The Son of His Father: Volume 1 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVIII.
 FAREWELL.

JOHN went up the village street towards the rectory with a heavy heart.

It was all over—his resistance and his notion of being able to resist, his hopes and all the foundation for them, his fond dreams and thoughts (so fallacious and so foolish) of independence, of settling matters for himself, of keeping the little house as a sort of monument to the old people to whom it belonged. Could anything be more vain than these visions? It was all settled now, and not a child in the village had less to do with it than he. The furniture was to be sold, the house itself to be let if it could not be disposed of. The gardener and Sarah had received their dismissal. They remained only till ‘the family’ left, which was an event now fixed for next day. In short, every part of John’s little world had crumbled under him. Himself was of no account in all the changes that had been determined upon. They were all quite reasonable, perhaps necessary, and his childish intention had been silly as well as vain. He understood that now; but how painful was the discovery? It left him aching body and soul, not only with the thought of what was to come, but with the smarting sensation of pain and shame, that overwhelming sense of having formed ludicrous intentions impossible to carry out, which is so terrible to youth. He felt himself blush from head to foot when he thought how foolish he had been, and how impossible that which he had supposed the most natural thing in the world. For the sting of it was that he saw the impossibility, and how childish it was to suppose that he could have done it, and the futility of everything he had imagined and planned. It was natural that she should take all the steps she had done—calmly, without the silly sentiment into which he had fallen. She was acting only as reasonable people should act—but he, he had been going on like a foolish boy.

John had passed through a great many vicissitudes both of mind and situation in these past days. He had been to his own thinking independent, feeling very young and forlorn indeed, but yet with a firmness of purpose and a tenderness of feeling which had given him confidence in himself. He had felt that he would not abuse the old people’s confidence. He would make a man of himself to do them credit. He would show them honour in his keeping up of everything that had pleased them, in his return, whenever he had leisure, to the home in which their love had guarded him. That had been his first phase, and it had been full of a simple youthful dignity, and a sense of worthiness of the trust they had placed in him. And then there had come a revolution, a storm, a fierce moment of fighting and resistance to the new will, a fight which was weakened from the beginning by the fatal conviction that it must be lost. And now even the struggle was over, and he had fallen—into what had he fallen? Into a child again—into what perhaps was his natural position—the place of a boy who did not quite know what was going to be done with him, whose fate was in other hands, who had to wait and hear what was intended, where he was to be placed, with a knowledge that his own wishes had very little to do with it, and no dignity, no freedom at all! Could there be a greater downfall for a sensitive, high-spirited boy? With a certain mental elation, tempered by sorrow, he had felt himself a man though only seventeen, with all the tender ambitions of a boy, to do credit to those that loved him: now he had fallen back to the position of a child—wistfully dependent, uncertain what his fate was to be. In more ordinary circumstances even, such as happen every day, a boy who has been brought up by his grandparents, made into the son of their old age, matured by the constant company of people full of experience, and the indulgence which comes with the end of life, is apt to feel a terrible downfall when he goes back into his own family, where his parents, in their busy prime, think but little of his precocious wisdom, and do not respect at all the fictitious independence into which he has grown, and where his brothers and sisters, a rabble rout, knock him about in a way which is supposed to be very much to his advantage.

John’s experiences were but a little more painful. The disenchantment was complete. He was shaken out of all opinion of himself. Perhaps even his feeling that his own will or way was of no importance at all exceeded reality: for he had no reason to suppose that his mother would be entirely indifferent to what he wished. She had not been unkind. She was not an emotional woman, nor given to any effusion of sympathetic feeling; but she was not unkind. But John in his downfall and dismay could not consider that. He felt himself altogether brought low. And then his position, so far as his mother was concerned, was so painful and extraordinary. She was his mother; he could not, even to himself, set up any other hope. He could not blind himself to the conviction that this was she that appeared in his childish recollections, always so silent, putting him aside, saying that the boy was not to know. But he could not call her ‘mother,’ having known her so long and seen to the depths of her character as Emily. He said ‘she’ to himself, and no more. She was the arbiter of his life. He did not think she cared at all for him, or minded whether he was happy or otherwise. Secretly, perhaps, he thought that she preferred he should not be happy; but that he knew, even while he entertained the thought, was a wrong thing to think, unkind and untrue: yet he kept it in his mind all the same.

