‘I remember about the sermon and the ink-bottle,’ said John, too young, even in the excited state of his feelings, not to be moved in the first place to self-defence, ‘but I thought it was——’
‘Oh, never mind what you thought—it came all right,’ cried Elly, with a little impatience. But, as a matter of fact, John could not forget, though she puzzled him for a moment by that sudden imputation of causeless forebodings that it was Elly who had been afraid.
CHAPTER XII.
SUSIE.
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.