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Descriptive Metadata for Television

Descriptive Metadata
for Television
An End-to-End Introduction
Mike Cox
Linda Tadic
Ellen Mulder
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Cox, Michael (Michael Edward), 1945–
Descriptive metadata for television : an end-to-end introduction / Michael Cox,
Ellen Mulder, Linda Tadic.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-240-80730-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-240-80730-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Metadata. 2. Information storage and retrieval systems—Television programs.
3. Cataloging of audio-visual materials—Standards. I. Mulder, Ellen. II. Tadic, Linda.
III. Title.
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025.3—dc22
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Contents
Introduction x
1 What Is Metadata? 1
So, What Is “Metadata”? 2
What Metadata Is Not: Myths and Facts 2
Perceptions of Metadata 3
Relationships with Current and Future Broadcast Technologies 4
The Perceived Relationship with the Data Handling (Information)
Technologies 5
The Very Real Relationship with Information Science 6
Data Structures, Rules, and Values 7
Data Structure or Schema 8
Data Rules 8
Data Values 9
Metadata as the Key to Knowledge Management during the
Production Processes 10
Knowing What You’ve Got and Everything about It 10
Libraries as a Resource and Gold Mine 11
Film Studios 11
Broadcast News 12
Broadcast Entertainment 12
The TV-Anytime Concept for the Use of Libraries 13
Where Is the Metadata? 14
Metadata Synchronization 18
v

2 Types of Metadata 19
The “Purpose” of Metadata 19
Descriptive 19
Administrative 21
Preservation 21
Metadata in the Workflow 22
The Metadata of Program Production and Publication 22
Metadata Flow 29
The Metadata of Program Publication and Consumption 30
3 Metadata Schemes, Structures, and Encoding 37
Metadata Schemes and Structures 37
Object Records and Item Records (Complex Objects) 40
Metadata Structure Standards 41
Broadcast Industry Standards 41
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers 41
European Broadcasting Union P/Meta 43
Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH (IRT) 44
Motion Picture Experts Group MPEG-7 44
Motion Picture Experts Group MPEG-21 47
Corporation for Public Broadcasting PBCore 49
British Broadcasting Corporation Standard Media Exchange
Framework (SMEF) 50
Press Industry Standard 50
International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC)
NewsML 50
Library Standards 50
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative 50
Library of Congress MARC 21 51
Archival Standards 52
International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) 52
Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP) 52
Metadata Rules Standards 53
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2) 53
Archival Moving Image Materials, Version 2 (AMIM2) 54
Metadata Value Standards 54
Using Controlled Vocabularies and Thesauri 54
International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) 55
Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) 56
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) 57
Moving Image Genre-Form Guide 57
Maintenance of Metadata 58
Encoding of Metadata 59
Contents
vi

4 The Impact of Technology Change on People and
Metadata Processes 61
How Is Metadata Captured and Stored? 64
Who Owns the Metadata? 67
Workflow Ownership 67
Legal Information and Metadata Content Ownership 68
Legal Information 68
Legal Ownership of the Metadata 69
Business Ownership 69
Practicalities and Opportunities of Desktop Production in the
New Workflows 70
Where Can Metadata Leak Away? 72
Authenticity in Metadata 73
Mapping Metadata to Different Systems 74
5 Identifiers and Identification 76
Registered Identifiers 78
International Registration Authorities 78
Identifiers with Program Production Relevance 81
International Standards Organisation 81
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
Registration Authority (SMPTE-RA) 81
International Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Foundation 82
Institution of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 82
European Broadcasting Union (EBU) 83
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 83
Summary: Registered Identifiers 83
Unregistered Identifiers 83
Unique Material Identifier (UMID) 84
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) 85
Summary: Unregistered Identifiers 86
Identifiers with Production to Consumer Relevance 86
Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB) 86
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 87
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) 87
Content ID Forum (cIDF) 87
TV-Anytime Forum (TVA) 87
Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) 87
6 Metadata for the Consumer 89
Online: Yes or No? 91
Metadata as the Connector between Broadcast Content and
Internet Content 93
Contents
vii

Metadata and Consumer Needs 94
Stages of the Production and Transmission Process Chains to
the Consumer 95
TV-Anytime Metadata Data Model 95
Content Creation 95
Content Publishing 95
Metadata Editing 95
Metadata Aggregation 96
Metadata Publishing 96
Content Selection 97
Location Resolution 97
Metadata Elements 97
The Content Reference ID (CRID) 97
Attractors 98
Suggested Elements to Create Attractors 98
Metadata for Locating the “Stuff” 101
Metadata in Marketing 102
Added Value for the Viewer 103
Added Value for the Marketers 103
Other Useful Metadata 104
Modification Date 104
Audio and Video Information 104
File Information 104
7 Metadata in Public Collections 106
Donations by Broadcasters 107
Newsfilm 107
Current Affairs Programs and Documentaries 108
Donations by Individuals and Production Companies 109
Programs Recorded Off-Air 109
Metadata Added by the Public Archive 109
Adapting Legacy Metadata 109
Tracking History and Provenance 110
Preservation Metadata 110
Intellectual Property 111
Getting Metadata out to the Public 111
Appendix 1 Sample Metadata Records 113
PBCore 113
Kentucky Educational Television 113
Wisconsin Public Television 116
Raw News Footage Cataloging: CNN 118
CNN Library Metadata Dictionary (Field List) 120
Contents
viii

Entertainment Program in MARC 122
Resources for Sample Metadata Records 130
Appendix 2 Extracts from SMPTE Documents 131
Index 135
Contents
ix

x
Introduction
Moving image technology dates back well over a century and sound recording
longer than that. It is possible today to watch clips from 19th-century wars or
listen to Tennyson himself reading “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Television
is the new kid on the block by comparison, with surviving recordings dating
from the 1920s (recorded on shellac discs) or “high-definition” 405 line recordings
from the 1930s (recorded on film). We can still find these old recordings, and we
still know what they are, who made them, why, and when because they are
carefully cataloged and preserved in libraries or archives. Librarians would point
out that this has been their work, not just with audiovisual material but with
every medium that has captured information since about the time of Alexander
the Great some millennia ago. But not only librarians use this “metadata.”
Everyone involved in television program-making does, from the earliest idea in
the production office right through to the listings agencies and, of course, the
viewer.
There has always been the film can with the title written on it. There has always
been the piece of paper inside the can with the film, often with a note such as
“Wednesday racing clip gone to Friday ‘South Today.’” There have always been
camera operators writing the shot details on the film can or tape box. There have
always been production staff researching and logging the film or tape that was in
the can. There have always been editors making their own notes and keeping their
own logs. There have always been directors assembling the program in their own
minds with the help of sheets of paper stuck together, cut up, rearranged, and
stuck back together again. There have always been people looking after the
administration and all the paperwork it involved, and there was always the
archive where program material was sent for “safekeeping.” There was always

the playout department, which seemed to rely solely on published listings, and
there was always the viewer who did the same.
So what has suddenly changed to make “metadata” such a buzzword? To put it
at its simplest, the advent of digital technology opens up the possibility, for the
first time, to treat anything that can be processed by a computer in the same way—
pictures, sounds, written material, and possibly things we have not yet thought
of are all the same to a digital system. Because all these can now be processed dig-
itally, why not just join up all the processes? But here is the rub—for over a century,
everyone involved has been doing things differently from everybody else, so
joining things up is, to use an engineering phrase, “not as simple as that” in spite
of what the sales reps say! We have to look again at the processes that have devel-
oped over 100 years or more and then try to reengineer them to fit together, not
so much in terms of hardware but in terms of managing the processes and the
information each needs. During the next year or two, we have to reinvent a situ-
ation that it took us 100 years to get into—no mean task. Managing the processes
implies a knowledge of what we have in the system and all the information about
it—unambiguously, because machines are even easier to confuse than people.
So now, disciplines with different approaches and backgrounds suddenly have
to work ever more closely together. They have to understand each other’s tech-
niques, the aspirations of the program makers, and the boundaries of the tech-
nology. So it was that this book came to be written.
This book is intended as an introduction for those involved operationally in
making television programs or archiving and caring for the completed programs.
It highlights many of the interoperability issues involved but does not attempt to
solve them, only perhaps point up the questions that others will solve. It is not
an in-depth thesis on any of the topics mentioned. Anyone working in a given
discipline will probably find some parts to be too shallow, while other parts will
introduce new concepts. Neither is the book exhaustive in its scope—for example,
it touches only on the better known standards likely to be encountered in TV pro-
duction. The hope is that everyone will learn something.
Three authors were involved, with the hope of effectively spanning the disciplines,
two continents, and two and a quarter languages—so expect to see some seams.
We would each like to thank the other authors for their enlightenment in attempt-
ing this book, not to mention families and friends who have had to endure its
writing. Appreciation also goes to those who took the time to review the work
and provide us with speedy feedback and encouragement.
Introduction
xi

1 What Is Metadata?
“That shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you get un-birthday presents,”
said Humpty Dumpty.
“Certainly,” said Alice.
“And only one for birthday presents, you know, there’s glory for you!”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a
nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I
choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.
“They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do
anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what
I say!”
“Would you tell me, please,” said Alice, “what that means?”
“Now you talk like a reasonable child,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. “I meant
by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d
mention what you meant to do next, as I suppose you don’t intend to stop here all the rest of your
life.”
“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”
“Oh!” said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
—Lewis Carroll
1

Humpty’s conversation with Alice will sound familiar to anyone who has been
involved with making programs. The different disciplines involved in making
programs have for many years used the same words to mean subtly different
things. New technologies have brought their own words and meanings as new
concepts are introduced and new ways of working become possible. A few years
ago, “metadata” was a word that nobody used. Now suddenly it is everywhere,
yet there is nothing new about it.
So, What Is “Metadata”?
The traditional answer is that the word “metadata” comes from the Greek “meta,”
meaning “about,” so that metadata literally means “about data.” To most people,
this is about as helpful as Humpty’s explanation to Alice. In the simplest terms,
metadata is a particular detail of information about something else.
Program makers work with sights and sounds. In theater, these are real and
involve working with real settings, real people, and real music with the audience
physically present for the production. In television, the audience is remote and
views or hears a reconstruction of the sights and sounds produced from some
form of electronic representation of the original, which may or may not have been
stored as a recording. In all these cases, the people in the audience will want some
detail of the show if they are to be in the right place at the right time for the right
show. At the least they will want to know the title of the show, how to find it, and
what time it is to be performed—in other words, they will want some details about
the show. They want some “metadata.”
What Metadata Is Not: Myths and Facts
In spite of the current hype in the industry, metadata is not magic! Neither is it a
panacea to bad practice and there is no metadata cavalry galloping over the hill
to rescue us from rising costs, ever tighter budgets, union demands, bad man-
agement, deadlines, or more competition. Metadata is not a threat to the quality
of programs, and it is not something that can be just bolted on by buying the latest
piece of equipment. Metadata is not “digital” (whatever that means), though the
word is often associated with digital hardware and applications.
Most important, metadata is meaningful information in its aggregate—a single
item of metadata is merely a piece of detail data and in isolation is not usually
very informative. Several items of metadata grouped together are probably nec-
essary to convey useful information. Further, information is not knowledge—only
when the right pieces of information are perceived in the correct relationship will
knowledge dawn. This implies increasingly complex structures as simple meta-
data elements are used to convey firstly information and then knowledge. This
increasing complexity is reflected in the way we use metadata—not as simple data
2

elements alone or even in groups, but in complex structures and substructures
each with their own rules.
Perceptions of Metadata
The perception of metadata is one of those curious things that depends on where
you stand and where you start from. One person’s important metadata is another
person’s rubbish. In addition, there can be several layers of metadata. For
example, a written description of a program might be considered metadata—or
the description itself might have its own metadata, such as the name of the person
who wrote it.
Some of the edges get very blurred: a browse or preview copy of a program might
arguably be considered metadata because it is a descriptive proxy for the real
thing—until the original is destroyed and you have to broadcast it! Indeed the
electronic representations of sights and sounds we all are used to in television
might be considered to be descriptive and therefore metadata. Proxies are fre-
quently used in program making as a research tool and usually (perhaps erro-
neously) referred to as browse video or browse audio—they are not a usable copy
but are instead descriptive of the broadcast-quality original.
Fortunately, the industry has come up with some basic definitions to give itself a
starting point. The following definitions from the Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers (SMPTE) were derived as a consequence of the final report
of the “EBU/SMPTE Task Force for Harmonised Standards for the Exchange of
Programme Material as Bitstreams” published in August 1998:
Any data or signal necessary to represent any single type of visual, aural, or other sensory
experience (independent of the method of coding) is Essence.
Any one or any combination of picture (or video) essences, sound (or audio) essences and
data (or auxiliary) essences is Material.
That data which convey information about Material is Metadata.
Material in combination with any associated Metadata is Content.
The definition of “essence” introduces an important concept—also a difficult one
because it is challenging to conceptualize essence without instinctively attaching
metadata to it in one’s own mind. As a result, there is often confusion between
the program essence and the program content. At the same time, the word “mate-
rial” is frequently used as a sort of slang term for almost anything to do with
a program, with no further thought given about what the word might really
mean.
It is important to recognize that metadata can exist before the essence about which
it conveys information—for example, titles, project numbers, or shooting sched-
ules can all fall into this category. Equally, the metadata can exist long after the
What Is Metadata?
3

essence has been destroyed, as might be the case with rushes where some of the
metadata continues to have importance but the essence does not—for example,
contact details or historical information.
Relationships with Current and Future Broadcasting Technologies
In traditional film- or tape-based program making, the essence as previously
defined is either transmitted “live” as an electronic signal or captured onto a
storage medium—either chemically on a suitable emulsion or magnetically onto
magnetic particles. In these cases, a supporting plastic strip is used as a physical
base for the actual storage medium to form a reel of film or tape, which is kept
safe in a film tin or tape cassette along with identifying data, titles, and the like—
in other words, along with basic metadata. Even a live feed will have supporting
metadata about its source, title, and so on.
In the production office, project plans are drawn up, contracts issued, scripts
written, and so on. All these processes produce their own metadata—but then the
people involved in the work traditionally store the metadata they produced inde-
pendently of each other in a variety of word processing files, spreadsheets, diaries,
filofaxes, and Post-it notes.
Once the program is finished, it is passed on to the archive or library for safe
keeping. Librarians will catalog and classify the content, possibly using a proxy
copy, and enter the resulting informative metadata in their database so they can
retrieve it in the future. However, rarely if ever is the metadata from the rest of
the process passed on to them, except, perhaps, for the title, tape number, and
basic technical information about recording formats. It has to be re-created, with
all the associated risk of errors and lack of accuracy—not to mention the work
and time involved.
As the electronic technologies of program making converge with the newer con-
cepts and technologies made possible by the computer industry, working prac-
tices are starting to change: program material need no longer be stored on
magnetic tapes but can be stored in exactly the same way as word processor or
spreadsheet files—that is, literally as computer data files. Program material no
longer needs to be moved from place to place by physically transporting the tape
or by the use of specialized and expensive communication circuits. Many differ-
ent users can work on the same program material at the same time, independently
of each other.
The downside is that the old numbered tape boxes are gone. Material can be
ingested into a digital, computer-based system entirely automatically, without
anyone ever having seen it, and stored in some nether region of cyberspace. Files
are nebulous, intangible things with no obvious way to track or find them, except
by the file name—did we call it doc1.doc or clip1.avi? Is it Fredsclip2.wav or
Tuesday6.bwf? 1pmmurder.mpg or pmhanging.mxf? Or did the machine give it
4

