The Son of His Father. Mrs. Oliphant
‘How could I be mixed up?’ said John, with a laugh. ‘But the strange thing is that he says he’s a returned convict, and that he was calling out and asking everyone for some woman, a Mrs. May.’
Mrs. Sandford clutched at John with her hand. Her lips fell apart with horror, the colour fled from her face.
‘Oh, good Lord! What is it you are saying?’ she gasped, scarcely able to speak.
‘You don’t mean to say you are frightened, with the doors locked and all the windows fastened! 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.
‘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? He said it might be a bit of faithfulness and human feeling, his coming to look for this poor woman, to bring her news of her husband.’
‘What had he to do with her husband?’ said the old lady, almost in a whisper, turning away from him her scared and panic-stricken face.
‘Oh, he had been in the same prison with him,’ said John. ‘He said her husband was his mate—that means, you know—but of course you know what it means. And, by-the-by,’ said the boy, ‘can you tell me, grandmamma, how it is that I seem to have some association or other—I can’t tell what it is—with the name of May?’
CHAPTER VI.
GRANDMAMMA.
Mrs. Sandford got up very early next morning, some time before it was daylight. She had scarcely slept all night. As quiet as a little ghost, not to wake her husband, she had stolen upstairs after dismissing John to bed: and she stole out of her room as softly in the morning, her heart rent with trouble and fear. It was her habit to go out early in the summer mornings to look after the garden, to collect the eggs from the poultry-yard, to gather her posies with the dew upon them, which was an old-fashioned way she had. But in winter the old lady was not so brave, and feared the cold as the least courageous will do. Notwithstanding, it was still dark when she stole out, unseen as she fondly hoped, by Sarah in the kitchen. The darkness of the night was just beginning to yield to the grey unwilling daylight. The milkman was going his rounds. 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. She had taken a basket in her hand to give herself a countenance. It was a basket which was well known. It carried many a little comfort to sick people and those who were very poor. The sight of the little slim old lady with her fair, fresh face and white hair, her trim black-silk gown, and warm wadded cloak, and the basket in her hand, was very familiar to the people in Edgeley. But she was seldom out so early, and her steps were a little uncertain, not quick and light as usual. You could generally see, to look at her, that she was very sure where she was going and knew every step of the way. This morning she went up past the ‘Green Man,’ so that the milkman, who was a great gossip, said to himself,
‘I know! She’s going to that tramp as was took bad last night in Feather Lane.’
But when he had gone on his round a little further and saw her coming back again, his confidence was shaken.
‘It must be old Molly Pidgeon she’s looking for—and most like don’t know as she’s moved.’
But, when Mrs. Sandford crossed the street, this observer was altogether at fault.
‘There’s nobody as is ill that a-way,’ he said to the customer whom he was serving. ‘Whatever is Mrs. Sandford doing out with her basket at this time in the morning, and no sickness to speak of about?’
The woman standing at her door with the jug in her hand for the milk leaned out too, and stared.
‘There’s a deal of children with colds, and old folks,’ she said.
And they both stopped to look at the uncertain movements of the little figure. Even curiosity in the country is slow in its operations. They stood half turned away from the milk-pails, which were their real point of meeting, and stared slowly, while the unwonted passenger in still more unwonted uncertainty flickered along. In the meantime there had been a little commotion at the ‘Green Man,’ such as was very unusual too: for in the morning all was decorous and quiet there, if not always so at night. There was a loud sound of voices, which, though beyond the range of the milkman and his customer, attracted the attention of other people who were about their morning’s business. The postman paused while feeling for his letters, and turned his head that way, and the people in the shop came running out to the door.
‘It’ll be him as made the row last night,’ they said, in fond expectation of a second chapter. Their hopes were so far realized that at this moment the folding swinging-doors flew open, and a man burst out more quickly than is the usual custom of retiring guests. And he stopped to shake his fist at the door, where Johnson appeared after him watching his departure.
‘I promise you I’ll keep an eye on you,’ Johnson cried after him, and the stranger sent back a volley of curses fortunately too hoarse to be very articulate.
Mrs. Sandford crossed the road again just at that moment, and she heard better than the observers far off. A look of horror came over her face.
‘Oh! my good man,’ she cried, lifting up her hand, ‘I am sure you don’t wish all those horrible things. What good can it do you to swear!’
The man looked at her for a moment. Her little dainty figure, her careful dress, her spotless looks made such a contrast to this big ruffian, all disordered, squalid, and foul, with every appearance of having lain among the straw all night, and the traces of last night’s debauch still hanging about him, as no words could express. He stood a moment taken aback by her address; probably he would have shrunk even from appealing to the charity of a being so entirely different and out of his sphere; but to have her stop there and speak to him took away his breath. His hand stole up to his cap involuntarily.
‘It do a man a deal of good, lady,’ he said; ‘it relieves your mind; but I didn’t ought to,’ he added, beginning to calculate, ‘I know.’
‘You should not, indeed,’ she said; and then added, ‘You seem a stranger. Are you looking for work? or have you any friends about here?’
The postman, the woman at the shop, and everybody within sight admired and wondered to see Mrs. Sandford talking to ‘the man.’ This was the name he had already acquired in Edgeley. They wondered if she could know that he was a man out of prison. But she was known to be very kind.
‘I shouldn’t wonder if that was just why she’s doing of it, because nobody else would touch him with a pair of tongs,’ an acute person said.
He seemed, it must be added, much surprised himself; but he was a man who had been used to prison chaplains and other charitable persons, and he thought he knew how to get over every authority of the kind.
‘Lady,’ he said, ‘that’s just what I want. It’s work, to earn an honest living; but, ’cause I’m a poor fellow as has been in trouble, nobody won’t have me or hear speak of me; but to have been in trouble oncet, that’s not to say ye don’t want to do no better.