‘Percy, did you talk to John?’

‘Oh, yes. I talked to him a great deal,’ said Percy, without meeting his aunt’s anxious eye.

‘But about the one subject? About——’

‘Most subjects in earth and heaven.’ He paused a little, and then resumed with embarrassment. ‘If you mean about Elly, Aunt Mary—I—I didn’t. That’s the fact. His sister was there, and—— somehow it didn’t seem suitable,’ the young man said.

‘Of course his sister was there. You knew she was expected: and of course you could not speak before her: but surely there were opportunities.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Percy, ‘but I didn’t, that is all that can be said.’

‘Your courage failed you at the last? Well, I don’t wonder: indeed I like you better for it,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘I did you injustice, my dear boy. I thought you rather liked the commission. That just proves how wrong we are in forming hasty judgments.’ Percy accepted this conclusion without wincing, and, after a moment of reflection, his aunt added, ‘I am afraid it will have to be done, though, and who is to do it? Your father is no good, and, as for me, I cannot trust myself. I wonder if Mr. Cattley—— but then Mr. Cattley is very fond of Jack.’

‘He is much fonder of you, Aunt Mary.’

‘Don’t put it in that ridiculous way. He has a very strong friendship for me. Poor Mr. Cattley! I am very glad he is going: and yet if I were to ask him to do such a thing——’

‘Of course he would do it. He has always done everything you told him.’

‘You always go so much too far in everything, you boys. I am sure he would try to do it, but it would be very hard upon him. Percy, don’t you think you might get up your courage for another time?’

‘It isn’t the courage,’ he said. And then after a moment:—‘After all, what’s the use? He’s not going to stay here all his life, and nothing can happen in a fortnight or so. Can’t you let it swing?’

‘Nothing can happen in a fortnight or so! Why, it is just the time in which everything may happen. If he were settled here it would not be half so dangerous, there would seem no hurry then: whereas in a fortnight! we may have Elly engaged to him before we know where we are.’

‘Come now, Aunt Mary. Poor Jack is nobody: that is not his fault: but he’s an honourable fellow, nobody can say anything against his honour. He couldn’t behave in an ungentlemanly way.’

‘What has that to do with it?’ said Mrs. Egerton, exasperated. ‘Honourable! why, in ten years, with a good profession and getting on so well, he may be a great match.’

‘Then why, in the name of heaven—— Oh, I’m speaking from your point of view. To me it would be horrid, anyhow—that fellow!—but if you think so——’

‘I don’t want Elly to wait ten years,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘The longer a girl like Elly waits, the more fastidious she grows. If she does not marry till thirty, she will probably never marry at all.’

‘She will probably not have the chance,’ Percy remarked.

‘That is all you know. You are all brutal on that question, you men. As if to have a chance was all that was necessary, and every woman was on the watch to obtain such an honour and glory.’ Having freed her mind in this way, Mrs. Egerton resumed:—‘What is the sister like? Is she common? Is she of the hospital-nurse or of the shop-girl type? Does he seem fond of her? Her appearance might do Elly good, perhaps.’

‘Shop-girl!’ said Percy to himself. He grew pale with a sort of holy horror. ‘You women are dreadful,’ he said. ‘Talk of being brutal! I don’t know any angels myself, but I should think she would be more like that type.’

‘Indeed!’ Mrs. Egerton said, and stopped and stared at him, a proceeding of which Percy showed his dislike by turning, if not his back, which would have been uncivil, at least the side of his clerical coat, and shaven cheek, to his relation’s eye. This made the gaze of scrutiny which she directed towards him innocuous, but raised her suspicions all the more. ‘Dear me,’ she said, ‘this is a sudden enthusiasm. I was not at all prepared for it. The mother was a striking-looking woman. What do you take for the angelic type, Percy, if I may ask?’

‘The type of Miss Sandford,’ said Percy: ‘I don’t mean anything silly.’ He spoke with an impatience which was not unhabitual, for Percy was one of those who think it the fault of the other people when he is not immediately understood. ‘You had better go and see her for yourself—indeed, good manners demand that you should do so, and show yourself civil, you and Elly too.’

Mrs. Egerton looked at him for a moment, not sure whether she ought to be angry: but policy and good humour won the day, and she laughed.

‘You lay down my duty for me very distinctly,’ she said. ‘You forget that my manners were formed before you were born. But I shall certainly go and see Miss Sandford—brought up among sick people and in hospital duties as she has been, a little change must be important for her.’

Women perhaps have the gift of showing a muffled claw like this better than men. Percy was exasperated to have the stranger spoken of as a hospital nurse, but he had not an opening to say a word.

‘Poor thing,’ Mrs. Egerton added, ‘it must be a trying life. I daresay the mere sight of people who have nothing the matter with them will do her good. Certainly I shall go. Oh, Mr. Cattley,’ said she, as the curate opened the door, ‘you have just come in time. I gave Percy a commission last night which he has not been able to carry out. Perhaps I might ask you——’

‘You know,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘that what you wish is a law to me.’

‘Not that,’ she said, with a faint, rising colour, ‘but this is a very delicate matter, out of the ordinary. It is to prevent further unhappiness: it is for the real good of two young creatures, who are almost as dear to you, I believe, as they are to me.’

