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. Don’t try----’

‘I’ll do nothing dishonourable, I hope,’ cried the boy, ‘but I’ll make
no promises. I’ll find out, if I can. I’ll do all I can to find out----
’

‘And when you have done so,’ she said, with an audible quiver in her
voice, ‘what will you discover? Nothing that is of any consequence to
you or anyone--only that we wanted you, all of us, to respect and
reverence your family until you were old enough to understand how things
come about. That is all. And it was my mother’s wish as well as----’

‘Don’t say that,’ exclaimed John. ‘She died saying, “Tell him--tell
him----”’

‘This is madness,’ she said, with a start, as if she would have sprung
out of the carriage: then recovering herself. ‘Like every young and
heated imagination you make mountains out of molehills,’ she said, in a
very slow and measured voice. ‘A mere matter of family expediency, and
you turn it into some dreadful secret. This shows how little you are to
be treated with confidence. What a child you are still!’

He turned round upon her with all the fierceness of boyish wrath.

‘If it isn’t a dreadful secret, what is it? You’ve taken my father and
my mother from me, both, both.’

She gave a little, quivering cry.

‘And what am I, then?’ she said.

The boy turned away with a sorrowful movement. They were drawing up at
the little station, and there was time for no more.

‘You are Emily,’ he said.

CHAPTER XV.

A VISIT TO THE FOUNDRY.

John was not, perhaps, very much pleased with himself as he came home
after seeing Emily away. As soon as he said that to her, his heart swung
back like a pendulum, and he asked himself what if he were wrong after
all, what if it were not so? He had believed her to be his mother all
his life, and what if, after all, that idea, which up to a few days
since there had been no doubt about, what if it proved the right one,
and this new light which had burst upon him, wrong? He shivered when
this thought came into his mind, but he would not entertain it. Yet
instinctively, involuntarily, it would come back and back. In all that
he could recollect of his childhood there was nothing which indicated to
him a different kind of mother. He had little recollection of caresses
or the softness of maternal tenderness. The bright spots in his
childhood were those illegitimate moments which he knew enough to know
must have been infringements of every rule, when he had been brought
down in his night-gown in his father’s arms. In place of all the
ordinary pleasures of childhood, he had the recollection of those
moments and nothing more; but of a mother, such as his grandmother had
been, nothing. All that he did remember chimed in well enough with the
image of her whom he had called Emily, a recollection which began to
burn and sting, but which yet he justified to himself, remembering all
the years in which he had heard her spoken of by that name, and in which
she had never come near him, never expressed any wish to see him, as
most mothers would. He came home distracted by these thoughts, driving
back solitary in the cab--though he had meant to walk; and found that
his grandfather had gone to bed, and that all was silent and miserable
in the house. There was the fire, and that was all, to give a little
cheerfulness. John was not old enough to feel the companionship of a
cheerful fire, making its little noises, its ashes falling, its flames
breaking out, to cheer the solitary; but he liked the warmth in his
nervous condition, and sat down by it and thought. If by chance it
should have been to his mother that he dealt that cruel blow! but he
would not think of a hazard so terrible. And then he put forward his
hand and pulled out two old books from the shelf, where all his old
classics stood untouched. These were classics too in a way, but it was
not for their rank in literature that he prized them. One was the
‘Robinson Crusoe,’ which was so full of memories; the other, which was
the one he chiefly sought, was Mrs. Trimmers’ ‘Robins.’ But it was not
the story of Pecksy and Chicksy that moved him. It was the name in a
large scrawl of childish text, Johnny May. He remembered it so
distinctly now, the name that had come to him with such vague souvenirs,
such a familiar but long-forgotten sound. He had never heard it since he
came to Edgeley. And why did his grandfather give him no answer to his
question when he asked what he had to do with that name? The wildest
fancies went circling about his brain. Why was his name taken from him?
Who was he? Had he indeed lost both father and mother in those old,
long-forgotten days, or was she--the grave mother of old, the mother who
never played with him or caressed him--was she--could she be after
all--Emily? His heart grew sick at the thought--sick not so much with
repugnance and opposition as with the recollection of how he must have
wounded her, insulted her, if this was so.

He tried next day to get some satisfaction from his grandfather, but
failed entirely. John began by telling the old man that, now he had
found out his real name, he intended to be called no longer John
Sandford, but John May--words which turned Mr. Sandford livid with
horror, and for a moment dumb with passion.

‘You shall do nothing of the sort,’ he cried, ‘unless you want to break
at once and for ever with me.’

‘But, grandfather----’

‘There’s no “but” in the matter. I’ll hear of no “buts.” Dismiss this
nonsense out of your head, or else dismiss yourself out of this house.
Do you hear me, sir? Not another word of it. It shan’t be--I won’t hear
of it. Silence, John! Say another word and I’ll turn you out to the
street. Cast off my name, who have been your guardian all your life, to
take up---- Silence, John! Don’t say another word to me.’

John, indeed, was saying no word. He was gazing at his grandfather with
wide-open, astonished eyes. Never in his life had such words been said
to him before. He was too much astonished to resent them. When the old
man reproached him for his wish to cast off the name which was that of
the tender protector, the only father he had really known, compunction
came quick to the boy’s heart. That was not what he had intended--it had
never entered his thoughts.

‘Grandfather, indeed you do me wrong. I--never thought of that.’

‘How was it you didn’t think of it? Haven’t we done enough for you, my
poor dear and me? What have we not done for you that heart could desire?
And now you want to be shut of us, to clear out, to change your name. I
am glad she’s out of the way not to see it or to hear of it. I’m glad
she’s out of the way.’

‘Grandfather! don’t, for pity’s sake don’t----’

‘Pity!’ said the old man--‘you don’t show much for me. I’m settling
down, my poor old dear in her grave, and the house desolate, and Emily
gone, and nobody left but you and me. And the first day, the very first
day when everything’s over, and I’ve got to face the world again alone,
that’s the time you choose to tell me that you’re going to make a fuss
and disturbance, and take a new name, and set all the village talking.
Set ’em talking and inquiring and putting things together. Oh, I’ll not
have it. I’ll rather clear out myself and go right away.’

‘Grandfather!’ said John again.

‘Don’t speak to me. I’ll go and telegraph for Emily back again. She’ll
have to find me a place where I can have some peace; for all my peace
will be gone here. Oh, John! oh, John! I am glad she has not lived to
see this day.’

‘Don’t say that, grandfather,’ the boy cried. ‘I’ll not do anything to
vex you. I only wanted to bear my own name.’

‘And who told you it was your own name? Your mother is Sandford, and so
are you----’

‘My mother?’ said John, faltering--‘my mother?’

‘Perhaps,’ said old Sandford, ‘you’re going to deny her too----’

And then there was a silence in the middle of the storm--a silence which
marked the dangerous point beyond which these two unused to fighting did
not care to go.

‘Grandfather,’ said John at last, ‘I don’t want to vex you, nor to make
myself as if I didn’t belong to you. But why shouldn’t you tell me? I’m
old enough to understand. If there’s any secret, oughtn’t I to know it?
Perhaps it isn’t half so bad as the things I take into my head. It would
be so much better if you would trust me--tell me. One time or other I
shall be sure to find out; and if I’ve been insulting my mother (how can
I tell?) and vexing you, is it my fault? It is out of exasperation
because I know there is something, and yet what it is I’m not allowed to
know.’

The old man calmed down during this speech and perceived what his best
policy was. He said:

‘You moider my poor brains with your talk of secrets. Let alone, my
boy. There’s few families that haven’t got something that they keep to
themselves--but the Sandfords have less than most. 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. By this time there should be a
snowdrop out.’

