FAREWELL.
John went up the village street towards the rectory with a heavy heart.
It was all over--his resistance and his notion of being able to resist,
his hopes and all the foundation for them, his fond dreams and thoughts
(so fallacious and so foolish) of independence, of settling matters for
himself, of keeping the little house as a sort of monument to the old
people to whom it belonged. Could anything be more vain than these
visions? It was all settled now, and not a child in the village had less
to do with it than he. The furniture was to be sold, the house itself to
be let if it could not be disposed of. The gardener and Sarah had
received their dismissal. They remained only till ‘the family’ left,
which was an event now fixed for next day. In short, every part of
John’s little world had crumbled under him. Himself was of no account in
all the changes that had been determined upon. They were all quite
reasonable, perhaps necessary, and his childish intention had been silly
as well as vain. He understood that now; but how painful was the
discovery? It left him aching body and soul, not only with the thought
of what was to come, but with the smarting sensation of pain and shame,
that overwhelming sense of having formed ludicrous intentions impossible
to carry out, which is so terrible to youth. He felt himself blush from
head to foot when he thought how foolish he had been, and how impossible
that which he had supposed the most natural thing in the world. For the
sting of it was that he saw the impossibility, and how childish it was
to suppose that he could have done it, and the futility of everything he
had imagined and planned. It was natural that she should take all the
steps she had done--calmly, without the silly sentiment into which he
had fallen. She was acting only as reasonable people should act--but he,
he had been going on like a foolish boy.
John had passed through a great many vicissitudes both of mind and
situation in these past days. He had been to his own thinking
independent, feeling very young and forlorn indeed, but yet with a
firmness of purpose and a tenderness of feeling which had given him
confidence in himself. He had felt that he would not abuse the old
people’s confidence. He would make a man of himself to do them credit.
He would show them honour in his keeping up of everything that had
pleased them, in his return, whenever he had leisure, to the home in
which their love had guarded him. That had been his first phase, and it
had been full of a simple youthful dignity, and a sense of worthiness of
the trust they had placed in him. And then there had come a revolution,
a storm, a fierce moment of fighting and resistance to the new will, a
fight which was weakened from the beginning by the fatal conviction that
it must be lost. And now even the struggle was over, and he had
fallen--into what had he fallen? Into a child again--into what perhaps
was his natural position--the place of a boy who did not quite know what
was going to be done with him, whose fate was in other hands, who had
to wait and hear what was intended, where he was to be placed, with a
knowledge that his own wishes had very little to do with it, and no
dignity, no freedom at all! Could there be a greater downfall for a
sensitive, high-spirited boy? With a certain mental elation, tempered by
sorrow, he had felt himself a man though only seventeen, with all the
tender ambitions of a boy, to do credit to those that loved him: now he
had fallen back to the position of a child--wistfully dependent,
uncertain what his fate was to be. In more ordinary circumstances even,
such as happen every day, a boy who has been brought up by his
grandparents, made into the son of their old age, matured by the
constant company of people full of experience, and the indulgence which
comes with the end of life, is apt to feel a terrible downfall when he
goes back into his own family, where his parents, in their busy prime,
think but little of his precocious wisdom, and do not respect at all the
fictitious independence into which he has grown, and where his brothers
and sisters, a rabble rout, knock him about in a way which is supposed
to be very much to his advantage.
John’s experiences were but a little more painful. The disenchantment
was complete. He was shaken out of all opinion of himself. Perhaps even
his feeling that his own will or way was of no importance at all
exceeded reality: for he had no reason to suppose that his mother would
be entirely indifferent to what he wished. She had not been unkind. She
was not an emotional woman, nor given to any effusion of sympathetic
feeling; but she was not unkind. But John in his downfall and dismay
could not consider that. He felt himself altogether brought low. And
then his position, so far as his mother was concerned, was so painful
and extraordinary. She was his mother; he could not, even to himself,
set up any other hope. He could not blind himself to the conviction that
this was she that appeared in his childish recollections, always so
silent, putting him aside, saying that the boy was not to know. But he
could not call her ‘mother,’ having known her so long and seen to the
depths of her character as Emily. He said ‘she’ to himself, and no more.
