Mrs. Oliphant

“ Don’t you begin and imagine things that are not true.’
‘I don’t imagine anything,’ said the boy, ‘but if you will consider, grandmamma, this is my mother. And I know nothing about her. For a long time it seemed all simple. I never minded. But, now I’m getting older and see how other people are, it is all so strange. Let me have my own way this time—let me just write to her as it would be natural if I were really her son.’
‘Oh, my John, that you are, indeed, indeed; her son and nothing else. Whose son should you be but hers? Don’t take any wrong notions into your head. My poor Emily! ”

“ EMILY. She came into the parlour first, where she sat down close to the fire. She shivered as she looked round, Mr. Sandford and John both standing behind looking at her. There was indeed already upon the house that air of revolution, the cold strangeness of a place which is no longer the centre of domestic life, but fit only for an ante-chamber and waiting-room for those who cannot be at the point of deepest interest. There was an unusual chill in this place which had always been so warm.
John could see now for the first time what his mother was like. ”

“ She went to the funeral, supporting her father on her arm, while John walked with Mr. Cattley behind. A great many people, indeed, it might be said the whole parish, attended the funeral; and there were many tears among the crowd. But Emily shed no tear. She kept her father’s arm in hers, and encouraged and supported him. The old gentleman, who had been so strong and hale, had sunk all at once into helplessness; his heavy foot, that had been so steady, became shuffling and uncertain; sometimes he would sob feebly, like the voluntary crying of a child, without tears. ”

“ They tell me that poor Mr. Sandford does not venture to call his soul his own, and John goes about as if all the life was cowed out of him. Who is she, Mr. Cattley? don’t you know?’
The curate was seated in the drawing-room of the rectory, which was to him the place most near to Paradise. It was twilight of the wintry day, and almost dark, the blaze from the fire dancing upon the walls and making glad Mr. Cattley’s heart. He loved, above everything in the world, to sit and talk by that uncertain light. ”

“ One does not naturally enter into discussions about one’s self. Even the most strained of circumstances appear to us all quite simple and easy when they concern ourselves. He was quite natural, everything about him was quite natural—he felt no mystery in his own being or surroundings: and—whatever might have been said or felt at the time when he came to his grandfather’s—neither did anyone else. Indeed, in the new place where they had settled, nobody knew anything of Mr. Sandford’s daughter, nor of their previous history at all.
And yet at the bottom of his heart John had forgotten nothing. ”

“ Why, grandmamma,’ said John, laughing, ‘you are as bad as the people in “Les Miserables,” that I read to you, you know—— ’
‘Oh, yes, I’m frightened!’ she said, leaning upon him, and putting her hand to her heart, as if she had received a blow.
He felt the throbbing which went all through the slight frame as if it had been a machine vibrating with the quickened movement.{88}
‘Why, grandmamma,’ he said again. ‘You to be frightened! He can’t, if he were a demon, do any harm to you. And shall I tell you what Mr. Cattley said? ”

“ Cattley advised and Elly urged him to do.
‘You should carry on your mathematics. Mathematics are always good for an engineer: or even draw,’ said Elly, as if that branch of industry was very frivolous in comparison, ‘that’s good for an engineer too. I am sure Mr. Cattley would help you if you were to ask him. But, for goodness sake, Jack, do something; don’t fall into the same ways as all the other boys, wandering about with your hands in your pockets. ”

“ It did not indeed enter into Jack’s mind to realise what he should do were he Elly; for that is one inalienable peculiarity of the human constitution that no male creature can put himself in the place of a woman, as almost all female creatures imaginatively place themselves in that of some man. It is the one intimate mark of constitutional superiority which makes the meanest man more self-important than the noblest woman. Elly knew exactly what she would do if she were John. ”

“ She is all I have. I have always given a great deal of heed to Emily. She knows most things—better than most people. I don’t know who I should trust to advise me if it wasn’t Emily; with her I know that I am safe.’
‘Oh, surely you are the best judge,’ said Mrs. Egerton, with offence. She had no right to be offended. What he said was perfectly just, and she had no ground whatever on which to stand with any idea of ousting Emily. What right could she have to oust Emily? She felt a great interest in John, but not enough to interfere on his account. ”

“ One thing I would ask of your honourable feeling, John. If it has been thought best by everyone, my mother included, not to enter into our family circumstances at your early age, I ask you to respect our decision. We know better than you. We must know better than you. Don’t try to surprise your poor old grandfather, in his loneliness, into saying—what he will regret. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Some late people, not the labourers, who were off to their work long ago in the darkness, were coming out very cold to their occupations: the shop had still a smoky paraffin-lamp lighted, and there was one of the same description shining through the open door of the ‘Green Man.’ Except for these points of light, all was grim and grey in the village. The sky widened and cleared minute by minute. It did not grow bright, but slowly cleared. Mrs. Sandford had a thick veil over her face, but everybody knew her. To attempt to hide herself was vain. ”

“ In his mind he came to feel himself a sort of little uncle to Susie, which, of course, being grandmamma’s son, was what he would naturally be. He fell into all the old people’s ways of thinking, feeling sorry in a disapproving way that Emily and her daughter never came to see them, yet feeling this more as a fault in them than as anything that told upon himself. Children and old people are more near to each other than the old and the middle-aged, and Johnnie made a far better child than Emily, who herself was older than her father and mother. ”