This altogether overcame John, who walked with the old man leaning on
his arm to the new-made grave, which had been covered with snowdrops,
and where already two or three of these pale, wintry blossoms, cold and
pure, were peeping out. They were followed all along the street by many
a sympathetic look. The men took off their hats, the women gave them
half-tearful greetings. ‘They go unto the grave to weep there.’ These
words can never be said without moving the general heart, so easily
touched, and to some griefs so sympathetic. That it should be an old man
and a boy who were making that pilgrimage was, the gossips said, ‘more
heart-breakin’ than if it had been a woman and a girl.’ The helplessness
of the pair, and yet the difference between their helplessness and that
of the women who had lost their bread-winner, has something poignant in
it. And if Mr. Sandford had exhausted all resources in finding an
expedient for calming the mind of John, and diverting him from his
inquiries, he could not have found one that was more effectual. The
chill sweetness of the little snowdrop upon his tender old mother’s
grave quenched all the heat and fire of thought out of the boy’s heart.

But he did not forget the question which tore it asunder. Some time
after he heard that Mr. Cattley was going to Liverpool for a day or two
to see his brother, and eagerly asked to be allowed to go with him. The
boy was looking pale, they had all remarked without surprise, and the
curate was very willing to have him for a companion. John managed to get
his grandfather’s permission without letting him know where they were
going; for Mr. Sandford was pleased and proud that his boy should be the
curate’s companion anywhere. It was with a mixture of excitement and
trouble that John set out. He felt that he might be about to make some
monstrous discovery, he knew not what, yet the sense of doing something
clandestine and forbidden contended in his mind with that pleasure in
carrying out our own desires, which is so strong in most hearts.

It was a long journey. Mr. Cattley and he went over the common to the
station at twelve o’clock of a brilliant, sunshiny February day, when
all the roads in their wetness reflected the wonderful colours of the
sky, and the very puddles were strewn with turquoise and gold; but it
was between six and seven at night, dark and cold, when they reached the
great town, which John entered with all the natural excitement of a
country boy who has never seen such a place before. Mr. Cattley took him
to the lodging to which he himself usually came on his visits here; for
his brother, like most other people of his importance, lived out of
town. He took John next morning through a world of streets, some of
which were imposing and brilliant, but by far the greater part mean,
narrow, and unlovely, to the place where the great foundry was, and
where but for an accident he himself might have been. The youth went
over it with a mixture of pleasure and repulsion. The novelty, the
bustle, the feeling of a great new energy unknown to him before, the
quickened sense of living and great creative work went to his head like
a new inspiration; but the plunging and ploughing of pistons and wheels,
the huge monstrous machines which looked like sentient creatures; the
grind, and whirl, and noise, and endless movement, in so many different
senses at once, up and down, round and round, back and forward,
contradicting each other, made the brain of the country lad go round
too, with a sickening confusion. A touch of envy of all those accustomed
workmen, who understood, and moved about so coolly among, this confusing
round of wheels, and at the same time a sense of thankfulness that he
was not himself to take his place among them, was in John’s mind. This
was not what had fired his imagination, or rather, had fired Elly’s
imagination, and thrown a warm reflection upon his. The lighthouses, the
canals, the civilising roads, the works that would be good for humanity,
as well as worth a man’s while, were different from all this buzzing and
plunging. Yet John was wise enough to know that the two things were too
closely connected to be severed. He was glad, however, that he was to be
set to surveying and outdoor work rather than to this.

Mr. Cattley was with his brother in the office, and John was left to
stray about the outskirts of the place, after he had been shown over it,
to wait for the curate. The grimy courts, the big, ugly buildings,
sheds, all the frightful accessories of the place were new to him. Why
were such places so ugly? Was it necessary they should be so ugly? The
black soil of the yard, over which the workmen went crunching in their
heavy boots, seemed mixed up of cinders and coal dust and mud. He was
asking himself, with a half laugh at his own simplicity, why this must
be--whether it might not be worth while to make the surroundings of the
workshops less hideous--when his eye was caught by one of the labourers
passing between him and the grimy wall. No skilled workman this, like
those in the blackened moleskins, which, at the beginning of the week,
were white, with their free step and independent aspect. The man was one
of the drudges of the establishment, a skill-less hanger-on, doing jobs
as they were wanted, carrying the great, rusty bars of iron, bringing
coals, doing all the rough work of the place. He was dressed in the
indescribable clothes of the British labourer, who has no sort of
habitual costume, not even a blouse under which to hide his rags, with a
red cotton handkerchief knotted about his neck. Perhaps it was this bit
of cotton that caught John’s eyes: and then it seemed to him that the
face above it was not unknown to him. It was a sufficiently villainous
face; the features looked as if they had been roughly shaped out of some
coarse paste, the small eyes, looking out from under shaggy brows, with
a sidelong glance, the slouching gait, the unshaven chin, made up a very
unattractive picture altogether.

‘Where can I have seen him?’ John said to himself. He had the keen
recollection of youth, and soon identified the unlovely figure which had
passed across his field of vision once, and no more. The man, seeing
John’s gaze fixed on him, felt it expedient to touch his cap, and claim
the recognition that was in the lad’s eyes. It might mean, if nothing
more, a pint of beer.

‘Mornin’, sir,’ he said, as if he knew all about him.

John was a little startled by this recognition.

‘You know me, too?’ he said.

‘I never forget anyone I ever sets eyes upon--especially a young man as
has little to do with them sixpences of his, and knows as a poor man is
mostly dry.’

‘And yet I never saw you but once,’ said John, with a laugh. He thought
within himself that this was not a very dignified acquaintance, and yet
to have remembered was something in the fellow’s favour. ‘When I saw you
you were looking for some one down at Edgeley, don’t you know?’

And then it suddenly occurred to John that it was this man’s inquiries
which had ended in bringing to his mind his own forgotten name--the
name of his childhood, which, for the present, at least, he was not
allowed to claim--and this changed his countenance from its lighter
aspect to profound gravity. For was not this the object with which he
came here, to find out something?--which he was not likely to do
wandering about the grimy yard of the foundry.

‘Ah!’ said the man, with a sudden lighting up of his seemingly impassive
countenance, ‘I have ye now. Never forgets a face, but don’t always
remember where I seen it. Edgeley, where I went to look up my mate’s
wife? But where that mate was, I’m not a-goin’ to say now.’ He put his
finger against his nose. ‘I warn’t a-minding down there. Bless you, I
knew if I’d a-found her, she’d a-bought me off pretty smart, rather than
let the story run that I was his mate and where he was. But mum’s the
word in the foundry. You won’t peach on a poor man, that is trying to
turn a honest penny, and get back his character--will ye, now?’

‘I!’ cried John, with great disdain. ‘I know nothing about you. I only
remembered I had seen your face----’

‘And was so kind as to want to know if I was in good ’ealth--which the
same to you, young man,’ said the fellow. ‘You wouldn’t give me no help,
though, then; and ye might have done it, and no harm.’

‘I couldn’t have helped you; for I knew there was no one of the name you
wanted in the village.’

‘Maybe there was, and maybe there wasn’t,’ said the man. ‘There was them
belonging to her, if she wasn’t there herself. An old lady come and give
me a sov. to go away. She did--she give me a sov.--though if it was for
that, or because she thought her blasted village wasn’t good enough for
the likes of me---- Give us a shilling, young master, to drink your
’ealth.’

John was so unused to the magnificence of dispensing shillings that he
took one mechanically from his pocket in answer to this appeal. But he
said before he gave it, with much authority and wisdom,

‘You don’t deserve a shilling, or anything else--if all you wanted was
to bring some poor woman to shame.’

‘It was very wrong,’ said the man, with a wink. ‘I know’d you’d think
so. But that was only my fun, bless you--and you’re sure there warn’t
not one o’ that name in the village, young master? Why, I wanted to give
her news of her ’usband as was my mate. You’re sure there warn’t one o’
that name?’

CHAPTER XVI.

RESEARCH.

