The Son of His Father; vol. 1/3

John had been palpitating with expectation and hope when he opened this letter. He came gradually down, down, as he read it. All through, he felt that it was Emily who was writing to him, a woman whom he knew a great deal about (and yet nothing), and whom he did not like very much—not his mother.

It seemed likely that he had no mother. The loss of all that he had been expecting and looking forward to, and the strangest sense of whirling down, down, as if everything was giving way under him, made him sick and cold. When he had read it to the last word, he folded it up carefully, with a very grave face, and put it into his pocket. He was far too serious for the angry impulse of throwing it into the fire. He was not angry so much as crushed and overawed. He felt himself altogether put down from the position which he had taken. She had acknowledged that he was no longer a child, and yet she treated him as if he knew nothing, understood nothing. The injury to his pride, to his heart, to all that was individual in him, was more than words could say.

Mrs. Sandford looked at him wistfully when she came downstairs (always a little later). She caught his hand when he came and stood by her sofa looking down at her, thinking how bright and liquid her eyes were. How large and deep the sockets seemed, as if they had widened out, and what a pallor had come upon her face—her little face! She was a small woman, but now her face was like the face of a child, all but the widened circle about her eyes. She put her hand upon his, the touch felt like a feather, and looked up at him wistfully, but without speaking. He had gone out immediately after breakfast, half stupified, and taken a long walk, his chief object being not to see her, not to give her any information. But he was obliged to answer the question in her eyes.

‘I have had a letter, grandmamma. She says she can’t come.’

‘Can’t come, John!’ The old lady kept looking up at him, till suddenly her eyes grew dim with two great tears. She clasped her hands together with a low cry. He could see the disappointment, which was so unexpected, go over her like a flood. She could not say any more. Her lips quivered—it was all she could do in her weakness not to break down altogether, and whimper and moan like a child. ‘Can’t come!’ she repeated, after a time, with little broken sobs.

‘Grandmamma, don’t take it like that, and break my heart. It is my fault. I began to write as if it was me only, and I felt it a good deal and went on and on from myself, not from you. She thinks it was only my letter, only I that wanted her. She seems to have thought that it was rather impudent of me to ask.’

‘She could not have done that. She could not have done that,’ said the old lady. She was so used to mastering herself that she had by this time succeeded in doing so, though her lip trembled and she kept softly drying her eyes: for at her age the eyes only get full with a dew of pain, they do not pour forth easy floods of tears like those that are young. John felt that she was, like himself, cast down from a height of expectation. She began to smile after a time very pathetically with her quivering lips. ‘We mustn’t forget,’ she said, ‘that it’s just Emily’s way.’

‘Oh, grandmamma,’ cried John, ‘can’t you understand that I don’t want to think any more of her as Emily. She is not Emily to me.’

‘We must not judge her hardly, my dear. She has always had a way of her own. She was one that never could bear the idea of disgrace or—anything of that kind. She would bear a great deal, but, if anyone brought discredit on the family, that she could not bear. She was more like a man than a woman in that way. A woman has to put up with everything, John.’

‘I don’t see why she should, any more than a man.’

‘I can’t tell you the rights of it. I never was a clever woman like Emily. From her childhood she learned everything a great deal better than I could ever do. She could learn anything when she was a girl, she was so bright and clever, and I can’t tell you how proud we were of her, John; oh! so proud. There seemed nothing she couldn’t do. Especially her father—he was proud of her. He and she used to talk, and quite go beyond me. But anything that was a discredit she couldn’t bear. I don’t say but what it’s unjust to expect it of us; but I do think it’s best when a woman just puts up with everything, as I was always taught it was my duty to do.’

‘You speak as if there was something she would not put up with,’ he said.

Here Mrs. Sandford looked at him anxiously.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she cried. ‘Some day or other everything is found out in this world. I never put any confidence in secrets for my part. Though they may be ever so carefully kept, they always come out in the end.’

‘Is there a secret, grandmamma? I had been beginning to fear something of the kind. And they think, perhaps,’ said John, with indignation, ‘that I am a child, and cannot be trusted—that whatever it is I must not know it. But I have always felt there was something. Whatever it is, if it affects us, surely I ought to be told it now.’

Mrs. Sandford had been thoroughly recalled to herself by his words. She cast a glance of terror round her, lest, perhaps, some one might be within hearing.

‘Secret!’ she said. ‘Oh, John, what has put that into your head? Yes, yes; there have been things in the family which were very unpleasant—but they are all past and over, and what is the use of going back upon them? If there was anything you ought to know, you may be sure Emily and her father would have told you. As for me, I am not the one—I am not——’

‘Grandmamma, you are ill again.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not ill—not anything to mind. Never take any notice if I cry. I just can’t help it, John. I’m ill, you know, and not very strong. I cry for nothing, because I can’t help it, because I’m old. I have grown a great deal older, don’t you think so, in the last three weeks? and that was why I wanted Emily, partly. There were things I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her about that—don’t you remember, that—— What am I saying? The like of him could have nothing to do with us, nothing at all. Emily! Oh, I want her, I want to tell her something—I want——’

John had no more than time to ring the bell hurriedly, to hold her in his arms lest she should fall from the sofa, when another of her attacks came on. He had not seen it before, and he was very much frightened and distressed. It began with a sort of faint, followed by violent spasms of pain; it was dreadful to see her, so fragile and soft as she was, thus fighting for her life, and the scene made John’s heart bleed. But he was pushed out of the room by-and-by, when his grandfather, looking, oh! so haggard and anxious, and the doctor, in his brisk, professional way, came in. They bade him stay outside that he might be ready to run for anything that was wanted, which the boy understood well enough was only to get him out of the way. Presently the struggles grew less; the attack went off as the others had done. And he was allowed to help to carry her to her bed. She gave him a faint little smile as he laid down her head upon the pillow, and made a slight movement as if to put up her face to kiss him. Then she spoke confusedly, as if her brain were not quite clear: ‘Emily, Emily,’ she cried, as if to some one at a distance. ‘Oh, Emily, tell the boy: if it should be my last word; Emily! tell the boy.’

CHAPTER XI.

THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

Mrs. Sandford did not rise from her bed again. She disappeared into that mystery of the death-chamber, in which the fits of suffering that mark the different steps of progress towards the end, alternate with long intervals of calm, intervals which seem so long because there is no incident in them, and in which another series of habits springs up as if that state also might last for ever. The hours for medicine, the hours for food, the little toilet so painfully accomplished, after which the patient feels weary but refreshed, and is said to have ‘a better colour,’ a more hopeful aspect—all those laws and rules, a perfect routine of subdued being, were set up, and the alarm of the household was calmed.

When John was admitted now and then to sit by her for a little while, and hold her transparent hand, he felt a great consolation in that established routine of affairs. It seemed to afford a solid framework out of which she could not slip. She might not get better, perhaps; but still she would remain there, which was much. John sat down by the bedside at first with awe and anxiety, but, soon getting accustomed to it, lost his fears.

‘You are better to-day,’ he would say, wistfully.

‘Oh, almost well,’ said the old lady; and he believed it, though with a silent doubt down at the bottom of his heart; a doubt which was so painful and unpleasant that he would not listen to it, nor give any heed.

One night, about a week after the receipt of his mother’s letter, he was allowed to watch her for part of one night, the nurse having occasion for rest, and the grandfather, too, being exhausted with much watching. It was the middle of the night when John’s watch began, and she was very quiet, asleep, and likely to want nothing, the nurse had said.

‘If you’ll sit quite still here behind the curtain, with the light shaded, most likely she’ll never stir at all: but, if she does, you must call me; now mind you do call me, whether it’s anything of consequence or not.’

John promised, and sat down motionless within the shadow of the curtain. He had never in his life been up at such an hour, and the profound silence of the night, and the solemnity of the occasion, at once overawed and excited the boy. He felt as if this fading life was in his hands. If she woke, if she wanted anything, his action, perhaps, might save her—who could tell? He felt, as the inexperienced are so apt to feel, that an accident or miracle was always possible, and that some little matter might at any time arrest the progress of dying, and bring a sufferer back from the verge of the grave. But she did not stir. She was very quiet, as the nurse had said she would be. And then he got frightened of the stillness, and thought that she might have died.

This oppression of quietness grew upon him so that he moved the curtain slightly to look at her; and then John was more startled still, driven almost into a panic by the sight of her open eyes, which turned to him when he moved though she did not move her head. She was lying back upon her pillow like a child, so small, her little face encircled by her cap, her eyes turned to him, two lamps of light amid the stillness and the dimness. There was nothing dim or still in them, they shone with all the brightness of a life which was inexhaustible, perhaps even with humour in them, but certainly with a clearness and vigour more remarkable, John thought, than he had ever seen in them before. He faltered ‘Grandmamma!’ in his alarm, though he knew that he ought to have taken no notice, that he ought to have kept perfectly still in order that she might go to sleep again, and not be disturbed.

She did not say anything for a moment, but gave him a soft reply with her eyes, then feebly put out her hand. She smiled when she felt the touch of his hands clasping it, but for some time did not attempt to speak. Then, after awhile, she called him faintly.

‘John——!’ It took some time to form her words. ‘I’m glad you’re there. I wanted to speak to you—my boy.’

‘Yes, grandmamma.’ He had knelt down at the bedside, where his head was on a level with hers as it lay on the pillow. She moved her other hand, as if to give him a caress.

‘You’ve been a good boy. Whatever may happen afterwards, you’ve been a good, good boy to me. Always remember that, whatever happens. John, it’s about—Emily; I want to speak to you.’

She lay still a little and rested, and then resumed,

‘Emily is not—like me. She’s one that is—more difficult to get on with. She thinks you’re like him, and you are—like him. I see it, too. But never mind—there was good in him—plenty of good. You mustn’t—be discouraged—my boy.’

She put her left hand upon his shoulder—it was a great effort for her—and faintly patted him with her fingers. So faintly: like the touch of a bird.

‘And she seems—harder than she is. It’s her—- principle. She has more—love in her—than she knows. If you wait long enough, it will come out. John—remember that. She will not let—her heart speak. It’s her—principle. She has—always done that. She has never—let her heart speak.’ The old lady stirred a little in her bed. Her voice strengthened for a moment. ‘Except once,’ she said. ‘And you know how that—turned out. She blames me, for I—was always fond of him—John.’

Her voice was so faint he could scarcely hear it, though every word was so precious to him, and though it was so hard to understand.

‘Poor dear,’ she resumed, ‘poor dear—if ever you should see him—you can tell him—I—always—prayed for him—to—the—end.’

‘Who is it, grandmamma? Oh, one word—tell me—who is it?’

The light in her eyes flickered a little. Perhaps she did not hear him. They wandered, fixed on his face for a moment, then strayed uncertain to other things.

‘It’s about Emily,’ she said, ‘Emily—don’t you know, Emily? You will think—she is hard—but, no—that’s her principle. Where—where is she? I thought—just now—she was here. Emily!’ She raised her voice a little, to call. And then a smile came over her face. Her hand dropped from John’s shoulder. ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘you are right, Emily—you always are right. I’ll talk—no more. I’ll go to sleep.’

John remained on his knees, he did not know how long. He was still there when the nurse came in from her sleep.

‘I hope you have not been talking to her, or crying, to excite her.’

‘She spoke to me a little; it was not my fault. I found her with her eyes wide open, and, when she saw me, she spoke.’

‘You ought not to have let her. This is always the way when one of the relations interferes. How is one to do one’s nursing, when relations interfere? There should have been another to take the night duty, and no amateurs here.’

‘May I stay?’ said John, who was shivering with cold and excitement.

‘No—get away, please, and leave me my sick person to myself; relations is just the destruction of everything. Oh, get away, please.’

John went downstairs to the fire, which had been kept up all night, and over which he crouched to warm himself. He was overwhelmed with wonder and sorrow. Death had come to the house, he felt it chill and cold, chilling him to his very heart. And what did these wandering words mean? Who was it for whom she had prayed to the end? He had his knees almost in the fire, and yet he shivered with cold, and with wondering and trying to understand. He must have dozed a little, for the voice of his grandfather, calling him, came to him through some sort of miserable dream, in which he seemed to be seeking some one and unable to find them—searching through wild distances and open wastes. He heard the call repeated two or three times, repeated through his dream, before he woke, with the trembling hand of the old man on his shoulder.