‘What is it?’ he said. Mr. Cattley was a little grey by nature, with no perceptible colour, but he warmed slightly with the interest of this mysterious office which was about to be conferred upon him.

‘It is about John and Elly,’ Mrs. Egerton said.

‘What,’ cried the curate, ‘have they——?’ with a gleam of animation, which faded, however, when he saw that his oracle shook her head; but it was very evident which way Mr. Cattley’s sympathies went.

‘I don’t know if I can trust you, after all. Mr. Cattley, you know Jack—though he is a charming boy, and was almost like one of ourselves as long as he was living here—still he is not in the same position, is he? Not perhaps quite so well educated and all that—not—a gentleman, as people say.’

‘Yes, I am sure he is a gentleman,’ said Mr. Cattley, quietly.

‘In heart and in manners, oh, yes. He is very nice; he is full of good impulses, and his manners, for his position, are very nice. But, Mr. Cattley, there is something more—really, you must acknowledge something more is necessary.’

‘For what?’ he said.

At this Mrs. Egerton’s middle-aged countenance was touched with a little colour, for perhaps in consequence of the curate’s boundless admiration for her, she stood a little in awe of him, and doubtless avoided in his presence the expression of all sentiments that might seem to him unworthy. She hesitated for a moment.

‘Mr. Cattley,’ she said. ‘I must first explain. These two are at a dangerous age to be such great friends. With boy and girl that sort of sentiment is so apt to glide into—a warmer feeling.’

‘Yes, I know; and not only with boy and girl.’

‘Well, some people condemn all friendship between men and women on that account; but of course at their age it is doubly—— Now, Mr. Cattley, you understand. With the greatest regard for John Sandford, one would not, you know, wish that Elly—— Her father would never give his consent.’

‘I see,’ said the curate. ‘It would not be a very fine match for her, indeed. I should prefer a young duke.’

‘Don’t laugh at me. I should not prefer a young duke: but I should prefer some one a little above, to some one a little below. Don’t you see? I think in the present circumstances you must feel there is something reasonable in that.’

‘Quite reasonable,’ said Mr. Cattley. ‘I should like Elly to be rich and great—happy, too.’

‘Yes, yes; there is no question of her happiness. If that were involved, of course I should not say another word. But at present we have not to take that into consideration. The only danger is that both of them might get to think—they are full of poetry and stories, Elly as full as possible. They might get to think they were made for each other, without any sufficient cause even in themselves, and everything against it—everything! in the circumstances.’

‘I see,’ Mr. Cattley said again. ‘But what do you suppose I can do?’

‘If you would but speak to Jack! There is no one he respects so much. Warn him that it is not wise for him to see so much of Elly, that their old familiarity was only possible when they were children, that for him to call her—— as he does—I am sure you would know exactly what to say. Percy was to have done it last night: but he was entirely routed by the appearance of Jack’s sister whom he took for——’ Mrs. Egerton laughed, but continued with mingled prudence and temerity, for Percy looked daggers at her, ‘who seems to have been something in the guardian angel way.’

Mr. Cattley did not take any notice of this, but he said, meditatively,

‘It will be a curious thing for me to do. And yet perhaps I am the most natural agent. But I don’t know what I shall say to him. It may be—have you considered that?—putting an idea into his head which was not there.’

‘Oh, I fear the idea is in his head,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘That idea never fails to get into their heads. If it was an arrangement everybody approved, and that we were moving heaven and earth to bring about, then indeed—but the moment it becomes undesirable, a trouble, an annoyance! I am sure when you see him, that you will easily find what it is best to say. And I shall be so grateful,’ she cried, giving him an affectionate glance, ‘for, Mr. Cattley, I know you will be very considerate; you will say nothing to wound his feelings.’

‘Nothing more than is necessary. You don’t suppose things like this can be said without hurting the feelings,’ said the curate. ‘Poor boy,’ he added, after a moment, ‘I would do a great deal to get him his wishes. It seems hard that I should be the one to say he’s not to have them.’

‘But you approve? You see there is nothing else to be done: you agree with me that it would be impossible to let it go on? I am sure, whoever else may misconceive my meaning, you understand,’ Mrs. Egerton said, with a sudden little pressure of her hand upon his arm.

He looked at her with a kind of appeal in his eyes.

‘I think I understand,’ he said, ‘and I approve, too, in a kind of way. But you will be kind? You will not push it too far?’

‘I hope I am not unkind,’ Mrs. Egerton said.

