JOHN’S LETTER.
John was allowed to sit in the parlour now that he was almost a man,
after the old people had gone to bed. His own room was small, and it had
been agreed upon as a reasonable thing that he should have a place in
which he could sit and read, or write--till eleven o’clock, at least.
Mr. Sandford retired to his room at ten exactly, every night, and, since
she had been so ill--no, not ill, tired--his wife had preceded him,
going upstairs very early, in that unaccountable but quite gentle
fatigue which had come over her. All the afternoon and evening John had
been very silent, thinking--chiefly what he was to say in his letter to
his mother--but also about all the circumstances, the strangeness of the
household life altogether, the extraordinary separation which, now that
conveyance was so easy, now that everybody travelled, when even little
Joe Hodge, who was apprenticed in London, came home every Christmas to
see his mother, a poor widow in the alms-houses--was more wonderful than
ever. In old times it might have been understood, when there were no
railways, in the days which the old people remembered--but now! It
perplexed him beyond description, when his thoughts were fully directed
to the subject. And it became clear to him all at once, as when a
landscape suddenly becomes apparent to us on turning a corner or coming
to the top of a hill, that some other reason must exist for this than
the simple fact that his mother lived in London and his grandparents at
Edgeley. That was no reason; his enlightened mind rejected it. All the
afternoon he kept turning over and over in his mind what he was to say.
He had never in his life written an important letter, scarcely ever
written one at all which was not suggested, partly dictated even, by the
old people, who would say to him, ‘You must write to Susie,’ or, ‘Don’t
you think, John, that you ought to write to your mother?’ This was how
his correspondence had generally been conducted. He had written a few
schoolboy epistles to Dick and Percy, but they did not count. He thought
a great deal of the importance of the letter. Phrases for it, sentences
which he polished and reconstructed, and which he felt, with a little
satisfaction, would come very well, kept passing through his mind in a
sort of procession. Sometimes he felt that he had put a thing very
strongly indeed, that his mother must feel herself entirely in the
wrong, and change her procedure altogether. He was not aware that people
do not like to find themselves in the wrong, and are far from candid in
acknowledging that fact, even when it is most apparent in the accuser’s
eyes.
He got out the little writing-case, of which he was proud, as soon as
his grandfather had gone upstairs. He got out some paper, carefully
inspecting it to see that there was no infinitesimal soil on its glossy
purity; and then he began to write, taking a new pen, and every
precaution against blotting. All these were signs and symbols of the
importance of the act he was about to accomplish. He lingered over the
preparations with a hope that they would inspire him. But when all was
done he did not find it so easy to put down what he wanted to say. He
did not go to bed at eleven that night. He sat up for two hours later,
trying to shape an epistle which should be like that of a son to his
mother, yet at the same time that of a young man coming into full
possession of his reason to a woman who was not obeying the dictates of
that fundamental principle. He did not want to be instructive or
dictatorial, but yet he wanted to show her that he was aware she was
failing in her duty; and withal it was his intention to be perfectly
respectful and filial. To combine these things was to an unaccustomed
letter-writer very difficult. His beautiful sheet of paper which he had
chosen so carefully was all scored and interlined, and had become a mere
scrawl long before he was done. And he himself grew hot and excited in
the process: far more than if Mr. Cattley had cut to pieces his Latin
poem, and he had been trying to do a new composition. As a matter of
fact, he had made two or three compositions of this letter before he
settled on one that would do.
This was what he decided on sending at the last:
‘Dear Mother’--(He had always heretofore said Mamma, keeping the baby
name, which was the only one under which he had any real knowledge of
her. That, and Emily, he understood: but Mother seemed a new person,
some one with whom he had no real acquaintance, whom he must learn to
know). ‘Dear Mother,’--He did not add any more for half an hour, and
then he began to write quickly for ten minutes, and put down the most of
what is copied here, though with corrections and interlining past
counting. This was nothing but the mere draft.
‘I think I am old enough to write to you from myself, being no longer a
child: for it seems so very hard not to know you, or to understand why
it is that I have not seen you for such a long, long time. People change
very much in such a time; it is said that even your body changes, and,
still more, your mind, which is always undergoing developments, and
learning more and having more experiences. Dear mother, I am not now a
little boy. I have finished my education. Mr. Cattley thinks I have
gone as far as I need try to do, as I am not to proceed seriously with
my studies, and now it has been settled that I am to begin to learn the
profession of an engineer. I had my choice between that and going into
an office, and I chose that. I hope you will be interested in hearing
all this. Mothers are generally so, and it is hard upon me--Please do
think so!--not to know whether you care, or if you will be pleased.