‘John! John! run for the doctor. John!’

‘Yes, grandfather,’ he cried, starting to his feet, still in his dream. Then he saw the cold, grey dawn of the morning about him, and the fire, and the well-known walls, and, with a shock and terrible sense of reality, came to himself. ‘Is she worse?’ he cried.

‘Run, run! Tell him he is to come directly,’ the old man cried, with a wave of his hand.

After the doctor had come and gone again, there was another errand for John. He had heard for himself what the doctor said. It had been said before them both, and they had received it in silence, saying nothing. Mr. Sandford was standing up, leaning against the mantelpiece, covering his eyes with his hand. He said, in a low voice, it might have been to himself,

‘We must send for Emily, now; she must come. She must come—now.’

‘Shall I telegraph, grandfather?’

‘Yes; say the time has come. Say her mother—her mother——’

And then there rose, in full wintry splendour, the day. It seemed to burst into sunshine all at once, as John came back from the telegraph office. It had been grey and misty before. But, suddenly, in a moment, the sun burst out over the top of the dark trees, in a flush and glow of triumph, and the village street blazed from end to end. It had rained the day before, and the road was wet and glistening, giving back a reflection from every broken edge and bit of pavement. It seemed to arrest and take hold of John in his cloud of trouble and unaccustomed misery, and flash him all over with light and warmth. He was astonished by it, as if it had been some great mysterious comet, and the suddenness of the illumination came into his mind and memory with an aching contrast to everything else about. It seemed to summon him to life and all its exertions, to hope and prosperity and activity; above all, it moved in his young soul an eager desire to do something, to fling himself into work, whatever it was; to begin in earnest. Alas, all that he had to do was to go back to the silent house, to meet and go through that awful day of waiting—that day in which nothing can be begun or done—in which all is waiting, in which every hour seems a whole day, although one would give one’s life to prolong that which this endless steady slow succession of flying moments is carrying away. The two watchers sat down sombre to meal after meal, at which each made a pretence of eating for the sake of the other, or rather that Mr. Sandford made a pretence of eating, for John, poor John, restless and unhappy, with nothing else to do, eat almost more than usual, ashamed of himself, yet feeling the relief of the dinner which was the only thing he had to do, the only break to those monotonous, endless hours.

‘Emily will arrive by the seven o’clock train. You must get the cab at Johnson’s, and go over to meet her, John.’

‘Yes, grandfather.’

‘And tell her her mother is if anything a little better. She may rally still. You will lose no time, John.’

‘No, grandfather.’

This was all the conversation that passed between them. It was repeated in about the same words three or four times during the day. For what was there else to say? All was either too trifling or too solemn. How could they talk of her, lying upstairs upon the edge of the eternal world? And how, she being there, could anything else be spoken of? The day went on like a century. Grandfather went up and down stairs, trying to walk softly, stealing into the room above on tiptoe, coming out again after a while shaking his head. John downstairs sat still and listened, sometimes dozing, in the long strain of that expectancy, waiting, almost wishing, for the news that would break his heart to hear. At last the evening came, and it was time to see after the cab at Johnson’s, and to set out to meet his mother. To meet his mother! How strange the words sounded! and yet he did not think much of them now. He drove to the station across the edge of the common, watching all the lights in the cottage windows staring out into the night.

There were several people arriving by the train, as John stood half stupified on the platform, still vaguely gazing, looking at the dark figures undistinguishable, which flitted to and fro against the background of the lights: the flicker of the lamps in the wind, the movement, the noise, the little crowd, confused him, even if he had not been confused before by all the effects of the domestic tragedy. He looked helplessly at the moving figures, wondering should he know her whom he sought, wondering if she had come, wondering which could be her? He felt now, at this moment for which he believed himself to have wished, that if she had not come it would be a relief, then he could go back all the easier, more peacefully if he went back alone. Even as the thought passed through his mind, one of the figures which he had been following with his eyes, that of a tall woman, detached itself quickly from the group of the others, and came towards him.

‘You are John?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he answered, with a gasp.

‘Have you a cab? This is all I have brought. Let us lose no time.’

She had put her hand in his as she had come up to him. She gave him no other salutation, no kiss; but followed, as the boy, once more with the sensation of falling down, down, from he knew not what height, led the way to where the cab was standing. She put in her bag, stepped in hastily, motioned him to her side, and in another moment they were driving away together, seated there, this mother and son who had not met for years. John felt timid, altogether stupid, unable to say a word, his heart one moment giving a great throb, the next like a lump of lead in his breast.

‘How is my mother?’ she asked, ‘is she still alive?’

It was like a stab to John to have this question put to him in so many words, though he knew that it was a question of how long she might survive.

‘I was told,’ he said, ‘to tell you that your mother was a little better and might rally.’

‘Might rally?’ she said, thoughtfully, ‘I should scarcely think it likely.’ She was quite calm. John seated so that he felt her breath upon him, could scarcely help shivering with a nervous chill which seemed to come from her. She remarked this at once.

‘You are cold,’ she said. ‘Put up the window at your side; no doubt it is your nerves: you have been kept on the strain all day, or perhaps for some days. It is not a good thing for you at your age: put up the window, I will keep mine open; I like the air. Have they let you be with her?’

‘A little last night—not before.’

‘I am glad they had so much sense as that. She would talk to you, no doubt, and you would be very much affected. Poor boy!’

There seemed a momentary wavering in her, as if she might have turned to him with something like tenderness. Her arm seemed to him to move. He thought she was going to put it round him, and his heart filled with a sudden rush of warmth and softness. His mother! But either she had never meant it, or she changed her mind. She altered her position only enough to change from one hand to another the little bag she carried. And yet he could not help feeling that she meant more than that.

‘Did she say anything to you?—I mean anything beyond what she would naturally say?’

‘She spoke to me about you, mother.’

