The man who had brought such dismay and misery with him had no lively sense of shame, but he had occasional perceptions as keen as they were evanescent. He looked for a moment at the group round him, and divined all it meant. It was not easy for the quickest wit to find a remedy.
‘Madam,’ he said, turning to Mrs. Egerton, ‘this young man has been working too hard, and he is off his head. Take care of him. It’s a common thing among inventors; take care of him.’
He settled himself on his chair as if he were about to enter on a long, peaceable explanation; then, in a moment, with the skill which is learned among criminals, he snatched his arm from John’s grasp and was gone. The clang of the door as it closed behind him was almost the first notice they had that he had escaped.
John was weakened by the sufferings of the past days, and altogether taken by surprise. He was thrown against the wall, and, for a moment, stunned by the shock. Mrs. Egerton, half disposed to think the respectable visitor was right and the young man crazed—half alarmed by that sudden exit, not knowing what to do—held his hands in hers and chafed them, bidding some one fetch a doctor, send for his mother, do something—she knew not what.
CHAPTER XV.
THE FATHER AND CHILDREN.
Mr. Cattley had quietly taken possession of Susie and her arrangements from the moment of the agitating conversation which followed John’s letter to Elly. It could scarcely be said that he had intended to make a declaration of love to her—though for some time it had been apparent to him that this was the solution of all the difficulties of that disruption in his life which he had not himself done anything to bring about, yet which was natural and necessary, and a change which he could neither refuse nor draw back from when it came. The sudden rending asunder of all the bonds that had fashioned his existence for years had been very painful to the curate. To keep them up unnaturally, in defiance of separation and distance, was all but impossible, and yet to cut himself finally adrift was an operation which he knew not how to perform. Susie had given him unconsciously the key to all these difficulties. Had he remained at Edgeley, leading a somewhat pensive and unfulfilled, yet happy life, his devotion to Mrs. Egerton would have been in all likelihood enough for his subdued and moderate spirit. It was as much out of the question that she should marry him as that the sky and the fields should effect a union, or any other parallel unconjoinable things: but there was little occasion for any attempt at such an alliance, considering that the terms on which they stood, of tenderest and most delicate friendship, were enough for all requirements. It is delightful to keep up such a tie when circumstances permit, and no more strenuous sentiment breaks in—but to break it is a thing full of embarrassment and difficulty. Scarcely any woman is so unnaturally amiable as to behold the defection of her servant and knight without a certain annoyance; it is difficult altogether to forgive that self-emancipation and disenthralment; and on the other hand the very delicacy and romantic sentiment in the mind of the man which makes such relations possible fills him with trouble and awkwardness when the moment comes at which more reasonable and natural ties take the place of the Platonic bond.
Mr. Cattley had felt the crisis deeply; he had not known how to detach himself, or what to do with his life when the disruption should have been made. Susie’s sudden appearance had been an inspiration and a deliverance to him. He had felt in her the solution of all his doubts. And now the sudden trouble which had come upon her, and which in his interest and long affection for John it was so natural he should share, came in like what he would himself have called ‘a special providence,’ to make his way more easy. That he should take her, so to speak, into his own hands, guide her, take care of her, aid her in everything that could be done for the family at such a crisis, was natural, most natural to a man of his character, most convenient in a general crisis of affairs. That he should step into the breach, that he should defend and help all who were likely to suffer, that he should manage matters for any distressed family, and specially help John, and help everybody, was what all the world expected from Mr. Cattley. It was his natural office. So that not only Susie but Susie’s troubles came with the most perfect appropriateness into his life, and afforded him the opportunity of withdrawing and emancipating himself on the one hand and securing his own happiness on the other, as nothing else could have done.
This is not to say that the communication Susie had made to him about her father had been received by the curate with indifference. It had, on the contrary, given him a great shock. A convict! That he should connect himself with such a person—he, a clergyman—a man placed in a position where all his connections and relationships were exposed to scrutiny—was a thought which gave him a momentary sensation, indescribable, of giddiness and faintness and heart-sickness; but the result of this shock was an unusual one. It made him instantly commit himself—identify himself with the sufferer; take her up, so to speak, upon his shoulders and prepare to carry her through life, and save her from all effects of this irremediable misfortune. This was not the effect it would have had on ordinary men; but it was so with Mr. Cattley. The first thing to be done seemed to snatch up Susie, not to let it hurt her—not even to let her feel for a moment that it could hurt her. A convict! He remembered the story faintly when he heard the name, how it had a certain interest in it, in consequence of the character of the man, whom everybody liked, although the forger had ruined his family, and plunged all belonging to him into misery. And to think now, after so many years, that he himself was to be one of the people plunged into trouble by this criminal of a past time! The shock went through his nerves and up to his head like a sudden jar to his whole being. But there was perhaps something in his professional habit of finding a remedy for the troubles brought under his eye, the quick impulse of doing something, which becomes a second nature with the physicians of the spirit as well as with those of the body, which helped him now. And then it afforded him the most extraordinary and easy opening out of a difficult conjunction of affairs; that had to be taken into account—as well as the rest.
The result was that Mr. Cattley took Susie to London to her mother, and at once, without anything—or at least very little more—said, took his place as a member of the family, threatened with great shame and exposure through the return of the disgraced father, whom some of them had hoped never to see again, and some had no knowledge of. Nobody but a clergyman could have done this so easily, and even Mrs. Sandford, with all her pride and determination to share the secret with no one, could not refuse the aid of a cool head and sympathetic mind in the emergency in which she found herself placed. She was too much pre-occupied by her great distress to have much leisure of mind to consider this sudden new arrival critically as Susie’s suitor. At an easier moment that question would no doubt have been discussed in all its bearings—whether he was not too old for Susie; whether he was not very plain, very quiet; whether they had known each other long enough; whether they suited each other: all these matters would have afforded opportunity of discussion and question. But in the present dreadful emergency there was no time for any such argument.
‘Susie has accepted me for her husband,’ Mr. Cattley said (which, indeed, Susie had scarcely done save tacitly), ‘what can I do to help you?’ There seemed nothing strange in it. It was his profession to have secrets confided to him, to help all sorts of people. Even Mrs. Sandford could not resist his quiet certainty that their affairs were his, and that he could be of use. And he had all the strength and freshness of a new agent, impartial, having full command of his judgment. He had none of John’s stern and angry Quixotism and determination not to lose hold again of the father who was a disgrace to him, that fiercest development of duty—neither did he share the horror and loathing of the wife for the man who had betrayed and disgraced her. He was of Mrs. Sandford’s mind that the culprit should be kept apart, that no attempt should be made to reinstate him in the family; and he was of John’s mind that May could not be abandoned. He agreed and disagreed with both, and he was sorry for all—at once for the family driven to horror and dismay by such a sudden apparition, and for the unfortunate criminal himself, thus cut off from all the ties of nature.