JOHN RECALLS AND REMEMBERS.
What a weight was off my heart! It seemed as if nothing more could go
wrong. But, though John was plainly happy, he was not quite comfortable:
he worried himself with trying to remember how he had come to us. The
last thing he could definitely recall before finding himself with us, was
his mother looking at him through a night that seemed made of blackness
so solid that he marvelled she could move in it. She brought him
something to drink, but he fancied it blood, and would not touch it. He
remembered now that there was a red tumbler in his room. He could recall
nothing after, except a cold wind, and a sense of utter weariness but
absolute compulsion: he must keep on and on till he found the gate of
heaven, to which he seemed only for ever coming nearer. His conclusion
was, that he knew what he was about every individual moment, but had no
memory; each thing he did was immediately forgotten, while the knowledge
of what he had to do next remained with him. It was, he thought, a mental
condition analogous with walking, in which every step is a frustrated
fall. I set this down here, because, when I told my uncle what John had
been saying, myself not sure that I perceived what he meant, he declared
the boy a philosopher of the finest grain. But he warned me not to
encourage his talking, and especially not to ask him to explain. There
was nothing, he said, worse for a weak brain, than to set a strong will
to work it.
I tried to obey him, but it grew harder as the days went on. There were
not many of them, however; he recovered rapidly. When at length my uncle
talked not only to but with him, I regarded it as a virtual withdrawal of
his prohibition, and after that spoke to John of whatever came into his
or my head.
It was then he told me all he could remember since the moment he left me
with his supper in his hand. A great part of his recollection was the
vision of my uncle on the moor, and afterward in the park. We did not
know what to make of it. I should at once have concluded it caused by
prelusive illness, but for my remembrance of what both my uncle and
myself had seen, so long before, in the thunderstorm; while John, willing
enough to attribute its recurrence to that cause, found it impossible to
concede that he was anything but well when crossing the moor. I thought,
however, that excitement, fatigue, and lack of food, might have something
to do with it, and with his illness too; while, if he was in a state to
see anything phantasmal, what shape more likely to appear than that of my
uncle!
He would not hear of my mentioning the thing to my uncle. I would for my
own part have gone to him with it immediately; but could not with John's
prayer in my ears. I resolved, however, to gain his consent if I could.
He had by this time as great a respect for my uncle as I had myself, but
could not feel at home with him as I did. Whether the vision was only a
vision, or indeed my uncle's double, whatever a double may be, the tale
of it could hardly be an agreeable one to him; and naturally John shrank
from the risk of causing him the least annoyance.
The question of course came up, what he was to do when able to leave us.
He had spoken very plainly to my uncle concerning his relations with his
mother--had told him indeed that he could not help suspecting he owed his
illness to her.
I was nearly always present when they talked, but remember in especial a
part of what passed on one occasion.
“I believe I understand my mother,” said John, “--but only after much
thinking. I loved her when a child; and if she had not left me for the
sake of liberty and influence--that at least is how I account for her
doing so--I might at this moment be struggling for personal freedom,
instead of having that over.”
“There are women,” returned my uncle, “some of them of the most admired,
who are slaves to a demoniacal love of power. The very pleasure of their
consciousness consists in the knowledge that they have power--not power
to do things, but power to make other people do things. It is an
insanity, but a devilishly immoral and hateful insanity.--I do not say
the lady in question is one of such, for I do not know her; I only say I
have known such a one.”
John replied that certainly the love of power was his mother's special
weakness. She was spoiled when a child, he had been told; had her every
wish regarded, her every whim respected. This ruinous treatment sprang,
he said, from the self-same ambition, in another form, on the part of
her mother--the longing, namely, to secure her child's supreme
affection--with the natural consequence that they came to hate one
another. His father and she had been married but fifteen months, when he
died of a fall, following the hounds. Within six months she was engaged,
but the engagement was broken off, and she went abroad, leaving him
behind her. She married lord Cairnedge in Venice, and returned to England
when John was nearly four, and seemed to have lost all memory of her. His
stepfather was good to him, but died when he was about eight. His mother
was very severe. Her object plainly was to plant her authority so in his
very nature, that he should never think of disputing her will.
“But,” said John, “she killed my love, and so I grew able to cast off her
yoke.”
“The world would fare worse, I fancy,” remarked my uncle, “if violent
women bore patient children. The evil would become irremediable. The
children might not be ruined, but they would bring no discipline to the
mother!”
