‘What does Emily say?’
Always Emily. He could not get rid of Emily.
‘There is no letter yet, grandmamma.’
‘Ah! she will be waiting till she can settle exactly which train she is to come by,’ said the old lady, and gave him a kiss, and lay smiling, thinking, no doubt, of her daughter, who was coming. She could not talk much, for she was still very weak.
On the fourth morning the letter arrived.
‘It is for you, Mr. John,’ said the postman.
‘Yes, yes,’ cried the boy; ‘I know it is for me.’
He hurried in, and shut the parlour-door, that no one might disturb him in reading it. At all events, it was a letter, he could see in a moment, and not the usual little formal note about his health and her health, which had been enough for him when he was a child. John’s heart beat very high as he began to read, but gradually calmed down, and became quite still, scarcely moving at all in his breast. For his mother’s letter was not the kind of letter to encourage the beatings of any heart.
‘My Dear John,
‘I have received your letter, partly with pleasure, seeing that you write in a much more intelligent and independent way than usual, which I am glad to see—for at nearly seventeen you are on the eve of manhood, and very different things may be expected from you from those which all your friends were content with when you were a child. But I also read it with pain, for there seems to me an idea in it that, if you insist very much, you are sure to get your own way, a sort of thing which perhaps is natural, seeing how you have been brought up, and that no doubt my father and mother have indulged you very much: but which is not good for you, and will expose you to disappointment even greater than we are doomed to by nature. How can you know that it would be a good thing if I were to come? You ought rather to understand that, as I have not come all these years, it is because your grandparents and I, who know all the circumstances, have decided that it is better I should not come. This I probably could not explain to your satisfaction, but it was settled to theirs and to mine long ago—and you cannot expect that I should depart from a resolution which I did not make without pain—because you, a boy who knows nothing about it, have been taken with a fancy that you would like to see your mother. It is quite natural, no doubt, that you should wish it, though I cannot suppose that it would make any particular difference to you whether your wish was granted or not. You are at an age when a mother is not of much consequence, and, if you had been brought up with me, you would probably be very impatient of me, and prefer to get out of my way, like most boys of your age. And I am sorry to say that I don’t think you would like me much if you saw me. Your ideal of course is my mother, and I am not at all like my mother. If anything should happen that would make it necessary for us to be together, necessity will help us to get on with each other; but for the present, so long as there is no necessity, it is best to go on as we are doing. There are reasons, quite needless to enter into, which make it out of the question, unless it were a matter of life and death, that I should go to Edgeley. I am sorry to disappoint you, but it is much better you should know.