rHE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS CHILDREN 
 
THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 AST) 
 
 HIS CHILDREN 
 
 BY 
 
 MBS. OLIPHANT 
 
 AETHOR OF "HESTER," "KIRSTEEN." ETC. 
 
 Eon&on 
 MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
 AND NEW YOKK 
 
 1892 
 
 The Riglit of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved 
 
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, 
 london and bungay. 
 
 First Edition (3 vols, crown 8vo), 1891. 
 Second Edition (I vol. crown Svo), 1S92. 
 

 ra. 
 
 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The news that Miss Ferrars was going to marry Mr. Rowland 
 the engineer, ran through the station like wild-tire, producing 
 a commotion and excitement which had rarely been equalled 
 since the time of the Mutiny. Miss Ferrars ! and Mr. Rowland ! 
 — it was repeated in every tone of wonder and astonishment, 
 with as many audible notes of admiration and interrogation as 
 would till a whole page. " Impossible ! '"' people said, " I don't 
 
 believe it for a moment." — " You don't mean to say ", But 
 
 when Mrs. Stanhope, who was Miss Ferrars' friend, with whom 
 she had been living, answered calmly that this was indeed what 
 she meant to say, and that she was not very sure whether 
 she was most sorry or glad — most pleased to think that her 
 friend was thus comfortably established in life, or sorry that 
 she was perhaps stepping a little out of her sphere — there 
 remained nothing for her visitors but a universal gape of amaze- 
 ment, a murmur of deprecation or regret — " Oh, poor Miss 
 Ferrars ! '"' the ladies cried. *' A lady, of such a good family, and 
 marrying a man who was certainly not a gentleman.'"' " But he 
 is a very good fellow," the gentlemen said ; and one or two of 
 the mothers who were conscious in their hearts, though they 
 did not say anything of the fact, that had he proposed for Edie 
 or Ethel, they would have pushed his claims as far as legitimate 
 pressure could go, held their tongues or said little, with a feel- 
 ing that they had themselves escaped the criticism which was 
 now so freely poured forth. They were aware indeed that it 
 would have come upon them more hotly, for it was they who 
 would have been blamed in the case of Ethel or Edie, whereas 
 Miss Ferrars was responsible for herself. But the one of them 
 who would have been most guilty, and who indeed had thought 
 a good deal about Mr. Rowland, and considered the question 
 very closely whether she ought not as a matter of duty to 
 
 MZ93llV> 
 
 .<w 
 
2 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 endeavour to interest him in her Ethel, whose name was Dorothy, 
 took up the matter most hotly, and declared that she could not 
 imagine how a lady could make up her mind to such a descent. 
 "Not a gentleman: why, he does not even pretend to be a 
 gentleman," said the lady, as if the pretention would have been 
 something in his favour. " He is not a man even of any educa- 
 tion. Oh I know he can read and write and do figures — all 
 those surveyor men can. Yes, I call him a surveyor — I don't 
 call him an engineer. What was he to begin with ? Why he 
 came out in charge of some machinery or something ! None of 
 them have any right to call themselves engineers. I call them 
 all surveyors — working men — that sort of thing ! and to think 
 that a woman who really is a lady — " 
 
 " Oh come, Maria, come ! " cried her husband, " you are glad 
 enough of the P.W.D. when you have no bigger fish on hand." 
 
 " I don't understand what you mean by bigger fish, Colonel 
 Mitchell," said the lady indignantly ; but if she did not know, 
 all the rest of the audience did. Match-making mothers are very 
 common in fiction, but more rare in actual life, and when one 
 exists she is speedily seen through, and her wiles are generally 
 the amusement of her circle, though the woman remains uncon- 
 scious of this. And indeed poor Mrs. Mitchell was not so bad 
 as she was supposed to be. She was a great entertainer, getting 
 up parties of all kinds, which was the natural impulse of a fussy 
 but not unkindly personality, delighting to be in the midst of 
 everything ; and it is certain that picnics and even dinner 
 parties, much less dances, cannot be managed unless you keep 
 up your supply of young men. There were times when her 
 eagerness to keep up that supply and to assure its regularity 
 was put down quite wrongly to the score of her daughters, 
 which is an injustice which every hospitable woman with 
 daughters must submit to. A sort of half -audible titter went 
 round the little party when Colonel Mitchell, with that cruel 
 satisfaction so often seen in men, gave over his wife to the 
 criticism of society. A man never stands by the women of his 
 family in such circumstances ; he deserts them even when he 
 does not, as in this instance, actually betray. There was one 
 young man, however, one of the staff of dancers and picnic 
 men, who was faithful to her — a poor young fellow who knew 
 that he had no chance of being looked upon as a pa?ii, and who 
 made a diversion in pure gratitude, a quality greatly lacking 
 among his kind. 
 
 " Rowland," he said, " is one of the best fellows in the world. 
 He does not shine perhaps among ladies, but he's good fun when 
 lie likes, and a capital companion." 
 
 "And Miss Ferrars, dear," said one of the ladies soothingly, 
 "is not like my Ethel or your Dorothy. Poor thing, it is just 
 as well, for she has nobody to look after her : she is, to say the 
 least, old enough to manage matters for herself." 
 
 " And to know that such a chance would never come again," 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 3 
 
 said one of the men with a laugh— which is a kind of speech 
 that jars upon women, though they may perhaps say something 
 very like it themselves. But to think of Miss Ferrars making 
 a last clutch of desperation at James Rowland the engineer, as 
 at a chance which might never occur again, was too much even 
 for an afternoon company making a social meal upon a victim, 
 and there was a feeling of compunction and something like 
 guilt when some one whispered almost with awe, "Look ! there 
 they are."' 
 
 The party in question were seated in a verandah in the cool 
 of the day when the sun was out of sight. They had all been 
 gasping in semi-darkness through the heat, and now had come 
 to life again to enjoy a little gossip, before entering upon the 
 real business of dining and the amusements of the evening. The 
 ladies sat up in their chairs, and the men put themselves at 
 least in a moral attitude of attention as the two figures went 
 slowly across the square. One feels a little "caught" in spite 
 of oneself by the sudden appearance of a person who has been 
 under discussion at the moment he or she appears. There is a 
 guilty sense that walls have ears, and that a bird of the air 
 may carry the matter. It was a relief to everybody when the 
 pair had passed and were seen no more. They went slowly, for 
 the lady had a couple of little children clinging to her hands. 
 
 Miss Ferrars was of an appearance not to be passed over, even 
 though she was quite old enough, as her critic said, to manage 
 matters for herself — so old as to have no prospect of another 
 chance did she reject the one unexpectedly offered to her at 
 present. She was a woman a little more than the ordinary 
 height, and a little less than the ordinary breadth — a slim, tall 
 woman, with a very pliant figure, which when she was young 
 had lent itself to all kinds of poetical similes. But she was no 
 longer young. She must have been forty at the least, and she 
 was not without the disadvantages that belong to that age. 
 She did not look younger than she was. Her complexion had 
 faded, and her hair had been touched, not to that premature 
 whiteness which softens and beautifies, but to an iron gray, 
 which is apt to give a certain sternness to the face. That there 
 was no sternness about her, it was only necessary to see her 
 attitude with the children, who clung to her and swayed her 
 about, now to one side now to the other, with the restless 
 tyranny peculiar to their age, while still she endeavoured to 
 give her attention and a smile to the middle-aged person by her 
 side, who, truth to tell, was by no means so patient of the 
 children's presence as she was. It was the little boy, who was 
 next to Mr, Rowland, and who kicked his legs and got in the 
 way of his footsteps, that brought that colour of anger to his 
 face, and many exclamations which had to be repressed to his 
 lips. Those dreadful little Stanhopes ! Miss Ferrars had been 
 by way of paying a visit to the friend of her childhood, and it 
 was very kind, everybody said, of Mrs. Stanhope to stretch such 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 a point for a friend, and to keep her so long. But there were 
 many who knew very well what Evelyn Ferrars had not said 
 even to herself, that she was the most useful member of the 
 Stanhope household, doing everything for the children, though 
 not a word was said of any such duties as those which had in- 
 sensibly been thrown upon her. Nobody breathed such a word 
 as governess in respect to Mrs. Stanhope's friend : but people 
 have eyes, and uncommonly sharp ones sometimes at an Indian 
 station, and everybody knew perfectly to what that long visit 
 had come. 
 
 Mr. Rowland was a man of another order altogether. He 
 was not tall, and he was rather broad — a ruddy weather-beaten 
 man, much shone upon by the sun, and blown about by all the 
 winds. It was not difficult to see at a glance the difference 
 between the two, which the critics in Colonel Mitchell's veran- 
 dah had pointed out so fully. He was dressed as well as the 
 gentlemen of the station, and had an air of prosperity and 
 wealth which was not often to be seen in the lean countenances 
 of the soldiers ; but he was not like them. He was respectable 
 beyond words, well-off, a sensible, responsible man : but he was 
 not what is called a gentleman in common parlance. You may 
 say that he was much better, being a good and upright and 
 honest man ; but after all that is but a begging of the question, 
 for he might have been all these things and yet a gentleman, 
 and this would have been in every way of the greatest advantage 
 to him. It would have done him good with the young men 
 under him, and even with the overseers and foremen of his 
 works, as well as with the handful of jDeople who made society 
 in the station. Fortunately, however, he was not himself con- 
 scious of this deficiency, or if he was, accepted it as a matter of 
 fact that did no real harm. He did not, as Mrs. Mitchell said, 
 even pretend to be a gentleman. As he walked along by the 
 side of the lady who had accepted him as her future husband, a 
 great satisfaction betrayed itself in every look and movement. 
 His face Avas lighted up with a sort of illumination as he turned 
 it towards her — not the transport of a young man, or the 
 radiance of that love-look which makes the most homely 
 countenance almost beautiful, for he was perhaps beyond the 
 age for such exaltation of sentiment ; but a profound satisfac- 
 tion and content which seemed to breathe out from him, sur- 
 rounding him with an atmosphere of his own. Perhaps there 
 was not the same expression upon the face of his betrothed. It 
 is true that she was disturbed by the children, who hung upon 
 her, dragging her now in one direction now in another ; but at 
 least her face was quietly serene, untroubled — peaceful if not 
 glad. 
 
 This was the story of their wooing. Mr. Rowland, though he 
 was not looked upon by the Society of the station as quite their 
 equal, was yet invited everywhere, dining with everybody : and 
 was treated witli the utmost hospitality, so that no one could 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 5 
 
 have suspected that any suspicion as to his worthiness was in 
 the minds of these friendly people whom such a sudden event as 
 this threatened marriage had moved to discussion of the claim 
 to be one of them, which indeed he had never made, but which 
 they had all awarded in that ease of social arrangement which 
 herds together a little masterful alien community in the midst 
 of that vast continent peopled by races so different. To be an 
 Englishman is of itself in India a social grade, and thus Mr. 
 Rowland the engineer had many opportunities of seeing Mrs. 
 Stanhope's friend, both in Mrs. Stanhope's house and the houses 
 of the other magnates of the station. He had met her at all the 
 entertainments given, and they were many, and he had almost 
 immediately singled her out, not because of her beauty nor of 
 the dependent position which touches the heart of some men, 
 nor indeed for any reason in particular, except that he did 
 single her out. Such an attraction is its own sole reason and 
 explanation. It was not even choice, but simple destiny, which 
 made him feel that here, by God's grace, was the one woman for 
 him. I do not deny that when this middle-aged and perfectly 
 honest and straightforward man asked her to marry him, Evelyn 
 Ferrars was taken very much by surprise. She opened wide a 
 pair of brown eyes which had not been without note in their 
 day, but which had long ceased to expect any homage, and 
 looked at him as if for the moment she thought him out of his 
 senses. Did he know what he was saying — did he by any 
 strange chance mean it ? She looked at him with scarcely a 
 blush, so great was her surprise, making these inquiries with 
 her startled eyes ; and there can be no doubt that her first 
 impulse was to say no. But before she said it a sudden train of 
 thought darted out from her mind, one crowding after the other 
 an endless succession of ideas and reflections, presented to her 
 in the twinkling of an eye, as if they had been a line of soldiers 
 on the march. And she paused. He was scarcely aware of the 
 hesitation, and resumed again after that moment of silence, 
 pleading his own cause, very modestly yet very earnestly, with 
 a seriousness and soberness which were much more effectual 
 than greater enthusiasm would have been. But by this time 
 she was scarcely aware what he said ; it was her own mind that 
 had come into action, saying to her a hundred things more 
 potent than what he was saying, and changing in a moment all 
 the tenor of her thoughts. Evelyn was not perhaps much more 
 of a free agent than Rowland was in this moment of fate. She 
 felt afterwards that she had been stopped and her attention 
 attracted as by the flash of one of those sun-signals of which 
 she had been hearing. She was altogether in a military 
 atmosphere in the Stanhopes' house, and everybody had been 
 explaining that process by which the sun's rays are made to 
 communicate messages from one distant army to another. She 
 was stopped with the no on her lips by the flash and radiation 
 through the air of that message. She had not any code of 
 
6 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 interpretation to note in a moment what it meant. But she 
 paused, almost to her own astonishment ; and when she found 
 her voice, it was to ask for a little time to think before she gave 
 her final reply. 
 
 When a woman does this, it is almost invariably the case that 
 she decides for the suitor, even the doubt being, I suppose, a 
 point in his favour, and increasing a disposition — a bias towards 
 him rather than away from him. Evelyn had, like most other 
 English women, a lively and wholesome feeling that love alone 
 justified marriage, and that any less motive was a desecration of 
 that tremendous tie. It is an excellent thing for a race that 
 this superstition should exist, and I am far from desiring to see 
 any lower ground accepted as the basis of a connection upon 
 which the purity and character of all other affections depend. 
 But yet when reason is allowed time to speak, there are many 
 other things which may be permitted to have a voice, and a 
 woman may at least be allowed to take into consideration at 
 forty, arguments which at twenty would be indignantly refused 
 a hearing. What Evelyn Ferrars felt as she retired from that 
 interview which had opened to her so many and such extra- 
 ordinary new suggestions for thought, it is difficult to describe. 
 She had become all at once a sort of battlefield — to keep up the 
 military simile — in which that " No," which had been her first 
 conception of the situation, stood like a force entrenched and 
 on the defensive, somewhat sullen, holding fast upon the mere 
 fact of its existence, emitting a dull roar of artillery now and 
 then, while the attacking forces scoured the plain in endless 
 evolution, pressing on and on. The first flash of the sun-signal, 
 which she had not been at first able to interpret, turned out to 
 mean a rapid identification of her own position, which was a 
 thing she had not allowed herself to think of, while it was 
 without remedy. It was not what she had anticipated when 
 she ventured in her loneliness to come up country in answ T er 
 to her friend's warm invitation. She had come out to Calcutta 
 with her brother, the last survivor of her family after the 
 breaking up of home at her father's death ; and when he too 
 died soon after, cut off by the sudden stroke which ends so 
 many promising careers in India, the despair of the solitary 
 woman left in a strange place with few friends and little money, 
 and nobody to come to her help, had been almost without a 
 gleam of light. And in that emergency the Stanhopes had been 
 very kind. The wife had written imploring her heart-broken 
 friend to come to her, offering her all that the affection of a 
 sister could do to supply her loss ; the husband had come, what 
 was even more kind, to do what he could for her, and to take 
 her, if she consented, home. They had been more than kind. 
 There had been no alloy of interested motives in that first 
 impulse of generous compassion. It was good to think how 
 frank, how full, how affectionate it had been. 
 
 But— oh what a pity, what a pity, that these beautiful 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 7 
 
 impulses and sincere moments of loving kindness should ever be 
 shadowed by the cold shade of afterthoughts ! From the 
 moment when Mrs. Stanhope weeping received poor Evelyn 
 into her arms, and lavished upon her the caresses and endear- 
 ments of the most devoted friendship, to that in which Miss 
 Ferrars became the unpaid governess, the useful dependent, and 
 at the same time a member of the family who was apt to be de 
 trop, who was not wanted between husband and wife, who was 
 always there and could not be kept to her schoolroom and out 
 of the way as an ordinary governess would have been — was 
 unfortunately not very long. And indeed it was nobody's fault. 
 The consciousness that she was getting a great deal out of her 
 friend, and that the tables were more or less turned, and it was 
 Evelyn who was conferring the benefit, did not make it easier 
 to Mrs. Stanhope to keep up the effusion and tenderness of the 
 first welcome : and Captain Stanhope was often cross, troubled 
 by harassments of his own, and wishing his wife's friend any- 
 where but where she was, notwithstanding the fact that her 
 presence was "everything for the children." The situation had 
 grown more and more strained, but there seemed no issue out of 
 it : for it takes a great deal of money to take your passage from 
 the centre of India to England, even when you know where to 
 go and have your living assured when there. And Evelyn had 
 nothing, neither a house to go to nor enough money for the 
 journey. There were moments when she would have given any- 
 thing in the world — which is a mere figure of speech, for she had 
 nothing in the world to give — to be able to go away, and relieve 
 her friends of her inconvenient presence ; and there were 
 moments when she felt that she was of too much use in the 
 house to deprive them of her services, as if she grudged the 
 expenditure. It was scarcely possible to imagine a position 
 more painful and trying. It was nothing to her that her whole 
 life Mas absorbed in the service of her friends and their children. 
 Many women are able to make this kind of sacrifice and to stave 
 off all thoughts of the future and what is to become of them 
 after — with a heroic obedience to the Gospel precept of taking 
 no thought for the morrow. But that was not all. For she was 
 at the same time, as she felt, an inconvenience to the very 
 people for whom she was spending her strength : they wanted 
 her very room for other uses. They did not want her constantly 
 between them spoiling their tete-db-tete — always to be considered 
 when there:: was company, and to be invited with them when 
 they went out. The very children got to know that Aunt 
 Evelyn, as they called her, was de trap in the house, and yet 
 could neither go nor be sent away. 
 
 And here suddenly was the opening of a door which made all 
 things possible. When that mental heliograph flashed in her 
 face, and she became aware of what it meant, Evelyn, for almost 
 the first time, retired into her room and locked her door, and 
 for a whole hour turned a deaf ear to the demands made upon 
 
S THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 her. The children came and called in every tone of impatience, 
 Edith, the eldest, tap-tapping upon the closed door for ten 
 minutes continuously, and little Bobby kicking, to the great 
 derangement of the thoughts going on within ; but for the first 
 and only time Evelyn held fast. She had plenty to do in that 
 house, more than ever she had done before in her life. In the 
 previous crises of that existence it had been other people who 
 had done the thinking, and there had been little left for her but 
 to submit. Now, however, the matter was in her hands, and no 
 one else could help her. It was hard work getting her head 
 clear enough to put this and that together ; for the mere idea 
 of marriage was very startling and indeed terrifying to the 
 middle-aged woman who had put it out of all her calculations 
 years ago, and who had retained merely the old youthful super- 
 stition that its only warrant was love. But was that really so ? 
 After all it was not so simple a thing that it could be thus 
 dismissed and classified. It was a very complicated thing and 
 involved many duties. It was not merely an emotional matter, 
 but one full of practical necessities and exertions. To be a true 
 and helpful companion through all the chances of life : to govern 
 a household : to secure comfort and peace of mind and consola- 
 tion in all circumstances and occurrences for the partner of life : 
 to care for him and his interests as nobody else could do : to 
 adopt his obligations and help him to serve God and to serve 
 men — Evelyn Ferrars felt that she was capable of all that. It 
 was a worthy office to fulfil, and it was surely the chief part. 
 As for the other side it was undeniable that she shrank from it 
 a little. But he was not young any more than herself. The 
 hour Avas scarcely over when Mrs. Stanhope herself appeared at 
 the door, half with the air of a mistress who has a right to all 
 her retainer's time, and half with that of a friend anxious to 
 know what was the matter. 
 
 " The children tell me they cannot make you hear," she said. 
 " I came myself to see if you were ill, or if anything is wrong. ' 
 
 "You have come just when I wanted you," said Evelyn, "if 
 I may shut the door on the children for ten minutes more. 
 Helen, something very wonderful has happened, and I have 
 been trying to think what I must do." 
 
 "What has happened V said Mrs. Stanhope in alarm. 
 
 "Mr. Rowland has asked me to — to marry him," said Evelyn. 
 She did not blush as women do, even when their feelings are but 
 little stirred. She was too anxious to learn what her friend's 
 verdict would be. 
 
 Mrs. Stanhope uttered a cry, and rising up hastily, caught 
 Evelyn in her arms. " Oh," she said, '' I shall lose you, Eve ! " 
 The words and the embrace were full of compunction, of kind- 
 ness, and remorse ; but Evelyn felt the relief, the thankfulness, 
 that suddenly Hooded her friend's breast, and her decision was 
 no longer in any doubt. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 "Me. Rowland," said Evelyn with a little tremor, "the 
 first thing I would like to say to you is that we are neither of 
 us very voting." 
 
 "MissFerrars," said the engineer, "you are just as young as 
 it is best and most beautiful to be." 
 
 There came a light like the reflection of a sudden flame over 
 a face which she at least thought to be a faded face. She had 
 never at her youngest and fairest received such a compliment, 
 and how it could have come from a plain man who had so little 
 appearance of any poetry about him was bewildering. It was 
 indeed difficult to resume the middle-aged matter-of-fact tone 
 after such an unexpected break. 
 
 "I am forty-two," she said, "and I have not been without 
 experiences in my life. I want you to know what my past has 
 been, before — " 
 
 "Whatever you please to tell me," he said with an air ot deep 
 respect— "but I must say it is not necessary. I am quite 
 satisfied ; your experiences may have been painful— the world 
 isn't over good to people like you. If you will give me your 
 companionship for the rest of our lives, that is enough for me, 
 and far more than I can ever deserve. I have had my expen- 
 ences too — 
 
 " "I must tell you, however, my story," she said. "Women, 
 especially those who have lived in the virginal age for so long, 
 are very conscientious in these matters. They have a much 
 greater respect for love than ordinary people, and think it 
 dishonourable to keep back the knowledge from a future hus- 
 band of how they have been affected in this way during their 
 past. The love that may have touched them years before they 
 had even heard his name, seems to their over delicacy as it it 
 must be a drawback to them in his eyes— a really guilty secret 
 of which a clean breast must be made before the new and real 
 history is allowed to begin. 
 
 "I was," she said with a little hesitation, " engaged to be 
 married at the usual age. It is a long time ago. My father 
 had not met with any misfortunes then. ^ e were living at 
 home. That makes so great a difference in every way. We 
 were of course well known people, friendly with everybody ; 
 everything about us was well known. You know in a county 
 people are acquainted with everything about each other— v.. u 
 can't conceal it when anything happens to you, even it you 
 wished to conceal it." 
 
 "I never had anything to do with a county, he said, with a 
 sort of respectful acquiescence, interested but not curious— 
 "but I can understand what you mean." 
 
 " Well : when my father speculated and was so unfortunate 
 
10 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 (it was really more for my sake than for any other reason that 
 lie speculated — and then he was drawn on) it became impossible 
 to cany my engagement out. The gentleman I was engaged to, 
 was not very well off then. We had to think what was best for 
 both of us. We agreed that it would be best to break it off. I 
 should only have been a sort of mill-stone round his neck. 
 People might have expected him to help papa. And his own 
 means were quite limited then. He had not been supposed a 
 good match for me in my wealthy days — and when the tables 
 were turned in this way, we both thought it was better to part." 
 
 " And did the fellow let you go — did he give you up ? The 
 wretched cad ! " cried James Rowland, adding this violent 
 expression of opinion under his breath. 
 
 " You must not speak so, Mr. Rowland ; it was a mutual 
 agreement. We both, I need hardly say, felt it very much. 
 I — for a long time. Indeed, it has had an influence upon all 
 my life. Don't think I have regretted it," she said eagerly, " for 
 if we had not done it by mutual agreement as we did, with a 
 sense of the necessity — we should have been forced to do it. 
 For as it turned out, I could not have left my father. He 
 was very much shattered. It cost him a great deal to give up 
 his home. He had been born there, and all his people before 
 him." 
 
 " And you, I suppose, were born there too, and all your 
 people before you 1 " 
 
 "I? Oh! that was nothing! Wherever one is with one's 
 own belongings, there is home. It doesn't matter for anything 
 else. But it was more sad than words can say for poor papa. 
 He had to move into the village to a little house. He bore it 
 like a hero, thinking that it was best not to hide himself as if 
 he had done any wrong. Misfortune and loss are not wrong. 
 I want you," she said, gently, having raised her head for that 
 one profession of faith, but dropping into the usual quiet tone 
 again, " to know exactly all about us before — " 
 
 "And did you ever see that — man again V 
 
 The adjectives that were implied in the pause James Rowland 
 made before he brought out the word "man" were lost upon 
 Evelyn, who probably could not have imagined anything so 
 forcible, not to say profane. 
 
 " Yes," she said quietly, "often. We could not help it ; to go 
 anywhere he had to go through our village. He removed very 
 soon, which was the kindest thing he could have done." 
 
 "The vile cad ! " said James Rowland between his teeth. 
 
 " What did you say ? " she asked with a startled look : but the 
 engineer did not repeat those words. 
 
 " I am sure I for one am very much obliged to him," he said, 
 getting up and walking about the room. " I'm not the man to 
 object. He did the best thing he could have done for me. And 
 you nursed your poor father till he died ; and then you came 
 from one trouble to another." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 11 
 
 " Oh, do not speak of that ! My poor Harry— my darling 
 brother ! to lose his home and his inheritance, and to be 
 banished away from all he loved ; and then just when life was 
 beginning to smile a little, to die ! I cannot speak of that ! " 
 
 Mr. Rowland walked about the room more quickly than ever. 
 She had covered her face with her hands, and the hot heavy 
 tears were falling upon her dress like rain. After many hesita- 
 tions he came up to her, and put his hand on her shoulder. "Is 
 that so bad," he said, "if we really believe that the other life 
 is the better life 1 We say so, don't we 1 and no doubt he's got 
 something better to do there than railroads, and likes it better, 
 now he's there." 
 
 She looked up at him startled, though the sentiment was 
 common enough. It is a fine thing to be matter-of-fact on such 
 a subject, and gives faith a solid reality which is denied to a 
 more poetical view. 
 
 "I'm not sorry for him," said Rowland. "Ill hope to know 
 him some day. I've always heard he was a fine fellow, incapable 
 of anything that was— shoddy." Our engineer used very good 
 English often, but now and then he knew nothing so forcible 
 as the jargon which has got so much into all talk nowadays, 
 and is a pitfall for a partially educated man. " But," he said, 
 pressing his hand upon her shoulder, in a way which perhaps a 
 liner gentleman would not have used to call her attention, 
 " There is this to be said, my dear lady. 1 ou've had a great 
 deal of trouble, but if I live you shall have no more. No more 
 if I can help it ! As long as James Rowland is to the fore 
 nothing shall get at you, my dear, but over his body." 
 
 He said it with fervour and with a momentary gleam as of 
 moisture in his eyes ; and she, looking up to him with a certain 
 surprise in hers in which the tears were not dry, held out her 
 hand. xVnd thus their bargain was made : with as true emotion, 
 perhaps, as if they had been lovers of twenty rushing into each 
 other's arms. No trouble to get at her but over his body ! it 
 was a curious touch of romance and hyperbole m the midst of 
 the matter-of-fact. And how true it turned out ! and how 
 untrue !— as if any one living creature could ever come between 
 another and that fate to which we are born as the sparks fly 
 upwards. But the idea of being thus taken care of, and <>t 
 some one interposing his body between her and every assailant, 
 was so new to Evelyn that she could not but smile. She was 
 the one that had taken care of everybody and interposed her 
 delicate body between them and fate. 
 
 "And now," said he, "it's my turn. I was ready when you 
 began I've more to say, and less ; for nobody has ever done me 
 wrong. I am a widower to start with. I dont know if yon 
 
 had heard that " 
 
 " Yes— I heard it—" , . 
 
 "That's all right then; you did not get to know me under 
 false pretences. But you must know that I wasn t always what 
 
12 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 I am now. I am not very much to brag of, you will say now — 
 but I'm a gentleman to what I was," lie said, with a little harsh 
 ei notional laugh. 
 
 "Don't please talk in that way, you offend me," she said; 
 "you must always have been a gentleman, Mr. Rowland, in 
 your heart." 
 
 " Do you think you could say Rowland plain out ? No ? Well, 
 after all it would not be suitable for a lady like you — it's more 
 for men." 
 
 " I will say ' James,' if you prefer it," she said, with a moment's 
 hesitation. 
 
 " Would you 1 Yes, of course I prefer it — above all things : 
 but don't worry yourself. Well, I was saying — Yes, I've been a 
 married man. She lived for five years. She was as good a little 
 thing as ever lived, an engineer's daughter, just my own class. 
 We worked at the same foundry, he and I. Nothing could be 
 more suitable. Poor Mary ! it's so long since : I sometimes ask 
 myself w r as there ever a Mary ? did I ever live like that, getting 
 up in the dark winter mornings, coming home to the clean 
 kitchen and the tidy place, bringing her my week's wages. It's 
 like a story you read in a book, not like me. But I w T ent through 
 it all. She was the best little wife in the world, keeping every- 
 thing so nice ; and when she had her first baby, what an excite- 
 ment it was ! " The honest middle-aged engineer fixed his eyes 
 on space and went on with his story, smiling a little to himself, 
 emphasizing it a little by the pressure of Evelyn's hand which 
 he held in his own. Curiously enough, as it seemed to her 
 looking on, not much understanding a man's feelings, wondering 
 at them — he was more or less amused by his recollections. She 
 felt her heart soft for the young wife whose life must have been 
 so short : but he smiled at the far-off, touching, j:>leasing recol- 
 lection. "She was a pretty creature," he said, " nice blue eyes, 
 pretty light hair with a curl in it over her forehead." He gave 
 Evelyn's hand another pressure, and looked at her suddenly 
 with a smile. "Not like you," he said. 
 
 She had a feeling half of shocked amazement at his lightness : 
 and yet it was so natural. Such a long time ago : a picture in 
 the distance : a story he had read : the little fair curls on her 
 forehead and the clean fireside and the first baby. He was by 
 no means sure that it had all happened to himself, that he was 
 the man coming in with his fustian suit all grimy, and his week's 
 wages to give to his wife. It was impossible not to smile at 
 that strange condition of affairs with a sort of affectionate 
 spectatorship. Mr. Rowland seemed to remember the young 
 fellow too, who had a curly shock of hair as well, and, when he 
 had washed himself, was a well-looking lad. With what a will 
 lie had hewed down the loaf, and eaten the bacon and consumed 
 his tea— very comfortable, more comfortable perhaps than the 
 well-known engineer ever was at a great dinner. He had his 
 books in a corner, and after Mary had cleared the table, got 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 13 
 
 them out and worked at diagrams and calculations all the 
 evening to the great admiration of his wife. He half wondered, 
 as he told the story, what had become of that promising young 
 man. . 
 
 " Xot like you,*' he said again, "but much more suitable. It 
 I had met you in those days, I should have been afraid to speak 
 to you. I would have admired you all the same, my dear, for I 
 always had an eye for a lady, with every respect be it said. 
 But she, you know, poor thing, was just my own kind. /Well, 
 well ! there's always a doubt in it how much a man is the 
 happier for changing out of his natural born place. But I don't 
 think I should like to go back : and now that you don t seem to 
 mind consorting with one who was only a working man " 
 
 Evelyn was a little confused what to say. She was very 
 much interested in his picture of his past life, but a little dis- 
 turbed that he too should seem no more than interested, telling 
 it so calmly as if it were the story of another : and she had not 
 the facultv of making pretty speeches or saying that a working 
 man was her ideal and the noblest work of God. So she, on her 
 side, pressed his hand a little to call him out of his dream. 
 " You said— the first baby 1 " 
 
 " Oh yes, I should have said that at once. There are two ot 
 them, poor little things. Oh, they have been very well looked 
 after. I left them with her sister, a good sort of woman, who 
 treats them exactly like her own— which has been a great thing 
 both for them and for me. I was very heart-broken, I assure 
 you, when she died, poor thing. I had always been a dreadful 
 fellow for my books, and the firm saw I suppose that 1 was 
 worth my salt, and made a proposal to me to come out here. 
 There was no Cooper's Hill College or that sort of thing then. 
 "We came out, and we pushed our way as we could. It comes 
 gradually that sort of thing— and I got accustomed to what you 
 call society by degrees, just as I came to the responsibility ot 
 these railroads. I could not have ventured to take that upon 
 me once, any more than to have dined at mess. I doboth now 
 and never mind. The railroad is an affair of calculation and ot 
 keeping your wits about you. So is the other. You just do as 
 other men do, and all goes well." 
 
 " But," she said, pressing the question, '' I want you to tell 
 me about the children." -it 
 
 " To be sure ! there are two of them, a boy and a girl 1 
 have got their photographs somewhere, the boy is the eld< 
 I'll look them up and show them to you : poor little things 
 Poor Mary was very proud of them. But you must make allow - 
 ance for me. I have been a very busy man, and bevond knowing 
 that they were well, and providing for them hi ..•rally 1 have not 
 paid as much attention as perhaps I ought to have done \ ou 
 see, I was full of distress about her when I left England ; and 
 out here a man is out of the way of thinking of that sort ot 
 thing, and forgets : well no, I don't mean forgets— 
 
14 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 "I am sure you do not," she said, "but are you not afraid 
 they may have been brought up differently from what you 
 
 would "wish ! " 
 
 "Oh dear, no," he said cheerfully, "they have been brought 
 up by her sister, poor thing, a very good sort of woman. I am 
 sure their mother herself could not have done better for them 
 than Jean." 
 
 "But," said Miss Ferrars, "you are yourself so different, as 
 you were saying, from what you were when you came to India 
 first V 
 
 " Different," he said with a laugh. " I should think so, 
 indeed — oh, very different ! things I never should have dreamt 
 of aspiring to then, seem quite natural to me now. You may 
 say different. When I look at you—" 
 
 She did not wish him to look at her, at least from this point 
 of view, and it was very difficult to secure his attention to any 
 other subject ; which, perhaps, was natural enough. The only 
 thing she could do without too much pertinacity was to ask, 
 which was an innocent question, how long it was since he had 
 come to India first. 
 
 "A long time," he said, " a long time. I was only a little over 
 
 thirty. It was in the year , seventeen years ago. I am near 
 
 fifty now." 
 
 " Then your son ?" she said, with a little hesitation. 
 
 " The little fellow ? Well, and what of him ? " 
 
 " He must be nearly twenty now." 
 
 He looked at her with an astonished stare for a moment. 
 " Twenty ! " he said, as if the idea was beyond his comprehen- 
 sion. Then he repeated with a puzzled countenance, " Twenty ! 
 you don't say so ! Now that you put it in that light, I suppose 
 he is." 
 
 "And your daughter — " 
 
 " My little girl — " he rubbed his head in a bewildered way. 
 " You are very particular in your questions. Are you afraid of 
 them ? You may be sure I will never let them be a subject of 
 annoyance to you." 
 
 " Indeed, you mistake me altogether," said Evelyn. " It will 
 be anything but annoyance. It will be one of the pleasures of 
 my life." She was very sincere by nature, and she did pause a 
 moment before she said pleasures. She was not so sure of that. 
 They had suddenly become her duty, her future occupation, but 
 as to pleasures she was far from certain. Children brought up 
 without any knowledge of their father, in the sphere which he 
 had left so long ago, and which he was so conscious was different, 
 very different from all he was familiar with now. It was curious 
 to hear him enlarge upon the difference, and yet take so little 
 thought of it in this most important particular. Her seriousness 
 moved him at last. 
 
 "I see," he said regretfully, "that you think I have been very 
 indifferent to them, very negligent. But what could a man do ? 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 15 
 
 I could not have them here, to leave them in the charge of 
 servants. I could not drag them about with me from one 
 province to another. What could I have done? And I knew 
 they were happy at home." 
 
 " You must not think I am blaming you. I see all the chm- 
 culty : but now— now you will have them with you, will you 
 not, and take them back into your life 1 " 
 
 He looked at her with eyes full of admiration and content. 
 " Is that the first thing you want me to do," he said, "the first 
 thing you have at heart 1 
 
 "Yes,' - ' she said simply, "and the most natural thing, lour 
 children. What could they be but my first interest 1 _ They are 
 old enough— that is one good thing— to come to India without 
 pause." . 
 
 He rose from her side again and returned to his habitual 
 action of walking about the room. "I knew," he said, "from 
 the first moment, that I was a lucky man, indeed, to meet with 
 you. I have always been a lucky man ; but never so much as 
 when you made up your mind to have me, little as I deserve a 
 woman like you. I've that good in me that I know it when I 
 see it : a good woman from the crown of your head to the sole 
 of your foot. There's nothing in the world so good as that, 
 Now, III tell you something, and I hope it will please you, for 
 it's chiefly meant to please you. I am very well oft. I can 
 settle something verv comfortable on you, and I can provide 
 for the young ones. If it pleases you, my dear, we'll turn our 
 backs on this blazing India altogether, and go home/' 
 " Go home ! " she said, with startled eyes. 
 
 "You'd like it? A country place in England or Scotland-- 
 better still, a house that would be your own— that you could 
 settle in your own way, with all the things that please ladies 
 nowadays. I'll bring you home a cartload of curiosities that 
 will set you up in that way. And then you could have the 
 children, and put them through their facings. Eh, my lady 
 dear % You'd like that 1 Well, I can afford it,' he said with 
 subdued exultation, with his hands in those pockets which 
 metaphorically contained all that heart of man could desire. 
 His eyes glowed with pleasure, with triumph, with a conscious- 
 ness that he was making her happy. Yes ! this was whatevery 
 English lady banished in India must desire. A house in her 
 own country, with every kind of greenness round, and every 
 comfort within— with beautiful Indian stuffs and carpets, and 
 curious things— and the children to pet and guideasshe pleased. 
 He was again the spectator, so to speak, of a picture of lite, 
 which rose before him, more beautiful than that ot old T lmnself, 
 indeed, the least lovely part of it, yet not so much amiss for an 
 old fellow who had made all the money, and who could give her 
 everything that could please her, everything her heart could 
 wish for. His eyes, though they were not in themselves remark- 
 able, grew liquid and lustrous in the pleasure of that thought. 
 
16 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 As for Evelyn, she sat startled, holding her hands clasped in 
 her lap, with many tilings beyond the satisfaction he imagined 
 in her eyes. Home in England meant something to her which 
 could never be again. She said somewhat faintly — "In ►Scot- 
 land, if you would please me most of all." At which words, for 
 How land was a Scotsman, he came to her in a glow of pleasure 
 and took both her hands, and ventured, for the first time, to 
 touch her forehead with his lips. The touch gave this elderly 
 pair a little shock, a surprise, which startled her still more. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Those two people had both a good deal to think about when 
 they parted. 
 
 As for Evelyn the agitation of telling her own story, and the 
 extraordinary commotion which had been produced in her mind 
 by the suggestion of going home, affected her like an illness. As 
 she escaped from the inroad of the Stanhope children, all much 
 surprised and indignant at being kept out, a thing which had 
 never happened in their experience before, and made her way 
 almost like a fugitive to the seclusion of her own room, she felt 
 all the languor and exhaustion of a patient who had gone 
 through a severe bodily crisis. It was over and she felt no pain 
 — on the contrary, that sensation of relief which is one of the 
 most beatific in nature, had stolen through her relaxed limbs 
 and faintly throbbing head. The ordeal was over, and it had 
 been less terrible than she had feared. The man whom she had 
 consented to marry, and with whose life her own would hence- 
 forward be identified, had not disappointed her, as it was possible 
 he might have done. He was not a perfect man. He had been 
 careless, very careless of those children who ought (she thought) 
 to have been his first care. But otherwise he was true. There 
 was no fictitious show about him, no pretension. He had been, 
 she felt sure, as good a husband to that poor young creature 
 who was dead as any man could be. Poor Mary ! her story was 
 so simple, so pretty and full of tenderness as he told it. Evelyn 
 had liked him better for every word. Had she lived ! — ah, had 
 she lived ! That would have been a different matter altogether. 
 In that case James Rowland would probably have become fore- 
 man at the foundry, and remained a highly respectable working 
 man all his life, bringing up his children in the natural way to 
 follow his own footsteps. Would it have been perhaps better 
 so 1 It would have been more natural, far more free of compli- 
 cations, without any of the difficulties which she could not help 
 foreseeing. These difficulties would be neither few nor small. 
 Two children brought up by their Aunt Jane, in an atmosphere 
 strongly shadowed by the foundry, to be suddenly transplanted 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 17 
 
 to a large country house full of luxury and leisure, and the 
 habits of an altogether different life — and not children either 
 but grown up, eighteen and twenty '. She drew a long breath, 
 and put her hands together with an involuntary drawing to- 
 gether of her forces. Here was a thing to look forward to ! 
 But as for Rowland himself he had come through that ordeal, 
 which was in one sense a trial of his real mettle, carried on 
 before the most clear-sighted tribunal, before a judge whose 
 look went through and through him, though not a word was 
 said to put him on his guard, most satisfactorily, a sound man 
 and true, with his heart in the right place and no falseness 
 about him. It was true that in one respect he was very wrong. 
 He had neglected the children : on this subject there could be 
 no doubt. He had no right to forget that they were growing 
 up, that their homely aunt, who was as good to them as if they 
 were her own, was not all they wanted, though it might have 
 been sufficient when they were little children. Miss Ferrars did 
 not excuse him for this, but she forgave him, which was perhaps 
 better. 
 
 She regarded the prospect thus opening before her with a 
 half-amused sensation of dismay and horror. Oh, it would be 
 no amusing matter ! Her mind took a rapid survey of the 
 situation, and a shiver ran over her. It would be she, probably, 
 who would have to bear the brunt. He perhaps would not 
 remark, as a woman would, though he was their father. "A 
 kick that scarce would move a horse may kill a sound divine."' 
 Their defects would probably not be apparent to him, and he 
 would have the strong claim of paternal love to carry him 
 through everything. On the whole, perhaps, it was better that 
 there should be something to do of this strenuous description. 
 It would keep the too-much well-being in hand. Two people 
 very well off, able to give themselves everything they wanted, 
 contented (more or less) with each other, were apt to fall into a 
 state of existence which was not elevated, especially when they 
 were middle-aged and the glamour of youth and happy love, 
 and all the sentiment of that period did not exist for them. 
 Evelyn looked upon married life with something of the criticism 
 of a woman long unmarried. It was often a seltish life. Selfish- 
 ness never comes to such a climax as when it is practised by 
 two, in each other's interests, and does not seem to be selfishness 
 at all. When the horizon is limited by the wants and wishes of 
 "-'. it is more subtly and exquisitely bound in, than when the 
 centre is me. In such circumstances people are incapable of 
 being ashamed of themselves, while a selfish solitary sometimes 
 is. But the children ! that restored the balance. There would 
 be enough to keep a woman in her sober senses, to neutralize 
 the deadening effects of prosperity, in that. As she laid herself 
 down upon her bamboo couch to rest a little, she laughed to 
 herself at the picture of too great quiet, too perfect external 
 well-being that had been in her mind. There would be a few 
 
 c 
 
18 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 thorns in the pillow — it would not be all repose and tranquillity. 
 She might make her mind easy about that. 
 
 The other thing that moved her was the suggestion of going 
 home. Home meant to Evelyn the county in which she had 
 spent her life, the house in which she had been born. Nothing 
 more likely than that the very dwelling was in the market — 
 that he might buy it — that she the last Ferrars might recover 
 possession of the house of her fathers. She had heard some- 
 thing to this effect with that acuteness to catch a half-said 
 inference in respect to anything that is of personal interest 
 which is so remarkable. Had it concerned any property on 
 earth but Langley Ferrars, she would never have caught the 
 words : but because it was about her old home she had heard 
 what two men were saying in the crowd of a station ball — "A 
 property in Huntingdonshire," u dirt cheap," "last man couldn't 
 keep it up." She had divined from this that her home was to be 
 bought, that it could yet be recovered. Oh no, no, she cried to 
 herself, covering her face with her hands, not for anything in 
 the world ! To go back there where she had been a happy girl, 
 where all her dreams of love and happiness had taken place, 
 where the famous oaks and bucks of Selston, which was his 
 home, were visible from the windows ! Oh no, no — oh no, no : 
 that indeed was more than she could bear. In Scotland it 
 would be another matter. It was no doubt the very thing which 
 a kind man without very fine perceptions would do, to buy back 
 her home for her, to take her there in triumph. A thrill of 
 almost physical terror came over her. "Oh no," she said to 
 herself, " oh no, no, no ! " These were the two things that dis- 
 turbed the dreamy calm of that sensation of trial over, the 
 kind of moral convalescence in which she found herself. They 
 came through the misty quiet with flashes of alarm. But, on 
 the whole, Evelyn felt as if she had been ill and was getting 
 better, slowly coming round to a world which was changed 
 indeed, and had lost something, but also had gained something, 
 a world with no vague outlines in it or uncertainty, but clearly 
 defined, spread out like a map before her. Perhaps there was 
 something to regret in the old solitude to which her subdued 
 life could retire out of all its troublesome conditions, and be its 
 own mistress. But solitude, though it may be soothing, is not 
 cheerful : and if she relinquished that, there was surely some- 
 thing in the constant companionship of one who had the 
 highest regard for her, thought the very best of her, looked 
 upon all her ways and words with admiration which should 
 make up. He was a good honest man. He rang as true as a 
 silver bell. There was nothing in him to be ashamed of. He 
 was kind and genuine, with right thoughts and no false shame, 
 but for that unaccountable failure about the children — a man 
 as good as any she had met with in all her life. And to say 
 there was no romance about the business, was to say the most 
 foolish untruthful thing. Why it was all romance, far more than 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 19 
 
 the girl and boy love-story, where they ran away with eacli other 
 in defiance of every consideration ! Here was a sober man, long 
 accustomed to his own way, and to moving lightly unimpeded 
 about the earth, a prosaic man, thinking a good deal of the world, 
 who had suddenly turned aside out of his way, to take note of a 
 neglected woman in a corner, and to raise her up over the 
 heads of all the people who had pitied her. She would have 
 been more than woman had she not felt that. To be able to do 
 favours where she had received them, to give help with a liberal 
 hand where she had been compelled to accept it in little, and 
 perhaps with a grudge. Was it not romance that she who had 
 nothing, should all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, have 
 much and be rich, when she had been poor ? It was in reality as 
 great a romance as if he had been King Cophetua and she the 
 beggar-maid— almost more so, for Evelyn Ferrars was not 
 beautiful as the day. She was to her own consciousness faded 
 and old. This was stating the case much too strongly, but it 
 was how a woman, such as she was, judges herself. If James 
 Rowland was not a romantic lover, who was 1 He was more 
 romantic than any Prince Charming that ever could be. 
 
 Mr. Rowland himself went away from this interview with 
 feelings which were almost in a greater commotion than those 
 of Evelyn. He was excited by going back upon the old life 
 which had died out of his practical mind so completely, and 
 which was to him as a tale that is told — yet which lay there, all 
 the same, an innocent sweet memory deprived of all pain, a 
 story of a young man and a young woman, both of whom had 
 disappeared under the waves and billows of life — the young 
 man, a well-looking fellow in his way, just as much as the young 
 woman who had died. Mr. Eowland, the great engineer, was 
 not even much like him, that hard-headed young fellow with his 
 books, working out his diagrams on the clean kitchen table, and 
 studying and toiling over his figures. How that fellow pegged 
 away ! James Eowland at forty-eight never opened a book. 
 His calculations for practical work came to him as easy as 
 a. b. c. He read his paper and the magazines when lie saw 
 them, but as for scientific works, never opened one, and did not 
 think much of theoretical problems. And then the little house 
 that was not far from the foundry, and the little clean bright 
 pretty wife always ready and looking out for her husband, and 
 the baby crying, and the young man coming in in his grimy 
 fustian — it was a prett} r picture, a charming story such as brings 
 the tears to the eyes. She died, poor thing — they always have 
 a sad end these little tales of real life. This was how he could 
 not help looking at that story which he had just told, though it 
 was the story of his own life. Xow that he thought of it he 
 could have given a great many more details, although he had 
 also forgotten many. It was a pretty story. There were a 
 great many such stories in the world, and when the wife died 
 and the little house fell to pieces, it was not at all unusual that 
 
 C 2 
 
20 THE RAILWAY MAN" 
 
 the poor young fellow went to the bad. It was a good thing he 
 had not clone so in this case. 
 
 And then there came back to him with a shock that strange 
 discovery about the children. Good heavens ! to think they 
 were grown up, those little things ! The little one was a baby 
 when he had seen her last— his paternal feelings had not been 
 very strongly roused. To put them with their mother's sister 
 and persuade her to take the full charge of them had been 
 evidently far the best thing to do. She was a good sort of woman 
 who had no children of her own, and they were to her as if they 
 had been her own, which was everything that could be desired. 
 To make sure that they wanted for nothing, and that they 
 should have kindness and affection 2 Klv ^ essus l e mdrcM was 
 everything. Even now he did not see what more he could have 
 done. He could not have brought them to India, where for a 
 long time he had no settled place, and where, as everybody 
 knows, children cannot live. He had done on the whole the 
 very best thing for them. But it was startling to think that 
 they were children of eighteen and twenty. _ Their aunt had 
 sent him their photographs on various occasions, and he had 
 replied in a way which did not displease her by adding on 
 twenty pounds to his next cheque, and beseeching her to have 
 them better dressed. Queer little things they had looked, not 
 Kke the children at the station. He had taken it for granted that 
 Jean had not much taste for dress, but that when she grew up, 
 the little one would change that. They got to know by instinct 
 what was becoming as they grew up, those little things : so he 
 was easy in his mind on that subject. Perhaps he had not 
 thought of going home till it came suddenly into his mind, to 
 please Miss Ferrars. Of course that was. what would please her 
 most, to have a home in England. She looked like a home in 
 England. She was not a station lady, full of picnics and 
 dances. A large peaceful country house with tine trees and a 
 beautiful garden, and a green fragrant park in which she could 
 walk with him, that was what looked most like her : and she 
 should have it ! If Mr. Rowland had heard of Langley Ferrars 
 which was in the market, I know very well what he would have 
 done. He would have telegraphed to his man of business in 
 London, regardless of expense, directing him to lose not a 
 moment in securing that place. It would have been the most 
 natural thing in the world for him to do. When a man is rich, 
 a man of James Rowland's mind, giving presents is his easiest 
 way of showing his kindly feelings— and it is not a bad way. 
 And all the explanations m the world would never have got it 
 into his kind head that she would not have liked such a present 
 as that. Her own home restored to her, where she could live at 
 ease, not poorly as her ruined father, poor gentleman, had been 
 compelled to do— but lavishly if she liked, carrying things with 
 a high hand, showing all the neighbours, who perhaps had looked 
 down upon her in her poverty, how well she had done for herself. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 21 
 
 There was nothing which would have pleased James Rowland 
 more than this. But fortunately he never had heard that 
 Langley Ferrars was in the market. He was not even aware 
 indeed at this early period where his future wife had lived, or 
 what the name of her home had been. 
 
 But she had said Scotland, which would be the best of all : 
 and then suddenly had appeared before his eyes a vision of a 
 house which he had often looked at when he went down the 
 Clyde upon a holiday, or when there was some work at Greenock 
 winch he was entrusted with, as sometimes happened. Who can 
 tell what visions of this kind steal into the brains of the working 
 men in their noisy excursions, or the foundry lads with their 
 sweethearts ? Oftenest it is a cottage, perhaps a little cockney 
 villa on the edge of a loch. " I'd like to tak' ye there, said with 
 glowing eyes and all the ardour of youthful dreams : or, "Eli, 
 man, if there was a bit housie like yon ahint ye, to gang back 
 to when ye were past work," — such speeches are common in the 
 mouths of the excursionists, who live and die, and are contented 
 enough, in the high "lands " and common stairs of the huge dull 
 town. But James Rowland had been more ambitious. What 
 he had remarked most had been a house, with a white colonnade 
 round it, standing up on a green knoll at the end of a peninsula 
 which overlooked the Clyde. There was one special spot from 
 which he remembered to have watched for it, through the 
 opening in the trees, not saying anything to any one, not even 
 to Mary, but watching till it became visible — not a villa, nor a 
 cottage, but a great house, with beautiful woods round it, and 
 soft green lawns sloping downwards towards the noble river-sea, 
 which just there flowed out into the opening of a loch. It 
 suddenly came before him in a moment while he walked through 
 the cantonments towards his own lodging in the arid enceinte of 
 the station. Such a contrast ! He felt as if he were again 
 standing on the deck of the river steamboat, watching for the 
 white walls, the pillars of the colonnade, as they appeared 
 through the trees. He knew exactly at what moment the trees 
 would stand aside, ranged into groups and lines, and the house 
 would come into sight. He thought that if he had been blind, 
 he w r ould yet have known exactly when that opening came. 
 
 That was the place for him ! His heart gave a leap, almost 
 as it had done when Evelyn Ferrars had given him her hand. 
 It was the next thing almost— the fulfilment of a dream older 
 by far than his knowledge of Evelyn Ferrars. Rosmore ! _ To 
 think that he should come to that ; that it should be possible 
 for him, the lad who had watched it so often coming in sight, to 
 call it his own ! But it was not yet sure by any means whether 
 he would ever call it his own. He was rich enough to buy it, to 
 improve it, to lit it up as it never had been fitted up before, but 
 whether he would get it or not, remained still to be seen. The 
 owner would have to be tempted with a fancy price, more money 
 than it was worth or could bring : for the owner was a great 
 
22 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 personage, a man who was not to be supposed ready to offer one 
 of his places to a chance buyer. Rowland did not mind the 
 fancy price, and he enjoyed the thought of the diplomacy that 
 would be required, and all the advances and retirings. It 
 would be a home fit for her. She would bring the best people 
 round her wherever she was. It should be hers, that home of 
 his dreams, settled on her — her dower house — when he was out 
 of the way : but he did not wish to think of being out of the 
 way. He preferred to think of happiness and dignity and rest 
 in that stately yet modest place, not too grand, quite simple 
 indeed, not like the castellated absurdities of the Glasgow 
 merchants. Among houses, it was like her among women, the 
 most unpretending, the most sincere, every way the best ! 
 
 And, then, with a sudden prick of his heart, he remembered 
 the children. Oh, the children ! To think that they could be 
 so old as that, and that it had remained for her to find it out ! 
 Twenty ! It was not possible little Archie could be that age. 
 What a little chubby fellow he was, with a face as round as an 
 apple, and little rosy cheeks — so like Mary, her very image. It 
 had always been j^leasanter to think of him like that, than to 
 identify the little scrubby boy in the photographs poor Jean 
 kept sending ; or the lean lad who, he now remembered, had 
 appeared on the last one. He had torn it up, as certainly a libel 
 on his son, not at all the kind of picture which he could have 
 wished to set up on -his chimney-piece, and point out com- 
 placently to visitors as " my boy." He remembered this incident 
 of the photograph perfectly now, and that he refused angrily to 
 accept that as a portrait of Archie. " The photograph you sent 
 me was a mistake, I suppose," he had written to his sister-in- 
 law ; " it is quite impossible it could be my boy ; " and he forgot 
 what explanation she made. He was not, indeed, very attentive 
 to her letters. He glanced at them to see that the children 
 were well, but he had seldom patience to read all the four pages. 
 Jean's style and her handwriting, and the very look of her 
 letters had been vexatious to him for many years past. They 
 suggested having been written on a kitchen table with a pen 
 that was greasy. The very outside of them coming in the bag 
 along with his business letters and his invitations gave Rowland 
 a little shock. He preferred that other people should not see 
 him receive these queer missives, the very envelopes of which 
 looked common, not like the others. Now it occurred to him, 
 with a pang, that it was no mistake, that the unwashed-looking 
 lad, with the vulgar, ill-cut clothes was probably his son after 
 all. The idea was horrible to him, but he was glad for one 
 thing that he had torn the photograph up, and could not be 
 made to produce it to show Evelyn what manner of youth 
 Archie was — if he was like that ! And then the baby, whom he 
 had always thought of as the baby, with all the tenderness 
 that belonged to the name. Tenderness ! but something else as 
 well — indifference, forgetfulness — or he could never have been 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 23 
 
 so blind, and suffered them to grow up like that. It was a 
 very tormenting and uncomfortable thought, and 1 lowland was 
 anxious to shake it off. He said to himself that photographs 
 never do justice to the subject ; that perhaps the boy migln 
 a tine boy for all that : and finally contrived to elude the whole 
 disagreeable subject by saying to himself how clever it was of 
 her to have made that out about their age ! What a clever 
 woman she was ; not learned, or that sort of thing, but knowing 
 so much, and so perfect in her manner, and such a true native- 
 born lady. This was her grand quality above all. She said 
 just the right thing, at the right time, never compromising any- 
 one, hurting nobody's feelings. He was himself rather given to 
 treading on people's toes, and making afterwards the astonishing 
 discovery that they felt it, even though he had meant no harm. 
 But she never did anything like that. She would know how to 
 manage that business about the children, and he had a happy 
 persuasion that everything would go right in her hands. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 After all this record of thinkings it will be a relief to do 
 something : which is generally the very best way, if not to 
 settle a problem, at least to distract the attention from it. Mr. 
 Rowland could not now do anything to alter the fact, that he 
 had allowed his children to grow up in a different sphere from 
 that which he intended them to occupy, and that probably the 
 first meeting with them would contain many disenchantments 
 and disappointments. ^o amount of thinking could now alter 
 this fact, and dwelling upon it was not a way of making himself 
 happier or adding in any way to the advantages of the moment. 
 Like most men who have a great deal to do, and who must keep 
 their brains clear for inevitable work, he had the power of 
 putting disagreeable things away and declining to look at them. 
 ''Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," is always the 
 maxim of philosophy, whether we take it in its highest meaning 
 or in a lower sense ; and it appeared to Mr. Rowland that the 
 best thing he could do was to carry out his marriage with all 
 the speed that was practicable, and to wind up his affairs 
 (already prepared for that end) so that his return home might 
 be accomplished as soon, and with as much pleasure to every- 
 body concerned, as possible. As he was a very direct man, used 
 to acting in the most straightforward way, his first step was 
 to call on Mrs. Stanhope, who stood in the place of Evelyn's 
 relations, in order to settle with her the arrangements he 
 wished to make. 
 
 " I should like, with Miss Ferrars' consent— which I have not 
 asked till I should have talked over the matter with you — that 
 
24 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 the marriage should take place as soon as possible. I can trust 
 to her excellent sense to perceive that we can have no possible 
 reason to wait." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Rowland ! " said Mrs. Stanhope. " Of course it is 
 quite reasonable on your part : but I don't think that Evelyn 
 would like it to be hurried. It is not as if you might be ordered 
 off at a moment's notice, like us poor military people. There 
 is no reason to wait of course ; but you can afford to take your 
 time." She said this more from the natural feminine impulse 
 of holding back in such matters, and not allowing her friend to 
 be held cheap, than from any other reason. 
 
 " If you mean that you want some time to fill Miss Ferrars' 
 place " 
 
 " Mr. Rowland ! " said Mrs. Stanhope again, this time with 
 great indignation, "what do you mean by Miss Ferrars' place? 
 I have known Evelyn all my life, and she is my dearest friend. 
 Do you think I could till up her place if I were to try 1— and I 
 certainly don't mean to try." 
 
 "I meant, of course, in respect to your children," said Mr. 
 Rowland dryly. "You may do without your dearest friend 
 by making an effort ; but you can't do without a governess. 
 Excuse me, I am a plain man, and call a spade, a spade." 
 
 This brutality of expression reduced Mrs. Stanhope to tears. 
 "I have never treated her like a governess," she said. "If 
 Evelyn's good heart made her help with the children, it was 
 not my asking, it was her own idea. She did it because she liked 
 it. I implored her not to take them out, feeling that you might 
 imagine something of that sort. Men like you, Mr. Rowland, 
 who have made a great deal of money, always, if you will excuse 
 me, impute interested motives. I foresaw as much as that." 
 
 "Yes," he said cheerfully, "we are given to think of the 
 money value of things. Not of friendship, you know, and all 
 that, but of time and work, and so forth. We needn't enter 
 into that question, for I'm sure we understand each other. And 
 I don't want to put you to inconvenience. How much time 
 will it take you to fill Miss Ferrars' place 1 " 
 
 Mrs. Stanhope was a clever little woman. _ She thought for a 
 moment, in natural exasperation, of dismissing him summarily, 
 and refusing to have anything to say to a man who had treated 
 her so ; and then she thought she would not do that He was 
 rich — he might be useful some time or other to the children ; it 
 would be foolish to make a breach with a friend who would 
 remember nothing but the best of her (she did Evelyn this 
 justice), and who would be kind to the children when they went 
 home, and invite them for their holidays. So she subdued the 
 natural anger that was almost on her lips, and gave vent to a 
 harsh little laugh instead. 
 
 " You do always take such a prosaic view, and reduce every- 
 thing to matter of fact," she said. " I can't afford to have any 
 one in Evelyn's pla,ce, if you desire to speak of it so. Evelyn 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 has helped me with the children for love— I must do the best 
 I can for them by myself when you take her away." 
 
 "Ah well," said Mr. Rowland, "then it is a real sacrifice, and 
 you will suffer. I dare say you have a great deal to do. Would 
 not little Molly Price be a help to you \ She is a nice little girl, 
 and she has nobody belonging to her, and I clout know what 
 the poor little thing is to do." 
 
 Airs. Stanhope made a pause before she replied, looking all 
 the time keenly in the engineer's face as if she would have read 
 his meaning in that way. But he was impassible as a wooden 
 image. " Molly Price is a very nice little girl," she said slowly, 
 trying all the time to make out what he meant, "and she would 
 be of ^use, though far different from Evelyn. But how could I 
 take up a girl like that, without any means of providing tor 
 her I had thought of it," Mrs. Stanhope admitted, 'but to 
 take up her time just when she might be doing better for her- 
 self and to give her false expectations as to what I could do for 
 h er l_ w hen it only can be for a few years, till we send the 
 children home.'' . ,,,«■„! 
 
 " I see,"' said Air. Rowland : " but the fact is that Molly has a 
 little income of her own, and all she wants is a home. 
 " A little income of her own ! " 
 
 "Yes" he said, meetins: with the most impenetrable look the 
 lady's eager scrutiny. "Did you not know % enough to pay for 
 her board if necessary. She only wants a home." 
 
 "I don't know what you can think of me," said Airs. Stanhope 
 with a little haste. "I should never ask her for any board. 
 She would have her share of whatever was going ; and ot course 
 if she liked to help me with the children's lessons— _ 
 
 "You would allow her to do it, without any compensation I 
 Don't explain, my dear lady— I know the situation perfectly. 
 \nd in return for that little arrangement you will help me m 
 getting Evelyn to consent to a speedy marriage. As soon as 
 we understand each other, everything will be perfectly straight. 
 " You are such a dreadful man of business. I am not accus- 
 tomed to such summary ways," said Airs. Stanhope, with again 
 a half hysterical laugh. She was very much afraid of him alter 
 this experience. Xo doubt everybody in the station had seen 
 through her actions so far as Evelyn Ferrars was concerned 
 attributing design and motive where none had existed, and 
 not making any allowances for the unconscious, or only half- 
 conscious way in which she was led into taking an advantage 
 of her friend. But nobodv had ever ventured to put it into 
 words She was overawed by the clear sight and the courage, 
 and also a little by the practical help of this downright man. 
 
 " Yes " he said, "I'm nothing if not a man ot business. W ell 
 now, there is another matter. I want it to be a very grand 
 
 affair." . _ ., i 
 
 She looked at him with eves more wide open than ever, and 
 
 with perceptions more fine than his, and a little gasp ot restrained 
 
26 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 horror in the thought— what would Evelyn say 1— Evelyn who 
 hoped it would be got over so quietly, that it might not be 
 necessary to let people know : as if everything was not known 
 from one end to another of the station almost before it was 
 fully shaped in the brain from which it came ! 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I see you're horrified— and, probably, so 
 would Miss Ferrars be : so I want you to take the responsibility 
 of everything, and put it on the ground of your gratitude to 
 her, which must take some shape. I need not add, Mrs. 
 Stanhope, if you will do this for me, that a cheque is at once at 
 your disposal— to any amount you may think necessary." 
 
 Anger, humiliation, injured pride, a quick perception of 
 advantage, a rapid gleam of pleasure, the thrill of delightful 
 excitement at the thought of a great deal of money to spend, 
 all darted through Mrs. Stanhope's mind, and glittered in her 
 eager eyes. The disagreeable sentiments finally died away in 
 the others which were more rational. To have the ordering of 
 a great entertainment regardless of expense, and everybody at 
 her feet, the providers of the same, and the guests, and indeed 
 the whole community eager either for commissions or in- 
 vitations ! This was a temptation more than any woman could 
 resist. 
 
 " Mr. Rowland," she said, " you are a very extraordinary man. 
 But I must warn you that Evelyn will not like it, and she 
 knows that we cannot afford it. Oh, I will try, if you have set 
 your heart upon it, and just say as little to her as possible. I 
 suppose something like what Mrs. Fawcett had when Bertha 
 was married ? And you must give me a list of all the people 
 you want to invite." 
 
 " The Fawcetts' was a very humdrum affair," said Rowland 
 critically, "quite an ordinary business. We must do a great 
 deal better than that. And as for the invitations, ask every- 
 body—beginning with the Governor. He'll be at Cumsalla 
 about that time, and it will be a line opportunity for him to 
 visit the station in a semi-official way ; and the General com- 
 manding, and the head of the district, and " 
 
 " The Governor and the General ! " Mrs. Stanhope gasped. 
 She lay back in her chair in a half -fainting condition, yet with 
 a keen conviction running through her mind like the flash of a 
 gold thread, that to receive all these people in his own house, at 
 a magnificent entertainment, would be such a chance as never 
 could have been anticipated for Fred ! 
 
 " Carte blanche" said Mr. Rowland, pressing in his enthusiasm 
 her limp and hesitating hand. 
 
 Evelyn Ferrars came in a moment after with the children. 
 She gave a smile to her future husband, and a glance of surprise 
 at her friend, who had not yet recovered that shock of emotion. 
 " What are you plotting 1 " she said : but did not mean it, 
 though it was so near their real occupation. As for Mr. Row- 
 land he was equal to the occasion, his faculties being so stirred 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 27 
 
 up and quickened by the emergency that he was as clear about 
 it as if it had been a railway or a canal. 
 
 " We are plotting against you,"' he said, "'and I think I have 
 got Mrs. Stanhope to enter into my cause" 
 
 She looked from one to another with a little rising colour, 
 divining what the subject would be. For once in her life Mrs. 
 Stanhope was the dull one, not understanding her ally's change 
 of front. She thought he was about to betray the conspiracy 
 into which he had just seduced her, and that Evelyn's dislike 
 and opposition would put an end to the delightful commotions 
 of the marriage feast. " Oh," she cried, " don't tell her. She 
 will never consent.'"' 
 
 "She is so very reasonable that I hope she will consent," said 
 Rowland. "My dear, it is just this, that there is no reason in 
 the world why we should wait. I would like to be married as 
 soon as the arrangements can be made. I think you won't 
 refuse to see all the arguments in favour of this : and that there 
 are very few against it.'"' 
 
 Evelyn grew red and then grew pale, and finally with a little 
 catch in her breath asked how long that would be ? 
 
 "About three weeks," said Rowland, holding her hand and 
 patting it as if to soothe a child. 
 
 Her limbs trembled a little under her, and she sat down in 
 the nearest chair. " It is a little sudden," she said. 
 
 " My dear let's get it over," said Rowland, his excitement 
 
 showing through his usual sobriety like a face through a veil. 
 "It's a great change, but it is the first that is the worst. You 
 and I, as soon as we're together, will settle down into each 
 other's ways, and be very happy. I know / shall, and some of 
 it 11 rub off upon you. There's nothing in the world you can 
 wish for that I shan't be ready to do. It is only the first step 
 that will be a trouble. Let's get it over," he cried, with a quiver 
 in his voice. 
 
 This is not the usual way in which a man speaks to his bride 
 of their marriage, but it is a very true way if people would be 
 more sincere. And especially in the circumstances in which he 
 and she stood, not young either of them, and taking fully into 
 consideration all the mingled motives that go to make a satis- 
 factory union of two lives. Mrs. Stanhope, to whom the con- 
 ventional was everything, listened in horror, wondering how 
 Evelyn would take this ; but Evelyn took it very well, agreeing 
 in it, and seeing the good sense of what her betrothed said. It 
 was the first step that would be the worst. After that habit 
 would come in and make them natural to each other. And to 
 get over that first step, and to settle down quietly to the mutual 
 companionship in which she too felt there was every prospect 
 of satisfaction and content, would no doubt be a good thing. 
 It was somewhat overwhelming to look forward to such a 
 tremendous change so soon. But she agreed silently that there 
 was no reason for delay, and that all he said was perfectly 
 
28 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 reasonable. "I cannot say anything against it," she said 
 quietly. "I have no doubt you are right. It seems a little 
 sudden. I could have wished a little more time." 
 
 "To think of it?" he said quietly. "Yes, my dear, if you 
 had not made up your mind, that would be quite reasonable. 
 But you have quite made up your mind." 
 
 " Yes," she said, " I have made up my mind." 
 
 "Then thinking of it is no longer of any use — because it is in 
 reality done, and there's no way out of it. So the best thing is 
 to carry the plan into execution, and think no more. Come," 
 said Rowland, with an air of great complaisance, " 111 yield a 
 little. I'll say a month — that will leave quite time enough for 
 everything," he said, with a glance at Mrs. Stanhope, to which 
 she replied with a slight, scarcely perceptible nod of the head. 
 And then it was all arranged, without difficulty and without 
 any knowledge on Miss Ferrars' part of the negotiations that 
 had gone on before. Evelyn was much overwhelmed by the 
 present her friend insisted upon making her, of her wedding- 
 dress, which turned out to be of the richest satin, and trimmed 
 with the most beautiful lace, to the consternation of the bride, 
 who remonstrated strongly. " How could you think of spending 
 so much money ? it is robbing the children — and it is far too 
 grand for me." "My dear," said Mrs. Stanhope, the little 
 hypocrite, "if you think how much you have done for the 
 children, and saved me loads of money ! I can afford that and 
 more too out of what I have saved through you." Evelyn was 
 confounded by this generosity, both of gift and speech ; but as 
 the dress did not arrive until the day before the ceremony, there 
 was not much time to think about it, and her mind was naturally 
 full of many subjects more important. The same cause kept 
 her even from remarking the extraordinary fuss in the station 
 on the wedding-day— the flags flying, the carpets that were put 
 down for the bride's procession, the decorations of the chapel. 
 She scarcely saw them indeed, her mind being otherwise taken 
 up. And when the Governor was brought up to her to be 
 introduced, and the General followed him, both with an air of 
 being royal princes at the least, amid the obsequious court of 
 officers, Evelyn was easily persuaded that it was because they 
 had chosen this day to make their inspection, and that their 
 presence at the station was quite natural. " How fortunate for 
 you that they are both here together," she said to Mrs. Stanhope. 
 " Now surely Fred will get what you want so much for him." 
 "Oh, he will get it, he will get it!" Mrs. Stanhope cried, 
 hysterically. " Thanks to you, you darling, thanks to you ! " 
 "'What have I to do with it ?" said Evelyn. She was now Mrs. 
 Rowland, and her mind was full of many tilings. It was a 
 nuisance to have so many people about, all drawn, she supposed, 
 in the train of the great men. As for the great men themselves, 
 they were, of course, like any other gentlemen to Evelyn : they 
 did not excite her by their greatness. She was a little surprised 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 29 
 
 by all the splendour, the sumptuous table, the crowd of people ; 
 but took it for granted that one half at least was accidental, 
 and that though it was quite unappropriate to an occasion so 
 serious as a middle-aged marriage, it might be good for Fred 
 Stanhope, who had so long been after an appointment, which 
 always eluded his grasp. 
 
 Thus the bride accepted, without knowing it, the extra- 
 ordinary honours that were done her, while all the station 
 stood amazed by the number and greatness of the guests. The 
 Lieutenant-Governor came without a murmur to compliment 
 the great engineer. He would not have done it for Fred 
 Stanhope, who was Brevet-Major, and thought himself a much 
 greater man than Rowland. Neither would the General com- 
 manding have come to Fred unless he had known him in private, 
 or had some special interest in him. But they all collected to 
 the wedding of the man who had made the railroads and ditches 
 — a proof, the military people thought, how abominably they 
 were neglected by Government, though it could not sustain 
 itself without them, not for a day ! They were, however, all of 
 them deeply impressed by the greatness that had come upon 
 Miss Ferrars, whom they had pitied and patronized, or even 
 snubbed during her humiliation — by the splendour of her dress, 
 and of the breakfast, and of the bridegroom's presents to her — 
 and still more, by the manner in which she received the con- 
 gratulations of the big-wigs without the least excitement, as if 
 she had been all her life in the habit of entertaining the great 
 ones of the earth. " Give you my word,'' said the little subaltern 
 Bremner, who was an ugly little fellow, and had not much to 
 recommend him, "she was not a bit more civil to the best of 
 them than she was to me." " Looked as if she had been used to 
 nothing but swells all her life,'' said another. "And as if she 
 thought one just as good as another." On the whole, it was this 
 that struck the company, especially the gentlemen, most — that 
 she was just as civil to a little lieutenant as she was to the 
 General commanding. The ladies had other things to distract 
 their minds, the jewels, the bridal dress, the table. Such a 
 commotion had never been made in the station before by any 
 marriage : the Colonel's daughter's wedding feast was nothing 
 in comparison : and that this should all be for the poor lady 
 who had been nothing more than nursery governess to the 
 Stanhopes, was quite bewildering. When the pair went away, 
 the whole station turned out. It was, of course, quite late 
 when they started, as they were only going as far as Cumsalla. 
 The station was lit with coloured lamps, which blazed softly in 
 the evening dusk, turning that oasis in the sand into a magical 
 place. And the big moon got up with a bound into the sky, as 
 she sometimes does when at the full, thrusting her large round 
 lustrous face into the centre of all, as if to see what it meant. 
 " By Jove, she's come out to look at you too," said the bride- 
 groom to his bride. He was considerably excited, as was but 
 
30 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 natural— enchanted with the success of all his plans, and the 
 eclat of the whole performance. It was altogether a trying 
 moment— for perhaps something of a vulgar fibre in the man 
 was betrayed by his eagerness that it should be " a grand affair, 5 
 and his delight in its success. 
 
 But fortunately Evelyn was not in possession of her usual 
 clear-sightedness, and she was still of opinion that the presence 
 of the great people had been accidental, and the extraordinary 
 sumptuousness of all the preparations a piece of loving extra- 
 vagance on the part of the Stanhopes, which should not, if 
 she could help it, go without its reward. " I hope,"' she said, 
 "the moon is loyal, and means it as a demonstration for the 
 Lieutenant-Governor, as all these rejoicings have been already 
 
 to-day." 
 
 " Not a bit of it," said Eowland ; u all the demonstrations 
 have been for you. The Governor and the General were only 
 my— I mean, Fred Stanhope's guests." 
 
 Evelyn thought her husband must have had too much cham- 
 pagne : but she would not let this vex her or disturb her, seeing 
 that it was so great an occasion. She calmed him with her 
 soothing voice, and did not show the faint movement of fright 
 and alarm that was in her breast. 
 
 " I am very glad they were there, anyhow," she said, " for 
 Fred's sake. I hope he will get that appointment now. It was 
 a fortunate chance for him. ' 
 
 " It was no chance at all," said Eowland, half piqued at her 
 obtuseness. " I dare say it will be good for him as well : but it 
 was all to do honour to you, my dear. I was determined that 
 you should have all the honour and glory a bride could have. 
 These swells came for you, and all that is for you, the illumina- 
 tions, and everything. But when I saw you among them, 
 Evelyn, I just said— how superior you were to everything of the 
 sort, Talk about women's heads being turned ! You went from 
 one place to another, and looked down upon it all like a queen." 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! " she said ; " indeed I did not look down upon 
 anything. I did not think of it. I am very different from a, 
 queen. I am setting out upon a great voyage, and my mind is 
 too full of that to think of swells, as you call them. You are 
 the swell that occupies me most." 
 
 "You are my queen," said Rowland in his pride and delight, 
 " and I am not good enough to tie your shoe : for I've been 
 thinking of a great flash to dazzle them all, while you were 
 thinking of— look back, there's the bouquet going of ! nobody 
 in this presidency has seen such fireworks as they've got there 
 to-night. I wanted every black baby of them all to remember 
 the day of Miss Ferrars' wedding. And now when I look at 
 you, I'm ashamed of it all, to think such folly as that should be 
 any honour to you ! " 
 
 These devoted sentiments, however, were not the prevalent 
 feeling at the station, where there was a ball after the fireworks 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 31 
 
 with everything of the most costly and splendid description, 
 and where the health of the bride and bridegroom was drank 
 with acclamations in far too excellent champagne. The ladies 
 who had daughters looked out contemptuously over the heads 
 of the subalterns to see if there was not another railway man 
 in the background who would give a similar triumph to one of 
 their girls. But young railway men are not any more satis- 
 factory than young soldiers, and there was not another James 
 Rowland far or near. When it was all over, Helen Stanhope 
 rushed into her husband's arms with tears of joy, "You have 
 got it, Fred," she said, "you have got it ! and it's all on account 
 of that kind thought you had (for it was your thought) when 
 you went and fetched Evelyn Ferrars home out of her misery. 
 It's brought a blessing as I knew it would.'"' 
 
 Fred pulled his long moustache, and was not very ready in 
 his reply. " I wish we hadn't got so tired of it, Nelly. It might 
 be a kind thought at the first, but neither you nor I kept up to 
 the start. God Almighty didn't owe us much for that." 
 
 " Oh, don't be profane," cried his wife, "taking God's name in 
 vain ! She didn't think so. What would she have done without 
 us ? And it's all thanks to her that we have got it at last," 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Rowland was able to carry out the programme which lie 
 had made for himself. He was a man to whom pieces of what 
 is called luck are apt to come. Luck goes rather against the 
 more serious claims of deserving, and is a thing which many of 
 us would like to ignore — but it is hard to believe there is not 
 something in it. One man who is just as worthy as another 
 gets little that he wants, while his neighbour gets much ; one 
 who is just as unworthy as another gets all the blows while his 
 fellow sinner escapes. Mr. Rowland had always been a lucky 
 man. The things he desired seemed to drop into his mouth. 
 That white house on the peninsula looking down upon Clyde, 
 with its noble groups of trees, its fine woods behind, its lochs 
 and inlets, and the great noble estuary at its foot, proved as 
 soon as he set his heart upon it procurable. Had you or I 
 wanted it, it would have been hopeless. Even he, though his 
 luck was so great and lie possessed that golden key which opens 
 so many doors, was not able to move the noble proprietor to a 
 sale : but he was permitted to rent it upon a long lease which 
 was almost as satisfactory. "I should have preferred to buy it 
 outright and settle it upon you, Evelyn," he said to his wife as 
 they sat at breakfast in their London hotel, and he read aloud 
 the lawyer's letter about this coveted dwelling. "But when 
 one comes to think of it, you might not care for a big house in 
 
32 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Scotland after I am out of the way. It was to please me, I 
 know, that you fixed on Scotland first. And then you might 
 find it a trouble to keep up if you were alone." 
 
 " There is no occasion for thinking what I should do when I 
 am alone, thank heaven," said Mrs. Rowland ; " there is little 
 likelihood of that." 
 
 kv V\ e must be prepared for everything," he said, with a beam- 
 ing face, which showed how little the possibility weighed upon 
 him. " However, perhaps it is just as well. Now, my dear, I 
 will tell you what I am going to do. I am going up to the 
 North to see after it all. You shall stay comfortably here and 
 see the pictures and that sort of thing, and I shall run up and 
 prepare everything for you, settle about Eosmore on the longest 
 term I can get, look after the furniture a bit : well — I should 
 like, you know, to look after the children a bit, too." 
 
 " To be sure you would," she said cheerfully. " You know I 
 wanted you to have them here to meet us ; but I understand 
 very well, my dear James, that you would rather have your 
 first day with them alone." 
 
 " It's not that," he said, rising and marching about the room — 
 "it's not that. I'd rather see you with them, and taking to 
 them than anything else in the world — but — perhaps I'd better 
 go first and see how the land lies. You don't mind my leaving 
 you — for a few days ? " He said this with a sort of timid air 
 which sat strangely on the otherwise self-confident and con- 
 sciously fortunate man, so evidently inviting an expression of 
 regret, that Evelyn could scarcely restrain a smile. 
 
 "I do mind very much," she said : and he was so genial, so 
 kind, even so amusing in his simplicity, that it was strictly 
 true. " I don't like at all to be left alone in London ; but stiil 
 I understand it perfectly, and approve — though I'd rather you 
 stayed with me." 
 
 " Oh, if you approve," he said with a sort of shamefaced laugh 
 of satisfaction, "that is all I want; and you may be sure I'll 
 not stay a moment longer than I can help. I never saw such a 
 woman for understanding as you are. You know what a man 
 means before he says a word." 
 
 It was on his wife's lips to tell him that he said innumerable 
 words of which he was unaware, about quite other matters, on 
 every kind of subject, but all showing the way his thoughts 
 were tending, but she forbore ; for sweet as it is to be under- 
 stood, it is not so sweet to be shown how you betray yourself 
 and lay bare your secrets unwittingly to the eye of day. It 
 was not difficult to divine that his mind was now very much 
 taken up by the thought of his children, not merely in the 
 way of love and desire to see them, but from an overmastering 
 anxiety as to how they would bear his wife's inspection, and 
 what their future place in his life would be. In his many 
 thoughts on the subject, he had decided that he must see them 
 first and judge of that. During the three months in which he 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 33 
 
 had been seeing with Evelyn's eyes and perceiving with her 
 mind, various things had changed for James Rowland. He was 
 not quite aware of the agency, nor even that a revolution had 
 taken place in him, but he was conscious of being more and 
 more anxious about the effect which everything would produce 
 on her, and specially, above all other things, of the effect that 
 his children would produce. And he had said and done many 
 things to make this very visible. For his own part he thought 
 he had concealed it completely, and even that she gave him 
 credit for too much feeling in imputing to him that eagerness 
 to see them, to take his boy and his girl into his arms, which 
 she had just said was so natural. He preferred to leave that 
 impression on her mind. The feelings she imputed to him 
 would have been her feelings, she felt sure, had she been coming 
 home to her children after so long a separation. He could not 
 say even to himself that this was his feeling. He had done 
 without them for a very long time, perhaps he could have gone 
 on doing without them. But what would Evelyn say to them 1 ? 
 Would they be fit for her notice ? Would they shock and startle 
 her ? What manner of beings would they seem in her eyes 1 It 
 was on the cards that did she show any distaste for them, their 
 father, who was their father after all, might resent it secretly or 
 openly — for the claims of blood are strong ; but at the present 
 moment this was not at all in his thoughts. His thoughts were 
 full of anxiety to know how they would please her, whether 
 they were worthy to be brought at all into her presence. Mrs. 
 Rowland would fain have assured him that his anxiety was 
 unnecessary, and that, whatever his children were, they would 
 be her first duty ; but she was too understanding to do even 
 this. All that she could do to help him in the emergency, was 
 to accept his pretext and give him her approval, and tell him 
 it was the most natural thing in the world. Useless to say that 
 she was anxious too, wondering how the experiment would turn 
 out. Whether the lowly upbringing would be so great a dis- 
 advantage as she feared, or whether the more primitive laws of 
 that simpler social order would develop the better faculties, and 
 suppress the conventional, as many a theorist believes. She 
 was no theorist, but only a sensible woman w r ho had seen a good 
 deal' of the world, and I fear that she did not believe in that 
 suppression of the conventional. But whatever it was, she was 
 anxious, as was natural, on a matter which would have so large 
 an influence upon her entire life. 
 
 "I'll tell you what you can do to amuse yourself,'' he said, 
 "when you're tired of the pictures and all that. Go to Wardour 
 Street, Evelyn, and if you see anything that strikes your fancy, 
 buy it. Buying is a great amusement. And we shall want all 
 sorts of handsome things. Yes, I know. I'd put it into the 
 best upholsterer's hands, and tell him to spare no expense. Bui 
 that's not your way : I've learnt as much as that. And then 
 there are carpets and curtains and things. Buy away— buy 
 
 D 
 
34 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 freely. You know what is the right tiling. What's the name 
 of the people in Regent Street, eh? Well go there— buy him 
 up if you please— -the whole shop. / don't care for those flimsy 
 green' and yellow things. I like solid, velvet and damask, and 
 so forth. But what does that matter if you do 1 I like what 
 you like ? " 
 
 " Do you want me to ruin you, James 1 " she said. 
 
 He laughed with that deep laugh of enjoyment which moneyed 
 men bring out of the profoundness of their pockets and persons. 
 "If it pleases you," he said. He was not afraid. That she 
 should ruin him, was a very good joke. He had no desire for 
 an economical wife. He wanted her to be extravagant, to get 
 every pretty thing that struck her fancy. He had a vision of 
 himself standing in the drawing-room which looked out upon 
 the Clyde, and saying to everybody, " It's my wife's taste. I 
 don't pretend to know about this sort of thing, except that it 
 costs a lot of money. It's she that's responsible." And this 
 anticipation pleased him to the bottom of his heart. 
 
 He went away next day, taking the train to Glasgow, not 
 without sundry expressions of contempt for the arrangement 
 of the Scotch trains, and the construction of the railways. " A\ e 
 do things better in India," he said. He was very compunctious 
 about going away, very sorry to leave her, very anxious that 
 she should have everything that was possible to amuse her 
 while he was gone ; and exceedingly proud, yet distressed, that 
 she should insist upon coming to the railway with him. It was 
 such an early start for her, it would tire her, it was too much 
 trouble, he said, with a beaming countenance. But when the 
 train started, and Mr. Rowland was alone, he became suddenly 
 very grave. He had not consented to her wish to have the 
 children to meet them in London, because of the fancies that 
 had seized him. If he could only have gone on paying largely 
 for the children, knowing nothing but that they were happy 
 and well, he would on the whole have been very thankful to 
 make such an arrangement. But not only would it have been 
 impossible to do so, but his wife would not have permitted it. 
 She it was who talked of duty in respect to them, who planned 
 everything that would have to be done. For his part, he would 
 have been quite content to let well alone. But how often it 
 happens that you cannot do that, but are compelled to break up 
 rational arrangements and make fictitious ones, visibly altering 
 everything for the worse. Rowland in his prophetic soul felt 
 that this was what he was about to do. He was going to take- 
 Ins children out of the sphere they belonged to, to transport 
 them to another with which they had nothing to do. And his 
 mind altogether was full of compunctions. He had not after all 
 shown their photographs or their letters to his wife. It would 
 be less dreadful, he thought, that they should burst upon her 
 in their native vulgarity and commonness all at once, than that 
 she should be able to divine what they were like, and look 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 35 
 
 forward to the meeting with horror. Naturally he exaggerated 
 the horror Evelyn would be likely to feel, as he depreciated her 
 acuteness and power of divining the motive which made him 
 so certain that he could not find the photographs. Evelyn 
 knew the situation, indeed, almost as well, perhaps in some 
 ways better, than he did. She divined what was to be expected 
 from the two young people brought up upon a very liberal 
 allowance by the aunt whose husband had been a working- 
 engineer in the foundry. She was sincerely sorry for them, as 
 well as a little for herself, wondering how they would meet her, 
 feeling it almost impossible that there should not be a little 
 grudge and jealousy, a determination to make a stand against 
 her, and to feel themselves injured and supplanted. She followed 
 her husband in her mind with a little anxiety, hoping that lie 
 would not show himself too enlightened as to their deliciencies. 
 And then there would be their aunt to reckon with, the mother's 
 sister, the second mother. How would she bear it if the young 
 people whom she thought perfect failed to please their father ] 
 It would be thought to be the stepmother's fault even before 
 the stepmother appeared on the scene. 
 
 Evelyn returned to her hotel after seeing her husband off, 
 with a countenance not less grave than his, and a strong con- 
 sciousness that the new troubles were about to begin. She had 
 shaken off her old ones. As for that familiar distress of not 
 having any money, it had disappeared like last year's snow. It 
 is a curious sensation to be exhorted to be extravagant when 
 you have never had money to spend during your whole life, 
 and there are few ladies who would not like to try that kind of 
 revolution. Evelyn felt it exhilarating enough for a short time, 
 though she had no extravagance in her; but she soon grew tired 
 of the attempt to ruin her husband which gave him so much 
 pleasure. She bought a few things both in Wardour Street and 
 in the shop in Regent Street to which he had alluded, finding 
 with a little trouble things that were not flimsy and diaphanous. 
 But very soon she got tired ; and by the third day it was 
 strongly impressed upon her that to be alone, even with un- 
 limited capacity of buying, is a melancholy thing. She had 
 said to herself when she came to London that to recall herself 
 to the recollection of old friends was the last thing she would 
 desire to do. There was too much sorrow in her past : she did 
 not want to remind herself of the time when she, too, used to 
 come to London for the season, to do as everybody did, and go 
 where everybody went, That was so long ago, and everything 
 was so changed. But it is strange how the rirmest resolution 
 can be overset in a moment by the most accidental touch. She 
 was sitting by herself one bright morning, languid, in the bare 
 conventional 'sitting-room of the hotel, which was by no means 
 less lonely because it was the best sitting-room, ami cosl a 
 great deal of money in the height of the season. She had 
 received a letter from her husband, in which she had been trying 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 hard to road between the lines what were his ideas about his 
 children, whether they had pleased him. The letter was a little 
 stiff, she thought, guarded in its expression. "Archie is quite a 
 man in appearance, and Marion a nice well-grown girl. They 
 have had every justice done them so far as their health is con- 
 cerned," Mr. Kowland wrote ; but lie did not enter into any 
 further details. Was he pleased ? had the spell of nature 
 asserted itself 1 did lie fear her criticism, and had lie determined 
 that no one should object to them 1 Evelyn was much concerned 
 by these questions, which she could not answer to her own 
 satisfaction. The thing she most feared was the very natural 
 possibility that he might resent her interference, and allow no 
 opinion to be expressed on the subject, whatever might be his 
 own. And it vexed her that he said nothing more, closed his 
 heart, or at least his lips, and gave no clue to what he was 
 thinking. It was the first time this had occurred — to be sure, 
 it was the first time he had communicated his sentiments to her 
 by way of writing, and probably he had no such freedom in 
 expressing himself that way as by word of mouth. Whatever 
 the fact might be, Evelyn felt herself cast down, she scarcely 
 knew why. She vaguely divined that there was no satisfaction 
 in his own mind, and to be thrust away from his confidence in 
 this respect would be Aery painful to her, as well as making an 
 end of all attempts on her part for the good of the children. 
 
 Evelyn was in this melancholy mood, sitting alone, and with 
 everything suspended in her life, feeling a little as if she had 
 been brought away from India where she had at least a definite 
 known plan and work, to be stranded on a shore which had 
 grown cold, unknown, and inhospitable to her, when in the 
 newspaper which she had languidly taken up she saw suddenly 
 the name of an old friend. She had said to herself that she 
 would not seek to renew acquaintance with her old friends : but 
 it is one thing to say that when one feels no need of them, and 
 another to reflect when you are lonely and in low spirits, that 
 there is some One in the next street, round the next corner, who 
 would probably receive you with a smile of delight, fall upon 
 your neck, and throw open to you the doors of her heart. 
 Evelyn represented to herself when she saw this name that here 
 was one of whom she would have made an exception in any 
 circumstances, one avIio would certainly have sought her out in 
 her trouble, and would rejoice in her well-being. She half 
 resisted, half played with the idea for half the morning— at one 
 time putting it away, at another almost resolved to act upon it. 
 And at length the latter inclination carried the day. Part of 
 the reluctance arose from the fact that she did not know how to 
 introduce herself. Would any one in London have heard of the 
 wedding far away at an obscure station in India? Would any 
 one imagine that it was she who was the bride 1 She took out 
 her new card with Mrs. James Rowland upon it, in a curious 
 shamefaced ness, and wrote Evelyn Ferrars upon it with an 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 37 
 
 unsteady hand. But she had very little time to entertain these 
 feelings of uncertainty. It was so like Madeline to come flying 
 with her arms wide open all the length of the deep London 
 drawing-room against the light, with that shriek of welcome. 
 Of course she would shriek. Evelyn knew her friend's ways 
 better, as it proved, than she knew that friend herself. 
 
 "' So it is you ! At last ! I meant to go out this very day on 
 a round of all the hotels to lind you ; but I couldn't believe 
 you wouldn't come, for you knew where to find me." 
 
 "At last!" said Evelyn astonished. "How did you know I 
 was in London at all ? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear Eve, don't be affected," cried this lively lady. 
 "as if a great person like Mr. Rowland could travel and bring 
 home his bride without all the papers getting hold of it ! Why, 
 we heard of your wedding — dress and the diamonds he gave 
 you, almost as soon as you did. They were in one of the ladies' 
 papers of course. And so, Evelyn, after waiting so long, you 
 have gone and made a great match after all.''' 
 
 " Have I made a great match % indeed I did not know it. I 
 have married a very good man, which is of more consequence, ' 
 said Evelyn, with almost an air of offence. But that, of course, 
 was absurd, for Lady Leighton had not the most distant idea of 
 offending. 
 
 " Oh, that goes without saying," she said lightly ; " every new 
 man is more perfect than any other that went before him. But 
 you need not undervalue your good things all the same. I 
 suppose there were advantages in respect to the diamonds % He 
 would be able to pick them up in a way that never happens to 
 us poor people at home." 
 
 " I dare say he will be glad to tell you if you want to know ; 
 but, Madeline, that is not what interests me most. There are 
 so many things I should like to hear of." 
 
 " Yes ; to be sure," said Lady Leighton, growing grave ; "but, 
 my dear, if I were you I wouldn't inquire — not now, when 
 everything is so changed." 
 
 " What is so changed 1 " said Evelyn, more and more surprised. 
 Her friend made a series of signals with her eyes, indicating 
 some mystery, and standing, as Evelyn now perceived, in such 
 a position as to screen from observation an inner room from 
 which she had come. The pantomime ended by a tragic whisper : 
 " He is there — don't see him. It would be too great a shock. 
 And why should you, when you are so well off?" 
 
 " Who is there ? And why should I not see, whoever it is i 1 
 can't tell what you mean," Mrs. Rowland said. 
 
 "Oh, if that is how you feel ! " said her friend ; "but I would 
 not in your place." 
 
 At this moment Evelyn heard a sound as of shuffling feet, and 
 looking beyond her friend's figure, saw an old man, as she sup 
 posed, with an ashy countenance 1 and bowed shoulders, coming 
 towards them. At the first glance he seemed very old, very 
 
38 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 feeble ; some one whom she had never seen before — and it took 
 him some time to make his way along the room. Even when 
 he came near she did not recognize him at first. He put out 
 feebly a lifeless hand, and said, in a thick mumbling tone : "Is 
 this Evelyn Ferrars? but she has grown younger instead of 
 older. Not like me." 
 
 Evelyn rose in instinctive respect to the old man whom she 
 did not know. She thought it must be some old relative of 
 Madeline, some one who had known her as a child. She answered 
 some indifferent words of greeting, and dropped hastily as soon 
 as she had touched it, the cold and flabby hand. It could be 
 no one whom she had known, though he knew her. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Saumarez," said Lady Leighton, " I am so sorry 
 this has happened. I do hope it will not hurt you. Had I not 
 better ring for your man 1 You know that you must not do too 
 much or excite yourself. Let me lead you back to your chair." 
 
 A faint smile came over the ashen face. " She doesn't know 
 me," he said. 
 
 Oh, heaven and earth, was this he ? A pang of wonder, of 
 keen pain and horror, shot through Evelyn like a sudden blow, 
 shaking her from head to foot. It was not possible ! the room 
 swam round her, and all that was in it. He I The name had 
 been like a jDistol shot in her head, and then something, a look, 
 as if over some chilly snowy landscape, a gleam of cold light 
 
 had startled her even before the name. " Is it is it 1 I did 
 
 not know you had been ill," she said, almost under her breath. 
 
 "l T es, it is my own self, and I have been ill, extremely ill; 
 but I am getting better. I will sit down if you will permit me. 
 I am not in the least excited ; but very glad to see Mrs. Rowland 
 and offer her my congratulations. I am not in such good case 
 myself, — nobody is likely to congratulate me." 
 
 "I do not see that," said Lady Leighton. "You are so very 
 much better than you have been." 
 
 " That's very true. I may be congratulated so far. I should 
 offer to call at your hotel on Mr. Rowland, but I fear my strength 
 is not to be trusted. I am more glad than I can tell you to 
 have seen you looking so well and happy, after so many years. 
 Lady Leighton, I think I will now accept your kind offer to 
 ring for my man." He put out the gray tremulous hand again, 
 and enfolded that of Evelyn in it. " I am very glad, very glad," 
 he said with emphasis, in a low but firm tone, Lady Leighton 
 having turned away to ring the bell, " to have seen you again, 
 and so well, and so young, and I don't doubt so happy. My 
 wife is dead, and I am a wreck as you see " 
 
 " I am very sorry, very sorry." 
 
 " I knew you would be : while I am glad to have seen you so 
 well. And I have two children whom I shall have to leave to 
 the tender mercies of the world. Ah, we have trials in our 
 youth that we are tragical about ; but believe me these are the 
 real tragedies of life," he said. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 39 
 
 And then there came something almost more painful still. 
 His servant came into the room and put on his coat and buttoned 
 him into it as if he had been a child, then raised him smartly 
 from his chair, drew an arm within his own, and led him away. 
 The two ladies heard them go slowly shuffling down-stairs, the 
 master leaning upon the servant. Evelyn had grown as pale 
 as marble. She remembered now to have seen an invalid chair 
 standing at the door. And this was he who had tilled her young 
 life with joy, and afterwards with humiliation and pain. "Oh," 
 she cried, "and that is lie, that is he ! " 
 
 " I wish I could have spared you the sight,'"' said Lady 
 Leigliton, "but when he saw your card — he looked at it, when 
 I dropped it out of my hand : people ill like that are so 
 inquisitive — I knew how it would be. Well, you must have 
 seen him sooner or later. It is as well to get it over. He is a 
 wreck, as he says. And oh the contrast, Evelyn ! He could 
 not but see it — you so young-looking, so happy and well-off. 
 What a lesson it is."' 
 
 "I don't want to be a lesson,*' said Evelyn, with a faint smile 
 " Don't make any moral out of me. He was a man always so 
 careful of himself. What has he done to be so broken down ? " 
 
 " Can you ask me what he has done. Evelyn ? He has thought 
 of nothing but himself and his own advantage all his life. Don't 
 you think we all remember "' 
 
 " I hope that you will forget — with all expedition," cried 
 Evelyn quickly. " I have no stone to cast at him. I am very 
 very sorry." The moisture came into her kind eyes. Her pity 
 was so keen that it felt like a wound in her own heart. 
 
 " Oh, Evelyn, I would give the world this had not happened. 
 I did all I could to keep you from seeing he was there. Such a 
 shock for you without any warning ! I know, I know that a 
 woman never forgets." 
 
 "Oh," said Mrs. Rowland, hastily, "that has nothing to do 
 with it. I never was sentimental like you ; and a spectacle 
 like that is not one to call up tender recollections, is it ? But I 
 am very sorry. And he has children, to make him feel it all 
 the more." 
 
 ''Yes," said Lady Leighton doubtfully, "he has children. 1 
 must tell you that he still has a way of working on the feelings. 
 Oh, poor man, I would not say a word that was unkind ; but 
 now that he has nothing but his troubles to give him an interest, 
 he likes, perhaps, to make the most of his troubles. I wish 
 you had not had this shock to begin with, dear Evelyn, your 
 first clay at home." 
 
