Chap­ter II – Father and Son unfolds with­in the silent walls of Her­mis­ton, where dis­tance defines the rela­tion­ship more than any shared blood. Adam Weir, Lord Jus­tice-Clerk, gov­erns not only the court but also his house­hold with the same stern­ness and absence of warmth. His role as a judge has con­sumed what­ev­er gen­tle­ness may once have lived in him, leav­ing behind a man whose affec­tion is buried beneath com­mand. His son Archie, bright and per­cep­tive, sens­es this void from ear­ly child­hood. Though pro­vid­ed for and instruct­ed in prop­er form, he is nev­er drawn into his father’s world in a way that feels human. Instead of sto­ries of kind­ness, he is giv­en accounts of gris­ly mur­ders as bed­time conversation—offered with pride, not hor­ror. Where one man sees jus­tice, the oth­er sees only its cold after­math. That dif­fer­ence plants a seed of qui­et rebel­lion in Archie that con­tin­ues to grow.

As Archie matures, his path begins to stray from what Lord Her­mis­ton con­sid­ers prop­er. Encour­aged by the thought­ful Lord Gle­nal­mond, Archie devel­ops a love for phi­los­o­phy, lit­er­a­ture, and ethics—subjects his father finds weak and irrel­e­vant. Adam, unaware or unwill­ing to under­stand, assumes his son’s reluc­tance to enter law is lazi­ness or soft­ness. In truth, Archie’s dis­com­fort lies in the bru­tal final­i­ty he sees in his father’s work. Their rare moments of con­ver­sa­tion are marked more by sar­casm and rep­ri­mand than gen­uine engage­ment. Even when Adam attempts to draw his son clos­er, his meth­ods betray his nature—relying on blunt humor and dis­mis­sive judg­ments to bridge a divide too wide for words alone. Archie, increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed, begins to view his father not just as a stranger but as a sym­bol of every­thing he can­not become.

At din­ners host­ed by Adam, where legal minds and harsh laugh­ter fill the room, Archie finds him­self shrink­ing inward. These gath­er­ings, meant to demon­strate cama­raderie among men of the bench, only deep­en Archie’s detach­ment. He watch­es his father laugh at cru­el­ty and dom­i­nate con­ver­sa­tions with sharp jests, all while remain­ing blind to his son’s silent dis­ap­proval. The divide is not caused by hatred, but by mutu­al incom­pre­hen­sion. Adam sees his son as over­ly del­i­cate and imprac­ti­cal. Archie sees his father as emo­tion­al­ly absent and moral­ly numbed. Nei­ther is entire­ly wrong, but nei­ther can reach across the gap. This unspo­ken stale­mate grows heav­ier with each pass­ing sea­son, turn­ing mis­un­der­stand­ings into qui­et resent­ments.

Though Lord Gle­nal­mond becomes a men­tor to Archie, fill­ing the void left by Adam’s emo­tion­al absence, this does lit­tle to change Adam’s stance. In fact, the more Archie is shaped by Glenalmond’s calm and thought­ful exam­ple, the more Adam sens­es a kind of betray­al. He can­not name it, but it irks him that his son finds ease with anoth­er man where he finds only pres­sure at home. Yet Adam does not con­front this feel­ing; instead, he responds with his usu­al gruff­ness and scorn. When he does speak of his son, it is often to colleagues—framed in terms of dis­ap­point­ment or con­fu­sion rather than con­cern. Archie, mean­while, avoids con­fronta­tion alto­geth­er. His resis­tance is silent, his defi­ance lived out through sub­tle choic­es and with­held affec­tions.

What makes their rela­tion­ship so trag­ic is not a lack of intel­li­gence or good will, but a fail­ure to rec­og­nize love in unfa­mil­iar forms. Adam does care, but he does not know how to show it with­out dis­guis­ing it as duty. Archie longs for approval but can­not accept it when it comes through judg­ment instead of under­stand­ing. Their inabil­i­ty to speak hon­est­ly to one anoth­er becomes the qui­et heart­break of their home. Nei­ther is the vil­lain in this dynam­ic; both are shaped by dif­fer­ent times, val­ues, and needs. Yet the silence between them speaks loud­er than any harsh word ever could. What remains is a bond not bro­ken by hate but by incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty, as each man drifts fur­ther from the oth­er, hop­ing the oth­er might some­day turn back.

This chap­ter becomes more than a domes­tic reflection—it becomes a lens through which gen­er­a­tional divides are exam­ined. Steven­son does­n’t only tell the sto­ry of one strained rela­tion­ship; he expos­es how soci­etal expec­ta­tions hard­en men against their own fam­i­lies. Archie’s strug­gle for a self-defined iden­ti­ty under the weight of lega­cy becomes the emo­tion­al core of the nov­el. Through every uneasy glance and unmet ges­ture, we see not just con­flict, but the ache of peo­ple who can­not reach each oth­er across the invis­i­ble walls they’ve built. It is not a ques­tion of blame, but of loss—of what’s missed when pride and silence speak loud­er than love.