its own number—4872bro1.abc? We know Linda was the reporter, but how does
that help us now?
This is why “metadata” has become such a buzzword as new digital technologies
are introduced into the workplace: it is the word the new technologies use and,
while it always was important, it is becoming an increasingly crucial part of the
workflow, right from its start. Applications are emerging that can automatically
capture metadata such as color, texture, and sounds, or even the spoken word as
text. Material increasingly has to be tightly linked to its metadata right from the
beginning, at the originating camera or microphone; the relationships between the
different pieces of metadata have to be preserved, and metadata has to be trans-
ported, copied, and updated as work progresses on the program. In short, the
metadata has to be properly managed right from the start. In a big enterprise such
as CNN or the BBC, if a piece of program gets lost inside a computer-based
system, it will probably stay lost.
The Perceived Relationship with the Data Handling
(Information) Technologies
Once again, this problem of managing data files is not new. Personal computers
began to appear in the 1980s, and at that time little thought had been given to the
problem of finding things—some of us remember the early DOS keyboard
commands and the seemingly impenetrable screens and unhelpful messages
they produced when all we were trying to do was to find our half-finished
document:
0 File(s) 0 bytes
18 Dir(s) 9,047,680 bytes free
Directory of C:Mike and Mirador
10/06/2004 21:36 <DIR> .
10/10/2004 22:00 <DIR> ..
07/09/2004 16:28 <DIR> Mike
30/09/2004 14:11 <DIR> Mirador
0 File(s) 0 bytes
4 Dir(s) 9,047,680 bytes free
C:Mike and Mirador>mirador
‘mirador’ is not recognized as an internal or external
command, operable program or batch file.
F:Mike and Mirador>cd Mirador
F:Mike and MiradorMirador>
. . . and so on
Fortunately, the situation has improved since then, and we now work with much
better tools, often graphics based, which are friendlier and easier to manage. Yet
how many of us can truly say that we have never forgotten what we called a
What Is Metadata?
5

word-processing document or a spreadsheet, or lost something because of a
spelling mistake?
This change has, of course, been driven by the demand from real users for tools
they understand. Tools have been developed to give a pictorial view of the work-
ings of the computer system. Because much of the demand was from people using
personal computers in an office environment, office terminology was often
adopted, such as “files,” “directories,” “folders,” and “cabinets.” Data was stored
in binary form on cassettes or discs, which required electric motors to drive them,
and the term “drive” appeared in computer language.
Finding your word-processing file has become much easier due to graphical inter-
faces—provided you know some simple data about the file, such as its name (or
even a fragment of its name), when you stored it, which folder you stored it in,
and which drive that folder is on. Most of us can manage this from memory for
current work in progress or by normal office good practice in the way the filing
has been structured, perhaps based on past experience. There are also simple
applications to help. Search engines or book-marking systems can jog our memory
as to what we named the file and some will do automatic text-based indexing. So
there has come to be a perception that finding word-processing documents in a
computer is the same as finding TV program files in the TV archive. In practice,
however, and particularly for older files or when you are looking for someone else’s
files, it has much in common with trying to find a needle in a haystack or maybe
a book in a large public library. Some sort of properly structured and managed
knowledge-based indexing system is needed. The importance of this is clear in
many broadcast archives where collections contain several millions of hours of
program content dating, in some cases, back to the 19th century (due to the inher-
itance of news film footage and early broadcast sound recordings). Media in these
collections include wax cylinder or wire recordings, film footage from Victorian
times, extensive European footage of World War I, and many samples of privately
shot material. No mean haystack in which to find your needle!
The Very Real Relationship with Information Science
Information science used to be called “library science,” a phrase that might conjure
up memories of typed catalog cards in wooden drawers and the Dewey Decimal
System. Metadata was also formerly called “cataloging.” In the analog age, the
cataloging of books, films, videos, and any media type was separate from the tech-
nology. The goal, however, was much the same as it is today: to describe materi-
als in a way that would help users retrieve what they wanted.
University and public libraries use standard data structures and authorized forms
of names and subjects to make searching for materials efficient. For broadcast
and moving image materials, studios and networks were fortunate if they had a
card or file system that tracked the date the material was shot or released; the
6

program’s title; a basic description; and the locations of the original elements,
prints, videotapes, and associated materials.
Online catalogs and databases were quickly embraced by librarians and cata-
logers. While the focus of a catalog librarian’s work remained the same (provid-
ing access to materials), catalog records in electronic form made searching far
easier. They also eased the work involved in using standardized terms since global
changes could be made by a few keystrokes instead of retyping cards or files.
Keyword searching could be applied to titles, names, descriptions, and subject
headings, in a way making data structures irrelevant.
Morphing from a manual cataloging and access environment to an electronic one
required that library scientists work with the technology department for the first
time. The library science staff became “clients” of the technology staff; they set the
requirements for their data needs, which the technology department then imple-
mented. As the world’s business culture has passed from electronic to digital
stages, where files are born or retrieved in digital format, the relationship between
library science and technology has become (at least, it should have become) closer.
Superficially, this has happened through nomenclature: “library science” has
become “information science” to reflect how “librarians” now manage data cre-
ation and retrieval. “Cataloging” has become “metadata,” to encompass not just
the description of a physical object, but the creation of the digital file, its preser-
vation, and all aspects of the essence the metadata describes. “Technology” has
become “information technology” (or IT), charged with finding the means to track
and retrieve metadata and digital files.
Businesses working with digital files, servers, and networks probably all have IT
departments. However, not all businesses have a separate department in charge
of the information science aspects of managing digital files. Perhaps since both
concepts share the word “information,” some might think that the IT department
can perform both functions. But an IT staff is made up of engineers, application
programmers, and database administrators, not necessarily trained in how to
provide access to knowledge of content. Information science staff—those who
know the content and know how current and future users, many unanticipated,
will need to retrieve and manage it—are best qualified to create requirements for
metadata creation and retrieval. In broadcasting, staff with information science
roles can increasingly be found not just in the archive, but in several departments:
program production, technical operations, the tape library, scheduling, and sales
and licensing.
Data Structures, Rules, and Values
Inefficient data retrieval can occur when staff not trained in or aware of metadata
business requirements and standards create data structures, rules, or values. It is
highly recommended that an organization try to use open standards whenever possible
What Is Metadata?
7

rather than reinvent the wheel. Organizations and consortia of domain experts have
already devoted years to creating these standards, so time can be saved by review-
ing the available standards and adapting what is best for a particular environ-
ment. Besides saving staff time internally, using standards also benefits the
organization when data must be shared externally—for example, in scheduling
television programs for cable subscribers (TV-Anytime) or in licensing footage
through a stock footage agency such as footage.net.
The concepts and some of the standards listed below will be discussed in more
detail in Chapter 3.
Data Structure or Schema
The data structure is the overall record structure for all records in the database;
it’s the field list that is used. A schema describes the relationships between data
elements. Examples of standardized data structures and schemas that can be used
for television and broadcasting include the following:
SMPTE Descriptive Metadata, Scheme 1
SMPTE Metadata Dictionary, RP210
PB Core (Public Broadcasting)
International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) Minimum Data
Dublin Core
MPEG7
TV-Anytime
MARC21
Independent Media Arts Preservation (IMAP) Template (rather than a standard,
the template is a software application that provides guidance to catalogers
working in MARC or Dublin Core; it is mentioned here as an illustration of
mapping between the two data structures).
Data Rules
While “data structures” define the fields that are used to create a record, “data
rules” define the structuring of the data within a particular field. For example,
should a person’s name be written as Last-Name, First-Name, or as First-Name
Last-Name (Doe, John or John Doe)? How should a title be written?
One might think that these rules don’t matter in an age of keyword searching.
However, if a researcher or producer needs a sorted list or report created off a par-
ticular field, inconsistent data will make for a frustrated client.
For example, let’s say a producer wants a report on all the people interviewed on
a particular program. She needs to see how many times individuals were inter-
8

viewed over a span of five years. If a name were input without rules, it may appear
as both Doe, Zevon and Zevon Doe, and the report could conceivably have entries
for both forms of the name for the same person. The producer’s aim could be frus-
trated, because she would not have accurate data if she did not look at the list
past the letter “D.”
There are many standards for data structures, but too few standards for data rules.
The broadcasting community has not yet created any standardized data rules, but
two have been created in the public sector:
• Archival Moving Image Materials, version 2 (AMIM2). These cataloging rules
were created by the U.S. Library of Congress and were revised in 2000. The
revised version contains enhanced sections for cataloging television and
broadcasting materials and newsfilm (stock footage), and it has examples of
records. AMIM is primarily used by the archival cataloging community
(www.loc.gov/cds/catman.html#amima).
• Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition, 2002 revision (AACR2). This
manual has been in use by the English-speaking library science community
since the 1960s. It does have a chapter on cataloging moving image materials,
but since the creation of AMIM, most archival catalogers use AACR2 primar-
ily for advice on formatting names. AACR2 is used as a descriptive standard
primarily by public and academic libraries in cataloging commercial materials
(e.g., DVDs for use in the library). While AACR2 is maintained by professional
library science organizations in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom,
and Australia, it is widely used as a standard in libraries around the world
(www.aacr2.org/index.html).
Data Values
The actual content of a particular field or data element is the data value. In most
cases, fields can contain text or numbers (in the case of date and item location
fields), preferably following accepted data rules in formatting. For those fields
used for indexing, it is best to use standard vocabularies, thesauri, or lists of autho-
rized terms, names, subjects, and genres for the most efficient retrieval of materi-
als. As with data rules, there are few standard data value lists of use in cataloging
broadcasting programs. If standard lists are not used, an internal list of terms and
names should be created to ensure consistent data input.
Some standardized data value lists in use in the United States are listed here. The
European Community does not have many standard vocabularies, in part because
of language differences across countries. The following standards will be dis-
cussed in more detail in Chapter 3.
• IPTC: NewsCodes. Includes both a subject list and a scene list (which defines
production terms for scene types) (www.iptc.org/NewsCodes).
What Is Metadata?
9

• Moving Image Genre-Form Guide. Compiled by staff at Library of Congress for
common genre and form terms in film and broadcasting (www.loc.gov/rr/
mopic/migintro.html).
• Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF). The source for authorized
forms of millions of personal and corporate names, titles, and other headings.
This list is available on the Internet and can help keep forms of names consis-
tent (http://authorities.loc.gov).
• Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). These subject headings were
designed to logically sort and display search results, as well as for retrieval.
Consequently, headings can sometimes be long and unwieldy, but the basic
forms of authorized headings can help keep terms consistent so users won’t
need to search both “purses” and “handbags” to find shots of handbags
(http://authorities.loc.gov).
Metadata as the Key to Knowledge Management during
the Production Processes
In a broadcasting production environment, incorrect or poorly created metadata
can mean missed deadlines, not finding the right clip for the producer, and even
mistakenly airing the wrong program because another show had a similar title
but the metadata was not clear about which tape was which. Inaccurate data
impacts all aspects of an end-to-end production environment, from the initial
concept and planning stage, to distribution of clips on the Internet, to licensing
footage years after production ends.
Metadata should be used to manage both information and knowledge about the
production process and the content of a work and its manifestations (versions,
copies, etc.). Those responsible for creating the metadata—and usually more than
one person contributes to a metadata record—should create data with the user of
100 years in the future in mind. Unfortunately, in a fast-paced environment it is
human nature to simply enter data in a shorthand that is meaningful to the person
inputting the data but means nothing to the person sitting in the editing suite
down the hall. This practice is especially deadly in a digital environment, where
the only means to identify and retrieve files is through metadata.
Knowing What You’ve Got and Everything about It
Different users will need to know different things about the work, and the meta-
data record should be rich enough to serve any required current or envisaged
future application (the richer the metadata, the more services can be served),
though clearly in practice there may need to be some sort of prioritization. Pro-
duction office staff might create the initial record (working title, key personnel,
rights, etc.), with staff who work on the program through its production and air
stages adding more information. The following list just scrapes the surface—it
certainly is not intended to be anything other than thought-provoking. Perhaps it
10

demonstrates how the majority of metadata is created “up front” in the produc-
tion office and then lost, only for bits of it to be repeatedly recreated throughout
the workflows of the production and archival lifecycles. Workflows are discussed
in more detail in Chapter 2.
Program development and preproduction. Working title, genre, subjects, the program
peg and structure, treatments and angles, conceptual and contextual informa-
tion, key personnel, target air date, number of episodes, targeted slot, target
audience, background research information on places and people (for
example, do they sniff or mutter on air? Are they really an expert and just
appear stupid? Is the chosen location dangerous? Does it rain a lot?), but above
all—ideas.
Rights and licensing. Information on rights to use the material, both for external
licensing footage and for the consumer to view on television on demand, over
air (terrestrial or satellite), or over the Internet; rights for use of different com-
ponents of the completed work such as the script, sound track, merchandising
material, reuse, and retention.
Production. Financial information, location logistical information, lighting, location
and shooting scripts, music details, personnel contact details (staffing, crewing,
performers), contractual details, safety information or authorizations, technical
details (high definition, widescreen, line standards, progressive or interlace,
etc.), delivery information.
The shoot. Clapper board information, shot marking, contact details of any kind,
tape numbers, take details, actuality details, key actions, shot listing, time-
codes, cue words.
Archival research. Content information: subject, persons in a clip; date and location
where footage was captured; unique identifier of tape or file.
Postproduction. Editor’s notes, edit decision lists, rendering data, edited versions.
Scheduling. Traffic data, final title and description, running length, confirmed
airdate.
Tape library. All information, including locations and unique identifiers for all
copies of a work; any preservation information.
Web content developers. All information; locations of digital files to use for web clips.
Libraries as a Resource and Gold Mine
One compelling reason why a broadcaster should be concerned about maintain-
ing accurate metadata is that it can contribute to an important revenue stream:
repackaging series for the consumer video market, repurposing footage for inter-
nal use, and licensing footage to external buyers.
Film Studios
Over the past few decades, film studios have become well aware that the films in
their libraries can be a revenue source long after the title’s initial release. A film
What Is Metadata?
11

might be repackaged as “restored,” a “special edition,” or the “director’s cut.”
These films may have long marketing lives on VHS cassette and (increasingly)
DVD, with different releases or versions appearing even just a few months after
the initial release. For example, the feature film Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
had a normal theatrical run. Three months after the VHS/DVD versions appeared
on the market, the “Special Extended Edition” (director’s cut) was released.
Broadcast News
Broadcast news divisions have always understood the importance of maintaining
at least a minimum amount of key metadata (subjects, people, locations, dates).
Their own researchers and producers need to be able to quickly find clips to incor-
porate in their daily news programs and documentaries. This business require-
ment of tracking key shot metadata so footage can be found quickly benefited the
broadcasters when they began selling outtakes from their libraries. The major
broadcasters and stations often provide access to their stock footage databases
through external agencies or licensing consortia. These agencies’ websites some-
times provide digital previews of the footage so researchers can determine
whether the footage contains what they need before they buy it. However, it is
the accuracy of the metadata in the online database that brings the researcher to
the footage and, it is hoped, to a sale for the broadcaster. Consistent and stan-
dardized metadata created by the broadcaster is key for researchers to find the
footage they need.
Readers who have not yet initiated a metadata program might want to experi-
ment searching across collections in the following licensing agencies’ online data-
bases to get a sense of why it is important to use standard field structures and
vocabularies. When you create metadata, you have to think of not just how you
and your company will use it, but also how external users will search for your
footage (Figure 1.1).
• www.FOOTAGE.net. One-stop shopping for stock and archival footage. Par-
ticipants include ABC News, CNN, Archive Films (Getty Images), HBO
Sports Archive, NBC News, National Geographic Television Film Library,
WGBH, WPA Film Library.
• www.stockfootageonline.com. BBC News and CBS News Archive footage for
license.
Broadcast Entertainment
News divisions can license their footage. Broadcast entertainment divisions can
sell videos (or DVDs) of their programs or series in the home video market, as
well as television on demand (or TV-Anytime). Video sales of boxed sets of
popular series include 1950s series such as The Honeymooners as well as more con-
temporary programs such as The Sopranos and Sex and the City.
12

The TV-Anytime Concept for the Use of Libraries
The TV-Anytime forum is a worldwide project involving vendors, broadcasters,
telecommunications companies, and the consumer electronics industry, which has
defined an extensive bundle of specifications for the use of local storage at home
in a specialized “set-top box” or in the TV set. The forum aimed to identify all the
potential possibilities enabled for the consumer by the use of home storage tech-
nology, to detail the consumer’s requirements and aspirations for storing pro-
grams locally in the home and making them broadcast schedule independent, and
to specify standard methodologies to implement the functionalities identified. All
of the features heavily rely on metadata. In a later chapter, we will explore this in
more detail.
A few of the business models from the TV-Anytime specification especially rely
on the availability of content from libraries. A section of the business model spec-
ification says, “Once a program is selected via the ECG [Electronic Content Guide]
an option shall be to record every episode of the program series.” In the context
of TV-Anytime, this means not only that all future episodes will be recorded but
that the option exists to record all episodes that were transmitted in the past. To
do this, a TV-Anytime based set-top box must be able to find this material from
the library space, and therefore the metadata should be structured in such a way
What Is Metadata?
13
Figure 1.1. CNN Library. Frame from raw footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, November
10, 1989. For the metadata record, see the appendices.

