The Son of His Father; vol. 3/3

‘Madam,’ he said, turning to Mrs. Egerton, ‘this young man has been working too hard, and he is off his head. Take care of him. It’s a common thing among inventors; take care of him.’

He settled himself on his chair as if he were about to enter on a long, peaceable explanation; then, in a moment, with the skill which is learned among criminals, he snatched his arm from John’s grasp and was gone. The clang of the door as it closed behind him was almost the first notice they had that he had escaped.

John was weakened by the sufferings of the past days, and altogether taken by surprise. He was thrown against the wall, and, for a moment, stunned by the shock. Mrs. Egerton, half disposed to think the respectable visitor was right and the young man crazed—half alarmed by that sudden exit, not knowing what to do—held his hands in hers and chafed them, bidding some one fetch a doctor, send for his mother, do something—she knew not what.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FATHER AND CHILDREN.

Mr. Cattley had quietly taken possession of Susie and her arrangements from the moment of the agitating conversation which followed John’s letter to Elly. It could scarcely be said that he had intended to make a declaration of love to her—though for some time it had been apparent to him that this was the solution of all the difficulties of that disruption in his life which he had not himself done anything to bring about, yet which was natural and necessary, and a change which he could neither refuse nor draw back from when it came. The sudden rending asunder of all the bonds that had fashioned his existence for years had been very painful to the curate. To keep them up unnaturally, in defiance of separation and distance, was all but impossible, and yet to cut himself finally adrift was an operation which he knew not how to perform. Susie had given him unconsciously the key to all these difficulties. Had he remained at Edgeley, leading a somewhat pensive and unfulfilled, yet happy life, his devotion to Mrs. Egerton would have been in all likelihood enough for his subdued and moderate spirit. It was as much out of the question that she should marry him as that the sky and the fields should effect a union, or any other parallel unconjoinable things: but there was little occasion for any attempt at such an alliance, considering that the terms on which they stood, of tenderest and most delicate friendship, were enough for all requirements. It is delightful to keep up such a tie when circumstances permit, and no more strenuous sentiment breaks in—but to break it is a thing full of embarrassment and difficulty. Scarcely any woman is so unnaturally amiable as to behold the defection of her servant and knight without a certain annoyance; it is difficult altogether to forgive that self-emancipation and disenthralment; and on the other hand the very delicacy and romantic sentiment in the mind of the man which makes such relations possible fills him with trouble and awkwardness when the moment comes at which more reasonable and natural ties take the place of the Platonic bond.

Mr. Cattley had felt the crisis deeply; he had not known how to detach himself, or what to do with his life when the disruption should have been made. Susie’s sudden appearance had been an inspiration and a deliverance to him. He had felt in her the solution of all his doubts. And now the sudden trouble which had come upon her, and which in his interest and long affection for John it was so natural he should share, came in like what he would himself have called ‘a special providence,’ to make his way more easy. That he should take her, so to speak, into his own hands, guide her, take care of her, aid her in everything that could be done for the family at such a crisis, was natural, most natural to a man of his character, most convenient in a general crisis of affairs. That he should step into the breach, that he should defend and help all who were likely to suffer, that he should manage matters for any distressed family, and specially help John, and help everybody, was what all the world expected from Mr. Cattley. It was his natural office. So that not only Susie but Susie’s troubles came with the most perfect appropriateness into his life, and afforded him the opportunity of withdrawing and emancipating himself on the one hand and securing his own happiness on the other, as nothing else could have done.

This is not to say that the communication Susie had made to him about her father had been received by the curate with indifference. It had, on the contrary, given him a great shock. A convict! That he should connect himself with such a person—he, a clergyman—a man placed in a position where all his connections and relationships were exposed to scrutiny—was a thought which gave him a momentary sensation, indescribable, of giddiness and faintness and heart-sickness; but the result of this shock was an unusual one. It made him instantly commit himself—identify himself with the sufferer; take her up, so to speak, upon his shoulders and prepare to carry her through life, and save her from all effects of this irremediable misfortune. This was not the effect it would have had on ordinary men; but it was so with Mr. Cattley. The first thing to be done seemed to snatch up Susie, not to let it hurt her—not even to let her feel for a moment that it could hurt her. A convict! He remembered the story faintly when he heard the name, how it had a certain interest in it, in consequence of the character of the man, whom everybody liked, although the forger had ruined his family, and plunged all belonging to him into misery. And to think now, after so many years, that he himself was to be one of the people plunged into trouble by this criminal of a past time! The shock went through his nerves and up to his head like a sudden jar to his whole being. But there was perhaps something in his professional habit of finding a remedy for the troubles brought under his eye, the quick impulse of doing something, which becomes a second nature with the physicians of the spirit as well as with those of the body, which helped him now. And then it afforded him the most extraordinary and easy opening out of a difficult conjunction of affairs; that had to be taken into account—as well as the rest.

The result was that Mr. Cattley took Susie to London to her mother, and at once, without anything—or at least very little more—said, took his place as a member of the family, threatened with great shame and exposure through the return of the disgraced father, whom some of them had hoped never to see again, and some had no knowledge of. Nobody but a clergyman could have done this so easily, and even Mrs. Sandford, with all her pride and determination to share the secret with no one, could not refuse the aid of a cool head and sympathetic mind in the emergency in which she found herself placed. She was too much pre-occupied by her great distress to have much leisure of mind to consider this sudden new arrival critically as Susie’s suitor. At an easier moment that question would no doubt have been discussed in all its bearings—whether he was not too old for Susie; whether he was not very plain, very quiet; whether they had known each other long enough; whether they suited each other: all these matters would have afforded opportunity of discussion and question. But in the present dreadful emergency there was no time for any such argument.

‘Susie has accepted me for her husband,’ Mr. Cattley said (which, indeed, Susie had scarcely done save tacitly), ‘what can I do to help you?’ There seemed nothing strange in it. It was his profession to have secrets confided to him, to help all sorts of people. Even Mrs. Sandford could not resist his quiet certainty that their affairs were his, and that he could be of use. And he had all the strength and freshness of a new agent, impartial, having full command of his judgment. He had none of John’s stern and angry Quixotism and determination not to lose hold again of the father who was a disgrace to him, that fiercest development of duty—neither did he share the horror and loathing of the wife for the man who had betrayed and disgraced her. He was of Mrs. Sandford’s mind that the culprit should be kept apart, that no attempt should be made to reinstate him in the family; and he was of John’s mind that May could not be abandoned. He agreed and disagreed with both, and he was sorry for all—at once for the family driven to horror and dismay by such a sudden apparition, and for the unfortunate criminal himself, thus cut off from all the ties of nature.