Once more the dark figure at his side moved. A sort of thrill seemed to run through her. She took a little time apparently to compose and command herself.

‘What did she say to you of me?’

‘I did not understand it,’ said John.

She turned, and seemed to look at him as if asking herself whether this simplicity was assumed or not. Then, with a touch of divination, put her hand upon his arm for a moment, and repeated,

‘Poor boy! I can see you are half-dazed with trouble and fatigue,’ she said.

‘Mother!’ said John, ‘mother——’

Again there was that faint thrill and moving in the profile that showed against the dim night of the further window. There was a soft suffusion of whiteness in the air from an unseen moon, and he could see the outline of her face and figure against it. But, if she had been moved by any impulse of love, she restrained it once more.

‘I would rather,’ she said, quickly, ‘that you used that name as little as possible while I am here. I am your mother, certainly; but we’ve been separated for a long time, and I have my reasons, chiefly for your own sake, for preferring not to be talked about among your village people, or discussed who I am. I mean no unkindness,’ she added, after a little pause.

‘Must I not call you mother?’ asked the boy. He was so tired, so dazed, as she said, so broken down with weariness and wonder and grieving that the sharp tone in his voice was more the petulance of a child than the indignation which began faintly to rise among the other emotions that were too much for him.

‘Not except when we are alone,’ she said. ‘Is this the village? are we near?’

The carriage stopped with a sudden creaking and jar. John had not observed where they were. He stumbled out now to his feet and held the door for her to get out. The door of the house was open, and his grandfather stood in the opening. The old man came down through the little garden slowly, shuffling with his heavy feet. There seemed to John’s feverish eyes some change, he scarcely knew what, in the house, as if the expectation, the waiting, had come to an end.

‘Emily,’ said old Mr. Sandford, ‘you are too late. Your mother is dead.’

‘Dead?’ she said, standing still at the gate.

‘Half-an-hour ago.’

The two, father and daughter, stood facing each other, with John behind not able to convince himself that there was anything real in it, that it was not all a dream.

‘Do you mean me to go back again, straight,’ she said, ‘from your door?’

CHAPTER XII.

EMILY.

John could see now for the first time what his mother was like. She did not resemble either of her parents. Her features were marked and high; her complexion of an ivory paleness; her hair quite black in original colour, with a thread or two of grey—altogether a tragic woman whom nobody could pass without a certain interest. She showed no emotion, nothing beyond the seriousness of aspect which was evidently habitual to her. For a little time even she said nothing, but held with a shiver her hands to the fire. Her father stood beside her leaning upon the mantel-piece, looking down upon the hearth, and for some time there was not a word spoken.

‘Half-an-hour ago,’ she repeated at length, in a low voice. ‘Did she know I was on the way?’

‘For twenty hours she has scarcely taken any notice. The last was——’

‘The last must have been what she said to the boy,’—his mother spoke of him as if he were a thing and not a person—‘and that was, he says, about me, something he did not understand. I hope there was no talk about—— affairs.’

‘Emily, you are not softened, even by death.’

‘It is not in me, I suppose,’ she said, with a sigh. Then she turned round to John. ‘Why did you not tell me that she was ill? You wrote from yourself. You said nothing about her—or nothing to speak of. If you had told me she was ill, I might have been in time.’

They both turned and looked at him, his grand-father with heavy eyes and a blank aspect of exhaustion and helplessness, but, with so much expression as was left in him, reproachful too.

And all power of self-defence, of anything but submission and acquiescence, seemed taken from John.

‘I did not think of it,’ he said, giving himself up, as he was dimly conscious, to total misconstruction, but what did it matter? Nothing seemed to be of any consequence in the subtle misery which had invaded the house. John did not feel even that he was aware of the cause of it. He scarcely thought of his grandmother, dead. He knew only that where all had been so happy and full of tenderness there was nothing but a chill misery and desolation, with a fault of his somehow involved, he could not tell how.

‘Of course I should have come at once,’ she repeated, turning round again to the fire, with her hands held over it. ‘We did not always understand each other. We were not like each other. How can one help it if that is so?’

‘Children are not always like their parents,’ Mr. Sandford said.

‘Some are not.’ She half turned towards John again with a movement of her hand as if directing her father’s attention to him. ‘There are likenesses—that take away one’s breath.’

‘Ah—yes—it may be so,’ the old man said. Then, as if waking up, ‘Will you take anything? The house is upset—there is nobody to give any orders. Still,’ he said, looking round at the table where a cloth was laid, ‘there are meals all the same.’

She looked up at him with a momentary softening in her face, and put her hand on his arm.

‘Poor father,’ she said.

‘Yes—I’ll be poor, poor enough by myself. To begin—that sort of thing at my time of life—after nearly fifty years——’

‘Be thankful that you have had fifty years—without any trouble,’ she said. And then, ‘I should like to see her. No doubt she is changed, much changed, since I saw her last. Don’t stir, father—sit down and rest—you are ready to drop with fatigue. The boy will show me the way.’

‘I hope you won’t think it strange. I—I couldn’t go with you, Emily.’

‘No. I understand it all. Sit down there in your own chair.’

The old man seated himself with a sudden burst of sobbing.

‘It’s not mine, it’s her chair. I like it so. I like it so! For fifty years! and she will never sit here more.’

‘Poor father!’ she said again. Her face softened more and more as she looked at him; she stooped down and kissed his forehead. ‘Now, come,’ she said to John. To him there was no softening. She gave him a fixed look as she signed to him to lead the way—a look of recognition, of stern investigation, which stirred the boy’s being. It seemed to call his faculties together, and awake him from the torpor of consternation and grief. He forgot almost where he was going, and what he was to see.

They went together into the room, already all in order, in the chill and rigid decorum of a chamber of death. All was white and cold. The curtains laid back, the white coverlet folded, a fine embroidered handkerchief covering the spot scarcely indented in the pillow where the head lay. John went in with his light in his hand, though there were candles on the table, in a tumult of personal feeling, which for the moment swept away all the natural emotion which that scene was calculated to call forth. He did not think of what lay there, but of the stranger so near him and yet so distant, so coldly serious, without any grief, only the subdued regret of a spectator, and with that keen observation of himself underneath, like a spectator too, but a spectator almost hostile. He had never known in all his life before what it was to be judged coldly, weighed in the balances and found wanting. His very soul seemed penetrated by the look, which fixed on something, he knew not what, that was hostile in him. Her eyes, as she followed him, searched into him, and he felt nothing but those keen looks going through and through his soul.