that the set-top box can find it automatically. The clear implication is that such
metadata must be standardized so that basically every set-top in the world will
be able to find the required content.
The mechanisms to achieve this are specified by the TV-Anytime forum. The
content information needed by a TV-Anytime enabled set-top box should be made
available by implementing service providers, and in many cases this information
can be (automatically) extracted from a library file system. This information will
have to be collected in advance, stored in the library’s database, and made avail-
able to service providers in an unambiguous and uniform way.
Another TV-Anytime function is the ability to find and select related content.
Related content can be “the making of” footage, “bloopers,” or eventually the
basic, raw material from the shoot. Metadata is essential to find this related content
in order to link it to the completed program.
Where Is the Metadata?
This is a simple question and can be answered with a simple answer: everywhere.
But this answer is deceptive and hides complex processes. In the digital world,
there are two basic classes of metadata capture and storage: data embedded in the
file (which currently is usually technical information about the file creation and
playback) and metadata stored separately (usually descriptive and business data).
These classes also have possible subclasses, offering a very detailed level of
information.
Some technical metadata can be captured automatically and stored in the file itself.
Often, such metadata tells machines the technical parameters they need to play
the file. This class of metadata is very dark and obscure to nearly all users, espe-
cially when the file will not play at all and there is no clue as to why not. To read
this technical metadata from the file, special software is needed. These kinds of
tools are essential in determining the nature of a problem—for example, if the
wrong player or decoder is being used or if the file is corrupted. However, fasci-
nating though it is to technical folk, the subject of technical metadata is not a
feature of this book and therefore will not be further mentioned in this context.
For the purposes of this book, it is sufficient to say that technical metadata can be
treated as part of the essence and is always embedded in the file header or stream.
Manually input metadata can appear in many forms and is usually stored sepa-
rately from the digital file. In the analog video and audio world, there was no pos-
sibility of metadata storage in the analog signal (teletext or closed captioning is
not metadata but data essence, although unknown (or “dark”) metadata could be
transported in the same space). Some basic information was stored on the tape or
film container, and the description was on a card in a card file system or, a little
more recently, in a computer database. The link between the two parts of the
14

content was the program name and in many cases a number in the broadcaster’s
own numbering system. Program exchange between broadcasters and countries
was not a very common activity, and the need for global exchange standards
and uniqueness in identification was not pressing. The situation has changed
rapidly with digital production and distribution and the demand for filling
more and more hours of television and on-demand use. These applications
and services have their own specific needs related to the availability of accurate
metadata.
The two classes—data embedded in a file and data stored in a separate database—
present questions like “How do we keep the metadata in the file synchronized
with the metadata in the database all the time?” In making the decision on which
kinds of data should be stored where, the data manager must consider several
scenarios.
1. Will the metadata be fixed/static or can it change or “grow”? Usually people think
of metadata as something static but in many cases it is not. Even legacy mate-
rial must have updated metadata with the latest information to be effectively
used in current projects. For example, when an actor or another person with
an important role in the work dies, the date of death should be indicated in the
metadata. For documentary program use, new facts about the footage need to
be incorporated in the descriptive metadata. Rights metadata must be updated
when there is a change in the rights situation or after the legal period has ended.
Rights tracking can be very complex, especially when parts of the work have
different rights holders and different rights are involved (e.g., music rights
versus footage rights to use a small part of a framed picture). To implement
these changes in the metadata efficiently, the best option is to have the meta-
data in a separate database and not embedded in the file. In cases where it is
advisable to store and maintain complete metadata with the work (maybe for
interchange, transport, or deep archiving), synchronization between the two
parallel storage systems can be complex and costly.
Note, though, that some metadata is dynamic and constantly changes with
time rather than growing—some technical metadata falls into this category.
Often, such metadata becomes useless with the passage of time and not worth
storing.
2. Is there a need for searching in the metadata? Sometimes there is a need to search
the metadata for keywords from a producer’s, researcher’s, or director’s
desktop computer. If this is achieved within an organization either via its local
network or from outside the company, metadata embedded in the content file
itself does not seem to be a practical solution. This is especially true if it is nec-
essary to search from a remote location using the Internet without having avail-
able all the facilities of the corporate infrastructure. In this case, searching a
separate metadata database will be a more practical solution, but it also will
bring some restrictions in the searching process. When the metadata describes
the content in a broad way it will not be a problem; but when the metadata is
What Is Metadata?
15

addressing frame-related and tightly bound metadata, the search engine should
display the metadata as it is coupled and related to that frame. In the future,
more complex searching and playback facilities will become available. One day
it will be possible to use a company’s infrastructure to its full potential from
any location in the world, but in the meantime we have to live with some
restrictions and find practical ways of working around them. In the case of
frame-bounded metadata, one needs at least to have real-time access to the
content from a server that can handle this kind of searching over a network
that is fast enough to perform this kind of action. It also puts extra demands
on the metadata, as the extracted metadata should give information about the
exact location in the file to which it applies. This suggests, besides the descrip-
tive metadata, also a structured way of handling the time line information with
the timed metadata. For this kind of application, storage in the file at the posi-
tion where it is relevant seems a logical solution.
To handle this kind of metadata in synchronism with the essence, it is nec-
essary to have the file online and accessible in a nonlinear fashion. This can be
a costly solution, particularly when it applies to a large library at broadcast
picture resolutions or even in visually lossless compressed formats, and it is
likely to be very expensive at least for the near future.
A compromise alternative solution often can be found by storing material on
a server as a low-resolution proxy version instead of the full broadcast resolu-
tion. However, the quality of this low-resolution proxy version needs to be
good enough to enable making production decisions (such as identification or
checking focus). In this way all kinds of hybrid combinations, from coupling
metadata to the essence within the file or completely decoupling it from the
essence and storing it in a separate database, may appear in practice.
3. Is there a need for having the metadata available all the time? One of the important
questions is, “Is it necessary to have all metadata available online all the time?”
Every advantage has its own balancing disadvantage. For example, an every-
thing-on-demand-available-all-the-time type of system will have a high price
tag. This will make a good return on investment difficult for archives and
libraries. Therefore it is important to make a realistic calculation of the overall
estimated operational costs of the metadata system.
Another important issue that all archives already face is the difficult ques-
tion of what to archive out of all the produced material. It will be almost impos-
sible to store all the raw material and the edited versions—not for technical
reasons but due to sheer storage costs. In the digital realm, an organization
must decide how its material will be stored: online, offline, or even “on the
shelf.” Other new questions will arise concerning the quality of the material
available, access speed, and completeness (essence plus metadata), among
others.
4. Will the content be used for further processing, and what will happen with the meta-
data? In the case where the content is on a server or data tape with the meta-
16

data bounded to individual frames—for example, interaction TV data used for
production or transmission—a few other interesting questions and problems
will arise.
This will be the case especially if the material with embedded metadata needs to
be switched or keyed with some other content stream, which also may be a file
with embedded metadata. The metadata embedded in the file cannot easily be
handled by switching or mixing equipment—partly because current equipment
cannot handle it and partly because decisions about what to do with the meta-
data are necessary—and therefore it will need to be stripped out of the content
and parallel processed in a metadata “mixer.” After the mix, the correct metadata
should be determined and embedded in the resulting content. The success of this
process depends on the application used and its implementation, because many
variables can creep in.
For example, whenever two streams (A and B, say) are mixed or added together
in some way, the resulting content may or may not have the original A or the orig-
inal B metadata because what happens during the mix depends on the applica-
tion. The output metadata may be replaced with new metadata after the mix. Or
the resulting metadata may depend on values of variables in the A or the B meta-
data or any combination of these. The relative timing of the output metadata
might also be important (Figure 1.2), and synchronization can often be a major
headache!
The database where the stripped-off metadata is going during the mix process
must be a complex machine with a lot of onboard intelligence, and the metadata
switch functions should be coupled with the functions in the mixing device. After
mixing, the metadata should have the correct timing relationships, eventually in
synchronism with the relevant audio and video.
What happens during the duration of the transition depends on the situation and
the specific needs of the program. This can lead to a complex data management
situation, and in the near future such mixing or cutting will have to be carried out
What Is Metadata?
17
Essence + Metadata
A Content
Essence + Metadata
B Content
A Essence
B Essence
Splitting
Tool
Splitting
Tool
A Metadata
B Metadata Metadata
Essence
Output file
Essence + Metadata = Content
Production
Equipment, e.g.
Mixers, Subtitle Systems
Combine and
Synchronize
Essence
with Metadata
Metadata
Database and
Management
Figure 1.2.

between two programs with associated interaction or statistics metadata and the
decisions made will be much more important and far reaching than at present.
Will the metadata “mixer” in the diagram be similar in operation to a mixer used
in the current audio and video streams? Most likely not. The metadata mixer is
likely to be an IT device or subsystem managed in a way that permits only the
correct metadata to associate with the right spot in the audio or video signal. IT
engineers in this area will need skills in broadcast technology as well as in IT to
manage and implement this kind of infrastructure.
Metadata Synchronization
In the preceding examples, we mentioned synchronized metadata several times.
Until late in 2004, this kind of metadata rarely existed in currently produced
content. In most cases, descriptive metadata is a description of the content as a
whole. Sometimes there will be some information about individual shots or scenes
in the form of a time-code list with information at the listed time-codes. In other
words, time line information is linked to the metadata.
With a new generation of television programs on the horizon that allows people
to react to or interact with specific elements in the content at specific times, it will
be necessary to have information available at the specific frames, shots, or scenes.
This is synchronizing metadata, available on a time line, coupled with the essence
and most likely in one container or wrapper. Recently developed file exchange
standards define mechanisms to achieve this effect—that is, to link with the time
line. Metadata becomes time accurate because it is on the same time line as the
essence.
These recent file exchange standards allow for more video, audio, and metadata
streams. For example, there can be parallel metadata tracks in different languages
or more than one form of interaction metadata track so that users can interactively
work with the content in a way that is specific to an area or culture. Such possi-
bilities in the transport or exchange formats of programs allow for interesting new
program concepts developed with a high level of automation to help control costs.
One important issue to take into account will be the difference in process time in
the different delivery channels to the consumer—there are big variations across
the diversity of delivery channels. The whole issue of synchronizing metadata
becomes ever more complicated as content is delivered using more delivery
methods, each with its own properties and characteristics. For instance, each
channel of audio, video, and metadata will inevitably have its own processing and
transmission delay between the transmitter and the consumer. Mixing this content
will be difficult—particularly if the channels are routed separately, with the video
delivered by satellite, say, and the metadata delivered via the Internet. The results
of this process for audio and video are already evident in today’s transmissions,
and the implications for metadata are often not yet even considered.
18

2 Types of Metadata
Metadata is used in different ways by those people involved in making and pub-
lishing television programs and those people who consume them. These two com-
munities sit on either side of an imaginary boundary of publication—whether that
publication is transmitted through traditional terrestrial broadcasting, via satel-
lite, over the Internet, or by a DVD sent through the regular mail. Yet much of the
metadata used by both communities is the same—titles, genre, slot, business infor-
mation such as rights, and so on.
Later in this chapter, we will look at the workflow of program production and the
metadata associated with each stage. Before that, however, it is worthwhile to con-
sider metadata under three main headings: Descriptive, Business/Legal (some-
times called Administrative), and Preservation, each broadly related to purpose
rather than workflow.
The “Purpose” of Metadata
Descriptive
As its name implies, descriptive metadata provides a description of program
content, often including access points (name, subject, and genre/form headings,
etc.). It can include three main areas in the metadata record: a narrative summary
of the program (brief and/or long versions), a list of the subjects explored in the
program, and a suggestion about the genre of the show. “Subject” is what the
program is about, regardless of whether it is a nonfiction or fictional program.
“Genre” is what the program is: comedy, drama, sports, news, Western, and
so on.
19

Several people can add descriptive metadata as the program evolves through the
idea to playout stages. The key issue is for contributors to be consistent in how
the metadata is added (terms used and rules followed) so that everyone involved
provides information useful to the production team, company, archive, and con-
sumer, with minimal duplication of effort. Some descriptive metadata can be used
for program guides, as well as in the marketing and consumer areas. The cata-
loger or library science professional in charge of maintaining the metadata data-
base should consult with these other business units to ensure that useful and easily
understood terms are applied unambiguously across the enterprise. Descriptive
metadata can be added as early as the initial idea stage, along with a working or
even final title (which is identification metadata). For example, the producer could
add terms for the subject and genre of the program, since the topic of the show
was most likely decided from the beginning.
Subject metadata includes terms that describe the topic(s) of the show. Often, this
metadata appears in a general keyword field. However, it could help the cata-
logers (and staff needing to find a particular program) if the catchall keyword field
were broken out into discrete subject-related fields. Types of subject metadata can
include the following:
• Names (in the case of a show profiling a person or a company)
• Geographic places (both the actual location where a scene was shot—for
example, Burbank, California—and the virtual location it was meant to depict—
such as the Sinai Desert)
• Historical events or periods (World War II, Berlin Wall, etc.)
• Topical nouns (football, fashion, global warming, etc.)
Ideally, the cataloger should select names and terms from a controlled vocabulary
or thesaurus so that indexing, search, and retrieval are more accurate. Even if the
cataloger does not utilize lists of open source vocabularies, an internal standard-
ized list should still be created and followed. The concept of controlled vocabu-
laries is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.
Genre terms would ideally be added at the beginning of the program’s life cycle.
Genre describes the type of program, such as news, children’s programming, or
drama. Usually there will be one genre term, but at times there can be more than
one. For example, a children’s program might also be classified as a news broad-
cast (for example, Nickelodeon’s Nick News).
Narrative summaries often come in two varieties: long and short. The short
summary is usually one sentence and is often used in programming guides. The
longer narrative (up to a paragraph or two) is usually for internal use, but it is
sometimes also provided on the program’s website for fuller episode descriptions
and enriched keyword searching. The long narratives are generally written after
the program has been completed and is ready to broadcast. Short summaries can
be written at any time in the production process.
20

Administrative
Administrative metadata includes business and legal metadata and can be attached
to a program produced by the company or to programs licensed by the broad-
caster. At a minimum, business and legal metadata should track information sur-
rounding the creation of the program (names of persons involved in production,
contracts with talent, licenses to shoot at a particular location, etc.), who owns the
intellectual property rights to the program, and any information on the program’s
use and permissions.
In the digital environment, legal metadata is often linked to digital rights manage-
ment (DRM). Several levels of information about a program need to be tracked for
the legal department, from licensing and contracts relevant to the production of
the program to on-demand restrictions and permissions for the consumer. Legal
metadata usually contains date-sensitive information, since contracts and rights
can expire.
For production, the metadata record can make reference to contracts with talent
and production staff, licenses for locations, and other particulars that are held on
file in the legal department. Not all the legal information needs to be retained with
every instantiation of the program.
As mentioned later in this chapter, the archive might not care about the access
license with the owner of a field where a scene was shot. That information need
not be embedded in a digital file of the program. However, the contract or license
information does need to be retained in the legal department’s files. All legal and
business metadata should be archived, even though it might be relevant to only
a few specialized departments. Those who do not need the information may be
prevented from viewing it by limiting their access for reasons of confidentiality.
Not many people would like their personal or financial details freely available
throughout an organization.
Public archives that hold television and broadcasting materials should track, at a
minimum, who owns the rights to the programs, or parts of programs, and any
usage restrictions. It is worth pointing out that this metadata is dynamic and can
(and frequently will) change with the passage of time. Provenance information
(e.g., how the archive acquired the materials) should also be permanently retained.
Preservation
Production entities have a strong business interest in preserving their assets so the
programs or their component parts can be reused in the future (footage repur-
posed, extended cuts released, programs released on video, etc.). Public archives
that perform preservation activities for the programs in their care also need to
track this information and sometimes even share it with fellow archives so that
the preservation effort is not duplicated.
Types of Metadata
21

