CHAPTER III.
HOW HE WAS TO BEGIN LIFE.
THEY were all seated one evening in the parlour round the fire. The house of the Sandfords was like many other old-fashioned middle-class houses. The dining-room was the principal room in it. They would have thought it very pretentious and as if they were setting up for a gentility to which they laid no claim had they called their other sitting-room a drawing-room. The rector might do so who belonged distinctly to the county; but the Sandfords called their sitting-room the parlour, without even knowing what a pretty old-fashioned word that is, and how it is coming into fashion again. Old Mr. Sandford’s armchair stood on one side of the fire, and his wife’s on the other. He had a stand for the candle near him, and she had a little table. Otherwise the room was furnished according to its epoch, with a round table in the centre, and chairs set round the walls. On grandmamma’s little table was her knitting, a basket with some needle-work, and a book. She read all through a book in a conscientious yet leisurely way, doing a bit of needle-work, when the light was good, and knitting when her eyes were tired. In this way she was always occupied and yet never fatigued by being busy too long at one thing. The knitting was done with large pins and thick wool. It was easy work. It resulted in comforters, mufflers, and other little things that were useful at Christmas, and made the school-children and the old people in the village happy—or as nearly happy as anyone is ever made by presents of warm woollen things to keep out the cold.
John sat at the table between the old people. He had the advantage of the lamp and warmest place. They liked to have him there, and he had learned to do all his work in that warm family centre, with their silent society, surrounded by their love. The old people did not talk very much at any time, and, when they thought it was for the advantage of John and his work, were capable of sitting all the evening in a silent blessedness making little signs to each other across him, but never speaking lest they should disturb him. They said at other times, with secret delight, that their John never wanted to retire into any study, but did his work, bless him, in the parlour, and never found them in his way.
On this particular evening it could scarcely be said that he was at work; his lessons were all prepared, and ready for next day: and John was reading for his own pleasure in that delightful calm of feeling which results from the sense of duty performed. It is not always in later life that one is privileged to enjoy this conscious virtue even when one’s work is fully accomplished, but at fifteen the case is different—and, as it happened, among the books on the table, the boy had brought down inadvertently the old copy of Robinson Crusoe which had been so dear to him in his childhood, and which was associated with so many of the confused reminiscences of that long departed past. He had taken it, and was looking at it, before the old people opened the conversation which for the whole evening had been in their thoughts. John scarcely felt it was necessary to open that book. He knew not only what was in it, but a great many things that were not in it, things which it suggested before it was opened, the strange visions of the time through which papa’s image flitted, dim now but still well remembered. He was thinking of all this with a vagueness in which there was no pain. There never indeed had been any pain, only a confused sense of so many things which he could not understand. He might have heard, if he had taken any notice, that the old people were simultaneously clearing their throats, with little coughs and hems—partly of preparation, partly to have him see that they were about to speak, and call his attention. But John did not take any notice, being fully absorbed with his own recollections and interests. Anyone who could have seen them would have been amused to remark how the grandfather and grandmother looked at each other, and made little signs egging each other up to begin, across the unconscious boy who took no notice at all.
It was Mrs. Sandford who spoke the first after all this pantomime. She gave her husband an upbraiding look as much as to say that he always pushed her to the front when anything disagreeable had to be done. Not that it was in reality anything disagreeable, but only exciting and full of new possibilities. She laid down her large pins with the knitting upon her lap, and cleared her throat finally, and said, ‘John.’
It had to be repeated a second time in a slightly raised voice, and with a touch of her hand upon his arm before he paid any attention. Then the boy roused up suddenly, gave himself a little shake, pushed his ‘Robinson Crusoe’ away from him on the table, and turning round, said, briskly, ‘Yes, grandmamma,’ coming back in a moment out of his dreams.
‘We want to speak to you, my dear,’ the old lady said. She put her hand on his arm again, and patted it softly. He sat, as a matter of fact, on his grandmother’s side, not exactly in the middle; nearer to her than to the old gentleman, who had long observed the circumstance not without a little kind of jealousy, but had never taken any notice.
Mrs. Sandford was conscious of it, and secretly proud; but you may be sure she took no notice, and would no doubt have shown a little surprise had it been remarked.
‘We want to speak to you,’ she said. ‘John, you are growing a great boy.’
‘Seventeen last birthday,’ said the grandfather. ‘I had been working for myself a couple of years when I was his age.’
‘Well, my dear, but it is not John’s fault. You have always said you regretted having so little schooling.’
‘The question is,’ said old Mr. Sandford, striking his hand against the arm of his chair, ‘whether the education he has been getting counts like schooling. For, you see, he has never been at school. I had my doubts on that subject all along.’
‘Oh, yes, oh, yes, my dear,’ said the old lady. ‘To be taught by a good man that knows a great deal, like our curate, that is better, surely, than being exposed to meet with bad boys and bad influences in a strange place.’
John listened to this conversation, turning his face from one to the other. He was quite used to be discussed so, and thought it the natural course of affairs—but here it seemed to him that he might intervene in his own person.