John reflected as he walked back to his lodging on the small matters on
which great effects sometimes hang. This wretched fellow--hoping to get
something out of a poor woman whose husband was a felon, but who was
probably living in decent obscurity somewhere, keeping this dreadful
fact from the knowledge of those about her--had pronounced the name
which the boy had not heard for ten years, and thus, by an accident
which had nothing whatever to do with John, had thrown a light upon the
boy’s life. At this moment it was not a very comfortable light. The
gleam it had thrown had not brought peace, but the reverse. It had awoke
difficulties, troubles which no doubt were there and must have come
into evidence some time, though not necessarily now. John did not feel
that he had any reason to be grateful to the returned convict who had
all unawares, by mere chance, thrown that passing gleam upon his way.
But it was very strange to him to think how such things come
about--perhaps by mere accident, if there was such a thing as mere
accident in the world (John had touched the edge of philosophy, and
liked to think that he had thought on such subjects), perhaps in the
elaborate arrangements of a purpose which regulates the world in matters
both small and great. It gave him a sense of pleasure that such high
mysteries should come into his mind in connection with his own little
affairs, and yet it was no doubt just as wonderful, nay, more so, that a
sparrow can not fall without Divine Providence noting that infinitesimal
event, than if the schemes of heaven concerned only nations and
principalities and powers. He said to himself, following out that line
of thought (and liking himself for the impulse to do so), that if one
thing, then another; and that if God’s purposes regulated one act of
human affairs, they must regulate all, for nothing could be small or
great with Him. And whatever happened, though the present effect of the
revelation had been perhaps more painful than pleasant it was always
best to know. He said to himself that it is always best to know.
Supposing there is anything unpleasant in the antecedents of your
family, supposing they are less dignified, less well-off than you may
now suppose, still to know is a great matter. He was determined to leave
no stone unturned to find out why it was that he was not to be allowed
to come to Liverpool, and what harm it was supposed that he should get
there, and how his name, his father’s name, was connected with it, and
why he was forbidden to bear that name. These were momentous questions,
but they were not of that kind which he could get solved by any of the
ordinary means of procuring information.

On the last morning of his stay in Liverpool, John, being alone for an
hour or two, set out with a distinct determination on his mind to do
something, to leave not a stone unturned. He had already, when going
about with the curate, fixed his mind upon this. Indeed it was never
out of his mind. What had he come here for but with the determination to
find out something, to find out everything if it were possible? He had
gone about always on the look out, with his eyes open; but there had
been nothing either said or done within his ken which threw any light
upon his subject. On the last morning he was left alone, Mr. Cattley
having business to execute with his brother, and John felt that now was
his opportunity. He went out about ten o’clock with all the advantage of
being by himself and unhindered by anyone else’s business. By this time
he had become a little accustomed to the place and knew his way about.
He walked along straight in front of him, looking at all the shop
windows and the names over the doors. He did not quite see what help was
to be got out of that--but still he went on, observing everything,
hoping that perhaps some street corner might awaken his own dormant
recollection, or something that would give him a better guidance catch
his eye. He meant to leave no stone unturned.

Was there ever a wilder undertaking than to try to find information
about an unknown family by walking about the streets of a great city?
When he had walked for an hour or two, and began to feel tired, the
futility of this mode of research suddenly struck him. It did not seem
likely that he could do it in this way, when he came to think of it. But
how was he to do it? In what way was he to turn the metaphorical stone
under which knowledge might be hid?

He found himself in front of the Exchange when he woke up to this view
of the question. He went in timidly by the archway through which so many
men were streaming, and found himself suddenly in the midst of a sea of
men, all intent upon affairs which seemed life and death to them, all
too much absorbed in their own business to give any attention to the
boyish stranger. Sometimes there would arise a clamour of voices
speaking together, then this momentary storm would be over, and a lower
hum of many voices, a sound of feet, the murmur of a crowd would be all
that met his ear. And now and then this human tide would be moved like
the sea by a wave setting in one direction, and then would break off
into eddies and sweeps of current here and there. John was very much
interested by this sight. He had heard of such assemblies so often--the
characteristic heads, the strange sombre important aspect of this crowd
of men, the faces full of meaning and earnestness, affected him with
mingled awe and interest. They had the affairs of half the world in
their hands; many of them had a look of wealth, money written all over
their substantial persons; and then there were the shabby ones, more
exciting still to look at, with a hungry eagerness in their faces. The
boy forgot himself altogether and stood for a long time watching them,
pushed aside, now to one corner, now to another by the stream. Then it
suddenly occurred to him that he was neglecting his quest. He wondered
whether if he had the courage to call out in the midst of them all and
ask whether they knew anything of his father he might perhaps acquire
some information. But then shrank away into a corner ashamed of himself,
wondering what all those occupied men would think of him if he disturbed
their business consultations and arrangements with such a question. If
John had done so, no doubt the merchants would have been delighted. It
would have been a delightful story to carry home: ‘To-day on ‘Change the
funniest thing happened. A young fellow of seventeen or so, evidently
fresh from the country, got up suddenly and asked if anyone was known
there by the name of May!’ That is what the merchants and stockbrokers
would have told their families with great satisfaction. But the idea
filled John with shame and sudden discomfiture. He saw for the first
time how ridiculous were his hopes, and how impossible it was that he
should discover anything in this way.

It was half from shame, to recover from the self-ridicule of this
unaccomplished idea, that he plunged into a great public reading-room,
where he sat down to recover himself. True, he had not done anything to
be ashamed of, but the intention was so vivid that he felt as if he had
done it, and threw himself into a seat in a tremor of excitement, his
heart beating exactly as if he had carried that wild fancy into action.
By-and-by, when he recovered himself, he turned over a newspaper or two
mechanically, not knowing what he was doing, and feeling a confused
calm in this atmosphere--the quiet which was in the heart of the tumult,
a noiseless room within and the roar of the traffic and the multitude
without. While he thus sat in a kind of half-dazed condition his eye
fell upon a large thick volume, which was the directory of the town. It
seemed to him that an expedient more possible, more practicable, was
here afforded to him. He got up hurriedly, and turned it over, finding
without difficulty the name of a number of Mays. It was a May who was
the Mayor even. If he had asked the merchants in the Exchange, there was
no doubt this was what they would have thought he meant.

Then John went out again, and went straight to the Town Hall, which had
been pointed out to him, and which was close to the Exchange. He went,
not knowing very well what he was doing; and though he was shy by
nature, not venturesome, pushed his way through the town officers and
officials, and asked to see the Mayor. To see the Mayor! Had he gone to
Windsor Castle and asked to see the Queen, it would have been only a
little less reasonable. What did he want with the Mayor? It was only
when this question was asked him by a person of commanding presence and
still more commanding costume, of the beadle race, that he came to
himself. What did he want with the Mayor? To ask him if he could give
any information as to some one of his name who ten years ago or
thereabouts had lived in Liverpool (John supposed) and fallen into
misfortune? Poor John made a very faltering explanation to the beadle,
and shrank away, not without raising suspicions in that functionary, who
watched him out of sight with a look which was not complimentary. And it
was only then that the boy perceived the foolishness altogether of that
fervent resolution of his to leave no stone unturned. What stone was
there which he could hope to turn? What could he do? To appeal to the
mayor because his name was May! He might just as well, he said to
himself, have appealed to the ex-convict who had known some one of the
name of May in prison. The one would really have been as sensible as the
other, which was to say that both were folly itself. And, short of this
appealing to some one, what was he to do?

He did, as may be supposed, nothing. When he went to meet the curate at
the foundry in time for their train, he saw again the fellow who had
known May the prisoner, and had a shame-faced laugh at himself as he
thought of May the mayor. What if he were to interrogate this man, who
was already his acquaintance, who touched his cap and brightened at
sight of him, expectant of another shilling? The one, he said to
himself, would be just as sensible as the other, and more easily carried
out. When Mr. Cattley saw the recognition that passed between this
labourer and his young companion he looked at John with surprise.

‘Do you know that man?’ he asked, upon which John entered into the story
of his appearance at Edgeley, saying,

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘I think I remember something of the kind,’ said the curate, ‘but I
wonder you recollect the looks of the fellow. He is not a very
attractive-looking acquaintance.’

‘He brought a name to my mind,’ said John, ‘that I had a recollection
of--when I was quite a child. I have been trying to find out something
about it, but I can’t.’

‘What have you been trying to find out about?’