Preservation metadata tracks the condition of the physical or digital forms of the
program and any actions taken to preserve them. For analog materials, this can
include noting when a tape was transferred to another medium or new film ele-
ments struck. For digital materials, preservation activities can include tracking
when a digital file is backed up or transferred to another storage medium. Infor-
mation that should be tracked includes the following:
• The action taken (file backed up, tape transferred, etc.)
• Where the action took place (at the studio, lab, etc.)
• The date the action took place
• Any condition concerns (original tape has sticky shed, the digital file is corrupt,
etc.)
Metadata in the Workflow
The Metadata of Program Production and Publication
Chapter 1 referred to one person’s important metadata being another person’s
rubbish. This is a key difficulty as we move into the new digital age and begin to
implement the new workflows enabled by this new technology.
For example, at the program planning stage when a reconnaissance for a location
shoot is being carried out, little thought is probably being given to the needs of
the archivist at the end of the program-making chain—even though location
details that might be useful in the future will certainly be known. Conversely, the
archivist will probably see little need for knowing who owned the field where the
shoot took place or what the access arrangements were. Neither of them would
be particularly interested in playout automation metadata—though advertising
clients most certainly would be!
Each part of the planning workflow makes its own contribution to the finished
program—right from the morning shower (where all the best ideas are born)
through researching, commissioning, production, postproduction, indexing and
cataloging in the library, and on to publication (playout). However, the point in
the process where a piece of metadata first becomes available is not necessarily a
point where it is needed for that stage in the process. Worse, frequently two or
more stages in the workflow might need the same metadata, but not the interven-
ing processes. For example, the camera operator on a news shoot will certainly
know the tape cassette numbers, and the picture editor will certainly need to know
them. But the newsroom journalists who scripted the story might not need the cas-
sette numbers because journalists sometimes do not need to look at the tapes, even
though the dispatch rider brings them all back to the newsroom. So the picture
editor gets lots of scripted stories and lots of tapes—but which belongs to which?
Each workflow stage will have it own specialist metadata. Some metadata will be
common to many or nearly all stages. Clearly, it makes sense to capture metadata
22

at the earliest stage possible as a program is made, and to either pass it through
the chain or hold it in a common repository. This way, those stages that need the
metadata can access it easily and do not need to look for it, reacquire it, or, worse,
reinvent it. Sadly, this has not been the traditional way of doing things.
The notional workflow illustrated in Figure 2.1 is not real, but is intended as an
example of the process stages commonly encountered in a program production
workflow. The emphasis placed on each stage will depend on the nature of the
program. For example, the planning process required for a news program is very
different from that necessary for a period drama. In both cases planning is essen-
tial; only the scale and depth changes. Likewise, the commissioning process is dif-
ferent; but here again, someone has to give the go-ahead and make the resources
available. The breakouts which follow give some idea of the information being
created and used at each stage.
All programs derive from someone’s original idea. Sometimes the
idea is forced upon an organization (as is the case with many news
stories); other times the idea originates from a sponsoring or com-
missioning body, from a member of the public, or from a work in
another medium (for example, from a book). Frequently though, the
idea comes in a flash of inspiration that might take form when the
person is taking a shower, commuting to work, or even eating dinner.
Unremarkably, even at the outset the idea will bring with it some metadata: what
the program will be about (the subject), its genre, the likely target audience, and
maybe the best date or time to show the program. A short summary of the
program idea will be jotted down, to be used later. Quickly following on from this
will be thoughts about the best medium (film or TV), possible actors and artists
for the lead roles, key contributors, and whether the program will be a single
blockbuster or a series of episodes. There will already be some sketchy outline of
Types of Metadata
23
Idea
Commission
Acquire
footage
Log
and
ingest
footage
Post
produce,
edit,
etc.
Deliver
finished
program
Library
Publish
(playout)
Production,
research,
planning
Work
up
the
idea
Figure 2.1. A notional program production workflow.
Idea
Figure 2.1a.

the business implications—who would be best to make the program, the research
involved, and likely implications for intellectual property and rights.
Most of this will be jotted down for later consideration—nearly always on paper,
sometimes in a word-processing document. Rarely is the idea widely shared at
this stage—good ideas are very valuable intellectual property and are therefore
jealously guarded.
Having slept on the idea and decided to run with it, facts of life
dictate that funding becomes an immediate issue. Someone needs to
be persuaded to pay for making the program. Few ideas are suffi-
ciently brilliant to let this happen immediately and in isolation, so
in practice “samples” have to be “sold” to a likely financier, along-
side the idea itself, to demonstrate the feasibility, quality, and sheer
brilliance of the program concepts. The summary of the program
that was jotted down at the idea stage will be worked up to adver-
tise or sell the idea. Program making is still expensive, so the costs
are likely to be considerable and the time with a potential backer
will be short. The sales pitch has to be good, persuasive, and able to
withstand searching questions about all aspects of the project.
Seed resources will have to be allocated to work up the idea and shape
it into a “proper” project.Allocating resources and the setting up of a project straight
away implies documented project information and hence more metadata: the
project will have to be allocated some sort of project number, it will acquire a
working name or title, cost control and budgeting information become a priority,
and staff have to be allocated to tasks. Research needs to be carried out into feasi-
bility by finding answers to a series of pertinent questions, such as: Have similar
ideas already been realized? Is there existing art in the library that can be used as
a resource for contacts or background material? Does usable and maybe previously
unused footage already exist, and, if so, is it accessible at a reasonable cost? Is the
program concept sound and does it stand up to scrutiny, or does it need to be
changed? What is the best way to treat the idea? Are the best performers available
in the right timescale and at the right cost? Does music need to be written especially
for the program or can existing recordings be used? Where is the best place to make
the program—on location, in a studio, or a mixture of the two? Is the best location
affordable? Who will produce and edit the demonstration samples?
Once the idea has been sold, things begin to get serious. Moves are
made in many directions at once, and whoever decides to finance
the development of the idea into a proper production by commis-
sioning it will have his or her own views.
First, and perhaps most important of all, business details need to be
thrashed out, such as the exact terms and conditions, prices, costs,
payment details and terms, and bank particulars. Rights become an
24
Work
up
the
idea
Commission
Figure 2.1b.
Figure 2.1c.

issue now. Which rights are to be retained and which sold? Are there any rights
implications for the input material and resources? Will the idea or format be
licensed to only one organization or sold to many organizations internationally?
Timescales and delivery details need to be agreed upon, along with stage pay-
ments and authorization or approval authorities.
The commissioner will want his or her own stamp on the look and treatment of
the program and how it is structured and will have ideas for the distribution
media and how publication will be scheduled. Commissioners may have condi-
tions too on the choice of artists for key roles, such as who directs or edits the
program and who composes the music, and they may even want to peg the sched-
uling to an upcoming or past event.
Now the technical metadata starts to rear its head as part of the delivery detail.
How will the program be delivered? On tape in traditional cassette format? As a
computer file to be played out from a server (and if so, to what standard)? What
will be the aspect ratio? Standard definition—525 NTSC or 625 PAL? High defin-
ition—720 or 1080 lines? Progressive or interlace scanning? What compression
scheme should be used? Is stereo or surround sound the best choice, and what
scheme is preferred?
On top of that, what are the commissioner’s requirements for metadata? Are there
interactive metadata requirements? Does the delivered program need to come with
a simple abstract or fully indexed and cataloged—and if so, to what standard?
This is the major stage in the making of a program. In spite of what
people involved in postproduction work or in technical departments
would have you believe, this is where the program is actually pulled
together and made ready for assembling. This is also where the bulk
of program-related metadata is produced. The work done during the
working-up stage earlier will be revisited and now forms the basis
for serious development work in combination with any require-
ments that the commissioner has made.
Resourcing has to be properly worked out and budgeted, which
includes everything from casting the onscreen personalities (and
their terms for taking part) to the availability, costs, and other details
for useful experts, experienced researchers, and camera and post-
production personnel. Locations have to be found and reconnoi-
tered, possibly meaning that hotels, transportation, catering, and toilet facilities
might have to be arranged. Rights to existing material must be negotiated and any
safety or policing issues identified and resolved. None of this can be left to chance,
and a huge amount of legwork is involved in the necessary research.
Initial contracts have to be placed to “lock in” the agreed arrangements, and the
resulting business issues need to be tracked and documented. There will be
endless discussions in the production offices about all the aspects and details of
Types of Metadata
25
Production,
research,
planning
Figure 2.1d.

the program as it comes to together—not to mention the frustrations as things do
not go according to plan (even these are worth noting for later reference). Seem-
ingly endless background research has to be carried out.
Then, at last, scripts can be pulled together—not only traditional participants’
scripts for speech, but also scripts for cameras, lighting, sound, and so on.
Probably 80 percent of the work has been done now, and shooting
new footage (material) for the program or acquiring suitable exist-
ing material can begin.
This can be an iterative process, and the material will grow through-
out the production process from now on, seemingly of its own
accord. From this stage of the process on, it pays off to log and store
as much of the metadata as possible as it becomes available during
the production process: descriptions of scenes, shots, light condi-
tions, camera positions, participants, times, costumes, and anything
else that can be recorded. Documenting this information will pay off
handsomely at the end of production. Sometimes metadata becomes
available which is not used until later—the temptation is to not
capture it now to save time, but this is a very false economy.
Increasingly, devices that capture pictures or sound can automatically record
much of the technical metadata from their own control systems—cameras that
keep track of f-stop, filter wheel settings, and focal length are obvious examples.
Likewise, it is becoming common for devices to capture the time of day and date
and even the latitude, longitude, and altitude of their position when recording of
the clip started. Perhaps most important of all, many modern devices generate
and record a globally unique identifier for the particular clip of material at the
very instant the record button is pressed and have facilities to import metadata
from the production office database and combine it into the output.
If the metadata logging has taken place during shooting, this task will
be much simpler and more accurate than for material that is logged
sometime later or when legacy material is logged. It has traditionally
been common practice for the logging to be started in earnest only
when the recordings have been returned to the production center—
frequently a researcher or production assistant would sit down and
view the tapes and log them at the same time. With analog recordings
from the camera, logging this information is not inconvenient because
it can be combined with the tedious task of ingesting the material into
a digital system. However, as more cameras and audio recorders
capture material directly into the digital domain, the former method
will become an increasingly inefficient way of working.
All information necessary to produce or to find segments of material must be prop-
erly structured and documented at this stage, and missing information should be
26
Acquire
footage
Figure 2.1e.
Log
and
ingest
footage
Figure 2.1f.

added to the project whenever this is possible. Finding or re-creating it later is at
best inefficient and at worst prone to error. Examples in the case of a documentary
program would be logging scene changes or producing an “as recorded” transcript
of an interview for use when searching the archive or when a book is to be pro-
duced as a supplement to the program. Increasingly, scene change detection and
speech recognition software will be used at this stage. So, too, will tools to describe
the content in analytical terms of the image itself—color, texture, scene depth, and
so on—as these details will become easier to capture and stored metadata will be
able to include them, possibly as histograms, for use later. This development will
enable searching using techniques that are less crude than the current method of
using text-based descriptions—for example, in searching by shape, texture, or
timbre, or by image matching and even face or voice recognition.
In the recent past, at this work stage the only metadata stored with
the content was the edit decision list (EDL). This list contained, at a
minimum, the duration of the shot and the information about the
switch between one scene and the other (the “in-point” and the “out-
point”). The list represented the switching or rendering that must be
applied to the original recorded material to produce the final output;
traditionally, this is done offline and not always in real time, but
increasingly it can be done in real time as high-speed processing
makes it feasible.
At its simplest, the EDL has only the switch points in terms of time-
codes. Nowadays, more complex operations call for information
about transitions, image manipulation, and rendering, and a lot
more information needs to be stored, particularly if the material
needs further postproduction at, for example, another facility or if it will be reused
or repurposed. Machine settings, digital effect settings, and audio mixing infor-
mation all need to be stored with the original recorded material if it ever needs to
be seamlessly used again in the way it was used before, as would happen, for
example, with producing different versions or alternative cuts.
Until recently, programs have been delivered in a straightforward
way—usually in a can, transported in a van or on a trolley to wher-
ever they were needed for playout or storage. A simple adhesive
label served as sufficient identification, and if the program was in
several parts, the appropriate cans were simply taped together.
The introduction of new digital technologies changes this funda-
mentally. Not only can a finished program be delivered electroni-
cally, but the deliverables can be expected to change and be more
comprehensive—for example, an interactive program will not only
have the main video and audio material, but it will also contain the
metadata and supplementary material necessary for the program to
Types of Metadata
27
Post
produce,
edit,
etc.
Figure 2.1g.
Deliver
finished
program
Figure 2.1h.

interact correctly with the end consumer. In future contracts, the required descrip-
tive, cataloging, administrative, and other metadata may well be stipulated in the
commissioning contract as part of the delivery schedule. Electronic delivery also
implies greater reliance on the business system, with its need for accurate meta-
data and unambiguous identification.
The library can nowadays be considered the repository where
actively used tapes, files, and metadata are stored. Metadata associ-
ated strictly with library functions need not be as detailed or exten-
sive as that for the associated archive, as is often reflected by the
function being distributed under a number of names given to the
library such as “current operations library,” “playout store,” “trans-
mission shelf,” or simply “incoming.”
The benefit of the library is that it can quickly retrieve a program for
a producer to view or use the footage, or for broadcast operations to
air the show. Metadata required for library purposes can vary depend-
ing on the particular circumstances and application and can include identification
facts (title, episode title or number, program number, tape location), technical and
playout information (running time, tape or digital file format), descriptive meta-
data (subject, genre, summary), abbreviated production information (director, pro-
ducer, cast), and initial airdate. A prime function of the library is that it is a readily
available source of material for any purpose: an authoritative source of facts and
figures, research for another program, stock footage, repurposed usage of existing
material (either unseen or previously used), and even ideas and treatments.
Somewhat in contrast, the archive has come to be the repository where more exten-
sive metadata is stored in perpetuity along with any related material, both
essences and other information. Information on physical items, such as condition
and preservation information, is also kept in the metadata. For items kept as
digital files, the error rates and other technical parameters for recent accesses will
be logged for automatic system alert purposes. Archival metadata will contain all
the information the library holds, but added to it will be legal, administrative,
preservation, audience statistics, and other metadata that provides the fuller
picture of the program’s creation and history.
All metadata contributors should keep a basic archival principle in mind: meta-
data is added not for you or your immediate needs but for users 100 years or more
from now. This principle is difficult to implement in a fast-paced production envi-
ronment, but it should be the goal. It stresses the importance of consistent meta-
data and clear but concise contributions. A user 100 years from now should be
able to read a metadata record and understand the program’s production inten-
tions, contents, and whole life cycle as well as its audience and how the physical
manifestations were created.
At some point the program will be ready for consumption and must be prepared
for distribution. For a traditional broadcast, the correct file must be identified,
28
Library
Figure 2.1i.

scheduled, and made available to the playout system. For a digital
broadcast, additional service information (SI) must be made avail-
able, and in the case of interactive television the application must be
made available as well. All the components that together form the
interactive TV program should be multiplexed into the digital broad-
cast stream. Interactive digital broadcast services rely heavily on
metadata and its correctly timed injection into the broadcast
program.
In reality, many more playout combinations and possibilities exist.
Digital terrestrial, cable, satellite, and the Internet all have their own
specific needs, usually controlled by the metadata that comes with
the file. Currently the information needed can be (and frequently is) produced and
assembled at this stage, but it is likely that in the future it will be collected during
the stage of production at which it first becomes available.
Metadata Flow
Figure 2.2 gives an impression of a complete production chain where a metadata
repository has been positioned as a central connection between the different work-
flow stages.
In practice, this repository would be the central metadata database of a produc-
tion organization. The figure can be redrawn to demonstrate an overarching meta-
data repository and to show how metadata is not used at every stage in the
workflow, with each workflow stage requesting the metadata it needs, updating
Types of Metadata
29
Publish
(playout)
Figure 2.1j.
Idea
Commission
Acquire
footage
Log
and
ingest
footage
Post
produce,
edit,
etc.
Deliver
finished
program
Library
Publish
(playout)
Production,
research,
planning
Work
up
the
idea
Figure 2.2.
Represents the ideal flow of metadata through a virtual (or actual) metadata
repository, which is continuous throughout the workflow.