But when he came face to face with that little waxen image which lay upon the bed, a flood of other feelings poured through the boy’s mind. For the first time he saw that which was Something awful and solemn, yet Nothing. Sometimes the dead retain the looks of life, and lie and smile upon us as if they slept; but sometimes the effect is very different, and, after a long illness, the worn-out body loses all the characteristics of identity. His mother went up to the bed, passing him by, and, without a word, lifted the handkerchief. When John saw what was underneath, he gave a great cry, a cry almost of horror; his limbs trembled under him.

‘They’ve taken her away,’ he said, hoarsely, ‘they’ve taken her away.’

The other spectator said not a word. She knew better. Death was to her no wonder. She had lived long enough to see it in all its aspects. She stood looking down upon the little body, the little, little body shrunken out of all semblance of life; the worn-out garment of long living, never big enough for the soul that had inhabited it, and cast it off as if it had never been hers.

‘No,’ she said at last; ‘they have not taken her away. This is all she has left.’

She took the candle out of John’s trembling hand, and held it so that the light fell on the small head surrounded by the white cap, and the face in which no expression lingered. The room was very strange. The white bed laid out in rigid lines, the small and solemn thing laid therein, the black, tall figure standing by throwing the light down from her hand. She was not like a woman by her mother’s bed-side, but like a solemn spectator expounding the mysteries of life and death.

‘People are as different,’ she said, ‘in their dying as in their living. She has taken everything with her she could take. She wouldn’t leave even a look for me, as if she thought I could have come, and did not. But I’ll not excuse myself here. Mother’—she stooped down, and kissed the waxen forehead—‘good-bye. You would have been a good mother to one more like yourself; she has been a good mother to you——’

John said no word in reply. He had fallen down by the bedside, with a sickening sense of loss which was more than grief. He could not speak, or even think. His young soul seemed to go out in a gasp towards the nothingness that seemed before him. He had thought she would be dear and beautiful still in her death—as people said—more dear, more beautiful than in life. But this was not as people said. His heart sank into depths unspeakable. Only last night what words she had spoken to him from that bed. And now, and now——!

‘Poor boy!’ said his mother, with her hand on his shoulder, ‘you have never seen death before! Come away; she would not like you to stay here; never come again. And forget that. For once she has not thought of other people. She has taken all she could away with her; her own look, as well as all the rest. Rise up, and come away.’

John obeyed her, scarcely knowing what he did. And so presently did all the house. She took the command of everything instantly, as if it was her right to do so. There was not much conversation, as may be supposed. She sat down by the fire, after the meal at which she eat moderately without any look of reluctance, and talked a little, in the same grave tone, to her father. But there were no tears, no words of sorrow. The old man gave a broken sort of account of his wife’s illness, subdued into a narrative of facts by the influence of that serious, but quite conventional, figure opposite to him; while John sat at the table behind, with a book before him, which he did not read, listening in a miserable way to every word, feeling a wretchedness which was beyond description, but which could not get vent in the ordinary way, because of the atmosphere about him, which was full of the new presence. He had been hungry, poor boy, but could not eat, feeling that to be able to eat at such a moment was more horrible than words can say. And his brain was giddy for want of sleep. Body and soul were in the same condition of exhaustion and misery. But still the slow exchange of those subdued voices over the fire held him like a spell.

The next days passed slowly and yet swiftly, every moment with leaden feet, yet, when they were gone, looking like a dream. And everything was done without trouble, it seemed; in perfect order and quiet, the whole house pervaded by the strong, still presence of this stranger. If there had been a confusion before between his mother and the daughter of the old people, the Emily whom he knew so well, there was no confusion now. John’s mother had disappeared into the mists from amid which her idea had never clearly developed itself. She had been swept out of his horizon altogether. He saw still very clearly in that far distant background, the father who was dead—but not her any more. And this was Emily, who had come to set everything right. It was almost a difficulty for him not to call her by that name. She was a very useful and very powerful personality in the house; but, as a matter of fact, no one knew what to call her. Her name was Sandford, like her father’s. It was on her travelling-bag and her linen, and the book or two she carried with her. E. Sandford; no more. To the servants it was a great problem how to address her. Mrs. Sandford it did not seem possible she should be; and Miss Sandford—there was something in her which seemed to contradict that title. Something of youth is associated with it, a possibility of dependence, and a secondary place. But no such ideas were compatible with the presence of this new-comer, of whom no one out of the house had ever heard before. The curate even, who was the only visitor, looked at her with a sort of diffident curiosity, and said ‘your daughter,’ when he spoke of her to the old man. She went to the funeral, supporting her father on her arm, while John walked with Mr. Cattley behind. A great many people, indeed, it might be said the whole parish, attended the funeral; and there were many tears among the crowd. But Emily shed no tear. She kept her father’s arm in hers, and encouraged and supported him. The old gentleman, who had been so strong and hale, had sunk all at once into helplessness; his heavy foot, that had been so steady, became shuffling and uncertain; sometimes he would sob feebly, like the voluntary crying of a child, without tears.

And more and more to John was this melancholy period like a dream. It all fitted in, one event with another—the meeting at the station, the pause at the door, when he thought for a moment that Emily would have turned back, and gone away without entering the house; and then that scene upstairs, the tall figure all in black, her bonnet still on, a veil drooping over her face, holding up the light over the snow-cold whiteness of the bed and the dead face on the pillow. He shuddered when he thought of that scene. It was all a dream—a dream from which he might perhaps awake to see all these sombre circumstances disappear, and the old, sweet life which was real—the only real life he could think of, with the two old faces, full of love, beaming on him—would come back. But that, John knew very well, it would never do. And what was it that lay before him?—new work, a strange place, his old grandfather left alone and desolate, his mother of whom he had once dreamed disappeared into thin air, and nothing certain in the world but Emily, who was and was not Emily, but—— But now the dream within dreams had gone. He did not believe that she was his mother. He began to think, in all seriousness, that his mother must have been a younger sister, one, perhaps, about whom there was a mystery, who had perished along with his father, who—but that seemed very confusing and wonderful to think of—might have been the subject of that secret of which his grandmother had spoken. It was all so strange, so little clear, that this solution of the matter took stronger form in John’s thoughts.

