John Caldigate’s Return

The carriage started with the old man in it as soon as the horses could be harnessed; but on the Folking causeway it met the fly which was bringing John Caldigate to his home,—­so that the father and son greeted each other in the street amidst the eyes of the villagers.  To them it did not much matter, but the squire had certainly been right in saving Hester from so public a demonstration of her feelings.  The two men said hardly a word when they met, but stood there for a moment grasping each other’s hands.  Then the driver of the fly was paid, and the carriage was turned back to the house.  ‘Is she well?’ asked Caldigate.

‘She will be well now.’

‘Has she been ill?’

‘She has not been very happy, John, while you have been away from her.’

‘And the boy?’

’He is all right.  He has been spared the heart-breaking knowledge of the injury done to him.  It has been very bad with you, I suppose.’

’I do not like being in jail, sir.  It was the length of the time before me that seemed to crush me.  I could not bring myself to believe that I should live to see the end of it.’

‘The end has come, my boy,’ said his father, again taking him by the hand, ’but the cruelty of the thing remains.  Had there been another trial as soon as the other evidence was obtained, the struggle would have kept your heart up.  It is damnable that a man in an office up in London should have to decide on such a matter, and should be able to take his own time about it!’ The grievance was still at the old squire’s heart in spite of the amenity of Mr. Brown’s letter; but John Caldigate, who was approaching his house and his wife, and to whom, after his imprisonment even the flat fields and dykes were beautiful, did not at the moment much regard the anomaly of the machinery by which he had been liberated.

Hester in the meantime had donned her silk dress, and had tied the gay bow round her baby’s frock, who was quite old enough to be astonished and charmed by the unusual finery in which he was apparelled.  Then she sat herself at the window of a bedroom which looked out on to the gravel sweep, with her boy on her lap, and there she was determined to wait till the carriage should come.

But she had hardly seated herself before she heard the wheels.  ’He is here.  He is coming.  There he is!’ she said to the child.  ’Look! look!  It is papa.’  But she stood back from the window that she might not be seen.  She had thought it out with many fluctuations as to the very spot in which she would meet him.  At one moment she had intended to go down to the gate, then to the hall-door, and again she had determined that she would wait for him in the room in which his breakfast was prepared for him.  But she had ordered it otherwise at last.  When she saw the carriage approaching, she retreated back from the window, so that he should not even catch a glimpse of her; but she had seen him as he sat, still holding his father’s hand.  Then she ran back to her own chamber and gave her orders as she passed across the passage.  ’Go down, nurse, and tell him that I am here.  Run quick, nurse; tell him to come at once.’