“ He had been drinking——’
‘Drink is a terrible thing, John. Almost everything begins with drinking. I have known it poison more lives than anything else in the world. If I had to choose, I think I would rather that a child of mine should murder some one outright than take to drink, for in that case there is no telling how many he might murder—all that loved him—and himself as well as the rest.’
‘You need not tell me, grandmamma; no one can hate it more than I.{126}’
‘I hope so. I hope so, dear! You have never seen anything all your life that could incline you in any such way, have you, John? ”

“ We’ve never been very rich or great, but we’ve always been able to hold up our heads wherever we went. I’m very shaky this morning,’ he said, relapsing into his broken voice. ‘I’d like to take the air a little; but I’ve been so long indoors I don’t know if I could keep my legs.’
‘Will you have my arm, grandfather?’ said John.
‘Well,’ said the old man, with his half sob, ‘the first day we’re alone it’s a kind of natural to go out together; and we’ll just look if there’s a snowdrop or two out yonder. ”

“ I think, my dear, we will go home.’
They had many little conversations of this kind. The old lady would begin upon any subject, it did not matter what, and then by degrees she would come to this:
‘I have seen so much in my life. I have seen many young people grow up everything that could be wished, as you have done, John; and then, as soon as they came into temptation, they have gone astray. Nobody knows till he has been tried: and it is not the disagreeable ones, the ones that you would dislike, that go: sometimes the very nicest, John—those that are the kindest, the tenderest. ”

“ John raised the lantern quickly, sharing his master’s indignation, and, the light suddenly shifting, fell upon a figure which, happily, was not that of a village toper. It was a tall man, in rough clothes, with a red spotted handkerchief tied round his neck, and a hat slouched over his eyes. If there had been any possibility of violence in Edgeley, the curate, who was a slim man, and, notwithstanding his height, not very strong, might have shrunk from such a meeting in the dark ”

“ Sandford, striking his hand against the arm of his chair, ‘whether the education he has been getting counts like schooling. For, you see, he has never been at school. I had my doubts on that subject all along.’
‘Oh, yes, oh, yes, my dear,’ said the old lady. ‘To be taught by a good man that knows a great deal, like our curate, that is better, surely, than being exposed to meet with bad boys and bad influences in a strange place.’
John listened to this conversation, turning his face from one to the other. ”

“ We are getting old people, and your dear father, though he never complains, is not such a walker as he used to be, and I have got a little stupid, and can’t keep him as cheerful as I could wish.” Do you think I shouldn’t say as much as that? or what do you object to, my dear?’
‘Dear grandmamma,’ said John, ‘I had better put “Emily” at the beginning of the letter: for I could not say that about getting old, and about her dear father, could I—when I am only her—son?’
Mrs. Sandford said tchick, tchick as her husband did; half coughing, half crying. ”

“ But that’s how it is, John. We’ve seen such things happen under our very eyes.’
‘That is no reason, grandfather,’ said John, very gravely, ‘that anything bad should happen to me.’
‘Have I not been saying so? The best thing{154} is to shut your ears to all idle tales. Don’t believe half you hear, and never go inquiring into trouble that is past. If you make up your mind to it, and never forget your duty, and keep steady—why, Liverpool is just the same as any other place.’
‘Not to us—not to anyone connected with us,’ Mrs. Sandford said. ”

“ Sandford looked at him anxiously.
‘Oh, my dear,’ she cried. ‘Some day or other everything is found out in this world. I never put any confidence in secrets for my part. Though they may be ever so carefully kept, they always come out in the end.’
‘Is there a secret, grandmamma? I had been beginning to fear something of the kind. And they think, perhaps,’ said John, with indignation, ‘that I am a child, and cannot be trusted—that{171} whatever it is I must not know it. ”

“ It was all very strange to John. He could not think why they should distrust him, why they should have so little faith. Keep steady! That was a very low level of duty; he said to himself that he hoped he would do better than that. Any poor workman, or poor fellow without education or advantage of training, disgraced himself if he did not keep steady. How much more was required of one like himself! He had not time, however, to express these sentiments, for that was the night on which Mrs. Sandford had one of her attacks. She had never been in the way of having attacks as so many people have. ”

“ You’ve advantages, as you say, in the village maybe, and just a little way about, where our name is known, though we have not spent all our lives in this little place. But look you here, John. You mustn’t expect to be able to make your way in the village, nor perhaps near it. You mustn’t expect the old folks will last for ever. When you go out into the world, you’ll find there are very few that ever heard tell of your grandmother and me. You will have to be your own grandfather, so to speak,’ grandpapa said, with an unsteady little laugh. ”

“ It was like herself going out into the world, planning the future, foreseeing all that was to happen. If it had been possible for her to go out into the world too, and have a profession, which with a sigh of regret she acknowledged was not possible, she would have done it just as he was going to{109} do it. His enthusiasm about lighthouses had indeed been struck out by Elly, who had read all about the Eddystone ‘in a book,’ as she said, and who thenceforward had done nothing but talk about it till she became a bore to her brothers, and set John’s congenial soul aflame. ”

“ She said: ‘Mother! Pity is what I cannot bear. Let them crush us if they like. Let them think us as bad as—but pity, never! That I cannot bear.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said grandmamma, ‘try to be softened and not hardened by this great trouble.’
These were things that Johnnie heard partially. ”