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THE SON OF HIS FATHER.
VOL. II.
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. II.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1887.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OUT IN THE WORLD 1
II. LONDON 16
III. SUSIE 39
IV. ON HIS TRIAL 59
V. BROTHER AND SISTER 79
VI. BEGINNING LIFE 95
VII. A MAN GROWN 112
VIII. A NIGHT ADVENTURE 128
IX. GOING BACK 145
X. THE WELCOME 162
XI. THE OLD HOUSE 179
XII. SUSIE 194
XIII. A NEW INFLUENCE 210
XIV. THE VITA NUOVA 228
XV. A FAMILY CONCLAVE 244
XVI. SUSIE’S SHARE 261
XVII. JOHN’S RESOLUTION 280
XVIII. A PHILOSOPHER 299
THE SON OF HIS FATHER.
CHAPTER I.
OUT IN THE WORLD.
Out in the world.
It was not so long a journey as that he had taken to Liverpool with the
curate, but how different it was! Then he had his home to return to; he
had set forth curious indeed and interested, with a hope of discovering
something about himself, but always with the idea of going back to the
quiet of his own life and working it out. He had his natural anchorage,
his harbour to sail back to, and no need to think of facing by himself
the storms of life. He had not been happy then; but even his sadness,
his trouble, even the mystery thrown into his life, his disquietude,
all these were so different. That was only a sort of amateur trouble, a
playing at distress. Now it enveloped him on every side. He sat down
opposite to his mother in the railway carriage, and saw everything that
he had known gliding away from him, disappearing into the distance. He
did not know where he was going, or to what. She said nothing to him,
not a word of his home, or of his new life; and his old had come to an
end, as if he had died.
As if he had died! In some ways it would have been more satisfactory to
have died. Then his name and memory, the name which he knew best,
without any mystery attached to it, would always have remained in the
same place, and the whole village would have been sorry, and talked of
him with bated breath, shaking their heads in sympathy. Poor boy, to
have died so young! and Elly and the boys would have looked after his
grave. Elly at least would have done it. She would never have forgotten.
Tears came into John’s eyes when he thought of Elly going with her
flowers to his grave, crying a little, never forgetting him. He made a
little picture to himself, in which he saw her leaning over the turf,
arranging her posy to his memory: and his eyes moistened with sadness
which had in it an exquisite sort of melancholy pleasure. For after all
it is not so dreadful for the very young to contemplate dying: the
violets on their grave breathe to them a great consolation and the
thought of the universal sympathy; they have not got so engrafted into
life, so determined in all its habits as their elders. But when John
turned to the other side, and found himself facing that blank world of
the unknown--not knowing what he was to do, having, so to speak, no say
in it, depending entirely upon what She should decide--there was no
consolation at all in it, nothing that corresponded to the violets on
the grave.
He did not know how his life was to be shaped, where he was to go, what
he was to do. She had brought away a few things with her, but very
few--grandmamma’s work-basket, in which she had kept her knitting, and
in which, had John had his will, the last unfinished piece of that
knitting should have been kept for ever--a selection of the books which
she had made carefully, rejecting so many that grandfather had been
proud of, and which she had said were of no use: but they would have
been of use to John: an old picture or two from the walls, portraits
with which John had been acquainted all his life, and one little
old-fashioned bureau of carved wood, which had always stood in a corner,
which he had never seen opened, and to which she seemed to attach great
importance. These, with some of the old lady’s boxes, were all she
brought away. And John had to come out of the house, leaving it as if
the old people might come in from their walk at any moment. Had it been
pulled to pieces first he thought it would have been less dreadful: but
probably had that been done, and all the old furniture scattered, he
would have thought it worse still. Everything had the aspect of being
the worst that could happen in his present state of mind. Mr. Cattley
came to the station to say good-bye. He was very civil to Mrs. Sandford,
but he grasped John’s hand without a word.
‘You’ll write,’ he said, just as the train glided away. And the porters
touched their hats and said ‘Good-bye, Mr. John,’ with a kind
recollection of sixpences past. And so the boy disappeared from Edgeley,
and his early life ended as if he had died, only that the severance was
still more complete.
There was very little said until they drew near the great smoke which
was London, and which roused a little excitement in John’s fatigued
bosom, as it began to stain the sky so long before they arrived. It was
almost night when they reached the great bustling crowded station--dusk
at least, the lamps beginning to twinkle, the air growing cold which had
been almost warm in spring brightness in the earlier part of the day.