Mother, I am writing now to ask you something--something that is very
much in my mind. I do want you to come here. Consider that I don’t know
you at all. It is not natural. I feel almost as if it were wrong not to
know my mother. But it is not my fault; and there are poor grandfather
and grandmamma whom you have given up too. They are your parents just as
you are mine, and it is dreadful that we should never meet. Mother,
please don’t think I am saying more than I ought to say; but do
come--oh, do come. I do not feel that I can go on longer as I have gone
on all these years, knowing nothing about myself, or about you. You must
see, if you will think, that it is very, very hard upon me, especially
now when I am old enough to think for myself.
‘I am, dear mother,
‘Your affectionate son,
‘JOHN SANDFORD.’
He had worked himself up to a very high pitch of feeling before he came
to the end. It need scarcely be added that it was not in the least what
he intended to say. He meant to have pointed out the hardship of his own
case incidentally, and put the force of his prayer into his
grandmother’s wishes. But John found out, like other people, that his
pen ran away with him--his thoughts ran away with him. The stream of his
eloquence all poured in one direction, while his intentions took the
other way--curious conflict of that dual nature which nobody understands
though so many people talk of it. It is more often in doing than in
saying that we contradict our own purpose. But John was more near to the
truth in what he said, being carried away by the fever of writing, and
the natural impulse which seized upon his pen, than if he had discharged
his commission more exactly. It was only when he read his letter over,
still labouring with the emotion it had called forth, and which
gradually rose higher and higher by the stimulus of his own eloquence,
that it occurred to him that he had altogether left out his
grandmother’s message. He added, as so many people do, in the manner
which is called feminine, the real object of his writing in a
postscript. It was very brief, and delivered with a much decreased
earnestness.
‘Grandmamma is not very well. She can’t do nearly so much as she did a
little while ago. It was she who first said I might write to beg you to
come, and to say that she would like to see you. There are many things
she would like to say to you, for the people here are very ignorant, and
don’t understand.’
John had no doubt that he had thus given everything that was of the
least importance in his grandmother’s message. He made a fair copy--a
very fair copy of the document which was the most important he had ever
had to do with. He would not trust himself to the opportunities of the
morning, when, perhaps, Mr. Sandford might want him to do something, or
Mr. Cattley might send for him, or anything might happen. The fire had
gone out by this time, and the boy was very cold and cramped, and the
stillness of the dead of night pressed upon his spirits. He took off his
shoes before he stole up the creaking stairs to bed, with the fumes of
his great intellectual effort in his head, and all his feelings roused.
A sense of temerity, yet of pride, in the independent step he had taken
was strong within him. Whatever might happen, at least he had made it
apparent that he was now able to act and judge for himself.
When Mrs. Sandford came downstairs a little later than usual next
day--it was always now a little later, so that it was hard upon any
principle of averages to say what the ‘usual’ was--she asked John about
his letter, with a look and a grasp of his hand, which showed how much
in earnest she was, and which gave him a momentary compunction at the
thought of how little important her share in the invitation had been
made.
‘Did you send it away?’ she said to him, as he kissed her.
‘Yes, grandmamma, this morning.’
‘Thank you, my dear,’ she said; ‘did you say how much I wanted her, and
how I hoped she would come soon?’
‘Ye-es,’ said John, with a less assured affirmative; then he added, ‘I
said everything I could think of. I implored her to come.’
She pressed his hand in hers with a tender clasp.
‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘you know I would never wish you to keep a secret
from your grandfather. But unless he asks you--unless he says
something--you will not take any notice, John?’
John drew himself apart a little, squaring his young shoulders.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘grandmamma, that I am old enough to write to my
mother on my own responsibility, without thinking what even grandfather
might say.’
‘Oh! yes,’ she said, looking up at him with a woman’s admiration for
masculine independence, ‘that is quite true.’
‘And he would be the last to think otherwise. He would see that it was
only natural and right.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, more doubtfully; ‘but he might think he ought to be
consulted before you took any step. And that would only be just. What I
hope is that Emily, who is so sensible, will take it into her own hands
and write that she is coming--without saying anything about an
invitation--that would certainly be the best way.’
‘I think,’ said John, ‘that, whether there were an invitation at all or
not, she ought to have come long ago to see----’
He paused with a curious sense of the involved situation. Mrs. Sandford
echoed his words with a soft, little sigh.
‘Oh! yes, whatever might have happened, she should have come to see her
mother, John.’
But that was not what John intended to say.
Mr. Sandford came in shortly after, full of an interview he had just had
with Mr. Cattley, who had been corresponding with his brother, the
engineer, about John’s plans.
‘It appears that Mr. Cattley’s brother is an engineer who has to do with
machinery,’ grandfather said. ‘I don’t know if that is the same thing as
a lighthouse man. You will have to go to the foundry and learn how
everything is made. It is not surveying and that sort of thing, so far
as I can hear. You will have to put your shoulder to the wheel, they
tell me, and work with your own hands: but I suppose you will not mind
that, John.’
‘And where is the foundry?’ asked grandmamma, from the sofa. ‘I hope it
is not too far away.’