that metadata, and passing it back or adding the data created in this stage into
the repository rather than having all the workflow metadata passing though every
stage whether it was used or not.
By the time the program is finalized, the metadata should be as complete as pos-
sible and ready for transmission, retransmission, or exchange by other means. At
a minimum, it must contain all the components needed to configure the different
(possibly interactive) playout channels and the metadata modules that should be
transmitted with the program.
The central metadata database can be provided with templates for each stage in
the production process and/or for each individual in the process, to restrict or
filter the metadata elements so that each user has access to only those elements
needed for that particular process. As can be appreciated from the brief outlines
of the workflow presented earlier, the metadata can be roughly categorized under
distinct headings: metadata purely descriptive of the program content, metadata
for business and administration, metadata for archival use (indexing, cataloging,
etc.), and so on.
The Metadata of Program Publication and Consumption
Chapter 3 will describe some of the existing metadata standards for broadcasting.
Regardless of the actual metadata standard used, metadata records for television
production, distribution, and consumers should contain most of the following ele-
ments, which are based on the metadata elements found in the Society of Motion
Picture and Television Engineers’ (SMPTE’s) Recommended Practice RP210 and
Descriptive Metadata Scheme 1 Standard, SMPTE380M. Many of these elements
30
Idea
Commission
Acquire
footage
Log
and
ingest
footage
Post
produce,
edit,
etc.
Deliver
finished
program
Library
Publish
(playout)
Production,
research,
planning
Work
up
the
idea
Figure 2.3.

appear obvious, but they still must be specified if interoperability is to be
achieved. Note that these elements are not taken from any real application. The
following table is only an example and does include some technical descriptive
metadata elements that might be included in the archive record.
Titles Titling metadata relating to productions
Title kind Kind of title (i.e., project, group of programs,
group of series, series, item, program, working,
original, item, episode, element, scene, shot, etc.)
Main title The main title
Secondary title The secondary title
Series number The alphanumeric series number
Episode number The alphanumeric episode number
Scene number The alphanumeric scene number
Take number Take number of the instance of the shot
Version title The version title
Mission identifier A locally defined identifier for the platform
mission number
Working title The (possibly temporary) working title of a pro-
duction or a production component
Original title The original title of a production
Clip number The alphanumeric number of the clip
Brand main title Main brand title (e.g., Horizon)
Brand original title Any original brand title
Framework title A human readable title for this instance of the
production framework (e.g., “Wilco Productions
version 3”)
Product Abstract information about the media product
Kind of programming group The kind of program group of which the
program forms a part (e.g., anthology, serial,
series, themed cluster, repeating series)
Title of programming group The title of a programming group
Total number of episodic Total number of episodic items in a series
items
Types of Metadata
31

Total number of series in a The total number of series for a related group of
series group series (For example, several series of the same
program may be commissioned over many
years.)
Episode item start number The episodic number at the start of a series
Rights Rights metadata
Copyright Copyright metadata
Copyright status Executive evaluation of copyright status
Copyright owner The name of the person/organization who owns
the copyright
Permitted access Details of permitted access to the media product
Restrictions on use Identifies the type or level of restriction applied
to the media product
Security Content encryption/decryption information
Broadcast Broadcast outlet information
Broadcaster The broadcasting organization
Name Name of the broadcasting organization
Channel Broadcast channel
Service The broadcast service (e.g., News 24)
Publishing medium Publishing medium, including transmission
(e.g., satellite, cable, terrestrial)
Publishing medium code Code defining the publishing medium,
including transmission (e.g., satellite, cable,
terrestrial)
Broadcast region Target region of broadcast
General publication General publishing details
Name Name of the publishing organization
Publication service The publication service
Publishing medium Publishing medium, including transmission
(e.g., satellite, cable, terrestrial)
Publication region Target region of publication
Broadcast and repeat Business information concerning the production
information
Broadcast flags Flags concerning aspects of business or
administration
32

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents

CHAPTER X.
MOTHER AND SON.
Mrs. Sandford looked round upon the tidy little sitting-room, but with
eyes of alarm that sought in the curtains and shadows for some apparition
she feared, and not as a woman looks at the dwelling-place of her child. She
had never been here before. Susie had visited him from time to time with a
woman’s interest in his surroundings, but his mother never. It was all
strange to her as if he had been a stranger. She gave that keen look round
which noted nothing except what was its object, that there was nobody to be
seen.
‘Is he here?’ she said, in a low voice of alarm, without any greeting or
preface. Caresses did not pass between these two either at meeting or at
parting, and there was no time to think even of the conventional salutation
now.
‘No, he is not here.’
She sat down with a sigh of relief, and put back altogether the heavy
gauze veil which had enveloped her head.
‘Is he coming back? Are you—— Tell them to admit no one, no one!
while I am here.’
‘I do not think you need fear; he is not coming back.’
She leaned back in her chair with relief. It was the same chair in which
the other had been sitting when John had left the room in the afternoon.
This recollection gave him a curious sensation, as if two images, which
were so antagonistic had met and blended in spite of themselves.
‘I don’t know what I said to you this afternoon; I was so taken by
surprise: and yet I was not surprised. I—expected it: only not that it should
have happened to you. It is better,’ she continued, after a pause, ‘that it
should have happened to you.’
‘Perhaps,’ said John; ‘I may be better able to bear it—but why did I have
no warning that such a thing could be.’
‘Oh, why?’ said she, with a quick breath of impatience—rather as
demanding why he should ask than as allowing the possibility of giving an

explanation. She loosened her long black cloak and put it back from her
shoulders, and thus the shadows seemed to open a little, and the light to
concentrate in her pale, clear face. It is but rarely, perhaps, that children
observe the beauty of their mothers, and never, save when it is indicated to
them by the general voice, or by special admiration. John had never thought
of Mrs. Sandford in this light; but now it suddenly struck him for the first
time that she had been, that she was, a woman remarkable in appearance, as
in character, with features which she had not transmitted to her children, no
common-place, comely type, but features which seemed meant for lofty
emotions, for the tragic and impassioned. She had not been in
circumstances, so far as he had seen her, to develop these, and her lofty
looks had fallen into rigidity, and the austereness of rule and routine.
Sometimes they had melted when she looked at Susie, but no higher aspect
than that of a momentary softening had ever animated her countenance in
his ken. Now it was different. Her fine nostrils moved, dilating and
trembling, with a sensitiveness which was a revelation to her son; her eyes
shone; her mouth, which was so much more delicate than he had been
aware, closed with an impassioned force, in which, however, there was the
same suspicion of a quiver. Her face was full of sensation, of feeling, of
passion. She was not the same woman as that austere and authoritative one
whom he had all this time known. When he returned from giving the order
which she asked, that nobody should be admitted, he found her leaning
back in her chair with her eyes closed, which seemed to make the rest of her
face, which was all quivering with emotion, even more expressive than
before.
‘I thought that I had not told you enough—that you deserved
explanations, which, painful, most painful as they are, ought to be given to
you now. I suppose I told you very little to-day?’
‘Nothing, or next to nothing,’ he replied.
‘I suppose—I wanted to spare myself,’ she said, with a faint quiver of a
smile.
‘Mother,’ cried John, ‘I will take it for granted. Why should you make
yourself wretched on my account? And, after all, when the fact is once
allowed, what does it matter? I know all that I need to know—now.’
‘Perhaps you are right, John. You know what I would have died to keep
from your knowledge, if it were not folly and nonsense to use such words.

Much, much would be spared in this world if one could purchase the
extinction of it by dying. I know that very well: it is a mere phrase.’
He made no reply, but watched with increasing interest the changes in
her face.
‘It was thought better you should not know. What good could it have
done you? A father dead is safe; he seems something sacred, whatever he
may have been in reality. I thought, I don’t shrink from the responsibility,
that it was better for you; and my father agreed with me, John.’
‘Grandmother did not,’ he said, quickly; ‘now I know what she meant.’
‘Then,’ she said, ‘now that you know, you can judge between us.’
She made no appeal to his affection. She was not of that kind. And John
was sufficiently like her to pause, not to utter the words that came to his
lips. He seemed once more to see himself in his boyhood, so full of
ambition and pride and confidence. After awhile he said,
‘It is much for me to say, but I think I approve. If it is hard upon me as a
man, what would it have been when I was a boy?’
‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that you see it in that light;’ and then she paused,
as if concluding that part of the subject. She resumed again, after a moment:
‘I took every precaution. We disappeared from the place, and changed our
name. My father and mother changed their home, broke the thread—I left
no clue that I could think of.’ She stopped again and cleared her throat, and
said, with difficulty, ‘Does he think he has any clue?’
John could not make any reply. How his heart veered from side to side!
—sometimes all with her in her pride and passion, sometimes touched with
a sudden softening recollection of the man with his sophistries, his self-
reconciliating philosophy, his good humour, and his almost childish,
ingratiating smile.
‘I don’t see how he can have found out anything. I have never lost sight
of him—that was easy enough. He has had whatever indulgences, or
alleviations of his lot were permitted. I left money in the chaplain’s hand for
him when the time came for his coming out. I did not trust the chaplain
even with any clue.’
The balance came round again as she spoke, and John remembered how,
in this very room, the same story had been told to him from the other side,

and he had himself cried out, indignantly, ‘Could you not find them? Was
there no clue?’
He said now, breathlessly, ‘Did you think that right?’
‘Right!’ She paused with a little gasp, as if she had been stopped
suddenly in her progress by an unexpected touch. ‘Could there be any
question on the subject?’
‘Did Susie think it right?’
‘Susie!’ She paused again with impatience. ‘Susie is one of those women
who are all-forgiving, and who have no judgment of right and wrong.’
‘And you never hesitated, mother!’
‘Never,’ she said, a faint colour like the reflection of a flame passing
over her pale face. ‘Why should I hesitate? Could there be a question? Alas!
Fate has done it instead of me: but could I—I, your mother, bring such a
wrong upon you of my own free will? Don’t you think I would rather have
died—to use that foolish phrase again—I use it to mean the extremity of
wish and effort,—rather than have exposed you to know, much less to
encounter—? Don’t let us speak of it,’ she said, giving her head a slight
nervous shake, as if to shake the thought far from her. ‘Upon that subject I
never had a doubt.’
‘And yet he was a man, like other men: and his children at least were not
his judges. Most men who have children have something, somebody to
meet them after years of separation.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘He did not blame anybody. Knowing nothing about it but that he was a
wretched poor criminal, and that this was his story, I, who was one of the
offenders without knowing, was very indignant.’
‘You were very indignant!’
‘Yes, mother; I thought it cruel. My heart ached for the man; fourteen
years of privation and loneliness, and not a soul to say “Welcome” when he
came back into the cold world.’
‘He had money, which buys friends—the kind of friends he liked.’
She had changed her attitude, and sat straight up, her eyes shining, the
lines of her face all moving, rising up enraged and splendid in her own
defence.

‘It seemed to have gone to his heart—the abandonment—and it went to
mine, merely to hear the story told.’
‘I bow,’ she said, ‘to the tenderness of both your hearts! I always felt
there was a certain likeness. I act on other laws:—to bring a convict back
into my family, to shame my young, high-minded, honourable son, whose
path in life promised no difficulty; to shame my gentle child who has all a
woman’s devotion to whoever suffers or seems to suffer; I don’t speak of
myself. For myself, I would die a hundred times (that phrase again!) rather
than be exposed—— No, no, no—nothing, nothing would have induced me
to act otherwise. You don’t know what it is—you don’t know what he is.
Fate, I will not say God, has baffled my plans: but do not let him come near
me, for I cannot bear it. I will rather leave everything and go away—to the
end of the world.’
John had in his heart suffered all that a proud and pure-minded young
man can suffer from the thought of what and who his father was: and he had
felt his heart sicken with disgust, turning from him and loathing him. But
when his mother spoke thus a sudden revulsion of feeling arose in him. He
could not hear him so assailed. A sudden partisanship, that family solidarity
which is so curious in its operations, filled his mind. He felt angry with her
that she attacked him, though she said no more than it had been in his own
heart to say.
He replied, with some indignation in the calmness of his words:
‘I think you may save yourself trouble on that account. I have not seen
him again. When I came back he was gone. They had not waited for me.
They left no message. I don’t know where to find him.’
‘Gone?’ she said. ‘Gone——?’
‘Yes, mother. He delivered me from the difficulty, the misery in which I
was coming back, with the intention of saying—what it is so hard to say to
a man who—may be one’s—father.’ John grew pale, and then grew red. The
word was almost impossible to utter, but he brought it forth at last. ‘But he
did not wait for my hesitation or difficulties. He relieved me. They were
gone without leaving a sign.’
‘Who do you mean by they?’
‘He had a friend,’ John answered, faltering, ‘a friend who is my friend
too. An actor, Montressor.’

‘Montressor!’ said Mrs. Sandford, with something like a scream. Then
she covered her eyes suddenly with her hand. ‘Oh, what scenes, what
scenes that name brings back to me! they were friends, as such men call
friendship. They encouraged each other in all kinds of evil. Montressor! and
how came he to be a friend of yours?’
‘It is an old story, mother: I daresay you have forgotten. It was entirely
by chance. Susie knows. I will make a confession to you,’ he said, with a
sudden impulse. ‘I was very unhappy, and full of resentment towards
everybody——’
‘Towards me,’ she said, quietly, ‘I remember very well. That was the
time when you said I was Emily, and would not have me for your mother.’
She smiled at the boyish petulance, as a mother thus outraged has a right
to smile: and perhaps it was natural she should remember it so. But it was
not the moment to remind him. He smiled too, but his smile was not of an
easy kind.
‘I was altogether wrong,’ he said, ‘I confess it. When I met this man, I
called myself—by the name which seemed to come uppermost in that whirl
of trouble. I said I was John May.’
She was silent for a time, not making any reply, her anger not increased,
as he thought it would be: for, indeed, her mind was too full to be affected
by things which at ordinary times would have moved her much.
‘And so,’ she said, after a time, ‘that was how he found you out. I will
not call it fate—it seems like God. And yet, for such a childish, small
offence, it was a dreadful penalty. Poor boy! you thought to revenge
yourself a little more on me—and instead you have brought upon your own
head—this——’
In the silence that followed—for what could John reply?—there came a
slight intrusion of sound from the house. Some one went out or came in
downstairs, a simple sound, such as in the natural state of affairs would not
even have roused any attention. It awakened all the smouldering panic in
Mrs. Sandford’s face. She started, and caught John by the arm.
‘What’s that? What’s that? It is some one coming—he is coming back.’
‘No, mother. It is the people below.’
‘Where is he?’ she cried, huskily, recovering herself, yet not loosing
John’s arm. ‘Where is he? Where does he live?—not here, don’t say he is

here.’
‘I don’t know where he lives. He has never told me, and he left no
message, no address.’
‘No address,’ she said. ‘You don’t know where he lives, to stop him, but
he knows where you live, to hold you in his power. I will meet him in the
face when I go out from your door.’
The horror in her looks was so great that John tried to soothe her.
‘There is no reason to fear that. He went away, though I had asked them
to wait. Perhaps he will come no more.’
‘Do me one favour, John,’ she cried, grasping his arm closer; ‘do this
one thing for me. Before he can come home again, before he can find you
out, this very night, if you are safe so long, leave this place. Find
somewhere else to live in. Oh! you shall have no trouble. I will find you a
place; but leave this, leave it now at once. Leave him no clue. What? he has
left you none, you say? Why should you hesitate? Come away with me,
John. For the love of God! and if you have learned to feel any respect or
any pity for your mother—for the poor woman whom once you called
Emily—— John, think what it was to me that you should call me Emily,
that you should refuse me the name of mother. And yet you were my boy,
for whom I had denied myself that you might take no harm. Oh, if you have
anything to make up to me for that, do it now. Come away with me to-night,
leave this place, let him find no clue, no clue!’
Something of this was said almost in dumb show, her voice giving way
in her passion of entreaty. She had clasped his arm in both her hands as her
excitement grew. Her breath was hot on John’s cheek. There was something
in the clasp of her hands, in the force of her passionate determination, that
made him feel like a child in her hold.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘what would be the use? Do you think I could
disappear? If ever that was possible, it isn’t now. Whoever wants to find
me, if not here, will find me at the office, or wherever I may be working. I
can’t sink down through a trap-door into the unknown; that might be on the
stage but not in real life. How could one like me, with work to do for my
living, and employers and people that know me, disappear?’
A remnant, perhaps, of John’s own self-esteem, which had been so
bitterly pulled down by the incidents of this day, awoke again. It was only
the insignificant who could obliterate themselves and leave no clue. For

him to do it was impossible. It was but a melancholy pride, but it was pride
still.
‘He will not go to the office after you. He knows none of your friends. If
you leave this, and give no address, he will perhaps not seek for you, for
that would be a great deal of trouble. He never liked trouble. We should
gain time at least to think what should be done. John, do what I ask you!
Come away with me to-night. I will manage everything. You shall have no
trouble. John!’
‘Mother,’ he cried, taking her hands into his, ‘at the end, when all is said
that can be said, he is our father, Susie’s and mine. We can’t leave him
alone to perish. We can’t forsake him. Mother, now that I know the truth, I
know it, and there is an end. I can’t put it out of my mind again. I thought
my father was dead, but he is not dead, he is alive. It can never be put out of
sight again. It may be bitter enough, terrible enough, but we can’t put it out
of our minds. There it is—he is alive. He is my business more than anything
else. There can be no choice for Susie and me.’
She had been trying to free her hands while he spoke. She wrung them
out of his hold now, thrusting him from her.
‘I might have known,’ she said, trembling with anger and misery, ‘I
might have known! Susie, too. What does it matter that I have protected
you, saved you, guarded you? I am not your business, I or my comfort—but
he—he—— What will you do with him? where will you take him? If he
comes here, the woman of this house will not bear it long, I warn you. What
will you do, John? Will you take him to your village among the people you
care for? Where will you take him? What will you do with him, John?’
‘My village?’ John said. And there came over him a chill as of death. His
face grew ashy pale, his limbs refused to support him longer; he sank into
the vacant chair, and leaned his head, which swam, on his two hands, and
looked at his mother opposite to him with eyes wild with sudden dismay
and horror: all the day long amid his troubles he had not thought of that. His
village! And must he tell this dreadful story there? and unfold all the new
revelations of failure, betrayal, disgrace—and of how he had no name, and
only shame for an inheritance? Must he tell it all there?