‘Well, that’s the funny part,’ said John, with an embarrassed laugh. ‘I
don’t exactly know. I want to know something, I can’t tell what, about a
gentleman of that name who I think lived here, or near here, ten or
twelve years ago.’

‘That’s vague,’ said the curate.

‘Yes, it’s very vague. I suppose it was silly to think I could find out
anything. The mayor’s name,’ said John, with a touch of pride in it, ‘is
May.’

‘Ah, the mayor. You didn’t think it was he, I suppose? I remember some
story of a May who embezzled or forged or something; no doubt the one
whom your friend there’ (Mr. Cattley jerked his thumb over his shoulder
to indicate the man at the foundry) ‘knew. Now, John, look sharp. We
haven’t got a minute to lose. Our train is at four.’

‘My things are all ready,’ said John: and they got their train, and
there was an end of the three days at Liverpool, in which he had hoped
to find out so much.

It was not so easy to explain his little journey to his grandfather as
he had hoped. He tried to give vague answers to the old man’s questions,
but in the end had to confess where he had been and why he had been so
desirous of going there.

‘To find out what?’ Mr. Sandford cried, with a flash of displeasure
quite unusual. ‘What did you want to find out?’

‘About my father, grandfather,’ said John. ‘I have never been satisfied
with what I have been told, and now less than ever.’

‘Why now? What has happened to make you dissatisfied? What does it all
mean?’

‘Since my--since your--since--Emily was here.’

‘How dare you call her Emily, sir? What do you mean by it? Do you intend
to drive me distracted in my lonely state? Am I to be brought to the
grave with your questions and your doubts? Ah, you never would have
taken that upon you,’ said the old man, ‘while _she_ was here. You think
you have got me at your mercy. You think you can take every advantage
of me now that I am alone.’

‘No,’ said John. ‘Grandfather, it is you who are hard upon me. She was
going to tell me. She would have told me if she had lived. The last
thing she said was, “Emily, tell the boy.”’

Old Mr. Sandford relapsed into his broken sobbing. It was quite genuine,
and yet both now and on other occasions it had served his purpose.

‘What is between two women,’ he said, ‘nobody can know, nobody but their
Maker. And neither you nor me can tell what that was. But she never told
you, bless her soul, that you were to insult your mother: oh no! nor me
that have always been your support and provided for you all your life.
You think perhaps you would have got on just as well without me, by
yourself, left upon the world?’

And then he fell into such agitation that John was full of regret and
self-reproach. He tried the best he could to make his grandfather forget
all that had been said, and to forget it himself, and to return to their
old life. But it was very hard to do. Indeed, this period in John’s
life was altogether very hard; his lessons were given over and he had
nothing to do: and after all the troubles and emotions of the past month
or two he had not strength of mind to begin some study by himself, as
Mr. 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 is
better to do anything,’ said Elly, ‘than to do nothing at all.’

John assented dutifully, but he neither resumed his drawing nor his
mathematics. He began even to avoid Elly, lest she should scold him; and
did wander about disconsolate with his hands in his pockets, with no
heart to do anything. This pause in his life was very hard upon him. It
had been settled that his mother, or Emily, whichever she was, should
arrange matters her own way at some engineer’s office in London, where
she had hopes of getting him taken in; but in the meantime she made no
sign, and it did not seem possible to do anything without her. Mr.
Sandford himself would take no trouble; sometimes he would lament
querulously that the boy whom he had brought up wanted to leave him and
had no feeling for him: sometimes he would say that his mother must
settle all that, that Emily was the proper person to arrange for her
son. But in any case nothing was done, and John relapsed into idleness
and wretchedness, and did nothing, devouring his own heart.

Whether this was a calculation of a cold-blooded kind on the part of the
woman who now seemed to have the lives of these two, the old man and the
boy, in her hands, as to what would happen--or whether it was the mere
course of events unquickened by any mortal calculation--it proved at all
events that Emily’s prognostics were right. Mr. Sandford never recovered
the death of his lifelong companion. He went out a little fitfully as
the spring came on, and took little walks chiefly ending in a visit to
her grave to see, after the snowdrops were over, if the primroses and
then if the violets were coming out there. He had covered the little
mound at first with all those spring flowers which she had loved,
perhaps with a dim prevision that the sod would be displaced before the
time for the later blossoms came. And all the long evenings he would sit
with a book laid out open upon her little table, but not reading, gazing
in the fire and twirling his thumbs. John sat at the table in his old
place near the lamps with his books, and sometimes tried to talk. But
his grandfather was not disposed to talk, and the hours would thus pass
by on leaden wings, so slow, so endless, so silent, not a sound in the
little parlour but the falling of the ashes from the fire, and the
ticking of the clock, and the rustle now and then of a page turned. But
John had no new books to tempt him, and at this turn of his life was but
a languid reader, and yielded in spite of himself to the fascination of
the strange dreary silence, and the contemplation of the old man
twirling his thumbs by the fire.

The summer had scarcely begun when Mr. Sandford’s daughter was again
summoned from London. When she arrived she found the sick-room in charge
of John, who had learned all that had to be done for the patient as well
as such an unlikely nurse could learn. The old man would not suffer him
out of his sight. He would not let him go even when Emily with her
superior knowledge came and took the seat at his bedside, and began,
almost before she came in, to alter the arrangements which the boy-nurse
had made.

‘He shouldn’t have this and that,’ she said, ‘they are bad for him in
his present state.’

‘My grandfather likes it so,’ said John.

‘We mustn’t ask what he likes, but what is best for him, ‘said the
new-comer. She was not unkind, but she was professional, seeing
everything from a point of view very different from theirs, with a
knowledge of what was right in the abstract and none of that tremulous
desire to please which moves a domestic ministrant. And, as if he had
waited for that sanction to his dying, the old man sank rapidly from the
time of her arrival. Whenever he could talk at all, his talk was about
‘the boy’ over whose head these two earned on their discussions, taking
no more notice of his presence than if he had been a chair or a table.

‘He’s been used to your mother, Emily. Your mother was very indulgent.
Perhaps he has been spoilt a little.’

‘A great deal, I fear, father.’

‘It was your mother did it. I like whatever she did best. It was all
done in love. Love is what he has been used to.’ This was on the last
night of his life. He was lying holding John’s hand, who was at one side
of the bed, while Emily was at the other. ‘Oh, be kind to him, my dear.
He’s a good boy. Don’t let there be any misunderstanding. When I am gone
he will have no one but you.’

‘I will try to do my duty to him, father. I don’t think you need have
any fear.’

‘Your duty, Emily, yes; but I hope it will be a little more than that.
Your own flesh and blood wants a little more. Trust him as much as you
can, my dear. He’s worthy of it. You would never repent it. Remember
that he has no one in the world but you.’

At midnight, the two to whom these words had been spoken stood again
together over the bed in silence more significant than words. ‘He had no
one in the world but you.’ The room was cold with the awe and chill of
death, and John stood stupified, as if his heart was dead. No one in the
world but her. Was this all he had to look to now?

CHAPTER XVII.

MOTHER AND SON.

They drove back together alone without a word, sitting close together,
not looking at each other--saying nothing. A few neighbours, out of
‘respect,’ had attended old Mr. Sandford’s funeral; and many hearts in
the village were sore for John. Behind the drawn blinds in the rectory,
and in many humbler houses, they spoke of the boy with great tenderness.
‘He’ll find out the difference,’ people said. ‘The old people thought
there was nobody like him: but if it’s an aunt, perhaps with children of
her own----’ And none of the little cortége returned with the mourners
to the house. The two were left altogether alone.

The little parlour was in painful good order, the blinds drawn up, the
daylight coming in as usual, the hearth so cleanly swept, the fire so
bright, the two chairs standing one on each side. It was all so
suggestive of the old people, as if they might have only gone out for a
walk, arm in arm, in their old way, and soon would come in and sit down
and look up smiling at their boy, and bid him come near the fire, for it
was a cold day. This suggestion flashed to John’s heart as he came in,
and might have overwhelmed him with sorrow and tears; but the presence
of that tall figure in her black cloak and close bonnet effectually put
a stop to any expression. She drew one of those chairs from the fire to
the table, without any sense of desecration, or of disturbing any sacred
image, and sat down. Her face was very grave, but without any harshness.
She was always very serious, yielding to no lighter impulses. She turned
to John, who stood vaguely, not knowing what he was to do, by the table.

