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THE SON OF HIS FATHER.
VOL. I.
NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS
AT ALL THE LIBRARIES
CATERINA. By the author of ‘Lauterdale.’ 3 vols.
JACOBI’S WIFE. By ADELINE SERGEANT, author of ‘No Saint,’ ‘An Open
Foe,’ ‘Beyond Recall,’ &c. 3 vols.
ON THE SCENT. By LADY MARGARET MAJENDIE, author of ‘Dita,’ ‘Once
More,’ ‘Sisters in Law,’ &c. 1 vol.
A GREAT PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP. By W. DUTTON BURRARD. 3 vols.
THE GOLDEN HOPE: A ROMANCE OF THE DEEP. By W. CLARK RUSSELL, author
of ‘A Sea Queen,’ &c. 3 vols.
HURST & BLACKETT, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
THE SON OF HIS FATHER
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF
“IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS,” “AGNES,”
“THE LAIRD OF NORLAW,”
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1887.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHEN HE WAS A CHILD 1
II. WHEN HE WAS A CHILD (CONTINUED) 18
III. HOW HE WAS TO BEGIN LIFE 35
IV. JOHN’S CHOICE 53
V. AN ADVENTURE 71
VI. GRANDMAMMA 89
VII. COMRADES 106
VIII. A CALL FOR EMILY 123
IX. JOHN’S LETTER 139
X. THE REPLY 156
XI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH 174
XII. EMILY 192
XIII. WHAT THE PARISH THOUGHT 210
XIV. MR. SANDFORD’S DAUGHTER 229
XV. A VISIT TO THE FOUNDRY 247
XVI. RESEARCH 264
XVII. MOTHER AND SON 283
XVIII. FAREWELL 301
THE SON OF HIS FATHER.
CHAPTER I.
WHEN HE WAS A CHILD.
‘Don’t say anything before the boy.’
This was one of the first things he remembered. In the confused
recollections of that early age, he seemed to have been always hearing
it: said between his mother and his sister, afterwards between his
grandparents, even by strangers one to another, always, ‘Don’t say
anything before the boy.’ What it was, about which nothing was to be
said, he had very little idea, and, indeed, grew up to be a man before,
in the light of sudden revelations, he began to put these scattered
gleams together, and see what they meant. They confused his little soul
from the beginning, throwing strange lights and stranger shadows across
his path, keeping around him a sort of unreality, a sense that things
were not as they seemed.
His name was John in those days: certainly John--of that there was no
doubt: called Johnnie, when people were kind, sometimes Jack--but John
he always was. He had a faint sort of notion that it had not always been
John Sandford. But this was not clear in his mind. It was all confused
with the rest of the broken reminiscences which concerned the time in
which everybody was so anxious that nothing should be said before the
boy.
In those days his recollection was of a little common-place house--a
house in a street--with two parlours, one behind the other, kitchens
below, bed-rooms above, the most ordinary little house. There was a
little garden behind, in which he played; and in which sometimes he was
vaguely conscious of being shut out on purpose to play, and doing so in
an abortive, unwilling way which took all the pleasure out of it.
Sometimes he only sat down and wondered, not even pretending to amuse
himself, until a butterfly flew past and roused him, or his little
spade showed itself temptingly at hand. At seven one is easily beguiled,
whatever weight there may be on one’s spirit. But now and then he would
stop and look up at the windows, and see some one moving indoors, and
wonder again what it was that the boy was not intended to know.
At this period of John’s career, his father was alive--and he was fond
of his father. Sometimes papa would be very late, and would go up to
John’s little bed, and bring him down in his night-gown only half awake,
seeing the candles like stars through a mist of sleep and wonder, till
he was roused to the fullest wakefulness by cakes and sweetmeats, and
every kind of dainty which papa had brought. John became quite used to
all the varying experiences of this mid-night incident--the reluctance
to be roused up, the glory of going downstairs, the delight of the
feast. He sat on his father’s knee, with his little bare feet wrapped in
a shawl, and his eyes shining as brightly as the candles, munching and
chattering. He got quite used to it. He used to feel uncomfortable
sometimes in the morning, and heard it said that something was very bad
for him, and that the child’s stomach, as well as his morals, would be
spoiled. Johnnie knew as little about his stomach as about his morals.
