‘I shall always be glad to hear how you are getting on. I am glad to know that something has been done towards deciding what you are to do for your living. Of course my father and mother, who have brought you up, are the right persons to settle that, and I approve in general, though I should like to know what they are doing most particularly, and to give my advice, though I should not interfere. For yourself, pray write to me whenever you feel disposed, and I will answer to the best of my ability, though I cannot always promise you to do what you desire.
‘Your affectionate mother,
‘Emily Sandford.
‘P.S—I am sorry to hear that my mother is not so strong as usual. Let us hope she will recover her old spirits as the spring comes on. I daresay she was a little low when she thought it would do her good to have a talk with me. Tell her, if she thinks a little, she will remember that it is very doubtful whether we should either of us like it, and, as for the people being ignorant, the more ignorant the better, it seems to me.’
John had been palpitating with expectation and hope when he opened this letter. He came gradually down, down, as he read it. All through, he felt that it was Emily who was writing to him, a woman whom he knew a great deal about (and yet nothing), and whom he did not like very much—not his mother.
It seemed likely that he had no mother. The loss of all that he had been expecting and looking forward to, and the strangest sense of whirling down, down, as if everything was giving way under him, made him sick and cold. When he had read it to the last word, he folded it up carefully, with a very grave face, and put it into his pocket. He was far too serious for the angry impulse of throwing it into the fire. He was not angry so much as crushed and overawed. He felt himself altogether put down from the position which he had taken. She had acknowledged that he was no longer a child, and yet she treated him as if he knew nothing, understood nothing. The injury to his pride, to his heart, to all that was individual in him, was more than words could say.
Mrs. Sandford looked at him wistfully when she came downstairs (always a little later). She caught his hand when he came and stood by her sofa looking down at her, thinking how bright and liquid her eyes were. How large and deep the sockets seemed, as if they had widened out, and what a pallor had come upon her face—her little face! She was a small woman, but now her face was like the face of a child, all but the widened circle about her eyes. She put her hand upon his, the touch felt like a feather, and looked up at him wistfully, but without speaking. He had gone out immediately after breakfast, half stupified, and taken a long walk, his chief object being not to see her, not to give her any information. But he was obliged to answer the question in her eyes.
‘I have had a letter, grandmamma. She says she can’t come.’
‘Can’t come, John!’ The old lady kept looking up at him, till suddenly her eyes grew dim with two great tears. She clasped her hands together with a low cry. He could see the disappointment, which was so unexpected, go over her like a flood. She could not say any more. Her lips quivered—it was all she could do in her weakness not to break down altogether, and whimper and moan like a child. ‘Can’t come!’ she repeated, after a time, with little broken sobs.
‘Grandmamma, don’t take it like that, and break my heart. It is my fault. I began to write as if it was me only, and I felt it a good deal and went on and on from myself, not from you. She thinks it was only my letter, only I that wanted her. She seems to have thought that it was rather impudent of me to ask.’
‘She could not have done that. She could not have done that,’ said the old lady. She was so used to mastering herself that she had by this time succeeded in doing so, though her lip trembled and she kept softly drying her eyes: for at her age the eyes only get full with a dew of pain, they do not pour forth easy floods of tears like those that are young. John felt that she was, like himself, cast down from a height of expectation. She began to smile after a time very pathetically with her quivering lips. ‘We mustn’t forget,’ she said, ‘that it’s just Emily’s way.’