The Son of His Father. Mrs. Oliphant
‘I ain’t a-going to sleep,’ said the stranger, haranguing from what he evidently felt to be a point of ‘vantage. ‘I’m as steady as a church, and a deal soberer nor e’er a one of you. I wants Missis May, as’ll take me in and do for me thankful, along of her husband, as was my mate.’
‘Come along, men,’ said Mr. Cattley, sharply. ‘I’m not strong enough to do it myself, and you won’t leave the boy to drag him, will you, not the boy——’
‘If it’s come to that, sir,’ said the man of the public-house, ‘I’d rather do it nor trouble you. After all, it’s more fit for me to have him than you. Supposing as he can’t pay, I take it you’d rather pay for him than have him in your house. Hey, man, get up and get to bed!’
‘All I’m wishful for,’ said the man, growing more and more solemn, ‘is for some one to direct me where Missis May’s living. It’s she as will be glad to see me wi’ news—news of her man—as was my mate.’
‘Thank you, Johnson,’ said Mr. Cattley, with a reluctance which he felt to be unjust. ‘I will certainly pay, and I’m obliged to you, which is more. Do you want the lantern? Then come along, John, you’ve had enough of this dismal sight.’
He went along the remainder of the way, which was not long, in silence, and it was only at his own door that he spoke.
‘John,’ he said, ‘that’s such a spectacle as the Spartans, don’t you remember, gave to their boys.’
‘It was awfully cruel, sir,’ cried John, ‘they made the Helots drink—and then—it wasn’t the fault of the poor brutes. I would rather go without the lesson than have it like that.’
‘And I’d rather you had gone without this lesson. I’d rather you knew nothing about it. But we can’t abstract ourselves from the world, and we can’t live in the world without seeing many horrible things. I wonder now whether there was a bit of faithfulness and human feeling at the bottom of all that? Heaven knows!—or it might be the reverse—an attempt to get something out of some poor decent woman to cover her shame. Did you ever hear the name of May about here?’
‘No,’ said John, ‘never;’ and then he paused for a moment. ‘I seem to know something about the name; but I’m sure there’s no one called May here.’
‘Not down by Feather Lane?’ said the curate, thoughtfully. ‘I must speak to Miss Summers about it. She will know. Now, here we are at my door, and I shouldn’t have let you come so far. Go quickly home, my dear boy.’
John obeyed, yet did not obey, this injunction. He went home without lingering, but he did not go quickly. Why there should be a particular pleasure in lingering out of doors in the dark in a world unseen, where there is nothing to please either mind or eye, it would be difficult to say. But that there is, every imaginative spirit must have felt. The boy strolled along in a meditative way, dangling his lantern at his cold fingers’ end, throwing stray gleams upon the road, which gave him a fantastic half-conscious amusement but no aid, though, indeed, he did not require that, in seeing his way. The landlord of the ‘Green Man’ was still outside discoursing upon the hardship of being compelled to take a drunken brute fresh out of prison into his respectable house.
‘We’ll maybe wake up in the morning all dead corpses,’ he said, unconscious of the warrant of Scripture for the words, ‘all along of a clergyman as just fancies things.’
‘Put him in the barn,’ said one of the loungers about, slow spirits excited by the stir of something happening, who had returned and hung about the door discussing it after the curate had passed. ‘Put him in the stable, that’s good enough for the likes of him.’
‘I’ll put him in the loft and turn the key upon him, so as he’ll do no harm,’ said the landlord. The man, as John made out with a gleam of his lantern, was still seated on the edge of the pathway, supported against the wall, his red handkerchief showing in the light. He was muttering on in a long hoarse monologue, in which there was still audible from time to time the name of May.
May! John asked himself, as he went on, how was it that he knew that name? It seemed to be so familiar to him, and yet he could not recall distinctly what the association was. Then he pondered on what the curate had said, whether by any chance there might be what he had called ‘a bit of faithfulness and human feeling’ at the bottom of the miserable fellow’s persistence. Nobody but Mr. Cattley would have thought of that, the boy said to himself; and there rose before his half-dreaming eyes a picture of some poor creature waiting for news, blessing even this wretched man for bringing them to her.
John had read ‘Les Miserables’ (in the original; for Mr. Cattley knew so much! and had taught him French as well as Latin), and a comparison between the incidents rose in his mind. He felt, as one feels at that age, that it was rather grand to be going along in the dark, thinking of Victor Hugo’s great book and comparing French and English sentiment, he who was only a country boy; and this feeling mingled with the comparison he was making. Mr. Cattley was not an ideal saint like Monseigneur Bienvenu, but neither were the English village-folks so hard-hearted as the French ones. They would not have left even a returned convict to perish in the cold. This suggestion of perishing in the cold, which made him shiver, sent John’s imagination all abroad upon shipwrecks at sea, and tales of desolate places, the martyrs of the Arctic regions and those in the burning deserts; his fancy flitting from one to another without coherence or any close connection as thoughts do. And then, with a sudden pang, as if an arrow had gone into his heart, he remembered what had been told him only this evening, that his own father, papa, who had been a sort of god to his infancy, was dead. How was it possible that he could forget it as he had done, letting any trifling incident take possession of his mind and banish that great fact from the foreground? He felt more guilty than could be said, and yet, while feeling so, his mind flitted off again in spite of him to a hundred other subjects. The recollection returned with a fluctuating thrill, at intervals, but it would not remain. It linked itself even with this question about Mrs. May. May! what had that to do with the revelation which had been made to him?—that, a mere vulgar incident seen on the roadside—the other an event which ought to make everything sad to him.
He went on a little quicker, spurred by the thought. His father’s death had not made everything sad to him. It was but one incident among many which came back from time to time; but the other incidents—he felt ashamed to think they had interested him quite as much. It had been altogether an exciting evening. First that intimation, and then the talk about what he was going to be, and the consent of his grandparents to his plan. Either of these facts had been quite enough to fill up an evening, or, indeed, many evenings, and now they all came together; and then, as if that were not enough, the startling scene in the darkness of the night, the returned convict just like ‘Les Miserables,’ but so different, the ‘bit of faithfulness,’ perhaps, and ‘human feeling.’ John said to himself that this was a poor little outside affair, not worth to be mentioned beside the others, but yet he could not help wondering whether the poor fellow, though he was so little worthy of interest, would ever find his Mrs. May.
He got home before he expected, in the multiplicity of these thoughts; and when the door was opened to him noiselessly, without anyone appearing, he knew it was grandmamma, who was always on the watch for him. She said, in a whisper,
‘You’ve been a long time, dear. Hush, don’t make any noise, grandfather has gone up to bed.’
‘I was kept by a strange thing,’ said John. ‘Come into the parlour, and I’ll tell you, grandmamma. Why, the fire is nearly out, though it’s so cold!’
‘There’s a fire in your room, my dear. You forget how late it is—near eleven o’clock. And what was the strange thing, Johnnie? There are not many strange things in our village at this hour of the night.’
She was wrapped up in a great white shawl, and the pretty old face smiled over this, her complexion relieved and brightened by it, a picture of an old lady, beaming with tender love and cheerful calm.
‘It was very strange,’ said John, ‘though it seemed at first