Thus it was that Mr. Cattley went, in the afternoon of the day following Susie’s arrival, to the old house of the Sandfords. He went somewhat against the grain; but yet there was sufficient justice in the commission given him. He thought with a little sigh how entirely natural and appropriate it would be that John should love Elly, and Elly John. If it was so, they would be delivered at once, in the happiness and harmony of nature, from all the constraints which distracted life. He himself had loved, if he had ever ventured to think so, amiss. He had given his affections to a woman entirely out of his sphere, of a different development, almost of a different generation. Any idea of marrying her, of a house made bright by her love, had never been possible. Many moments of a happiness very sweet, though always subdued, he had no doubt possessed. She had been if impossible as a wife, yet his dearest friend, his frequent companion, and his years had passed very sweetly by her side. But if it had chanced to him in his youth, like John, to love somebody of his own age, somebody within his reach! If she had been young, like Elly, and fancy-free when he was as John! He sighed to think how many embarrassments, how many self-denials those two young creatures would escape in the love which had no complications in it. And then he recollected, with a shock, that he was going to put a stop to this love, that he was going as the accepted messenger of family pride and importance, of the difference between the rector’s daughter and an obscure young man whose pedigree would not bear examination. Mr. Cattley shook his head a little and rubbed his eyes; was it possible that this was the errand upon which he was going? He then began to think of the matter from the other point of view. It was indeed very natural that it should be thought undesirable for Elly, who might, as people say, marry anybody, to have her affections surprised before she knew anything of the world, or had seen anyone, by a young man of obscure origin and uncertain prospects. They were quite justified in thinking so, quite right, indeed, and in trying to save her from a connection which was almost too natural, into which she might be drawn by the mere force of circumstances, by the habit of liking John, and the impossibility of understanding the difference between liking and love. Yes, he said to himself, Elly must be saved. She must not be drawn inadvertently into a union which was too natural, which seemed inevitable, the expedient of a story. No, no! Elly, and John, too, must be saved from drifting into that.

He carried on this controversy, which was not really a controversy, for his heart first took one side and then the other, and he was the partisan of both, as he went down the street, mechanically returning all the salutations made to him. He said to himself that it was a strange world, that wherever one turned there was trouble, things not going right in the battle of life, all for want of being put in the right way at the beginning. His sense of all these contradictions was possibly deepened by the consciousness which never left him that he was going away. He was to leave all these people whom he knew, and whose troubles he understood, and to leave the way of life to which he had become accustomed, and the sweetness of the friendship which was his, that sweetness in his life which replaced the wife and children of other men. Mr. Cattley’s heart rebelled a little in spite of himself. Why had he to go away? Not by his own wish entirely. He would have gone on for ever if they would let him, and nobody would have been the worse. He was going away to better himself, so they all said, because at his age it was right he should be independent and have a living of his own and settle down.

Settle down! How was he ever to settle down? He thought drearily of the new rectory in which he had already spent a dreary month or two. And now he had come back to initiate Percy into his duties, and to take leave of all he was most used to, and cared for most. John! That he should have to interfere with Jack,—to whom everything was possible,—he, in his middle-aged desolation! What should he himself do? The worst thing would be if he were ever forced by stress of circumstances to marry some innocent woman who might be put in his way, and do her grievous wrong, marrying for convenience because it would not be possible for him to live alone. It was John who ought to interfere, who should take his old tutor by the shoulders and say to him— What do you mean by it? What right have you to yield to external pressure in this way and tear yourself from all you care for in life? If the tables were turned on him, either by John or Elly, Mr. Cattley felt it would be only just: but nevertheless, holding to his consigne to the last moment, he went on—to do her bidding dutifully, and her business, and make an end of any dream that might be stealing into John’s imagination. Poor John!

Mr. Cattley walked into the parlour which he knew so well, and where he could not help feeling the old people must be sitting, waiting to upbraid him, for conspiring—he who had always professed to be so proud of the boy—against Jack’s happiness. He did not pay any attention to what the maid said in answer to his inquiry for Mr. Sandford, but went in straight, as he had been accustomed to do, without announcement or preliminary. And then there occurred to Mr. Cattley something of the same miraculous effect which on the evening before had paralysed Percy. There rose up as he entered, meeting him with the honest, modest look of a pair of eyes sincere and sweet, and that tranquil air of home-dwelling and content which makes an ordinary room into a sort of palace of the soul—Susie, not John. He looked at her in great surprise: for, though he knew that John’s sister had come, he had not realised nor thought of her, and for the first moment did not even comprehend that this was she.

‘My brother is out,’ said Susie. ‘If you will sit down, I am sure he will not be long. He has gone up to the rectory, I think, with some books.’

‘To the rectory?’ said Mr. Cattley, with a prevision, which—for the reason that it agreed with all his wishes, yet went against all his instructions—made his heart beat—‘I must have met him on the way had he gone there.’

‘I am sure he has gone there,’ said Susie, ‘for he took some books Miss Spencer had asked for. He may have gone round some other way.’

‘Yes, he may have gone round,’ said Mr. Cattley, his face growing long, yet his heart stirring with a sharp, acute sympathy which was almost painful. And then he said, ‘You must pardon me, Miss Sandford, for I am sure I am speaking to Jack’s sister. I should like to wait for him if you will let me stay.’

‘Surely,’ she said, with that smile in her eyes which was always there, resuming her seat: and the curate sat down by her, with a pleasure in this novelty, in the old associations turned into new ones, in the unknown gentle friend who did not know anything about his perplexities or his position, but met him on fresh ground with her pleasant welcoming eyes and tranquillising presence. He would wait for Jack: and probably some new light as to how to treat this matter might spring up by the way.