Susie took no independent action in the matter. She left it now to him, as she had left it all her life to her mother, feeling such questions beyond her, she who was so ready and so full of active service in the practical ways of life. She left the decision to those who were better able to make it, but with an altogether new and delightful confidence such as she had never known before; for Mr. Cattley was far more merciful than anyone who in Susie’s experience had ever touched this painful matter. Mrs. Sandford had desired nothing so much as never to hear the name of the husband through whom she had suffered so many humiliations and miseries again; but Mr. Cattley would not permit the natural right to be shaken off, or the claims of blood abandoned. Susie turned to him with a gratitude which was beyond words in her mild eyes. Her mother’s panic and loathing were cruel, but he was ever kind and just. She looked at him with that sense that he was the best of created beings, which it is so expedient for a wife to possess. Even love does not always carry this confidence with it, but Susie was one of the women who will always, to the last verge of possibility, give that adoration and submission to the man upon whom their affections rest. And happily she had found one by whom, as far as that is possible to humanity, they were fully deserved.

They set out together in the morning sunshine, after many arguments and consultations with Mrs. Sandford, to seek John in his lodgings and settle if possible upon some common course of action. But, though so many painful questions were involved, these two people were able to dismiss them as they walked along together. They seemed to step into a land of gentle happiness the moment they were alone with each other, though in the midst of the crowded streets. They went across the bridge making momentary involuntary pauses to look at the traffic on the river, forgetting that they ought not to have had any attention to spare for such outside matters. Though Susie was entirely town-bred, they looked what they were henceforward to be—a country pair, a rural couple come up from their vicarage to see the world. There ought not to have been so much ease, so much sweetness in the morning to May the convict’s daughter: and yet she could not help it, there it was. And to Mr. Cattley, who had always been accustomed to a somewhat secondary place, the sensation of being supreme was strangely delightful. A woman who can give that unquestioning admiration, that boundless trust, is always sweet. It is not every woman that can do it, however godlike may be the man: and the curate did not believe that he was godlike. But yet it was very delightful that she should think so. It was a surprise to him to receive this tender homage; but it was very sweet.

They had reached the quiet street in which John’s rooms were, when Susie was suddenly roused out of this heavenly state by the sight of some one coming hastily out of her brother’s door. They were still at a sufficient distance to see that he came out half-running, as if pursued, and that he looked round him with alarm as he came towards them, stumbling a little with uncertain steps. Something perhaps it was in this somewhat wavering movement which roused old recollections in her mind—and her father, but for that temporary lapse into personal blessedness, had been very much in the foreground of her imagination.

She let go Mr. Cattley’s arm with a shock of sudden awakening, with a cry of ‘Papa!’ She recognised him in a moment. He was in reality very little changed, far less changed than she was, the austerity of his prison life having preserved the freshness of early years in his face.

‘Papa,’ she said, and stopped and reddened with sudden emotion, ashamed to look at him who she thought must stand abashed before her, and for the first time fully apprehending this tragedy, which no one could smooth away.

‘Eh!’ he cried, and gave her a hurried look. ‘I am in a great hurry. I can’t speak to you now:’ then he stopped reluctantly, for the first time realising what she had said. No, it was not shame; he was not afraid of meeting her eye: but a look of curiosity and interest came into his face. ‘What’s that you are calling me? Do you know me? Who are you? Are you——? is this Susie?’ he said.

‘Oh, yes, papa, it is Susie. Don’t go away. We were coming to look for you, to ask—don’t go away from us. You are not at all changed,’ she said, putting out her hands to detain him, ‘you are just the same. Papa, oh, where are you going? Don’t go away.’

‘You think so? Not changed! I might be—for you are changed, Susie, and so is the world; everything’s changed. Don’t stop me, I must go; your brother, if that is your brother—and if you are Susie——’

‘Have you seen John, papa?’

‘John,’ he repeated, with a half smile; and, though he had been in such haste, he stopped now at once with every appearance of leisure. ‘He may be John, but he’s not Johnnie, my little boy. He’s like a policeman,’ he went on, in a tone of whimsical complaint, rubbing his arm where John had grasped him; ‘he clutches in the same way. My little chap would never have behaved like that. And so you’re Susie? I see some likeness now. You were your mother’s pet, and the boy was mine. Ah! well, it comes to the same thing in the end. You’re both of you ashamed of me now.’

‘Oh, papa,’ cried Susie, with tears, ‘don’t say so; don’t think so! John——’

‘Yes, I know: he wants to get hold of me, to keep me in some family dungeon where I can’t shame him. I know that’s what he wants. No, child, I’m going away. Do I want to disgrace you? I’ll go, and you shall never hear of me more.’

‘Papa,’ cried soft-voiced Susie, ‘come back and let us talk all together like one family. Come back to poor John’s lodgings. We are all one family, after all. We are all friends. Oh, come back, come back, papa!’

‘He has got ladies there—the girl he is going to marry. Never, never! I’m not going to have anything to do with him. I’m glad to have seen you, Susie. God bless you, you’ve got a sweet face. You’re like a sister of mine that died young. If you ever see your mother—I suppose you see your mother sometimes?—you can tell her—— Well, perhaps I gave her reason to hate me and give up my name. You can tell her she’ll never be troubled anymore with me.’

‘Oh, papa!’ Susie drew a long breath and held him firmly by the arm. ‘Here is John. You must speak to John.’

John had come hurriedly up to the other side, having followed from his house, and now put his hand also upon his father’s arm.

‘I can’t let you out of my sight,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘We must understand everything, we must settle everything now.’

‘Oh, listen to him, papa: it’s not his fault; let us consult together; we are all one family. Surely, surely we are all friends,’ Susie cried.

May stood between his children with a sullenness unusual to it coming over his face. He shook off John’s hold pettishly.

‘I told you he clutched like a policeman,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind you, Susie, you’re natural. If I had you with me, I might perhaps—— But it’s no use thinking of that. You can tell your mother that whatever happens she shall never be troubled with me.’

‘Father,’ said John, with a shudder at the word, ‘we none of us want to neglect our duties. Now that you are here, you can’t disappear again. We belong to each other whether we wish it or not. You have a claim upon us, and we—we have a claim upon you. Come back. Susie, get him to come back.’

A look of panic came upon May’s face. He shook them off from either hand.

‘Don’t let us have a row in the street,’ he cried. ‘You’ll bring all the policemen about. And when a man has once been in trouble they always think it’s his fault. Let me go.’

‘Not without telling us where to find you, at least,’ said John.

‘Oh, papa, papa!’ said Susie. ‘Don’t go, don’t go.’

‘We’ll have all the policemen in the place about,’ May said, looking round him with alarm.

Mr. Cattley had stood by all the time saying nothing. He came forward now, and drew John aside.

‘Jack, will you leave it in my hands?’ he said. ‘I know everything, more perhaps than you do. And you’re not in a condition to judge calmly. You know you can trust me.’