CHAPTER XI.
SUSIE AND HER LOVERS.
Susie had been nearly a month in Edgeley, and a new faculty had developed
in her—a faculty that lies dormant for a life long with many people, and
that is impossible to others—the faculty of living in the country. She had
never known what that was. Not only in town, in the midst of London, but
in the strange, rigid, conventional, severely-regulated life of the great
hospital, she had spent all the most important years of her life, and thought
she knew no other way. Had she been interrogated on the subject, Susie
would have said that the country might be very good for a change—it was,
as everybody knew, the very place for convalescents; where people ought to
be sent to get well: but for those who were well to start with, oh no! This
she would have said in all good faith, in that serene unacquaintance with
what she rejected, which is the panoply of the simple mind.
But when she got to the country, almost the first morning Susie woke up
in the quiet, in the clear air, and kind, mild sunshine which beamed out of
the skies like a smile of God, and had no stony pavement to rebound from
and turn into an oven—with a soft rapture such as all her life she had never
known before. She had thought she liked the crowd, the stir, the perpetual
call upon her, and what people called the life, which was nowhere so
vigorous, so intent, so full of change, as in town. But in a moment she
became aware that all this was a mistake, and that it was for the country she
had been born. This had been a delightful revelation to Susie. And there had
followed quickly another revelation, which never is unimportant in a young
woman’s life, but which in her peculiar existence had been somehow
eluded: and this was her own possession of that feminine power and
influence of which books are full, but which Susie had not seen much of in
ordinary life. Sometimes, indeed, there had happened cases in which a
young doctor had somehow been transported beyond the line of his duties,
by some one, perhaps a sister, most probably a young lady on probation, or
one who was playing at nursing, as some will. And this had been at once
wrong, which gave it piquancy as an incident, and amusing. But such
incidents were very rare; people in the hospital being too busy to think of

anything of the kind. Susie had been, without knowing, the object of one or
two dawning enthusiasms of this description. In one case she had perhaps
vaguely suspected the possibility: but Mrs. Sandford gave neither
opportunity nor encouragement, and the thing had blown over.
Now, however, it had fully dawned upon her that she herself, tranquil
and simple in early maturity, no longer a girl, as she said to herself, nor in
the age of romance, had come to that moment of sovereignty which sooner
or later falls to most women, notwithstanding all statistics—the power of
actually affecting, disposing of, the life of another. It does not always turn
out to be of profound importance in a man’s life that he has been refused by
a certain woman. But for the time, at least, both parties feel that it is of great
importance: and the result of acceptance, colouring and determining the
course of two lives, cannot be exaggerated. Susie discovered, first with
amusement, afterwards with a little fright, that the visits of Percy Spencer
and of Mr. Cattley were not without meaning. The two curates, who were so
different! Their position gave them a certain right to come, and her position
as a stranger and a temporary inhabitant exempted her, so far, at least, as
she was aware, from the remarks and criticisms to which another young
woman living alone might have been subject. But Susie had nobody to
interfere, no duenna, not even a well-trained maid to say not at home. These
visitors came in with a little preliminary knock at the parlour door without
asking if it was permitted—without any formality of announcement. The
door of the house was always open, and Sarah in the kitchen would have
thought it strange indeed to be interrupted in her morning work by anyone
ringing at the bell.
A month is a long time when it is passed in this land of intimacy. Susie
was asked frequently to the rectory, not always with Mrs. Egerton’s free
will—but there are necessities in that way which ladies in the country
cannot ignore: and it was very rarely that a day passed without a meeting in
the village street, if no more—at some cottage where Susie had made
herself useful, but most frequently in her own little sanctuary, in the parlour
so familiar to both these gentlemen, so much more familiar to them than to
her. At first they were continually meeting there, and their meetings were
not pleasant. For Percy did his best to exasperate Mr. Cattley by a pretended
deference to his old age and antiquated notions, or by the elevation of his
own standard of churchmanship over the mild pretensions of the clergyman
who did not call himself a priest. And Mr. Cattley would retaliate by times

with a middle-aged contempt for boyish enthusiasms, by assuring his young
friend that by-and-by he would see things in a different light.
After a while, however, they fell into a system, arranging their comings
and goings with a mutual and jealous care in order that they might not meet.
And they both gave Susie a great deal of information about themselves. She
sat, and smiled, and listened, not without a subdued pleasure in that power
which she had discovered later than usual, and which even this mutual
antagonism made more flattering. Percy was full of schemes in which he
demanded her interest.
‘Everything has gone on here in the old-fashioned way,’ he said, ‘in the
famous old let-alone way. Aunt Mary has pottered about: she is the only one
that has done anything. My father never had any energy. He would have let
anyone take the reins out of his hands. And she has done it; and she has
always had old Cattley under her thumb. He has not dared to say his soul
was his own. To see him sit and stare and worship her used to be our fun
when we were boys. Jack must have told you.’
‘No, never. John saw nothing that was not perfect. He worshipped all of
you, I think.’
‘Some of us too much, perhaps—not me, I am certain,’ said Percy. ‘But
old Cattley was the greatest joke, Miss Sandford. How you would have
laughed!’ (Susie, however, did not laugh at all at this suggestion, but sat as
grave as a judge, with her eyes bent on her sewing.) ‘But nothing could
have been more unecclesiastical,’ Percy continued, recovering his gravity.
‘It was the first thing I had to do in getting the parish into my hands. Aunt
Mary had to be put down.’
‘Has she been put down?’ said Susie, laughing a little in her turn.
‘I flatter myself, completely,’ said the young man. ‘She has learned to
keep her own place, which is everything. My father gives no trouble; he
sees how things have been neglected, and he is quite willing that I should
have it all in my own hands. I hope, especially if I have your help, Miss
Sandford, to have the cottage hospital and all the improvements of which
we have talked carried out. If I might hope that you would set it going——’
‘But would not that be like your aunt’s interference over again, with no
right at all,’ Susie said.
‘No one can have any right—save what is given them by the clergy. And
you are not my aunt—very different! How I should love to delegate as

much as is fit of my authority to you!’ He paused a moment, with a sigh and
tender look, at which Susie secretly laughed, but outwardly took no notice.
Then he added: ‘Aunt Mary would have no delegation. She interferes as if
she thought she had a right to do it—a pretension not tenable for a moment.
But to entrust the woman’s part—to find an Ancilla Domini, dear Miss
Sandford, in you!’
Mr. Cattley was not so lively as this. He would sit for a long time by the
little work-table which had belonged to old Mrs. Sandford, and say very
little. He would sometimes relate to Susie something about her
grandparents, and talk of the pretty old lady with her white hands.
‘They were here when I first came,’ he would say. ‘I was a little lonely
when I came. I was one of the youngest of an immense family. My people
were glad to get rid of us, I think, especially the young ones, who were of
no great account. And my mother was dead. Edgeley was very pleasant to
me. I was taken up at the rectory as if I had been a son of the house. And
nobody can tell what she—what they all—were to me.’
Mr. Cattley coughed a little over the she, to make it look as if it were a
mistake, changing it into they.
‘Mrs. Egerton,’ said Susie, with a directness which brought a little colour
to the old curate’s cheek, ‘must have been very pretty then.’
‘To me she is beautiful now,’ he said, fervently, ‘and always will be. I am
not of the opinion that age has anything to do with beauty. It becomes a
different kind. It is not a girl’s or a young woman’s beauty any longer, but it
is just as beautiful. You will forgive me, Miss Sandford——’
‘I have nothing to forgive,’ said Susie, but she said it with a little heat. ‘I
like people to be faithful,’ she added, perhaps indiscreetly.
Mr. Cattley did not answer for some time. And then he said:
‘I am going away now, and another life is beginning. I have been rather a
dreamer all my life, but I must be so no longer. I begin to feel the
difference. I think, if you will not be offended, that it is partly you who have
taught me——’
‘I!’ cried Susie, with something like fright. ‘I don’t know how that could
be——’
‘Nor I either,’ he said, with a smile which Susie felt to be very
ingratiating. ‘You have not intended it, nor thought of it, but still you have

done it. There is something that is so real in you, if I may say so—a sweet,
practical truth that makes other people think.’
‘You mean,’ said Susie, with a blush, ‘that I am very matter-of-fact?’
‘No, I don’t mean that. I suppose what I mean is, that I have been going
on in a kind of a dream, and you are so living that I feel the contrast. You
must not ask me to explain. I’m not good at explaining. But I know what I
mean. I wish you knew Overton, Miss Sandford.’
‘Yes,’ said Susie, simply, ‘I should like to know it—when do you go?’
He smiled vaguely.
‘That is what I can’t tell,’ he said. ‘I should be there now. When do you
go, Miss Sandford?’
‘I don’t know that either,’ she said, with a blush of which she was greatly
ashamed. ‘I suppose I ought to go now: but the country life is pleasant, far
more than I could have thought, after living so long in town.’
‘You have always lived in town?’
‘As long as I can remember,’ said Susie.
‘That is perhaps what makes one feel that you are living through and
through. It must quicken the blood. Now I,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘am a
clodhopper born. I love everything that belongs to the country, and nothing
of the town—except——’ he said, and laughed and looked at her with
pleasant, mild, admiring eyes.
‘You must make an exception,’ said Susie, ‘or you will seem to say that
you dislike me.’
He shook his head at that with a smile—as if anything so much out of
the question could be imagined by no one. It was all very simple, tranquil,
and sweet, nothing that was impassioned in it, perhaps a little too much of
the middle-aged composure and calm. But Susie liked the implied trust, the
gentle entire admiration and appreciation. It might not be romantic, perhaps,
but she had a feeling that she might go to Overton or anywhere putting her
hand in that of this mild man. If there was a little prick of feeling in respect
to Mrs. Egerton, who had been so long the object of his devotion, that was
soothed by the natural triumphant confidence of youth in its own
unspeakable superiority over everyone who was old: and to Susie at twenty-
six (though that, she was willing to allow, was not very young) a woman of
forty-eight was a feminine Methusaleh, and certainly not to be feared.

Nothing more had been said; and these two were tranquilly sitting
together; she at her work, he close to her little table, in a pleasant silence
which might have been that of the profoundest calm friendship, or the most
tranquil domestic love. And it might have ended in nothing more than was
then visible—a great mutual confidence and esteem: or it might end at any
moment in the few words which would suffice to unite these two lives into
one for all their mortal duration. But as they sat there silently, in that intense
calm fellowship, the ears of both were caught by the sound of hurried
footsteps approaching, so quick, so precipitate, that it was not possible to
dissociate them from the idea of calamity.
Mr. Cattley lifted his head and looked towards the door; Susie
involuntarily put down her work. She thought of an accident, in the semi-
professional habit of her thoughts, and her mind leaped naturally into the
question where she could find bandages and the other appliances? while he,
whose duty took another turn, instinctively felt in his breast-pocket for the
old well-worn Prayer-book, from which he was never separated. Then there
was a clang of the open door, pushed against the wall by some one entering
eagerly. And the next moment the parlour door burst open, and Elly
appeared—Elly with her eyes very wide open and shining, her mouth set
firm, a wind of vigorous and rapid movement coming in with her,
disturbing the papers on the table. The curate jumped up in alarm, with a
cry: ‘Elly, what is the matter?’ and a changing colour. Susie thought the
same as he did—that something must have happened at the rectory, and rose
up, but not with the same eagerness as he.
‘Oh, you are here, Mr. Cattley,’ said Elly, with an impatient wave of her
hand. She was breathless, scarcely able to get out the words, which ran off
in a sort of sibilation at the end. Then she sat down hastily, and paused to
take breath. ‘It was Susie,’ she went on, with a gasp, ‘that I wanted to see.’
‘I will go away,’ said the curate, ‘but tell me first that nothing is wrong—
that nothing has happened.’
Elly took a minute or two to recover her breath, which she drew in long
inspirations, relieving her heart.
‘Since you are here,’ she said, ‘you may stay, for you have known
everything. Nothing wrong? Oh, everything is wrong. But nothing has
happened to Aunt Mary, if that is what you mean.’

Mr. Cattley grew very red, and cast a glance at Susie, who on her part sat
down quickly, silently, without asking any question, which had its
significance. Perhaps she only felt that, as there was evidently no need for
bandages she could not have much to do with it, either; perhaps—but it is
unnecessary to investigate further. For Elly added, immediately,
‘I have got a letter from Jack, which I don’t understand at all.’
She had recovered her breath. There was an air of defiance and
resolution upon her face. She drew her chair into the open space in front of
Susie, and challenged her as if to single combat.
‘I want to know,’ she said, ‘from you—I don’t mind Mr. Cattley being
there, because he knows us both so well, and has been in it all along. I want
to know, from you—is there any reason, any secret reason, that he could
find out and did not know before, that could stand between Jack and me?’
Susie looked at her with an astonished face, her mouth a little open, her
eyes fixed in wonder. She did not make any reply, but that was
comprehensible, for the question seemed to take her altogether by surprise.
‘I don’t think you understand me,’ said Elly, plaintively, ‘and I’m sure I
don’t wonder. You know, Mr. Cattley, at least; Jack went away full of his
great scheme which was to make him rich, which was to make Aunt Mary’s
opposition as much contrary to prudence as it was to—to good sense and—
everything,’ cried Elly, ‘for of course the only drawback in it, as everybody
must have seen with half an eye, was that I was not good enough for him, a
rising engineer, with the finest profession in the world! However, we were
engaged all the same. People might say not, but we were—in every sense of
the word—I to him and he to me!’
Her face was like the sky as she told her tale, now swept by clouds, now
clearing into full and open light. She grew red and pale, and dark and bright
in a continued succession, and kept her eyes fixed with mingled defiance
and appeal on Susie’s face.
‘Now tell me,’ she said, ‘for you must know—is there anything that Jack
could find out that would change all that in a moment? What is there that he
could find out that would make him think differently of himself and of
every creature? Can’t you tell me, Susie? You are his only sister; you must
know, if anyone knows. What is it? What is it? Mr. Cattley, her face is
changing too. Oh, for goodness sake, make her tell me! If I only knew, I
could judge for myself. Make her say what it is!’