He was strolling along with his hands deeply thrust into his pockets, and despondency unspeakable in his soul, feeling that everything that made life worth living had been taken from him. He was going to the rectory to say good-bye. Good-bye was what was in his heart towards everything he looked on. Not a house he passed but was familiar to him—the shop, the post-office, even Johnson at the public-house, though the old people had so disapproved of him, and John had grown up in the idea that he was not much better than the roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour, of Scripture: they were all kind, familiar objects now. He regretted them all, worthy and unworthy. As he went along, there was some recollection associated with every bit of the road. There, Dick Spencer had thrown a snowball and hit him, and made his forehead bleed; a snowball with a stone in it—but how sorry Dick was! There he had run against Percy on the way to school and they had both come to the ground, rolling over each other. At another corner was the spot where Elly used to start to run and get before them all, with swift, light steps like a deer, scarcely touching the ground. All the boys had united in saying that it was not fair, that Elly could not stay, that the slowest of them could have beaten her in a quarter-of-a-mile; but, nevertheless, she had always got first whatever they might say. He was turning over all these old things in his heart while he strode along slowly, languidly, his whole being in pain, when suddenly, in the midst of his troubled thoughts, a slap came on his shoulder from behind, and a cheerful voice hailed him:

‘Why, Jack! what are you doing here at this time of day?’

Then another voice addressed the first one with that pleasant frankness which characterises brothers or dear friends, and bid him for a blockhead to remember. Whereupon the first speaker penitently cried out:

‘I beg your pardon! You know I didn’t mean to be unfeeling, Jack.’

John had scarcely the heart to turn round. He did so, half, saying, in a tone of little interest,

‘Have you fellows come back?’

The fellows were two. They were older than John. One—the nearest to him in age—was short and of spare figure, neat and careful of apparel; the other was some two years older, a person of advanced age in the estimation of his juniors, who did not think Dick’s sense was on a level with his years. He was large and fair, a full-grown man in person, with a moustache which many an older man might envy, and a careless good-humour and heartiness about him which was very attractive to many of his fellow-creatures, though his own immediate belongings were a little contemptuous of them. Both the lads were dressed with a little of that jauntiness which characterises the University. They came from a centre of boyish fashion; their coats were cut on the correctest model, and even Percy, though so much the wiser of the two, would have died, it was evident to the commonest observer, rather than wear anything which he ought not to have worn. The very canes which both of them scrupulously carried were exactly the right kind of cane. When John turned round slowly upon them, he was a little overawed as he awoke to it by the splendour of their appearance.

‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he said.

‘No, only for the day. Where are you going—to the rectory? Come along, then. That’s all right,’ said Dick. ‘We wanted to go and look you up, but didn’t like.’

Percy gave his brother a push aside.

‘I should have come fast enough; but I wanted to know first—that’s to say, we thought you might have relations or something. We’re awfully sorry, you know, Jack.’

‘Awfully sorry,’ echoed Dick, eager to make his sympathy known.

‘There’s nobody but my mother,’ said John, with an effort. ‘We are going away to-morrow morning.’

‘Going away?’

‘Yes. I’m going back with my mother. There is to be a sale and the house is to be let.’ John forced himself to say all this with an appearance of stolid calm.

Dick thrust his arm into John’s, and, half roughly, half tenderly, led him along.

‘Come and talk to Aunt Mary,’ he said. This was his own idea of consolation. He could not himself say anything that would be of any use to a mourner; but Aunt Mary, if anyone, could. Dick always said that he would back her against the world.

John suffered himself to be led along a little more quickly than the pace at which he had been going along the street. He was vaguely encouraged by Dick’s arm within his, and even by Percy’s little trim shadow walking along on the other side of him. The boys had naturally nothing to say. What could they have to say to a comrade in trouble? They could only stand by him; grip his hand till he cried out; hold his arm tight in theirs; get him a chair, as if he had been a girl; minister to his wants in any way he would let them: but otherwise, beyond ‘awfully sorry,’ what could they say?

‘We have made a run home to see Aunt Mary and Elly,’ said Percy, ‘but we can’t stay above an hour or two. It’s a capital offence, don’t you know, to be out of college without leave; but Dick had something he wanted to look to, and so had I. I wish we had come before yesterday.’

‘It didn’t matter,’ said John.

‘We tried hard,’ said Dick, ‘and then we thought at least you’d like to see us before——’

‘Are you going to town, Jack? Best thing for you. You will be sure to get something there. And nothing so easy as to meet one’s friends in town,’ said Percy, briskly. Dick was inclined to make allusions, to dwell upon the departure from Edgeley, and repeat that he was awfully sorry. But Percy was much more a man of the world. It was always better, he had heard, to speak in the most cheerful way to fellows who were in trouble, and direct their eyes beyond the trouble to the time when all should be cheerful again. ‘You must leave us your address,’ he said. ‘We constantly run up to town. We shall see more of you than if you were staying here.’

‘I don’t know if I shall have an address,’ said John. ‘I—don’t know where I’m going. I’m—all at sea. I know nothing. It’s like a mist—’

‘I know,’ said Percy, soothingly: ‘that’s how fellows feel; but it can’t last like that. You’ll have to pick up, and go on again, don’t you know.’

