The Son of His Father. Mrs. Oliphant
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had ever heard before. The curate even, who was the only visitor, looked at her with a sort of diffident curiosity, and said ‘your daughter,’ when he spoke of her to the old man. She went to the funeral, supporting her father on her arm, while John walked with Mr. Cattley behind. A great many people, indeed, it might be said the whole parish, attended the funeral; and there were many tears among the crowd. But Emily shed no tear. She kept her father’s arm in hers, and encouraged and supported him. The old gentleman, who had been so strong and hale, had sunk all at once into helplessness; his heavy foot, that had been so steady, became shuffling and uncertain; sometimes he would sob feebly, like the voluntary crying of a child, without tears.
And more and more to John was this melancholy period like a dream. It all fitted in, one event with another—the meeting at the station, the pause at the door, when he thought for a moment that Emily would have turned back, and gone away without entering the house; and then that scene upstairs, the tall figure all in black, her bonnet still on, a veil drooping over her face, holding up the light over the snow-cold whiteness of the bed and the dead face on the pillow. He shuddered when he thought of that scene. It was all a dream—a dream from which he might perhaps awake to see all these sombre circumstances disappear, and the old, sweet life which was real—the only real life he could think of, with the two old faces, full of love, beaming on him—would come back. But that, John knew very well, it would never do. And what was it that lay before him?—new work, a strange place, his old grandfather left alone and desolate, his mother of whom he had once dreamed disappeared into thin air, and nothing certain in the world but Emily, who was and was not Emily, but—— But now the dream within dreams had gone. He did not believe that she was his mother. He began to think, in all seriousness, that his mother must have been a younger sister, one, perhaps, about whom there was a mystery, who had perished along with his father, who—but that seemed very confusing and wonderful to think of—might have been the subject of that secret of which his grandmother had spoken. It was all so strange, so little clear, that this solution of the matter took stronger form in John’s thoughts.
On the evening after the funeral they were all seated together once more like the old arrangement, two on different sides of the fire, the boy in the middle with his book, but, ah! so different. No kind looks exchanged across him, all meaning love to him; no interest in what he was doing; no consciousness on his part that he was the principal figure, the centre of their thoughts. John was of no importance now, and felt it. He was in the background, an insignificant unit in the group. His grandfather sat, saying nothing, limp in his chair, a little irritable, ready to watch any movement, while Emily (he could not call her anything but Emily) sat between the fire and the table with her work. Presently John awoke to the consciousness that she was talking of himself.
‘I should like you to tell me what you have arranged about the boy?’
‘The boy’ was what she called him almost always. And the words were never uttered without rousing a sense of injury in John’s heart.
‘How can I tell you,’ said Mr. Sandford, ‘about John or anything? Do you think I’m able to be troubled about that?’
‘You must,’ she said, in her steady, serious tone, ‘for in a day or two I shall have to go back, and all business should be settled before I go.’
‘Must!’ said the old man, with unwonted fire; and then he fell again into the half-whimpering tone of complaint. ‘I have never had that said to me. I’ve been master in my own house, and no one to lift their hand against me, near upon fifty years.’
‘Father, you will recognise, if you think, that I have a right to hear about the boy. You had settled to send him to an engineer? So much I know; but who is it, and where? It is far more easy to tell me than to quarrel with me about my right to ask.’
Mr. Sandford had already forgotten his moment of wrath, or perhaps the good sense of her argument had an effect upon him.
‘He has had all his schooling from the curate, Mr. Cattley. You saw him, Emily. Now, Mr. Cattley has a brother—in Liverpool.’
Her work fell from her lap.
‘In Liverpool—in Liverpool. I must be dreaming. You don’t mean that, father?’
‘I remember now,’ said the old gentleman, ‘she thought you would object. She objected herself, poor dear. But what does it matter, one place or another? It is the curate’s brother—a kind man that would look after him. He will be better there than anywhere. Mr. Cattley’s brother——’
‘He shall not go there,’ she said; her pale face coloured over a little, very little, and yet enough to make a great difference. And she looked her father steadily in the face as she spoke.
‘Shall not! Is it you or me that is the master? She tried to persuade me, as a woman may, but you, you, with your “shall not,” your “shall not!” …’ He rose up and began in his wrath to walk about the room, recovering something of his old force. ‘I have never allowed anyone to speak to me so.’
‘Not since I left home, father. You must hear it again, for it is necessary you should. He shall not go there. No, if there was no other place for him in the world. There he shall not go.’
What further development the quarrel might have taken it is needless to speculate, for at this moment John, who had been turning aimlessly over a number of children’s books, which had been brought out of his grandfather’s room, here uttered a strange cry. What he said was, ‘Johnny May, Johnny May,’ with a mixture of trouble and satisfaction.
‘I knew that I had something to do with that name,’ he said.
The discussion stopped at once. Mr. Sandford went back tremulous to his easy chair, and Emily turned to the boy.
‘With that name—with your own name,’ she said.
‘Is it my name?—but my name is Sandford.’
‘May Sandford,’ she answered, fixing him with her steady eyes.
‘More than that, more than that,’ said John, ‘now I remember! Papa was Mr. May. I am Mr. May’s little boy. He taught me to say that. Now I remember everything. And my mother would be Mrs. May, not Mrs. Sandford. Now I know. You are not my mother. I felt sure of it from the first,’ said the boy.
Emily paled so that every shade of colour went out of her face. It had been pale before, but now it was like a stormy evening sky, of the blankest whiteness. She looked at John for a moment, with something like a quiver on her steady lip. Then she turned to her father with a singular smile and asked,
‘Will you send him to Liverpool now?’
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