"Hé, le Djohn!" cried this passer-by, "thy mother is not here. You will find her at the Hôtel de la Gare, with the gentleman who is dying, or like to die."
"What gentleman?" cried John, striding over the broken ground towards the speaker.
"Do I know? Some one who came in search of her and thee. It is thought thy real father. But why ask me? Go and see for thyself!"
John paused a little till this man had passed, disappearing into the valley. He would not allow a mere peasant, a clodhopper, to see the commotion in which his mind was; but as soon as the passer-by was out of sight he took to his heels and ran all the way, which was more than a mile, through the opening of the valley to the white Route Nationale which ran along the coast, on the other side of which was the little new station and a half-built house, emblazoned with the ambitious title of Hôtel de la Gare, in the meantime not much more than a café, where the Cagnois went on Sundays to drink their bocks and breathe the dust they love. Here, sure enough, there was a crowd at the door, and many signs of excitement – the men standing about and describing something to each other, two railway porters surrounded by the closest group, and the women all pressing up the steps, shaking their heads and asking questions of the proprietor, who stood blocking up the doorway. John had run as only a boy can all the way until he came in sight of this little throng; then he altered his aspect, slowed down by degrees, thrust his hands into his pockets, and came the rest of the way in slow marching time, as if he were going along for his proper diversion, and had nothing on his mind. There was a great outcry, however, before he reached the spot, and he saw his mother led out into the balcony and placed there in a chair, apparently fainting, one woman sprinkling water upon her head, another fanning her, two or three hanging about wringing their hands. When John saw this he made a sudden forward movement, and forced his way through the crowd, which, as soon as it was seen who he was, gave way before him.
"It is her boy – let him go to her. Djohn, God bless thee! be good to thy poor mother. Let him go in, let him go in, Père Rondilet – it is her boy."
But, notwithstanding these encouragements and the readiness of everybody to help him, it was not so easy for John to attain to his mother. There were two rooms which opened upon that balcony, the doors of both of which were shut and guarded, one by a spare, trim, English-looking man, the other by one of the women who knew Madame Jeanne, and who now took John's head in her two hands, kissed him, leaving a tear on his cheek, and begged him to have patience a little.
"Thy mother has had a great shock," she said. "She has an attack of the nerves – how could it be otherwise after such a discovery? Wait a little till she comes to herself, my little friend." "Little friend" does not mean anything so soft and tender in English as mon petit ami did; but we must take the faults of our language along with its qualities.
"What does it mean?" cried John. "What lies are they all saying about my father? My father was dead before I was born."
"I beg pardon," said the English-looking man, in very slow and difficult French; "is this the English lady's son?"
John answered abruptly in English, perhaps even a little rudely. "Who are you?" He was very much irritated and troubled, poor boy. He divined a certain inferiority in the man, and the horrible question, Was this perhaps his father? crossed his mind.
"I am Mr Rothbury's servant – I may say his confidential man; and I know everything," was the strange reply.
The good woman who had just spoken to John stood open-mouthed with admiration to hear the boy whom she had known all her life thus express himself in a foreign tongue with an aplomb which was extraordinary, and which the strange gentleman quite a gentleman in the opinion of Mère Pointêt, understood and replied to with so much deference. Decidedly John, who had been brought up among them all, and considered just as one of the other boys, had more in him than anybody thought.
"What do you mean by everything?" said John. "And who is Mr Rothbury? I don't suppose there is anything to know."
"This is not a place to explain, if you are not acquainted with the circumstances, sir," the English valet said.
John was not at all accustomed to be spoken to in this tone; and though it was meant to be very respectful, it seemed to him something like mockery. He grew very red with the idea that he was being laughed at.
"Perhaps you mistake me for some one else," he said. "I can speak English because my mother is English – that is all; and I won't stand being made fun of, I can tell you. Though you are," he added after a moment with reluctant candour, "a great deal bigger than me."
"I am not making fun of you, sir. I am your father's valet; it wouldn't become me, especially with him, poor gentleman, lying dead on the other side of the door."
"Lying dead!"
A kind of horror seized upon John. He had never, that he knew of, been so near to any one who was dead. He drew back a step, with the timidity that is born of awe.
"Would you like to see him, sir?" the valet said.
"What does he say?" said the Mère Pointêt. "It is just: you ought to go and see him, you who belong to him. Thy mother is too much agitated – it would kill her to remain there; but thou, boy, go – it is only right, since the man is thy father, whatever he may have been in his life."
"I have no father – my father died long ago," the boy cried.
But presently, without wishing it, he found himself in the room which the valet unlocked to admit him. A man lay on the bed in his ordinary clothes – the clothes in which he had travelled. Nothing as yet had been done of those last offices which are performed for the dead. The windows which opened on the balcony were half-closed with shutters, but open enough to let the sounds without come in; the room was, if not "the worst inn's worst room," at all events the bare, newly-plastered, half-furnished room of a poor railway hotel. There were no curtains, no veil of any kind to conceal the terrible fact of that big figure lying there, in all the dreadful ordinariness of a tweed travelling suit, and boots upon which the dust of the road still lay.
"You must not think it was the shock alone," the valet said, moving on tiptoe, and speaking in a whisper. "It was a great shock, of course; but it happened yesterday. My master saw Mrs Rothbury standing on the platform at the station as the train went by. Shows how much he had thought of her, doesn't it, sir, that just a glimpse like that as we went by was enough, after all these years? To be sure, the train slowed as we went through the stations. I saw the lady too, and I believe it was you, sir, along with her; but then I had never seen my poor master's wife. And he didn't know anything about you, if you'll excuse me saying it. He would have come back here last night if he hadn't been taken so bad. He's been ill a long time, my poor master has – gout and many other things. But when he saw you, sir, there was no holding him. 'Struthers,' said he (my name is Struthers, sir) – 'there's a child, she's got a child – and a boy too: what I've always wished for was a boy.' The doctor had to let him come this morning, – he wouldn't be kept back; but he said to me, the doctor did, 'It's as much as his life is worth.' Family quarrels are dreadful things. I don't want to say a word against your mother, sir. She had her reasons, no doubt of it; but my poor master might have been a better man as well as a happier if – It's not for a servant to make remarks. Come a little nearer this way."
"I don't want to see him," said John, trembling. "I don't know who he is. I don't wish to hear anything more about him."
"He is your father, sir," said the valet, reproachfully; and John stood still with a strange fascination, yet repugnance, while the man withdrew the handkerchief which covered the face. The boy trembled from head to foot at the sight. It was a face in which there was little of the dignity and solemnity that so often comes even upon the homeliest faces when death has touched them – a large heavy countenance with bloated features, and eyes half-closed, with something of a stare in them under the light-coloured, scanty eyelashes. It was impossible to believe that the man was dead. The redness natural to it had hardly departed from the coarse face; a few limp locks of hair, laid over in life to hide the baldness, straggled now about the swollen temples – not a face to be remembered as that of a boy's father. John stumbled away, covering his face with his hands. What did it mean? His father? – but he had had no father since ever he was born.