‘Father,’ said John, with a shudder at the word, ‘we none of us want to neglect our duties. Now that you are here, you can’t disappear again. We belong to each other whether we wish it or not. You have a claim upon us, and we—we have a claim upon you. Come back. Susie, get him to come back.’
A look of panic came upon May’s face. He shook them off from either hand.
‘Don’t let us have a row in the street,’ he cried. ‘You’ll bring all the policemen about. And when a man has once been in trouble they always think it’s his fault. Let me go.’
‘Not without telling us where to find you, at least,’ said John.
‘Oh, papa, papa!’ said Susie. ‘Don’t go, don’t go.’
‘We’ll have all the policemen in the place about,’ May said, looking round him with alarm.
Mr. Cattley had stood by all the time saying nothing. He came forward now, and drew John aside.
‘Jack, will you leave it in my hands?’ he said. ‘I know everything, more perhaps than you do. And you’re not in a condition to judge calmly. You know you can trust me.’
‘And who may this be now?’ said May, in a pettish and offended tone. He turned to the new speaker with a rapid change of front: but changed again as soon as he perceived what the new speaker was. He had known a great many chaplains in his time, and had never found them unmanageable. ‘I see you’re a clergyman,’ he said, in his usual mild tones: ‘and you have a good countenance,’ he added, approvingly. ‘There’s some little questions to settle between me and—my family. I don’t mind talking of our affairs with such a—with such a—respectable person. So long as no attempt is made on my personal freedom.’ He paused a little, and then laughed with his usual perception of the ludicrous. ‘I’m very choice over that,’ he said, ‘it’s been too much tampered with already.’ He looked from one to another as he spoke, with a faint expectation of some smile or response to his pleasantry: some sense of the humour of it in Susie’s deprecating anxious face or the stern misery of John. The want of that reply chilled him for a moment, but only for a moment. Then he stepped out briskly from between his irresponsive children.
‘Lead on—as Montressor would say—I’ll follow with my bosom bare—or at least with my heart open—which comes to the same thing, I suppose,’ he said.