The Son of His Father. Mrs. Oliphant
a child of seven or to a man of seventy.
She said: ‘Mother! Pity is what I cannot bear. Let them crush us if they like. Let them think us as bad as—but pity, never! That I cannot bear.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said grandmamma, ‘try to be softened and not hardened by this great trouble.’
These were things that Johnnie heard partially. Sometimes a few words would get lost as the corner of the table-cover fell down between him and the other parlour, like a curtain in a theatre, which was what happened from time to time: and there would be long pauses in which nothing at all was said, but only a little sob from grandmamma, or the tchick, tchick of inarticulate comment which the old man made, or the mother or Susie moving across the room. There is nothing more terrible than those long pauses in which those who have come to console the sufferers can find nothing to say, when words are impossible, and the silence of the little company, which cannot be broken save on one subject, becomes more intolerable than if no consolation had been attempted at all.
Then they had a sort of dreary dinner, to prepare for which Johnnie and his bricks had to be removed into a corner. They all sat down round the table, grandpapa still giving a tchick, tchick from time to time and grandmamma stopping in the midst of a mouthful to dry her eyes. Johnnie himself was hungry, but it was difficult to eat when everybody looked so miserable, and when he asked for a little more they all looked at him as if he had said something wrong.
‘Poor child, he had always a good appetite, bless him,’ grandmamma said, laying down her knife and fork with a little sob. ‘What a good thing it is that nothing matters very much at his age.’
Johnnie did not say that it mattered very much indeed—he had no words to use; but his little heart throbbed up into his throat, and he could not eat a morsel of his second help. Oh, if anyone had known how forlorn that little heart was, groping among the mysteries with which he was surrounded, which he could not understand! All he could do was to gaze at the grown-up people who were so hard upon him, who did not understand him any more than he understood them. Grandpapa, though he went on with his tchick, tchick at intervals, made a tolerable meal, and thought he could taste a bit of cheese after all the rest had done.
‘Meat has no savour to people in trouble,’ he said, ‘but sometimes you can taste a bit of cheese when you can take nothing else.’
All the same, however, he made a very good meal.
Some time after this it was suddenly intimated to Johnnie that he was going ‘back’ with the old people.
‘Grandpapa and grandmamma are going to take you with them,’ Susie said, seeking him out in the back parlour where he had relinquished the bricks and taken to Robinson Crusoe, and began again to wonder whether, in spite of the placid policeman, the savages, after all, might not have something to do with the disappearance of papa.
‘Oh, what a lucky boy you are, Jack! You are going to drive back between them in the shandry, and stay there for a change—for mamma thinks you are not looking very well. Oh, you lucky little boy!’
Though Susie said this as if she envied him, Johnnie could see that in her mind she thought it was a good thing that he should be going away. And his poor little heart, which was so silent, gave a great throb and cry, ‘Why do you want to send me away?’
‘It is because mamma thinks you are so pale—and that a change will do you good,’ said Susie. She said it as if it were a lesson she had learnt, repeating the same words. ‘You are to make haste and get on your things, and not keep them waiting. You can take your book with you if you like,’ she said. And then Betty came in with the little blue pilot cloth topcoat which was so thick and warm, and the comforter, and a fur cap which papa had bought for Johnnie in old days when he used to take the little boy out for drives. The sight of this was too much for the child. He rushed out to the front hall where mamma was standing watching her mother mount into the shandry, and caught hold of her by the skirts of her dress.
‘I want papa; I want papa!’ said Johnnie, flinging himself upon his mother. The cry was so piercing that it went out into the street where old Mrs. Sandford was arranging her wraps round her, and making a warm seat between herself and her husband for the child.
‘Tchick tchick!’ said the old gentleman, standing on the pavement before the open door. Mamma caught Johnnie in her arms and gave him a hug which was almost fierce, to solace him as well as to take good-bye of him, and then she lifted him up beside his grandmother and tucked him in.
‘Mind you are a good boy, and don’t trouble granny,’ she said, but took no notice of his crying or of the trouble on his little face. Looking back as they drove away he could see her standing, very pale in her black dress, and Susie by her, who was waving her hand, and calling out good-bye. Betty stood behind them, crying, but neither his mother nor his sister seemed to be sorry to see him go away. He looked back at them with a dreadful choking in his throat, and for years after saw it all like a picture—the two figures in the doorway and Betty crying behind. Susie smiled and waved her hand, but his mother neither wept nor smiled. She was all black and white, like a woman cut out of marble, as though nothing could move her more. And that was the last that Johnnie saw of them for years.
The house to which he went at first was not the place in which he grew up: for the grandparents, it seemed, were on the eve of a removal. Everything was new in the new house to which they took him, and which was a very neat little red brick house, with green shutters, like a house in a story book. It stood in the village street, with a little garden full of lilac and rose bushes in front, and a large garden with everything in it, from lilies to cabbages, behind. Nothing could exceed the comfort, or the neatness, or the quiet of this little place. There was only one servant, as at home; but probably she was a better servant than Betty: and there was a gardener besides, who did a great many odd jobs in the house, and now and then took Johnnie out with him upon wonderful expeditions to the moor which lay just outside the last houses of the village. It was the most wonderful moor that ever was seen, sometimes golden with gorse, sometimes purple with heather, with wild little black pools in it, which looked as if they went down into the very heart of the earth, and here and there a little ragged tree, which the wind had blown into corners and elbows, and which stood and struggled for bare life with every storm that raged. The wind blew on the moor so fresh and keen that Johnnie’s cheeks got to be two roses, and his little body strengthened and lengthened, and he grew into a strong and likely lad without any fancies or delicacies, or anything at all out of the way about him. The grandparents were more kind than words could say; that is they were not kind, but only loved the child with all their hearts, which is the one thing in the world that is better than kindness. He did nothing but play for a year or two, and then he had lessons from the curate, and learned a great deal, and was trained up in all the duties which can be required from a boy. There could not have been a happier child. He was the king of the little house, and of the two old people’s hearts, and of Sarah the maid, and Benjamin the gardener, and of the donkey and cart. And in the village itself he was quite a considerable person, ranking next after the rector’s boys and above the doctor’s son, who was delicate and spoilt.
This change of life worked a great change in every way in the boy. He was removed altogether from his own childish beginnings and all those scenes which had impressed themselves on his mind in the mists of early recollection. He had become the son of his grandfather and grandmother, who were old, and comfortable, and quiet, and never stepped beyond their routine or did differently to-day from what they had done yesterday. The vision of his father had gone altogether from his life, and his mother was as much or even more lost, for her aspect was completely changed to him. She had ceased to be his mother and become Emily, which was the name by which he always heard her called, a person found fault with sometimes, discussed and criticised, about whom there were shakings of the head between the grandparents, complaints that she liked her own will, and would have her own way.
By dint of hearing her spoken of like this for years, and hearing very little of her in any other way, John came to have a sort of impression that she was only an elder sister, whom he too might call Emily, who had been very long away from home, and who had departed from all their traditions. In his mind he came to feel himself a sort of little uncle to Susie, which,