IT was with some difficulty that John persuaded his old landlady to take in his unfortunate protégé. But the woman had a great respect for the young man who had done so well, and allowed herself finally to be induced to do a charity, which was what he assured her it would be, at a rate of payment double that which she could have procured in the ordinary way. He went home with a curious commotion in his heart. The incident was quite new in his experience. He had never been deaf to the appeals of charity. When any of the men at the works got hurt, when there was sickness or death among them, John was known to be always ready to contribute what he could for the comfort of the sufferers or the relief of the widow. This was almost the only manner in which it had come in his way to help his fellow-creatures. To enter of his own accord into schemes of beneficence had not occurred to him. He had shrunk even from the undertakings which Percy Spencer, when in London, had told him of, in which young men were working for the poor. John, though he was not at all humble-minded in ordinary ways, had a certain diffidence and modesty in this. He had not been conscious of any capacity in himself to exercise ‘a good influence.’ He knew too much and too little to take it up in good faith as these young men did—too much of himself, too little of the others. What he could do to help an individual who came in his way, or whom he knew, he did quietly, and this chiefly in material ways; paying rent, sending for a doctor, helping to set up a little shop, or buy a mangle. This he could do; but he could not ‘exercise a good influence:’ or, at all events, he was timid and did not try. He paid doubly and beforehand for the hesitations and alarms of his old landlady, who took in with so much doubt this poor gentleman, who was not in a condition to take care of himself, and promised to make up for any damage he might do, should she suffer by her charity; but John did not feel any desire to talk, or to give him good advice.
The man was got not without difficulty to bed. His aspect to the young man seemed quite different from that of the ordinary sinners in the same way, whom he had seen often enough. He had a confused look of kindness and that jovial good-nature which appears in the Bacchanalian literature of the past, not like the sodden misery of drunkenness in the present time. Perhaps this social vice, which is so terrible in its consequences, has changed its characteristics, like other things. The man seemed to have the merry twinkle in his eyes when he opened them now and then, the humorous consciousness as of a bizarre and irresponsible condition which was not culpable, which belonged to an age when indulgence was common and supposed to be a venial fault, and associated with all sorts of fun and good-fellowship. Tipsiness bears no such aspect now: it is dull, sodden, miserable, a shame to see. The victim in the present case was as different as possible from the brutal drunkards, the wretched, pale, self-conscious sinners of a higher sphere, whom John had beheld with scorn from his eminence of youthful virtue. His eyes were not blear and sodden, as the eyes of such offenders are now-a-days, the gleam of mirth in them had no guilty look. ‘If you think I don’t see how ridiculous it all is, you are mistaken,’ they seemed to say.
To think that John should ever have been moved to an almost sympathetic amusement by the looks of a man whom he had picked up in a state of intoxication in the street—to think that he should have been so much touched by his appearance as to pick the man up, to transport him to this familiar place, to exert himself so distinctly on behalf of an ex-convict, a criminal, a drunkard! How was it? he could not tell: and yet, after he had seen the unhappy man lying quietly asleep, John went away with a curious emotion in his heart. For one thing, the being to whom we have been kind, whom we have effectually served, always acquires an interest to the mind; our own consciousness of bounty, of charity, still more of mercy, throwing a favourable light on the recipient of it. And John said to himself that to have left a man who had at least the remains of something better about him, who had come out of prison perhaps with the intention of leading a different life, in the hands of such a coarse ruffian as Joe, was a thing which no one would willingly do. It was found, too, by the curiosity of the landlady, who emptied the poor man’s pockets in order that John might see that all was safe, that he had a considerable sum of money in his possession, which was a very strong reason why he should not be handed over in a helpless condition to the tender mercies of a penniless frequenter of the streets. John would not look over the contents of his protégé’s pocket. He saw and counted the money at the woman’s request, but the other things he folded away in a sealed packet, with that high sense of the sacredness of personal belongings which is peculiarly strong in youth.
And then he went home with the consciousness of having done a good action, which is also peculiar to his age, making his heart and step still more buoyant. It was a sort of seal to all his well-being, to his majority, to his new and complete independence. On this first day of perfect manhood (as he thought) to have served a fellow-creature, to have perhaps delivered a soul out of pressing danger, anyhow to have secured the poor man’s safety and that of his money till he should be fit to look after himself. Poor old fellow, what a pity! Was it possible he could have nobody to take care of him? And what, with that cheerful, humorous face so full of good temper and geniality, could he have done to merit imprisonment for fourteen years? John, whose conscious life was almost included in that term, shivered as he thought of it. To be shut up in prison for fourteen years, and then to come out of it, and find no friendly face, no hand to meet his, but only those of Joe!