The clouds that came and went on Elly’s face seemed suddenly to have
blown upon that wind of emotion to Susie’s. After her first look of wonder,
she had given the questioner a quick suspicious troubled glance. Then Susie
picked up her work again and bent her head over it, and appeared to
withdraw her attention altogether. She went on working in an agitated way a
minute or two after this appeal had been made to her. Then she suddenly
raised her head.
‘What could he have found out? How should I know what he could find
out? What was there to find out?’
‘These are the questions I am asking you,’ cried Elly. ‘Here is his letter. I
brought it to show you. It is a letter,’ cried the girl, ‘which anybody may
see, not what anyone could call a love-letter. I suppose he has found out,
after having spoken, that he did not—care for me as he thought.’
‘Elly,’ said the curate, ‘I know nothing about it—but I am sure that is not
true.’
‘Oh, you should see the letter,’ she cried, with a faint laugh. The clouds
with a crimson tinge had wrapped her face in gloom and shame. Then she
paused and put her hands to her eyes to hide the quick-coming tears. ‘Why
should one be ashamed?’ she said. ‘I was not ashamed before. It was I who
insisted before; for I was quite sure—quite sure—— And now what am I to
think? for he has given me up, Susie, he has given me up!’
Susie kept her head bent over her work.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘of something he has found out?’
‘Because of—yes—yes. Read it, if you like—anyone may read it.
Because he thought his father was dead and he finds out now that he is
alive; but what is his father to me? No father can make a slave of Jack, for
he is a man. What have I do with his father, Susie?’
Susie’s work served her no longer as a shield. It dropped from her hands:
she was very pale, everything swam before her eyes.
‘Oh, what is it—what is it—what is it?’ cried Elly, clapping her hands
together with a frenzy of eagerness and anxiety and curiosity, which
resounded through the silence of the house.

CHAPTER XII.
JOHN’S LETTER.
The letter which had been received that morning, and had thrown the
rectory into the deepest dismay ran thus:
‘Dearest Elly,
‘After all that we have said and hoped, I am obliged to come to a pause.
What I have to tell you had better be said in a very few words. I have
always believed that my father was dead, that he died when I was a child. I
have suddenly found that he is alive. His existence makes an end at once of
all the hopes that were as my life. I must give you up, first of all, because
you are more precious than everything else. Whatever may happen to me;
whatever I do; whether I succeed, as is very little likely, or fail, which is
almost sure now, I never can have any standing-ground on which to claim
you. I must give you up. This revolution in my life has been very sudden,
and I dare not delay telling you of it—for nothing can ever bridge over the
chasm thus made. I will explain why this is, if you wish it, or if anyone
wishes it: but I would rather not do it, for it is very, very painful. All is pain
and misery—I think there is nothing else left in the world. Elly, I daren’t
say a word to you to rouse your pity. I ought not to try to make you sorry
for me. I ought to do nothing more than say God bless you. I never was
worthy to stand beside you, to entertain such a wild dream as that you might
be mine. I can never forget, but I hope that you may forget, all except our
childhood, which cannot harm.
‘J. M. S.’
‘Now what,’ said Elly, facing them both defiantly, ‘what does that
mean?’
Susie had read it too, at last, though at first she had refused to read it.
Did she not know in a moment what it meant? For her there could be no
doubt. Since she had grown a woman; since she had learned how things go
in this world, and how difficult it is to conceal anything, there had always
been a dread in Susie’s mind of what would happen when John found out.

This had only come over her by moments, but now, in the shock of the
discovery, she believed that she had always thought so, and always
trembled for this contingency. She said to herself now that she had always
known it would happen, which was going further still—always known—
always dreaded—and now it had come. She did not need to read the letter,
but she had done so at last, overwhelmed by anxiety and fear. She gave it
back to Elly without a word. Of course she had known what it must be. Of
course, from the first moment, she had known.
‘Susie,’ Elly said again, ‘tell me, what does it mean?’
‘You know him well enough,’ Susie said, falteringly; ‘you know he
would not say what was not true.’
‘But if this is true,’ said Elly, ‘then he has said before what was not true.
What can it be to me that his father is living? I do not mind—his father is
nothing to me. I don’t want to hurt you, Susie, but if his father swept the
streets, if he—oh, I don’t want to hurt you!’
‘You don’t hurt me,’ said Susie, with the smile of a martyr. ‘Oh, Miss
Spencer, let us leave it alone. You see what he says. He will explain, if you
insist, but he would rather not explain. Don’t you trust him enough for
that?’
‘Trust him!’ said Elly. ‘I trust him so much that, if he sent me word to go
to him and marry him to-morrow, I would do it. I trust him so that I don’t
believe it, oh, not a word,’ the girl cried. And then she threw herself upon
Susie, clasping her wrists as she tried, trembling, to resume her work. ‘Oh,
tell me, what does he mean—what does he mean? What can his father be to
me?’
‘Elly,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘don’t you see how hard you are upon her? Take
what Jack says, or let him explain for himself. I will go to him and get his
explanation, if you wish—but why torture her?’
Elly shot a vivid glance from the curate to Susie, who sat with her head
bent over her work, her needle stumbling wildly in her trembling hands.
‘You think a great deal of sparing her, Mr. Cattley. Aunt Mary says——’
Elly was in so great distress, so excited, so crossed and thwarted, so
uncertain and unhappy, that to wound some one else was almost a relief to
her. But she stopped short before she shot her dart.

‘I am sure she says nothing that is unkind,’ said the curate, firmly; but
his very firmness betrayed the sense of a doubt. Mrs. Egerton had been his
idol all this time, and was he going to desert her? Could she by any
possibility think that he was deserting her? His own mind was too much
confused and troubled on his own account to be clear.
Susie kept on working as if for life and death, not meeting the girl’s
look, tacitly resisting the clasp of her hands, grateful when Mr. Cattley
distracted Elly’s attention and relieved herself from that urgent appeal, yet
scarcely conscious whence the relief came or what they were saying to each
other to make that pause. Her needle flew along wildly all the time, piercing
her fingers more often than the two edges which she was sewing together:
and in her mind such a tumult and conflict, half physical from the flutter of
her heart beating in her ears, making a whirr of sound through which the
voices came vaguely, carrying no meaning. Elly’s appeal to her, though so
urgent, was but secondary. The thing that had happened, and all the
questions involved in it: how he had come to light again, that poor father
whom Susie had been brought up to fear, yet whom she could not help
loving in a way; how John had found out the family tragedy; what it would
be to her mother to be brought face to face with it again, and to know that
he knew it, whom it had been the object of her life to keep in ignorance. To
think that all this had happened, and nobody had told her; that she had not
known a word of it till now, when that intimation was accompanied by this
impassioned appeal for explanation. Explanation! how could Susie explain?
The very suggestion that another mode of treatment was possible from that
which her mother had adopted, and that, instead of concealing it at any risk,
John was setting it up between him and those he loved most, identifying
himself with it, even offering explanation if necessary, was appalling to
Susie.
It was only when she had a moment of silence to consider, that it all
came upon her. She did not know what they were saying, or desire to hear.
She felt by instinct that some other subject had been momentarily
introduced, and was grateful for the moment’s relief to think. But how
could she think in the shock of this unexpected revelation, and with all that
noise and singing in her ears? She came to herself a little when the voices
ceased, and she became aware that they were looking at her, and wondering
why she did not say anything—which was giving up her own cause as much

as if she confirmed the truth. She looked up with eyes that were dim and
dazed, but tried to smile.
‘I cannot tell you what John means,’ she said; ‘how could I, when I don’t
know what he means? He has—very high notions: and he thinks—nothing
good enough for you. We have no—pretensions—as a family.’
Susie tried very hard to smile and look as if John were only very
scrupulous, humble-minded, feeling himself not Elly’s equal in point of
birth.
‘We’ve gone over all that,’ cried Elly, with an impatient wave of her
hand. ‘And what does it matter—to anybody, now-a-days? It is all
exploded; it is all antiquated. Nobody thinks of such a thing now. And Jack
knows well enough. Besides, it is ridiculous,’ cried the girl; ‘he is—well, if
you must have it, he is conceited, he is proud of himself, he is no more
humble about it than if he were a king. Do you think I’m a fool not to know
his faults? I’ve known them all my life. I like his faults!’ Elly said.
And then there was again a pause. Nobody spoke. It became very
apparent to both these anxious questioners—to Elly, when the fumes of her
own eager speech died away, and to Mr. Cattley, who was calmer—that
Susie did not wish to make any reply, that she knew something of which
this was the natural consequence, something which she was determined not
to tell, something which was serious enough to justify John’s letter, which
showed that it was no fantastic notion on his part, but a reality. Susie herself
was dimly aware, even though she had her eyes on her work as before, that
they were looking at her with keen examination, and also in her mind that
they were coming to this inevitable conclusion: but what could she do?
‘Every family,’ she said, faltering, ‘has its little secrets, or at least
something it keeps to itself. I don’t know that there is more with us than
with other people——’ But her voice would not keep steady. ‘The only
thing,’ she went on, sharply, feeling a resource in a little anger, ‘is that
people generally—keep these things to themselves;—but John, it seems that
John——’And here she came to a dead stop and said no more.
Elly had grown graver and graver while Susie spoke. Her excitement and
impatience to know, fell still, as a lively breeze will sometimes do in a
moment. Her eyes, which Susie could not meet, seemed to read the very
outline of the drooping figure, the bent head, the nervous stumbling hands
so busy with work which they were incapable of doing. Elly’s face settled

into something very serious. She flung her head back with the air of one
taking a definite resolution.
‘In that case,’ she said, lingering a little over the words in case they
might call forth an answer, ‘in that case, I think I had better go.’
Mr. Cattley, much perplexed, went with her to the door. He went up the
street with her, his face very grave too, almost solemn.
‘Don’t do anything rash, Elly,’ he said. ‘We know Jack. I—I can’t think
he is to blame.’
‘To blame!’ Elly said, with her head high, as if the suggestion were an
insult. Then she added, after a moment, ‘Yes, he’s to blame, as everybody is
that makes a mystery. Whatever it is, he might have known that he could
trust me; that is the only way in which he can be to blame.’
Susie had thrown away her work in the ease of being alone. It was an
ease to her, and the only solace possible. She put her arms on the table and
her face upon them, and found the relief which women get in tears. It is but
a poor relief; yet it gives a sort of refreshment. Her burning and scorched
eyelids were softened—and the sense of scrutiny removed, and freedom to
look and cry as she would, was good. But the thronging thoughts that had
been kept in check by that need of keeping a steady front to the world,
which is at once an appalling necessity and a support to women, came now
with a wilder rush and took possession altogether of her being. How was it
that he had appeared again, that spectre whom she had feared since she was
a child, yet for whom by moments nature had cried out in her heart, Papa!
She, like John, only knew the child’s name for him, only remembered him
as smiling and kind; though she had learned, as John never had learned, that
other aspect of him which appeared through her mother’s eyes. Susie knew
something, embittered by the feeling of the woman who had gone through it
all, of the long and hopeless struggle that had filled all her own childhood,
and of which she had been vaguely conscious—the struggle between a
woman of severe virtue, and an uprightness almost rigid, and a man who
had no moral fibre, yet so many engaging qualities, so much good humour,
ease of mind, and power of adapting himself, that most people liked him,
though no one approved of him: the kind of father whom little children
adore, but whom his sons and daughters, as they grow up, sometimes get to
loathe in his incapacity for anything serious, for any self-restraint or self-
respect.

His wife had been the last woman in the world to strive with such a
nature, and perhaps the horror that had grown in her, and which she had
instilled unconsciously into Susie’s mind, was embittered by this
knowledge. Susie knew all the terrible story. How the woman had toiled to
keep him right, to convince him of the necessity of keeping right, to
persuade him that there was a difference between right and wrong: and she
knew that this always hopeless struggle had ended in the misery and horror
of the shame which her proud mother had to bear, yet would not bear. All
this came back to her as she lay with her head bowed upon her arms in the
abandonment of a misery which no stranger’s eye could spy upon. And he
had come back? and how was mother to bear it? And how had John found it
out? And why did he not hide in his own heart, as they had done, this
dreadful, miserable secret? She, a girl, had known it and kept it a secret,
even from her own thoughts, for fourteen years. Day and night she had
prayed for the unfortunate in prison, but never by look or word betrayed the
thing which had changed her life at twelve years old, and sundered her from
others of her age, more or less completely ever since. It had separated her
so completely that till now Susie had never lived in entirely natural easy
relations with other girls, or with men of her own age. There had always
been a great gulf fixed between her and youthful friendship, between her
and love. This had been somehow bridged over here in this innocent place
—and now! Oh, how would mother bear it? Oh, how had John found it out?
She was in the midst of these confused yet too distinct and certain trains
of recollections and questions, when her solitude and ease of self-
abandonment were suddenly disturbed. She had not heard any step, any
token of another’s presence until she suddenly felt a light touch upon her
bowed head, and on her arm. Susie had given herself up too completely to
her own thoughts to be capable of considering the plight in which she was.
She started and looked up, her face all wet with her weeping. She thought,
she knew not what—that it was he perhaps, the terror of the family, though
she remembered nothing of him but kindness; or John, it might be John,
come to fetch her, to claim her help in these renewed and overwhelming
troubles. She started up in haste, raising to the new-comer her tell-tale face.
But it was not John, nor her father. It was Mr. Cattley who was standing
close by her with his hand touching her arm. He had touched her head
before, as she lay bowed down and overwhelmed. His eyes were fixed upon
her, waiting till she should look at him, full of pity and tenderness.

‘Oh, Mr. Cattley!’ she cried, in the extremity of her surprise. He only
replied by patting softly the arm on which his hand lay.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what is wrong. Tell me what is wrong. The secret, if
it is a secret, will be safe with me: but you cannot bear this pressure; you
must have some relief to your mind. Susie—I will call you what Elly calls
you for once—do you know what I was going to say to you when she
came?’
Susie raised her tear-stained face to his with a little surprise, and said no.
‘So much the worse for my chances,’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘You
might have divined, perhaps; yet why should you? I was going to tell you a
great many things I will not say now—to explain——’ Something like a
blush came upon his middle-aged countenance. ‘This is not the time for
that. I was going to ask you if you would marry me. There: that is all. You
see by this that I am ready to keep all your secrets, and help you and serve
you every way I can. It is only for this reason that I tell you now. Will you
take the good of me, Susie, without troubling yourself with the thought of
anything I may ask in return? There, now! Poor child, you are worn out.
Tell me what it is.’
‘Oh, Mr. Cattley,’ she cried, and could say no more.
‘Never mind Mr. Cattley: tell me what troubles you—that is the first
thing to think of. I guess as much as that it is something which poor Jack
has found out, but which you knew. I will go further, and tell you what I
guessed long ago—that this poor father has done something in which there
was trouble and shame.’
He had seated himself by her and taken her hand, holding it firmly
between his, and looking into her face. Susie felt, as many have felt before
her, that here all at once was a stranger to whom she could say what she
could not have said to the most familiar friend.
‘We hoped,’ she said, in a low voice—‘we thought—that nobody knew.’
‘Not John?’
‘Oh, John last of all; that was why he lived here; that was why we left
him, mother and I, and never came, and let him think that he was nothing to
us. He thought we had no love for him. He said to mother once that she was
not his mother. Ah!’ cried Susie, with a low cry of pain at that recollection,
‘all that he might never know.’