‘And who may this be now?’ said May, in a pettish and offended tone. He turned to the new speaker with a rapid change of front: but changed again as soon as he perceived what the new speaker was. He had known a great many chaplains in his time, and had never found them unmanageable. ‘I see you’re a clergyman,’ he said, in his usual mild tones: ‘and you have a good countenance,’ he added, approvingly. ‘There’s some little questions to settle between me and—my family. I don’t mind talking of our affairs with such a—with such a—respectable person. So long as no attempt is made on my personal freedom.’ He paused a little, and then laughed with his usual perception of the ludicrous. ‘I’m very choice over that,’ he said, ‘it’s been too much tampered with already.’ He looked from one to another as he spoke, with a faint expectation of some smile or response to his pleasantry: some sense of the humour of it in Susie’s deprecating anxious face or the stern misery of John. The want of that reply chilled him for a moment, but only for a moment. Then he stepped out briskly from between his irresponsive children.

‘Lead on—as Montressor would say—I’ll follow with my bosom bare—or at least with my heart open—which comes to the same thing, I suppose,’ he said.

This transaction took place so rapidly that John, in his confused state, and even Susie, scarcely understood what was taking place till they found themselves alone, watching the two other figures going quickly and quietly along the street. To Susie it seemed as if in a moment everything had come right. Mr. Cattley carried off her anxieties with him, to be solved in what was sure to be the best way. She came close to John’s side and put her arm within his, supporting him with her confidence and certainty that all would now go well, supporting him even physically with the soft backing-up which he wanted so much. They stood together silent, watching the other two disappear along the street. How it was that John gave in so easily, and let the matter be taken out of his hands, no one ever knew; the secret was that he was worn out with misery and unrest. Body and soul had become incapable of further exertion, even of further suffering. The only solution possible to his strained nerves and strength was this—that some one else should do it for him. For he was incapable of anything more.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE GREAT SCHEME.

While this strange meeting had gone on, a telegraph boy—that familiar, common-place little sprite of the streets—had made his way to John’s door; and, unnoticed by the agitated group, had been directed by Mrs. Short putting out her head and shaking it sadly all the time by way of protest—to where John stood. This little bit of side action had been going on for a minute or two without anyone observing it; and it was not till the group had broken up and John and his sister were standing together, incapable of speech and almost of thought, watching the others as they walked away, that the telegraph boy came up and thrust his message into John’s hand. It seemed a vulgar interruption, breaking into the tragic scene; and John stood with the envelope in his hand, with a sense that he was as much beyond the reach of any communications which could reach him in that way, as if he had come to himself in the land beyond the grave. But Susie felt differently; the interruption was to her a welcome break.

‘Look at it,’ she said, holding his arm close with a woman’s keen interest in a new event. ‘It may be something of importance.’

‘There is nothing of any importance,’ he said, in the deadly languor of exhaustion. ‘Nothing can make any difference to us now.’

‘But open it,’ said Susie.

He gave her a look of reproach. What did it matter? If the telegram had been from the Queen, it could have made no difference. Nothing could alter the fact that he was his father’s son.

‘But open it,’ Susie said again.

He tore it open in a languid way, hoping nothing, caring for nothing, in the blank of despondency and helplessness. Even the words within did not rouse him. He read and crumpled it up in his hand.

‘What is it, John?’

‘Nothing very much. They want me—in the office,’ he said.

‘In the office! That makes me think—John, why are you here at this time of day?’

‘If you mean why am I not there—— I haven’t been there for three days. I have left the office,’ said John, in the carelessness of his exhausted state.

She caught his arm again with an almost shriek of dismay.

‘Left the office! when it is all you have to look to. Oh, John, John!’

‘What did it matter? They were very unjust: they made a false accusation: and then I discovered him. I found out why they suspected me, why I have been suspected all my life—even by you and—my mother, Susie.’

‘Oh, no, John. Oh, no, no, dear John. Never, never!’ cried Susie, vehemently. ‘Mother has suffered a great deal: she can’t forget: she can’t forgive even as we do. We do, John, don’t we? We do, we do!’

‘Forgive whom? The people that had always doubted me for a reason I didn’t even know?’

His face grew stern. He could say nothing of the other, whom it was both easier and harder to forgive. Susie did not dare to enter upon that subject. She gave his arm a little pressure, and said, softly,

‘Since they send for you, you will go, John? Oh, go! You must not throw everything away, because——’

‘Because—it does not matter to anybody, least of all to me. I’ll go away to America, or somewhere, and take that poor wretch, that light-hearted wretch——’

‘Oh, John, he is your father.’

‘I know: can you say anything worse? are you trying what is the hardest thing you can say?’

‘Oh, John!’ said poor Susie, and began to cry.

Her confusion, and trouble, and anxiety, not unmixed with a little exasperation, too, were not to be expressed in any other way.

He relented a little at the sight of her tears.

‘I think there’s no heart left in me,’ he said. ‘I make everybody that cares for me unhappy. You, out here in the street, and there, inside—Elly.’

‘Elly!’

Susie’s astonishment was so great that she could not find another word to say.

‘She does not cry,’ said poor John. ‘She has come to stand by us. She is braver than I am. She’s so innocent, Susie, she doesn’t know. If she knew better, if she knew the world, she wouldn’t come to me, a poor, shamed, and ruined man, a convict’s son.’

‘Oh, John!’ There being no answer to make to this, Susie recurred to the former subject. He had still the telegram crushed in his hand. ‘That is not about ruin and shame,’ she said. ‘John, tell me, what does it say?’

‘I scarcely know what it says,’ he answered, with an impatient sigh. And then suddenly, in a moment, by some strange miracle of the nerves and brain, he seemed to see the message glow out in big letters of flame quivering through the air, obliterating the shabby walls and long lines of the pavement, throwing a strange light upon everything—till they got inside his very soul, and obliterated everything else that was there. Words which were not divine, nor even very elevated that they should have moved him so. ‘Scheme very promising, your presence indispensable.’ What did that mean? He knew very well what it meant—that all was not over, as he thought, that life and hope still remained. What did he care about such empty, impotent things? But so it was. All was not over, though he insisted within himself that it was so. The story of May and his little boy might, after all, be but a fairy-tale that had no sequence or meaning. And he was John Sandford, and the ball was at his foot once more.

John scarcely knew how he got to the office on that eventful morning; but somehow, by force or sweet persuasion, or something that drew him in spite of himself, he went, leaving the ladies still in his parlour, where, in the sickness of his heart, he could not see them again. The sight of Elly was more than he could bear. It was easier to face the Barretts, and anything they could say to him, than to look at Elly in her ignorance and certainty, in her all-confident love and courage. She to stand by him! who would not be permitted to soil her gentle name and stainless record by the most distant contact with his shame and wretchedness. Elly! her very name gave him a sick pang of mingled sweetness and misery. To think she should be ready to do all that for him—and to think that in honour and justice he ought never to see her again!