40 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Does a woman never forget? It was not true perhaps as 
 Lady Leighton said it, but it would be vain to say that Evelyn 
 was not moved to the bottom of her heart by the sight of her 
 former lover. He, about whom all the dreams of her youth had 
 been woven, who had deserted her, given her up in her need, 
 and humiliated her before all the world. To see him at all 
 would not have been without effect upon her, but to see him so 
 humiliated in his turn, so miserable a wreck, while she was in 
 all the flush of a late return to youth and well-being, happy in 
 a subdued way, and on the height of prosperity, gave her a 
 shock of mingled feeling, perhaps more strong than any she 
 had experienced since he rent her life in two, and covered her 
 (as she felt) with shame. But it was not any re-awakening of 
 the extinguished fire which moved Evelyn. She could not 
 forget, it was true, and yet she could easily have forgotten, the 
 relation in which she had stood to him, and her old adoration 
 of him, at all times the visionary love of a girl, giving a hundred 
 fictitious excellencies to the hero she had chosen. This was not 
 what had occurred to her mind. Had she seen him in his 
 ancient supremacy of good fortune — a well-preserved, middle- 
 aged Adonis, smiling perhaps, as she had imagined, at her late 
 marriage with a rich parvenu, keeping the superior position of 
 a man who has rejected a love bestowed upon him, and never 
 without that complacent sense of having "behaved badly," 
 which is one of the many forms of vanity — the sight would not 
 have disturbed her, except, perhaps, with a passing sensation of 
 anger. But to see him in his downfall gave Evelyn a shock of 
 pain. It was too terrible to think of what he had been and 
 what he was. Instead of the sense of retribution which her 
 friend had suggested, Evelyn had a horrified revulsion of feeling, 
 rebellious against any such possibility, angry lest it should be 
 supposed that she could have desired the least and smallest 
 punishment, or could take any satisfaction from its infliction. 
 She would haA'e hated herself could she have thought this 
 possible. There is an old poem in which the story of Troilus 
 and Cressida, so often treated by the poets in its first bloom, 
 has an after episode, an administration of poetic justice, in 
 which all the severity of the mediaeval imagination comes forth. 
 The false Cressida falls into deepest misery in this tragic strain, 
 and becomes a leper, the last and most awful of degradations. 
 And while she sits with her wretched companions, begging her 
 miserable bread by the roadside, the injured Troilus, the true 
 knight, rides by. Evelyn, though I do not suppose she had 
 ever seen Henryson's poem, felt the same anguish of pity which 
 arose in the bosom of the noble Greek. If she could have sent 
 in secret the richest offering, and stolen aside out of the way 
 
THE RAILWAY MAN 41 
 
 not to insult the sufferer even by a look, she would have done 
 it. Her pity was an agony, but it had nothing in it akin to 
 love. 
 
 Lady Leighton, however, did not leave her friend any time fco 
 brood over this painful scene. She had no intention to confine 
 to a mere interchange of courtesies this sudden reappearance 
 upon the scene of a former companion whom, indeed, she could 
 not help effectually in the period of her humiliation, but to 
 whom now, in her newly acquired wealth, Madeline felt herself 
 capable of boing of great use. And it must not be supposed 
 that it was purely a vulgar inclination to connect herself with 
 rising fortunes, or to derive advantage from her friend's new 
 position that moved her. It was in its way a genuine and 
 natural desire to further her old companion, whom she had been 
 fond of, but for whom she could do nothing when she was poor 
 and her position desperate. The love of a little fuss and pleasant 
 meddling was the alloy of Lady Leighton's gold, not any mer- 
 cenary devotion to riches or thought of personal advantage. It 
 was certainly delightful to have somebody to push and help on 
 who could be nothing but a credit to you ; to whom it would 
 be natural to spend much money; and who yet was "one of 
 our own set"' and a favourite friend. 
 
 On the second day accordingly after that meeting which had 
 been so painful an entry into the old world, Lady Leighton 
 came in upon Evelyn as she sat alone, not very cheerful, longing 
 for her husband and the new home in which she should find her 
 natural place. She came with a rustle and bustle of energy, 
 and that pretty air of having a thousand things to do, which is 
 distinctive of a lady in the height of the season. "Here you 
 are, all alone," she said, "and so many people asking for you. 
 Why didn't you come to luncheon yesterday? We waited half 
 an hour for you. And then we expected you at five o'clock, and 
 I had Mary Iiiversdale and Alice Towers to meet you, who had 
 both screamed to hear you were in town. And you never came ! 
 And of course they thought me a delusion and a snare, for 
 they had given up half a dozen engagements. Why didn't vou 
 come ? " 
 
 " I am very sorry," Evelyn said. 
 
 "That is, no excuse," cried her friend. " You were upset by 
 the sight of that wretched Xed Saumarez. And I don't wonder ; 
 but I believe he is not half so ill as he looks, and up to a good 
 deal of mischief still. However, that is not the question. I 
 have come about business. What are you going to do about a 
 house ! " 
 
 "About a house?" 
 
 "I came to be quite frank with you to-day. When your 
 husband comes back you ought to have something ready for 
 him. My dear Evelyn, I am going to speak seriously. If you 
 want to know people, and be properly taken up, you must have 
 a house for the rest of the season. A hotel is really not the 
 
42 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 thing. You ought to be able to have a few well chosen dinner 
 parties, and to see your friends a little in the evening. There 
 is nothing like a speciality. You might go in for Indian people. 
 Let it be known that people are sure to meet a few Eastern 
 big-wigs, and your fortune would be made." 
 
 " But " cried Evelyn aghast. 
 
 "Don't tell me," said Lady Leighton solemnly, "that you 
 don't want to know people, and be properly taken up again. 
 Of course you don't require to be pushed into society like a 
 mere millionaire who is nobody. You are quite different. 
 People remember you. They say to me, ' Oh, that is the Miss 
 Ferrars of the Gloucestershire family.' Everybody knows who 
 you are. You have nothing to do but to chose a nice house— 
 and there are plenty at this time of the season to be had for 
 next to nothing— and to give a few really nice dinners. Doing 
 it judiciously, finding out when people are free, for of course it 
 does happen now and then that there will be a day when there 
 is nothing going on, you can manage it yet. And everybody 
 knows that your husband is very rich. You could do enough at 
 least to open the way for next season, and make it quite simple. 
 But, my dear, in that case you must not go on wasting these 
 precious days, without deciding on anything and living in a 
 hotel." 
 
 " You take away my breath," said Mrs. Rowland. " I have 
 not the least desire to be taken up by society. If I had, I think 
 what I saw the other day would have been enough to cure me ; 
 but I never had the smallest thought— my husband is rich, I 
 suppose, but lie does not mean to spend his money so. He 
 means to live — at home — among his own people." 
 
 Evelyn's voice, which had been quite assured, faltered a little 
 and trembled as she said these last words. 
 
 " Among his own people ! " said Lady Leighton, with a little 
 
 shudder. "Do you mean to say ■ ! Now, my dear Evelyn, 
 
 you must forgive me, for perhaps I am quite wrong. I have 
 heard about Mr. Rowland. I have always heard that he was — 
 
 that he had been " Madeline Leighton was a person of 
 
 great sense. She saw in Evelyn's naturally mild eyes that look 
 of the dove enraged, which is'more alarming as a danger signal 
 than any demonstration on the part of the eagle. She con- 
 cluded hastily, " A very excellent man, the nicest man in the 
 world." 
 
 "You were rightly informed," said Mrs. Rowland, somewhat 
 stiffly. " My husband is as good a man as ever lived." 
 
 "But to go and settle among— his own people ! perhaps they 
 are not all as good as ever lived. They must be a little different 
 to what you have been used to. Don't you think you should 
 stipulate for a little freedom 1 Frank's people are as good as 
 ever lived, and they are all of course, so to speak, in our own 
 set. But if I were condemned to live with them all the year 
 round, I should die. Evelyn ! it is, I assure you, a very serious 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 43 
 
 matter. One should begin with one's husband seriously, you 
 know. Very good women who always pretend to like every- 
 thing they are wanted to do, and smother their own inclinations, 
 are a mistake, my dear. They always turn out a mistake. In 
 the first place they are not true any more than you thought me 
 to be the other day. They are cheating, even if it is with the 
 best of motives. And in the end they are always found out. 
 And to pretend to like things you hate is just being as great a 
 humbug as any make-believe in society. Besides, your husband 
 would like it far better if you provided him with a little amuse- 
 ment, and kept his own people off him for part of the year." 
 
 " I don't think Society would amuse him at all," said Evelyn, 
 with a laugh. "And besides, he has no people that I know of — 
 so that you need not be frightened for me — except his own 
 children," she added, with involuntary gravity. 
 
 Lady Leighton gave vent to an " O ! " which was rounder 
 than the O of Giotto. Horror, amazement, compassion were in 
 it. " He has children ! " she said faintly. 
 
 " Two — and they, of course, will be my first duty." 
 
 " Girls 2 " 
 
 "A girl and a boy." 
 
 " Oh, you poor thing ! " said Lady Leighton, giving her friend 
 an embrace full of sympathy. " I am so sorry for you ! I hope 
 they are little things." 
 
 Evelyn felt a little restored to herself when she was encoun- 
 tered with such solemnity. "You have turned all at once into 
 a Tragic Muse," she said ; " you need not be so sorry for me. I 
 am not — sorry for myself." 
 
 "Oh, don't be a humbug," said Lady Leighton severely ; "of 
 all humbugs a virtuous humbug is the worst. You hate it ! I 
 can see it in your eyes." 
 
 "My eyes must be very false if they express any such feeling. 
 To tell the truth," she added smiling, " I am a little frightened 
 — one can scarcely help being that. I don't know how they 
 may look upon me. I shouldn't care to be considered like the 
 stepmother of the fairy tales." 
 
 "Poor Evelyn!" said Lady Leighton. She was so much 
 impressed as to lose that pliant readiness of speech which was 
 one of her great qualities. Madelines resources were generally 
 supposed by her friends to be unlimited : she had a suggestion 
 for everything. But in this case she was silenced — for at least 
 a whole minute. Then she resumed, as if throwing off a load. 
 
 "You should have the boy sent to Eton, and the girl to a 
 good school. You can't be expected to take them out of the 
 nursery. And for their sakes, Evelyn, if for nothing else, it is 
 most important that you should know people and take your 
 place in society. Tt makes all my arguments stronger instead 
 of weaker : you must bring Miss Rowland out — when she 
 grows up." 
 
 Evelyn could not but laugh at the ready advice which always 
 
44 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 sprang up like a perpetual fountain, in line independence of 
 circumstances. "Dear Madeline," she said, "there is only one 
 drawback, which is that they are grown up already. My step- 
 daughter is eighteen. I don't suppose she will go to school, if 
 I wished it ever so much — and I have no wish on the subject. 
 It is a great responsibility ; but provided they will accept me 
 as their friend " 
 
 "And where have they been brought up 1 Is she pretty 1 are 
 they presentable 1 She must have money, and she will marry, 
 Evelyn ; there's hope in that. But instead of departing from 
 my advice to you on that account, I repeat it with double force. 
 You must bring out a girl of eighteen. She must see the world. 
 You can't let her marry anybody that may turn up in the 
 country. Take my word for it, Evelyn," she added solemnly, 
 "if it was necessary before, it is still more necessary now." 
 
 " She may not marry at all — there are many girls who do 
 not." 
 
 "Don't let us anticipate anything so dreadful," said the 
 woman of the world. "A stepdaughter who does not marry is 
 too much to look forward to. No, my dear, that is what you 
 must do. You must bring her out well and get her off. Is she 
 pretty ? for, of course, she will be rich." 
 
 " I don't know. I know little about the children. My husband 
 has been in India for a long time. He does not himself know 
 so much of them as he ought." 
 
 A shiver went through Lady Leighton's elegant toilette. She 
 kissed her friend with great pity. " I will stand by you, dear," 
 she said, " to the very utmost of my ability. Y r ou may be sure 
 that anything I can do to help you ; — but put on your bonnet 
 in the meantime. I have a list of houses I want you to look at. 
 You can look at them at least— that does no harm ; if not for 
 this season, it will be a guide to you for the next. And it is 
 always more or less amusing. After that there are some calls 
 I have to make. Come, Evelyn, I really cannot leave you to 
 mope by yourself here." 
 
 And Evelyn went. She was lonely, and it was a greater dis- 
 traction after all than buying cabinets in Wardour Street, and 
 looking over even the most lovely old Persian rugs. Looking 
 at houses, especially furnished houses, to be let for the season, 
 is an amusement which many ladies like. It is curious to see 
 the different ideas, the different habits of the people who want 
 to let them, and to contrast the house that is furnished to be let 
 and the house that is furnished to be lived in, which are two 
 different things. Lady Leighton enjoyed the afternoon very 
 much. She pointed out to her friend just how she could arrange 
 the rooms in every house, so that the liveliest hopes were left in 
 the mind of each householder ; and by the time they got back 
 to Madeline's own house to tea, she declared herself too tired to 
 do anything but lie on the sofa, and talk over all they had seen. 
 " It lies between Wilton Place and Chester Street," she said. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 The last is the best house, but then the other is better fur- 
 nished. That boudoir in Wilton Place is a little gem : or you 
 might make the drawing-room in Chester Street exceedingly 
 pretty with those old things you are always buying. The car- 
 pets are very bad, I must allow, but with a few large rugs — and 
 it is such a good situation. Either of them would do. And so 
 cheap ! — a mere nothing for millionaires like you." 
 
 Evelyn allowed, not without interest, that the houses were 
 very nice. She allowed herself to discuss the question. Visions 
 floated before her eyes of old habits resumed, and that flutter of 
 movement, of occupation, of new things to see and hear, which 
 forms the charm of town, caught her with its fascination. To 
 step a little, just a little, not much, into the living stream, to 
 feel the movement, though she was not carried away by it, was 
 a temptation. At a distance it is easy to condemn the frivolity, 
 the hurry, the rush of the season ; but to touch its glittering 
 surface over again after a long interval of banishment, and feel 
 the thrill of the tide of life which is never still, which quickens 
 the pulse and stimulates the mind, has a great attraction in it. 
 Evelyn forgot for the moment the shock which had so driven 
 her back from all pleasant projects. She allowed herself to see 
 with Madeline's eyes. Xo doubt it might be pleasant. It was 
 now June, and a month of society in the modified way in which 
 a late arrival, so long separated from all old acquaintances can 
 alone hope to enjoy it, would not be too great an interruption 
 to the home life, and it would leave time to have everything 
 done at Rosmore. And it would postpone a little the introduc- 
 tion to many new elements of which she was afraid. She had 
 been disappointed when her husband left her, to have the en- 
 trance upon her new life postponed at all, and the period of 
 suspense prolonged. But that feeling began to give way to 
 other feelings — feelings more natural. After the unutterably 
 subdued life she had led in India, and before the novel and 
 strange existence which was now waiting for her as the mother 
 and guide of human creatures unknown to her, might not a 
 moment of relaxation, of individuality, be worth having ? She 
 had been Mrs. Stanhope's friend without any identity, with a 
 life which was all bound up in the obscure rooms of the bunga- 
 low ; and she was Mr. Rowland's wife, the mother of his children, 
 the head of his house, in an atmosphere altogether novel to her, 
 and which of her, in her natural personality, knew nothing. 
 Society was not her sphere, yet it was the nearest to any sphere 
 in which she could stand as herself. And she allowed herself to 
 be seduced. She thought that perhaps for a little James might 
 enjoy it. Chester Street is very near the Park. To walk out 
 in the June mornings, when even the London air is made of 
 sunshine, to the Plow and see the dazzling stream fiow by — the 
 beautiful horses, the beautiful people — girls and men whom it 
 was a sight to see — to meet every five minutes an old acquaint- 
 ance, to hear once more that babble about people and personal 
 
46 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 incidents which is so trivial to the outsider, but always attrac- 
 tive to those who know the names and can understand the situ- 
 ations about which everybody talks ! And in the evening, to 
 sit at the head of the table with perhaps a statesman, perhaps 
 a poet, somebody of whom the whole world has heard, at her 
 right hand, penetrating even the society chatter with a thread 
 of meaning ! Evelyn forgot for the moment various things that 
 would not be so pleasant — that her husband w r ould like to enter- 
 tain a lord, but would not probably know much more about 
 him, however great he might be — that he might be inclined to 
 tell the price of his wine, and laugh the rich man's laugh of 
 satisfaction at the costliness of everything, and the ruin that 
 awaited him in London. These little imperfections Evelyn was 
 perhaps too sensitive of, but on this occasion they stole out of 
 her mind. She began to discuss Chester Street with a gradually 
 growing satisfaction. Or Park Lane 1 There was a house in 
 Park Lane — and for a hundred pounds or two of rent, if he 
 liked the scheme at all, James would not hesitate. She was 
 quite sure of him so far as that was concerned. 
 
 " Chester Street has its advantages," said Lady Leighton. " It 
 is such a capital situation ; and yet quite modest, no pretension. 
 It is more like you, Evelyn. So far as Mr. Rowland is con- 
 cerned, I feel sure, though I don't know him, that he would 
 prefer Belgrave Square, and the biggest rent in London." 
 
 " How do you know that ? " said Evelyn with an uneasy 
 laugh. 
 
 " Because I know my millionaires," said Lady Leighton 
 gravely. " But for the end of the season, and an accidental 
 sort of thing as it will be, I should not recommend that. Next 
 year if you come up in May, and on quite lance ; but for this 
 year, when you are only feeling your way — Chester Street, 
 Evelyn ! that's my idea — and a few small parties, quite select, 
 to meet some Indian man. I don't want you to have just a 
 common success like the vulgar rich people. Dear, no ! quite a 
 different thing— a success d'estime—a, real good foundation for 
 anything you might like to do after. You might take Marl- 
 borough House then — if you could get it — and stick at nothing." 
 
 " We shall not attempt to get Marlborough House," said 
 Evelyn, with a laugh, " nor even anything more moderate. Mr. 
 Rowland does not care for town. But I confess that you have 
 beguiled me, Madeline, with your flattering tongue. I think — 
 I should rather like — if he approves of the idea." 
 
 " My dear, it is surely enough if you approve of the idea. He 
 is not going to make you a black slave." 
 
 " My husband is sure to approve of what I do," said Evelyn, 
 with a little dignity. "But I prefer to consult him all the 
 same. He may have formed other engagements. It may be 
 necessary to go up to Rosmore at once. But I confess that I 
 should like — if there is nothing else in the way." 
 
 "And that is all," cried Lady Leighton, "after all my efforts ! 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN ^ 47 
 
 Well, if it must be so, telegraph to him— or at least tell him to 
 answer you by telegraph : for that house might still be swept 
 up while you are hesitating. Oh, I know it is rather late for a 
 house to lie snapped up. But when you want a thing it immedi- 
 ately becomes a chance' that some one else will want it too. I 
 shall look for you to-morrow to luncheon, Evelyn : now, mind 
 that you don't fail me, and we'll go out utter and settle about it, 
 and do all that is necessary. Shouldn't you like now to go and 
 look at a few more Persian rugs I and that little Chippendale 
 set you were telling me of? The next best thing^to spending 
 money oneself is helping one's friend to do it,'" said Lady 
 Leighton. "Indeed, some people think it almost more agree- 
 able : for you have the pleasure, without the pain of paying. 
 Come, Evelyn, and we can finish with a turn in the Park before 
 dinner. I always like to get as much as possible into every 
 day.' 3 
 
 It was indeed a necessity with the town lady to get as much 
 as she could into her day. If she had not gone to choose the 
 rugs on her friend's account, she would have had to make for 
 herself some other piece of business equally important, There 
 was not an hour that had not its occupation. Looking at the 
 houses had tilled the afternoon with bustleand excitement: and 
 doing all that was necessary, i. e. rearranging all the furniture, 
 covering up the dingy carpets, choosing new curtains, etc., 
 would furnish delightful '"work" for two or three. Lady 
 Leighton had never an hour that was without its engagement, 
 as she said with a sigh. She envied her friends who had leisure. 
 She had not a moment to herself. 
 
 And Evelyn wrote a hurried letter to her husband about the 
 Chester Street house, and the pleasure of staying in town for a 
 week or two, as she put it vaguely, and introducing him to 
 some of her friends. She even in her hate mentioned Lord and 
 Lady Leighton, knowing that he had a little weakness for a 
 title— a thing she was sadly ashamed of when she came to think. 
 But the best of us are so easily led away. 
 
 ( 'HAITI:!: VII 
 
 The bustle of this afternoon's occupation, which left her no 
 time to think before she was deposited at her hotel for her late 
 dinner, put serious thoughts out of Evelyn's mind ; and even 
 when that hasty meal, over which she had no inclination to 
 linger, was ended, and she had relapsed into the comfort of a 
 dressing-gown, and lay extended in an easy-chair beside the 
 open windows, hearing all the endless tumult of town, half with 
 a sense of being left out. and half with self -congratulations over 
 her quiet, she was little inclined to reflection The echo of all 
 thatshe hid been doing hung about her, and that pleasant little 
 
48 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 commotion of choice, of arrangement and organization, winch 
 is involved in a new house and new settlement, absorbed her 
 thoughts. They went very fast, setting a thousand things stir- 
 ring. There is nothing that moves the woman of to-day more 
 than the task of making a house pretty and harmonious, and 
 forming a version of home out of any spare hired dwelling. 
 Evelyn had anticipated having this to do for Rosmore. But 
 James had somehow taken it out of her hands. He had gone to 
 prepare it for her, not thinking that she would have liked much 
 better to have a share in the doing. And now to think of having 
 her little essay for herself, and setting up a temporary home out 
 of her own fancy, turning a few bare rooms into a place full of 
 fragrance and brightness, pleased her fancy. She listened to 
 the carriages Hying past with an endless roll of sound, so many 
 of them conveying society to its favourite haunts, to one set of 
 brilliant rooms after another, to new combinations of smiling 
 faces and beautiful toilettes, with a half melancholy half pleasing 
 excitement. To be above, and listen to that sound, is always 
 slightly melancholy, and Evelyn could not but think a little of 
 the pleasure of emerging from the silence of solitude, of seeing 
 and being seen, of finding friends from whom she had been long 
 parted, and a dazzling vision of life which was all the brighter 
 from being partially forgotten, and never very perfectly known. 
 From where she sat she could see the glare of the carriage lamps, 
 and now and then some glimpses of the persons within — a lady's 
 white toilette surging up at the window, or a brilliant shirt 
 front looking almost like another lamp inside. It amused her to 
 watch that stream flow on. 
 
 And then there came over her a dark shadow, the vision of 
 the man who had been so young and so full of life when she 
 saw him last, and who was so death-like and fallen now. The 
 thought chilled her suddenly to the heart. She drew back from 
 the window, and wrapped herself in a shawl, with the shudder 
 of a cold which was not physical but spiritual. In the midst of 
 all that ceaseless loudness of life and movement and pleasure, 
 and of the visions which had visited her own brain of lighted 
 rooms, and animated face, and brilliant talk — to drop back to 
 that wreck of existence, the helpless man leaning upon his ser- 
 vant's arm, bundled up like a piece of goods, unresisting, com- 
 pelled to submit to those cares which were an indignity, yet 
 which were necessary to very existence ! The echo came back 
 to Evelyn's heart. If there was in her mind, who in _ reality 
 cared for none of these things, a little sentiment of loneliness as 
 she saw the stream of life go by, what must there be in his, to 
 whom society was life, and who was cut off from all its plea- 
 sures 1 Her imagination followed him to the prison of his weak- 
 ness, his melancholy home, with this imperative servant who 
 tended and ruled all his movements, for his sole society. God 
 help him ! What a condition to come to, after all the experiences 
 of his life ! 
 
AND BUS CHILDREN 49 
 
 Should she ever meet him again, she had asked herself, partly 
 with a vaguely formed wish of saying some word of kindnes 
 so great a sufferer, partly with a shrinking reluctance to give 
 herself the pain of looking upon his humiliation again ? Bui 
 was almost as great a shock as on the first meeting to see him 
 coming along the Park as she walked to Lady Leighton's next 
 day. He was being drawn along in his wheeled chair by the 
 man who had bundled him up so summarily on the previous 
 occasion. Evelyn would have hurried on, but he held out his 
 hand appealingly, and even called her name as she endeavoured 
 to pass. " Won't you stop and speak to me I '' he said. It was 
 impossible to resist that appeal. She stood by him looking 
 down upon his ashy countenance, the loose lips and half-open 
 mouth which babbled rather than talked, and which it required 
 an effort at first to understand. " Will you sit down a little and 
 talk ] "' he said. k< It's a pleasure I don't often have, a talk with 
 an old friend. Sit there, and I'll have my chair drawn beside 
 you. I hope you won't think yourself a victim, as I fear some 
 of my friends do 
 
 " Oh no, ' she said anxiously, " don't think so : I — was going 
 to see Madeline — but it will not matter " 
 
 " Oh, she can spare you for half an hour. ' 
 
 It was with dismay that Evelyn heard this, but how could 
 she resist the power of his weakness and fallen estate \ He had 
 his chair drawn up in front of the one she had taken, very near 
 her, and with a gesture dismissed his servant, who went and 
 took up his position with his back against a tree, and his eyes 
 upon the master who was also his patient. The sight of this 
 reminder of his extreme weakness and precarious condition was 
 almost more than Evelyn's nerves could bear. 
 
 " We are a wonderful contract, you and I," he said : " you so 
 young and fair, just entering upon life, and I leaving it, a 
 decrepit old man.'"' 
 
 "You know,"' she said, "that I am not young and fair any 
 more than you are old. I am grieved to see you so ill ; but I 
 hope • 
 
 "There is no room for hope. To go on like this for many 
 years, which they say is possible, is not much worth hoping for, 
 is it I Still, I would bear it for various reasons. But I am not 
 likely to be tried. I am a wreck — and my wife only lived two 
 years — I suppose you knew that.'" 
 
 "I had heard that Mrs. Saumarez died.'" 
 
 " Yes — Id have come to you for consolation had 1 dared." 
 
 " It was better not." -aid Evelyn, while a subdued Hash of 
 indignation shot out much against her will from her down. 
 eyes. 
 
 "That was what I thought. When a thing docs not sue 
 at first it is better not to try to get lire out of the ashes, he said 
 didactically ; "but between us two, there is no difficulty in s 
 ing which has the best of it. I should like to call and make Mr. 
 
50 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 Rowland's acquaintance. But you see the plight in which I am. 
 It is almost impossible for me to get up a stair " 
 
 " My husband — does not mean to remain in London/' she said 
 hurriedly. " We are going to Scotland at once." 
 
 "To a place he has bought, I suppose? I hear that he has 
 a great fortune — and I am most heartily glad of it for your 
 sake." 
 
 She replied hurriedly, with a slight bow of acquiescence. It 
 was the strangest subject to choose for discussion : but yet it 
 was very difficult to find any subject. "You told me the other 
 day," she said, " about your children." 
 
 " I am very thankful to you for asking. I wanted to speak 
 of them. I have a boy and girl, with only a year between them 
 — provided for more or less ; but who is to look after them when 
 I am gone 1 Their mother's family I never got on with. They 
 are the most worldly-minded people. I should not like my little 
 Rosamond to fall into their hands." 
 
 There was a pause : for Evelyn found that she had nothing 
 to say. It was so extraordinary to sit here, the depositary of 
 Edward Saumarez's confidences, listening to the account of his 
 anxieties — she who was so little likely to be of any help. 
 
 " How old is she 1 " she managed to ask at last. 
 
 " Rosamond 1 How long is it since we were — so much together 1 
 A long time. I dare say more than twenty years." 
 
 " Something like that." 
 
 " Ah well," he said with a sigh, " I married about a year after. 
 They're nineteen and twenty, or thereabouts. Rosamond, they 
 tell me, ought to be brought out ; but what is the good of 
 bringing out a girl into the world who has no one to protect 
 her 1 Nobody but a worldly-minded aunt who will sell her for 
 what she will bring — marry her off her hands as quickly as 
 possible ; that is all she will think of. It may seem strange to 
 you, but my little girl is proud of me, dreadful object as I am." 
 
 " Why should it seem strange 1 It would be very unnatural 
 if she was not." 
 
 " She is the only one in the world who cares a brass farthing 
 whether I live or die." As Evelyn raised her eyes full of pity, 
 she was suddenly aware that he was watching her, watching for 
 some tell-tale flush or gesture which should give a tacit denial 
 to what he said. He, like Lady Leighton, was of opinion that 
 a woman never forgets, and dreadful object as he allowed him- 
 self to be, the man's vanity would fain have been fed by some 
 sign that the woman beside him, whom he had abandoned so 
 basely, whose heart he had done his best to break, still cherished 
 something of the old feeling, and was his still. He was discon- 
 certed by the calm compassion in her eyes. 
 
 " Eddy is as cold as a stone," he said ; " he is like his mother's 
 people. He doesn't see why an old fellow like me should keep 
 dragging on. He minds no more than Jarvis does— less, for I 
 am Jarvis's living, and to keep me alive is the best thing for 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 51 
 
 him. But it would be better for Eddy, he thinks, if I were out 
 of the way." 
 
 " Please do not speak so ; I don't believe that any son really 
 entertains such thoughts." 
 
 "Ah, that shows how little you know. You have not been in 
 society all these years. Eddy is philosophical, and thinks that 
 [ have very little good of my life, which is true enough, and that 
 lie would have a great deal, which is quite as true." 
 
 " Even if it were so, he would not be his own master — at 
 nineteen," Evelyn said. 
 
 " Twenty — he is the eldest. Of course he would be better oft' 
 in that case. He would have more freedom, and a better allow- 
 ance ; and he would be of more importance, not the second but 
 the first." 
 
 " Oh," she cried with horror, " do not impute such dreadful 
 motives to your own child.'' 
 
 He shook his head, looking at her with an air of cynical 
 wisdom — a look which made the countenance, so changed and 
 faded with disease, almost diabolical to contemplate. Evelyn 
 turned her eyes away with a movement of horrified impatience. 
 And this was not at all the feeling with which Saumarez meant 
 to inspire the woman who had once loved him. He was unwill- 
 ing even now to believe that she had entirely escaped out of his 
 power. 
 
 "Evelyn," he said, putting forth again that large nerveless 
 hand, from the touch of which she shrank — " let me call you so, 
 as in the old days. It can do no one any harm now." 
 
 " Surely not," she said ; "it could do no one any harm." 
 
 He had not expected this reply ; if she had shrank from the 
 familiarity and refused her permission, he would have been 
 better pleased. Helpless, paralytic, dreadful to behold, he 
 would fain have considered himself a danger to her peace of 
 mind still. 
 
 "I have to accept that," he said, "like all the rest. That it 
 doesn't matter what I say, no man could be jealous of me. 
 Evelyn ! — I like to say the name— there's everything that's 
 sweet and womanly in it. I wish I had called my little girl by 
 that name. I thought of it, to tell the truth." 
 
 "Nothing could have been more unsuitable," cried Evelyn, 
 with a flush of anger. " I hope you did not think of it, for that 
 would have been an insult, not a compliment to me. Mr 
 Saumarez, I think I must go on. Madeline expected me at " 
 
 " Oh, let Madeline wait a little ! She has plenty of interests, 
 and I have something very serious to say. You may think I 
 am trying to lead you into recollections — -which certainly would 
 agitate me, if not you. You are very composed, Evelyn. I 
 ought to be glad to see you so, but I don't know that I am. 
 I remember everything so well — but you — seem to have passed 
 into another world." 
 
 "It is true. The world is entirely changed for me. I can 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 scarcely believe that it was I who lived through so many ex- 
 periences twenty-two years ago." 
 
 " I feel that there is a reproach in that — and yet if I could 
 tell you everything — but you would not listen to me now." 
 
 " I am no longer interested," she said gently, " so many things 
 have happened since then : my father's death, and Harry's. 
 How thankful I was to be able to care for them both ! All 
 these things are between me and my girlhood. It has died out 
 of my mind. If there is anything you want to say to me, Mr. 
 Saumarez, I hope it is on another subject than that." 
 
 The attempt in his eyes to convey a look of sentiment made 
 her feel faint. But fortunately his faculties were keen enough 
 to show him the futility of that attempt. " Yes," he said, " it is 
 another subject — a very different subject. I shall not live long, 
 and I have no friends. I care for nobody, and you will say it is 
 a natural consequence of this that nobody cares for me." 
 
 She made a movement of dissent in her great pity. "It 
 cannot be so bad as that." 
 
 " But it is. My sister's dead, you know, and there is really 
 nobody. Evelyn, I have a great favour to ask you. Will you 
 be the guardian of my boy and girl 1 " 
 
 " The guardian— of your children ! " She was so startled and 
 astonished that she could only gaze at him, and could not find 
 another word to say. 
 
 " Why should you be so much surprised 1 I never thought so 
 much of any woman as I do of you. I find you again after so 
 many years, unchanged. Evelyn, you are changed. I said so a 
 little while ago : but yet you are yourself, and that's the best I 
 know. I'd like my little Bosamond to be like you. I'd like 
 Eddy, though he's a rascal, to know some one that would make 
 even him good. Evelyn, they are well enough oft", they would 
 not be any trouble in that way. Will you take them — will you 
 be their guardian when I am gone ? " 
 
 Evelyn was not only astonished but frightened by what he 
 asked of her. She rose up hastily. "You must not think of 
 it — you must not think of it ! What could I do for them 1 I 
 have other duties of my own." 
 
 "It would not be so much trouble," he said, "only to give an 
 eye to them now and then ; to have them with you when you 
 felt inclined to ask them — nothing more. For old friendship's 
 sake you would not object to have my children on a visit once a 
 year or so. I am sure you would not refuse me that ? " 
 " But that is very different from being their guardian." 
 " It would not be, as I should arrange it. You would give 
 them your advice when they wanted it. You would do as much 
 as that for any one, for the gamekeeper's children, much more 
 for an old friend's — and see them now and then, and inquire 
 how they were getting on ? I should ask nothing more. Evelyn, 
 you wouldn't refuse an old friend, a disabled, unhappy solitary 
 man like me ? " 
 
A^D HIS CHILDREN 53 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Saumarez ! " she cried. He had tried to raise him- 
 self up a little in the fervour of his appeal, but fell back again 
 in a sort of heap, the exertion and the emotion being too much 
 for his strength. The servant appeared in a moment from 
 where he had been watching. "He oughtn't to be allowed to 
 agitate himself, ma'am,"' said the man reproachfully. Evelyn, 
 alarmed, walked humbly beside the chair till they came to the 
 gate of the Park, terrified to think that perhaps he had injured 
 himself, that perhaps she ought to humour him by consenting 
 to anything. He was not allowed to say any more, nor did she 
 add a word, but he put out his hand again and pressed hers 
 feebly as they parted. " Can I do anything 1 " she had asked 
 the servant in her compunction. " Xothing but leave him quite 
 quiet," said the man. " It might be as much as his life is worth. 
 I don't hold with letting 'em talk." Saumarez was one of a 
 class, a mere case, to his attendant. And Evelyn felt as if she 
 had been guilty of a kind of murder as she hurried away. 
 
 She found Lady Leighton waiting for her for lunch, and 
 slightly disturbed by the delay. " I have a thousand things to 
 do, and the loss of half-an-hour puts one all out," she said, with 
 a little peevishness; "but I'm sure you had a reason, Evelyn, 
 for being so late." 
 
 " A reason which was much against my will," said Evelyn, 
 telling the story of her distress, to which her friend listened 
 very gravely. "I should take care not to meet him again," said 
 Lady Leighton, with a cloud on her brow. "You listen to him 
 out of pure pity, but weak and ailing as he is, it would be sweet 
 to his vanity to compromise a woman even now."' 
 
 " I do not understand what you mean," said Evelyn ; " he 
 could not compromise me, if that is it, by anything he could do, 
 were he all that he has ever been." 
 
 " You don't know what your husband might think," said her 
 friend ; " he wouldn't like it. He might have every confidence 
 in you — but a man of Xed Saumarez's character, and an old 
 lover, and all that — he might say " 
 
 "My husband," said Mrs. Rowland, feeling the blood mount 
 to her head, "has no such ideas in his mind. He neither knows 
 anything about Mr. Saumarez's character, nor would he even if 
 he did know. You mistake my feeling altogether. It is not 
 anything about my husband that distresses me — it is the trust 
 lie wants me to undertake of his children." 
 
 "Oh, you may make yourself easy about that, Evelyn. That 
 was only a blind. It is little he thinks about his children. 
 He'll get you to meet him and to talk to him, professedly about 
 them — oh, I don't doubt that ! but that's not what he means. 
 You don't know Xed Saumarez so well as I do," cried Lady 
 Leighton, putting out her hand to stop an outcry of indigna- 
 tion ; "you don't know the world so well as I do; you have 
 been out of it for years, and you always were an innocent, 
 and never did understand "' 
 
54 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " Understand ! that a man who is dying by inches should 
 have — such ideas. A man on the edge of the grave — with a 
 servant, a nurse, looking after him as if he were a child." 
 
 " It's very sad, my dear, especially the last, which is incre- 
 dible, I allow. How a man like that can think that a woman 
 would But they do, all the same. You might be led your- 
 self by pity, or perhaps by a little lingering feeling — or — well, 
 well, I will not say that, I don't want to make you angry — 
 perhaps by a little vanity then, if I may say such a word." 
 
 " Madeline, I think you know far too much of the world." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Lady Leighton, not without a little self- 
 complacence. "I have had a great deal of experience in life." 
 
 " And too little," said Evelyn, " of honest meaning and 
 truth." 
 
 " Oh, as for that ! but if you think you will find truth or 
 honest meaning, my dear, in Ned Saumarez, you will be very 
 far wrong ; and if he can lead you into a mess with your hus- 
 band, or get you talked about " 
 
 " He will never get me into a mess with my husband, you 
 may be certain of that, Madeline." 
 
 " Oh, if you will take your own way, I cannot help it," 
 cried Lady Leighton. " I have done all I can. And now come 
 down to lunch. At all events we must not quarrel, you and I." 
 
 The lunch, however, was not a very successful one, and Evelyn 
 refused to take any further action about Chester Street, and 
 was so determined in her resistance that her friend at last gave 
 up the argument, and with something very like the quarrel she 
 had deprecated, allowed Mrs. Rowland to depart alone for her 
 hotel, which she did in great fervour of indignation and distress. 
 But as she walked quickly along the long line of the Park, she 
 perceived with a pang of alarm and surprise, the invalid's chair 
 being drawn across the end of the ride, into the same path 
 where she had met Saumarez an hour or two before. Was it 
 possible that Madeline could be rig] it 1 Was he going back to 
 wait for her there 1 She stood but for a moment and watched 
 the slow mournful progress of the chair, the worn-out figure 
 lying back in it, the ashen face amid the many wraps. A certain 
 awe came over her. She had been long out of the world, and 
 had never been very wise in such matters : and who could 
 believe that a man in the last stage of life should be able to 
 amuse himself by schemes at once so base and so frivolous 1 
 She turned back half -ashamed of herself for doing so, and went 
 home another way. It might be, she said to herself with a 
 compunction, that all he meant was after all what he thought 
 his children's interest : then with a thrill of self-suspicion asked 
 herself, was this the vanity by which Madeline, too clear sighted, 
 had suggested she might be moved ? Oh, clearly the world was 
 not a place fcr her ! The mere discussion of such possibilities 
 abashed and shamed her. Her simple husband, who could not 
 cope with these fine people, and uj3on whom probably they 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 
 
 would look down — her home, far from all such ignoble 
 tions, her own difficulties, which might be troublesome enough, 
 but not like these — how much better they were ! Her heart 
 had been a little caught by the aspect of the old life from which 
 she had been separated so long, and she had begun to think that 
 witli all the advantages her new position gave her, it might be 
 pleasant to resume those of the old one, and venture a little 
 upon the sea of society, which looked so bright at the first 
 glance. Had she yielded to this temptation no doubt the good 
 [lowland would have followed her guidance, pleased with any- 
 thing she suggested, delighted for a time with the line company, 
 giving up his chosen life for her sake. And it is very probable 
 that, had Lady Leighton foreseen the disgust with which her 
 warning would till her friend's mind, she would have been chary 
 about giving it, and would have preferred to let Evelyn take 
 her chance of compromise and danger. The worst of society is, 
 that it deadens the mind to the base and vile, taking away all 
 horror of things unclean, by inculcating a perpetual suspicion 
 of their existence. But no such deadening intluence had ever 
 been in Evelyn's mind. She sent another letter to her husband 
 by that afternoon's post, winch, in the midst of various tribula- 
 tions of his own, made that good man's heart leap. She told 
 him that she had changed her mind about staying in London, 
 that it was odious to her : that she counted the hours till he 
 should return, that she longed forRosmore, and to seethe Clyde 
 and the lochs, and the children, and "our own home." James 
 Rowland, though he was not a sentimental man, kissed this 
 letter : for he was in great need of consolation, having in full 
 measure his own troubles too. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Evelyn scarcely went out at all next day. She paid a visit 
 to some of the old furniture shops in the morning, which was a 
 direction quite different from that in which she would be sub- 
 jected to any painful meeting — and realized once more her 
 husband's simple maxim that there was great diversion in 
 buying. She did buy within a certain range, expensive articles 
 — tilings which she knew Madeline Leighton would covet but 
 could not afford, with a kind of pleasure in the unnecessary 
 extravagance which she was half ashamed of, half amused by 
 when she realized it. The old marqueterie was solid and beauti- 
 fully made, and had borne the brunt of years of usage ; it was 
 not a hollow fiction like the fabric of society which Lady 
 Leighton and such as she expounded as unutterably vile, yet 
 clung to as if it were the only thing true. Evelyn declared 
 to herself that she would have no house in Chester Street. To 
 
M THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 cover up the old faded carpets with pretty Persian rugs, and 
 make the dingy rooms fine with temporary fittings up which 
 did not belong to them, was, like all the rest, a deception and 
 disgust. The pretty things should be for her own house, where 
 they would be placed to remain as long as she lived, where they 
 would be like herself, at home. But except the time she spent 
 in these shops, which was not very long, she did not go out all 
 day. And she had, it must be allowed, got very tired of her 
 own company, when in the afternoon the door was opened 
 suddenly, and a servant appeared to announce some one, a 
 young lady, about whose name he was very doubtful, for Mrs. 
 Rowland. He was followed into the room by the slim figure of 
 a girl looking very young but very self-possessed and unabashed, 
 with an ease of manner which Evelyn was not accustomed to 
 see in her kind. This young lady was dressed very simply, as 
 girls who are not "out " (as well as many who are) are specially 
 supposed to be. The gray frock was spotless, and beautifully 
 made, but it was absolutely unadorned, and she had not an 
 ornament or a ribbon about her to break the severe grace of her 
 outline. But to make amends for this, she had the radiant com- 
 plexion which is so often seen in English girls — a complexion 
 not yet put in jeopardy either by hot rooms and late hours, or 
 by the experiences of Ascot and Goodwood and Hurlingham ; 
 her hair was very light, not the conventional gold. She came 
 forward to Evelyn with the air of a perfect little woman of the 
 world. "I am Kosamond Saumarez," she said, holding out her 
 hand ; "my father told me I was to come to see you." Evelyn 
 stumbled up to her feet with a startled sensation, bewildered 
 by a visit so absolutely unexpected. The young lady took her 
 extended hand, and shook it affably, then with a little air of 
 begging Mrs. Rowland to be seated, like a young princess, drew 
 forth for herself a low chair. 
 
 " He said I need not explain who I was, for that you would 
 know." 
 
 ; 'Yes," said Evelyn, "you must forgive me for being a little 
 confused." 
 
 " Oli, I dare say you were having a little doze. It is so warm ; 
 and don't you find the noise soothing? There is never any 
 break in it : it goes on and on, and puts one to sleep." 
 
 "I don't find it has that quality," said Evelyn, half affronted 
 to have it supposed that she was dozing. " It is strange for 
 me," she said, "to meet your father's children. I knew him 
 only as a young man." 
 
 " Oh yes, I know," said the young lady, nodding her head 
 with an air of knowing all about it, which confused Evelyn still 
 more. 
 
 "He told me he had two children, I think. Are you the 
 eldest ? " she asked almost timidly. 
 
 " Oh no, Eddy is the eldest : but I'm the most serious. I have 
 got the sense of the family, everybody says. Eddy is with a 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 57 
 
 crammer trying hard to pass the army examination ; but he 
 
 never will : lie hates books, and is very fond of his fun. Tli.tt 
 may be natural, but you will agree that it is not very good for 
 getting on in life.*' 
 
 " I suppose not," said Evelyn. 
 
 " No, certainly ; and so much is thought of doing something 
 nowadays. I suppose father was not very much in the way 
 of working when you knew him, Mrs. Rowland : and yet he is 
 as hard upon Eddy as if he had done nothing but what was 
 good all his life." 
 
 " Your father is a very great sufferer, I fear," said Evelyn, 
 who had entirely lost her presence of mind, and did not know 
 what to say. 
 
 " Oh no, not so much as you would think. Of course he's 
 very helpless : Jarvis has to do everything for him. But I don't 
 think he really minds — not so much as people would think. He 
 likes to be pitied and sympathized with, and to look interesting. 
 Poor father ! he thinks he looks interesting ; but perhaps you 
 thought it went too far for that. Some people are quite afraid 
 of him as if he might die on their hands." 
 
 " Oh no," cried Evelyn, faltering ; "nobody would be so cruel : 
 but it must be very terrible for you." 
 
 " Well," said Miss Saumarez, ''we have been used to it a long- 
 time, it looks quite natural to us. But some people are fright- 
 ened. It isn't a thing, however, that kills, I believe. It may 
 go on for years and years." 
 
 " And you "" — Evelyn felt that it was almost an irreverence to 
 talk to this young lady as to a school-girl, but still it was to be 
 supposed she was one — "you are still in the school-room, busy 
 with lessons yet*?" 
 
 "I don't think I have ever been much in the school-room," 
 said the girl. "It has been rather difficult to manage my 
 education. Father liked to have me at home when I was a 
 little thing. I used to make him laugh. We tried several 
 governesses, but they were not very successful ; either they 
 preferred to take care of him or they quarrelled with me. 1 
 don't think I was a very nice child," said Miss Rosamond im- 
 partially. "It wasn't a good school, was it, to have all kinds 
 of pettings and bon-bons because i was funny and could make 
 him laugh, and then turned out, as if I had been a little dog, 
 when he was cross .' 
 
 " My dear ! " said Evelyn, dismayed. 
 
 "Oh, I am afraid you think me awful" said Bosamond, "but 
 really it is all quite true." 
 
 "It is a long time since I was a girl like you," said Mrs. 
 Rowland, " and we were not allowed to be so frank and speak 
 our mind ; that is the chief difference, I suppose." 
 
 "Oh, I have always heard from all the old ladies that I am 
 dreadful. But certainly the thing we do nowadays is to speak 
 Our mind — rather a little more than le--, d<>n't you know. We 
 
58 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 don't carry any false colours, or pretend to pretty feelings, like 
 the girls in the story-books. What humbugs you must have 
 been in your time ! " 
 
 "I don't think we were humbugs," said Evelyn. She was 
 beginning to be amused by this frank young person, who made 
 her feel so young and inexperienced. It was Evelyn who was 
 the little girl, and Rosamond the sage, acquainted with the 
 world and life. 
 
 " Father says so ; but then, he thinks all people are humbugs. 
 He says we really can think of no one but ourselves, whatever 
 we may pretend." 
 
 " But you mustn't believe in that," said Evelyn. ' It is a 
 dreadful way of looking at the world. Nobody can tell how 
 much kindness and goodness there is unless they have been in 
 circumstances to try it, which I have. You must not enter upon 
 life with that idea, for it is quite false." 
 
 " What ! when father says so 1 Oughtn't I to believe that he 
 knows best 1 " 
 
 " Oh, when your father says so ! " said Evelyn, startled. " My 
 dear, I don't think your father can mean it. He may say it — in 
 jest " 
 
 " Oh, don't be afraid, Mrs. Rowland," cried the girl, cheerfully. 
 " I don't take everything he says for gospel. He's a disappointed 
 man, you know. He never got exactly what he wanted. Mother 
 and he did not get on, I am told : and there is every appearance 
 that Eddy will be a handful, as I suppose father was himself in 
 Ids day. And then he's paralyzed. That should be set against a 
 lot, shouldn't it 1 I always say so to myself when he is nasty to me." 
 
 " I am very glad that you do," said Evelyn, with tears in her 
 eyes. " It should indeed stand against a great deal. And as you 
 grow older you will understand better how such dreadful help- 
 lessness affects the mind " 
 
 " Oh," cried Rosamond, breaking in, " if you think there's any 
 softening of the brain or that sort of thing, you are very very 
 much mistaken. If you only knew how clever he is ! I have 
 heard him take in people — people, you know, like my uncle the 
 bishop, and that sort of person, with an account of pious feelings, 
 and how he knows it is all for his good, and so forth. You would 
 think he was a saint to hear him — and the poor bishop looking 
 so bothered, knowing too much to quite believe it, and yet not 
 daring to contradict him. It was as good as a play. I shrieked 
 with laughter when he was gone, and so did father. It was the 
 funniest thing I ever saw." 
 
 " My dear ! " cried Evelyn again, wringing her hands in pro- 
 testation ; but what could she say ? If she had been disposed to 
 take in hand the reformation of Edward Saumarez's daughter, 
 it could not be by adding to her unerring clear sight and criticism 
 of him. " Do you see much," she said, in a kind of desperation, 
 " of the bishop % " with a clutch at the moral skirts of some one 
 who might be able to help. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDEEX 59 
 
 " Oh no, only when lie comes to town. They don't ask us now 
 to the Palace, for I am sure he never can make up his mind about 
 father, whether lie is a real saint or — the other thing. Aunt 
 Rose is the relation, you know, not the bishop. It is by mother's 
 side, so they naturally disapprove of papa.' 1 
 
 Evelyn did not at all know how to deal with this girl, who 
 was so cognisant of the world and all its ways. Rosamond was 
 even more a woman of the world than Madeline Leighton. She 
 believed in less, and she seemed to know more, and her calm 
 girlish voice, and the pearly tints of her infantine radiance of 
 countenance produced upon the middle-aged listener a sensation 
 of utter confusion impossible to describe. She asked hurriedly, 
 with an endeavour to divert the easy stream of words to another 
 subject, " Have you any friends of your own age, my dear, to 
 amuse yourself with 1 " 
 
 " Oh plenty," said Rosamond, " quantities ! There are such 
 crowds of girls ; wherever one goes, nothing but women, women, 
 till one is sick of them. I have a very great friend whom I see 
 constantly, and who is exactly of my way of thinking. As soon 
 as we are old enough we both mean to take up a profession. I 
 have not quite decided upon mine, 'but she means to be a doctor. 
 She is studying a little now, whenever she can get a moment, 
 and looking forward to the time when she shall be old enough to 
 put down her foot. Of course they will try to forbid it, and that 
 sort of thing. But she has quite made up her mind. As for me, 
 I have not such a clear leading as Madeline. I am still quite in 
 doubt." 
 
 " Madeline," said Evelyn. " I wonder if by chance that is 
 Madeline Leighton whom I saw the other day .'" 
 
 Miss Saumarez nodded her head. " But you must promise," 
 she said, "not to betray us to her mother. Of course we quite 
 allow that we are too young to settle upon anything now. She 
 is only seventeen. I am nearly two years older, but then, unfor- 
 tunately, I have not the same clear vocation. And of course 
 something must be allowed for natural hindrances, as long as 
 father lives." 
 
 " I hope you will never leave him," said Evelyn warmly. " It 
 is true I am old-fashioned, and do not understand a girl with a 
 profession ; but everybody must see that in your case your duty 
 lies at home." 
 
 " If anybody who was a very good match wanted to marry 
 me," said the girl with a laugh, " would you then think that my 
 duty lay at home ? " 
 
 Evelyn felt herself reduced to absolute imbecility by this 
 bewildering question. "My dear — my dear — you know a great 
 deal too much ; you are too wise," she said. 
 
 "But that's not an answer," said Rosamond; "you see the 
 logic of it, and you daren't give me an answer. You just beg 
 the question. I must go away now ; but father told me I was 
 to ask you if I might come again." 
 
60 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 "If you care to come to such an old-world, old-fashioned, 
 puzzled person as I am," said Evelyn, with a troubled smile. 
 
 " I should like it, if I may. Father says you are the real good, 
 and a great many people I know only pretend. I should like to 
 know better what the real good was like, so I will come again 
 to-morrow, if I may." 
 
 "Come, but not because I am the real good. lam a very 
 puzzled person, and you who are only a little girl seem to know 
 a great deal more than I." 
 
 Rosamond smiled, for the first time, a bright and childlike 
 smile. She had smiled and even laughed in the course of her 
 prelections as the same required it. But for the first time her 
 face lighted up. " Oh, perhaps you will find there is not so 
 much in me as you think," she said, giving her hand to the 
 middle-aged and much-perplexed person before her, after the 
 fashion of the time. I forget what the fashion of the time was 
 in those days. People had not begun at that period to shake 
 their friends' hands high into the air as if they were grasping a 
 pump handle. Evelyn stood and looked after her aghast, not 
 capable of sitting down or changing out of that pose while the 
 girl went away. She crept out, half ashamed of doing so, into 
 the balcony, to watch her as she appeared in the crowded road 
 outside : and after a moment, Rosamond came forth, accom- 
 panied by a large mastiff, who performed several gambols of joy 
 about her as she stepped out into the stream of people. Evelyn 
 watched her going along, keeping, so to speak, the crown of the 
 causeway, she and her dog giving place to no one. She was on 
 her right side of the pavement, and to be hustled out of her 
 course was an impossibility. Her strong, confident step, her 
 half masculine dress, jacket and hat like those of a youth, were 
 wonderful and terrible to the woman who had never moved 
 anywhere without an attendant. She stared after this wonderful 
 young creature with a bewilderment which almost took from her 
 the power of thought. 
 
 Later in the day Lady Leighton came in, penitentially, and in 
 a softened mood. " I was very silly to frighten you," she said ; 
 " I can't think what made me such a fool. I forgot that you 
 were you, and not any one else. I was right enough so far 
 as ordinary society goes, only not right in respect to Evelyn 
 Ferrars." 
 
 " Evelyn Rowland, doubly removed from your traps and 
 snares of society," said Evelyn with a smile. 
 
 " Well — be it so ; — but I hope you are not really going to give 
 up that delightful plan about the Chester Street house, because 
 I was silly and spoke unadvisedly with my lips. If punishment 
 were to come upon a woman for every time she did that " 
 
 " No great punishment," said Evelyn. " You will come and 
 see me in my own house, and that will be better than seeing me 
 at Chester Street — or not seeing me — you who have never a 
 moment to yourself." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 61 
 
 "That i.5 true. I never have a moment to myself,*' said Lady 
 Leighton. "I am going off now to St. Roque's to see about 
 getting Mr. Pincem, the great surgeon, to look very specially 
 after a favourite patient of mine : and then I must come back 
 to Grosvenor Place to a drawing-room meeting : and then — but 
 I can sandwich you in between the two, Evelyn, if you want to 
 go over any of those houses again."' 
 
 " I don't want to go over any of them again, thanks. I was 
 quite satisfied with Chester Street if I had wanted any. Per- 
 haps, however, I ought to let the people know.'' 
 
 " Oh, never mind the people," said Lady Leighton. " if you 
 actually mean to give it up and throw me over ; for it is me you 
 ought to think of. And why 1 because I told you that Ned 
 Sauinarez, though he is paralyzed, was as great a flirt as ever ' 
 
 " Don't let us have it all over again," said Evelyn. " I take no 
 interest in it. By the way, I have just had a strange visitor — his 
 daughter, Madeline. She tells me that your daughter is her 
 dearest friend." 
 
 " His daughter 1 Oh, Eosamond ! yes, she and Maddy run 
 about everywhere together,. and plot all manner of things." 
 
 "Are you not afraid of their plottings, two wild girls together ? " 
 
 " I afraid ! oh dear, not I ; they will probably both marry before 
 they have time to do any mischief. That puts all nonsense out 
 of their head. I know ! they are going to walk the hospitals, 
 and heaven knows what ; relieve the poor and also see life. I 
 never contradict them— what is the use? Somebody will turn 
 up in their first or second season with enough of money and suffi- 
 ciently presentable. And they will be married off, and become 
 like other people, and we shall hear of their vagaries no 
 more." 
 
 "They will then have every moment occupied, and more 
 things to do than hours to do them in, Madeline, like you." 
 
 "Precisely like me," said the woman of the world ; "and an 
 excellent good thing too, Evelyn, if you would allow yourself 
 to see it. Do you think it would be so good for me if I had 
 more time to think 1 My dear, you know many tilings a great 
 deal better than I do, but you don't know the world. Then 1 
 are as many worries in a day in London as there are in a year 
 out of it. That is, I mean there are in society, both in London 
 and the country, annoyances such as you people in your tran- 
 quillity never can understand. I am not without my troubles, 
 though I don't wear them on my sleeve. I do what is far 
 better. I am so busy, I have not time to think of them. There 
 are troubles about money, troubles about the boys, troubles 
 about — well, Leighton is not always a model husband, my dear, 
 like yours. And it Avill be well for the girls if they do as I 
 do, and don't leave themselves too much time to think." 
 
 " They seem," said Evelyn, glad to turn the seriousness of 
 this speech aside, and not to seem curious (though- she was) about 
 her friend's troubles, "to exercise the privilege of thinking very 
 
62 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 freely at their present stage. But this poor girl has no mother, 
 and no doubt she lias been left a great deal to herself.'' 
 
 "I know you don't mean that for a hit at me," said her 
 friend ; "though you may perhaps think a woman with so much 
 to do must neglect her children. Madeline is every bit as bad 
 as Rosamond, my dear. They mean no harm either of them. 
 They want, poor darlings, to work for their living and to see 
 life. It is a pity their brothers don't share their youthful 
 fancies. The boys prefer to do nothing, and the kind of life 
 they see is not very desirable. But by the blessing of Providence 
 nothing very dreadfully bad comes of it either way. The girls 
 find that they have to marry and settle down, like their mothers 
 before them ; and the boys — well, the boys ! oh, they come out 
 of it somehow at the end. 75 
 
 And to the great amazement of Evelyn, this woman of the 
 world, this busy idler and frivolous hne lady suddenly fell into 
 a low outburst of crying, as involuntary as it was unexpected, 
 saying, amid her tears : " Oh, please God, please God, they will 
 all come through at the end ! " 
 
 Mrs. Bowland was a woman who had known a great deal of 
 trouble, but when she was thus the witness of her friend's 
 unsuspected pain, she said to herself that she was an ignorant 
 woman and knew nothing. She had not believed there was 
 anything serious at all, not to say anguish and martyrdom, in 
 Madeline Leighton's life. She held her friend in her arms for a 
 moment, and they kissed each other ; but Evelyn did not ask 
 any question. Perhaps Lady Leighton thought she had told 
 her everything, perhaps she had that instinctive sense that 
 everybody must know, which belongs to the class who are 
 accustomed to have their movements chronicled, and all they 
 do known. For she offered no explanation, but only said, as 
 she raised her head from Evelyn's shoulder and dried her eyes, 
 with a little tremulous laugh in which the tears still lingered, 
 " I am as sure of that as I am that I live. If we didn't think 
 so, half of us would die." 
 
 Not two minutes after this she returned to the charge again 
 about the house in Chester Street. "Will you really not think 
 of it again, Evelyn 1 It would be such a pleasure to have you 
 near : and, my dear, I should never say a word about any 
 Platonic diversion that amused you. On the contrary, I'd flirt 
 with Mr. Rowland and keep him off the scent. — Oh, let me 
 laugh : I must laugh after I have cried. Well, if you have 
 decided, I don't mind saying that you are quite as well out of 
 Ned Saumarez's way. Sending the girl to see you was a very 
 serious step. And he is a man that will stick at nothing. 
 Perhaps it is all the better that you are going away." 
 
 "That is the strongest argument you could use," said Evelyn, 
 "to keep me here." 
 
 "Perhaps that was what I intended," said Lady Leighton; 
 "but, dear, how late it is, I must go " She had reached the 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 63 
 
 door when she suddenly turned back. "What time did you fix 
 for our visit to you, Evelyn? I must work it into our list. 
 Without organization one could never go anywhere at all. It 
 must be between the end of October and the middle of December. 
 AVould the 10th November to the 20th suit you? or is that too 
 long. One must be perfectly frank about these matters, or one 
 never could go on at all/' 
 
 " It must be when you please, and for as long as you please, 
 dear Madeline," said Mrs. Rowland. She added, U I fear, you 
 know, it will be rather dull. I don't know whether there is any 
 society, and James " 
 
 k 'I will put it down 10th to 15th,'"' said Lady Leighton, 
 seriously noting this consideration. And then she gave her 
 friend a hasty embrace, and hurried away. 
 
 How strange it all was ! Evelyn felt as if she had peeped 
 through some crevice behind the lively bustling stage, and 
 suddenly seen what was going on behind the scenes. There 
 had been little behind the scenes in her own life. It had been 
 sad, but it had all been open as the day. And now, when she 
 stood at the beginning of a new life, she had nothing to wound, 
 nothing to make her reluctant that any word should leap to 
 light, even that story of hers which had been so near tragedy, 
 of which Edward Saumarez had been the hero. She almost 
 blushed at the importance she had given that story, now that 
 she had seen again the man who had been the hero of it. It 
 seemed to lose all the dignity and tragic meaning which had 
 been the chief thing in her life for so long. 
 
 While Evelyn was thinking this, a letter was put into her 
 hand, in which her husband bade her do exactly as she pleased 
 about the Chester Street house. " If you like to stay there for 
 a little, my dear, and see your old friends, I shall like that best ; 
 and if you prefer to come home with me at once, and take 
 possession of Eosmore, that is what I shall like best. It is for 
 you to choose : and in the meantime I am coming back to town, 
 to do whatever you like to-morrow night." 
 
 To-morrow of the day on which the letter was written meant 
 that very day upon which Evelyn received it. She had not 
 pretended to be in love with her good middle-aged husband, 
 she, a subdued middle-aged woman. But what a haven of quiet, 
 and plain honest understanding, and simple truth and right 
 she seemed to float into when she realized that he w r as coming 
 back to her to-night. 
 
64 THE KAIL WAY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 James Rowland left his wife in London with a certain satis- 
 faction which was very unlike the great affection he had for her, 
 and the delight which day by day lie had learned more and 
 more to take in her society. He was a man full of intelligence 
 and quickness of mind notwithstanding various roughnesses of 
 manner ; and he never had known before what it was to have 
 such a companion ; a woman who understood almost all he 
 meant, and meant a good deal which he was delightfully learning 
 to understand : bringing illustrations to their life which his 
 imperfect education had kept from him, and making him aware 
 of a hundred new sources of satisfaction and pleasure. But his 
 very admiration for Evelyn had deepened in his mind the first 
 stab of anxiety which her hand had involuntarily given. He 
 had never got over the shock of finding out that his children, 
 instead of being the little things he had invariably gone on 
 thinking them to be, had reached the age of early manhood and 
 womanhood, and that he knew nothing whatever about them. 
 He had tried at first to laugh at this as a simple evidence of his 
 own folly, but the little puncture of that first wound had gone 
 on deepening and deepening. He felt it only in occasional 
 thrills at first, when it had given him about as much annoyance 
 as a stray pang of rheumatism ; but as he travelled home, every 
 day's nearer approach made the ache a little keener. It was the 
 only thing in his experience of which he had said nothing to 
 Evelyn — although from the day of their arrival in London it 
 had begun to gnaw him like the proverbial fox under his mantle. 
 He grew restless, unable to settle to anything, continually 
 wondering what they would be like, how they would receive 
 him, if they would be a credit to him or the reverse, how 
 Evelyn would receive them, and how they would take to 
 Evelyn. Their stiff little letters about his marriage, which were 
 almost the first letters of theirs which he had read with any 
 attention, had been received at Suez on the way home. And 
 they had redoubled his anxiety and his restlessness. He did not 
 show them to Evelyn, which was very significant of their un- 
 satisfactory character to himself. Had they been " nice " letters, 
 he would have been too anxious to place them in her hands, to 
 see her face light up with interest. But they were not, alas, 
 nice letters. They were very stiff formal productions. They 
 acknowledged that their father had a right to please himself, 
 and that they had no claim to be taken into consideration. 
 " What we expected was different, but it is you, as Aunt Jean 
 says, that are the master, and we hope that your lady will not 
 look down upon us, or keep us away from you." This was not 
 the sort of thing which he could show to Evelyn, anxious as she 
 was to do everything a mother could do for his children. And 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 65 
 
 all this made him very restless : he wanted * from her, 
 
 to go and inspect them before she saw them, to try even, if that 
 were possible, to lick them into shape before they came under 
 her eyes. He had not been afraid of the venture of his new- 
 marriage, nor of the perils by land and sea to which he was 
 continually exposed ; but he was very much afraid of the effect 
 of the boy and girl whom he felt himself to have neglected, and 
 who were now rising up as giants in his path. In these circum- 
 stances Rowland snatched anxiously at the pretext of going to 
 see Rosmore and prepare it for his wife's reception. What he 
 really wanted was to see the children and decide what could be 
 done to prepare them. 
 
 It was consequently with a sense of escape that he waved his 
 hand to Evelyn from the carriage window, thinking, with a 
 touch of pride, what a lady she looked, in her plain dr 
 standing there upon the platform to see him off, among 
 crowd, not one of whom was like her. He was very proud of 
 Ids wife. He thought she looked like a princess standing there 
 so simple, with no outward sign to show what she was, but a 
 look, to which any one would bow down. But, as the train 
 rushed away into distance, and the long lines of the houses and 
 streets flew past, James Rowland laid himself back, and thanked 
 Heaven that he had escaped, that he had found a pretence to get 
 away, and that he would thus be able to see the worst for him- 
 self. Dwelling upon this view of the subject so long had made 
 him scarcely conscious of any pleasure in the anticipation of 
 meeting his children. Had he not been married, had he come 
 back without any special direction of his thoughts towards them, 
 he would no doubt have looked forward with a certain pleasure 
 to meeting his two little things, and perhaps the disenchant- 
 ment of rinding them grown up would have amused him, and 
 paternal feeling excused the imperfections which he now s i 
 much feared to find. It never, however, could have ple;i - 
 Rowland to find in his son a half-educated lout, or in his 
 daughter a pert little girl, on the original level of the foundry, 
 which was the haunting fear in his mind now ; so that in any 
 case a great disappointment would in all probability have 
 awaited him. His apprehensions became stronger and stronger 
 as he approached the end of his journey, when they would be 
 proved right or wrong. He recalled to himself what the aunt 
 had been, whom in his foolishness lie had been so glad to confide 
 them to, as one who would cherish them as if they were her 
 own : — a rosy-cheeked, cheerful lass, with a jest for any lad who 
 addressed her ; perfectly modest and good, but with the freedom 
 of the overflowing young community, which above all things 
 loved its fun — not equal to his Mary, who had always showed a 
 little shrinking from the fun, and never kept company with 
 any one but with him alone. Jean appeared very clearly before 
 him as he searched the memories of his youth — a trig, comely, 
 clever lass, full of health and spirits. She would be, no d-jubt, 
 
 9 
 
66 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 buxom now, terribly well off by means of the lavish cheques he 
 had sent, and iiis daughter would be much as she had been. 
 Oh, she had been a good steady lass, there had been nothing to 
 find fault with ; but to think of a daughter like Jean rilled the 
 good man with horror. What could he do with her? What 
 could Evelyn do with her ? Cold beads of perspiration came 
 out on his forehead. And then the lout of a boy ! This was 
 how he had got to think of them who ought to have been the 
 stars of his horizon. And it would not be their fault, it would 
 be his fault. He was thankful to the bottom of his heart that 
 he would see them first, and get the shock over, and have time 
 to think how it could be broken to Evelyn. But he was not the 
 less afraid of the first sight of them, afraid of proving all his 
 prognostications true. 
 
 He had not warned his sister-in-law of his arrival, and it was 
 again an escape to him to postpone the meeting till next day, 
 and in the meantime to go to the best hotel he could rind. This 
 was many years ago, and I don't know what may be the case 
 now : but then the hotels in Glasgow were not very excellent, 
 that great city being, I suppose, too much occupied with its 
 manifold businesses to make preparation for tourists and idle 
 visitors as Edinburgh does ; and Mr. Rowland did not rind 
 himself in the lap of luxury to which that masterful rich man 
 Avas accustomed. This probably discouraged him still more, for 
 it must be said that next morning, instead of going to see his 
 children, he took an early train and went down to Rosmore, 
 thus putting off for another day the possibility of ascertaining 
 definitely what there was to fear. He was conscious that it was 
 a cowardly thing to do : and it was an unnatural thing — heart- 
 less, even, some people might say ; but then his terrors for the 
 moment had taken the place of his merely instinctive and quite 
 undeveloped paternal love. 
 
 Rosmore was not disappointing, that was certain ! He took a 
 steamer from the opposite side of the Clyde, in order that he 
 might see it first, as he had been used to do when he was a 
 young man, and all such advancement seemed as far above him 
 as the throne. His heart beat as the rustling, bustling, crowded 
 steamboat came to the spot where the white colonnade had 
 always been visible among the noble groups of trees, which 
 withdrew a little just there, and stood about in clumps and 
 gatherings to let the view be seen. There it stood upon its 
 green knoll unchanged, the sloping greensward stretching down 
 towards the salt, dazzling water, the windows caught and shining 
 out in the sun. It was by good fortune — which everybody 
 knows is not invariable in these regions — a beautiful day, and 
 to Rowland it seemed paradise to see the heavy clouds of the 
 foliage ojDen, and the white pillars come in view. He landed 
 upon the side of the peninsula, where a little salt water loch 
 runs up into the bosom of the hills. It is characteristic of a 
 IScot in all countries that he never sees a landscape which does 
 
AND HIS CHILDRKX 67 
 
 not remind him, to its own disadvantage, of some landscape at 
 home. But Rowland, who had been a great deal about the 
 world, went a step further and declared to himself that he had 
 never seen anything to equal that "silver streak" of sea- water, 
 with the noble line of mountains stretching across the upper 
 end. They were beautiful in themselves, their outlines as grand 
 against the sky and intense sunshine as if they had been as lofty 
 as the Himalayas : but this was only half their fascination. It 
 was the capricious Northern lights and shadows that made them 
 so delightful, so unlike anything but themselves. In the East 
 the sunshine drags and becomes tedious : it goes on blazing all 
 day long without change. But the Xorth is dramatic, individual, 
 full of vicissitude, making a new combination every minute, 
 never for half an hour the same. He stood and watched the 
 clouds flying over the hills, like the breath of some spell-bound 
 giant, now one point and now another coming into light ; and 
 the little waves dancing, and the soft banks reflected like 
 another enchanted country under the surface of the water. The 
 sight uplifted in his bosom the heart of the homely man who 
 had no raptures to express, but felt the beauty to the depths of 
 his being. " I've travelled far, but I never saw anything like 
 it," he said to the agent, who had met him on the little pier, and 
 who backed him up with enthusiasm, partly because he was of 
 the district too, and prone to believe that there was nothing 
 equal to Rosmore in the world, and partly because he was a 
 good man of business, and liked to see a wealthy tenant in such 
 a good frame of mind. 
 
 But it would be difficult to describe the emotions of James 
 Rowland as he walked through the beautiful woods and entered 
 the house. He had never been in the house before. Xaturally, 
 at the time when he first conceived his passion for it, the 
 young foundry man, however clever, could never have had 
 any means of entering into such a place ; and to tell the truth, 
 he did not much know what was required by a family of 
 condition in an English or rather Scotch house. He knew the 
 luxury of the East, and how to make a bungalow comfortable, 
 but the arrangements of a mansion at home were strange to 
 him. 
 
 He followed the agent accordingly with a little awe, which lie 
 carefully concealed, through the suites of rooms, libraries, morn- 
 ing rooms, boudoirs, all sorts of lavish accommodation, with the 
 uses of which he was practically unacquainted. But lie did not 
 betray his ignorance. On the contrary he was very critical, 
 tinding out the defects in the old-fashioned furniture as if he 
 had been accustomed to such things all his life. 
 
 "This looks as old as Methuselah," he said. " Why, the things 
 must be mouldy. I should think they can't have been touched 
 for a hundred years." 
 
 *' More than that, " said the agent, "and that's just why the 
 ladies like it. It is called Countess Jean's boudoir. Everything 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 is just as it was when she came home a bride. The ladies will 
 not have it touched.' 3 
 
 " Oh, I know that decayed style is the fashion," said Mr. 
 Rowland without winking an eyelid : " but you can't imagine 
 we will put up with these old hangings 1 You must have them 
 cleared away." 
 
 " We'll do that, if it's your desire ; but the hangings are real 
 tapestry — the oldest in Scotland. The Earl will be just delighted 
 to have them back." 
 
 " Now I look at them," said Rowland, " I believe my wife will 
 like them. For my part I like fresh colours and rich stuffs. I 
 like to have bright things about me. I find it all a little dingy, 
 Mr. Campbell. You must put your best foot forward and have 
 it put in complete order. And a great many other things will 
 be wanted. We have got a boat-load," said the engineer with 
 exhilaration, "of Indian toys and stuff. My wife's fond of all 
 that sort of thing. We have curios enough to set up a shop." 
 
 "Ah," said the agent respectfully, "you have had unusual 
 opportunities, Mr. Rowland : and ladies are so fond of picking 
 things up." 
 
 " Yes," said Rowland, " my wife has wonderful taste — she 
 knows a good thing when she sees it." 
 
 "Which is very far from being a general quality," said the 
 appreciative agent. " Mrs. Rowland, I make no doubt, will turn 
 Rosmore into a beautiful place." 
 
 " It is a beautiful place to begin with," said the new tenant ; 
 " and it would be a strange place that would not be improved 
 when my wife got it into her hands," he added with a^glow of 
 pride. He wanted much to confide to the agent that she was 
 a lady of one of the best English families, and full of every 
 accomplishment ; but his better sense restrained him. 
 
 What exultation he felt in his bosom as he stood under the 
 white colonnade and gazed at the great Clyde rushing upon the 
 beach at the foot of the knoll, and the steamer crossing (which 
 it did by the influence of some good fairy just at this moment) 
 the shining surface, and all the specks of passengers turning in 
 one direction to catch that glimpse of Rosmore. So many times 
 had he gazed at it so — and now for the first time, in the other 
 sense, here he was looking down upon the landscape from his 
 own door. It was not the satisfied appetite of acquisition — it 
 was something finer and more ethereal — a youthful ideal and 
 boyish sentiment carried through a whole life. He had dreamed 
 of this long before there had been any conscious aim at all in 
 his mind ; and now he had actually attained the thing which 
 had so pleased his boyish thoughts. James Rowland took off 
 his hat as he stood under the white colonnade. The agent 
 thought he was saluting somebody in the passing steamer, and 
 murmured, " They'll not see you; it's farther off than it looks ;" 
 but Rowland was saluting One who always sees, and who does 
 not so often as ought to be receive thanks thus warm and glow- 
 
AND HI* CHILDREN G9 
 
 ing from a grateful heart. " And for Evelyn too, who is the 
 best of all ! " he said within himself. 
 
 The agent gleaned enough to perceive that Mr. Rowland was 
 exceedingly proud of his wife, and formed an exaggerated, and 
 consequently rather unfavourable opinion of this unknown 
 lady. He thought she must be a c mnoisseuse with her boat load 
 of curiosities, which indeed, to tell the truth, were things that 
 Rowland had '"picked up " himself in many advantageous ways, 
 before he had even seen his wife, and which Evelyn was not 
 acquainted with at all. Mr. Campbell thought she must be a 
 fantastic woman, and would, as he said, transmogrify the good 
 honest old house, and turn it into a curiosity shop, or " chiney" 
 warehouse — which was an idea he did not contemplate with 
 pleasure. However, this was no reason why he should under- 
 value so rich and so easily pleased a tenant. He made the 
 most ample promises as to what should be done, and the 
 expedition witli which everything should be accomplished — 
 and accompanied Rowland to the boat, introducing him to the 
 minister and to various local authorities on the way. " This is 
 Mr. Rowland that has taken Rosmore. Ye '11 likely see a great 
 deal of him, for lie means to make his principal residence here. 
 — It's the great Rowland, the Indian engineer and railway man," 
 lie said aside, but not quite inaudibly, in each new-comer's ear. 
 
 The local potentates looked with admiration and interest at 
 the new-comer. Any possible inmate of Rosmore would have 
 been interesting to the minister, who had not much society in 
 the parish, and had a natural confidence in the social qualities 
 of a man who was so rich. The " merchant "' who had long dreamt 
 of a railway up the side of the loch, which would bring Glasgow 
 excursionists in their thousands to Rosmore, gazed with awe on 
 the new inhabitant who had but to look upon a country desti- 
 tute of means of locomotion, and lo, the iron way was there. 
 Other points of interest abounded in the new inhabitant. He 
 would quicken life in the parish in every way : probably his 
 very name would secure that second delivery of letters for which 
 the whole peninsula had been agitating so long. The steamboat 
 would certainly call summer and winter at the pier, now that 
 the House would be occupied and visitors always coming and 
 going : and the decoration of the church, which was so much 
 wanted, would, the minister thought, be secured now that such 
 a wealthy inhabitant had been added to the resources of the 
 parish. They all gave him a Avelcome which was as flattering 
 as if he had been a royal prince. "It's been a distress to us a' to 
 see the House standing empty so long, and I'm very glad to 
 make Mr. Rowland's acquaintance. It will be good for us a' to 
 have a man like him among us." How did they know what 
 manner of man he was, except that he was rich ) But James 
 Rowland did not ask himself that question. In his present 
 mood he was very ready to believe that, as he was delighted to 
 come, so his new neighbours would be delighted to have him 
 
70 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 there ; and he knew as well as they did that it would be a good 
 thing for them to have a rich and liberal new parishioner at 
 hand. He liked the looks of the minister, and the schoolmaster, 
 and the merchant, and he was pleased that they should like him. 
 He walked down to the pier attended by a little train ; and it 
 was quite a feather in the cap of Mr. Foggo of Pitarrow, one of 
 the smaller heritors of the parish, that he happened to be going 
 across to the other side, and would consequently travel with the 
 great man. '' I'll talk to him about the kirk and see what he's 
 willing to give," said this gentleman, exhilarated by the thought 
 that a good subscription from the new-comer would save a good 
 deal of money to the heritors. " But only don't be hasty ; don't 
 be rash ; don't let him think that his siller is the first thing we 
 are thinking of," said the minister. " Gangrel body ! what would 
 we be thinking of but his siller," said the laird. But this, which 
 was the only thing that was not complimentary, was not said aloud. 
 
 Thus Rowland was escorted to the boat, the frequent mes- 
 senger between that solitude and the busy world, while Pit- 
 arrow followed, giving way to him as if he had been the Earl 
 himself. The boat already felt as if it partially belonged to 
 him, the crew, too, being all interested and impressed. He 
 looked back from the deck upon the line of the Rosmore woods, 
 and the prolile of the house, which showed itself through them, 
 a different view yet a delightful one : and listened with affability 
 while the different places on the loch were pointed out to him. 
 The evening was perfect as the day had been. The light had 
 died off the deep waters of the loch, though it still played upon 
 the hills, and its low rays struck full in the eyes, so to speak, of 
 the white colonnade, bathing the house in a dazzle of light. 
 What a place to come home to, to settle down in, to see from 
 afar as he approached, and recognize as his own ! He figured 
 to himself returning from an absence, hastening through the 
 woods, received by Evelyn at the door. What a beautiful dream 
 to be fulfilled at last ! What a refuge from all the labours and 
 the tumults of life ! He listened vaguely to what Pitarrow was 
 saying, and granted cordially that it would henceforward be his 
 duty to come to the aid of the parish and to help to beautify 
 the church, and would have given him a cheque on the spot, 
 had there been pen and ink handy. But of course he had not 
 taken his cheque-book with him upon that day's excursion, 
 important as it was. 
 
 He got to the railway in this blissful state of mind, uplifted, 
 liis feet scarcely touching the ground. And then all at once his 
 face grew sad and set. The light went out of it and a blank 
 came in place of the animated and lively expression. He had 
 done all that he wanted to do for the moment at Rosmore. 
 Now another duty awaited him, a duty he should have turned 
 to first, which was indeed the most important duty of all. Now 
 there was no longer any escape for him : he must see his children, 
 and that without any further delay. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN" 71 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Next morning James Rowland woke with the churning of 
 the waves under the little Clyde steamboat in his ears, as if lie 
 were again on the deck waiting for the opening in the trees, 
 and the sight of the white colonnade on the summit of its knoll, 
 which brought with it the dazzle of the sunshine, the purity of 
 the sweet fresh air, the twitter of the birds. How pleasant to 
 have such a vision at waking, to realize with delight that all 
 those pleasant things were henceforth to be the everyday cir- 
 cumstances of his life ! But the next moment a cloud came 
 over his face, for he recollected what it was that must be his 
 occupation to-day. Xo shirking it any longer — no possibility 
 of persuading himself that something else ought to be done first. 
 That had been possible the first day : to see that their future 
 home was comfortable — to make sure that it would be ready for 
 them, surely that was a duty • But now he had accomplished 
 it, and knew all about the house, there was nothing further to 
 keep him back. I hope the reader will not think this perplexed 
 father unnatural or unkind. As a matter of fact, he would 
 have been, and probably would be, after this first obstacle was 
 got over, the kindest, the most fond of fathers. It was the 
 consciousness of the great gulf between what, when he last saw 
 his children, would have been right and natural for them, and 
 what would be suitable and indeed necessary now — between 
 what he himself was then, and what he was now, that over- 
 whelmed him. They might be, in their hearts, everything the 
 prudent father could desire, and yet be quite out of place at 
 Kosmore, where he himself, if a little unpolished, would never- 
 theless be quite in his proper place. If they had been but the 
 little children he remembered, who could have been trained 
 into anything ! Alas, these possibilities were all over. He 
 dressed himself slowly, sighing from time to time, with an 
 oppression on his heart that he could not account for, wishing 
 now, after all, that Evelyn had been with him, who perhaps 
 would have known better how to deal with the emergency. 
 And he breakfasted very slowly, reading the Herald in detail, 
 and brooding over the paragraphs of local news which he did 
 not understand after so many years of separation from Glasgow 
 and its interests. At last the moment came when he could 
 delay no longer He had read the papers ; he had finished his 
 breakfast : he rose with a sigh and took his hat. 
 
 There is a street in Glasgow which I remember long ago, 
 and which was then called the Sauchiehall Road. Something- 
 picturesque in the name has kept a place in the recollection of 
 a child, over — let us not imagine how many years ; but it may 
 be that a recollection so far on° has confused the outlines of the 
 street, or that in this age of change it maybe completely altered, 
 
72 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 perhaps overrun with tall tenements, perhaps fallen into irre- 
 mediable decay. In like manner I am not sure that it was the 
 Sauchiehall Road in which the young Rowlands lived with their 
 aunt, though I think it was ; and the reader may here excuse 
 the possibility of topographical error. It was a street in which 
 there were many, according to a description exclusively and 
 characteristically Scotch, " self-contained " houses of a small 
 description, such as are not Aery usual in Scotland. So far as 
 I remember, they were of a generally grimy kind, built in that 
 dark complexioned stone which adds so much gloom to the often 
 cloudy skies and damp atmosphere of the western city. These 
 houses presented an aspect of faded gentility, and of having 
 seen better days. But they were at the same time very attrac- 
 tive to people without any pretence at gentility, to whom the 
 dignity of a front door and a house self-contained, in distinction 
 to the more usual circumstances of a flat, was very tempting. 
 
 It was in one of these houses that Mrs. Brown, who was 
 Rowland's sister-in-law, had established herself with her charges. 
 It was one that was supposed to be among the best of the long- 
 row. It had a yard or two of what was called garden in front, 
 almost tilled with an elder-berry tree, on which there were some 
 dusty indications of coming blossom ; and as the house had 
 been recently painted, and had a bank of flowers in the parlour 
 window, it was easily distinguishable from its neighbours, which 
 were generally faded and dingy in appearance. To describe the 
 beating of the heart with which Mr. Rowland knocked at that 
 freshly painted green door would be almost more than words 
 are equal to : a lover at the crisis of hope and fear, not knowing 
 what was to be the answer to his suit, could not have been more 
 agitated than this sober-minded, middle-aged man. It occurred 
 to him at the last moment not to give his name, but to trust to 
 his sister-in-law's recognition of him, and thus have his first 
 view of his children entirely without any warning. He had 
 scarcely done this, however, before he began to think that to 
 have given them the fullest warning would have been better, 
 so that his first impressions should have been of their very best 
 aspect prepared to please him. But this was only after it was 
 too late to change. 
 
 " Wha'll I say 1 " said the servant girl, so decidedly bearing 
 that aspect that she could not have been called the maid, or the 
 servant, or anything but the girl. She was wiping her hands 
 with her apron to be ready to take a card, and a cap had been 
 stuck on rather at random upon a mass of curly and not very 
 well-tended hair. 
 
 " You can say it's a gentleman to speak to Mrs. Brown," said 
 Rowland, stepping into the parlour, which was rather dark with 
 its flowers banked up against the window, though the flowers 
 themselves seemed to flourish luxuriantly. There was something 
 horribly familiar to him in the aspect of the room. He had seen 
 nothing like it for many years, and yet he recognized it in a 
 
AXD HIS CHILDEEN 73 
 
 momont. It was the best room of the respectable mechanic — 
 the parlour in which his wife put all her pride. There was a 
 round stand, covered with a glass shade, of wax flowers in the 
 centre of the table, and it stood upon a still larger mat sur- 
 rounded with raised flowers worked in crochet in coloured wools 
 standing primly up around. There were a few books laid round 
 like the rays of a star : the Course of Time and other grimly 
 orthodox productions of that character. The chairs and sofa 
 were covered with long " antimacassars," also worked in wool 
 in stripes of different colours ; the mantelpiece was loaded with 
 small pieces of china — girls with lambs, jugs with little pictures 
 upon them, and other such impressive articles, and photographs. 
 Hung over it in the place of honour, Mr. Rowland shivered to 
 see his own portrait, flanked on one side by the picture of a 
 bungalow in which he had once lived, and on the other by a 
 group of football players, with names written underneath, one 
 of them being conspicuously marked as "Archie." Rowland, 
 however, was breathing too quickly to allow him to go up to 
 it, and prepare himself for the appearance of his son. He felt 
 more like running away, and keeping up a fiction of being in 
 India still. 
 
 While he was looking round him in consternation and alarm, 
 he was suddenly aware that the door had opened, and a little 
 bright figure in coloured muslin and many floating ribbons had 
 come in. She twisted herself as she walked, with a swaying 
 and movement of all the bright-coloured ribbons, and came 
 forward with an apparent intention of shaking hands with the 
 strangei\ But stopping at the distance of a step or two, said 
 with another twist, " Oh, I thought I knew you ! Was there 
 anything you might be wanting that I could do ? " 
 
 " I am waiting to see Mrs. Brown," he said. 
 
 " Oh ! that's aunty," said the girl. She looked at the elderly 
 visitor with a slight air of contempt, as if a man who could 
 prefer to see aunty instead of herself was a most curious speci- 
 men of humanit}^. And then she laid down upon the table a 
 parasol she had been carrying, and her gloves, and a small 
 basket of flowers. "I've just been out to the nursery garden to 
 get a flower," she said, " I'm awfully fond of flowers. D'ye like 
 them 1 — Will I give you one for your button-hole — if you're one 
 of aunty's friends ! " 
 
 "You are very kind," said the tremulous father, "but had 
 you not better wait till you see if aunty recognizes me for one 
 of her friends 1 " 
 
 "Oh, it's no matter," said the girl, "a flower is neither here 
 nor there — and she'll not be fit to see a gentleman for a good 
 while. She likes to put on her best gown, and her cap with the 
 red ribbons, like the lady in the ' Laird of Cockpen ' — D'ye know 
 the song 1 ?" 
 
 "I used to know it long ago — before I went to India " 
 
 "Oh, you've come from Ingia ? Papas out there — I wonder 
 
74 THE RAILWAY MAS 
 
 if you've come from papa. Archie and me, we are always 
 wishing he would send for us. It would be awful fun. But he 
 says lie's coming home. I hope he'll not come home. I hope 
 he'll send for us out there. Isn't it far better fun out in Ingia 
 than it is here ? " 
 
 " I don't know about the fun here. Do you remember your 
 father? "he asked. 
 
 " No," said the young lady indifferently, " I was a little baby 
 when he went away : and he must think I'm a little baby still, 
 for he never sends me things that you might think he would. 
 I've seen girls that had grand necklaces and things, and bangles. 
 Bangles are very much worn here now. But papa never sent 
 me any. I had to buy what I wear." 
 
 She held out a wrist to him laden with these ornaments of 
 the flimsiest description, wires of silver manufactured to suit a 
 sudden demand. 
 
 " I am sure that he would have sent you things like these 
 had he thought you cared." 
 
 " What for would I not care? " said the unconscious girl with 
 great reasonableness. She turned the bangles round and round 
 upon her outstretched arm, holding it up to see how they looked, 
 and not unwilling, perhaps, that the visitor should see how r slim 
 and white it was. The girl was pretty in her way. She had a 
 wonderful amount of ribbons, a necklace with several lockets 
 suspended round her neck, and about a dozen bangles on each 
 arm. What with looking at these, letting them drop upon her 
 arm to judge the effect, glancing at her figure reflected in the 
 little flat glass on the mantelpiece, and casting stealthy looks 
 aside at the stranger to see how all these pretty ways moved 
 him, she had the air of being so fully occupied that there was 
 no wonder it did not occur to her to compare his elderly brown 
 face, with the portrait of her father hanging over the mirror 
 on the wall. 
 
 " Is your brother at home ? " Mr. Rowland said. 
 
 "Archie ! oh no, he's never at home. It's past the season for 
 football, perhaps you know, but he's taken to cricket to fill up 
 his time. He's not a dab at cricket," the girl said with a laugh. 
 " It's more an English game than a Scotch game, and Archie is 
 awfully Scotch. He goes on about the flag and that nonsense. 
 Now, I never mind : I like people just to be pleasant, whether 
 they are English or Scotch." 
 
 " That is the most sensible way," said the father. 
 
 " Do you hear aunty," said the girl, " rummaging about to 
 get herself dressed, as if you would ever notice what kind of a 
 gown she had on ! I always put on a nice frock in the morning, 
 and then I am fit to be seen all the rest of the day." 
 
 "But perhaps," said Mr. Rowland, "you have had more 
 advantages than your aunt has had. You have been at school, 
 and learnt a number of things." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I've been at school," said the girl. " I was at Miss 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 75 
 
 Gibbs' in St. Vincent Square. It's rather a grand place ; but I 
 have my doubts about what we learnt there. Aunty sent me 
 because it was so grand — the parents coming in their carriages 
 — Mr, MacColTs daughters, that has the splendid shop in 
 Buchanan Street, and people like that. Miss Gibbs only took 
 me because she was told about papa being so rich. The MacColls 
 have a pony-trap of their own, and a boy in livery to drive 
 about with them," said Marion, with a discontented face. "If 
 my papa is really so rich, I don't see why I shouldn't have a 
 pony-trap too." 
 
 " When he comes home " Rowland began. 
 
 " Oli, when he comes home ! I once thought I would like 
 that, though both Archie and me would have liked it better it 
 he had sent for us out to Ingia. But maybe you don't know 
 what has happened ? Papa has married again ! He's married 
 a governess, or something of that kind, that has just caught 
 him for his money. Aunty says there are no fools like old 
 fools. And what will we be now? We might just as well be 
 anybody's children as belong to a man that has got a new wife. 
 She is just sure to put him against us, to get all the money for 
 herself " 
 
 It was all Rowland could do not to spring up and silence with 
 an angry hand this little pert voice, with its ignoble complaint. 
 He was very angry, but he subdued himself. " I should like to 
 see your brother," he said curtly, for just then the door had 
 been heard to open by a latch-key, and some one had come in. 
 
 "Archie," said Miss Marion, elevating her voice, but without 
 any other movement. "Come in here. Here's a gentleman 
 that knows papa." 
 
 The door of the room was ajar. It was pushed open, more 
 gently than might have been expected, by a tall lad, his face 
 highly coloured by the still unsubdued flush of violent exercise. 
 His countenance was of a milder, perhaps feebler, type than 
 that of his sister, and his dress and manner were something 
 between those of an assistant gentleman in a shop and a young 
 clerk. His clothes were good enough, but not very well made 
 or carefully kept. Rowland's heart gave a leap, however, when 
 this head looked in, for the boy had his mother's eyes — kind, 
 honest, well-meaning eyes, devoid of guile. They looked in 
 with an inquiry in them, and then brightened up. The door 
 opened wide, and the young man came in and went up to 
 Rowland, holding out his hand : " If he's from papa," he said, a 
 little broadly — (papaw would be nearer the sound, yet not so 
 much as that), " he's very welcome." In the delightful revulsion 
 the father felt unspeakably grateful, though there was little to 
 call forth that sentiment. 
 
 "I've been telling him," said Marion, holding up her arm 
 again in order that her bangles might drop back with a tinkle, 
 which evidently was agreeable to her, "that we're very dis- 
 appointed that papa didn't send for us to Ingia, and then we 
 
76 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Mould have taken care of him and stopped this awful marriage, 
 which will just be our destruction. And it would have been 
 awful fun out there." 
 
 "You will think we've no business to speak of his marriage 
 in that way. And neither we have," said the youth. " He's old 
 enough to judge for himself." 
 
 " Old enough ! " said Marion ; "just so old that the parliament 
 should stop people from making such fools of themselves. But 
 there's no fools like auld fools, as aunty says." 
 
 "I don't go so far as that," said Archie, with an air of im- 
 partiality, " but of course it was a great disappointment. We've 
 been brought up to think everything would be ours ; and then, 
 as my aunt says, there will perhaps be a large young family, 
 and everything spoiled for May and me." 
 
 A Hush such as would not have misbecome a young lover — a 
 glow of warmth and pleasure — came over Rowland. He scarcely 
 noticed the boy's reflection, for the curious shade of gratification 
 which the last part of his speech gave him. A large young 
 family ; — not that perhaps : but the suggestion seemed to fill 
 his veins with new life. 
 
 It was at this moment that a sound was heard upon the 
 stairs, announcing Mrs. Brown's speedy appearance : a rustling 
 of silk, and tinkle of ornaments, and some half-whispered 
 remarks to the servant girl— "Ye tawpy ! why did ye no show 
 the gentleman into the drawing-room 1 He's just in the parlour, 
 and that's not the place for visitors. When I give a ring to the 
 bell, mind that ye're ready wi' the cake and wine." 
 
 "Dear me," said Mrs. Brown, appearing in the room, and 
 using her full and sonorous voice, " May, what tempted ye to 
 bring a gentleman into this small bit of a room — just a family 
 parlour, no fit for visitors, and the drawing-room standing 
 useless up the stair? I havena heard your name, sir, but I'm 
 sure I'm glad to see ye. I was in the middle of some femily 
 business, and I could not get away before." 
 
 Her appearance, however, contradicted this excuse. Mrs. 
 Brown had put on a silk dress of a brilliant colour, which she 
 called ruby, and which glistened and rustled exceedingly. She 
 wore a big locket on her ample bosom ; her watch, a large one, 
 was twisted into her belt, depending from a long and heavy 
 gold chain, which was round her neck. She had a number of 
 rings upon her fingers. Her cap was an elaborate construction 
 trimmed with ribbons of the same colour as her dress. Her 
 appearance, indeed, as, large and ruddy and full of colour, 
 she came in through the narrow doorway, turned the very 
 atmosphere in the room to a rosy hue. 
 
 " Jean," said Rowland, rising from his chair. 
 
 She gave a scream, and gazed at him with wondering eyes. 
 " Wha are ye 1 — wha are ye ? — for I'm sure that I've seen ye be- 
 fore. The lass has no sense to ask a visitor his name." 
 
 " Is it possible that ye don't know me, Jean 1 " 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 77 
 
 "God bless us ! " she said, "it's just Jims Rowland himself ! 
 Eh, man, I'm glad to see ye, Jims. Is it just you !— bairns, it's 
 your papaw. Lord bless me that I should ha' been such a time 
 putting on my cap, and Jims Rowland waiting for me down the 
 stair."' 
 
 " Papa-w ! " with about half of a W at the end of the last 
 syllable, said Archie. 
 
 " Papa ! " said Marion. They were both discomfited, but the 
 girl least. She fell back a little upon the bodyguard as it were 
 of her brother. " It was you that said that about the new 
 family," she whispered in Archie's ear. 
 
 " I am not denying it," said Archie. " He had no business to 
 come in like this and take us unawares." 
 
 Mrs. Brown gave Rowland a fat hand to shake, and then she 
 subsided into a chair and began to cry. " Eh, to think it should 
 be you ! and saemony years come and gane since ye parted with 
 us a' — and such things as have happened. Ye was but young 
 then, and your heart was running on many a thing out of com- 
 mon folks' way — and to see ye back again looking little the 
 worse, and a' your fancies f ullilled ! It's just the maist wonderful 
 thing I ever heard of. But eh ! Jims Rowland, you're an awfu' 
 changed man from what ye were when ye went away." 
 
 "I am seventeen years older," Rowland said. 
 
 "It's no that — but you're far different. You were a heart- 
 broken lad then. 'Twas for the loss of your wife, my bonnie 
 sister Mary— and now you're back with a new lady to put out 
 her very name from the airth." 
 
 " I think," said Rowland in his own defence, " that not to marry 
 again for more than sixteen years was surely enough to show my 
 respect for her memory." 
 
 " I never thought you would have married again," said Mrs. 
 Brown. "Mony a time it's been said to me, 'He'll get another 
 wife out yonder ' — but I would never believe it. I just could not 
 think it true. Eh, man, when ye had a bonny dochter o' your ain 
 grown up, and just real well qualified to be the mistress of her 
 faither's house- — ■ — " 
 
 " Jean," said Mr. Rowland, with seriousness, "I have a great 
 regard for you. You've been, no doubt, a careful guardian of 
 the children — but I cannot answer to you for what I do." 
 
 " Xa, na, I never imagined it. Ye just acted to please your 
 ain sel', considering nobody. I'm no finding fault — I'm just 
 wondering. And there's the bairns. What think ye of them \ 
 Are they no a credit to any house 1 and a pleasure to the eyes, 
 and a comfort to the heart % 
 
 She drew Marion forward witli a vigorous hand, and placed 
 the two side by side, confronting their father, who sat and gazed 
 at them helplessly. Two well-grown, well-looking young crea- 
 tures they were indeed. But Rowland gazed at them with a 
 gradual dying out of all light from his face : his lip dropped, his 
 eyes grew blank. What could he say ? Nothing ; there was 
 
78 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 little to find fault with, nothing that could be expressed in 
 ordinary words. A sort of dread came over him as he looked at 
 them, the boy and girl of whom he knew nothing ; who had 
 speculated on him, a being of whom they knew nothing, as to 
 what he would do for them, send for them to India, which would 
 be awful fun, or disappoint them of their lawful expectation of 
 being his heirs. He might never have known what were their 
 sentiments, and perhaps would have remained remorseful all his 
 life, thinking himself to blame in not responding to their affec- 
 tion, but for this unintentional revelation. And now it astonished 
 him to find himself in face of the two who had formed such clear 
 opinions of their own as to what his duty was, and how he had 
 deviated from it. They thought his duty was to take care of and 
 provide for them — and he thought their duty was to regard their 
 unknown father with affection and submission. And neither one 
 nor the other had come true. He could not make any reply to 
 their aunt's appeal. He got up and went to the window, and 
 walked about the little room, knocking against the furniture. 
 " This is a pokey little place you are in," he said, by way of getting 
 rid of some of the vexation in his mind. " I could have wished 
 that you had been in a better house." 
 
 " It's a very good house," said Mrs. Brown. " This is just the 
 femily parlour — but if ye'll come up to the drawing-room, ye '11 
 see what a nice room it is. It's just as pleasant a house as there 
 is in Glasgow, if maybe no so big as in some of those new cres- 
 cents and squares out on the Kelvin Road. But everybody knows 
 that the Sauchiehall Road is one of the best pairts. What ails 
 ye at the house? it is just a very good house, quite good enough 
 for the bairns and me." 
 
 Rowland could make no reply. He stood and stared blankly 
 out of the window into the elder-berry tree, and said no more. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 "You will stay to your dinner?" Mrs. Brown said. The 
 moment that these words, prompted by an inalienable Scotch 
 hospitality, whose promptings are sometimes less than prudent, 
 had left her lips, she reddened suddenly, and cast an alarmed 
 look at Marion, who, for her part, was still standing contem- 
 plating her father, with a look in which a little defiance was 
 concealed under a good deal of curiosity. The girl was con- 
 sidering how to approach and mollify this unknown parent, who, 
 after all, was papa, the giver of all things, and upon whom was 
 dependent the comfort, not to say grandeur, of life to come. It 
 was a pity she had spoken so unadvisedly about his wife, but 
 that, after all, was his own fault. Marion had some experience 
 in novels, which supply so many precedents to the ignorant and 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 70 
 
 young, and knew what a meeting between a father and his 
 children ought to be. He ought to have taken them into his 
 paternal arms. She, the girl, ought to have thrown herself upon 
 his bosom in tears and rapture. He ought to have lifted his eyes 
 to the skies or the ceiling, and have said: "Just like this was 
 her mother when I saw her first ! " None of these things had 
 been done, and the girl was a little at fault. To look at his back- 
 as he stood at the window, evidently out of temper, discouraged 
 and discouraging, was a thing that suggested no kind of original 
 procedure to her mind. And she was consequently of no manner 
 of comfort to her anxious aunt, who had instantly remembered 
 that the mid-day dinner of the family was nothing but hotch- 
 potch. And how was she to set down a rich man, who fared 
 sumptuously every day, to a dinner of hotch-potch 1 Marion's 
 mind was occupied with much more important things. How was 
 she to do away with the disadvantages of that first introduction, 
 and make herself agreeable to papa % A girl in a novel, she began 
 to think, would steal up to him and j:>ut her arm through his, 
 where he stood looking out into the elder-berry tree, and lean 
 her head upon his shoulder, and perhaps say " Dear papa ! " But 
 Marion's courage was not quite equal to that. As for Archie, he 
 simply stood still and stared, too completely taken by surprise 
 to make any movement whatever, contemplating his father's 
 back with unspoken disappointment and dismay. 
 
