‘And you knew all along that your mother was living? How strange that you never spoke of her—that we never heard—I hope, dear John, I—I trust——’
She had meant to say, ‘that she is kind to you.’ But her courage failed her in sight of his pale, set face.
‘We heard from her always regularly, but there seemed nothing to write about. She had given me up to my grandparents.’ John had to pause to get rid of the sob in his throat; but he was determined to tell all he knew, to leave nothing to be found out. ‘She has been living in London, with little time to herself.’
It was a curiously lame story. He felt it was so, as he told it; hitherto it had all seemed simple enough. He met Mrs. Egerton’s look of interest and her interrogative ‘Yes?’ with sudden confusion, as if it was all a made-up tale.
‘Yes?’ she said, and paused with her eyes full of a hundred questions expecting him to resume. But John had told everything he had to tell, and stopped short with no more to say. She sat looking at him for a minute longer expecting when he should resume. Then, as he said nothing, she asked, as if to make a beginning again and draw him on, ‘Are there any more of the family?’
‘I have a sister,’ John said.
‘Oh! a sister. I am very glad to hear it. I am extremely glad for your sake. A sister is so near—a sister will sympathise. I have seen—Mrs. Sandford, once: it seems so strange to say that name and not to mean your dear old grandmamma, my kind, true old friend.’ Mrs. Egerton’s bright eyes were moistened with tears, but John sat stolid in the stupidity of his grief, and made no sign. ‘Did you know I had seen her once?’ she said. ‘She is Mrs. Sandford, isn’t she? and that is your name? She must have married—a cousin, I suppose?’
John made no reply. He felt a sense of guilt come over him. He said to himself that she was not Mrs. Sandford, nor was that his name; but his lips were sealed. He did not himself know how it was. His discovery of his own childish name had led to no further discoveries, and in his own family no one had given him any help to understand how it was. The subject was one which now he could not enter upon with his mother; and he felt by instinct, though no warning had ever been given to him, that it was a subject he must not speak of to others. So he made no answer, but in his heart felt a pang of secret guilt. He had not been used to secrets, especially he had not been used to concealing anything about himself: and now, in the sting of this consciousness, he sat silent, unresponsive, feeling himself dull and blank in presence of the kind, genial, affectionate woman full of curiosity, who wanted to know everything. She wanted him to tell her everything—to confide in her: and she was disappointed that the boy to whom she had been so kind should close up all the avenues to his heart and make no reply. Then Mrs. Egerton opened her drawer and took out her present to John. She was very liberal in the way of presents, loving to give them, delighted to give pleasure to others. What she had got for John was a gift of real value, a pretty gold hunting-watch, which was much better than the silver one that his grandparents had given him. It was very pretty, very nice, very kind; but when he took the old shabby silver one out of his pocket which had been given him when he was a boy, which had never gone very well, in order to make place for the new one, he tried his best to thank his kind friend, but he held the little old watch in his hand and gazed at it with troubled eyes.
‘You must give it away to some one,’ said Mrs. Egerton. ‘It will be a pleasure for you to give it to some good lad—Hedger’s boy, perhaps, who has been with you so long.’
He murmured an assent, but put the old watch back again into another pocket with a quick revolt of feeling. Give it away—to Ned Hedger. Oh! no, no, not for the world! He would keep it all his life for grandmamma’s sake.