A MAN GROWN.
After this there ensues a gap in John’s life:--no real gap, indeed, but
a steady, quiet continuance of work and training of which the record
might be interesting enough to those who are pursuing the same path, but
not perhaps to anyone else. He was transferred to lodgings nearer his
work, almost without any will of his own, his mother acting for him with
a steady authority against which he chafed, but which it was impossible
to resist. The lodgings might have been the same as those from which he
was transferred, a little parlour, a little bed-room, a red and blue
cover on the table, a horse-hair sofa, the same features were in both.
And here John settled down. He knew nobody to lead him into the ordinary
haunts of young men in London; and perhaps the fixed prepossession
against him that he was sure to like what was wrong, had as strong an
influence as the fixed certainty that nothing but right and honest
things could come from him, which does so much for some favourites of
nature. Human nature is very contradictory, and no two specimens can be
guided in the same way. His mother’s stern observation of every possible
indication of weakness, and Susie’s wistful watch, enlisted perhaps the
evil as well as the good of John’s nature in the cause of virtue. His
temper, and that perversity which is more or less in every natural
character, rose in arms against the imputation that was upon him. He
said to himself that, whatever happened, their prognostics should not be
permitted to be right: and thus aided, so to speak, by his demons as
well as by his angels, with his head held high against all the
solicitations of the lower nature which would have proved that injurious
foregone conclusion to be a just one, he made his way through the
loneliness of those early years--going back evening after evening to
spend the dull hours in his little sitting-room, with a determination
which virtue alone might not have been equal to, without the aid of
those forces of pride, and opposition, and resistance to injustice.
This austere self-restraint told upon his work, as it always does.
Temperance and purity give wings to the mind, as they give force to the
body. He read in self-defence, to quench all youthful longings after
gaiety and brightness, and when he had exhausted poetry and fiction,
which naturally he felt to be the best indemnifications and solaces for
his loneliness, he began to read for work and for ambition, and soon
found in those books that dealt either directly or indirectly with his
profession, an interest more ardent, more exciting, than even that of
story. From seventeen to twenty-one, a youth, with this inclination for
work and few distractions, can get through an enormous amount of
reading: and John’s mind gradually filled with stores such as no student
need have been ashamed of. They were not perhaps so classical as they
might have been had he gone to the University, but, in all probability,
even in that respect they were fully as extensive as they would have
been had John without the stimulus of his resolution and his solitude
‘gone up’ with Dick and Percy Spencer into the midst of the noisy young
life of their college. He would not have resisted these cheerful
influences; he would have done what the others did, and read as little
as was necessary. But in the unlovely quiet of his little parlour in a
little London street, with pride and angry self-defence keeping his
door, along with more celestial guardians, he read with enthusiasm, with
passion: and as his books, after the first juvenile frenzy for the
lovelier and lighter portions of literature, were practical and serious,
engaged with the present rather than the past, he became by degrees a
mine of information, thoroughly equipped for all the chances of his
work, and every region that these might lead him to. He read travels and
books upon new and little known countries with devotion. He studied
every scheme for the new development of the untrodden portions of the
earth. He had the stories of all great industrial undertakings at his
fingers’ end. In short, John got to know so very much more than the
narrator of his story, that I give up the attempt to follow him, simply
adding that though it had been done rather with the intention of making
that austere life possible, than from any other reason, it had the most
admirable effects both on his mind and his work. Such stores are like
the miraculous gifts of the Gospel, they cannot be hid. It soon became
apparent, both to those who were over him and to his fellow-pupils, that
for the settling of a disputed question, or for the geography of any new
piece of work undertaken by the firm, or for those most essential
questions about native workmen and local government which tell so much
on enterprises like theirs, there was no such referee as John. He was
sent for before Messrs. Barrett would settle about that railway in
Hungary. He was consulted as to the South American business, which
eventually, young Sandford’s knowledge having been overborne by the
apparent advantage of the undertaking, was a source of so much trouble
to the firm. And, by the time he was twenty-one, John was recognised by
everybody as the most valuable of all the young men trained in the
office. He had already been sent ‘abroad,’ a word which means anything
from Calais to Africa, several times. He had been in America. He was
altogether an accomplished and fully-trained engineer, capable to tackle
even the lighthouses of Elly’s fancy, but perhaps not so earnest about
lighthouses as, under Elly’s inspiration, he had been in his seventeenth
year.
