SUSIE arrived a few days later, having left John time, as she believed, to resume his relations with his old friends, and get himself received upon such foundations as were practicable in the change of circumstances. It was a subject which she and her mother had talked over often with different opinions. For it was apparent to both that the question was very doubtful as to how John going back, no longer a boy, but a man, no longer an equal in the school-work which had united him to these friends of youth, but divorced from all their ways and traditions in the path of practical life, would be received by them. Mrs. Sandford had been of opinion that the bland and patronising woman who had attempted to fathom her own circumstances in a ten-minutes’ interview, would summarily drop the young man, who was the son of a matron in a hospital, and had no standing of any kind which could place him on a level with her family. So would the young clergyman. ‘Clergymen are never indifferent to social inequalities,’ she said. And it was her severe opinion that the only way to demonstrate to John the fact of his practical severance from all those boyish ties was to let him return to Edgeley and see for himself that kindness shown to a boy was a very different thing from friendship accorded to a man.
‘Mother, you are sending him there to be wounded and trampled on,’ Susie had said: to which Mrs. Sandford had replied with a smile, ‘Not if you are right, Susie.’
But, nevertheless, this was most likely what the stern woman meant, to prove to him of how little worth was the friendship upon which he had built, that sort of amateur motherhood and sisterhood of the ladies at Edgeley, who had beguiled his heart in his youth into a faith in them which his real mother did not believe they would ever justify. She was not aware, perhaps, of any taint of jealousy in her own mind, any remnant of the inevitable wound which she had shown so little, but which she had still felt, in the days when he had hotly resisted her influence, and told her she was Emily. Mrs. Sandford had been very magnanimous. She had not punished John in any way, not even by a taunt, for that cruel utterance of his youthful despair; but perhaps there had lingered in her heart a tone of vindictiveness towards the lady who had been so kind to him—so strangely kind, the mother thought, but whose regard was no doubt so artificial, so little likely to survive the pressure of years. She was willing that he should find this out, that he should be undeceived. The blow might be a keen one, but it was necessary, she said to herself.
Susie was indignant at this intention. She saw in it a still more cold-blooded aspect than that which it really bore, and John had no sooner gone than she felt herself a sort of accomplice exposing him to a terrible ordeal for no rational end: for to Susie’s softer nature the dispelling of John’s dream, if it should be dispelled, was in itself an evil, not, as his mother thought, an advantage. The two days which she had arranged to stay behind him seemed long to her, a lingering delay, in which harm that she might have prevented was perhaps being done. She was eager to start, to go to the succour of the poor boy whose castles in the air were perhaps cast down by this time, and his trust betrayed. And why should his dream-castles have been demolished? They did nobody any harm, and they kept his heart warm. Susie said to herself that she would like to have somebody to believe in, of whom she could always be sure that they liked and remembered her. Even if they should never do her any good, if they did not like her enough for any practical advantage, still to believe in them as poor John had done in his Edgeley friends, would be a pleasant thing. Susie’s life had not been gay. She was neither discontented nor did she complain: neither the one nor other were in her nature; but she said to herself that if she had friends like John’s friends she would take good care not to put their devotion to any severe test. She would not try them whether they were true or not, but would believe they were true, and cling to that faith as long as they took no steps to convince her of the contrary. Some people think it is best to know the truth at all hazards. She had no such disastrous curiosity. She would have been content to believe.
Susie was very anxious for her brother’s first look, which she thought would tell her more than he was at all likely to tell in words. If she found him depressed and subdued she would know what had happened—that his mother’s policy had been successful, that he was disenchanted, and his fond illusions gone. But this was not John’s aspect when she sprang out to meet him as the train arrived, and saw him waiting on the little platform in the twilight of the soft evening. How silent it was, how quiet when the train went shrieking on into the night, and the brief bustle was over! The air, almost dark, seemed infinite, stretching away into the unseen across the common, full of the breadth and freshness of the sky, and space unbroken for miles by any obstacle. She felt the charm of the wide atmosphere, the soft enlargement of the darkening world about, and the freshness and dewy look of John’s eyes, with a sensation of refreshment and relief. He was not disenchanted at least, whatever had happened to him. He took her home, not saying very much, feeling the excitement and surprise of the home-coming in a way which Susie, who knew nothing about it, and to whom any house in the village was the same as any other, could not possibly feel it. John had been very busy re-establishing the little old house which had been so dear. The two old chairs had been brought from the rectory, Elly herself accompanying them, and he and she together had reverently put them back in their old place. It looked exactly as it had done when the old people left it, as John led his sister over the threshold. Elly and he had gone over this little scene in anticipation with great feeling.
‘Jack, you will say to her, “Welcome home:” and when she looks round and sees everything as it always was——’
‘But she never knew it in the old time,’ John felt bound to say against his will.
‘Her heart will tell her,’ said Elly, with high conviction: and they looked round together and felt for Susie—so much more than it was possible Susie could feel.
He carried out this little programme quite simply and fully with the greatest faithfulness. He kissed her as he led her in, and said,
‘Susie dear, welcome home.’
‘Home,’ she said, with a little start, ‘is this where you used to live?’
‘It is where we all used to live. It is our home, where we always were. These are grandfather’s and grandmother’s chairs on each side of the fire. Most of the things here belonged to them. We have got no home to speak of anywhere else. Susie, I am always going to keep it, as I intended. It shall always be home to come back to when we please.’
Susie looked round with astonished eyes—not with so much emotion as they had hoped, but with much astonishment and some pleasure, and perhaps at the bottom of her heart a little amusement at the impressive way in which she was introduced into the little parlour, which did not look anything very remarkable. But presently her eye was caught by something she, too, remembered; some old article which had belonged to the old people even in her time, which brought a flood of associations to her heart: and she suddenly sat down in one of the old chairs and cried a little, thinking of things that were further back than any clear memory John had. How Elly had divined, he said to himself! Her heart had told her, as Elly said! To find how right Elly was, gave John almost more pleasure than to feel that Susie appreciated what he had done.
They had taken their first meal together, and she had gone upstairs to arrange her ‘things,’ that first necessity for a woman who has not a maid to do it for her, leaving John sitting in grave but wistful satisfaction in his familiar place. He had been very busy for two days past and was glad to sit still and rest—and he was happy, yet sad in a luxurious delicious melancholy such as is the atmosphere and background of life at a certain stage. He felt a little pang as he looked at the two old chairs, and half regretted for them that they had been brought away out of Elly’s room, and felt for himself that they had a charm, a sort of perfume hanging about them from being so long there, and wished for Elly to tell this to—not Susie, though she was the heroine of the evening. He felt that he wanted to say it to Elly. He wanted to talk to Elly, to have her there—which was impossible. He was very fond of his sister; but it was Elly he wished to communicate his thought to, and whom he longed to see coming in, sitting down—which, as has been said, was impossible. She had been a great deal with him during these preparations of his, helping him with everything, suggesting various little improvements, remembering even he took pleasure in thinking, almost better than he did, how all the things had been. He was sorry those busy days were over—and that she would come no more. But the melancholy of this thought was tempered by the certainty that she must come to see Susie, that Susie being here he would have chances of seeing her continually more easily and sweetly than if he had been himself going to the rectory, where Percy for one was not very cordial. All this was going through his mind when he heard the outer door, an innocent village door which opened from outside, pushed open, and some one enter. Then Percy’s voice said, ‘May I come in?’ with a certain solemnity, John was chilled a little in the fulness of his satisfaction by Percy’s voice.
‘So you really got in, and got everything done in time,’ said Percy, ‘and has Miss Sandford come? It was clever of you to get it done in time. How you managed with the tradespeople, I don’t know.’
‘I was my own tradespeople,’ said John, with a laugh. ‘We have got the use of our hands, we engineers: and Elly,’ he added, unguardedly, in the warmth of the moment, ‘helped me so much: it is more credit to Elly than to me.’
Before John had ended this speech he had seen how injudicious it was, and accordingly the second time stammered a little and hesitated upon Elly’s name.
‘Really,’ said Percy, with a darkening brow. And then he added, ‘Sandford, I hope you won’t take it amiss: but that was just what I wanted to speak to you about.’
‘To speak to me about?’ said John, with an air of astonishment: but as a matter of fact he was not surprised. He had been sure all the time, even when most happy and at his ease, that this would come.
‘Yes: you know,’ said Percy, evidently not finding his errand an easy one, now he had plunged into it: ‘we were all children together, Jack.’
‘Yes, indeed. I am not likely to forget that; I shall have forgotten everything before I forget that,’ cried John.
‘And we’ve always been very good friends—I am sure not one of us wishes anything different—the best of friends.’
‘You have all been the best of friends to me,’ said John, with warmth, ‘up to this time I haven’t had much in my power: but if there should ever come a day——’ The earnestness with which he spoke made John’s eyes glisten. He felt his heart swell and glow with affection and every kindly feeling. And yet he knew very well that he was going to receive a blow.