And he had a way of being well which greatly interfered with all these
prognostications. He was a very sturdy little boy.
He had a consciousness through all these scenes of his mother’s face,
very pale, without any smile in it, showing serious, like the moon,
among those lights. She gave him no cake or oranges, but it was she who
wrapped up his feet in the shawl, and took care of him in the morning
when his little head sometimes ached. Papa was never visible in the
morning. Johnnie was sometimes a little afraid of him, though he was so
jolly in these mid-night visits. The boy was frightened when he was
being carried downstairs, and clung very close, though he did not say
anything about his fears. Papa would lurch sometimes on those occasions,
like the steamboat on which John once had gone to sea. The memory of the
lighted table, the father who always made a noise, laughing, talking,
sometimes singing, always so fond of his little boy; but mamma
dreadfully quiet, scarcely saying anything, and the lights of the
candles, not at all like the candles we have now-a-days, but big, and
shining like stars, never faded from his memory, even when he had grown
a man.
In the day-time, it was rather dull. Susie was five years older than he,
going on for twelve, and knowing everything. She got to saying, ‘Go
away, child,’ when he asked her to come and play. As he remembered her,
she never played, but was always at her needlework or something, almost
worse than mamma--and there would be long conversations between those
two in the winter’s afternoon, while he was playing at coach and horses,
made with chairs, in the other room, the back parlour, which was the
place where they had their meals. Sometimes when he got tired of the
obstinacy of Dobbin, who was the big mahogany arm-chair, and who would
have his own way, and jibbed abominably, he would catch a glimpse
through the half-opened folding-doors of those two over the fire. They
always spoke very low, and sometimes cried--and, if he came a little
near, would give each other a frightened look and say, ‘Not a word
before the boy.’ Johnnie’s ears got very quick to those words--he heard
them when they were whispered, and sometimes he heard them through his
sleep. Could they be talking of anything naughty, or what was it so
necessary that he must not know?
There came a time at last when all this confused mystery came to a
climax. There were hasty comings and goings, men at the door whose heavy
loud knockings filled the house with dismay, stealthy entrances in the
dark: for Johnnie a succession of troubled dreams, of figures flitting
into his room in the middle of night, but never papa in the old jovial
way to carry him down to the parlour with its staring candles. No one
thought of such indulgences now. If they were wrong, they were all over.
When he awoke he saw, half awake and half dreaming, sometimes his
father, though he had been told he was away, sometimes his mother; other
strange visitors flitting like ghosts, all confusion and disorder, the
night turned into day. He was himself kept in corners in the daylight,
or sent into the garden to play, or shut up in the back parlour with his
toys. It seemed to Johnnie that they must think he wanted nothing but
those toys, and never could understand that to play without any
companions, without any wish for playing, was impossible; but he was a
dutiful child, and tried to do what he was told. It was at this strange
and uncomfortable period that he learned how nice it is to have a book,
after you have exhausted all your solitary inventions and played at
everything you know. The fascination of the books; however, added to the
confusion of everything. Johnnie mixed up Robinson Crusoe with the
agitating phantasmagoria of his little life. He thought that perhaps it
was from the savages his father was hiding,--for he was sure that it was
his father he saw in those visions of the night, though every one said
he had gone away. Then there came a lull in the agitation, and silence
fell upon the house. Mamma and Susie cried a great deal, and were
together more than ever, but Johnnie’s dreams stopped, and he saw no
more in the night through his half-closed eyes the flitting figures and
moving lights.
Then there came a strange scene very clearly painted upon his memory,
though it was not for many years after that he was able to piece it in
to his life. Johnnie had been left alone in the house with the maid, the
only servant the family had, who was a simple-minded country woman, and
kind to the child, though not perhaps in a very judicious way. She was
kind in the way of giving him sweetmeats and pieces of cake, and the
remains of dainty dishes which upstairs were not supposed to be
wholesome for Johnnie, ‘as if the dear child shouldn’t have everything
of the best,’ Betty said. On this day Betty was full of excitement, not
capable of staying still in one place, she herself told him. She gave
him his dinner, which he had to eat all by himself, a singular but not
on the whole a disagreeable ceremony, since Betty was about all the
time, very anxious that he should eat, and amusing him with stories.