She was the arbiter of his life. He did not think she cared at all for
him, or minded whether he was happy or otherwise. Secretly, perhaps, he
thought that she preferred he should not be happy; but that he knew,
even while he entertained the thought, was a wrong thing to think,
unkind and untrue: yet he kept it in his mind all the same.
He was strolling along with his hands deeply thrust into his pockets,
and despondency unspeakable in his soul, feeling that everything that
made life worth living had been taken from him. He was going to the
rectory to say good-bye. Good-bye was what was in his heart towards
everything he looked on. Not a house he passed but was familiar to
him--the shop, the post-office, even Johnson at the public-house, though
the old people had so disapproved of him, and John had grown up in the
idea that he was not much better than the roaring lion, seeking whom he
might devour, of Scripture: they were all kind, familiar objects now. He
regretted them all, worthy and unworthy. As he went along, there was
some recollection associated with every bit of the road. There, Dick
Spencer had thrown a snowball and hit him, and made his forehead bleed;
a snowball with a stone in it--but how sorry Dick was! There he had run
against Percy on the way to school and they had both come to the ground,
rolling over each other. At another corner was the spot where Elly used
to start to run and get before them all, with swift, light steps like a
deer, scarcely touching the ground. All the boys had united in saying
that it was not fair, that Elly could not stay, that the slowest of them
could have beaten her in a quarter-of-a-mile; but, nevertheless, she had
always got first whatever they might say. He was turning over all these
old things in his heart while he strode along slowly, languidly, his
whole being in pain, when suddenly, in the midst of his troubled
thoughts, a slap came on his shoulder from behind, and a cheerful voice
hailed him:
‘Why, Jack! what are you doing here at this time of day?’
Then another voice addressed the first one with that pleasant frankness
which characterises brothers or dear friends, and bid him for a
blockhead to remember. Whereupon the first speaker penitently cried
out:
‘I beg your pardon! You know I didn’t mean to be unfeeling, Jack.’
John had scarcely the heart to turn round. He did so, half, saying, in a
tone of little interest,
‘Have you fellows come back?’
The fellows were two. They were older than John. One--the nearest to him
in age--was short and of spare figure, neat and careful of apparel; the
other was some two years older, a person of advanced age in the
estimation of his juniors, who did not think Dick’s sense was on a level
with his years. He was large and fair, a full-grown man in person, with
a moustache which many an older man might envy, and a careless
good-humour and heartiness about him which was very attractive to many
of his fellow-creatures, though his own immediate belongings were a
little contemptuous of them. Both the lads were dressed with a little of
that jauntiness which characterises the University. They came from a
centre of boyish fashion; their coats were cut on the correctest model,
and even Percy, though so much the wiser of the two, would have died, it
was evident to the commonest observer, rather than wear anything which
he ought not to have worn. The very canes which both of them
scrupulously carried were exactly the right kind of cane. When John
turned round slowly upon them, he was a little overawed as he awoke to
it by the splendour of their appearance.
‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he said.
‘No, only for the day. Where are you going--to the rectory? Come along,
then. That’s all right,’ said Dick. ‘We wanted to go and look you up,
but didn’t like.’
Percy gave his brother a push aside.
‘I should have come fast enough; but I wanted to know first--that’s to
say, we thought you might have relations or something. We’re awfully
sorry, you know, Jack.’
‘Awfully sorry,’ echoed Dick, eager to make his sympathy known.
‘There’s nobody but my mother,’ said John, with an effort. ‘We are going
away to-morrow morning.’
‘Going away?’
‘Yes. I’m going back with my mother. There is to be a sale and the house
is to be let.’ John forced himself to say all this with an appearance
of stolid calm.
Dick thrust his arm into John’s, and, half roughly, half tenderly, led
him along.