Next day, however, John was sent away to look after some work which was going on at a distance, and when that was completed the time had arrived when his leave of absence began, and he was free to go to Edgeley. The press of work, and then the rush of other interests and commotion, drove the poor man whom he had succoured out of his mind. He had intended vaguely to go to Mrs. Bentley’s to inquire after him when he returned to town; but with the visit to Edgeley before him, and all the rising of things new and old in his mind, it was not wonderful if this momentary interest failed. A vague surprise that the man himself had taken no notice, also went across the surface of his thoughts, but this he soon perceived was somewhat unreasonable, since there was little ground for thinking that he was at all aware who his helper was, or whether in reality anything had been done for him. John had scarcely time indeed to think of the matter at all, until he was travelling, in the seclusion of a railway-carriage to Edgeley, a moment in which all the omissions and forgetfulness of an immediate past are apt to come into our heads. But they did not last long in John’s. He was going—back. He could not call it home, after four years—having in the meantime no knowledge, save by letters at long intervals, as to what the changes were which he might find there. Susie had excused herself from accompanying him, but had promised to follow in a day or two, and John had secured for himself a lodging at Mrs. Sibley’s, where Mr. Cattley still was. The very names gave him a thrill of feeling: to pronounce them lightly again as everyday matters seemed so strange. The first return after a long absence is not like any other. When it becomes a matter of use and wont to go and come, the mind gets accustomed to the thought that life goes on in many places at a time, almost entirely unaffected by its own presence and absence. But to John the village had been suspended in a sort of crystal of memory since ever he left, and, although he knew this was impossible, he half expected he should find it so suspended, only to be restored to the current of a progressive existence on his return.
He travelled by night, as busy men do, and he could almost have believed that this fancy was real, when he arrived in the early morning and found the houses still half asleep, opening their eyes and shutters, awaking to life as he came back. He had put his portmanteau on the omnibus (which was something new; there had been no omnibus when he left), and walked across the common in the early glory of the morning, everything so fresh and sweet around him. The hedgerow on the one side, and the tufts of bushes and low trees on the other, were all glistening with the early dew. There were many fine things in London, and the trees in the parks were looking their best and freshest in the May weather, but John reflected that either there was no dew there, or else it fell when nobody knew, or—a still less poetical explanation, it became so black with the soot in it that it was more like ink than dew upon the leaves. But here it was a sort of elixir of life, so pure and glistening, every drop like a little heaven. He walked on slowly, willing to put off the realisation of the world he had known so well, now that he found this world so near to him. A thousand nameless odours seemed to be going up to heaven: the smell of the fresh earth, of the growing grass, of the heather that began to push upward in strong green bushes, of the gorse unfolding its honey blossoms, of the sweet briar in the hedge: and along with all these an indefinite sweetness of the morning which could not be explained, which was partly physical and partly spiritual, a sweetness that went into the very soul. John could not but remember the many times he had come along this way: but his recollections were winterly, or they were pictures of the night, when the village lights had been shining, and the common lost in the darkness. Above all he recollected the silent drives he had taken with his mother to and fro, when he had met her for the first time, when he had disowned her and called her Emily, a memory which made his cheek burn and sting; but it was not his fault. He did not think of her as Emily any longer. He respected her and all she said and did: but his heart was not much nearer to her than when he had sat by her side with his head turned the other way, in a concentrated still opposition to her and all her ways.
These recollections and reflections chilled him a little as he walked along; but soon happier thoughts came. The scenes of his old life began to pass before him like a succession of pictures. Mr. Cattley’s room, with all the books lying about, and the two photographs, her own and John’s, which Elly had fastened over the curate’s mantelpiece when they ended their lessons—would they still be there in the same place? and how had Mr. Cattley made up his mind to go away? and how was it possible to imagine Percy at the reading-desk and in the pulpit as Mr. Cattley’s successor? This thought made John laugh. And then he seemed to see the rectory garden rolling out before him, and Elly and himself coming so very quietly down the walk after that kiss which had been such a solemnity. Would she recollect that, and grow red (as John felt himself to do all alone in the soft, uninquisitive light of the May morning), when she met him again? and had she remembered what she had said about the pear-tree and her algebra, which she was to study there? She was never very good at her algebra: that was the very best thing she could have been doing when she wanted to think of John. He came along smiling, thinking of all that, not of the old house and the old people, which were too sacred, which were put off to a time when he should be less conscious of the curiosity and amusement and wonder of coming back to the old place, and seeing it awake, as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ must have seen the world awake round her, rubbing its eyes and stretching forth after years of suspended animation, taking up once more its natural life.