 " AVeel," said Mrs. Brown, after waiting in vain for a response, 
 seizing dexterously the opportunity of escape ; "111 just leave ye 
 to make acquaintance witli one another, for I have things to see 
 to in the house ; and, Marion, you'll just see that your papa has 
 a glass of wine, for the dinner, as you're aware, is no till two 
 o'clock. I'll send in the girl with the tray — she ought to have 
 been here before now — and I'll leave you two to entertain your 
 papaw." 
 
 Then there followed another rustling of the silken gown, and 
 tinkle of the long gold chain, with its bunch of breloques^ after 
 which came another tinkle, that of glasses, as " the girl " brought 
 in a tray with two decanters, a large plate of shortbread, and 
 one of another kind of cake. The wax flowers had to be lifted 
 from the centre of the table to make room for this, and the 
 process occupied a little time and a good deal of commotion, of 
 which Rowland was conscious with increasing irritation and 
 annoyance. He began to feel, however, that the position was 
 ridiculous, and that to stand at the window, with his back to the 
 other occupants of the room, was certainly not to make the best 
 of the situation in any May. He turned round accordingly, and 
 threw himself into a chair, which rocked under him. The strange- 
 ness alike and familiarity of the scene were more bewildering 
 to him than words could say. Mrs. Brown, in the wealth which 
 he had supplied, had done all she could to be genteel, poor woman, 
 according to her lights. The tray with the port and sherry was 
 her best rendering of what a proper reception ought to be. In 
 
SO THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 the foundry days it would no doubt have been a little whiskey 
 and a bit of oatcake. The instinct was the same, but, according 
 to all the good woman knew, this was the most lofty and cultured 
 way of setting it forth. 
 
 " Will you take port wine or sherry wine, papa ? " Marion said. 
 
 "I will take nothing, thank you. Shut the door, I beg. I 
 want to speak to you, my dear." He turned towards her, but 
 his look stopped short at Archie — at Archie, the loutish lad 
 whose lowering forehead was bent over his mother's honest 
 blue eyes. 
 
 " I did wrong not to tell you at once who I was. I suppose I 
 had some absurd idea that you might recognize me. To make 
 up for this, I'll forget all the foolish things you have said about 
 my wife. As they arise from simple ignorance, and you have 
 had unfortunately no acquaintance with ladies, I'll look over all 
 that, and we'll begin square." 
 
 Marion listened, standing with the decanter in her hand. 
 " Will you really take nothing, papa ; not a little sherry to keep 
 you going till dinner-time 1 " she said. 
 
 " My aunt," said Archie, "is a very good woman ; she has been 
 everything that is kind to us, and my own mother's sister — more 
 than the grandest lady in the land. If she is not a lady, neither 
 was my mother, I suppose 1 " 
 
 " Your mother was — like nobody else, nor to be compared with 
 anybody else," said Rowland hastily. "But you are quite right 
 to stand up for your aunt. I don't doubt she has been very 
 kind to you." 
 
 " Oh," said Marion, turning her head, "no more than was just 
 her duty, papa. We've done a great deal for her. There is just 
 as much to be said on the one side as the other. You can take 
 a piece of shortbread, Archie, and a wee drop of the sherry wine 
 will do you good." 
 
 The lad pushed her hand away somewhat rudely. " I wish," 
 he said, " you wouldn't interrupt what papaw says." 
 
 The girl broke off a little piece of the cake for herself. She 
 poured out a little of the port and sipped it. " Aunty will be 
 vexed if she thinks it hasn't been touched," she said, munching 
 and sipping. Rowland turned his look from her to that pair of 
 blue eyes which were like his Mary's. They were the only com- 
 fort he had in the strange circumstances. He addressed himself 
 to them as to something in which there was understanding in 
 this uncongenial place. 
 
 " I am afraid, my boy," he said gently, " that we've all been 
 wrong. I first for forgetting that you were growing into a man. 
 It was only my wife's inquiries, anxious as she was to hear 
 everything about you, that showed me my dreadful mistake in 
 this respect. And your aunt has been wrong, which was very 
 excusable on her part, in forgetting that your bringing up, for 
 the position you are likely to have, should have been different. 
 Where have you been at school 1 " 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 81 
 
 "I've been at a very good school," said Archie ; "it's no fault 
 of the school. I've maybe been a little idle. Aunty always said 
 — that is, I thought, as there was plenty of money, what was the 
 use of being a galley slave. So I just got through." 
 
 "And what is the use," said Marion, "of toiling like the lads 
 that have to go up for exams, when you are such a rich man, 
 papa, and he will never need to work for his living? It's always 
 a nice thing to get grand prizes ; but he was not going in for 
 anything, and what for should he have risked his health, that 
 was of far more consequence 1 " 
 
 " Let's alone, May. I was maybe wrong, but that was my 
 own opinion, papaw." 
 
 " Don't say papa," said Rowland, glad to give vent to a little 
 of the intolerable impatience that possessed him. " Call me 
 father. You talk about exams, and working for your living. 
 Do you know what a young man of the upper classes, far better 
 than you, is doing at your age ? — I don't mean the fops and the 
 fools — I hope," he said with some vehemence, "a son of mine 
 will never be either the one or the other. Do you know what 
 they do ? They work in their colleges till they are older than 
 you, or they go and travel, or they're away with their regiment. 
 There are idle ones, but they are no credit, any more than an 
 idle working lad is a credit. Are you doing anything, boy 1 " 
 
 Archie's countenance fell a little. "I'm in two or three debat- 
 ing societies," he said ; " there's a great many students in them. 
 We have very good debates. I've read a paper twice ; on the 
 ►Scotch question and about local government." 
 
 " What's the Scotch question ? " said Mr. Rowland ; but like 
 other careless inquirers, he did not wait for an answer. " At 
 your age," he said, " you are better employed learning than 
 teaching, in my opinion." 
 
 " Oh, papa," said Marion, who had finished her cake and her 
 wine, "it's not teaching ! He doesn't get anything for it. He 
 subscribes to keep up the society. It's quite a thing a gentleman 
 might do." 
 
 " Hold your tongue, May ! " said her brother. 
 
 " Quite a thing a gentleman might do ! — and he is not a 
 gentleman, but only a wealthy engineer's son," said Rowland 
 with a sudden flash of mortified pride. The boy in his badly-cut' 
 clothes rilled him with an exasperation not less keen that it was 
 mingled with tenderness for his mother's eyes, and the ingenuous 
 expression in his own countenance. " I've been a fool !" he said ; 
 "I thought, I suppose, that you would take my rise in life like 
 nature, and start from where I ended. I hoped you would turn 
 out like — the lads I've been accustomed to see. How should 
 you 1 ? They all started from gentlemen's houses, and had it in 
 their veins from their birth." 
 
 His two children stood opposite to him listening to this tirade, 
 which they only half heard and did not half understand. They 
 were quite bewildered by his heat and vehemence and apparent 
 
 G 
 
82 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 displeasure. What was it that made him angry 1 Marion thought 
 that her brother was very like a gentleman, and he thought that 
 she was very like a lady. It was the utmost length of their 
 ambition. The MacColls, whose father had the splendid shop in 
 Buchanan Street, were not so like ladies as May, though they 
 had a carriage with a pair of ponies. And as for Archie, he was 
 of opinion that he was himself one of those manly and in- 
 dependent thinkers, whose mission it was to pull down the 
 aristocrats, and to abolish caste wherever it might appear. 
 
 Mr. Rowland took another turn to the window, and wiped his 
 forehead and came back to his chair. He was very anxious to 
 subdue himself, since the defects of the two young people were 
 not their fault, nor were they at all likely to be cured in this 
 way. He tried even to put on a smile as he said to Marion, 
 "And what are you doing with yourself ? " 
 
 " Oh,"<said the girl, " I'm just like Archie. I am doing nothing 
 to speak of. Aunty has always said it was not necessary, and 
 there is very little to do. It's no profit making our things at 
 home, for you can buy them cheaper in the shops. At first 
 Aunty used to make Archie's shirts, but they never fitted him, 
 and it was no saving. So I just fiddle about and plague every- 
 body, Aunty says." 
 
 " And who are the people you plague? " said her father. 
 
 " Oh ! " The young lady hung her head a little and blushed 
 and laughed. " Well ! there's Archie and Aunty first of all ; and 
 then there's Archie's Debating Boys, as we call them ; and the 
 Philosophers — fine philosophers to be so minding what a lassie 
 says ! " She laughed again consciously. " I am sure I never say 
 a word to them but nonsense," she cried. 
 
 Mr. Rowland drew a long sigh out of the bottom of his heart. 
 He had not thought much of the young ladies at the station, 
 jhe General's daughters and the others ; but Marion, as she 
 stood with her head down and that foolish laugh, conscious of 
 her effect upon the Philosophers, and proud of it, was still 
 another species less honourable to womankind. What Evelyn 
 would say ! flashed across his brain like an arrow. But it was 
 not her fault, poor thing ; and he could not mend it. It was his 
 duty, at least, as her father, to bear with her, to find no fault. 
 For, after all, this was the natural outlet for a girl who had no 
 other interests in her life. 
 
 " You must have," he said, " a little sense to talk to me now 
 and then, for I am past the time for nonsense. There is nobody," 
 he added with a little hesitation, " who will teach you that better 
 than my wife." 
 
 "Oh!" said Marion: then she raised her eyes quickly, "she 
 will be awfully clever, and know everything — for wasn't she a 
 governess when you were married to her, papa 1 " 
 
 " No, she was not a governess," he said quickly. " That is a 
 delusion which you seem to have got into your minds. Let me 
 hear no more of it. She was a Miss Ferrars, of Langley Ferrars, 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 83 
 
 one of the oldest families in England — as different from me in 
 origin as she is superior to me in every quality. If you were in 
 the very least like her, I should hope one day to be proud of 
 you, Marion. But you will have to get rid of a great many 
 defects first." 
 
 Marion made a little moue which was not unnatural. It was 
 of course a very unwise speech on her father's part — but it is 
 difficult under such exasperation to be always wise. She felt 
 it, however, more prudent to take no notice, but to do her best 
 to find out what were his intentions ; which was a matter of 
 the utmost importance to all. 
 
 " If you please, papa, are we going to live on here with 
 Aunty ?"' she asked. 
 
 The question gave him a startling sensation of relief : was it 
 possible that this might be done 1 Would it not be kinder to 
 leave them in the life to which they were accustomed % Poor 
 Jean would probably break her heart if her children were taken 
 away. They were more her children than his, he reflected ; and 
 money was no object. He could arrange their income so as to 
 give Archie the freedom of a young man, without obliging the 
 poor boy to qualify himself suddenly for therarified atmosphere 
 of Rosmore. This calculation passed through Rowland's mind 
 with the speed of light. What a happy untying of the knot 
 would it be ! He would not require to saddle himself with the 
 discomfort and disappointment which probably would result 
 from any attempt to prepare them for Rosmore. And they 
 would not like Rosmore. It would be dull for them. No debat- 
 ing societies or philosophers' clubs to enliven their evenings. 
 And the arrangements of the house would be so different. Oh, 
 if he could but solve the question that was before him in that 
 easy way ! 
 
 But then there occurred to him — the person who would suffer 
 most, the one and only person who would oppose any such 
 compromise with his duty — Evelyn ! He dared not appear 
 before her with the information that he had left his children 
 behind because it was their original sphere, because they would 
 be no credit, an impracticable pair. He could imagine the look 
 with which she would listen, the astonishment in her face. As 
 likely as not she would get her bonnet at once, and, before he 
 could stop, set out to fetch them home. That was the sort of 
 thing she would do. She would have no evasion, not even that 
 about breaking their aunt's heart. In that case, she was capable 
 of suggesting that the aunt should be brought to Rosmore, but 
 not that the responsibility of the children should be shuffled off. 
 What a world of thoughts can be disposed of in a minute or 
 two ! This whole course of argument, question and reply, ran 
 through his mind while Marion's short question was being put, 
 and before he could make up his mind what to say in reply. 
 He played with it for a moment, still keeping that blissful 
 possibility before him — " What would you like best ? " he asked. 
 
84 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 The girl and the boy looked at each other— they too had a 
 multitudinous flood running through their minds, rushing like 
 a mill race. They had an agreeable life enough so far as their 
 instincts went : nothing to do — which, being on the very edge 
 of the world that has to work hard for its living, and does not 
 like it, was delightful to them, just as work is delightful to those 
 whom nature provides with nothing to do. But then they were 
 tired of this life all the same, as most people are, if the possi- 
 bility of a fundamental change is put before them. And though 
 they were rather afraid of their father, and what he might 
 require from them, the excitement of the change to a great 
 house, horses and carriages, and all the splendour they had 
 dreamt of was a strong counterbalance. They did not take 
 Aunty Jean's heart much into consideration : and it would cer- 
 tainly be a terrible break-down from the vague future of glory 
 before them, which all their friends believed in, did they step 
 back into the monotony of Sauchiehall Road and the guardian- 
 ship of Aunty Jean. They consulted each other with their eyes, 
 and then Marion replied, "We would rather be with you, papa." 
 
 " It is with me you ought to be," said Rowland, with a sigh. 
 " I have taken a house down the Clyde, which you may have 
 seen if you have ever been down that way. You see it from the 
 water as you come across. It is called Rosmore " 
 
 " Rosmore ! " they both said with bated breath. 
 
 " You know the place ? It is a place I've always wanted since 
 I was a lad like Archie. I used to stand on the deck and glance 
 at it, but never said a word to anybodj 7 . That's where I am 
 going to live." 
 
 " For a little whilie — for the salt water ? " said they. 
 
 " For altogether ; for as many years, I hope, as I live." 
 
 " Oh ! " they said again together, looking at each other. Ros- 
 more was far more splendid than anything they had imagined. 
 They had been with their aunt down to a cottage on the peninsula 
 for the benefit of what Mrs. Brown picturesquely called "the 
 salt water," i. e. the sea-bathing : so they knew something of 
 what it was. It was very grand, but perhaps a little oppressive 
 to imaginations accustomed only to the cottage. Their eyes, 
 looking at each other, had a question in them. They were over- 
 awed, but a little frightened too. 
 
 " I suppose — there will be a carriage, or a gig, or something. 
 It is a long, long way up from the pier." 
 
 " There will, I hope, be carriages enough for anything that is 
 required, and horses to ride, and most things that may be found 
 necessary. Archie, I hope," said the father, unconsciously 
 replying to Marion, " can ride ?" 
 
 At this the boy burst into a great laugh. "I do not know, 
 for I never did try," he half sang, half said, with a big voice, 
 inclining to be bass, but uncertain yet. His face grew red and 
 Ins eyes shone. He communicated his pleasure to his sister by 
 a look, but this time she did not respond. 
 
VXD MS CHILDREN 81 
 
 " And I " she said, with a contraction of her soft girlish 
 
 , forehead, " will have to bide at home." 
 
 " No," said Rowland, feeling at last a little pleasure in the 
 idea of' changing so entirely the lives of his children, and sur- 
 rounding them with every good thing ; " you will find plenty of 
 pleasant things to do. But," he added, pausing, "what will 
 become of the poor Aunt Jean if I take you both away i " 
 
 They looked at each other again, and repeated in different 
 tones the same " Oh ! '' Marion uttered that exclamation with 
 a toss of her head, and a tone of indifference. " Aunty has made 
 plenty out of us," she said. 
 
 Archie here, for the first time, took the words out ot her 
 mou1}h. " She has aye expected it, : ' he said. " It would vex her 
 more if vou didn't take us." 
 
 •• Are you sure of that ! She has been like a mother to you. 
 
 '•But mothers expect,'"' said Archie, "that their families should 
 
 s:o awav.'' 
 
 Marion shrugged her little shoulders. " She'll be free then to 
 "•o to the saut water or wherever she likes," she said, "and not 
 say she is doing this or doing that, not for herself, but for him 
 
 and me." . . 
 
 "Then you are not sorry to leave her solitary] said 
 
 Rowland. 
 
 They consulted each other again with their eyes, with a 
 sort of frank surprise at the question. " Oh, she'll have her 
 friends," said Marion : and she added, " It could never be 
 thought that Ave would stay here with her, when our papa 
 had come home and was wanting us, and a grand house and 
 horses and carriages. That's very different from Sauchiehall 
 
 Road." . , 
 
 Archie looked as if he saw something more in the question — 
 but he did not say anything. He was slow of expression, and 
 perhaps not even so nimble of thought as his sister. He 
 looked, however, a little wistfully at his father, studying his 
 countenance. 
 
 "And what will become of her 1 " Rowland said. 
 "Oh, she will just bide on," said Marion: "she has always 
 expected it. She has her friends. There's the church quite near, 
 and she'll go to all the prayer meetings. She aye says she 
 has no time as long as we're here, but that when we re away. 
 she will go to them, every one. But I think shell change 
 her mind;' said the girl with a laugh, "and go out to her 
 
 tea ' 
 
 Archie had caught his father's eye, and was much confused. 
 •• It'll not be any the worse for her i " he said. 
 • Before the question could be answered, Mrs. Brown came 
 in a little flushed but beaming. " The dinner is just ready, ' she 
 said. "Bairns, did I not tell you to take up your papaw to 
 the drawing-room till the cloth was laid. And you 11 be hungry, 
 Jims, just off' your journey.' 1 She spoke as if she supposed him 
 
86 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 to have come straight from India without any chance of a meal 
 upon the way. 
 
 The dinner was a curious mixture of what was excellent and 
 what was bad. The hotch-potch, for which Mrs. Brown apolo- 
 gized, was excellent. It is a soup made with lamb and all the 
 fresh young vegetables, which, in the characteristic Scotch cuisine, 
 supplies the place in summer of the admirable broth. Rowland 
 had never tasted anything better ; but it was followed by what 
 Mrs. Brown called a "made dish," which was as bad as the other 
 was excellent, but of which the good woman was very proud, 
 "You see my hand has no forgotten its cunning," she said, 
 with a smirk across the table ; and Rowland then recollected 
 with dismay that in the distant ages, almost beyond his own 
 recollection, Jean, his wife's elder sister had exercised the craft 
 of a cook. 
 
 "Weel," she said, after the meal, herself taking him up-stairs 
 to the glories of the drawing-room, "you're satisfied? You 
 would be ill to please if you were not, with these two bonnie 
 bairns. And just as good as they are bonnie— Archie as steady 
 as a rock, aye in to the minnint, though thae student lads are 
 no that careful. Eh, Jims, what a pleasure it would have been 
 to my poor sister to have seen them grown up like that." 
 
 This softened, even while it exasperated Rowland— for no 
 doubt poor Mary's imagination, like her sister's, could have gone 
 no further than the pert intelligence of Marion and the steadi- 
 ness of her boy. " I should have liked better if they had been 
 kept to some occupation," he said, " not suffered to lead useless 
 lives." 
 
 "Eh!" said the aunt in astonishment, "useless! but what 
 would ye have them to be, and you a rich man 1 You wouldna 
 have had me bring them up like a puir body's bairns 1 They 
 are just as well conditioned as can be, bidable, and pleased with 
 what's set before them. I've had no trouble with them : they 
 will never have given me a sore heart but when they're taken 
 from me— Oh, I'm no saying a word ! It's your right and it's 
 your duty too. They maun go, and I've aye counted upon it— 
 and God's blessing 11 go with them. They've never given me a 
 sleepless night nor a day's trouble. Oh, man, be thankful ! 
 There's no mony that can say as much. The first sore heart 
 they'll give me is when they go away." 
 
 The good woman sat down upon one of the many gilded and 
 decorated chairs of which she was so proud, and put her hand- 
 kerchief over her face as she might have done the apron which 
 she was no longer happy enough to wear, and lifted up her voice 
 and wept : " My hoose will be left to me desolate," she said, 
 " me that has been, though with none of my ain, a joyful mother 
 of children. But I'll no say a word. It's just what I've known 
 would happen this many and many a year. And it's my pride 
 and pleasure to think that I give them back to you, everything 
 that two good bairns should be." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 87 
 
 Rowland was silenced once and for all. He had not a word 
 
 to say to the woman thus deeply conscious of having fulfilled 
 her trust. There was something pathetic in the thought that 
 the two children who were so unsatisfactory, so disappointing 
 and incomplete to him were to this kind woman the highest 
 achievement of careful training, everything that boy and girl 
 could be, and that their mother would have been of the same 
 opinion had she lived to see this day. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 RoWIiAUB went back to his hotel in the evening in much 
 depression, yet excitement of mind. He had taken his two 
 children out with him in the afternoon, with a remorseful desire 
 to please them in any way he could, since he could not feel 
 towards them as their father ought to feel. It was difficult at 
 first to make out how* he could please them best, and at last it 
 was Marion's indications of desire that were the rule of the 
 party. He procured the smartest carriage the hotel could 
 supply, with a pair of horses, and drove them about, Marion in 
 the fullest rapture of satisfaction, increased by her father's 
 presents to her of various articles which she admired in the 
 shop windows as they passed. It amused him, and yet hurt 
 him to see the air with which she got down from the carriage 
 and swept into the jewellers and the haberdashers. Her eyes 
 swam in a rapture of light and happiness. She raised her little 
 flowing skirt, which was more like Sauchiehall Eoad than the 
 temples of fashion which she visited, with an air that suggested 
 velvet. Poor little Marion ! it was impossible to be more happy 
 than she was. turning over the pretty things presented to her, 
 and choosing whatever she pleased, while papa, with his pocket- 
 book full of notes, stood by. She had taken him to Mr. Mac- 
 Coil's "splendid shop"' in Buchanan Street, with a sense that 
 the school friends who had overwhelmed her with their grandeur 
 might be thereby somewhat subdued in their pretensions ; and 
 it was ecstasy to her to buy the most expensive things, and to 
 feel the superiority of the position of patron. "It is a very 
 good shop." she said, so that all the young gentlemen and young- 
 ladies behind the counter might hear, "and I will advise mamma, 
 when she comes, to patronize Mr. MacColl."' 
 
 Archie, who dragged behind, much bored and ashamed of 
 himself, opened wide eyes at the introduction of this name, and 
 Rowland, for his part, had a sudden pang of anger to think 
 that this vulgar little girl should venture to speak of his Evelyn 
 So — before he recollected, poor man, that the vulgar little girl 
 was his own child, and that it was most desirable that she 
 should give that character and title to his wife. "Will I say 
 
88 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 the things are for Miss Rowland of Rosmore ? " she whispered 
 to him. " Certainly not," he said with irritation. And yet he 
 had no right to be angry with the poor little thing who knew 
 no better. He encouraged her in her purchases by way of com- 
 pensation to her for his unfatherly thoughts. "And now, don't 
 you think you might buy a silk dress or something for the poor 
 aunty ? " Marion tossed her little head. 
 
 "She got yon ruby silk just six months ago, and she's got 
 more in her drawers than she can ever wear ; " and sinking her 
 voice a little — "it's all off us. She would never have had a 
 silk—" 
 
 " Hush, child ! " said Rowland imperatively ; but Marion was 
 not to be hushed. 
 
 " It's quite true, papa. She has just dresses upon dresses, 
 and last winter she made down one of hers for rne— me that it 
 all belonged to ! She said I was too young to have new silks 
 for myself. I never put on the horrid old thing ! I would have 
 thought shame for your daughter, papa ! " 
 
 " There are worse things than wearing old dresses that my 
 daughter might be ashamed of," he said hastily. But then he 
 repeated to himself that it was not her fault : it was his fault — 
 his alone, that he had neglected his children, and how could he 
 ever make up to them for that unfortunate beginning? To 
 please Archie they drove to a cricket match going on in a field 
 in a remote part of the town, where Mr. Rowland's carriage 
 made a great sensation, with the coachman in the hotel livery. 
 Rowland himself was a little ashamed of the turn-out. But 
 even Archie, though much simpler than his sister, jumped down 
 from the carriage with a swagger, and strolled across the ground 
 with an ineffable air of splendour and superiority, which made 
 his father — oh, his jooor father ! — so conscious of all these weak- 
 nesses, laugh. It was a rueful laugh : and to see Marion sit and 
 bridle and plume herself, with little touches of re-arrangement 
 to -her hat and her tie and her gloves, looking as well as she 
 knew how, as a fine lady and patroness of the humble but lively 
 scene should look, was such a painful amusement as the poor 
 man could never forget. He could not help being amused, but 
 it was rueful fun. And then he said to himself, repressing at 
 once the levity and the pain, that had he never left them, he 
 would have been as proud of them as Jean was, and never would 
 have found out the imperfections. 
 
 Archie brought several of his friends in their cricketing clothes 
 up to the carriage to see his sister, and to be introduced to papaw. 
 Poor Archie could not make up his mind to abandon that 
 "papaw." "Father" seemed almost disrespectful to so great a 
 personage as the rich Rowland, the great engineer. He was 
 very anxious, however, to explain, sotto voce, that several of the 
 young men in their flannels who gathered round Marion, and to 
 whom she dispensed smiles and small jokes, like a Duchess at 
 Lord's, were "students," a description which slightly mollified 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 89 
 
 Rowland. _ Students were better than shop-boys, which was 
 what Archie himself was painfully like. Never' had Mr. Row- 
 land encountered a harder piece of work in his life than to smile 
 and tolerate the small talk of his children and their friends. 
 He could not help comparing them to the people he had been 
 accustomed to in late years, — people, he said vehemently to 
 himself, perhaps not worth half so much ! These lads, if they 
 were students, were probably maintaining themselves, living 
 like Spartans, not to draw upon the limited resources at home. 
 How much nobler and liner than the young officers and civilians 
 he had been in the habit of seeing in that same guise, yet how 
 different ! That he, a man of the people himself, should so see 
 the difference ; that he should be so pained by it, and by the 
 fact that his son was at home in the one strata of company, and 
 would be quite out of the other ! How painful, how miserable, 
 how ridiculous, how wrong altogether it was ! He exerted him- 
 self to talk to some of them, and said angrily to himself that 
 they were much more conversible than the subalterns, at whom 
 he would have thrown a jibe, whom he would not have taken 
 the trouble to talk to ! But what of that 1 Archie swaggered 
 about the ground proud and inwardly uplifted because of the 
 carriage, the pair of horses, the pretty sister, and papaw. Had 
 he dared to ask them all to Rosmore, where they might see the 
 family in their glory, his cup of triumph would have been full ; 
 but he did not quite venture upon such a strong step as that. 
 
 Then they drove home in triumph to the Sauchiehall Road, 
 where the people next door and next again, looked out of their 
 windows to see the splendid vehicle dash up to Mrs. Brown's, 
 and the baskets of fruit and of flowers that were lifted out. 
 She herself came out to the door to meet them, with her dress 
 rustling, and her gold chain tinkling, and her ruby ribbons 
 floating behind her. " AVeel ! " she cried, " ye've gotten back ! 
 and have ye had a grand drive 1 and eh, the bonnie flowers ; 
 but what an extravagance, for they would cost just a fortune ; 
 and a handfu' of sweet-peas is just so pleasant in a room. And 
 the pine aipples ! Jims, my man, you're just a prodigal ; but 
 we cannot be severe on you, a man just new come home." She 
 was very anxious that he would come in " to his tea." But poor 
 Rowland had borne enough for one day. He made the excuse 
 of business to do and letters to write. " Ou, ay, ye'll just have 
 Madam to write to, and tell her all about your bonnie bairns," 
 Airs. Brown said, with a cloud upon her brow. 
 
 Yes, thank Heaven, he had madam to write to ; but Avhether 
 he would tell her or not about the children was a matter upon 
 which he could not make up his mind. He drove back to his 
 hotel in solitary splendour, still somewhat ashamed of the hotel 
 carriage, the pretension of the showy vehicle, and the shabby 
 horses. Should he tell Evelyn all about the children? It 
 seemed almost a disloyalty to poor Mary who was gone, to con- 
 fide his disappointment in her children to any one, above all to 
 
90 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 the wife who had taken her place, though at so long an interval 
 of years that he felt no disloyalty in that. If Evelyn had been 
 with him, her sympathy would have been his best solace, and 
 she would have found something to say that would have been a 
 comfort to him. He was certain of that — something that would 
 prove to him that things were not so bad as they seemed, that 
 they would mend. But to put it in black and white, to put the 
 disappointment of his soul into words, was what he could not 
 do. He did not even feel sure that he wanted her to know it. 
 If he could only keep his opinions to himself, pretend that they 
 were all he could desire, and leave her to find out ! It was quite 
 possible that she would be more tolerant than he ; her pride 
 would not be injured as his was by the shortcomings of those 
 who were his own. She would not feel the mortification, the 
 disappointment, and perhaps she would not even see so much to 
 find fault with in them. She had finer insight than he had ; 
 she was more charitable. She would see all the good there was, 
 and not so much of the vulgarity. What did she know about 
 vulgarity % She would think, perhaps, it was characteristic, 
 original, Scotch. Rowland had listened often grimly enough to 
 such fashionable views of manner and deportment. He had 
 heard a man, whom he considered a brute, explained away in 
 this manner. Evelyn might take that view. So he locked up 
 his chief trouble in his own mind, and wrote to her that delight- 
 ful letter, telling her that whatever she did would be right, 
 whether to stay in town or to set up at once at Rosmore. He 
 was not sure himself that he did not look upon that suggestion 
 of staying in town as a relief and postponement for which he 
 would be grateful. Yet what did a little time matter, one way 
 or another % Sooner or later the step would have to be taken ; 
 the permanent household formed. Indeed, he felt that it would 
 be natural for the children to expect that their father should 
 take them to London, and let them see something of the world, 
 which was a suggestion at which he shivered more than ever. 
 
 Poor Rowland ! being only an engineer, though a distin- 
 guished one, and a man of the people, though risen to great 
 wealth, and sometimes even objected to in his own person as 
 not a gentleman, it was very hard that he should be thus sensi- 
 tive to the breeding of his children, and feel their imperfections 
 as keenly as the most accomplished " smart " man could have 
 done. Perhaps had he not married and learned to see through 
 Evelyn's eyes, this catastrophe might not have happened. And 
 he had been so long parted from the children that there was 
 little real love, only the vague instinct of partiality to counter- 
 act the shock : and that instinct of partiality often makes 
 everything worse, giving a double clear-sightedness, and exi- 
 gence of impossible perfection to the unfortunate parent whose 
 fatherhood is mortifying and miserable to him, not a thing of 
 pride but of shame. These were much too strong words to use 
 —but they were not too strong from Rowland's point of view. 
 
AND HIS CHILDKEX 91 
 
 The only comfort he had was in his boy's eyes, which were like 
 his mother's. And even that thought was not without a pang, 
 for it thrust upon him the question whether the mother, had 
 she lived, would not have been like Jean. Had it been so, it 
 was evident that Rowland himself would not have been what 
 lie was. He would have stayed on in the foundry and become 
 a foreman, and perhaps in course of time would have ascended 
 the social scale to a house in the Sauchiehall Road : and his son 
 would have been a clerk in an office, and he himself would have 
 been very proud to think that Archie had friends who were 
 " students/' and was steady, and read papers at the Debating 
 Society. His brain seemed to whirl round as he thought of all 
 that which might have been. It is usually the better things 
 which might have happened to us that we think of under that 
 formula — but there is another side in this, as in all human 
 matters. And when Rowland thought what might have been 
 the natural course of his life had Mary lived, it gave him a 
 giddiness which seemed to suspend all his powers. Would it 
 perhaps have been happier so ? He would have been very fond 
 of his children, and proud to think that they were taking a step 
 above himself in the world — and Mary would have grown stout 
 like her sister, and would have had, perhaps, a rustling silken 
 gown like Jean's, and produced with pride a bottle of port wine 
 and a bottle of sherry wine when she received a visitor. And 
 he himself would have been proud of his family and contented 
 with his moderate means. He would have taken Archie and 
 May to the saut water, and pointed out to them the opening in 
 the trees and the house upon the knoll with the white colonnade, 
 and Mary would have said with a laugh, " Hoot, your father's 
 just doited about that white house on the brae." What a differ- 
 ence, what a wonderful difference ! And which would have 
 been best 1 
 
 James Rowland, tenant of Rosmore, with a name known over 
 India, and his money in all manner of lucky investments, and 
 Evelyn Ferrars^ for his wife, thought of all this with a curious 
 strain of sensation. He was in many respects an imaginative 
 man. He could realize it all as distinctly as if he saw it before 
 him. He knew the kind of man he would himself have been — 
 perhaps a better man than he was now — a straightforward, 
 honourable man, limited in his horizon, but as trustworthy, as 
 honest and true as a man could be. And he would have known 
 all the real good there was in his children then, and they would 
 have been free of the vulgarities and meanness they had acquired 
 by their false position and mistaken training. It was very 
 startling to think how different, how altered everything might 
 have been. Was he thankful that poor Mary had died ? That 
 which had been such a blow to him, driving him out of the 
 country, had been the foundation of all his fortune. It had 
 been the most important event, the turning point in his life. 
 He would never have seen Evelyn, or would have contemplated 
 
92 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 her afar off as a line lady, a being to be admired or made light 
 of, but neither understood nor known. How his head went 
 round and round ! 
 
 It was naturally the same subject that suggested itself to his 
 mind when he woke next morning to a new day, a day not like 
 the last in which everything was unassured, but one in which 
 certainty had taken the place of doubt, and he had no longer 
 vague and exciting possibilities to think of, but only how to 
 nourish and adapt the drawbacks which he knew. These cost 
 him thought enough, all the more that the practical part of the 
 matter had now to be determined, and every decision of life 
 was so close to him that the sense of perspective failed, and it 
 was impossible to realize the relative importance of things : 
 how he should manage to satisfy their Aunt Jean, being for the 
 moment of as great consequence as how he should order the 
 course of their future existence. 
 
 He was received in Sauchiehall Road with great eagerness, 
 Archie hurrying to open the door for him, while both Mrs. 
 Brown and Marion appeared at the window as soon as his step 
 was heard, full of nods and becks and wreathed smiles. Mrs. 
 Brown wore another and different " silk," one that was brocaded, 
 or flowered, as she called it, the foundation being brown and 
 the flowers in various brilliant colours ; and Marion had put on 
 the trinkets lie had bought to please her on the previous day in 
 addition to those she had worn before, so that she too tinkled 
 as she walked. Rowland received their salutations with as 
 much heartiness as was possible. But he was scarcely prepared 
 for the questions with which Marion assailed him, dumbly 
 backed up by Archie from behind, with his mother's eyes plead- 
 ing for every indulgence. " Oh you're walking, papa ! " the girl 
 cried witli disappointment, "I thought you would have come 
 in the carriage." 
 
 " It would be a great nuisance for me to have always to move 
 about in a carriage," lie said. " Besides I can't say that I am proud 
 to be seen behind such horses, a pair of old screws from a hotel." 
 
 " Oh, you're not pleased with them ! I thought they were 
 beautiful," said Marion, " and they go so splendidly — far far 
 better than a cab or a geeg. We were making up in our minds 
 where we were to go to-day." 
 
 " Where you were to go 2" 
 
 " To show you everything, papa," said Marion. " You must 
 see all the sights now that you are here. Archie and me were 
 thinking " 
 
 " I knew the sights," he said, interrupting her, " before you 
 were born — but if you want the carriage, Archie can go and 
 order it and take you where you please — I have many things to 
 consult your aunt about." 
 
 " To consult — aunty ! " Marion opened her eyes wide, and 
 elevated her brow, but this impertinence did not disconcert 
 Mrs. Brown. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 93 
 
 "They just take their fun out of me," she said, with a broad 
 smile ; " they think I'm a' of the old fashion, and ken naething. 
 And deed it's true. They're far beyond me with their new- 
 fangled ways. But ye see your papaw is no altogether of your 
 way of thinking, Mey." 
 
 Marion nodded her little head again and again in astonished 
 acquiescence ; but by this time it had dawned upon her that to 
 drive everywhere in " the carriage," she and Archie alone, would 
 perhaps be still more satisfactory than with the grave counten- 
 ance beside her of a not altogether understood papa — who did 
 not enter into their fun, or even understood their jokes. The 
 brother and sister accordingly hurried out together well-pleased, 
 and Marion established herself in Rowland's room at the hotel 
 while Archie ordered the carriage. The girl turned over all her 
 father's papers, and examined closely the photograph of Evelyn 
 which stood on his mantelpiece. " That'll be her," she said, 
 and took it up and carried it to the window to see it better — 
 "but no great thing," she added under her breath, "to have 
 made such a catch as papa ! Dear bless me, she's a very ordinary 
 woman — nothing to catch the eye. She'll have plain brown 
 hair, and no colouring to speak of, and not even a brooch or a 
 locket round her neck. What could he see in a woman like 
 that ? " 
 
 " It's a nice kind of a face," said Archie. 
 
 "So is aunty's a nice kind of a face— and plenty other people 
 — but to catch a man like papa ! " 
 
 Mrs. Brown had no greater pleasure in life than to see her 
 children go out together in their best clothes, bent upon enjoy- 
 ment. She stood at the window and watched them, as she did 
 on every such opportunity. It was her way, even of going to 
 church and performing the weekly worship, which was all she 
 thought of in the light of religious observance— to watch them 
 going, dressed in their best, with their shining morning faces, 
 and Marion's ribbons fluttering in the air, and to laugh with 
 pleasure, and dry her wet eyes, and say " the blessin' of the 
 Lord upon them ! " The humble woman did not want a share 
 in their grandeur, not even to see the sensation they made when 
 they walked into church, two such fine young things. She was 
 content with the sight of them walking away. It was only 
 when she turned her eyes, full of this emotion and delight, 
 upon James Rowland's disturbed and clouded face, that she 
 began to understand that all was not perfectly, gloriously well. 
 
 " Bless me ! oh, Jims ! a person would think you were not 
 content." 
 
 "If you mean with the children," he said, "I don't see any 
 reason I have for being content." 
 
 " Lord bless us ! " said Jean, thunderstruck. She added after 
 a moment, "I canna think but it's just your joke. No to be 
 satisfied, and far more than satisfied ! If you're no just as 
 prood as a man can be of the twa of them— I would just like 
 
94 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 to know what you want, Jims Rowland. Princes and princesses? 
 but so they are ! " 
 
 "It is quite just what you say," lie replied, hanging his head. 
 " It's my fault or it's the fault of circumstances, that makes a 
 thing very good in one place that is not good at all in another. 
 But never mind that ; the thing to be considered is, what is the 
 best way of transplanting them to so different a kind of life." 
 
 "Oh, there is no fears of that," said Mrs. Brown; "if you 
 were transplanting them, as you say, from your grand life to 
 be just in the ordinar' as they've been with me, I wouldna say 
 but that was hard ; but it's easy, easy to change to grandeur 
 and delight ; there's few but's capable of that." 
 
 " If it was all grandeur and delight ! " said Rowland ; " but 
 there is not very much of the first, and perhaps none at all 
 of the other. No delight for them, I fear. A number of rules 
 they will have to give in to, and talk, dull to them, that they 
 will have to listen to, and no fun, as they call it, at all ; I 
 don't know how they will like being buried in a country place." 
 
 "They will have horses and carriages, and everything that 
 heart can desire— and servants to wait on them, hand and foot." 
 
 " Oh, yes, they will have horses, but, I suppose, they won't 
 be able to ride ; and carriages they don't know how to drive ; 
 and a road to take exercise upon, which to me is beautiful, 
 but which leads to nothing but a view, and not half a dozen 
 people to be seen all the way. Marion will not like that. I 
 may get the boy broken in, but the girl — I don't know what 
 my wife will do with the girl ! " 
 
 " Ye are no blate," cried Mrs. Brown, " to speak of my Mey 
 as the girrel ! or what your wife would do with her. It's that 
 that's ruined you, Jims Rowland — your wife ! What had you 
 ado with a wife, a strange woman, when your own dauchter 
 was growing up, and old enough to sit at the head of your 
 table and order your dinner to you ! It sets you well to get 
 a wife that will not know what to do with the girrel ! What 
 would my sister Mary say to think that was the way you 
 spoke of her bonnie bairn. Man, I never knew ye had such a 
 hard heart ! " 
 
 " The question has nothing to do with my hard heart, if I 
 have a hard heart," said Rowland. "We'd better leave that 
 sort of thing aside. The question is, how are they to be brought 
 into their new life ? " 
 
 Mrs. Brown wiped her eyes, and held up her head. " The 
 thing is just this," she said, " I see no other way, nor any diffi- 
 culty, for my part : ye'll just take them home." 
 
 " Ah ! " said the agitated father walking up and down the 
 room, " it is very easy to speak. Take them home, but when, 
 and how ? without any breaking in 1 without any preparation 
 to a life they don't understand and won't like 1 " 
 
 " Bless me ! are you taking them to be servants, or to learn a 
 trade ! " cried Mrs. Brown. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 95 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 It was very difficult for Rowland to decide what course he 
 ought to pursue practically at the moment after these bewilder- 
 in 0- experiences. He was a man who had a great contempt for 
 what he would himself have called shilly-shallying, and for 
 the impotence which could be mastered by difficulties, and 
 could not make the most of a trying situation. He would a 
 little time before have scoffed at the possibility of any such 
 thing happening to himself. No such thing had ever happened 
 in the course of his work, which had involved many interests 
 far more important than the interests of two insignificant 
 creatures — girl and boy : which had sometimes been weighted 
 with the responsibility of life and death for many ; and yet 
 he had not paused and hesitated as now. Two insignificant 
 creatures, girl or boy, will blot out earth and even heaven from 
 you, standing so near as they do, annihilating all perspective. 
 What short work would he have made with them had they been 
 a gang of navvies, or more difficult, a staff of clerks or engineers ! 
 But Marion and Archie were a very different matter. _ They had 
 a right not only to all he could do for them, but to himself and 
 everything that was best in him. Nothing could do away with 
 that claim of nature. Not disapproval, dissatisfaction on his 
 part, not even unworthiness on theirs. And they were not un- 
 worthy, poor things. Their only fault it was, and it was not 
 their fault, that their father was in one atmosphere and they in 
 another. Not their fault ! he it was who had left them in that 
 atmosphere— condemned them to it, and he must bear the 
 
 penalty. 
 
 They enjoyed their day in the carriage, driving about wherever 
 they liked, displaying their grandeur to admiring friends— at 
 least Marion enjoyed it to the bottom of her heart. And she 
 was bon prince in her elevation. She waited in all her splendour 
 at the door of a little house, where everybody came to the 
 window to stare at "the carriage' 1 while a sick girl was hastily 
 dressed in her best— and took the invalid out for a drive. There 
 was a vein of kindness in the girl, and a warm desire to bestow 
 favours which was partly the product of vanity and partly of a 
 better inspiration. She was really proud and happy when the 
 colour came faintly into the cheeks of her ailing friend, although 
 she never failed afterwards to attribute her recovery to " yon 
 drive I took you." The kindness was vulgar, and fed conceit, 
 yet it was kindness in its way. Archie was not perhaps so 
 happy. He soon tired of " the carriage," and desired to be left 
 at the cricket ground, which they again visited, and joined his 
 friends, not without a certain glow of superior rank and im- 
 portance about him from the fact of his being dropped there 
 
96 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 by the carriage, yet glad to escape from a position that was 
 tiresome. 
 
 They all dined that evening with Mr. Rowland at his hotel — 
 Mrs. Brown in such splendour of apparel that her brother-in- 
 law was abashed by her appearance. Marion was fortunately 
 more simply arrayed, and her father tried to believe that it 
 was her own good taste which made the difference. The poor 
 man felt all their little solecisms at table with double force, as 
 remembering that he had once himself felt all the perplexity 
 which paralyzed Archie as to what he was to do with his knife 
 and fork and table-napkin, and the finger-bowl which was put 
 before him at dessert. As for Mrs. Brown, she showed no 
 perplexity at all, but frankly broke every rule, stuck her fork 
 into the potato she preferred, helped herself to the salt with 
 her knife, and then ate her peas with it in the most assured 
 simplicity, unconscious of criticism. 
 
 " Will you give me a little of that, sir," she said to the waiter. 
 "I'm no just sure what it is, but I would like to try. I tell the 
 bairns no to be prejudiced, but just to try everything." 
 
 Rowland felt that the imperturbable waiters were laughing 
 in their sleeves at this strange party. But Marion gave him a 
 little comfort. Marion was as sharp as a needle. She had all 
 her wits about her. She divined from the smallest indication 
 what was the right thing to do ; but then she had read a great 
 many novels, in some of which the very circumstances in which 
 she now stood were set forth. Novels are a great help to an 
 intelligent young lady endeavouring to acquire the manners of 
 society to which she has been unaccustomed. Between these 
 several sources of enlightenment she came out with credit from 
 the ordeal, which made Archie feel himself a clown, and which 
 Jean blundered through without being aware. This somehow 
 eased the weight of trouble in Rowland's heart. 
 
 "And what are ye gaun to do the morn?" said Mrs. Brown, 
 lying back in an easy-chair with her cap strings unloosed, and 
 a genial glow upon her countenance after her abundant meal. 
 " Have ye some ferlies to let your father see 1 But he just knew 
 them all before ye were born." 
 
 " I am afraid I have no time to see ferlies," said Rowland. 
 "I've seen a great many in my time. I am engaged to-morrow : 
 and I must get back to London as soon as I can. I can't leave 
 my wife alone." 
 
 kt Oh, man, ye might first let the bairns have their turn," said 
 Jean, with a cloud on her brow. But alarmed by the darkness 
 of that which gathered on his, she added hastily, " They might 
 take a trip down the water if ye're so busy. Ye canna expect 
 them to settle to anything and you here." 
 
 Then Rowland had a momentary struggle with himself. He 
 came out of it victoriously on the side of virtue. "I am going," 
 he said, "to Rosmore to-morrow. Perhaps you would like to 
 come with me, and see the house." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 97 
 
 There was a cry of eager acceptance from Marion of this 
 proposal, and Archie gave his father a look of pleasure. Mr. 
 Rowland was emboldened to add— "We must make the most of 
 it, for in a dav or two I must go to London." 
 
 "That's just what they would like best of all," said Mrs. 
 Brown. "Archie, puir laddie, would just give his little finger 
 for a look of London. I've always said no, for it's a place full 
 of temptations. But to be with his own father makes a great 
 difference." 
 
 " And me," said Marion. " Ah, papa," she added, studying his 
 countenance, " I want to see London ; but far more, I want to 
 see mamma." 
 
 " Don't say ! " said Rowland, and then stopped. He telt 
 
 a sort of pang of indignation to think of this girl calling Evelyn 
 by that name. This girl— his own girl— his child ! He stopped 
 short with a hard-drawn breath of vexation. Of course she 
 must say mamma if she would— or mother, a more sacred title. 
 And it would be necessary for Evelyn to submit to it— Evelyn 
 would desire it. Between these two certainties he felt himselt 
 caught as in a vice. 
 
 "I am sorry," he said, "that T can't take you with me to 
 London — it is out of my power." 
 
 "Dear, man," said Mrs. Brown, "you that just have your 
 pockets full of money, how can it be out of yourpower? Its a 
 journey that costs dear, and living in a hotel is just ruination ; 
 but you're no one to consider that. You mauna say it's out of 
 your power."' 
 
 " Money is not everything," said Rowland shortly. 
 " Eh no— far be it from me to say it is ; but in the matter of 
 taking your two children upon a veesit, what else is there to 
 think o' ? Na, na, there are plenty things it canna buy. It can 
 neither bring ease o' body nor peace o' mind; but railroad 
 tickets to London— Hoot! it's siller^ alone that's wanted— and 
 you that has just your pockets full !" 
 
 " It is out of the question," said Rowland, and then he stopped 
 suddenly once more, for he had encountered the wistful look in 
 Archie's eyes— the eyes that were his mother's. It cost him an 
 effort to repeat his negative in the face of that silent appeal. 
 " I cannot do it," he said hastily. " Another time— but not now. 
 However, if you would like to come with me and see the house— 
 This proposal was accepted faute de mieux, and he set off next 
 morning accompanied by the two young people, who by this 
 time had become a little accustomed to him, and had learned 
 to adapt themselves a little to his " ways." Marion at least had 
 learned to note when he was worried and put out, and though 
 she was not yet at all aware what points in her conduct dis- 
 turbed him or that it was her conduct that disturbed him her 
 quick perception had already noticed that something did from 
 time to time derange his equanimity, and that it was his children 
 who were the cause. 
 
 H 
 
98 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 " It will be Archie," she said to herself. Already, so quick is 
 the contagion of a new sentiment, Marion had begun to be dis- 
 satisfied about Archie's clothes. His coat was rough and badly 
 made in comparison with his father's coat ; his boots were 
 clumsy, his linen ding}*. All these things she had found out for 
 herself. Archie was not bad-looking : he was rather handsome 
 than the reverse ; but he had not at all the same appearance as 
 his father, who was old and without any graces. This Marion 
 discovered all by herself. She had not attained to any such 
 enlightenment on her own account. 
 
 When they got out at Rosmore pier, other revelations began. 
 They found a dog-cart awaiting them with a beautiful horse 
 and a groom, the perfection of whose get-up was more than 
 words could tell, though they were not learned enough to per- 
 ceive that. Only a dog-cart ! — Marion felt that she was coming 
 down from the glories of " the carriage " ; but the obsequious- 
 ness of everybody around reconciled her a little to the less 
 dignified vehicle. The drive through the woods overawed the 
 young people. The}* gave each other a look of unmingled 
 gratification and dismay. When they reached the house itself, 
 the dismay perhaps was uppermost, but they did not as yet 
 venture to say a word. Nothing could be more beautiful than 
 the situation of the house, or the woods which apjDroached it, 
 when everything was in the full height of summer ; the sun 
 blazing over a country in which at almost every corner there 
 was a burn to toss back a dazzling ray. From the colonnade 
 the view had been opened a little by judicious clearing, and the 
 broad Clyde, like a silver sea, lay glistening at the foot of the 
 knoll, with all its passing boats and sails, and the background 
 of the smoky but not unpicturesque town throwing up its 
 towers and spires on the other side of the estuary. They were 
 impressed for a moment in spite of themselves, and lingered 
 looking at the view while their father went indoors. 
 
 " It's awfully bonnie," said Archie. 
 
 " So it is," said Marion, holding her breath a little. They 
 stood side by side overawed, not venturing to say any more. 
 Indoors they were still more silent, following their father from 
 room to room. In every one of them were workmen, and every 
 kind of luxurious article was being added to the original 
 furniture. By and by thay became bewildered by the number 
 of rooms and their names — dining-rooms and drawing-rooms 
 were comprehensible, but the libraries, morning-rooms, boudoirs, 
 studies, made their heads go round. 
 
 " And what's this 1 " said Marion in bewilderment. 
 
 " This is Mrs. Rowland's own sitting-room," said a polite 
 functionary with what the young people characterized as an 
 English accent. 
 
 " What does she want," said Marion, almost angrily, " with 
 another sitting-room 1 when she's got the dining-room and the 
 drawing-room, the morning-room and the library." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 99 
 
 "Oh, that is just the thing, Miss,'' said the functionary ; an 
 enigmatical saying which made the girl stare at him for a 
 moment in perplexity, but added no light. 
 
 They wandered up-stairs and down-stairs, wondering where 
 their own places were to be in the middle of this bewildering 
 space and unaccustomed luxury. There were some small back 
 rooms in the corner of a wing, to which instinctive suspicion 
 naturally pointed as the " holes " that would be allotted to them. 
 
 "That's where she'll put us," said Marion, "to get us out of 
 the way." 
 
 Archie did not make any reply, but he thought it very likely. 
 To tell the truth, those back rooms were larger and quite as 
 well fitted up as the rooms in Sauchiehall Road. 
 
 Rowland almost forgot their existence as he went over the 
 house, examining what had been done, pointing out what there 
 was still to do. So mucli of his ideal was in it, of which nobody 
 knew save himself. He had furnished the house in fancy many 
 a time, fitted it up in such a way as house was never fitted 
 up before. It filled him at once with sweet delight and dis- 
 appointment, to see the reality growing before him. It was 
 not, and could not be, ever so fine as his dreams, and yet it 
 was Rosmore, and it was his. He went about anxious, yet 
 elated, looking out from every window to savourer over and 
 over again the well-known prospect — the Clyde, visible in a 
 different aspect from every corner ; the boats upon its dazzling 
 surface, which seemed to hang in space, which seemed to pause 
 and quiver, as if upon the wing, as they crossed the openings, 
 to give the passengers a sight of the house. He knew what 
 was being said on the deck of the steam-boats that rustled 
 across and across. "Oh, ay, it's let— and maybe it will be 
 sold— to Jims Rowland, that was once a lad in a foundry in 
 Glescow, nae mair, and now is the great Railway Man from 
 India, and has come hame very well-off, and gotten the place 
 he had aye set his heart upon. Oh, my lord doesna like to part 
 with it, nae doubt, but siller is not a thing to be turned from 
 the door." He knew that was what was being said. He had 
 heard it himself, or something very near it ; it kept singing in 
 his ears like a pleasant tune—" Jims Rowland, that was once a 
 lad in a Glescow foundry, and has gotten the place he had aye 
 set his heart upon." Yes, it was what he had set his heart 
 upon, and it was his at the last. And to make it perfect was 
 all his intent and thought. He forgot again that natural diffi- 
 culty which his own neglect and forgetfulness had gone so far 
 to make— the two standing under the colonnade, where they 
 had strayed after their examination of the newly-furnished 
 rooms, and looking out again with a sullen shade over then- 
 eyes upon "the view." 
 
 " Well ? " he said, coming suddenly upon them, full ot his own 
 elation and excitement, " and what do you think of the house ? 
 There was a pause ; and then Marion answered him. ' Oh r 
 
100 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 the house is very well, papa. It is a great big house, and there 
 is a fine view." 
 
 " Is that all you have to say 1 " 
 
 "I don't know what more I can say. It will be awfully 
 lonely in the winter-time, and when it's raining ; but perhaps 
 you will only come here in the summer, and have another place 
 for the dark days." 
 
 " The dark days," he repeated with a little trouble. " You 
 don't know much about it, I'm afraid," he added with an attempt 
 to be jocular ; "the fine folk go to London in the summer, and 
 spend what you call the dark days in the country. That's the 
 right thing to do." 
 
 "But it's awfully foolish," said Marion with a very serious 
 face. 
 
 Archie did not say anything in articulate words, but he made 
 a sort of murmur of assent. 
 
 "Now if it was me," said the girl, "I would live here in the 
 summer and take one of the new houses, the new big houses 
 out by the Park, or on the Kelvin Road ; they're grand big 
 houses, bigger than this, just like palaces, to spend the winter 
 in ; and where we could go to all the grand parties, and be near 
 the football ground — where there was aye something going on. 
 There will be very little going on here." 
 
 "Unless there might, maybe, be a curling pond," suggested 
 Archie, but very dubiously, and with a sigh. 
 
 Rowland was struck with a certain reasonableness in this 
 suggestion, which chilled his enthusiasm a little in spite of 
 himself. " Come and have some luncheon," lie said, "and after- 
 wards we can talk of that." Lunch was set out for them in a 
 small room, one of the many which had bewildered Marion. 
 There was already a tribe of servants in possession, and the 
 small, well-ordered table and silent servants overawed the 
 young people once more. The new butler had the air of a 
 minister (he had, indeed, though Marion did not understand 
 these fine distinctions, the airs of a dean at the least), and it 
 was all that the girl could do not to call him sir. She accepted 
 what he handed to her meekly with a reverential submission to 
 his better knowledge. As for Archie, he had committed himself, 
 but fortunately not so as to be comprehended by any one but 
 his sister, by offering the gentleman in black a chair. 
 
 " Well," said their father again, " so you think Rosmore will 
 be dull, and there will be nothing going on ? " 
 
 "That was my opinion," said Marion firmly. Archie was not 
 to be reckoned upon in company as a steady backer up, and 
 she thought it wisest not to give him the opportunity of betray- 
 ing her. " The rooms are very pretty, and there's a beautiful 
 view ; but you cannot be always looking at the view. And it's 
 very rainy down here. It rains mostly every day. And then 
 there are so many trees. In the winter-time it will be terrible 
 dark, and not a shop on this side, or a place to go to." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN Id 
 
 "You will have to lay in all your stores, my dear, before the 
 winter comes." 
 
 "No, not that," said Marion; "but the shops are always a 
 diversion ; it is not for buying things. And there will be no 
 parties to go to." 
 
 " Have you many parties," said Rowland with a laugh, " where 
 you are ] ' 
 
 Marion gave a glance round, feeling it necessary to keep up 
 her dignity before the solemn servants. "Oh, yes," she said, 
 " plenty ! We go out a great deal. There was a ball last week 
 at the MacColls. I was all in white ; at my age, just new out, 
 that's aye the proper thing." 
 
 "So you are out, are you," said Rowland somewhat grimly 
 "the MacColls are " 
 
 " Oh, papa, _ they _ are people of great consideration," said 
 Marion, stopping him ; " it is a real good name, well-known 
 everywhere." Marion was making very rapid progress. She 
 was proud at their first interview of knowing the MacColls, 
 who had the great shop in Buchanan Street. Xow she had 
 cut adrift the shop and sheltered her friends under the aegis of a 
 well-known name, with all the skill of a leader of society. " But 
 there's nobody here," she said, spreading out her hands and 
 shaking her head. 
 
 "How do you know there is nobody here? There seem a 
 number of houses as far as I can see." 
 
 *' Xot of people like us, papa," said Marion ; " not of houses 
 that mamma could visit at." She had her eye upon the butler, 
 who was visibly impressed, and to whom she was consciously 
 playing. "There are only Glasgow people coming for the salt 
 water — I mean for the sea-bathing ; and the Manse, and the 
 like of that ; no gentlemen's houses. Of course it was only that 
 I was looking for," she added with the air of a princess. Archie 
 sat opposite and regarded his sister with wide-open eyes. He 
 did not know her in this new development. As a person of 
 rank standing on her dignity, Marion was to him a new revela- 
 tion. He admired yet wondered at her. 
 
 As for her father, he burst into a laugh which was louder and 
 more boisterous than became his usual character. " You might 
 perhaps," he said, "recommend the j)lace to your friends, the 
 MacColls, for the salt water." 
 
 " Papa ! " said Marion in dismay. The butler was just going- 
 out of the room followed by his attendant footman. She 
 watched him till he was quite gone, and the door softly closed 
 behind him. Then she said in a lower tone, "I have always read 
 that the servants know more about you than you know your- 
 selves, and I took care to say very little about the MacColls ; 
 for though they are well-off, they are not — in our position, 
 papa." 
 
 " Oh, May ! " said Archie in consternation. 
 
 It was the comic side of this speech which first struck her 
 
102 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 father. He laughed once more loud and long. " You will soon 
 be quite fit for a society lady," he said. But immediately fell 
 into absolute gravity again, with a face blank as wood ; dis- 
 couraging and repressive, had Marion been sensitive. It was 
 very amusing, but one does not desire to be so amused by one's 
 own child. 
 
 " I was thinking chiefly," Marion resumed with dignity, " of 
 mamma. She will expect some society, and there will be none ; 
 just the Manse, and a house or two like that, scarcely genteel, 
 not in Our Position. We might do very well, Archie and me, 
 though it would be dull ; but she will be expecting to go out 
 to her dinner, and to be asked to jDarties, and show off all her 
 grand gowns. And there will be nobody. And not even a shop 
 to go to, to spend an hour in an afternoon. And you cannot 
 always be looking at the view. It is mamma that I am think- 
 ing about," Marion said. 
 
 He did not again bid her not to speak of Evelyn so ; for was 
 it not the best thing he could hope for, that his child should 
 tliink of his wife as of a mother ? but his heart revolted all the 
 same, and the girl's commonplace prettiness, her little assured 
 speech, even the undeniable sense that there was in her remarks 
 sense of the most prosaic kind, yet genuine enough in its way, 
 exasperated him. He said dryly, " I think I can take my wife 
 in my own hand." 
 
 " Yes," said Marion ; " but maybe it will be a great dis- 
 appointment to her, when she knows that it is so bonnie a place 
 and all that, and then comes here, so far away, and finds that 
 there is nothing but the view." 
 
 Sense ! undeniably it was sense, in its petty, miserable way ; 
 and what if it might be true 1 After all, he had only known 
 Evelyn on one side of her character. She was much superior 
 to himself in a hundred ways. She had the habits of a life 
 very different from his, the habits of good society, of knowing 
 "the best people." Rowland himself, in his rough practical way, 
 had not a very profound admiration for the best people. There 
 were even more bores among them, he thought, than among the 
 most simple, and their views were not more elevated. But then 
 Evelyn knew no other life than theirs, and to bring her down 
 here to an unbroken solitude, or to the society of the sea-bathers, 
 the people who came for "the salt water," might perhaps be a 
 dangerous experiment. A cold shiver ran over him, while his 
 daughter prattled on in her cool precocious wisdom. How could 
 he tell that she would be sufficiently compensated by "the view " 
 as to forget everything else, or that she would be able to bear 
 from morning to night the unbroken enjoyment of his own 
 society, and of Marion and Archie ? His mind went away into 
 a close consideration of her previous life as far as he knew it. 
 The society at the station was perhaps not very choice, but it 
 was abundant. The people there knew people whom she knew, 
 were acquainted with her own antecedents, and the kind of life 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 103 
 
 to which she had been accustomed, a life which he himself did 
 not know much about, much less his daughter and his son. A 
 woman brought up in a great country house, overflowing with 
 company, such as people in humbler positions know only by 
 books, accustomed to go up to town for the season, to make 
 rounds of visits, etc., etc. — would not she perhaps expect all 
 that to begin over again after the period of her humiliation 
 was over, when she had become the wife of a rich man % And 
 if instead she found herself seated opposite to him for life with 
 his two children only to diversify the scene, though it was in a 
 beautiful house with a beautiful view ! how would Evelyn bear 
 it ? Nothing but a view! The little monkey! the little wretch ! 
 Eowland in his heart was still a man of the people, and he 
 would have liked to take Marion by the shoulders and give her 
 a shake. And yet, probably, she was right. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 There were a great many hours to be got through still before 
 the evening steamer which would take them across the loch on 
 their way back to Glasgow. And after the luncheon was over, 
 Archie and Marion did not know what to do with themselves. 
 They went out together and walked about the grounds, not 
 without a feeling of elation now and then as they looked back 
 upon the great house with all its velvet lawns, and the com- 
 motion of furnishing and arranging which was going on. There 
 were carts unlading at the door which had come all the way 
 from Glasgow, round the head of the loch, a very roundabout 
 way, with delicate furniture which could not bear the transfer 
 from railway to steamboat, and witli the great boxes containing 
 Mr. Rowland's curiosities ; the Indian carpets, curtains, shawls, 
 carved ebony, inlaid ivory, and other wonderful things. Had 
 the young people been aware what were the contents of these 
 boxes, they would no doubt have felt that some amusement 
 was possible in the unpacking of them. But, indeed, I doubt 
 whether Marion's interest would have held out long unless there 
 had been pickings — a bracelet, or a brooch, or an Indian chain 
 among the more curious matters to indemnify her for time lost 
 over the caipets or even the shawls, which, as altogether " out 
 of the fashion " (so far as Marion knew) would have had no 
 interest to the girl. But they did not have this source of enter- 
 tainment, for they were totally unaware what was in the boxes 
 which Marion thought probably contained napery, a kind of 
 wealth not without interest yet scarcely exciting. They stood 
 about for a time in front of the door watching the unpacking 
 of the big chests and crates until the amusement palled. And 
 then they went round to look at the stables, in which as yet 
 
104 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 there were only two horses, one of which had brought them up 
 with the dog-cart from the ferry. Archie examined this animal, 
 and the rough and useful pony which acted as a sort of four- 
 legged messenger, with an assumption of knowing all about 
 horses, which was very superficial and imperfect, and did not 
 at all deceive the groom who was in charge, and to whom one 
 glance at the young master had been enough. But Marion did 
 not even pretend an interest which she did not feel, and soon 
 w 7 ent out yawning and stood at the door, half-despising, half- 
 advising her brother. She felt a little ill-used that there was 
 no carriage which she could order out, as she had done with 
 delight the carriage from the hotel. There would be carriages 
 to come, no doubt, but they would not be for her, and Marion 
 knew that she herself must relapse into a very secondary place. 
 She called to Archie, while he was improving his mind by 
 questions to the groom, with great impatience, "Are you going 
 to stay there all day ? with nothing to see,'"' said Marion. And 
 then she broke in upon the conversation, yawning largely, "Is 
 there anything here to see?" The groom informed them of 
 certain points which were considered interesting by visitors, 
 the Chieftain's Jump, and the Hanging Hill, where there was a 
 "graun point o' view." "Oh, I'm not caring about the view," 
 said the girl pettishly, " but we'll go and see the Chief's Jump. 
 It'll always be something to do." It proved, however, not very 
 much to do, and the young lady was disappointed. " It's only 
 a rock," she said with much impatience; "is there nothing, 
 nothing to see in this dull place V The groom was a native of 
 the parish, and he was naturally offended. " It's a great deal 
 thought of," he said, " the family — that is the real family — the 
 Earl when he's doun, and the young ladies, brings a' the 
 veesitors here. It's a historical objeck as well as real romantic 
 in itsel'." 
 
 " I am not caring for historical things : and I don't call that 
 romantic," said Marion. 
 
 "Maybe," said the groom, "you would like to go down the 
 wood to aulcl Rankin's cottage, that has the clougs 1 " 
 
 " What dougs 1 " cried Archie, pricking up his ears. 
 
 "Weel, they're just auld Rankin's breed. He's no historical, 
 nor yet is he romantic : but Miss here will maybe relish him a' 
 the better. He's a funny auld fellow, and the place is just fu' o' 
 dougs — terriers : it's a grand breed — a wee delicate, being just 
 ower weel bred : but aw r fu' thought upon by the leddies. The 
 Earl and Lady Jean they get then for a' their grand friends." 
 
 "I am just sick of the Earl and Lady Jean," said Marion, 
 stamping her foot. 
 
 " That's a peety," said the groom, calmly, " for you'll no live 
 long here without hearing o' them. Will I let ye see the way 
 to auld Rankin's 1 They're funny bits o' things." 
 
 " I would like to see the dougs," said Archie mildly. 
 
 Marion yielded, being not without a little hope of amusement 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 105 
 
 hereby. But she took, and pinched, his arm as they went on, 
 saying under her breath, " For any sake don't say that— don't 
 say dougs ! It's so common, so Glesco ! You are dreadfully 
 Glesco — the man will think you are just like himself."' 
 
 " What am I to say 1 " said Archie indignant, shaking his arm 
 free of her hand. 
 
 "Say dogues," whispered Marion, drawing out the long O. 
 She was very careful herself to be as English as possible. It 
 had always been her ambition, though the success was perhaps 
 scarcely equal to the desire. She threaded her way through 
 the woods with delicate steps, protesting that it was very damp 
 and a veiy long way. It was a delightful way through narrow 
 woodland paths, where the hawthorn, which in Scotland is 
 neither called nor has much to do with May, was, still in the 
 height of June, breathing fragrance over the copse, and where 
 the wild rose-buds were beginning to peep upon the long 
 branches that overhung the path. Xow r and then they shook 
 a drop of moisture upon the passer by, for, needless to say, it 
 had rained that morning, leaving little pools full of reflections 
 in the hollows. Marion gave little jumps when a drop came 
 upon her face, and went upon the tips of her toes past the damp 
 places : but it was always " something to do." 
 
 Old Rankin's cottage was in the depths of the wood that 
 encircled Rosmore. He had been a gamekeeper before "his 
 accident." It was supposed in the peninsula that everybody 
 must know about old Rankin's accident, so that no further 
 account was ever given. It was a red-roofed cottage, looking 
 comfortable and cheerful among the grass, with a big ash tree 
 in a plot of grass before the door, and honeysuckle covering it 
 on the southern side where the sun came. In northern regions 
 people are indifferent about the sun. It is a curious fact, but 
 it is so. " "Where the sun does not go the doctor must," says the 
 Italian who has almost too much ; but the Scot turns his back 
 upon it sturdily and does not mind. The sunshine caught only 
 one corner of Rankin's cottage, and no windows looked that 
 way. It was buried deep in the greenness, adding itself a little 
 ruddy reflection to brighten the atmosphere. In the room on 
 the left side of the door, Rankin himself lay upon his bed, with 
 a large head and shoulders appearing out of the tartan rugs 
 that covered the rest of his person. He had a head like an 
 ancient prophet or bard, with a high bald forehead, and a long 
 gray beard, and with supple long arms which seemed to reach 
 to all the corners of the room. Naturally there was a fire 
 burning, though the day was warm. The mistress of the 
 house came trotting forward, and dusted two chairs with her 
 apron for the visitors. "You're kindly welcome," she said, 
 " Come ben, come ben. He's aye weel pleased to see company." 
 The good woman did not require any introduction of the 
 visitors ; but this the groom, more formal, made haste to give. 
 
 " It's the young lady and the young— lad from the Hoose," he 
 
106 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 said. The pause before his description of Archie was significant. 
 In that coat which Sandy felt was not so good as his own, how 
 was any one to recognize a gentleman ? Sandy could not dis- 
 guise his sentiments. He could not give a false designation 
 even to his master's son. 
 
 " I am Miss Rowland," said Marion, graciously, " of Rosmore." 
 
 The big gray head and beard were shaken at her from the 
 bed, even while its owner, waving his long arm, pointed out the 
 chair on which she was to sit down. "No of Rosmore, if you'll 
 excuse me, my bonnie young leddy," he said. "Ye may say 
 Miss Rowland, Rosmore, and that will be right enough : but 
 tenants never can take the name of the laird." 
 
 "My papa," said Marion half angrily, "is going to buy the 
 place. He is rich enough to buy it ten times over." 
 
 " He may be that," said Rankin with polite doubt. Then he 
 added, " Y r ou will maybe be wanting a doug." 
 
 "We would like to see them," said Archie. 
 
 " Oh, I'll let you see them, though it's no a thing I do in a 
 general way. Them that visit at the House, they are a' keen 
 for a sight of my dougs ; and I have one here and one there 
 over all the country ; a quantity in England. They're wonder- 
 ful little beasts, though I say it that maybe shouldna — here's 
 one of the last batch." He put down his hand somewhere behind 
 his back and produced a small, round, struggling puppy of a 
 light fawn colour, with brown ears, newly arrived at the seeing 
 stage of its babyhood, and sprawling with all its four feeble 
 limbs, and the tail, which looked like a fifth, in his large hand. 
 Put down upon the bed, it began to tumble helplessly over the 
 heights and hollows of Rankin's large, helpless figure. The sight 
 of it moved Archie, and indeed Marion, in a lesser degree, to 
 greater delight than anything had yet moved them at Rosmore. 
 
 " Oh the bonnie little beast ! " cried Archie ; " oh the clever 
 little creature ! Look, May ! look at its little nose, and the bits 
 of paws, and the long hair." He threw himself on his knees to 
 get the puppy within reach, which paused in its tumbling on 
 the mountainous ridge of one of the old keeper's knees,' to 
 regard the simple young face brought so close to its own with 
 that look of premature sagacity common to puppies. Marion 
 put out her gloved hand to distract the attention bestowed on 
 her brother. "It's just like a little baby," she said. 
 
 " Baby ! a baby's a little brute : it's ten times nicer than any 
 baby that ever was born. Here, doggie ! Man, keep your feet ! 
 Eh, look, May ! it's tummilt off the bed. The little beastie ! 
 I've got it ; I've got it. Are ye hurt, my wee man 1 " 
 
 " Poor little doggie ! " said Marion, patting with a finger the 
 puppy which Archie had placed on her knee. The two young 
 creatures, bending over the animated toy of the little dog, made 
 a group which was pretty enough. And Rankin and the groom 
 looked on sympathizingly, flattered by their applause. To 
 Rankin the puppy was like a child of his own. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 107 
 
 m " Oh, ay,'' he said, "it's no an ill specimen. Here's"— and he 
 dived once more into the hidden reservoir from whence came a 
 sort of infantile murmur which had puzzled the visitors at first 
 — "another. It's a variety. Now ye see the twa kinds : them 
 that are no licht in the colour are dark. I could scarcely gie 
 ye my opinion which is the bonniest. What's ca'ecl the Skye 
 breed are just the sauvage dougs that would have eaten up the 
 country by this time if they hadna received a check by being 
 made led dies' pets of. One o' my name was the first to tak' the 
 business in hand, and improve the breed. Yon lang, low-bodied 
 creaturs, with nae legs to speak of, are the original stock, as 
 the wild bushes are the stock of the rose tribe. My anes are 
 an awfu' improvement in pint o' symmetry — and temper too. 
 They have langer legs and no sae short a temper. Yell hear a' 
 the world ower of the Rosmore breed. It's just celebrated from 
 one end o' the country to anither. Lady Jean she was ggre coming 
 with orders ; but I'm no fond of taking orders especially from 
 foreign countries, like England and the like. I canna bide to 
 send my dougs where they are ill fed or kept careless. There 
 was ae lady that let twa o' them, ane after the ither, get lost. 
 She w^as a friend o' the minister. I canna understand decent 
 folk keeping on with sic friends. And as for the feeding o' 
 them, leddies are just maist inveterate, and ruins their health, 
 whatever I can say. They'll feed my doggies, just fresh from 
 their guid halesome parridge, with sweet biscuits and bits of 
 sugar, and every silly thing they can think of, and syne they'll 
 write and say the dougs are delicate. Xaething of the kind ! 
 the dougs are nane delicate. It's just the traitment ; if you can 
 think o' onything mair foolish than that — beasts used to guid 
 fresh country air, shut up in rooms with carpets and dirt of a" 
 kinds, and when they're dowie andaff their meat, a dose o' strong 
 physic ! And they ca' that a kind home. I ca' it just murder ! 
 and that's a' I've got to say." 
 
 Rankin had worked himself to a point of vehemence which 
 brought the moisture in great drops to his forehead, for the 
 day was warm and so was the fire. But it cannot be said that 
 his visitors were much affected by it. Sandy the groom, indeed 
 formed a sympathetic audience, but Archie and Marion were 
 too young and foolish to be interested in the old gamekeeper. 
 They played with the puppies, each choosing one. Marion held 
 fast the one of light colour — Archie secured the dark gray. 
 Their comments on their respective prizes ran on through 
 Rankin's speech. "Mine's the bonniest!" — "Xo, I like mine 
 best. Look at its funny little face." — "Mine has no een at all 
 — just a little spark out under the hair." — "And look, the little 
 brick that it is, showing fight," said Archie in great triumph and 
 elation. 
 
 The old gamekeeper wiped his brow, and looked on with a 
 smile of grim amusement at the mimic fight going on between 
 those two little balls of animated fur, "I would ca' those two 
 
108 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Donal'bane and Donal'dhu — as ye might say in a less cultivated 
 tongue, Whitey and Darkie," he said benevolently. " If ye would 
 like to have the pair of them, I'll not say no to the Hoose, even 
 when it's in a tenant's hands. But ye maun mak up your minds, 
 for I haven't a doggie about the place that's no bespoke afore it's 
 born, and I owe my duty to Lady Jean first." 
 
 "I'm tired hearing of Lady Jean," said Marion petulantly, 
 throwing her puppy upon the bed. 
 
 "Aye, my Missie, are ye that?" said old Rankin : "ye'll be 
 tireder afore you're done, for Lady Jean's muckle thought of in 
 this parish : and a tenant is just a tenant and nae mair — 
 there's no continuance in them. Your papaw and you will be 
 just here the day and gane the morn. Ye canna expect to be 
 thought upon like our ain folk. — Are ye wantin' the puppy, 
 
 Maister what's the name, Sandy 1 I hae never maistered 
 
 the name," added the gamekeeper with polite disrespect. " Oh 
 ay, now I mind — Rowland" — he pronounced the first syllable 
 broadly like a street row — " I'm no sure," he added thought- 
 fully, " but I may have ken't your papaw before he went 
 abroad." 
 
 Archie paid no attention to this talk. He had a puppy in 
 each hand comparing them, wondering which he might venture 
 to buy. Dared he go to such an expense as to buy 1 ? Mrs. 
 Brown, though lavish in many ways, had not been liberal in 
 the matter of pocket-money, and to spend money for a dog, 
 a creature that would cost something to feed, and could do 
 nothing to make up for the cost of it, would have seemed to 
 her the most wicked of extravagances. Archie was forced by 
 the habit of his life into a great timorousness about money. 
 He did not feel himself justified in spending even a shilling. 
 Lie looked at the little dogs and longed and hesitated. He 
 had taken one up in each hand with a wild impulse of 
 expenditure, of buying both — unheard-of extravagance ! — and 
 then he put one down, feeling the cold shade as of Aunty Jean 
 come over him. Then he bethought himself that his father was 
 a rich man — ay ! but then he would probably like to spend his 
 money himself, not to give it to his son to spend. Then Archie 
 put down the other dog upon the bed. But he did not abstract 
 his eyes from the pleasing prospect ; and presently a tempting 
 demon suggested to him that about such a big house dogs 
 would be wanted for the purpose of watching, if for nothing 
 else ; and he took one, the little dark gray one, up again. It 
 was the bonniest little doggie he had ever seen — ready to play 
 already, though it was such a small puppy, looking as wise as 
 Solomon, though it was so silly ; the greatest diversion possible 
 in this dull country place, where there never would be any- 
 thing to do. And two of them would be funnier still. Archie 
 took up the rival in his other hand. He held them as if he 
 were weighing them against each other like pounds of flesh, 
 but no such thought was in his mind : he wondered if perhaps 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 109 
 
 Rankin might not want to be paid at once. In case of delay- 
 there were a hundred chances that the money might be pro- 
 cured somehow. He might even ask his father— or Mr. Rowland 
 might make him a present. He had bought a great many 
 things for Marion, who, being a lassie, could be gratified in 
 that way more than was possible for a man. A man didn't 
 want silks and things, or even brooches and rings, though 
 Archie would not have disliked a pin. What a man liked was 
 manly things — maybe a bonnie little beast of a doug. What 
 bonnie little beasties they were ! and they would be capital 
 watch-dogs when they grew up. Would it do if he were to ask 
 papa ? If May wanted such a thing, she would ask in a moment. 
 She might perhaps do it on her own account if she took a fancy 
 to little Light and little Dark. Poor Archie was so absorbed 
 in this question that he did not know what Rankin said. 
 
 He was roused by a sweep of the gamekeeper's long arm, 
 which swung over the bed for a moment, then suddenly came 
 down upon one of the puppies and conveyed it swiftly away. 
 Archie followed his movements with a gape of disappointment 
 as he took up the coveted gray. He put out his hand to avert 
 the second withdrawal. " Eh, man, leave the little beastie," he 
 said. 
 
 " Would you like to have it ? You have naething to do but 
 to say sae." 
 
 "I have no money — with me — to pay for't," said Archie, with 
 the profoundest sense of humiliation. He had come into his 
 fortune, so to speak ; but he had never felt so poor before. 
 
 The gamekeeper answered with a laugh. k * There's plenty of 
 time for ye to put your siller in your pouch, my young gentle- 
 man — for I'll no send ane of them out for sax weeks to come — 
 or maybe mair. Ye can come and see them when you like, but 
 I'll no risk my credit for a wheen pounds, me that never sends 
 out a doug but in the best condition and able to fend for them- 
 selves. Will I keep the twa for ye ? Ye maun speak now, or 
 for ever hold your tongue, for every puppy I have is ordered 
 long before it's born." 
 
 Archie looked at his sister, endeavouring to catch her eye, 
 but Marion refused him all help. She betook herself to the 
 task of buttoning her glove, which required all her energies, 
 and then she got up shaking out her skirts : " I'll die," she said, 
 " if I stay longer here — it's so hot, and there's a smell of dougs. 
 You can come when you're ready. I want the fresh air." 
 
 " Dear me," said Rankin with scorn ; " this'll be a very 
 delicate Miss ! and ower grand for the likes of us. Lady Jean 
 never minded the smell of the dougs. Sandy, man, what made 
 you bring such a grand lady here % Are ye for them, or are ye 
 no for them?" he added, severely, turning to Archie. "It's no 
 of the least consequence to me — but you'll have to say." 
 
 Archie, with his hair standing on end at his own audacity, 
 gave the order hurriedly, and went out after his sister, with a 
 
110 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 sort of despairing sense that lie had now committed himself 
 beyond recall, and that the stories he had read in books about 
 the miseries of men who had large sums to make up and no 
 prospect of finding the wherewithal, were about in his dread 
 experience to come true. The gamekeeper and the groom 
 discussed the abrupt withdrawal after their fashion, and with 
 no particular precaution not to be heard by the subjects of 
 their discourse. 
 
 "Yon's a queer pair to be gentry," said Rankin. "I would 
 have said a lad and a lass from Glesco in an excursion ; just 
 the kind that comes doun at the fair-time, and has nae manners 
 nor education. I'm no much accustomed to that kind — A smell 
 o' dougs ! set her up ! Mony a leddy has sat there and had her 
 crack, and never a word about the dougs, poor things. The 
 smell of a mill would maybe be more in her way." 
 
 "Whisht, man,"' said the groom, "they're maybe listening. 
 Where could they get their manners or their eddication 1 
 They're just Jim Rowland's bairns that my father knew when 
 he was in the foundry ; and they've lived a' their lives with 
 Jean Brown, that was ance the auld man's joe, and raicht have 
 been my mother if a' things had gane straight — think o' that ! 
 I micht have been their cousin, and I'm just the groom in the 
 stables. 'Od ! I could have brought doun Missie's pride if I 
 had been a drap's blood to her. They're no a preen better nor 
 you and me." 
 
 "In the sicht o' heaven," said Rankin, "there's no one person 
 better than anither : I dinna just rank myself with the com- 
 monality. But 111 allow that the auld family has the pull of it 
 even with me. There's something about Lady Jean now — ye 
 canna say what it is, and yet it maks a difference. I'm a man 
 that has seen a' kinds. The real gentry, and what ye may call 
 the Glesco gentry, and them that's just shams through and 
 through. The Glesco gentry has grand qualities sometimes. 
 They just never care what they spend. If ye put a fancy price 
 upon a little doug, they just say, 'Oh ay, nae doubt you have 
 great trouble in rearing them,' and gies ye your price without 
 a word. The tither kind's no that liberal — they canna bide to 
 be imposed upon. They just stiffen up and they say, ' That's 
 mair than I thought of giving, and good day to ye.' But I 
 canna bide them that would and then they wouldna, that just 
 hankers and grudges and have nae money in their pouches. 
 Without money, nae man has any right to take up my time 
 coming here." 
 
 Archie heard this diatribe as he stood outside, waiting under 
 the protection of the great ash tree till a passing shower should 
 have blown over, with a sense of the truth of it which went 
 over him in a great wave of heat and discomfiture down to his 
 very boots. That was just what he was, a sham with nothing 
 in his pocket, combining all the defects of the Glesco great 
 people with an absolute want of that real foundation on which 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 111 
 
 they stood. He had no education, no manners, nothing upon 
 which any claim of superiority could be put forth. Superi- 
 ority ! he did not mean that. Poor Archie felt himself the 
 equal of nobody, not even of Sandy the groom, who, at least, 
 had an occupation of his own and knew how to do it. And no 
 money in his pocket ! that was perhaps the worst of all. He 
 had always heard a great deal about money all his life. Mrs. 
 Brown had an unlimited reverence for it, and for those who 
 possessed it. She had no particular knowledge of the gentry. 
 But to be able to pay your way, to be able to lay by a littlo, 
 to have something in the bank, that was the height of her 
 ambition. And though she highly disapproved of large expend- 
 iture, she admired it as the most dazzling of greatness. "He 
 just never minds what he spends,'' she had said of Rowland a 
 hundred times, almost with awe. Archie had been accustomed 
 to admire this quality in his father from his earliest conscious- 
 ness. And to stand on the soil which to him was his father's 
 (though the people of the place were so strong upon the fact 
 that he was only a tenant), almost within sight of the great 
 house which was being fitted up regardless of expense, and to 
 have nothing in his jDocket, filled the lad with the bitterest 
 shame and humiliation. "If Iliad only live pounds — or knew 
 where to get it," he said to himself, with a gesture of disgust 
 and despair. " Five pounds," said Marion, who heard him 
 though he did not want to be heard, and repeated it in her 
 usual clear very distinct voice, not lowered in the least, "What 
 do ye want with five pounds 1 and why don't you get it from 
 papa 1 " Archie thought he heard a laugh from the cottage 
 which proved that the men inside had heard. It wrought him 
 almost to fury. He dashed out into the rain and left her 
 standing there astonished. Marion did not care for what the 
 groom and the gamekeeper said. She was quite confident that 
 she had only to "ask papa," and that whatever she wished 
 would fall into her lap. She had not, like Archie, any difficulty 
 in asking papa. After a few moments of hesitation she too 
 stepped out of the shelter of the ash, and followed her brother 
 through the wood. The shower was over, the sun had come 
 out again, every branch and leaf was glistening. The birds 
 had taken up their songs at the very note where they left off, 
 with renewed vigour. Marion too broke out into a little song 
 as she went on. The boughs as she brushed past scattered 
 shining drops like diamonds over her, which she eluded with a 
 little run and cry. Even the woodland walk was thus more 
 amusing than she thought. 
 
112 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Mr. Rowland, when his children left him, was left with a 
 very uncomfortable prick of thought, a sort of thorn lacerating 
 the skin, so to speak, of his mind. The suggestion which had 
 been thrown at him as the Spanish bullfighters throw their 
 ornamented darts, stuck as they do, and kept up an irritating 
 smart, though it was not, he said, to himself of the least im- 
 portance. No society ! He came out to the colonnade in the 
 intervals of his anxious work of supervision, and looked round 
 him wistfully. He walked indeed all round the house, looking 
 out in every direction. Towards the west there were visible, by 
 glimpses among the trees, some houses of the village of Kilrossie, 
 a high roof or two, and the white spire of the newly-built church; 
 to the east, on the other side of the loch, another village-town 
 extended along the edge of the gleaming water, shining in the 
 sunshine. Plenty of human habitations, fellow-creatures on 
 every side : but society ! Wealth has a very curious effect upon 
 the mind in this respect. The people who came to the hand- 
 some houses at Kilrossie for the bathing season were many of 
 them much superior to James Rowland in birth and education, 
 and quite equal to him in intelligence, except in his own par- 
 ticular sphere ; yet this man who had been only a man in a 
 foundry when those good people were enjoying the advantages 
 of the saut water, and all the luxuries of comparative wealth, 
 would now have felt himself humiliated had he been obliged to 
 accept the society of the good people at Kilrossie as all he might 
 hope to attain. Their neighbourhood was rather a trouble than 
 an enlivenment to his mental vision. And the county people, who 
 had their " places " scattered about at intervals, were in many 
 cases neither so well-off", nor so intelligent as these : and they 
 would look down upon the railway man, while the others would 
 regard him with respect. There was no possibility of doubt as 
 to which of the two he would be most comfortable with. And 
 yet he slurred them over cursorily as if they were not there, 
 and sighed into the sweet vacant air which contained no loftier 
 indication of society. How proud he would have been to have 
 known the Kilrossie people fifteen years ago — how it would have 
 elated him to be asked under their roof ! and now their presence 
 irritated him as a set of impostors who perhaps would thrust 
 themselves upon him in the guise of society : that was not the 
 society for which he cared. 
 
 The prick of the banderilla discharged by Marion's trifling 
 little hand was in him all day : and in the afternoon when 
 he had done everything he could, and given all his orders about 
 the arrangement of the furniture, he too went out to take a walk 
 and to spy out the nakedness of the land. He did not go into the 
 woods as his children had done, nor would the dogs have had any 
 
AXD HIS CHILDKEN 113 
 
 charm for him. He went down to the village, where there cer- 
 tainly was no society except in the one house which held modest 
 sway over the cluster of white-washed and red-tiled cottages — 
 the manse, where the minister represented, if not the wealthier 
 yet the educated portion of the community, and might at least 
 furnish information, if nothing else, as to the prospects and 
 possibilities of the place. In spite of himself Rowland's dis- 
 couragement reflected itself in his countenance, making him, as 
 so often happens, look angry and discontented. There was 
 something even in the way in which his heel spurned the gravel, 
 making it fly behind him, which betrayed the_ unsatisfied state 
 of his mind. He had scarcely emerged from his own gate when 
 he met the minister in person, who turned with him and walked 
 along the country road by his side with great complaisance, 
 partly because he was glad to meet any one on that not much 
 frequented road, and partly because it was a good thing to make 
 a friend of the inhabitant of " The House.*' The shower which 
 had caught Marion and Archie at Rankin's cottage, made the 
 two gentlemen pause for a few moments but no more under the 
 shade of an overhanging tree. A shower is too common a thing 
 in that country to disturb any one. It discharged its harmless 
 volley, and then cleared away with rapidity as if the sportive 
 angel who had that brief job in hand was glad on the whole to 
 get it over ; which is very often the way with the sky officials 
 in that particular in the west of Scotland.^ The cloud blew 
 away in a second, dispersing what was left of it in floating rags 
 of white, which fled towards the hills, leaving the sky radiant 
 over Peterston on the other side of the loch, and the loch itself 
 as blue, reflecting the sky, as was that capricious firmament 
 itself— for the moment. The road ran inland, with fields of wheat 
 between it and the margin of the shining water, beyond which 
 rose the low banks of the loch, and further off a background of 
 mountains. If it was not quite equal to the great " view " of 
 Eosmore House, this prospect was at least very tine, soft and 
 clear, in all the harmony of a blueness and whiteness such as a 
 rainy climate confers ; and Mr. Rowland too, like his daughter, 
 was comforted by the singing of the birds, which all burst forth 
 again with unusual energy after the subduing influence of the 
 shower. He said, " It is certainly a beautiful place.** as he paused 
 for a moment to look over the green field at the little steamers 
 which seemed to hang suspended in the beatific air, one on the 
 surface of the water, one reflected below. 
 
 " Yes, it is a lovely place," said the minister with a sigh. 
 He was a middle-aged man dressed in careful clerical fashion 
 like an Anglican priest— a costume new and rather distressing 
 to Row land, no such thing having been thought of in his early 
 days before he left Scotland. At that period a white tie (or 
 neckcloth, to use the proper phraseology) rather limp, and a 
 black coat often shabby, were all that were thought of as neces- 
 sary. But Mr. Dean, which was the name of the minister of 
 
 I 
 
114 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Rosmore, liked to be called a clergyman rather than a minister, 
 and would not at all have objected to hold the ecclesiastical rank 
 which is denoted by his name. He was of the new school. He 
 had a harmonium in his church, and a choir which chanted the 
 psalms. He was very advanced, and his wife still more so. He 
 shook his head a little as he made this reply. Yes, it was a 
 lovely place — but — this latter word was inferred and not said. 
 
 " I want to ask you," said Eowland, by no means reassured by 
 this, " about the society." 
 
 Mr. Dean now shrugged his shoulders a little. " You have 
 perhaps heard of the chapter about snakes in Ireland," he said. 
 
 " I have always understood there weren't any." It is a very 
 unjustifiable thing to cut in this way a quotation out of another 
 person's mouth. Mr. Dean was a little disconcerted, as was 
 natural. " Well," he said, "that's just the thing, there is none. 
 I answer the same to your question : there is no society. I hope 
 that Chamberlayne did not bring you here on false pretences." 
 
 u I cannot remember that I asked him anything about it, nor 
 would it have made any difference if I had. Society or not, it's 
 always this place I've set my heart upon. But what do you do 
 and the other people in the place V 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Dean, with a glance at his companion s face, 
 " the House, as we all call it, has been our great resource. Lady 
 Jean — you must hear her quoted everywhere, and, I dare say, are 
 sick of her name." 
 
 " No ; I have not heard her quoted." He remembered that he 
 had not cared anything about it, who was quoted, his whole heart 
 being fixed upon the house. 
 
 " She's very good company." said the minister. "She was 
 always our resource. And sometimes the Earl was here. I don't 
 want to speak evil of dignities, but his lordship was perhaps 
 less of an acquisition. And they had visitors from time to time. 
 That's the great thing," Mr. Dean added with perhaps just a touch 
 of condescension to the simplicity of the millionaire, " in the 
 country. You just fill the house, and one amuses the other. 
 My Avif e and I have seen a great many interesting people in that 
 Avay, which was a little compensation to us for being buried 
 here. You will come in and take a cup of tea. This is the 
 nearest way." 
 
 The Manse garden was on the slope of the lull-side, but the 
 Manse itself was tucked in below, in what was supposed to be a 
 sheltered position, out of the way of all sunshine, or other im- 
 pertinent invasions. It surprised Mr. Eowland to see several 
 pony carriages about, and to hear a noise of talk coming out 
 into the garden all perfumed with sweet-peas and roses. He 
 looked at the minister with an inquiring air. 
 
 " Oh, I don't call this society," said Mr. Dean, " though perhaps 
 you will be of a different opinion," he added. He was a little 
 supercilious in his tone to the railway man, who was a rich per- 
 son and no more : not that the minister had any inclination to 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 115 
 
 break any tie that might be formed with " the House." He was 
 not himself fond of tea-parties, and his expression had made it 
 plain that dinners were chiefly to be found, if anywhere, at 
 Rosmore. 
 
 " I have inveigled Mr. Eowland in for a cup of tea. I did not 
 know you had guests.'' 
 
 "Dear me, Henry ! " said Mrs. Dean.; "of course you knew. 
 It's my day : everybody in the parish knows, if you don't. But 
 I am very glad to see Mr. Rowland : he has just come at the 
 very nick of time. I was saying to Mrs. Wedderburn, so much 
 depends on who is at the House." 
 
 "It is just the centre of everything," said a fat lady who was 
 thus referred to. She gave Mr. Rowland a little bow, half rising 
 from her chair. "We all defer to the House," she added with 
 an ingratiating smile to which Rowland answered as best lie 
 could with a bow which was as deferential as hers was con- 
 descending. There were a dozen of people or more in the room, 
 which was not very large, and hot with the fumes of tea. There 
 were two or three matronly persons like Mrs. Wedderburn, and 
 a few who were younger, and two men who were making them- 
 selves useful and handing the tea and the cake, There were 
 also some queerly-dressed, middle-aged ladies, of the class to 
 which Scotch society owes so much, the rural single woman, 
 individual and strong-minded : and there were some with a 
 great air of fashion and the consciousness of fine clothes. These 
 last Rowland set down, and justly, as sea-bathers from Kilrossie. 
 One of the others was the minister's wife from the next parish, 
 also unmistakable. His name caused a little rustle of interest 
 among them, as he made his bow all round. 
 
 "I'm sure you're very welcome among us," said another lady, 
 rising up from the window where she sat. " Since we cannot 
 have our dear Lady Jean, we're well content to have a tenant 
 that is creditable and a well-known name. You are just new 
 from India, and our climate will be a great change to ye, at least 
 for the first." 
 
 " Oh, I am well accustomed to the climate," said Rowland. " I 
 don't think that will trouble me much." 
 
 " You're really then a west-country man to begin with 1 so 
 we've heard ; but Mrs. Rowland, I'm afraid, will not be so used 
 to it. Nor perhaps your young folk. You'll think me bold," 
 added his interrogator, "but we hear there are young folk?" 
 
 " My wife is not Scotch," said Rowland ; " but the difference 
 between Rosmore and an English county is not so very great." 
 He longed to say who she was — one of the oldest families— 
 but the same pride which suggested this statement held him 
 back. 
 
 " Oh," said the ladies, two or three together ; and then Mrs. 
 Dean, bringing him his cup of tea, took up the parole. 
 
 " You'll soon learn the weakness of a country neighbourhood, 
 Mr. Rowland. We never rest till we're at the bottom of every- 
 
116 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 thing. We had heard it was a lady from India that was to be 
 the mistress of ' the Hoose.' " 
 
 And now his opportunity arrived. " I will give you all the 
 information in my power," he said smiling. " My wife was a 
 Miss Ferrars of Langley Ferrars, a very old family — Leicester- 
 shire people. She is a lady from India just as I am a man from 
 India. We arrived about a fortnight ago. Is there anything 
 else I can satisfy the ladies about 1 " 
 
 He knew of old that there was no such way of discomfiting 
 the curious as to proclaim your own story, whatever it might 
 be. And he had recovered his spirit, which Marion and Archie 
 had subdued. Society at the station had endeavoured to keep 
 him in his place, but in vain. Even the attaches and aides-de- 
 camp had not been able to manage that. He was a little 
 amused at the thought of this little rural tea-party questioning 
 him, sitting upon his claims to be considered one of them. — One 
 of them ! His suppressed sense of the absurdity of this gave a 
 gleam of mischief to his eyes, and quite restored him to his own 
 self-opinion, which had been so rudely interfered with of late. 
 He stood with his back to the fire-place, which, even when there 
 is no fire, is a commanding attitude for a man, and regarded 
 them all with a smile. 
 
 " We are all looking forward to calling," said fat Mrs. Wedd er " 
 burn, who did not like the trouble of much talking, yet evidently 
 felt that it lay with her to inaugurate every subject. 
 
 " That we are," said his other questioner, who was called Miss 
 Eliza by the other ladies. " I'm just a very pushing person, and 
 yell excuse me. Is it true, Mr. Kowland, what the folk say, that 
 from a boy ye had set your heart on Kosmore House ? " 
 
 " Quite true," he said promptly, " when I seemed to have as 
 much chance of it as of the moon. They say there's nothing like 
 boding of a golden gown— for you see there I am — " 
 
 "It's a wonderful encouragement to the young," said Miss 
 Eliza. " The minister should put it into one of the papers he's 
 aye writing. Did ye not know that our minister was a leeterary 
 character 2 Oh, that he is ! and a real prop to the constitution ; 
 for though he may not be always so in the pulpit, he's real sound 
 in politics — that's what I always say." 
 
 "Miss Eliza," said the other clergyman, "you must not raise 
 n fa ma about a reverend brother. We're all sound till we're 
 proved otherwise, and Presbytery proceedings are against the 
 spirit of the time." 
 
 " Oh," said Miss Eliza, " Mr. Dean knows well what I think. 
 There's no man I like so well to hear, but his views are whiles 
 very papistical. He would just like to be the bishop and more. 
 He's no sound for Presbytery. He would like vestments and 
 that kind of thing, and incense, perhaps, for anything I can tell. 
 I would not wonder but he would put on a white surplice, if 
 that is what they call it, if he could get one over his decent black 
 gown." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 117 
 
 •• I was an Episcopalian before I married Mr. Wedderburn," 
 said the fat lady. " I do not regret it, for Mr. Dean knows we 
 are all uncommonly well pleased with him. And a surplice 
 would become him very well."' 
 
 "It's a very becoming thing,'' said another of the ladies. 
 "We're very glad to come to hear Mr. Dean, but we're all 
 Episcopalians when we're at home." 
 
 "It's the fashion," said Mrs. Wedderburn, folding her fat 
 hands. 
 
 " I've no desire to enter into that question. I'm saying nothing 
 but that the minister is no very sound on certain points. I've 
 said it to his face, and he just laughs, as you see. But, bless 
 me ! this conversation has wandered far from where it began, 
 for I was asking Mr. Rowland, in the interests of all the nieces 
 and the nephews, whether he had not, as we've been informed, 
 some young folk." 
 
 Rowland had dropped out of the talk a little, and had for- 
 gotten that he was being cross-examined. He woke up suddenly 
 at this question with a start. The lingering smile disappeared 
 from his mouth. He put up shutters at all his windows, so to 
 speak. The light went out in his eyes. " Yes," he said in a voice 
 which he felt to be as dull as his countenance was blank ; "I 
 have a son and a daughter." 
 
 "That w~as just what I heard," said Miss Eliza with triumph. 
 " We have usually some young folk staying with us up at the 
 Burn. My sister and me, we are overrun with nieces and 
 nephews. It's just a plague. There is scarcely a boat but 
 brings one at the least, I hope your two will come and see 
 them. There is aye something going on ; a game at that tennis, 
 or whatever they call it, or a party on the water, or a climb up 
 the hills. If they will just not stand upon ceremony, but come 
 
 any day " 
 
 " When they are here," said Rowland stolidly ; k> as yet they 
 are not here. The house will not be ready for a week or 
 more." 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon. We thought— there were so many 
 waggons coming and going, and the dog-cart out at the pier. 
 
