Right! did she call this right? Whose doing had it been that she had become Emily, the daughter of the old people, in his eyes—not herself, not his mother? And then he gave her a furtive look to see if, perhaps, she looked like his mother now, and was no longer Emily. She met his wistful look with one that was troubled too; but even this expression did not change her. And whose fault was that? He seemed to hear the old people talking of Emily with many unguarded comments. It was like her, they would say. When a letter came, or when they would ramble off into those mutual recollections with which so often, to John’s amusement, they had traced out for him, with glimpses of the half-seen landscape all around, the story of their lives, that name always came in from time to time: ‘Emily said—Emily did—this or that. How like that was to Emily! It was her way of looking at things: for Emily never would see, don’t you know—never made any allowance——’ A hundred such scenes appeared to him, like scenes out of some play suddenly becoming visible without any will of his. How could he help it, if his mind had collected out of all these unconscious portraits an image of Emily, which was more clear than anything else he knew? It was not their fault. Was it not she herself who was to blame if this was how he knew her best, as the daughter whom the old people were half afraid of, whose probable criticism alarmed them, whose thoughts were not as theirs? The fear of her which crept into his own mind was more chill, more overwhelming—for how could he make any stand against her if it was true that he was entirely at her mercy, without any defence or shield.
That little quiet parlour, the old people’s room with all its old-fashioned furniture and little prim ornaments! Had it ever beheld such a mute encounter, such a strange struggle before? The boy looked at his mother and she at him. His eyes appealed to her, yet resisted her, while hers—but he could not read what they meant. He was not capable of comprehending, in his youthful inexperienced judgment, the many things he wot not of, the recollections, the sternness, the relentings that were in his mother’s eyes. But no more was said. For just then Sarah came in, pushing open the door with the great tray in her arms to prepare for tea—which was a thing that could not be intermitted, though heaven and earth should be beginning to dissolve and drop away.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FAREWELL.
John went up the village street towards the rectory with a heavy heart.
It was all over—his resistance and his notion of being able to resist, his hopes and all the foundation for them, his fond dreams and thoughts (so fallacious and so foolish) of independence, of settling matters for himself, of keeping the little house as a sort of monument to the old people to whom it belonged. Could anything be more vain than these visions? It was all settled now, and not a child in the village had less to do with it than he. The furniture was to be sold, the house itself to be let if it could not be disposed of. The gardener and Sarah had received their dismissal. They remained only till ‘the family’ left, which was an event now fixed for next day. In short, every part of John’s little world had crumbled under him. Himself was of no account in all the changes that had been determined upon. They were all quite reasonable, perhaps necessary, and his childish intention had been silly as well as vain. He understood that now; but how painful was the discovery? It left him aching body and soul, not only with the thought of what was to come, but with the smarting sensation of pain and shame, that overwhelming sense of having formed ludicrous intentions impossible to carry out, which is so terrible to youth. He felt himself blush from head to foot when he thought how foolish he had been, and how impossible that which he had supposed the most natural thing in the world. For the sting of it was that he saw the impossibility, and how childish it was to suppose that he could have done it, and the futility of everything he had imagined and planned. It was natural that she should take all the steps she had done—calmly, without the silly sentiment into which he had fallen. She was acting only as reasonable people should act—but he, he had been going on like a foolish boy.
John had passed through a great many vicissitudes both of mind and situation in these past days. He had been to his own thinking independent, feeling very young and forlorn indeed, but yet with a firmness of purpose and a tenderness of feeling which had given him confidence in himself. He had felt that he would not abuse the old people’s confidence. He would make a man of himself to do them credit. He would show them honour in his keeping up of everything that had pleased them, in his return, whenever he had leisure, to the home in which their love had guarded him. That had been his first phase, and it had been full of a simple youthful dignity, and a sense of worthiness of the trust they had placed in him. And then there had come a revolution, a storm, a fierce moment of fighting and resistance to the new will, a fight which was weakened from the beginning by the fatal conviction that it must be lost. And now even the struggle was over, and he had fallen—into what had he fallen? Into a child again—into what perhaps was his natural position—the place of a boy who did not quite know what was going to be done with him, whose fate was in other hands, who had to wait and hear what was intended, where he was to be placed, with a knowledge that his own wishes had very little to do with it, and no dignity, no freedom at all! Could there be a greater downfall for a sensitive, high-spirited boy? With a certain mental elation, tempered by sorrow, he had felt himself a man though only seventeen, with all the tender ambitions of a boy, to do credit to those that loved him: now he had fallen back to the position of a child—wistfully dependent, uncertain what his fate was to be. In more ordinary circumstances even, such as happen every day, a boy who has been brought up by his grandparents, made into the son of their old age, matured by the constant company of people full of experience, and the indulgence which comes with the end of life, is apt to feel a terrible downfall when he goes back into his own family, where his parents, in their busy prime, think but little of his precocious wisdom, and do not respect at all the fictitious independence into which he has grown, and where his brothers and sisters, a rabble rout, knock him about in a way which is supposed to be very much to his advantage.
John’s experiences were but a little more painful. The disenchantment was complete. He was shaken out of all opinion of himself. Perhaps even his feeling that his own will or way was of no importance at all exceeded reality: for he had no reason to suppose that his mother would be entirely indifferent to what he wished. She had not been unkind. She was not an emotional woman, nor given to any effusion of sympathetic feeling; but she was not unkind. But John in his downfall and dismay could not consider that. He felt himself altogether brought low. And then his position, so far as his mother was concerned, was so painful and extraordinary. She was his mother; he could not, even to himself, set up any other hope. He could not blind himself to the conviction that this was she that appeared in his childish recollections, always so silent, putting him aside, saying that the boy was not to know. But he could not call her ‘mother,’ having known her so long and seen to the depths of her character as Emily. He said ‘she’ to himself, and no more. She was the arbiter of his life. He did not think she cared at all for him, or minded whether he was happy or otherwise. Secretly, perhaps, he thought that she preferred he should not be happy; but that he knew, even while he entertained the thought, was a wrong thing to think, unkind and untrue: yet he kept it in his mind all the same.
He was strolling along with his hands deeply thrust into his pockets, and despondency unspeakable in his soul, feeling that everything that made life worth living had been taken from him. He was going to the rectory to say good-bye. Good-bye was what was in his heart towards everything he looked on. Not a house he passed but was familiar to him—the shop, the post-office, even Johnson at the public-house, though the old people had so disapproved of him, and John had grown up in the idea that he was not much better than the roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour, of Scripture: they were all kind, familiar objects now. He regretted them all, worthy and unworthy. As he went along, there was some recollection associated with every bit of the road. There, Dick Spencer had thrown a snowball and hit him, and made his forehead bleed; a snowball with a stone in it—but how sorry Dick was! There he had run against Percy on the way to school and they had both come to the ground, rolling over each other. At another corner was the spot where Elly used to start to run and get before them all, with swift, light steps like a deer, scarcely touching the ground. All the boys had united in saying that it was not fair, that Elly could not stay, that the slowest of them could have beaten her in a quarter-of-a-mile; but, nevertheless, she had always got first whatever they might say. He was turning over all these old things in his heart while he strode along slowly, languidly, his whole being in pain, when suddenly, in the midst of his troubled thoughts, a slap came on his shoulder from behind, and a cheerful voice hailed him:
‘Why, Jack! what are you doing here at this time of day?’
Then another voice addressed the first one with that pleasant frankness which characterises brothers or dear friends, and bid him for a blockhead to remember. Whereupon the first speaker penitently cried out: