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?’