On the evening after the funeral they were all seated together once more like the old arrangement, two on different sides of the fire, the boy in the middle with his book, but, ah! so different. No kind looks exchanged across him, all meaning love to him; no interest in what he was doing; no consciousness on his part that he was the principal figure, the centre of their thoughts. John was of no importance now, and felt it. He was in the background, an insignificant unit in the group. His grandfather sat, saying nothing, limp in his chair, a little irritable, ready to watch any movement, while Emily (he could not call her anything but Emily) sat between the fire and the table with her work. Presently John awoke to the consciousness that she was talking of himself.

‘I should like you to tell me what you have arranged about the boy?’

‘The boy’ was what she called him almost always. And the words were never uttered without rousing a sense of injury in John’s heart.

‘How can I tell you,’ said Mr. Sandford, ‘about John or anything? Do you think I’m able to be troubled about that?’

‘You must,’ she said, in her steady, serious tone, ‘for in a day or two I shall have to go back, and all business should be settled before I go.’

‘Must!’ said the old man, with unwonted fire; and then he fell again into the half-whimpering tone of complaint. ‘I have never had that said to me. I’ve been master in my own house, and no one to lift their hand against me, near upon fifty years.’

‘Father, you will recognise, if you think, that I have a right to hear about the boy. You had settled to send him to an engineer? So much I know; but who is it, and where? It is far more easy to tell me than to quarrel with me about my right to ask.’

Mr. Sandford had already forgotten his moment of wrath, or perhaps the good sense of her argument had an effect upon him.

‘He has had all his schooling from the curate, Mr. Cattley. You saw him, Emily. Now, Mr. Cattley has a brother—in Liverpool.’

Her work fell from her lap.

‘In Liverpool—in Liverpool. I must be dreaming. You don’t mean that, father?’

‘I remember now,’ said the old gentleman, ‘she thought you would object. She objected herself, poor dear. But what does it matter, one place or another? It is the curate’s brother—a kind man that would look after him. He will be better there than anywhere. Mr. Cattley’s brother——’

‘He shall not go there,’ she said; her pale face coloured over a little, very little, and yet enough to make a great difference. And she looked her father steadily in the face as she spoke.

‘Shall not! Is it you or me that is the master? She tried to persuade me, as a woman may, but you, you, with your “shall not,” your “shall not!” ...’ He rose up and began in his wrath to walk about the room, recovering something of his old force. ‘I have never allowed anyone to speak to me so.’

‘Not since I left home, father. You must hear it again, for it is necessary you should. He shall not go there. No, if there was no other place for him in the world. There he shall not go.’

What further development the quarrel might have taken it is needless to speculate, for at this moment John, who had been turning aimlessly over a number of children’s books, which had been brought out of his grandfather’s room, here uttered a strange cry. What he said was, ‘Johnny May, Johnny May,’ with a mixture of trouble and satisfaction.

‘I knew that I had something to do with that name,’ he said.

The discussion stopped at once. Mr. Sandford went back tremulous to his easy chair, and Emily turned to the boy.

‘With that name—with your own name,’ she said.

‘Is it my name?—but my name is Sandford.’

‘May Sandford,’ she answered, fixing him with her steady eyes.

‘More than that, more than that,’ said John, ‘now I remember! Papa was Mr. May. I am Mr. May’s little boy. He taught me to say that. Now I remember everything. And my mother would be Mrs. May, not Mrs. Sandford. Now I know. You are not my mother. I felt sure of it from the first,’ said the boy.

Emily paled so that every shade of colour went out of her face. It had been pale before, but now it was like a stormy evening sky, of the blankest whiteness. She looked at John for a moment, with something like a quiver on her steady lip. Then she turned to her father with a singular smile and asked,

‘Will you send him to Liverpool now?’

CHAPTER XIII.

WHAT THE PARISH THOUGHT.

The curate was seated in the drawing-room of the rectory, which was to him the place most near to Paradise. It was twilight of the wintry day, and almost dark, the blaze from the fire dancing upon the walls and making glad Mr. Cattley’s heart. He loved, above everything in the world, to sit and talk by that uncertain light. Elly, who at sixteen was old enough to have been the object of his devotion, was sitting close against the great window of the room, which looked upon the lawn and waving trees, with a book in her arms. She was making use of the very last rays of the daylight, which were not strong enough for older eyes, and was altogether enrapt in the book, and unconscious of what was going on behind her, though now and then a word would come to her and she would return across the short distance of several centuries to reply; for she was deep in the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ and inattentive to everything else, except, as we have said, when something which interested her, something upon which she was ready with a word, came uppermost and flashed across the keen young faculties which found it no matter of difficulty to be in two places at a time.

‘I suppose I ought to know,’ said the curate, ‘for I have spoken to her three or four times. Whoever she is, she looks a lady and talks—with great sense at least; but more than that I know nothing, not even her name.’

‘What relation is she to John? I am glad to hear she is a lady. Our dear little Mrs. Sandford, whom we all loved—yes, yes, she was a true gentlewoman in her heart—but they were what you would call bourgeois, don’t you think? No, you must not shake your head at my French word. There is no English word that expresses what I mean.’

‘Middle-class,’ the curate said.

‘Middle-class is such a big word, and it does not mean the same thing. When I was young it meant gentry, too, all who did not belong to the very highest. Oh, yes, we are all as good gentlemen as the King; but I feel quite middle-class myself, not living with duchesses, nor wishing to do so.’

