The Son of His Father. Mrs. Oliphant
when anything disagreeable had to be done. Not that it was in reality anything disagreeable, but only exciting and full of new possibilities. She laid down her large pins with the knitting upon her lap, and cleared her throat finally, and said, ‘John.’
It had to be repeated a second time in a slightly raised voice, and with a touch of her hand upon his arm before he paid any attention. Then the boy roused up suddenly, gave himself a little shake, pushed his ‘Robinson Crusoe’ away from him on the table, and turning round, said, briskly, ‘Yes, grandmamma,’ coming back in a moment out of his dreams.
‘We want to speak to you, my dear,’ the old lady said. She put her hand on his arm again, and patted it softly. He sat, as a matter of fact, on his grandmother’s side, not exactly in the middle; nearer to her than to the old gentleman, who had long observed the circumstance not without a little kind of jealousy, but had never taken any notice.
Mrs. Sandford was conscious of it, and secretly proud; but you may be sure she took no notice, and would no doubt have shown a little surprise had it been remarked.
‘We want to speak to you,’ she said. ‘John, you are growing a great boy.’
‘Seventeen last birthday,’ said the grandfather. ‘I had been working for myself a couple of years when I was his age.’
‘Well, my dear, but it is not John’s fault. You have always said you regretted having so little schooling.’
‘The question is,’ said old Mr. Sandford, striking his hand against the arm of his chair, ‘whether the education he has been getting counts like schooling. For, you see, he has never been at school. I had my doubts on that subject all along.’
‘Oh, yes, oh, yes, my dear,’ said the old lady. ‘To be taught by a good man that knows a great deal, like our curate, that is better, surely, than being exposed to meet with bad boys and bad influences in a strange place.’
John listened to this conversation, turning his face from one to the other. He was quite used to be discussed so, and thought it the natural course of affairs—but here it seemed to him that he might intervene in his own person.
‘Grandpapa,’ he said, ‘Mr. Cattley says Elly and I construe much better than Dick and Percy, though they have been so many years at school.’
‘Does he really, John!’ said Mrs. Sandford, and her old eyes got wet directly with pleasure; but grandpapa still shook his head.
‘I don’t know much about construing,’ he said; ‘I never had time to study any outlandish tongues, but you and Dick, as you call him, and Percy are very different; one’s going to the army and one to Oxford, as I hear; but as for you, my Johnny-boy——’ Here Mr. Sandford winked his eyes, too; for, though he had begun with the intention of taking his John down a little, and showing him that he was far from being so fine a gentleman as he thought—when it came to the point, the old grandfather did not himself like the idea, and felt that his John was much more of a gentleman than any other boy he knew.
‘Yes, grandfather,’ said John, tranquilly. ‘I know I’m not like the others. I’ve got to make my own way.’
‘Yes; and you’ve got to make it without a family behind you, and friends to push you on as those young Spencers have—though you’ve more in you than both of them put together,’ cried grandpapa, with a little outburst of feeling which John did not at all understand.
John smiled. He was used to hearing that he was a fine fellow, and better than the others, and he took it as a peculiarity of the doting affection these old people had for him, and excused it good-naturedly on that ground: but he knew very well it was not true.
‘The only thing that is wanting to Percy and Dick is that they’re not your boys, grandfather,’ said John—‘yours and grandmamma’s—you would know then that they are quite as good as me—or better, perhaps,’ he added, candidly, feeling that so far as this went there might be reason for a doubt.
‘You will never make us see that,’ said Mrs. Sandford; ‘but I love the boys, bless them, for they’ve always been like brothers to you. And it is saying a deal for the rector and all of them that, though we are not just in their position, they have never hindered it nor made any difference, which they might have done; dear me, oh! yes, they might have done it, and nobody blamed them——’
‘My dear,’ said the old man, in a tone of warning.
‘Oh! yes, yes,’ cried grandmamma. ‘I know; I know——’ And she cried a little, and gave a stolen look at John such as he had caught many a day without ever understanding the meaning of it—a look in which there was something like pity, compassion, and indignation as well as love, as if somebody had wronged him deeply, though he did not know it, and she felt that nothing could ever be too good for him, too tender to make up for it—and yet that nothing ever would wipe out that wrong. All this in one glance is, perhaps, too much to believe in; but John saw it all confusedly, wondering, and not knowing what it could mean.
Mr. Sandford cleared his throat again, and then it was he who began.
‘John,’ he said, ‘we think, and so does your mother think, that it is time to speak to you about what you are going to do——’
‘Yes, grandfather,’ said John. He looked up with a little eagerness, as if he were quite ready and prepared, which, while it made matters much easier, gave the old people a little chill at the same time, as if the boy had been wanting to get away.
‘There is no hurry about it,’ the old gentleman said, closing up a little and drawing back into his seat.
‘But, grandfather,’ said John, ‘I’ve been thinking of it myself. Percy is going to the University after he’s finished at Marlborough: but I can’t do that. I can’t wait till I’m a man before getting to work. I know I’m not like them. Mr. Cattley has taken us—oh, I don’t mean us: me—as far as I have any need to go.’
‘Why shouldn’t you say “us,” John?’
‘Because Elly is a girl. She is more different still. She says her aunt will never let her go on when she comes back. And, it is thought, Mr. Cattley will get a living: so that’s just how it is, grandfather. I’ve been thinking the very same. As I’ve got to make my own way, it’s far better that I should begin.’
‘Especially as the poor lad has no one behind him,’ said his grandmother, shaking her head.
‘I have you behind me,’ said John; ‘I’d like to know how a fellow could have anything better. And I’ve all the village behind me that know you and know me, though I’m not so much. What could I have more? I’ve only got to say I’m Mr. Sandford’s grandson, and, all this side of the county, everybody knows me. The Spencers have got greater relations, perhaps, but what could be better than that?’
He looked round upon them, first to one side, then to the other, with a glow of brightness and happy feeling in his cheerful young face. He was a good-looking boy, perhaps not strictly handsome, with mobile irregular features, honest well-opened eyes, with a laugh always in them, and brown hair that curled a little. He was not particularly tall for his age, neither was he short, but strong and well-knit. And he had the complexion of a girl, white and red, a little more brown perhaps than would have been becoming to a girl. But to John the brown was very becoming. He looked like a boy who was afraid of nothing, neither work, nor fatigue, nor poverty, nor even trouble, if that should have to be borne—but who was entirely confident that he never need be ashamed to look the world in the face, and that everything known of him, either of himself or those who had gone before him, was of a kind to conciliate friendship and spread goodwill all round.
The two old people looked at him, and then at each other. The grandfather gave his ‘tchick, tchick’ under his breath, as it were, the grandmother under her soft white knitting wrung her old hands. But an awe was upon them of his youth, of his confidence, of his happiness. They withdrew their eyes from him and from each other with a suddenness of alarm, as if they might betray themselves—and for a moment there was silence. They dared