‘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?
CHAPTER X.
THE WELCOME.
‘Hullo, Jack, is this really you?’
The speaker was the Rev. Percy Spencer, as completely arrayed a curate as could be found in all the parishes of England. John sprang up from his seat, and contemplated him with an amused scrutiny which suddenly ended in a burst of laughter. Percy did not refuse to join a little, but only a little, in the laugh, conscious of the difference between his long clerical coat and high waistcoat, and the soft hat he held in his hands, and those gayer garments, resplendent ties and canes in the height of the fashion, which had distinguished him in his university days. John had not seen him since he had assumed the severe simplicity of this priestly garb, and he was willing to allow a momentary merriment; but he soon resumed the little air of seriousness and responsibility which became his position.
‘I daresay,’ he said, ‘you find me a little changed; so I am. It makes a vast difference on a man, on his feelings as well as on his clothes, when he becomes a priest. But, all the same, I’m delighted to see you, and I hope Cattley has given you a good breakfast after your journey.’
Cattley! John, notwithstanding that he felt himself rather a fine fellow, had preserved, probably because of having been so far removed from the scene of them, all the traditions and reverential usages of his youth, and to have called his old tutor Cattley would have been no more possible to him than to have thrown stones at the old church-tower which presided over the village. Percy, too, thought himself a fine fellow, a much finer fellow than John, and the young layman naturally saw the absurd aspect of that conviction in the person of the young priest.
‘I am very well,’ he said, ‘I have had a capital breakfast, and everything here looks delightful and like itself—even Mr. Cattley; only you and I have changed, I think.’
‘You’re not so big as you promised to be,’ said Percy, with satisfaction. ‘I thought you’d have grown twice that height. Dick is six foot, don’t you know. That’s all very well for one in a family, but you can’t go on doing it. I suppose you’re going now to see—Aunt Mary? You’re expected, of course. Cattley, there’s a good fellow, do put me up a little to the manners and customs of Feather Lane.’