‘Grandpapa,’ he said, ‘Mr. Cattley says Elly and I construe much better than Dick and Percy, though they have been so many years at school.’
‘Does he really, John!’ said Mrs. Sandford, and her old eyes got wet directly with pleasure; but grandpapa still shook his head.
‘I don’t know much about construing,’ he said; ‘I never had time to study any outlandish tongues, but you and Dick, as you call him, and Percy are very different; one’s going to the army and one to Oxford, as I hear; but as for you, my Johnny-boy——’ Here Mr. Sandford winked his eyes, too; for, though he had begun with the intention of taking his John down a little, and showing him that he was far from being so fine a gentleman as he thought—when it came to the point, the old grandfather did not himself like the idea, and felt that his John was much more of a gentleman than any other boy he knew.
‘Yes, grandfather,’ said John, tranquilly. ‘I know I’m not like the others. I’ve got to make my own way.’
‘Yes; and you’ve got to make it without a family behind you, and friends to push you on as those young Spencers have—though you’ve more in you than both of them put together,’ cried grandpapa, with a little outburst of feeling which John did not at all understand.
John smiled. He was used to hearing that he was a fine fellow, and better than the others, and he took it as a peculiarity of the doting affection these old people had for him, and excused it good-naturedly on that ground: but he knew very well it was not true.
‘The only thing that is wanting to Percy and Dick is that they’re not your boys, grandfather,’ said John—‘yours and grandmamma’s—you would know then that they are quite as good as me—or better, perhaps,’ he added, candidly, feeling that so far as this went there might be reason for a doubt.
‘You will never make us see that,’ said Mrs. Sandford; ‘but I love the boys, bless them, for they’ve always been like brothers to you. And it is saying a deal for the rector and all of them that, though we are not just in their position, they have never hindered it nor made any difference, which they might have done; dear me, oh! yes, they might have done it, and nobody blamed them——’
‘My dear,’ said the old man, in a tone of warning.
‘Oh! yes, yes,’ cried grandmamma. ‘I know; I know——’ And she cried a little, and gave a stolen look at John such as he had caught many a day without ever understanding the meaning of it—a look in which there was something like pity, compassion, and indignation as well as love, as if somebody had wronged him deeply, though he did not know it, and she felt that nothing could ever be too good for him, too tender to make up for it—and yet that nothing ever would wipe out that wrong. All this in one glance is, perhaps, too much to believe in; but John saw it all confusedly, wondering, and not knowing what it could mean.
Mr. Sandford cleared his throat again, and then it was he who began.
‘John,’ he said, ‘we think, and so does your mother think, that it is time to speak to you about what you are going to do——’
‘Yes, grandfather,’ said John. He looked up with a little eagerness, as if he were quite ready and prepared, which, while it made matters much easier, gave the old people a little chill at the same time, as if the boy had been wanting to get away.
‘There is no hurry about it,’ the old gentleman said, closing up a little and drawing back into his seat.
‘But, grandfather,’ said John, ‘I’ve been thinking of it myself. Percy is going to the University after he’s finished at Marlborough: but I can’t do that. I can’t wait till I’m a man before getting to work. I know I’m not like them. Mr. Cattley has taken us—oh, I don’t mean us: me—as far as I have any need to go.’
‘Why shouldn’t you say “us,” John?’
‘Because Elly is a girl. She is more different still. She says her aunt will never let her go on when she comes back. And, it is thought, Mr. Cattley will get a living: so that’s just how it is, grandfather. I’ve been thinking the very same. As I’ve got to make my own way, it’s far better that I should begin.’
‘Especially as the poor lad has no one behind him,’ said his grandmother, shaking her head.
‘I have you behind me,’ said John; ‘I’d like to know how a fellow could have anything better. And I’ve all the village behind me that know you and know me, though I’m not so much. What could I have more? I’ve only got to say I’m Mr. Sandford’s grandson, and, all this side of the county, everybody knows me. The Spencers have got greater relations, perhaps, but what could be better than that?’
He looked round upon them, first to one side, then to the other, with a glow of brightness and happy feeling in his cheerful young face. He was a good-looking boy, perhaps not strictly handsome, with mobile irregular features, honest well-opened eyes, with a laugh always in them, and brown hair that curled a little. He was not particularly tall for his age, neither was he short, but strong and well-knit. And he had the complexion of a girl, white and red, a little more brown perhaps than would have been becoming to a girl. But to John the brown was very becoming. He looked like a boy who was afraid of nothing, neither work, nor fatigue, nor poverty, nor even trouble, if that should have to be borne—but who was entirely confident that he never need be ashamed to look the world in the face, and that everything known of him, either of himself or those who had gone before him, was of a kind to conciliate friendship and spread goodwill all round.
The two old people looked at him, and then at each other. The grandfather gave his ‘tchick, tchick’ under his breath, as it were, the grandmother under her soft white knitting wrung her old hands. But an awe was upon them of his youth, of his confidence, of his happiness. They withdrew their eyes from him and from each other with a suddenness of alarm, as if they might betray themselves—and for a moment there was silence. They dared not venture to say anything, and he had said what he had to say. After a moment, however, he resumed. He noticed no hesitation, no tragic consultation of looks; for him everything was so simple, so plain.
