His father! What a name that was, full of tenderness, full of honour, a name that could neither be obliterated nor transferred, nor lost in forgetfulness. A man’s father is his father for ever, whatever circumstances may arise. John, the son of——: is not that the primitive description, the first distinction of every man, the thing which gives him standing among his fellows? The mother may or may not have a name of her own, a reputation of her own—what does it signify? John, the son of Emily Sandford!—oh no, that was not his natural description. He was John, the son of Robert May. And Robert May was the convict whom he had picked up in the street, of whom he had been so kindly indulgent, so contemptuously tolerant.
John did not follow this train of thought. It gleamed before him as he went along, that was all; and once more he paused on the middle of the bridge, remembering how he had done so before at the different crises of his life. How he had smiled not so many days ago, on his birthday, when he passed over it and thought of his own boyish despair at seventeen, and the impulse he had felt to rush away, and cut all the ties that bound him, and go off to the ends of the world to struggle out a career for himself all alone. At twenty-one he had looked out over the same parapet, on what seemed the same outgoing sails, and had laughed to himself in high self-complacence and content at that foolish petulance of his youth. It was not yet three weeks ago—but then he had felt himself the master of his own fate with prosperity and hope in every circumstance of his life—the ball at his foot as he had said. Not three weeks ago! and now here he stood a ruined man, crushed by disgrace and humiliation, and made to appear as if in his own person he deserved that doom—the son of his father!—doing what he had always been expected to do, betraying those who trusted in him. John grasped the stony parapet and looked—oh no, with no idea of self-destruction—that was an impossible as it was a contemptible mode of escape: but with a bitter indignant persuasion that his early plan would have been the best, and that to have gone away beyond the knowledge of any who had ever heard his name—away into the unknown, fatherless, motherless, friendless—would have been after all the most expedient for him, the only wise thing to do.
A convict: a convict! He went on afterwards setting his teeth, saying this to himself. It was not a thing that could be thought over calmly: his thinkings got into mere repetition to himself of these words, which seemed to circle about him like the flies in the air as he walked on. A convict! There was not the slightest reason to doubt it: it proved itself: no man but one could have held in his imagination and recollection that old innocent picture which had been John’s so long. The pretty innocent little picture that might have come out of a child’s book, with its little spice of innocent wrongness, the baby disorder, the mutinous pleasure of it! It had been sweet to his memory for years—and now all at once it became horrible, a thing his heart grew sick to think of.
John felt that to few people could it be so horrible as it was to him. Honour and integrity, and noble meaning, and a high scorn of everything base had been the very air he breathed. He had stood on this foundation as some people stand on wealth, and some on family and connections. The other pupils in the office had in many cases possessed a foundation of that other kind: but, as for John, he had always stood high on those personal qualities, on the fact that no reproach could be brought against him, and that whatever records were brought to light he never could be shamed. That very morning when he set out to go to the office, puzzled about the loss of the copy, but fearing nothing, feeling in all heaven and earth no shadow of anything to fear, with his papers in his pocket, there was not so much as that cloud like a man’s hand to warn him. And yet he had been on the eve of irremediable and ruinous disgrace. Only to think of it—this morning with a spotless reputation and every prognostic in his favour: and now—a convict’s son!
When the soul is overcome in this way with sudden trouble, how constantly does the sufferer feel that the blow has been administered skilfully in that way of all others which cuts most deeply. There were many other kinds of suffering which John could have borne, he thought, patiently enough—but this! Shame! It was the defeat of all his efforts, the keen and poignant contradiction of all he had striven after. And he was wise enough to know that the first impulse of indignant resistance and that cry of despair with which a man protests that he cannot and will not bear what has befallen him—were alike futile. There it was, not to be got over; and bear it he must, whatever ensued.
In this maze of dreadful thought, he came home to the little rooms in which his virtuous and austere young life had been passed, not knowing in the least what he was going to do, feeling only that he must acknowledge the—man—the convict—acknowledge him, and thus give him more or less the command of his life. John had been in a fever of excitement and suspense when he went away. He was now calm enough, quite quiet and resolute, though he had as yet no plan of action. He walked quickly, absorbed in himself and the consequences to himself, without thinking of what might have happened on the other side; not able, indeed, without a sinking sensation, to think of the other side at all—and pushed open the door which was unlatched. Probably he had left it so when he went out, he could not tell. He did not remember indeed anything about how he had come out. Mr. Barrett’s appearance and every secondary circumstance had disappeared from his mind; yet he woke, as he felt the door give way under his hand, to the idea that he must have left it so. It is not a thing to do in London, not even in a quiet little street out of the way. Probably he had done it in his madness in the first shock of his dismay.
It gave him an extraordinary check in the height of his concentrated self-control, to find everything empty when he came in. There was no trace even that anyone had ever been there. The respectable little sitting-room looked exactly as it had done ever since he knew it—the chairs put back in their places, the Standard carefully folded upon the table where he had left it in the morning, no appearance anywhere that anything had happened since then. He stood still for a moment with a gasp of dismay, wondering whether he had only dreamt all this, if it had been a mere nightmare, a feverish vision. Could he but persuade himself that this was so, that he was the same John Sandford he had been in the morning, with the ball still at his foot! For the moment a wild hope gleamed across him; but it was only for a moment. He sat down and stared about him, wondering to see everything the same. All the same! yet altogether changed, as no external convulsion could have changed it: an earthquake would have been nothing in comparison. If a bomb had suddenly exploded upon the decent carpet among the inoffensive furniture, and shattered the innocent house to pieces, what would that have been in comparison? These were the ridiculous thoughts that came across his mind, and almost made him laugh in the first revulsion of feeling, which was disappointment and relief, and yet was nothing at all. For what did it matter? The thing had been, and could not be wiped out. It existed and could never be swept away. Ignore it if he could, forget it even if he could, there all the same it would be. He could not be rid of it ever, for ever. He sat silent awhile realising this, and then rose and went to ring the bell: but, before he could touch it, he was startled by a tap at the door.
It was only his landlady who came in—but she had her best cap on, and looked as if she had something to say. She was embarrassed, and turned round and round on her finger a ring which was too big for her.
‘If you please, Mr. Sandford——’ she began.
‘Yes? I left two—people here. Do you know where they have gone?’