The Son of His Father; vol. 1/3

‘I suppose so,’ she replied, carelessly. ‘Mayn’t I see your daughter now I am here? I should like to tell her how sorry, how very sorry—— I don’t even know her name.’

‘Emily has gone out,’ he said. ‘She is giving some orders for me. She is very kind trying to save me trouble; though I might manage by means of John. John and I are so accustomed to each other. We’ll get on very well—when we’re alone.’

‘But John is going away to begin his work,’ she said, assuming ignorance notwithstanding what Mr. Cattley had said.

‘Not at present. His m—— I mean, I think it is best to keep him at home for a little longer. Emily is going to look for something near London—but for my part I am glad to have him at home.’

‘Your daughter seems to be making great changes in your arrangements—— ’

‘I don’t know,’ said the old gentleman, somewhat testily, ‘who has so good a right. She is all I have. I have always given a great deal of heed to Emily. She knows most things—better than most people. I don’t know who I should trust to advise me if it wasn’t Emily; with her I know that I am safe.’

‘Oh, surely you are the best judge,’ said Mrs. Egerton, with offence. She had no right to be offended. What he said was perfectly just, and she had no ground whatever on which to stand with any idea of ousting Emily. What right could she have to oust Emily? She felt a great interest in John, but not enough to interfere on his account. Nevertheless, she was more or less indignant. It was ingratitude; it was a kind of insubordination. It was not often she was told in the parish what this old man virtually told her, that she had no right to interfere: and there could be no doubt that she was annoyed. She talked a little, somewhat coldly, of ordinary topics, of the people who were ill in the village, and that it was rather a sickly season, and that Mr. Cattley had a great deal to do. And then she got up to go away, much dissatisfied, disappointed, and even a little humiliated, feeling that she had not shown the power which she was supposed to possess. But it was not fated that Mrs. Egerton was to withdraw thus uncontented. As she opened the door of the parlour to go out, there rose before her suddenly a tall shadow in the doorway. It was Emily herself.

CHAPTER XIV.

MR. SANDFORD’S DAUGHTER.

‘I am so glad to have met you before you go,’ she said, putting out her hand, ‘although glad is scarcely a word to use—in the present sad circumstances.’

‘How do you do?’ Emily said, with a grave movement of her head. It was more disconcerting than if she had reproved the undue warmth of the visitor in so many words. Mrs. Egerton felt herself obliged to be conciliatory, to make herself agreeable if possible to this serious woman with her pale handsome face.

‘I may call myself an old friend,’ she said, with a feeble smile, ‘though I have never seen you before. I have been away, unfortunately, during—all that has happened. I was so grieved to hear—and that you were just too late.’

‘No one need be grieved to hear that suffering is over,’ said Mr. Sandford’s daughter; ‘for my part I could not but be glad. I would not have had her suffer an hour or a moment longer, for me——’

‘But you might have been called sooner—before the illness had gone so far. These, however, are vain things to say. No doubt,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘everything is for the best.’

To this general statement Emily made no reply. She did not ask the visitor to sit down again. She did not even come into the room herself, but stood in the little passage outside the open door.

‘I am glad to see your father so well,’ Mrs. Egerton said.

‘Yes, he is very well. The health does not suffer from distress of mind so much as people think.’

‘That is true, though it is very strange to think that it should be so.’

‘Oh, no, not at all strange,’ said Emily, with the calm of superior knowledge. ‘The more your mind is taken off yourself, the less you suffer physically—except, perhaps, in the case of actual disease, and I am not sure that the rule does not apply there too. It is always good to have the mind carried away from the contemplation of itself.’

‘You have experience in such cases.’

‘Yes, I have great experience. I am matron of a hospital, and see it every day.’

‘Ah, that explains,’ said Mrs. Egerton, who had known this fact from the first glance. ‘Of course, with such a responsible post, you cannot give much time to—your relations.’

‘I can give none,’ said this calm, inscrutable woman. ‘I am going away to-night.’

‘To-night!’

‘Yes. I have been ten days here, and I think I’ve arranged everything comfortably. John, until a place has been found for him, will stay with his grandfather.’

‘John—oh, I suppose your—nephew. It is, no doubt, a good thing that he should be with his grandfather; but isn’t it a pity he should lose a good opening just for this; he must leave, one time or another.’

‘We did not feel, on thinking it over, that it was a very good opening,’ said Emily, with the same unalterable gravity. ‘The boy wishes to be a civil engineer; and this was an engine-foundry, mechanical engineering, not what he wants——’

‘But it was Mr. Cattley’s brother, a man who would have taken an interest——’

‘The interest which the head of a great foundry can take in one of his apprentices is not much to rely upon. We preferred that he should not go.’

‘Then there is nothing to be said, I suppose,’ said Mrs. Egerton, with something like indignation.

It seemed so extraordinary that the Sandfords, or any people in their position, should not pause, and weigh what she might have to say. It was ridiculous, besides.

‘Nothing, I think,’ said this Emily, quite seriously. ‘We have gone over it carefully, and our minds are quite made up.’

She stood in the passage, without any regret or apology, without any sign of yielding, not impatient, and yet, perhaps, a little tired, as might be seen in her eyes, of being thus stopped as she came into the house.

‘Then, perhaps, there is nothing better for me to do than to take my leave,’ said Mrs. Egerton, smiling as best she could, yet feeling, if truth must be told, very little inclination to smile.