‘For that matter,’ said Mr. Cattley, hotly, ‘there are very few duchesses who are worthy to——’

‘Tie my shoe,’ said the lady, with a laugh. ‘Let us take that for granted; but middle-class is not what I mean exactly. And this Mrs.—— what is her name——’

‘I can’t tell, indeed. He said “my daughter.” The servants called her Sandford, but whether Mrs. or Miss——’

‘Oh, not Miss, at all events. That woman has gone through everything which is in life. I feel sure of it. It is a handsome face, but a great deal of trouble in it.’

‘Must one be married to have that?’ asked the curate, with a little sigh.

‘Yes,’ she replied, laughing again, for his little sentimentalities amused her, though she did not dislike them. ‘One must have been married to have a face with so much in it. You young ones have your own vexations, no doubt, but not of that kind.’

‘We young ones: does that mean Elly,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘and me?’

‘You are as great innocents the one as the other,’ said Mrs. Egerton.

She was seated by the side of the fire, with a little screen before her which shielded her face, an ample figure in a black satin dress which gave back a faint glimmer of reflection. The teatable beside her, half in light and half in shadow, gave brighter dancing gleams, and the curate, stooping forward with a certain tender eagerness, saw a gigantic uncouth shadow of himself moving with the movements of the light upon the further wall. Behind Mrs. Egerton was the great window, full of the fading twilight, fading quickly into night, against which came the shadow silhouette of Elly with her big book clasped in her arms.

‘But this is abandoning our subject,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘The best thing is for me to call.’

‘Far the best—you will make it all clear if anyone can.’

‘I have not so much confidence in myself as all that, but still I can try. It is curious to find a sort of mystery about people one seemed to know so well—or rather to find out how very little we did know after all. And whose son is John? It never seemed necessary to inquire. But this—lady: well, I will call her so if you like it—seems to confuse everything. There may be other daughters—or sons—half-a-dozen, for anything we know.’

She spoke in the aggrieved tone natural to a lady in the country, a semi-clerical lady, entitled through her brother to know everybody, and finding that here was somebody whom she did not know.

‘John—must be the son of a son—for otherwise how could he be Sandford?’

‘John has got a mother,’ said Elly, nodding from the window. ‘He has not seen her for ten years.’

‘Can this, then, be John’s mother?’ cried Mrs. Egerton.

‘Oh, no,’ said the curate, and ‘Oh no,’ cried Elly, jumping up. ‘I’ve seen them together, and she looked at him as if she were not the least fond of him; so that couldn’t be.’

‘She can’t be very fond of him if she has never come to see him for ten years.’

‘No,’ said the curate, ‘old Sandford was very particular to say his daughter; therefore she must be John’s aunt, I suppose. And aunts are not always, not necessarily, fond of their——’

‘Do you hear that, Aunt Mary?’ cried Elly, placing herself in the full light of the fire with the indifference of her age to scorched cheeks and strained eyes.

‘Few people,’ said Mr. Cattley, with subdued enthusiasm, ‘are so happy, Elly, as the boys and you.’

‘My dear, it is quite true that I am not at all necessarily fond of you—(you will make digressions from our subject). Get up this moment, and put aside your book till Joseph brings the lamp. Now, Elly, do what I tell you. You will ruin your eyes, and as for your complexion——’

‘Mr. Cattley, you are always flattering Aunt Mary. She is a tyrant. She is as cruel as Nero. She does not care for us at all.’

‘Hush—don’t blaspheme,’ Mr. Cattley said.

‘I wish I had been here,’ Mrs. Egerton resumed, making an end of the interruption, ‘to see the dear little woman herself before the end came. How sad it is that one cannot be away for two or three weeks without the chance of finding some familiar face gone before one comes back. No doubt she would have told me—indeed one would naturally have asked if there was anyone she would like to have sent for, or wanted to see. And the daughter did not arrive till she was gone? How sad it all is. I will go there to-morrow. Mr. Sandford, of course, knew I was away.’

‘Everyone knows when you are away. It makes a difference in the very atmosphere,’ the curate said.

Mrs. Egerton passed over this compliment with a slight wave of her hand; a smile would have been enough, had it been possible to see it. ‘I shall go to-morrow,’ she said. ‘I should have done so anyhow. And John—is anything settled with your brother about him? Is he going to begin his work? Poor boy; he will go with an aching heart. But he is so young.’

‘Do you think people don’t feel when they are young, Aunt Mary? I think it is then they feel most.’

‘Yes, Elly—and no: you feel, my dear, no one more keenly; but then you forget. Your heart will be breaking, and then there will come a bright day, a burst of sunshine, and it will spring up like a bird in spite of you. Thank God for it. That is the good of being young.’

‘There seems to be some hesitation now about my brother,’ said Mr. Cattley. ‘This aunt, if she is the aunt, seems to have interfered. I don’t know what is to come of it, except that the boy is evidently unhappy.’

‘It is very clear,’ said Mrs. Egerton, half smiling, half serious, ‘that I have been too long away, and that I must try what I can make of it at once.’

‘Oh, do! No one ever understands like you,’ said the curate, with a sigh of relief. And then the fireside talk floated off to other things.

Mrs. Egerton set out next morning according to her engagement. She was a comely woman of forty-five, bright-eyed, grey-haired, ample, as became her age, and making no pretensions to be a day younger than she was. She had been long a widow, so long that the recollection of her married life was not much more than a dream; but her brother’s household and children had kept her from relapsing into any narrowness of a celibate state, and conferred upon her that larger and softer development of motherhood which was not hers in fact. She was a woman in whom a great many people had much confidence, and who had, to tell the truth, a good deal of confidence in herself. But she did not take herself altogether seriously, as Mr. Cattley did. She half laughed at the influence with which she was credited, and laughed altogether at the magic powers with which that one worshipper endowed her. But still the worship had a certain effect. Perhaps but for that she would not have thought herself capable of unwinding the tangled skein which had suddenly been brought under her notice. A sense of half-fantastic annoyance to find that the family she knew so well was in reality not known to her at all, which in Edgeley parish was a breach of all custom and decorum; and at the same time a half satisfaction that these perplexing circumstances had come to light while she was out of the way, so that it was quite possible that everything might be set right when she, the legitimate confidential adviser of the parish, had returned—was, in her mind, not unmixed with a certain self-ridicule on the surface, and amusement with herself for this certainty of setting all right.