Dick did not say anything, but he gave John’s arm a sort of hug, which almost threw the boy off his feet.

‘Why, there’s Elly running along in her wild way. She ought to know that she’s not a child now,’ said Percy, who understood it was a good thing to divert a fellow’s thoughts from himself and his troubles as soon as possible. ‘Hallo, Ell! Where are you running, like a rabbit, and never looking? and here we are, and here’s Jack.’

‘Oh, you have come!’ said Elly, suddenly perceiving them, with a flash of her eyes from one to another, but holding out her hand to John between them. ‘You ought to have been here yesterday, you know. What does it matter coming now? Jack, Aunt Mary wants you. Never mind the boys. Oh, you two, why didn’t you come yesterday? Don’t tell me you couldn’t have come if you had tried!’

‘We couldn’t, though,’ said Percy; while Dick, drawing his arm from John’s, stood abashed, making no reply. ‘You don’t know what a fellow old Scrymgeour is. He won’t give you leave. And to-day we came, you know, without asking. So we’ve got to be back before the gates are closed.’

‘I know,’ said Elly, ‘you’ve come to-day for your own pleasure; but when there was something serious to do, something you were wanted for—— John, do run; Aunt Mary is waiting for you, and afterwards you can see these two. You might have had sense enough,’ she added, as John left them; ‘you might have had heart enough—the last of the two old people that were always so nice to us—and then poor Jack. Papa saw it,’ said Elly, as if that was something unusual, ‘as well as Aunt Mary and me.’

‘Funerals are horrible things,’ said Dick, under his breath.

‘But what is the use of talking when we couldn’t manage it?’ said Percy, glibly. ‘We thought it better to come and see him, poor old beggar, after. And, I say, what’s all this about a mother? Has he got a mother? and perhaps a sister and a brother? and no doubt a nearer one still and a dearer one?’

‘How dare you laugh,’ cried Elly, stamping her foot: and ‘I say, stop that!’ said Dick, with a low growl.

John did not hear anything beyond the merest murmur of this conversation. He left them quarrelling, explaining themselves with that ease of brother and sisterhood which sets all politeness at defiance, and hurried on as Elly had directed him to see Mrs. Egerton. Perhaps John had not the same absolute confidence in her powers of consolation that her nephew had, but she had always been very kind to him, and he went with a sort of dull pleasure, knowing that she would be even more kind than usual to-day. She was in her own special room, the morning-room, which looked out over the shrubberies to the village street in the distance, and whence she saw, more or less, all that was going on. It was a room more useful than ornamental, with bookshelves filled with shabby books, which formed a sort of extra lending library for the parish, and cupboards full of the goods purchased for the Clothing Club, and all sorts of parish necessities; but it was also very bright, with its corner windows, one in each angle, and its air of occupation and cheerfulness. Mrs. Egerton looked up as John came in after a little tap at the door. She held out her hand to him across the table, where she was busy with the concerns of the parish, and drew him to a chair opposite to her.

‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘how I have wanted to see you.’ Her smile was beaming warm with kindness. It was not love, but it was the nearest thing to it, and it warmed the chilled and famished youth.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope you were coming to me of yourself, John.’

‘I was on my way,’ he said.

‘That’s right! I thought you would not desert your old friends. I told Elly to look out for you, and, if you were not coming, to bring you. Now tell me, my dear boy, do you go or stay?’

‘We are going to-morrow, Mrs. Egerton.’

‘To-morrow? So soon as that? And you say we——’

‘With my mother, Mrs. Egerton.’

He grew a little pale, and so, it seemed, did she.

‘Is that—that lady your mother, John?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and no more.

‘And you knew all along that your mother was living? How strange that you never spoke of her—that we never heard—I hope, dear John, I—I trust——’

She had meant to say, ‘that she is kind to you.’ But her courage failed her in sight of his pale, set face.

‘We heard from her always regularly, but there seemed nothing to write about. She had given me up to my grandparents.’ John had to pause to get rid of the sob in his throat; but he was determined to tell all he knew, to leave nothing to be found out. ‘She has been living in London, with little time to herself.’

It was a curiously lame story. He felt it was so, as he told it; hitherto it had all seemed simple enough. He met Mrs. Egerton’s look of interest and her interrogative ‘Yes?’ with sudden confusion, as if it was all a made-up tale.

‘Yes?’ she said, and paused with her eyes full of a hundred questions expecting him to resume. But John had told everything he had to tell, and stopped short with no more to say. She sat looking at him for a minute longer expecting when he should resume. Then, as he said nothing, she asked, as if to make a beginning again and draw him on, ‘Are there any more of the family?’

‘I have a sister,’ John said.