‘Now,’ she said, not without feeling, ‘there are only us two--we must
try to understand each other.’

He made no reply. The movement she had made of the chair, though
perfectly simple and quite unintended, was enough to re-awaken in his
mind all the resistance, the repulsion, which indeed her action
throughout had never suffered to fade. For she had managed everything in
a perfectly clear, unhesitating, business way, giving her orders with
quiet and brief decision saving everybody trouble, but leaving no place
for any consultation, for any of those faltering conversations upon what
would have been most pleasant, or according to the ideas of the
departed, which draw together mourners in their grief. There was no
particular appearance of grief in her at all. She was serious and pale;
but then, she was always so, and there had been no room for sentiment in
anything she had done or said.

No creature more desolate than the boy himself at that moment ever stood
by a new-filled grave. The love which had enveloped him so closely all
his life had passed altogether away. He felt as if there was no longer
anyone that cared for him in the world. He felt that this familiar
place, which had been his home for so long, was not only to cease to be
his home, but to cease altogether. The jar of the chair as it was drawn
aside seemed to go through his heart. It was only a commonplace piece of
furniture now, a common old chair to be put up at an auction. The place
seemed to be desecrated by that simple movement. He had thought he would
keep the house just as it was, like a little temple to the memory of the
good guardians of his childhood. He was to be their heir, he took that
for granted. He would leave everything, he thought, and from time to
time come back out of the midst of the active life he had planned for
himself, and always find them in imagination sitting there to meet him.
No doubt John would soon have found out the impossibility of that fond
imagination; but this was what he thought. He had even planned how he
should put the gardener and his wife--themselves old people for whom it
would make a provision--into the house to keep it for him, which he had
said to himself, with tender childish pleasure, would please grandmamma.
But with the jar of that chair as it was drawn aside, John’s tender
imaginations went from him, leaving him with a sense of astonishment and
startled waking up. He had another will to calculate with of which he
had not thought.

She kept looking at him while these thoughts passed in a tumult through
his mind, waiting for an answer. It was but for a very short time, yet
to both of them it seemed long: and with all her seriousness she was of
a disposition which could not brook waiting. She said, ‘Well!’ a little
sharply, when he made no reply.

‘I did not say anything,’ John replied.

‘No, you did not say anything--you made no response. You look at me as
if you wanted to make a quarrel over those graves. But you shall not
make any quarrel, on that point I am resolved. We must understand each
other.’

He went and leant upon the mantelpiece and stood looking down into the
fire. Make a quarrel! It seemed to John that his heart would burst with
the pang this misconception gave him. A quarrel, over their graves! But,
though the suggestion was so abhorrent, he felt the sense of rebellion
and resistance grow stronger and stronger. He would not even meet her
eye. He would withdraw into that passive unyielding silence which of all
things in the world is most difficult to meet and to withstand.

She turned again towards him though she could not see his face.

‘John,’ she said, ‘don’t make me feel, at a moment when I am far from
wishing to feel it, how you have been spoiled by my father and
mother--and how wrong I was in giving you out of my own care.’

He made a fierce gesture of denial at the first part of her sentence,
and added at the last, with a sort of mocking echo, ‘Out of your own
care!’

‘I have said that it is time we understood each other,’ she said, ‘I
don’t know whether it was merely to wound me that you flung at me that
suggestion that I was not your mother.’ Here she made a pause, and he
too, his attention suspended with an excitement that took away his
breath. ‘If that was the motive, it was fully successful. It did wound
me. But if you had any real doubt on the subject----’

‘He had, he had!’ he said to himself, the blood throbbing in his head
with a giddy sense of mounting up and up to the circles of the brain,
and yet he knew very well what she was going to say, and knew also that
it was true.

‘It seems strange that I should have to put such an assurance into
words. Who would have borne with your alienation and your caprices, but
your mother? Many women even, in the circumstances, would have said, Let
him go. If nature has no voice, if there are no recollections of your
childhood to move you--never mind! Say it since you feel it. But I have
not been willing to do that. I have felt that the moment would come--and
the moment has come--when, you would have nobody but me. I have spoken
to Susie about it,’ she added, with a slight tremor in her voice.

‘Susie!’ The name brought a new sensation--something that touched his
heart.

‘Your sister--your only sister--as I am your only mother, though you
have so strangely misconceived me and denied me. I put that all down to
the circumstances, not to you. I am not blaming you--only we must
understand each other now.’

John, leaning on the mantelpiece with his face overshadowed by his hand,
knew in his heart that all this was true. He made no attempt within
himself to deny it. The reality of it was too much for him. It went into
his heart like a stone in deep water, deep, deep to the bottom, where it
lay a dead weight never to be got rid of. He could not protest or say
anything, as if he were surprised by this sudden announcement. He was
not surprised. He felt now that he had known it all well enough, that
when he said otherwise it had only been in the impulse of the moment,
with a frantic short-lived hope that perhaps that might come true. Alas!
he knew very well that it was this which was true. He seemed to remember
her now always silent, cold, an image of reserve and gravity in the
midst of the more cheerful scenes in his memory. It was rather from the
extreme occupation of his mind with these thoughts and recollections
which surged through it, than from any antagonistic intention that he
said nothing. But standing there with his head bent and his eyes lowered
it was not wonderful that he should appear to her an impersonation of
silent rebellion, a determined opponent.

‘You say nothing;’ she spoke in a tone in which a growing exasperation
began to make itself felt. ‘It might have been less painful for me to
let you go on in your own delusion--if delusion it was. But
unfortunately you cannot be free of me and my authority; you are at an
age when your life has to be settled for you, and in that as in
everything else it is with me only that you have to do.’

John changed his position a little, which, in the high strain of emotion
at which they were, seemed to both of them like a sort of response; so
that he was almost forced to add, ‘With you only?’ faintly. He did not
intend to say it. It did not mean anything. It was a mere echo, as if
the air caught the words. But it had not upon her this harmless effect.
Her paleness, which nothing else had touched, flushed high at these
words; she made a sudden movement as if she had received a blow.

‘With me only,’ she repeated, with mingled energy and irritation, as if
he had suggested a doubt. ‘Who else?--do you mean to say? do you
think----?’ These questions came from her hurriedly with something quite
unlike her usual gravity and calm. Then she stopped with a panting
hard-drawn breath, and added after a moment, in a tone almost of
derision, ‘As you are so intent on setting yourself against me, perhaps
you will tell me what, left to yourself, you would do.’

John could not quite tell what this change of tone meant. He was not
used to the quick interchange of argument nor was he quick to note the
significance of the inflections of a voice. He had never known
controversy at all, until he had embarked upon this one, and the moment
he withdrew from the unintentional force of silence, in which he had at
first wrapped himself, his ignorance and defencelessness became
apparent. He thought however that she was withdrawing from her position,
and recognising some claim in him to know and judge for himself. He left
the place where he had been standing, and came to the middle of the
room, throwing himself into a chair on the other side of the table.

‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that all this is mine now.’

‘What is yours?’

‘I mean: I suppose it is--all left to me? I could stay here, and--give
no one any trouble.’

‘Left to you, my father’s house and all that he had! Is that what you
mean? and you would stay here?’

‘I suppose so,’ said John. ‘I don’t know why. It seems natural, I
thought it would always be mine. If I was wrong, I’m--I’m very sorry,’
he cried, giving a sudden bewildered glance round him, with a new and
painful light of possibility breaking on his mind.

‘And you would stay here?’ she said. ‘And do--what? nothing? If you have
your plans made----’

‘I have no plans made. I have not thought of anything. I supposed--that
was how it could be.’ He looked at her for the first time with a
bewildered appeal in his eyes. ‘If you knew what it was--to change all
at once from being so--spoilt, perhaps, as you say, always understood,
never found any fault with----’ in spite of himself his voice faltered,
‘to change from that to--to---- and being not very old, nor knowing very
well: it makes a great difference,’ John said, feeling a sob swell
upwards in his boyish throat, and breaking off that he might not betray
himself. And he did not look at her again to see if there was in her
any responsive feeling, but leaned his head upon his hands, shading his
countenance from the light. And then there followed a moment of
silence,--so silent, so long--with the clock ticking loudly through it
with a sort of triumphant click-clack, as if that ceaseless measure were
the master of all.

After a while she spoke again, with a softened voice.

‘I recognise,’ she said, ‘all the difference: poor boy!--it is natural
you should feel it. I am a stranger--so to speak--though I--gave you
birth, which is something, perhaps. But it is not your fault. Tell
me--you think that all my father had to leave is yours, and that you
might continue to live here, just as before--is that what you expect?’

He made a little movement with one hand, still leaning his head on the
other. It was a movement that looked like assent. And yet this was not
what he had expected; for he had expected nothing, nor had he any
thought what he was to do.

‘To do nothing?’ she continued, ‘or to do--what? To live all alone at
your age--to carry on the sort of life my father led? That was suitable
enough at his time of life, but not at all for you. To keep the maid
Sarah and the gardener, and doze in your chair of an afternoon? This
could not be seriously what you thought.’

He started a little and cast a look at her, half indignant, half
piteous, but did not reply.

‘I am not laughing at you,’ she said, quite gently; ‘you will yourself
see when I put it to you that this would be quite impossible. Now I must
tell you how things really are. All that my father had is divided
between you and me: but you are too young to enter into possession of
your share. It will accumulate for you till you are twenty-one, and in
the meantime the charge of you naturally lies with me. Whatever has to
be determined is between us two. This is what I told you when we came
in; you have nobody but me.’

To describe what John’s feelings were while she spoke would be
impossible; everything seemed to swim and dissolve around him. It was
true that he had formed no definite idea to himself of what was to come;
and yet there had never seemed any question about this--that he was his
grandfather’s heir--his natural and lawful heir. Nothing else had
occurred to him. There had been nothing said about it; but it was this
arrangement which seemed inevitable to the boy. He did not think even
that any will was wanted. He, John Sandford, and no one else, could
succeed John Sandford. This was what he had believed; and in this
inheritance a certain sense of liberty was involved. He had thought of
various things he would do. That about keeping up the house for one
thing, and putting in the old gardener to take care of it; and then of
the measures he would take in his own person to learn his profession,
and prepare himself for a larger life. But in all of these thoughts
emancipation was the first article. He did not suppose that he could
have much to do with Emily. He had shivered a little when he so named
her in his own mind, feeling a chill shadow of doubt as to who she was.
But he had never remembered that he was only seventeen, much under age,
and that he might have to yield to some other will instead of doing his
own. He looked at her with a sort of helpless alarm in his eyes,
feeling that everything was going to pieces round him, and as if he were
feeling for something to clutch at in the general whirl.

‘You are surprised,’ she said, ‘and yet it is quite true. You have been
put, perhaps, in a false position, John. It is not your fault, nor
anyone’s; but I cannot let it go on. You are only seventeen. Who at
seventeen is fit to be his own master? The position would be absurd, if
it were not worse. It is sad for us both that you have not been brought
up to care for me. I never realised how it might be when I left you in
my father’s and mother’s hands. I was willing that they should have you,
but not that they should turn the heart of my child away from me.’

John’s voice broke forth hoarse, not as it had sounded in his own ears
before, ‘It was not their fault.’

‘I do not ask whose fault it was. Mine, perhaps, for giving you up; but
that is past and need not to be taken into account. The thing we have to
do is to get right now.’

Right! did she call this right? Whose doing had it been that she had
become Emily, the daughter of the old people, in his eyes--not herself,
not his mother? And then he gave her a furtive look to see if, perhaps,
she looked like his mother now, and was no longer Emily. She met his
wistful look with one that was troubled too; but even this expression
did not change her. And whose fault was that? He seemed to hear the old
people talking of Emily with many unguarded comments. It was like her,
they would say. When a letter came, or when they would ramble off into
those mutual recollections with which so often, to John’s amusement,
they had traced out for him, with glimpses of the half-seen landscape
all around, the story of their lives, that name always came in from time
to time: ‘Emily said--Emily did--this or that. How like that was to
Emily! It was her way of looking at things: for Emily never would see,
don’t you know--never made any allowance----’ A hundred such scenes
appeared to him, like scenes out of some play suddenly becoming visible
without any will of his. How could he help it, if his mind had collected
out of all these unconscious portraits an image of Emily, which was more
clear than anything else he knew? It was not their fault. Was it not
she herself who was to blame if this was how he knew her best, as the
daughter whom the old people were half afraid of, whose probable
criticism alarmed them, whose thoughts were not as theirs? The fear of
her which crept into his own mind was more chill, more overwhelming--for
how could he make any stand against her if it was true that he was
entirely at her mercy, without any defence or shield.

That little quiet parlour, the old people’s room with all its
old-fashioned furniture and little prim ornaments! Had it ever beheld
such a mute encounter, such a strange struggle before? The boy looked at
his mother and she at him. His eyes appealed to her, yet resisted her,
while hers--but he could not read what they meant. He was not capable of
comprehending, in his youthful inexperienced judgment, the many things
he wot not of, the recollections, the sternness, the relentings that
were in his mother’s eyes. But no more was said. For just then Sarah
came in, pushing open the door with the great tray in her arms to
prepare for tea--which was a thing that could not be intermitted, though
heaven and earth should be beginning to dissolve and drop away.

CHAPTER XVIII.

FAREWELL.

John went up the village street towards the rectory with a heavy heart.

It was all over--his resistance and his notion of being able to resist,
his hopes and all the foundation for them, his fond dreams and thoughts
(so fallacious and so foolish) of independence, of settling matters for
himself, of keeping the little house as a sort of monument to the old
people to whom it belonged. Could anything be more vain than these
visions? It was all settled now, and not a child in the village had less
to do with it than he. The furniture was to be sold, the house itself to
be let if it could not be disposed of. The gardener and Sarah had
received their dismissal. They remained only till ‘the family’ left,
which was an event now fixed for next day. In short, every part of
John’s little world had crumbled under him. Himself was of no account in
all the changes that had been determined upon. They were all quite
reasonable, perhaps necessary, and his childish intention had been silly
as well as vain. He understood that now; but how painful was the
discovery? It left him aching body and soul, not only with the thought
of what was to come, but with the smarting sensation of pain and shame,
that overwhelming sense of having formed ludicrous intentions impossible
to carry out, which is so terrible to youth. He felt himself blush from
head to foot when he thought how foolish he had been, and how impossible
that which he had supposed the most natural thing in the world. For the
sting of it was that he saw the impossibility, and how childish it was
to suppose that he could have done it, and the futility of everything he
had imagined and planned. It was natural that she should take all the
steps she had done--calmly, without the silly sentiment into which he
had fallen. She was acting only as reasonable people should act--but he,
he had been going on like a foolish boy.

John had passed through a great many vicissitudes both of mind and
situation in these past days. He had been to his own thinking
independent, feeling very young and forlorn indeed, but yet with a
firmness of purpose and a tenderness of feeling which had given him
confidence in himself. He had felt that he would not abuse the old
people’s confidence. He would make a man of himself to do them credit.
He would show them honour in his keeping up of everything that had
pleased them, in his return, whenever he had leisure, to the home in
which their love had guarded him. That had been his first phase, and it
had been full of a simple youthful dignity, and a sense of worthiness of
the trust they had placed in him. And then there had come a revolution,
a storm, a fierce moment of fighting and resistance to the new will, a
fight which was weakened from the beginning by the fatal conviction that
it must be lost. And now even the struggle was over, and he had
fallen--into what had he fallen? Into a child again--into what perhaps
was his natural position--the place of a boy who did not quite know what
was going to be done with him, whose fate was in other hands, who had
to wait and hear what was intended, where he was to be placed, with a
knowledge that his own wishes had very little to do with it, and no
dignity, no freedom at all! Could there be a greater downfall for a
sensitive, high-spirited boy? With a certain mental elation, tempered by
sorrow, he had felt himself a man though only seventeen, with all the
tender ambitions of a boy, to do credit to those that loved him: now he
had fallen back to the position of a child--wistfully dependent,
uncertain what his fate was to be. In more ordinary circumstances even,
such as happen every day, a boy who has been brought up by his
grandparents, made into the son of their old age, matured by the
constant company of people full of experience, and the indulgence which
comes with the end of life, is apt to feel a terrible downfall when he
goes back into his own family, where his parents, in their busy prime,
think but little of his precocious wisdom, and do not respect at all the
fictitious independence into which he has grown, and where his brothers
and sisters, a rabble rout, knock him about in a way which is supposed
to be very much to his advantage.

