a true gentlewoman in her heart—but they were what you would call bourgeois, don’t you think? No, you must not shake your head at my French word. There is no English word that expresses what I mean.’
‘Middle-class,’ the curate said.
‘Middle-class is such a big word, and it does not mean the same thing. When I was young it meant gentry, too, all who did not belong to the very highest. Oh, yes, we are all as good gentlemen as the King; but I feel quite middle-class myself, not living with duchesses, nor wishing to do so.’
‘For that matter,’ said Mr. Cattley, hotly, ‘there are very few duchesses who are worthy to——’
‘Tie my shoe,’ said the lady, with a laugh. ‘Let us take that for granted; but middle-class is not what I mean exactly. And this Mrs.—— what is her name——’
‘I can’t tell, indeed. He said “my daughter.” The servants called her Sandford, but whether Mrs. or Miss——’
‘Oh, not Miss, at all events. That woman has gone through everything which is in life. I feel sure of it. It is a handsome face, but a great deal of trouble in it.’
‘Must one be married to have that?’ asked the curate, with a little sigh.
‘Yes,’ she replied, laughing again, for his little sentimentalities amused her, though she did not dislike them. ‘One must have been married to have a face with so much in it. You young ones have your own vexations, no doubt, but not of that kind.’
‘We young ones: does that mean Elly,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘and me?’
‘You are as great innocents the one as the other,’ said Mrs. Egerton.
She was seated by the side of the fire, with a little screen before her which shielded her face, an ample figure in a black satin dress which gave back a faint glimmer of reflection. The teatable beside her, half in light and half in shadow, gave brighter dancing gleams, and the curate, stooping forward with a certain tender eagerness, saw a gigantic uncouth shadow of himself moving with the movements of the light upon the further wall. Behind Mrs. Egerton was the great window, full of the fading twilight, fading quickly into night, against which came the shadow silhouette of Elly with her big book clasped in her arms.
‘But this is abandoning our subject,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘The best thing is for me to call.’
‘Far the best—you will make it all clear if anyone can.’
‘I have not so much confidence in myself as all that, but still I can try. It is curious to find a sort of mystery about people one seemed to know so well—or rather to find out how very little we did know after all. And whose son is John? It never seemed necessary to inquire. But this—lady: well, I will call her so if you like it—seems to confuse everything. There may be other daughters—or sons—half-a-dozen, for anything we know.’
She spoke in the aggrieved tone natural to a lady in the country, a semi-clerical lady, entitled through her brother to know everybody, and finding that here was somebody whom she did not know.
‘John—must be the son of a son—for otherwise how could he be Sandford?’
‘John has got a mother,’ said Elly, nodding from the window. ‘He has not seen her for ten years.’
‘Can this, then, be John’s mother?’ cried Mrs. Egerton.
‘Oh, no,’ said the curate, and ‘Oh no,’ cried Elly, jumping up. ‘I’ve seen them together, and she looked at him as if she were not the least fond of him; so that couldn’t be.’
‘She can’t be very fond of him if she has never come to see him for ten years.’
‘No,’ said the curate, ‘old Sandford was very particular to say his daughter; therefore she must be John’s aunt, I suppose. And aunts are not always, not necessarily, fond of their——’
‘Do you hear that, Aunt Mary?’ cried Elly, placing herself in the full light of the fire with the indifference of her age to scorched cheeks and strained eyes.
‘Few people,’ said Mr. Cattley, with subdued enthusiasm, ‘are so happy, Elly, as the boys and you.’
‘My dear, it is quite true that I am not at all necessarily fond of you—(you will make digressions from our subject). Get up this moment, and put aside your book till Joseph brings the lamp. Now, Elly, do what I tell you. You will ruin your eyes, and as for your complexion——’
‘Mr. Cattley, you are always flattering Aunt Mary. She is a tyrant. She is as cruel as Nero. She does not care for us at all.’
‘Hush—don’t blaspheme,’ Mr. Cattley said.
‘I wish I had been here,’ Mrs. Egerton resumed, making an end of the interruption, ‘to see the dear little woman herself before the end came. How sad it is that one cannot be away for two or three weeks without the chance of finding some familiar face gone before one comes back. No doubt she would have told me—indeed one would naturally have asked if there was anyone she would like to have sent for, or wanted to see. And the daughter did not arrive till she was gone? How sad it all is. I will go there to-morrow. Mr. Sandford, of course, knew I was away.’
‘Everyone knows when you are away. It makes a difference in the very atmosphere,’ the curate said.
Mrs. Egerton passed over this compliment with a slight wave of her hand; a smile would have been enough, had it been possible to see it. ‘I shall go to-morrow,’ she said. ‘I should have done so anyhow. And John—is anything settled with your brother about him? Is he going to begin his work? Poor boy; he will go with an aching heart. But he is so young.’
‘Do you think people don’t feel when they are young, Aunt Mary? I think it is then they feel most.’