 "Ihope you don't think," he said, "that I would take home 
 my wife either in a waggon or a dog-cart 1 " }j 
 
 The ladies looked at each other, and there came a taint ' oh . 
 that universal British interjection which answers to every emer- 
 gency — from some unidentified person. But a sort of awe stole 
 over the party. Who was this lady that could not be taken 
 home in a dog-cart I Lady Jean had been driven from the pier 
 in a dog-cart many and many a day. Did the woman who had 
 married this foundry lad from Glesco, this railway man. that 
 had made his fortune in India, did she think herself better than 
 Lady Jean 1 . 
 
 Air. Rowland walked away through his own woods, much 
 amused by this incident generally. They were not his own 
 
118 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 woods : they were the Earl's woods, which was a reflection very 
 unpleasant to him. If money could smooth over the difficulty, 
 they should be his own woods still before he was done with 
 them ; and in the meantime he had a long lease, and a strong 
 determination to call them his own. He looked at every tree, 
 and put a mental mark upon it, to prove to himself that he was 
 right. There was a great silver fir, an unusually fine tree, near 
 the gates, at which lie paused, saying to himself, "This is not 
 mine," with an assumption that all the rest were, which was 
 strange in such a sensible man ; but his mind had a little twist 
 in it so far as Eosmore was concerned. He smiled at the little 
 society of the place with a sense of superiority, at which they 
 would have been extremely indignant. The Miss Elizas of the 
 peninsula were nothing to him, and their gracious intention of 
 calling upon his wife, gave him such a feeling of the ridiculous, 
 that he laughed aloud as he went on. Call upon Evelyn ! Mr. 
 Rowland had perhaps as exaggerated an idea of Evelyn's claims 
 as the village people had a humble one. They had heard that 
 she was a governess whom he had picked up in India ; and he 
 was of opinion that she was a very high-born lady, as good as 
 the Queen. He chuckled to himself as he realized how she would 
 look amid the ladies who came to Kilrossie for the sea-bathing, 
 and the ladies of the parish : Miss Eliza with her big rusty hat 
 and shawl, and the two ministers' wives. Evelyn witli the look 
 of a princess, and her beautiful dresses, that were like nothing 
 else in the world, which her mere putting them on gave the air 
 of royal robes to ! This was his way of looking at the matter, 
 which probably would not have been at all the way of the 
 county ladies, who had a general idea what was the fashion, 
 though they did not take the trouble to adopt it. But to Mr. 
 Rowland whatever Evelyn wore was the fashion, and it was she, 
 he felt, who ought to be everybody's model, to dress after, as far 
 as it was in vain flesh and blood to follow such an ideal. Lady 
 Jean herself would be but a rural dowdy in presence of Evelyn. 
 He thought of the impression she would make. The startled 
 " Oh ! " of wonder which would burst from all their lips when 
 she was first seen. It would be something altogether new to 
 them to see such a lady ! It restored him to his natural spirits 
 and self-confidence to think of this ; indeed, his pride in his 
 wife was the very apex of Rowland's self-esteem and proud 
 sense of having acquired everything that man could hope to 
 acquire, and all by his own exertions and good judgment. lie 
 r3flected to himself with satisfaction that he had owed nothing 
 to anybody ; that it was all his own doing, not only his success 
 in life, i. e. the fortune he had made, but all those still more 
 dazzling successes, which he could not have got had not the for- 
 tune been made. Nobody, for instance, had ever suggested 
 Rosrnore to him ; no benevolent teacher, or other guide of youth, 
 had pointed out to him the house with the white colonnade as 
 an inspiring object and stimulus to ambition. Himself alone 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 119 
 
 had been his counsellor. Nor had anybody indicated to him at 
 the station the pale and graceful woman who was Mrs. .Stan- 
 hope's dependent and poor friend. He had for himself found 
 out and chosen both the wife and the house. This triumphant 
 thought returning to his mind wiped out the impression of the 
 morning, and even the recollection that he had gone out to hunt 
 for society, and had — found it ! He remembered this a little 
 later with a sense that it was the best joke in the world. He 
 had found it ! Mrs. Dean had a " day,"' as if she lived in a novel 
 or Mayfair ; and the neighbouring gentry and the sea-bathers, 
 when they came in force, elated her soul as if they had been all 
 out of the peerage. He wondered, with a laugh to himself, what 
 Evelyn would say to Miss Eliza and the fat Mrs. YVedderburn, 
 and went back to Rosmore in high glee, really oblivious for a 
 time of the two " difficulties,'" the irreconcilable portion of his 
 new life, whom he had left there. 
 
 CHAPTER XYI 
 
 To describe the blank which fell upon the successful man as 
 he went briskly up through the woods, which in his heart he 
 called his own, reflecting upon his success and how he had won 
 it all unaided, his happy selection of a house, his still happier 
 luck in a wife, and saw the pair of limp young figures without 
 interest in anything, vaguely standing about in front of the 
 colonnade, would be too much for words. They stood a little 
 apart, Archie with his hands in his pockets, Marion drawing 
 lines in the ground with the end of her parasol. They were not 
 even looking at " the view." The air of caring for nothing, 
 finding no interest in anything, was so strong in them both that 
 they might have been taken as impersonations of ennui, that 
 most hopeless of all the immoralities. They did not know what 
 to do with themselves — they would never know what to do witli 
 themselves, Rowland thought in despair. They would stand 
 about his life as they were doing about the vacant space in 
 front of the house, empty, indifferent, uninterested. Going 
 wrong, he said to himself (heaven forgive him !) was almost 
 better than that — anything is better than nullity, the state of 
 doing and being nothing. The outline of them against the light 
 struck him as he came up to them like a dull blow. 
 
 " Well," lie said, " what have you been doing since I saw you 
 last?" 
 
 "Nothing," said Marion, with a slight look up at Mm, and a 
 yawn, " for there is nothing to do." 
 
 " Xo— thing," said Archie with hesitation and a less assured, 
 more anxious look. He wanted to speak to his father about 
 those puppies, if he could only venture : but he did not dare. 
 
 " You might have explored the woods," said Rowland, " or 
 
120 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 gone down to the loch, or taken a boat, or rambled up the hill 
 — there's a hundred things to do." 
 
 "The woods are very damp : I would have spoiled my shoes : 
 and the hills very craggy : it would have torn my frock : and 
 Archie, lie is too lazy to row a boat, and too grumpy to speak. 
 Will it soon be time to go back to Glasgow ? You might have 
 taken me with you, papa." 
 
 " It is a pity I did not : for there was company at the Manse, 
 and I have an invitation for you." 
 " Oh, papa ! " 
 
 Archie too looked up with a certain lightening of his pre- 
 occupied face. 
 
 " Yes— if you are not too fine for it. It is to go to some place 
 that is called the Bum, to a lady whose name is Miss Eliza, who 
 has a number of nieces and nephews, and something always 
 going on, tennis, or boating, or dancing." 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " Marion's eyes shone ; but presently a little 
 cloud came over her. " I have not had much chance of learning 
 tennis. The MacColls can play, they've got a nice ground of 
 their own — they have just every tiling ! But there's no club 
 you can get into out of the Sauchiehall Road, and you want 
 shoes and things. I never was in the way of learning." A 
 little furtive moisture glistened in Marion's eyes. 
 " I could let you see the way," said Archie. 
 "Oh yes, laddies learn everything," said his sister with ^ an 
 offended air ; and then she perceived that she had been guilty 
 of an unauthorized word. "I mean young gentlemen," she 
 cried. ^ v 
 
 " For heaven's sake, whatever you mean, don't say that, said 
 Rowland hastily. " However it is not a desert, as you thought : 
 there is balm in Gilead. When you come back and settle down, 
 you must make friends with Miss Eliza." 
 
 " Is she a lady, papa 1 I would not, not for anything, make 
 friends out of our own sphere." 
 
 Rowland laughed loud and long. He said, "I am glad you 
 have such an exalted idea of your sphere ; but how about the 
 MacColls?" 
 
 "I am not meaning," said Marion, with dignity, " to keep up 
 with the MacColls. They're just acquaintances, not to call 
 friends. They never even ask me to their grandest parties. If 
 they were friends, they would have let me learn tennis and all 
 that. I have always meant to let them know that when my 
 papa came home, they were not good enough for me." 
 
 « Well— perhaps it's legitimate— if they thought you not good 
 enough for their grand parties, and no question of friendship in 
 the matter. But you, Archie, you've got some friends ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the lad with hesitation. He had no friend whom 
 he would not have sacrificed on the altar of the puppies. " There 
 are some of the students— but I perhaps will have little chance 
 of seeing them after " 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 121 
 
 "If you please." said Sandy, the groom, who had been loiter- 
 ing near, " will I put in the horse 1 for yonder's the steamer 
 leaving the loch head, and she'll sune be here."' 
 
 " Never mind the horse : we'll walk," said Rowland, at which 
 Marion gave him a look of wonder and reproach. Walk ! a 
 dog-cart was not much, but it was always a more dignified thing 
 than to think a young lady like herself capable of walking like 
 a common person to the pier. 
 
 "And, sir," said Sandy, "about the little dougs — Rankin 
 would be glad to know." 
 
 " The little dougs 1 " 
 
 "The young gentleman will have tell't ye. It's Rankin's little 
 dougs that are kent for a grand breed — and there's aye some- 
 body wanting them. He would like to ken one way or anither 
 afore the young gentleman goes away." 
 
 " It's some little terriers,'"' said Archie, coming forward a step, 
 " we were looking at them. They're very bonnie little beasts. 
 I thought that maybe — there would be watch-dogs wanted 
 about the house — or — just for the fun of them — they're — tine 
 little things. I — I — thought it might be — a good thing." 
 
 Rowland looked severely at his son as he stammered and 
 hesitated. He replied coldly, " If you want the dogs, I suppose 
 that is enough." He waved his hand to Sandy, dismissing him. 
 "Now, Marion, are you ready for your walk ' " 
 
 Marion pouted and protested that she was sure she could not 
 walk so far, but Rowland was inflexible. " It will be something 
 to do," he said grimly. And with a troubled countenance and 
 trembling limbs Archie followed. 
 
 A more beautiful walk could scarcely have been conceived. 
 Here and there, as they descended the hill, they came out upon 
 an open space where the lovely loch, with the great range of 
 hills at the head lying full in the western sun, stretched out 
 before them. Its surface glistened with gleams of reflection, 
 repeating everything from the white scattered houses on its 
 banks to the whiter clouds that floated on the surface of the 
 sky. A boat or two, between the dazzling atmosphere above 
 and the still more dazzling reflection below, lay like a thing 
 beatitied. Woods and hills and shining water — there was 
 nothing wanting to the perfection of the scene. " Every pros- 
 pect pleases, and only man is vile : " and troubled— troubled, 
 full of care — wanting for something wherever he is. 
 
 The successful man marched along with his head high, his 
 pretty little daughter running with her short steps by his side, 
 the house of his choice behind him, the wife of his choice await- 
 ing him, and so well off, able to do whatever he pleased, the 
 admiring, curious people said. Whatever he pleased ! yes, to 
 buy furniture of the rarest description, horses and carriages, 
 even Rosmore itself, if he could by any means procure that it 
 should be brought to market ; but not with all his wealth able 
 to expand the kittle vulgar nature of the girl, or open the 
 
122 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 disturbed heart of the boy beside him. Poor rich man ! to 
 whom his wealth could give no pleasure while this constant 
 irritation gnawed at his heart. 
 
 lie took them back to Sauchiehall Road, not exhilarated by 
 their day'- outing : and while Marion recovered her fatigue and 
 began really to enjoy Rosmore in describing its grandeur to her 
 aunt, he took Archie aside for a few brief words. "Yi hat was 
 that about the dogs i " he said. " Did you pay for them, or have 
 they to be paid for. or what did the groom mean ! .1 won't have 
 any familiarity with the grooms. Why should I be consulted as 
 if you couldn't settle such a matter for yourself .' " 
 
 "I never wanted you to be consulted," said the boy. retiring 
 within himself. 
 
 " What did it mean then ! Remember I consider you old 
 enough to take the responsibility of your own actions. If you 
 want anything, get it : if I don't approve, 111 let you know my 
 opinion.' If I find you spending too much, I'll put a -top to it. 
 But I am not to be consulted about every trifle as if you were a 
 
 child." . _ 
 
 Archie was so struck with the irony of this address as applied 
 to himself, that his wounded feelings and strained temper burst 
 out into a harsh laugh. "As for spending." he said, "much 
 or little, you may set your mind at rest, for I've nothing to 
 spend." 
 
 Rowland took out his pocket-book with a look of doubt, 
 glancing from Archie to Mrs. Brown. "You must have your 
 allowance of course," he said. "You've had it, I suppose, for 
 years p . 
 
 "A shilling a week or sometimes half-a-crown, said Archie. 
 prolonging the laugh which was the only witness of emotion 
 his boyish pride and shyness permitted him to indulge in. 
 "But I'm not asking you for money," he said harshly. The 
 puppies tlitted in vision before his eyes, and counselled a softer 
 tone, but he could not. in spite of the puppies, put forward a 
 linger to touch the crisp piece of paper which his father held out 
 to him. 
 
 "I'll see about that," said Rowland. "Here, in the mean- 
 time." 
 
 " I am not wanting your money." 
 
 "You young ass! take what I give you. I'll see that > 
 have at * your command in future, a proper sum.— Here ! 
 Rowland, who was much out of temper too, tlung the note at 
 the boy, who let it drop upon the floor. "And try to behave 
 like a gentleman." he said, exasperated, "and not like a sullen 
 
 g, as vou're doing now. _ ^ _ 
 
 He did not mean to be so severe. He was tired and sick of it 
 all, as he said to himself as he hurried away. The boy was not 
 true, he was not - due. not frank nor open.. The father was 
 very angry, disappointed : yet in the dark, as he walked back 
 to the hotel, there gleamed somehow upon him, he did not know 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 123 
 
 how, a reflection, a gleam from poor Mary's blue eyes, that had 
 so long been hidden in the grave. 
 
 Meanwhile, the party in Mrs. Brown's parlour had been 
 disturbed by a sense of something sulphurous in the air, and 
 by the flutter of the piece of paper which had been thrown at 
 Archie like a blow. All demand for explanation or possibility 
 of interference had been stopped by the rapid leave-taking and 
 departure of Rowland. "Are you not going to stay to your 
 supper 1 ? and me prepared the table for you, and everything 
 ready ! " Mrs. Brown had said in great disappointment and dis- 
 may ; but Rowland had not yielded. He had letters to write, 
 he said, that unanswerable reason for everything. When the 
 sound of his quick steps had died out upon the pavement, 
 Mrs. Brown came back with a blank countenance into the 
 parlour, where Archie still sat with the bit of white crisp paper 
 at his feet. 
 
 "There's been some quarrel atween you," she said. ' Tell me 
 no lees : you've been setting up your face to your father, that's 
 just a gentleman and far above ye, as ye whiles do to me/' 
 " I tell no lies/' said the boy. 
 
 "That means ye just acknowledge to it, ye thrawn, vexatious 
 callant ? What's that bit of paper lying at your feet 1 ' 
 "It's of no consequence," said Archie. 
 
 " But it is of consequence when I say so. Give it to me ! " 
 "I will not touch it," said the boy. 
 
 "Then I'll touch it !" She stooped suddenly with a nimble- 
 ness for which Archie was unprepared and snatched the 
 paper. 
 
 Then she gave a loud scream. "Preserve us a' ! It's nae less 
 than a twenty-pound note. Lord, laddie, what did you say to 
 him that lie's given you a twenty-pound note ! " 
 
 " Give me the note ! " said Archie hoarsely, holding out his 
 hand. 
 
 " Atweel and I'll do nothing of the kind. What was it for? 
 Twenty pound ! to the like of you that never had twenty 
 pence ! Archie Piowland, what is the meaning of this ? It's a 
 thing I will not put up with to have notes ("nots" Mrs. Brown 
 called them) lying about my carpet and naebody condescending 
 to lift them up." . 
 
 " Let him be, aunty," said Marion ; " he's in one of his ill keys ; 
 he was real disagreeable to-day, and would do nothing. I have 
 had just a very dismal day because he would never rouse him- 
 self up." 
 
 "He may rouse himself or not as he likes, ' said Jean ; " but 
 I've gotten possession of the not, and I'll just keep it till I find 
 out what it's for." 
 
 " It's my note," said Archie. 
 
 "And ye leave it lying at your feet ! Twenty pounds ! that 
 would put pith into many a man's arm, and courage in his 
 heart. Besides, what would ye do with all that siller ? Ill give 
 
124 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 ye a shilling or twa, and I'll just put it by. Your father must 
 be clean gyte to put the like o' that in the power of a call ant 
 like you.— Come ben to your supper. I'll wager ye havena had 
 a decent bite nor sup the haill day." 
 
 "I'm wanting no supper. I'm wanting my note," Archie 
 said. 
 
 " Ye can have the one but no the other. The table's a' set 
 and ready. Come in, ye fool, and take your supper. We'll no 
 wait for you, neither Mey nor me." 
 
 Archie sat by himself with his head in his hands for some 
 moments after they had gone away. Mrs. Brown had carried 
 the lamp with her, but it was not dark. The days are long in 
 June, and the soft visionary light, which was neither night nor 
 day, came through the bars of the Venetian blinds, making the 
 little shabby room faintly visible. He was tired, he was even 
 hungry, but he would not stoop to the degradation of owning it, 
 now that he had said he would have no supper. _ This added to 
 the general sum of wretchedness in Archie's mind. It had all 
 ended so miserably, the day which began so well. He was 
 aware that he had been a fool. He had been tempted with the 
 puppies — which even now, when he thought of them, tempted 
 him still, filling him with a sort of forlorn pleasure in the recol- 
 lection, and making him feel how silly it was to have let his 
 " not" be taken from him— though he knew he had no money to 
 pay for them. And then he had not had the courage to tell his 
 father that he wanted them. Surely he who had bought May 
 so many things would have given this little gratification to 
 Archie, had he gone rightly about it. But he had been a fool. 
 What was he always but a fool? He had got himself into 
 several scrapes because he had not had the courage to ask any- 
 thing from Aunty Jean. And now when he had gotten the oppor- 
 tunity — the note that was his own, that nobody else had any 
 right to, to think that he had let that be taken out of his hand ! 
 He would never get a penny of it, Archie knew ; yes, a shilling 
 perhaps, or maybe half-a-crown, like a little bairn. And what 
 good were they to him, when he had twenty pounds— twenty 
 whole pounds of his own— to get the little dogs with, and many 
 another luxury besides, and pay up his subscriptions to his 
 clubs, which were always in arrears, and maybe treat some of 
 the lads to a dinner without having to account for every penny 1 
 But he had let it be taken from him, and farewell to the doggies 
 and everything else that was pleasant. Oh what a fool he was, 
 what a fool ! "He went up to his room, and tumbled as he was 
 upon his bed, in his best clothes, though he was hungry, and 
 smelt the supper, and wanted it, with all his vigorous young 
 appetite. Happily for Archie, in this painful complication of 
 circumstances, it was not very long before he fell asleep. 
 
 Next morning Mrs. Brown received Piowland in the parlour 
 above. " I am wanting to speak to you, Jims," she said, " you're 
 no used to the charge of young folk, and I maun speak out my 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 125 
 
 mind. Ye mayna take it well of me, but at any rate I will have 
 delivered my soul.' 
 
 "Well," said Rowland, "I hope that will be for your comfort, 
 however little it may be for mine." 
 
 "It will be for baith our goods, if ye will take my advice. 
 Jims, what was that you threw at Archie last night before you 
 
 went away !" . , 
 
 "Did I throw it at him? That was a curious filing to do; 
 but I don't suppose it was intentional on my part. 
 
 " "What was it, Jims % Answer me that." ?j 
 
 "And may I ask what it matters to you, whatever it was 1 
 "It matters a great deal to me. I have been like a mother to 
 him and 111 no have the laddie to be led away. I know very 
 well what it was. It was an English note, and I've got it here. 
 Eh, Jims Rowland, knowing the world as ye must kn w it, how 
 daur ye put the means of evil in that boy's innocent hands . 
 
 " This is very strange,'"' said Rowland, " to be brought to book 
 because I give'my son a little money. 
 
 "Do ye ca' twenty pounds a little money ! My patience ! a 
 sma' fortune," said Mrs. Brown. _ 
 
 " My dear Jean, this is one of the things, unfortunately, that 
 we have made a great mistake about. My boy should have 
 been accustomed to a little freedom, a little money ot his own. 
 It is all very unfortunate. He will be plunged into spending 
 money when he is quite unacquainted with the use of it. It is 
 the very worst thing." . 
 
 " -W that's a' my faut ye'll be thinking,'' said Jean, grimly. 
 '• I don't say it is your fault. It is my fault as much as yours 
 I thought of" securing them kindness and motherly care. I 
 shoukrhave remembered there was something more necessary. 
 You have been very kind to them, Jean.'' 
 
 " Kind I" the cood woman flushed with a high angry colour : 
 "kind ! that's a bonny word to use to me. A strangers land 
 that says a pleasant word. The first person in the street that s 
 taken with their winnin' ways is kind, it you please hut me . 
 that has given them a' the love of my heart, that has been a 
 
 mother to them and mair !'' 
 
 •• I beg your pardon," said Rowland, "I am very much obliged 
 to you : I know you have been all that." 
 
 "A mother, and mair," said Mrs. Jean. "No mony mothers 
 would have done for them what I've done, watching every step 
 they took, that ye mi-ht find them good bairns, no spendthrifts, 
 nor wasters of your substance, but knowing the value ot money, 
 and using their discretion. I've given him the siller tor his 
 clubs and things, for I'm told that's the fashion nowadays, and 
 he's aye had a shilling in his pouch for an occasion It he had 
 been my own I would never have held him with halt as tight a 
 hand for he would have been making his weeks wages it he 
 had been a son of mine, and wouldna have been depending upon 
 either you or me.' ' 
 
126 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 "That's just the pity of it," said Rowland. "He has fallen 
 between two stools, neither a working lad nor a gentleman's 
 son. That proves, Jean, we have both been in the wrong, and 
 I more than you, for I should have known better. We have 
 made a terrible mistake.'' 
 
 " I've made nae mistake," said Mrs. Brown. The tears were 
 near which would soon choke her voice, and she spoke quickly 
 to get out as much as she could before the storm came. " You 
 may be in the wrang, Maister Rowland, but I'm no in the 
 wrang. I've just acted on principle from beginning to end, to 
 save him from the temptation of riches. They're a great 
 temptation. If he had been learned to dash his way about like 
 young MacColl, or the most of the lads that have had a father 
 before them, what would ye have said to me 1 You will see that 
 laddie dashing about a' Glesco in his phaeton, or whatever ye 
 ca't ; and his grandmother was just a howdie in the High Street, 
 nae mair. Would ye have likit that, Jims Rowland 1 folk saying 
 ' set a beggar on horseback,' and a' the rest, to a son of yours, 
 and calling to mind the stock he came of, that was just working 
 folk, though aye respectable. I'm no the one to bring up a lad 
 to that. If ye had wanted him made a prodigal o', ye should 
 have pit him in other hands. I've just keeped him in his right 
 place. And ye tell me it's a mistake, and my fault and terrible 
 wrong. Lord forgive ye, Jims Rowland ! How dare ye say 
 it's a mistake to me, that has been a mother to them — and 
 mair ! " 
 
 Rowland, like other men, was made very uncomfortable by 
 the sight of the woman crying, but he held his ground. " I am 
 very sorry to seem ungrateful, Jean. I am not ungrateful. 
 You've given them a happy childhood, which is everything. 
 But we must try a different system now. I can't have a young 
 man stumbling and stammering before me, as if he had some- 
 thing on his conscience. I am not going to watch every step he 
 takes. He must learn to take steps on his own account, and 
 understand that he's a responsible creature. If you have taken 
 his money from him " 
 
 Mrs. Brown jumped up as if she had received a blow. She 
 rushed to the door of the room, which she flung open, calling 
 upon "Archie ! Archie ! " in a voice broken by angry sobs. The 
 lad came stumbling down-stairs not knowing what was wrong, 
 and appeared with his still somewhat sullen face, asking 
 tv What's the matter ? " in a tone which was half alarmed and 
 half defiant. She seized him by the arm and dragged him into 
 the room, then flying to a little desk, opened it, flinging back 
 the lid, and seizing the unfortunate bit of paper, flung it again 
 in Archie's face. "Hae !" she said, "there it's till ye. Me taken 
 his money 1 Me that have just done everything for them, and 
 never thought of mysel'. Me ! taken his money ! " Mrs. Brown's 
 voice rose to a shriek, and then she fell into a chair and burst 
 into a more renewed and violent passion of tears. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 127 
 
 "What have ye been saying to her to make her like that V 
 said Archie, turning to his father. "I was not wanting your 
 money, and if she put it away it was no harm. Her take your 
 money ! She cares nothing for money but to get things for 
 May and me. Aunty," he said, going up to her, putting his hand 
 on her shoulder, " I'll just put a notice in the, Herald to-morrow. 
 If he is my father, I'll not be dependent upon him. What right 
 has he to fling his dirty money in a man's face, and come into 
 this house like a wild beast and make you cry. He made his 
 money himself, and he can spend it himself. 1 11 make what I 
 want for mysel." 
 
 But oh the puppies, barking with their ridiculous noses in his 
 hand, sprawling over old Rankin's bed ! They suddenly came 
 before Archie's mental vision, and made his voice waver. Xo 
 such luxuries as Rankin's puppies could be in the lot of a poor 
 young clerk in an office, making perhaps a pound a week — and 
 he the great railway man's son that was rolling in wealth ! — a 
 sense of the great injustice of it made Archie's voice harsh. Vs\\o 
 should all that money be for but for him ? And the rich father, 
 the hoped-for incarnation of wealth, was there scolding about a 
 miserable note, accusing Aunty Jean of having taken the money! 
 The lad went and stood at the back of her chair, putting himself 
 on her side, defying the other who thought so much of his filthy 
 siller ! Let him keep his siller ! lie had made it himself and he 
 could spend it on himself. Archie for his part would do the 
 same. But as he uttered these noble sentiments, an almost 
 overwhelming sense of the wickedness of it, of the cruelty of 
 the unjust father, and of the unimaginable wrong to himself 
 flooded Archie's mind. He could have cried too with anger and 
 the intolerable sense of wrong. 
 
 Rowland stood for a minute or two contemplating the scene, 
 and then lie burst into a laugh. The climax was too ridiculous, 
 he said to himself, for any serious feeling And yet it was not 
 a pleasant climax to come to, after so many years. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The husband and wife met with perhaps a greater sense of 
 satisfaction and pleasure than either had anticipated feeling 
 when they parted. Marriage is a curious thing, notwithstanding 
 all the ill that is said of it. They had not been long married ; 
 they had not been exactly what people call in love with each 
 other ; nor was James Rowland at all a sentimental person. 
 Yet there is something in that old-fashioned expression which 
 speaks of making two persons one flesh, which has a most 
 powerful influence. They meet as people only can meet whose 
 interests are one, who are fain to confide everything that affects 
 
128 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 them to the bosom of the other, who is theirself. The thing is 
 indescribable ; it is simple as a b c to those who have experienced 
 it. It would probably be impossible without the other circum- 
 stances of the union, yet it is superior to all the rest — the most 
 essential, the most noble. Both these persons had been disturbed 
 and troubled by various matters peculiar to themselves ; Rowland 
 by the problem of his children, Evelyn by other problems not 
 unlike, yet so different from his. When they met, there seemed 
 an instant lull in these disturbances. The twofold being was 
 now complete, and was able to deal with all problems. 
 
 Rowland had travelled by night, as busy men so often get 
 the habit of doing, and Evelyn superintended the excellent 
 breakfast he always made, and looked on at the satisfaction of 
 that admirable appetite with much complacency, before she 
 asked any questions. She was not a woman who was fond of 
 asking questions. She awaited confidences, and did not press 
 them ; which is a very good way for those who can do it, but 
 not perhaps very easy to an anxious mind. The difference of 
 her position from that of a mother was, that she was interested 
 without being anxious, and this made her also more charitable 
 in judging, and probably would make her less hard upon the 
 shortcomings of the children. She was very much interested, 
 but she was calm, and it was not to her a question of life and 
 death. It was not till he had eaten the very last spoonful of 
 marmalade and piece of roll, of which he was capable, that she 
 said "Well?" looking with a smile into his eyes. 
 
 "Well — ," he said with satisfaction, pushing back his seat 
 from the table, "you're ready to hear all about my troubles, 
 Evelyn ? " 
 
 " I hope they are not very bad troubles." 
 
 " That will be very much as you take them, my dear. They 
 might be bad enough, but I've great confidence in my wife. In 
 the first place, the house is, I think, perfection ; but you may 
 not agree with me — you know I have not your refinement. It 
 stands on a green knoll overlooking the Clyde, with a back- 
 ground of the most beautiful hills in the world, and for the 
 foreground the grand Firth — and all the wealth and life that 
 pass over it But," he said pausing, and with a half-shame- 
 faced laugh, " I've told you all that before," 
 
 " Yes, you have told me before ; but that does not take away 
 my interest. Tell me more." 
 
 "He took her hand with a grateful pressure, and so began to 
 tell her about the arrangement of the house, and other matters 
 on which she was not informed before, to all of which she listened 
 with much grace and satisfaction, nodding her head as one thing 
 was reported to her after another. I do not say that Mrs. 
 Rowland did not exercise a natural privilege, and suspend her 
 judgment on one or two points. It was only natural that she 
 should know better what the internal arrangements of a great 
 house should be than he did. But she received it all as if in 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 129 
 
 every way he had done well ; which was the case so far as she 
 yet knew. " There is one tiling, however, I must tell you of, 
 Evelyn," he said, "and your feeling about that will of course 
 make all the difference. You may not feel inclined to put up 
 with it. And in that case it matters very little about anything 
 else. It is you that must be the judge." 
 
 " What is this great thing ? " she said with a smile. 
 
 "It is a great thing, my dear. I dare say even I might not 
 like it, though, having your society, I'm very indifferent. It is 
 that I'm afraid there is very little society at Eosmore." 
 
 She burst out into a pleasant laugh. " Society — is that all 1 
 Dear James, I thought you were going to say there was no 
 good water, or that the drainage was bad, or something of that 
 sort."' 
 
 " We'd soon have managed that," he said, laughing too with 
 relief, " sunk a well or turned the whole place upside down ; 
 that would have presented no difficulty. I cannot tell you 
 what a relief it is to me that you take it so easily, Evelyn. It 
 was — it was — Marion who put it into my head. She said, ' There 
 will be nobody that mamma will like to associate with here.' 
 That was all her own doing — not suggested in any way by me : 
 for I did not know whether you would like it, if a little girl you 
 never saw before called you, right out — " 
 
 "Like it !" said Evelyn — Perhaps, to tell the truth, she had 
 winced a little. " Of course I should like it. It shows an in- 
 clination to adopt me, which is the very best thing I could have 
 hoped for. Tell me about her, James. The house is very 
 interesting, but the children are more interesting than the 
 house." 
 
 "You take a load off my mind when you say so. I would 
 give a thousand pounds that the hrst was over — that you had 
 met them and made acquaintance with them. She's eighteen, 
 and he's twenty. The boy is rather a cub — and the girl — " 
 
 " My dear James ! it's very likely they are not made up exactly 
 to your taste : how could they be % They are very young, and 
 it will be quite exciting to put them a little into shape — into 
 our shape. Society, indeed ! — Society, whatever it was, would 
 not be nearly so interesting as that. Tell me everything about 
 them, James." 
 
 Encouraged by this, Mr. Eowland began to tell her his ex- 
 periences with the children ; but by some means it came about 
 that, he could not tell how, their faults got slurred over, and 
 their good qualities magnified in his hand. How did it happen % 
 He could not tell. He had Marion's impertinent little minois 
 before him every word he said, yet he managed to give an 
 inoffensive saucy look to Marion — a saucy look which fathers 
 do not dislike, though mothers may object to it. And then the 
 boy — 
 
 "Archie disarms me," he said, "because I can't help seeing in 
 him his mother's eyes. I'm afraid he's a dour fellow and sullen, 
 
 K 
 
130 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 and you can't be expected to be mollified as I am. It takes away 
 my anger when I look at him. And yet I had cause to be angry," 
 
 "Tell me," she said. 
 
 And then Mr. Rowland told the story, beginning at the 
 apparition of the groom with his question about the dougs, and 
 ending with Archie's defence of his aunt, who had taken his 
 money from him, against the father who had given it. As he 
 told this, it seemed to himself less bad as an indictment against 
 Archie than he had supposed. What was it, after all, that the 
 boy had done 1 The enormity disappeared as it was put into 
 words. And Evelyn sat smiling, from time to time shaking her 
 head. 
 
 " It appears to me," she said, " that if Archie was wrong, as 
 no doubt he was, Archie's father was also a little to blame." 
 
 "Do you think so?" he said eagerly. He was glad to think 
 that perhaps this might be so. 
 
 " You would not like him to be disloyal, nor for twenty bank- 
 notes ? He might have swallowed the injury to himself of having 
 that money flung in his face — " 
 
 "Injury ! " — Mr. Rowland's countenance fell. 
 
 She put her hand upon his, smiling — " Yes, Sir Stern Father. 
 That's not your role, James : you were born to be a most in- 
 dulgent father, giving in to them in everything. And you must 
 henceforward take up your right role, and let me be the repressive 
 influence." 
 
 He took her hands between both his. It was not a very strong 
 support, so far as physical force went, and yet for the first time 
 James Rowland felt their soft fingers close upon his in a way 
 that expressed not their usual soft gentleness, but strength. 
 He felt himself suddenly holding on to that hand as if it were 
 his sheet-anchor, which indeed it was. 
 
 " To tell the truth," he said, " I think perhaps I looked at them 
 through what I suppose were your eyes, Evelyn, seeing how 
 unlike they were to you, how little worthy to live with you, to 
 have the rank of your children. It was that, at all events, made 
 me hard upon poor little May. It's not her fault if she is more 
 like Jean Brown than she is like a lady, or anything that had 
 even been near you." 
 
 "Whom should she be like but the person who has brought 
 her up 1 I am delighted to hear that they are so loyal. I would 
 not have that changed for anything in the world." 
 
 " I am not so sure about their loyalty," said Rowland, recalling 
 to mind Marion's strict impartiality in respect to her aunt, and 
 detachment from her. But he felt sure that Evelyn would be 
 able to explain that away also ; and put his foot upon it. No 
 need to make the child out worse than she was ; and a rush of 
 paternal kindness came over him now that the two were out of 
 his sight. It was not their fault. He said, "I don't doubt you'll 
 do wonders with Marion, my dear. The little thing is very quick. 
 Even in the day or two I was with them, a change came over her. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 131 
 
 She kept her eye upon me, and without a word just adopted 
 manners. No, I don't think I am partial. Indeed I found that 
 I was quite the reverse."' 
 
 I am afraid that a cold shudder, unsuspected by her husband, 
 passed over Evelyn, in which, if there was horror, there was also 
 a distinctly comic element. What sort of a wonderful creature 
 must the girl be who "adopted manners" from good James, the 
 most excellent man, but not a model of refinement. She could 
 not but laugh, yet shivered a little as well. 
 
 " I am more afraid of Marion than of Archie,'' she said, "for 
 he will chiefly be your concern. I shall have only the consoling 
 part, the petting, to do with him. I hope your little May is a 
 magnanimous little person, who will not mind being pulled to 
 pieces for her good ; for I suppose I shall have to do that— if 
 you are right." 
 
 She added these last words with a little quick awakening to 
 possible danger. He had not been at all complimentary to his 
 little girl. Yet was it possible that there was a faint little 
 cloud, a suspicion of a cloud on his face, to be taken at his word, 
 and to have even his wife express, nay repeat what was his own 
 opinion ? She was very quick to see these almost imperceptible 
 chancres of countenance, and with a little start and catching of 
 her breath, awoke to a sense of risk, which she had never realized 
 before. . 
 
 " I have a story of my own to tell you," she said hastily, ra 
 which I shall have to crave a great deal of forbearance on your 
 part, James, and pardon for what I have taken upon myself to do, 
 or rather to consent to. I thought of asking your permission first. 
 but then I felt that anything of this kind might seem a want of 
 confidence in you."' 
 
 His face had changed in a moment to the widest of smiles, and 
 brightest of aspects. " Fancy ! " he said, " anything for which 
 you should have to ask my permission, any wish of yours that 
 it would not be my highest pleasure to do.'"' 
 
 " Thank you," she said, " dear. I felt sure you would back me 
 up : and now I have got this pretty speech to the boot, to make 
 me happy. James, do you remember a story I told you when 
 you first spoke to me, when you asked me first, in Helen Stan- 
 hope's house V 
 
 " About % "—He paused and added, " Yes : you have seen him 
 again V 
 
 " I have seen a man paralyzed, in a Bath-chair, moved, dressed, 
 fed, ordered about by a servant. The ghost, or far worse than 
 the ghost, the wreck of a man." 
 
 " And that was he % " A certain gleam— was it of satisfaction I 
 — was for a moment in James Rowlands eyes. But it was only 
 for a moment, and the next they were subdued by the most 
 genuine sympathy. " My poor dear ! " he said. 
 
 " It was a great shock to see him, you may suppose : but that 
 is a small matter. He lias two children, like ourselves." 
 
 k 2 
 
132 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 The light sprang up in his eyes, and he thanked her with a 
 sudden kiss upon her hand. 
 
 " A boy and a girl, about the same ages. The girl I have seen 
 — a strange specimen to me of a new generation I have no 
 knowledge of ; the boy, I fear, a very careless boy. Of all 
 things in the world it has occurred to Mr. Saumarez, of all people 
 in the world, to desire to confide these children to me." 
 
 "It shows that he has more sense than I could have thought." 
 
 " Their mother, of course, is dead, and he thinks he will die 
 soon. I hear from others that how he lives at all is a wonder, 
 though they think him likely to go on living : but he wishes me 
 to take the guardianship of his children ' 
 
 " And you have accepted 1 " 
 
 " No, I have not accepted. That was too much to do, without 
 your approval at least : even with it I doubt if I could take such 
 a responsibility. It is not so bad as that. But I have pledged 
 myself to ask them to Rosmore, for a long visit, to make their 
 acquaintance thoroughly. They are young people who are, ac- 
 cording to their slang, up to everything. I have been in great 
 doubt since, whether it would be a good thing for — our two." 
 
 James Rowland's eyes Hashed again. After all there are some 
 things which the experiences of a lifetime cannot do away with. 
 As a point of fact, he knew well enough that the higher classes 
 as he had seen them, chiefly in India, were fundamentally not a 
 bit superior to the lower classes as he knew them by more inti- 
 mate experience ; and yet, risen from the ranks as lie was, it 
 gave him the strangest sensation of pleasure to hear that two 
 young aristocrats, children of Society, " up to everything," were 
 about to become his guests. Even the flavour of something a 
 little wrong which was conveyed in these words, rather height- 
 ened than diminished the pleasure. A good thing for— our two. 
 Surely it would be a good thing : it would teach them manners 
 far more effectually than if they were to observe their father's 
 ways to the end of the chapter. It would smarten up Archie, 
 and let him see what a young man should look like in his new- 
 sphere. 
 
 " My dear," he said, "if that is all you are in doubt about, I 
 think you may set your mind at rest. Two young people who 
 are up to everything, will probably find it very dull at Rosmore; 
 but so far as we are concerned, and the two — it can be nothing 
 but an advantage. Ask as many people as you like : there is 
 plenty of room in the house, and there will be plenty of car- 
 riages and horses, and plenty of things to see, though there is 
 nothing to do, as Archie says." 
 
 " That is a very advanced thing for Archie to say : it is the 
 fashionable complaint." 
 
 " Is it 1 " said Rowland, brightening more and more. He began 
 to think that perhaps he had been too severe upon the young 
 people, that his anxiety had made him see blemishes which 
 perhaps did not exist. It was quite possible that well-made 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 133 
 
 clothes, and a little money in his pocket, would make entirely a 
 different figure of Archie : and little May— well perhaps little 
 May wanted still less. She was as sharp as a needle. She would 
 pick up everything without letting it be seen that she did not 
 know^ it to begin with. The thought flashed through his mind 
 that in a week she would have made herself an exact copy of 
 Evelyn, and what could a girl do better than that ? Marion was 
 not like her own mother at all ; she had not those eyes which 
 gave Archie, though he did not know it, so much power. But 
 she was very clever : she could make herself whatever she wanted 
 to be. 
 
 The Rowlands had a great deal before them in the few days 
 which they were to spend in London, before going, as Mr. Row- 
 land proudly said, home. There were a great many things still 
 to buy, which could be got only in town, though the Gksgow 
 people had been indignantly sure that nothing was to be had in 
 London (to call London town, was an arrogance which was not 
 to be endured) which could not be much better procured in 
 Glasgow. Rowland, however, was precisely the man to be of a 
 contrary opinion, and he had <a list as long as his arm of things 
 that were still wanted. Plate, for one inconsiderable item, and 
 carriages on which Evelyn's judgment was necessary, and for 
 which orders had to be given at once. He approved of her 
 purchases, but thought them far too few and unimportant. " I 
 believe you are afraid of spending money,'"' he said, with a long 
 rich laugh. This rich laugh of contempt at all small economies 
 and insignificant expenditure is offensive in many people, but 
 it was not offensive in James Rowland — perhaps, indeed, to the 
 wives of the millionaires, who are thus allowed carte blanche, 
 and egged on in the way of pleasant extravagance, it is never 
 offensive. Evelyn entered into the joke of being niggardly, of 
 spending too little. "As if there was :iot enough to come and 
 go upon,"' he said, with perfect satisfaction. When any one was 
 by, especially any one who was not rich, who could not afford 
 these liberalities, she might blush a little and restrain with a 
 look, or a touch upon his arm, the large utterances of her good 
 man ; but when they were alone, she did not find it offensive. 
 She went with him from one shop to another, quite pleased 
 with herself and him. He was really a satisfactory person to 
 go shopping with. He found nothing too costly so long as it 
 was good, and threw over cheap things with a fine contempt 
 that was refreshing to behold, especially to one who for a long 
 time had been obliged to take cheapness much into consider- 
 ation. One day he took her into Christie's, and bade her look 
 if there was anything good enough for her boudoir at home, 
 and stood by smiling with pride in his wife's taste and superior 
 knowledge, while she was inspecting those treasures which he 
 declared he did not understand. But he did understand bric- 
 a-brac, it turned out, much better than Evelyn did, though 
 perhaps his taste in Dictures was not so pure. 
 
134 THE RAILWAY MAN" 
 
 Thus the clays passed by ; and though those pleasures depended 
 very much on the depth of Mr. Rowland's purse, they could 
 scarcely be called vulgar pleasures, although Evelyn sometimes 
 at the end of the day blushed to think how she had enjoyed her- 
 self. Was it the fact of spending money, an operation which in 
 itself seemed to give pleasure to her husband, or was it the 
 acquisition of so many valuable and beautiful things which was 
 delightful 1 It was complicated, as everything human is, with 
 the contrast of previous life, with the pleasure of pleasing him 
 by being pleased herself, even perhaps a little by the obsequious 
 respect by which their progress was attended. This was a poor 
 view, and we are poor creatures, the best of us — for there was 
 something even in that. As for the purchases themselves, 
 Evelyn knew that a cracked pot, a scrap of an old picture, a 
 bit of clumsy carving, was capable of giving quite as much 
 pleasure as all the treasures of art which accumulated in their 
 rooms at the hotel. Happily there is compensation in all things, 
 and the highest of all delights, in bric-a-brac at least, is not to 
 him who buys whatever strikes his fancy, regardless of expenses, 
 but to him "who " picks up " an unexpected gem, for a few pence 
 or shillings, in some ignoble corner where no such treasure could 
 be suspected to be. 
 
 And they dined out in the evenings, at the Leightons, of 
 course, and at other places, where the great railway man found 
 himself a sort of lion, to his great astonishment, where he ex- 
 pected modestly to be received, chiefly on his wife's account, in 
 spheres which were not his. In this point of view Mr. Rowland 
 was delighted, and Evelyn was as proud of her husband as he 
 could be of her, which was saying a great deal. Like many 
 other people in this world, Rowland was not in the least vain 
 of the real work he had done. He was aware that he had been 
 very lucky in many things, in the means he had employed, in 
 the curious natural facilities which always came in his way ; 
 but his own skill and patience and thought did not seem to come 
 into his mind as deserving of special distinction. " Oh, of course, 
 since it was my business, I tried to do it the best I could," he 
 said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. It 
 was his assistants who were the wonderful fellows ; he was so 
 fortunate in always getting hold of the best men ; no man but 
 had been true to him, as Brutus says. Evelyn sat by and listened 
 with such light in her eyes that her friend, Lady Leighton, 
 looked at her in wonder. " Why, you are in love with him ? " 
 said that woman of the world. 
 
 There was one meeting, however, in which Evelyn's feelings 
 were exercised in a more complicated and difficult way. She 
 had kept safe from all encounter with Saumarez, whose invalid 
 chair she had seen repeatedly in the distance with a sense of an 
 escape, until the very last day, which Rowland had insisted upon 
 devoting to amusement alone. "Why shouldn't we begin with 
 this ' How ' which I hear everybody speaking of 1 " 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 135 
 
 " Oh, it is too early for the Row." 
 
 "Never mind; it seems to be pretty, and to have pretty 
 people about it. I want to sit down on a chair and look at 
 them." 
 
 "As if you were a man to sit long quiet on a chair ! " 
 _" Come along, Evelyn. I believe you're jealous of the pretty 
 girls," he said with his big laugh. How well she had known 
 how it would be ! Saumarez had no objection at any time to be 
 seen of the crowd. He had grown to feel his helplessness a dis- 
 tinction, as he would have felt anything else that belonged to 
 him. But his time for his promenade was before the fashionable 
 hour, and the Rowlands had not gone half the way along before 
 the well-known chair became visible slowly approaching. Evelyn 
 gripped her husband's arm. 
 
 "James, I see an invalid chair there in front of us, with 
 three ladies standing round it. I rather think it must be Mr. 
 Saumarez. He is sure to see us ; he will ask to be introduced 
 to you. ' 
 
 "Well, my dear: if you would rather not, let's turn back; 
 otherwise, it makes no difference to me. Yes, I might almost 
 saj T I have a kind of curiosity — but not if it troubles you." 
 
 "How should it trouble me? "said Evelyn. But yet it did, 
 though there was no reason for it. What was her reason 1 A 
 half vexation that her husband should see him so humiliated, so 
 helpless and pitiful a spectacle ; a half terror to see her husband 
 reflected through his eyes. But there was no help for it now. 
 
 " Make me acquainted with Mr. Rowland, my dear lady," 
 Saumarez said. " I have wanted to make his acquaintance ever 
 since I heard — how lucky a man he was." 
 
 " You may say that," said Rowland heartily, " the luckiest 
 man, I think, in the whole world." 
 
 " You say so," said the invalid, " to the man who can perhaps 
 best understand you in the whole world, being the unluckiest 
 man in it, I should think ; a failure in everything beside you, 
 who are a success in everything. You must let me congratulate 
 you, as one of your wife's earliest friends. I am just sufficiently 
 older than she is to have held her in my arms as an infant." 
 
 " For heaven's sake, none of that ! " Evelyn exclaimed under 
 her breath, with a flash of overpowering offence. He eyed her 
 with a smile in those two brilliant eyes. 
 
 " To have juetted her as a little girl, to have — admired her as 
 a woman : nobody can know so well as I what a prize you have 
 got, Mr. Rowland." 
 
 James was a little surprised, and slightly, faintly disturbed. 
 "I hope I know that," he said, " and my great good fortune." 
 
 " And I hope," said Evelyn, " that I am not considered likely 
 to enjoy all this, listening to those mutual compliments. I, for 
 my part, am fully alive to my own good fortune. James, I think 
 we must go on. We have to be at Madeline's." 
 
 "Madeline," said Saumarez with a laugh, "is always Mrs. 
 
136 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Rowland's excuse. She is constantly going to Madeline's if one 
 tries to detain her for a moment. But you must wait till I tell 
 you how kind she has been to my children. It cannot but do a 
 young girl good to be in Mrs. Rowland's society ; and I am 
 doubly grateful for my motherless Rose. I hear you've got Lord 
 Clydesdale's place at Rosmore." 
 
 Mr. Rowland did not like to hear it called Lord Clydesdale's 
 place. " Until the moment when we can get him to sell it to us," 
 he said. 
 
 "Ah, will he sell? That's a different matter. A rich tenant 
 paying a good rent, that's one thing — but Clydesdale won't sell. 
 I hope you are not calculating upon that." 
 
 " We shall see," said Rowland, not well pleased. 
 
 " Yes, we shall see. And must you really go — to Madeline 1 
 Lay me at her ladyship's feet. I will go and give her ladyship 
 my opinion of — things in general, one day very soon." 
 
 " My dear," said Mr. Rowland to his wife, " I don't think 
 much of that — old friend of yours. Cripple or no cripple, lie's 
 got a devil in his eye." 
 
 "You cannot think less of him than I do, James," said Evelyn, 
 holding fast by her husband's arm. She knew very well what 
 he had meant when he had said he would give Madeline his 
 opinion on — things in general ; and she knew what barbed 
 arrow he had intended to place in her heart when he spoke of 
 holding her in his arms as an infant. To think that she should 
 have been in that man's arms a happy girl, considering herself 
 happy in his love ! She shuddered as the thought passed through 
 her mind. 
 
 "Are you cold, Evelyn 1 ? " Rowland said with surprise. 
 
 "Only witli the moral cold that is in that man's horrible 
 atmosphere," she said. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 "Yes, he is rather a dreadful spectacle," said Lady Leighton. 
 "Now, one wonders he likes to exhibit himself about the world, 
 where he once was so well known in another way. There's 
 nothing so strange as human vanity, Mr. Rowland. I think he 
 rather likes to show as a sort of prize example of suffering and 
 misery. It's a distinction in its way. He had the distinction 
 of being one of the handsomest men of his day, and of behaving 
 more badly than almost anybody else, and now he's the most 
 deplorable sufferer — always the first, you know, whatever he's 
 at." 
 
 " You are a little hard upon him, Lady Leighton." 
 
 " Not a bit too hard. I know the man so well. We've always 
 been very good friends " 
 
 " What ! Though he behaved more badly than almost any- 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 137 
 
 body else ? " Rowland said, with a laugh. Evelyn, who, knowing 
 what her friend meant, and still smarting as she was from the 
 previous encounter, felt it almost as an added injury, looked on 
 with the gravest face, feeling herself unable to speak. 
 _ " Well -—you don't know society as I do. You've spent your 
 life in primitive countries, where men fly at each other's throats 
 when they disapprove of each other. We' don't do that here. 
 We carry on our relations all the same. Sometimes, however, 
 we speak very plainly, I am glad to say. Ned Saumarez knows 
 exactly what I think of him, but he comes to see me as if we 
 were the dearest of friends." 
 
 "I don't understand society," said Rowland, "and I don't 
 think I should ever know that part of it. How is anybody to 
 know which you prefer, the good or the bad, if you treat them 
 just the same ?" 
 
 " Oh, everybody knows what I think of him, including him- 
 self," said Madeline lightly ; " that's one of our refinements. 
 And so you are going to have Rose and Eddy to visit you in the 
 country. You are a couple of bold people— with a boy and a 
 girl of your own. Of course there will be fallings in love." 
 
 Rowland laughed again, opening his mouth in simple enjoy- 
 ment of the joke, as he took it. ''I think I can answer for my 
 two," he said. 
 
 " Oh, you can't answer for anybody ! " said Lady Leighton, 
 somewhat sharply. " Rose is a girl of the period, and scorns that 
 kind of thing— so does my Mabel, save the mark! They are 
 both going to do all sorts of things as soon as they are out — 
 walk the hospitals ! I don't know what absurd projects they 
 have. But Eddy, I warn you, is a rnauvais sitjet, Evelyn. He 
 is like his father. He makes love to everybody. I don't know 
 
 what age Miss Rowland is " 
 
 " Eighteen," said her father. 
 
 Lady Leighton threw up her hands. "His natural prey! 
 And she has been brought up in the country, I suppose, and 
 
 believes anything that is said to her " 
 
 "She has been brought up," said Rowland, a little displeased 
 with the turn the conversation was taking, "in Glasgow, which 
 is a very different thing from the country, and perhaps not so 
 much given to the innocence of faith." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Lady Leighton, making a dead pause. She had 
 not the least idea how a girl could be brought up in Glasgow, 
 any more than if it had been Timbuctoo. The country she 
 comprehended ; town she comprehended — but Glasgow ! A 
 "smart" lady's information stops long before it comes to such 
 a point as that. 
 
 " Perhaps," said Evelyn, troubled by all this, " I have been 
 imprudent. It is awkward, anyhow, to have these young 
 people coming to us so soon, when we are scarcely settled ; but 
 it is hard to say no, when one is appealed to, for the good of 
 others." 
 
138 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " I hope," said Rowland, " it is an appeal you never will 
 refuse. It shocks me rather to hear you now discussing your 
 future guests. Don't they become sacred as soon as you invite 
 them, like the strangers in a Bedouin's tent? That's our old 
 Scotch way." . 
 
 " Mr. Rowland, you are a darling," said Lady Leighton, quite 
 too great a darling, Evelyn, for this wicked world. I am so 
 glad you have invited me ! But is it not the Scotch way to tear 
 one into little pieces after one is gone ? The balance must be 
 kept straight somehow." 
 
 "It is not the way in my house," he said, with a certain 
 severity, not liking that little scoff at the Scotch way, though 
 he had brought it on himself. Rowland had no objection to 
 have his fling at his fellow-Scot when occasion served. He had 
 vituperated the Glasgow tradesmen largely for being slow, for 
 being behind the time. He had thought everything " provincial 
 —the hardest word to be applied to such a huge and important 
 place ; but he felt offended when any one else followed Ins 
 example. Evelyn had begun to know the look in his face. 
 
 That afternoon, when they had completed all their last 
 emplettes, chosen everything, ordered everything they wanted, 
 and were seated together over the little tea-table which has 
 once more become, though under changed circumstances from 
 those of the eighteenth century, one of the confidential centres 
 of life in England, a visitor appeared who disturbed their talk, 
 and gave to the astonished Rowland another new sensation. 
 He was tired with much movement, declaring that London 
 fatigued him more than the hottest of the plains, and that the 
 shops made a greater call on his energies than any railway or 
 canal he had ever had to do with ; and the rest and comparative 
 coolness of the room was pleasant to them both, the beginning 
 of the day having been unlucky, and a disagreeable turn given, 
 as sometimes happens, to all its occurrences. There is some- 
 thing in luck after all, and perhaps the primitive people who 
 turn back from the day's adventure at sea, and labour on land, 
 because they have met an ill-omened passenger— an evil eye- 
 have more reason in their superstition than is generally sup- 
 posed. That morning's encounter with the invalid in his chair 
 had been bad for the Rowlands. They had found nothing they 
 wanted. The persons they desired to see had been out of the 
 way. The commissions they had given were not executed to 
 their mind. Everybody knows that sometimes, without any 
 apparent cause, this will be the case, to the trial of one's temper 
 and the confusion of all one's arrangements. Some one else had 
 snapped up the picture which they had selected at the picture- 
 dealer's. There had been nothing successful that they had 
 done that day. Rowland, of course, was too enlightened and 
 modern to think of anything like an evil eye. But Evelyn was 
 old-fashioned, and not without a touch of natural and womanish 
 superstition. She set it down to the score of Saumarez and 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 139 
 
 that meeting which she had wished so much to avoid : and the 
 thought oppressed her more than the contra - fche clay. 
 
 '* It was all our unlucky meeting with that man." she even went 
 so far as to say, when she came in, jaded and disappointed, 
 feeling the unsuccessful day all the more that everything 
 hitherto had been so very much the reverse. "Do you think 
 he threw a spell upon us )" Rowland said with a laugh. "He 
 doesn't look at all unlike an old magician, to say the truth.''" 
 Evelyn's little outburst of temper somehow soothed her husband. 
 And though he grumbled a little at the heat, which was worse 
 than Indian, and declared that the English were asses never to 
 have introduced the punkah, yet he soon recovered his elasticity 
 of mind. And when the door opened and Miss Saumarez was 
 announced, he was lounging in the easiest way upon a sofa. 
 and discoursing to his wife, as he loved to discourse, upon the 
 beautiful country to which he was about to take her, and the 
 views from the colonnade which encircled Rosmore. 
 
 "Miss Saumarez." There walked in a tall girl in the simplest 
 of dresses, but without a soil or sign of dust, or crease, or 
 crumple of any description, perfectly self-possessed, yet per- 
 fectly unpretending, with that air of being and knowing that 
 she was the best of her kind, which is born with some people, 
 and to others is utterly beyond the possibility of being acquired. 
 Rosamond would not have been fluttered, she would have known 
 perfectly what to do and how to behave herself, had she walked 
 into the presence of the Queen instead of into that of James 
 Rowland, who, very much flustered, and conscious that he had 
 loosed his necktie a little, and that his collar was not so stiff as 
 it ought to be, got up in much surprise and discomfiture. 
 Evelyn rose slowly from her low chair, with a feeling more 
 wretched still. A sort of sick loathing of the very name, and 
 of the connection she had so foolishly allowed herself to b ■ 
 drawn into, overwhelmed her ; and it was all she could do to 
 keep this sensation out of her face as Rosamond came forward 
 and offered a peachy cheek to her kiss. The young lady took 
 in the aspect of things in a moment. 
 
 ''I am afraid I have disturbed you," she said, "just when 
 you are tired and resting. I asked the man if it was a good 
 time, but he did not know. They never know anything, those 
 servants in a hotel. But I will go away directly, as soon as I 
 have asked one little question. Thank you very much, but I 
 don't think I had better sit down." 
 
 She had a high-bred voice, soft but perfectly clear, with the 
 finest low intonation. She spoke very quietly, but Rosamond 
 always had the gift of being heard. 
 
 " Yes. yes, you must sit down/' said Rowland, awakening to a 
 more agreeable sentiment as he handed her a chair. 
 
 "We have just come in,'"' said Evelyn. "You must forgive 
 me : we have had a very tiring day." 
 
 " It is so hot and dusty, I do not wonder. One feels as if one 
 
140 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 were breathing dust and noise and people, anything but air. 
 But you have it hotter in India," she said, turning her face 
 towards Rowland, with a little gracious acknowledgment of 
 his presence, and of what and who he was. 
 
 " It is hotter, but there are more appliances. I was saying to 
 my wife we should have had a punkah." 
 
 " Something that the poor natives pull and pull to give you 
 air ? I have heard of that — but who punkahs them ? " said 
 Rosamond, with a sweet severity, as if calling upon him to give 
 an account of tyranny and selfish misgovernment, presumably, 
 yet perhaps not inexcusably his fault. 
 
 "I am afraid we don't think much on that subject," said 
 Rowland ; " they are natives, you know, and like it, not the 
 punkah, but the heat." 
 
 "Ah ! there, is, of course, always something to be said on both 
 sides of a question. Dear Mrs. Rowland, I came to you from 
 my father, who gets a great fidget with his illness. Since he 
 cannot move himself, he likes to keep some one always in 
 motion. It was to ask when we were to go to you, Eddie and 
 I. I thought it would be better to wait until you let us know, 
 but father thinks those who are to be obliged should take all 
 the trouble, which of course is just, too. So will you please 
 think it was not wanton intrusion, but to save you the trouble 
 of writing a note." 
 
 "I'll answer for my wife, that she could not be otherwise than 
 glad to see you,"' said Rowland, astonished to see that Evelyn 
 hesitated. 
 
 Miss Rosamond gave him a pretty bow and smile, but it was 
 evident that she considered his judgment an exceedingly small 
 matter, and did not at all accept his answering for his wife, as 
 he ignorantly thought himself quite qualified to do. 
 
 " Indeed, you must not think I take your coming as intrusion. 
 And, of course, you must arrange your visits beforehand." 
 
 " It is scarcely that," said Rosamond. " We have not many 
 visits to arrange : people don't ask a girl who is not out, except 
 it is for charity, like you. And Eddy is rather a pickle : I have 
 not concealed that from you. Nor is it to tell us the very day, 
 as if I were putting a pistol to your head. Indeed, I only came 
 because I was sent. Father is often exceedingly tiresome, but 
 it is easier to do what he tells one than to argue with him that 
 it is not what one ought to do." 
 
 " We have scarcely had time yet to consider what we shall be 
 doing. Our house, you know, is scarcely in order yet. I hardly 
 know what accommodation there is, or how we shall arrange 
 matters. I know nothing yet but what I have been told. But 
 as soon as we are quite settled," said Evelyn, " you may be sure 
 that I will let you know." 
 
 " To be sure," said Rosamond ; " I knew my instinct was right. 
 Now, that is just what I wanted. I shall be able to satisfy 
 father." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 141 
 
 "But, my dear," cried Rowland in horror, '"of course you will 
 be delighted to see this young lady whenever she pleases. There 
 is plenty of accommodation, and we could be doing nothing 
 in which we should not be glad to have the pleasure of her 
 company." 
 
 " Let me settle, please, James," said Evelyn, a little crossly. 
 " These things want arranging, as Rosamond quite knows." 
 
 Consternation filled the mind of the man who did not know 
 the ways of society. To allow an intending guest to feel as if 
 by any possibility she might not be welcome at any time, over- 
 whelmed him with dismay. He got up and walked to the 
 window to free himself at least from responsibility — to be no 
 party to such an astounding act of inhospitableness. Certainly 
 that was not " our Scotch way." He stood there a little, with 
 his back to them, listening to the soft voices running on. He 
 was very susceptible to the music of these mellow, well-bred 
 voices. And the girl's had no sound of offence in it, neither 
 had Evelyn's any hardness. He stood looking at the street, 
 while they had it out between them, calculating the times and 
 seasons. Not for about a month did the Saumarez family leave 
 London. Miss Rosamond had to go to her grandmother's, and 
 it was the time of Eddy's examination ; so that arrangement 
 was necessary on both sides. He stood there feeling more and 
 more every moment what an ignoramus he was. He would 
 have bidden the young people to come at once, to accompany 
 him through all the difficulties of settling down, had he had his 
 way ; and to accept such an invitation would have disturbed 
 all their plans as well as Evelyn's. Well, w T ell ! in this respect 
 it was evident that the calm society way was the best. And 
 yet, middle-aged as he was, and acquainted with the world as 
 he believed himself to be, lie felt that he would not have liked 
 to have a proposed visit from himself discussed and regulated 
 like this. 
 
 "I hope you have settled," he said, coming back from the 
 window, when the soft ripple of the voices came to a little 
 pause. 
 
 " Oh, yes, the fifth of October ; thank you very much," said 
 Rosamond. " That will suit us quite, extremely well. Father 
 will still be at Aix, and Eddy's exam, will be over, and I shall 
 have finished with grandmamma. Thank you so very much, 
 dear Mrs. Rowland. Now I see father was right in making me 
 come — though I did disturb you at the first." 
 
 " Only because I was a little cross, my dear, and tried " 
 
 " I don't believe she is ever cross — is she 1 " said Rosamond, 
 appealing to Rowland. "We shall see how you put up with 
 Eddy. Eddy is enough to make any one cross. Of course he 
 will break down in his exam. : he always has done it, and he 
 always will. There are some boys who seem to go on like that 
 on purpose that everybody may see they will not take the 
 trouble. There seems some pride among boys as to not taking 
 
142 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 trouble. They are ashamed to say they have worked for any- 
 thing. _ And father seems to understand it, but I do not." 
 
 " Neither do I, Miss Rosamond," said Rowland ; " you and I 
 will agree. I think a young fellow should be flogged that goes 
 on like that." 
 
 "I should not like Eddy to be flogged," said Rosamond, in her 
 cool, even, sweet voice. " Of course he was flogged at Eton — 
 swished, as _ they call it — and he did not mind one bit. They 
 rather like it. They are proud of what is a shame, and ashamed 
 of things they ought to be proud of. That's one of the tilings 
 Eddy says ' that no girl can understand.' " 
 
 Rowland approached the table where the tea still stood, and 
 where the young lady was eating bread-and-butter in her com- 
 posed and reasonable way. " Do you go to a great many balls ? " 
 he said, in the tone which he might have ajuplied to a child. 
 
 Rosamond regarded him from top to toe with her calm lumin- 
 ous eyes. She paused a moment as if wondering at such extreme 
 fatuity. Then she said, " I am not out yet," with great serious- 
 ness. A few minutes later she unbent. " I do not wonder you 
 are surprised. I am eighteen, but father's condition stops him 
 from doing many things — that he does not care to do. Grand- 
 mother is too old to go to Court, and nobody has cared very 
 much to take me. I shall perhaps be presented next year." 
 
 " By the bye," said Rowland, looking with eagerness at his 
 wife. 
 
 "What is it, James?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing," he said, going off again to the window. Both 
 of the ladies divined at once what he wanted to say ; Evelyn 
 with a faint regretful sense of the excitement which he betrayed ; 
 Rosamond with a much more prosaic feeling that here was some- 
 thing which they wanted to consult each other abou t. She would 
 have liked to stay to hear what it was, but a better instinct 
 persuaded her that it was time to go away. 
 
 " You have some one with you ? " said Evelyn, as she rose to go. 
 
 "I have Champion: he always takes care of me. I do not 
 often bring him out at this hour ; but he is quite sufficient for 
 a protector. Ah, might I bring Champion ? He does nothing 
 wrong, never misbehaves, nor attempts to lie on sofas. He is a 
 gentleman. Might I bring him 1 It would be such a favour, 
 for the house will be shut up, and grandmamma cannot bear 
 dogs." 
 
 " Is it a dog ?— to be sure ! " said Rowland. " I suppose that's 
 in my department, Evelyn. My son Archie and you will get on 
 very well, if you are fond of dogs." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Rosamond. There was something in that mono- 
 syllable which implied a good deal more. ' ; Oh," it seemed to 
 say, " you have a son Archie, and he is fond of dogs ? I don't 
 make much account of your son Archie — still — " There was all 
 this in the varying of her tone ; but she did not ask any ques- 
 tions. She presented her peach-like cheek once more to Evelyn 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 143 
 
 to be kissed, and she offered her hand with a little inclination 
 of a curtsey to Rowland. He went down-stairs with her, though 
 she remonstrated, and watched her untie her dog from the rail- 
 ings with a sense of wondering, wistful admiration. "Oh," he 
 breathed in his heart, "if Marion was but like that!"' He 
 burst into words when he got up-stairs. " Oh, if I could but see 
 Marion like that ! " This exclamation was quite unintentional 
 and involuntary : he was startled into it, and almost regretted 
 he had said it the moment the words were out. 
 
 "Why!" said Evelyn, wondering. Then she added, "I hope 
 Marion will end by being something much better than 
 that." 
 
 "Better!" he paused a little. "I wish I saw her at all like 
 that. The voice, and the manner, and the dress. That girl 
 talks almost like you : how composed she is — taking everything 
 just as it ought to be taken : understanding — You have some- 
 thing about you, people in your class — you are more philoso- 
 phical — you seem to know what things mean, even a child like 
 that : while Marion — poor little Marion — she is ready to cry or 
 fly into a passion about anything — nothing — and to say little 
 impertinent senseless things. Even the very dress — " 
 
 "Dear James, I say what I mean. Probably dear little 
 Marion is far better in her naturalness than this. I mean 
 nothing against Rosamond. She is made up of so many things. 
 She is natural too, but it is a nature which is full of art. You 
 would not like Marion to understand as she does, poor child. 
 As for the dress — " 
 
 He had received this with much shaking of his head. Marion's 
 naturalness ! If only Evelyn might find it so. He thought 
 Eosamond much more natural for his part, and he was very 
 grateful to his wife for the " dear little Marion," which indeed 
 was more the fruit of opposition in Evelyn than of an affection 
 which she could scarcely have been expected to feel for a girl 
 whom she had never seen. He caught at the last words as 
 something to which he could reply — "The dress?" 
 
 " I have been thinking about that. It is a great pity you did 
 not bring them both up with you to town, James, for that pur- 
 pose. It was almost certain there would be deficiencies in 
 dress." 
 
 He smote upon his thigh in disgust with himself. " If I had 
 only thought of that ! Indeed I did think of it ; but I thought 
 — in short I got out of heart a little witli the whole concern. I 
 thought — I would keep you from disappointment as long as 
 I could ; keep you from seeing what they are ; what little, 
 common, foolish — Evelyn, I have had a terrible disappointment, 
 a hideous sort of undeception. It is all my own fault — that I 
 should have been such a heartless fool as to leave them there all 
 these years ! " 
 
 Evelyn got up to support him in this sudden _ breakdown. 
 She put her arm round the big shoulders, which it would not 
 
144 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 half encircle. " James, dear James ! what nonsense you are 
 talking. Your children and your Mary's — no, no, my good 
 man ! you are excited ; you are over-anxious ; you have judged 
 the poor dear children too hardly. Shall we stay another week 
 and have them down here, and set the clothes to rights 1 Fancy 
 you, of all people in the world, being so much influenced by a 
 question of clothes ! " 
 
 " If it were only that ! " he said, holding her close to him, 
 almost weeping on her shoulder. It was safer not to investigate 
 what it was that made the strong man's eyes so wet and sore. 
 Evelyn did not attempt any such prying, but let him hide him- 
 self — he so much stronger than she was — in her soft hold, and 
 swallow the sob that was in his capacious heart. No one ever 
 guessed but in that moment, what it was to James Rowland to 
 have lost his ideal children, the little things with all their 
 sweetness whom he remembered, and to have found the common- 
 place young man and woman whom he now knew. Evelyn's 
 tender sympathy, compassion, and presently the tremulous 
 laugh with which she began to jest and tease him about his 
 devotion to externals, his fancy for fine clothes, brought him at 
 last to himself. He was a little ashamed to feel his eyes red, 
 to know that he must look almost like a woman who had been 
 crying when he raised his head to the light. But all that Evelyn 
 did to betray her knowledge was a little kiss upon his eyes, 
 which she gave him heartily, as if in spite of herself. And then 
 they sat down to consider the question, which was decided at last 
 in favour of "going home," as Evelyn called it, there to take 
 such steps for a complete renewal of Marion's wardrobe as her 
 taste and knowledge would suggest. It was easy to talk of the 
 clothes, to which she had playfully directed the conversation — 
 too serious and too emotional to be otherwise discussed : but 
 both of them were very well aware that a great deal more was 
 meant. 
 
 It was some time after that, when the gravity of the situation 
 had been dissipated, and lighter thoughts and talk came in, that 
 he asked her with a little shamefacedness, whether she had gone 
 through that ceremonial to which Rosamond Saumarez had 
 referred. "I suppose you have been — presented, as they call 
 it," he said with a laugh. 
 
 " Oh, yes — at the proper time, when I was a girl. I was only 
 at one drawing-room after that. We were too poor to afford the 
 dress." 
 
 " You are not too poor now to afford — whatever you please in 
 that way — Evelyn : " lie laughed, abashed and shy, but eager, 
 " should you think it right to — go again." 
 
 " Oh, yes," she said by no means so earnestly. " I hope you 
 would not dislike it, James." 
 
 " Dislike it ! — to show one's reverence and homage to the 
 Queen 1 Good heavens, no ! if a man felt good enough — It seems 
 as if it should be a kind of duty, Evelyn." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 145 
 
 " Yes," she said, not so fervent even now ; " but not this year. 
 I can take Marion next spring." 
 
 He laughed so that he almost cried. "And I suppose I shall 
 have to get myself up in some ridiculous costume or other to 
 go with you— me and little Mey — a pair of guys — before the 
 Queen ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XIX , 
 
 This sudden glimpse into her husband's deeper nature which 
 it was so easy to lose sight of in his genial and easy exterior, 
 touched Evelyn more than words could say. She entered into 
 his profound discontent with the tenderest sympathy, a little 
 appalled by it indeed, and by the prospect of struggling in her 
 own person with the two grown-up children, who were so mush 
 more difficult a problem at the age they had now reached than 
 had they been younger. She contemplated the prospect with 
 no little dismay. The words of his faltering disclosure, "little, 
 common, foolish," were of all others the words most difficult to 
 reconcile with any higher or generous quality. The only tiling 
 that seemed to have broken the shock to James was that the 
 boy had his mother's eyes. But what, Evelyn said to herself 
 with a little shudder, would the mother herself have appeared 
 to Rowland now, if she had been living all these years stagnant 
 in their old world, growing fat and prosaic, while he had gained 
 so many new experiences'? And how much might his dis- 
 appointment have to do with herself, and that faculty of seeing 
 things through other eyes which comes with sympathy and 
 close intercourse. He might not have required so much from 
 his little Marion, poor child, if it had not been for Evelyn. So 
 much the greater, then, was her responsibility who had accus- 
 tomed him to a different standard, and so unintentionally 
 brought to him an acute pang. Evelyn said to herself that, 
 however desillvsione her husband might be, she must try to 
 keep a motherly glamour in her own eyes. She must endeavour 
 to suffer long and be kind, to think no evil — neither to be dis- 
 gusted nor discouraged. It was perhaps partly her fault. She 
 must take it upon her own shoulders, and refuse to see anything 
 that was undesirable to be seen. But it was very difficult for 
 her to form any just idea of what was the special trouble which 
 she had to expect — even of how the littleness and commoni. 
 would show themselves. She thought of a wild girl speaking 
 broad Scotch, a young man with sinewy limbs, and perhaps 
 (forgive her ignorance) a kilt, speaking the language which in 
 books is put into the lips of the Celt. They were not Celts, she 
 knew, and Glasgow was not a place for gillies and wild High- 
 landers. But of the gillies and wild Highlanders she did know 
 a little, though of Glasgow, nothing, no more than if it had been 
 
 L 
 
146 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 in the South Seas. She tried to compose the imagination which 
 painted a highly coloured tableau, full of red hair and freckles, 
 and a wonderful primitive speech. Always, she felt she must 
 recollect, James might have judged them less severely but for 
 herself, though she in her own person would be the last to throw 
 any cold shade upon them. It is needless to say that this new 
 light shed an illumination that was much less tempting upon 
 the house of which he was so proud, and which her discrimin- 
 ating judgment soon made out, according to the graphic de- 
 scription of Marion, to be chiefly " a view." She had learned to 
 recognize the imposing object it must be from the Clyde steamer 
 after the description which her husband had given her so often, 
 and from the same source she recognized the corresponding view 
 from the colonnade upon the Clyde and the passing boats. 
 These were the chief things he had told her— and no society, 
 and that unkempt, uncultured two. In her innermost retirement 
 Evelyn shuddered a little at what was before her. 
 
 It was not a very pleasant prospect, especially with Rosamond's 
 clear eyes observing everything in the interior, and carrying 
 back her report to the world. However, all this had to be faced 
 courageously. She had undertaken the burden, and she must 
 fit it to her back. No one could help her with it, nor was it fit 
 that she should desire to elude it. It was henceforward her 
 work in the world, and to comfort her husband in his discon- 
 tentment ; to charm it away ; to persuade him that things were 
 better than he thought, and, lastly and chiefly, to make them 
 so, was her occupation, the trust she had received. She did not 
 confess either to him or any one the alarm it gave her. She 
 laughed him quietly out of his depression. " You will see things 
 will arrange themselves," she said. But it must be confessed 
 that when'Evelyn set out, surrounded by every luxury, with a 
 railway director to hand her into a special carriage, and all the 
 officials, great and small, bowing down before the great Indian 
 railway man, she was disposed to think all this honour and glory 
 something like a farce, considering what she was going to. Had 
 she travelled in the simplest way, nobody taking any notice, 
 with the humblest quiet house awaiting her, without these 
 "complications," how much more light-hearted would she have 
 been ! But fortunately James liked the attention of the railway 
 people : a King's Cross director was an important functionary 
 in his eyes. The inspectors and porters to him were like the 
 regiment to a military man. It was agreeable to have the 
 recognition that lie was somebody, that his life had not been 
 spent in vain. 
 
 Meanwhile, the news of the approaching arrival had a very 
 great effect in Sauchiehall Road, whither Mr. Rowland had 
 written directing that Marion and Archie should proceed to 
 Rosmore on Tuesday, to be there when he arrived with his wife. 
 "You can go down in the morning," he wrote, "and tell the 
 housekeeper we shall be at home for dinner. Nothing more 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 147 
 
 than this will be needed, she will know what to do. You can 
 occupy the rooms you preferred when you were at liosmore 
 with nie, but with this reservation, that Mrs. Rowland may 
 
 make other arrangements when she comes.'' This perhaps was 
 not a very judicious way of presenting his wife to his children, 
 but few men are judicious in this particular. He intended that 
 they should understand at once that Evelyn was sovereign 
 mistress of the house. 
 
 "Mrs. Rowland/"' said Aunty Jean, "and the housekeeper!' 
 Her voice sank below her breath in apparent awe, but this was 
 only the cloak of other emotions. " Oh, the ingratitude," she 
 cried, "of men — though many and many a time has he thankit 
 me for being so good to you bairns, that have been like my ain. 
 And now he has gotten a housekeeper, and never even offered 
 me the place : there is nae gratitude in men." 
 
 "You the place— of the housekeeper? She's just a servant, ' 
 said Marion. 
 
 "And what am I but just a servant? I've been ane, ye 
 needna denv't, to you : it's been aye your pleasure that has 
 been followed, no mine : and I was a servant lass before I was 
 married, and thought no shame. Xo : I have nane of your silly 
 pride about words. A housekeeper with a good wage and a 
 good house behind her, and the command of all the orders, is a 
 very responsible person. He might at least have given me the 
 offer, and I would have thought it no discredit. It would have 
 been a grand provision for me at my age. ' 
 
 "I would never have consented," said Archie, for once taking 
 the first word. " A servant in my father's house ! " 
 
 " Xor me," said Marion, " it's just out of the question. I would 
 never have spoken to him if he had dared to offer that to you." 
 
 "I would have thought it nae discredit," said Mrs. Jean. 
 " \nd ye'll maybe, with all your pride, tell me what's to become 
 of me now ? It's little, very little, I have laid away. My heart 
 was aye set on to do ye full justice. A' my young days ye have 
 had the best of them. I've seen many a good place go past me 
 and even a good man, but I would never gie up my trust ; and 
 now ye are going away without a tear in your e'e, or a word m 
 your mouth" for your auld aunty— that was just too faithful to 
 you. And I'll have to take a place somegate for my living. He 
 might have given me the offer at the least." _ , n 
 
 "If you think my father will leave you without a provision,' 
 said Archie , 
 
 "A provision ! " said Marion, more doubttully, " that s a great 
 thing— but a little assistance you may be quite sure— and we 11 
 always come and see you, and bring you anything we can. 
 Unity ye need not be taking up time with little things ot yours 
 when there's us to settle about. We must go, as papa says we 
 are to go. Is there anything I will be wanting to wear - 
 
 "We" might all die and be buried, and Mey s first thought 
 would be what she would have to wear ! " 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " That's reasonable enough," said the aunt ; " she would want 
 mourning if ony one of the family — but we needna think of 
 that till the time comes. There wouldna be much wanted for 
 me," she went on, beguiled, however, by the doleful, delightful 
 subject, though it was contrary to her own injunction ; " there's 
 little crape ever wasted on a poor aunty in these days, ' Oh, 
 it's no a very near relation— just our aunt,' they will say, and 
 oot in a' the colours of the rainbow in six months or less.'' 
 
 "Aunty Jean," said Marion, in her calm little voice; "it's no 
 a funeral we're thinking of, but to go down to Kosmore on 
 Tuesday to meet papa — and mamma." 
 
 " I wouldna stoop to call her mamma. I would call her just 
 Mrs. Rowland, as he says." 
 
 " I have settled in my mind about that," said the girl, " but 
 not about my frock. Will I w-ear that one he bought me at 
 MacColl's shop ? The body's not made, but Miss Peebles would 
 do it if she got her orders to-night ; or I might wear my silk 1 
 If you would tell me what you think about that, and just let 
 the other things alone." 
 
 "Ye have nae mair feeling," protested Mrs. Brown, "than a 
 little cat — as ye are." 
 
 " But a cat has no need to take thought about its dress," said 
 Marion, philosophically, " and see, I'm wanting to make a good 
 impression. My silk would maybe look too grown-up, and trying 
 to be grand ; and it's a very rustling silk, like your red one, 
 aunty. But I notice that very soft silks are the fashion, and 
 white is becoming to me. If the body was made like that one 
 of Janet MacColl's " 
 
 " With plenty of nice red ribbons " 
 
 " No red ribbons at all," cried Marion, "but just muslin work, 
 and all white. In white," she continued, with natural percep- 
 tion, " you cannot go far wrong. I wish I was as easy in my 
 mind about Archie. His trousers are all bags at the knees, and 
 there's something about his coat— Papa," said Marion, " is an 
 old gentleman, but there's something quite different about his 
 coat." 
 
 " I would just imagine sae," said Mrs. Brown with contempt. 
 " What is he caring about his coat, a man of his age, whereas 
 Archie's but a young lad ! I would buy a pair of lavender 
 gloves, Archie. With all that money in your pocket ye may 
 weel allow yourself a pair of gloves, and Marion too." 
 
 " Oh, I will buy her as many gloves as she likes," said Archie, 
 with something of the tone of the millionaire— as he felt him- 
 self to be. He had the remains of the twenty pounds in his 
 pocket after having got many gratifications out of it, including 
 the dinner to the lads, which had been highly successful, but not 
 very costly, and he was on the whole very well satisfied with 
 himself. 
 
 " I canna remember," said Mrs. Brown, " that ye have offered 
 gloves or onything else, or so much as a flower, to me. But 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 149 
 
 that's a very different question," she added, with satirical 
 briskness; u I'm just mysel' the old glove that ye toss away. 
 It's done its part, poor tiling, but ye've nae mair use for it. — 
 Mey, slip the new frock on ye that I may see how it looks, and 
 then you could run to Miss Peebles. If she canna do it, I will 
 just have to cobble it up for you mysel'." 
 
 "I'm going to have no cobbling up," said Marion decisively. 
 "She must just doit, whether she can or not. She would be 
 very fain to get jobs from Kosmore." 
 
 "Aunty, did ye mean yon — about my never giving ye any- 
 thing 1 " said Archie, when May had gone. 
 
 " Me, laddie ? Xo, no, I didna mean it. I was just in a girn- 
 ing humour. Shedoesna see it, and you dinna see it ; and maybe 
 I think more than I should about the dirty siller, and how I am 
 to make my living after having been used to owre muckle com- 
 fort and ease. But it's just my life that's going from me," cried 
 Mrs. Brown, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. " If I did 
 speak about the housekeeper's place, it was no for the grand 
 situation nor the wages, nor even the perquisites, it was just that 
 I would have been near my bairns. I would have seen my bairns 
 — them the young lady and the young gentleman, and me the 
 servant woman ; but I could have seen them every day, and now 
 the Lord kens if I'll ever see them mair." 
 
 " Aunty, we're not savages nor brute beasts : how can ye think 
 ye will never see us mair i " 
 
 " My laddie," she said in her tears ; "it's no only that you'll be 
 taken from me, but I'll have to think of mysel' too. I canna keep 
 up a house like this over my head, nor a servant to do my work. 
 I will have to get lodgers, or take a place, or do something for 
 my bread. I will maybe leave Gleska a' thegither," she added 
 in a tone of despair, as who should have said leave paradise ; 
 "for I have my little pride like other folk, and I wouldna like 
 them that have kent me here, with every comfort about me, to 
 see me taiglin' after a wheen lodgers, or standing about the 
 register office looking for a place." 
 
 "Aunty Jean, ye cannot for a moment think that my father 
 would leave you like that without a provision. If he does, I will 
 leave him." 
 
 " Oh, Archie, hold your peace ; it's not your part to 
 speak." 
 
 " I will ! " cried the boy, flushing red. "I will never go near 
 his grand house. He may do what he likes, he will get nothing 
 out of me. I was just in an awful state of delight when he was 
 coming home," said Archie ; "you know I was. It was the king 
 enjoying his ain again, like the songs. I thought everything in 
 the world was coming right." He turned a little aside and dashed 
 something out of the corner of his eye. " Aunty," he said in an 
 altered voice, "I will confess to you that I am real disappointed 
 in my father. He's no the man I expected. He's like other 
 men, crabbed and thinking of himself. Even when he does a 
 
150 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 kind thing, as he did about that money, it's in such a way that 
 you just want to fling it back in his face ! " 
 
 " Oh dinna say that," cried Mrs. Brown, alarmed ; " you 
 mustna say tliat. He has his ain ways of thinking, but he's a 
 good father, Archie. Look how he has kept you all your lives 
 with every luxury ; he's grudged you nothing. It was just for 
 me to say what you wanted, and as much as you wanted it was 
 aye ready ; never an objection in his mind. Oh, no, no ! you 
 must never say that ! To turn you against your papaw is the 
 last thing in the world that would please me. Look what he's 
 done for us a' for years and years. I always kent it had to stop 
 some time or other. At first I thought when he came hame, we 
 would just all go to him and keep thegither. I didna realize 
 what a grand wealthy gentleman lie had grown. I thought of 
 the siller and nothing else. I expected he would be just like 
 what he was in the foundry, but rich ; and that's what I brought 
 you up to expect. It was just a dreadful mistake. I saw it all 
 the moment I set eyes upon him. I just divined it before that 
 when I heard of his new wife. It's my fault : you've not been 
 brought up as ye ought to have been, for I didna understand 
 things, Archie. Now I understand. But oh, my bonnie man, 
 dinna take up a grudge against your papaw ! He's been as kind 
 to me as ever he could be. Now he's done wi' me, and I'm no 
 more wanted. I've nae claim upon him that he should provide 
 for me, a great, muckle, strong woman, no fifty, quite able to 
 work. But for the Lord's sake, Archie, whatever you do, dinna 
 you turn on your papaw ! " 
 
 "Aunty Jean," said the lad, who was half sobbing too, "I 
 think he's a just man, and, as you say, he has never grudged 
 money. If he provides for you, I'll give you my word I'll do 
 justice to him. I'll listen to no prejudice. I'll just give him 
 my best attention, and maybe we'll come to understand one 
 another. But if he doesn't, God forgive him for it, for I'll not. 
 I'll come back here, and I'll take a situation, and we'll fend 
 together. You shall have no lodger but me ; you'll be house- 
 keeper to nobody but me. This shall just be the test for him, 
 if he's the man I thought him or no. And if it's no, he may 
 search the world for a son : he'll get none of me ! " 
 
 " Oh, my ain laddie ! " said Mrs. Brown, choked by tears and 
 emotion. She could say nothing more, for at this moment the 
 door opened and Marion entered, wearing the skirt of the pretty 
 dress which her father had allowed her to buy at Mr. MacColl's 
 splendid shop. The stuff intended to make the " body " was 
 wound round her shoulders. She resembled exceedingly one of 
 the figures which make so fine an appearance in the shops. It 
 was an ideal which would certainly have satisfied her highest 
 desires. She was too much absorbed to notice the emotion of 
 the others. "Y'ou see," she said as she came in, "the skirt is 
 very nice and wants no altering. It is just my length, which 
 is a providence. I think this is far better than my silk." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 151 
 
 Mrs. Brown awakening to a new interest, got up and walked 
 round her, inspecting the garment closely. Perhaps she was 
 glad of the occasion of concluding an interview which was 
 agitating to both ; but the attraction of the half -made dress 
 would have been a great one in any circumstances. Archie 
 took the opportunity to escape, neither having nor pretending 
 to have any interest in the matter, while a very keen and close 
 discussion went on about the manner of "making up the 
 In respect to this these ladies were not of the same mind, Mrs. 
 Brown being reluctant to accept Marion's new theory of sim- 
 plicity, which the sharp little girl had picked up somehow since 
 the change which had come in her fortunes. Aunty Jean 
 wanted bright ribbons, a sash, a bow at the throat "to brighten 
 it up," as she said. But Marion held her own. It was only at 
 the close of the controversy that she found out that anything 
 had been amiss. She turned upon her aunt as if she were mak- 
 ing an accusation. " Your eyes are red,"' she said ; " you've been 
 crying ! " with a tone in which there was a certain sense of 
 injury, as of one who had been left out. 
 
 " YVeel, if I have been crying, it's naething extraordinary," 
 said Mrs. Brown; "naething to call for your notice." 
 
 '" What is it that's the matter now ? " 
 
 "You have just not as much heart as would lie on a sixpence, 
 to ask me such a question. There's your father will be just 
 like you. He will think nothing about it. He will think I 
 should just give ye up as I took ye ; the one as pleasant as the 
 other. Oh, it is very little that folk kens, when they begin, 
 how it's to end." 
 
 " But I suppose," said Marion, "you would like us to have the 
 advantage now that he has come home ? You never expected 
 we were just to bide on with you." 
 
 "Oh, no, I never expected it : I'm no just a fool for all the 
 way that ye set up your little neb to me." 
 
 "Well," said Marion, "then what have ye to complain of, 
 Aunty Jean 1 ? You knew all the time : it was always his mean- 
 ing to come home ; and ye have always spoken about it. Both 
 Archie and me, we've learned to look forward to it ; and ye 
 would like us to lose all the advantage now ! " 
 
 "It's you that just canna understand. It's maybe not your 
 fault. I was very muckle taken up with mysel' and what I had 
 to put on, when I was your age. Xo your mother : she was aye 
 different. It's me rather that you're like — for all that y '11 
 think shame to speak to me in the street three months after 
 this day." 
 
 ""What for should I think shame to speak to you." said 
 Marion ; " for everybody knows ye belong to us, Aunty Jean ] 
 There would be no reason for that : we cannot hide it if we 
 wanted to hide it. It would just be bringing odium on our- 
 selves." 
 
 "And that's a' ye have to say?" 
 
152 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " What more should I say 1 I'll just go and take off the skirt, 
 and run round to Miss Peebles about the body ; for between this 
 and Tuesday there's very little time." 
 
 "There is none to lose, that's true. Ye had better tell her 
 that ye want it on Monday night, for they're never to be lippen't 
 to, thae mantua-makers." 
 
 "That will be the best way." But perhaps she felt a little 
 compunctious ; for she paused at the door to throw a look back 
 and a word. "I think ye may make your mind easy, Aunty 
 Jean, that papa will not do a shabby thing either to us or to 
 you." 
 
 Mrs. Brown raised her hand to dismiss the subject with a 
 certain natural pride. But though she would not discuss it 
 with Marion, in whose calculations affection was not taken into 
 account, it was not without a certain comfort that she adopted 
 this conclusion. No, he would not do a shabby thing. It had 
 never been his character. Even when he was a working-man, 
 Jims Rowland had never been shabby. He might be a wee hard 
 to them that offended him, but shabby — no. There was comforC 
 in that. So that perhaps, after all, Marions matter-of-fact con- 
 solation was practically of more importance than her brother's 
 feeling. " She's no an ill creature after all," Mrs. Brown said to 
 herself. 
 
 The "body" was fortunately done in time, and the dress put 
 on with much satisfaction when Tuesday came, which proved to 
 be, fortunately, a fine day — a day on which a white dress was 
 not inappropriate. Mrs. Brown wept plentifully as the young 
 pair left her. To them it was only a "ploy," but to her it was 
 the parting — the end of her brighter life. She looked after 
 them with maternal pride, proud of their good looks and their 
 best clothes, and even the new boxes that were piled upon the 
 top of the cab. She might have been invited to go down with 
 them to break the parting a little. He might have thought of 
 a little thing like that, not to treat her just as if she were an 
 old nurse, to be dismissed when they were done with her. Jean 
 looked after them with streaming eyes. They were not thinking 
 that it was good-bye : they had left half of their things behind : 
 they were coming back — oh, very often, and certainly in a day 
 or two, they both said. It was only a ploy to them. And so 
 well as they looked, two young things that anybody might be 
 proud of. She thought of Rowland's triumph in showing them 
 to his wife, and how astonished that proud lady would be to see 
 the two, just so lady-like and so gentleman-like ! That was 
 Mrs. Brown's view of the case, and it gave her consolation in the 
 middle of her woe. 
 
 The young people were surprised that their appearance in the 
 boat and at the pier, where they landed, was not the subject of 
 any demonstration. If their father had been received as a 
 person of importance, how much more should they who were 
 not elderly or old-fashioned like him, but in all the triumph of 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 153 
 
 their youth — his heirs, to whom everything would eventually 
 belong. There was, however, only the dog-cart, no more, wait- 
 ing for them at the pier, with Sandy the groom, who was too 
 friendly by half, and not nearly so much impressed as he ought 
 to have been with their importance. They spent an hour or two 
 by themselves, which would have hung very heavy on their 
 hands had not Archie darted down to see the dogs, and Marion 
 employed herself in arranging her " things " in her room, which 
 was nearly as large as the whole area of the house in Sauchiehall 
 Road. And then the important moment came. The dog-cart 
 had been good enough for them, but it was not good enough for 
 Mrs. Eowland, and it was in the great new resplendent landau 
 that Marion solemnly drove down, all alone, and looking import- 
 ant enough to fill the whole carriage, to meet the lady whom 
 she called mamma. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Evelyn came fully up to her husband's expectations, which 
 were not small, in the way of admiration. She had not, indeed, 
 been thinking much about the beauty of the country, her mind 
 being fully occupied by matters more important, so that the 
 Clyde, and the loch, and Rosmore, burst upon her more or less 
 as a surprise. She delighted Rowland, whose whole being was 
 on the watch to see what she would say, by her exclamations. 
 " What a beautiful situation ! What a lovely view the people 
 must have who live there. What is — Oh ! ? ' She broke off 
 abruptly, seeing the flush of pleasure and broad smile of happi- 
 ness which came over his face. " So that is Rosmore," she added : 
 " I can see it in your face ! " 
 
 "Ay, that's just Rosmore," he said, with a thickness in his 
 voice ; "and this is just the spot, if this confounded boat would 
 stand still for a moment, where I have watched for it appearing 
 since ever I was a lad, and wished and wondered if it would 
 ever be mine." He put his arm through hers, as he had a way 
 of doing, and held her close — "And now it is mine ; and you are 
 mine, Evelyn, that was still more unlikely by far."' 
 
 "You must not flatter me by comparing me to that beautiful 
 place ; and I pray God you may be very happy in it now you 
 have got it. It is certainly an ideal place.'"' 
 
 "Is it not?" cried Rowland, delighted. It is to be feared 
 that he did not at that moment remember his poor homely 
 Mary, who had been with him so often when he watched for the 
 opening in the trees, and worshipjDed his idol afar ofl*. " Toots, 
 nonsense," Mary had said witli a laugh at his absurdity, so many 
 times. He did not think of her, but Evelyn did, with a curious 
 tenderness for the simple little woman who, probably, by this 
 
154 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 time would have developed into a stout arid matter-of-fact 
 matron, and disappointed her husband as much as his children 
 had done, although the love between them had been as true and 
 full of natural poetry as any, dans les temps. Evelyn was quire 
 aware of her husband's shortcomings, and that there were 
 various superficial failures in him which justified the superficial 
 judgment that he was "not a gentleman," that most damning 
 of English criticism ; but she knew at the same time how it 
 was that the fact of his son not appearing- a gentleman was 
 the source of grief to him, and how critical his eyes would be, 
 and how exacting his demands in this respect. Poor little 
 Mary ! Perhaps it was as well that she had died in the far-off 
 poetical time. Evelyn felt a little moisture in the corner of her 
 rye, and made a promise in her heart to the wife of dames 
 Rowland from the foundry, who was so different from dames 
 Rowland, the great railwayman from India. "'1 will do what 
 L can for them. Mary!" was what Evelyn said. Her husband 
 - i\v the little glimmer on her eyelash, and pressed her arm with 
 fend delight and pride. " I can never bo thankful enough," he 
 said. " Evelyn, for the way you enter into your rough husband's 
 feelings — my bonnie lady of Rosmore!" That was the very 
 foundry lad who spoke, the very poet of the ironworks whose 
 imagination ran in the ways of iron and steel, and who had 
 attained for himself so incalculable a triumph — everything, and 
 more than everything, that heart could desire — Rosmore, and 
 its bonnie lady ! His emotion touched his wife, not displeased 
 — as what woman would be I — to feel herself the very crown of 
 his acquisition ; yet her heart went back all the more to poor 
 Mary, whose arm he had probably held in the same way while 
 he glowered with adoration at the white col »nnade from the 
 deck of this very steamboat if steamboats live so long), and 
 who had said. "Toots, Jims, what nonsense !" with her Glasgow 
 accent, thinking that in that particular her husband, who was 
 so clever and soon might rise to be foreman, was little better 
 than a fool. 
 
 After this ecstatic moment was over, they both fell into 
 silence, a little anxious for the approaching meeting : he for 
 what she would think of his children : she for what the children 
 would turn out to be. Site had begun to doubt a little whether 
 the son would be an unkempt lad in a kilt, like the nephew with 
 whom Mrs. Reuben Butler, once of that same parish, had made 
 disastrous acquaintance, 1\. s y young men about Glas- 
 
 gow and Greenock had not been of the kind of the Whistler, as 
 indeed, or. second thoughts, her reason ed her Archie 
 
 was not the least likely to be : nor would Marion probably have 
 the red hair and the she: .n frock, which had been her 
 
 first idea of what was the probable a] ice of the girl with 
 
 whom Rowland had been so much disappointed. The sight in 
 the distance of a white and p. dark speck Rosmore pier. 
 
 as the boat crossed the shining loch, Q it Row'. . 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 155 
 
 to his mouth, and made him almost incapable of speech. " Yon 
 will be them,"lie said with a parched mouth, gripping her arm. 
 And Evelyn did not feel disposed to say anything, or to remark 
 upon the beauty of the hills, though they lighted up in all their 
 purple hollows, and threw out all their blue peaks, as if to catch 
 her attention. Nature has a wonderful charm, if there is not 
 some human emotion before her to pre-occupy botli heart and 
 eye. The range of mountains at the head of the loch were after 
 all not of half so much importance as the little white figure on 
 the pier head, of which scarcely the first fact of its existence 
 was as yet perceptible, or the taller one that already seemed 
 to sway and lounge with idle limbs beside her. Evelyn kept 
 her eyes fixed upon them as she drew nearer and nearer, and 
 gradually a feeling of relief stole into her heart. There was 
 nothing so very alarming that James should have made such a 
 fuss ! " My dear James," she said, turning to him, " I suppose 
 you did it for a joke : your Marion is a dear little girl.'*' He 
 pressed her arm close, but he could not say anything : his 
 middle-aged heart was beating. "Archie I must study more at 
 leisure, but he looks very nice too," she added with more of an 
 effort. Perhaps, after all, the boy would have been better in a 
 kilt, with his hair over his eyes, like the Whistler in the Heart 
 of Midlothian. She looked on breathless as the steamboat drew 
 to the pier. Certainly they would rush on board to greet their 
 father, to bring him home in triumph, even if they were less 
 anxious to make her acquaintance ; but Marion and Archie did 
 not budge an inch. They stood there, on the defensive, a little 
 defiant, staring, waiting till they were spoken to ; and in the 
 bustle of the arrival, the haste of the transference from the 
 quickly departing steamboat to the land, with all the baggage 
 which Rowland, with his habits of personal superintendence, 
 did not think the maid and man whom they had brought able 
 to deal with, Evelyn found herself flung upon the two without 
 any introduction. She put out her hand to her step-daughter. 
 "You are Marion, I am sure," she said, drawing the girl towards 
 her and kissing her on both cheeks. " I am very glad to see 
 you, my dear." 
 
 " And so am I — to see you — mamma," said the girl redden- 
 ing and staring. The name felt to Evelyn like a stone flung in 
 her face. 
 
 " And this is Archie," she said, transferring Marion's some- 
 what unwilling, hot little gloved hand to her left, and holding 
 out the other to the boy. He for his part made no answer, but 
 gave her a quick look, and then withdrew his eyes. " Your 
 father is too busy to think about us till the luggage is all right," 
 she said ; " but I hope we are going to be, we three, very great 
 friends." 
 