‘Come and talk to Aunt Mary,’ he said. This was his own idea of
consolation. He could not himself say anything that would be of any use
to a mourner; but Aunt Mary, if anyone, could. Dick always said that he
would back her against the world.
John suffered himself to be led along a little more quickly than the
pace at which he had been going along the street. He was vaguely
encouraged by Dick’s arm within his, and even by Percy’s little trim
shadow walking along on the other side of him. The boys had naturally
nothing to say. What could they have to say to a comrade in trouble?
They could only stand by him; grip his hand till he cried out; hold his
arm tight in theirs; get him a chair, as if he had been a girl; minister
to his wants in any way he would let them: but otherwise, beyond
‘awfully sorry,’ what could they say?
‘We have made a run home to see Aunt Mary and Elly,’ said Percy, ‘but we
can’t stay above an hour or two. It’s a capital offence, don’t you
know, to be out of college without leave; but Dick had something he
wanted to look to, and so had I. I wish we had come before yesterday.’
‘It didn’t matter,’ said John.
‘We tried hard,’ said Dick, ‘and then we thought at least you’d like to
see us before----’
‘Are you going to town, Jack? Best thing for you. You will be sure to
get something there. And nothing so easy as to meet one’s friends in
town,’ said Percy, briskly. Dick was inclined to make allusions, to
dwell upon the departure from Edgeley, and repeat that he was awfully
sorry. But Percy was much more a man of the world. It was always better,
he had heard, to speak in the most cheerful way to fellows who were in
trouble, and direct their eyes beyond the trouble to the time when all
should be cheerful again. ‘You must leave us your address,’ he said. ‘We
constantly run up to town. We shall see more of you than if you were
staying here.’
‘I don’t know if I shall have an address,’ said John. ‘I--don’t know
where I’m going. I’m--all at sea. I know nothing. It’s like a mist--’
‘I know,’ said Percy, soothingly: ‘that’s how fellows feel; but it can’t
last like that. You’ll have to pick up, and go on again, don’t you
know.’
Dick did not say anything, but he gave John’s arm a sort of hug, which
almost threw the boy off his feet.
‘Why, there’s Elly running along in her wild way. She ought to know that
she’s not a child now,’ said Percy, who understood it was a good thing
to divert a fellow’s thoughts from himself and his troubles as soon as
possible. ‘Hallo, Ell! Where are you running, like a rabbit, and never
looking? and here we are, and here’s Jack.’
‘Oh, you have come!’ said Elly, suddenly perceiving them, with a flash
of her eyes from one to another, but holding out her hand to John
between them. ‘You ought to have been here yesterday, you know. What
does it matter coming now? Jack, Aunt Mary wants you. Never mind the
boys. Oh, you two, why didn’t you come yesterday? Don’t tell me you
couldn’t have come if you had tried!’
‘We couldn’t, though,’ said Percy; while Dick, drawing his arm from
John’s, stood abashed, making no reply. ‘You don’t know what a fellow
old Scrymgeour is. He won’t give you leave. And to-day we came, you
know, without asking. So we’ve got to be back before the gates are
closed.’
‘I know,’ said Elly, ‘you’ve come to-day for your own pleasure; but when
there was something serious to do, something you were wanted for----
John, do run; Aunt Mary is waiting for you, and afterwards you can see
these two. You might have had sense enough,’ she added, as John left
them; ‘you might have had heart enough--the last of the two old people
that were always so nice to us--and then poor Jack. Papa saw it,’ said
Elly, as if that was something unusual, ‘as well as Aunt Mary and me.’
‘Funerals are horrible things,’ said Dick, under his breath.
‘But what is the use of talking when we couldn’t manage it?’ said Percy,
glibly. ‘We thought it better to come and see him, poor old beggar,
after. And, I say, what’s all this about a mother? Has he got a mother?
and perhaps a sister and a brother? and no doubt a nearer one still and
a dearer one?’