‘How do I know they will tell me any more than the others?’ she said to herself: but as a matter-of-fact she had no doubt whatever that they would tell her more than the others. She had been away for nearly a month, and found a great many things to remark as she walked down the village street. Perhaps she was, as Elly had said, something of a despot—as the benevolent head of a community, wishing the greatest possible happiness of all, not only of the greatest number, usually is. Her despotism was of the benignant kind, but still here and there it was resented by a too independent spirit. That she should pause to put the baby in a comfortable position in its perambulator, and to give the young nurse a lesson as to carefulness in driving it, was no doubt quite legitimate; but when she stopped to say to Mrs. Box at the shop—‘I would not, if I were you, send out the child with such a very young girl; she can’t have sense enough to take proper care,’ Mrs. Box tossed her head a little, and said she hoped she was as careful of her children as most folks.

‘So you are, I don’t doubt, yourself; but that girl is too young, you should have some one with more sense. I am sure you are able to afford it,’ the rector’s sister said.

Mrs. Box from that day was unsettled in her principles, and, though in the interests of trade she made no reply, it became very clear to her that clergy and clergy’s belongings who interfered with what they had nothing to do with, were extremely troublesome. Mrs. Egerton, however, walked on with a conviction that she had said no more than was her duty, and a serene unconsciousness of having fostered the first flying seeds of Dissent.

She was disconcerted when, on being shown into Mr. Sandford’s parlour by Sarah—who paused in the doorway to sniff and put her apron to her eyes, and secure a word of sympathy in respect to ‘poor missis’—she found the old man alone. The visit was by way of being one of condolence to him; but when Mrs. Egerton looked round the familiar little room, and saw no trace of the presence of any stranger, she was, there could be no doubt, disappointed. Her eye and mind took in this fact even while she advanced to the old gentleman with her hands stretched out, and a perfectly genuine pang of regret and pity in her heart. She herself missed the pretty, old, kind face that always brightened at the sight of her. Her eyes filled with natural and most genuine tears as she took Mr. Sandford’s hand; for a moment something rose in her throat which hindered her speech: and yet she was able to feel that her visit would be a failure if this were all. She recovered her voice after a moment, and sat down beside the old gentleman’s chair.

‘I hope, at least,’ she said, faltering a little, ‘that there was not much suffering. She was so sweet and patient. It is so dreadful to come back and find her gone—without a word.’

‘She was always fond of you,’ he said, with that little, broken sob in his voice which was his way of giving vent to his sorrow.

‘And I was very fond of her,’ cried the visitor. ‘It was a comfort always, whatever was troubling me, to come and see her pretty, kind face. But, though it is our loss, it is her gain. We must not forget that. How happy she must be now!’

‘So they say,’ said the old gentleman; ‘but I can’t very well understand for my part how she can be so happy in a strange place. For it will be a strange place to her without me.’

‘Oh, my dear old friend, we must not think of things in that way, as if this world were the model of everything. It must be such a very different life.’

‘Yes, I suppose it must be very different,’ he said, musing, leaning with his hand upon his knee, ‘but she was old to begin in a new way.’

‘But she is not old now,’ said the comforter. ‘We may be sure of that. With such a new beginning everything must be renewed too.’

‘I suppose you must be right, Mrs. Egerton; but we were so used to our old ways. A little rheumatism, a bit of a cold now and then was all we had to disturb us. I should have been very well pleased to put up with it. And she too——’

‘But we can’t go on living for ever, Mr. Sandford.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ he said, though without any conviction; but it was perhaps injudicious of her to add, though with the best intentions,

‘There is one great consolation on your side, that it cannot be for very long: that must soften every parting. At an advanced age——’

Mr. Sandford sat very upright in his chair.

‘I don’t see the certainty of that,’ he said, with some briskness. ‘It may be or it may not be, no one can say for certain either at seventy or at forty. Many a younger man may die before me——’

‘That is quite true,’ Mrs. Egerton said, and the strain of her condolence and consolatory remarks was stemmed. She was silent for a moment, and then added, ‘But you are not left quite solitary in your trouble. You have a daughter with you, I hear.’

‘Yes, there’s Emily,’ he said.

‘She has not come to see you since you’ve been here. I was not sure you had any children—alive.’

‘Oh! yes, there’s Emily,’ repeated the old man.

‘And I hope she will be able to remain with you and take care of you.’

‘Oh, dear, no!’ he said, sitting up in his chair. ‘Emily—couldn’t stay. Oh, no! It was a chance her being able to get away at all. She is going, I think, to-morrow.’

‘It must have been dreadfully sad for her—to arrive too late?’

The old man shuffled in his chair.

‘Emily—is not just like—any other person. She is not young, you know—not like a young girl—her eldest child is quite grown up, and—then there is John——’

‘Is she John’s mother, then?’ cried Mrs. Egerton, in surprise.

‘Well, you know—’ said old Mr. Sandford, and paused—‘she has been a long time away. She is kept very close by her engagements, and she never was a great letter-writer. My poor wife and me were glad to know just that she was well. What happened besides we didn’t—hear much about—— ’

‘But John?’ said Mrs. Egerton, quite bewildered by this speech. There was an air about the speaker of having explained all that was asked him, and this confused his questioner: though she said to herself after the first moment that John—was not an incident that could have passed without remark. Besides, John had been with them all these years—presumably before the period at which their daughter had been withdrawn from their view.

‘Emily is not at all an ordinary person,’ Mr. Sandford said: and then he added, ‘You have been away a long time, Mrs. Egerton, for you. My poor dear would have liked to say “Good-bye.”’

She felt that he was thus directing her away from a dangerous subject, and she was more than ever curious and anxious to know.

‘I am very sorry I happened to be absent. I would have come home had I known how ill she was. And probably I could have been of use in sending for your daughter in time.’

‘Don’t disturb yourself about that,’ he said. ‘She was sent for, but could not come. And then we telegraphed, not knowing how near it was. They must all be very glad at the rectory to have you back.’