‘Oh! a sister. I am very glad to hear it. I am extremely glad for your sake. A sister is so near—a sister will sympathise. I have seen—Mrs. Sandford, once: it seems so strange to say that name and not to mean your dear old grandmamma, my kind, true old friend.’ Mrs. Egerton’s bright eyes were moistened with tears, but John sat stolid in the stupidity of his grief, and made no sign. ‘Did you know I had seen her once?’ she said. ‘She is Mrs. Sandford, isn’t she? and that is your name? She must have married—a cousin, I suppose?’

John made no reply. He felt a sense of guilt come over him. He said to himself that she was not Mrs. Sandford, nor was that his name; but his lips were sealed. He did not himself know how it was. His discovery of his own childish name had led to no further discoveries, and in his own family no one had given him any help to understand how it was. The subject was one which now he could not enter upon with his mother; and he felt by instinct, though no warning had ever been given to him, that it was a subject he must not speak of to others. So he made no answer, but in his heart felt a pang of secret guilt. He had not been used to secrets, especially he had not been used to concealing anything about himself: and now, in the sting of this consciousness, he sat silent, unresponsive, feeling himself dull and blank in presence of the kind, genial, affectionate woman full of curiosity, who wanted to know everything. She wanted him to tell her everything—to confide in her: and she was disappointed that the boy to whom she had been so kind should close up all the avenues to his heart and make no reply. Then Mrs. Egerton opened her drawer and took out her present to John. She was very liberal in the way of presents, loving to give them, delighted to give pleasure to others. What she had got for John was a gift of real value, a pretty gold hunting-watch, which was much better than the silver one that his grandparents had given him. It was very pretty, very nice, very kind; but when he took the old shabby silver one out of his pocket which had been given him when he was a boy, which had never gone very well, in order to make place for the new one, he tried his best to thank his kind friend, but he held the little old watch in his hand and gazed at it with troubled eyes.

‘You must give it away to some one,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘It will be a pleasure for you to give it to some good lad—Hedger’s boy, perhaps, who has been with you so long.’

He murmured an assent, but put the old watch back again into another pocket with a quick revolt of feeling. Give it away—to Ned Hedger. Oh! no, no, not for the world! He would keep it all his life for grandmamma’s sake.

Then there was a tumult in the room with the entrance of all the young people, and John did his best to allow himself to be ‘cheered up’ by the boys as they intended. But he was not cheered up, and was very glad to steal away with Elly to go ‘once round the garden,’ she said, before he went away. The rectory garden had witnessed so many of the pleasures of his childhood. It was big and old-fashioned, with an orchard attached, where the children had roamed at their pleasure. The girl and the boy set out talking with a little show of vivacity, but, as they strayed along the shady paths, they got more and more silent. At the bottom of the orchard, where the long stretch of the common showed under the trees, and all was silent and full of recollections, Elly suddenly thrust her hand into his.

‘Oh, Jack!’ she said, ‘how will you bear going away? Always think of me just here under the old pear-tree. Look how it is coming out like a great white tower of blossoms. I shall come here and think of you; and that will keep us near to each other. And, Jack——’

‘Yes, Elly?’

‘If you should feel lonely or anything—if you should miss home very much—oh, just think! I’ll come and do my algebra here, and think of you. It will be always something—not like your grandmother, but always something—a little bit of a home just here under the pear-tree.’

‘Elly,’ said John, ‘will you do one thing for me? There is nobody but you that I would ask.’

‘Yes, I will, Jack; half-a-dozen. Tell me what it is.’

‘There are the two old chairs by the fire. They will be sold like all the rest. I’ve money enough to buy them, but nowhere to put them. Oh, Elly!’

‘They shall stand in my own room. I’ll always keep them there,’ said Elly, with enthusiasm, ‘the two dear old chairs! Oh! yes, yes, Jack; in my own room.’

‘Thanks, awfully,’ said John.

He grasped the little, warm hand she had put into his, and they stood for a moment holding each other, like two children, by the hand.

‘Oh, Jack! this is dreadfully like good-bye now!’

‘It is good-bye. Elly, you give the boys a kiss when they go away. Won’t you give me one too? Oh, not if you don’t like; it’s only because it seems cold, just shaking hands, after what you have said.’

There was no blush on John’s simple face. He meant in absolute sincerity what he said. The girl reddened, being, perhaps, a little more advanced in life, though a year younger than the boy. She turned away her head for the moment, but then turned to him again with a steady look, and suddenly inclined her head towards him.

‘Yes, Jack; it will be like being brother and sister really, and for good.’

‘For good,’ he repeated, touching her fresh cheek with honest, tender lips; and then they went back sedately to the house, very quiet, with a certain awe upon them. For it is a ceremonial, and a sad one, to say that first good-bye.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.