‘No need to think of that,’ said Percy, with a little wave of his hand, ‘though indeed with the church and the gentry going down as they seem to be in these advancing times, and the people coming up——’
John was vaguely wounded by this. To be called of the people is not delightful to anyone who feels himself at all above the general crowd. Some visionaries may like it, but better in their own mouths than in those of others. Our young man was no democrat; and he felt himself a better man than Percy, notwithstanding his long coat.
‘You may be able to save all our lives one time or other. You may save us from the violence of the mob, like the French Revolution, don’t you know?’
‘I am not a Radical,’ said John. ‘I might require to be saved from the mob as well as you.’
‘Oh, not with the same reason,’ said the curate, with an air that was insufferable. John felt that presently he might be moved to pitch the friend of his youth out of window, notwithstanding Elly and notwithstanding the clerical coat. ‘Let us cling at least to the idea that you would save us. But, I say, look here—don’t you know——’
It had become very embarrassing indeed, and difficult to carry out, while John sat and looked at him seriously and attentively, not giving any assistance whatever.
‘Oh, I say,’ Percy repeated, ‘don’t you know? though we all think so highly of you, and wish you every success—oh, yes, we do, all of us, as much as anyone can. But, Jack, now don’t be offended. Just call your good sense to your aid, and you will see the reason in it. It is about Elly. Most likely you know beforehand what I want to say.’
‘No, not I,’ said John, all the meaning having arbitrarily disappeared from his face: and for a moment Percy, who was not so hard-hearted as he made himself appear, sat before him, a very awkward mortal, endeavouring to clear his throat and say what he had come to say.
In the midst of this, quite suddenly the door opened and a miracle happened, one of those that go on happening every day, and which will continue to happen to the end of time. It was a miracle, yet it was a very simple fact. The door opened, and light-footed in her slippers, which she had gone to get, and a pretty dress, which it had seemed to her expedient to put on at the same time, in honour of John and his new-old house, Susie suddenly appeared, She was twenty-six, but she looked much younger, she looked any age that may be supposed the perfect age. Her pretty complexion was as sweet and fresh as eighteen; but in her eyes there was something more, a sweetness of understanding and gentle thought to which eighteen rarely attains. Her fair hair was not so carefully arranged as usual, and frisked a little about her temples. She came in with that air of perfect health, perfect content and harmony, which made her very appearance in the hospital so healing and tranquillising, her eyes very clear and kind, always with a smile latent in them, even when her mouth was grave. She came in with the air of having something to say, something that was upon her lips, but made an instant’s pause at the unexpected sight of a stranger whom she had never seen before.
That stranger, all embarrassed, startled beyond measure, feeling as if an angel had suddenly come in to recall him to a sense of the unfriendliness, the untenderness of what he was doing, gasped and rose from his chair and stood before her, in every line of his person and every feature of his face submissively asking pardon, though he could not understand how, and she had not the slightest idea why. Had Susie been indeed that angel passing by, coming in to ask what unseemly words were these that were about to be said, the young man could not have been more confounded. He stood for a moment like a culprit at the bar, while she paused with a slightly startled look, which brought just a little colour, and then a smile.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘I thought there was no one here.’ And ‘I beg your pardon,’ cried he, with far more emphasis and meaning. There was indeed so much emphasis in it that Susie’s smile ran into a little laugh, and she said to her brother: ‘Shall I go away?’
‘No,’ said John, putting a chair for her. He was a little stern, thinking still of the words that had not been said.
‘Jack,’ said Percy, ‘won’t you introduce me to your sister?’ There was nothing but humility and submission in his tone, a change which was almost ludicrous in its completeness. But he had the clerical habit of explaining himself, of making amiable advances, which stood him in stead in the present emergency. ‘I am one of his oldest friends,’ he said, ‘and I hope you’ve heard of me, Miss Sandford. I’m Percy. If Jack hasn’t been a traitor to the old days, I make bold to believe that you must have heard of me.’
‘I have heard of you, often,’ said Susie, a little puzzled. She perceived now that the conversation which she had interrupted had not been of so affectionate a kind as might have been inferred from this address; and she felt that the character of it had been entirely changed by her appearance—a suggestion which was not unpleasant. ‘I have heard so much of everything at Edgeley,’ she continued, ‘that I feel as if, though I have never been here before, I was coming home.’
‘I hope,’ said Percy, ‘that we shall succeed in strengthening the impression. I am very sure we shall try our best.’ And with that he sat down again with all the mild persistence of his profession, as if he meant to remain there for the rest of his life.