THE DARKNESS THAT COULD BE FELT.
John rose late next morning to a changed world. It no longer seemed to
be of any importance what he did. For the first time in his life he got
up in the forenoon and breakfasted as late as if he had been a
fashionable young man with nothing to do. He was not fashionable indeed,
but there was no longer any occupation that claimed him. He had nothing
to do. He flung himself on his sofa, after the breakfast, which he had
no heart to touch, had been taken away. What did it matter what he did
now? He had not slept till morning. He was fagged and jaded, as if he
had been travelling all night. Travelling all night! that was nothing,
not worth a thought. How often had he stepped out of a train, and,
after his bath and his breakfast, rushed off to the office with his
report of what he had been doing, as fresh as if he had passed the night
in the most comfortable of beds! that was nothing. Very, very different
was it to lie all night tossing, with a fever swarm of intolerable
thoughts going through and through your head, and to rise up to feel
yourself without employment or vocation, to see the world indifferently
swinging on without you, when you yourself perhaps had thought that some
one train of things, at least, would come to a dead stand without you.
But there was no stoppage visible anywhere. It was he who had stopped
like a watch that has run down, but everything else went on as before.
He had written his letter to Elly on the previous night. Thus everything
was crammed into one day--his bad reception at the office, his discovery
of the man who had thus injured him, who had injured him so much more
sorely by the mere fact of existing; and the conclusion of his early
romance and love-dream. He had not sent the letter yet. He had kept it
open to read it in the morning, to see whether anything should be added
or taken away. So many words rose to his lips which appealed
involuntarily to Elly’s love, to her sympathy--and he did not want to do
that. He wanted to be quite imperative about it, as a thing on which
there could be no second word to say. Elly could not call a convict
father. She must never even know of the man who was John’s destroyer,
though he was at the same time John’s father. He shuddered at the words,
notwithstanding that a great melting and softening was in his heart
towards the strange, loosely-knitted intelligence which seemed to drift
through everything--life, and morality, and natural affection--without
feeling any one influence stronger than the other, or any moral
necessity, either logical or practical. To be brought thus in all the
absolutism of youth, and in all the rigid rightness of young
respectability, face to face with a man to whom nothing was absolute,
and the most fundamental principles were matters of argument and
opinion, gave such a shock to John’s being as it is impossible to
estimate. It seemed to cut him adrift from everything that kept him to
his place. Had the discovery been uncomplicated by anything at the
office, John might have felt it differently. It would, in any way, have
taken the heart out of him, but it would not, perhaps, have interfered
with his work. But now everything was gone.
He flung himself down on the sofa, and lay like a man dead or disabled;
like a man, he said to himself, who had been drunk overnight, who had
come out of dissipation and vice with eyes that sickened at the light of
day. And this was John Sandford, who never in his life before, having
unbroken health and an energetic disposition and boundless determination
to get on, had spent a morning in this way. He almost believed, as he
threw himself down on the sofa and turned his eyes from the light, that
he actually had been drunk (using the coarsest word, as if it had been
of one of the navvies he was thinking) overnight.
And yet his heart was soft to the cause of it all. A feeling which had
never been awakened in him, even when she was most kind, by his mother,
which seemed out of the question so far as she was concerned, stole in
with a softening influence indescribable, along with the image of that
disgraced and degraded man, insensible as he seemed to his own disgrace.
That easy smile of cheerful vagabondage was the only thing that threw a
little light upon the unbroken gloom. It had amused John in the vagrant
soul which he had taken under his wing; it was awful and intolerable to
him in his father: yet unconsciously it shed a sort of faint light upon
the future, from which all guidance seemed removed. What was he to do in
that changed and terrible future, that new world in which there was no
longer any one of all the hopes that had cheered him? Elly was gone, as
far as the poles apart from him and his ways, and so were his ambitions,
his schemes. There remained to him in all the world nothing but his
mother and sister, who had deceived him, and whom he could now serve
best by going away out of their ken for ever: and this poor criminal,
abandoned by all--the convict who had no friend but Joe, who had wronged
and cheated John, and brought him to the dust, but who yet was the only
living creature that belonged to him and had need of him now.
He was roused from his first languor of despair (though that was a
condition which could not have lasted long in any circumstances) by the
entrance of the little maid to lay the table for another meal. Another
meal! Was this henceforward to be the only way in which his days should
be measured? But no, he said to himself, jumping up with a sort of fury
from his sofa, that could not be, for there would soon be nothing to get
the meals with in that case: at which thought he laughed to himself.
Laughing or crying what did it matter, the one was as horrible as the
other.
‘Missis said as she thought perhaps you would be wishing your dinner at
’ome to-day,’ said the maid, startled by his laugh.