All this time his correspondence with Elly had never dropped: but it had
become intermittent. They had not met during these years which tell for
so much in a young man’s life, and probably even tell for more in the
experience of a girl. How she had grown up, or whether she had grown up
at all, was a question which John did not discuss with himself. He was
very fond of Elly, no one had ever taken her place in his mind. He still
thought of her under the pear-tree with her algebra, as if during all
this time there had been no further development either of herself or her
studies. Elly probably formed a clearer apprehension of the changes that
had occurred in him: but to John she was still in short frocks, with all
that beautiful hair about her shoulders. He thought sometimes of the
serious kiss which had passed between them in token of everlasting
friendship, of brotherhood and sisterhood, a seal of youthful affection
untinged by any of the agitations or uneasy appropriations of love. It
had brought a little colour to Elly’s cheek, but none to that of John,
who had asked for it so seriously. The thought brought a little stir
now, a little pleasurable movement of his blood. A sister, but not like
Susie; a friend, but holding a place apart which no other friend could
come near. And, to tell the truth, John had not very many friends; his
early life had been against it, and those guardian demons of whom we
have spoken--demons without discrimination, who kept out good as well as
evil. He was friendly with most of the people about him, but he had not
many intimates. The place in which Elly lived supreme, and that in which
even Dick and Percy were still recognised as ‘the other boys,’ was kept
sacred to that early circle which had been the closest and the warmest
John had ever known--all the more so from its contrast with what
followed, from the severe mother amid all the cares and business of the
hospital, and Susie with her wistful, watchful eyes.
He had not paid very much attention to the fact that his birthday was
his twenty-first, and that he was attaining his majority, though that is
so important a point in the career of many young men. It was not
particularly important to John. He had no joyful tenantry to celebrate
it; no happy father and mother to wish him joy. He was already in some
things much older than his age, experienced by long encounter with the
practical, and by the habits of self-dependence which the nature of his
occupations had forced upon him. He was rather, if anything, disposed to
smile at the importance of twenty-one, not seeing what difference it
could make. His little property he had long ceased to think of. At
seventeen it had seemed important; at twenty, nothing. What could it
matter? It was better, even more just, he thought, that his mother
should have it, who was after all the natural heir of her parents: and
if it could purchase a little ease, a little relaxation for her, John
was not only generously willing, but had a less amiable, half scornful
feeling, that to throw it back at her feet was the only thing that he
could desire to do. He was astonished accordingly when he went by her
invitation on the evening of his birthday to visit his mother, to find
her table covered with papers and she herself awaiting his arrival with
a number of accounts and note-books.
‘I have to render an account of my stewardship,’ she said, with her
usual gravity. He did not always recognise the change in her manner of
speaking to him and regarding him, but nevertheless there was a great
change.
‘What stewardship?’ he said.
‘I cease to-day to be your guardian, John, and your trustee and manager
and everything. My father thought it unnecessary to burden you with any
of those things. He had perhaps an excessive confidence in me. I have
now to give up my accounts----’
‘I want no accounts,’ he said: ‘I want to hear nothing about it. If I am
to be acknowledged a man, that’s enough. I’ve been to my own
consciousness a man--and older than most people--long enough.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with a little sigh, ‘you are a man; you have proved
yourself one. The softest of mothers (and I know I have never been
soft) could not acknowledge that with more gratitude and satisfaction
than I.’
‘But a little grudge,’ he said, with a laugh. He was able to laugh now,
though never to forget altogether the bitterness of being misjudged. He
no longer talked to her with constraint, feeling himself like a child in
her presence--but even yet he was never really at his ease with her.
‘With a grudge,’ he said. ‘You would almost rather I had confirmed your
bad opinion, and justified you in what you expected.’
‘I can’t hope that you will understand me--in that respect,’ she said,
with a little wave of her hand dismissing the subject. If she did not
repent of her evil expectations, she was at least a little ashamed of
them, and desired no recurrence to the subject. ‘Look here,’ she said,
‘this is an account of all my incomings and outgoings for the last four
years.’
‘I don’t want to see them,’ said John. ‘I am sure you have always done
what was best for me.’
‘And, for the future, here is the statement of what you have at your
disposal. Surely, at least, you will look at that.’
‘Mother,’ said John, ‘if it is anything worth counting, couldn’t you
take it, and get a little rest? All this upon your shoulders from year
to year, never any ease or repose, must wear you out. Why don’t you give
up, and take Susie to see a little of the world--of course I don’t know
if there’s enough for that,’ he added, hastily, with momentary
confusion.
‘Mother, didn’t I tell you!’ said Susie, a flush of pleasure rising over
her face.