He found the Barretts, father and son, awaiting him with apparent anxiety. They both looked up eagerly when he opened the door, and Mr. William came forward, holding out his hand.

‘Sit down, Sandford. My father and I wish to have a little talk with you. We are all sorry for the misunderstanding that occurred when you were here last.’

‘I don’t think there was any misunderstanding. Mr. Barrett told me that I was doing what he always expected, when I behaved like a traitor and liar.’

‘It was all a mistake, Sandford. I give you my word it was all a mistake. Father, you had better speak for yourself.’

‘I withdraw what I said, if I said that,’ said the old gentleman. ‘Perhaps I have been prejudiced. My opinion is that children are what their parents make them: but circumstances alter cases. And I hear from William——’

‘The fact is,’ said the junior partner, laying his hand upon the papers on the table, ‘that this is a most remarkable scheme of yours, Sandford.’

In whatsoever depths a man may be, to have his work or his invention praised will make his heart jump. Suddenly it seemed to John as if a great cloud, which had enveloped the world, opened and rolled aside, and out from behind it, in all the splendour of day, appeared for a moment the smiling blue. He thought that cloud and darkness had been the shadow of his father; but that it was not this alone was evident suddenly now—if only for a moment. He did not say anything in reply, but drew a long breath.

‘Spender & Diggs,’ continued Mr. William Barrett, ‘like idiots as they are, tell Prince that they can’t make head or tale of it: that it’s mixed up with clever things and nonsense; and that they have sent it back.’

‘The man,’ said John, with a stammering in his voice which his late masters thought was due to some sense of delinquency; ‘the man who copied my papers, and who took them without my knowledge, went for them yesterday and demanded them back.’

‘Ah, that explains—! Well, Sandford, most likely we were wrong altogether. I find a great deal that is admirable in your scheme. We see business in it,’ said Mr. William, rubbing his hands. ‘We see money in it. We see our way to making a great thing of it; that’s the fact, Sandford. We never meant you to take our remonstrance as bitterly as you did, you know: never. Things looked bad. It looked like an ugly piece of business—it looked like——’

‘Put it in plain words,’ said John, roused to all his old indignation, and using involuntarily the words his navvies might have used. ‘You thought it as mean a dirty trick as ever was played?’

Mr. William Barrett paused a little and then he burst into a laugh which carried off a good deal of annoyance and something like shame.

‘We needn’t quarrel about words,’ he said, ‘but I never believed it in my heart. I looked for some explanation from you that would clear it up at once, for I knew you were not the man to do a dirty trick. But I could get nothing out of you, not even when I went to your rooms that time, and found you involved deeper and deeper.’

‘When did you come to my rooms?’ said John, looking at him blankly.

‘Sandford,’ said the younger Barrett, ‘look here, my good fellow, you’re young and you must be careful. Whatever you have been doing, it must have been worse than an ordinary spree.’

John stared at him for a moment without comprehending: and then he answered; with a kind of smile,

‘Yes, it was much worse than an ordinary—spree.’

‘If it were not that I never knew you to do anything of the kind before—— Yes, I was there; you had two men with you, and I didn’t like the looks of them. Now, look here: I didn’t understand then, and I don’t inquire now, what was the matter; you’ve always been a steady fellow so far as we have known; you’ll have to be so more than ever, mind you, if you go into this big thing. The thing’s so big that it will make your fortune—with the help our experience can give you—and if it’s accepted, as I have little doubt it will be. But you’ll have to be careful. Bad company and bad hours, and that sort of thing, will never do for a rising man.’

John made no reply. Bad company! yes, it had been bad company. It was hard to sit quietly under an imputation which went so entirely against all the traditions of his life, but it was better perhaps that they should think so than that they or anyone should know the truth.

The elder Mr. Barrett shook his solemn head like a wise old sheep, with his white hair and beard.

‘Depend upon it,’ he said, ‘without good principles, no man ever did anything. Clever notions are all very well, but without good principles——’

‘It’s well to have the notions and the principle too,’ said the junior partner, interrupting hastily. ‘Here are some jottings I have put on paper, Sandford. You can run your eye over them. That’s what, in case your plan should be accepted, we would propose. You had better think it well over and consult your friends: and in the meantime make use of any assistance you want in the office to put it all in right form. If you will take my advice, you will lose no time.’

John looked over the paper put into his hand with a dimness in his eye and a throbbing in his head, as if all the machinery that would be wanted in the work had suddenly been set going in his brain. It clanged, and whirred, and rang as if all the great wheels were going and the pistons falling, and every motive power in action; and then there suddenly rolled out before him like a panorama the future life which he had planned and hoped, the great works in which his mind should be the directing force, and all the industries that depended thereupon. It was not, perhaps, what the youthful dreamer would ordinarily think a romantic picture. He seemed to see all the great workshops, the men in the foundries in the glare of their red furnaces, the brickworks, the regiments of excavators on the soil, a whole busy world of men, with plenty and prosperity around them. He saw all this in one lightning flash. This was what had set his imagination soberly aflame when he was a boy. This was the lighthouse that Elly had shaped among the boundless possibilities of life in Mr. Cattley’s study. Elly! Ah! that drove away his dream in a moment, and brought him back to himself, standing in a great confusion of being in Mr. Barrett’s office, studying the paper—the paper which was only half visible to him, which made fortune and favour sure.

‘I’ll take to-day,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can settle to anything to-day.’

They shook hands with him, even the old sheep, looking out with his white locks with an immovable face still distrustful of John, yet compelled to that complaisance; and he went out with that in his pocket—that which proved his early dreams to be real, which was the test and touchstone of his value in the eyes of those who had been his masters, and were best able to judge. He went out, forgetting everything else that had happened, taking up for the moment his life where he had dropped it a week before. A week ago he would have taken that paper to the family at the rectory, and the humbleness of his origin—his origin, which was so respectable, yet not on the level of the Spencers—would have been forgotten. Again for one moment more the elation of his success got into John’s brain. Again he trod on air. He thought, his brain all dizzy with the sudden rapture, of showing it all to Elly, making her understand. She would not understand, but she would think she did, in her heart, if not in her brain, and would jump to the delight of it, and all that would follow. They would say to each other that this was the lighthouse, the first idea that had struck their youthful fancy, Elly’s lighthouse, which had caught John’s imagination in its earliest dawning, and flashed at last into this great thing.