‘How dare you laugh,’ cried Elly, stamping her foot: and ‘I say, stop
that!’ said Dick, with a low growl.
John did not hear anything beyond the merest murmur of this
conversation. He left them quarrelling, explaining themselves with that
ease of brother and sisterhood which sets all politeness at defiance,
and hurried on as Elly had directed him to see Mrs. Egerton. Perhaps
John had not the same absolute confidence in her powers of consolation
that her nephew had, but she had always been very kind to him, and he
went with a sort of dull pleasure, knowing that she would be even more
kind than usual to-day. She was in her own special room, the
morning-room, which looked out over the shrubberies to the village
street in the distance, and whence she saw, more or less, all that was
going on. It was a room more useful than ornamental, with bookshelves
filled with shabby books, which formed a sort of extra lending library
for the parish, and cupboards full of the goods purchased for the
Clothing Club, and all sorts of parish necessities; but it was also
very bright, with its corner windows, one in each angle, and its air of
occupation and cheerfulness. Mrs. Egerton looked up as John came in
after a little tap at the door. She held out her hand to him across the
table, where she was busy with the concerns of the parish, and drew him
to a chair opposite to her.
‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘how I have wanted to see you.’ Her smile was
beaming warm with kindness. It was not love, but it was the nearest
thing to it, and it warmed the chilled and famished youth.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope you were coming to me of yourself, John.’
‘I was on my way,’ he said.
‘That’s right! I thought you would not desert your old friends. I told
Elly to look out for you, and, if you were not coming, to bring you. Now
tell me, my dear boy, do you go or stay?’
‘We are going to-morrow, Mrs. Egerton.’
‘To-morrow? So soon as that? And you say we----’
‘With my mother, Mrs. Egerton.’
He grew a little pale, and so, it seemed, did she.
‘Is that--that lady your mother, John?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and no more.
‘And you knew all along that your mother was living? How strange that
you never spoke of her--that we never heard--I hope, dear John, I--I
trust----’
She had meant to say, ‘that she is kind to you.’ But her courage failed
her in sight of his pale, set face.
‘We heard from her always regularly, but there seemed nothing to write
about. She had given me up to my grandparents.’ John had to pause to get
rid of the sob in his throat; but he was determined to tell all he knew,
to leave nothing to be found out. ‘She has been living in London, with
little time to herself.’
It was a curiously lame story. He felt it was so, as he told it;
hitherto it had all seemed simple enough. He met Mrs. Egerton’s look of
interest and her interrogative ‘Yes?’ with sudden confusion, as if it
was all a made-up tale.
‘Yes?’ she said, and paused with her eyes full of a hundred questions
expecting him to resume. But John had told everything he had to tell,
and stopped short with no more to say. She sat looking at him for a
minute longer expecting when he should resume. Then, as he said nothing,
she asked, as if to make a beginning again and draw him on, ‘Are there
any more of the family?’
‘I have a sister,’ John said.
‘Oh! a sister. I am very glad to hear it. I am extremely glad for your
sake. A sister is so near--a sister will sympathise. I have seen--Mrs.
Sandford, once: it seems so strange to say that name and not to mean
your dear old grandmamma, my kind, true old friend.’ Mrs. Egerton’s
bright eyes were moistened with tears, but John sat stolid in the
stupidity of his grief, and made no sign. ‘Did you know I had seen her
once?’ she said. ‘She is Mrs. Sandford, isn’t she? and that is your
name? She must have married--a cousin, I suppose?’