‘Master Johnnie,’ she said, when the meal was over, ‘it do be very dull
staying in the house, with nothing at all to do. Missus won’t be back
till late at night. I know she can’t, poor dear. It would be more
cheerful if you and me went out for a walk.’
‘But how could you leave the house, Betty, all alone by itself?’ said
the little boy.
‘It won’t run away, never fear, nor nobody couldn’t steal the tables and
chairs; and there ain’t nothing else left to steal, more’s the pity,’
said Betty. ‘We’ll go afore it’s dark, and it’ll cheer us up a bit: for
I can’t sit still, not me, more than if I was one of the family: though
you don’t know nothing about that, you poor little darlin’, Lord bless
you.’
Betty, it is to be feared, would have told him readily enough, but the
child was so used to hearing that he must not be told that he asked no
questions. To go out, however, was certainly more cheerful than to pass
another wintry afternoon in the back parlour without seeing anyone but
Betty. He allowed himself to be buttoned up in his little thick blue
topcoat of pilot cloth, which made him as broad as he was long, and to
have his comforter wound round his neck, though he did not much like
that; and then they sailed forth, Betty putting in her pocket the great
key of the house door. She did not talk much, being occupied profoundly
with interests of her own, of which Johnnie knew nothing, but she led
him along past lines of cheerful shops all shining with Christmas
presents: for Christmas was coming on, and there was an unusual traffic
in the toy shops and the book shops, and all the places where pleasant
things for Christmas were. Johnnie stopped and gazed, dragging at her
hand, and wondered if any of the picture-books would fall to his share.
His mother did not buy many pleasant things for him; but if papa came
back he never forgot Johnnie; he thought to himself that surely for
Christmas papa would come back--unless indeed the savages had got him.
But a certain big policeman strolled by, while this thought passed
through the child’s mind, and, even at seven years old, one cannot feel
that savages are ineffectual creatures where such policemen are. But the
thought of papa gave Johnnie a sense of mystery and alarm, since his
father had disappeared in the day-time, only to be seen fitfully through
half-shut eyes at night.
As the afternoon wore on, and the lights were lighted in all the shop
windows, Johnnie thought this better than ever; but Betty was no longer
disposed to let him gaze. She said it was time to go home, and then led
him away through little dark and dingy streets which he did not know,
and which tired him both in his little legs and in his mind. At last
they came to a row of houses which ran along one side of a street, the
other side of which was occupied by a large and lofty building. Here
Betty paused a moment pondering.
‘Master Johnnie,’ she said at last, ‘if you’ll be a good boy and don’t
say a word to anyone, I’ll take you to see the most wonderful place you
ever saw, something which you will never, never forget all your life.’
‘What is it, Betty?’ asked Johnnie.
‘Oh, you would not understand if I was to tell you its name. But it’s
something that you will always remember, and be glad you went there. But
you must never, never tell; for if you were to tell anyone your mamma
would be angry, and it’s not known what she would do to me.’
‘I will never tell,’ said Johnnie, upon which Betty gave him a kiss and
called him ‘a poor darlin’, as knew nothing,’ and knocked at the door
before which they were standing, and took him up a long, long narrow
stair. Johnnie saw nothing of any importance when he was taken into a
little ordinary room at the top, where two women were sitting beside a
little fire, where a kettle was boiling and the table set all ready for
tea.
‘This is the poor little boy,’ Betty said, after a while: and both the
women looked at him, and patted him on the head, and said, ‘Poor little
gentleman,’ and that he must have his tea first. He did not mind having
his tea, for he was tired with his walk, and the bread and butter they
gave him was sprinkled thinly over with little sweetmeats, very little
tiny things, red and white, which were quite new to Johnnie. He was used
to jam and honey and other things of this kind, but to eat bread and
butter sprinkled with sugar-plums was quite a novelty. While he was busy
in this agreeable way, one of the women put out the candles and drew up
the blind from the window. And then Johnnie saw the wonderful thing
which he was never to forget all his life.
Out of the little dark room there was a view into a great hall, lighted
up and crammed full of people all sitting round and round in endless
lines. Even in church he had never seen so many people together before.