 "Oh, we'll be all that," said Marion with a laugh, working 
 her hand out of Evelyn's hold. Archie made no reply ; he too 
 drew his hand away from her as soon as she had shaken it, 
 
156 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 which was the only thing, so far as he was aware, that any one 
 could want to do with another person's hand. He gave her a 
 second look as he did this, which Evelyn did not perceive, but 
 in which Mary's eyes made a little, a very little essay of a reply 
 to her, had she but seen it. She stood by them a moment, not 
 knowing how to proceed further, with the little crowd of the 
 pier pressing round, and the wheelbarrow for the luggage knock- 
 ing against the group. "Is that our carriage 1" said Evelyn. 
 "Don't you think the best thing you could do would be to put 
 your sister and me into it, until your father gets through his 
 troubles 1 " Put her into it ! Archie had not an idea what she 
 meant. Was he to lift her up and set her down in it, like a doll 1 
 He stared and hung about on those loose legs of his, which could 
 not even stand firm, and followed her awkwardly to the carriage, 
 where the footman stood opening the door. What was there for 
 Archie to do 1 The footman was there to help them in, if they 
 needed to be helped in. He followed them, and hung about, the 
 most unnecessary personage. The footman belonged to the 
 turn-out, he was in his proper place ; but where was the need 
 of Archie 1 Evelyn took pity upon him, when she saw his help- 
 less looks. " Go and see if you can be of use to your father," she 
 said. Of use to his father ! when there were two servants with 
 his father. It was their business, not Archie's. He turned and 
 went reluctantly back again, with his idle legs, and his hands in 
 his pockets. The Archie of Sauchiehall Road would have picked 
 up a portmanteau and carried it in with the greatest cheerful- 
 ness ; but this was the Archie of Rosmore. 
 
 " Well, there you are," said Rowland, shaking hands with him 
 cursorily. " Just show Stanchion, will you, where the cart is 
 for the luggage. I suppose they've sent something to bring him 
 up and Mrs. Rowland's maid." 
 
 Archie knew nothing about it, and said so. " You said you 
 had given all the directions." 
 
 " So I did, but you might show the man the way at least," 
 said Rowland, hurrying forward to the carriage. Archie stood 
 among the crowd, with the boxes and barrows bumping at his 
 legs, for a full minute more, then, as his better angel began to 
 get the advantage, took one hand out of his pocket, and made a 
 step to the tall and fussy valet, who stood among a mountain of 
 boxes. " Yonder's the cart from the House," he said, pointing 
 to the highway, where the cart and dog-cart stood among the 
 trees. " It's no use telling me yonder's the cart. You'll better 
 lend a hand, young man, or how are them boxes to get there ?" 
 said Mr. Rowland's gentleman, who prided himself in being a 
 better gentleman than his master. To understand the rage that 
 boiled up in Archie's breast, it would be necessary to fathom 
 the angry contempt with which a Scotch clerk of the humbler 
 kind, but capable of being a great merchant one day, or even 
 the Scotch artisan, regards a domestic servant, however magni- 
 ficent. Archie could have slain Mr. Stanchion where he stood. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 157 
 
 He did not laugh, as his father's son ought to have done, at the 
 mistake. As he swung round on his heel, his father called out 
 from the carriage, " Hallo, Archie, Mrs. Rowland wants to know 
 if you're coming with us : make haste." He stared a moment 
 with a sullen countenance, and then, turning again, walked 
 quickly otf without a word. 
 
 " He says he would rather walk," said Evelyn, " which is what 
 young men generally do." 
 
 " I did not hear him say a word." 
 
 "Xor me, papa,*' said Marion, with a laugh. She thought 
 Archie's "sulks" were a good joke, and, to do her justice, saw 
 no harm in them, nor anticipated any consequences from his 
 ill temper. "We just never mind," she added, feeling mistress 
 of the position, "when he's in an ill key." And Marion was 
 very gracious to her father and his wife as they drove home. 
 She pointed out to Mrs. Rowland various points of view. 
 "That's the Chieftain's Leap, but it's nothing to see, just a red 
 scaur, and trees growing all about ; but a little further on is a 
 good view of Greenock and the docks and the big chimney 
 smoking, and up there you can see down upon Kilrossie, where 
 everybody goes for the salt water— for the sea-bathing, I 
 mean." 
 
 "The salt water is a very picturesque description," said 
 Evelyn, "and full of local colour." She laughed at herself for 
 her own words, but it was better to make talk of any kind, than 
 to see that cloud settling down on her husband's face. 
 
 " And down there," said Marion, "is Rankin's cottage, the old 
 gamekeeper who has the dogues. He is a cripple creature him- 
 self since he had his accident, but the dogues are very nice 
 little things. Archie has bought two. He says they will be 
 good for watch-dogs about the House. And Rankin himself is 
 a very funny old man to talk to— but I do not care for him, for 
 he is always on about Lady Jean." 
 
 "Who is Lady Jean?" 
 
 " Oh, she is the Earl's sister ; old, and not pretty, and not 
 married. I don't know why they make such a fuss about her. 
 There's no interest in a person like that." 
 
 " Don't you think you might let somebody get in a word from 
 time to time," said Rowland ; " I have heard nothing but your 
 little voice since ever we arrived." 
 
 " Well, I hope my little voice is better than nothing, papa. 
 And you will not hear very much from Archie. He is just as 
 sulky as he can be about Aunty Jean. He thinks she should 
 have come down here with us, to see us settled, and make 
 acquaintance with mamma, and all that. The very idea ! but 
 boys have so little sense. That is not what Aunty Jean cares 
 so much about herself. She is more concerned in her mind 
 about what she is to do next." 
 
 " Is Aunty Jean the lady who brought you up ? Indeed, then, 
 I do think, James, that she has not been very nicely treated. 
 
158 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 She has been so devoted to the children. It was the least thing 
 you could do to ask her to bring them home, and let me show 
 how we appreciated her goodness and affection. You must give 
 me the address, Marion, and I will write to-morrow." 
 
 "Oh," said Marion with a gasp, raising herself bolt-upright, 
 "that's not necessary — that's not at all necessary. Aunty never 
 expected " 
 
 "I am afraid I must take upon myself to be the judge of 
 what is necessary," said Mrs. Rowland with the sweetest smite 
 in the world. Her soft peremptoriness was for her husband as 
 well as for his daughter. For Rowland, too, had responded with 
 a gasp to the suggestion of inviting Jean, and his wife's gentle 
 assumption of supreme authority took him as much by surprise 
 
 as it did Marion. He began, too, with an anxious "But ," 
 
 but got no farther. Jean at Rosmore was something which his 
 imagination could not reach. 
 
 "But is not a word which exists in autocratic countries," 
 said Evelyn laughing. "Constitutional surroundings alone 
 encourage such expressions, and I'll have no dissent in Rosmore. 
 Didn't you hail me Lady as we came over that glorious Firth ?" 
 — Evelyn would not perhaps have used the words had she not 
 meant to reduce her husband to instantaneous submission. She 
 thought, indeed, that the Firth was very tine, but her usual 
 principles were against hyperbole. It would be hard, however, 
 to refuse to a good woman the legitimate use of certain weapons 
 because they are used to a large extent by women who are not 
 good. And the " glorious Firth " and his wife's smile together 
 were far more than James Rowland could make head against. 
 I do not think indeed that such artillery was needed. He had 
 not the least objection, but, on the contrary, the greatest pride 
 and pleasure in thinking of her as the autocrat and supreme 
 mistress of Rosmore, to ask any splendid visitor she liked, even 
 royalty, should it cost him half his fortune. It was, however, a 
 little bewildering when it was not royalty but Jean Brown. 
 
 "But I don't think she can come," said Marion's little 
 monotonous voice coming in, " so you may put your mind at 
 rest, papa, for she would not like to leave the house with just 
 Bell in it. She is thinking of selling the things, for she will 
 not want to keep up a big house like that when there is nobody 
 but herself, and no allowance ; but she will have to take care of 
 them all the more not to let them be spoiled by a servant-lass. 
 
 And she will think she has not good enough clothes ." 
 
 Marion here made a very perceptible examination of Mrs. 
 Rowland's dress, which was not "a silk" nor "a satin," but 
 simple gray stuff, and made in the most unassuming way : " I 
 don't see that," she continued with an obvious comparison, " for 
 she has some very nice silks, and she might come very well, so 
 far as that goes. But for another thing, she could not spend 
 the money. When it was for us, she never minded ; but she 
 always grudges a railway ticket for herself." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 159 
 
 "What do you mean about selling her things, and no allow- 
 ance?" said Kowland hastily; but he added, "We need not 
 discuss that here. But of course, my dear, what you decide 
 upon must be done." . 
 
 " So I intend," said Mrs. Rowland, with a laughing bow to 
 him, as of a queen to a king. " We shall have a great deal to 
 settle when we get home, and I hope that everybody will be 
 pleased with my despotism." 
 
 " Oh, as for that," said Marion, taking upon herself again the 
 role of' expositor, "I've always read that a lady should be the 
 mistress in her own side ; the gentleman, outside ; and she's 
 not to meddle with him ; but the lady " 
 
 "I assure you I shall meddle with him, Marion. I he flower 
 garden, for instance, I shall take entirely into my hands. In 
 short, I don't know the thing in which I shall not meddle." 
 
 " The lady," said Marion, raising her voice a little, " should 
 have all the house to manage, and the children, and all within 
 her own sphere. The books all say that woman's sphere is 
 
 Home." 
 
 " With a great many capital letters.' _ 
 
 "You maybe meaning some joke with your capital letters, 
 but I'm saying just what I've read. It's nothing about politics 
 nor business— not that kind of thing ; but to sit at the fireside 
 and give her orders, and everybody to be at her beck and call 
 
 " Excellent, Marion ; you have said your lesson very well, and 
 I hope you mean to be at this lady's beck and call." 
 
 " I don't know," said Marion, " that it means the grown-up 
 children : for when you get to be eighteen or so, you are supposed 
 to be able to judge for yourself. But it was no lesson. It was 
 just what I've read in books. I have always been very fond ot 
 reading books." 
 
 "You could not do better, my dear ; and we must read some 
 books together," said Evelyn. Then she thought there had 
 been enough of Marion for the moment. "The woods are 
 beautiful," she said, "and I see, James, the mountains you told 
 me of. Is that Ben Eos— that great shoulder rising over the 
 loch, or the peak in the distance that is so blue and misty i 
 You must tell me when we have time, every name. I think 
 I should prefer to stop the carriage and walk the rest ol the 
 
 "that is just what I would like you to do," said her husband, 
 " for every step's enchanted ground." 
 
 Marion did not know what to do, whether to join them in 
 this walk, as curiosity suggested, or to drive home in state, as 
 if it were she who was the mistress of everything. The paths, 
 however, were damp in places, as they usually were, and she 
 reflected that she could walk when she pleased, but that it her 
 pretty white dress was marked with mud, it would have to be 
 washed, and that nothing, not even a white dress, loo^s so well 
 after it is washed. And also her shoes were thin : they were 
 
160 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 worked with beads, and she wore them over a pair of openwork 
 stockings. The boggy parts would be just ruination to her 
 pretty shoes. Mrs. Rowland had strong leather ones, and a 
 gray dress that would take no harm. " For my part," she said, 
 " I would be better in the house, for I have a headache. I would 
 like to come too, but if I got my feet wet, it would give me a 
 cold, and I might never get well." 
 
 " By all means drive home," said Evelyn. " Your shoes are 
 much too thin for walking, and see that tea is ready when we 
 come in. Now, James." 
 
 He took her away to the opening, from which the loch was 
 visible, and pointed out to her, hill by hill, the whole range, 
 lying under the evening sunshine and the flying shadows ; now 
 one peak coming out, now another, now a sudden gleam, like 
 some sun-signal calling forth an unseen knoll into glory, among 
 all the other unnoticed slopes, now a deep purple mantle of 
 royal wealth coming down over the great veiled shoulder of a 
 chosen mountain. During the few minutes they stood there 
 gazing, a hundred transformations took place upon those heights. 
 At what strange games were those Titans playing, veiling 
 themselves, unveiling, retiring into mist, breaking out as with 
 a shout, into the sudden light. Evelyn, for a moment, forgot 
 everything as she gazed at this rapid drama of the hills. She 
 was recalled to herself by the tremble in Rowland's arm as he 
 held hers. He had been as happy and proud in her enthusiasm' 
 as if the beloved mountains were part of himself : but there 
 was something more important to him even than the hills. He 
 gave her arm a close pressure as she was silent for a moment, 
 and said close in her ear, with a tremor in his tone, " Evelyn, 
 what do you think of them 1 " 
 
 The question brought her back to a prosjDect more near and 
 important than the hills, one that she had been glad to put aside 
 for the moment in favour of this wonderful and delightful scene. 
 The moment at least was something gained, and she said to 
 herself that she never would forget it — this first glimpse at the 
 surroundings of her home. The other now had to be faced 
 again, the interior landscape, which was not so delightful. " I 
 think, dear James," she said, " that they are both very shy and 
 very strange between us two. They don't know me at all, and 
 you so little. Nature works, of course, on your side, but even 
 Nature must have a little time. And for me, Nature is rather 
 against me than for me. We must wait before we form any 
 judgment." 
 
 " But your first impression is — bad, or if not bad, yet " 
 
 " It is not bad at all ! Don't take up false ideas. They are 
 both so shy " 
 
 " Shy ! Evelyn ! do you think what you are saying 1 Marion 
 shy ! " 
 
 " It is because she is shy that she chatters, poor little girl ! 
 Did you never know that was a form it took 1 Archie is silent, 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 1G1 
 
 and she chatters. He is a little — rude, and she is a little — ■ 
 talkative. It is all from the same cause. You did not tell me 
 what a pretty little thing she was, James.'"' 
 
 "Pretty ! — do you think she is pretty ] She is not the least 
 of your kind, Evelyn." 
 
 " I hope she is of a better kind. Xext spring, when she has 
 learned to make her courtesy, and is dressed regardless of 
 expense — for I will take carte blanche, I warn you, so far as 
 Marion is concerned— you shall see ! She will make a sensation 
 at the drawing-room.'"' 
 
 A glow of beatitude came over James Rowland's face. He 
 almost hurt her arm with the pressure he gave it. "You think 
 so ? You really think so, Evelyn — before the Queen \ " The 
 warmth ran to his very heart, and came back in a sort of dew 
 of happiness to his eye.-. His little girl before the Queen ! 
 perhaps to be noted by that mother sovereign herself with a 
 kindly eye. His child ! and he there to look on, paying the 
 homage it would be more than his duty to pay. He stood for a 
 moment clasping Evelyn's arm, too glad to speak. And then — 
 for the pain is more persistent than the pleasure — he added in 
 a low confidential tone, "But the boy — is just a lout, poor lad ! " 
 It sounded like an assertion, but it was a question, and of the 
 most anxious kind. 
 
 " He is no lout, you unjust, abominable parent. I see at once 
 the eyes you told me of — his mothers eyes." 
 
 "One would think, to hear you, that you had seen his 
 mother ! " 
 
 "I have through your eyes, James. I will never forget that 
 first day. And I thought of her as we came across the Clyde."' 
 
 "It was more than I did, Evelyn — with you there." 
 
 " She must have been there with you often, and thought you 
 were talking nonsense ; and now you have got all you ever 
 dreamed of " 
 
 •* And more ! " he said ; " and more ! " again pressing her arm. 
 
 "And now we have got to make it up," said Evelyn, "to the 
 two whom she has left to you — and to me, through you, James." 
 
 "She was an innocent, simple creature, Evelyn ! " 
 
 " She was your wife, James. Don't go into the house which 
 you have dreamed of for so long without thinking of her who 
 never lived to be its mistress." 
 
 Rowland took off his hat. " I had a sore heart to lose my 
 poor Mary,"' he said ; " God bless her in Heaven, where she is : 
 out I have got the best blessing a man can have in Rosrnore. ' 
 
 M 
 
162 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Mrs. Brown did not come to Eosmore, though she received a 
 letter from Mrs. Rowland which dissolved her at the first 
 moment of reading in tears and gratitude, but which after- 
 wards she began to fear must have "some motive," though it 
 was difficult to imagine what. For why should the lady be so 
 kind to her? she asked herself. There are a great many good 
 people in the world, and especially women, who are haunted 
 with this idea of a " motive," and cannot shake themselves free 
 of it. Jean was herself an innocent person enough, acting upon 
 impulse continually. But all the more was she anxious to in- 
 vestigate the supposed mysterious meaning and suggestion of 
 self-interest which could have dictated Evelyn's kind and simple 
 letter. "I should have wished that you had come with the 
 children to settle them in their new home, where, of course, 
 there will always be a room for you, their affectionate guardian, 
 who have been a mother to them ; but at least I hope you will 
 come now, and that you will approve of all my arrangements 
 for them." It was difficult to find anything in this that could 
 be objected to, and Jean wept over it at first, as has been said ; 
 but then her habitual distrust came in. " What will the woman 
 be wanting with me ? It will be to give herself credit with Jims, 
 and throw a' the blame on me — but I'll no fa' into the snare," 
 she said to herself, falling into it instantly, if snare it was. 
 When Archie appeared in the afternoon to fetch her, she shook 
 her head. "Na, na, I'm no gaun — no a fit. It's just some plan 
 for exposing your poor mammaw's family, and letting him see 
 we're not to be evened to her. No, no, I will never set my fit 
 within Rosmore." 
 
 Archie himself, though he had gone to Glasgow on Mrs. 
 Rowland's gentle compulsion to escort his aunt, was not perhaps 
 very anxious that she should come. Though he was full of 
 affection for her, it is to be feared that already the cold eye of 
 the butler had worked its effect upon Archie. He felt himself 
 grow red and a cold dew come over his forehead when he thought 
 of that functionary holding his silver dish at Mrs. Brown's elbow. 
 Yv 7 hat unutterable things would be in his eye ! Archie felt 
 that Morris looked at himself with a pitying wonder. What, 
 then, would he feel for Mrs. Brown % Therefore he was not 
 disposed to press the matter. As for Mrs. Rowland, the lively 
 prejudice with which he had met her, had been kept up with 
 difficulty in her presence, and he could throw no light on 
 the motive she could have in asking Mrs. Brown. There was, 
 alas, no difficulty whatever in proving to the most casual 
 observer that Mr. Rowland's family, which in this case was 
 Mrs. Brown's family, could not in any way be " evened " to the 
 new wife who was supreme at Rosmore. To bring Mrs. Brown 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 163 
 
 to make that doubly sure was a work of supererogation. Archie 
 did not say this to his aunt, but with a burning sense of dis- 
 advantages which he had never suspected before he felt it in 
 his own breast. 
 
 " And how is Mey getting on ? " said Jean, when this question 
 was decided. 
 
 "Oh, well enough. She is just copying everything she sees, 
 like a little parrot, as she is." 
 
 "There's no harm in that," said Jean, "for I suppose the 
 leddy's real well-bred and a' that. It would be nothing but 
 that he marriet her for. He was aye an ambitious man, Jims 
 Rowland. But eh ! he's a good-hearted man — just ower good. 
 I got a letter from him this morning, and he says the allowance 
 will just go on, and I'm to keep the house, and make myself 
 comfortable." 
 
 Jean's ready tears flowed forth upon this argument. "It's 
 awf u' kind," she sobbed ; " I wouldna say a word against one 
 of them, nor do a thing to vex him. If he had been my ain 
 brother, he couldna have been more kind — I'm just at my ease 
 for life ; and if you could tell me ony thing I could do to please 
 him " 
 
 "Maybe it would please him," said Archie doubtfully, "if you 
 wei'e to come to Eosmore." 
 
 "Na, na, I'll no do that — just to graitify that prideful woman. 
 But ye can tell him that I want the house for his, and that 
 whatever use can be made of it to send things to, or to come 
 for a night's lodging instead of one of thae dear hotels — it will 
 be ready. There will be beds ready, and linen aired ready to 
 put on, night and day," said Mrs. Brown in the fervour of her 
 gratitude. " And ye can say to het% Archie, that I'm very much 
 obliged, but that I have not sleepit out of my own house for 
 years, which is just the real truth, as ye can certify, though 
 maybe it's no just the reason in the present case ; and ye may 
 say I will be glad to see her if she comes to Gleskie— which is 
 no perhaps exactly the case, but we maun be ceevil. Mind, ye 
 must always be ceevil, whatever happens. It would give her 
 a grand hold upon ye, if ye were ever wanting in respec'." 
 
 " I've no reason to think she's wanting any hold upon me," 
 said Archie, with a little irritation. 
 
 " Eh ! " said his aunt, holding up a warning finger, " she's 
 laying her spell on you too ! I'll no go near her, or she might 
 make a fool o' me. It's easy enough to make a fool o' me. I 
 just greet at a kind word — I canna help mysel. When I got 
 her letter wi' a' its fine words, I just grat till I was blin' ; but 
 then I asked myself what for should she be that ceevil to me?" 
 
 " It was maybe only for kindness after all," said Archie. 
 
 " Dinna you be a born idiot to trust in that. Na, na, it's no 
 without a motive, take my word for it," Jean said. 
 
 It was hard, however, for the closest observer to find out what 
 the motive could be. Evelyn had no small eftbrt to me^ke to 
 
 M 2 
 
1G4 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 overcome her own natural objections to the society of the two 
 young people, one of whom studied her like a pattern book, 
 while the other eyed her from his corner with a hostility 
 scantily veiled by that attempt to be "ceevil" which his aunt 
 had enjoined upon him. Archie's attitude, however, was on the 
 whole less trying than that of Marion, who studied and copied 
 Mrs. Rowland's manners, her tone, as far as she could master 
 it, her little tricks of gesture, till Evelyn became ridiculous to 
 herself ; which is a very curious experience. When she saw 
 little Marion with her slight person throw back her head as 
 Evelyn was aware she had herself the habit of doing, and drop 
 her hand by her side, which was another peculiarity, swaying 
 it slightly as she walked, a trick for which Evelyn had suffered 
 much in her youth, the laugh which burst from her in spite of 
 herself was not pleasant. Evelyn was tall, while Marion was 
 little ; she was forty, and Marion was eighteen. She belonged 
 a little, she was aware, to a by-gone school, which had been 
 stately rather than piquant, and Marion's infantile prettiness 
 was adapted to a quite different principle. It was ludicrous to 
 watch growing and increasing day by day the travesty of herself 
 which was before her eyes in her husband's little girl. Some- 
 times her impatience with the copy was so great that the 
 woman's instincts of outraged personality were upon her, and 
 she could have seized and shaken the folly out of the little 
 flatterer and imitator. But I need not say that this was the 
 merest flutter of nerves on Evelyn's part, and that she never 
 really departed from her role of patience. The worst of it was 
 that James began gradually to perceive, and not only to perceive, 
 but regard with delight, this imitative process. " I really think 
 she is growing a little like you, Evelyn ! " he said, when his wife 
 had been driven nearly to an end of her toleration, and it was 
 all she could do to keep from her countenance a contraction — 
 which Marion would probably have reproduced next day, to the 
 confusion of all concerned. 
 
 In this way, however, a great superficial improvement was 
 notable in the girl. She learned in an inconceivably short time 
 how to manage all the circumstances of her changed life, adapting 
 herself to everything as one to the manner born. No temptation 
 of being respectful to the butler ever came to Marion. She 
 treated him and the rest of the fine servants as if they were 
 cabbages ; which was her rendering of the easy and genial 
 indifference with which Mrs. Rowland received the services she 
 had never been accustomed to consider extraordinary. Evelyn's 
 manner to the maid in her room, though she might not say a 
 word to her, was the easy composure of a woman perfectly con- 
 siderate and friendly, and ready on any occasion to show her 
 natural interest in the fellow-creature so near to her, both by 
 word and deed. But Marion's indifference went the length of 
 insult, though she had no intention of anything but to follow 
 exactly her stepmother's example. The demeanour of the one 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 165 
 
 was just that kind of quiet familiar affability and ease which 
 characterizes a relationship in which there is no desire, on the 
 part of the superior at least, for any more demonstration than 
 is felt, or unnecessary intercourse ; but Marion's was a kind of 
 brutality by which the inferior was made to feel as if she had 
 no existence at all except as a ministrant to certain wants. 
 Thus the little girl achieved that polish of the Tartar, which, 
 when scratched, shows the savage through. 
 
 Archie was not at all of this kind. And sometimes when 
 Evelyn looked up suddenly and found him with his averted 
 head, shoulder turned the side she was sitting on, and blank of 
 dull opposition, she felt it almost a relief. Now and then some 
 sentiment on her part, something quite unthought of which she 
 said or did, and which probably had no connection whatever 
 with himself, would make him look full at her with those eyes 
 which Rowland had called his mother's eyes — the honest soft blue, 
 not too profound, but clear as the sky, in which at least the per- 
 ception of the heart was not wanting, whether it was accom- 
 panied or not by any higher light of the spirit. What Archie 
 knew or did not know it was difficult to say, for he never spoke 
 when he could help it, and then chiefly in answer to questions 
 which were seldom of an intellectual kind. Something had been 
 said at first about the University, or rather, as both Archie and 
 his father called it, "the College," which meant, as Evelyn came 
 slowly to understand, the same thing — only so far different that 
 Glasgow or Edinburgh was the University meant, and not 
 Oxford or Cambridge. That his son should go to "the College" 
 had been Rowland's intent, but the idea seemed to drop all the 
 more completely, of course, that it was the summer vacation, 
 and nothing could be done for the moment. Archie, however, 
 instead of exerting himself like Marion to acquire a new, if it 
 should happen to be a fictitious standing ground, remained a 
 sort of unknown quantity in his father's house. With all the 
 efforts she could make, Evelyn did not succeed in forming any- 
 thing but the most slight acquaintance with her stepson, and 
 neither (which was more extraordinary still) did his father 
 attain to more than an acquaintance. Sometimes Archie would 
 be drawn into an expression of opinion on a political subject, 
 which naturally was, as a rule, in opposition to his father, and 
 at once crushed by him ; upon which the boy with not unnatura 1 
 wrath returned into his shell more closely than before. One 
 time, indeed, Evelyn had found herself on the very verge of 
 attaining his confidence, or so at least she thought. It was on 
 the day — momentous day — when Rankin judged the two little 
 dogs to be sufficiently mature to be sent home to their master. 
 They were brought up to the great door, which was at one end of 
 the colonnade. Nothing more amusing could be than the two 
 little bundles of fur and fun deposited at her feet by Sandy 
 the groom, who was delighted with his errand, though a little 
 discomposed to find nobody but " the mistress. 55 
 
166 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " They'll be for the young gentleman," he said shamefaced. 
 "What delightful little things," said Evelyn, who, like all 
 well-conditioned persons, loved dogs. " Go and find Mr. Archi- 
 bald, Sandy. I'll take care of them till he comes." 
 
 When Archie appeared in great haste and for once glowing 
 witli pleasure, he found her seated in the centre of a great rug 
 on the floor of the hall with the two little dogs in convulsions 
 of delight beside her, barking, biting, rolling and struggling 
 upon the soft carpet, and undaunted with the something so 
 unknown to them — a lady in a soft silken dress to play with. 
 Perhaps the little things recognized only this of Evelyn's many 
 excellences, that she wore an exceptionally soft gown — not like 
 Jenny Rankin's rough homespun. Dogs are very susceptible to 
 this superiority of texture. 
 
 " Come and look at your doggies, Archie," she said without 
 looking up. " I have taken possession of them, or they have 
 taken possession of me. Where did you find such delights'? 
 There is nothing so nice as a puppy, except a baby perhaps — 
 and you, I know, would not appreciate that." 
 
 " Why would I not appreciate that 1 " said Archie roughly 
 (being thereto moved by suggestions from Aunty Jean). 
 
 Mrs. Rowland gave a glance up at the clouded countenance 
 of the sullen boy, surprised but saying nothing, and he ended as 
 he generally did when alone with her, by feeling ashamed of 
 himself. 
 
 "They're Rankin's doggies — a particular breed," he added 
 more civilly than usual to make up. " He's the old gamekeeper, 
 and he's given himself up to dogues ever since his accident." 
 This was quite a long speech for Archie to make. 
 " He has given himself up to it with great success," said 
 Evelyn. " You must take me to see him. These are just at the 
 most delightful stage. I said there was nothing so nice except 
 a baby. But kittens are almost as nice before they grow to be 
 cats." 
 
 " They cannot be so nice," said Archie, " because they do grow 
 to be cats ; and these will be dogues when they're grown up." 
 
 Evelyn pondered a little over this dogmatic proposition before 
 she answered : " You put it in an original way, but I think I 
 agree with you, Archie. And what are these little things called 
 — or have they got names — or shall we confer some on the 
 spot 1 " 
 
 " Rankin hasn't much imagination : he calls them just Roy 
 and Dhu— that means red and black in Gaelic. But you spell 
 the last D-h-u." 
 
 " Roy and Dhu are very good names," said Evelyn. " I would 
 keep to them, I think : they sound well even if Rankin has not 
 much imagination." 
 
 "He has a great deal of Gaelic," said Archie: "he writes 
 things in papers about poetry and stuff. He discourses to me 
 sometimes, but I never mind." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 1 : 
 
 "Then you don't care for poetry and stuff?" 
 
 "How should I, in Gaelic, which I don't understand I " The 
 conversation, however, was thus getting upon general topics, 
 which Archie eschewed, and he suddenly awoke to the danger of 
 being drawn into a tete-a-tete with his stepmother. "The dogues 
 will be spoiling your dress, and a bother to you." 
 
 "I have never confessed to your father," she said, '"that I am 
 very fond of dogs. I don't think he likes_ them. Suppose ->you 
 and I set up a little kennel of our own. You will want dogs for 
 the shooting when the time comes, and I have not seen one about 
 the place." 
 
 ** No, there are none. Gilmour — that's the gamekeeper — has 
 two or three. He says there's a good deal of shooting," said 
 Archie, led out of himself by the interest of this subject, about 
 which he had gleaned a little further information. It excited 
 and charmed the lad, for he was full of eagerness to do things 
 like other young men of his age, but afraid to show his ignorance 
 to begin with. 
 
 " Your father has not said much about it. He is not a shoot- 
 ing man. you know. You will have to go out with the game- 
 keeper and bring us our first grouse." 
 
 "I'll not bring in many grouse/" he said almost under his 
 breath. 
 
 "You are not a good shot- Never mind: you are young 
 enough to mend that. The great thing is to keep cool and not 
 get flurried, I believe." 
 
 "Oh, I don't suppose lassies" — he corrected himself quickly 
 with a violent blush — "ladies know much about it." 
 
 "Perhaps not." said Evelyn, "but my father was one of the 
 best shots in Northamptonshire. It is not a very great dis- 
 tinction," she added with a smile. " I could quite forgive a man 
 for not shooting at all." 
 
 " It's no a crime," said Archie, as if to himself, and with a tone 
 of defiance. 
 
 " Oh no, quite the reverse — neither one way nor another. I 
 think,"'' she added with a little hesitation. " that your father, 
 though he does not shoot himself, would be pleased if you showed 
 a little enthusiasm about it. Forgive me for saying so. It is 
 worth while taking a little trouble to please him, he cares so 
 much — "' 
 
 " Xot for me," said Archie, setting his pale face within his high 
 collar like a rock. 
 
 " Oh, you silly boy ! — more for you in that way than for any 
 living creature. And very naturally, for are not you his heir — ■ 
 his successor — to represent him in anything he does not do 
 himself \" 
 
 " For pride, then," said Archie, throwing down rather roughly 
 upon the rug one of the dogs with which he was playing, "not 
 for anything else. 3 
 
 " Oh, poor little doggie," said Evelyn, seeing it inexpedient to 
 
168 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 continue this subject, and then she added more lightly, "What 
 are they to be called then, Archie? Roy and Dim V 
 
 " Whatever you like," cried the young man. " I care nothing 
 for them now : they are just little brutes that fawn on anybody. 
 You may call them Red and Black, if you like, like the cards. I 
 don't care if I never saw them more." 
 
 And lie turned upon his heel and strode away. But these were 
 words too dignified and tragical to suit with Archie's appearance, 
 which was not that of the hero of romance who grandly does 
 those things. To turn on your heel and stride away, you ought 
 to be six feet at least, with chest and shoulders to match. Archie 
 was about live feet six, stooped, and was badly dressed. He had 
 not yielded to any soft compulsion on this point, as Marion had 
 done so easily. He had begun to perceive it himself, nay, he 
 could see that the youngest footman's cut of livery suit >vas 
 better than his. But he clung to his old suit all the same. 
 
 The shooting which Mr. Rowland had taken along with Ros- 
 more was not very great — a few grouse on the hillside, a few 
 partridges late in the season, some pheasants as tame as poultry 
 in those delightful woods which were so pleasant to wander in 
 (when your shoes were thick and you did not mind the damp), 
 but not sufficient to entertain many birds. I don't know how 
 rich men generally who have made their money, and have not 
 been used to those luxuries, arrange about the shooting in the 
 fine " places " which they buy and retire to when their portion 
 is made — whether they fall naturally into the habit of it, and 
 shoot like the other gentlemen, or whether it is a matter that 
 lies heavy on their mind. It certainly lay very heavy on the 
 mind of Archie, who was too shy to acknowledge that he knew 
 nothing about that mode of exercise, and therefore went out 
 with the keeper when the dreadful moment came in great per- 
 turbation, not frightened, indeed, for his gun, or for shooting 
 himself, which would have been a certain deliverance, but for 
 cutting a ridiculous figure in the eyes of Roderick, the game- 
 keeper, who talked to him, the inexperienced Glasgow boy, as 
 he would have talked to any young gentleman who had been 
 accustomed to the moors from his cradle. Archie did not reflect 
 that Roderick knew perfectly where he had come from and how 
 he had been bred, and that this assumption that he knew all about 
 it was indeed pure ridicule on the keeper's part, which would 
 have been completely divested of its sting if the lad had possessed 
 sufficient courage to say that he was a novice. But he did not, 
 and the consequence was a few days of utter humiliation and 
 weariness, after which Archie became painfully capable of 
 shooting within a few yards of the bird, and once actually 
 brought down a rabbit, to his great exultation yet remorse. 
 Poor rabbit, what had it done to have its freedom and its life 
 thus cut short 1 But the lad durst no more express this senti- 
 ment than he durst say that he had never fired a gun in his life 
 before that terrible Twelfth when he went out for the first time 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 169 
 
 on the hillside and barked his unaccustomed shins, and made 
 his arms ache and his head swim with the fatiguing, sickening, 
 hopeless day. Rowland had been warned that there was no 
 game to be had which would justify him in inviting company. 
 " Me and the young gentleman — twa guns — we will want nac 
 mair — just enough to keep up a bit supply for the hoose," 
 Roderick said, with a twinkle in his eye. And as Archie made 
 no protest, his father thought that somehow or other the boy 
 who had never had anything to do all his life must know how 
 to manage his gun. 
 
 There were some ideas of going out to the hill with luncheon, 
 which Evelyn, however, seeing the terror and despair at once in 
 the lad's eyes, discouraged. 
 
 " No," she said, " men only pretend to like it when there's a 
 party : they never like it when they mean serious work." 
 
 "Do you ever desire work, Archie?" said his father. "Come 
 in with a good bag, there's a good fellow."' 
 
 "If I might speak a word, sir," said Roderick, "the finest 
 fallow in the world will no bring up a cheeper if there's nane to 
 come." 
 
 "Well, well, start early, and good luck to you," said Rowland. 
 
 And they all came out to meet the pair returning in the after- 
 noon, Archie more dead than alive, with his hands blistered, 
 and his shins scratched, and the look of absolute exhaustion on 
 his face, but somehow with a bird or two in his bag which he 
 was not conscious of, still less of how they got there. 
 
 " Ou ay, there's aye a hare or twa," said the gamekeeper ; 
 "but it was very warm on the hill, and Mr. Archibald is not 
 used to the work, as few gentlemen are the first day. I'll take 
 your gun, sir, and I'll take your bag, and the ladies will give ye 
 a lift hame." 
 
 Archie obeyed, and clambered into the carriage, the most 
 dilapidated sportsman, perhaps, that the evening of the twelfth 
 ever saw. 
 
 " Well, sir, had ye good sport % " said his father, feeling a glow 
 of pride in the performances of the boy. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know if you call that good sport," the lad said 
 with a gasp. 
 
 But this was set down to modesty, or fatigue, or crossness, 
 which unfortunately had grown of late to be a recognized 
 quality of Archie. And Mr. Rowland himself took down a brace 
 of grouse to the Manse next morning, a proud father handing 
 out "my son's birds," as if Archie had been the finest shot in the 
 world. But this was not Archie's fault, who knew nothing of 
 the transaction. He managed to be able to carry his gun like 
 other feeble sportsmen after that terrible initiation. Thus both 
 Mr. Rowland's children learned to adapt themselves to the duties 
 of their new sphere. 
 
170 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Rowland's ideas of the absence of society in his new home 
 were confounded by the number of visits his wife received 
 within the first six weeks of their stay at Rosmore. It had, I 
 have no doubt, been noised abroad that the wife of the great 
 railway man was, in the loose but convenient phraseology of the 
 time, "a lady," and that there was therefore no appreciable peril 
 to the gentility of her caller, from making her acquaintance. 
 Lady Jean, of course, was one of the first to call upon her 
 brother's tenant. Her arrival was attended by circumstances 
 of which James Rowland could never think afterwards without 
 shame and humiliation. Indeed it all but happened to him to 
 turn the little shabby old lady who was trudging through the 
 woods in short petticoats and a waterproof to the kitchen door 
 as the natural entrance. Lady Jean was a little woman of 
 about fifty, who had long ceased to take the least pride in her 
 appearance, or to care what people thought on the subject. 
 This last presumption was of course quite unnecessary in the 
 parish of Rosmore, where everybody knew who she was, and 
 where, had she gone about in cloth of gold, it would have made 
 no particular difference. She wore tweed accordingly with the 
 most reckless indifference to quality (I believe the quality was 
 generally good — it came in bales from Romans and Paterson, 
 which the Glasgow shopkeepers thought disloyal to them, and 
 unpatriotic) — one society gown after another being manufac- 
 tured for her as need arose ; and she was fond of giving a gown- 
 piece to any girl that might strike her fancy, walked well, and 
 was, as she expressed it- in pregnant Scotch, " purpose-like." 
 This is not to say that Lady Jean could not be every inch the 
 Earl's sister when occasion demanded, and strike terror into the 
 Radical multitude, or that she did not possess, and occasionally 
 wear, a wardrobe more fitted to her condition. 
 
 Her arrival at Rosmore had nearly led to disastrous effects, as 
 I have said. For when Mr. Rowland saw the little old lady 
 nimbly climbing the hill, with the tweed petticoats reaching to 
 her ankles, and her hat bearing traces of encounters with several 
 showers, he had not a doubt in his mind that she was a friend of 
 the housekeeper or some of the servants. He had said " Hi ! " 
 and he was hurrying along partly out of kindness, for the way 
 to the servants' entrance was shorter than the one which swept 
 round to the front of the house, when he saw Archie meet and 
 pause to answer the old lady's questions. His father, deeply 
 critical, yet not so critical as he would have been had he known 
 who the visitor was, saw his son turn and accompany her, taking 
 off his hat, which Rowland thought unnecessary (though to be 
 over civil was always better than being rude), not to the ser- 
 vants' door, but up to the left hand, to the front of the house. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 171 
 
 He had another "Hi !" on his very lips, but stopped, thinking 
 he might as well leave it to Archie, no great harm being possible. 
 If the housekeeper's friend did get admission at the great door, 
 what then? He gave a regretful thought to the evident fact 
 that Archie was more at home with the old lady than he was 
 with people in his own position. Mr. Rowland shook his head 
 sadly over this, and said to himself that it was in the boy's blood, 
 and that he would never make a gentleman : yet comforted him- 
 self next moment and justified Archie by declaring to himself 
 with some warmth that he had a better opinion of a lad when 
 he was civil to those who had but little claim to the civility of 
 their neighbours. 
 
 Consequent upon this, however, a little curiosity about this 
 old lady came into Rowland's mind. She was perhaps some 
 ancient sempstress — some old pensioner of "the family," which 
 was a title only accorded by the public in general to the Clydes- 
 dale family, not to the interlopers at present at the house. The 
 old person was very nimble, whoever she was, and she had " neat 
 feet," Mr. Rowland remarked, who had always an eye for a good 
 point in a woman — very neat feet — shod with strong, purpose- 
 like shoes. If Marion would only learn to have shoes like that 
 instead of the things like paper she w T ent about in. He went 
 on very much at his leisure, following till the old lady disap- 
 peared under the colonnade. It would do her good to get a 
 glimpse of the hall with its Indian carpets and wonderful 
 hangings. It's fine to show a poor old body like that once in a 
 way what wealth can do. It would be a thing for her to make 
 a great gossip about in the village when she got home. Mr. 
 Rowland was still smiling with the pleasure of this benevolent 
 view when he saw Archie come out again. "Who is that old 
 dame you were showing in ? I'm glad to see you so civil," said 
 the father. 
 
 " Civil ! " said the young man. And then he added with his 
 usual look of suppressed indignation, " I'm surprised you did 
 not know her : it is Lady Jean." 
 
 " Lady Jean ! ! " But a thousand notes of admiration could 
 not express the dismay of Rowland when he found out that he 
 had very nearly called out " Hi ! " to Lady Jean. 
 
 Lady Jean w T as greatly pleased with Mrs. Rowland, whom she 
 described as " probably a little too English for this place — but 
 very well meaning, and a gentlewoman. It appears I once knew 
 her grandmother," said Lady Jean. This, so far as the point 
 was concerned, was as good as a patent of nobility. Her grand- 
 mother ! — it added the charm of antiquity to all the rest — though, 
 indeed, Lady Jean was not more than a dozen years older than 
 Mrs. Rowland. Evelyn had besought the Earl's sister to let her 
 take charge of "the poor" in the village, which gave Lady Jean 
 occasion for a lecture, which pleased her. " But I must ask you 
 not to call them the poor. They are neighbours not so well oft' 
 in this world's goods as we are. ' Poor folk ' is an allowable 
 
172 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 phrase, meaning a large class ; and it is mostly neighbourly 
 kindness, not charity, that you will be called on to give. Some- 
 thing off your own table to the sick and ailing — that's a fashion 
 of speaking — something off your housekeeper's table, not French 
 dishes, will be the best, and a helping hand with the schooling, 
 and a kind thought of the old people. That is what you want 
 here." 
 
 " But that is very much what is wanted everywhere," Evelyn 
 said. 
 
 "Very true, but there are Scotch susceptibilities which you 
 must respect," said Lady Jean. She liked to make this explan- 
 ation, and then to laugh at it, with a twinkle in her eye. 
 
 But her conclusion was that Mrs. Rowland was a most credit- 
 able person. " Rich, oh, richer than anybody has a right to be 
 — but not much the worse, considering— just a well-looking, 
 well-mannered gentlewoman." 
 
 Nothing could be more satisfactory than this report. It ran 
 up the loch and across the mountains. The Duchess heard of 
 it in her quarters among the hills. It flew east to another 
 duchess on the lowland side. Of course I need not say to people 
 who know the country which was the one duchess and which the 
 other. In the course of time they both called, which was a pro- 
 digious distinction : and so did all the smaller gentry, and some 
 of those great Glasgow potentates who build themselves new 
 castles upon the banks of the Clyde. Some of them were very tine 
 gentlemen indeed, but they were " mixed," and some were only 
 " Glasgow builders " of a kind quite unknown to Evelyn. One 
 whose carriage would have made a sensation in Hyde Park, even 
 in the days of hammer-cloth, with two powdered footmen behind, 
 had the manners still of the blacksmith he had originally been. 
 Mr. Rowland rather liked these personages, especially the old 
 gentleman who had been a blacksmith. He stood up in a group 
 with two or three of them who represented among them heaven 
 knows how many millions, and thrust his hands into his pockets 
 and talked investments and money. Why should not people talk 
 money who have more of that than of anything else % Painters 
 talk of their pictures, and literary men of their books. Why not 
 millionaires of that which makes them so ? Rowland was very 
 intelligent, and he liked to talk upon money subjects ; but an 
 occasional laying of the heads together with a few other rich 
 men over the subject of money was refreshing to him, as it is 
 refreshing to an artist after long deprivation to find himself 
 once more among his own kind. 
 
 With all this flash of fine society, however, which so soon made 
 an end of Rowland's fears, it is astounding how much in the fore- 
 ground of the picture was Miss Eliza, briefly described as "of 
 the Burn," in the nomenclature of the parish. What Miss Eliza's 
 surname was, and what was implied by the designation "of the 
 Burn," it was really quite unnecessary to add. The same sur- 
 name is so very general in Scotch west-country parishes, that 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 173 
 
 it confers little distinction in itself. Miss Eliza came to call 
 in a little wickerwork carriage, called a clothes-basket by her 
 friends, with a russet pony to draw it and an equally russet 
 groom or stable-boy to look after the vehicle when she made a 
 call. Miss Eliza drove the pony herself, with Colin generally 
 behind, to whom she threw a word occasionally when a longer 
 time than usual elapsed without meeting anybody on the road : 
 but as the kind woman knew everybody, from the fishwife who 
 came over with her creels from Kilrossie during the season of 
 the saut water, up to the Earl himself, when he happened to be 
 seen in those regions, or even the Duchess, who was a still more 
 rare visitor, there was but little time for her to entertain Colin 
 with a special remark. "How do you do the day?'' she said 
 with a wave of her whip in salutation of her friends. " How's 
 a' with you, David ? I hope the hoast is better, and that you 
 like the lozenges.— Good morning, Mrs. Dean, and isn't it just a 
 pleasure to see such a fine day : grand for the hay, as I have 
 been saying all the way down the loch, fifty times if I've said it 
 once. I'm hoping they'll get it all well carted in at Rowanson, 
 and a fine heavy crop it is, just a pleasure to see. — Eh, is that 
 you, Lizzie, with your basket ? It's awfu' heavy for you, my 
 poor lass, and you not got up your strength yet. Climb up 
 beside Colin : I'll take ye a bittie of the way. — Good day to ye, 
 minister. Ye see I've got Lizzie Chalmers in the basket. Ye 
 must just give her a good talking to, for she's come out before 
 she has got up her strength. Would you like any of her fish at 
 the Manse ? I would call and leave them on my way back, with 
 pleasure, and it would aye be something for her to take home. 
 I will have some of the herrings and the little haddies myself, 
 though the haddies are not equal to the Fife haddies, and the 
 herrings are not so good as Loch Fyne. Oh yes, I am just going 
 to Eosmore. I hear she's just an uncommon nice person, and a 
 credit to the loch-side. — Dear me, there's Lady Jean. It's a sight 
 for sore eyes to see you now, and a sore trouble to think you're 
 in the parish no longer, and I can scarcely offer to give you a 
 lift when I have Lizzie Chalmers in the cart. Isn't she just a 
 very presentable sort of person 1 I'm meaning the new lady at 
 the house, no Lizzie : we all know everything there is to know 
 about her. And I hope his lordship is quite well, and you are 
 not finding Ardnachrean damp. — Dear, bless me, there is the 
 doctor, and I want to ask him about young Rankin, and make 
 him speak his mind to Lizzie there. Good-day to you all, 
 good-day." 
 
 If it may be suggested that a country lady driving her own 
 machine could scarcely be likely to meet so much company on. 
 a country road, I must say in my own defence that it was the 
 same day on which Lady Jean had paid her visit to Mrs. Rowland, 
 which accounted for her ; and as for the usual inhabitants of 
 Eosmore, from the minister down to old David, they were all 
 to be met with in the afternoon, within a few hundred yards. 
 
174 THE RAILWAY MAN" 
 
 Lizzie Chalmers, it is true, was from Kilrossie, and did not come 
 every day, but she was the only one of the party with the ex- 
 ception of Lady Jean who was not to be met with about the 
 same hour on the same road every day. 
 
 " Is he any better, doctor ? " said Miss Eliza, coming down 
 upon the doctor with a little rush of the russet pony, prompted 
 by a smarter than ordinary flourish of the whip. " Yes, I was 
 afraid it was his own fault, the foolish fellow. Men are just 
 idiots rushing upon destruction, and him so sensible when he is 
 himself. There is Lizzie Chalmers, behind me in the basket, just 
 as silly in another way, coming out with her heavy creel before 
 she is well over her trouble. I would wish you to speak very 
 seriously to her, doctor. You must just lay me out my herrings 
 and baddies, and the codfish for the manse, it will make your 
 creel the lighter. And Colin, fill you that long basket with 
 grass to make a nice caller bed for the fish. — And here we are 
 at the gate of liosmore, and to take you further would just be 
 to take you out of your way. Help her out, Colin, and you can 
 put out the biggest codfish — if it's too much for them, I'll make 
 them a present of it, and they can send the rest to that ne'er- 
 do-weel's poor wife, poor thing. And Lizzie, my woman, here's 
 another shilling for you. Stay at home and look after the bairns, 
 and don't come out to-morrow. Now, Ruf us, on you go, my man. 
 It's a stiff brae, and I know you don't like it ; but we'll just 
 make Colin get out and run. Come away, my bonnie man," said 
 Miss Eliza, with a chirrup, as she slanted the pony's head towards 
 the brae. Having no one else to speak to, she talked to Rufus, 
 who was Aery well used to it, and responded by little shakings 
 of his head and jinglings of his harness. " Come away," she 
 added, meaning "go on." "It's a stey brae, but ye must just go 
 at it with a stout heart, and it will be over in a moment. Come 
 away, my bonnie man ! Just jump in, Colin, and not let him 
 cool after that fine burst, for I like to come in at the door with 
 a dash, and Rufus can do it if he likes. Now down with ye 
 again, and give a good peal to the bell. — Will Mrs. Rowland be 
 in this afternoon % " she added, with a sweep of the whip towards 
 the footman at the door. Then Miss Eliza got down a little 
 more dexterously than an inexperienced spectator would have 
 looked for. She went into Eosmore in the same cheerful manner, 
 talking all the way. The footman, it is true, was English, and 
 an unknown quantity, but even to him Miss Eliza found some- 
 thing to say. 
 
 " They will be in, both Mrs. Rowland and the young lady 1 
 That is very lucky for me, for in a fine day like this most people 
 are on the road. They will be using the long drawing-room 
 with the view 1 Well, I do not blame them : it is best, though 
 Lady Jean used to keep it for company. — Who will ye say 1 
 Oh, there is my card, that is the most sensible w r ay. — My dear 
 Mrs. Rowland, I am very glad to make your acquaintance. We 
 have heard just everything that is good of you, and I have been 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 175 
 
 most anxious to welcome you to the parish. And this is Miss 
 Rowland ? Dear me, how delighted all the young folk will be 
 to hear of such an addition. And now that you have got settled 
 down a little, I hope you like the house 1 ? " 
 
 "The house is delightful," said Evelyn, "and so are the views. 
 My husband prepared me for the beauty of the country, but he 
 siid very little about the excellence inside." 
 
 "He would know but little, 5 ' said Miss Eliza. "They're not 
 noticing about houses, the men folk. And as for the views, we 
 have been settled here this forty years since we came quite 
 young creatures ourselves ; but I've never tired of this. I've 
 never got indifferent, as you generally do, with what you've 
 seen every day : it's just as new to me now as it was at the 
 first.'' 
 
 " It is a beautiful country," said Evelyn civilly. 
 
 "Is it not — just a blessed country! Eh, if the people were 
 but equal. ' Every prospect pleases,' you remember the hymn 
 says, 'and only man — ' Xo, no, I will not say that man is vile : 
 that is a great deal too strong. What I complain of in very 
 religious folk is that they are censuring their neighbours, when 
 perhaps, if the truth was known, their neighbours — But we 
 must not pursue that subject. Man is not vile, but he's not so 
 satisfying as the everlasting hills." 
 
 " Oil," said Marion, with the little fictitious intonation which 
 copied Evelyn's, " but men are more amusing than the moun- 
 tains." She herself was not by any means so amusing in her 
 diction since she had become an echo of Mrs. Rowland in her 
 gesture and voice. 
 
 " The young ladies," said Miss Eliza with a laugh, "are mostly 
 of that opinion, and I should not say nay, for I have not less 
 than six nephews coming to-morrow for tennis, and everything 
 that they can find that is diverting. They are either at the 
 college, for there's a summer session in the scientific classes, or 
 else they're in offices, and they come down to us on Saturday to 
 play. I hope you'll come up to the Burn, you and your brother, 
 to meet my young men. There will be a view or two as well. 
 And after the diversion there will be a kind of supper, and then 
 they will see you home." 
 
 Marion did not know how to act in sucli an emergency, but 
 it was understood that the invitation was accepted. And Miss 
 Eliza returned after half an hour's talking, full of the genius of 
 the mistress of the house, and the wealth of its fitting up. 
 " There would need to be something very sustaining in the sense 
 of good old blood in your veins, and a family that has existed 
 for generations," she said, "for if I was Lady -Jean, I could not 
 bear to see how the house is changed, just by the railway man. 
 For it was always a bare, cauldrife sort of house. I used to 
 feel that there were not carpets enough on the fioor, nor coals 
 enough in the grate. Now it's just all blazing and shining with 
 warmth — curtains that just clothe the place, and pictures on 
 
176 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 the walls, and grand carpets that your foot sinks in. It may 
 not be such good taste, but it is far more comfortable. And 
 Mrs. Rowland is a most personable woman, and him a very 
 good sort of a man." 
 
 "And the daughter, Aunt Eliza?" cried the miss, to whom 
 this was the most interesting part of all. 
 
 " The daughter — well she's just a young lady like the rest. I 
 asked her to come to-morrow, and you can judge for yourself," 
 Miss Eliza said. 
 
 The minister and his wife formed a still more interesting part 
 of the immediate society of the little place, and puzzled Evelyn, 
 who had been brought up in the somewhat narrow creed of her 
 country to ignore everything but "the Church," and to look 
 with small respect upon dissenters in general as a community 
 of uneducated people. She did not at all know what to make 
 of the trim and well-dressed pair who called upon her, he in 
 garments almost more sacerdotal than if he had been a priest 
 of All Saints, Elizabeth Street, and she with the fashionable 
 cut of her dress shadowed by the inevitable mackintosh. This 
 was the Scotch minister whom she had met with in pictures in 
 a Aery different aspect, but of whom she knew nothing in real 
 life except that she had a puzzled comprehension that he did 
 not belong to " the Church," but yet was — what was he ? — a 
 kind of vicar or rector after another fashion, like yet quite 
 unlike the vicars and rectors whom she knew. Mrs. Rowland 
 had her limitations like others, and did not know what to think. 
 But she was, as ever, charmingly polite, and did her best to 
 please these bewildering neighbours. She apologized for not 
 having yet been to church, giving some excuse of tiredness or 
 headache. As a matter of fact the headache had been a result 
 of the same bewilderment which made her so curious and so 
 unassured about the position of Mr. Dean. A Scottish gentle- 
 woman in England would have had no such ignorance ; which 
 is a curious fact, and one, perhaps, which proves the superiority 
 of the wealthier and more remote ecclesiastical economy. 
 
 "I dare say," said Mrs. Dean, "that you were not sure if you 
 should come to our church. There is an Episcopalian Chapel in 
 Kilrossie. As you are English, Mrs. Rowland, it's perhaps there 
 you should go." 
 
 "Indeed, I cannot say," said Evelyn, "I have never gone 
 anywhere but to the parish church — but — I don't quite under- 
 stand—" 
 
 " We both understand perfectly," said Mrs. Dean, " that you 
 would miss the ritual and your beautiful prayer-book. We 
 have a great sympathy for that. There is nothing in the 
 prayer-book, I am sure, that would be a stumbling-block to my 
 husband, and he sometimes takes a collect just sti^aight out of 
 it without any kind of clipping or trimming. There is a great- 
 movement in Scotland, which perhaps you are not acquainted 
 with, to improve the baldness of our services, and make them 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 177 
 
 more generally attractive. We have a harmonium/' Mrs. Dean 
 said with pride, "and I am happy to say that our choir is begin- 
 ning to chant just extraordinarily well. You will see no such 
 terrible difference as maybe you think."' 
 
 Evelyn held her peace, being more and more bewildered with 
 every word. She wondered what Mrs. Reuben Butler, nee 
 Jeanie Deans, who was once the minister's wife of this parish, 
 would have thought of this statement. She only bowed in 
 reply, not being for her own part at all qualified to speak. 
 
 "Alexander will explain to you far better than I can, and 
 you will rind no intolerance in him. He perhaps agrees better 
 with you," she added, with a smile, "than with the old-fashioned 
 folk who insist upon keeping up all the difference. — Alexander, 
 Airs. Rowland would like you to explain the way we're trying 
 to bridge over the clebateable land between our establishment 
 and the other. Just come here. I will change places with you." 
 The good wife, with these words, rose and took a chair beside 
 Rowland, to whom her husband had been talking, which was 
 very self-denying on the part of the minister's wife, there being 
 nothing at all novel in the gentleman of the house, whereas 
 there was a great deal that was novel in the lady, and therefore 
 interesting. She relinquished the post to the minister, who 
 was perhaps better able to expound — was he better able to 
 expound 1 — the problem of that ecclesiastical movement in 
 Scotland which is so much more puzzling to unsophisticated 
 English understandings, prepared for polemics and opposition, 
 than the good old conventional ligure of the Presbyterian 
 L'alvinist, which is a primitive type that everybody knows. 
 
 "I don't know what there is to explain,"' said Mr. Dean, 
 taking, nothing loth, the chair his wire had vacated : he too 
 preferred the mistress to the master of the house. " Our services 
 — but then Mrs. Rowland will understand them better when 
 she has seen them/" 
 
 "Oh, I was very tired after my long journey — and I had a 
 headache.*' 
 
 " She was not out of her bed," replied Rowland, as if his wife 
 were being blamed. 
 
 "I am sure," said Mr. Dean, "that if I was Mrs. Rowland, I 
 should not go through the tedious drawl of the old-fashioned 
 Scotch church on any account, or listen to_ a sermon an hour 
 long, which is what some of our neighbouring clergymen still 
 indulge in. But it is modified in Rosmore church, and I promise 
 you you shall not have more of me than twenty minutes. ^ T\ e 
 have very decent music, thanks to my wife. In short, for a 
 country service in an out-of-the-way place like this. I m glad to 
 think that we are making it much more attractive. 
 
 ''Attractive ?" Evelyn said, more bewildered than ever. u To 
 whom were they intended to be attractive % To the persons to 
 whom they were addressed ? " 
 
 "It is in noway necessary," said the minister, "that music 
 
17G THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 and everything that is pleasant should be appropriated by onG 
 body. We can take up our inheritance in that way just as 
 fitly as the Episcopalians. I am not a bigoted Presbyterian." 
 he said, "even in the way of Church government, which is 
 really the only peculiar part of our economy. I think it is just 
 as good as the other. I don't think that either of them is 
 divinely appointed. I am used to presbytery, you are used to 
 bishops — very well. AVe need not go to loggerheads about that. 
 I know a bishop or two, and I've always found them very 
 friendly, without being inclined to bow down to kiss the pastoral 
 ring any more than the papal toe." 
 
 ""You are not so peaceably inclined when you come home 
 from a Presbytery meeting, Alexander," said the wife of his 
 bosom. " For my part I am rather fond of the lawn sleeves. I 
 think equality of ministers is just as great nonsense as equality 
 generally. Don't you think so, Mr. Rowland ? When young 
 Lord Eosmore says to me we are all born equal, I just say to 
 him, Bah ! As if anybody in his senses would put my husband 
 and Johnny Shanks at the head of the loch upon the saraa 
 level ! You will remember Johnny Shanks 1 just a nobody ; 
 whereas Alexander " 
 
 "My wife," said Mr. Dean, while this was going on, "likes 
 the decorative side. Lawn sleeves and gaitered legs take her 
 fancy. But if there is one thing convenient in our simplicity, 
 it is that we are saved all the millinery questions. And that, 
 I think, goes for a great deal." 
 
 Evelyn had never been ecclesiastically minded, and was but 
 vaguely aware what the millinery question meant. As for the 
 rest, though she was an intelligent woman, these two people 
 might as well have talked Hebrew to her : there was no under- 
 standing in her mind. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 It was October when the young Saumarez's arrived at Eosmore. 
 October is very lovely in the west of Scotland. The trees are 
 thinned but still glowing, the birches like lamps of gold among 
 the darker woods, scattering round them, as the leaves drop, a 
 golden underground that gives out light, The great line of 
 mountains at the head of the loch were lightly touched with 
 snow. The villas on the banks came out more brightly from 
 the thinned foliage, and stood reflected in the shining water, 
 with all the tints round them of red rowan berries and dazzling 
 autumnal leaves. The air had a clearness as of the rarified air 
 of high altitudes. There had not been any rain for ten days, so 
 remarkable a fact that the district in general was beginning to 
 fear the failure of its wells. 
 
 In such an evening, while the sun lavished its last rays upon 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 179 
 
 the loch and the opposite shore, bathing them in golden light, 
 Rosamond and Edward came across in the steamboat to the 
 whole Rowland family, which awaited them on the pier. I am 
 wrong, however, to say the whole family : for Archie, who had 
 been seized by a strong repugnance to the^ newcomers without 
 any reason— a fact which, of course, made it more strong— was 
 not of the number. He had gone up the k)ch or the hill with a 
 determined intention of returning only in time for dinner. If 
 truth had been told, he was extremely curious, even anxious, 
 about the young man who was of his own age, about whom 
 there could' be no doubt that he was a gentleman born to every- 
 thing which Archie had not been born to, yet possessed. He 
 did not think at all about the pretty sister, who probably would 
 have most engaged the interest of the ordinary youth of twenty. 
 But the more Archie was curious, the less had he any intention 
 of showing it. He listened himself to what was said, but lie 
 asked no questions. Finally he started, half an hour before 
 they went to meet the newcomers, for a long walk up the hill. 
 
 "It is too lovely," said Rosamond, presenting her cheek, as 
 usual, that Mrs. Rowland should kiss it. " I wish some one had 
 told me that it was a beautiful place. I never began to look 
 till we got into the steamboat. I am not in the least tired, thank 
 you. Eddy! where are you, Eddy? One never knows where 
 to find him. He is always picking up everywhere some fellow 
 he knows. He is not nice to travel with, because there are so 
 many fellows he knows." 
 
 Here there advanced from the other end of the boat, and 
 bounded across the gangway just before it was withdrawn, a 
 short young man, with a travelling cap upon one side of his 
 head and a cigar in his mouth. He had to make a jump upon 
 the pier amid a shout of " Take care, will ye ! " and " What are 
 ye doing, lad 1 " from the man at the pier ; and dropped like a 
 projectile in the midst of the group which, so undistinguished 
 was Eddy's appearance, were not looking for him except his 
 sister, who put out a hand as if to help him. ' % That was cleverly 
 done," said Rowland, opposing his own substantial bulk to arrest 
 the stranger who was standing in their midst; "but I would 
 advise you, my young friend, to bestir yourself sooner, and not 
 run such a risk again/' 
 
 " Oh, it is his way," replied Rosamond. " You would not think 
 it, but this is Eddy, Mrs. Rowland. He is like nobody one ever 
 
 saw 
 
 Certainly he was not like his handsome father, the young 
 Edward Saumarez whom Evelyn remembered so well. She had 
 been half afraid of seeing a reproduction of his old look. But 
 that was one of the anticipatory troubles that she might well 
 have spared herself. He was short ; his hair was light and 
 scanty ; his eyes half lost under many folds of loose eyebrows, 
 and a brow which contracted with what some unkind critic has 
 called the short-sighted soul, was rather small. His nose was 
 
 N 2 
 
180 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 turned up a little. Marion, who, in the interests of Archie, had 
 been looking forward, half with hope and half with fear, to the 
 arrival of a beautiful youth — a darling of society, exquisitely 
 clothed and of distinguished appearance— felt a pang, half of 
 disappointment, half of relief. Perhaps the relief was the 
 stronger. Archie ! — why Archie was taller, better-looking, and 
 more a man than this little shambling fellow ! The foolish 
 father felt much more cordial to Eddy, and grasped him strongly 
 by the hand. 
 
 " You're welcome to Rosmore, both you and your sister," he 
 said. 
 
 There came an answer from Eddy's lips which sounded very 
 much like "Who's this?" but a glance from his sister brought 
 him to himself, and he made his bow accordingly. 
 
 " I'm very glad to be here, I can tell you," said Eddy. " Never 
 knew such a beast of a journey — tumbled out of one carriage 
 into another, and then Glasgow, and then a boat, and I don't 
 know all what. How do you do ? Been here long 1 — and have 
 you got any sport 1 It's just like my luck to come so late." 
 
 "My son," said Rowland with ineffable pleasure — for he did 
 not feel ashamed of his son now, quite the reverse in sight of 
 this shabby young lad, who looked like nothing at all — " has 
 arranged a day for you, and I think you'll find a bird or two 
 yet." 
 
 " That's all right," said Eddy. " How do you do, Mrs. Rowland ! 
 
 not 
 same 
 
 to you." 
 
 " Certainly," said Rowland amazed, but always with a certain 
 exultation on Archie's account. This an example for Archie ! 
 the boy was twice the man this fellow was. It is not good to 
 rejoice in the disadvantages of other people, but he had been so 
 sure, and professed his pleasure in it, that Saumarez's son — a 
 man in the best society— could be a model for Archie, that the 
 satisfaction in finding him so shabby a little fellow was more 
 than words could say. He did not need to be ashamed of his 
 own boy in this company at least. Mr. Rowland started to 
 walk, while the little man jumped into his place in the carriage, 
 with a certain elation, as if somebody had given him something 
 he acknowledged to himself. 
 
 "How jolly of you to come to meet us," said Eddy, "country 
 fashion. We were wondering, Rose and I, if there would be a 
 dog-cart or something. Never expected this luxury. Rose, did 
 you see after the luggage 1 I had no time to think of it— met 
 a fellow who was with me at Eton — one of the great plucked, 
 don't you know — run all over the country in crowds at this time 
 af the year." 
 
 "Yes," said Rosamond with her calm air, "he was plucked of 
 course, Mrs. Rowland. I told you we could not come any sooner 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 181 
 
 because of his exam. Of course I knew quite well how it would 
 turn out, and so I told father. But there are some things that 
 people will not believe. I never can see the good, for my part, 
 of going in for exams, that you are sure not to pass." 
 
 "Oh,"' said Eddy, light-heartedly, "it is always something to 
 do — keeps you from feeling that you've got no centre to your 
 life, don't you know. I like a sort of fixed point ; if you don't 
 work up to it, of course that's your fault, but all the same an 
 object, — a fine thing. Don't you agree with me, Miss Rowland • " 
 said the young man, turning round a little to look into the face 
 of his companion on the front seat, who had given up her place 
 to Rosamond without any pleasure, and was now studying that 
 young lady in every line of her costume, with something of the 
 same sensation of mingled disappointment and relief which her 
 father had experienced. Marion was accustomed now to all the 
 subtleties of the toilette. She was more respectful of Rosamond's 
 grey gown than she had been of Evelyn's travelling dress ; but 
 she perceived at a glance that from this visitor there would be 
 little to learn. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean by an object. I think most 
 gentlemen's object is to please themselves," Marion said. 
 
 ''That's what you call epigrammatic, ain't it," said Eddy, '"and 
 severe." 
 
 "Oh, I just say what I think," said Marion. She had not 
 had a young man given her to play with since the days of the 
 students, who laughed at her saucy speeches, and said among 
 themselves that Rowland's sister was clever, much cleverer than 
 he was ; and the prospect was agreeable to her. Not that there 
 was anything attractive in Eddy personally, but still he was of 
 the kind of mouse to her cat — or cat to her mouse, as sometimes 
 happens in that sort of exercise. They eyed each other with 
 furtive glances, both aware of this probable relationship. 
 
 "Father has left Aix," said Rosamond, "they have sent him 
 to some other place which it is supposed may do him good. Of 
 course so long as he has Rogers with him we know that he is 
 well attended to. I hope we shall not stay too long and bore 
 you, Mrs. Rowland. Would it be too much to say a month I I 
 hope you will be so kind as to tell us if you want our rooms for 
 other visitors, or get tired of us. Of course people always do in 
 society, or it would be impossible to get on." 
 
 "Yes, I promise, my dear, I shall tell you if I get tired of you," 
 said Evelyn. 
 
 " We have been for a fortnight with grandmamma. I think 
 we bored her very much. She told us she had people coming 
 for the 22nd. But we really could not get away on the 22nd. 
 One's grandmother is not the same as any one else, do you 
 think? However much she maybe bored, it is right that she 
 should put up with it. We don't go there very much. Once in 
 a year is not a great deal. She never has anything to say to 
 father : he makes her so nervous, she says. She will soon say 
 
182 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 that Eddy makes her nervous too : when there is no smoking- 
 room, perhaps it may be a little unpleasant to smell his cigars ; 
 but if there is anything at all in being a grandmother — then she 
 is of course impatient that he has not passed his exam. I can- 
 not see why, for my part. They ought to have known it from 
 the first. If you will not even open a book, how can you expect 
 to pass any exam. ? " 
 
 " My object, I allow, is to amuse myself,'"' said Eddy to Marion, 
 dropping his voice, as it is the right thing to do when you wish 
 to set up a separate conversation. " I am quite candid, as you 
 are — and, tell me, isn't that yours too % " 
 
 " I am afraid you will not find it very easy," said Marion, "to 
 amuse yourself at Rosmore." 
 
 " What ! is there nothing to do ? " said Eddy, looking a little 
 dismayed. 
 
 " We never see anybody from morning to night but the old 
 maids out of the village. And we never go anywhere. There 
 was a ball at Campbellton, but they refused it, and there was 
 one at Eagle's Craig, but they just went themselves." 
 
 "Good heavens !" cried Eddy, "what depravity! you never 
 mean to say that the old people, papa and mamma " 
 
 "They just went themselves ! " said Marion with an indigna- 
 tion almost too terrible for words. 
 
 " This must be looked into," said Eddy, " it is almost beyond 
 belief." 
 
 " I will tell you after," said Marion, as the conversation on the 
 other side of the carriage came to a pause. 
 
 Thus Mr. Edward Saumarez, jun., procured for himself, with- 
 out a moment's delay, something to do at Rosmore. And Marion 
 Rowland found at once an additional interest in life. It was 
 quite innocent, and as trivial as could have been desired. In 
 the evening after dinner she confided a part of her troubles to 
 him, and then the next day, when the young visitors were con- 
 ducted by the young people of the house to see the neighbour- 
 hood, Marion managed so that Rosamond went on with Archie, 
 while she herself followed, attended by Eddy. And the sight of 
 the two pairs thus arranged was amusing enough. Rosamond 
 went on in advance, very quickly, with her smooth firm step, 
 and her head held high, as she walked in London, where, intent 
 upon her own business, this young woman of the period passed 
 where she pleased, as safe in her own protection and that, but 
 in a most secondary degree, of her mastiff, — as safely as Una with 
 her lion ; while Archie walked by her, a step behind, finding it 
 slightly difficult to keep up with her long yet graceful steps, 
 and still more difficult to answer the occasional questions which 
 she addressed to him without turning her head. Archie for his 
 own part could not, however he cudgelled his brains, find out 
 anything to say to this beautiful young lady. He felt her to b:> 
 miles, nay Alps above him, and that he could not say anything 
 which did not feel common, vulgar, mean — like a boy in a shop 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 183 
 
 talking to a princess. He kept striving to keep up with her, 
 yet never quite kept up with her save when she stopped suddenly 
 and turned with the same swiftness of movement with which 
 she walked to look out on the water or up to the hills, when he 
 would outgo her, and be compelled to swing himself round with 
 an effort to get back to his place. 
 
 " What is the name of that hill ? " she asked, all at once coming 
 to one of those sudden pauses. " That 1 " said Archie, anxiously 
 turning to quite another point ; " oh, that is Ben Eos — or no, I 
 think it is what they call The Miller — if it is not Eosdhu." 
 
 " You don't seem to know very much about them," said the 
 stately girl; and then she set off again, certainly indifferent to 
 the blundering explanation he made that he was afraid he had 
 a bad memory, and that one person said one thing and one 
 another, so that it was difficult to know. At another time it 
 was on the sea-side that Rosamond paused, demanding to know 
 the name of the lighthouse in the distance, and what was the 
 shadowy height to be seen far oft" down the course of the Clyde. 
 If it had cost him his life, poor Archie could not remember 
 whether he had been told that this peak was Goatfell or if it 
 was one of the Cumbraes, which he knew lay " that way." And 
 the light : w T hat was it that Eoderick called the light ? If he 
 had ever dreamt that he would be interrogated this way, Archie 
 would have given his whole attention to the acquisition of local 
 knowledge. A cold perspiration came out upon his forehead, as 
 he stammered out answers which lie was sure were all wrong. 
 "Oh ! " said Miss Saumarez, not even deigning to cast a glance 
 at him. Eddy did not suffer half so much for his unsuccessful 
 examination as poor Archie did from this totally unexpected 
 process, which showed him the profound depth of his ignorance. 
 What a fool she must think him ! What an idiot he was ! 
 
 "I am afraid, Mr. Rowland, you don't admire your own 
 country so much as I do," Eosamond said at the end of the 
 walk, with a smile that went over his head like an arrow, which 
 she did not even take the trouble to aim at him. And he was 
 tongue-tied and could not say a word, could not think of any- 
 thing to say ; though after she had gone on, a dozen little darts 
 of words which he might have said came into his mind, wound- 
 ing himself with little pricks instead of compelling her to respect 
 him a little, as, if they had but come soon enough, they might 
 have done. 
 
 Meanwhile the other pair had got on, as Eddy would have 
 said, like a house on fire. Marion had given him the whole 
 history of the ball at Eagle's Craig, to which she had been in- 
 vited with her stepmother ; but to which Mrs. Rowland had 
 gone alone — with diamonds round her neck and in her hair. 
 
 " She would not have had any diamonds but for papa," said 
 Marion. " She was quite nobody when he married her." 
 
 " Oh, now I don't think that can be true," said Eddy, " for my 
 governor, you know — " an impulse of wisdom checked the young 
 
184 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 man — "couldn't have known her, could he, if she had been 
 nobody % " 
 
 " Well, at least she was nobody out in India," said Marion, 
 " and to see her now ! And I had to stay at home— me, papa's 
 own daughter, and the only one, and a very good dancer ! And 
 it was her that went to the ball, an old lady, and me, I had to 
 stay at home ! " 
 
 " It is a sort of thing that would justify an appeal to parlia- 
 ment," said Eddy, "but there must have been some sort of 
 reason alleged. Perhaps you had not a frock ? " 
 
 " I have dozens of frocks," said Marion, turning upon him 
 with a gleam in her eye. 
 
 " Or you did not know the people ? " 
 
 " I know heaps of people ; that is, I did not know them my- 
 self, but what does it matter about that when I am papa's 
 daughter, and he could just — buy them all up ! " 
 
 " Oh," said Eddy, taken a little aback — for though he was 
 accustomed to a great deal of slang and much frank speaking, 
 it was not generally quite of this kind. " Then," he said, " I am 
 at my wits' end, and I can't think what they meant." 
 
 " They said," cried Marion, " that I was not out." 
 
 " Oh," said Eddy again. 
 
 " But what did that matter — for who would have ever known ? 
 And it was a delightful ball, with a great many officers. And 
 I am a fine dancer," said Marion, with a deep sigh of mingled 
 indignation and regret. 
 
 "Oh, as for that, there is no doubt," said Eddy, "you are as 
 light as a feather, and with those pretty little feet " 
 
 "No, I am not as light as a feather : I am just the weight I 
 ought to be, and my feet are just the same as other people's ; 
 but I know," said Marion with conviction, " that I am good at 
 dancing. Archie is not very good at it, and he is not fond 
 of it." 
 
 "He does not look as if he would be," said Eddy, with a look 
 at the son of the house tramping on before them at a con- 
 siderable distance in close pursuit of the lady who was in his 
 charge. 
 
 " No," said Marion, " he never was fond of it — are you 1 " 
 
 " Oh, I adore it," said the young man, " when I have a partner 
 to^ my mind. You and I, Miss Marion, would fly like the wind. 
 We'd leave everybody behind us. Ill tell you what we must do 
 to make up for that Ravenscraig — no, Eagle's Craig business — 
 we'll make them give a ball here." 
 
 " A ball at Rosmore ! " 
 
 " The very thing ! while we are here. Rosamond has not come 
 out either, but, as you say, who will ever know ? We may as 
 well have our fun, and you and she can keep each other in 
 countenance. Nobody will tell — and what would it matter if 
 they did ? Why, girls not out are to be seen everywhere — always 
 at balls at home. You put on a high dress." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 1S5 
 
 " No," cried Marion, W 'I would rather die than go to a dance 
 in a high dress." 
 
 "Well,- don't then," said the complacent Eddy, "anything you 
 please. Oh, don't be afraid. I will speak to Mrs. Rowland. I 
 can be as independent as you like when there's any occasion for 
 it. And my governor, you know, poor old chap " 
 
 " Do you mean ' your papa ' [ " said Marion. 
 
 " Well, I don't call him so," said Eddy with a laugh. "There 
 was a story, don't you know, about him and your mamma-in-law. 
 The governor behaved badly, but she had a sneaking kindness 
 for him all the same. That's why we are here." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Marion, with a gasp of excitement, " tell me ! for 
 I know nothing about her. I want to know about her. I was 
 sure there was some story."' 
 
 " The governor was a sad dog when he was young," said Eddy. 
 " Oh, he's a nice fellow to blow a fellow up for some trifle not 
 half so bad as himself. He was up to anything that was naughty. 
 It's funny, isn't it, to hear of these antediluvian lovers — my old 
 governor, who can't move a limb, poor old chap, and this prim 
 lady here who looks like a saint." 
 
 " As if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth," said Marion ; " but 
 I always knew there was some story. Be quick and tell me, for 
 they are coming back." 
 
 " I will tell you another time. Can't we come out to-night in 
 the moonlight to smoke a cigarette ? Did you ever try a cigar- 
 ette ? Oh, all the girls do ! I'll teach you how. It makes you 
 much better company when you don't mind a cigarette. — Hi ! 
 here's Rosamond down upon us. Not a word to her, whatever 
 I tell you. And your brother coming lagging behind as if she 
 had given him a touch of the lash, file's a rare one for 
 that ; keeps a fellow in his place, as if she was too grand to 
 mind." 
 
 "Oh, Archie is just as grand as she is," said the girl, slightly 
 offended ; "and it is just his way to keep behind. I would like 
 to see anybody giving my brother a touch of the lash ! " 
 
 "It is not because he is your brother, but because he is him- 
 self," said Eddy. "I don't mean any offence. I mean that's 
 Rosamond's way. She is like the governor, don't you know. 
 She lias got a great deal of the devil in her. So have you, I 
 should think."' 
 
 "Me!" said Marion, much shocked. "I am not what you 
 think at all." 
 
 "Yes," said Eddy, "I am sure you are what I think. As nice 
 as girls are made, but plenty of devilry, and a spirit for any- 
 thing. That is precisely what I like best." 
 
 " Well," said Marion, kw I will allow that I have a great deal of 
 
 spirit, if that's what you call the ; but you shouldn't say 
 
 bad words. Do you mean that girls are not made so nice as 
 men % for I think you're very impudent to say so, and me a girl 
 that you are speaking to." 
 
186 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " Girls," said Eddy, with an air of authority, " are sometimes 
 much better, and sometimes they are a great deal worse than 
 men. There's no medium in them. You are one of the nice 
 ones, so of course you are a great deal nicer than a fellow like 
 me, or even your brother. I am a dreadful little beggar, and 
 that is the truth." 
 
 " Oil, you like to say ill things of yourself."' 
 
 "No, I don't, if they weren't true. You hit me off exactly, 
 the very first thing, when you said men had no object but to 
 amuse themselves. You must be awfully clever as well as nice. 
 I don't see what we're in the world for but to enjoy ourselves. 
 I'm sure I didn't ask to come, and I dare say I shan't have a very 
 long life, so I mean it to be a merry one, I can tell you. As for 
 the governor," said Eddy, " he has no right to complain. Rose 
 is too good for him, but he deserves to have me to keep him in 
 mind of how naughty he has been." 
 
 "What have you done," said Marion, interested, "that is 
 so naughty, as you say 1 " 
 
 "Oh, you would like to know?" he said, opening his eyes 
 wide, with a laugh, " Perhaps if I were to tell you, you would 
 never speak to me any more." 
 
 "I am not that kind," said Marion. "I would always speak 
 to you, whatever you did— if you were sorry."' 
 
 "Ah ! but the chief thing in me is that I am not a bit sorry," 
 said Eddy. — "Are you going back already, you two ? You go off 
 like a hunter, Hose, never minding who toils after you. Miss 
 Rowland and I are going further on." 
 
 " There is a beautiful view up there," said Rosamond, pointing 
 to the west, " if you cared about vieWs, and the mountains are 
 beautiful in that direction, but as you never would look at a 
 landscape in your life " 
 
 " Not when I had mettle more attractive," said Eddy, with a 
 look at Marion, and then he laughed out. " When I can combine 
 both, I like it very much." 
 
 "Mary, it is perhaps going to rain. I would not advise you 
 to go very far," said Archie, who was more susceptible than Ms 
 sister to the light compliment and the laughter. But Marion 
 stood her ground. 
 
 "Since we came to Rosmore," she said, "it has always been 
 going to rain, and we can shelter under the trees, and it does no 
 harm. I have promised to Mr. Saumarez to show him Ben Ros 
 before we go in." 
 
 k * I am very anxious to make the acquaintance of Ben Ros," 
 said Eddy with a laugh. "Au revoir, you people who have 
 accomplished that part already. I don't suppose you are deeply 
 attached to Ben Ros— what do you call him — are you % But it is 
 always a good excuse for a walk — and a talk." 
 
 " You never call me by my name," said Marion ; " you say 
 just you, as if I were not a person at all." 
 
 " Because you would be angry if I called you by your name." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 187 
 
 "Me, angry! Why I am just Miss Rowland to everybody, 
 servants and all." 
 
 "I suppose you don't rank me with the servants? I shall 
 say Marion or nothing— and of course you would not allow 
 me — or May, that is your name too, and the prettiest of all." 
 
 " May is short for Marion," she said with a blush. 
 
 "And I'm to call you so? Then I shall do nothing but call 
 you by it. May, May — it is the prettiest name in the world."' 
 
 Thus there came into conjunction another two who were not 
 Mr. Rowland's two, nor perhaps a two who were very desirable 
 companions for each other, yet who suited each other, as Mr. 
 Edward Saumarez eloquently expressed it, down to the ground. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 "A ball! It is not Archie, I am sure, who would like a 
 ball," said Mrs. Rowland from the sofa, where Eddy had been 
 sitting by her, in an attitude of respectful adoration for some 
 time. He had cast repeated startling glances at Marion, calling 
 her observation while he was so engaged. And Marion, seated 
 at a distance with a book held up in front of her face, gave way 
 now and then to little bursts of laughter, which she quickly 
 repressed. It was infinitely ludicrous to Marion that any one 
 should pretend to advise Mrs. Rowland, a woman of that age ; 
 but Eddy, she thought, played his part to perfection, and it was 
 the funniest thing in the world. 
 
 Rosamond was seated at the piano, playing as it were in an 
 undertone, and for her own pleasure, various bits of music, 
 one suggesting another, as one verse of poetry suggests another. 
 She was a good musician, but she did not attempt to play to 
 so indifferent an audience, though Rowland was always cer- 
 tainly civil in his desire to " have a little music,"' when he 
 came into the drawing-room after dinner. The good man 
 knew that this was the right thing, and that Miss Saumarez 
 would expect to be asked, and sat and yawned dutifully 
 through what he privately thought to himself "just a terrible 
 jingle," out of respect to his guest. But Rowland had not left 
 the dining-room on this occasion. He had a playfellow of his 
 own who had dined with him, and was now engaging him in 
 much more congenial talk. Archie was not much more educated 
 in music than his father ; but there was in his unpossessed being 
 a power of perception, only half developed, of beautiful things. 
 A sonata would have disconcerted him as much as it did Row- 
 land ; but the bits of melody that Rosamond was playing, and 
 which he called in his simplicity tunes, seemed to make an 
 atmosphere about her which was poetically appropriate, and 
 iilled the background of the large partially-lighted sitting-room. 
 
188 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 The group on the sofa, with Marion's detached figure full in the 
 light of a lamp, seemed like a group on the stage, carrying on 
 the thread of some half-comprehended story. Rosamond and 
 the music belonged to a different sphere. There were shaded 
 candles upon the piano, throwing a white light upon a pair of 
 white hands, moving softly over the ivory keys ; behind, the 
 curtains were drawn back from one of the rounded windows, a 
 line of moonlight came in, and in the distance from the corner 
 in which Archie was seated unseen there was a glimmer visible 
 of the distant waters of the Clyde, in glistening life and move- 
 ment under the white blaze of the moon. Archie's heart was 
 full of strange and uncomprehended emotion. He was in a 
 new world, listening to those soft strains which touched him as 
 the light might touch a being coming to life, and feeling the 
 vague enchantment of the night, the presence, like a charm, of 
 the half-seen figure, half dark, half light, at the piano, and this 
 subtle atmosphere in which she breathed. He had said very 
 little to Rosamond in the week during which they had lived 
 under the same roof. She despised him quite frankly, taking 
 no pains to disguise it. He read in her looks that she thought 
 him a lout, a fool, a nuisance, and he was not angry or even 
 surprised that she should think so. But he had no sucli thoughts 
 of her. He liked to watch her, as he liked to look (but this lie 
 had never betrayed to any one) at the hills. He liked this 
 atmosphere of the music, which seemed to have a curious appro- 
 priateness to her — not that he appreciated the music, although 
 she was playing, he thought, some very pretty tunes, but it- 
 suited her somehow. He had not read much poetry, and could 
 not remember any that would apply to her, as a better instructed 
 man might have done ; but the whole scene had a vague poetry 
 which filled in a dim sort of way Archie's inarticulate soul. 
 He listened sitting in what was almost the dark, listening and 
 listening, though he did not suppose she even knew he was there. 
 
 But the sound of one's own name penetrates distance and 
 music and even the development of thought in the strangest 
 way. He heard Mrs. Rowland say that Archie, she could see, 
 would not desire a ball, and the impulse of opposition sprang 
 up quick and strong within him. 
 
 " Why should I not like a ball as well as the rest?" he said 
 out of his corner, raising his voice that his opinion might be 
 heard. 
 
 "There! I told you so," said Eddy; "who wouldn't wish for 
 a ball in this house? The floor in the hall is perfect — it is 
 wasting a good thing not to dance upon it. I am sure you of 
 all people, clear lady, are not one to waste good things. Then 
 fancy what a thing for us. We should make acquaintance with 
 everybody, and probably reap a harvest of invitations. We are 
 on the prowl. We want to be asked places. The governor 
 
 would feel how nobly you had done your part by us and 
 
 and " 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 189 
 
 That shower of fluent words flowed on, but Archie's attention 
 to it suddenly failed. For out of the dimness nearer to him, 
 through the sound of the softly tinkling notes, came a soft but 
 very distinct question — "Why should you, Mr. Rowland, wish 
 for a ball?" 
 
 " I don't," he cried abruptly in his surprise. 
 
 " Then you gave a false impression. Mrs. Rowland must 
 think from what you said that you gave the project your 
 support." She spoke without turning her head, playing softly 
 all the while, speaking in her usual calm and serious vein. 
 
 "I would not oppose," said Archie, "what Marion wanted, 
 and you." 
 
 " You are quite right to put Marion first. It is not generally 
 accounted civil, but it was honest, and I like it from you. I do 
 not care — I am not fond of dancing. There are so many things 
 more important in this life. I should have been surprised if 
 you had wished it," she added after an interval, during which 
 she had gone on modulating, with her hands pressed down upon 
 the keys. 
 
 "Would you tell me why?" said Archie timidly out of the 
 dim world behind her. 
 
 " Oh," she said, " not because it is the fashion with a certain 
 sort of young man, for I don't suppose you would — " she meant 
 to say " know," in her disdain, but moved by some better feeling, 
 said instead "care. But I should not think you were fond of 
 dancing," she said, pressing firmly upon the two bass keys. 
 
 "You think," said Archie, emboldened by the fact that she 
 could not see him, "that I don't look much like dancing. And 
 it's true. I am not good at it. Marion is, though," he said, after 
 a little pause. 
 
 "And what has that got to do with you ?" 
 
 " Oh ! " he said surprised. Then after a pause, " I would 
 naturally like her to be pleased." 
 
 "You would naturally — like her to be pleased ? " Rosamond 
 ceased her playing and turned right round upon the music- 
 stool, facing him. But the light of the candles was now entirely 
 behind her, shining upon the ribbons of her sash — shining a 
 line of colour beyond her white figure, but leaving her counte- 
 nance invisible as before. " Why ? " she said after an interval, 
 "why?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Yes, yes, why? Don't I speak plain? Why? 1 want to 
 know why." 
 
 "But there is no why to it," said Archie, " it is just so." 
 
 She sat dark against the light and thought over this pro- 
 position for some time. " Well," she said at length, " but you 
 are inconsistent. You go against your father in everything, and 
 this lady — who is so out of place here " 
 
 "Why," said Archie hotly, "is she so much out of place 
 here ? " 
 
190 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " Oh ! " said Rosamond, and turning round again she burst 
 into a loud heroic tuneful strain, filling the still room with a 
 clamour of sound. In a few minutes more she had changed 
 into a waltz. Then there occurred a complete transformation 
 scene. Eddy jumped up from his seat by Mrs. Rowland, and 
 snatched or seemed to snatch Marion from her chair, and the 
 pair began to fly and flout about the room, as lightly as a pair 
 of birds. Eddy Saumarez was not an elegant cavalier, but he 
 danced very well, and Marion had not done herself more than 
 justice when she said that she was " very good at it." They 
 threaded the intricacies of the furniture with the greatest light- 
 ness and ease, and whirled from dark to light and from light to 
 dark, from where Mrs. Rowland sat looking on with a smile in 
 the full revelation of a large lamp, to where Archie sat unseen 
 in his corner. Rosamond never turned her head, but played on, 
 varying the tune with an esprit, which her brother followed, 
 ducking and anon sweeping on the light figure of the girl with 
 all the art of an accomplished performer. Archie, taken com- 
 pletely by surprise at first, watched them with a vague sensation 
 of pleasure in the same, which was against all his prepossessions. 
 The sudden indignation in his mind died out. The novelty and 
 suddenness of the movement beguiled him out of himself. There 
 ajDpeared suddenly at the open door while the dancers still went 
 on, all preliminary sound being drowned by the music, the jovial 
 and ruddy countenances of Rowland and his friend, who stood 
 looking on with broad smiles. " Well done," cried the master 
 of the house, clapping his hands ; and then, as if this had been 
 the signal, Rosamond concluded in a moment with a resounding 
 chord, and the dancers stopped short. 
 
 ' fc Well, that was a pretty sight — are we to have no more of 
 it?" Rowland said. 
 
 "I think I can manage an old-world waltz," said Evelyn, "for 
 Rosamond no doubt would like a turn too." 
 
 k 'Xo, thanks — Eddy will never dance with me — and I like the 
 piano best." 
 
 " Nonsense, nonsense," said the master of the house. " Where's 
 Archie 1 Get up, ye lout ! can ye see a pretty girl wanting a 
 dance and not be on your feet in a moment? Come, Evelyn, 
 let us have the old-world waltz, and see the young ones enjoy 
 themselves." 
 
 " Come on," said Eddy to his partner. " It will be as slow as 
 a funeral, but it's fine all the same. Come on, and never mind." 
 
 Rosamond stood up by the piano with a perfectly serious 
 face. She turned half round towards Archie's corner, who in an 
 agony of incapacity and reluctance hesitated to make a step 
 towards her. Rosamond did not care any more for the young 
 man than if he had been a cabbage. He had no mystery or 
 attraction for her, as she had for him, nor was her amour propre 
 affected by his hesitation. She said, scarcely looking at him 
 from the pitch to which her head thrown high seemed to reach, 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 191 
 
 above every one, "Are we to dance?" in those clear tones of 
 unaffected indifference and disdain. She knew that she would 
 be bumped against all the furniture, and expected to be thrown 
 upon the rock of Mr. Rowland standing in the middle of the 
 room where Eddy and Marion encircled, brushed with their 
 wings, wound into the gyrations of their indefatigable whirl ; 
 but she was resigned, and ready for the sacrifice. To poor 
 Archie it was a far more serious affair. He came slowly forward, 
 slouching his shoulders and bending his head. " You were right 
 in thinking I was not fit for it," he said ; " if it's disagreeable 
 to you, you will remember it's not my fault.'' She put out her 
 hand without a word and placed it on his shoulder. I have read 
 many rhapsodies about the manly character of a waltz, in which 
 two people on the verge of love nnd themselves suddenly swept 
 together into paradise ; but the unhappy young man who cannot 
 dance, who finds a fair partner suddenly, in spite of himself, 
 thrust into his awkward arms, who does not know what to do 
 with her, nor with his own unlucky fate, and the things which 
 seem suddenly to spring up and put themselves into his way — 
 no one, so far as I know, has ever found any interest in the 
 sufferings of such an unlucky hero. He held himself as far 
 apart from her as possible as he turned her slowly round, won- 
 dering if she hated him, if she would ever again look at him, 
 afraid to glance at her lest he should read disgust in her face. 
 A time of giddy anguish followed, how long or how short Archie 
 could not tell. He supposed that Rosamond exerted herself to 
 keep him up, to guide him blindly about the room ; for when 
 those horrible gyrations were over, and the whirl ceased, and 
 the walls began once more to settle straight into their placesjie 
 heard himself addressed with noisy congratulations^ "Well 
 done, Archie, you're not such a duffer after all," cried his father. 
 "Bravo, Rowland!" said Eddy. Mrs. Rowland laughed and 
 clapped her hands. " You are far better at it than I thought," 
 said Marion. Rosamond alone stood as serious as before, her 
 breathing a little quickened, looking at it as if she thought she 
 might have soiled the hand which had been upon his shoulder. 
 He felt as if he could have struck her as he turned away his 
 head. 
 
 "After this," said Mrs. Rowland, "I musttell you what the 
 children want, James. I am opposing it as in duty bound, but 
 their little performance, I am sure, has thrown you on their 
 side : they want us to give a ball." 
 
 "A ball !" said Mr. Rowland, with many notes of interroga- 
 tion ; and then he added with the broad smile, which in its 
 warmth and ruddiness breathed a little intimation of being after 
 dinner, " Why not ? " 
 
 " Ah, I knew you would be on their side. I have been resisting 
 as in duty bound " 
 
 "And why in duty bound? In your heart," said Rowland, 
 "it is you who are always on their side. I may have my little 
 
192 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 moments of fatherly wrath. A father is nothing, you know, 
 Legden, if he does not find fault." 
 
 " That's quite so," said the great ironmaster, who had been 
 dining with the great railway man. "We must keep up our 
 authority, and discipline must always be preserved." 
 
 " But she stands up for them through thick and thin," said 
 the happy man. " I cannot wallop my own niggers, so to speak, 
 meaning to give my boy a wigging, but she pushes in, standing 
 up for two. To hear her speak, you would think my two were 
 angels, and I an old curmudgeon always finding fault : that's 
 the beauty of a wife." 
 
 "Well," said Evelyn, " never mind ; I am to give in, I suppose. 
 You know, James, it will turn the whole house upside down." 
 
 " We'll put it right again," he said. 
 
 " And probably make a revolution among the servants." 
 
 "We'll crush the revolution, or get other servants in their 
 places." 
 
 " And you will have no comfort in your life for at least three 
 days — the day before the performance, the day of the perform- 
 ance, and the day after the performance." 
 
 " Hoot ! " said Rowland, and he said no more. 
 
 "It will not be a bad plan at all if ye think anything of my 
 opinion," said the ironmaster., " I'm but new in my place my- 
 self, a matter of two or three years. And one of the first things 
 I did was to give a ball. It was a very popular thing — we just 
 got in everybody. The young folk, who are very important, 
 who just give you a great lift in reconciling a place where they 
 are pleased, and the mothers that come with them, and all the 
 intermediate ones that are neither young nor old, that are hang- 
 ing at a loose thread. If your house is a good size, you can ask 
 anybody ; and this is a very fair size," said the other rich man, 
 looking condescendingly round the drawing-room, which was 
 certainly not so immense as his great new-built castle down the 
 Clyde. 
 
 "Oh, it's big enough," said Rowland, a little wounded in his 
 feelings. To compare Rosmore to any bran-new house with 
 fictitious battlements and towers, was at once a brutality and a 
 bad joke. " We will get in a good number here," he said, look- 
 ing round him complacently, " and as we have nothing but 
 Eastern carpets, there will be the less trouble. Well, my dear, 
 that is settled. I am not such a stern parent as I get the credit 
 of being, and the bairns shall have their will." 
 
 " I told you I could make her do it," said Eddy to Marion 
 behind the shelter of the book of pictures which she had taken 
 up again. 
 
 " It was neither you nor her that did it," said Marion : " it was 
 papa." 
 
 " It was because she put it to him so cleverly. You will see 
 Mrs. Rowland will always follow my lead. She can't forget that 
 I am my father's son." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 193 
 
 " Will you tell me that .story I " said Marion, whose curiosity 
 he had raised and allowed to drop a dozen times. 
 
 " Some time or other," said Eddy. " I like to keep you on the 
 tenter-hooks. You look prettier than ever when you have a fit 
 of curiosity which makes your eyes shine. Do you know your 
 eyes give out sparks when you look at me like that ? " 
 
 " Like a cat," said Marion ; " that is no compliment." 
 
 " Yes, just like a cat, torturing- the poor little mouse that she 
 has fascinated with her big shining eyes." He opened his own 
 eyes wide with a threatening movement of his hand, at which 
 they both laughed. " Before she devours him, she tortures him," 
 he said. Which was it 1 he or she ? But poor little Marion had 
 not the faintest idea that she was in the way of being devoured. 
 She did not require very fine methods, but accepted the com- 
 pliments and the badinage in her simplicity. It amused her 
 extremely to " tease " him, as she thought, to make little rude 
 speeches and show her innocent power. After all it was inno- 
 cent enough, and artless, if without much delicacy or dignity. 
 So much meaning as was in it was all on Eddy's side. 
 
 There was no question of cat or mouse between the other two, 
 who stood by each other's side without movement, without 
 looking at each other, while the question of the ball was dis- 
 cussed. Rosamond at last said to her partner, speaking as 
 usual from her full height, and without even turning her head 
 his way : "You do not dance so very badly, if you would take 
 time and not be flurried." It was the same advice which Evelyn 
 had given him about his shooting, and which he had resented 
 then, as he resented this counsel now. 
 
 " You are very kind to encourage me. I have no desire to 
 learn," he said. 
 
 " Oh, that's silly," said Rosamond. " Why shouldn't you 
 learn 1 Why shouldn't you make yourself a little agreeable, 
 Mr. Rowland 1 Xo, of course it is nothing to me. I see you 
 for a few weeks, a great deal of you, and then perhaps I never 
 see you again. It does not matter to me in the very least. Still 
 it is a pity to see a man sitting as you do — not speaking, not 
 taking an interest in anything. What is the good of being a 
 man at all 1 " 
 
 Archie was very much taken aback by this onslaiight. He 
 stared at her for a moment helplessly. His wit was not quick 
 enough to make any lively rejoinder as he might have done. 
 All he could say was rather vulgar, and said with an injured, 
 offended air — " I did not make myself." 
 
 " You ought to make yourself," said the severe young judge, 
 "if you are not made properly to begin with ; but that is not 
 the question. Don't you know it makes everybody uncomfort- 
 able to see the son of the house sitting behind never saying 
 anything. I hate to be made uncomfortable," said Rosamond, 
 "it makes me think all sorts of horrid things. But there is 
 nothing the matter with you. You are not deformed or bad in 
 
 o 
 
194 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 your head, or out of health, or badly snubbed. Mrs. Rowland 
 keeps looking at you : she does not know what to do ; and you 
 make me horribly uncomfortable," said Rosamond with energy ; 
 "that was why I made you get up and dance." 
 
 " It wasn't very successful," said Archie, with a grim smile ; 
 "don't you wish you had let it alone 1 " 
 
 " No, I don't wish I had let it alone. I should like to take 
 you by the shoulders and shake you. Oh, if I Avere your sister ! " 
 She broke off with a suggestive grind of her white teeth. " Eddy 
 is bad enough," she added after a moment. "He's a little ape : 
 I can do nothing with him ; but I could put up with even 
 Eddy better than I could put up with you — if I were your 
 sister." 
 
 " But fortunately you are not my sister." 
 
 " No, nor your stepmother either," said Rosamond with energy, 
 " or I don't know what I should do. Can't you talk a little, can't 
 you try to dance a bit, can't you be like other people 1 Usually 
 I don't advise other people so very much : they chatter for ever 
 and ever, and talk a great deal of nonsense. But it reconciles 
 one to them. When one sees you " 
 
 " Perhaps I had better take myself off," said Archie ; " and 
 then you will not have that annoyance any more." 
 