‘And now he has found out: how do you think he can have found out?’
Susie shook her head.
‘The time was up; we knew that, and we were frightened, mother and I,
though there seemed no reason for fear, for we had left no sign to find us
by. Oh, I am afraid—I was always afraid—that to do that was unkind. He
was papa after all; he had a right to know, at least; but mother could not
forget all the dangers, all that she had gone through.’
‘I suppose, then,’ said Mr. Cattley, with a little pressure of her hand, ‘his
name was not your name?’
Susie looked at him with something like terror. Her voice sank to the
lowest audible tone.
‘His name—our real name—is May.’
The curate had great command of himself, and was on his guard;
nevertheless she felt a thrill in the hand that held hers: Susie sensitive, and
prepared to suffer, as are the unfortunate, attempted to draw hers away—but
he held it fast; and when he spoke, which was not for a minute, he said,
with a movement of his head,
‘I think I remember now.’
The grave look, the assenting nod, the tone were all too much for her
excited nerves. She drew her hand out of his violently.
‘Then if you remember,’ cried Susie, ‘you know that it was disgrace no
one could shake off. You know it was shame to bow us to the dust; that we
never could hold up our heads, nor take our place with honest people, nor
be friends, nor love, nor marry, with such a weight upon us as that; and now
you know why John, poor John, oh, poor John!’
She hurried away from the table where the curate sat, regarding her with
that compassionate look, and threw herself into her grandfather’s chair
which stood dutifully by the side of the blank fireplace where Elly and John
had placed it. Her simple open countenance, which had hid that secret
beneath all the natural candour and truth of a character which was serene as
the day, was flushed with trouble and misery. Life seemed to have revealed
its sweeter mysteries to Susie only to show her how far apart she must keep
herself from honest people, as she said. And her heart cried out—almost for
the first time on its own account. Her thoughts had chimed in with her
mother’s miseries, but had not felt them, save sympathetically; now her

own time had come—and John’s—John’s, who knew nothing, who must
have discovered everything at one stroke; he who was not humble, nor
diffident, but so certain of himself and all that he could do. What did it
matter for anybody in comparison with John?
Mr. Cattley did not disturb her for some time. He let that passion wear
itself out. Then he went and stood with his back to the fireplace, as
Englishmen use, though it was empty.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘that we understand, let us lay our heads together
and think what can be done.’
‘There is nothing to be done,’ said Susie. ‘Oh, Mr. Cattley, go away,
don’t pity me. I can’t bear it. There is only one thing for me to do, and that
is to go home to mother and John.’
‘I do not pity you,’ he said, ‘far from that. You have got the same work
as the angels have. Why should I pity you? It hurts them too, perhaps, if
they are as fair spirits as we think. But I am going with you, Susie: for two,
even when the second is not good for much, are better than one.’
She clasped her hands and looked up at him with a gaze of entreaty.
‘Don’t,’ she cried, ‘don’t mix yourself up with us! Oh, go away to the
people who are fond of you, to the people who are your equals. What has a
clergyman to do with a man who has been in prison? Oh, never mind me,
Mr. Cattley. I am going to my own belongings. We must all put up with it
together the best way we can.’
‘Susie,’ he said, softly, ‘you are losing time. Don’t you know there is an
evening train?’

CHAPTER XIII.
THE DARKNESS THAT COULD BE FELT.
John rose late next morning to a changed world. It no longer seemed to be
of any importance what he did. For the first time in his life he got up in the
forenoon and breakfasted as late as if he had been a fashionable young man
with nothing to do. He was not fashionable indeed, but there was no longer
any occupation that claimed him. He had nothing to do. He flung himself on
his sofa, after the breakfast, which he had no heart to touch, had been taken
away. What did it matter what he did now? He had not slept till morning.
He was fagged and jaded, as if he had been travelling all night. Travelling
all night! that was nothing, not worth a thought. How often had he stepped
out of a train, and, after his bath and his breakfast, rushed off to the office
with his report of what he had been doing, as fresh as if he had passed the
night in the most comfortable of beds! that was nothing. Very, very different
was it to lie all night tossing, with a fever swarm of intolerable thoughts
going through and through your head, and to rise up to feel yourself without
employment or vocation, to see the world indifferently swinging on without
you, when you yourself perhaps had thought that some one train of things,
at least, would come to a dead stand without you. But there was no
stoppage visible anywhere. It was he who had stopped like a watch that has
run down, but everything else went on as before.
He had written his letter to Elly on the previous night. Thus everything
was crammed into one day—his bad reception at the office, his discovery of
the man who had thus injured him, who had injured him so much more
sorely by the mere fact of existing; and the conclusion of his early romance
and love-dream. He had not sent the letter yet. He had kept it open to read it
in the morning, to see whether anything should be added or taken away. So
many words rose to his lips which appealed involuntarily to Elly’s love, to
her sympathy—and he did not want to do that. He wanted to be quite
imperative about it, as a thing on which there could be no second word to
say. Elly could not call a convict father. She must never even know of the
man who was John’s destroyer, though he was at the same time John’s
father. He shuddered at the words, notwithstanding that a great melting and

softening was in his heart towards the strange, loosely-knitted intelligence
which seemed to drift through everything—life, and morality, and natural
affection—without feeling any one influence stronger than the other, or any
moral necessity, either logical or practical. To be brought thus in all the
absolutism of youth, and in all the rigid rightness of young respectability,
face to face with a man to whom nothing was absolute, and the most
fundamental principles were matters of argument and opinion, gave such a
shock to John’s being as it is impossible to estimate. It seemed to cut him
adrift from everything that kept him to his place. Had the discovery been
uncomplicated by anything at the office, John might have felt it differently.
It would, in any way, have taken the heart out of him, but it would not,
perhaps, have interfered with his work. But now everything was gone.
He flung himself down on the sofa, and lay like a man dead or disabled;
like a man, he said to himself, who had been drunk overnight, who had
come out of dissipation and vice with eyes that sickened at the light of day.
And this was John Sandford, who never in his life before, having unbroken
health and an energetic disposition and boundless determination to get on,
had spent a morning in this way. He almost believed, as he threw himself
down on the sofa and turned his eyes from the light, that he actually had
been drunk (using the coarsest word, as if it had been of one of the navvies
he was thinking) overnight.
And yet his heart was soft to the cause of it all. A feeling which had
never been awakened in him, even when she was most kind, by his mother,
which seemed out of the question so far as she was concerned, stole in with
a softening influence indescribable, along with the image of that disgraced
and degraded man, insensible as he seemed to his own disgrace. That easy
smile of cheerful vagabondage was the only thing that threw a little light
upon the unbroken gloom. It had amused John in the vagrant soul which he
had taken under his wing; it was awful and intolerable to him in his father:
yet unconsciously it shed a sort of faint light upon the future, from which all
guidance seemed removed. What was he to do in that changed and terrible
future, that new world in which there was no longer any one of all the hopes
that had cheered him? Elly was gone, as far as the poles apart from him and
his ways, and so were his ambitions, his schemes. There remained to him in
all the world nothing but his mother and sister, who had deceived him, and
whom he could now serve best by going away out of their ken for ever: and
this poor criminal, abandoned by all—the convict who had no friend but

Joe, who had wronged and cheated John, and brought him to the dust, but
who yet was the only living creature that belonged to him and had need of
him now.
He was roused from his first languor of despair (though that was a
condition which could not have lasted long in any circumstances) by the
entrance of the little maid to lay the table for another meal. Another meal!
Was this henceforward to be the only way in which his days should be
measured? But no, he said to himself, jumping up with a sort of fury from
his sofa, that could not be, for there would soon be nothing to get the meals
with in that case: at which thought he laughed to himself. Laughing or
crying what did it matter, the one was as horrible as the other.
‘Missis said as she thought perhaps you would be wishing your dinner at
’ome to-day,’ said the maid, startled by his laugh.
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said John; but, when the food came with its
savoury smell, he found out, poor fellow, that he was hungry, very hungry,
having eaten nothing for—he did not recollect how long, weeks it seemed
to him, since that peaceful breakfast before anything had gone wrong. At
twenty-one a young man’s appetite cannot be quenched by anything that
may happen. He ate, he felt enormously, eagerly, and afterwards he was a
little better. When that was over he drew himself together, and his thoughts
began to shape themselves into a more definite form.
In his profession, young as he was, he had already seen something of
emigration, and had contemplated it more familiarly than is usually the
case. He had been in America. He knew a little of the works that were going
on in various distant regions, and he had that confidence which belongs to a
skilled workman in every class, that he must find employment wherever he
went. Anyhow, wherever he might decide to go, the world would be a
different world for him. He would be cut off from everything with which he
was acquainted or which was dear to him, as much in London as at the
Antipodes. Therefore, the wiser thing was to go to the Antipodes, and make
life outside at once as strange as the life within.
It would, perhaps, ease the horrible annihilation of every hope if
everything external were changed, and he could imagine that it was
Australia or New Zealand, and not some awful fate that had done it. And
now henceforth he would have one companion—one poor companion from
whom he could never cut himself free—his father! who would have to stand

to him in place of a family, in place of Elly, over whom he would have to
watch, whom he must never suffer to steal from his side, whom perhaps he
might guide into some little tranquil haven, some corner of subdued and
self-denying life where he might wear out in safety. But, alas! John recoiled
with a thrill of natural horror, first at the circumstances, then at himself, for
building upon that. His father was not old as fathers ought to be. He was not
more than fifty, and, though this is old age to persons of twenty-one, the
young man could not so far deceive himself as to see any signs of failing
strength or life drawing towards its close in the man whom the austerity of
prison life had preserved and purified, and whose eye danced with youthful
elasticity still. He was not like an old father of seventy or eighty, the
conventional father whom fiction allots to heroes and heroines, and who is
likely to die satisfactorily at the end, at least, of a few years’ tenderness. No.
May would live, it might be, as long as his son. This was an element of
despair which it was impossible to strive against, and equally impossible to
confess; even to his own heart John would not confess it. It lay heavily in
the depths of that heart, a profound burden, like a stone at the bottom of a
well.
‘Yes,’ he said to himself, with a little forlorn attempt to rouse up and
cheer himself on, ‘to the Antipodes!’ where perhaps there might be
something to do, of as much importance, or more, than draining the Thames
Valley: where the primitive steps of civilisation had yet to be made, and he
might be of use at least to somebody. That was one thing to the good at
least, to have decided so much as that. And then he seized his hat and went
out. There was still one preliminary more important than any other, and that
was to find the cause of all this ruin, the future object of his life. Everything
else must go; his scheme—he had thrown down all his papers on the office-
table, and left them there, for what was the good of them now? his love? He
took up finally the letter to Elly, and with his teeth set dropped it into the
box at the first post-office he came to. Having done this he stood all
denuded, naked, as it were, before fate, and went forth to seek him who was
the cause of it all—his father the convict; the man whom it would be his
duty to serve and care for, who was all that was left to him in life.
Perhaps, if it had not been for this failure in respect to his work, for the
betrayal of which he had been the victim, and the prompt discovery and
consequent abandonment of him by his employers which had followed,
John would not have been so certain of his duty. He never could have taken

his mother’s advice and altogether forsaken the father whom he had so
unfortunately discovered. But he might have been induced to conceal May’s
existence, and to make some compromise between abandoning him
altogether and burdening his life with the perpetual charge of him, as he
now intended. The conjunction of circumstances, however, had narrowed
the path which lay before him. Never, in any case, could he have kept Elly
to the tie, which as yet was no tie, when he discovered the disgrace which
overshadowed his family; and with both his great motives withdrawn—his
love and his ambition—what did there remain for John? To enter with his
reputation as a social traitor the service of Spender & Diggs? As soon
would a soldier in the field desert to the enemy. And what, then, remained
for him to do? Australia, where there was a fresh field, and where not only
he but the poor burden on his life, the soiled and shamed criminal, would be
unknown, and might begin again.
The first thing, however, was to find him; but John had not much doubt
on that point. After a little pause of consideration he set out for
Montressor’s lodgings, feeling convinced that the actor would at least know
where he was to be found. The Montressors, notwithstanding their return to
fortune through the success of Edie, were still in the old rooms in one of the
streets off the Strand, up three pairs of stairs, the same place in which John
had supped upon hot sausages on his first night in London. How strange it
was that an incident so trivial should have altered the colour of his whole
life! For had he not, in his boyish folly, called himself John May to that
chance friend, it might so have been that this discovery never would have
been made. It was with a sigh that John remembered, shaking his head as he
went up the long dingy stairs, that after all this had nothing to do with it,
and that it was something more uncalled-for still, an accident without
apparently any meaning in it, which had brought him directly in contact
with his father, on the first night on which that contact was possible. The
very first night! He had to break off with a sort of satirical smile at this
accidental doom, when the door was opened by Mrs. Montressor, who
looked at him with a startled expression, and not the welcoming look with
which on his rare visits she had always met him.
‘Oh, Mr. May!’ she said; then paused and added, hurriedly, ‘Montressor
is out, and I am just going to fetch Edie from the rehearsal. I am so sorry I
cannot ask you to come in.’ He thought she stood against the door
defending it, and keeping him at arm’s length.

‘It does not matter,’ he said. ‘I had—no time to come in. I wanted to find
out from Montressor the address—of a friend.’
‘What friend?’ said the woman, quickly.
‘He must have told you, Mrs. Montressor, of the discovery we made:
that his friend May—was—my father: no more than that: though it had
been kept from me and I didn’t know.’
‘Oh, no, Mr. Sandford,’ cried Mrs. Montressor, ‘that was a mistake, I am
sure. You see I know your real name. I found it out long ago, but I never
told Montressor. No, no, Mr. Sandford, it is all a mistake. He is no relation
of yours.’
A sudden gleam of hope lit up John’s mind, but faded instantly.
‘He is my father,’ he said, ‘there can be no mistake.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ said the woman, beginning to cry. ‘It can’t be, it shan’t be;
there is none of that man’s blood in you.’
‘Hush,’ said John, ‘he is my father. Tell me where I can find him; that is
the best you can do for me, Mrs. Montressor.’
‘I can’t, then,’ she said, ‘I don’t know. I will tell you frankly he has been
here, but I would not have him; I know him of old: and where he is now I
don’t know.’
‘But Montressor knows.’
‘Very likely he does. I can’t tell you. He is out. I don’t know where he
has gone. I’ll give you no information, Mr. Sandford, there! If he has the
heart of a mouse in him, he will never let you know.’
‘And what sort of a heart should I have if I let him elude me?’ said John.
‘No, if you would stand my friend, you must find him out for me. I am
going abroad. I am leaving England—for good.’
‘Is it for good?’ said Mrs. Montressor. ‘Oh, I’m afraid it’s for bad, my
poor boy.’
‘I hope not,’ said John, steadily, ‘at all events it’s all the good that is left
me. And I cannot go without him. Tell Montressor, for God’s sake, if he
wants to stand my friend, to bring my father to me, or send me his address.’
It took him some time to convince her, but he succeeded, or seemed to
succeed, at last. And he went away, not at all sure that the object of his
search was not shut up behind the door which Mrs. Montressor guarded so
carefully. He resumed his thoughts where he had dropped them, as he went

down again the same dark and dingy stairs; they seemed to wait for him just
at the point at which he had left off. The very first night! he almost laughed
when he thought of it: and then he began to account to himself for that
meeting, following up the course of events to the time of his first
acquaintance with Joe. He went back upon this carelessly enough,
remembering the man in the foundry at Liverpool, and before that, before
that—— John started so violently that he slipped down half-a-dozen steps
at the bottom of the stairs, and a sort of stupor seized his brain till he got
into the open air and walked it off.
There came before him like a picture the evening walk with Mr. Cattley,
the tumult outside the ‘Green Man,’ the half-drunken tramp who wanted
some woman of the name of May. Good God! was he so near the discovery
then, and yet had no notion of it! He remembered the very attitude of the
man sitting with his back against the wall, maundering on in his hoarse
tones, half-drunk, muddled yet obstinate, about his mate’s wife and the
news he was bringing. Could it be his mother—his mother! the fellow was
seeking all the time: and had he got thus closely on the scent from some
vague information about the change of habitation made by his
grandparents? How strange all seemed, how impossible, and yet how
natural! And to think of the boy going gravely by, disgusted yet half-
amused, with his lantern, looking down from such immense heights of
boyish immaculateness upon the wretched, degraded creature who played
the helot’s part before him, and called forth his boyish abstract protest
against the cruelty of the classic moralists who thus essayed to teach their
children by the degradation of others. It all came before him, every step of
the road, the aspect of everything, every word almost that had passed
between Mr. Cattley and himself. And all this time it was himself whom Joe
was seeking, and at last—at last—his message had come home! He seemed
to be gazing at the village street, and that first act of the tragedy played
upon it, with a smile to himself at the strange, amazing, incredible, yet still
and always so natural—oh, so natural—sequence of events—when all of a
sudden his heart seemed to turn that other corner under the trees, and, with
a rush of misery, it came back to him that Elly, Elly, was and could be his
Elly no more.
He never knew very well how it was that he spent the rest of this long
afternoon and evening. He walked about, looking vaguely for some trace of
his father, or Montressor, or Joe, but saw nothing of them, as may be

supposed; and then he went from shop to shop of the outfitters, where
emigrants are provided with all they want on their voyage: and finally went
back to his rooms, and, in the blank of his misery, went to bed, not knowing
what to do.
And thus, in the changed world, in the darkened life, the evening and the
morning made the first day.

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