Some were seated in red dresses quite high up where everybody could see
them, but the others were quite like people at church. It was very
strange to see all that assembly, busy about something, sitting in rows
and looking at each other, and not a word to be heard. Johnnie gazed and
eat his bread and butter with the sugar-plums, and was not quite sure
which was the most wonderful.
‘What are they doing?’ he asked Betty. But Betty only put her arms round
him and began to sob and cry.
‘Oh, bless the child, Lord bless the child! Oh listen to him, the little
innocent.’
He did not like to be held to Betty’s breast, nor to be wept over in
that unpleasant way. He shook himself free, and said to the other women,
‘Will you tell me? What are they doing all staring at each other.’
‘It’s a trial, my poor dear little gentleman. They are trying a man for
his life.’
‘No, no, not for his life: though it would have been for his life a
little time ago,’ said the other.
Johnnie did not know what it meant to try a man for his life; but he
accepted the description, as a child often does, without further
inquiry, and stood and looked at it wondering. But it did not seem to
him the extraordinary thing that Betty had said it was, and presently he
began to pull at her skirts, and asked to go home.
That was a very dismal night for Johnnie. They got home, and his things
were taken off, and he returned to his toys. To see him playing in his
forlorn way, all alone, with his little serious face was too much for
Betty. But he got very tired of her caresses and attempts at
consolation. The night passed on, and bed-time came, but his mother
never came home. He sat and listened for the steps coming along the
street, and dozed and woke up again, and felt as if all the world was
empty round him, and only he and Betty left. He began to cry, but he
felt as if he dared not make a noise, and sat with his little head in
his hands trying to keep quiet, though now and then breaking out into
sobs. ‘Oh, where was mamma? Why didn’t she come? Where was Susie? What
had happened that they did not come home?’ And then the picture-books in
the shop windows, and the great place full of people, who sat all
silent under the light in those rows and rows of seats, and the little
sugar-plums upon the bread and butter, all circled confusedly in his
mind. And in the end he fell asleep, and was carried up to bed by Betty,
and undressed without knowing it; but yet even in his sleep seemed to
know and feel that there was nobody in the house but Betty and him.
Nobody but the servant and the little boy! What a strange, miserable
thing in a house that it should be left alone with only the servant and
the little boy.
Johnnie woke up suddenly out of his confused and broken sleep. His
little bed was in the dressing-room that opened into his mother’s
bedroom. He woke to hear a sound of crying and miserable voices, low and
interrupted with tears. There was a light in his mother’s room, and he
could see Susie moving about, taking off her outdoor dress, while mamma
lay back in the easy-chair before the little fire, as if she had been
taken ill. She lay there as if she could not move, till a sudden quick
pang sprang up in the little boy’s heart, and a coldness as of ice crept
over him, even in the warmth of his little bed. Could mamma, too, be
going to die? Mamma _too_? He did not know at all what he meant, and yet
he knew that something had happened which was more miserable than
anything that ever had been before. He lay still, and gazed out from
between the bars of his crib, and listened to the crying. That grown-up
people should cry was dreadful to him. He wanted to get up and creep to
his mother’s knee, and so at least belong to them, rather than be left
out in this dreadful solitude: but he knew that if he did this they
would immediately stop their talking, and tell each other that nothing
must be said before the boy. So all that he could do was to lie still,
and cry too, the silent tears dropping upon his little pillow, the sound
of the low voices, too low to be intelligible, but not to betray the
wretchedness that was in them, coming to him like sounds in a dream. Oh
what a different scene from the other awakings, when, half peevish, half
frightened out of his sleep, he had opened his eyes to the dazzling of
the candle, and seen papa’s laughing face bending over his; and then to
be carried off, with his little bare feet in papa’s hands to keep them
warm, even though there might be a lurching like the steamboat, which
frightened yet made him laugh. And then the cakes, the oranges, the sip
of papa’s wine, and, best of all, papa’s laugh, and his merry face. That
little vision out of the past got confused by-and-by with the crying and
the low talk in the next room, and then with the people sitting in the
court, and the sugar-plums on the bread and butter, till Johnnie, in a
great bewilderment of images, not knowing which was which, at last out
of that chaos once more fell asleep.