She had another frequent visitor whom she received with almost more pleasure and sense of grateful esteem than any, and that was Mr. Cattley, who had not half so much to say as Percy, and yet seemed to feel in Susie’s parlour—the room which he had known so well in other times, when it was full of the ways of the old people, but which now was Susie’s parlour as if it never had belonged to anyone else—something of the same sweet calm and refreshment which the village life and quiet brought to her. Mr. Cattley knew the village as well as Susie knew the hospital: he wanted something more to refresh his spirit: and on the eve of going away from Edgeley, and breaking up all the old habits which had been his life for years, this new habit and association were more pleasant to him than it was easy to believe anything could be. He liked to sit and watch her, moving about, or sitting at work, or perhaps only looking up with a little interchange of simple talk. He told her when he got more familiar how long he had been here, and how little inclination he had to go away; and then he told her of his new parish, and its great unlikeness to this, and how reluctant he was to plunge into it, feeling as if he were about to plunge into a new world.
‘It will not seem so when you get used to it,’ Susie would say.
‘No, most likely not. It is the getting used to it that is the difficulty,’ he would reply: and looked at her in an anxious way, as if the sight of her made a difference. He did not himself understand yet what the difference was.
When Percy came and found Mr. Cattley there, the new curate made it apparent in his manner that he thought the old one very much out of place. He would say,
‘Oh, I thought this was your day for the schools: but, of course, it is not important to keep that up now you are going away;’ or ‘I thought you said you would take the almshouses this evening. If I had known you were not going I should have gone, for the old people don’t like to be disappointed:’ which was half-amusing to Mr. Cattley, but not pleasant, as the pupil’s attempts to instruct his former master seldom are. But what the old curate felt most of all was when the young man said to him: ‘I thought you had some business with Aunt Mary! I know she was looking for you.’
When this was said, Mr. Cattley took up his hat and rose from his chair, giving Susie a glance which she did not understand—and perhaps neither did he: and Percy would settle himself in his chair to remain, while Mr. Cattley went away.
CHAPTER XVII.
JOHN’S RESOLUTION.
John’s feelings as he returned to town were very different indeed from those with which he had left London. Everything then was enveloped in a vague pleasure of expectation, a delightful doubt which was not fear. He did not know what he was to meet, how he was to be received, what changes had passed upon his old home and surroundings. All that was unascertained, in every way doubtful, making his heart beat with uncertainty, with expectation, and a pleasant mist of possibilities. But since then all had become clear—so clear! dazzling even in the distinctness of the light: and he himself had been suddenly lifted from youthful obscurity, and compelled, as he felt, to distinguish himself, to bring out all his powers without delay, to prove what he was. He was not afraid of this compulsion: it exhilarated him rather with the delightful consciousness that he was equal to the undertaking, able for all that was demanded from him; proud and glad to be forced to the front where he knew he could hold his place. But still it was a tremendous change—one that subdued him with its greatness even while it exhilarated and inspired him. Life had altered altogether. It had become a thing laid down on grand and noble lines, much greater and firmer than anything he had thought of, yet perhaps, by reason of being no longer vague, not such an altogether splendid and dazzling possibility. He saw before him what he was going to do. He was not going to conquer kingdoms, to deliver princesses, to subdue the nations like an old knight of romance, which is what in the mists of the morning every ambitious youth still feels possible, though the nineteenth century makes it expedient for them to laugh at all such fancies. John too had seen visions in which he enacted the part of St. George and encountered a modern dragon, with Elly looking on; and the dream had been sweet.
But he saw things differently now. He was going to slay no dragon. There was not indeed any monster to slay. What he had to do was to mature as rapidly as possible his plans, the great scheme which had occupied so much of his thoughts for months past, which he had been working out on paper, and building his future upon. It was, after all, the slaying of a dragon in the only practicable nineteenth century way; and perhaps the mediæval dragon meant nothing more than a great public danger which the knight-errant had to face and subdue and kill, or reform into an amiable and sociable monster, as could be done to the great river, which, a tyrant and destroyer sometimes, was at others the delight and help of man. All these ideas passed through his head as the train plunged along, with little interludes of lover-like dreaming and surprises of softer thoughts. He would recall to himself Elly on the common, as she looked when she had given herself to him, and next moment would be running over long lines of calculations in his mind, calculations made over and over again, which it was a satisfaction to prove and reprove, lest there should lurk any weak points in them. How to perfect them in every final detail, to carry them to the firm, to demonstrate the greatness of the undertaking, the impossibility of failure—which, indeed, would at once be plain and evident to those skilled eyes, was to be his occupation now. After that everything would be plain sailing enough, he felt. He had meant to delay a little, to wait until he was himself a little more mature. But what did that matter, after all? He was only all the more adapted to superintend and carry out the work for being so young as he was. Young as he was he was a fully trained engineer, and already works of some importance had been committed to his hands. He was equal to any fatigue and any exertion in the carrying out of this, and there could be no doubt that he was the only fit person to work his own plan to completion. As a matter of fact he had no doubt about anything, either in the plan itself, or his capability of executing it, or its instant and entire acceptance by those who had so long been looking for something of the kind.
He had thus so much to think of, that when the quickening of speed, the suburban stations whirling by, and all the signs which announce a near arrival at the end of a journey, made it clear that London was at hand, he was half sorry, and felt that he had not had half time enough for all he had to think about. He gathered up the two primary subjects of his thoughts as he did the books and newspapers which he had not read, being concerned with more pressing matters, and jumped out of the carriage with his bag in his hand with the sense that he had not a moment to lose. It was a long train, and there were a great many passengers, porters running about after the luggage, a crowd of cabs waiting; and in the hurry John strode along, intending to mount up upon the knife-board of an omnibus which passed the end of the street in which his lodgings lay. But it was not fated that he should do this so simply as he intended.