Mrs. Sandford had all her packages collected and placed on a cab, with
little assistance from John, who was bewildered and confused by all the
commotion and tumult, people running against him on all sides, and
shrieking at each other. She was perfectly collected, business-like, and
calm, understanding exactly what to do, and evidently accustomed to
manage everything for herself; and the officials about seemed to
recognise her, and were particularly ready and assiduous in her service.
She made John get into the cab before her, like a child, and told the
cabman where to drive; and it was only when they began this last brief
part of their journey that she gave him any information as to where he
was going.
‘It is time I should tell you,’ she said, ‘that I cannot have you to
live with me, John. I should perhaps have said this before. I don’t know
whether you are aware what my occupation is, though of course you have
always addressed your letters to me at the hospital.’
John looked with quickened interest at the close black bonnet and cloak,
perceiving their difference from other people’s bonnets and cloaks as if
for the first time. It was not for the first time. He had remarked it at
once and always, feeling the difference. But then, in her, everything
was different.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘the letters were always addressed to the hospital.’
‘That is my profession,’ she said; ‘I am the matron. I had to take to
that when I was left alone. I had two children to provide for, and
myself worse than penniless. I don’t say this to claim your pity. I have
always been quite able for my work, and it suited me. An idle woman I
never could have been----’
There was nothing left for him to say. He might, perhaps, have shown a
little feeling--for he had never heard anything about working women, and
recognised it as the natural state of affairs that they should stay at
home; but she quenched any sentimentality of that sort at once.
‘And then my father and mother took you off my hands,’ she said, with
the same composure, ‘so that I was perfectly free. For, of course, Susie
could go with me anywhere. I have been in the hospital for nine years.
My rooms are very comfortable--for Susie and me: but I could not take
you there. I have got lodgings for you close by.’
‘Oh,’ said John. He thought it was a relief to hear this, but then fell
back upon himself bitterly, feeling that it was a new wrong and misery.
No home, not even the semblance of a shelter, no place that belonged to
him. It struck him with a sense of misery and shame.
‘It is too late to take you with me, even for tea--the hours and rules
are naturally very strict; but I have ordered everything for you. You
will find it quite comfortable. You will have enough to do unpacking and
settling yourself to-night, and to-morrow at ten you may come to the
hospital. If Susie had been able, she would have come to assist us, but
this is one of the busy days. She must have had a great deal to do.’
‘Is Susan--working in the hospital, too?’
‘She helps me. She is very good, very serviceable--being a girl, she
fits into everything, and spares me a great deal of trouble.’
‘And I suppose I fit into nothing,’ said John.
‘It is a pity you should take it up in that way; but it is true enough.
A woman and her daughter can go anywhere. They are sure to be able to
help each other. But a boy is quite different, as you say.’
Nothing further was said for a time, and John swallowed as best he could
the bitterness that filled his mind. It was like a flood which rose and
drowned every other sensation. Was he then of no use, a mere
encumbrance, he whom everybody had looked upon as a boy who was going to
do great things? The contrast of all that had been, with all that now
was, became more and more bitter. He broke silence again after two or
three clearings of his throat.
‘I hope, though I am so useless to you, and only a burden, that I may
get something to do at least. I--must do something. I cannot be
unpacking and settling myself all my life.’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said his mother. ‘I encourage idleness in no one.
Here we are at your lodgings. You had better get down your boxes
yourself, with the aid of the cabman. There is only a maid-of-all-work
in the house.’
John stumbled out of the carriage in haste and bitterness of soul. The
cab had stopped at the door of an old-fashioned red brick house, looking
small but pleasant enough, with a very white doorstep, and a woman
standing in the doorway who smiled and nodded her much-adorned cap at
him by way of welcome. He snatched his boxes from the cabman’s hands and
carried them in himself almost with violence, which was a little
safety-valve to him, and worked off the passionate perturbation of his
spirit. Mrs. Sandford got out too, and walked into the little front
parlour, which opened on one side of the door. On the opposite side of
the street there was a great sombre building, with rows of lighted
windows rising high over the level of this little row of houses, and the
only prospect visible from them. Mrs. Sandford cast the quick look of a
person in authority round the room.
‘You had better take down those curtains,’ she said. ‘He will be better
without them; they are mere traps for dust, and keep out the fresh air.
I hope you have arranged everything else as I told you.’