‘Well, it is not perhaps the place I should have chosen; but what does
it matter? one place is very like another. Anything that could harm him
would be just as likely to come to him in any other place. It’s in
Liverpool, my dear.’
‘In Liverpool----’ Mrs. Sandford raised herself so quickly and
energetically for her weak condition that she looked as if she were
about to spring from the sofa. ‘John Sandford,’ she said, ‘you will
never let the boy go there.’
‘It is not what I should have wished,’ said the old gentleman; ‘in
short, it is the last place I should have chosen. But I did not think of
that soon enough, and, after Mr. Cattley has been so kind as to make
all the inquiries---- What can it matter, after all? That or any other
place. It will be just the same. I can’t think that there is any more
danger there than anywhere else. And, things have gone so far, I don’t
see how we can draw back.’
‘Oh, John Sandford!’ cried his wife, ‘it is not possible. I can never,
never consent. What! After all we have suffered, and all the sacrifices
we have made, to send him back there!’
‘I know, I know,’ said the old gentleman, with a deprecatory wave of his
hands. ‘It is all true; but still, what can we do? A long time has
passed, and he is going back without any---- No, I know very well what
you would say: but if you will look at it reasonably----’
‘How can I look at it reasonably? And do you think Emily will be
reasonable? She will never consent, and neither will I.’
‘But, my dear, my dear!’ he said, ‘it is all settled, and how can I go
back?’
John had listened to this conversation with a surprise which gradually
grew into something like indignation.
‘Grandmamma,’ he said, coming forward to the sofa, ‘I don’t want to seem
wiser than you, or as if I knew better; but why should you be so afraid
to trust me? I have never done anything to make you afraid. I don’t
think I want pleasure or anything that is wrong. I will try to do my
duty either at Liverpool or anywhere else. Don’t, please, think that I
shall forget everything you have taught me, and all that I have been
brought up to, the moment I go away.’
Both the old people had their eyes fixed on him as he spoke, and then
they looked at each other across him, with one of those looks which he
had so often caught in the passing, looks which it had always been hard
to understand. Whatever it was, their eyes spoke to each other, not to
him, with a sort of troubled commentary between them on what he said.
Grandfather shook his head slightly in answer to his wife’s look, and he
cleared his throat as if for something he wanted, but did not know how,
to say--but in the end it was she who spoke.
‘Oh, John, it is not that, my dear. We do trust you, both grandfather
and I. It isn’t that. I’m always of a tremble when I see an innocent
boy go out into the world. Oh, yes, I allow I am, John: and for you,
because you’re so precious, most of all; but it’s not that--oh, no, it’s
not that.’
‘What is it, then? What is there so dreadful about Liverpool?’
That look passed between them again--but this time there was a warning
in the husband’s eyes. He turned round in his chair towards where John
stood.
‘Grandmamma was always one of the nervous ones,’ he said, with a faint
little laugh, ‘and the particular thing about Liverpool is that we once
lived near it, and knew a great deal of what went on there. And there
were some dreadful things happened--one above all. Oh, you need not be
afraid, my dear. I’m not going to disturb the boy’s mind with any tales.
But that’s how it is, John. We’ve seen such things happen under our very
eyes.’
‘That is no reason, grandfather,’ said John, very gravely, ‘that
anything bad should happen to me.’
‘Have I not been saying so? The best thing is to shut your ears to all
idle tales. Don’t believe half you hear, and never go inquiring into
trouble that is past. If you make up your mind to it, and never forget
your duty, and keep steady--why, Liverpool is just the same as any other
place.’
‘Not to us--not to anyone connected with us,’ Mrs. Sandford said.
It was all very strange to John. He could not think why they should
distrust him, why they should have so little faith. Keep steady! That
was a very low level of duty; he said to himself that he hoped he would
do better than that. Any poor workman, or poor fellow without education
or advantage of training, disgraced himself if he did not keep steady.
How much more was required of one like himself! He had not time,
however, to express these sentiments, for that was the night on which
Mrs. Sandford had one of her attacks. She had never been in the way of
having attacks as so many people have. But on that evening she was very
ill, and John had to run for the doctor, and for medicines, and was kept
perpetually in movement, not to say that he was in deep anxiety,
altogether discouraged by the sight of her suffering, and jumping at
once, as is usual to inexperience, to the awful idea of death. He did
not know how hard that is of coming, and how many lingering
preliminaries there are to go through. He thought that the dread
presence might push through all human defences at once, as he does
sometimes, and do his work in a moment. And he was awe-stricken,
overwhelmed with terrible suspense. She was very ill all night, but in
the morning began to get better.
‘We shall pull her through,’ the doctor said, ‘but you must see she is
not worried or put out about anything--for that in her present state she
could not bear.’
‘We are to see she is not worried. But who except God can do that?’ said
grandfather, still up in the cold, blue dawn of the morning, leaning
upon John’s shoulder. ‘As long as she lives she will never cease to
worry: and what can I do?---- Perhaps if Emily were here----’