‘Don’t you agree with me?’ he said.
‘Agree with him! Listen to the young ’un,’ said the old man at last, with a quaver in his voice. ‘But I’m glad you take it like this, my boy. We’re old folks, and we’re growing older every day. We’d like to live just to see you settled for yourself in the world. You’ve advantages, as you say, in the village maybe, and just a little way about, where our name is known, though we have not spent all our lives in this little place. But look you here, John. You mustn’t expect to be able to make your way in the village, nor perhaps near it. You mustn’t expect the old folks will last for ever. When you go out into the world, you’ll find there are very few that ever heard tell of your grandmother and me. You will have to be your own grandfather, so to speak,’ grandpapa said, with an unsteady little laugh.
It was just at this moment that John, looking down on the table with his smiling eyes, with an undimmed boyish satisfaction in grandfather’s little jokes, contented he could scarcely call how, saw the old ‘Robinson Crusoe’ which lay there. It lay among half-a-dozen books, in no way distinguished from the others, but to John it was not like any of the others. It brought a sudden check, like the rolling up of a cloud over his mind. The light paled somehow on his face, as the sky pales when the cloud rolls up. It was not that he was afraid, or that any shadow of a coming trouble fell upon him. No, not that. He was only recalled to the far back childish life, like a faint vision which lay in the distance, like an island on the other side of the sea, half touching the line of the ocean, half drawn up into the skies. He paused for a moment in the shock of this idea, and said, half to himself,
‘By-the-by: I talk as if I were only your grandson, grandfather: but there’s something that comes between—there’s papa.’
There was a slight faint stir in the room. He did not look up to see what it was, being fully engaged following out the thread of his own thoughts.
‘I remember him quite well,’ he said; ‘sometimes I don’t think of him for ages together, and then in a moment it will all come back. I’ve been away from them a long time, haven’t I, to be the only son? and though you sometimes speak of—mother’—he had nearly said Emily, and reddened a little, half with horror, half with amazement, to think of the slip he had almost made—‘you never say a word about papa.’
John could not employ any other than the childish name to denote his absent father. He could not think of him but as papa. He was silent for a little, following out his own thoughts, and it was not till a minute or two had elapsed that it occurred to him how strange it was that they should be quite silent too, making no response. He looked up hastily, and caught sight of one of those signs which the old people would make to each other across him, he paying no attention. But somehow this time he did pay attention. Mrs. Sandford was bending forward towards the old man. Her hands were clasped as if in entreaty. She was giving him an anxious, almost agonized look, imploring him to do something, to refrain from doing something—which was it?—while the grandfather, drawn back into his chair, seemed to resist, seemed to be making up his mind. They both assumed an air of indifference, of forced ease precipitately, when they saw that John was observing them, and then the old gentleman spoke.
‘I’m—glad you’ve asked, John. It’s been on my mind for a long time to tell you. We ought to have done it years ago: but somehow you were always such a happy lad, and it seemed a pity, it seemed a pity to—disturb your mind——’
‘Oh, John Sandford!’ the old lady said. It was not to the boy she was speaking, but to her husband, once more wringing her hands.
Grandfather gave her a look which was almost fierce, a look of angry severity, imposing silence; and then he resumed—
‘Your mother left it to us, to do what we thought best; and we had that anxiety for you to keep you happy that I said unless you asked—and strange it is you never asked before, though it’s not far off ten years you have been with us. You can’t remember much about him, John.’
‘I do, though—I remember him quite well. How he would come and take me out of bed and carry me downstairs, and how jolly he was. I don’t perhaps think of him much, but when I do, I remember him perfectly. He was ruddy and big, and had bright merry eyes—I can see him now——’
The old lady gave a little whimpering cry.
‘Poor Robert! poor Robert! You may say what you like, but the boy is like him, not like any of us,’ she said.
‘Hold your tongue!’ said her husband, peremptorily. ‘Merry, yes, he was merry enough in his time; but it doesn’t make other folks merry that kind——’
And there was again a little pause. John’s curiosity was aroused, and his interest: but yet he was not greatly moved—for anything connected with his father was so vague for him and far away.
‘Well, grandfather? he said at last.
‘Well,’ said the old man, slowly, ‘there is not very much to say; the short and the long of it is that—hush, woman, I tell you! he is just—dead. That is all there is to say.’
‘Dead!’ John was startled. He repeated the word in an awestruck and troubled tone. He did not know what he had expected. And yet the moment he thought of it—and thought goes so quick!—he had gone through the whole in a moment like a flash of light, realising the long separation, the utter silence, through which there never came any news. Of course, that was the only thing that was possible. He said, after a time,
‘I ought to have known. It must have been that. Never to hear of him for so many years—’
‘Yes, to be sure,’ grandfather said. ‘He didn’t do well in his business, and he went abroad, and then he died——’
‘I ought to have known—it must have been that,’ said John.
CHAPTER IV.
JOHN’S CHOICE.
This conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door, which was evidently a very welcome sound to the old people, who displayed even more than their usual cordiality when the door of the parlour opened and Mr. Cattley was shown in. Mr. Cattley was the curate. He had held that position in the village of Edgeley-on-the-Moor since John’s childhood, having little influence, and no ambition, and finding himself in congenial society, which indisposed him to take any measures for ‘bettering himself’ or moving, as perhaps he would himself have said, to a wider sphere. As a matter of fact, if Mr. Cattley had ever possessed any friends who would have helped him to that wider sphere, they had forgotten him before now; and he had forgotten them, having succeeded in concentrating himself in the little rural parish as few people could have done. Perhaps his pupils had helped to weave that spell which bound him to the little place. He had taken charge of all the young Spencers in their earlier days. He had trained both Dick and Percy for their school, in which they had done him credit, at least, in the beginning of their career: but Elly and John were his favourites: and, as they had remained with him until now, his interest in his work had remained unbroken.
Mr. Cattley was not a very frequent visitor at the house of the Sandfords. He was, to tell the truth, generally so absorbed by another friendship that he had no leisure to pay visits. This was in fact the secret, but it was no secret, of the good curate’s life. The rector, Mr. Spencer, was a widower, having been so for many years, and his house was ruled and presided over by a sister, also a widow, to whom en tout bien et tout honneur, the curate was devoted. It was such a devotion as from time to time arises without any blame on one side or another in the heart of a young man for a woman who is older than himself, and whom there is not the least possibility that he can ever marry. Such attachments are perhaps less uncommon than people think, and they are very warm, constant, and absorbing. Sometimes, as everybody knows, they do end in marriage, but that is a disturbance of the ideal, and brings in elements less delicate and exquisite than the tie which is