Emily made no protest, nor any effort to detain the visitor. She turned round politely, and, opening the door, made room for the lady in her satin draperies to pass. And presently the rector’s sister, the chief personage in Edgeley, found herself in the street again, feeling, she knew not how, that old Sandford’s daughter, the matron of a hospital, a woman with a mystery about her, a stranger unknown in the place, had overcome and proved herself the better woman. Mrs. Egerton felt angry, humiliated, astonished. She felt, too, which was more remarkable, that she was herself in fault, that her attempted interference had been an unjustifiable intrusion, that she had no right to thrust herself into their house and dictate to them what they should do. Old Sandford was a lonely old man, over whom it might have been easy enough to domineer, but was it possible that she had really tried to do it? She was angry, first with them, then with herself. She met Mrs. Box’s perambulator again, with the baby hanging out of it, in imminent risk of dislocating its neck; but Mrs. Egerton was so subdued that she let the little unfortunate pass, and never said a word. Finally, she met the curate, whose undoubting faith in her was her best consolation at such a moment.

‘I have been beaten,’ she said to him, ‘horse and foot—defeated all along the line.’

Meanwhile, Emily went into the parlour where her father sat, a little tremulous, glad to be out of it, leaving the women to struggle, if they pleased. The voices had been quite soft, and all had passed with the perfect decorum of good breeding, notwithstanding that Mrs. Egerton had been so conscious of her defeat. Mr. Sandford, though he had been listening anxiously, had heard no sound of any quarrel. He gave Emily a questioning look as she came in.

‘I hope she was not uncivil to you, my dear? She seems to think I want taking care of, now my poor dear’s gone. She’s a good woman, and a kind woman, Emily, and I’m glad you said nothing that was disagreeable to her, my dear.’

‘She is like many parish ladies,’ said his daughter, who was not without experience of such. ‘She thinks she should be allowed to meddle with everything, because her motives are good. I don’t doubt that she’s good and kind in her way, but she has nothing to do with you and me.’

‘Still she was always very nice to your mother; and when you are gone I may be thankful to have her come to see me. There are times when we have both been very glad to see her coming in. Sometimes she would bring the papers, or Punch, or a new book—especially in the winter afternoons it was a pleasure—and if I am to be left without even John——’

‘But you are not to be left without John. And nothing has passed that need keep her from coming to see you. She will like to come and be kind. It is as good a way of filling up vacant time as any other,’ said Emily, with an experience of such matters which probably justified a little harshness of speech.

‘I shall be left very lonely,’ said the old man, with the break in his voice which was his substitute for weeping. ‘There is Mr. Cattley too. He was always very kind: but now you’ve gone and made me break with him—after giving him all that trouble with his brother about the boy.’

‘Father,’ she said, ‘I thought we had settled that question. I have never interfered with the boy. All his life, at least since he was a child, he has been with you: and you saw last night what it has come to, and what ideas he has on the subject. I don’t complain—I am not saying a word. Wait till I complain before you speak. But so it is: there is only one subject on which I am determined, and you know what that is too. I will not have the past made known to him. I will not have him find out—no, not for the world.’

‘And how should he have found out by going to Liverpool?’ said old Sandford, querulously, ‘a boy serving his time in a foundry, is it likely that he would go raking up old stories in such a very different sphere?’

‘Everything is likely that we don’t want to happen,’ she said.

‘And now,’ cried the old man, ‘all’s undone that was settled before she left me, my poor dear. She has gone to heaven carrying a false idea with her; thinking of things that were never going to happen. Do you call that keeping faith with those that are gone? I will never be able to explain it to her, without putting the blame upon you.’

‘I hope it will be long before you have to explain it to her—and I don’t mind about the blame. I can bear it, father; put it upon me.’

‘It is all very easy for you to speak,’ he said, in his broken voice, ‘but you put me all in a muddle, and I’m growing old, as Mrs. Egerton said.’

‘What has she to do with your age? You are not old—to speak of. Most probably you will see us all out.’

This did not seem an unpleasant consideration at first, but afterwards he said, in his complaining voice,

‘The longer I live the worse it will be for me, if you take away all my friends.’

To this she made no reply, but after a while sat down beside him, endeavouring to turn his thoughts to other subjects.

‘I have settled everything I can for you,’ she said, ‘it will not be so comfortable as in mother’s time. She was very comfortable, without having any method in particular or settled ways. If I don’t make any fuss, yet I feel that all the same. But after a while you’ll fall into the new method. Sarah’s a good girl. She will do everything for you that she knows. And new customs creep up, and you will get on more comfortably than you think. The only question that there is any anxiety about is the boy.’

‘You had better take him back, Emily, into your own hands.’

‘How can I do that?’ Her face changed a little out of its fixed gravity and calm. ‘You can’t undo ten years in a day. By all the habits of his mind he’s your boy. It was a risk, but you took it. I ought to have thought, but I didn’t then, that in the course of nature I should most probably live the longest, and that, before he was fully set out in the world, you might——’

She paused, reflecting that this was the very contrary of what she had said a few minutes before.

‘What?’ he said, fretfully. ‘If you think that in consequence of what has happened I will make any change—of any kind—you are much mistaken, Emily. I’ll neither form new ties, nor change in any way. Half is left to you and half to him, as we always settled, and there shall be no alteration.’

‘I was not thinking of that,’ she said, gently; but she did not say any more. It is difficult, unless as a matter of business, to speak to any man of what will happen when he dies, and if he does not care to contemplate that idea it is so much the worse. Emily let the subject drop. She had said he might see them all out, which indeed might happen, as such things happen every day; but though she said this she perceived with her experienced eyes that her father was a man unlikely to live long. The loss of the companion of his life, who had been his prop, though his mind had never been sensible to the fact, was not a thing likely to be got over so easily as seemed. Though she spoke of Sarah’s faithfulness and the new ways, she had no real faith in the apparent composure with which he had accepted the change in his life. In many ways this was to her a painful conclusion, and hard to face. Something no doubt of natural feeling had survived the long separation, the great difference between her ways of thinking and his. To have that house swept from the face of the earth in which there was always a refuge whatever might happen; and still worse to have on her hands a responsibility from which she had shaken herself free; to have it back again with all its difficulties increased, and every kind of new complication, was a most unwelcome thought. But her mind was a very clear and cool one in its peculiar way, and she foresaw everything that could possibly occur to make her arrangements vain, even while in the act of making those arrangements. How could she help seeing the extreme probability of another visit to that little house ere long, of a final winding up of all things, and the absolute necessity of regulating all future movements in her own person? People of very tender feelings conceal these prognostications from themselves, and think of them, if think they must, only with previsions of sorrow, not the clear arrangements of a foregone conclusion. But Emily Sandford had been separated from her parents for many years. She was not affectionate in the ordinary sense of the word. She was compelled to a system of rigid plans and rules by the necessities of her life, and she could not help giving a serious eye to the eventualities which she felt might be so near.

