The Son of His Father. Mrs. Oliphant
be. He fell into all the old people’s ways of thinking, feeling sorry in a disapproving way that Emily and her daughter never came to see them, yet feeling this more as a fault in them than as anything that told upon himself. Children and old people are more near to each other than the old and the middle-aged, and Johnnie made a far better child than Emily, who herself was older than her father and mother. He redressed the balance, and by slipping, as it were, a generation, set them right again in their parental place. But the effect upon him was very confusing.
Emily did not write very often, and scarcely at all to the boy. When she did send him a letter to himself at Christmas, or on his birthday, it was without any appreciation of the fact that Johnnie had grown into John, and was no longer a child: and her letters to the old people were bulletins of life rather than familiar letters. She told them what she was doing, and how Susie was getting on, and what sort of weather it was—hot or cold—and that she was quite well in health, or else had little ailments, of which she hoped soon to be well: but there was nothing in these epistles to interest the boy. As a matter of fact he was much disposed in his heart to the conclusion that Emily was not sympathetic, and was fond of having her own way. His way was that of the elder world, and was quite different from hers: and for years he had ceased to wonder why it was that the letters were addressed to Mrs. Sandford, and that he too bore that name.
He was so little when all these changes happened that he was very hazy in his mind about the circumstances, and very far from clear that he had ever been anything but John Sandford. As a matter of fact he never discussed this matter with himself. One does not naturally enter into discussions about one’s self. Even the most strained of circumstances appear to us all quite simple and easy when they concern ourselves. He was quite natural, everything about him was quite natural—he felt no mystery in his own being or surroundings: and—whatever might have been said or felt at the time when he came to his grandfather’s—neither did anyone else. Indeed, in the new place where they had settled, nobody knew anything of Mr. Sandford’s daughter, nor of their previous history at all.
And yet at the bottom of his heart John had forgotten nothing. Those far distant scenes were to him like a dream, like a play he had seen some time (though he had never been at the theatre in his life), like a story that had been told him, but far more vivid than any story. He recollected those wakings in the middle of the night, and the dazzling of the candle in his eyes, and his father’s face—and how he was carried down to the parlour in his night-gown, and the table in all the disorder of supper, with oranges and cakes, and a little wine out of his father’s glass—and of the other face on the other side of the fire which would look on disapproving, and as soon as possible bear him off again into the darkness of bed. The look on that other face was quite what he would have expected from Emily, that grown-up uncomfortable child of whom the grandparents disapproved.
The other scenes of the drama came also fitfully to John’s mind from time to time—the back parlour where he was sent to play with his bricks, and then Robinson Crusoe, and the trouble in his mind lest the savages should have got papa; and then that strange silent spectacle of the lighted court with the judges sitting (as he knew now) and the little sugar-plums sprinkled upon the bread and butter; and then the old people coming to dinner, and grandmamma crying and grandfather with his ‘tchick, tchick,’ and the shandry in which he was carried away, with Betty crying and Susie waving her hand, and mamma neither smiling nor weeping (always so like Emily!) at the open door; and the impression through everything that nothing was to be said before the boy. All this was as distinct in his mind as it ever had been—which perhaps was not saying much: for all was misty with childhood, imperfect in outline, running into such wildernesses of ignorance on either side; but yet so very certain, never forgotten, always at the same point. His mind varied upon matters of every day, and he got to see what happened last year in a different light after passing through the experiences of this year. But nothing changed for him those early scenes, they were beyond the action of experience. They were the same to him at sixteen as they had been when they happened—misty, incomprehensible, yet quite certain and true.
He was the son of his grandparents, as has been said. He was like a boy who had never had either father or mother when he set out upon the active way of his life. And how he came to work in that early drama of the beginning, with all the later incidents, and how he was affected by it for good and evil, has now to be shown in the story of John Sandford, who was his father’s son, though he knew nothing of him, and did not even bear his name.
CHAPTER III.
HOW HE WAS TO BEGIN LIFE.
They were all seated one evening in the parlour round the fire. The house of the Sandfords was like many other old-fashioned middle-class houses. The dining-room was the principal room in it. They would have thought it very pretentious and as if they were setting up for a gentility to which they laid no claim had they called their other sitting-room a drawing-room. The rector might do so who belonged distinctly to the county; but the Sandfords called their sitting-room the parlour, without even knowing what a pretty old-fashioned word that is, and how it is coming into fashion again. Old Mr. Sandford’s armchair stood on one side of the fire, and his wife’s on the other. He had a stand for the candle near him, and she had a little table. Otherwise the room was furnished according to its epoch, with a round table in the centre, and chairs set round the walls. On grandmamma’s little table was her knitting, a basket with some needle-work, and a book. She read all through a book in a conscientious yet leisurely way, doing a bit of needle-work, when the light was good, and knitting when her eyes were tired. In this way she was always occupied and yet never fatigued by being busy too long at one thing. The knitting was done with large pins and thick wool. It was easy work. It resulted in comforters, mufflers, and other little things that were useful at Christmas, and made the school-children and the old people in the village happy—or as nearly happy as anyone is ever made by presents of warm woollen things to keep out the cold.
John sat at the table between the old people. He had the advantage of the lamp and warmest place. They liked to have him there, and he had learned to do all his work in that warm family centre, with their silent society, surrounded by their love. The old people did not talk very much at any time, and, when they thought it was for the advantage of John and his work, were capable of sitting all the evening in a silent blessedness making little signs to each other across him, but never speaking lest they should disturb him. They said at other times, with secret delight, that their John never wanted to retire into any study, but did his work, bless him, in the parlour, and never found them in his way.
On this particular evening it could scarcely be said that he was at work; his lessons were all prepared, and ready for next day: and John was reading for his own pleasure in that delightful calm of feeling which results from the sense of duty performed. It is not always in later life that one is privileged to enjoy this conscious virtue even when one’s work is fully accomplished, but at fifteen the case is different—and, as it happened, among the books on the table, the boy had brought down inadvertently the old copy of Robinson Crusoe which had been so dear to him in his childhood, and which was associated with so many of the confused reminiscences of that long departed past. He had taken it, and was looking at it, before the old people opened the conversation which for the whole evening had been in their thoughts. John scarcely felt it was necessary to open that book. He knew not only what was in it, but a great many things that were not in it, things which it suggested before it was opened, the strange visions of the time through which papa’s image flitted, dim now but still well remembered. He was thinking of all this with a vagueness in which there was no pain. There never indeed had been any pain, only a confused sense of so many things which he could not understand. He might have heard, if he had taken any notice, that the old people were simultaneously clearing their throats, with little coughs and hems—partly of preparation, partly to have him see that they were about to speak, and call his attention. But John did not take any notice, being fully absorbed with his own recollections and interests. Anyone who could have seen them would have been amused to remark how the grandfather and grandmother looked at each other, and made little signs egging each other up to begin,