John’s experiences were but a little more painful. The disenchantment
was complete. He was shaken out of all opinion of himself. Perhaps even
his feeling that his own will or way was of no importance at all
exceeded reality: for he had no reason to suppose that his mother would
be entirely indifferent to what he wished. She had not been unkind. She
was not an emotional woman, nor given to any effusion of sympathetic
feeling; but she was not unkind. But John in his downfall and dismay
could not consider that. He felt himself altogether brought low. And
then his position, so far as his mother was concerned, was so painful
and extraordinary. She was his mother; he could not, even to himself,
set up any other hope. He could not blind himself to the conviction that
this was she that appeared in his childish recollections, always so
silent, putting him aside, saying that the boy was not to know. But he
could not call her ‘mother,’ having known her so long and seen to the
depths of her character as Emily. He said ‘she’ to himself, and no more.
She was the arbiter of his life. He did not think she cared at all for
him, or minded whether he was happy or otherwise. Secretly, perhaps, he
thought that she preferred he should not be happy; but that he knew,
even while he entertained the thought, was a wrong thing to think,
unkind and untrue: yet he kept it in his mind all the same.

He was strolling along with his hands deeply thrust into his pockets,
and despondency unspeakable in his soul, feeling that everything that
made life worth living had been taken from him. He was going to the
rectory to say good-bye. Good-bye was what was in his heart towards
everything he looked on. Not a house he passed but was familiar to
him--the shop, the post-office, even Johnson at the public-house, though
the old people had so disapproved of him, and John had grown up in the
idea that he was not much better than the roaring lion, seeking whom he
might devour, of Scripture: they were all kind, familiar objects now. He
regretted them all, worthy and unworthy. As he went along, there was
some recollection associated with every bit of the road. There, Dick
Spencer had thrown a snowball and hit him, and made his forehead bleed;
a snowball with a stone in it--but how sorry Dick was! There he had run
against Percy on the way to school and they had both come to the ground,
rolling over each other. At another corner was the spot where Elly used
to start to run and get before them all, with swift, light steps like a
deer, scarcely touching the ground. All the boys had united in saying
that it was not fair, that Elly could not stay, that the slowest of them
could have beaten her in a quarter-of-a-mile; but, nevertheless, she had
always got first whatever they might say. He was turning over all these
old things in his heart while he strode along slowly, languidly, his
whole being in pain, when suddenly, in the midst of his troubled
thoughts, a slap came on his shoulder from behind, and a cheerful voice
hailed him:

‘Why, Jack! what are you doing here at this time of day?’

Then another voice addressed the first one with that pleasant frankness
which characterises brothers or dear friends, and bid him for a
blockhead to remember. Whereupon the first speaker penitently cried
out:

‘I beg your pardon! You know I didn’t mean to be unfeeling, Jack.’

John had scarcely the heart to turn round. He did so, half, saying, in a
tone of little interest,

‘Have you fellows come back?’

The fellows were two. They were older than John. One--the nearest to him
in age--was short and of spare figure, neat and careful of apparel; the
other was some two years older, a person of advanced age in the
estimation of his juniors, who did not think Dick’s sense was on a level
with his years. He was large and fair, a full-grown man in person, with
a moustache which many an older man might envy, and a careless
good-humour and heartiness about him which was very attractive to many
of his fellow-creatures, though his own immediate belongings were a
little contemptuous of them. Both the lads were dressed with a little of
that jauntiness which characterises the University. They came from a
centre of boyish fashion; their coats were cut on the correctest model,
and even Percy, though so much the wiser of the two, would have died, it
was evident to the commonest observer, rather than wear anything which
he ought not to have worn. The very canes which both of them
scrupulously carried were exactly the right kind of cane. When John
turned round slowly upon them, he was a little overawed as he awoke to
it by the splendour of their appearance.

‘I didn’t know you were here,’ he said.

‘No, only for the day. Where are you going--to the rectory? Come along,
then. That’s all right,’ said Dick. ‘We wanted to go and look you up,
but didn’t like.’

Percy gave his brother a push aside.

‘I should have come fast enough; but I wanted to know first--that’s to
say, we thought you might have relations or something. We’re awfully
sorry, you know, Jack.’

‘Awfully sorry,’ echoed Dick, eager to make his sympathy known.

‘There’s nobody but my mother,’ said John, with an effort. ‘We are going
away to-morrow morning.’

‘Going away?’

‘Yes. I’m going back with my mother. There is to be a sale and the house
is to be let.’ John forced himself to say all this with an appearance
of stolid calm.

Dick thrust his arm into John’s, and, half roughly, half tenderly, led
him along.

‘Come and talk to Aunt Mary,’ he said. This was his own idea of
consolation. He could not himself say anything that would be of any use
to a mourner; but Aunt Mary, if anyone, could. Dick always said that he
would back her against the world.

John suffered himself to be led along a little more quickly than the
pace at which he had been going along the street. He was vaguely
encouraged by Dick’s arm within his, and even by Percy’s little trim
shadow walking along on the other side of him. The boys had naturally
nothing to say. What could they have to say to a comrade in trouble?
They could only stand by him; grip his hand till he cried out; hold his
arm tight in theirs; get him a chair, as if he had been a girl; minister
to his wants in any way he would let them: but otherwise, beyond
‘awfully sorry,’ what could they say?

‘We have made a run home to see Aunt Mary and Elly,’ said Percy, ‘but we
can’t stay above an hour or two. It’s a capital offence, don’t you
know, to be out of college without leave; but Dick had something he
wanted to look to, and so had I. I wish we had come before yesterday.’

‘It didn’t matter,’ said John.

‘We tried hard,’ said Dick, ‘and then we thought at least you’d like to
see us before----’

‘Are you going to town, Jack? Best thing for you. You will be sure to
get something there. And nothing so easy as to meet one’s friends in
town,’ said Percy, briskly. 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. ‘I--don’t know
where I’m going. I’m--all at sea. I know nothing. It’s like a mist--’

‘I know,’ said Percy, soothingly: ‘that’s how fellows feel; but it can’t
last like that. You’ll have to pick up, and go on again, don’t you
know.’

Dick did not say anything, but he gave John’s arm a sort of hug, which
almost threw the boy off his feet.

‘Why, there’s Elly running along in her wild way. She ought to know that
she’s not a child now,’ said Percy, who understood it was a good thing
to divert a fellow’s thoughts from himself and his troubles as soon as
possible. ‘Hallo, Ell! Where are you running, like a rabbit, and never
looking? and here we are, and here’s Jack.’

‘Oh, you have come!’ said Elly, suddenly perceiving them, with a flash
of her eyes from one to another, but holding out her hand to John
between them. ‘You ought to have been here yesterday, you know. What
does it matter coming now? Jack, Aunt Mary wants you. Never mind the
boys. Oh, you two, why didn’t you come yesterday? Don’t tell me you
couldn’t have come if you had tried!’

‘We couldn’t, though,’ said Percy; while Dick, drawing his arm from
John’s, stood abashed, making no reply. ‘You don’t know what a fellow
old Scrymgeour is. He won’t give you leave. And to-day we came, you
know, without asking. So we’ve got to be back before the gates are
closed.’