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said John; but, when the food came with its
savoury smell, he found out, poor fellow, that he was hungry, very
hungry, having eaten nothing for--he did not recollect how long, weeks
it seemed to him, since that peaceful breakfast before anything had gone
wrong. At twenty-one a young man’s appetite cannot be quenched by
anything that may happen. He ate, he felt enormously, eagerly, and
afterwards he was a little better. When that was over he drew himself
together, and his thoughts began to shape themselves into a more
definite form.
In his profession, young as he was, he had already seen something of
emigration, and had contemplated it more familiarly than is usually the
case. He had been in America. He knew a little of the works that were
going on in various distant regions, and he had that confidence which
belongs to a skilled workman in every class, that he must find
employment wherever he went. Anyhow, wherever he might decide to go, the
world would be a different world for him. He would be cut off from
everything with which he was acquainted or which was dear to him, as
much in London as at the Antipodes. Therefore, the wiser thing was to go
to the Antipodes, and make life outside at once as strange as the life
within.
It would, perhaps, ease the horrible annihilation of every hope if
everything external were changed, and he could imagine that it was
Australia or New Zealand, and not some awful fate that had done it. And
now henceforth he would have one companion--one poor companion from
whom he could never cut himself free--his father! who would have to
stand to him in place of a family, in place of Elly, over whom he would
have to watch, whom he must never suffer to steal from his side, whom
perhaps he might guide into some little tranquil haven, some corner of
subdued and self-denying life where he might wear out in safety. But,
alas! John recoiled with a thrill of natural horror, first at the
circumstances, then at himself, for building upon that. His father was
not old as fathers ought to be. He was not more than fifty, and, though
this is old age to persons of twenty-one, the young man could not so far
deceive himself as to see any signs of failing strength or life drawing
towards its close in the man whom the austerity of prison life had
preserved and purified, and whose eye danced with youthful elasticity
still. He was not like an old father of seventy or eighty, the
conventional father whom fiction allots to heroes and heroines, and who
is likely to die satisfactorily at the end, at least, of a few years’
tenderness. No. May would live, it might be, as long as his son. This
was an element of despair which it was impossible to strive against,
and equally impossible to confess; even to his own heart John would not
confess it. It lay heavily in the depths of that heart, a profound
burden, like a stone at the bottom of a well.
‘Yes,’ he said to himself, with a little forlorn attempt to rouse up and
cheer himself on, ‘to the Antipodes!’ where perhaps there might be
something to do, of as much importance, or more, than draining the
Thames Valley: where the primitive steps of civilisation had yet to be
made, and he might be of use at least to somebody. That was one thing to
the good at least, to have decided so much as that. And then he seized
his hat and went out. There was still one preliminary more important
than any other, and that was to find the cause of all this ruin, the
future object of his life. Everything else must go; his scheme--he had
thrown down all his papers on the office-table, and left them there, for
what was the good of them now? his love? He took up finally the letter
to Elly, and with his teeth set dropped it into the box at the first
post-office he came to. Having done this he stood all denuded, naked, as
it were, before fate, and went forth to seek him who was the cause of
it all--his father the convict; the man whom it would be his duty to
serve and care for, who was all that was left to him in life.
Perhaps, if it had not been for this failure in respect to his work, for
the betrayal of which he had been the victim, and the prompt discovery
and consequent abandonment of him by his employers which had followed,
John would not have been so certain of his duty. He never could have
taken his mother’s advice and altogether forsaken the father whom he had
so unfortunately discovered. But he might have been induced to conceal
May’s existence, and to make some compromise between abandoning him
altogether and burdening his life with the perpetual charge of him, as
he now intended. The conjunction of circumstances, however, had narrowed
the path which lay before him. Never, in any case, could he have kept
Elly to the tie, which as yet was no tie, when he discovered the
disgrace which overshadowed his family; and with both his great motives
withdrawn--his love and his ambition--what did there remain for John? To
enter with his reputation as a social traitor the service of Spender &
Diggs? As soon would a soldier in the field desert to the enemy. And
what, then, remained for him to do? Australia, where there was a fresh
field, and where not only he but the poor burden on his life, the soiled
and shamed criminal, would be unknown, and might begin again.
The first thing, however, was to find him; but John had not much doubt
on that point. After a little pause of consideration he set out for
Montressor’s lodgings, feeling convinced that the actor would at least
know where he was to be found. The Montressors, notwithstanding their
return to fortune through the success of Edie, were still in the old
rooms in one of the streets off the Strand, up three pairs of stairs,
the same place in which John had supped upon hot sausages on his first
night in London. How strange it was that an incident so trivial should
have altered the colour of his whole life! For had he not, in his boyish
folly, called himself John May to that chance friend, it might so have
been that this discovery never would have been made. It was with a sigh
that John remembered, shaking his head as he went up the long dingy
stairs, that after all this had nothing to do with it, and that it was
something more uncalled-for still, an accident without apparently any
meaning in it, which had brought him directly in contact with his
father, on the first night on which that contact was possible. The very
first night! He had to break off with a sort of satirical smile at this
accidental doom, when the door was opened by Mrs. Montressor, who looked
at him with a startled expression, and not the welcoming look with which
on his rare visits she had always met him.