‘I’ve made everything as nice as I could,’ said the smiling woman; ‘and
I hope as the young gentleman will be ’appy with me.’
‘I hope I may have reason to be satisfied with your treatment of him.
You know, Mrs. Williams, I have something in my power.’
‘Oh, la, yes, mum! I knows that,’ said the woman, in a tone of alarm;
and then she made John a curtsey, picking up her smile again with an air
of having put it into a corner for a moment, which would have amused him
had he been able to be touched by such light thoughts. He had in the
meantime thrust the boxes which contained his own property into the
little bed-room beyond, which opened with folding doors from the
parlour, and it was the glimpse this afforded which had prompted the
remark about the curtains, grim articles of hard red woollen stuff,
which half covered the windows of the inner room.
Mrs. Sandford gave another glance around her. The table in the centre of
the room was partially covered with a cloth, and laid apparently for
that meal which is called a heavy tea. There was a plate of ham, a
quantity of watercress, a pat of butter, and a little loaf, and by the
side of all this a battered old tea-tray with the japanning half worn
off, on which were the tea things, the big cup and saucer and jug of
blue milk, familiar to the dwellers in London lodgings. Mrs. Sandford
cast a glance at all this with apparent satisfaction.
‘It is not what you have been used to,’ she said; ‘but it is not bad for
the kind of thing. I hope you will be able to make yourself comfortable
here. Susie will come and see you if she can to-night, and to-morrow at
ten I shall expect you at the hospital. I must go now. Good-night.’
She paused a moment, turned back, laid her hand on his shoulder, and
kissed him lightly on the forehead. It was the first time she had done
so, and John had a feeling that it was because of the presence of the
spectator, who might have made remarks upon the cold parting of the
mother and son--this thought gave him a feeling of horror and repulsion
not to be described. He grew red, as with a sense of insult. She had
come to the place where she was known, and kissed him to keep up
appearances. The youth could have struck her as he drew his cheek away.
Perhaps she too felt that what she had done was not natural. She
withdrew too with something like an angry colour rising over her
features. Motives are so mixed, and human sentiments so complex. Perhaps
it was because of the presence of that spectator that she had kissed her
son; and yet there were many other feelings in her mind; quiverings of
long-suppressed emotion, and an impulse in which there were many tender
elements. But she saw what he thought, and there was enough truth in it
to make it a new sting to her that he should have thought so. She went
away back to her cab without another word, and he stood and watched
while it crossed the street and drew up at a door a short distance off,
a side door in the great building with its many lights. There he stood
gazing while the cabman delivered his load of packages. He ought to have
helped, perhaps; to have gone with her and seen her safely landed. But
he stood instead at a distance, looking on with unfriendly eyes, with
his mother’s kiss still burning and stinging. How strange that it should
be so! He stayed there till she had disappeared with all her goods, and
the cab had driven away; then returned to the little parlour of his
lodgings alone.
It was a great wonder to him to find himself there, and to think that he
was in London, in the heart of the great place to which every man’s eyes
are turned, where everything is to be done, where all that is pleasant
and gay, and all that is noisy and terrible, are going on. He had
perhaps thought, even in his subdued state, even under the chilling
shadow of his mother’s wing, something of this kind. However subdued one
may be, however little desire one may have for amusement or commotion,
yet in London it is inevitable that one should be amused and excited. It
comes, in spite of one’s self, in the mere clamour of so much life, in
the bustle of the streets, in the noise and riot. So he had thought, as
so many think every day. But what had really happened to John in London
was that he had fallen into the completest stillness, a quiet more than
the quiet of the village, a loneliness such as he had never known
before. His landlady had lighted two candles on the table. She had drawn
down the blind, shutting out a bit of daffodil sky, the last lingering
of day in the midst of the coming night. All was shut up, above,
without--and John was alone.
What a form for novelty to take, for the first night of London, for the
excitement of a new life! He sank down upon the hard horse-hair sofa,
and looked round with speechless dismay. Here he was shut up as in a
box, closed in, as if he were in a prison. In a prison it would almost
be more cheerful; you would be aware, at least, of a host of other
minds, of other hearts beating. Here there was nothing. A little
parlour, with a little bed-room behind; a landlady, with nodding ribbons
in her cap; a door which shuts out the world. It was like waking up
after a night of fiery dreams, and finding yourself shut in a closet,
separated from everything--the blind drawn, the door closed, the room
shut up, and the young victim all alone.