The young man in his misery had a revelation, a vision of overpowering sweetness and delight. Without that spark of divine light from her, he said to himself, it would never have been, this great work, which he knew would bring comfort and well-being over a whole district, and make his name famous, and bring many a blessing: his name; but they should know, everybody should know that by himself he never would have thought of it, that it was Elly who had been the first. How could he let the world know that it was Elly who was the first—not, indeed, to think of the Thames Valley and its drainage, or how to make an end of the floods, she who could not, God bless her, manage her algebra even, or work out a problem to save her life—but only to light up the thoughts that were good for that sort of thing, to light the first divine beacon of which all lighthouses were only the development? He was very young in spite of all his maturity and experience; and for one blissful moment, nay hour, this elation and rapture took possession of his soul, and made him forget the horrible passage through which he had gone, and all the bitter realities around him. He floated once more into a world of light and brightness, and boundless hope and enthusiasm. All the more heavenly, for the depth of despair in which he had been dwelling, was the glory of this, the confidence, the anticipation of everything that was best both in work and in life, the happiness of carrying it all out, the delight of talking it over with Elly, explaining it all to her day by day. She would not understand, not a bit, he said to himself, with tears of pleasure in his eyes; but it would come to the same thing: for she would understand him and what he wanted, and it would be her work as well as his—Elly’s lighthouse, of which the foundations were laid in Mr. Cattley’s study long ago.

When suddenly, in the midst of all these delightful thoughts, John felt himself struck down as if by a great stone, as if it were some falling meteor, compounded of infernal elements, though coming from the skies. It came down, down with the straight and cruel velocity which is given by natural laws, down to the very bottom of his heart. Suddenly there seemed to appear before him old Barrett shaking his head, and his own mother, with her suspicious, troubled eyes, watching him, looking for evil: and the reason of it all. The convict’s son! with the whole world watching to see when the leaven would break out in him, his father’s nature, the instincts of the criminal—and even his friends standing apart in horror and pity, broken-hearted, yet holding his shame aloof. What could they do but hold him aloof? And Elly, Elly, who wanted to stand by him, who had come to give him her support, to be his champion, his stainless white protector! He heard himself laugh in the street like a madman, laugh aloud with misery, he who had been nearly weeping with pleasure. God help him, for what could man do for him; or woman either, or fool, or angel—for was not she all these together, she who could dream of the possibility of standing up for him still, standing by him, and he his father’s son?

CHAPTER XVII.

ELLY’S PLEDGE.

Mrs. Egerton and Elly were aware, but vaguely, that something was happening outside while they sat half frightened, bewildered, not knowing what to think, in John’s little parlour, dismayed by the sudden appearance and disappearance of the man who was his father, who had looked at them with that deprecating, good-humoured face, unlike a criminal, and who yet was—something that they shuddered to think of. They sat there silent, listening, waiting for John to come back; but they forgave him that he did not come back. Everything was so disorganised, so out of gear, that all the ordinary laws seemed suspended, and even Mrs. Egerton forgave, indeed scarcely thought of, this breach of all the rules of courtesy. Poor boy! whatever he had done, she would have forgiven him. She was sorry for him, sorry to the bottom of her heart. And fortunately they neither of them knew that Susie had been there, and had fled, afraid to meet them, not knowing what to say to them. Both pride and honour had kept them from looking out, from spying upon John, or watching what he was doing. They had sat, as it were, behind a veil, and only known vaguely and half by instinct that another scene in this painful little drama was going on outside. And then silence had come, the sound of the voices had died away, and they had still sat looking at each other with everything stopped and arrested round them, not knowing what to think. It was some time before they made up their minds to go, leaving the address of the house in which they were in the habit of staying when they came to town to see the pictures or do a little shopping such as ladies from the country love. But all these pleasant usages were forgotten in the excitement of this crisis.

‘Tell Mr. Sandford we shall expect him as soon as he can come to us.’

‘Oh, I will, ma’am, I will,’ cried Mrs. Short, ‘for he have need of his friends, that I’m sure of. He do have need of his true friends.’

Mrs. Egerton was too much subdued and anxious even to take advantage of this opportunity to inquire into John’s habits and mode of life, which for a lady accustomed to manage a parish was wonderful, and showed how serious the emergency was. And then they got into their cab and drove away.

These two ladies had come to London in a flush of tender impulse and kindness, even Mrs. Egerton, who was an impulsive woman, forgetting all her objections—which, indeed, from the beginning her heart had fought against. And the thought of John in what seemed an abyss of despair which had roused Elly to a swift determination to suffer no more interference, to go to him, stand by him, marry him even in spite of himself, and whether he wished it or not, had also swept all prudential sentiments out of the warm heart of her aunt. They had rushed like a couple of doves flying to save some wounded eagle, like a couple of generous, inconsequent women, determined that there was nothing in heaven or earth that could not be overcome by their support and love. He had been met by some sudden obstacle, perhaps, to the success he had dreamt of—good heavens, what did that matter? And as for his father, his father, what could he have to do with it? Even now, when they knew all, though the elder woman had met the revelation with a shriek of dismay, Elly remained stolidly, stupidly unconscious of any force in it. It did not affect her intelligence at all: if it was anything, it was a reason for standing more determinedly, more constantly, by Jack, who wanted support—that was all. It was not even that she would not permit herself to see the force of it: she did not, actually. It passed by her intelligence, and did not touch her. The more reason to stand by Jack! that was all that Elly saw.

But as they drove along in the dingy cab, through the endless shabby streets, in the silence which was rendered more complete by the din and tumult of London round them, a better understanding came to both—even Elly began to find a tremor seize her. Her mind began to work in spite of herself. The moment that crime comes near, within the circle where honour has been always a foregone conclusion, and any infringement of the law a thing impossible, is a moment unspeakable, indescribable. It is bad enough when vice shows itself among all the pure traditions of an honourable family: but crime—something that cannot be excused by the force of temptation, that cannot be wept over as affecting the sinner only, who is nobody’s enemy but his own—but a breach of honesty, a crime against the law and against the rights of others! There are sins which are a thousand times more deeply guilty than theft or even forgery, but they are in a different category. Trial, conviction, the contamination of a prison, the felon’s obliteration from personality and right, make up a horror and shame of the actual, undeniable, matter-of-fact kind, which the dullest feel, and which affect the innocent with a sensation like a nightmare.

In the silence of their long drive Mrs. Egerton repeated now and then to herself, ‘A convict!’ with a shudder. Anything but that; if the father thus suddenly discovered had been a beggar, if he had been a poor broken-down drunkard, a reprobate! There are drunkards and reprobates, alas! everywhere, whom the best of families have to put aside into some corner, and veil with silence or with pitiful excuses, with abandonment or sacrificing love. But a convict cannot be hid. A man may live the purest life, he may win everything that energy and even genius can secure, but at the end of all the meanest may rise up and say, ‘Behold the convict’s son,’ and cover even a hero with shame. Imagination could not go so far as that in picturing the evils that are possible. Poor Jack! Poor boy! with his father a convict—a convict! The horror of it was so great and terrible that nothing was possible, save to say over and over these words of shame.