John accompanied her to the train as he had accompanied her from the train ten days before. It was again night, and to sit by her side during that short drive, which still afforded opportunity for so many things to be said, was about as exciting to him as on the previous occasion; but it was a different kind of excitement. His heart was no longer quivering on the balance between love and opposition. It had taken strongly the latter poise; his very ears seemed to thrill with eagerness to hear every word she said, which his mind instantly construed in a sense offensive to himself. When this impulse seizes upon us, it is astonishing how much bitterness can be extracted from the very simplest phrases. She had no disposition to offend the boy that night. On the contrary, there was in her voice a softness, and in her words a tremulous feeling such as a week since would have gone to John’s heart. She had an appearance of emotion about her altogether which, not even in the moment when they stood together beside the bed of death, had been in her before. And now it was she who was the most ready to speak.

‘It is only now,’ she said, ‘when I am gone, that you will settle down to your changed life—you will only realise it fully now.’

‘Oh! I have realised it,’ said John, ‘since the first day. It will be less strange—less—when grandfather and I are alone.’

‘Less?’ she said, with a question unexpressed, ‘you don’t leave me room to think very much of myself.’

To this he made no reply: and there was the faint quiver of a laugh in the air, which, the speaker’s face being unseen, was more suggestive of pain than any other sound could have been.

‘I need not recommend your grandfather to your care, John. You will be as good to him and watchful of him as you can. He is not so strong as he thinks he is. You will write to me at once, if you see anything to be anxious about.’

‘It didn’t do much good,’ said John, ‘writing to you before.’

‘You did not tell me the true state of the case,’ she said, exercising evident control over herself. ‘You wrote as if it was entirely from yourself——’

‘I know better now,’ he said, bitterly. ‘You may be sure I will never do that again.’

He turned his head away from her, and stared out of the window at the lights in the cottages which skirted the common—lights which twinkled at him many a time afterwards in his dreams.

‘Boy,’ she said, suddenly grasping his arm with her hand, ‘you don’t know what you say.’

‘That is no fault of mine,’ said John.

He would not yield even so much as to turn his head to her. It was, indeed, all he could do to keep himself from shaking off the hand on his arm. She took it away after a moment, and then resumed:

‘This is the last time I shall have the chance of saying anything to you. John, you’ve set your heart against me without any cause.’

‘Isn’t it cause enough that you’re taking both father and mother from me,’ cried the boy. ‘Isn’t that enough? But no, I’m saying too much, for you’ve given me back my mother, my faith in a mother. I had always been thinking you were my mother—till now.’

She gave a little, low cry as if some one had struck her, and paused for some time to recover herself, putting her hand up to her throat as if she were suffocating. He never looked round nor moved, but, with his heart on flame, kept his shoulder towards her, looking out fixedly into the darkness of the night.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘well, if you feel so: I—I have nothing to say if you feel so. One thing I would ask of your honourable feeling, John. If it has been thought best by everyone, my mother included, not to enter into our family circumstances at your early age, I ask you to respect our decision. We know better than you. We must know better than you. Don’t try to surprise your poor old grandfather, in his loneliness, into saying—what he will regret. Don’t try——’

‘I’ll do nothing dishonourable, I hope,’ cried the boy, ‘but I’ll make no promises. I’ll find out, if I can. I’ll do all I can to find out—— ’

‘And when you have done so,’ she said, with an audible quiver in her voice, ‘what will you discover? Nothing that is of any consequence to you or anyone—only that we wanted you, all of us, to respect and reverence your family until you were old enough to understand how things come about. That is all. And it was my mother’s wish as well as——’

‘Don’t say that,’ exclaimed John. ‘She died saying, “Tell him—tell him——”’

‘This is madness,’ she said, with a start, as if she would have sprung out of the carriage: then recovering herself. ‘Like every young and heated imagination you make mountains out of molehills,’ she said, in a very slow and measured voice. ‘A mere matter of family expediency, and you turn it into some dreadful secret. This shows how little you are to be treated with confidence. What a child you are still!’

He turned round upon her with all the fierceness of boyish wrath.

‘If it isn’t a dreadful secret, what is it? You’ve taken my father and my mother from me, both, both.’

She gave a little, quivering cry.

‘And what am I, then?’ she said.

The boy turned away with a sorrowful movement. They were drawing up at the little station, and there was time for no more.

‘You are Emily,’ he said.

CHAPTER XV.

A VISIT TO THE FOUNDRY.