‘It was not necessary for anyone to tell me. There never was any want of
generosity,’ said Mrs. Sandford, in a sort of aside. And then she added,
‘Thank you, John. It is very good of you to make the offer: but I’m used
to the hospital, and I’m not used to rest. I don’t think I should like
it. And my father and mother would like you to have the full enjoyment
of your own. There is not very much, but it will always be a comfortable
addition to what you can make. There is about two hundred a year,
everything put together. And I have as much--that is to say, Susie will
have as much as soon as she makes up her mind to do anything
independent--in the way of marriage or--any other way.’
At this, Susie turned away with another flush of agitation and
embarrassment. Susie was now twenty-six, a mature young woman. And
perhaps by times there had come across her mind desires such as maturity
brings, to adopt some independent career for herself. It was apparent
even to John’s eyes, which were not by any means acute in respect to the
doings of others, that there had been moments recently in which the idea
of marriage had been in consideration between the mother and daughter,
but he had never been told anything about it, nor who the suitor was.
And there had also been floating ideas in Susie’s head of joining a
sisterhood, and thus consecrating herself to the service of the sick, to
whom she was now a volunteer and unofficial ministrant. But nothing had
come of that any more than the other. She was in a state of mental
commotion, awaiting that development which nature craves, and uneasy,
feeling herself no longer a girl to be swayed by the natural law of
obedience and submission, but old enough to decide and act for herself:
save only that she could not decide how to act. Her mother’s words
seemed to her a reproach. She turned away; then, coming back again with
an effort, laid one hand upon John’s arm and one upon Mrs. Sandford.
‘Mother,’ she said. ‘We’re both honest, both John and me. He can do for
himself, and I, so far as I can see, will never be able to make up my
mind to do anything for myself. Why won’t you take us at our word, and
take grandfather’s money, and, for the first time in your life, rest?’
The three were all very different. John, perhaps, in his confidence of
young manhood, and that consciousness of being entirely a satisfactory
person, which cannot fail to have a certain influence on a young man’s
way of looking both at himself and others, was now the one most like his
mother--and yet he was not like her. While Susie, with her soft eyes,
her soft manner, her little flutter of indecision, was as unlike as
possible in sentiment, though her features were almost identical with
those of the self-controlled and serious woman, with so many
responsibilities on her head, and so distinct a grasp of them all, whom
she was imploring to take up that softer task, to retire, and accept
the generosity of her children and repose from her labours. Mrs.
Sandford looked the tallest of the three, not indeed in fact, though she
was taller for a woman than John was for a man--but certainly in nature,
in sentiment, in the impression which her still graceful, slight figure,
her head carried high, her general air of authority, gave. She looked
from one to another with a smile, in which there was (to Susie)
indulgent toleration of miscomprehension, to John, a little indifference
to what he might think at all.
‘Circumstances alter everything,’ she said; ‘if I were really an old
woman wanting rest I might take it from you. But I am not. I am as able
for my work as either of you. I like it, and if you gave me your money
you might have to wait a long time before it came back to you. All these
things are against Susie’s proposal. And as for John----’
He looked at her with the opposition in his eyes which had never been
quenched since the moment they had met at the little station at Edgeley,
on the day his grandmother died.
‘What of John?’ he said.
‘Only that nobody at your age can say what chances a few days may bring
forth; what occasion there may be for the support of the little fortune
he has a right to, however little it may be. Let us leave this subject
for something that will interest you more. John, your grandfather’s
house has not been sold, though I had thought it better to do so, had
the opportunity occurred. But, as it happens, the opportunity has never
occurred. It is yours, now, to do what you like with it, and the tenant
who has been in it is going away. I have thought that perhaps you would
like to go--and see for yourself what is best to be done. You have still
friends there: and you have had few holidays--few amusements.’
There was a certain compunction in her voice--but John could not observe
what there was in her voice, for the sudden haze of recollection, and
all the old images and thoughts that came back and enveloped him in an
atmosphere so different from this. The old house so little and peaceful,
the old couple by the fire, the garden full of sunshine with the old
gardener pottering about, and the old lady with her tender smile,
gathering the flowers. It was not that he remembered all these long
past and half-forgotten things. They returned to him as if the sphere of
living had rolled round, and he had come to the former times once more.
How strange out of the matron’s room in this huge London hospital, out
of the engineer’s busy surroundings, the office, the plans, the
succession of big undertakings and journeys all over the world, to
return back in a moment to that tranquil living once again! He was
roused from this momentary realisation of the past, by Susie’s soft
voice saying, with a wistful tone in it, ‘I should like to go with you,
John.’