 " You want to try to make me out to be a meddler and a busy- 
 body," said Rosamond ; " but I am not that. I only say what I 
 feel. Why, you should be the one to make the house j)leasant ! 
 You are going out to shoot to-morrow, you and Eddy, and we 
 are to bring you your luncheon out on the hill. You ought to 
 be all full of petit s soucis, and make it pleasant for us ; but you 
 will not. I know what you will do. You will sit down on a 
 stone as far away as you can go, and you will bend down your 
 brow, and perhaps turn your back, and never say one word." 
 
 " I shall do nothing of the kind," said Archie, red with rage, 
 especially as she shrugged up her shoulders, and put down her 
 chin, and contracted her forehead in a manner which he felt to 
 be more or less like himself. 
 
 " Yes, you will," said Rosamond, with the point-blank contra- 
 diction of youth. 
 
 "No, I will not," cried the boy, forgetting everything but his 
 wrongs. A hot moisture came to his eyes. " I hate shooting," 
 he said ; " I hate company. I hate all those antics I was not 
 brought up to. What business have you to come here and want 
 London manners from me 1 " 
 
 " You poor boy," said Rosamond, shaking her highly-poised 
 head. " London manners," she said, in a tone of the mildest 
 philosophy, "are often just what yours are. Men in London ape 
 being rude like you. They pretend to care for nothing ; not to 
 hear what people say to them. It is smart to be uncivil, don't 
 you know. If you keep it up, you will be the fashion when you 
 go to town." 
 
 Archie clenched his fist in the height of his passion ; not, of 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 195 
 
 course, to hit out at Rosamond, but at somebody — at the London 
 men — at the detestable world. 
 
 " Oh, you may be angry,"' said the young lady, "but it is quite 
 true. Should you like to dance with me again, Mr. Rowland, 
 for you see Eddy and Marion are off once more 1 ? and Mrs. How- 
 land plays very well — really very nicely, for such an old-fashioned 
 thing as she is playing. If you do not choose to dance, as there 
 is nobody else to take me out, perhaps you will kindly say so, 
 and then we need not continue standing here." 
 
 Said Archie, with a gasp, with sudden humility, "I can't 
 dance at all : do you want to make a fool of me ! If you think 
 it is my fault, you are quite mistaken. I don't want to be 
 ridiculous. I would talk and do things if I could " 
 
 " Come along then and try," said the girl. " Don't be flurried 
 and nervous. Let us make for the other end of the room, where 
 there is not much light— and do remember not to knock against 
 your father. That was not bad at all ; now, one turn more, and 
 then make for the window, and take me out." 
 
 " You will catch cold," said Archie, breathlessly. 
 
 " Oh, I'm not afraid ; and it will make an end of it. Here we 
 are," she cried, as they emerged suddenly into the moonlight. 
 " Now give me your arm, please, and take me round to the back 
 door. Eddy will be after us in a moment ; it will be just the 
 chance for him. That was all very well for ten minutes, but it 
 would not do to carry it on all night. Oh ! " she said, suddenly, 
 "look! look!" 
 
 They had come out suddenly upon the colonnade, and in a 
 moment stood in another world. Far below the Clyde lay like 
 molten silver, in a ripple of glistening movement, with the mass 
 of trees, wholly denuded of their leaves, paving it in on either 
 side. Into the opening glided in a moment a little pleasure boat, 
 with a white sail catching the white blaze of the moon. It was 
 wafted by in a moment; as they stood, appearing and disaj> 
 pearing like a bird across the silver tide. The sky, a wide, vast 
 vault of blue, llaked with little white clouds, seemed to envelop 
 and hold that little vignette of earth and sky. In the far dis- 
 tance was the darkness of heaven's vault, the smoke of the town 
 on the other side, with a few lights appearing out of it here and 
 there. Rosamond, forgetting herself in the sudden sensation, 
 pressed his arm with her fingers to call his attention. "Did 
 you ever see it like that before ? " she said. 
 
 '" Never!" said Archie, with a fervour of which he was not 
 himself conscious, feeling as if all the evil conditions of life had 
 vanished and paradise come. 
 
 Was this another version of the cat and the mouse? 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 The luncheon on the hill-side would have been probably as 
 successful as these parties ever are, had it not been for one 
 incident. In the train of the little pony-cart, which carried the 
 food, and which had to be led over the rougher parts by Sandy 
 the groom, there appeared a stranger whom Mrs. Rowland and 
 her visitors had seen at two or three corners on the way, so 
 long as it was possible to drive : supposed a tourist — which was 
 a being very little esteemed at Rosmore, where tourists were 
 divided into two sections, one labelled as being "from Glasgow,'' 
 who was at once the most innocent and the most objectionable ; 
 while the other, in the slang of the district, was called B. T. or 
 British tourist, and was presumably "from the south," a flatter- 
 ing appellation which means England in these regions. This 
 man had been persistently making his way with much toil, but 
 apparent inoffensiveness, to the top of the hill, and the ladies 
 had not interfered with his freedom. I may say, however (which 
 is a view not perhaps popularly taken), that there are two ways 
 of regarding the indiscriminate presence of tourists everywhere 
 as exemplified in the question of footpaths. The tourist ought 
 to know that wherever he appears he is objectionable to the 
 natives of a country, save to those who sell him provisions, and 
 take him in to lodge ; and that his undesired presence upon 
 private property is regarded by all who possess any, whether it 
 be a grass-plot or a hill-side, with unmitigated aversion. It is at 
 least as hard for the proprietor to put up with him, as it is for 
 him to be shut out from one particular view — which is no better 
 than other views which are to be procured on other people's 
 property, or even from the high-road. If it w^re^ then fully 
 understood that there w 7 as a hardship on both sides, it might be 
 easier to come to an understanding. Mrs. Rowland and the 
 young ladies regarded the figure of the tourist toiling upwards 
 with natural hostility. " What right has any man on our hill ! " 
 Marion said ; and there was one occasion on which Rosamond 
 had actually extended a foot, with the intention of jumping out 
 of the pony carriage and warning off the intruder. 
 
 "I do not mind in the least telling him that he is on private 
 property, if you wish it, Mrs. Rowland." 
 
 " My dear, though it is private property, it is only the wild 
 side of a mountain," said Evelyn ; " the poor man is doing harm 
 to nothing but our feelings." 
 
 "If he was to be shot," said the persistent Marion, "we would 
 be blamed for not warning him." 
 
 Perhaps Mrs. Rowland thought it would not be a bad thing if 
 the stranger was shot (very slightly), as the best way of proving 
 the peril of such unauthorized wanderings. But she said nothing, 
 
AXD His CHILDREN 197 
 
 and drove on, until the path was lost in the moor, and the ladies 
 had to get out and walk. 
 
 It was too much of a good thing, however, they all felt, when 
 the same man was seen to reappear, following closely in the 
 footsteps of Sandy, who led the pony with the luncheon. They 
 had reached by this time the appointed spot on the hill, which 
 was high above the loch, a sort of natural platform, where a 
 circle of grass broke the darker surface of the heather and 
 underwood. Great bushes of high-growing ling, with the faded 
 bells all stiffened into russet upon them, stood round this oasis, 
 which was kept green, and in a wet season something more than 
 green, by the burn, which made half a circuit round it, leaping 
 downwards from little ridge to ridge of its course. All around 
 among the heather grew the sweet gale, or bog-myrtle, sending 
 up a grateful sweetness when any one crushed a self-sacrificing 
 plant. The sky was of the triumphant yet not too well assured 
 brightness, which is peculiar to Highland skies — a sort of 
 heavenly triumph over difficulties, chastened by the sense that 
 the conquered clouds may blow back at any moment. Deep 
 down, the loch lay like a blue mirror, with all the little clouds 
 floating upon it like boats, in reflections, among the grey 
 willows and the yellow autumnal foliage. Was the grass so 
 velvet, mossy, and beautiful of this little circle — slightly wet, 
 perhaps boggy, "saft,"' as Sandy said? Far from us be the 
 thought : besides, it was heaped with shawls and plaids, and 
 what did it matter 1 ? The only members of the party who 
 thought of the view were Evelyn and Rosamond. The others 
 were satiated with views. And what did Eddy and Marion care 
 for anything but their eternal war of words, their little mutual 
 rudenesses and compliments 1 About Archie's sentiments nobody 
 knew. Sometimes he turned his back to the loch, sometimes 
 would be seen with his eyes intent, as if he were watching some- 
 thing on the opposite side. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Marion suddenly, with a long-drawn breath, 
 "there is that man again !" 
 
 "What man?" 
 
 They had all been seated on the dry ridge of the ling, rust- 
 ling and stiff" with its dessicated flowers, above the less trust- 
 worthy level of the grass, and were watching with interest the 
 broken hobble . of the cart with the baskets, over the uneven 
 ground. 
 
 "Roderick will tell him—" said Mrs. Rowland, "and persuade 
 him to go away." 
 
 "Ay will I, mem," said the gamekeeper, jocund but grim. 
 "I'll persuade him — in the drawing of a breath." 
 
 Here an exclamation from Eddy startled everybody. "Oh, 
 hold on ! " was all the young man said ; but_ his tone had an 
 expression which somehow roused the attention of every one. 
 He made a spring among the heather towards the objectionable 
 visitor. "Is it you, Johnson? I thought you were gone," he 
 
198 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 was heard to say. And then it appeared that he had something 
 private to add to the intruder, for he drew him away under the 
 shelter of the clump of rowan trees, which lent an illumination 
 of red berries to the scene. 
 
 The luncheon had been spread out, and everything was ready 
 to begin upon, when Eddy, certainly under the circumstances 
 the most useful member of the party, came back. He was 
 slowly followed by the tourist, and bore a somewhat embar- 
 rassed look. " Mrs. Rowland, may I introduce a friend of mine, 
 Johnson of— St. Chad's?" His countenance had been full of 
 perplexity, but in the momentary pause which preceded the 
 utterance of the last words, he suddenly recovered himself. 
 "Distinguished don," he added, "no end of a scholar. Came up 
 here for a reading party ; but some of them have not arrived 
 
 yet." 
 
 Mr. Johnson did not come up to Evelyn's ideas of a distin- 
 guished don ; but Mrs. Rowland was aware that appearances 
 are often deceptive in the case of such great personages, and it 
 did not occur to her that October was an unlikely moment for a 
 reading party. She was perhaps the only one who attached any 
 significance at all to the words. She begged Mr. Johnson to 
 find aseat for himself, and share their luncheon. He was an 
 insignificant person, with furtive eyes and a sallow complexion, 
 clothed in the usual tweeds. "I am sure, madam, I am much 
 obliged to you," he said ; which was somewhat startling ; but 
 dons are often very old-fashioned, as Evelyn was aware. 
 
 The conversation went on as if he were not there. He was a 
 taciturn person, but gave a great and concentrated attention to 
 the basket. To see him eating and drinking recalled to Evelyn 
 stories which everybody in her youth had been fond of telling 
 to the disadvantage of the dons. 
 
 " You have very little in your bag. I would have killed more 
 myself," said Marion. 
 
 "Ah, I dare say," Eddy replied; "you've no heart and no 
 conscience, and what would you care what you killed ? A man 
 or two in the bag would have made it much heavier." 
 
 "As if I would take the trouble to shoot men ! " 
 
 " And a woman can't be tried for manslaughter," said Eddy : 
 and they both laughed as if, except their own rather poor fun, 
 there was nothing that was of any interest in the world. 
 
 Rosamond kept her stately pose, her lofty manner of treating 
 the subject under discussion, but she was perhaps scarcely more 
 elevated in her aim. "Can you tell me the names of the 
 mountains, now ? " she said, with an emphasis which only Archie 
 understood. 
 
 And he woke up from that self-absorbed dullness which was 
 the aspect he presented in general, and pointed out to her peak 
 after peak, not without an occasional glance at Roderick in the 
 background, who gave him a nod back again over the young 
 lady's head. Evelyn looked on, perceiving all these little details 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 199 
 
 with an unembarrassed attention. It was seldom she was so free 
 to observe what was going on about her : the business of a large 
 household, to which she was yet unaccustomed, the calls of her 
 husband upon her attention, the cares of the mistress of the 
 house to keep everything going, had lessened her possibilities of 
 observation. But the position of an elder woman in the midst 
 of a little company of this description is sometimes almost 
 uncomfortably free. There is no pretence made of any parti- 
 cular regard to her amusement, and she is allowed to observe at 
 her leisure. Evelyn perceived, with a little alarm, the position 
 of affairs. Was it perhaps accidental — a mere fortuitous con- 
 junction of the two who most attracted each other? Was it 
 perhaps a plan, a scheme? She had been so long out of the 
 world of social scheming that she had forgotten its ways. She 
 observed for a little, with a half benign amusement the skirmish- 
 ing of Marion and Eddy, the little onslaughts and withdrawals, 
 pro vocations not much more refined than a milkmaid's jibes, 
 responses not in better taste. Mrs. Rowland had not thought 
 much of the "style"' of Edward Saumarez the younger, from 
 the beginning — an old-fashioned word, which in the language of 
 the present day would mean that she thought him "bad form." 
 Words change, and so do all forms of expression, but the actual 
 fact does not alter. As she mentally compared this common- 
 place young man, whose manners she thought bad and whose 
 person was so entirely without distinction, with his father — the 
 love of her own youth, the handsome, distinguished, courtly 
 Saumarez of another day — a sudden rush of painful feeling came 
 over Evelyn. Was this what he intended? Was it to be so 
 done that she herself should seem the schemer, the matchmaker, 
 promoting the advantage of his son and daughter above that of 
 her husband's children? Nobody remarked how Evelyn was 
 looking, or inquired what it was that gave occasion for that 
 sudden flush and paleness. Was this what it meant — his eager- 
 ness to connect his children with her, that she should invite 
 them, assume the responsibility of them ? Evelyn saw every- 
 thing that might have been in his mind as with the flash of a 
 sudden light. He had jilted her, but she had never ceased to 
 care for him, people would say ; as witness the results. Had 
 she not thrown her husband's boy and girl, inexperienced, sus- 
 pecting nothing, made of money, into the grip of those clever 
 Saumarez ? 
 
 Evelyn got up from her seat in the horror of the thought that 
 thus came into her mind, and with the sensation that she must 
 do something at once to put an end to it. But nobody even 
 remarked her movement, and she sat down again with a pant 
 of baffled eagerness. Rosamond and Archie sat with their backs 
 to her, full of their own subject : the dull boy was awakening 
 under that siren's touch ; while Marion and Eddy kept up a 
 deafening chatter about something much more interesting than 
 the mountains or waters — themselves ; each moving on the lines 
 
200 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 that answered best. Was the plan laid out in all its details 1 
 Had they come with their instructions to captivate these two 
 homely Rowlands before the other harpies had so much as got 
 note of them, to anticipate all competition ? It was just such 
 a heartless scheme as he might have conceived in his unsoftened, 
 unchastened suffering. And Madeline Leighton's words came 
 back upon Evelyn's mind with a sudden horror : " He will com- 
 promise you, if he can, with your husband." How angry she 
 had been, thinking only of the ordinary sense of these words. 
 Ah ! here was another sense — a sense she had never dreamt of ! 
 If Eddy Saumarez with his bad little record, his short story of 
 as much folly as could be crammed into a life of twenty, asked 
 Marion's father for her hand and fortune — and Archie, with the 
 power of sullen opposition which was in him, proclaimed his 
 intention of marrying Rosamond, to whom would her husband 
 turn as the cause of these premature engagements? Who would 
 be blamed by the world ? Would any one believe that she had 
 
 not thought of such a contingency? Would James James, 
 
 whose soul trusted in her ? Oh, villain and traitor ! was this 
 his way of punishing her for having escaped from his influence, 
 for the late happiness that had made her so much better oft' than 
 he was? Madeline's warning had not been strong enough or 
 clear enough to save her. Evelyn clasped her hands in her lap 
 till the pressure hurt her, and looked on helpless at the work 
 which was going so briskly on at her side — the work which she 
 would be believed to have planned — with eyes which could 
 scarcely endure the sight. 
 
 " I have always observed," Rosamond was saying with the air 
 of a sage, " that the more you take an interest in anything, the 
 more amused you are. Everything is tiresome when you don't 
 take an interest. My father is an instance. He is never out of 
 his chair : he can't do anything without Rogers, not even raise 
 himself up. You would think he had a dreadful life : but he 
 has not : he watches the people, and knows everything that 
 happens. I am a little like that myself. Now Eddy has no 
 such interest in anything. He likes horses and billiards and 
 that sort of thing, and bad company generally." Rosamond 
 gave a glance behind at Eddy's acquaintance, who was making 
 a perfectly good luncheon, and keeping up a furtive observation 
 of everybody round him. " I don't like," she said, " the looks of 
 that man. Do you think he belongs to any college ? I don't." 
 
 " He is not like the college men I have seen," Archie ventured 
 to say. 
 
 "No, of course he is not : he is more like a scout out on a 
 holiday. — As you are so kind as to pay some attention to what 
 I say, Mr. Rowland, please remember that Eddy is not at all to 
 be relied upon. He would think it was quite a good joke to 
 bring in a man like that. Don't let him, whatever 3^011 do, have 
 an invitation to the ball." 
 
 " If your brother asks for it — " said Archie. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 201 
 
 " Never mind my brother : you will do a great deal better if 
 you trust me," said Rosamond. There was a little pause, and 
 then a murmur from Archie, which Evelyn could not hear ; but 
 she drew her own conclusions. It was : " And am I not doing 
 that with all my heart ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " Eosamond said, elevating her eyebrows slightly, cast- 
 ing for almost the first time a glance down upon him. It seemed 
 to give her some surprise, not unmingled with apprehension, 
 and she drew a little further off from the heather, and caught a 
 branch of the gale, as if disturbed for once in her composure. 
 The scent of it, as the girl crushed it in her hand, rose to Mrs. 
 Rowland and remained in her consciousness ever after as some- 
 thing associated with anxiety and care. 
 
 Meanwhile Marion and Eddy were chatting so continuously, 
 sometimes in confidential whispers, sometimes with outbursts 
 of sound and laughter, that no one could be any the wiser as to 
 what they said. "He is no more a don than I am," Eddy was 
 confessing ; "it was the first thing I could think of to give him 
 a countenance. There never was a more villainous one than he 
 has by nature. Xo, I won't tell you what he is : he's mixed up 
 with all sorts of people. What a lark to have him asked to the 
 ball ! Do you think she would do it ? To introduce him every- 
 where as Johnson of Chad's, and see how he would behave ! I 
 shall not let you dance with him though, or any nice girl I 
 know." 
 
 " Oh, I would dance with him if he asked me," said Marion. 
 " If you think that I would be guided by you ! " 
 
 " I know more about that than you do," said Eddy. " You 
 shan't, I can tell you : for one thing, I mean to dance with you 
 myself all the night. We go so well together, you and I. And 
 I know how to square the chaperons— especially with her. She 
 won't dare to say anything against me." 
 
 "If you think that I would let her interfere ! " said Marion ; 
 " but you are not to get things all your own way. I'll just dance 
 with whom I please — and maybe not with you at all." 
 
 " We'll see about that," said Eddy. 
 
 " Yes, we'll see about it," cried the girl, and then there was a 
 great laugh, as if this had been the wittiest observation in the 
 world. 
 
 If Evelyn did not hear this, she saw it, with all the advantages 
 of spectatorship seeing more in the game than the actors them- 
 selves were aware of, probably more (which is the drawback of 
 spectatorship) than had any existence. Would James think 
 she was in the plot ? Woulcl he believe it was of her invention, 
 or that she had carried it out consciously for the advantage of 
 the others'? In her first hurried discovery of this aspect of 
 affairs, it did not occur to Evelyn that James was a man of an 
 old-fashioned type, who believed in true love, and might sym- 
 pathize with his children if they were impressed by such an 
 influence, more than with any wise counsel or hesitation as to 
 
202 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 means. She herself, whatever her sentiments might be, belonged 
 to a world more moved by conventional laws. She thought that 
 she saw him with reproach in his face, looking at her as he never 
 had done, severely, reproachfully — lie to whom she owed so much, 
 not only wealth and consideration, but tenderness and kindness, 
 and absolute trust — Trust ! that was the greatest of all : and he 
 would think that she had betrayed him. 
 
 Mr. Johnson, so-called of St. Chad's, finished the substantial 
 part of his banquet about this moment, and with a glance at the 
 pastry which was visible, laid out upon the white cloth, stirred 
 a little in his nest of heather, making the long spikes of the ling 
 rustle, and calling forth again that pungent sweetness of the 
 gale. Mrs. Rowland, to whom incivility was impossible, and 
 who, though doubtful, still felt it more comprehensible that a 
 distinguished don might be of evil appearance than that Eddy 
 Saumarez could have told her a lie, turned towards him to see 
 what were his wants. He was not without an ambition to shine 
 in polite conversation, and Evelyn's was not the aspect to dis- 
 courage such attempts. He said, waving his hand as if to include 
 the whole party, " This is a very cheerful way, if you will let me 
 say so, of meeting for the first time." 
 
 " Yes ? " said Evelyn, interrogatively. 
 
 " It's a beautiful scene," said the stranger, " and the pie was 
 excellent. What a nice way for ladies to join in sport, when 
 the men's tired and ready to be tumbled over at the first shot— 
 ha, ha, — as seems to be the case, ma'am, in your vicinity." 
 
 "Sir?" said Mrs. Rowland. 
 
 " I don't want to give offence," said Johnson of St. Chad's, 
 "but I should say, if ever there was one, that there is a case." 
 He indicated with his eyebrows the chatting pair, too busy to 
 pay attention to their neighbours, on Mrs. Rowland's other side. 
 
 "A case? I do not really know what you mean?" she said 
 hurriedly. 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon," said the man, " if I remark what I 
 oughtn't. These sort of things are generally remarked — but 
 some people takes them very serious," he added, nodding his 
 head confidentially. 
 
 " Takes them serious ! " If this was a college don, he had 
 certainly a very strange Avay of speaking. 
 
 " I think you are mistaken," said Mrs. Rowland ; " I don't know 
 of anything that is going on — except luncheon. May I offer 
 you some of these, as your friend is too busy to see that you 
 have what you want." 
 
 "Ah, he is a fellow that knows what he wants," said the don 
 admiringly, "and doesn't trouble himself what other people 
 thinks. Thank you very much, I'll take some grateful — " he 
 added " ly," after he had drawn a breath, making a little choke 
 over the word — "gratefully, that's what I mean. A man gets 
 out of his manners never seeing a lady for — a whole term 
 sometimes," he said. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 203 
 
 Was he a college don ? More and more puzzled was poor 
 Evelyn, who could believe in anything rather than that she had 
 been told what was not true. But whatever it was, she felt 
 that it was better not to leave this person to his false ideas in 
 respect to the young people. "Perhaps I ought to tell you."' 
 she said, "that you are making a mistake. There is no case, if 
 that means an — engagement, or anything of that sort. My son 
 and daughter are very young, and so are their friends. They 
 are boys and girls together — no one, on either side, would hear 
 of anything of the kind." 
 
 "Oh!" said the man, who was certainly not a gentleman, 
 whatever else he might hs. He put down his plat*- and gave a 
 keen look across Mrs. Rowland to Eddy, who was far too much 
 engaged to notice anything. " Oh ! " he said again ; then after 
 a pause : "I'm an old hand," he added ; "it maybe you that are 
 mistaken, ma'am, and not me." 
 
 Mrs. Rowland did not think proper to say more. One way or 
 other it must, she thought, be a matter of entire indifference to 
 this disreputable-looking stranger what were the circumstances 
 of Eddy Saumarez. She rose from her throne of heather, taking- 
 no further notice of the visitor, and disturbing the party alto- 
 gether, to the resentment of everybody. "I have only just 
 begun to have my lunch," said Marion — and "Is it really time 
 to be going ? -> Rosamond asked with a fine tone of surprise. The 
 young men said little ; but their faces showed their feelings. 
 "That is the Avorst of it," said Eddy, in an audible whisper, "a 
 chaperon is sure to spoil sport. She doesn't mean any harm, 
 but she does it by instinct." And of the two pairs no one 
 budged. Evelyn was alone among these young conspirators, 
 and the vulgar commentator who had sought to make himself 
 agreeable by putting her terrors into words. She wandered a 
 little further upon the hill-side, and gathered a handful of the 
 white Grass of Parnassus, and the little blue orchid which is to 
 be found on these hills, to give herself a countenance, not 
 knowing how to act or what to do ; whether to speak to her 
 husband or to endeavour in her own person to divide the bonds 
 which had grown up so fast. But how could she do this? What 
 did they care for what she said, these independent young people 1 
 What hold had she over them, one way or another 1 And yet 
 it would be said that she had been the chief actor in everything, 
 that it was she who had thrown them together ; she who had 
 plotted to throw James Piowland's wealth into the hands and 
 house of the Saumarez. The thought was intolerable ; her whole 
 mind cried out against it, protesting that it was not to be borne ; 
 but how was she to free herself from this knot in which she was 
 envelojDed ? What was she to do ? 
 
204 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 It need scarcely be said that the young Saumarez had been 
 early made acquainted with Rankin's cottage in the wood, and 
 with the wonderful qualities of the " sma' " family which he 
 kept about him. The humours of Roy and Dim were by this 
 time among the most cheerful features of the house of Rosmore. 
 That little pair went tumbling over each other with ferocious 
 curiosity into every corner, sniffing and investigating : they 
 gave each other the word when, in the far distance, a carriage 
 began to grind, or a footstep to disturb the gravel approaching 
 the door — and flew like two balls of fur, with two little pairs of 
 gleaming eyes and no legs to speak of, helter-skelter, head- 
 over-heels, to defend the house with ferocious, if infantile, 
 barking. They walked out with Mrs. Rowland when she went 
 out upon the lawn, making futile efforts to get upon the edge of 
 her dress, and so be carried along as in a triumphal car on the 
 silken train that touched the ground. They superintended 
 every setting out and returning home, all but opening the door 
 of the carriage when their mistress appeared. Archie had given 
 them up to her with a sort of revulsion of feeling, kicking them 
 from him when he found that the doggies hung on to his step- 
 mother's skirts in spite of all other blandishments. He addressed 
 them only in kindly intercourse when she was out of the way, 
 but when she appeared, gave a kick to one and tossed the other 
 down out of his hands. They had this quality, that they never 
 were hurt, always came up again in a jovial entanglement of 
 legs and hair, and were not too proud to talk to any one 
 who would talk to them. Even the solemn butler, of whom 
 Archie always continued to stand in awe, had been seen in a 
 corner on his knees with a supply of biscuits, endeavouring to 
 teach them to beg ; which was an unsuccessful effort, since the 
 little soft unformed backbones were as yet unfit for the effort. 
 The young visitors, it is needless to say, were at once initiated 
 into the worship of Roy and Dhu, and to become the happy 
 possessors of other members of the family had early become the 
 ambition of both Rosamond and Eddy — genuine on her part, 
 perhaps only a pretext on his. For the worship of the dog is a 
 very widespreading and varied rite, followed by some out of a 
 real understanding of those faithful, little-discriminating, and 
 often puzzled retainers of humanity, but by many out of pure 
 vacancy and for love of the inferior company of grooms and 
 kennel-keepers, who are the retainers, in their turn, of the 
 nobler breed. It was natural that Eddy should gravitate 
 towards a place where the dull hours were to be got through by 
 such means. And Rosamond liked the little humorous creatures, 
 and was amused by the old gamekeeper, and had pleasure in the 
 quaint unknown aspect of the cottage life. Besides all these, 
 
AXD His CHILDREN 205 
 
 when they escaped one morning together from the house, at a 
 moment when Marion was out of the way, and Archie occupied, 
 there was a little pleasure in the mere act of escaping and in 
 theopportunityfor consultations of their own. More than half 
 their month in Rosmore was now over, and they had occasion 
 for a little mutual understanding. It was a crisp morning of 
 late October, very still, hoar frost white in all the hollows, and 
 not yet melted into dew on the trees. Heaps of yellow leaves 
 had come down in the night, and lay like gold at the foot of the 
 now thin and trembling birches. The red trunks of the fir-trees 
 came out warmly in the sharpness of the atmosphere, and the 
 big branches of the rowan-berries drooped in consciousness of 
 the approaching fall. 
 
 "What luck,'" said Eddy, "to get off for once without those 
 other two, as old Rowland calls them, at our heels."' 
 
 Eosamond assented briefly, but added, by way of qualification, 
 "It is you generally who are at Marion's heels." 
 
 " Look here, Rose,'' said the brother, " you know the governor 
 better than I do. What was his object in sending you and me 
 here 1 " 
 
 " To get rid of us for a month, and have no responsibility," 
 said Rosamond promptly. 
 
 " Oh, come, that's not reason enough for him. Did he mean 
 me to make up to this little thing here 1 I suppose she's made 
 of money — at least the father is ; but what he'll give her for her 
 fortune is an unknown quantity. I don't think he is very fond 
 of her ; do you 1 And I say, how old is Mrs. Rowland ? — some- 
 thing would depend on that." 
 
 " How should I know how old Mrs. Rowland is ; and what 
 would it matter if she were as old as — father himself ? " 
 
 "She must be near it," said Eddy thoughtfully, "or he would 
 not have gone after her in his young days. Of course if she has 
 no children, don't you see, it makes all the difference. Let' 
 assume that shell have no children : then he must leave all 
 his money between those two, and that would not be bad. 
 If I am to marry for money, I don't mean to let myself go 
 cheap." 
 
 " You would be worth so very much to any woman ! " said 
 Rosamond in high disdain. 
 
 "I am worth a decent sum," said Eddy, "which is more than 
 you are, for as much as you think of yourself ; I and the old 
 tumble-down house, which is what silly people like you admire 
 so much — when the governor hops off. If this new place does 
 him a great deal of good, as he believes it will, I shan't have such 
 a good chance." 
 
 "Poor father !" said Rosamond, but with perfect composure, 
 " it is a pity to raise his hopes." 
 
 " So I think," said Eddy : "whe you've had that before you 
 for so long, you ought to be able to make up your mind to it. 
 And it isn't as if he did not have his fling in his day. However, 
 
206 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 the question is, what did he mean when he sent us here 1 Was 
 it you or was it me ? " 
 
 "What do you mean by me ?" said Rosamond with irritation ; 
 "father knows quite well what I am going to do." 
 
 " Oh yes, I believe you ! " said Eddy, " doctoring or something, 
 isn't it ? That is all bosh. You must just do like the rest, The 
 question is, will old Piowland divide the money ? when the one 
 would be as good as the other, and I shouldn't mind very much. 
 But if the girl has only a little bit of a fortune, and the boy all 
 the rest — that indicates you, my dear ; and as you are always 
 admiring the country, I suppose you are making up your mind 
 to your fate 1 " 
 
 " I would not marry Archie Rowland if there was not another 
 man in the world," said Rosamond calmly. " Indeed, you may 
 say there is not another man in the world, for I have no intention 
 of marrying at all." 
 
 " Then you are treating him as badly as can be," said Eddy, 
 " and you ought to be turned out of the house." 
 
 " I ! " said Rosamond, raising her calm eyebrows a little. 
 " Why 1 It is only men who are pulled up for behaving badly. 
 I am bringing him into shape. He is a great deal better 
 already, and you will see he will behave quite decently at the 
 ball." 
 
 " If we could only find out," said Eddy, who after all was but 
 moderately interested in that side of the question which did not 
 concern himself, "whether old Rowland means to divide the 
 money ! I should think he would, an old fellow with a sense of 
 justice, and who has made his own money. Why shouldn't the 
 girl have as much as the boy 1 " 
 
 "Why shouldn't I have Gilston as well as you? That," said 
 Rosamond, " cuts both ways." 
 
 " That's quite a different thing," said Eddy. " Gilston isn't 
 money, the more's the pity ; I wish it was." 
 
 " You may be very glad it is not ; for it would soon be gone 
 in that case, and nothing would be left." 
 
 " Well," said Eddy, reflectively, " it's always bait to catch a 
 fish ; no money, but a fine old house in the country, and a good 
 name. The question is," he said with much gravity, " whether 
 it's good enough to spend all that upon this little girl here, and 
 perhaps find out at the end that she was no such prize after all 1 
 Why can't one go honestly to the man and ask him, ' What do 
 you mean to give your daughter ? ' " 
 
 "You might try," said Rosamond, with a laugh. 
 
 " And get turned out of the house ! They would do it in France 
 and never think twice ; but in England it must be love, forsooth 
 — Love ! " said Eddy, with great disdain. " What is there to love 
 in a little chit like that ? " 
 
 " She is a pretty little thing," said Rosamond, philosophically, 
 " and she is quick enough. She would soon be just like other 
 people, if she were about in town for a little. But, Eddy, what 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 207 
 
 is the use of talking when you are far too young to marry ? At 
 your age father could not have intended that." 
 
 " I shall soon be old enough to be pulled up," said Eddy, " on 
 my own account. Don't you know I'll come of age in the begin- 
 ning of the year '• After that no one can come on the governor 
 for my infant wants, don't you know. I wish they would : he 
 wouldn't give them a farthing, and I should get all the fun ; 
 but they are far too cute for that. This Johnson fellow, don't 
 you know " 
 
 "The don V said Rosamond; "has he lent you money? I 
 thought these men had never any money to lend." 
 
 " Oh, that depends ! " said Eddy. He burst into a great 
 laugh, but immediately restrained himself. " He could get 
 me into a pretty scrape if he liked, so I must keep friends 
 with him. I mean to get Mother Rowland to ask him to the 
 ball." 
 
 "How dare you call her Mother Rowland?" said the girl, 
 stamping her foot. 
 
 " Oh, dare ! I dare do — whatever suits me," said the young- 
 man. " Look here," he added, " I don't want you to dance with 
 him all the same." 
 
 Rosamond turned upon her brother and gave him a look of 
 scorn. It was not often that she condescended to look at any 
 one to whom she was talking ; but her glance was very direct and 
 keen when she took the trouble. And she did not make any 
 reply. They were by this time at the entrance to the game- 
 keeper's cottage, and she swept in at the always open door. 
 " May we come in '? " she condescended to say, but did not pause 
 for an answer. Old Rankin was sitting up in bed, taking his 
 forenoon refreshment : which he himself described as "supping 
 a wheen broth." 
 
 " Oh, you're welcome, my young leddy. \ e will have come 
 about the dowg ; but I think it is mair civil, in an ordinary 
 way, if you would just chap at the door." 
 
 " That's what I say," said Eddy ; " but she takes her own way. 
 I hope you're better, Rankin, and no rheumatism. It's not so 
 cold, for there's no wind this morning ; but the hoar frost is still 
 lying under the trees." 
 
 "• Ay," said Rankin, " there will be rain the morn. These 
 white frosts aye brings rain, no to say that it's ever sweered to 
 come. I'm muckle obliged to you for asking for me. You're 
 the only one of the young folk at the House that ever minds I 
 am a man. And a very ill man. They think I'm some kind of 
 a creature for producin' dowgs." 
 
 "I am very sorry for you," said Rosamond ; " my father is like 
 you, he cannot move ; but lie does not like people to ask him 
 how he is." 
 
 '"Ay, ay, ye hae a father like me? Poor gentleman, I'm sure 
 he has my compassion," said Rankin, " especially if he has no 
 favourite purshoot like mine that makes the time pas 
 
208 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 " Well, let us see your favourite purshoot," said Eddy ; " let 
 us see them. They are great fun, the little beasts." 
 
 " I am no reduced to that stage of intelligence/' said the 
 gamekeeper, "to call the breeding o' dowgs a purshoot. I just 
 leave that to nature. What I really am, and I'm proud o't, is an 
 antiquary. There's no many things ye can bring to me in the 
 way of antiquities that would puzzle me. I've seen when half 
 o' this," he laid his hand on a paper on the bed, " was my writing 
 — whiles questions and whiles answers. It's maybe no a profit- 
 able kind of study. I make nothing by it in the way of money ; 
 but it's real entertaining. I'm just as pleased when a number 
 comes in with me, answering a' the scholars and putting them 
 right, or them answering me and putting me right, as if it was 
 so much siller in my pooch." 
 
 "Oh ay," said his wife, in the background, "you have had an 
 awfu' troke with the papers, John Rankin ; but it would have 
 sert ye muckle better if you had written something that would 
 be of use, and got a little by it. Good siller is out o' place in 
 nobody's pooch." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you — write for the papers ? " said 
 Rosamond. 
 
 " That do I, my bonny leddy ; and ye should just recommend 
 a study like mine to your father, poor gentleman. You'll see 
 many a thing from me there. I'm Ros-beg, that's the name I 
 took ; which means the little Ros, just as Rosmore means the 
 muckle Ros, and Ben Ros the hill. I'm grand upon Hieland 
 antiquities, and considered one o' the first authorities. Ye'll 
 see, ye'll see," said Rankin, waving his hand as he held out the 
 jDaper to his visitor. It was a very well-known paper, one in 
 which a great many questions are put and answered. The 
 reader will not need to be told its highly respectable name. 
 
 " Is it you that has written all this about some bard — Donald 
 — I can't say his name 1 And there's an answer from Ben 
 Cruachan, and one from Mr. Davies, and G. Johnson — oh, Eddy ! 
 St. Chad's, Cambridge ! " 
 
 "I say," Eddy had begun, "hand us out some of the doggies, 
 and don't talk ; " but when he saw the page which Rosamond 
 held out to him, he laughed out till the cottage rang. " Oh ho," 
 he said, " Johnson ! Here is a lark ! Johnson ! Now we'll have 
 some fun. I say, gamekeeper ! Johnson's here." 
 
 " What is your will, sir 1 " said Rankin, with great dignity. 
 The purveyor of dogs could take a joke, but not the contributor 
 to Xotes and Queries. In the latter capacity, John Rankin veiled 
 his bonnet to none. 
 
 " Why, Johnson, I tell you. Johnson's here ! Don't you know 
 what I mean 1 Johnson, the don," and Eddy laughed again till 
 the tears ran down his cheeks. " I'll bring him to see you, old 
 fellow. You shall have your fight out, and I'll back you, old 
 bo} T , to him, six to one." 
 
 " My learned correspondent ! " said Rankin, with a look of 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 209 
 
 excitement. And then he turned to Rosamond. " Your brother 
 is a wild laddie, but I suppose what he says is true ? " 
 
 " I suppose so/' said Rosamond, with great gravity, while 
 Eddy did his best to subdue the convulsions of laughter into 
 which he had fallen. His sister was impatient of Eddy's joke, 
 and of the whole matter. " Let us, please, see the little dogs," 
 she said. 
 
 " Yes ; but I'm far more interested about the other thing," said 
 Rankin, " for I would like well to put forth my views in a mair 
 extended form. The space of the paper is real limited. They 
 will sometimes leave out just your maist conclusive argument. 
 Dod ! but I'd like a crack with Mr. Johnson fine." 
 
 "I wish you would not laugh like a fool," said Rosamond, 
 frowning. " What is there to laugh about 1 Mr. John. -on is not 
 nearly so nice-looking as Mr. Rankin, and I think he'll be dis- 
 appointed in him. But you need not go on making a ridiculous 
 noise in this way. I wish to have one of the little dogs to 
 give to a lady I know. She will be very kind to it. She is my 
 grandmamma. She likes her dogs better than anything else in 
 the world." 
 
 " The dogues are fine creatures," said Rankin ; " but no to be 
 made a first objeck. I dinna agree with that. A leddy that 
 likes her dogs better than anything else will just probably spile 
 them, baith their health and their moral nature. Ye will 
 observe, mem, that I am not wanting to sell my dogues. I have 
 aye plenty of customers for them : the first houses in the land 
 has my dogues. It's no as if I was keen to sell. She will no 
 doubt feed them in a ridiculous way — sweet biscuits and made 
 dishes, instead of good porridge and a bone at a time. Na, I 
 think I'll no give you one for your grandmammas, though I 
 dinna like to disappoint a bonnie young leddy. If it was for 
 yoursel' now " 
 
 " I would like to have this one for myself," said Rosamond, as 
 the little half-blind puppy curled on her lap and nibbled at her 
 fingers. " It will be like little Roy at Rosmore." 
 
 " That will it ! " said old Rankin in the fervour of generous 
 acquiescence, " or maybe even finer. And ye shall have it, ye 
 shall have it ! I will give ye my directions, and ye'll make a 
 principle of carrying them out. If ye do that, ye'll keep the 
 little beastie in good health, and aye clean and pleasant — and 
 he'll be a pleasure to ye a' his days. There are no finer bred 
 dogues in a' Scotland, though I say it that maybe shouldn't. 
 And if ye'll be guided by me, ye'll just call him Roy too. It is 
 a fine handy little name. I call them all the same, like Dandy 
 Dinmont's terriers in Sir Walter, as maybe ye will remember. 
 It's a kind of token of the race : and ye may make real pleasant 
 acquaintances about the world, or maybe, wha kens, be directed 
 to a braw gentleman that will make ye a fine partner for life — 
 just by the circumstance of having twa doggies by the name of 
 Roy, baith from Rosmore ! " 
 
 p 
 
210 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Rankin ended with a faint guffaw partly at his own humour, 
 partly in the emotion of giving up to a stranger one of his 
 cherished infants. He dived again into the mysterious recep- 
 tacle in which the puppies feebly squealed and whined, within 
 reach of his hand, and produced, all warm and blurred from 
 that nest^ another ball of fur. "Ye can tak' your choice," he 
 said ; " this ane is of the line of Roy as well as that ane. It is 
 the last I have, and I dinna see my way to pleasure Lady Jean 
 till maybe geyan weel on in the next year. If ye were to fancy 
 the twa, I wadna grudge them to ye : for I think you know 
 what you're about with dogues. Would you like to have it? 
 Oh, it's not to please me but to please you. I can dispose of 
 the double of what I have got, or am like to get. There's not a 
 person comes to Rosmore but is keen for one of Rankin's dogues. 
 But I'm that pleased with you and your sense, that, if ye like, 
 I'll let you have the twa." 
 
 Rosamond accepted the favour in her stately way. "Have 
 we any money, Eddy ? " she said. It did not in the least trouble 
 her when her brother for answer turned his pockets inside out. 
 "It does not matter in the least/' she said. "I should like to 
 have them both, and the money will come somehow." She was 
 not touched with doubt as Archie had been about the possi- 
 bilities of paying. She was aware that she was poor, and had 
 not a penny ; but most things she wanted were procured for 
 her inone way or another. This had been Rosamond's experi- 
 ence since ever she remembered, and naturally it gave her mind 
 a great calm. 
 
 "And yon you were saying about Mr. Johnson?" said the 
 gamekeeper, turning to Eddy when the bargain was made. — 
 "Wha's that chapping at the door?" lie added impatiently. 
 " Some gangrel body with an e'e to the dogues, and muckle Roy 
 out there just a senseless beast that bids a' body welcome, and 
 hasna a bark in him. Janet, woman ! wha's that chappin' at 
 the door?" 
 
 "It's I," said a voice that made Eddy start. "It's a friend — 
 of your master's, my good man." 
 
 " My maister[s ! " said Rankin. " Wha's that, I would like to 
 ken ? Janet, just shut the door upon his nose, the uncivil 
 person. My maister's ! It will be some English towerist body 
 that kens no better," he added condescendingly with a wave of 
 his hand. " You may let him come in." 
 
 "Wiry, Rankin," cried Eddy, "you are in luck ! This is the 
 very gentleman — of St. Chad's, Cambridge. Johnson, come in — 
 you're in luck too, I can tell you. Here's the champion that 
 holds another view. You're on the Welsh side, aren't you ? — 
 here's the great authority, Ros-beg, that takes the other view." 
 
 "What?" said Johnson, coming in a little blinded from the 
 winterly sunshine outside into the comparative gloom of the 
 cottage, where the window was half covered with the drawn 
 blind to keep out the sun. Mrs. Rankin had a notion, shared 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 211 
 
 by many simple housekeepers, that the sun puts out the fire. 
 "Eh— ah, who are you? Ill swear that's Eddy Saumarez's 
 voice." 
 
 Rosamond rose up from her place by the gamekeepers bed- 
 side, and put back the puppy. The very sound of this man's 
 voice offended her. To be sure it was the usual thing for every- 
 body to say Eddy Saumarez. She had seen him discussed by 
 that name in the sporting papers, the horrible crumpled things 
 which he left about— there was nothing surprising in it ; but 
 there was something exasperating in the sound of his voice. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Saumarez," he said, stepping back a little. Her 
 presence startled him as much as his appearance exasperated 
 her. 
 
 "I think,"' she said, "as you've found your friend, I'll go 
 back by myself, Eddy. And good-bye, Mr. Rankin. I will pay 
 the greatest attention to your instructions when you send me 
 the dogs." 
 
 Then without taking any notice of the intruder, except by 
 the slightest of bows, Rosamond turned and walked away. She 
 waved her hand to Janet, but Janet was accustomed to scant 
 ceremonv, and was not offended. Rosamond was vaguely 
 uneasy about this man and his frequent re-appearance, and 
 Eddy's intention of having him asked to Rosmore. Of course 
 Mrs. Rowland would do it, if she were asked. Rosamond was 
 not aware of the impression he had already made on Evelyn's 
 mind. Nor had she any doubts as to the truth of Eddys 
 description. Everything, she was aware, had changed at the 
 University as at other places. There were no tests, and any- 
 body might become a don. Of course, if hewas a don, there 
 was" no reason why he should not be given an invitation for any 
 entertainment, But only she, Rosamond, would not counten- 
 ance him. She would neither dance with him nor talk with 
 him. His appearance meant no good to Eddy if he were a 
 hundred times a don. Eddy was a boy whom it was impossible 
 to keep out of mischief, whatever happened, if anything went 
 wrons:, she felt sure her father would hold her responsible, 
 which would be extremely unjust, for what could she do 1 Thus 
 she reasoned with herself as she walked very quickly through 
 the woods, hurrying home. Home ! it was not home. In about 
 ten days or so, this visit would be over, and if Eddy played any 
 tricks," probably Mrs. Rowland would never ask them again. 
 And Eddy was almost certain to play tricks of one kind or 
 another. His flirtation with Marion must come to some end. 
 And what did father mean by sending him there? Was it 
 intended that he should marry Marion 1 was Marion rich enough 
 to make father wish that Eddy should marry her? These 
 questions became disagreeably present with Rosamond as she 
 walked back to the house, and gave her a great feeling of 
 insecurity and discomfort of every kind. It really was not safe 
 to go anywhere with Eddy : lie was sure to get himself into 
 
 P 2 
 
212 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 scrapes, and have disreputable acquaintances appearing after 
 him. A curve of annoyance came over Rosamond's smooth 
 brow. It did not occur to her, however, as a thing possible that 
 any blame in any other way could turn upon herself. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 " Come along, Johnson," said Eddy; " don't be shy. The nature 
 of great scholars, Rankin, is that they're dreadfully shy, don't you 
 know. A man that you couldn't put out by the heaviest argu- 
 ment will give in at the sight of a young lady. That's like our 
 friend here : he thinks eveiy woman he sees is going to bite 
 him, or — marry him, perhaps, out of hand, as you do in Scotland, 
 don't you know." 
 
 "There is a great deal o' nonsense prevalent about Scotch 
 marriages," said Rankin. "It's nothing of the kind. Come 
 away ben, Mr. Johnson, I'm real glad to see you. Dod ! he's 
 no so lo'esome in his ain person that he should be f richtened for 
 the leddies ; but study's mair embellishin' for the mind than the 
 body. Come in by, sir, and gi'e me a shake o' your hand. You 
 and me's had mony a controversy, but nane sae bitter but that 
 we may meet as friends." 
 
 " Eh ! what's the man saying ? What have I got to do with 
 him ? " cried Johnson, stumbling in, with eyes as yet unaccus- 
 tomed to the light. 
 
 "I tell you," said Eddy, "of course you never expected to find 
 here the great Ros-beg, your opponent on the question of— 
 What question was it, Rankin? Don't attempt to hide your 
 honours, Johnson, my boy. Everybody here knows you're 
 Johnson of St. Chad's. You have only got to behave yourself 
 as such, and recognize the power of learning whenever you see 
 it. This, I tell you, is Ros-beg, your adversary on " 
 
 " I say, Eddy, none of your humbug ! I've got to talk to you 
 on serious business, and here you are agoing on with your 
 pranks to drive a man out of his senses." 
 
 " I have nothing to do with it," said Eddy. " This gentleman 
 here in the bed, though you mightn't think it, is a great scholar, 
 Johnson. He's driven you into a corner and holds you there. 
 W^e know what you mean when you pretend ignorance. It's 
 because you're shut up. You might find an argument if you 
 were in your own study among all your books at St. Chad's ; 
 but here, face to face with the great Ros-beg, you've not got a 
 word to say." 
 
 " Be canny with him, be canny with him, sir," said Rankin, a 
 glow of complacency on his face. " A man's no to be expected 
 to be ready wi' his weepons just at a moment's notice. Coming 
 into a Highland cottage, how was he to think he was to be con- 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 213 
 
 fronted by an adversary ) Na, na ; great allowances must be 
 made. Sit down, sir, and tak' time and come to yourself.'' ^ 
 
 " By Jove ! " said Johnson, with most un-don-like force, I 
 think you mean to drive me mad, Eddy Saumarez ! One^day 
 
 it's with your ladies, and another day it's with this old ■ 
 
 " Let him get it oot, let him get it oot," cried Rankin. ' Oh, 
 ay ! it's easier to abuse your opponent than to answer him ; 
 that's a trick weel kent in controversy. An anlcl— what, sir '?— 
 get it oot ; it will ease your mind, and it will do me nae hairm. 
 3 " Johnson, vou fool, can't you see that you've got a character 
 to keep up ? "cried Eddy, half-choking with laughter. The youth 
 was full of mischievous delight in his mystification, but he was 
 not without a meaning behind it, which was the thing most 
 interesting to his present victim. 
 
 " I see your game, Mr. Eddy," said Johnson ; but you am t 
 going to get the better of me. Be done with that stuff, and 
 come out and let us have a bit of serious talk. You know as 
 well as I do what's hanging over your head. If you cant bring 
 him something to stop his mouth, that old cove will— —or give 
 him security as vou're to be married before a certain day. 1 
 don't mind who I speak before. If you'll not listen to me one 
 time you'll have to listen another ! " cried Johnson, working 
 himself up into energy. Eddy stood facing the light with the 
 ruddy glow of the flames playing over him, his somewhat worn 
 and pale young face broadened with laughter. I he effect ol 
 his vouth, and perhaps a special impishness of nature, gave him 
 a delight in mischief which the most serious emergency could 
 not destroy. . . , 
 
 " I told you," he said, " this man's always got his thoughts 
 filled with marrying— especially in Scotland, where you can 
 always do it at a moment's notice. ^ hen he s not in terror tor 
 himself he's in terror for me." 
 
 "Ye may deliver your soul o' a' such terrors,' said liankin 
 angrily. " There's naebodv will marry ye here but the minister, 
 and him no afore a' inquiry's made. There's an awtu deal o 
 nonsense prevalent about Scotch marriages. It s a question 1 
 would have no objection to argue oot with ye, if ye prefer that 
 to a mair learned subject," said the gamekeeper with a disdamtul 
 wave of his hand. . .. 
 
 "I argue !" cried Johnson ; "I'll not argue ; it amt my line. 
 I'm not a parson, nor I ain't a lawyer ; I'm a plain man, by 
 Jove I I've got my own business, and I know how to do it ; 
 and this I tell you, Master Eddy, if you ain't ready with that 
 
 cash, and before the month's out, come by it as ye will 
 
 "Can't you hold your d d tongue ! Cant you see what s 
 
 expected of you ! " said Eddy in a rapid whisper.—" Rankin, he 
 said, raising his voice, "I'm ashamed of my man. He hasnt 
 pluck enous-h to come up to the scratch. The sight ot you lias 
 routed hmThand and foot. There's no spirit left in him at all. 
 " He never said a truer word," said Rankin, " than when he 
 
214 THE RAILWAY MAK 
 
 said he couldna argue. I'm glad he has that much knowledge* 
 o' himsel'. It was aye a wonder to me that the editor let him 
 in wi' his disjectae membrae and hotchpotch o' reasoning. I'm no 
 surprised, for my pairt ; but after this exheebition, I'm thinking 
 it would be just as weel to tak' the cratur away. It's a'e thing 
 to ha'e the gift o' sound argument, which is no given to every- 
 body, and it's anither thing to be ceevil to a man in his ain 
 house. Maybe, however, he thinks because I'm here in a cottage 
 and no able for any exertion, that it's no me. But I can gi'e 
 him evidence that it's me." Rankin put up his hand to a box 
 of papers fastened within his reach by the wall, and dived into 
 it, much as, on the other hand, he dived into the nest of his 
 dogs. " There's the editor's ain hand of write addressed to John 
 Rankin, Esquire, which will maybe convince him. No that it 
 matters a brass bodle to me, if a man, when he's worsted in 
 arguments, forgets his mainners. It's just of as little consequence 
 as the yelping of thae beasties of dogues." Rankin took the 
 puppies, who had been stumbling, with little whines and sniffs, 
 over the heights and hollows of his own person, and dropped 
 them one after another into what seemed some invisible pocket, 
 their disapjDearance acting as a sort of energetic punctuation to 
 his words. The letter, which he had flung towards the stranger, 
 was indeed directed as he had said, and disclosed as it fell on 
 the bed a number of proof-sheets or cuttings, very conclusive to 
 the instructed eye. But Mr. Johnson did not look at them at 
 all. He said, "What have I to do with the old — gentleman's 
 letters," substituting that word for " fool," which he had intended 
 to use, on the compulsion of Eddy's eye. 
 
 "Then, good-bye, Rankin, I'll soon come back," said Eddy, 
 shaking the old gamekeeper's hand ; " but, look here, I'll bring- 
 no more of my grand friends to see you from the Universities, 
 if you are going to crumple them up like this." 
 
 Rankin laughed the satisfied laugh of the controversialist 
 who has demolished his adversary. " He haclna a word to say 
 for himself, no' a word. It's one thing compiling nonsense out 
 o' books in a library, and meeting a man face to face. Ye just 
 saw for yoursel' that the beggar hadna a word to say." 
 
 " Eh me," said Janet, who had gone out to the door to see the 
 visitors fairly off, "that was an aw T fu' like man to be one of your 
 great scholars, as ye call them. I've seen the college gentlemen 
 in my young days, and tine lads some o' them were. I wadna 
 have believed that was a college gentleman if it had been tell't 
 to me." 
 
 " And what do you know about it ? " said Rankin, scornfully. 
 "There's the evidence that he just would not face me, the 
 moment he heard who I was. I never thought he had the root 
 of the maitter in him. Just a blethering retailer o' other men's 
 opinions, no fit to haud his ain in any real controversy. I'm a 
 wee disappointed, for it would have been a grand sensation to 
 have it oot with ane of those Oxford ignoramuses in my ain, 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 215 
 
 house ; hut ye see he could not put out a finger without his 
 authorities at his back. — I think I'll maybe take a pickle mair 
 broth.'' 
 
 "If yon's a college man and a gentleman," said Janet, "111 
 just allow that I never was mair deceivit in my life.'' 
 
 Eddy took his friend's arm as they issued out from the shadow 
 of the cottage. " Why didn't you show tight ? " he said, " you 
 fool ! You can act well enough when you like. Why didn't 
 you be civil and draw him out % He'd have done all the talk 
 himself, and you'd have saved your character as a college fellow 
 and a don." 
 
 "There's been enough of this nonsense," said Johnson. "I 
 tried it on with the lady the other day, and I put my foot into 
 it. She didn't believe I was a don, as you call it, any more — 
 than any other person would. What was I to say to that old 
 fool? I didn't know what he was talking about. Look here, 
 we must have some talk serious, none of your humbug. I have 
 my orders as clear as daylight. If he can't pay up " 
 
 " I know," said Eddy, impatiently, " I know ! I've heard all 
 that before." 
 
 " You'll not hear it again, my fine fellow, or else it'll be before 
 the judge for something that is more ticklish than debt. Don't 
 you know there's that little bit of paper as was refused at the 
 bank. Xo assets, just your luck to keep you from the Old 
 Bailey. But he's got it all the time. If you're safe to marry 
 the railway man's daughter, perhaps I might get him persuaded 
 to wait. For I'm your friend, Eddy Saumarez, you know as I 
 always stand your friend when you don't play any of your 
 tricks. I can't go bail for him that he'll do that ; for what with 
 putting him oil", and never answering his letters, and letting 
 
 things swing, he's in the temper of the very ; but if it's 
 
 certain and settled, and the figure of her fortune known, and 
 all that " 
 
 "You saw for yourself how things were going," said Eddy, 
 not without a faint blush of shame, "the other day on the hill." 
 
 " Oh, I saw you, fast enough — carrying on. But when I said 
 to the lady, ' That's a case if ever there was one,' she looked at 
 me as if she could have knocked me down. ' If you mean it's 
 an engagement,' she says, as sharp as anything, ' you're mis- 
 taken, and it wouldn't be allowed for a minute on either side.' " 
 
 " You put that into her head, you everlasting fool ! " cried 
 Eddy. And then with an effort of self-control, or rather with the 
 natural facility of his easy temper, lie added, bursting into a 
 laugh, "She's the stepmother, and they hate her all round. The 
 more she opposes it the more it's sure to be, so you see there's 
 more things in heaven and earth, Johnson, than are in your 
 philosophy. AYhat she says is just the tiling that will never 
 come to pass. I say, if you'll behave a little decent, and get up 
 the character, I'll make her send you an invitation to the big 
 ball ! " 
 
210 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " The ball ! " 
 
 " I know you're fond of high life, and seeing smart people : 
 and you can act when you like. Now look here, put a good face 
 upon it and let's have a little more time. Write to him that 
 you've got a promise of having everything settled if you wait 
 till after the 30th, and that you're going to a ball at Rowland's 
 house under my wing ; and then you'll wire about the engage- 
 ment and all that as soon as ever it comes off. You'll never have 
 such a chance again," said Eddy ; " crcme de la creme, my boy, 
 and all that sort of thing." 
 
 " People of the place," said Johnson, with a sneer. 
 " People of the place ! Well, I hope when it's Clydesdale and 
 his lot, that's good enough for you. And perhaps you call the 
 Duke of Arran one of the people of the place. So he is, for 
 it all belongs to him : and the Huntingshaws and the Herons, 
 who, I rather think, have been heard of even in London town.' 3 
 " Oh, well," said Johnson, with half-eager, half-reluctant ac- 
 quiescence ; "but if that lady is the one to give the invitations, 
 you will never get her to ask me." 
 
 "We'll see about that," said Eddy, complacently. " I think I 
 know what I'm about." 
 
 "You know a deal too well what you're about. For a fellow 
 of your age, you are the oldest fellow and the most artful I ever 
 knew. I do believe it's only to gain time, and that there's nothing 
 in it. Carrying on with a girl is nothing to you ; you can get 
 'em to believe you when another fellow hasn't even the chance 
 to have a hearing. There's that tall one, your sister, looks at 
 me as if I was the dirt under her feet. Ill tell you what, if 
 you'll make her give me a dance at this thundering ball of yours, 
 I'll do it — whatever the governor may say." 
 
 "Well, you can ask her," said Eddy, in lightness of heart, "like 
 any other gentleman. You don't want an introduction, because 
 you've met her before. A woman can't refuse without being ill- 
 bred, and nobody could ever say of the Saumarez that they were 
 ill-bred. Of course she'll dance with you — if you ask her," he 
 said, with a laugh. 
 
 " What's that laugh for 1 " said Johnson, suspiciously. 
 " Oh, come, if a man isn't allowed to laugh ! It's for the fun 
 of the thing. I've seen you in a good many queer circumstam 
 but I never saw you at a society ball dancing with girls — of 
 that sort, don't you know. I'll get you an introduction to the 
 Duchess," cried Eddy, " and you can ask her to dance. By Jove ! 
 what fun it will be ! I shouldn't wonder if you had what they 
 call a great success. But mind, whatever you do, you must 
 learn up the part." 
 
 " Where shall I get it ? " said Johnson. The idea of success in 
 the world which was " smart " turned his head. The thought 
 went through his mind that it might be but the beginning of 
 triumph. The Duchess, if she found his dancing to her mind, 
 might invite him during the season. She might ask him to the 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 217 
 
 Cumbraes, that princely mansion. The light swam in Johnson's 
 eyes. He felt as if he were on the verge of a new world. He 
 could learn a part with any man, and mind his cues and enter 
 into his role. Where could he get it 1 ? He ran over all the 
 plays he knew, which was saying a good deal, but he could not 
 remember the part of a don. " Hang it all," he said, " I wish 
 you had introduced me as a plunger or a Guardsman, or some- 
 thing of that sort. I could have got 'em as easy as look at 'em ; 
 but I don't remember no don." 
 
 " There are plenty in novels," said Eddy. 
 
 " Oh, novels ! — I don't read any except the yellow kind. I 
 say, how d'ye dress the part ? Is it a long coat and a white tie 1 
 or what is it % I don't know nothing about it," said Johnson, 
 falling in his anxiety into the dialect of his kind. 
 
 "In the evening," said Eddy, "all gentlemen dress alike, 
 except when they're parsons. Johnson of St. Chad's is not a 
 parson. Probably in the day-time he wears an easy coat, and 
 smokes a pipe. But we'd better leave that. You only want 
 your evening things — I suppose they're decently cut — and a 
 flower in your coat ; but mind you have not a bouquet like a 
 coachman at a drawing-room." 
 
 "I think I know enough for that," said the novice; "but 
 you'd better get me one of those dashed novels if I'm to learn up 
 the part." 
 
 They walked on in silence for a few minutes towards the moor ; 
 great visions filled the mind of Johnson. " I say," he resumed 
 after a while, " couldn't you get me asked for the shooting one 
 day 1 The young fellow ain't much of a swell, whatever the rest 
 of them may be ; and I should like to shoulder a gun on a real 
 moor, just for once in a way. It's a thing to have done. The 
 governor would like it too. 'My son's up shooting in Scot- 
 land,' he'd tell everybody, 'with some of his smart friends.'" 
 
 " He can say it all the same, whether or not," said Eddy. 
 
 " That's true ; but it feels much nicer when there's something 
 in it. I say — I don't mind standing a sovereign to the game- 
 keeper, if you'll manage that. I'd give asovereign any day to 
 have some birds to send up to town witli that heather stun 
 round 'em, and a label, ' From A. Johnson, Esquire.'" 
 
 "You had better give the sovereign to me," said Eddy, "if I 
 am to take the trouble of it. Well, I'll try— and you'll have to 
 get up that part too, Johnson, the don on the moors." 
 
 " Oil, I ain't frightened for that. Do they ask you to shoot at 
 the Cumbraes— that's the Duke's place 1 ?" said Johnson, with 
 greater and greater visions of delight rising before his eyes. 
 
 " They don't ask me, but they might ask you," cried Eddy, 
 with a peal of laughter. " ' In for a penny, in for a pound.' 
 When once you get to know a Duke, all the rest follows like 
 clockwork." 
 
 "That was what I thought," Johnson said modestly. He 
 marched on by Eddy's side for some time over the heather. 
 
218 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Then he paused, and looked his companion in the face. " Mind," 
 he said, " I don't say as I shan't like all this very much, and if 
 I get on, I shall never forget as it was you as launched me, 
 Master Eddy. But that's not to interfere with business : you'll 
 have to keep to your day and square your account, or else the 
 governor will be down upon you, and there's not a little thing 
 in the whole affair as won't be brought to the light of day." 
 
 " And who will that harm most % " said Eddy. " I'll pay up, 
 of course ; but who do you think would suffer most — I, only a 
 boy when you got me into your accursed hands, or him, an old 
 bloated, money-lending, sixty per cent., blood-sucking — — ' 
 
 " Keep a civil tongue in your head. Do you think he'll mind 
 what the papers may say ? Look here, Eddy Saumarez, why 
 don't you go to your governor and make a clean breast of it, 
 and settle it up so as nothing should ever be brought against 
 you again 1 You've got a lot of relations that wouldn't like to 
 be dragged through the mud." 
 
 "Do you think they mind what the papers may say?" said 
 Eddy, sardonically ; " when that's the case on both sides, there 
 can't be much to be done either way." 
 
 "Well, smart people don't, somehow," said Johnson, "no more 
 than we do — they're so used to it. It ain't my business to dictate 
 how you're to do it, but somehow you'll have to do it. Y r ou may 
 get the money how you please, but you must get it, and not a 
 moment later than the 31st. Now that's settled, I can give my 
 thoughts to getting up the part." 
 
 When he was left by his companion, Eddy went up by himself 
 upon the moors, which was a kind of excursion he did not 
 usually enjoy. He went up breasting the hill like a deer or a 
 mountaineer, nor caring where he went, through ling and 
 bracken, among the prickly whins, and over the treacherous 
 quagmires of moss and bog. Something was in his mind which 
 made him indifferent to all the accidents of the way. When he 
 had reached the very top of the ridge he threw himself down 
 upon the dark heather with his face upon the ground, falling as 
 if he had been shot, and lay there for a few moments motionless 
 as if he had died. Nature accommodates herself very easily to 
 any vagary of rest. The dark figure seemed for a moment to 
 disturb and break the line of vegetation, but had not been there 
 a moment before the grasses and the ling seemed to take a new 
 beginning, starting up from under him, the long myrtles rustling 
 their heads, the Grass of Parnassus waving its white stars. So 
 they would have done had he been dead, covering him over, 
 hiding him in the bosom of the soil. He lay for a little while 
 thus, harmonized and composed into quiet under the still touch 
 of the hill, so that when he got up again he seemed to leave a 
 broad and angry void where he had been. What passed in his 
 mind while he buried his face in the coolness of the earth, and 
 hid himself from the eye of day, it would be hard to tell— perhaps 
 only the working of his quick brain as to what he could do in 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 219 
 
 the emergency in which he found himself, perhaps compunction, 
 miserable thoughts of the past, more miserable reflections on the 
 future. But nothing of this was visible when he raised himself 
 from that momentary collapse. He sat down upon the heather 
 with his face towards the lake, and pondered, clutching at his 
 hair with both his hands, setting his elbows on his knees. What 
 was it he was thinking of out there upon the lonely moor, not a 
 living creature near him except the wild creatures on the hills, 
 the insects in the moorland vegetation 1 His short-sighted eyes 
 roamed vaguely over the heather, pausing upon here and there 
 a gleam of water in a hollow, turning instinctively, like a child 
 toward a light, to the deep loch lying far below. But he saw 
 little or nothing with these wandering eyes. _ They were bent 
 upon visionary objects, seeing scenes and visions which had 
 nothing to do with the moor or the loch of Rosmore. 
 
 Presently Eddy took something from his pocket, a piece of 
 paper with a few words upon it, which he studied intently. 
 His eyes came back from their roaming to fix themselves in- 
 tently, with the contraction of the eyebrows which marked 
 their defect, upon the paper. They were sharp eyes though 
 they were short-sighted, seeing everything within their limited 
 range with a keenness and mastery of every detail quite un- 
 usual, a power of observation which was more precious than the 
 longest sight. What was it he was trying to master % A few 
 uninteresting words, nothing of the slightest importance. Then 
 lie took out a pencil and wrote something, repeating the same 
 characters again and again. What was it % He kept the paper 
 so cautiously in bis hand that had he been startled by any 
 intruder he could have doubled it up in a moment, and hidden 
 it in his hollowed palm. It was somewhat strange to see such 
 a precaution taken on the wide stretch of moor, which was as 
 desolate as a moor could be, some part of it dark with the 
 blistered stems of heather which had been burned, the rest dewy 
 and glistening with the moisture with which a few days of rain 
 had soaked the country. The very insects were hushed by the 
 cold of the October afternoon. A few desolate cheepings low 
 among the heather betrayed a lowly nest here and there. In 
 the distance a road came like a black ribbon over a corner of 
 the slope. Eddy sent another anxious look round him, and 
 returned to his paper, writing the same letters over and over 
 again. Was it the name of his love \ What was it % He held 
 it so carefully under the shadow of his hand that even had some 
 one risen silently from the heather, and looked over his shoulder, 
 it would have been difficult to see. 
 
 This was not exactly what happened. What happened was 
 that— coming along the dark road in the distance, Eddy spied a 
 figure, which made him start to his feet and hastily return to 
 his pocket the little document. He sat down again, but with 
 his face that way, watching who it was who was approaching. 
 There was something in the outline and the gait, those points 
 
220 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 which are all the short-sighted have to go upon, which seemed 
 to indicate a person he knew. It was not the moment which 
 Eddy would have chosen to encounter Archie Rowland, but 
 there was something in his own occupation just suspended, and 
 in the curious fancy which had brought him here, the object 
 which he only knew, which made him eager to disarm any 
 possible suspicion on the part of his hosts at Eosmore — which 
 impelled him at least not to avoid the meeting. Suddenly he 
 got up and began waving his arms about to attract the atten- 
 tion of the passer-by, who, pausing and standing still a moment 
 to consider who called him, at length decided to change his 
 course, and came towards the figure thus signalling to him 
 across the summit of the hill. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Archie came over the hill, lifting his feet high among the 
 heather. He had changed in his aspect a little since the old 
 Glasgow days. For one thing he had changed his tailor, which 
 always makes a great difference. And three months of the 
 fresh Highland air and outdoor exercise, and something too of 
 the growing habit of a little authority and command, and that 
 of having tilings done for him, of saying to this man, go, and 
 he goeth, and to another, come, and he cometh, had changed 
 the looks of Archie. And another more subtle influence had 
 changed him. His brow had cleared of an overhanging cloud, 
 once too ready to come down at a moment's notice. He held 
 his head more erect. It was not perhaps that he was in reality 
 more sure of himself — but at least he had somehow acquired 
 the air of being so — and he was of course more accustomed and 
 at ease in the habits of his new life. 
 
 He could not think why he had been called in this way ; and 
 did not indeed recognize Eddy, whose presence here on the top 
 of the moor was the last thing any one could have expected. 
 Eddy was not fond of long walks. To stroll down to the beach 
 with his hands in his pockets, and when he had got there, to sit 
 on a rock and throw stones into the water, was the hardest 
 exercise he generally indulged in, except a day's shooting now 
 and then, when he showed himself, notwithstanding his indolence, 
 as to the manner born — a thing which Archie could never do. 
 But how he should have got up here without any motive was a 
 thing which young Rowland could not understand. " Is it you ? " 
 he cried with surprise when he came near enough to recognize 
 his guest. 
 
 "It's just me — which I perceive is the formula here," cried 
 Eddy. "I've no right to invite you to sit down, as this is your 
 own place ; but I can recommend that ling bush. It's dry, and 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 221 
 
 there is no gorse about to prick into your vitals. Are you in a 
 hurry, or can you wait a bit here .' " 
 
 "Oh, I am in no hurry," said Archie. "It's not easy to be in 
 a hurry when you've got nothing to do." 
 
 "Do you think so? I'm always in a hurry and always late — 
 though I have nothing to do." 
 
 "I suppose it's according to a man's nature," said Archie. 
 
 " Everything is that if you go to the bottom of things. You're 
 one of the restless fellows that want to be doing — I don't. I 
 love idleness," said Eddy, stretching himself back over the ling, 
 with his arms extended over his head and his eyes on the sky. 
 The sky was covered with clouds, yet there was a break of blue 
 just over Eddy's head, which he regarded complacently as if 
 it had been made for his special use. 
 
 "I was surprised to see you up so far — it's a good climb from 
 the loch side." 
 
 "So it is," said Eddy ; "it was not for want of something to 
 do. So long as there's a billiard-table handy, thank heaven, 
 you never need be without occupation. If there's nobody to 
 have a game with, vou can at least be improving your own 
 
 " I did not think of that, said Archie. 
 
 "No, for you don't appreciate billiards," cried the other, 
 k> which is a pity, for it's a fine game. I say. Rowland, when 
 are we to have another day's shooting? This ball takes up a 
 lot of time ; but I hope you'll take me out on the hills at least 
 one day again before I go ? " 
 
 " When you like," Archie said shortly. 
 
 "Well, that's curt," said Eddy with a laugh. "And I always 
 like, don't you know. By the way, I've got a sort of a — favour- 
 to ask you. I don't know what you'll say. " 
 
 Archie did not make any reply, but looked up, waiting with- 
 out much excitement for the demand, whatever it might be. 
 
 "Well, it's this," said Eddy embarrassed, which was almost a 
 new sensation to him, and gave him a sense of youth and fresh- 
 ness which in its way was delightful. "I don't know what 
 you'll say to me for asking such a thing. It's not as if you had 
 your governor out and a lot of big-wigs. A couple of young 
 fellows doesn't matter." 
 
 Archie kept his face towards his companion with the same 
 look of indifferent expectation, but he said nothing to help 
 him on. 
 
 '"It is not even like an invitation to the house; and the 
 ladies probably will not be coming out again." 
 
 There was faintly indicated on Archie's countenance a question 
 as to this latter statement — a sort of interrogating curl in the 
 curve of his eyebrows ; but the young man was chary of Ins 
 words, and spoke no more than was indispensable. 
 
 "It is getting late in the season you know," said Eddy, '"and 
 cold for them." 
 
222 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " They don't mind the cold," said Archie. 
 
 " Well, it's rather cutting up here, and Mrs. Rowland — isnt so 
 young as the girls. However, I'm afraid they didn't care for my 
 man when he appeared before. It was bad taste I allow, thrust- 
 ing himself into the midst of our party. But I don't pretend 
 that he's much in the way of breeding. He's a good fellow — 
 enough — and he never had any opportunity of this sort of thing 
 when he was younger. It's that man Johnson, don't you know. 
 He's hanging about here. I am always knocking up against 
 him. He would be awfully pleased if you'd ask him to come 
 with us out shooting. And I don't think he'll do much harm." 
 
 "Oh," said Archie, "the college man." 
 
 " Yes," replied Eddy, wincing a little, " the college man." He 
 had not minded at all promulgating that fiction to the ladies. 
 It was immense fun. To do him justice it had been struck off 
 on the spur of the moment, without any intention ; but to say 
 it to Rowland, two fellows on the hillside, was a different 
 matter. He began to pull up the tenacious roots of the ling 
 with _ both hands, struggling with them, and did not meet 
 Archie's eyes. Nothing could be more innocent than Archie's 
 eyes, which suspected nothing. Archie had scarcely been con- 
 scious of Johnson's presence at all. He had made no mental 
 remarks as to the breeding or want of breeding of the stranger. 
 He had no theories about a college don. It is doubtful, indeed, 
 whether he had any clear impression as to what that character 
 was. Eddy added quickly, "He's a little uncouth. They don't 
 see much society, these fellows. I would not mix him up with 
 the ladies : but he would be awfully pleased — and when it's 
 only two young fellows on a moor, you and me " 
 
 "Oh, I have no objections," said Archie. "Ask him if you 
 like, Saumarez ; it was hardly necessary to take the trouble of 
 asking me." 
 
 "You are an awfully good fellow, Rowland!" said Eddy,, 
 struck with a faint and very temporary sense of shame. 
 
 "Oh, if that's all," cried Archie with a smile which lighted 
 up his face. It pleased him that anybody should think so, 
 and still more that Eddy Saumarez should think so. In the 
 exhilarationof that encouragement he went a little further, as 
 the simple giver pleased with his own liberality is so apt to do. 
 m "If there is anything else we can do for him ? I'll tell Rode- 
 rick to see that it's all right. And we can go out any day you 
 like. I'm not such a hearty sportsman as yon. If it wasn't a 
 kind of duty— but it's pleasant when somebody enjoys it," he 
 said with a glow upon his brightened face. 
 
 " I enjoy it— down to the ground," said Eddy. " It's not that 
 there's so very much game ; but then one has it all one's own 
 way. Nobody poking in before you, saying, ' My bird ! ' and 
 then a young fellow has to give in. You're a lucky dog, Row- 
 land — the cock of the walk so far as the moor goes, and thought 
 no end of at home." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 223 
 
 " Do you think so ? " said Archie, with a sort of painful grati- 
 iication. "I'm afraid that's more than I can believe. I'm a 
 disappointment to my father, Saumarez. I don't know what 
 he expected, but he expected something very different from 
 me." 
 
 " They are always like that," said Eddy, with the air of an 
 authority. " They put you in a certain grind, and then they 
 look outfor something quite different. I am just the product 
 of my training ; but the governor jaws at me as if I were a 
 monster : though if all tales be true, he could have given me 
 odds, at my worst." 
 
 Eddy spoke with the composed expression of a man whose 
 worst had been very bad, and who had fathomed all the secrets 
 of life. Archie could not but look on with a certain respect, 
 though his blameless mind recoiled a little from this man of 
 knowledge. He had no experiences of his own save of the most 
 trilling kind, to produce. 
 
 " The worst of it all," said Eddy, " is the money. We have all 
 that's nice, you know, in the way of living, and places to go to 
 and so forth, but never any money in our pockets. I don't 
 know if the governor himself is much better. It all goes on 
 quite smoothly, and I suppose it gets paid. I don't know. I 
 never have a penny to bless myself with." 
 
 "Oh, there's no want here in that way," said Archie. He 
 took out a card-case from his pocket, and took a piece of paper 
 from it. "Here is something my father gave me this morning, 
 for extra expenses he said. I told him I had no extra expenses, 
 but it was no use. And I don't know what to do with it," 
 Archie said ; " you can't buy anything at Rosmore. I'll pay it 
 into my bank, which is his bank too, and there it will lie." 
 
 " Good life, Rowland ! Xo use ! " cried Eddy, with eager eyes 
 fixed upon the cheque. He took it out of his companion's hand, 
 and examined it, gloating over every line. " One hundred 
 pounds, James Rowland," he cried. "I wish I had a few signa- 
 tures like that. I wish he'd take a few pieces of paper out of 
 his pocket of this description and offer them to me." 
 
 " I dare say he would," said Archie, calmly, " if he knew you 
 were in such great need of them ; but you are just romancing 
 on that score." 
 
 "Romancing!" cried Eddy. ; 'I romancing! It shows how 
 little you know. You can't think, Rowland, what temptations 
 a young fellow is subjected to. And then all sorts of harpies 
 about, thirsting for your blood. Before you know where you 
 are, they've got you hard and fast, and after that you never 
 
 dare call your soul your own. Why this fellow John . I 
 
 mean a man in London, has got his horrid thumb on me !— 
 Romancing ! " cried Eddy, " I'd give my little linger for a bit of 
 paper like that— and one a day as long as they lasted for ever 
 and ever." 
 
 To see Archie's countenance while his companion was speaking 
 
224 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 was an experience in its way. He raised himself erect the 
 first minute out of his habitual lounging and careless attitude. 
 His brow cleared more and more. He pushed his hat back, 
 revealing it with the heavy ruddy hair, pushed back too, and 
 standing up in a thick crest : his eyes so often overcast, or 
 gleaming out in sudden gleams, half -timorous, half -defiant, 
 were bent steadily upon Eddy's face with something celestial in 
 their blueness— his mother's eyes. He had never looked out 
 upon the world so openly, so free, with so little self-conscious- 
 ness, since the first day when his father's heart had risen at the 
 first look of him in the humble parlour at Sauchiehall Road ; 
 and there was something of a new-developed soul, something 
 higher, something deeper in that look now. 
 
 " Would ye that ? " he said, in his native tone and accent. 
 He took up the paper where Eddy had laid it down, spread out 
 upon the ling for admiration. " Your little finger would be of 
 no use to me," he said ; " but if ye want this so much, and I 
 don't want it at all, take it, Saumarez. You are very welcome 
 to it, and it's little use to me." 
 
 Eddy raised his eyes suddenly, with a gleam of eager covet- 
 ousness, to the other's face. They were hazel eyes, with a 
 peculiar reddish gleam, and flashed out like lanterns on the 
 steadfast blue of Archie's look. Then a flush came over his 
 face, and his eyelids, which were full and in manj^ folds, went 
 over these two lamps like curtains drawn. "Rowland, you 
 cover me with shame," he said, in a voice only half audible, 
 trembling in the air. 
 
 "What for?" said Archie: as his countenance brightened, 
 liis tone went back more and more to that obnoxious Glasgow, 
 which his father so disliked to hear. But though it was Glasgow, 
 there was the very soul of music in Archie's voice. It became 
 soft and round and dewy and liquid, with the qualities of all 
 melting things in one. "What for? when you want it so 
 much, and me not at all. I have nothing to do with it ; and 
 
 " I have a hundred things to do with it," cried Eddy, " if I 
 could only tell you ! — if you would only understand ! But you 
 wouldn't — an honest fellow like you, that never had a thought 
 you were ashamed of. Oh, yes, it's life or death, that is about 
 what it is ! I could perhaps grapple on, and struggle out. 
 
 Perhaps — I don't know if it would be enough Oh, I say, 
 
 Rowland, it's too great a temptation. Put it away, back in your 
 pocket. What does it matter what becomes of a wretched fellow 
 like me ! " 
 
 There was just enough reality in this struggle against himself 
 to give to Eddy what was generally absent from his best 
 endeavours — an air of truth. He did try to work himself up 
 to the point of refusing this sudden windfall which had dropped 
 into his very hand. 
 
 "Well," said Archie, "don't give it up for that. I have a 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 225 
 
 little more in the bank. It is not very much ; it's about fifty- 
 pounds more. My father gives me an allowance. It's a new 
 thing for me to have all that money, and I just never spend it. 
 What would I spend it upon here ] I got two of Rankin's little 
 dogues — but they're paid for, the little dashed beasts that have 
 taken to — somebody else — that don't care a button for me. 
 Come, take it, lad : and it you'll come to my room when we 
 get home, Fll give ye a cheque for the rest. If it was to buy 
 anything, ye might demur, and say as well me as you ; but when 
 it's to free you of something on your mind : 
 
 "I should think it was on my mind," Eddy said, not looking 
 up at the other face which beamed benignant upon him. Archie, 
 perhaps, was never so much at ease with himself, so conscious of 
 power and faculty, so flattered and gratified during his whole 
 life. 
 
 "Well— and I have nothing on my mind,'" he said with a 
 happy laugh. He doubled up the cheque and thrust it into 
 Eddy's hand. '"And just come to my room as soon as you get 
 
 back— or perhaps :: He paused a little, wondering, as he 
 
 had a favour to confer, which was the best way. "I'll tell ye 
 what's the best. I'll come to yours, and then there will be no 
 difficulty," Archie said. 
 
 He went down over the shoulder of the hill to Rosmore, never 
 feeling for a moment the roughness of the way. laughing at 
 himself as he stuck in a bog or stumbled over a rock, elated, 
 happy, twice the man he was when he threaded slowly through 
 the harsh bushes of the ling to where Eddy awaited him. What 
 a half-hour that had been ! He had never been able to be of 
 use to any one all his life. The experience was quite new to 
 him, delightful above all words. He did nob even remember 
 for some time that it was Rosamond's brother whom he thus 
 had it in his power to deliver from mysterious and unknown 
 troubles. The first recollection of that additional inducement 
 produced upon him indeed rather a sobering than an exciting 
 effect. He divined instinctively that to Rosamond this would 
 be a horror and humiliation. Heaven forbid she should ever 
 know ! He felt nothing but delight in being able to do some- 
 thing for Eddy, but the thought of Rosamond covered him 
 with sudden cold dews of alarm. Never, never must Rosamond 
 know. She would blame him for it, Archie foresaw. It would 
 raise a mountain of horrible obstacles between them. She 
 would resent the mere possibility of such a link between her 
 brother and himself. He must warn Eddy in the first place, 
 who was so careless, who might let it out at any moment ; and 
 in the next, he must take every precaution that no one should 
 ever discover what had passed. Even his cheque might be 
 compromising to Eddy ; there must be no way of betraying 
 him, no possibility left. He turned over in his mind, as he 
 hurried home, all the precautions that could be taken to conceal 
 the transaction. Archie was not a man of business. He had 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 little knowledge of the ways of banks and the manner of pass- 
 ing money from one hand to another. But when the heart is 
 concerned, the mind becomes ingenious. And he had thought 
 it well out, and how it was to be done, so that whatever secrets 
 might be revealed, nothing of this should ever come out against 
 Eddy, before he had reached home. 
 
 Eddy himself was too much ashamed of the part he was play- 
 ing to walk home with the young man who had thus come to 
 his help. There was so much grace left in him that he could not 
 do that. He made the excuse that he was going a little way up 
 the loch to speak to Alick Chalmers, the universal agent, about 
 something that was wanted for the decoration of the ball-room, 
 and when Archie had left him lie stood watching his progress 
 over the hill till he was out of sight. He had been really 
 touched by Archie's kindness, and by the absolute trust that 
 young Rowland had showed in him, and something of compunc- 
 tion, something of unwonted tenderness, was in Eddy's eyes as 
 he looked after that good Samaritan. " What a good fellow he 
 is," he said to himself ; "but, Jove ! how badly he carries him- 
 self. To think he should treat a man like that whom he knows 
 so little as he knows me ; but I ought to have gone with him, 
 for he'll be on his nose before he gets down to the road." 
 
 He could not but laugh at the manner in which Archie can- 
 noned off a big boulder and nearly rolled down the hill at one 
 point in his progress. His heart was still touched, but yet to 
 be as awkward as that, was what no man had any right to be. 
 Then he threw himself down on the heather again and thought, 
 steadily following out with puckered eyebrows and a set face 
 the scheme which had sprung to being in his brain when he set 
 his eyes on the cheque which now kept him warm against his 
 bosom. How much fun and frolic there was in that bit of paper, 
 if he could have used it for his own pleasure. It gleamed 
 across him that lie might yet use it for his own pleasure and 
 let everything slide ; but there are some things that are more 
 necessary than pleasure even to the most sordid mind. He had 
 hailed this money as a benediction from heaven when it first 
 dropped so unexpectedly into his hands, to enable him perhaps 
 to arrange his most pressing affairs and deliver himself from a 
 galling presence. But by the time Eddy rose from his seat 
 among the heather, the most lively feeling he felt in his mind 
 was resignation, and a sense that he was giving up his personal 
 wishes in the noble way of paying an old debt, when he might 
 have got so much fun out of the money ! It was a wonderful 
 change of view. 
 
 He took his way to the upper end of the loch, but not to see 
 Alick Chalmers. He went on for a mile or two on the crest of 
 the hill, and then dropped down upon a little cluster of houses 
 on a little knoll among the harvest fields where the scanty crop 
 was only being gathered in in the end of October. Johnson 
 came out of one of those houses as the young man approached. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 227 
 
 "If you've anything particular to say, let us go up the hill," 
 he said. "It ain't safe talking in these little holes. They can 
 hear you in the other room, if not next door." 
 
 "What makes you think I have anything to say .' " 
 
 "Well, there's those invitations you promised me,'' said 
 Johnson. 
 
 "Promised you! I said I'd ask for you. I'll get them if 
 you'll do what I want for me." 
 
 "Not a farthing more money, Master Eddy; it's no use 
 speaking. To mention it even, would be as much as my place 
 is worth." 
 
 " You fool ! who's talking of money ? " said Eddy. 
 
 They mounted up slowly till they came to a little green knoll, 
 a sort of oasis in the waste of the heather. 
 
 "There's nobody can listen here," he said. "I've brought you 
 a payment on account, Johnson. Look here, if you'll get him to 
 take this, and wait for the rest till I can get it " 
 
 "I daren't make such a proposal, Master Eddy ; he'll have all 
 or none — the whole sum, every penny — or he'll write and expose 
 you." 
 
 "Hold your tongue, I say. Look at it first and see— it's as 
 good as sovereigns counted out upon the table — it's not like a 
 bill or that sort " 
 
 "You don't suppose he'd take a bill off you?" 
 
 "You needn't be so dead sarcastic," said Eddy. "He's had 
 many a worse fellow than me to deal with. Look here, John- 
 son, a hundred pounds down — or perhaps I could make it a 
 hundred and fifty. It's a pity to refuse good money. If any- 
 thing were to happen to me to-morrow ; if you were to put 
 some shot into me, for instance, on Friday on the moor " 
 
 "Do you mean?" cried Johnson, his unwholesome white face 
 lighting up with pleasure. "I can't do what you want, Mr. 
 Eddy, for it don't depend upon me : but I'll never forget what 
 you've done for me, man. It's the thing I've wished most." 
 
 "And do you think," said Eddy, "I'm going to do that for 
 nothing? Xot such a fool, my fine fellow. A hundred and 
 fifty, Johnson — down ; and as good as gold paid over the 
 counter. Wire him that it's an offer, and that you'll be able to 
 push business among the swells you will meet. I can introduce 
 you to half the big-wigs about , and if you don't make some- 
 thing out of them ! — But I must have that confounded paper 
 back." 
 
 "I don't wonder that you say so ; but it's no use speaking. 
 
 If I it depended upon me ! and, Master Eddy, if I can do 
 
 you a good turn another time I will. You never can tell when 
 you may want a good turn." 
 
 " I want this good turn — that confounded bit of paper, and a 
 little ease of my life. Look here ! — and there's more where that 
 came from." 
 
 " I shouldn't wonder," said Johnson. He took the cheque out 
 
 (i 2 
 
228 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 of the young man's hands and examined it closely. "Yes," he 
 said ; " it's as good as gold. Lord, what a pity, when he was 
 doing it, he didn't go a little bit farther and add a nought ! 
 Another nought, and just a little bit of change in one word. 
 Bless us all, how easy he could have done it — a touch of the 
 pen." Johnson put his hand on the cheque, pointing out 
 lightly here and there where the improvement could have been 
 made. '"The one would be just as easy to him as the other," he 
 said. "And think ! then you would be set right in a moment ; 
 that bit of j)aper given up, and everything squared. When you 
 have a friend like this, why can't you get him to do something 
 that's of real use ? A hundred's nothing ; I would advise you 
 to keep that for yourself. It might be of use to you for pocket- 
 money. It's of no use to us." : 
 
 " It's precisely a hundred pounds' worth of use," said Eddy. 
 
 "Ah ! if you take it in that way ; but he wouldn't take it in 
 that way. He would say it's the tenth part of our claim, and 
 I'm not going to let a young fellow like that (he would say- 
 mind, it's not me) off for a tenth of our claim. How much 
 more money (he would say) d'ye think we'd get out of him after 
 he had his bit of paper back. No, no, Master Eddy, no use to 
 try on that little dodge, he's far too old a bird. But, so far as I 
 am concerned, if there's anything in a moderate way I could 
 help you in, after what you're going to do for me " 
 
 " How do you know 111 do it for you now 1 It's nothing for 
 nothing in this world," said Eddy, fiercely. " If you don't help 
 me, why should I take any trouble ? Your day's shooting and 
 your ball depend upon me, and I'm willing to see you through 
 these and introduce you to all the big- wigs, but if I get nothing 
 in return " 
 
 " Only a word of advice," said Johnson. " Go back to your 
 friend, Master Eddy, and get him to alter that thing there ; he 
 could do it with a scratch of his pen. Another nought, and 
 there's nothing easier for a man, when it's his own writing, to 
 change a word. If it looks blotchy, don't you know he puts 
 his initials to show it's all right — I've seen it done a dozen 
 times — that's all he's got to do, and everything would be square. 
 Take it back to him, Master Eddy, that's my advice." 
 
 "I think you're the devil in person, Johnson," was what Eddy 
 replied. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 On the evening of the same day Archie Rowland knocked at 
 Eddy's door. It had been an evening of the lively order, which 
 had now become habitual at Rosmore. Eddy and Marion 
 had carried all before them. After a long discussion of the 
 details of the ball, the decorations in which Eddy was collabor- 
 ating with Mrs. Rowland, and fertile in a thousand suggestions, 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 229 
 
 Rosamond had again struck up a waltz on the piano, and the 
 two gayest members of the party had immediately started 
 off. There were present some of Miss Eliza's many nieces and 
 nephews from the Burn, and in a few minutes two or three 
 couples had ''taken the floor," winding in and out of the 
 furniture, with difficulties which increased the mirth. Mr. 
 Rowland himself had come in from the dining-room while this 
 lively scene was going on, and had looked upon it benignantly 
 for a minute or two in the doorway, but had ended by going 
 away, amused but perhaps a little bored by this unreasoning 
 invasion of his quiet, as the father of a family not unf requently 
 does, not displeased that his children should enjoy themselves, 
 but with an odd sense of bachelorhood and detachmen as he 
 takes refuge in his library, supposing him to have one. Evelyn 
 had been looking on too, still more benignant, glad that the 
 youthful members of the party should be occupied anyhow, 
 ready to take her place at the piano, and help them to keep it 
 up, yet a little disturbed by the withdrawal of her husband, and 
 instantly conscious, sympathetically, that the too-prominent 
 and continual amusement of the young people had its dis- 
 advantageous side. Probably had she been their mother, she 
 would have taken their part more warmly, and with a vague 
 blame in her mind of the man who could not blot himself out 
 as she did, for what pleased the children. Archie, to whom this 
 evening, in the greater number of performers, Rosamond could 
 not offer himself as a partner, felt like his father, a little annoyed 
 and very much amazed with himself for feeling annoyed. How 
 much better, he said to himself, to be like Saumarez, able to 
 give himself up to what other people wished, to amuse them, 
 and make the evening "go off'"' for the guests. Archie felt that 
 he himself would never be up to that. He would never be able 
 to forget himself and throw off all his cares, and sacrifice him- 
 self on the altar of his guests. A secret longing forced itself 
 upon him to get rid of them all. to be quiet, even as in the dull 
 evenings before the arrival of the visitors. The evenings had 
 
 been very dull, but still As for the old life in Glasgow, Archie 
 
 somehow did not go back to that — it had retired so very far 
 away out of his ken. If it had been thirty years ago instead of 
 four months it could not have become more completely impos- 
 sible, a thing got into the abyss of the past, not to be thought 
 of any more. 
 
 It was late when he walked softly through the dim corridor 
 up-stairs, in which one lamp only was burning low, making a sort 
 of darkness visible. Everybody was asleep, or at least so it 
 appeared from the absolute stillness of the house. He felt as if 
 his step now and then coming upon a plank in the flooring which 
 creaked, must startle the people retired in those silent rooms 
 like the tread of a thief in the night. Nothing could be more 
 unlike a thief than Archie was, stealing along in the dark to 
 give away all he possessed in the world to a man whom he did 
 
230 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 not by any means love, who was his neighbour only in the 
 broadest sense of the word, one who wanted something which he 
 possessed. He had made out all his generous foolish plans, as 
 to how it could be best done, so that nobody need ever know 
 that he had come to Eddy's aid, not even a banker's clerk. He 
 knocked softly at the door from underneath which there was a 
 glimmer of light, the 011I3- one in the long corridor where any 
 sign of life was to be seen. His knock was not responded to 
 for the first moment. He heard a little rustle and movement of 
 paper, and then he knocked a second time, and again after a 
 little interval Eddy came and opened the door. 
 
 "Oh, it's you, Rowland," he said, admitting him instantly. 
 
 Eddy had been sitting at a writing-table, with a number of 
 papers before him, over which lie had tossed a newspaper, the 
 first tiling that came handy, when he heard Archie's knock. 
 There was no reason why he should have covered up his papers 
 so. What he had been lost in contemplation of, was Archie's 
 cheque, which was stretched out before him in his blotting- 
 book, and which lie was poring over with no doubt the grateful 
 sensations which a man has when a friend holds out to him, 
 when he is drowning, a helpful hand. He had been looking at 
 it with his head on one side, and a look of earnest and fixed 
 observation, sometimes making a visionary line with his pencil 
 in the air, here and there. Perhaps a little regret about that 
 nought that was wanting might be in his mind. Eddy was very 
 hard pressed. The bit of paper which the money-lender had in 
 his possession, which he held over the unfortunate young man's 
 head, demanding a ransom as cruel and extravagant as any 
 blood-money, was enough to ruin Eddy for ever and ever. No 
 aid or succour from his friends would enable him to get over it, 
 and lie dared not on account of this examine the demand made 
 upon him, or attempt to have it ratified. He must pay it, or lie 
 himself must sink to the very pit of social annihilation. Eddy 
 was very well known to be a little m<nir<ti* sujet % as his father 
 had been before him. Still that was a thing which society could 
 ignore : it could even have permitted him to marry an heiress, 
 with a sensation of pleasure in having him so well disposed of ; 
 but the bit of paper in the usurer's hand was a different matter. 
 That was a thing which could not be admitted, and could not be 
 forgotten. At all hazards, at all costs, that must be got rid of. 
 If there only had been that other nought, if only a t had been 
 prefixed to the It of the hundred, and sundry other unimportant 
 alterations made ! It was impossible not to think of this, not to 
 see how easy it would have been, had Mr. Rowland been possessed 
 by so good an idea. What a pity ! what a pity ! Eddy with all 
 his thinking could not imagine a plan by which Rowland could 
 be made to do that : and yet how easy it would be ! He threw 
 the Glasgow paper over it when he heard the knock at the door. 
 
 "Oh, is it you, Rowland? Come in. I was just looking at 
 the — paper before I went to bed." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 "It's little interest it can have for you — a Glasgow paper," 
 said Archie with a smile. And then he said, "I've come to speak 
 about what we were saying this afternoon on the hill." 
 
 "' Yes ! " -aid Eddy. He has repented already, he said to 
 himself with a deep-drawn breath. 
 
 Archie stammered and hesitated, and blushed as he sat down 
 at the table. He began to rustle and pluck at the corner of the 
 paper unconsciously with those awkward ringers which he never 
 knew what to do with. "I've been thinking,"' he said, and 
 could get out no more. 
 
 "Look here," said Eddy nervously, "if you've been thinking, 
 Rowland, as would be quite natural, that you were taken by 
 surprise to-day on the hill, that you handed over that cheque to 
 me in a moment of weakness, and that now on thinking it over 
 you felt that you had been a fool, and that my troubles were 
 no concern of yours — don't beat about the bush. I have been 
 thinking just the same myself. It's monstrous you should be 
 put out about a fellow's concerns whom you had never seen a 
 month ago, and never may see again. Say it out, there's a good 
 fellow ; don't hesitate and spare my feelings. I agree before- 
 hand in every word you say." 
 
 Archie stood open-mouthed while his companion delivered 
 very rapidly this little oration, in which there was a great deal 
 of genuine feeling : for Eddy thought it was almost inevitable 
 that such a rash piece of generosity should be repented of, and 
 yet was in so much mental excitement concerning the matter 
 altogether, that Ids mind was full of impatient resentment 
 against the man whose action (mentally) he approved, and 
 whom he believed to be doing the most natural thing in the 
 world. 
 
 " I suppose." said Archie. " it's the natural tiling, because a 
 man is a little behind in his company manners, and all that, 
 and can't ride, or shoot, or dance, or anything as well as you, 
 that you should make sure he is a cad all round, as you say." 
 
 " What do you mean ] " cried Eddy, with his sharp eyes doing 
 all he knew to read a face, to him altogether inscrutable in the 
 simplicity of its single-mindedness. 
 
 "So long as you don't ask me to discuss what you mean," said 
 Archie, with a careless disdain which stung the other : for, 
 indeed, the lad was desperate in the feeling of being unable to 
 himself understood, whether from one side or another. 
 "I've been thinking," he said, "the best way of getting that 
 money without compromising — any person. It's a transaction 
 between ourselves that nobody has anything to do with. My 
 father might a-k I my bank book. I am perhaps doing 
 him the same injustice that I think you are doing me : bill 
 might, for my own good, if he thought I was spending I 
 much. Now, I don't want him to poke into this, and rind per- 
 haps your name, or Therefore I was thinking, suppose we 
 
 go up to Glasgow, you and me • There's these things that you 
 
232 THE RAILWAY MAN" 
 
 want for the ball — that would be a very good excuse. And 
 then I can draw out the money myself, in notes or gold, or 
 whatever you please, which will leave no record on the books, 
 so that I will be in it alone if there should be any remarks, and 
 not you. Do you see ? _ Here's the cheque for the other fifty 
 pounds. You can have it that way if you like, of course ; but I 
 can't help thinking it would be better my way." 
 
 "Rowland," said Eddy, giving him one glance, then with- 
 drawing his eyes quickly, as from an inspection he could not 
 bear; "do you do all this for my sake?" 
 
 "I don't know that it's for any one's sake. It's just the 
 easiest way — not to compromise any one. If I'm asked for an 
 explanation, I can give it in my own way — about myself. But 
 if I am asked for an explanation about you, I neither could 
 give it, nor would I : you see the difference. It's just a plain 
 business view." 
 
 "It is not a common kind of business," said Eddy; "it's the 
 first time I ever heard that sort of thing called business. You're 
 a queer fellow, Rowland ; but I think you must be about the 
 best fellow I ever knew." 
 
 "Nothing of the sort," said Archie. "I have something I 
 don't want, and you want something you haven't got. We 
 niifer, that's all. Oh, I suppose you don't understand that 
 word, it's Scotch. We exchange, that's what it means." 
 
 " And what do I give in exchange ? " said Eddy. The question 
 was asked rather of himself than of Archie, who made no reply, 
 except a little shame-faced laugh. Young Saumarez reflected a 
 little, with working eyebrows and twitching mouth. He said 
 at last, " I'll take you at your word, Rowland ; this will make it 
 a debt of honour. I'll take you at your word. A thing that's 
 got no evidence, that you couldn't recover, is the only thing 
 that presses on a man's conscience. I'll take you at your word." 
 