John was not, perhaps, very much pleased with himself as he came home after seeing Emily away. As soon as he said that to her, his heart swung back like a pendulum, and he asked himself what if he were wrong after all, what if it were not so? He had believed her to be his mother all his life, and what if, after all, that idea, which up to a few days since there had been no doubt about, what if it proved the right one, and this new light which had burst upon him, wrong? He shivered when this thought came into his mind, but he would not entertain it. Yet instinctively, involuntarily, it would come back and back. In all that he could recollect of his childhood there was nothing which indicated to him a different kind of mother. He had little recollection of caresses or the softness of maternal tenderness. The bright spots in his childhood were those illegitimate moments which he knew enough to know must have been infringements of every rule, when he had been brought down in his night-gown in his father’s arms. In place of all the ordinary pleasures of childhood, he had the recollection of those moments and nothing more; but of a mother, such as his grandmother had been, nothing. All that he did remember chimed in well enough with the image of her whom he had called Emily, a recollection which began to burn and sting, but which yet he justified to himself, remembering all the years in which he had heard her spoken of by that name, and in which she had never come near him, never expressed any wish to see him, as most mothers would. He came home distracted by these thoughts, driving back solitary in the cab—though he had meant to walk; and found that his grandfather had gone to bed, and that all was silent and miserable in the house. There was the fire, and that was all, to give a little cheerfulness. John was not old enough to feel the companionship of a cheerful fire, making its little noises, its ashes falling, its flames breaking out, to cheer the solitary; but he liked the warmth in his nervous condition, and sat down by it and thought. If by chance it should have been to his mother that he dealt that cruel blow! but he would not think of a hazard so terrible. And then he put forward his hand and pulled out two old books from the shelf, where all his old classics stood untouched. These were classics too in a way, but it was not for their rank in literature that he prized them. One was the ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ which was so full of memories; the other, which was the one he chiefly sought, was Mrs. Trimmers’ ‘Robins.’ But it was not the story of Pecksy and Chicksy that moved him. It was the name in a large scrawl of childish text, Johnny May. He remembered it so distinctly now, the name that had come to him with such vague souvenirs, such a familiar but long-forgotten sound. He had never heard it since he came to Edgeley. And why did his grandfather give him no answer to his question when he asked what he had to do with that name? The wildest fancies went circling about his brain. Why was his name taken from him? Who was he? Had he indeed lost both father and mother in those old, long-forgotten days, or was she—the grave mother of old, the mother who never played with him or caressed him—was she—could she be after all—Emily? His heart grew sick at the thought—sick not so much with repugnance and opposition as with the recollection of how he must have wounded her, insulted her, if this was so.

He tried next day to get some satisfaction from his grandfather, but failed entirely. John began by telling the old man that, now he had found out his real name, he intended to be called no longer John Sandford, but John May—words which turned Mr. Sandford livid with horror, and for a moment dumb with passion.

‘You shall do nothing of the sort,’ he cried, ‘unless you want to break at once and for ever with me.’

‘But, grandfather——’

‘There’s no “but” in the matter. I’ll hear of no “buts.” Dismiss this nonsense out of your head, or else dismiss yourself out of this house. Do you hear me, sir? Not another word of it. It shan’t be—I won’t hear of it. Silence, John! Say another word and I’ll turn you out to the street. Cast off my name, who have been your guardian all your life, to take up—— Silence, John! Don’t say another word to me.’

John, indeed, was saying no word. He was gazing at his grandfather with wide-open, astonished eyes. Never in his life had such words been said to him before. He was too much astonished to resent them. When the old man reproached him for his wish to cast off the name which was that of the tender protector, the only father he had really known, compunction came quick to the boy’s heart. That was not what he had intended—it had never entered his thoughts.

‘Grandfather, indeed you do me wrong. I—never thought of that.’

‘How was it you didn’t think of it? Haven’t we done enough for you, my poor dear and me? What have we not done for you that heart could desire? And now you want to be shut of us, to clear out, to change your name. I am glad she’s out of the way not to see it or to hear of it. I’m glad she’s out of the way.’

‘Grandfather! don’t, for pity’s sake don’t——’

‘Pity!’ said the old man—‘you don’t show much for me. I’m settling down, my poor old dear in her grave, and the house desolate, and Emily gone, and nobody left but you and me. And the first day, the very first day when everything’s over, and I’ve got to face the world again alone, that’s the time you choose to tell me that you’re going to make a fuss and disturbance, and take a new name, and set all the village talking. Set ’em talking and inquiring and putting things together. Oh, I’ll not have it. I’ll rather clear out myself and go right away.’

‘Grandfather!’ said John again.

‘Don’t speak to me. I’ll go and telegraph for Emily back again. She’ll have to find me a place where I can have some peace; for all my peace will be gone here. Oh, John! oh, John! I am glad she has not lived to see this day.’

‘Don’t say that, grandfather,’ the boy cried. ‘I’ll not do anything to vex you. I only wanted to bear my own name.’

‘And who told you it was your own name? Your mother is Sandford, and so are you——’

‘My mother?’ said John, faltering—‘my mother?’

‘Perhaps,’ said old Sandford, ‘you’re going to deny her too——’

And then there was a silence in the middle of the storm—a silence which marked the dangerous point beyond which these two unused to fighting did not care to go.

‘Grandfather,’ said John at last, ‘I don’t want to vex you, nor to make myself as if I didn’t belong to you. But why shouldn’t you tell me? I’m old enough to understand. If there’s any secret, oughtn’t I to know it? Perhaps it isn’t half so bad as the things I take into my head. It would be so much better if you would trust me—tell me. One time or other I shall be sure to find out; and if I’ve been insulting my mother (how can I tell?) and vexing you, is it my fault? It is out of exasperation because I know there is something, and yet what it is I’m not allowed to know.’

The old man calmed down during this speech and perceived what his best policy was. He said:

‘You moider my poor brains with your talk of secrets. Let alone, my boy. There’s few families that haven’t got something that they keep to themselves—but the Sandfords have less than most. We’ve never been very rich or great, but we’ve always been able to hold up our heads wherever we went. I’m very shaky this morning,’ he said, relapsing into his broken voice. ‘I’d like to take the air a little; but I’ve been so long indoors I don’t know if I could keep my legs.’

‘Will you have my arm, grandfather?’ said John.