‘Don’t you agree with me?’ he said.
‘Agree with him! Listen to the young ’un,’ said the old man at last, with a quaver in his voice. ‘But I’m glad you take it like this, my boy. We’re old folks, and we’re growing older every day. We’d like to live just to see you settled for yourself in the world. You’ve advantages, as you say, in the village maybe, and just a little way about, where our name is known, though we have not spent all our lives in this little place. But look you here, John. You mustn’t expect to be able to make your way in the village, nor perhaps near it. You mustn’t expect the old folks will last for ever. When you go out into the world, you’ll find there are very few that ever heard tell of your grandmother and me. You will have to be your own grandfather, so to speak,’ grandpapa said, with an unsteady little laugh.
It was just at this moment that John, looking down on the table with his smiling eyes, with an undimmed boyish satisfaction in grandfather’s little jokes, contented he could scarcely call how, saw the old ‘Robinson Crusoe’ which lay there. It lay among half-a-dozen books, in no way distinguished from the others, but to John it was not like any of the others. It brought a sudden check, like the rolling up of a cloud over his mind. The light paled somehow on his face, as the sky pales when the cloud rolls up. It was not that he was afraid, or that any shadow of a coming trouble fell upon him. No, not that. He was only recalled to the far back childish life, like a faint vision which lay in the distance, like an island on the other side of the sea, half touching the line of the ocean, half drawn up into the skies. He paused for a moment in the shock of this idea, and said, half to himself,
‘By-the-by: I talk as if I were only your grandson, grandfather: but there’s something that comes between—there’s papa.’
There was a slight faint stir in the room. He did not look up to see what it was, being fully engaged following out the thread of his own thoughts.
‘I remember him quite well,’ he said; ‘sometimes I don’t think of him for ages together, and then in a moment it will all come back. I’ve been away from them a long time, haven’t I, to be the only son? and though you sometimes speak of—mother’—he had nearly said Emily, and reddened a little, half with horror, half with amazement, to think of the slip he had almost made—‘you never say a word about papa.’
John could not employ any other than the childish name to denote his absent father. He could not think of him but as papa. He was silent for a little, following out his own thoughts, and it was not till a minute or two had elapsed that it occurred to him how strange it was that they should be quite silent too, making no response. He looked up hastily, and caught sight of one of those signs which the old people would make to each other across him, he paying no attention. But somehow this time he did pay attention. Mrs. Sandford was bending forward towards the old man. Her hands were clasped as if in entreaty. She was giving him an anxious, almost agonized look, imploring him to do something, to refrain from doing something—which was it?—while the grandfather, drawn back into his chair, seemed to resist, seemed to be making up his mind. They both assumed an air of indifference, of forced ease precipitately, when they saw that John was observing them, and then the old gentleman spoke.
‘I’m—glad you’ve asked, John. It’s been on my mind for a long time to tell you. We ought to have done it years ago: but somehow you were always such a happy lad, and it seemed a pity, it seemed a pity to—disturb your mind——’
‘Oh, John Sandford!’ the old lady said. It was not to the boy she was speaking, but to her husband, once more wringing her hands.
Grandfather gave her a look which was almost fierce, a look of angry severity, imposing silence; and then he resumed—
‘Your mother left it to us, to do what we thought best; and we had that anxiety for you to keep you happy that I said unless you asked—and strange it is you never asked before, though it’s not far off ten years you have been with us. You can’t remember much about him, John.’
‘I do, though—I remember him quite well. How he would come and take me out of bed and carry me downstairs, and how jolly he was. I don’t perhaps think of him much, but when I do, I remember him perfectly. He was ruddy and big, and had bright merry eyes—I can see him now——’
The old lady gave a little whimpering cry.
‘Poor Robert! poor Robert! You may say what you like, but the boy is like him, not like any of us,’ she said.
‘Hold your tongue!’ said her husband, peremptorily. ‘Merry, yes, he was merry enough in his time; but it doesn’t make other folks merry that kind——’
And there was again a little pause. John’s curiosity was aroused, and his interest: but yet he was not greatly moved—for anything connected with his father was so vague for him and far away.
‘Well, grandfather? he said at last.
‘Well,’ said the old man, slowly, ‘there is not very much to say; the short and the long of it is that—hush, woman, I tell you! he is just—dead. That is all there is to say.’
‘Dead!’ John was startled. He repeated the word in an awestruck and troubled tone. He did not know what he had expected. And yet the moment he thought of it—and thought goes so quick!—he had gone through the whole in a moment like a flash of light, realising the long separation, the utter silence, through which there never came any news. Of course, that was the only thing that was possible. He said, after a time,
‘I ought to have known. It must have been that. Never to hear of him for so many years—’
‘Yes, to be sure,’ grandfather said. ‘He didn’t do well in his business, and he went abroad, and then he died——’
‘I ought to have known—it must have been that,’ said John.