‘Oh, Mr. May!’ she said; then paused and added, hurriedly, ‘Montressor
is out, and I am just going to fetch Edie from the rehearsal. I am so
sorry I cannot ask you to come in.’ He thought she stood against the
door defending it, and keeping him at arm’s length.
‘It does not matter,’ he said. ‘I had--no time to come in. I wanted to
find out from Montressor the address--of a friend.’
‘What friend?’ said the woman, quickly.
‘He must have told you, Mrs. Montressor, of the discovery we made: that
his friend May--was--my father: no more than that: though it had been
kept from me and I didn’t know.’
‘Oh, no, Mr. Sandford,’ cried Mrs. Montressor, ‘that was a mistake, I am
sure. You see I know your real name. I found it out long ago, but I
never told Montressor. No, no, Mr. Sandford, it is all a mistake. He is
no relation of yours.’
A sudden gleam of hope lit up John’s mind, but faded instantly.
‘He is my father,’ he said, ‘there can be no mistake.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ said the woman, beginning to cry. ‘It can’t be, it shan’t
be; there is none of that man’s blood in you.’
‘Hush,’ said John, ‘he is my father. Tell me where I can find him; that
is the best you can do for me, Mrs. Montressor.’
‘I can’t, then,’ she said, ‘I don’t know. I will tell you frankly he has
been here, but I would not have him; I know him of old: and where he is
now I don’t know.’
‘But Montressor knows.’
‘Very likely he does. I can’t tell you. He is out. I don’t know where
he has gone. I’ll give you no information, Mr. Sandford, there! If he
has the heart of a mouse in him, he will never let you know.’
‘And what sort of a heart should I have if I let him elude me?’ said
John. ‘No, if you would stand my friend, you must find him out for me. I
am going abroad. I am leaving England--for good.’
‘Is it for good?’ said Mrs. Montressor. ‘Oh, I’m afraid it’s for bad, my
poor boy.’
‘I hope not,’ said John, steadily, ‘at all events it’s all the good that
is left me. And I cannot go without him. Tell Montressor, for God’s
sake, if he wants to stand my friend, to bring my father to me, or send
me his address.’
It took him some time to convince her, but he succeeded, or seemed to
succeed, at last. And he went away, not at all sure that the object of
his search was not shut up behind the door which Mrs. Montressor guarded
so carefully. He resumed his thoughts where he had dropped them, as he
went down again the same dark and dingy stairs; they seemed to wait for
him just at the point at which he had left off. The very first night!
he almost laughed when he thought of it: and then he began to account to
himself for that meeting, following up the course of events to the time
of his first acquaintance with Joe. He went back upon this carelessly
enough, remembering the man in the foundry at Liverpool, and before
that, before that---- John started so violently that he slipped down
half-a-dozen steps at the bottom of the stairs, and a sort of stupor
seized his brain till he got into the open air and walked it off.
There came before him like a picture the evening walk with Mr. Cattley,
the tumult outside the ‘Green Man,’ the half-drunken tramp who wanted
some woman of the name of May. Good God! was he so near the discovery
then, and yet had no notion of it! He remembered the very attitude of
the man sitting with his back against the wall, maundering on in his
hoarse tones, half-drunk, muddled yet obstinate, about his mate’s wife
and the news he was bringing. Could it be his mother--_his mother!_ the
fellow was seeking all the time: and had he got thus closely on the
scent from some vague information about the change of habitation made
by his grandparents? How strange all seemed, how impossible, and yet how
natural! And to think of the boy going gravely by, disgusted yet
half-amused, with his lantern, looking down from such immense heights of
boyish immaculateness upon the wretched, degraded creature who played
the helot’s part before him, and called forth his boyish abstract
protest against the cruelty of the classic moralists who thus essayed to
teach their children by the degradation of others. It all came before
him, every step of the road, the aspect of everything, every word almost
that had passed between Mr. Cattley and himself. And all this time it
was himself whom Joe was seeking, and at last--at last--his message had
come home! He seemed to be gazing at the village street, and that first
act of the tragedy played upon it, with a smile to himself at the
strange, amazing, incredible, yet still and always so natural--oh, so
natural--sequence of events--when all of a sudden his heart seemed to
turn that other corner under the trees, and, with a rush of misery, it
came back to him that Elly, Elly, was and could be his Elly no more.
He never knew very well how it was that he spent the rest of this long
afternoon and evening. He walked about, looking vaguely for some trace
of his father, or Montressor, or Joe, but saw nothing of them, as may be
supposed; and then he went from shop to shop of the outfitters, where
emigrants are provided with all they want on their voyage: and finally
went back to his rooms, and, in the blank of his misery, went to bed,
not knowing what to do.
And thus, in the changed world, in the darkened life, the evening and
the morning made the first day.