“Her servants,” continued John, “obey her implicitly, except when they
are sure she will never know. She treats them so imperiously, that they
admire her, and are proud to have such a mistress. But she is convinced
at last, I believe, that she will never get me to do as she pleases; and
therefore hates me so heartily, that she can hardly keep her ladylike
hands off me. I do not think I have been unreasonable; I have not found
it difficult to obey others that were set over me; but when I found
almost her every requirement part of a system for reducing me to a
slavish obedience, I began to lay down lines of my own. I resolved to do
at once whatever she asked me, whether pleasant to me or not, so long as
I saw no reason why it should not be done. Then I was surprised to find
how seldom I had to make a stand against her wishes. At the same time,
the mode in which she conveyed her pleasure, was invariably such as to
make a pretty strong effort of the will necessary for compliance with it.
But the effort to overcome the difficulty caused by her manner, helped to
develop in me the strength to resist where it was not right to yield. By
far the most serious difference we had yet had, arose about six months
ago, when she insisted I should make myself agreeable to a certain lady,
whom I by no means disliked. She had planned our marriage, I believe, as
one of her parallels in the siege of the lady's noble father, then a
widower of a year. I told her I would not lay myself out to please any
lady, except I wanted to marry her. 'And why, pray, should you not marry
her?' she returned. I answered that I did not love her, and would not
marry until I saw the woman I could not be happy without, and she
accepted me. She went into a terrible passion, but I found myself quite
unmoved by it: it is a wonderful heartener to know yourself not merely
standing up for a right, but for the right to do the right thing! 'You
wouldn't surely have me marry a woman I didn't care a straw for!' I said.
'Quench my soul!' she cried--I have often wondered where she learned the
oath--'what would that matter? She wouldn't care a straw for you in a
month!'--'Why should I marry her then?'--'Because your mother wishes it,'
she replied, and turned to march from the room as if that settled the
thing. But I could not leave it so. The sooner she understood the better!
'Mother!' I cried, 'I will not marry the lady. I will not pay her the
least attention that could be mistaken to mean the possibility of it.'
She turned upon me. I have just respect enough left for her, not to say
what her face suggested to me. She was pale as a corpse; her very lips
were colourless; her eyes--but I will not go on. 'Your father all over!'
she snarled--yes, snarled, with an inarticulate cry of fiercest loathing,
and turned again and went. If I do not quite think my mother, _at
present_, would murder me, I do think she would do anything short of
murder to gain her ends with me. But do not be afraid; I am sufficiently
afraid to be on my guard.
“My father was a rich man, and left my mother more than enough; there was
no occasion for her to marry again, except she loved, and I am sure she
did not love lord Cairnedge. I wish, for my sake, not for his, he were
alive now. But the moment, I am one and twenty, I shall be my own master,
and hope, sir, you will not count me unworthy to be the more Belorba's
servant. One thing I am determined upon: my mother shall not cross my
threshold but at my wife's invitation; and I shall never ask my wife to
invite her. She is too dangerous.
“We had another altercation about Miss Miles, an hour or two before I
first saw Orba. They were far from worthy feelings that possessed me up
to the moment when I caught sight of her over the wall. It was a leap out
of hell into paradise. The glimpse of such a face, without shadow of
scheme or plan or selfish end, was salvation to me. I thank God!”
Perhaps I ought not to let those words about myself stand, but he said
them.
He had talked too long. He fell back in his chair, and the tears began to
gather in his eyes. My uncle rose, put his arm about me, and led me to
the study.
“Let him rest a bit, little one,” he said as we entered. “It is long
since we had a good talk!”
He seated himself in his think-chair--a name which, when a child, I had
given it, and I slid to the floor at his feet.
“I cannot help thinking, little one,” he began, “that you are going to be
a happy woman! I do believe that is a man to be trusted. As for the
mother, there is no occasion to think of her, beyond being on your guard
against her. You will have no trouble with her after you are married.”
“I cannot help fearing she will do us a mischief, uncle,” I returned.
“Sir Philip Sidney says--'Since a man is bound no further to himself than
to do wisely, chance is only to trouble them that stand upon chance.'
That is, we are responsible only for our actions, not for their results.
Trust first in God, then in John Day.”
“I was sure you would like him, uncle!” I cried, with a flutter of loving
triumph.
“I was nearly as sure myself--such confidence had I in the instinct of my
little one. I think that I, of the two of us, may, in this instance,
claim the greater faith!”
“You are always before me, uncle!” I said. “I only follow where you lead.
But what do you think the woman will do next?”
“I don't think. It is no use. We shall hear of her before long. If all
mothers were like her, the world would hardly be saved!”
“It would not be worth saving, uncle.”
“Whatever can be saved, must be worth saving, my child.”
“Yes, uncle; I shouldn't have said that,” I replied.