 Archie again gave vent to a little laugh of embarrassment, 
 and confused relief. He did not enter into the reasoning. 
 Debts of honour, or debts of any kind, were unknown to him. 
 It had driven him almost distracted to think how he was to pay 
 for the two little puppies from Rankin— the doggies which he 
 always thought of witli a little bitterness, who had abandoned 
 him and gone over to the enemy. No more than Eddy could 
 have understood that difficulty, could Archie understand how it 
 might be supposed he was securing himself against loss by 
 astutely giving the character of a debt of honour to the money 
 he was bestowing upon his fellow-creature who was in need. 
 He said simply, "We will consider this as settled then; and 
 we'll run up to Glasgow to-morrow. I can show you the place : 
 it is not like London, perhaps ; but there's things in it you 
 couldn't see in London. There's a boat about ten o'clock." 
 
 " Oh, I say ! that means getting up in the middle of the night." 
 
 " Well, there's one at twelve. We'll get there before the bank 
 shuts. You'll not be able to see so much of the town." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 233 
 
 "I can live without that," said Eclcly. 
 
 *• Well, Glasgow's a very fine place," said Archie gravely, not 
 wishing to permit any disparagement of his native town : and 
 then he rose from the table. He had already unconsciously 
 pulled the newspaper half away, and as he rose up his movement 
 displayed it altogether, and he could not help seeing, notwith- 
 standing Eddy's eager half-movement to cover it again, the 
 cheque lying opened out upon the blotting-book underneath. 
 He said hastily, "You were just going to send it away — — " 
 
 "Yes," said Eddy, his heart beating, not understanding the 
 question, but seizing at it as he would have done at any means 
 of escape. 
 
 "Then I just came in time," said Archie, with a pleased 
 smile. 
 
 Eddy took up the cheque, with a feeling of despair clutching 
 at his heart. "You had better have it back," he said. 
 
 "You can bring it up with you," said Archie; "nobody is 
 likely to ripe your pockets and see what's in them in the 
 middle of the night." 
 
 With this enigmatical speech, which Eddy did not in the 
 least understand, Rowland bade him a hurried good-night, and 
 took himself away. 
 
 Eipe his pockets : what did that mean ? but this problem did 
 not occupy much of the precious time which Eddy had to give 
 up to thinking. He found the pencil lying where he had left it, 
 the cabalistic pencil which he had been waving over Archie's 
 cheque, hoping perhaps to convey thus into it the alterations 
 which James Rowland could have made so easily, which would 
 have cost that millionaire so little, and done Eddy such a world 
 of advantage. A malison on all millionaires ! What they 
 might do with a sweep of the pen, without ever feeling it, 
 without knowing that a crumb had fallen off their well-covered 
 tables for a dog to eat ! Eddy flung the pencil from him in his 
 indignation. The fellow meant very well, he allowed that. 
 There was advantage in keeping this little transaction quite 
 dark, in obliterating all traces of the loan or gift given him in 
 this way. But, confound the fellow, all the same ! Eddy flung 
 his pencil out of his hand, and it fell on the floor at the foot of 
 the table where Archie had been sitting. The dumb articles that 
 one throws away generally have a prompt revenge over us in 
 having to be groped after next minute ; and this was what 
 happened to Eddy. But as he stooped to pick it up, his heart 
 began to beat with a wild commotion which almost choked him : 
 for there at the foot of the table, underneath the chair which 
 Archie had pushed away, lay a long booklet in a green paper 
 cover. There could be no doubt to the most ignorant what it 
 was. It was Archie's cheque-book, which he had brought in, 
 in case Eddy should, after all, have preferred his money that 
 way, with a cheque written out for Archie's spare fifty pounds 
 on the first page, and a dozen more blank cheques behind. The 
 
231 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 blood mounted up to Eddy's face. It came in such a rush that 
 he could scarcely see for the moment ; and yet he knew very 
 well what it was, and the inconceivable opportunity which the 
 devil — was it the devil, or that something not always benevolent 
 which people call providence ? — had put into his hand. 
 
 He scarcely went to bed at all that night. Hosts, armies, 
 legions of thoughts came up and possessed him like an invaded 
 country, marching and counter-marching through his mind. 
 It was not without a struggle that he yielded, it was not with- 
 out many struggles. Half-a-dozen times at least he was the 
 victor, and rejected conclusively, triumphantly, the idea set 
 before him ; and then the landscape would change, the perspective 
 alter, and regrets, doubts, convictions that wrong was right, 
 specious arguments to show how entirely it had always been so, 
 would rise up and bring back the rushing tide of battle. And 
 then there were things he had to do. He went to bed only when 
 the morning gray had come up over the little town on the other 
 side of the loch, bringing it out of the darkness with a curious 
 furtive aspect, stealing into the light as if it had been lying in 
 wait for this moment, which indeed was quite true. He tossed 
 himself on his bed, and courted sleep ineffectually for half an 
 hour, but after that time it came with all the force of a despot. 
 He slept, as men or boys sleep only at twenty, till the day was 
 bright all over the loch. At twenty ! oh heavens, was that all 
 the age he was, that haggard little gray face waking up and 
 remembering in the great pale shining of the light. 
 
 He went into Archie's room on his way down-stairs and put 
 back the cheque-book which he had found. Archie had break- 
 fasted an hour before, and explained to the family that lie was 
 going to Glasgow by the mid-day boat, and Sauinarez with him, 
 to see after those things for the ball. 
 
 "You seem to be getting great friends with Eddy," Mrs. 
 Rowland said in the pause which followed this speech. The 
 words were simple enough, but they went witli a wave of 
 interest round the table. 
 
 "Well, no harm, Evelyn, no harm," said Rowland, pleased 
 that his boy was making friends in what the poor man in his 
 heart called "our own position." 
 
 Marion put on a little conscious look, blushed a little and 
 smiled a little, as if she knew the private cause of this friendship 
 —while Eosamond opened a little wider her steady eyes, and 
 turned them with an inquiry upon Archie. He did not shrink 
 from the attention thus attracted towards him : his heart was 
 soft to Eddy, to whom he was about to do so great a service. It 
 is a wonderfully softening process to be very good to any one, 
 and makes us think better of the objects of our kindness. Eddy 
 had become more interesting to Archie than he had ever thought 
 it possible he would find him ; and this not for any one's sake, 
 not even for Pxosamond's, but for his own. The only effect, 
 curiously enough, of this incident, was to deepen his dislike to 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 235 
 
 his stepmother. She was the one to question and object, he 
 thought. Perhaps she thought him not good enough for Eddy 
 — most likely, as Eddy was of her own kind. Eddy, though so 
 late that the party had all dispersed from the table, except Mrs. 
 Rowland herself, who was reading her letters, and Marion, who 
 was making pretence of looking over the fashion papers in 
 order to wait for his appearance, was in great spirits and full of 
 the expedition he was about to make. 
 
 " Rowland is going to show me everything," he said. He made 
 a very bad breakfast, eating nothing, but he was full of talk and 
 apparent enjoyment, and begged the ladies to give him com- 
 missions. " Archie may forget, but I will not forget." He in- 
 sisted that Marion and his sister should walk down to the pier 
 to see them off. 
 
 "Come along, Rose," he called to her as they all came out on 
 the colonnade, " don't you see I am going out sight-seeing % I am 
 a British tourist. I am not sure that I am not a Tripper — and 
 Rowland is taking care of me. Come and see me safe into the 
 boat." He continued in an extremely cheerful condition all the 
 way to the ferry, keeping up a fire of banter. 
 
 " The laddie's fey, I think," said old Saunders on the pier, who 
 resented too much liberty. 
 
 "And, Eddy, I don't think you are well. I think you are 
 feverish," said Rosamond. 
 
 " You don't say those sisterly things," said Eddy to Marion. 
 
 " Oh," cried the girl, " I just never mind. What would I do if 
 I were to make myself uneasy about everything % It is time 
 enough when there is any occasion. And Archie would never 
 mind what I said." 
 
 " But I should mind always," said Eddy, lowering his voice. 
 
 "You ! but you would not like me to ask you if you were 
 feverish." 
 
 "I should tell you I was always feverish — with rage, when I 
 saw you wasting your attention listening to fellows like that 
 nephew. It is that that has made my head ache," cried Eddy. 
 " I thirst for his blood." 
 
 " He has never done you any harm," said Marion demurely. 
 
 " Thank heaven no one is coming to-night. I shall have you 
 all to myself to-night. There will be no nephews about. I shall 
 make Archie take me to where you used to live." 
 
 " Oh, you wouldn't like that at all," said Marion. " It's not a 
 place to see. We were put there when we were little children, 
 when it didn't matter where we lived. Don't go to any such 
 place. There's nothing to see." 
 
 " There would always be some trace of you," said Eddy, 
 making great use of his eyes. And then they both burst into a 
 laugh. 
 
 "You're so silly that one doesn't know how to speak to you," 
 said Marion, " but for all that don't go there." 
 
 Rosamond walked along with her long tread in stately serious- 
 
236 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 ness after them. She said, " You are very kind to take Eddy in 
 hand. He wants so much to be steadied, and get a little solidity. 
 
 I would much rather have him with you than with more " 
 
 She paused a moment, and looked her companion over with her 
 steady gaze. 
 
 " How 1 You mean better company," he said. 
 
 " No, I don't mean that. I mean — people in the world : he is 
 so much better out of the world, and seeing nobody he ever knew 
 before." 
 
 "Among the natives," said Archie with a laugh. 
 
 Rosamond did not contradict him or look as if he had made 
 any mistake. She said with a sigh, " Eddy wants a great deal 
 of looking after. I wish I could lind some one to pay a little 
 attention to him. He will be good for a few days, and then he 
 Avill go all wrong, as if he had never pulled up before." uhe 
 sighed, and added, " Keep him safe for me to-day. Don't let him 
 go and roam about spending money." 
 
 " I will do my best."' 
 
 " Are you a man that spends money yourself, Mr. Rowland ? 
 People don't do that in Scotland, do they ? They are different." 
 
 " They cannot do that," said Archie, with a laugh, " when they 
 have nothing in their pockets to spend." 
 
 " I beg your pardon. I thought you had quantities of money," 
 Rosamond said. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 There was not very much conversation between the two 
 young men as they went to Glasgow. Eddy, indeed, would talk 
 for a few minutes from time to time in his usual way, but 
 presently would fall into silence, from which he roused up 
 feverishly with suppressed excitement in his eyes, to rattle on 
 once more for a brief time, asking hasty and often absurd ques- 
 tions, and making fun of the answers which Archie in puzzled 
 seriousness made. Humour had not much share in Archie's 
 constitution. He had been light-hearted enough in his earlier 
 development, and joked like the rest in the rather noisy fun of 
 the class to which he belonged ; but his father's return, and the 
 revolution that had taken place in his existence, had taken all 
 the fun out of Archie, and made life very serious to him. Eddy's 
 "chaff*," the light art of turning everything into ridicule, which, 
 when there is no sympathetic ear to hear, falls so flat and sounds 
 so dreary, perplexed his graver companion. Archie concluded 
 charitably and not untruly that it was excitement that pro- 
 duced this varying behaviour, the dead silence and the chatter 
 of speech. He believed that Eddy's troubles about money and 
 the relief he was himself about to bring to them were the cause. 
 He himself thought that a hundred and fifty pounds was an 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 237 
 
 immense sum, and that there was scarcely any embarrassment 
 possible to a youth of his own age which could not be amply 
 covered by that, Archie had known "fellows in debt' - ' often 
 enough, but a ten-pound note, or twenty at the outside, would 
 have made their hearts dance. And he thought, with a sense 
 that he himself was acting the part of providence, that a com- 
 plete and perfect deliverance must result in this case. He said 
 to himself, that when Eddy had actually the money in his hands 
 — which he intended to draw out himself and hand over in notes 
 to his companion — his mind would be more calm. 
 
 The transaction at the bank was managed quite satisfactorily. 
 Archie would not even permit Eddy to accompany him inside, 
 but left him gazing vacantly into the shop-windows Avhile he 
 accomplished his business. Very little passed between them 
 when it was completed. Archie thrust the little packet of notes 
 into Eddy's hand. "They're small ones,'' he said, "I thought 
 that was best." And Eddy grasped Archie's hand and gave him 
 a look in which gratitude was blended with what Archie ima- 
 gined to be joy — in his salvation, so to speak : but which was 
 in reality a delightful consciousness of the possession of money, 
 and of the great joke involved in his benefactor's conviction 
 that lie was doing a great thing. Eddy did not think so much 
 of the hundred and fifty pounds. He concluded that it was the 
 merest trifle to the millionaire's son, who, of course, had only ; got 
 to ask his father for more if lie wanted it. Eddy put it into his 
 pocket carelessly, though with much pleasure. It did not mean 
 the payment of debt, which to him was but a mediocre satis- 
 faction ; it meant various things much more agreeable — the 
 spending of money, which is an inexhaustible pleasure so long 
 as the wherewithal lasts. 
 
 After this they went to see various of the sights of Glasgow, 
 in which Eddy, it must be allowed, was not very much interested 
 — the Cathedral, for one, which Archie looked' upon as the most 
 glorious building in the world, but which young Saumarez cared 
 about as little for as he would have cared for any other cathedral 
 under the sun. Eddy yawned as he walked about the aisles and 
 investigated the crypt. He cared neither for the architecture 
 nor the antiquity, nor for the painted glass, nor even for Rob 
 Roy, which latter interest poor Archie considered infallible. 
 Nor were the other sights more exciting to him. He suggested 
 luncheon as far more interesting either than the Necropolis, the 
 College, or the Broomielaw : and after the luncheon, which he 
 did not consider highly satisfactory, asked with much languor 
 and fatigue of expression, whether Rowland had not some one 
 he wanted to call on instead of bothering about any more 
 Glasgow sights .- 
 
 Archie coloured high at this question, not on Eddy's account, 
 but with a curious feeling of shame, which was also a feeling of 
 guilt. To be in Glasgow without going to see his aunt would 
 te, he was aware, an unpardonable and heartless thing. It 
 
238 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 would wound her deeply if she knew, and even if she never 
 knew, it would be no less a mean and abominable thing to do. 
 Nevertheless the presence of Eddy had been enough to make 
 him put this from his mind as an impossibility. " I was not 
 thinking of calling anywhere," he said. 
 
 "But you must have people that you want to see. Let's go 
 and see somebody,"' Eddy said. " I like people. I'm not a fellow 
 for seeing sights." 
 
 "I might take you to see the football at the Westpark — if you 
 are fond of football." 
 
 " Oh, I don't mind it," said Eddy ; " let's go and see the football. 
 It is better than staring at things neither you nor I care about." 
 
 " Oh, I care about that," said Archie : and as he thought of 
 the old field in which his old companions used to meet, a certain 
 warmth for the old times came over his heart. He had been 
 rather a fine performer at football in his day, and the Westpark 
 men had meant to play the College that very season, he recol- 
 lected. He had not appeared at the field since the season began. 
 His place there knew him no more. Nevertheless, to see them 
 at their practice would be something, and he might meet some of 
 the fellows between whom and himself there was now such a 
 gulf fixed. Saumarez would be startled no doubt by their noisy 
 ways, and their broad Scotch : but what did it matter after all 
 what Saumarez thought ? They went accordingly to the West- 
 park, where, with pleasure but alarm, he-had conducted his father 
 four months ago, when cricket was going on. Happy lads ! they 
 had but changed from cricket into football, while Archie — what 
 changes, what changes his life had undergone ! 
 
 They got to the field before the play had begun, and Archie 
 was loudly welcomed by several of his old friends. "What's 
 come of ye, man, all this time ? " " Eh, Archie ! you're a sight 
 for sair een." "Are ye back in Glaskie, or are ye just on a 
 visit?" Archie shook hands with a whole band, and replied 
 that he was only up for the day, but that he felt he must come 
 and see them, and hear what was going on; and he had a friend 
 with him — a friend from England. The young athletes clustered 
 round, delighted to see any friend of Archie's. They asked Eddy 
 questions about the game "in the South." "But I don't know 
 much about the South," he said. "Harrow's the farthest South 
 I know." Archie's friends, though they were but Glasgow lads, 
 knew enough to know that Harrow merited respectful treat- 
 ment, and they led the stranger to the best place to see the 
 game which was just beginning. The two young men stood and 
 watched with great interest for some time, and then in this new 
 springing of kindly associations, Archie felt it was impossible 
 to go back without seeing his aunt. To come here and not to 
 go to Aunt Jean, to run the risk of wounding her to the heart : 
 for some one would be sure to tell her he had been seen at 
 Westpark— he felt that it was impossible he should do this 
 thing. He touched Eddy on the shoulder at the very crisis of 
 
AX I) HIS CHILDREN 230 
 
 • 
 
 the interest, and whispered, " I'm going to run away for ten 
 minutes to see an old friend. I'll come back for you here." 
 
 "Not a bit," said Eddy, promptly. "I'll go with you. My 
 interest is not overwhelming in the match. I'd much rather 
 go 
 
 " Oh, it is not a place you will care for,'' said Archie, much 
 embarrassed. 
 
 " Xever mind : I'll come with you,'' said his companion, and 
 what could Archie say 1 He made" a hurried explanation to one 
 of the performers that he was compelled to go, and the two left 
 the field. Even then Archie made another attempt to throw off 
 this too close companion. 
 
 "It's a pity," he said, "to take you away. I'm not going to 
 see anybody that's interesting. It is an old body, an old — 
 relation ; nothing that will please you." 
 
 " You don't do me justice," said Eddy. " I tell you people care 
 what I care for ; and you know my taste for ladies. Old ladies 
 are my favourite study— when there are no young ones in the 
 way." 
 
 " There are no young ones," said Archie, in despair ; and I 
 don't want to take you away.' 
 
 " Oh, I like it," said Eddy, and thrust his hand through the 
 other's arm. 
 
 There was, therefore, nothing to be done but to accept the 
 leading of fate. How strange and wonderful now were all these 
 familiar ways that led to the Sauchiehall Eoad ! Already the 
 work of time and change had operated upon them. They were 
 narrow, and mean, and gray, not comfortable and friendly as 
 they had once looked, the houses small and poor, the streets 
 confined and filthy, the whole complexion of the place altered. 
 He had not known what a homely, poor part of the town it 
 was : he saw it now as if it were a new place with which lie was 
 making acquaintance for the first time. 
 
 And when he came in sight of the house in Sauchiehall Road, 
 the familiar house with its front door, so dignified a feature, 
 and the big elderberry tree filling up the little space before the 
 door ! The blinds were drawn carefully half over the window, 
 except in the little parlour down-stairs, where everything was 
 open, the little muslin curtain over the lower part of the window 
 tucked up that Mrs. Brown might see— who was sitting there at 
 her knitting, carefully looking out upon the street, for some- 
 thing new. What a "changed life it was for Mrs. Brown; no 
 young people running out and in, no merry companions, no 
 little vanities to minister to, no little quarrels and frettings, 
 but a dead load of solitary comfort, good things which she 
 ate alone, and new dresses which nobody saw. She gave "a 
 skreigh," as she herself would have said, as she saw Archie 
 coming up the path, and flew herself to open the door for him. 
 " Eh, my bonnie man ! " cried Mrs. Brown. She did not fling 
 herself on his neck and kiss him, for that was not according to 
 
240 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 her reserved Scotch ways, but she held both his hands, and 
 swayed him slightly by them, gazing into his face with eyes full 
 of ecstasy and tears. "Eh, Archie, but it's a pleasure to see ye. 
 Eh, my bonnie man ! " 
 
 " I am glad to see you again, Aunty Jean," said Archie. " I 
 was in Glasgow for the day, and I've come to see you ; and I've 
 got a friend with me — a friend from England.'' 
 
 " Oh," said Mrs. Brown, perceiving Eddy's not very distin- 
 guished figure behind. She made him something between a 
 curtsy and a bow. "I am sure," she said, "any friend of 
 Archie's is welcome to me, sir. Come in and take a seat. I'm 
 glad to see ye. — But oh, Archie, m\ T man ! the sight of my own 
 laddie is just light to my een. And how is a' wi' you, my bonnie 
 boy 1 — and Mey % And are ye getting on well at Rosmore 1 And 
 is your father well ? and the leddy 1 I have so many questions 
 to ask I dinna know when to stop. Eh, Archie, how I have 
 missed you — life itself is not the same — and Mey ! I just sit 
 dowie all the day, and care for nothing, looking out at my 
 window as if I might see ye pass, and sitting by the fireside and 
 listening as if I might hear ye coming down the stair. Eh, but 
 life's a different thing when there's naething but an old wife 
 sitting her lane by her fireside " 
 
 And here Mrs. Brown broke down and cried; but looking up 
 smiling, in the midst of her tears, bade them to tell her if they 
 had got their dinner, or what she could give them. " I will have 
 mince-collops ready in a moment," she said. 
 
 "I told Rowland so," said Eddy, "that he should have come 
 and asked you for some dinner instead of going to that queer 
 place in — what do you call the street 1 but he thought it would 
 be giving you too much trouble. That's the worst of that 
 modest sort of dreadfully proud fellow. He can't be got to see 
 that you would like to take the trouble — for him." 
 
 "Eh, laddie," cried Mrs. Brown, her face lighting up through 
 the half-dried tears; "are ye a warlock, or how do ye ken? 
 That's just heaven's truth ; and though he's blate, he's awfu' 
 proud: and ye must be a lad of uncommon sense to ken." 
 
 "Yes," said Eddy, modestly, "I've always been noted for my 
 sense ; but I am not at all proud, and I think if you were to 
 make some of your nice tea for us — I am quite sure that you 
 make delightful tea." 
 
 "Hear to him ! " said Mrs. Brown, delighted. "Ye shall have 
 your tea, my young gentleman, and a pleasure it will be to 
 serve ye. I will just ask Bell if the kettle is boiling ; and, Archie, 
 ye can show your friend the pictures of Mey and you when you 
 were bairns, and the views your father sent home from India, 
 and anything you can find to amuse him. I'll no be a minute." 
 She left the two young men alone together while she hurried to 
 the kitchen to see after the tea. 
 
 "Let me see the picture of your sister and you, not the views 
 from India, Rowland," said Eddy. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 241 
 
 "Saumarez," cried Archie, clearing his throat ; "I told you 
 this was a relation. She brought us up, and she was very kind 
 to us. I can't have her laughed at, you know." 
 
 "Laughed at?" cried Eddy; "how you misunderstand! I 
 found out all that in the twinkling of an eye. And as for being 
 disrespectful to your aunt, it is not I that will ever be dis- 
 respectful ; besides which, I delight in an old lady like that — 
 was the kettle boiling, Mrs. Brown ] " 
 
 " 'Deed it was,'' said Mrs. Brown, "and Bell will bring the tea 
 ben in a minute or two, as soon as it lias had time to mask. I 
 never let it stand long after I have maskit the tea. And how 
 are ye getting on, Archie, my bonnie lad, at Bosmore 1 Are ye 
 getting more familiar ? are ye liking it better ] And Mey 1 Ye 
 are such poor letter writers, I must take my chance of hearing 
 all I can when you're at hand. Four months, Archie, and 
 neither the one nor the ither of you has been near. That's no 
 what you ought to have done. You that were just like bairns 
 of my ain." 
 
 "It is not my fault, aunty. We have not been in Glasgow 
 since we left. There has been always something to do. Either 
 my father has wanted me, or May has been busy, or something 
 has been in the way. We have had people visiting in the 
 house." Archie looked instinctively at Eddy to help him out. 
 
 "We have been there for a long time,'' said Eddy. "People 
 very hard to keep amused, always making claims upon them. 
 Of course we had not the pleasure of knowing you, dear Mrs. 
 Brown ; and we have been the greatest bother " 
 
 "Oh, dinna say so," cried Aunt Jean ; "sure am I they were 
 very glad of the bother, and real pleased to have ye there. And 
 so am I delighted that Archie should have such a friend as you. 
 No, I'm not so unreasonable. I was giving a bit jeer at them 
 to see what they would say for themselves, and Avhat excuse 
 they would give. But I was wanting no excuse. I'm just over- 
 joyed that they have such friends. And if they werena coming 
 about me every day, well I kent the reason. I would rather 
 see them doing their duty in their father's house, and taking 
 their proper place, than fiddling and fyking about me." 
 
 "We've been neglectful, Aunt Jean," said Archie, "but we'll 
 do better after this." The sense that he had been good to one, 
 in one direction, made his heart all the softer in every way. 
 "It's all been so new, and there is so much to learn ; but it will 
 never happen again." 
 
 " Xa, na, ye must not take me in earnest like that," said Jean. 
 "I gie a girn, but — I've no evil meaning. And here's the tea. 
 
 Just draw in your chair and come near the table, Mr. but 
 
 I didn't rightly catch your name." 
 
 " Most people call me Eddy," said the young man with a 
 laugh. 
 
 " And a very good name too. You'll be from the south ? though 
 I have kent many Adies in our ain country. But ye have a 
 
 E 
 
242 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 grand way of speaking, and I hope, Archie, ye'll take an example. 
 I'm no fond of knapping English, but it's a' the fashion, and 
 mair does it than has ony right." 
 
 " I will just speak as I was born to speak," said Archie, with 
 a taste of his native obstinacy. 
 
 " Weel, weel, it's no for me to interfere. But ye havena said 
 a word about Mey? She might have come with yc, to look in 
 upon her auld aunt. But it was aye oot of sight oot of mind 
 with Mey. Ye are mair faithful, Archie. Have you heard of 
 the great changes in the Road 1 " (Mrs. Brown said Rod.) "Lizzie 
 White, that was once out and in of the house every day, she is 
 married upon Mr. Wright, a watchmaker in Buchanan Street — 
 just a very excellent match. Oh yes, ye must mind very well, 
 for I used to think that if ye wasna both so young — — And 
 then the Cowcaddens, that made just a great show, with cabs at 
 their door every day, and pairties and dancing and I dinna ken 
 all what — has failed, j)oor man, and the house roupit, and them 
 living in some poor close somewhere, just as miserable as they 
 can be, which shows what prideful wasting and high living must 
 come to. And oh, Archie, there is another tiling I just want to 
 speak to you about. You mind Colin Jamieson that was at the 
 College, and meaning to be a minister — poor lad ! he's fallen 
 into a dwining and an ill way, and they say he maun go to 
 Egypt or some of thae places. And his folk are poor folk, and 
 he just smiles and says 'they might as well tell me to gang to 
 the moon.' Archie, I had the pen in my hand yesterday to 
 write you a letter. Eh, laddie, ye aye had an open hand. If 
 ye would maybe spare out of your abundance a little siller to 
 help this poor lad ! He would never ask it, but from an auld 
 comrade that was so well off, there could be nae reason for 
 refusing. Archie, if your heart were to speak." 
 
 There was a dead pause, and it seemecl to poor Archie that 
 heaven was against him. He who would have been so read}*, so 
 anxious to offer anything he had — and he had nothing! He 
 could not speak ; and that this demand should have been made 
 before Eddy made it more dreadful still. But Eddy did not 
 take it in that point of view. He was not called upon to say 
 anything. He sat calmly eating the cake with which Mrs. 
 Brown had supplied him. Eddy Avas not embarrassed at all ; he 
 was much interested in a half-comic way to know how Rowland 
 would get out of it. To a fellow like that it would be hard to 
 refuse, and Eddy felt that it was a very good thing lie had got 
 all the money, or else to a certainty the fool would have given 
 it to this other man, who probably would do much better to 
 stay at home. He ate his cake, therefore, and drank his tea 
 with an amused and interested mind, looking on with a perfectly 
 tranquil perception of all that was involved. 
 
 '"Aunt Jean,"' said Archie, stammering and blushing, "I am 
 more sorry than words can say — but I have not got the money. 
 I would give it — or my heart's blood if I could — to an old friend 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 243 
 
 like Colin. But I haven't it. I haven't it ! If it would do at 
 the New Year ' 
 
 " He will likely be in his grave by the New Year,'' said Mrs. 
 Brown, "if lie canna get away." Jean had drawn herself within 
 herself, so to speak. "She rose a head taller as she sat, over her 
 tea-tray, her portly person seemed to draw in, the beaming 
 expression departed from her face. To be refused ! and by her 
 own boy ! and before a stranger ! and with a lee ! for how could 
 he be without money 2 He that had got a twenty-pound note, as 
 she herself knew, only four months before, just a fortune for a 
 callant like Archie ; besides more no doubt where that came 
 from, Jims Rowland being just too liberal. It was to Mrs. 
 Brown as if all the waves of tlie Clyde had dashed into her face. 
 For a moment she could make no reply. 
 
 "Archie," she said at last solemnly, " I'm no fond of much 
 troke about money between friends. It's very likely to lead to 
 ill-blood. But I thought for Colin, that ye once were so fond of, 
 if I might speak— you have maybe," she said with keen irony, 
 " forgotten who he was. I've often seen that folk have but short 
 memories that rise in the world. He's the lad who got you into 
 your grand club. Ye may not think much of it now, but it was 
 a grand thing for ye then. It was him ye used to consult about 
 your debating and all that, and that was sae good at the footba', 
 and that learnt ye '' 
 
 "Do you think I have forgotten, auntie? I have forgotten 
 nothing," cried Archie, starting up from the table. "It's just 
 despair,' he said, under his breath. " I havena got it. I havena 
 got it ! " He began to pace about the room as his father did, 
 with his hands thrust into the depths of his empty pockets, and 
 his shoulders up to his ears. As for Eddy, he turned aside a 
 little and took up the paper Mrs. Brown had been reading, by 
 way of relieving them of the embarrassment of his presence as 
 much as possible during this family dispute. 
 
 "Well ! " said Mrs. Brown, "it is the first time I have askit 
 anything of ye, and it will be the last time, Archie Rowland. 
 Let's say no more about it. I thought it was just a thing yo 
 would have made no hesitation about, but been mair ready to 
 give than me to ask. 
 
 " "And so I would," he cried, "and so I would ! " with a sort ot 
 groan out of his very heart. 
 
 "We will just say no more about it," said Mrs. Brown, wit.i 
 dignity. " Sit down and take your tea." 
 
 " I am wanting no tea," said Archie. 
 
 " Ye will sit down and bide quiet at any rate, and not disturb 
 other folk. Mr. Adie, I am very glad that ye like your tea ; ic s 
 aye a good sign in a young man if he likes his tea. It show ; 
 he's no thinking of ither beverages that are mair to the taste of 
 so many unfortunate lads in this world. Ye'll maybe be from 
 London, which is a muckle place, I have always heard, and full 
 o' temptation. Eh, laddies, but ye should be awfu' careiul not 
 
 K, 2 
 
244 THE .RAILWAY MAN 
 
 to put yourselves into temptation. A very little thing will do 
 it. Ye will maybe think," said Mrs. Brown, making a desperate 
 attempt to fathom the cause of Archie's behaviour, and explain 
 its enormity, " that to take an interest in racing horses or even 
 in playin' cards or dice or the like of that, is no just a cardinal 
 crime. But oh, it leads to a' the rest ! Ye will maybe think 
 nothing of losing a shilling or twa, or even a pound or twa upon 
 a game. That's bad enough, oh, it's bad enough ! It may keep 
 ye from doing a good turn to a neighbour in time of need, it 
 may make ye powerless for good, just as it makes ye an instru- 
 ment for evil ; but that's not all. It leads from bad to worse. 
 It's like the daughter o' the horse-leech, it's aye crying ' Give, 
 give.' It's like a whummel down a hill, the longer ye go the 
 faster ye go. Oh, laddies ! when I think how young ye are, and 
 a' the dangers in your way, and what soft hearts some of ye 
 had, and how soon they harden when ye think of nothing but 
 yoursel " 
 
 "Aunty," said Archie, "we have got the train to catch, and 
 the boat to catch, and we will have to go." 
 
 "I will not detain ye, Archie," said Mrs. Brown, with the air 
 of a duchess, " so long as ye give Mr. Adie the time to finish his 
 tea. Good morning to you, sir, and I am very glad to have seen 
 ye in my poor bit place. Ye will maybe give my love to my 
 niece, Mey. And good-bye to ye, Archie. I hope that every- 
 thing good will be aye in your path, and that ye may never 
 want a kind friend nor one to succour ye in time of need." 
 
 To tell the feelings with which Archie heard the door of his 
 childhood shut upon him with a decisive clash, as if for ever, 
 is more than I have words or power to do. He was shamed, 
 abandoned, given up — and without any fault of his. Eddy was 
 extremely entertaining all the way home. He had of course too 
 much good taste and good breeding to refer in any way to the 
 family quarrel of which he had been so unlucky as to be the 
 witness. To ignore it altogether and do his best to divert his 
 companion's mind, and make him forget, was of course the thing 
 which in the circumstances a man of good feelina: would do. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 There was great curiosity at Rosmore to hear what the 
 young men had done and what they had seen in Glasgow : in 
 the chief place, no doubt on account of the decorations for the 
 ball, which were of so much importance, and in which Eddy's 
 taste was expected to accomplish such great tilings. Eddy had 
 so much to say on this point, that the brief interval in the 
 drawing-room before dinner was wholly taken up with his 
 account of his arrangements and purchases. 
 
 " If it all succeeds as I expect," said Eddy, " I know what I 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 245 
 
 shall do, Mr. Rowland. It will make a revolution in my life. 
 I will follow the example of other fl& d( famille and set myself 
 up as a decorator, don't you know. Algy Fergusson makes 
 heaps of money by it. When you are going to give a ball, he 
 takes everything in hand, charges you a certain sum, and sup- 
 plies whatever you want, from the flowers on the stairs to a few 
 dancing men in the best society, if that is wanted. I shall 
 follow Turn in humble imitation. No, I'm not going to tell you 
 too much. Mrs. Rowland has given me carte blanche. A^ ait till 
 you see." 
 
 "It's a queer trade." said Rowland; "but something might 
 be made of it. I would advise you, however, Eddy, to look out 
 for something more like a man." 
 
 "Oh, it is very like my kind of man," said Eddy : a not yours, 
 sir : but there's not very much of me." 
 
 Rowland, like everybody else, had learned to call young 
 Saumarez, according to the fashion of the day. by his petit nom. 
 And he laughed with great good humour at this self-description. 
 The young man was the most entertaining study of what he 
 considered the manners of the best society to the master of 
 Rosmore. Eddy's lightness and ease and imperturbability 
 amused him more than he could say, and at the same time tilled 
 him with respect. It was all the more evident in comparison 
 witli Archie's easily roused temper and irritable self-conscious- 
 ness, which saw in everything a shadow of blame, and never 
 was at ease, or able to take anything lightly. Rowland watched 
 the effect upon his son of intercourse with the other light- 
 hearted lad with the greatest secret anxiety. He thought with 
 pleasure that Eddy had "taken to : ' his uncultured uneasy boy, 
 and that Archie would "learn manners" from contact with the 
 other youth, who, though so little to look at, not such a nice- 
 looking fellow as Archie, was yet so much more a man of the 
 world. Eddy's cheerful admission of his own defects, and that 
 there was not very much of him, delighted Rowland. How it 
 disarmed criticism ! Would Archie, he wondered, ever attain 
 to that easy mind, and unembarrassed faculty of taking the 
 sting out of any jibe by tranquil pre-assertion of his own 
 deficiencies ] It was not a thing which Mr. Rowland could 
 himself have attained, but he saw its advantages. It did not 
 seem, however, in the meantime that Archie had made much 
 progress in acquiring this gift. He took little part in the 
 conversation which young Saumarez kept up so lightly. It 
 was Eddy who told the story of their day in Glasgow, and 
 owned to have yawned in the Cathedral. Archie was silent, 
 as was his wont. He kept a little apart, and said nothing. 
 Sometimes he cast a glance of strange meaning at the lively 
 conversationalist, who made their expedition sound so amusing. 
 What was it that look meant ? It was Archie's usual way— 
 his inability to understand the happier natures. They all noted 
 that occasional glance, and all gave the same interpretation to 
 
246 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 it : for what, indeed, could it mean else 1 There was nothing 
 else to arouse his surprise, the wondering, half-question in 
 his eyes. 
 
 Archie's wonder, indeed, was beyond words. To think that, 
 with such a light heart, the transaction which had already cost 
 himself so much should be taken by the other without a thought 
 of the penalty involved, or the shame it had already brought. 
 Perhaps Eddy did not realize that shame, or what it was to the 
 young man to be suspected of unkindness, of selfishness, of 
 wasting upon miserable pursuits of his own the money that 
 might have saved the life of another. A year ago nothing 
 could have made Archie himself realize such a position, for he 
 had never possessed money, and could not in the nature of 
 things have been asked for it, and this probably was why 
 Saumarez was so obtuse. There was another thing, however, 
 which Archie could not understand, but which he was deeply 
 grateful for : and that was that Eddy made not the slightest 
 reference, in his lively narrative of the day's proceedings, to the 
 visit to Mrs. Brown. Why 1 But Archie could not tell— it 
 only vaguely increased the trouble in his mind, while more or 
 less soothing it externally : and he did not know whether it 
 was not his duty to mention it himself. They might think him 
 ashamed of Aunt Jean if he said nothing, and yet the recol- 
 lection of that visit was so painful that he preferred not to 
 speak of it, and was grateful to his companion for leaving it 
 out of his easy and amusing tale. After dinner Eddy was as 
 much the hero of the moment as he had been before. He had 
 various experiments to make as to the lights, as to the flowers, 
 and all the details of the ball-room, for the due regulation of 
 which the group of admiring spectators followed him up and 
 down, hanging upon his words. Archie followed at the end of 
 the train, still wondering, saying to himself, that no doubt the 
 money, which apparently was to cost himself so dear, had so 
 relieved Eddy's mind that he could not restrain himself, that 
 he felt a new man :^ that was no doubt the cause of his vivacity, 
 the lightness of his heart. Archie remembered how he had 
 himself felt when relieved of the burden of the debt to Eankin 
 for the little dogs, and other small matters which had been on 
 his mind before he had received his father's first gift of twenty 
 pounds. That gift had come to him amid painful circumstances, 
 but when the first effect produced by them had died away, how 
 glad he had been to have it, to clear himself from the small 
 burdens which were as lead upon his soul ! Eddy was much 
 more a man of the world than he, and his liabilities were far 
 greater, but he thought he could understand how he must feel 
 from those sensations of his own. He could not but think, 
 however, that in Eddy's place he would have said something — 
 he would have given a look or a grasp of the hand to his bene- 
 factor to show him that he appreciated and felt what he had 
 done, especially if that benefactor had been likely to get into 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 247 
 
 trouble for it. Then Archie, pondering behind backs, while 
 all that lively chatter was going on, remembered himself that 
 he had not said a word of gratitude to his father for the twenty 
 pounds, had neither felt nor spoken any gratitude. Ah, but I 
 am not his father, Archie said to himself. With this thought, 
 however, came another reflection, that up to this moment he 
 had never shown any thankfulness to his father, who had be- 
 stowed so many gifts upon him. He had been embarrassed and 
 awkward, and had taken everything for granted. Who was he 
 to blame another for the same sentiment which was so strong 
 in himself ? Only just I am not his father, Archie said. 
 
 It was when the party was breaking up for the night that 
 Marion seized upon her brother, drawing him into a corner of 
 the hall where the lights were extinguished, and where in the 
 recess of a window there was a sheltered place beyond the 
 reach of observation. She caught him by the arm and drew 
 him aside there, until the others had dispersed, and then a piece 
 of inquiry which he had not anticipated burst upon Archie. 
 • Were you at Aunty Jean's? Did you take him to Aunty 
 Jean's ?" Marion exclaimed breathlessly, holding his arm with 
 her hands as if in a vice. 
 
 '■ You heard him," said Archie, avoiding the question, w telling- 
 all where we had been.'' 
 
 " Were you not there ? Did you not go there 1 He never 
 said a word, but he could not speak if you didn't. Archie, tell 
 me on your word— were you not there ?" 
 
 Archie saw that her eyes were gleaming, and her face pale. 
 
 He did not know what to make of this sudden assault, nor what 
 
 it could matter to Marion whether he had or had not gone to 
 
 see Aunty Jean. He answered at last, however, with reluctance. 
 
 " Yes, we were there." 
 
 "You were there! you took him there!" cried the girl, her 
 eyes in the dark shooting out sparks of fire. She seized him 
 again by the arm and shook him violently. " Oh, I knew you 
 would do it ! What do you care for keeping up our name ! It 
 it had been anybody else you might have done what you 
 pleased — but him ! " . 
 
 "Why him]'' said Archie; "what is he? Do you think I 
 could neglect an old friend, not to speak of my nearest km, and 
 
 her that brought us up " . 
 
 " Oh, what's in that ?— brought us up ! She was well paid 
 for it," cried Marion, "and now established for her life, and 
 everything provided, because papa thinks she was kind to us.' 
 •• She was verv kind." 
 
 -She was not unkind," said Marion. "She just made us 
 serve her purpose and keep her in an easy life. If she had 
 been unkind it would have been the same as killing the goose 
 that laid the golden eggs. And now you've exposed us, and 
 showed just what we were, and where we came from, to hddy 
 Saumarez ! Oh, Archie, man ! could you not have said she was 
 
248 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 an old nurse, or something like that 1 and then there could have 
 been no objection. I would have had my wits about me if I 
 had been in such an emergency. You might so easy have said 
 she was our old nurse ; but that's what you could never do, to 
 take thought for our credit and not to expose us." 
 
 "I don't know what you mean by exposing us," said Archie 
 indignantly, " and as for disowning our Aunt Jean " 
 
 " Oh, disowning is just a grand word ! I mean nothing of the 
 kind. I could just be as fond of aunty in private as you. And 
 what could she expect more? It would show she was self- 
 seeking and full of her own pride if she wanted us to expose 
 ourselves for her. What does that mean ? It just means that 
 we have our position to keep up. We belong to the upper 
 classes and not to Sauchiehall Road. I would not have let the 
 like of Eddy Sauniarez know that we had any connection with 
 Sauchiehall Koad, except with an old nurse or the like of that. 
 An old nurse explains everything," said Marion. "I will just 
 let him understand that's how it is, and that we call her aunty 
 because we are fond of her. You may do that and no harm — 
 just for kindness. And what is she more than an old nurse? 
 You know yourself she would not come to Eosmore for that— 
 not to expose us. Her and me, we both understand. I will just 
 explain it all." 
 
 "One would think," said Archie, "that Saumarez was of great 
 importance, and what he thought. And most likely he thinks 
 nothing about it. His mind is full of his own affairs." 
 
 "And what are his own affairs?" said Marion scornfully. 
 "Maybe that is one of his own affairs," she added with a faint 
 blush, as Archie turned upon her in surprise. " You never can 
 tell what may turn out to be important and what not. Eddy 
 is just nothing in himself. But though he will have no money, 
 he Avill have a good property and a line house, and a position 
 and all that. And we have plenty of money and nothing more. 
 It might be a thing to be taken into consideration on both 
 sides. But you will never understand that, nor perhaps papa 
 either, and I will just have all the responsibility thrown upon 
 myself." 
 
 " What responsibility ?" said Archie, more and more astonished. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried, with a little stamp of her foot, " as if the 
 like of you would ever understand ! " She gave him a little 
 indignant push from her in the impatience of her soul, but 
 turned to him again after a moment's interval. " I am not 
 saying, mind," said Marion, " that there is anything in it. There 
 may be nothing in it. It may just pass over, and be of no con- 
 sequence. I will maybe be in a much better position when I 
 have gone to court, and have been seen in society and all that. 
 But you should remember, Archie, that we're just very new 
 people. Papa is a new man. His name is known, but except 
 for our money we are just nobody. Now mamma is different. 
 I was angry at the time to think that papa had married again 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 249 
 
 raid brought in a grand lady that would look down upon you 
 and me ; but I've come to a different way of thinking now. I 
 just study her and take a lesson by her, and I can see if we arc 
 to get on in the world that she is the one to help us most.' 
 
 ''I don't want her help/' cried Archie, "and it that's what 
 you call getting on in the world " 
 
 "Oh," cried Marion, with a sigh of impatience, "you are just 
 like a bairn. To think that you cannot see for yourself, you 
 that are a man ! What are we to do if we don't get into 
 society - You would rather be back in the Sauchiehall Eoad, 
 with your football and your friends, than in a grand house like 
 this, with nobody that cares for you, and nothing that you 
 can do." 
 
 "May," said the young man, sadly, "many a time I have 
 thought that myself, — far rather ! It was a kind of living, and 
 this is none — to be waited on hand and foot when you're not 
 used to it, and feel like a fool, and have nothing to do. But 
 that's not all the harm it's done. When I went back to the 
 Sauchiehall Bead, I was just as much out of place there ! That's 
 ended : and the other is begun, and there's no satisfaction any- 
 where. I will be faithful to Aunty Jean, poor body, that was 
 so kind to us, while I have a breath to draw," he exclaimed with 
 energy. Then sinking into despondency, " But I cannot go 
 back there, and I am out of place here ; and there is no good 
 that I can see in a world that's all a vain show, both for the 
 rich and the poor." 
 
 '"Well," said Marion, witli a certain satisfaction, "you see 
 then just as I do. We must get ourselves well into what we 
 have, for we never can go back to what we were. And the only 
 
 way that we can do it is by " She broke off with a little 
 
 laugh. " You can find it out for yourself, but you need not put 
 a spoke into another person's wheel. I am not saying that 
 Eddy Saumarez will be of any consequence in the end. Maybe 
 I will not care to know them after I have been to court. I will 
 not commit myself, you may be sure. I will aye have a way of 
 escape, if I should change my mind. But it was just silly beyond 
 measure to give him a story about Aunty Jean. He will take 
 her off, and make everybody laugh. You can see yourself how 
 he makes fun, and takes everybody off. That is what amuses 
 people, and makes them ask him. He could make it very funny 
 about Aunty Jean. Oh, I know all the}' say, and I'm getting 
 to understand. If you can tell them stories, and keep them 
 laughing, it's all they think of. And you to give him the 
 occasion with poor Aunty Jean ! " 
 
 "He had better not let me hear him say a word about Aunty 
 Jean, said Archie, between his closed teeth. 
 
 " Oh, he'll not let you hear him," said Marion. She was alto- 
 gether unconscious of the fact that Eddy took herself off with 
 perfect effect, so that even Mrs. Rowland had difficulty in 
 looking severe enough. 
 
250 THE BAILWAY MAN 
 
 Archie went to join the party in the smoking-room after this 
 conversation, with more uneasiness than ever. He was not 
 quite clear about his sister's meaning. Marion was too far- 
 seeing, too full of calculations for her brother. He had himself 
 his own thoughts : but they were of a very different turn from 
 hers. Rosamond Saumarez was to Archie a being of a different 
 species from himself or any one belonging to him. It had not 
 occurred to him that he could appropriate this beautiful lady, 
 and make life more possible by her means. She was still upon 
 her pedestal, a thing apart, a being to be remotely admired, 
 scarcely even as yet worshipped : for in worship itself there is 
 a certain appropriation, and his imagination had not gone so 
 far as that, had not ventured to use any pronoun of possession, 
 even with goddess attached to it. In no way had he imagined 
 that she could ever be his, but always something beyond reach, 
 as superior to him as earth is to heaven. The impression she 
 produced upon him was subduing, rather than exciting. To 
 think that there could be such a distance between him and any 
 other human creature, as there was between him and Rosamond, 
 doubled the mystery and awe of the world on the threshold of 
 which he was standing, to the disturbed and unsatisfied mind 
 of the boy-man, so rudely shaken out of all lus old habitudes, 
 so little at home in his new. At no time could Marion's frank 
 calculations of how she could help herself up the ascent she 
 meant to climb, by grasping a chance hand, this man's or 
 another's, as happened to suit her best, have been possible to 
 her brother. He faintly apprehended what she meant, but found 
 it so uncongenial that his mind declined to look into it. There 
 are some who feel themselves forced, in the course of nature, 
 to investigate, and come to the bottom of such questions ; and 
 there are some who shake themselves uneasily free of an ex- 
 amination which could end in nothing but pain. 
 
 Archie had no wish to think badly of Marion, to bring down 
 the ideal of his sister : so he shook off the question of her mean- 
 ing, and left it alone. There was not much pleasure to him in 
 the sitting in the smoking-room, where he found his father and 
 Eddy in full discussion, the latter bearing all the frais of the 
 conversation, and making his host laugh with his lively descrip- 
 tions and sketches. Archie was conscious that he presented a 
 complete foil and contrast to Eddy, as he went in and seated 
 himself a little in the background, notwithstanding the invita- 
 tions of both the gentlemen to draw his chair nearer to the fire. 
 He liked to skulk behind, Rowland thought angrily, with vexa- 
 tion, to himself — never could take his place simply, always kept 
 behind backs. Perhaps young Saumarez was not any more 
 than Archie the son he would have chosen. But yet what a 
 difference there was ! 
 
 The day of the ball was approaching apace, and everything' 
 in the house began to feel the excitement of the coming event. 
 There was less than a week to go, when Eddy broached tli3 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 251 
 
 subject of Johnson— of Chad's— and the possibility of procuring 
 him an invitation. 
 
 "Oh," he said, "there is that— friend of mine up at the head 
 of the loch." (Naturally, Eddy, however much he might en- 
 deavour to conceal the fact, said "lock,"' but I need not spoil 
 my orthosrraphv by repeating his error.) "I wonder if you 
 would be inclined to let me bring him, Mrs. Rowland. I scarcely 
 like to ask; but he's all alone, you know, and knows nobody, 
 and looks wistful when one sees him.'"' 
 
 "You should bring him in to dinner, Eddy, ' said the ever- 
 hospitable Rowland. 
 
 " Xo, sir, I don't think I should like to do that. He has noo 
 paid the extra twopence for manners. In a crowd he might 
 pass muster, but at your table " * m 
 
 There was the faintest emphasis on the words, which interred 
 a delicate compliment. And Rowland was pleased. 
 
 "Mr. Johnson. T ; said Evelyn, doubtfully.^ "I did not feel 
 quite sure about him. He was a little— odd/' 
 
 " College dons are generally odd," said the unblushing Eddy. 
 
 "Are you quite certain, my dear boy, that he is a college 
 
 don .- "' 
 
 " For my own part," said Eddy presently. "I should probably 
 like him much better if he were not. But I suppose there can t 
 be two Johnsons — of Chad's.'' 
 
 '•Xo, I suppose not," said Evelyn, still doubtfully. At the 
 same time," she added, "one would have thought if there was 
 one thing vou could be sure of in a college don it would be 
 
 grammar— and his and that they should talk like gentlemen. ' 
 
 3 "I don't know," said Eddy, reflectively, "that one can be so 
 very sure of that ; now that everything goes by competition, 
 you can't tell by his profession that any man is a gentleman. 
 Besides, they speak Latin between themselves," said the young 
 man, with an unmoved countenance. 
 
 " Eddy ! " cried Rosamond. 
 
 - Well, they do. I allow it's queer, but I have heard them 
 avec mes propres ore 'dies, va/ and Latin grammar is quite 
 different from English— far more elaborate, and that sort of 
 thing. English translated out of Latin would naturally sound 
 a little strange." 
 
 Even Evelyn looked at him with a little surprise, uncertain 
 whether to laugh or not. She was but little interested in the 
 ways of college dons. She had a kind of belief that there was 
 something in what he said about competition. The gardeners 
 son was at college, and if he came to be a don he would no 
 doubt remain a little inelegant in point of grammar. 
 
 While she was thus pondering, her husband took the matter 
 
 in hand. . . 
 
 "Send him an invitation as Eddy's friend, he said, m his 
 lar^e and liberal way ; "if he were a coal-heaver what does it 
 matter so long as he is Eddy's friend? And I don't suppose the 
 
252 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 young ladies will think of his conversation ; they will be more 
 interested in his dancing. It's a question of heel and toe, and 
 not of h's." 
 
 "I don't know that he dances much," said Eddy; "but he 
 could always prop up a doorway, and it would please him 
 awfully to come and look on." 
 
 " You'll ask him, of course, Evelyn," Mr. Rowland said. 
 
 And he was asked, of course ; and the invitation was handed 
 to him next day on the hillside, where he met Archie and Eddy 
 and the gamekeeper, and was supplied with a gun, to the great 
 disdain of the latter functionary. 
 
 " That man has never had a gun in his hands till this day," 
 said Roderick, aside ; "keep out of his road, for any sake, Mr. 
 Airchie : he will never hit a grouse, but he might put a wheen 
 shots into you or me." 
 
 " I was not very much better myself," said Archie. " I can 
 feel for him, Roderick." 
 
 " Oh, you," said the gamekeeper. It was his young master he 
 was speaking to, and that has a wonderfully mollifying influ- 
 ence. "You were maybe no to call experienced, but you were 
 neither frightened for your gun nor sweerd to use her. Keep 
 you to that side, Mr. Airchie, and if the other gentleman gets it, 
 it's just his ain friend, and he maun bear the brunt." 
 
 "I thought you liked Mr. Saumarez, Roderick." 
 
 "So I do like him, though he has an awfu' funny name. He 
 has a good eye for a bird, and will make a fine shot when he's 
 come to his prime, and just makes you lose your manners with 
 his fun and nonsense. But if he brings out a stick like this 
 upon the moor, he must just rin the risk of him. Come you, 
 Mr. Airchy, to this side." 
 
 Eddy, on his hand, had something to say to his guest. " Have 
 you got me that thing ? " he said. 
 
 "They won't give it up till they see the money, Master Eddy. 
 I've told you so before." 
 
 "Very well, Johnson. I have an invitation for you, in my 
 pocket, to the ball — and I have a cheque in my pocket, which is 
 better than money. Y r ou shall neither have the one nor the 
 other till I have that paper in my own hands." 
 
 " Give and take then, Master Eddy," said the other. 
 
 " You ass, keep down the muzzle of your gun ! No. I must 
 have it in my hands to see it's all right before I let you touch 
 the other. Oh, just as you please ! but that's my last word." 
 
 "Y r ou don't suppose I carry it about in my pocket," said 
 Johnson. 
 
 " I suppose nothing. I only tell you what I'll do. Give it me 
 that I may see it's right and the genuine thing, and you shall 
 have the cheque, which is as good a cheque as any in the world, 
 whatever the other may be." 
 
 " You might play me some tricks, or stop it at the bank," said 
 Johnson. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 253 
 
 " By Jove, that's an idea. I'll do so, if you don't look sharp 
 with that other thing." 
 
 " Well,'*' said Johnson, " if that's how it is to be, I'll bring it 
 up to you to-morrow morning to the house — and then you can 
 introduce me to the ladies. I ought to know them first, before 
 I come to the dance.'' 
 
 "No," said Eddy, "you can come to the ball, where it will be 
 fun : but if you come near the house till the night of the ball, 
 I'll let off my gun by accident, as you'll do presently if you 
 don't mind, and take your wretched life. Xow, you hear, i ou 
 can come to old Rankin's cottage in the wood to-morrow, if you 
 like, at twelve. You can say you want a dog — he'll not let you 
 have it, for he never sells them to cads ; but it will do for an 
 excuse. ' 
 
 "By Jove," said Johnson, "if you don't mind what you .say, 
 I've got a gun, and I can have an accident too."' 
 
 " Put it down, you ass ! " cried Eddy, striking down the 
 muzzle of the gun, which, in the confusion, went off, nearly 
 knocking down by the concussion the unfortunate Johnson, 
 and ploughing into the heather and mossy soil. The neophyte 
 thought he had killed somebody, and fell down on his wretched 
 knees. "I swear to God I neA'er meant nothing. I never 
 meant to 'it any man," he cried. 
 
 " Oil, get up, you brute, and hold your tongue," cried Eddy. 
 He added, shaking him by the shoulder, " If you talk when 
 you're at Kosmore, you'll be turned out of the house. I've told 
 them you speak nothing but Latin— mind you hold your tongue 
 if you don't want to do for both yourself and me." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 Eddy took his morning walk to Rankin's cottage next day ; 
 but he did not meet any one there. He went in and endeav- 
 oured to treat with the old gamekeeper for a dog, but found the 
 old man quite indisposed for any such negotiation. 
 
 " Xa, na," he said, "I have nae dogues that I can part with. 
 They're a' bespoken. Lady Jean has mostly friends that want 
 them. I canna part with one o' them. Mr. Archie from 
 Rosmore House, he came and picked up my best. I couldna 
 well refuse the son o' the place — but that's thrown me far 
 behind. Yell excuse me for saying it, but you're a stranger, 
 my young gentleman, and I'm my lord's auld servant, and Lady 
 Jean's. I must think o' them first." 
 
 "Do you think I would not be kind to it, you old sceptic 1 ? " 
 said Eddy. 
 
 " I wasna saying ye would not be kind to it. There's few 
 folk wicked to dogues. I was saying I have none to dispose of 
 
254 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 Ye will not be staying very lang at the Hoose 1 Ye Ye been 
 here a good while, the young lady and you. Few visitors bide 
 as Jang now-a-days. I canna tell whether it's the faut of 
 having so many enjoyments, or if it's the faut of the hosts that 
 dinna give a sufficient welcome ; but I notice that it's three 
 days, and that kind of a veesit that's popular now. No time to 
 turn yoursel' round in. Just the day of coming and the day of 
 going, and one or at the most twa days between." 
 
 "We are not like that," said Eddy, "we have come for a 
 visitation, don't you see : but I am sorry you think that we are 
 staying too long." 
 
 " Oh, it is none o' my business," said Rankin, with a serious 
 face. "I'm thinking ye will be taking the road after this ball? 
 they're a' talking about it. To hear what they say you would 
 think it was ane o' the Queen's balls." 
 
 " Well," said Eddy, " I Hatter myself it will be quite as pretty. 
 By the way, Rankin, have you had any more encounters with 
 that great scholar, don't you know — the college man from 
 Oxford— that I saw here?" 
 
 "I'm glad," said Rankin, "that you've given mean occasion 
 of speaking. Sir, ye're young, and your experience is no great, 
 though you have a real good opinion of yourself. Yon's nae 
 college man — or, if maybe in these times he may have gotten 
 himself to be a college man — at least I can say this of him, that 
 he's nae gentleman. Just you be awfu' careful what you re 
 about wi' yon man. I would not trust him a foot's length out 
 of my sight. He has nae root o' the matter in him : neither 
 ceevility, which is little thought upon, I allow, in the training 
 of a college — nor learning. He is awfu' cautious no to open his 
 mouth on sicli subjects ; but my impression is that he has 
 naething to say, and he's nae mair a gentleman than yon doug. 
 Mair ! I'm meaning far less. Rover's a real gentleman. He'll 
 make place for ye by the fire, and he'll give you his best atten- 
 tion when you speak, and thank ye when ye do him a pleasure. 
 A good doug of a good breed might learn manners to a prince ; 
 but as for yon friend of yours " 
 
 "I never said he was a friend of mine," said Eddy ; "but you 
 are too severe, Rankin. How should you be such a judge, not 
 being a gentleman yourself ? " 
 
 The old gamekeeper's ruddy colour deepened a little. 
 
 " Sir," he said, " I've aye found the best sign of a well-bred 
 man was that he gave credit to other folk of being as good as 
 himself — if no better. Them that fail in that will never come 
 up to my standard. Ye think nae doubt that ye ken better 
 than me — but just you take warning from an auld man. I've 
 seen a' kinds. Maybe you are no aware that I was much about 
 the world in my younger years with my lord — and my lord 
 wasna very particular in these days, though he's a douce man 
 now. I've seen a' kinds ; but a worse kind than yon Johnson 
 man " 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 255 
 
 '■•lohnson of St. Chad's, Rankin — mind what you're saying." 
 
 " He's nae mair of St. Chads than I am ! There's both a note 
 and a query in my paper from the real man — on a subject, it is 
 true, that lie doesna understand — he goes clean against ray 
 reasoning, which to any unprejudiced mind would be mair 
 than conclusive ; but it's dated from a place away in Wales, or 
 somewhere far to the south of this. Na, na, yon man is nae 
 scholar, and if yell take my word for it, nae gentleman either. 
 His name may be Johnson, but he's just masqueradin" in 
 another's local designation, and I wouldna trust him, no a fit 
 beyond what I could see him. Ye are a very clever lad, but ye 
 canna have the experience of the like o' me." 
 
 " Here he is, Rankin ; you may be right, but you must be 
 civil," Eddy said. 
 
 "Ceevil ! in my ain house. He kens John Rankin little that 
 thinks it needful to tell me that. Good-morning to ye, sir," said 
 the gamekeeper, raising his voice. " Come ben without hesita- 
 tion, there's naebody but freends here.'' 
 
 " Oh, friends ! I don't seek my friends in a hole like this," 
 said Johnson, evidently bent on showing his quality. "I've 
 nearly been blown away coming along your infernal lock, and 
 I've been in the mud up to my ankles on what you call the paths 
 in the wood." 
 
 "It's a pity," said Rankin grimly, "that the maker of them 
 was not mair careful to suit baith land and water to your 
 needs.' 5 
 
 "The maker of them," said Johnson, "could have understood 
 nothing about making roads — some of your country fellows that 
 are bshind in everything. Oh, you are here, Master Eddy. I've 
 come to see after one of these little dogs you talk so much 
 about." 
 
 "And what may you be wanting with a little dogue?" said 
 Rankin, with scrupulous politeness. 
 
 "I? — just what other people want, I suppose. Let's see, old 
 gentleman, what sort you have got." 
 
 "I have no little dogues," said the gamekeeper, folding his 
 hands on his chest. The impulse was so strong upon him to dip 
 into the nest, where their small conversation as they tumbled 
 over each other was quite audible, that he had to grasp his coat 
 with his hands, in order to refrain. 
 
 "I can hear them squeaking," said Johnson. 
 
 Rankin turned a serene glance upon Eddy. " Ye see," he said, 
 "what I tellt ye. What kind of a person would use a word like 
 that ? My dogues, sir," he added, "are all bespoke. I have cer- 
 tain ladies and gentlemen, great friends of mine, that get a' I 
 can spare. Ye hear naething squeaking here, but just a few 
 remarks made at ween themselves by a sma' family, that are of 
 as good blood and race as any here." 
 
 " Oh, come, my man," said Johnson, " I'm not a softy to be 
 cheated out of my money like that. I'll give a fair price, but 
 
256 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 you needn't think to take me in, with your ladies and gentlemen. 
 I know what a dog is worth." 
 
 u Hold hard, Johnson,'' said Eddy. " It's a monopoly, don't 
 you know, and Rankin can do what he likes. He knows a lot, 
 I can tell you. He knows you're in South Wales or somewhere 
 and not here -" 
 
 " I ? " cried Johnson again. " I never was in Wales in my 
 life." 
 
 " I tellt ye sae, sir," said Rankin significantly ; " and that 
 being proved, I hope you will mind the rest of my advice." 
 
 " What is he saying, Master Eddy 1 What has he been advis- 
 ing you ? Something about mel I'll trouble you, my man, to 
 keep your advice where you keep your dogs, and not to interfere 
 with me." 
 
 "I am no man o' yours," said Rankin, "any more than you 
 are a man o' mine. I advise my friends for their good just when 
 I please. Ye are in my poor bit dwelling, and that gives ye a 
 privilege : but I must do my duty by a young gentleman that 
 is a veesitor at the Hoose, and therefore more or less under what 
 I may call my protection when he comes to see me." 
 
 " You are no match for him, Johnson," said Eddy laughing. 
 " You needn't try. Come along, old fellow. I'll show you that 
 business I told you of. Don't be afraid, Rankin. Whatever I 
 do that's wrong it will be my own fault and not his. I'm young, 
 but I know a thing or two for all that." 
 
 " Mair than you should — mair than you should ! "' cried the 
 gamekeeper ; " but come soon again and see me, sir ; there's a 
 hantle mair advice I would like to give ye. Janet," said Rankin 
 solemnly to his wife as the door was closed, " if there's any devilry 
 comes to your ears, mind you it's that man." 
 
 " Hoots, John," said Mrs. Rankin, who had come " ben " with 
 her glistening arms wrapped in her apron, from the midst of 
 her washing, at the sound of the opening door : it was almost 
 all that good woman ever said. 
 
 In about half an hour from this time Eddy Saumarez reached 
 Rosmore, and made his way to his room in much haste. He was 
 drenched with the rain which for some time had been coming 
 down small and soft, but persistent, after the fashion of the west 
 country, and only waved his hand to the party collected over the 
 great fire in the hall, where the decorations were already being 
 put up. " I am so wet, I must change before I can be of any 
 use," he said, as he passed : but before he succeeded in gaining 
 the shelter of his room, his sister came out upon him from hers, 
 where she seemed to have been keeping watch. She put her 
 hand upon his wet sleeve and detained him. 
 
 " Eddy," she said, " what have you been doing ? You have got 
 into some scrape ? For goodness' sake remember where you are, 
 and all that depends upon it." Rosamond was very serious, she 
 had even a pucker of anxiety on her usually smooth brow. 
 
 " I have got very wet," said Eddy, " if that's what you mean : 
 
AXD HIS CHILDKEN 257 
 
 and probably a bad cold depends on it, which would be pleasant 
 on the eve of a ball. If you've got a sermon to preach you can 
 do it after. I must change my clothes now." 
 
 " Oh, what does getting wet matter/' said Eosamond, " or 
 catching cold either 1 Who is this man you have made them 
 ask ? If it's any one that ought not to come, and father hears 
 of it—" 
 
 "It's Johnson— of St. Chad's/' said Eddy, pausing to laugh 
 at his joke, which had already prospered so much beyond his 
 hopes. 
 
 '"What do you know of St. Chad's ? And father, who set me 
 to keep you "straight ? Eddy, I didn't mind any humbugging 
 with grandmamma, she deserves it, and you had a great deal of 
 provocation ; but they're good people here " 
 
 "Who are good people 1 my little girl, or your fellow that you 
 can turn round your finger % I'll answer for them, my child. 
 And the father, with his money " 
 
 "He has been very kind to us," said Rosamond. "I will not 
 have him mystified. Tell me who this man is, or I will go 
 straight to Mrs. Rowland and tell her not to let him come." 
 
 " Oh, he'll come fast enough," said Eddy, " he's got his invita- 
 tion ; all the country couldn't keep him from coming. _ But if 
 you have any bravos at your disposition, and can have him way- 
 laid and thrown into the loch, do it, my dear, with my blessing ; 
 I shan't mind." 
 
 " Then why, why did you make them ask him?" cried Rosamond. 
 
 Eddy laughed ; there was excitement in his laugh, but there 
 was also amusement. " Why ? " he said, " for fun ! isn't that 
 reason enough \ To watch him will be the best joke that ever 
 was. I'm to Introduce him to all the bigwigs, and shan't I do it, 
 too ! Find me a title for Miss Eliza, Rose. How he'll listen to 
 her ! — and lend the nephews money " 
 
 "Eddy, it's some wretched money-lender " 
 
 "Well," said Eddy, with a laugh, "there are many worse 
 trades ; they must have it, or they couldn't lend it. Go away 
 and let me change my wet clothes." 
 
 Rosamond went away as she was bidden, partially satisfied. 
 She was a girl of great experience in many ways. She knew the 
 shifts of living when there is very little money to live on, and 
 yet all the luxuries of existence have to be secured. She was 
 not acquainted with the expedient of doing without what you 
 cannot afford to buy, but all the other manners of doing it were 
 tolerably familiar to her. She had none of that shrinking from 
 a money-lender which people, who know nothing about them, 
 are apt to suffer from. She even appreciated the advantage of 
 keeping on good terms with members of that fraternity. It was 
 one of their weaknesses to be eager about getting into society, 
 putting on a semblance of gentility. Rosamond went back to 
 her room, with that air of a princess which was natural to her, 
 shaking her head a little over Eddy's joke, but not so disturbed 
 
 s 
 
258 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 by it as she had been. Her only hope was that Johnson -would 
 not come to the ball covered with jewellery, that he would 
 understand the wisdom of holding his tongue and refraining 
 from the dance. She herself knew very well how to defend her- 
 self from the penalty of dancing with him. Rosamond was not 
 out, but yet she was aware of those guiles by which girls, obliged 
 to accept any partner that offers, defend themselves from carry- 
 ing out their engagements when that is necessary. She was in 
 no uneasiness on her own account, and a faint sense that it 
 would be fun to see the money-lender floundering among people 
 who after all, whatever airs they might give themselves, were 
 not, Rosamond reflected, in society, stole through her mind. It 
 does not matter so much when people are not in society who 
 they associate with. Who thinks of their lesser distinctions? 
 You are in society or you are not ; and if the latter is the case 
 what does it matter ? This was the thought in her mind. She 
 hoped that Johnson was not too Hebraic, that his nose was less 
 pronounced than usual, and his eyes less shining. Indeed, as 
 she endeavoured to recall his appearance, he had no speciality 
 in the way of nose, so that really on the whole there would be 
 little harm done. If any society man happened to be there who 
 recognized the money-lender, he could either divine the real 
 state of the case or suppose that the Rowlands were not so well 
 off as they looked. And in neither case would that do any 
 harm. 
 
 Eddy, for his part, locked his door behind him when he got 
 inside his own room : and he risked the cold which would be so 
 awkward on the eve of the ball, by remaining still for some time 
 in his wet clothes. What he did was to take a paper from his 
 pocket, which he carried to the light of the window, examining 
 it closely, holding it up to the daylight which was subdued by 
 the overhanging shadow of the trees, and the clouds of rain 
 sweeping up from the sea. Then after reading it over line by 
 line, he took it, holding it very closely in both hands as if he 
 had been afraid that it might take wings to itself and flee away, 
 to the smouldering lire — for it was nearly the end of October, 
 and fires were very necessary to combat the damp of the place. 
 Then Eddy put the paper carefully into the centre of the fire, 
 where it curled up and blackened and began to smoke, but did 
 not burst into flame until he had seized the box of matches on 
 the mantelpiece and had strewed a handful upon it. Then there 
 was a series of small distinct reports like minute guns, and the 
 whole flamed up. His clothes steamed as he stood before the 
 fire, but he was not aware of it, nor that the damp was mean- 
 time penetrating into every muscle and limb. 
 
 After this Eddy dressed himself cheerfully in dry clothes and 
 went down-stairs. He had never been more lively or entertain- 
 ing. He went down to find the whole party occupied with their 
 letters, which came in before lunch, making that meal either & 
 joyful feast or a meal of anxiety. Rowland it was who knitted 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 259 
 
 his brows most keenly after lie had received his letters. Over 
 one of them he lingered long, casting glances occasionally at 
 Archie, who had no letters, and who was amusing himself 
 furtively with the two dogs, Hoy and Dhu, which he had 
 abandoned on discovering that they took to his step-mother 
 more than to himself. Such a preference is always irritating to 
 the legitimate owner of dog or man. He could not forgive 
 them for their bad taste : nevertheless, when Mrs. Rowland was 
 out of the way, the infantile graces of the two puppies were 
 more than flesh and blood could stand out against. He had 
 withdrawn into a deep recess of the hall in which there was a 
 window, and where he considered himself free from inspection, 
 and there was rolling over the two little balls, with their waving 
 limbs and the gleams of fun that were visible under the tufts of 
 hair that fell over their eyes. Though they were rolling over 
 and over each other in the height of play, attacking and re- 
 treating before Archie's hands, with which he pulled their ears 
 and tails, now lifting one, now another, by some illegitimate 
 portion of hair, each little dog kept an eye upon where the 
 Mistress sat, retired in a large chair, reading her letters, waiting 
 till she moved or looked, and ready at a moment to pick them- 
 selves up, get upon their respective legs, and run out of the 
 recess, one after the other, as if they had been anxiously await- 
 ing the moment when her attention might relax and she would 
 have leisure to bestow upon her faithful retainers. It was not, 
 however, Mrs. Rowland, but her husband, who disturbed the 
 pastime. He looked up from his letter and called "Archie ! " in 
 a voice which meant mischief. Archie looked up startled. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I am here.'"' 
 
 " How was it you never mentioned that you had gone to see 
 Mrs. Brown the other day when you were in Glasgow ? :5 
 
 Archie raised himself up, pushing the puppies away from him. 
 "I — scarcely could have been in C41asgow,' : he said, though with 
 a slight faltering in his voice, it was so little true, ''without 
 going to see Aunt Jean.*' 
 
 "That is true enough," said his father, in a slightly softened 
 tone. "It was of course your first duty : but — is this story she 
 tells me true ?'"' 
 
 k 'She is very little likely,*' said Archie, "to tell anything that 
 is not true ; but I don't know what she has told you." 
 
 "She says — that she asked you to help a poor comrade of 
 yours who is ill, and must go away to save his life, and that you 
 refused — is that true ? " 
 
 Archie stood in the vacant space formed by the recess, turn- 
 ing his face towards his father— pale, miserable, half-defiant, 
 Avithout a word to say. 
 
 "Is that true?" said Rowland, his voice pealing through the 
 hall. It disturbed the whole party, drawing their attention from 
 their letters. Mrs. Rowland looked up witli an air half of terror, 
 half of compassion. " James, James ! :; she said in a low voice. 
 
260 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " Let alone, Evelyn ! yon don't understand. Do you hear 
 me, sir ? come forward ; don't skulk, as you are always doing. 
 Is it true ? " 
 
 Archie made a step forward, his brows bent over his eyes, 
 his head sunk between his shoulders. He saw them all turning 
 to him — his stepmother, with a compassionate look, which he 
 could tolerate less than if it had been the triumph and satis- 
 faction which he believed she felt ; Rosamond raising her head 
 from the letter she was reading with a half -contemptuous 
 surprise ; and Eddy ! Eddy in the background, unseen by any, 
 sending over their heads a look of half-amused, half-sympa- 
 thetic comment, opening his eyes wide and raising his eyebrows. 
 Eddy looked— not as if he had anything to do with it, but as if 
 partly indignant, partly astonished, yet as good as saying— that 
 is just as they all do. 
 
 "Yes," said Archie, at last ; "it is true." 
 
 His father began, with an exclamation, to speak, but recalled 
 to himself by another low but emphatic call from his wife, 
 "James, James!" restrained himself. He gave Archie, how- 
 ever, a look, under which the unfortunate young man fell back, 
 feeling as if something had struck him to his heart. Oh, the 
 contempt in it, the indignation, as of something unworthy a 
 word ! and to know that he did not deserve it, and yet have 
 his lips sealed and nothing to say for himself. It was almost 
 harder to bear than any fury of reproach. Archie felt himself 
 shamed in the way in which shame was most bitter, and in the 
 presence of those who made his disgrace most terrible to bear — 
 the girl whom he admired with a kind of adoration, and the 
 woman whom he hated without knowing why. As he stood 
 there, drawn back a step, lowering, gloomy, his eyes sunk in 
 their sockets, he looked the picture of conscious meanness, and 
 almost guilt. And such he appeared to his father, whose pas- 
 sion of disappointment and rage of offended affection was 
 scarcely to be restrained. Rowland got up from his seat 
 abruptly and went into the library, which was the room he 
 used. He came back in a minute or two, holding a cheque in 
 his hand, which he tossed at his son, as he had once tossed the 
 twenty pound note. "Send that," he said, "to your aunt for 
 your friend." He walked back towards his place, then turned 
 again, and adding, "By to-day's post," sat down with his face 
 towards the lire. 
 
 Archie stood for a moment with the cheque lying at his feet. 
 All the old rebellion rose within his heart. It was more bitter 
 this time than the last. Should he leave it there lying, the 
 wretched money, and turn his back upon his father, who even 
 when he was kind was so in scorn, and flung the help for the 
 friend, whom he believed Archie had refused to help, as he 
 would have flung a bone to a dog 1 Should he go and leave it, 
 and turn his back upon this house for ever ? There was a mo- 
 ment's struggle, very bitter and sore, in Archie's breast : and 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 261 
 
 then lie remembered Colin, the pale-faced lad, whoso illness, ifc 
 had been no great surprise, but so overwhelming a blow to hear 
 of, just at the moment when he had made himself incapable of 
 helping him. Then he stooped down, and picking up the paper 
 went to the writing-table and wrote a hasty letter, stooping 
 over the blotting-book as he stood. ''Aunt Jean,'"' he wrote, 
 " you have done me a very ill turn, but I do not blame you : 
 and my father will perhaps end by driving me desperate ; and 
 most likely you will none of you ever know the reason. But 
 here's the money for Colin Lamont, though it's been flung 
 at my head, like the time before, and though I have not 
 even you to take my part now. Anyhow it will be good for 
 him. His is a better case, however ill he is, than mine. — A. 
 
 EOWLAND." 
 
 Archie put this letter and the cheque into an envelope, which 
 he placed conspicuously on the table that his father might see 
 it, and then lie left the house, with a soul more heavy and a 
 heart more sore than words could say. 
 
 ''Your brother is always getting to loggerheads with your 
 father," said Eddy to Marion, who was helping him with a 
 design for the wall. "You should give him good advice, and 
 get him to take a jaw pleasantly. They all do it, don't you 
 know." 
 
 '"Who all do it ? — but I'm astonished at papa," said Marion ; 
 "for why should Archie give all his money to a lad that was 
 not at all of his kind, but just a companion for a while, when 
 we were — not as we are now. Archie has not so much money 
 that he could give it away to — a friend." 
 
 "Why should he indeed?" said Eddy. "Friends that want 
 money are always to be had in plenty ; but money is best in 
 one's pocket, which is the right place for it, as you say." 
 
 "I am just surprised at papa," said Marion ; "for it should be 
 a father's part to keep us from foolishness, and not to put it 
 into our heads. Archie is silly enough without giving him any 
 encouragement. He was always for giving things away ; and 
 this Colin — for I am sure it must be Colin — is just one that will 
 never be better whatever is done for him. It is just throwing 
 away money. — Shall I cut out all these leaves the same, or would 
 it be better if they were a little different, like leaves upon a 
 tree?" 
 
 " Oh, make them like the drawing, please," said Eddy. — 
 " Archie is a very good fellow, but he takes things too seriously. 
 What is the use of looking so tragical ? The best of fathers 
 loves a chance for a sermon. You must speak to him like a 
 mother, Miss May." 
 
 " I have always been the most sensible," said May ; " but I 
 am the youngest, and I don't see how I could speak to him like 
 a mother. I will, perhaps, speak to papa, and tell him how 
 wrong it is, when a boy is disposed to be saving and takes care 
 of his money, to put such things in his head. For what could 
 
262 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Colin Lamont matter to him in comparison with himself 1 And 
 where would we have been now, if papa had thrown away his 
 money and made that kind of use of it ? It is not for Archie's 
 sake, for Archie is just very silly ; but I think I will perhaps 
 speak to papa." 
 
 And then they returned Avith enthusiasm to the decorations 
 for the hall. 
 
 Poor Archie, for his part, wandered out disconsolate upon the 
 hills : everything was turning out badly for him. There had 
 been a moment when things were better, when he had overcome 
 various troubles— his unaccustomed gun, and Roderick and the 
 groom, and the sudden valse into which he had been driven, 
 with still less chance of escape. For a week or two things had 
 gone so well, that he had began to trust a little in his fate ; but 
 now again the balance had turned, and everything was going 
 badly. Small comfort was there in prospect for him. He had 
 denuded himself altogether of all his revenues, and now there 
 came upon him the consciousness of many things that would 
 be required of him, many claims which he would be unable to 
 respond to. He would not have a sixpence to give to a boy, or 
 a penny to a beggar. He Avould have to guard against every 
 little expense as if he were a beggar himself. He could not go 
 to Glasgow again, however much he might wish to do so, scarcely 
 even to go across the ferry. He had nothing, and would have 
 nothing till Christmas, these long and weary months. And 
 Eddy did nothing but lift his eyebrows, half-amused at the 
 misery of which he w T as the cause. And never could Archie 
 explain, neither to his father, nor to Aunt Jean, the reason why 
 he had refused her prayer for Colin Lamont. When he thought 
 of that, Archie gnashed his teeth, and in the silence of the hill- 
 side, dashed his clenched hands into the air. He must bear it 
 all and never say a word — and all the time see before him the 
 other, smiling, who could make it all plain. But Archie did 
 not know how much greater and more awful trouble was yet in 
 store. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 The night of the ball arrived at last. The stables in Rosmore, 
 and all the accommodation to be had in the neighbourhood, were 
 lilled with horses and carriages of every description. Everybody 
 had come. The great element of success, which predetermines 
 the question, the arrival of all expected, made the hearts of the 
 hosts glad. Rowland had forgotten that little episode which still 
 hung heavy on Archie's soul, and stood beaming, the proudest 
 man in the country, to receive his guests. The sound of the 
 arrivals was music to his ears. That he, so simple as he stood 
 there, the foundry lad, the railway man, the creator of his own 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 263 
 
 fortune, should be receiving the best people in the countryside, 
 opening large and liberal doors of hospitality, entertaining in 
 the superior position of a host people whose names he had heard 
 afar off in those early days, was a sort of happiness which he 
 could scarcely believe, and which filled his heart with a glow of 
 elation and proud delight. Perhaps it was not a very elevated 
 or elevating sentiment. To shake hands with the Earl of Clydes- 
 dale, and welcome him to one's house, might not fill one's own 
 bosom with any sense of bliss. But Lord Clydesdale was to 
 James Rowland the king of his native district, high above all 
 cavil or partnership, and there could be no such evident sign to 
 him of the glorious position to which he had himself attained. 
 This sense of triumph beamed all over him, and made his accent 
 more and more cordial, his anxiety about the pleasure of his 
 guests more and more warm. There was nothing he would not 
 have done to add to the brightness of the joyous assembly. The 
 least little momentary shade of dullness in any corner went to 
 his heart. When he saw either girl or boy who was not dancing, 
 he would come down upon them like a rescue party, providing 
 partner, or supper, or refreshment, or repose, whatsoever they 
 wanted. It could not be said that his success and glorymade 
 him selfish. He wanted everybody to enjoy as he was himself 
 enjoying. Impossible to imagine a more beneficent form of 
 success. 
 
 He had quite forgotten his censure of Archie. He clapped 
 him on the shoulder when he appeared, with an exhortation — 
 " Xow, Archie, man ! shake yourself together— put your best 
 foot foremost— make it go off ! Mind we are all upon our pro- 
 motion. If it is not the finest ball that has been given on 
 Clydeside, I will never hold up my head more." This address a 
 little lightened Archie's heart, still sore and heavy from the 
 blame to which he had been subject— so undeservedly as he 
 knew, but as nobody else was aware. And lie was young, and 
 though alarmed by the part he had himself to play, it was not 
 in human nature not to feel some stir of exhilaration in the 
 arrival of all that fine company, the music striking up, the crowd 
 of other young people streaming in. What he would have 
 thought of admission to such a scene a year ago ! To be sure, 
 this was chastened by the thought of the important part he had 
 to play, as son of the house. He found Piosamond at his elbow, 
 after his father had given him that exhortation. 
 
 " You should ask Lady Jean first," said the young lady, hold- 
 ing, as usual, her head high and not looking at him while she 
 
 spoke. 
 
 « Aj e _ as t Lady Jean ! to what '? " he asked, with an uneasy 
 
 laugh. 
 
 ""To dance, of course— unless the Duchess comes : is the 
 Duchess coming % Without her you have nothing better than 
 a baronet and his wife. Therefore, unless your father dances, 
 you must take out Lady Jean." 
 
264 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 L "My father — dances ?" cried Archie, with an uncontrollable 
 laugh. It seemed to him the most ridiculous idea in the 
 world. 
 
 "Most gentlemen do in their own houses," said Rosamond, 
 " but if he does not, then you. Lady Jean first. Then Lady 
 Marchbanks : and not for some time that little pretty woman, 
 whose husband was knighted the other day. She is my lady too, 
 and perhaps you would never know the difference. But please 
 to mind what I say." 
 
 " Lady this, and Lady that — and when am I to come to you ? " 
 said Archie, taking a little courage. 
 
 " Oh, I will keep one for you — not till you have got through 
 all your duty dances. This is the disadvantage many people 
 say of a ball in one's own house. But I like responsibility," 
 said Rosamond. " It is better than thinking merely what will 
 be most fun." 
 
 By the inspiration of this double charge, Archie became a new 
 man. He led Lady Jean very tremulously, it must be allowed, 
 through a quadrille — or she led him, it would perhaps be better 
 to say ; but he was very docile and very humble, and her lady- 
 ship did not dislike the modest young man, who, for the first 
 time for some days, opened full his mother's eyes, innocent and 
 honest, upon those to whom he spoke. She said, "He's not an 
 ill lad, that young Rowland," to the ladies about her. And Miss 
 Eliza repeated it up and down the room. " We all know what 
 dear Lady Jean means," cried that lady. " She is maybe sparing 
 of her praises, but when she does say a good word, it comes from 
 the heart. He has many things to contend against, but he's not 
 an ill lad. I have always said it myself. Few women have 
 greater opportunities of studying young folk than I have, 
 though I'm only, as you may say, an old maid myself. And so 
 is Lady Jean for that matter. We are just a real respectable 
 fraternity — or would it be better to say sisterhood ? — but that's 
 a word with other meanings. No, he's not an ill lad. He has 
 always been very civil to me, and the boys all like him. They 
 say there's no humbug in him. But Lady Jean is the one to give 
 a thing its right name." 
 
 Wliether any echo of this comforting report reached Archie's 
 ken it would be hard to tell, but it somehow blew across his 
 father's ears, and made him laugh till the tears came to his eyes. 
 He sought out Evelyn in the midst of her guests to report it to 
 her. " It's Scotch praise," he said, " but it means more than you 
 would suppose." 
 
 " I think it is very poor praise, and Archie deserves a great 
 deal better," said his wife, which pleased him too. 
 
 "But that from Lady Jean is more than raptures from 
 another," he replied. 
 
 As for Eddy Saumarez, though he was not much to look at, 
 he was always a popular man, as he himself said, in a ball-room. 
 He did not dance very gracefully, nor indeed, though his con- 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 265 
 
 fidence in himself carried him through all kinds of performances 
 creditably, was he a graceful person in any way : but he was 
 adroit, and despite his somewhat insignificant person, strong, 
 and carried his partner skilfully through the most complicated 
 crowd. His enjoyment of the evening was interrupted or in- 
 creased (it would be difficult to say which) by the appearance of 
 a man whom nobody knew, and most people took for one of the 
 servants (a supposition very injurious to Mr. Rowland's servants, 
 who were well-made, well-set-up individuals, excellent specimens 
 of humanity). Johnson wore an evening coat with long tails, 
 too long for him, and a white tie with long ends too big for him, 
 and gloves with half an inch of vacant linger, which made his 
 hands look like a bundle of loose skeins of white yarn. Hi- 
 face wore an anxious look as he came in unnoticed, eagerly 
 looking for the only face he know. Even the genial Rowland, 
 who was ready to welcome everybody, passed over this per- 
 sonage with vague surprise, supposing that he must belong to 
 some reserve force of the pantry, or had been brought in in 
 attendance on some guest. He knew nobody but Eddy, and 
 Eddy, who was dancing without intermission, contrived never 
 to catch his prot'eye s eyes. It was not that he was unconscious 
 of the presence of this visitor, whom nobody took any notice 
 of. On the contrary, Eddy kept a careful watch upon him in 
 his corner. 
 
 "Look yonder," he said to his partner ; "but don't look as it 
 you were looking. Do you see that queer little being in the 
 corner % Oh, yes, I know him ; but I don't mean to see him. 
 He has got an invitation here by mistake, and he depends on 
 me to introduce him right and left,— Who is he % ah, that's what 
 I can't tell. He is not a man I shall introduce to you. Did 
 you ever see such a droll little beggar '] I knew he would be 
 fun. There he goes prowling into the other corner, where he 
 thinks he will catch my eye. But I don't mean him to catch 
 my eye. Oh, you know well enough, don't you, how to avoid 
 seeing any one you don't want to see ? Cruel? no : he has no 
 business to be here. The little brute must pay for his im- 
 pudence. Keverse, shall we 1 Ah, he thought he had me then ! " 
 Eddy said with a laugh. " We were running right into him. 
 But you'll see I shall get clear away." 
 
 Perhaps Rosamond heard some part of this talk as her brother 
 darted past. For it was she in all her pride who sailed up to 
 poor Johnson in his corner, who was diving under the dancers' 
 arms and stretching over their shoulders, in a vain attempt to 
 attract the attention of his false friend. 
 
 " You are looking for my brother," she said, "and he is paying 
 no attention. He seldom does when it is not for his own 
 advantage. But perhaps I may do as well." 
 
 Johnson murmured something about surprise and honour. 
 "You will do just as well, Miss Saumarez, if you will introduce 
 ine to some nice girls," he said eagerly. " Master Eddy promised 
 
266 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 me : but I know his promises is like pie-crust. May I have the 
 pleasure of the next dance ? " 
 
 Rosamond almost looked at him in her scorn — the next dance ! 
 as though every place on her card had not been filled in the 
 first five minutes. 
 
 "I will dance a quadrille Avith you," she said, "if you will 
 remain here quietly till I am ready, and not ask any one 
 else." 
 
 " Oh, miss ! " cried Johnson, in delight ; " fancy my conducting 
 myself like a gay Lothario, and asking any one else, when I 
 have an offer from you 1 " 
 
 Rosamond was not used to blushing, but she coloured high at 
 this. She did not see the fun of it as Eddy would have done. 
 She had no sense of humour. 
 
 " If you will wait here till I am ready, I will dance with you," 
 she said. 
 
 Johnson had been very indignant and deeply disappointed, 
 not to be introduced to " the big-wigs," as Eddy had promised. 
 But when Eddy's beautiful sister proposed to him to dance with 
 her, not even waiting to be asked, his feelings sustained a 
 wonderful change. He relaxed his watch upon Eddy, and 
 waited with wonderful patience for the blissful moment when 
 he should take his place among that dazzling throng. With this 
 before him, he could enjoy the sight and the ecstatic sensation 
 of forming part of that assembly, even though he knew no big- 
 wigs. When they saw him dancing with Miss Saumarez, who 
 was one of the beauties, if not, Johnson thought, nattered and 
 nattering, the beauty of the evening, they would change their 
 minds about him. And indeed, the shabby little man made an 
 extraordinary sensation when he joined, by the side of Miss 
 Saumarez, the next quadrille. Who was he 1 where did lie come 
 from 1 everybody asked. And whispers ran among the throng, 
 that a person so shabby, dancing with Miss Saumarez, one of 
 the house party, must to the blood of the millionaires belong, 
 and was probably the scion of a secondary Rothschild. Much 
 curiosity was roused concerning him, and shabby as he looked, 
 there is little doubt that after Rosamond lie might have danced 
 with almost any one he pleased. As a matter of fact, Archie, 
 always good-natured, and unsuspicious of anything remarkable 
 about Johnson, introduced him to several ladies, who did not 
 object to allow him to inscribe his name upon their programmes. 
 And Marion did more than this. She was just standing up 
 with him for a waltz, and with her hand on his arm was about 
 to enter the field, when another change occurred which made 
 Johnson's appearance and behaviour more extraordinary than 
 ever. He suddenly stopped in the midst, just at the moment 
 when he ought to have put his limp hand upon her waist, a 
 contact which Rosamond had been unable to submit to, but 
 which Marion, with her much less cultivated sense, found quite 
 Hnobj ectionable. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 267 
 
 "Excuse me, miss, for a moment," Johnson said, dropping her 
 arm, and leaving her alone in the midst of the dancers. 
 
 He had seen something in the distance which made him turn 
 pale. And it happened that at that moment, after so long and 
 so ineffectually attempting to catch Eddy's eye, he at last 
 succeeded in doing so without the slightest difficulty. Eddy had 
 been startled beyond expression by the sight of Johnson's shabby 
 figure by his sister's side, and distracted by this sight from all 
 idea of fun ; and restraining with difficulty the impulse he had 
 to seize the fellow by the shoulders and turn him out — which 
 evidently he had no right to do— had followed him, no longer 
 now with laughing eyes that saw every movement while 
 appearing to see nothing, but with the furious gaze of the 
 plotter upon whom the tables are turned. When Johnson 
 started, shrank, and dropped Marion's arm, Eddy, watching, 
 saw the whole pantomime, and saw also the fellow's almost 
 imperceptible signal towards the window, which stood open 
 behind its drawn curtains for the ventilation of the great warm, 
 heated hall. Eddy turned his own sharp, suspicious eyes toward 
 the spot at which Johnson had looked, and there he saw a some- 
 what startling sight — a man in morning dress, buttoned up in 
 a warm overcoat" like a visitor newly arrived, standing at the 
 hall door, and gazing with astonishment as at a totally unex- 
 pected scene. The sight startled him, though he did not know 
 why. It could be nothing to him, so far as he knew. He did 
 not know what it could be to Johnson. But he was startled. 
 The man looked like some commercial functionary, business- 
 like, and serious, surprised beyond measure to find himself 
 suddenly introduced from the open air and quiet, frosty, chilly 
 night, to the crowded ball-room with all its decorations. 
 
 Eddy made a dive through the throng towards the window, 
 with an explanation to those around him that the draught was 
 too much for Lady Jean. 
 
 " I must try and draw the curtains down," he said, with a shrug 
 of his shoulders at the unreasonableness of women. _ And in 
 another moment was outside, standing under the brilliant cold 
 stars, which looked down coldly upon this curious little unex- 
 pected effect. 
 
 "What's the matter?" he said breathlessly to the other dark 
 figure, conspicuous only by the whiteness of his large shirt, 
 among the bushes. 
 
 "I don't knowV'said Johnson, "unless you've been at it again, 
 Master Eddy. Did you see that man 1 that's the clerk at the 
 bank that cashed your cheque. I don't know what brings him 
 here, if you don't. Anyhow, I thought it the best policy to slip 
 away.'' 
 
 Eddy's teeth began to chatter — perhaps with the cold. 
 
 " You confounded fool," he said, "did you give them the chance 
 of identifying you % I didn't think you would have been such 
 an ass." 
 
268 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " As for that," cried Johnson, " I'm square. I've only got to 
 say it was given me by you, my fine young fellow. By George, 
 I never had no suspicion. And p'raps it ain t that — p'raps it's 
 something else ; but it looks fishy seeing that fellow in the 
 middle of all the folks dancing. It has given me a turn ! I 
 hope, Master Eddy, for your own sake, as you have not been at 
 it again." 
 
 "Oh, what's that to you 1 ?" cried Eddy impatiently. He was 
 biting his lower lip till it bled, unconsciously to himself. 
 
 "It might be a great deal to me," said Johnson, "if it is not 
 on the square. They've a set of queer laws of their own in 
 Scotland : you never know where you are with them ; and you 
 didn't trouble yourself very much to get me partners, Mr. Eddy. 
 Oh, ah, didn't see me ; tell that to them as will believe it." 
 
 "If you think you are in danger, Johnson, from the arrival 
 of that fellow," said Eddy, " you'd better scuttle. They don't 
 understand a joke these bank men." 
 
 "A joke," cried Johnson. " Me that am on the square if ever 
 a man was ! and you that — — ■" 
 
 "Have nothing at all to do with it," said Eddy with cool 
 superiority. " If you think that you're likely to get into trouble, 
 take my advice and walk home. I'll pitch you out a coat, and 
 it's a fine night. You should start to-morrow, as soon as it's 
 day ; and I advise you to get over the hills to Kilrossie, and take 
 the boat there. Good-night — it's cold standing out here jabbering 
 about nothing. You should never have come ; and how dared 
 you touch a lady, you little snob ! " Eddy cried. 
 
 "By George," cried the other ; and then he added with com- 
 placency in his tone : " If it's Miss Saumarez, she is a stunner, 
 Master Eddy. It was she— that offered to me." 
 
 " You confounded, miserable little cad," said Eddy, furiously 
 driving him back among the bushes with a sudden blow. But 
 he stole back to the house on the outskirts of the crowd, and 
 seizing the first coat he could find, pitched it out of a window 
 above, on Johnson's head. He had humanity enough, though 
 he was not unwilling to sacrifice the scapegoat, to give him 
 something warm to wrap himself in. After this he returned to 
 the ball-room, with a thousand apologies to his partner, and 
 eloquent description of the difficulty he had found in so arrang- 
 ing the curtains as to keep the draught from Lady Jean. " The 
 shortest way would have been to shut the window, I know," 
 said Eddy, "but we can't have the ball-room made into a black 
 hole of Calcutta, can we? So I compromised matters, as I 
 always do." 
 
 " Do you, Mr. Saumarez ? " said the young lady with a look 
 of faith, such as young ladies often wear — ready to receive 
 what he said as truth, or to laugh at it as transparent humbug, 
 it did not matter which. And Eddy danced all night un- 
 disturbed and imperturbable. The bank clerk was nothing to 
 him. He sat out two square dances with Miss Monteith, the 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 269 
 
 heiress. But every other on the programme Eddy danced, even 
 the Scotch reel, of which he said, " I shall only make you all 
 laugh, of course, but- never mind." Everybody did laugh, no 
 doubt, at his performance, but they liked him all the better for 
 trying it. It was a part of the programme into which Archie 
 entered with spirit, for once sure of his ground. This was at a 
 tolerably advanced period, when the guests who lived at the 
 greatest distance were already ordering their carriages, and 
 Archie, in the absence of his father, after the reel was over, had 
 to preside over all the arrangements for the conclusion of the 
 most successful entertainment that had ever been known in 
 Rosmore, and to give Lady Jean his arm to the door. " It has 
 been a pleasant party,"' said Lady Jean. "And you must come 
 over and see us, and have a day or two with my brother on the 
 moors. Clydesdale, I am telling young Mr. Rowland he must 
 come over and see what he can do among the grouse, some fine 
 day very soon." 
 
 "You must do that," said the Earl himself. "You must do 
 that. I will write and fix a day."' 
 
 What greater honour could have been done to the son of the 
 railway man % He felt the glory of it, though the thought of 
 such a visit was enough to take all the courage out of Archie. 
 He stood a little dazed by the honour that had been done him, 
 watching the carriage as it drove away, and pleased to feel the 
 cold fresh air upon his forehead, when the butler came up to him 
 with a serious face. "Mr. Archibald," he said, "the Master 
 would like to see you in the library as soon as the principal 
 people are gone." 
 
 " Very well," said Archie, a little surprised ; but he made no 
 haste to obey his father's call. There were a few more dances 
 after the great people were gone, and Miss Eliza had made three 
 or four ineffectual starts before she could collect her party to- 
 gether, who were the last to go. " Indeed, Mr. Archie," she said, 
 "you will just be worn off your feet hunting up these wild lassies 
 for me. For the moment you've found one, there's a new waltz 
 started, and the other three are on the floor. And when they've 
 done, Helen's off' again just to have a last turn, and there's 
 nothing left for it that I can see but for you and me to perform 
 a pas seid to frighten them all away. — Here they are at last, the 
 whole four, which is all that can be squeezed into Alick Chalmers's 
 coach, whatever we do. And the lads must just walk, it will do 
 them good after the three or four suppers they've had. And it 
 has been a beautiful ball. I see your mammaw and papaw have 
 stolen away, which I'm not surprised at, considering how late it 
 is. You will say good-night to them for me, and many thanks 
 for a delightful evening. And ye must all come up to your tea 
 to-morrow and talk it over. Good-night — and good-night." 
 
 Eddy was at the carriage-door also, superintending with much 
 laughter the packing in of the five ladies in their ball-dresses 
 into Alick's fly. All the dignified and ceremonious leave-takings 
 
270 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 were over — this was pure light-hearted fun and frolic. While 
 Miss Eliza's four young ladies were still waving their handker- 
 chiefs from the windows of the coach as it disappeared into the 
 darkness, and " the boys," an equal number of them, four young 
 men, were buttoning their coats and lighting their cigars, the 
 butler appeared again. Once more he touched Archie on the 
 shoulder, this time with more solemnity than ever. " Mr. Archi- 
 bald," he said, " the Master is waiting for you in the library. 
 You're to go to him without another moment's delay." 
 
 " What have you been doing, Rowland — are you going to get 
 a wigging ? " said Eddy. " Thank heaven," he added with a 
 yawn, " my governor's several hundred miles away." 
 