John made no reply. He felt a sense of guilt come over him. He said to
himself that she was not Mrs. Sandford, nor was that his name; but his
lips were sealed. He did not himself know how it was. His discovery of
his own childish name had led to no further discoveries, and in his own
family no one had given him any help to understand how it was. The
subject was one which now he could not enter upon with his mother; and
he felt by instinct, though no warning had ever been given to him, that
it was a subject he must not speak of to others. So he made no answer,
but in his heart felt a pang of secret guilt. He had not been used to
secrets, especially he had not been used to concealing anything about
himself: and now, in the sting of this consciousness, he sat silent,
unresponsive, feeling himself dull and blank in presence of the kind,
genial, affectionate woman full of curiosity, who wanted to know
everything. She wanted him to tell her everything--to confide in her:
and she was disappointed that the boy to whom she had been so kind
should close up all the avenues to his heart and make no reply. Then
Mrs. Egerton opened her drawer and took out her present to John. She was
very liberal in the way of presents, loving to give them, delighted to
give pleasure to others. What she had got for John was a gift of real
value, a pretty gold hunting-watch, which was much better than the
silver one that his grandparents had given him. It was very pretty, very
nice, very kind; but when he took the old shabby silver one out of his
pocket which had been given him when he was a boy, which had never gone
very well, in order to make place for the new one, he tried his best to
thank his kind friend, but he held the little old watch in his hand and
gazed at it with troubled eyes.
‘You must give it away to some one,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘It will be a
pleasure for you to give it to some good lad--Hedger’s boy, perhaps, who
has been with you so long.’
He murmured an assent, but put the old watch back again into another
pocket with a quick revolt of feeling. Give it away--to Ned Hedger. Oh!
no, no, not for the world! He would keep it all his life for
grandmamma’s sake.
Then there was a tumult in the room with the entrance of all the young
people, and John did his best to allow himself to be ‘cheered up’ by the
boys as they intended. But he was not cheered up, and was very glad to
steal away with Elly to go ‘once round the garden,’ she said, before he
went away. The rectory garden had witnessed so many of the pleasures of
his childhood. It was big and old-fashioned, with an orchard attached,
where the children had roamed at their pleasure. The girl and the boy
set out talking with a little show of vivacity, but, as they strayed
along the shady paths, they got more and more silent. At the bottom of
the orchard, where the long stretch of the common showed under the
trees, and all was silent and full of recollections, Elly suddenly
thrust her hand into his.
‘Oh, Jack!’ she said, ‘how will you bear going away? Always think of me
just here under the old pear-tree. Look how it is coming out like a
great white tower of blossoms. I shall come here and think of you; and
that will keep us near to each other. And, Jack----’
‘Yes, Elly?’
‘If you should feel lonely or anything--if you should miss home very
much--oh, just think! I’ll come and do my algebra here, and think of
you. It will be always something--not like your grandmother, but always
something--a little bit of a home just here under the pear-tree.’
‘Elly,’ said John, ‘will you do one thing for me? There is nobody but
you that I would ask.’
‘Yes, I will, Jack; half-a-dozen. Tell me what it is.’
‘There are the two old chairs by the fire. They will be sold like all
the rest. I’ve money enough to buy them, but nowhere to put them. Oh,
Elly!’
‘They shall stand in my own room. I’ll always keep them there,’ said
Elly, with enthusiasm, ‘the two dear old chairs! Oh! yes, yes, Jack; in
my own room.’
‘Thanks, awfully,’ said John.
He grasped the little, warm hand she had put into his, and they stood
for a moment holding each other, like two children, by the hand.
‘Oh, Jack! this is dreadfully like good-bye now!’
‘It is good-bye. Elly, you give the boys a kiss when they go away. Won’t
you give me one too? Oh, not if you don’t like; it’s only because it
seems cold, just shaking hands, after what you have said.’
There was no blush on John’s simple face. He meant in absolute sincerity
what he said. The girl reddened, being, perhaps, a little more advanced
in life, though a year younger than the boy. She turned away her head
for the moment, but then turned to him again with a steady look, and
suddenly inclined her head towards him.
‘Yes, Jack; it will be like being brother and sister really, and for
good.’
‘For good,’ he repeated, touching her fresh cheek with honest, tender
lips; and then they went back sedately to the house, very quiet, with a
certain awe upon them. For it is a ceremonial, and a sad one, to say
that first good-bye.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.