‘Yes, Elly—and no: you feel, my dear, no one more keenly; but then you forget. Your heart will be breaking, and then there will come a bright day, a burst of sunshine, and it will spring up like a bird in spite of you. Thank God for it. That is the good of being young.’
‘There seems to be some hesitation now about my brother,’ said Mr. Cattley. ‘This aunt, if she is the aunt, seems to have interfered. I don’t know what is to come of it, except that the boy is evidently unhappy.’
‘It is very clear,’ said Mrs. Egerton, half smiling, half serious, ‘that I have been too long away, and that I must try what I can make of it at once.’
‘Oh, do! No one ever understands like you,’ said the curate, with a sigh of relief. And then the fireside talk floated off to other things.
Mrs. Egerton set out next morning according to her engagement. She was a comely woman of forty-five, bright-eyed, grey-haired, ample, as became her age, and making no pretensions to be a day younger than she was. She had been long a widow, so long that the recollection of her married life was not much more than a dream; but her brother’s household and children had kept her from relapsing into any narrowness of a celibate state, and conferred upon her that larger and softer development of motherhood which was not hers in fact. She was a woman in whom a great many people had much confidence, and who had, to tell the truth, a good deal of confidence in herself. But she did not take herself altogether seriously, as Mr. Cattley did. She half laughed at the influence with which she was credited, and laughed altogether at the magic powers with which that one worshipper endowed her. But still the worship had a certain effect. Perhaps but for that she would not have thought herself capable of unwinding the tangled skein which had suddenly been brought under her notice. A sense of half-fantastic annoyance to find that the family she knew so well was in reality not known to her at all, which in Edgeley parish was a breach of all custom and decorum; and at the same time a half satisfaction that these perplexing circumstances had come to light while she was out of the way, so that it was quite possible that everything might be set right when she, the legitimate confidential adviser of the parish, had returned—was, in her mind, not unmixed with a certain self-ridicule on the surface, and amusement with herself for this certainty of setting all right.
‘How do I know they will tell me any more than the others?’ she said to herself: but as a matter-of-fact she had no doubt whatever that they would tell her more than the others. She had been away for nearly a month, and found a great many things to remark as she walked down the village street. Perhaps she was, as Elly had said, something of a despot—as the benevolent head of a community, wishing the greatest possible happiness of all, not only of the greatest number, usually is. Her despotism was of the benignant kind, but still here and there it was resented by a too independent spirit. That she should pause to put the baby in a comfortable position in its perambulator, and to give the young nurse a lesson as to carefulness in driving it, was no doubt quite legitimate; but when she stopped to say to Mrs. Box at the shop—‘I would not, if I were you, send out the child with such a very young girl; she can’t have sense enough to take proper care,’ Mrs. Box tossed her head a little, and said she hoped she was as careful of her children as most folks.
‘So you are, I don’t doubt, yourself; but that girl is too young, you should have some one with more sense. I am sure you are able to afford it,’ the rector’s sister said.
Mrs. Box from that day was unsettled in her principles, and, though in the interests of trade she made no reply, it became very clear to her that clergy and clergy’s belongings who interfered with what they had nothing to do with, were extremely troublesome. Mrs. Egerton, however, walked on with a conviction that she had said no more than was her duty, and a serene unconsciousness of having fostered the first flying seeds of Dissent.
She was disconcerted when, on being shown into Mr. Sandford’s parlour by Sarah—who paused in the doorway to sniff and put her apron to her eyes, and secure a word of sympathy in respect to ‘poor missis’—she found the old man alone. The visit was by way of being one of condolence to him; but when Mrs. Egerton looked round the familiar little room, and saw no trace of the presence of any stranger, she was, there could be no doubt, disappointed. Her eye and mind took in this fact even while she advanced to the old gentleman with her hands stretched out, and a perfectly genuine pang of regret and pity in her heart. She herself missed the pretty, old, kind face that always brightened at the sight of her. Her eyes filled with natural and most genuine tears as she took Mr. Sandford’s hand; for a moment something rose in her throat which hindered her speech: and yet she was able to feel that her visit would be a failure if this were all. She recovered her voice after a moment, and sat down beside the old gentleman’s chair.
‘I hope, at least,’ she said, faltering a little, ‘that there was not much suffering. She was so sweet and patient. It is so dreadful to come back and find her gone—without a word.’
‘She was always fond of you,’ he said, with that little, broken sob in his voice which was his way of giving vent to his sorrow.
‘And I was very fond of her,’ cried the visitor. ‘It was a comfort always, whatever was troubling me, to come and see her pretty, kind face. But, though it is our loss, it is her gain. We must not forget that. How happy she must be now!’
‘So they say,’ said the old gentleman; ‘but I can’t very well understand for my part how she can be so happy in a strange place. For it will be a strange place to her without me.’
‘Oh, my dear old friend, we must not think of things in that way, as if this world were the model of everything. It must be such a very different life.’