‘I know,’ said Elly, ‘you’ve come to-day for your own pleasure; but when
there was something serious to do, something you were wanted for----
John, do run; Aunt Mary is waiting for you, and afterwards you can see
these two. 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?
and perhaps a sister and a brother? and no doubt a nearer one still and
a dearer one?’

‘How dare you laugh,’ cried Elly, stamping her foot: and ‘I say, stop
that!’ said Dick, with a low growl.

John did not hear anything beyond the merest murmur of this
conversation. He left them quarrelling, explaining themselves with that
ease of brother and sisterhood which sets all politeness at defiance,
and hurried on as Elly had directed him to see Mrs. Egerton. Perhaps
John had not the same absolute confidence in her powers of consolation
that her nephew had, but she had always been very kind to him, and he
went with a sort of dull pleasure, knowing that she would be even more
kind than usual to-day. She was in her own special room, the
morning-room, which looked out over the shrubberies to the village
street in the distance, and whence she saw, more or less, all that was
going on. It was a room more useful than ornamental, with bookshelves
filled with shabby books, which formed a sort of extra lending library
for the parish, and cupboards full of the goods purchased for the
Clothing Club, and all sorts of parish necessities; but it was also
very bright, with its corner windows, one in each angle, and its air of
occupation and cheerfulness. Mrs. Egerton looked up as John came in
after a little tap at the door. She held out her hand to him across the
table, where she was busy with the concerns of the parish, and drew him
to a chair opposite to her.

‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘how I have wanted to see you.’ Her smile was
beaming warm with kindness. It was not love, but it was the nearest
thing to it, and it warmed the chilled and famished youth.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope you were coming to me of yourself, John.’

‘I was on my way,’ he said.

‘That’s right! I thought you would not desert your old friends. I told
Elly to look out for you, and, if you were not coming, to bring you. Now
tell me, my dear boy, do you go or stay?’

‘We are going to-morrow, Mrs. Egerton.’

‘To-morrow? So soon as that? And you say we----’

‘With my mother, Mrs. Egerton.’

He grew a little pale, and so, it seemed, did she.

‘Is that--that lady your mother, John?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and no more.

‘And you knew all along that your mother was living? How strange that
you never spoke of her--that we never heard--I hope, dear John, I--I
trust----’

She had meant to say, ‘that she is kind to you.’ But her courage failed
her in sight of his pale, set face.

‘We heard from her always regularly, but there seemed nothing to write
about. She had given me up to my grandparents.’ John had to pause to get
rid of the sob in his throat; but he was determined to tell all he knew,
to leave nothing to be found out. ‘She has been living in London, with
little time to herself.’

It was a curiously lame story. He felt it was so, as he told it;
hitherto it had all seemed simple enough. He met Mrs. Egerton’s look of
interest and her interrogative ‘Yes?’ with sudden confusion, as if it
was all a made-up tale.

‘Yes?’ she said, and paused with her eyes full of a hundred questions
expecting him to resume. But John had told everything he had to tell,
and stopped short with no more to say. She sat looking at him for a
minute longer expecting when he should resume. Then, as he said nothing,
she asked, as if to make a beginning again and draw him on, ‘Are there
any more of the family?’

‘I have a sister,’ John said.

‘Oh! a sister. I am very glad to hear it. I am extremely glad for your
sake. A sister is so near--a sister will sympathise. I have seen--Mrs.
Sandford, once: it seems so strange to say that name and not to mean
your dear old grandmamma, my kind, true old friend.’ Mrs. Egerton’s
bright eyes were moistened with tears, but John sat stolid in the
stupidity of his grief, and made no sign. ‘Did you know I had seen her
once?’ she said. ‘She is Mrs. Sandford, isn’t she? and that is your
name? She must have married--a cousin, I suppose?’

John made no reply. He felt a sense of guilt come over him. He said to
himself that she was not Mrs. Sandford, nor was that his name; but his
lips were sealed. He did not himself know how it was. His discovery of
his own childish name had led to no further discoveries, and in his own
family no one had given him any help to understand how it was. The
subject was one which now he could not enter upon with his mother; and
he felt by instinct, though no warning had ever been given to him, that
it was a subject he must not speak of to others. So he made no answer,
but in his heart felt a pang of secret guilt. He had not been used to
secrets, especially he had not been used to concealing anything about
himself: and now, in the sting of this consciousness, he sat silent,
unresponsive, feeling himself dull and blank in presence of the kind,
genial, affectionate woman full of curiosity, who wanted to know
everything. She wanted him to tell her everything--to confide in her:
and she was disappointed that the boy to whom she had been so kind
should close up all the avenues to his heart and make no reply. Then
Mrs. Egerton opened her drawer and took out her present to John. She was
very liberal in the way of presents, loving to give them, delighted to
give pleasure to others. What she had got for John was a gift of real
value, a pretty gold hunting-watch, which was much better than the
silver one that his grandparents had given him. It was very pretty, very
nice, very kind; but when he took the old shabby silver one out of his
pocket which had been given him when he was a boy, which had never gone
very well, in order to make place for the new one, he tried his best to
thank his kind friend, but he held the little old watch in his hand and
gazed at it with troubled eyes.

‘You must give it away to some one,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘It will be a
pleasure for you to give it to some good lad--Hedger’s boy, perhaps, who
has been with you so long.’

He murmured an assent, but put the old watch back again into another
pocket with a quick revolt of feeling. Give it away--to Ned Hedger. Oh!
no, no, not for the world! He would keep it all his life for
grandmamma’s sake.

Then there was a tumult in the room with the entrance of all the young
people, and John did his best to allow himself to be ‘cheered up’ by the
boys as they intended. But he was not cheered up, and was very glad to
steal away with Elly to go ‘once round the garden,’ she said, before he
went away. The rectory garden had witnessed so many of the pleasures of
his childhood. It was big and old-fashioned, with an orchard attached,
where the children had roamed at their pleasure. The girl and the boy
set out talking with a little show of vivacity, but, as they strayed
along the shady paths, they got more and more silent. At the bottom of
the orchard, where the long stretch of the common showed under the
trees, and all was silent and full of recollections, Elly suddenly
thrust her hand into his.

‘Oh, Jack!’ she said, ‘how will you bear going away? Always think of me
just here under the old pear-tree. Look how it is coming out like a
great white tower of blossoms. I shall come here and think of you; and
that will keep us near to each other. And, Jack----’

‘Yes, Elly?’

‘If you should feel lonely or anything--if you should miss home very
much--oh, just think! I’ll come and do my algebra here, and think of
you. It will be always something--not like your grandmother, but always
something--a little bit of a home just here under the pear-tree.’

‘Elly,’ said John, ‘will you do one thing for me? There is nobody but
you that I would ask.’

‘Yes, I will, Jack; half-a-dozen. Tell me what it is.’

‘There are the two old chairs by the fire. They will be sold like all
the rest. I’ve money enough to buy them, but nowhere to put them. Oh,
Elly!’

‘They shall stand in my own room. I’ll always keep them there,’ said
Elly, with enthusiasm, ‘the two dear old chairs! Oh! yes, yes, Jack; in
my own room.’

‘Thanks, awfully,’ said John.

He grasped the little, warm hand she had put into his, and they stood
for a moment holding each other, like two children, by the hand.

‘Oh, Jack! this is dreadfully like good-bye now!’

‘It is good-bye. Elly, you give the boys a kiss when they go away. Won’t
you give me one too? Oh, not if you don’t like; it’s only because it
seems cold, just shaking hands, after what you have said.’

There was no blush on John’s simple face. He meant in absolute sincerity
what he said. The girl reddened, being, perhaps, a little more advanced
in life, though a year younger than the boy. She turned away her head
for the moment, but then turned to him again with a steady look, and
suddenly inclined her head towards him.

‘Yes, Jack; it will be like being brother and sister really, and for
good.’

‘For good,’ he repeated, touching her fresh cheek with honest, tender
lips; and then they went back sedately to the house, very quiet, with a
certain awe upon them. For it is a ceremonial, and a sad one, to say
that first good-bye.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.