The ‘Green Man’ stood open, but not with the dissipated air, the look of tremendous wickedness and riot which it once had borne. He thought it an innocent-looking little village alehouse now, with no harm about it: and Johnson, blinking over his early pipe at the door, no monster at all, not even bloated, but very much like other men. Mrs. Box had finished taking down her shutters, and the perambulator stood at her door just as of old, and the milkman was coming along with his shining cans, looking up and shading his eyes from the sun, as he looked in obedience to a question from the woman he was serving, as to who the gentleman was who was crossing the road towards Mrs. Sibley’s. ‘One o’ Mr. Percy’s friends,’ the milkman said, by way of maintaining his character for universal knowledge, yet not committing himself. It was curious to John to see that nobody recognised him, neither the porter at the station nor the postman whom he met, and whom he felt so strong an inclination to stop and ask for the letters as of old. He felt pleased, and yet a little troubled and somewhat desolate. The great difference there must be in him he took for granted must be to his advantage: and yet it was dismal to pass like a stranger through a place which he knew so well.
Mrs. Sibley, however, who expected him, knew John, and received him with an enthusiastic welcome, and in due time so did Mr. Cattley, who hurried downstairs, half-dressed, to grasp his old pupil by the hand.
‘Is it possible that it is you, John? I doubt, really, whether I should have known you. You have grown a great deal, and got a very manly look. Are you really only twenty-one? I should have thought you four or five years older if I had not known.’
‘I’ve been knocking a great deal about the world,’ said John.
He was pleased to be supposed to look older, like most lads of his age.
‘Yes, I know. I’ve always looked up on the map where you were, to tell Elly. She likes to see the exact place and find out all about it. You’ve not—no; of course you cannot have seen Elly since you came?’
‘I have come straight from the station,’ said John. ‘I did not so much as see anyone stirring at the windows in the rectory as I passed.’
‘I am surprised at that,’ said the curate. ‘She was so anxious to be the first to see you. She had half a mind to go to the station. But I thought it better not, and on the whole so did she, for Percy—that is to say, he is apt to take fancies in his head.’
‘What fancy could he take into his head?’ John asked, ‘that could concern me?’
The curate cleared his throat, and after a moment changed the subject as well as he could.
‘You find me still here, John, though perhaps I should have gone before now. For my part I daresay I should have stayed on all my life: but when Percy got old enough to hold the curacy it seemed to be thought that I should go.’
‘I am sure they will all miss you dreadfully,’ said John.
‘Do you think so?’ said Mr. Cattley, with doubt in his tone. He sighed a little, but then cheered up again. ‘Well, perhaps it is true that I ought to go. I’ve been here a long time, and perhaps, as Mr. Egerton says, if I delay longer—but I’m a man of use and wont, John, perhaps too much so—perhaps too much so.’ Mr. Cattley sighed softly again, then roused himself, and added, with sudden briskness, ‘But you must want your breakfast—of course after travelling all night you want your breakfast. Mrs. Sibley, I hope you have been thinking of Mr. John’s breakfast—for you know he has been travelling all night.’
‘It’s quite ready, sir,’ said Mrs. Sibley, ‘and a pleasure it is, sir, if you’ll excuse me saying it, to see him again.’
‘Why should I excuse you saying it? It is the most natural thing in the world to say. We all think it a pleasure. And tell me, John,’ said the curate, ‘do you find this night travelling suit you? I know business people think it saves time, but it seems to me to knock you up next day.’
‘I have been so used to it,’ said John. ‘I don’t mind. I can sleep nearly as well as if I were in bed. In some places where I have been, all the best trains go by night, and in America, where the distances are so great, you have to make up your mind to travel night and day.’
‘Dear me, what a traveller you have grown,’ said Mr. Cattley. ‘It is astonishing to look at you and to think you have been in America and at the ends of the earth.’
John laughed a little and settled his collar, and felt the superiority of his position.
‘I have been about a great deal,’ he said, with conscious modesty. He could not but feel that he was coming back in the way he had wished and anticipated, with colours flying and drums beating, and the certainty of having done not only as well as anyone could have done, but far better than could have been expected. Mr. Cattley unwillingly going away to his living, and Percy stepping into the post which had been kept thus warm for him, were fulfilling the ordinary law of nature. But John might just as well have done nothing in particular, have contented himself with holding his place and no more. He sat down at the table in the old bow-windowed room, where all his early education had been given him, with a still warmer thrill of self-approval. It is so seldom that one can feel one’s self to have done more than one’s duty. The two little photographs were still over the mantelpiece where Elly had placed them. The room was exactly the same as it had always been: yet in himself what a difference! But the difference in his case was all for the better. It was not perhaps altogether the same with Mr. Cattley. And with the others, too, how would it be?