And Elly felt it still more deeply in her way. It seemed to ache all over her, this consciousness which she could never shake off, never forget. She took it for her own without doubt or question, embraced it, drew it close to her, with all the abandon of youth. It seemed to Elly that nobody would ever forget it, that it would be blazoned on Jack, and all who belonged to them, on their name, their dwelling, and, above all, on those great things that he was to do. And, of course, he could not give up his father; he must live with them, be their daily companion, this man who had spent years and years in a prison. She was silent, too, with a chill upon all her thoughts. No idea of deserting him ever came into Elly’s mind. She accepted the misery as for her too. And all the accounts she had ever heard of the cruelty of the world in visiting disgrace upon the innocent came into her mind. Could they live it down? she asked herself, or must Jack, poor Jack, dear Jack, with only her to console him, live under this shadow, this awful, undeserved shadow, all his life?

Things were better when they got to their rooms, where all was quiet, as quiet as a London street can ever be; and where, as they sat down facing each other with nothing to do, the irrepressible controversy broke forth:

‘Your father will never, never hear of it,’ Mrs. Egerton said. ‘Never! Even I myself, Elly—— A convict—how could we let you connect yourself with a convict? And your father and brother both clergymen! Percy would die first. I am sure he would see you die first. And even your father: your father—can be very decided when he takes a thing into his head.’

‘You said so before, Aunt Mary. You said you never would consent; but you talk now as if you would have consented; as if you had consented.’

‘Ah, that was very different!’ Mrs. Egerton said. And in her heart Elly felt that it was different, oh, how different! So different, that even Elly herself felt with a shudder that something was before her quite other than love and happiness. There would still be love, oh, more than ever! but bitter with pain and shame.

It was the afternoon when John came to them. They perceived at once, with their quick, feminine habit of reading the face and its expression, that some change had occurred since the morning. Elly rushed to meet him, when he entered, with both her eager hands held out, but John turned from her, shaking his head with sorrowful self-control. He came and sat down opposite Mrs. Egerton. And there followed a moment in which no one spoke. Mrs. Egerton lifted up her hands, and clasped them together with the natural eloquence of restrained emotion.

‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘oh, my poor boy!’

Pity, tenderness, reluctance, the inexorable impossible were in her looks. It could not be, it could not be; and yet it broke her heart to say so; in such moments there is little need of words.

‘I want to tell you,’ he said. ‘I want to show you——’ He took Mr. Barrett’s paper from his pocket, and spread it out before them: the figures on it were like hieroglyphics in the women’s eyes. ‘This is what I hoped for,’ he said, ‘when I left Edgeley that day—— I don’t know how long ago, it might be a century. My great scheme, that I had all my heart in, is to be carried out. It will bring me a fortune: it is a great work, a work any man might be proud to do. I have got my foot on the ladder, sure. It is not mere hope any longer, but sure, as sure as anything that is mortal can be.’

‘Oh, Jack!’ cried Elly, rushing to his side once more.

‘I am very glad, Jack,’ said Mrs. Egerton, with a trembling voice, ‘very glad, very glad, for you—but, oh, my poor boy——’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Are you glad, indeed? that’s very good of you. I’m not glad, not a bit. It doesn’t matter. I’ll work at it all the same, but I don’t care. It’s the same thing to me whether it goes on or whether it stops. You need not shake your head, for I know—I know it makes no difference. But I thought I must come and tell you. I am going to make my fortune: but it does not matter to anyone in the wide world, and I don’t care.’

‘Jack,’ said Elly, standing by his side, ‘have you made up your mind that you will pay no attention to what I think or what I say?’

He looked at her in such a bewildering passion of misery and hopelessness that all expression seemed to have gone out of his eyes.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I can’t, I can’t—even if you would.’ Then he paused, drawing a breath which was half choked by something hysterical in his throat. ‘But I had to come and tell you. It’s what we used to talk of long ago. It’s—it’s the lighthouse, Elly!’ he cried, with a sudden sob which all the manhood of twenty-one could not restrain, and buried his face in his hands.

She flung her arms round him, bent down over him, holding his bowed head to her breast. She was half-sister, half-mother, protector, guardian, as well as his love. Tender, domestic affection, unabashed, as well as the strong passion of the woman, shone in the eyes with which she turned to the weeping spectator.

‘Do you think you or anyone will ever part me from Jack?’ she said.

‘Oh, children, do not break my heart! Your father will never, never consent—and Percy—and everybody who knows. Jack, for pity’s sake, tell her, tell her! She will listen, perhaps, to you.’

It was a minute at least, a long, long time, before John raised himself, detaching those dear arms.

‘Elly,’ he said, ‘I am my father’s son. People have distrusted me all my life, and I never knew why. They may distrust me yet, and I will know the reason, and God knows what it may make of me. No, I know that your father will not consent.’

‘And a girl’s own mind is nothing,’ she cried, indignant, ‘I know you all think so, whatever you may say.’

John turned to Mrs. Egerton with a piteous look.

‘It is you that must tell her,’ he said, ‘how can I do it? I’m young, too. I only know you mustn’t decide, Elly, at your age. You don’t know the world; you don’t know what you’re doing. If everything had been straightforward with me, you are still above me, gentlefolks, while I am nobody. You said so——’

‘Oh, Jack, Jack!’ said Mrs. Egerton, as if this was a reproach.

‘Everything is straightforward with you,’ said Elly. She had drawn away from him with a little movement of pride. ‘But,’ she said, ‘it is true enough. I don’t know the world, and neither do you. Perhaps we are too young. If you say that, or if Aunt Mary says that, I will not make any objection, Jack—how should I? I don’t want to force you to—to have me before the time——’

The extreme youth of both gave them a simplicity of words and good faith which elder lovers could not have ventured on. He accepted what she said in all seriousness and humility.

‘But there’s more than that,’ he said. ‘Oh, Elly, I can’t deny it, I can’t disguise it, there’s more than that. If it was only that we were too young! But everything is against us. And how could I, loving you all my life, owing everything to you as I do——’

‘You owe me nothing, nothing, Jack! It is all the other way.’

‘Ah, don’t say that, for I know better. I was just thinking—it’s all you, Elly. I should have gone into an office, or wherever they pleased to put me. I should not have minded. It was all your lighthouse. And to think,’ said Jack, as if that furnished him with a new argument, ‘that I should bring you to shame! Never, Elly; I would rather die.’ He paused a moment and shook his head. ‘It’s no good talking of dying, is it, at my age? I’d rather—live alone as I’ve always done, and do my work the best I could, and agree that there was nothing more for me in this world.’