‘Well,’ said the old man, with his half sob, ‘the first day we’re alone it’s a kind of natural to go out together; and we’ll just look if there’s a snowdrop or two out yonder. By this time there should be a snowdrop out.’

This altogether overcame John, who walked with the old man leaning on his arm to the new-made grave, which had been covered with snowdrops, and where already two or three of these pale, wintry blossoms, cold and pure, were peeping out. They were followed all along the street by many a sympathetic look. The men took off their hats, the women gave them half-tearful greetings. ‘They go unto the grave to weep there.’ These words can never be said without moving the general heart, so easily touched, and to some griefs so sympathetic. That it should be an old man and a boy who were making that pilgrimage was, the gossips said, ‘more heart-breakin’ than if it had been a woman and a girl.’ The helplessness of the pair, and yet the difference between their helplessness and that of the women who had lost their bread-winner, has something poignant in it. And if Mr. Sandford had exhausted all resources in finding an expedient for calming the mind of John, and diverting him from his inquiries, he could not have found one that was more effectual. The chill sweetness of the little snowdrop upon his tender old mother’s grave quenched all the heat and fire of thought out of the boy’s heart.

But he did not forget the question which tore it asunder. Some time after he heard that Mr. Cattley was going to Liverpool for a day or two to see his brother, and eagerly asked to be allowed to go with him. The boy was looking pale, they had all remarked without surprise, and the curate was very willing to have him for a companion. John managed to get his grandfather’s permission without letting him know where they were going; for Mr. Sandford was pleased and proud that his boy should be the curate’s companion anywhere. It was with a mixture of excitement and trouble that John set out. He felt that he might be about to make some monstrous discovery, he knew not what, yet the sense of doing something clandestine and forbidden contended in his mind with that pleasure in carrying out our own desires, which is so strong in most hearts.

It was a long journey. Mr. Cattley and he went over the common to the station at twelve o’clock of a brilliant, sunshiny February day, when all the roads in their wetness reflected the wonderful colours of the sky, and the very puddles were strewn with turquoise and gold; but it was between six and seven at night, dark and cold, when they reached the great town, which John entered with all the natural excitement of a country boy who has never seen such a place before. Mr. Cattley took him to the lodging to which he himself usually came on his visits here; for his brother, like most other people of his importance, lived out of town. He took John next morning through a world of streets, some of which were imposing and brilliant, but by far the greater part mean, narrow, and unlovely, to the place where the great foundry was, and where but for an accident he himself might have been. The youth went over it with a mixture of pleasure and repulsion. The novelty, the bustle, the feeling of a great new energy unknown to him before, the quickened sense of living and great creative work went to his head like a new inspiration; but the plunging and ploughing of pistons and wheels, the huge monstrous machines which looked like sentient creatures; the grind, and whirl, and noise, and endless movement, in so many different senses at once, up and down, round and round, back and forward, contradicting each other, made the brain of the country lad go round too, with a sickening confusion. A touch of envy of all those accustomed workmen, who understood, and moved about so coolly among, this confusing round of wheels, and at the same time a sense of thankfulness that he was not himself to take his place among them, was in John’s mind. This was not what had fired his imagination, or rather, had fired Elly’s imagination, and thrown a warm reflection upon his. The lighthouses, the canals, the civilising roads, the works that would be good for humanity, as well as worth a man’s while, were different from all this buzzing and plunging. Yet John was wise enough to know that the two things were too closely connected to be severed. He was glad, however, that he was to be set to surveying and outdoor work rather than to this.

Mr. Cattley was with his brother in the office, and John was left to stray about the outskirts of the place, after he had been shown over it, to wait for the curate. The grimy courts, the big, ugly buildings, sheds, all the frightful accessories of the place were new to him. Why were such places so ugly? Was it necessary they should be so ugly? The black soil of the yard, over which the workmen went crunching in their heavy boots, seemed mixed up of cinders and coal dust and mud. He was asking himself, with a half laugh at his own simplicity, why this must be—whether it might not be worth while to make the surroundings of the workshops less hideous—when his eye was caught by one of the labourers passing between him and the grimy wall. No skilled workman this, like those in the blackened moleskins, which, at the beginning of the week, were white, with their free step and independent aspect. The man was one of the drudges of the establishment, a skill-less hanger-on, doing jobs as they were wanted, carrying the great, rusty bars of iron, bringing coals, doing all the rough work of the place. He was dressed in the indescribable clothes of the British labourer, who has no sort of habitual costume, not even a blouse under which to hide his rags, with a red cotton handkerchief knotted about his neck. Perhaps it was this bit of cotton that caught John’s eyes: and then it seemed to him that the face above it was not unknown to him. It was a sufficiently villainous face; the features looked as if they had been roughly shaped out of some coarse paste, the small eyes, looking out from under shaggy brows, with a sidelong glance, the slouching gait, the unshaven chin, made up a very unattractive picture altogether.

‘Where can I have seen him?’ John said to himself. He had the keen recollection of youth, and soon identified the unlovely figure which had passed across his field of vision once, and no more. The man, seeing John’s gaze fixed on him, felt it expedient to touch his cap, and claim the recognition that was in the lad’s eyes. It might mean, if nothing more, a pint of beer.

‘Mornin’, sir,’ he said, as if he knew all about him.

John was a little startled by this recognition.

‘You know me, too?’ he said.

‘I never forget anyone I ever sets eyes upon—especially a young man as has little to do with them sixpences of his, and knows as a poor man is mostly dry.’

‘And yet I never saw you but once,’ said John, with a laugh. He thought within himself that this was not a very dignified acquaintance, and yet to have remembered was something in the fellow’s favour. ‘When I saw you you were looking for some one down at Edgeley, don’t you know?’