‘Yes, I suppose it must be very different,’ he said, musing, leaning with his hand upon his knee, ‘but she was old to begin in a new way.’
‘But she is not old now,’ said the comforter. ‘We may be sure of that. With such a new beginning everything must be renewed too.’
‘I suppose you must be right, Mrs. Egerton; but we were so used to our old ways. A little rheumatism, a bit of a cold now and then was all we had to disturb us. I should have been very well pleased to put up with it. And she too——’
‘But we can’t go on living for ever, Mr. Sandford.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ he said, though without any conviction; but it was perhaps injudicious of her to add, though with the best intentions,
‘There is one great consolation on your side, that it cannot be for very long: that must soften every parting. At an advanced age——’
Mr. Sandford sat very upright in his chair.
‘I don’t see the certainty of that,’ he said, with some briskness. ‘It may be or it may not be, no one can say for certain either at seventy or at forty. Many a younger man may die before me——’
‘That is quite true,’ Mrs. Egerton said, and the strain of her condolence and consolatory remarks was stemmed. She was silent for a moment, and then added, ‘But you are not left quite solitary in your trouble. You have a daughter with you, I hear.’
‘Yes, there’s Emily,’ he said.
‘She has not come to see you since you’ve been here. I was not sure you had any children—alive.’
‘Oh! yes, there’s Emily,’ repeated the old man.
‘And I hope she will be able to remain with you and take care of you.’
‘Oh, dear, no!’ he said, sitting up in his chair. ‘Emily—couldn’t stay. Oh, no! It was a chance her being able to get away at all. She is going, I think, to-morrow.’
‘It must have been dreadfully sad for her—to arrive too late?’
The old man shuffled in his chair.
‘Emily—is not just like—any other person. She is not young, you know—not like a young girl—her eldest child is quite grown up, and—then there is John——’
‘Is she John’s mother, then?’ cried Mrs. Egerton, in surprise.
‘Well, you know—’ said old Mr. Sandford, and paused—‘she has been a long time away. She is kept very close by her engagements, and she never was a great letter-writer. My poor wife and me were glad to know just that she was well. What happened besides we didn’t—hear much about—— ’
‘But John?’ said Mrs. Egerton, quite bewildered by this speech. There was an air about the speaker of having explained all that was asked him, and this confused his questioner: though she said to herself after the first moment that John—was not an incident that could have passed without remark. Besides, John had been with them all these years—presumably before the period at which their daughter had been withdrawn from their view.
‘Emily is not at all an ordinary person,’ Mr. Sandford said: and then he added, ‘You have been away a long time, Mrs. Egerton, for you. My poor dear would have liked to say “Good-bye.”’
She felt that he was thus directing her away from a dangerous subject, and she was more than ever curious and anxious to know.
‘I am very sorry I happened to be absent. I would have come home had I known how ill she was. And probably I could have been of use in sending for your daughter in time.’
‘Don’t disturb yourself about that,’ he said. ‘She was sent for, but could not come. And then we telegraphed, not knowing how near it was. They must all be very glad at the rectory to have you back.’
‘I suppose so,’ she replied, carelessly. ‘Mayn’t I see your daughter now I am here? I should like to tell her how sorry, how very sorry—— I don’t even know her name.’
‘Emily has gone out,’ he said. ‘She is giving some orders for me. She is very kind trying to save me trouble; though I might manage by means of John. John and I are so accustomed to each other. We’ll get on very well—when we’re alone.’
‘But John is going away to begin his work,’ she said, assuming ignorance notwithstanding what Mr. Cattley had said.
‘Not at present. His m—— I mean, I think it is best to keep him at home for a little longer. Emily is going to look for something near London—but for my part I am glad to have him at home.’
‘Your daughter seems to be making great changes in your arrangements—— ’
‘I don’t know,’ said the old gentleman, somewhat testily, ‘who has so good a right. She is all I have. I have always given a great deal of heed to Emily. She knows most things—better than most people. I don’t know who I should trust to advise me if it wasn’t Emily; with her I know that I am safe.’
‘Oh, surely you are the best judge,’ said Mrs. Egerton, with offence. She had no right to be offended. What he said was perfectly just, and she had no ground whatever on which to stand with any idea of ousting Emily. What right could she have to oust Emily? She felt a great interest in John, but not enough to interfere on his account. Nevertheless, she was more or less indignant. It was ingratitude; it was a kind of insubordination. It was not often she was told in the parish what this old man virtually told her, that she had no right to interfere: and there could be no doubt that she was annoyed. She talked a little, somewhat coldly, of ordinary topics, of the people who were ill in the village, and that it was rather a sickly season, and that Mr. Cattley had a great deal to do. And then she got up to go away, much dissatisfied, disappointed, and even a little humiliated, feeling that she had not shown the power which she was supposed to possess. But it was not fated that Mrs. Egerton was to withdraw thus uncontented. As she opened the door of the parlour to go out, there rose before her suddenly a tall shadow in the doorway. It was Emily herself.