‘Jack!’ cried Elly, with a kind of shriek of exasperation and tenderness and contradiction; and then she turned from him, her eyes flaming bright under the dew of tears, her cheeks like two deep roses, her mouth quivering, smiling, touched with fine scorn. She wanted some one to vent her loving wrath, her disdain of all mean arguments, her boundless, fiery indignation upon. ‘Aunt Mary,’ she cried, ‘how dare you to say so, or to think it? My father is a gentleman! He may not be much as a parson—it’s not for me to say: but he’s as fine a gentleman as Chaucer’s knight. Say all the bad things you please, you two, I know what’s in papa! He will no more forbid me to marry John than he would turn against the poor boy himself for what’s no fault of his. But I won’t do it now,’ Elly added, magnanimously, breaking into a laugh, which much resembled crying. ‘Not now. I’ll wait till I’m one-and-twenty. And then I’ll do it with my father’s full consent, whatever you may do or say, you two!’

With which defiance flung at them, Elly majestically marched out of the room, leaving them to conclude the conference together. What she did after, whether she did anything but retire to her room and cry, burying her face in the coverlet of her bed where she had thrown herself, no one can say; for nobody ever knew from Elly what torrents of tears came after that thunderstorm, nor how she trembled, and wondered, and doubted if papa were really so noble, so good, so fine a gentleman as she had asserted him to be.

‘They will never consent,’ said Mrs. Egerton, after the girl had gone, ‘Oh, Jack, I wish I could believe as she does, that my brother—— But I will not deceive you, Jack. He will never, never consent. He is a proud man, though she does not know it—there are no such proud people as these simple people. I wish, I wish I could think as she does: but I can’t, I can’t, Jack!’

‘Do you really wish it, Mrs. Egerton,’ said John, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘I could not have expected that. It is more than I had any right to hope.’

‘Did I say I wished it? I can’t tell. She and you draw the heart out of my breast. I ought not to wish it. Oh, Jack, my poor Jack, this is a dreadful thing to bear.’

He let her hand go with a deep sigh. ‘Who can feel that as I do?’ he said.

‘You; oh, but it is different with you. The man (I am sure I beg your pardon) is your father. It is your duty to put up with him: it is not for you to bring up his sins against him. But we that have nothing to do with him—Jack, oh, Jack, the cases are different! and you say yourself that Elly ought not—that she knows nothing of the world.’

It was ungenerous to appeal to what he had himself said. But he consented with a melancholy movement of his head.

‘The rector has always been very kind to me. Oh, yes, I know that’s a different thing altogether. It is not like giving me—— Mrs. Egerton, I think I had better go away, for what is the use of talking. He is my father, it is true. It is my business to put up with it, to bear it—to bear everything that follows from it—but it is hard. You can’t say but what it is hard.’

‘Oh, Jack, my poor boy! She took his hand in both of hers, and, that not being enough, bent forward and kissed him in the anguish of her sympathy. ‘But what can I say to you? I can’t deceive you. I know they will never, never consent.’

John went away, not knowing where he went, as if he were following his own funeral. He felt like that, he said to himself, sadly—the funeral of all his hopes. He had his work, but what would that be, what could it matter if he made his fortune, without Elly? And then he went on reflecting, as many a man has done before him, on the spite of fate. If this had all happened before he went to Edgeley, how much less would the misery have been! It would have been bad enough, but he could have thrown it off, and perhaps in time have forgotten it: for then Elly was but a light of his childhood faint and far-off, and had not become a necessity of his life. Why was he permitted to go and see her again, to discover all that she was to him, only to lose her for ever? For Elly had been right in what she had said in her indignation, ‘A girl’s own mind is nothing.’ Even John, though he had perfect trust in her, though for a moment he had been carried away by the flash of her resolution and certainty, did not take much comfort now from Elly’s pledge. She did not understand (how should she?) what thing it was that so lightly, so easily, she made up her mind to take upon herself. Poor John put that aside in the deep despondency that overwhelmed him. And, when his mind recurred to his momentary triumph of the morning, it but added a pang the more. To think that this success had secured the only thing that had been needed a little while ago; and, now he had got it, it was nothing. He went slowly, slowly away, following (he said to himself again) his own funeral, not able to hold up his head.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A SUSPENDED SOLUTION.

It seemed to matter very little to John that Mr. Cattley met him in the evening with what he thought good news. In the absence of anything better, it was good news. May had been very amiable, as was the manner of that hopeless but good-humoured and philosophical unfortunate. He declared that nothing on earth would induce him to injure his children by attaching himself to them: he had come back to John’s room only to return those papers which he had taken with the intention of disposing of them on his son’s account, meaning no harm. He had never meant any harm. He had intended, perhaps, to secure to himself a share of the profit, but never to harm the boy. ‘Though he’s sadly changed, if ever he was my little chap,’ he said.

Mr. Cattley did not tell Jack, but he confided to Susie that he had offered to take that smiling and gentle-mannered reprobate to live with ‘us’ in the new parish where nobody would have known. But May would not listen to any such proposal. He was very wise and foreseeing, and full of consideration.

‘There is no saying who might turn up,’ he said; ‘at the last, everything gets known; and perhaps a parson’s house would be too much for me,’ he had added, with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘I don’t know that I’m good enough for that. I might fall into temptation, don’t you know! And I couldn’t live with a blunderbuss always at my head, which would be the case if I were with that son of mine—if he is my son. And Susie would be worse, with her eyes. I remember her eyes long ago—they were harder to meet than all her mother’s talk. They’re all very good, Mr. Cattley. A man might be very happy among them; but not my kind. I’m not worthy of such company. No, I’ve got a plan of my own.’

This plan, when it was stated, was to the effect that May had made up his mind to emigrate. He thought he would go to the far West of America, or to California.

‘I don’t want to go to a place where there’s no fun,’ he avowed, candidly. ‘I want to see a little life. If I stay here, I’ll get into mischief.’

Mr. Cattley (against his own wishes) had done his best to persuade him to depart from this determination, but in vain; and finally he had been authorised to treat with the family for the passage-money of the two travellers, for Mr. Cattley had found the faithful Joe in attendance, and had not been able to persuade May that this was not a fit companion for him.

‘He has been all the company I’ve had. Perhaps he’s not fit for respectable society,’ said May, looking at the slouching ruffian with eyes that were almost affectionate, ‘but I’m not respectable myself, and why should I pretend to be better than he is? I’m not better, I’m worse, if the truth was known; for of course I know a great deal better, and ought to have avoided what was wrong, if anything is really wrong or right in this world. It depends so much on your point of view.’

‘But why should you not be respectable?’ the curate had said. ‘There is a home waiting for you, and better company than Joe.’