And then it suddenly occurred to John that it was this man’s inquiries which had ended in bringing to his mind his own forgotten name—the name of his childhood, which, for the present, at least, he was not allowed to claim—and this changed his countenance from its lighter aspect to profound gravity. For was not this the object with which he came here, to find out something?—which he was not likely to do wandering about the grimy yard of the foundry.

‘Ah!’ said the man, with a sudden lighting up of his seemingly impassive countenance, ‘I have ye now. Never forgets a face, but don’t always remember where I seen it. Edgeley, where I went to look up my mate’s wife? But where that mate was, I’m not a-goin’ to say now.’ He put his finger against his nose. ‘I warn’t a-minding down there. Bless you, I knew if I’d a-found her, she’d a-bought me off pretty smart, rather than let the story run that I was his mate and where he was. But mum’s the word in the foundry. You won’t peach on a poor man, that is trying to turn a honest penny, and get back his character—will ye, now?’

‘I!’ cried John, with great disdain. ‘I know nothing about you. I only remembered I had seen your face——’

‘And was so kind as to want to know if I was in good ’ealth—which the same to you, young man,’ said the fellow. ‘You wouldn’t give me no help, though, then; and ye might have done it, and no harm.’

‘I couldn’t have helped you; for I knew there was no one of the name you wanted in the village.’

‘Maybe there was, and maybe there wasn’t,’ said the man. ‘There was them belonging to her, if she wasn’t there herself. An old lady come and give me a sov. to go away. She did—she give me a sov.—though if it was for that, or because she thought her blasted village wasn’t good enough for the likes of me—— Give us a shilling, young master, to drink your ’ealth.’

John was so unused to the magnificence of dispensing shillings that he took one mechanically from his pocket in answer to this appeal. But he said before he gave it, with much authority and wisdom,

‘You don’t deserve a shilling, or anything else—if all you wanted was to bring some poor woman to shame.’

‘It was very wrong,’ said the man, with a wink. ‘I know’d you’d think so. But that was only my fun, bless you—and you’re sure there warn’t not one o’ that name in the village, young master? Why, I wanted to give her news of her ’usband as was my mate. You’re sure there warn’t one o’ that name?’

CHAPTER XVI.

RESEARCH.

John reflected as he walked back to his lodging on the small matters on which great effects sometimes hang. This wretched fellow—hoping to get something out of a poor woman whose husband was a felon, but who was probably living in decent obscurity somewhere, keeping this dreadful fact from the knowledge of those about her—had pronounced the name which the boy had not heard for ten years, and thus, by an accident which had nothing whatever to do with John, had thrown a light upon the boy’s life. At this moment it was not a very comfortable light. The gleam it had thrown had not brought peace, but the reverse. It had awoke difficulties, troubles which no doubt were there and must have come into evidence some time, though not necessarily now. John did not feel that he had any reason to be grateful to the returned convict who had all unawares, by mere chance, thrown that passing gleam upon his way. But it was very strange to him to think how such things come about—perhaps by mere accident, if there was such a thing as mere accident in the world (John had touched the edge of philosophy, and liked to think that he had thought on such subjects), perhaps in the elaborate arrangements of a purpose which regulates the world in matters both small and great. It gave him a sense of pleasure that such high mysteries should come into his mind in connection with his own little affairs, and yet it was no doubt just as wonderful, nay, more so, that a sparrow can not fall without Divine Providence noting that infinitesimal event, than if the schemes of heaven concerned only nations and principalities and powers. He said to himself, following out that line of thought (and liking himself for the impulse to do so), that if one thing, then another; and that if God’s purposes regulated one act of human affairs, they must regulate all, for nothing could be small or great with Him. And whatever happened, though the present effect of the revelation had been perhaps more painful than pleasant it was always best to know. He said to himself that it is always best to know. Supposing there is anything unpleasant in the antecedents of your family, supposing they are less dignified, less well-off than you may now suppose, still to know is a great matter. He was determined to leave no stone unturned to find out why it was that he was not to be allowed to come to Liverpool, and what harm it was supposed that he should get there, and how his name, his father’s name, was connected with it, and why he was forbidden to bear that name. These were momentous questions, but they were not of that kind which he could get solved by any of the ordinary means of procuring information.

On the last morning of his stay in Liverpool, John, being alone for an hour or two, set out with a distinct determination on his mind to do something, to leave not a stone unturned. He had already, when going about with the curate, fixed his mind upon this. Indeed it was never out of his mind. What had he come here for but with the determination to find out something, to find out everything if it were possible? He had gone about always on the look out, with his eyes open; but there had been nothing either said or done within his ken which threw any light upon his subject. On the last morning he was left alone, Mr. Cattley having business to execute with his brother, and John felt that now was his opportunity. He went out about ten o’clock with all the advantage of being by himself and unhindered by anyone else’s business. By this time he had become a little accustomed to the place and knew his way about. He walked along straight in front of him, looking at all the shop windows and the names over the doors. He did not quite see what help was to be got out of that—but still he went on, observing everything, hoping that perhaps some street corner might awaken his own dormant recollection, or something that would give him a better guidance catch his eye. He meant to leave no stone unturned.

Was there ever a wilder undertaking than to try to find information about an unknown family by walking about the streets of a great city? When he had walked for an hour or two, and began to feel tired, the futility of this mode of research suddenly struck him. It did not seem likely that he could do it in this way, when he came to think of it. But how was he to do it? In what way was he to turn the metaphorical stone under which knowledge might be hid?

He found himself in front of the Exchange when he woke up to this view of the question. He went in timidly by the archway through which so many men were streaming, and found himself suddenly in the midst of a sea of men, all intent upon affairs which seemed life and death to them, all too much absorbed in their own business to give any attention to the boyish stranger. Sometimes there would arise a clamour of voices speaking together, then this momentary storm would be over, and a lower hum of many voices, a sound of feet, the murmur of a crowd would be all that met his ear. And now and then this human tide would be moved like the sea by a wave setting in one direction, and then would break off into eddies and sweeps of current here and there. John was very much interested by this sight. He had heard of such assemblies so often—the characteristic heads, the strange sombre important aspect of this crowd of men, the faces full of meaning and earnestness, affected him with mingled awe and interest. They had the affairs of half the world in their hands; many of them had a look of wealth, money written all over their substantial persons; and then there were the shabby ones, more exciting still to look at, with a hungry eagerness in their faces. The boy forgot himself altogether and stood for a long time watching them, pushed aside, now to one corner, now to another by the stream. Then it suddenly occurred to him that he was neglecting his quest. He wondered whether if he had the courage to call out in the midst of them all and ask whether they knew anything of his father he might perhaps acquire some information. But then shrank away into a corner ashamed of himself, wondering what all those occupied men would think of him if he disturbed their business consultations and arrangements with such a question. If John had done so, no doubt the merchants would have been delighted. It would have been a delightful story to carry home: ‘To-day on ‘Change the funniest thing happened. A young fellow of seventeen or so, evidently fresh from the country, got up suddenly and asked if anyone was known there by the name of May!’ That is what the merchants and stockbrokers would have told their families with great satisfaction. But the idea filled John with shame and sudden discomfiture. He saw for the first time how ridiculous were his hopes, and how impossible it was that he should discover anything in this way.

It was half from shame, to recover from the self-ridicule of this unaccomplished idea, that he plunged into a great public reading-room, where he sat down to recover himself. True, he had not done anything to be ashamed of, but the intention was so vivid that he felt as if he had done it, and threw himself into a seat in a tremor of excitement, his heart beating exactly as if he had carried that wild fancy into action. By-and-by, when he recovered himself, he turned over a newspaper or two mechanically, not knowing what he was doing, and feeling a confused calm in this atmosphere—the quiet which was in the heart of the tumult, a noiseless room within and the roar of the traffic and the multitude without. While he thus sat in a kind of half-dazed condition his eye fell upon a large thick volume, which was the directory of the town. It seemed to him that an expedient more possible, more practicable, was here afforded to him. He got up hurriedly, and turned it over, finding without difficulty the name of a number of Mays. It was a May who was the Mayor even. If he had asked the merchants in the Exchange, there was no doubt this was what they would have thought he meant.

Then John went out again, and went straight to the Town Hall, which had been pointed out to him, and which was close to the Exchange. He went, not knowing very well what he was doing; and though he was shy by nature, not venturesome, pushed his way through the town officers and officials, and asked to see the Mayor. To see the Mayor! Had he gone to Windsor Castle and asked to see the Queen, it would have been only a little less reasonable. What did he want with the Mayor? It was only when this question was asked him by a person of commanding presence and still more commanding costume, of the beadle race, that he came to himself. What did he want with the Mayor? To ask him if he could give any information as to some one of his name who ten years ago or thereabouts had lived in Liverpool (John supposed) and fallen into misfortune? Poor John made a very faltering explanation to the beadle, and shrank away, not without raising suspicions in that functionary, who watched him out of sight with a look which was not complimentary. And it was only then that the boy perceived the foolishness altogether of that fervent resolution of his to leave no stone unturned. What stone was there which he could hope to turn? What could he do? To appeal to the mayor because his name was May! He might just as well, he said to himself, have appealed to the ex-convict who had known some one of the name of May in prison. The one would really have been as sensible as the other, which was to say that both were folly itself. And, short of this appealing to some one, what was he to do?

He did, as may be supposed, nothing. When he went to meet the curate at the foundry in time for their train, he saw again the fellow who had known May the prisoner, and had a shame-faced laugh at himself as he thought of May the mayor. What if he were to interrogate this man, who was already his acquaintance, who touched his cap and brightened at sight of him, expectant of another shilling? The one, he said to himself, would be just as sensible as the other, and more easily carried out. When Mr. Cattley saw the recognition that passed between this labourer and his young companion he looked at John with surprise.

‘Do you know that man?’ he asked, upon which John entered into the story of his appearance at Edgeley, saying,

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘I think I remember something of the kind,’ said the curate, ‘but I wonder you recollect the looks of the fellow. He is not a very attractive-looking acquaintance.’

‘He brought a name to my mind,’ said John, ‘that I had a recollection of—when I was quite a child. I have been trying to find out something about it, but I can’t.’

‘What have you been trying to find out about?’

‘Well, that’s the funny part,’ said John, with an embarrassed laugh. ‘I don’t exactly know. I want to know something, I can’t tell what, about a gentleman of that name who I think lived here, or near here, ten or twelve years ago.’

‘That’s vague,’ said the curate.

‘Yes, it’s very vague. I suppose it was silly to think I could find out anything. The mayor’s name,’ said John, with a touch of pride in it, ‘is May.’

‘Ah, the mayor. You didn’t think it was he, I suppose? I remember some story of a May who embezzled or forged or something; no doubt the one whom your friend there’ (Mr. Cattley jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the man at the foundry) ‘knew. Now, John, look sharp. We haven’t got a minute to lose. Our train is at four.’

‘My things are all ready,’ said John: and they got their train, and there was an end of the three days at Liverpool, in which he had hoped to find out so much.

It was not so easy to explain his little journey to his grandfather as he had hoped. He tried to give vague answers to the old man’s questions, but in the end had to confess where he had been and why he had been so desirous of going there.

‘To find out what?’ Mr. Sandford cried, with a flash of displeasure quite unusual. ‘What did you want to find out?’

‘About my father, grandfather,’ said John. ‘I have never been satisfied with what I have been told, and now less than ever.’

‘Why now? What has happened to make you dissatisfied? What does it all mean?’

‘Since my—since your—since—Emily was here.’