The unteachable, the never-to-be-convinced, shook his head. ‘Joe will suit me best,’ he said. And thus the bargain was made. He was to have a moderate allowance, his passage-money, and his outfit. He was shipped off with his friend, decently clothed, well fitted out as he desired, and disappeared into the West. When his children, half-glad, half-miserable, went to see him off, he bade them be cheerful and not fret. ‘For there is no telling when the fancy may take me, and I may turn up again,’ he said. The hearts of Susie and John sank within them at this last blessing which he flung at them over the side of the ship, which was already beginning to churn the water on her passage outward-bound. They did not see the twinkle in his eye, nor know that he meant it for a joke in the humorous simplicity of his heart.

Susie married her curate shortly after, very quietly, without any fuss, in London, an event which caused much excitement in Edgeley, but none where it took place. The Rev. Percy Spencer never mentioned it at all, or allowed that he knew of it. But he spoke of ‘that fool Cattley,’ and was so violent about the late curate’s mismanagement of the parish that even the mild rector, who never made any appearance save in extremity, took up the cudgels on behalf of the absent.

‘It will be well for you if you do half as much for the parish in your day as Cattley did in his,’ the rector said; and his son aghast at this unexpected defence ventured to say no more. Mrs. Egerton treated the matter in the contrary way. She made, perhaps, too great a joke of it, talking to everybody on the subject. ‘Such a good thing for him,’ she said, ‘going into a new place: and a good little nonentity of a wife who will adore him, which is what our good Mr. Cattley was little used to.’ But she sent the pair a wedding present, and was what Susie called very kind. This marriage was no help to Elly, however, in the arduous piece of work which she found she had before her when she got home. It made matters a little worse. It turned Percy into an open and violent foe, and it shook a little the wavering sympathy which Mrs. Egerton always accorded her. And as for the rector, whom Elly had declared her faith in, he did not respond as she had hoped. He was a true gentleman, he was as good as Chaucer’s ‘very parfit gentle knight’—he was all his daughter had claimed for him to be. But he, too, shuddered at the name of the convict. Like all the older people, he remembered May’s story, and all about him: and to permit his daughter, the quintessence of the family excellence and pride, the flower of all the kindred, to connect herself with such a race was more than Mr. Spencer’s generosity, or his kindness, or even Elly’s influence could bring him to. He retired into that stronghold of silence which is so redoubtable. He would not argue nor give his reasons; he would not enter into the abstract question. He acknowledged, or at least he did not contest, the merits of John. But, when all was said that Elly’s fervid eloquence could say, the rector remained unresponsive and unshaken.

‘One might as well try to get an answer out of a stone wall,’ Elly cried, in hot exasperation to her aunt.

‘Oh, my dear, didn’t I tell you so? I told poor Jack so and he believed me, but you would not believe me. He will never, never consent.’

‘Then he shall never, never be asked any more!’ cried Elly, in her indignation.

But this was a thing which it was not practicable to carry out. He was asked again and again, and continued to be asked until the time when Elly should come of age, and then she was determined to take her own way.

‘I am disappointed in papa,’ she wrote to John, ‘but it is not out of his heart he does it. He has not a word to say for himself. When I have showed him the question in a just light, and proved that all their objections are prejudice and nonsense, he just goes back to where he was at first and shakes his head. But never mind. In two years’ (in a year and a half—in a year—according as time went on, for this formula was repeated on several occasions) ‘I shall be of age. You cannot say that I don’t know the world or that I am too young then; and they all know what I am going to do.’

John could not refuse to take comfort from this repeated and unwavering pledge. He had plunged into the preliminaries of his work without a moment’s delay, and very soon, at an age when in England most young men are only beginning to wonder what they shall do, he found himself at the head of one of the greatest undertakings in the country, the centre of endless activity. Such advancement perhaps, everything favouring, comes sooner in his profession than in any other. But nobody, except those who had seen him grow up, suspected how young Mr. Sandford really was, and even those who did know it could scarcely believe in the accuracy of their own memory. He had always been older than his years, and the great shock he had received in the discovery of his father threw him so far apart from all the thoughts and occupations of youth, that it seems to John himself like half-a-century, that age of doubt and of misery, when everything was at its lowest ebb, before the upspringing of new hope. That grave youth matured under the fire of suffering into something like a precocious middle-age, or at least the steadiest, sternest manhood. He grew to be both respected and feared before he was five-and-twenty. And, what was curious, the resemblance to his father, which had been chiefly, perhaps, in the imagination of the elders, died completely away. He became like Mrs. Sandford in these days of strong activity and doubtful hope: not severe to his men, the multitude of work-people of all classes who now laboured under him, a whole little world of clerks, engineers, artisans, and labourers in every grade. He was not severe ever: it was said indeed that he took circumstances into consideration and tempered justice with mercy when any fault was pointed out at the office or among the men, far more than most masters do, and was slow to lose patience with any young culprit; but he looked severe, which is the same thing—nay, is better as a deterrent. The people under him were afraid of the stern look of his youthful unimpeachable virtue: whereas, if he had been as severe in fact as in looks, a natural antagonism, the protest of nature against harshness, would have speedily evolved itself.

There are some things, however, which John has not been able to do, notwithstanding his great success. He has never been able to move his mother from the position in which she has so firmly placed herself. Mrs. Sandford spoke no more of her husband than was inevitable; she never recurred to the subject with John, never mentioned it to Susie except on that one morning when Mr. Cattley was first introduced to her: but she took upon herself all the arrangements that were made by Mr. Cattley for May’s comfort, not permitting either son or daughter to interfere. Susie was proud of this fact, while John with a grudge understood it at least—that the proud woman could speak more freely to a stranger than to her children, of the man who had been the ruin of her own life. She would not see her husband, however, and never spoke of him, nor gave the least indication of any knowledge on the subject. If she was aware of the time of his departure, she made no sign of knowing it. There was no relenting in her, no affection, only a horror beyond words. And she would not allow John, when he began to grow rich, to remove her from the laborious post which it seemed no longer right that the mother of a rising man, with plenty of money at his disposal, should continue to hold. She smiled at the suggestion, and dismissed it with a wave of her hand. To return to the little house at Edgeley among all the village people, which was what John in youthful ignorance, notwithstanding his precocious middle-age, would have liked her to do, was indeed impossible. What would she have done there? unless, indeed, the cholera had broken out, or some tremendous epidemic, when she could have organised hospitals. John, however, here let us allow, with a great want of perception, was annoyed that she should not have accepted this proposal of his, and retired and given herself repose after her hard-working life. But Mrs. Sandford was not one of the people who long for rest. ‘The wages of going on’ was what pleased her most, and work, and her own way. John was not pleased; it would have soothed him to think that his mother was resting and doing nothing in that little house, which he kept up always with an obstinate determination that it should be, if not a grateful retirement for anyone, at least the shrine of departed innocence and peace.