‘How dare you call her Emily, sir? What do you mean by it? Do you intend to drive me distracted in my lonely state? Am I to be brought to the grave with your questions and your doubts? Ah, you never would have taken that upon you,’ said the old man, ‘while she was here. You think you have got me at your mercy. You think you can take every advantage of me now that I am alone.’

‘No,’ said John. ‘Grandfather, it is you who are hard upon me. She was going to tell me. She would have told me if she had lived. The last thing she said was, “Emily, tell the boy.”’

Old Mr. Sandford relapsed into his broken sobbing. It was quite genuine, and yet both now and on other occasions it had served his purpose.

‘What is between two women,’ he said, ‘nobody can know, nobody but their Maker. And neither you nor me can tell what that was. But she never told you, bless her soul, that you were to insult your mother: oh no! nor me that have always been your support and provided for you all your life. You think perhaps you would have got on just as well without me, by yourself, left upon the world?’

And then he fell into such agitation that John was full of regret and self-reproach. He tried the best he could to make his grandfather forget all that had been said, and to forget it himself, and to return to their old life. But it was very hard to do. Indeed, this period in John’s life was altogether very hard; his lessons were given over and he had nothing to do: and after all the troubles and emotions of the past month or two he had not strength of mind to begin some study by himself, as Mr. Cattley advised and Elly urged him to do.

‘You should carry on your mathematics. Mathematics are always good for an engineer: or even draw,’ said Elly, as if that branch of industry was very frivolous in comparison, ‘that’s good for an engineer too. I am sure Mr. Cattley would help you if you were to ask him. But, for goodness sake, Jack, do something; don’t fall into the same ways as all the other boys, wandering about with your hands in your pockets. It is better to do anything,’ said Elly, ‘than to do nothing at all.’

John assented dutifully, but he neither resumed his drawing nor his mathematics. He began even to avoid Elly, lest she should scold him; and did wander about disconsolate with his hands in his pockets, with no heart to do anything. This pause in his life was very hard upon him. It had been settled that his mother, or Emily, whichever she was, should arrange matters her own way at some engineer’s office in London, where she had hopes of getting him taken in; but in the meantime she made no sign, and it did not seem possible to do anything without her. Mr. Sandford himself would take no trouble; sometimes he would lament querulously that the boy whom he had brought up wanted to leave him and had no feeling for him: sometimes he would say that his mother must settle all that, that Emily was the proper person to arrange for her son. But in any case nothing was done, and John relapsed into idleness and wretchedness, and did nothing, devouring his own heart.

Whether this was a calculation of a cold-blooded kind on the part of the woman who now seemed to have the lives of these two, the old man and the boy, in her hands, as to what would happen—or whether it was the mere course of events unquickened by any mortal calculation—it proved at all events that Emily’s prognostics were right. Mr. Sandford never recovered the death of his lifelong companion. He went out a little fitfully as the spring came on, and took little walks chiefly ending in a visit to her grave to see, after the snowdrops were over, if the primroses and then if the violets were coming out there. He had covered the little mound at first with all those spring flowers which she had loved, perhaps with a dim prevision that the sod would be displaced before the time for the later blossoms came. And all the long evenings he would sit with a book laid out open upon her little table, but not reading, gazing in the fire and twirling his thumbs. John sat at the table in his old place near the lamps with his books, and sometimes tried to talk. But his grandfather was not disposed to talk, and the hours would thus pass by on leaden wings, so slow, so endless, so silent, not a sound in the little parlour but the falling of the ashes from the fire, and the ticking of the clock, and the rustle now and then of a page turned. But John had no new books to tempt him, and at this turn of his life was but a languid reader, and yielded in spite of himself to the fascination of the strange dreary silence, and the contemplation of the old man twirling his thumbs by the fire.

The summer had scarcely begun when Mr. Sandford’s daughter was again summoned from London. When she arrived she found the sick-room in charge of John, who had learned all that had to be done for the patient as well as such an unlikely nurse could learn. The old man would not suffer him out of his sight. He would not let him go even when Emily with her superior knowledge came and took the seat at his bedside, and began, almost before she came in, to alter the arrangements which the boy-nurse had made.

‘He shouldn’t have this and that,’ she said, ‘they are bad for him in his present state.’

‘My grandfather likes it so,’ said John.

‘We mustn’t ask what he likes, but what is best for him, ‘said the new-comer. She was not unkind, but she was professional, seeing everything from a point of view very different from theirs, with a knowledge of what was right in the abstract and none of that tremulous desire to please which moves a domestic ministrant. And, as if he had waited for that sanction to his dying, the old man sank rapidly from the time of her arrival. Whenever he could talk at all, his talk was about ‘the boy’ over whose head these two earned on their discussions, taking no more notice of his presence than if he had been a chair or a table.

‘He’s been used to your mother, Emily. Your mother was very indulgent. Perhaps he has been spoilt a little.’

‘A great deal, I fear, father.’

‘It was your mother did it. I like whatever she did best. It was all done in love. Love is what he has been used to.’ This was on the last night of his life. He was lying holding John’s hand, who was at one side of the bed, while Emily was at the other. ‘Oh, be kind to him, my dear. He’s a good boy. Don’t let there be any misunderstanding. When I am gone he will have no one but you.’

‘I will try to do my duty to him, father. I don’t think you need have any fear.’

‘Your duty, Emily, yes; but I hope it will be a little more than that. Your own flesh and blood wants a little more. Trust him as much as you can, my dear. He’s worthy of it. You would never repent it. Remember that he has no one in the world but you.’

At midnight, the two to whom these words had been spoken stood again together over the bed in silence more significant than words. ‘He had no one in the world but you.’ The room was cold with the awe and chill of death, and John stood stupified, as if his heart was dead. No one in the world but her. Was this all he had to look to now?