 Archie did not make any reply : but he was not at that 
 moment in any fear of a wigging. Lady Jean's gracious words, 
 and the fun of Miss Eliza's good-humoured party, had brought 
 warmth and confidence to his heart. There could be nothing 
 to be laid to his charge to-night. He knew that he had done 
 his duties well, better than ever before. He had been careful of 
 everybody's comfort, emancipating himself by that thought from 
 his native shyness and fear of putting himself forward. Perhaps 
 his father meant to say something kind to him, to express some 
 satisfaction. It was with this feeling of confidence and ease, a 
 feeling so unusual to him, and even with a little pleasurable 
 sense of expectation, that Archie turned the handle of the library- 
 door. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIY 
 
 Archie had not remarked at all the incident which had startled 
 Johnson, and which Eddy Saumarez, alone at present among the 
 relics of the supper, and making a final meal with considerable 
 appetite, was going over and over in his eager and fertile mind, 
 trying to make out its meaning, and in what way it could affect 
 himself, and on the course he ought to pursue. The man in the 
 overcoat, closely buttoned up, coming suddenly out of the cold 
 outside to the lighted and dazzling ball-room, with his pale face 
 and startled air, was as a picture to the mind of Eddy, full of 
 innumerable suggestions and possible fate : but it would have 
 conveyed no idea at all to the intelligence of Archie even had 
 he perceived it. Somebody about business ; if not, as was most 
 likely, some invited guest who had not caught the boat, or had 
 been otherwise detained on the way, was all the son of the house 
 would have thought of. Somebody about business did not mean 
 much to Archie. It could have, he would have been quite sure, 
 nothing whatever to do with him. 
 
 The hall in which the dancing took place was separated from 
 the great door by a vestibule and inner door, chietly made of 
 glass, and half-covered by heavy curtains. The stranger, when 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 271 
 
 he jumped from the dogcart winch had brought him round the 
 loch, a long detour, had pushed into the vestibule, finding it 
 open and no servants visible. There had been a general with- 
 drawal both of the servants of the house and the many strange 
 footmen, who had attended the guests, to the servants' hall, 
 where a supper was going on, quite as merry, and not much less 
 luxurious, than the other supper in the dining-room : and at 
 this moment there was nobody about to direct the visitor. He 
 had accordingly, his business being urgent, opened the glass 
 door, to find himself in the ball-room, as has been already de- 
 scribed. He stood there much surprised, looking round him for 
 some one who could direct him to the master of the house. And, 
 as luck would have it, the master of the house himself was the 
 first to perceive this curious apparition in the midst of his guests. 
 At that end of the hall none of the usual loiterers were standing 
 about. They were all at the other end and along the upper sides 
 of the ball-room, which were free from those draughts which, as 
 the elder people confided to each other, can never be quite shut 
 out from a room so close to the open air. Mr. Rowland made 
 his way through the dancers, dodging here and there a quickly 
 gyrating pair, with a smile upon his face, towards the man in 
 the greatcoat, who stood helplessly at the door not knowing 
 what to do. He held out his cordial hand to him as if he had 
 been the most welcome of visitors. "I don't remember your 
 face," he said, "excuse me ; and you're very late : but the fun, 
 as you see, is still going on." 
 
 The new-comer stared at him, with his lips apart. 
 
 " You are Mr. Rowland," he said. 
 
 " Well, yes, naturally," said the good-humoured host, with a 
 laugh ; "it appears you don't know me any more than I know 
 you." 
 
 " I'm from the Bank of Scotland— the Glasgow branch," said 
 the stranger. " I have come, if you please, with a private com- 
 munication from the manager, very important. If I could speak 
 a word to you by yourself " 
 
 " The Bank of Scotland ! Then you have not come to the 
 ball ? " said Rowland. 
 
 The new-comer looked round with a glance of admiration and 
 awe. He was a young man, and he thought it a scene of en- 
 chantment, though his Scotch pride was too great to permit any 
 desire to intrude himself into that dazzling assembly. He drew 
 himself up a little and replied, "I have nothing to do with the 
 ball. I knew nothing about it, I have driven round the head 
 of the loch, a very long road ; and I've no prospect but to spend 
 the whole night that way, getting back. Ten minutes, sir, if 
 you can give it me, will be enough for what I have to say." 
 
 " Come this way," said Rowland, drawing back the curtain 
 that covered the library-door. He had preferred to keep his 
 sanctuary uninvaded by the visitors, to whom the rest of the 
 house had been thrown open. He stirred the lire in the grate, 
 
272 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 which was burning low, and turned up higher the subdued light 
 of the lamp. 
 
 " Sit down there," he said, " and get warm ; and tell me what 
 this business is that has brought you so far on a cold night. I 
 suppose you missed the boat ? ' 
 
 "I just missed it by two minutes, so there was nothing to do 
 but to drive ; if I had known that there was a ball, I think I 
 should have stayed on the other side till the morning, whatever 
 the manager said." 
 
 " Oh, never mind that," said Rowland, with a genial laugh. 
 " Dancing's not much in my line — a little business will be a 
 diversion. What is it 1 The Bank of Scotland has not broke, I 
 hope, nor the Bank of England either. Banks have no great 
 reputation, I'm afraid, in these parts." 
 
 " The Bank of Scotland, sir, is not like your Glasgow Banks," 
 said the visitor, with some severity, for he was an east country 
 man. He paused a little, and then lie took from the breast- 
 pocket of his overcoat a case, and from that a piece of paper. 
 "Will you tell me if this is your signature ? " he said. 
 
 It was a cheque for a thousand pounds — a cheque crumpled 
 and refolded in diverse ways, as if it had already passed through 
 several hands. Rowland took it with great surprise, and held 
 it to the light. 
 
 " My signature V he said. 
 
 It was mere bewilderment, not intuition, which kept him 
 silent as he examined the writing ; and then there sprang a 
 sudden flutter and dart of anguish through his heart, which he 
 neither understood nor could account for. 
 
 "It looks like my signature — why do you ask such a 
 question ? " 
 
 He said this, scarcely knowing why, to gain time : though he 
 could not have told why he wanted to gain time. 
 
 " God be thanked ! " said the stranger. " You lift a load from 
 my mind. It was paid yesterday by one of our young clerks ; 
 but our attention was not called to it till to-day. On comparing 
 it with your usual signature, we felt a doubt ; and the cheque 
 itself was unlike you. It was not crossed— it was drawn to 
 nobody's order ; and it's a considerable sum, Mr. Rowland — 
 nothing to you — but to most people a considerable sum. If you 
 say it's all right, you will lift a load from my mind. It was 
 young Farquhar that paid it — a fine young fellow. And his 
 
 career would be spoiled " 
 
 These words came in a sort of strange mist to Rowland's 
 mind. He was standing all the time with the cheque in his 
 hands, holding it to the light. Everything external was in a 
 mist to him, both what he saw and what he heard. The very 
 cheque, with that signature "James Rowland" sprawling on it 
 as his own signature sprawled, seemed to float in the air. But 
 within his mind, everything was acute and clear — a great 
 anguish rending him as with a serpent's fangs — a dart through 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 273 
 
 all his veins, dull in bis heart like a stone, violent in his head, 
 as if all the blood had gone there to throb and knell in his ears, 
 and beat like a hammer in his temples. All the time lie was 
 standing with his back to the ill-omened messenger, holding the 
 cheque as if he were examining it, in his hands. 
 
 His voice, when he spoke, had a dull and thick sound, and he 
 did not turn round, but remained as if fixed in that position, 
 with the cheque stretched out in both his hands, and his head 
 bent to get the light upon it. 
 
 "I needn't trouble you any more," he said ; '"the cheque's — 
 all right. It was drawn for a special purpose ; it is nothing to 
 me, as you say.'" 
 
 Here he broke into a hoarse laugh. ''Xothing to me ! What's 
 
 a thousand pounds in comparison with . You can relieve 
 
 your friend, young Farquhar's mind. Young Farquhar, is that 
 his name \ But he ought to be more careful. That's a large 
 sum to pay to bearer over the counter without any guarantee. 
 But he did quite right— quite right— my name's enough for 
 many a thousand pounds." He moved from where he was 
 standing to ring the bell but did not turn round. Then he 
 went back to the lamp and pushed the shade lower down. 
 
 ''I'll keep the cheque," he said, "to remind me not to do such 
 a thing again. Saunders, will you take this gentleman into the 
 dining-room, and see that he has some supper before he goes. I 
 don't^know your name," he added, turning upon the stranger 
 and putting out his hand, "but I highly approve your energy 
 in coming, and I'll take care to say so to the directors." 
 
 '• My name is Fergusson— and I'm very glad of your approval, 
 Mr. Rowland : and the night journey will be nothing, for I am 
 going back with a light heart." 
 
 "Yes, yes,''' said Rowland, ''on account of young Farquhar: 
 but you should tell him to be careful. Take a good supper, 
 and then you're less likely to catch cold. You'll excuse me 
 entrusting" you to my butler, for you see for yourself that 
 to-night " 
 
 " I am only grieved I troubled you," said the bank clerk. 
 
 "Xo, no, nothing of the sort— and mind, Saunders, that Mr. 
 Fergusson has a good glass of wine." 
 
 He waited until they were gone, and then he dropped heavily 
 into a chair. He had no doubt, none whatever — not for a 
 moment. AYho could have done it but one % He took out that 
 fatal scrap of paper again, and laid it out before him on the 
 table in the intense light. It was very like his signature. _ He 
 would have himself been taken in, had that been possible. 
 Some of the lines were laboured, while his were merely a dash ; 
 but it was very like— so like, he thought, that no new hand 
 could have done it, no one uninstructed. He might himself 
 have been taken in, had he not known, as the bank people did, 
 that he never drew a cheque like that— a cheque with no pro- 
 tection—drawn to bearer, not crossed, nothing to ensure its 
 
 T 
 
274 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 safety. He smiled a little at the ridiculous thought that he 
 could have been capable of doing that — then suddenly flung 
 himself down upon the table, covering his face with his hands. 
 
 Oh, pain intolerable ! oh, anguish not to be shaken off! His 
 boy — Mary's son, who had her eyes — his heir, his successor, the 
 only one to continue his name. Oh burning, gnawing, living 
 pang, that went through and through him like a spear made 
 not of steel, but of fire ! He writhed upon it, as we all do in 
 our time, feeling each sharp edge, as well as the fiery point that 
 pins us helpless to the earth. What was Prometheus upon his 
 rock, of whom the ancients raved — a trifler, a nothing, in com- 
 parison with the father, who had just been persuaded of the 
 guilt of his only son. 
 
 And all the time the music was sounding outside the door, 
 the sound of the light feet going and coming in rhythmic waves, 
 the confused hum of voices and laughter. The boy who had put 
 this spear into his father's heart was there, enjoying it all. 
 Rowland had been pleased to see that Archie was enjoying it. 
 He had said to himself that the boy was no such cub after all ; 
 that perhaps that failure of his about his comrade might be 
 explained ; that he might have been dazzled by the possession 
 of money, and too completely unused to it to understand the 
 spending of it. He might have been afraid to give what was 
 wanted, fearing that he would be blamed. There must be some 
 reason. He had persuaded himself that this must be the case 
 in the sensation of a certain pride in his children, which the 
 sight of them among the others had produced. 
 
 And now, and now ! — James Rowland had gone through the 
 usual experiences of man — he had known sorrow, and he had 
 known the pangs of repentance. He had not always been satis- 
 fied with himself, and he had been disappointed in others from 
 time to time. But what were all these miseries to this ? 
 
 As he lay there with his face hidden, a hand was suddenly 
 laid upon his shoulder. "James— what is the matter, what is 
 the matter ? " his wife said. 
 
 He turned at first from her, with a thought that she was the 
 last person who should hear — she who was not the mother, who 
 had nothing to do with the boy ; and then he turned towards 
 her : for was not she bound to be his own comforter, to help 
 him in everything 1 He raised himself up slowly, and lifted his 
 face from his hands, which had left the mark of their pressure 
 upon his ashy cheeks. 
 
 " The matter ! " he said ; " the worst is the matter ! — the worst 
 that can happen. I am afraid of nothing more in this world ! " 
 
 "James !" she cried, — then with an attempt to smile — "You 
 are trying to frighten me. What is it % A man has been here. 
 — Dear James, it is not the loss of — your money ? — for what is 
 that % We will bear it together, and be just as happy." 
 
 Evelyn's mind, in spite of herself, was moved by accounts in 
 story-books of catastrophes which were announced in this way. 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 275 
 
 I am not sure that he even heard her suggestion, much less was 
 capable of comprehending the devotion to himself that was in 
 it. He moved his hand to the pink paper which lay stretched 
 upon the table in the full light of the lamp. " Look at that,*' he 
 said. 
 
 She took it up perplexed. A cheque for a thousand pounds, 
 which to Evelyn, unaccustomed to the possession of money, 
 looked, as the bank clerk had said, like a large sum. She looked 
 at it again, turning it over, as if any enlightenment was to be 
 had in that way. Then it occurred to her in the midst of her 
 alarm, that after all her husband's great fortune could not be 
 represented by a cheque for a thousand pounds. "What does 
 it mean?" she said, still holding it vaguely in her hands. 
 
 " Can't you see ? " He was almost harsh in his impatience, 
 snatching it out of her hand and holding it up to the light. 
 " They were fools to pay it at the bank ; and, as for that 
 
 young Farquhar, 1*11 Can't you see ] Look there, and 
 
 there— — " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean me to see, James. It is a little 
 laboured, not quite like your hand. You must have been tired 
 
 when you Ah ! " said Evelyn breaking suddenly off, and 
 
 beginning to examine, fascinated, the terrible document that 
 looked so simple. She looked up in his face, quite pale, her lips 
 dropping apart. " You don't mean me to think " 
 
 " Think ? See ! look at it ; it is forged— that is what it is." 
 
 She looked at him, every tint of colour gone from her face, 
 her eyes wide open, her lips trembling. It might have been 
 supposed that she had done it. " Oh, James, James ! " she cried 
 in a low voice of terror and dismay. Then there flashed before 
 her eyes a whole panorama of moving scenes : the pale and 
 lowering face of Archie ; the lively one of Eddy Saumarez ; 
 the disreputable Johnson— all came and went like distracting 
 shadows. In a second she went over a whole picture-gallery of 
 visionary portraits. Her husband looked at her intently, as if 
 to read the name of the culprit in her eyes ; but she only 
 repeated, "Oh James, James ! " as if this appeal was all that she 
 could say. 
 
 "You see it," he said with a sort of exasperated calm. 
 "Though that young Farquhar — confound him, oh, confound 
 
 him ! " Here he stopped again, as if the thought were too 
 
 much. "He's got a father and mother now, no doubt, who can 
 trust him with everything they've got ; who look forward to 
 his becoming a director of the bank ; whom he goes home to 
 every night self-conceited— Oh, confound them every one ! '"' # 
 
 "James," she said, laying her hand doubtfully again upon his 
 shoulder, "is it Mr. Farquhar who has got your money] Is 
 it — 1 W horn do you — suspect?" 
 
 He broke out into a loud, harsh laugh. "I haven't much 
 choice, have II" he said, " there are not many that could have 
 done it. There is only one, so far as I can judge. He's been 
 
 T 2 
 
276 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 set on horseback, and he's ridden to the devil ; and to make it 
 up — though God knows how it's gone, for he has nothing to 
 show for it — he puts his father under a forced contribution — 
 that's about what it is." 
 
 "You mean Archie! — no, no, no," cried Evelyn; "it is not 
 Archie — it is not Archie ! James, you are angry ; you are 
 letting prejudice lead you astray." 
 
 "Prejudice — against my only son ! If it had been prejudice 
 in his favour, prejudice to look over his faults, to think him 
 better than he is — ■ — " 
 
 " No, no, no," said Evelyn, " that is not your way. Y"ou want 
 perfection, and you can't bear not to have it, James. There is 
 nothing — nothing vicious about Archie. He must have been 
 vicious to want that money ? No, no, no. I am as sure that 
 you are mistaken as that I'm alive." 
 
 He shook his head, but he was a little comforted for the 
 moment. " Y r ou can send for him if you are so confident," he 
 said ; and then there came to them in a sudden gust the sound 
 of the music, the movement of the dancers, which made the 
 floor thrill even where they were apart in that room full of 
 trouble : and the horror of the combination brought from 
 Evelyn a cry of pain, as she put up her hands to her face. 
 
 " Oh, don't send for him now ! in the middle of all that, where 
 he is doing his best, poor boy — where lie has forgotten every- 
 thing that's been troubling him \ — don't, James, don't for your 
 wife's sake send for the poor boy now " 
 
 "For my wife's sake ! — It is you who are my wife, Evelyn." 
 
 "If I am, it is not to sweep her influence away, but to help 
 it. Have mercy on her boy ! Oh, James, you have been hard 
 upon him : you are a good man, but you have been hard upon 
 him. Why did you expose him the other day about that 
 money % There might be a hundred reasons that you never 
 stopped to hear. James, I am in Mary's place ; and what she 
 would have done I am doubly bound to do. Don't ruin her 
 boy. Don't, for God's sake, James, even if your anger is just, 
 destroy her boy ! " 
 
 He rose up and walked about the room in his way, laughing 
 at intervals that hard, dry, little laugh, which was his signal of 
 distress. 
 
 " It shows what you think of me," he said, " that you bid me 
 not to ruin him. What's the meaning of that accursed bit of 
 paper lying there 1 It means that I have adopted the lie and 
 the guilt to save him. I have said it was all right — not for his 
 sake — but to save an open shame." 
 
 " Ah, James ! for his sake too." 
 
 He put his arm round her, and bent his head down upon her 
 shoulder for a moment. She felt his heart beating like a loud, 
 hard piece of machinery, thumping and labouring in his breast ; 
 and she thought she divined the pain that was in him, forcing 
 all his organs into such tierce movement. And so she did, in 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 277 
 
 fact ; but who can altogether understand the bitterness in 
 another's heart % 
 
 He sat down again after a while, and said again— 
 
 " Send for him — he must answer for himself.' - ' 
 
 " I will have to go and see to the people who are leaving, 
 James ; you ought to come too." 
 
 " I can't, it is impossible." 
 
 "Then Archie must stay to take your place. He lias done 
 very well, as well as any boy could have done. He must back 
 me up, and help me to see all the people away." 
 
 Eowland made a gesture of disgust at the people, the music, 
 the gaiety, the whole brilliant, delightful entertainment which 
 he had devised so splendidly, and only an hour or two ago 
 enjoyed so intensely. He could not bear the thought, much 
 less the sight of it now. He remained alone while Evelyn went 
 back to go through the final proceedings— to shake hands witli 
 the guests, and receive their acknowledgments. He sat and 
 listened to the music and the sound of the feet keeping time, 
 and the driving up of the carriages outside, and the commotions 
 of the departure. Twice in his impatience, as the reader has 
 seen, he rang for the butler, who was dispensing hospitality on 
 a scale little inferior to that of his master, and who was much 
 annoyed to be disturbed. Saunders took one message after 
 another to Archie, as has been seen, without very much effect. 
 The butler's feelings were all with the young man. He too was 
 of opinion, from his master's aspect and a something in theair 
 which the inferior members of a household are quick to perceive, 
 that there was " a wigging " in store for Archie ; and everybody 
 in the servants' hall instinctively took Archie's side, and agreed 
 with Saunders that to keep out of the governor's way as long 
 as he could, was very natural on the part of the young man. 
 Several of them wondered whether the man in the topcoat, 
 who had supper punctually served to him in the dining-room, 
 Avas the man who had made the row, an opinion to which Mr. 
 Saunders himself privately inclined. But the opinion of these 
 functionaries did not reach to Mr. Rowland in his library. He 
 sat and listened to all the voices and counted the_ carriages as 
 they rolled away. There could be but few remaining when lie 
 sent the last message to Archie. But when Saunders went out 
 of the library with his errand, he met Mrs. Rowland coming in. 
 She had stolen away from Miss Eliza and her vigorous group 
 of dancers. Evelyn's heart was sick too, in dismal expectation 
 of the interview to come. She knew beforehand how it would 
 be. Rowland would dash the accusation in his son's face, taking 
 everything for granted, while Archie would either retire in 
 sullen offence, or deny violently with as little reason or moder- 
 ation as his father. They would meet like the clash of angry 
 waves, neither making the smallest impression on the other; 
 and then they would drift afloat with what she felt to be an 
 irremediable wrong between them, something far more grave 
 
278 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 than had ever appeared on the stormy horizon before. And 
 what could Evelyn do, she who would so fain have taken all 
 the trouble upon her shoulders, and saved them both? Oh no, 
 there was no such luck in store for her ! She could not save 
 her husband from committing himself to a great accusation, or 
 Archie from violent rebellion and denial. If he took it too 
 calmly, Evelyn felt that even her own faith in him would fail, 
 and if he were violent, it would make the breach with his father 
 all the greater. She went and stood by her husband's side, 
 putting her hand upon his arm as he sat at the table with the 
 shade of the lamp raised, and the light full upon his angry face, 
 waiting till his son should come. 
 
 And Archie came in so unconscious, almost self-satisfied, 
 expecting a little approbation, and to find that his exertions 
 had been appreciated ! There was a half smile on his mouth 
 which changed the expression of a face so often lowering and 
 heavy with anticipation of evil. He feared no evil this night. 
 His eyes were limpid and blue, without a cloud, though with a 
 faint mist of boyish drowsiness in them just coming over the 
 brightness of excitement. He was excited still, but a little 
 sleepy, the call upon him being almost over : and it was nearly 
 four o'clock in the morning, a sufficient reason for fatigue. 
 " Did you want me, father 1 " he said, in his fresh, boyish voice. 
 Evelyn stood by her husband's side, holding his arm with a firm 
 significant pressure. She gave one look at the lad who stood 
 there, with his half smile, fearing no one, and then, with a sick 
 heart, turned her face away. 
 
 "Yes, sir, I wanted you. I have been waiting for you here 
 for hours," Rowland said. 
 
 Archie was startled by this unexpected tone. The smile went 
 away from his mouth. His eyes woke up from that mist of 
 coming slumber and looked a little anxious, a little wondering, 
 ready to be defiant, in his father's face. 
 
 Rowland took up the piece of paper that lay on the table in 
 the fierce white light of the lamp. Archie had clearly perceived 
 it was a cheque, but what it could be for he did not imagine. 
 His father took it up, and once more flung it at him as he had 
 done so often. "Look at that," in a voice of thunder, "and 
 tell me what it means!" he cried. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 " What is the meaning of it 1 " said Archie. He was so tired 
 and pleased and sleepy, that he did not even now feel sure that 
 anything was wrong. A faint idea struck his mind that his 
 father, though he did not look amiable, might yet be making 
 him another present, as he had done before. He caught it this 
 time as it whirled towards him, and looked at it puzzled, but 
 
AST) HIS CHILDEEX 279 
 
 without any alarm. " It is a cheque,'"' he said, looking up from 
 it with again that vague, slumberous smile creeping about the 
 corners of his mouth. 
 
 "Is that all you have to s ! i 
 
 "'What should I say?" asked the young man. ,; Is it— an- 
 other present you are making me ? — but it's a great sum," he 
 added, waking up more and more, "it can't be that." 
 
 He was so simple as he stood, almost so childish, taking the 
 awful missive, of the nature of which he had no understanding, 
 which meant ruin, shame, everything that was dreadful, into 
 his hand so innocently, that there came from the breast of the 
 spectator standing by — the only being whom the boy feared — a 
 suppressed but irrestrainable groan of emotion. Yet Evelyn 
 felt that to her husband his son's ignorance meant nothing but 
 acting, a consummate deceit, got up beforehand, the result of 
 guilty expectation, not of innocent ignorance. 
 
 " Alind, how you drive me wild ! " Rowland said hoarsely. " I 
 give you yet a place of repentance. For your mother's sake, and 
 for my wife's sake, who is not your mother — own to it like a man 
 even now — and I'll forgive you yet." 
 
 Archie's unconsciousness was almost foolish, as he stood there 
 with the thing in his hand. Evelyn, trembling from head to 
 foot in her own impatience and anxiety, could scarcely bear it. 
 '" Oh speak, speak ! '' she cried under her breath. 
 
 ' ; Own to what I " the boy said. "A place of repentance — for 
 what I " His consternation and amazement were clear enough ; 
 only to his father they seemed the deepest deceit. 
 
 " Down upon your knees ! " he cried, springing to his feet. 
 " Do you know what that means ? — not mere cheating of your 
 father, which perhaps was all you thought of ; it means the ruin 
 of your whole life : it means penal servitude — a little while ago 
 it meant death. Go down on your knees and ask my pardon. 
 I will never trust you again, nor will I ever have a happy 
 moment, knowing what you are ; but I will forgive you, as far 
 as the world is concerned, and hide your shame."' 
 
 Evelyn, whom her husband had thrown off in his hurried 
 movement, stood wringing her hands, her tears dropping upon 
 them, her countenance convulsed with terror and pity. " Oh 
 speak to him, Archie, tell him, tell him ! " she said. 
 
 Then the poor young fellow came fully to life, though even 
 now he did not quite understand what it was he was accused of. 
 " I don't know what you mean," he said ; " for there is nothing 
 in the world that can mean penal servitude to me. You are 
 mad, I think, father. I have done nothing to ruin my life. — Me ! 
 what could I have done — what has been in my power ] If I were 
 as bad in nature as you think me— what, what has been in my' 
 power . 
 
 "Archie," said Rowland, recovering his composure by a great 
 effort : "I want no useless talk. Let's understand all that as 
 said. Self-defence is out of the question. If you will tell me as 
 
280 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 humbly as you can what led you to such a crime as forgery, 
 perhaps — God forgive you, I'll try to think the best — thinking 
 less of it because it was your father " 
 
 " Forgery ! " cried Archie with a great shout, as if to earth 
 and heaven. 
 
 "You need not proclaim your shame and mine — Forgery. 
 What is the money to me 1 I would rather than ten thousand 
 pounds, than all I have in the world, that you had come to me 
 and told me— oh, any story you pleased — if it were gambling, if 
 it were some wretched woman — whatever it was. Man," cried 
 the father in his anguish, " you are my only son. It was my 
 fault, perhaps, that I was disappointed in you. But if you had 
 come to me and said, ' I have been a fool, I have need of a thou- 
 sand pounds to clear me of my folly/ — do you think I would 
 have refused 1 I might have been angry then — not knowing 
 what was in store — but if I know myself, I would not have been 
 hard upon you. I would have thought you were but young — I 
 would have felt you were like your mother. God forgive you, 
 boy, you're like your mother there where you stand, a felon, 
 a criminal, subject to the law. And my only son, my only 
 son ! " 
 
 He turned away with a loud sob, that came from his heart 
 like the report of a pistol, and throwing himself in his chair, 
 covered his face with his hands. 
 
 " A felon and a criminal," said Archie, in his turn half mad 
 with passion, and having made a dozen efforts to break in. " Oh, 
 I knew you hated me ; but I never thought it would go so far. 
 
 Me a felon — me subject to the law ! It's just a damned 
 
 cursed lie ! " cried the boy, tears of rage in his eyes. "Ay J I 
 never swore in my life, but I'll swear now. It's a damned lie ! 
 It's a cursed lie ! Oh, publish it to the whole world, if you like ; 
 what do I care 1 it's all over between you and me. You may 
 call me your son if you like, but no more will I call you father. 
 Oh, get a trumpet and tell it all over the world, and see if one 
 will believe you that ever knew Archie Rowland. Shame!" 
 cried the lad ; " father ! do you not think shame to say it 1 do 
 you not think shame ? " 
 
 The innocent face was gone — the look, that almost seemed 
 like imbecility in its unawakened ignorance. His features were 
 distorted and quivering with fury, his eyes full of great hot 
 tears of pain, which splashed upon that paper in his hand in 
 round circles, making the boy's passion wilder still with the 
 shame that he had been made to cry like a girl ! But these 
 fierce drops were not the easy tears of a child. He flung the 
 cheque upon the table Avith a laugh that was more painful 
 still. 
 
 " Put it up in a frame," he said, " in your hall, or in the bank, 
 or where folk can see it best ; and write on it, ' Forged by Archie 
 Rowland.' And send your policeman out to take me, and bring 
 me to trial, and get me condemned. You're a rich, rich man. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 281 
 
 and maybe you will be able to do it : for there's nobody will 
 believe that you invented all that to ruin your son, your only 
 son. Oh, what grand words to say ! Or maybe it was her 
 invention ! " cried Archie, as a movement caught his ear, which 
 drew his wild eyes to Evelyn. He stood staring at her for a 
 moment in silence. " It would not be so unnatural if it were 
 her invention,'"' he said. 
 
 There was a moment of awful silence — for great though the 
 passion was in Rowland's accusation, the fury of the unjustly 
 accused was greater. It was a storm against which no lesser 
 sentiment could stand. The slight untrained figure of the lad 
 rose to strange might and force, no softness in it or pliancy. Ho 
 stood fiercely at bay, like a wild animal, panting for breath. 
 And the father made no reply. He sat staring, silenced by the 
 response, which was a kind of fiercer echo of his own passion. 
 
 "You have nothing to say, it appears," said Archie, with quick 
 breathing, "and I will say nothing. I will go to the place I was 
 brought up in. I will not run away. And then ye can send 
 your warrant, or whatever you call it, to arrest me. I will bide 
 the worst you can do. Not a step will I move till you send to 
 take me. You will find me there night or clay. Good-bye to 
 ye," he said abruptly. A momentary wavering, so slight that it 
 was scarcely perceptible, moved him, one of those instantan- 
 eous impulses which sometimes change the whole character of 
 life— a temptation he thought it— to cry "father! father," to 
 appeal against this unimaginable wrong. But he crushed it on 
 the threshold of his mind, and turned to the door. 
 
 " Archie ! " cried Evelyn in despair, rushing after him. 
 " Archie ! I believe every word you say." 
 
 He took no notice of her, nor of the hand with which she 
 grasped his sleeve, but pausing, looked round for a moment at 
 his father, then he flung open the door, disdaining even to close 
 it after him, and walked quickly away. 
 
 " James ! — for God's sake go after him, stop him. James ! 
 James ! for the love of God- " 
 
 "Ye mean the devil ! " said Rowland, quickly, "that put all 
 that into his head." 
 
 He rose up and took the cheque from the table, but, perceiving 
 the stain of the tear, threw it down again, as if it had stung 
 him. There are some things that flesh and blood cannot bear, 
 and the great blot of moisture upon that guilty paper was one 
 of them. It all but unmanned this angry father. ' ; Put that 
 thing away, lock it up, put it out of my sight," he said, with a 
 quivering in his throat. 
 
 He had no doubt of his son's guilt. He had known other 
 cases in which a fury of injured innocence had been the best 
 way of meeting an accusation. And yet there was something 
 in Archie's passion which, while it roused his own, penetrated 
 him with another strange contradictory feeling — was it almost 
 approval, of the bearing of the boy 1 But not on so slight an 
 
282 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 argument as that was he shaken in his foregone conclusion. He 
 walked up and down the room, curiously made into a sort of 
 public, comfortless, unprotected place by the flinging open of 
 the door, and presently began to speak, flinging broken sentences 
 from him. The hall, with its decorations, the waxed and shining 
 floor, with a broken flower, a fallen card, a scrap of ribbon, 
 dropped upon it here and there, that air of the banquet-hall 
 deserted which is always so sug stive, formed the background 
 to his moving figure. And even Evelyn, in her absorption in 
 the wild tragic excitement of this domestic drama, did not think 
 of the stealthy servants moving about, and the eager ears so 
 intent upon picking up some indication of what the trouble 
 might be. 
 
 " He knows very well," said Rowland. " Oh, he knows very 
 well that I will never have him arrested or do anything to dis- 
 grace my own name. It's cheap, cheap, all that bravado about 
 waiting till I send to take him ; he might wait till doomsday, 
 as he well knows. Hold your tongue, Evelyn. It's well your 
 part to defend him, when he had the grace to say it was your 
 invention." 
 
 " Poor boy, poor boy ! he did not know what he was 
 saying." 
 
 "Are you so sure of that? He knew what he was saying, 
 every word. He's a bold hand — it's a superior way when the 
 artist can do it — I've seen the thing before. Injured pride, and 
 virtue — oh, virtue rampant ! That never had a thought, nor 
 could understand what wickedness meant. I have seen it before. 
 And cheap, cheap all yon about waiting till I sent the police- 
 man, when he knows I would not expose my name, not for more 
 than he's worth a thousand times over. Worth ! he's worth 
 nothing ; and my name, my name that is known over two con- 
 tinents — and more ! That's what you would call irony, isn't it 1 " 
 said Rowland, with his harsh laugh. " Irony ! I'm not a man 
 of much reading, but I've seen it in books. Irony ! — a name 
 known over half the world ; though, perhaps, I shouldn't be 
 the man to say it. And forged ! forged by the man's own son 
 that made it." 
 
 "James, for God's sake ! It was not Archie. I believe every 
 word he said." 
 
 " That the whole thing was your invention ? " said Rowland. 
 " That's what he said ; the rest was rubbish, I remember that. 
 And you believe every word ? You are a fool, like most women 
 — and many men too. That old sage, as ye call him, was right, 
 though people cry out. Mostly fools ! It was said before him 
 though. Men walk in a vain show, and disquiet themselves in 
 vain. They lay up riches, and know not who is to gather them. 
 Was there ever such a fool as me to keep thinking of my boy, 
 my little callant, as I thought, and never once to remember that 
 he was growing up into a low-lived lout all the time." 
 
 "Archie is not so," said Evelyn. "He is not so; his faults 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 283 
 
 are on the outside. He did not do this. I never believed lie did 
 it. James, you will never have been a fool till now if you let 
 the boy go." 
 
 " Bah ! lie has no intention of going. You take the like of 
 that in earnest. He will go to his bed and sleep it off, and then 
 — to-morrow's a new day. I am dead-tired myself,'"' said Row- 
 land, stretching his arms ; "as tired as a dog. I'll sleep till one, 
 though I've had enough to murder sleep. Xo, no, he'll not go ; 
 yon's all cheap, cheap, because he knows I will do nothing 
 against him. You are a tine creature, Evelyn, but you are no 
 wiser than the rest. Good-night, my dear, I am going to 
 bed."' 
 
 "' Without a word of comfort to him, James ] " 
 
 " Comfort ! he wants no comfort. And if he did," said Row- 
 land with a smile of misery, " it would be hard to come to me 
 for it, who have none to give. If you know anybody that has 
 that commodity to part with, send them to that boy's father, — 
 send them to the man that has had the heart taken out of him. 
 1 am going to my bed," 
 
 He went slowly up-stairs, and then, for the first time, Evelyn 
 saw the butler, Saunders, within hearing, though busily em- 
 ployed, with one or two subordinates, in putting out the lights 
 and closing the shutters. She watched her husband, with his 
 slow, unelastic step, going one by one up the long flight of 
 steps. He had never learned to subdue his energetic step, and 
 take them less than two together before. She was almost glad 
 to see those signs of exhaustion. The fervour of his passion 
 had dropped. He would, perhaps, turn aside, she thought, to 
 Archie's room, and would understand his son, and the two might 
 meet heart to heart at last. 
 
 Evelyn waited a long time, shivering and chill in those dismal 
 hours of the morning. She saw the servants conclude their 
 work and go away unwillingly to their rest. She sat down in 
 the library, with the room open to the dark, desolated hall, in 
 which only a faint light was left burning, and listened to all 
 the creakings and rustlings that seemed to run through the still 
 and sleeping house. Xo one came. Had his father, after all, 
 gone to his door and made peace ? Had the tired boy fallen 
 asleep in spite of himself ? Had it all been vapouring, as James 
 said ? She waited in her ball dress, with a rough woollen shawl, 
 the first she could find, wrapped about her ; and the lamp, 
 burning with a steady, monotonous light, throwing a lengthened 
 gleam upon the dark curtains of the glass door. 
 
 It had all been almost as she thought. Rowland had paused, 
 his feet had almost carried him, his heart, yearning, had almost 
 forced him to Archie's room to make a last appeal, perhaps to 
 listen, perhaps to understand. But he would not allow himself 
 to be moved by impulse, and turned heavily in the other 
 direction to his own room, where lie fell, as he had prophesied, 
 heavily asleep. And Archie, tired beyond description, his very 
 
284 THE RAILWAY MAN" 
 
 passion unable to resist the creeping languor in his brain, had 
 almost gone to sleep too, leaning his head against the bed, in 
 the attitude in which he had thrown himself down in order that 
 he might try to understand this new mystery. But in this he 
 was not successful, for after a minute or two, the sound of the 
 heavy step, which was his father's, startled him, and he became 
 more wide-awake than ever, listening with a beating heart, 
 wondering would lie come. He heard the pause, and wondered 
 more and more. When Rowland took the other direction, Archie 
 sprang to his feet and began hurriedly to change his dress. It 
 took him a considerable time to do this, for his fingers were 
 trembling, and his whole being shaken. He had to pull every- 
 thing out of his drawers to find the old shabby coat whicli lie 
 had worn when he first came to Rosmore. The room looked as 
 if it had been scattered in scorn or frenzy with everything he 
 possessed. But that was not Archie's meaning. He got his old 
 suit at last, and put it on, tossing his evening clothes into a 
 corner. He took off the watch his father had given him, and 
 denuded himself of everything that had come to him since 
 Rowland returned home. Poor Archie, his humiliation was 
 complete. The old clothes seemed to bring back the old mien, 
 and it was the lad of the Sauchiehall Road, and not the young 
 gentleman of Rosmore, who, seeing that the lights were out and 
 all the house silent, stepped out of the chaos of his desolated 
 bedchamber and took his way down-stairs. 
 
 There was a jar upon the great staircase, the sound thrilling 
 through the silence, of a slip upon some hardened plank, and 
 Evelyn awoke with a start from a troubled doze. She drew her 
 shawl close round her, for it was very cold, the coldest moment 
 of the night just before dawn. She had drawn the curtain half 
 over the library-door, that the light might not betray her, and 
 it was only by the dim rays of the night lamp in the hall that 
 she could distinguish the dark figure going softly towards the 
 door. He had his hand upon it when she stole out quietly and 
 caught his arm in her hands. 
 
 " Archie ! where are you going ? You are not going out at 
 this hour of the night 1 " 
 
 " Is it you, Mrs. Rowland ?" he said with a start. " If I had 
 known that anybody was up, I should not have come this way." 
 
 " Thank God you did not know. Archie, where are you going 
 out of your father's house'?" 
 
 " My father's house ! " he said with a faint laugh. "But why 
 go over it again ? you were there, and you heard the whole." 
 
 " And you heard me ? " 
 
 " You ! I was not thinking of you," he said with a contempt 
 which was purely matter-of-fact and natural, meaning no 
 offence. 
 
 "Nevertheless you heard what I said." 
 
 He paused a little and then said, "Yes, I suppose I did. I 
 remember something, but what does all that matter now ? " 
 
A^D HIS CHILDREN 285 
 
 "It matters having a friend always at hand, to note every- 
 thing. Oh, my boy, don't go. Stay and work it out — stay and 
 prove who has done it. Archie, take my advice.'"' 
 
 "Why should I, Mrs. Rowland ? I have always thought you 
 were my enemy." 
 
 " \ ery falsely, very falsely ! " she cried. "Archie, I promised 
 to your mother I would do all to you that a woman who was 
 not your mother could do." 
 
 '"You promised to my mother ! What do you know about 
 my mother ? It is getting late and I should be on the road : let 
 me go." 
 
 She was holding his arm with both her hands. And she was 
 not his enemy. His heart was charged with wrath, and grievous 
 against her, but he would not think she was his enemy any 
 more — and his mother— the name startled him, and there was 
 something in the close contact with this beautiful lady and the 
 pressure of her hands, that gave Archie a bewildered new sens- 
 ation in the midst of his rage and misery. The very sense of 
 her superiority — that superiority that had been so humiliating, 
 so sore a subject, and her beauty which he had never appreciated, 
 but which somehow came in to amaze yet touch him, as with 
 the deep curves round her anxious eyes, pale with watching and 
 trouble, she held him and kept him back on the threshold of the 
 friendless world, all evident in the surprise which jDenetrated 
 through Archie's wretchedness. Was it the promise of some- 
 thing better at the bottom of the deepest wrong of them all ) 
 
 "I don't know what you mean — about my mother — " he said. 
 
 "I promised her," said Evelyn, the tears dropping from her 
 eyes, " when I first caught sight of this house, which should 
 have been hers, — I promised her, that you should be cared for, 
 as if she were here." 
 
 "What was that!" he said, "something touched me — what 
 was that \ Who is it I Is there some one playing tricks here?" 
 
 He worked himself out of her grasp, turning to the other 
 side, where there was no one or anything to be seen. It was 
 the darkest hour of the night, and the coldest and most dreary, 
 though indeed, it was already morning, and in many a humble 
 house about the inhabitants were already awake and stirring. 
 But there was a stillness in the deserted hall, as if some one 
 had died there, and all the revellers had lied from the deserted 
 place. He searched about the side of the hall, peering and 
 groping in the feeble miserable light, but came back to where 
 Evelyn stood, coming close to her, shivering, with a scared and 
 blanched face. 
 
 "Somebody touched me, on my shoulder," he said in a very 
 low voice. 
 
 "You have had no sleep. Your nerves are excited. Go back, 
 go back, my poor boy, to your bed and sleep.'' 
 
 '' Xo, never when that has been said against me — never — if 
 there was not another house in the world." 
 
286 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 "Archie, my dear, we must keep our sense and our heads 
 clear. Whoever has done it, must know and be on the watch 
 to escape, and you must see that you must be cleared : it must 
 be made quite plain as the light of day." 
 
 " I will never be cleared," he said, shaking his head. " My 
 father will never say that he was wrong, and how should I find 
 out 1 I am not clever to be a detective. There are things that 
 are never found out. No, there's no light of day for me. Aunt 
 Jean will take me in, and I will go to the foundry and work, as 
 he did. But I will never be the man he was," the boy said with 
 a sort of forlorn pride in the father who had thrown him off. 
 "Mark you, I think maybe you are good as well as bonnie, and 
 far better than the like of us. If I had known sooner, it might 
 have been different. Let me go." 
 
 " Oh, boy, boy ! you must be cleared, and you won't stay and 
 do it," she cried, grasping his arm again. 
 
 He unloosed her hands with a certain roughness yet tender- 
 ness. " Let me go," he said. " I will go, there is nobody on 
 earth that can stop me." He undid the iron bar that held the 
 door with fierce haste, paying no attention to her pleadings, 
 and flung the big door open, letting in the chill morning air, 
 which sped like a messenger unseen swiftly through the hall 
 and up the stairs, and driving Mrs. Rowland back with a chill 
 that went to her heart. 
 
 Archie stepped out into the dark world. Over the mouth of 
 the loch where the current of the great river swept its waters 
 in, there was a faint trembling of whiteness, which meant a 
 new day. He did not feel the cold or any shock from it, but 
 instead of hurrying forth as might have been looked for, 
 lingered, standing outside a moment, with his face turned 
 towards that lightness in the east. Evelyn wrapped her shawl 
 more closely round her and followed him, standing upon the 
 step of the door to make a last effort. But he paid no attention 
 to what she said. He stood lingering on the gravel absorbed 
 in his own thoughts. Then he came up to her again close, as 
 if he had for the first time remarked her presence. " Do you 
 think," he said, " it could be her, to give me heart ? " and then 
 without waiting for a reply, he turned away. 
 
 Cold and startled and shivering, Evelyn watched his retiring 
 figure till it was lost in the darkness, and then closed the door, 
 with a heart that was fluttering and sick in her breast. He had 
 said many strange things — things which almost made it jx)ssible 
 that he was not so innocent as she thought, and yet he was 
 innocent, he must be innocent ! She crossed the dark hall with 
 a tremor in her weariness and exhaustion. It needed not the 
 darkness to veil an ethereal spirit. Had Mary been there 1 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 287 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 Xot a word was said of Archie in the house of Rosmore until 
 the tired and still sleepy party assembled to breakfast. Evelyn, 
 who had not closed her eyes till daylight, had slept late, and 
 had not been disturbed ; and her husband had no opportunity 
 of questioning her, had he been disposed, until they met at the 
 breakfast-table. The rest of the party were all assembled when 
 she came in — Rowland himself invisible behind his newspaper, 
 and taking no notice, while the others were talking as gaily as 
 usual, without any sign of being moved by any knowledge of a 
 catastrophe. Eddy Saumarez indeed had dark lines under his 
 eyes, but his talk was endless as ever. He gave Mrs. Rowland 
 a quick and keen look of investigation as she came in, but Eddy 
 was the last person in her thoughts, and she did not even 
 observe the glance. The conversation, in due course of the 
 table, ran on without much interruption from the strangers, 
 who dropped in one by one, and to whom the mistress of the 
 house gave all her care. 
 
 "Archie was magniiicent with Lady Jean,'' said Eddy. "I 
 never saw anything so good as his bow. He put his feet 
 together like a French dandy of the last century. We've lost 
 the art in our degenerate days.'"' 
 
 " Oh/' said Marion, " that was nothing wonderful, for it was 
 a Frenchman that we got our dancing from, Archie and me. He 
 used to play a little fiddle and caper about. Some people 
 thought he was old-fashioned — the MacColls — but they were 
 just as ignorant ! He taught me that way of doing my steps, 
 you know " — and Marion sprang up, lifting a fold of her dress 
 to exhibit a neat foot pointed in a manner which presumably 
 her former partner had admired. 
 
 "Oh yes, I know- — you danced young Cameron's heart away. 
 As for mine, it is well known I have got none. But did you 
 see him in the reel ? By Jove, he sprang a foot from the floor." 
 
 "Who is him?" said Rosamond — "Mr. Rowland or Mr. 
 Cameron — you might make your descriptions more clear." 
 
 " Oh, Archie ! Xo. He wanted lightness perhaps a little in 
 the waltzes, but the reels he performed like one to the manner 
 born." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," said Marion, "that he was more born to 
 one than to the other. We've danced very few reels, if that is 
 what you mean. Waltzes and polkas, and so forth, is what we 
 were learned to dance — just like other people. But it is true 
 that Archie was never so good at it as " 
 
 Marion paused with a feeling of her stepmother's eyes upon 
 her, though indeed Mrs. Rowland was far too much occupied 
 by the other guests, even had her mind been less troubled, to 
 have any perception of the chatter going on at her side. 
 
288 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 "It is savage," said Rosamond, "but it has a kind of sense in 
 it ; whereas going round and round is delirious, but it has none. 
 One enjoys dancing very much, but one is rather ashamed of it 
 after it is over. Why should one spend hours doing nothing 
 but go round and round % When you look on and don't dance, 
 it is silly beyond anything in the world." 
 
 " I dare say the wallflowers think so/' said Eddy. " But they 
 would not if they could get partners." 
 
 " That is the worst of it," said Rosamond reflectively. "Pro- 
 bably they are far the nicest people in the room. I thought 
 last night we were all like the little figures on the barrel-organ 
 that used to play under our nursery windows, going round and 
 round till it made one giddy to see them. And to think that 
 l^eoi^le with other things in their minds should go like that a 
 whole evening ; and all the trouble that was taken to prepare 
 for them, and all the trouble to make things rational again, and 
 only know perhaps in the midst of all the nonsense " 
 
 " What — in the midst of all the nonsense, Miss Saumarez ? " 
 said Mr. Rowland, suddenly laying down his paper, which 
 had much the effect of a gun suddenly fired into the midst of 
 them, for it was very rarely that he interfered in the conversa- 
 tion of the young members of the party. His face, which 
 always had a weather-beaten tone, was flushed and redder than 
 usual, which is the unattractive way in which some middle-aged 
 people show their trouble, instead of the more interesting 
 method of young folk. 
 
 " Oh nothing/' said Rosamond a little startled, and answer- 
 ing like any shy girl suddenly finding herself called to book. 
 She recovered her courage, however, and continued : " I mean 
 it looks silly to see everybody twirling and twirling as if they 
 had nothing to do or think of, when they must have things to 
 think of, even in the midst of a ball." 
 
 Rowland threw down his paper and rose from his seat. " You 
 are about right, however you came about your knowledge," he 
 said, and walking to the window stood with his large back 
 turned towards them, staring out and seeing nothing ; indeed, 
 as the windows of the dining-room looked only into the shrub- 
 beries, there was nothing but trees and bushes to see. 
 
 " It is not the fashion," said Eddy, " to wear your heart on 
 your sleeve, thank heaven. And society's the best of discipline 
 in that way. When a man's hit, he must blubber out loud 
 before the crowd like a child ; I am always at my funniest 
 when I'm hardest hit — and as for the Governor, Rose, you know 
 when he's bad by the way he laughs at everything. By the way," 
 cried Eddy, "what's become of Rowland, the lazy beggar? 
 doesn't he mean to come down-stairs to-day ? " 
 
 "Archie was always lazy in the morning," said Marion, "we 
 never could get him up." 
 
 " Young Mr. Rowland should have a long allowance," said a 
 lady who had been absorbed in her letters, " for he had double 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 289 
 
 work last night. He was ubiquitous, finding partners, finding 
 places, doing everything. You should have heard Lady Jean. 
 He fairly won her heart."' 
 
 "And mine too,'' cried Lady Marchbanks from the other end 
 of the table, who was known to copy Lady Jean faithfully in 
 all her strongly expressed opinions. 
 
 "That would show, according to Sauruarez," said a young 
 man laughing, "that to show himself so lively, he must have 
 had something on his mind/' 
 
 Rowland turned round from the window at which he stood, 
 and gave a keen look at the careless young speaker who had 
 just appeared, then returned to his contemplation of the some- 
 what gloomy landscape without. 
 
 "Are you studying the weather, James ?"' said Evelyn from 
 her place at the head of the table. 
 
 " That's not a subject that repays contemplation in this 
 country, Mrs. Rowland," said ^>ir John Marchbanks with his 
 mouth full. 
 
 " It wants variety, it's always raining : the glass may say 
 what it likes, but you're sure of that/' 
 
 " The glass," said another gentleman, strolling towards the 
 window to join the laird, " has little effect in this district. But 
 just for the fun of the thing, Rowland, what does it say ]"' 
 
 James Rowland was not' a man who wore his heart on his 
 sleeve, but neither had he that super-admirable discipline of 
 society which rouses the spirits to special force in order to con- 
 ceal a calamity. He turned round upon the inquirer somewhat 
 sharply : " The fun of the thing 1 I see no fun in the thing. 
 Corn still out on those high-lying fields, and frost in the air, and 
 the glass falling : it's not funny to me." 
 
 Nothing was funny to him at that moment, to look at his 
 flushed and clouded face. He had held himself in for some time, 
 but the tension was unbearable. Was Archie coming, and all 
 as usual 1 was he sulking in his room 2 was he — terrible question 
 — gone ; gone for ever out of his father's house % His trouble 
 took, as in so many middle-aged minds, the form of acute 
 irritation. And yet he did his best to restrain himself. 
 
 " Oh, that's true," said the other, somewhat disconcerted. 
 " Perhaps we don't think enough of the poor bodies' bit fields. 
 But they should learn better than to put corn there. You will 
 find no decent farmer doing that.'' 
 
 " Corn's but a delusion at the best, in these days," said a 
 country gentleman with a sigh. 
 
 " But if we are going out to take you your luncheons to the 
 hill, cried the pretty Miss Marchbanks, "we must be sure of 
 the weather. Oh, I am not going out upon the hill if it rains, 
 to go over my ankles in every bog." 
 
 Rowland had turned from the window and was looking round 
 the table with a faint hope of finding his son there. He had 
 tried to smooth out his troubled countenance, and at this speech 
 
 u 
 
290 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 he contrived to smile. " I will go and consult the big glass in 
 the hall for your satisfaction, Miss Marchbanks," he said. 
 
 " Oh, do, do ! how kind you are ! and we'll all come too," cried 
 the girl. But he did not wait for this undesirable result. What 
 a relief it was to escape, to get beyond reacli of all those inquisi- 
 tive looks, to reach the shelter of the room which no one invaded. 
 He hid himself behind the heavy curtains and the closed door, 
 only in time to escape the invasion of the light-hearted company, 
 whose voices and footsteps he could hear coming after him. He 
 had purposely refrained from asking any questions about Archie, 
 not willing to betray his uneasiness to the servants. His wife 
 had remained long down-stairs after him, but even with her, who 
 knew every tiling, he was reluctant to ask any questions ; and 
 she had been asleep when he was roused by the movement in 
 the house to the shining of a new day. He knew nothing — 
 nothing from the time when, with angry despair, he had gone 
 up-stairs and wavered for a moment at Archie's door. All he had 
 wanted then was to pour out upon the boy the bitterness of his 
 heart. But now the snatches of broken sleep which had come 
 to him refreshing him against his will, and the enforced quiet 
 of the night, and the new beginning of the day, had worked 
 their natural effect. A longing came into his mind to dream it 
 all over again, to- see if perhaps there might be any fact to 
 support the boy's vehement and impassioned denial. No, no, 
 he said to himself, there could be no proof — none ! Some dis- 
 graceful secret must lie beneath. It was not in Archie's nature 
 (which was kind enough — the fool had a good heart and faithful 
 enough to his friends) to have refused to help his old comrade 
 without some reason. Perhaps, 1 lowland thought, this was to 
 do that — the fool ! he had no sense about money. It might have 
 been for this purpose — a good purpose ; a tiling lie had himself 
 taunted him for not doing. The perspiration came out in great 
 beads on his brow — a cold dew of pain. Could it be for this 
 that he had made himself a criminal 1 or had lie not done it at 
 all? But that was impossible. Who else could have done it? 
 It would be easy for him whose own handwriting resembled 
 his father's, whose appearance with so large a cheque would 
 have occasioned no suspicion. It had been a little pleasure to 
 Itowland, and warmed his heart with a sensation of the mys- 
 terious bond of nature, to find that, though he had nothing to 
 do with his son's education, Archie's handwriting had resembled 
 his. And now the recollection struck him like a sharp blow. 
 And then the son — who could wonder that he came with so large 
 a cheque ? But no, it was not he that had cashed the cheque, 
 for it had been wondered over, and young Farquhar — confound 
 young Farquhar ! — no doubt some shady puppy doing well, good 
 
 as they always are these fellows to contrast with He had 
 
 thrown himself into his chair, but now he got up again and 
 walked about the room. That the bank people should be so 
 anxious to cover young Farquhar at the cost of Archie— It was 
 
AXD HIS PHILDREX 291 
 
 not that ; he knew there was something wanted to complete the 
 logic of that, but it came to the same thing. To transfix his 
 own heart with ten thousand wounds, to ruin the boy — for what 
 was it but ruin to the boy, whatever came of it, not a trick and 
 frolic as the young fool pretended to think, but ruin, ruin, all 
 the same — for the sake of young Farquhar, to save a little delay 
 in his advancement ! Good Lord ! how disproportionecl things 
 were in this life ! 
 
 He was standing by the fire, idly looking at the calendar on 
 his mantelpiece, which marked the date 25th of October, a 
 date he never forgot, when the door was cautiously opened and 
 Saunders, the butler, came in, closing it again carefully after 
 him. There was something in the man's eyes which already told 
 half his tale. 
 
 " Lo, this man's face, like to a title leaf, 
 Foretells the nature of the tragic volume." 
 
 Rowland did not probably know these lines or anything like 
 them, but he watched Saunders' approach with the same feeling. 
 The butler came quite up to him and spoke in a low voice, as 
 if he were afraid of being heard. " I beg your pardon, sir," he 
 said ; " I thought I had better let you know ; Mr. Archibald, 
 sir, — I'm thinking he has been called away suddenly." 
 
 " What % " cried Rowland, holding by the marble of the 
 chimney-piece, and feeling as if a touch would bring him down. 
 
 " Mr. Archibald, sir — I'm thinking he must have had some 
 sudden call. His room is lying in great disorder, and his bed 
 has not been slept in this night." 
 
 He held by the marble of the chimney-piece for a full minute 
 before he came to himself : and then his lips hanging a little 
 loose, his voice a little thick — " Do you mean that my son — is 
 not in the house 1 " 
 
 " He's had some sudden call," said the man, with instinctive 
 endeavours to lessen the shock. "He's left no message. And 
 there's the gentlemen all intent upon the shooting, and the ladies 
 to go with their luncheon " 
 
 Kowland paused for another minute before he spoke. Then 
 he said, " Mr. Archie had to start very early for Glasgow on 
 business. It was only settled last night — something about that 
 messenger, you remember, Saunders, that came into the middle 
 of the ball and looked so frightened." His voice became easier 
 as it went on, and he laughed at this recollection. " As I could 
 not go myself, I sent my son. He may be detained a day or two. 
 Just go to Mr. Saumarez and ask him, with my compliments, if 
 he would take Mr. Archie's place. Is Roderick ready ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, sir ; quite ready and waiting. It's a thought late : 
 all the gentlemen have been a little late this morning." 
 
 "What can you expect, Saunders, after a ball? You can tell 
 Mrs. Rowland I would like to see her as soon as she has a 
 moment to spare." 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 It was so then ; without remedy. Archie had gone — gone— 
 not lied ; that could never be said of him ; gone to wait for the 
 police coming to arrest him for forgery, as if that would ever be. 
 God ! his boy — Mary's boy — the only son ; whom the ladies had 
 been praising so for his conduct last night ; whom Lady Jean, 
 they said — Lady Jean who was so ill to please, who was not an 
 easy person — and he was gone. Eowland felt his heart in his 
 breast as heavy as a stone. It had been beating very irregularly, 
 sometimes loudly, sometimes quieted down for a moment, now 
 it seemed to stop and lie heavy, like a stone. He waited till he 
 heard the ladies' voices die away, the men come out to the door 
 where Roderick was awaiting them, and saw the start from his 
 window, himself unseen, feeling a kind of contempt in his misery 
 for the men who are so easily amused. Old men, too : Sir John, 
 as old as himself, so easily amused ! but then, perhaps, there 
 w T as no son in this case to make his father's life a burden to him. 
 " Has he daughters ? " old Lear said, as if a man had no right to 
 be mad who had not. As for Sir John, tramping along in his 
 knickerbockers, an older man than Eowland, he had no son ; 
 and yet the father, unhappy, felt a sort of contempt for him so 
 easily amused, while others were too sick at heart to bear the 
 light. He went out of his room when the coast was clear, and 
 went to Archie's room, which lay in the disorder it had been 
 found in by the servant who went to call him in the morning : 
 the drawers all open, the things thrown about. Nothing could 
 be more dismal than the aspect of the room in this abandonment. 
 It is terrible at all times to enter the empty room of any one 
 whom we love, especially when its owner is sick or in trouble. 
 The unused bed cold, as if it were never to be employed more ; 
 the air of vacancy ; the emptiness and silence, have an effect of 
 suggestion more overwhelming than any simple fact. And 
 Archie's room was not only empty, it was abandoned. His 
 father turned over the things upon the table in the miserable 
 preoccupation of his mind, not knowing what he did, and then 
 lifted a handful of papers, including Archie's cheque-book, which 
 was lying there. " How careless of Archie ! " he said, mechanic- 
 ally, as he carried them away. There was no real intention of 
 carrying them away. He had not, indeed, thought on the 
 subject at all, but took them up almost unawares. 
 
 Evelyn put her hand within his arm as he crossed the hall to 
 his room, and accompanied him there. She told him that Archie 
 had gone, but in what temper and disposition, softened, as she 
 thought and hoped, and he listened with his head bent down, 
 saying nothing. He was angry, yet he was soothed that she 
 should be on Archie's side. " You take his part against your 
 husband," he said roughly, but he loved her better for it than if 
 she had taken his part against his son. There are artifices of 
 the heart which it is well to know. And he sat heavily thinking 
 for some time after she had ended her tale. Then he said abruptly, 
 " I gave you yon cheque to keep. Give it me back, please." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 293 
 
 Evelyn opened the drawer of a little ornamental escritoire, in 
 which she had locked that fatal paper, and gave it to her hus- 
 band. Rowland was a strong man, and he was not emotional, 
 but the sight of the two round marks which were on the paper 
 with broken edges, when the tears had pleaded unawares with 
 their weight of saltness and bitterness the rage and horror of the 
 boy accused, was more than he could bear. He put it down hastily 
 on the table, and for a moment covered his face with his hands. 
 Those tears which anguish and shame had forced from his boy's 
 eyes — who could have seen them unmoved 1 There was a relent- 
 ing, a melting, a thawing of horrible ice about his heart. "If 
 he was guilty," he said, in a faltering voice. " Evelyn, if he was 
 
 guilty, do you think " 
 
 She went and stood behind him, drawing his head against her 
 breast. "You could but forgive him," she said, very low ; "at 
 the worst — at the worst." 
 
 " Come," he said, after that moment of emotion ; " it is just a 
 question of business after all. This was never taken from any 
 
 book of mine. You see the difference " He opened a drawer 
 
 and drew out his cheque-book, pointing to her the numbers. 
 The cheque was numbered in much more advanced numerals 
 than Mr. Rowland's book. " That's nothing in itself," he added, 
 " for I might have borrowed a cheque from some one, or got it 
 at the bank, if I had been wanting for money then. I might 
 have got it from — anybody that banks there. Archie — I might 
 have got it from Archie." As he spoke his eye fell suddenly 
 upon his son's cheque-book which he had brought from the 
 empty room. He took it up and opened it almost with a smile. 
 But the first glance struck him with a strange alarm. He gave 
 a frightened look up at her, throwing back his head for a 
 moment, then began slowly to turn over the pages. What an 
 office that was ! Evelyn stood behind, looking over his shoulder, 
 feeling that the moment of intolerable crisis had come. 
 
 The smile was fixed upon his face ; but it changed its cha- 
 racter, and got to be the cynical smile of a demon upon that 
 honest face. Over and over went the quivering long leaves of 
 
 the pink cheques in his trembling lingers, and then 
 
 " James, James ! " 
 
 He put it in the place from which it had been torn, a scrap of 
 the perforated line had been left on the side of the foil, and 
 fitted with the horrible precision of such things. He laid it 
 there exact, rag to rag, then gave her a triumphant glance, and 
 broke into a fit of dry and awful laughter, such as the trembling 
 woman, whom he pushed away from him, had never heard 
 before. 
 
 " There ! " lie said, " there ! and what do you think of that, 
 and your brave young hero now % " 
 
 It seemed to Evelyn as if her spirit and courage were entirely 
 gone from her, and she could never hold up her head again. 
 She had recoiled when he pushed her away, but now came 
 
291 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 tremblingly back, and looked at it as at a death-warrant. Ah ! no 
 delusion — no fancy — it was as clear as the cold dreary daylight 
 that jDoured in upon them through the great window — as clear 
 as that Mary's boy, who had looked so honest, who had faced 
 his accuser with such rage of upright indignation, who had 
 approached with such an unsuspecting look of innocence, as 
 clear as that the boy 
 
 " No, no, no ! " she cried out. " I will not believe my senses, 
 James ! There is something in it more than we know." 
 
 " Ay ! he said. " Ay, I well believe that — something more 
 than you and me know, or perhaps could understand — though 
 lie's but twenty. Do you hear, Evelyn — only twenty, with 
 plenty of time " 
 
 "Yes," she cried, clasping her husband's hand, upon which her 
 tears fell heavily, " plenty, plenty of time, thank God, to repent." 
 
 " To do more, and to do worse," he said. " Repent ! I believe 
 in that when I see it — but never before. Plenty of time to drag 
 down my honour to the dust — to make my name a byeword — 
 to lay my pride low. Oh, plenty of time for that, and a good 
 beginning." 
 
 He took a large envelope out of one of the drawers of the 
 table at which he was sitting, and methodically arranging the 
 cheque in the place from which it had been torn, at the end of 
 the book, placed the cheque-book in the envelope, and fastening 
 it up, locked it into a private drawer. 
 
 " There ! " he said, " that is done with, Evelyn. We'll say no 
 more about it. We'll just disperse, my dear, you to your farm 
 and me to my merchandise. The incident is over. It's ended 
 and done with. If we can forget it, so much the better. It's 
 not very long to have had the delusion of a — a — son in the house. 
 It's well it has been so short a time. Now that chapter's closed, 
 and there's no more to be said." 
 
 "James ! you will not abandon the boy for the first error — 
 the first slip?" 
 
 " Error — slip ! I would like to know what kind of a moral 
 code you have," he said with a smirk. "An error would be — 
 perhaps staying out too late at night— perhaps forgetting him- 
 self after dinner. I would not cast him off for a slip like that. 
 And if he asks me for money, he shall have it, enough to keep 
 him. But as for the slip of a lad of twenty who signs another 
 man's name to a cheque for a thousand pounds " 
 
 "Oh, what does the sum matter?" she cried. 
 
 " The sum matters — nothing. I would have made a coat of 
 thousand pounds, like old Jacob in the Bible. Ay, that and 
 more. But never mind, it's all passed and over, Evelyn. My 
 dear, you have behaved through it all like an angel. God bless 
 you for it. Now go away and leave me to my business, and we 
 will never mention it again." 
 
 " I do not consent to that, James. I will mention him many 
 times again." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 205 
 
 '" Then you will force me to keep out of your reach, my dear," 
 her husband cried. And yet he was thankful to her for what 
 she said, thankful to the bottom of his heart. 
 
 Thus Archie disappeared, and the waters closed over his head 
 - - but not silently or without commotion. The men went out to 
 the hill and made tolerable but not very good bags ; the ladies 
 took them their luncheon, and there was a very merry party 
 among the heather, but when two came together they asked 
 each other, " What has become of the son % " or " What have 
 they done with Archie % : ' and the incident was as far from being 
 ended as human incident ever was. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 If any one thinks that such events can come to pass in a 
 house, and the servants remain unaware of the movement and 
 commotion, I can only say that these persons are little ac- 
 quainted either with human nature, or the peculiar emotions 
 and interests called forth by domestic service. As certain 
 members are kept in exercise by certain kinds of action, so 
 there are certain sets of mental and moral fibres that are moved 
 by the differing conditions of existence, and no one is more 
 completely and continuously in operation than those of interest, 
 curiosity, and that mixture of liking and opposition which 
 naturally actuate one set of human creatures towards the other 
 set of human creatures who are immediately over them, and 
 control and occupy all their movements. It gives something of 
 the interest of a continual drama to life, to watcli the compli- 
 cated play of human fate going on so near, in circumstances so 
 intimate that it is scarcely possible not to enter into a certain 
 partizanship, and take sides. Thus there were some of the 
 servants who were all for Mr. Archie, and had an instinctive 
 certainty that he was being unjustly treated and ill-used, and 
 some who held for the master, with a conviction that a young 
 son was never to be trusted, and was apt to go astray, as the 
 sparks fly upward, by force of nature. Singularly enough, 
 though Mrs. Rowland was a considerate and kind mistress, 
 good to everybody, and taking a much greater interest in the 
 members of her household than either father or son, nobody 
 took her side : partly because she was, more or less, like them- 
 selves, a sort of spectator, not one of the first actors in the 
 drama ; and still more because she was the stepmother, and 
 naturally, according to all traditions, a malignant element 
 doing harm to both. The items of fresh information which 
 were brought to the upper servants by Saunders, and which 
 percolated through the house by means of an observant foot- 
 man, were eagerly seized by the attendant crowd, and rapidly 
 
296 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 classified under fact or guess, according to its kind, until the 
 superstructure was very remarkable. Naturally, the servants' 
 hall knew far better what Mr. Rowland was going to do than 
 he himself did, and had settled the career of Archie in every 
 particular before he had more than the most rudimentary idea 
 of it himself. 
 
 It is a very poor and shabby thing to gossip with servants as 
 to the habits and peculiarities of their masters : nothing can be 
 more true than this. But it is very difficult for a lady not to 
 hear, as she can scarcely help hearing, the word dropped by her 
 maid — or for a man to arrest in time the revelation that falls 
 from his attendant in respect to the disturbed condition of a 
 house. "How could there be much comfort in the house, my 
 lady, when there was a terrible scene in the middle of the night, 
 and poor Mr. Archie never in his bed at all, but gone out of the 
 house by break of day ? " You have to be quick indeed, and 
 very much on your guard, to prevent the woman, as she stands 
 behind you, from letting loose such an expression as this before 
 you can stop her. And still less is a man able to check the 
 valet who thinks it so very queer that a gentleman should have 
 arrived late on business, and come scared-like into the ball-room 
 all in his travelling things. " And they do say, sir, that that's 
 why young Mr. Rowland lias disappeared this morning, though 
 the house is full of company." How can you restrain or ignore 
 these communications from the back-stairs? Consequent upon 
 a number of such communications was the resolution taken by 
 everybody at Rosmore to arrange their departure as early as 
 possible on the second day. All felt confused and troubled in 
 the dreary rooms in the evening, where there was nobody to 
 lead the revels, and where the master of the house scarcely took 
 any pains to conceal the preoccupation of his mind. Nobody 
 could have known, except by the anxious glance she threw now 
 and then at her husband, by Mrs. Rowland's bearing that any- 
 thing was wrong, and Marion was in her usual spirits, ready to 
 do a little solid flirtation (for the young men complained of 
 Marion that she was far from being light in hand) with any 
 candidate : but Rowland gave so broken an attention to what 
 was going on, mingled in the conversation so abruptly, and fell 
 into such silences between, that it was easy to see how little 
 accomplished he was in the art of living, according to its highest 
 social sense. Whether it was that, or the hints from below 
 stairs, which had reached more or less every member of the 
 party, it was certain that it \v r as a party very little at its ease. 
 One or two of the bolder guests asked directly for Archie, if he 
 was expected home that evening, if he was likely to be long 
 detained by his business, etc. ; the more timid did not mention 
 his name. "What is the best thing to do," they asked each 
 other privately, "when there is trouble of that kind in a 
 house?" Lady Marchbanks, who was not generally supposed 
 to be a very wise woman, here spoke with authority out of the 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 297 
 
 depths of a great experience, being a woman with many brothers, 
 sons, and nephews, and full of knowledge on such points. " I 
 always ask," she said, "just as if I were sensible of nothing- 
 just as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a 
 young man to be suddenly called away on business, when it is 
 well known he has no business, and his father's house full of 
 guests. It's the kindest way," Lady Marchbanks said, and she 
 had occasion to know. But they were all unanimous in finding 
 reasons why they must depart next morning after their de- 
 lightful visit. Interesting as human complications are to all 
 spectators, there are few people who think it right to stay on in 
 manifest presence of trouble in the house. 
 
 There was one, however, who excelled himself in friendly 
 devotion to his hosts, and that was Eddy Saumarez, who took 
 upon himself, only with far greater ability than Archie could 
 have shown, the work of the son of the house. There was 
 every appearance that it would have been a very dull and 
 embarrassing evening but for Eddy, who flung himself into the 
 middle of affairs like a hero. He sang, he talked, he arranged a 
 rubber in one corner, a game in another, of that semi-intel- 
 lectual kind which is such a blessed resource in a country-house, 
 and has the happy effect of making dull people think themselves 
 clever. Eddy himself was too clever not to be infinitely bored 
 by such contrivances, but he forgot himself and stood up like a 
 hero, asking the most amusing questions and giving the wittiest 
 answers when it was his turn to be badgered, and keeping the 
 company in such a state of stimulation that even the heaviest 
 grew venturesome, and made themselves ridiculous with delight, 
 for the amusement of the rest. He even drew a smile from 
 Rowland, who was too restless for whist, but who came more 
 than once within Eddy's wilder circle of merriment, and was 
 cheated into a momentary forgetfulness. When the party dis- 
 persed, having passed, instead of the dull hours they had most 
 of them anticipated, an unusually animated evening, Rowland 
 came up and laid his heavy hand on Eddy's shoulder. The 
 young man started like a criminal, grew red and grew pale, and 
 for once in his life was so disconcerted that he had not a word 
 to say. And yet Rowland's address was of the most flattering 
 kind. " I can't tell how much I'm obliged to you," his host 
 said. " You've been the life of the house since ever you came, 
 Eddy, my man. And to-night I don't know what we should 
 have done without you. My w r ife will tell you the same thing. 
 You've been the saving of us to-night. If ever I can serve you 
 in anything — Lord ! . I would have done that for her, on account 
 of her interest in you. But remember now, that on your own 
 account, if I ever can be of any service " 
 
 Eddy shrank back from that touch. He would not meet 
 Rowland's eye. He faltered in his answer, he that was always 
 so ready. " I don't deserve that you should speak to me so," he 
 stammered out. ' ; I — I've done nothing, sir. All that I can ask 
 
298 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 is your forgiveness for — for — inflicting so long a visit upon 
 you." 
 
 "Is that all?" said Rowland, with a laugh. "Then I hope 
 you'll make your offence double, and give me twice as much to 
 forgive you. Are you bound for the smoking-room now ? " 
 
 "Perhaps I had better go," said Eddy, carefully watching the 
 other's eyes. 
 
 "Do, my good lad. I had a disturbed night, and I'm out of 
 the habit of keeping late hours. I will not appear myself, if 
 you are going — though I dare say they will all go soon to their 
 beds to-night." 
 
 "Good-night, sir," said Eddy, "I hope you'll sleep well." 
 There was almost a tender tone in the youth's voice. 
 
 "Oh, I'll sleep well enough. I always sleep. Good-night — 
 and thank you again, Eddy, for backing me up." 
 
 As for Evelyn, she pressed his hand with a grateful look, and 
 said also, " Thank you, Eddy," in a soft tone, which, for some 
 reason or other, seemed more than Eddy could bear. He almost 
 tore his hand from hers, and turned his back upon her as though 
 she had insulted him, which filled Mrs. Rowland with astonish- 
 ment ; but when there were so many things of importance to 
 think of, what did Eddy's look matter ! She was glad when the 
 girls too said good-night, and left her alone with her husband — 
 who, however, was in no humour for conversation. 
 
 " I'm going to bed," he said. " I can always sleep, thank God. 
 Evelyn, if you ever write to that lads father " 
 
 "I never do, James." 
 
 " Well, you might, my dear. It would have been no offence 
 to me. I'm not one to sin against my mercies, as if I did not 
 know when I had got a good woman. But you might say the 
 lad had been a real stand-by. When you have a son, and the 
 like of that can be said, it's a pity that a man should not have 
 
 the satisfaction " He broke off with a sigh, and walked up 
 
 and down the room with his hands deeply thrust into his 
 pockets, and then pulled the heavy curtains aside and looked 
 out. It was one of the windows under the colonnade just where 
 the view was — the view through the trees over the triumphant 
 Clyde, with its towns and hills beyond. There was a faint 
 glimmer of light in sky and water, which showed where the 
 opening was. Ah ! this, which had been the star of his life for 
 so many years — to what had it turned when it was granted to 
 his eager desire % 
 
 " James ! there is nothing to prevent you from having that 
 satisfaction — yet." 
 
 He looked at her and burst into a hoarse laugh — then, as she 
 essayed to speak again, stamped his foot on the carpet in im- 
 patience and hurried away. 
 
 An hour later there was a knock at Rosamond's door in the 
 stillness of the early withdrawal which last night's dissipation 
 had made general throughout the house. Rosamond was sitting 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 
 
 in her dressing-gown before her lire — thinking of many tilings, 
 and particularly of her father's last letter, which lay open upon 
 the little table beside her. 
 
 " Stay as long as you can,"' Mr. Saumarez said. ''It's the best 
 chance you can have at present to see a little society, and keep 
 Eddy on the straight.'"' 
 
 Rosamond was not happy, she could not have told why. It 
 was not that Archie was of any importance to her, but there is 
 something in the atmosphere of a disturbed and unhappy house, 
 which reflects itself in the consciousness of the most indifferent 
 guest. She could not think what he could have done. The 
 offence of which his father had convicted him the other day 
 in the hall, of having refused money to a friend, was of all 
 reproaches in the world the most extraordinary to Rosamond. 
 She thought with a laugh that was irrestrainable, of what her 
 own father's remark would have been, and the high tone of 
 indignation he would have assumed at the folly, nay the crimi- 
 nality, of throwing money away. "Where do you expect to get 
 more 1 " he would have asked with righteous wrath, had his son 
 been suspected of such a miserable weakness. But, to do him 
 justice, Eddy had no guilty inclinations that way. Curiously 
 enough, while Rosamond laughed with the surprised contempt, 
 yet respect, of the poor for Rowland's liberality, which had, in 
 spite of herself, the aspect of "swagger" in the girl's eyes — she 
 felt, at the same time, something of the same astonishment, 
 mingled with disappointment, that Archie should have laid 
 himself open to such a reproach. "I should have thought he 
 would have given away — everything he had," Rosamond said 
 to herself — not as praise, but as a characteristic feature of 
 Archie's nature, as she conceived it — and she was disappointed 
 that he had not carried out her idea of him, notwithstanding 
 that she believed such a procedure to be folly of the deepest 
 dye. 
 
 She was considerably startled by the knock at the door, and 
 still more by seeing Eddy in the silk snioking-suit, which was 
 too thin for this locality. It was perhaps that flimsy dr 
 which made him look so pinched and cold, and he came in with 
 
 _ r demonstration of his delight at the sight of her fire. 
 
 "Mine's gone out an hour ago," he said, "let's get a good 
 warm before we go to bed." 
 
 "You have come from the smoking-room," she said; "you 
 will fill my room with the smell of your cigarettes. I hate the 
 smell of the paper worse than the tobacco/' 
 
 "Oh, you're always hating something," said Eddy vaguely. 
 And then he added/standing with his back to the fire, looking 
 down upon her in her low chair — "It won't matter how it 
 smells, for to-morrow we ought to go." 
 
 "To go!" she cried in astonishment. "What new light 
 have you got on the subject ? for I have heard nothing of this 
 before."' 
 
300 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 "Never mind what you've heard/'' said Eddy. "Circum- 
 stances have arisen — altogether beyond my control," he added 
 with a laugh at the familiar words. "In short, if you must 
 know it, Rose, I can't stay here any longer, and that is all there 
 is about it," he said. 
 
 "Do you mean now that Archie has got into disgrace? 
 How has he got into disgrace 1 I can't think what he can 
 have done." 
 
 " I mean — that and other tilings. How should I know what 
 he has done ? Some of his father's fads. But in every way 
 we'd better go : everybody is going, and I'm dead-tired of the 
 place. There is not a single thing to do. We shot every bird 
 on the hill to-day, and more — and after this burst there won't 
 be a soul in the house for months. Probably they have 
 themselves visits to pay. I tell you we'd better go to-morrow, 
 Rose." 
 
 "They say nothing about visits to pay," said Rosamond, 
 bewildered. " Mrs. Rowland said to-day she hoped we would 
 stay as long as we pleased : and father is of opinion that if wo 
 can hang on for another month — well, he says so. It saves so 
 much expense when the house is shut up." 
 
 " But I tell you I am not going to do it," said Eddy, " what- 
 ever the governor chooses to say. You can if you please, but I 
 shan't. You may stay altogether if you please. Marry Archie, 
 it would not perhaps be such a bad spec ; and become the 
 daughter of the house." He laughed, but there was not much 
 mirth in his laugh. 
 
 " You need not be insulting at least," said his sister. " And 
 as for the daughter of the house — the less there is said on that 
 subject the better, if you are going away." 
 
 " Why ! do you think she would mind ? " he asked. " Mind 
 you, she is not so simple as you think. I don't believe she 
 cares. If she did, that might be a sort of a way : but mind 
 what I say, Rose — that girl will not marry anybody till she's 
 been at Court and seen the world. She might like me a little 
 perhaps — but if she saw her way to anything better — as 
 Heaven knows she might do easily enough. Oh, I don't make 
 myself any illusions on that subject ! She would drop me like 
 a shot." 
 
 "As you would her," said Rosamond, with an air of scorn. 
 
 " Precisely so ; but unless I'm very far mistaken, we meet — 
 that little Glasgow girl and I, that am the fine flower of civiliza- 
 tion — on equal ground." 
 
 "So much the better for her if it is so," said Rosamond. 
 
 "Am I saying anything different? — only I don't think there's 
 the least occasion to be nervous about little May." 
 
 There was a pause here, and for a moment or two nothing 
 was said. A little hot colour had come on Rosamond's face. 
 Was she perhaps asking herself whether Archie was as easily to 
 be let down as his sister, and likely to emancipate himself as 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 301 
 
 lightly? But on this subject, at least, she never said a word. 
 She broke silence at last by saying, with a sigh — ■ 
 
 " We have nowhere to go." 
 
 " Nonsense : we have the house to go to. I don't say it will 
 be very comfortable. Old Sarah is not a cordon bleu" 
 
 " As if I cared about the cooking ! " 
 
 "But I do," said Eddy ; "and the one that does will naturally 
 have more to suffer than the one that doesn't ; but thank 
 heaven, there's the club — and I dare say we shall get on. The 
 end of October is not so bad in town. There's always some 
 theatre open — and a sort of people have come back. :: 
 
 "Nobody we know — and we have not a penny; — and father 
 will be so angry, he will send us nothing. And they are so willing 
 to have us here ; why, I heard Mr. Rowland say to you " 
 
 "Never mind what you heard Rowland say," said Eddy, 
 almost sullenly. "You can stay if you like. But I won't, 
 and I can't stop here. Oh ! it's been bad enough to-day ! I 
 
 wouldn't go through another, not for " Here he stopped 
 
 and broke forth into a laugh, which stopped again suddenly, 
 leaving him with a dark and clouded countenance — "a thou- 
 sand pounds ! " 
 
 "I don't understand you, Eddy," said Rosamond, with an 
 anxious look. "You have not been borrowing money ? What 
 do you mean by a thousand pounds ? " 
 
 " Do you think," said Eddy with a short laugh, " that any one 
 would lend me a thousand pounds? That shows how little you 
 girls know." 
 
 "If I don't know, it would be strange," said Rosamond, with 
 a sigh, "seeing how dreadfully hard it has been to get money 
 since ever I can remember. x\nd there is no telling with people 
 like Mr. Rowland. Didn't you hear him coming down upon 
 Archie for not giving his money to some one who was ill? 
 Fancy father talking like that to one of us ! " 
 
 " The circumstances have no analogy," said Eddy. " In the 
 first place, we have no money to give : and we want hundreds 
 of things that money could buy. Archie and fellows like him 
 are quite different — they want nothing, and they've got balances 
 at their bankers ; not that he has much of that, poor beggar, 
 after all." 
 
 " What do you mean, Eddy ? " 
 
 Vk Well, I mean he's a good sort of fellow if he weren't such 
 a fool ; — and I could have thrown some light on his refusal, 
 perhaps, if they had asked me." 
 
 " Oh, why didn't you, Eddy ! — when his father was so vexed 
 and so severe." 
 
 "It was none of my business," said the young man. "And 
 Archie is not a fellow who likes to be interfered with. If I had 
 suggested anything, he would probably have turned upon me." 
 
 " And what was it ? " said Rosamond. " What was the light 
 you could have thrown?" 
 
302 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " Oli, I don't mean to tell you," cried Eddy ; " you have 
 nothing to do with it that I can see. And it is of no use telling 
 his father, for lie's in a far deeper hole now. Poor old Archie — ■ 
 he is an ass, though, or he would never have got into such a 
 mess as he is in now. He never can strike a blow in his own 
 defence, and never will ; but look here, Rose," cried Eddy, " all 
 this jawing will make it no better ; I am going to-morrow, 
 whatever you may choose to do. I can't stop another night 
 here." 
 
 "You must have something to do with it. I am sure you 
 have something on your conscience, Eddy. You have got a 
 conscience somewhere, though you pretend not. It is you that 
 lias got Archie into trouble ! — you have been tempting him and 
 leading him away. That day in Glasgow ! Ah, now I see ! " 
 
 "What do you see?" cried Eddy, contemptuously; but his 
 sallow face betrayed a sharp, sudden rising of colour. He 
 did not look at her, but kicked away a footstool with some 
 vehemence, on which a moment before he had rested his foot. 
 
 " Let's hear ! " he said, " what fine thing do you see 1 " 
 
 "You must have got — gambling, or something," she said, 
 feeling to her heart the inadequacy of the words to express the 
 great terror and incoherent suggestion of evil that had come 
 into her mind, she knew not how. 
 
 " Gambling — with Archie ! " her brother burst into a loud 
 laugh. " One might as well try to gamble with Ben Ros, or what- 
 ever that beast of a hill is called. I broke all my toes going up 
 him to-day. No, my dear Rose ; you will have to try again," 
 Eddy said. 
 
 She looked at him with eyes full of consternation and horror. 
 It was incredible to Rosamond that Archie should have done 
 anything to merit such condemnation : but it was not at all 
 incredible to her that Eddy should have got him into mischief. 
 She looked at her brother as if she could have burst through the 
 envelope of his thoughts with her intent and searching eyes. 
 
 " Eddy, I know you have something to do with it," she said. 
 
 " That proves nothing," said Eddy ; " you know what you 
 think only." 
 
 " I don't know what I think \ I think terrible things, but I 
 can't tell what they are. Oh, Eddy, this was such a quiet house 
 when we came into it ! They might not be very happy, but 
 there was no harm. And Archie had begun to please his father. 
 I know he tried. And they have been very kind to us — the ball 
 last night was as much for us as for their own children." 
 
 " It was to get themselves into favour in the county — it was 
 neither for us nor for them." 
 
 Rosamond was herself so much accustomed to measure every- 
 thing in this way, and to have it so measured, that she had no 
 protest to make. 
 
 " But we had all the benefit," she said. " We were made the 
 chief alonsr with Marion and Archie. And Mr, Rowland lias 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 303 
 
 shown how much be thinks of you, Eddy — lie has made you his 
 deputy.'"' 
 
 "Yes, to save himself trouble,'' said Eddy; "to amuse his 
 guests — is that a great sign of kindness 1 It was kindness to 
 himself. But if they had been as kind as — whatever you please, 
 what would that matter 1 I cannot stand any more of it, and I 
 am going away." 
 
 " But you have no money," she said. 
 
 " Oh yes ; I have a little — enough to take us back to town, if 
 you please — and to get me a few chops at the club till the 
 governor turns up — who has a right to feed me at least until I 
 come of age." 
 
 "You must have got it out of Archie," said Bosamond, her 
 cheeks burning, springing from her seat, and standing between 
 him and the door, as if to force an explanation. But Eddy only 
 smiled. 
 
 "For a right down odious supposition — an idea that has 
 neither sense nor possibility in it, commend me to a girl and a 
 sister ! How could I get it out of Archie 1 What had Archie 
 to give 1 I think you must be taking leave of your senses," he 
 said. 
 
 Was it so 1 ? — Was it merely a sympathetic sense of the trouble 
 in the house, and sorrow for Archie, whatever might be the 
 cause of his banishment ? Or was it some sense of guilt, some 
 feeling that it was he who had led Archie away, and who ought 
 to share in the penalty ? But, to tell the truth, Rosamond could 
 not identify any of these fine feelings witli Eddy. He was not 
 apt to feel compunctions : perhaps to take him at his word was 
 the safest way. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 Next morning, a rattle of pebbles thrown against the 
 window, roused Marion, who was by nature an early riser, and 
 who had been dressed for some time, though she had not gone 
 down-stairs. She opened the window, and saw Eddy below, 
 making signs to her and pointing towards a path which led 
 into the woods, across a broad stripe of sunshine. Eddy stood 
 and basked in this light, making gestures, as if in adoration of 
 the sun. He did not call to her, for in the clear morning air, 
 his voice might have reached other ears than hers. But Marion 
 called to him lightly, " I'm coming, I'm coming," with no fear 
 of anything that could be said. She was not disturbed by 
 the unceremonious character of his appeal to her attention. 
 Marion's antecedents made it a very natural thing, and no way 
 to be reprehended, that a lad should call to his lass in this way. 
 She ran down-stairs, delighted with the summons, and joined 
 
304 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 him, almost hoping that Miss Marchbanks might see from her 
 window and feel the superiority of the daughter of the house. 
 
 " What might you be wanting, rousing people when perhaps 
 they were in their beds ?" said Marion. 
 
 " You were not in your bed. I know you get up early. Let's 
 have a ramble," said Eddy, " before any one knows." 
 
 " Oh, is that all ? but Ave can ramble wherever you please ; 
 and when the people are gone," said Marion, with a sigh, " we'll 
 have it all to ourselves." 
 
 " Do you wish that the people were not going, May ?" 
 
 " I never said, sir, that you were to call me May." 
 
 "No, but you did not prohibit it. I cannot call you Miss 
 Marion, like the servants, or Miss Rowland, like young 
 Marchbanks." 
 
 As he assumed the tone of young Marchbanks when he said 
 this, Marion received it with a burst of laughter. There was 
 nothing particularly amusing in the tone or manners of young 
 Marchbanks, but a mimic has always an easy triumph. 
 
 "Alas," said Eddy, instantly changing his tone, and taking 
 her hand to draw it through his arm, "though they were all 
 going away this moment, it would not be much advantage to 
 us, May, for I must go too, this very day." 
 
 " You going, Eddy ! " this exclamation burst from her in spite 
 of herself. She hastened to add, "Mr. Saumarez, I did not know 
 you were going. Do you really — really mean — " the tears came 
 into her eyes. 
 
 He had drawn her hand through his arm, and held it with his 
 other hand. " I can't stay longer," lie said. " How can I stay 
 longer? There is Archie gone, who might be sujDposed my 
 attraction : and I daren't go and say to your father what my 
 real attraction is." 
 
 " Oh, that is nothing to me," said Marion, with a toss of her 
 head, " about your real attraction. Nobody is asking you — you 
 are just welcome to stay or — welcome to go: it is whatever you 
 please." 
 
 "You know very well," he said, resisting her attempt to 
 snatch away her hand, " that I would never go if I could help 
 it, unless I could carry you off with me ; if I could do that, I 
 should not mind." 
 
 "And you know very well," said Marion, "that you will never 
 do that." 
 
 " I suppose I ought to know ; but there are some things that 
 one never can learn. When a man thinks of a girl night and 
 day, he naturally feels that the girl might give a moment now 
 and then to thoughts of him." 
 
 " Oh, as for that," said Marion, tossing her head, " I've had 
 people that thought about me before now, but I never troubled 
 my head to think of them." 
 
 " You are as heartless as a stone," said Eddy ; "it is of no use 
 speaking to you, for you are past feeling. One might as well 
 
AXD HIS CHILD1JEX 305 
 
 fall in love with a picture, or a dummy in a milliner's 
 shop." 
 
 " Dummy yourself ! " cried Marion, highly indignant, giving 
 him a shake with the hand that was on his arm. 
 
 And then they both burst out laughing together. As a 
 matter of fact, though they understood each other extraordin- 
 arily well, and made no false representations of each other as 
 lovers are in the habit of doing, there was a little love at 
 bottom between this curious pair. 
 
 "Do you know what has been the row about Archie?" said 
 Eddy, after a little pause. 
 
 "It's something about money," said Marion; "he has been 
 spending his own money that was given him to spend — and he 
 has not sent it to a poor student, as papa thought lie would. 
 But I would like to know why he should. The student should 
 have stayed at home, and then his own people would have been 
 obliged to help him. If Archie were to give up his money to 
 all the poor students, what would be the use of giving him 
 money at all ? If I were in his place I am sure I would just 
 give what I please, and keep a good share to myself. It is just 
 ridiculous to give you money, and then say you are to give it 
 away.'' 
 
 " Is that the only reason 1 " said Eddy ;" I thought there had 
 been enough of that." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know if it's the only reason. I will go back to 
 the house if it's only Archie you want to hear about. You can 
 ask Mrs. Eowland, she is your great friend, or Saunders, that 
 looks so wise and knows everything. But for me, I am going 
 back to the house." 
 
 •' I only ask," said Eddy, tightening his hold on her hand, 
 " to keep it off a little longer ; for how am I to say good-bye — 
 not knowing how we may meet again — for I know what's in 
 your thoughts, May. You think I'm well enough to play with 
 while there's nobody here, but when you come up to town and 
 everybody is at your feet " 
 
 " Oh, sucli ridiculous nonsense, — everybody at my feet ! who 
 would be at my feet % — no person ! You speak as if I were a 
 Duke's daughter." 
 
 " You are better than most Duke's daughters. You will 
 marry a Duke if you please, with that little saucy face of yours, 
 and mints of money." 
 
 " I hope I will not be married for my money," said Marion : 
 "though of course there's something in that," she added 
 seriously. "I'll not deny that it lias to be reckoned with. 
 Papa would not be pleased if all his work came to nothing, and 
 I got just a nobody." 
 
 "Like me," said Eddy. 
 
 "I never said like you. There might be other things — papa 
 likes you, you see." 
 
 "And you, May ? Oh, May, you little witch ! I wish — I wish 
 
 x 
 
306 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 I only wanted to marry you for your money— then I should not 
 feel it as I do now." 
 
 " You wouldn't like to marry me without my money," Marion 
 said. 
 
 "Wouldn't I, — try me ! though all the same I don't know 
 very well how we should live," Eddy said. 
 
 " And I never said I would marry you at all — or any person," 
 said Marion. " Maybe I will never marry at all." 
 
 "Oh, that's so likely!" 
 
 " Well, it is not likely," Marion admitted candidly, " but you 
 never know what may happen. And," she added, " if Archie is 
 to be put out of his share, and everything come to me, then, 
 whether I liked it or not, I would have to think first what was 
 doing most justice to papa." 
 
 Eddy, in spite of his self-control, turned pale. " Archie," he 
 said, in a tone of horror, "put out of his share ! " 
 
 Marion gave him a keen, investigating look. "When a man 
 has two children," she said, "and one of them flies in his face 
 every time he can, and the other is very careful always to do 
 her duty, whether it is pleasing herself or not, I would not 
 wonder at anything, for my part. He might like the son best 
 for the name and all that, but if the lassie would do him most 
 justice? I am not saying if it would be a good thing or not. 
 But the man might see that in the one there would be no 
 credit, but plenty in the other. I am thinking of it just in a 
 general way," Marion said. 
 
 " Then good-bye to me," said Eddy, " if you were to be a 
 great heiress — and Archie ! Good life ! " he let her hand go, 
 and, cold though the morning air was, wiped the moisture from 
 his forehead. " I'd better take a header into the loch and be 
 done with it," he said. 
 
 " You will not do that, Mr. Eddy, for you like yourself best : 
 though perhaps you may like Archie a little — or, perhaps, me." 
 
 " Perhaps even you ! " cried Eddy. " Perhaps I do, or I 
 shouldn't have stayed down here in the north for a month with 
 nothing to do. You are a dreadful little thing to talk quietly 
 of tossing me over after all that lias passed, like an old glove. 
 And to take Archie's place, as if it were nothing, as if it were 
 the most natural thing in the world ! " 
 
 " And is it not ? " said Marion. " I never would have done a 
 thing to harm Archie. It is none of my doing ; but if it opens 
 papa's eyes, and makes him ask who will do him the most 
 credit — him, that would never be anything but a common lad 
 at the best, or me, that might be at the Queen's court, and do 
 him great justice." 
 
 Eddy clapped his hands together, with a quick laugh. 
 "Marry the Duke," he said. 
 
 "Well," said Marion, with dignity, "and if I did that? 
 What more would it be than I would deserve, and doing great 
 justice to papa ! " 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 307 
 
 Eddy stood for a moment looking at her, with a curious 
 mixture of pain which was quite new to him, in being thus left 
 out of Marion's cold-blooded philosophy, and of cynical amuse- 
 ment, tempered by wonder at the progress this very young and 
 apparently simple person had made in the mystery of worldli- 
 ness. He had the sensation, too, of having done it all, of having 
 wrought that ruin to Archie which might place Archie's sister 
 in a position to balk his own plans and humiliate himself. He 
 had meant to have the upper hand himself in all the arrange- 
 ments between them. He had meant, indeed, this very morning 
 to bind her by a quasi engagement, while leaving himself free 
 for whatever eventualities might come. But Marion, with these 
 cool, matter-of-fact dispositions, had turned the tables upon 
 Eddy. And lie was discomposed besides to find that it actually 
 hurt him. He, the accomplished man of the world that he was, 
 so infinitely above Marion in experience and knowledge ! it 
 gave him a confused pang which he could not understand, to 
 find that he was no more to her than half an hour before he 
 had believed her to be to him. He was more or less stunned 
 by that sensation, which was unexpected, and stood vaguely 
 gazing at her, coming to himself before he could reply. "I 
 don't find much place for me in all this," he said, ruefully. He 
 could have laughed at his own discomfiture if he had not 
 been so ridiculously wounded and sore. 
 
 It was perhaps a sign that she was not very sure of herself, 
 but she did not look at him, which also took away one of Eddy's 
 weapons. She walked on quite calmly by his side, looking 
 straight before her, neither to the right hand nor the left. 
 
 "What was your place in it, Mr. Eddy?" she said, "except 
 just as a friend : and there is no difference in that. You're 
 still a friend — unless you have changed your mind." 
 
 " May ! you are a little witch ! you're a Come, you know 
 
 this is all nonsense/' said Eddy ; " I never pretended to be a 
 friend." 
 
 "Well, perhaps you never were — to Archie, at least," said 
 Marion. 
 
 "What do you know about Archie? What have I done to 
 Archie % I never intended — I never thought of harming him ; 
 I could swear it," cried Eddy, in great excitement ; " never ! 
 never ! I've done a heap of wrong things," he put up his hand 
 to his throat with a gasp as for breath, " I've done enough to — 
 sink me for ever. I know I have : you needn't say anything 
 with your little set face that I was silly enough to care for. 
 But I never meant to ruin Archie, nor harm him, never ! Ill 
 go to your father, and tell him •" 
 
 "What will you tell him?" cried Marion, to whom nothing 
 but her own share in Eddy's expressions seemed of any import- 
 ance. "That we've perhaps been very silly, you and me ?— but 
 you the most, for I was never meaning what you thought. I 
 am not a person to let myself go," said the girl, folding her 
 
 X 2 
 
SOS THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 hands. "I was just willing to be very friendly— but no more. 
 All the rest was just— your fun. I thought you cared for 
 nothing but fun. And I'm not averse to that myself," she said, 
 turning her face to his with the provoking and saucy smile 
 which Eddy had so completely understood, yet which — was it 
 possible ?— he had fallen a victim to all the same. It was Marion 
 who had the upper hand. She was not averse to the fun, but 
 she did not mean to compromise her future for Eddy, any more 
 than Eddy up to this moment had intended to do for her. But 
 Marion thought it best now to conciliate him, that he might 
 not rush off and compromise matters by making proposals to 
 her father, which was all she thought of. As for those wild 
 words about Archie, Marion did not even pretend to inquire 
 what they meant. 
 
 He went to Mrs. Rowland as soon as he could get a chance 
 after the leave-taking of so many of her guests. "You will 
 haye to shake hands with me too, presently," he said. " I'm 
 going off to-night." 
 
 " You, Eddy ? " Evelyn's face grew longer and graver with 
 a certain dismay. "I was calculating upon you to keep us 
 cheerful," she said. "Why must you go?" 
 
 " I have so many reasons I couldn't tell you all. In the first 
 place I must, which perhaps will do : like the fool that had a 
 hundred reasons for not saluting— but first of all because lie 
 had neither powder nor shot." 
 
 "What is the must?" said Evelyn; "your father perhaps 
 
 coming back ' 
 
 "Oh, I know," said Eddy, "that the governor would refuse 
 you nothing, Mrs. Rowland— though I am next to nothing in 
 his estimation, to be. sure. No, there's other reasons, pecuniary 
 and otherwise." 
 
 " I am afraid, Eddy, you are a very reckless boy." 
 " Rather," he said, with an uneasy and embarrassed laugh ; 
 "but I am going to turn over a new leaf, and not be so any 
 more." 
 
 A tender impulse moved the woman, who had a faint under- 
 lying recollection which she could not quite quench, though she 
 was ashamed of it, that she might have been Eddy's mother. 
 "I am not very rich in my own person," she said, "though my 
 husband is : but if there is anything, Eddy, that I could do, or 
 
 James either, I am sure " 
 
 " Oh, good heavens ! " cried Eddy, under his breath. " Don't, 
 for pity's sake, say such a thing to me," he cried. " You don't 
 know how it hurts— what an unutterable cad it makes me 
 feel." 
 
 "Why?" she asked, with a smile ; but she did not pursue the 
 subject. " I wish you could stay a little longer. If Archie does 
 not come home in a day or two, my husband will sadly want 
 some one to cheer him. I wish you could stay." 
 " Is Archie coming home in a day or two ? " 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 309 
 
 " I don" t know," she said, faltering. " I can't tell— I hope 50 
 with all my heart. I need not try to hide from you, Eddy, that 
 his father and he — have had a disagreement." 
 
 "Mrs. Rowland, don't think me impertinent : can you tell me 
 what it was about 1 " 
 
 " It is their secret, not mine,"' she said ; then with a troubled 
 smile, " You know what fathers and sons most generally disagree 
 about." 
 
 " Money,"' he said, with so disturbed a look, that Mrs. Rowland 
 felt in her heart she had been unjust in thinking Eddy callous 
 to anything that did not concern himself. 
 
 " My husband — is too suspicious. I believe in him, poor boy. 
 I hope time," she said, with a sigh, "will clear it up and bring 
 everything right." 
 
 It gave her pleasure to think better of Eddy after that 
 interview. The boy, after all, she thought, must have a 
 heart. 
 
 But he was not like himself : his face, which was usually so 
 full of fun and mischief, was clouded and unhappy. When it 
 was understood, though not without a struggle, that he must go 
 that evening — and even Mr. Rowland resisted it with a certain 
 terror (though he was very glad at the same time to get all the 
 strangers out of the way) of being left alone with his trouble 
 and his wife and daughter, who could so ill soothe it — Eddy's 
 aspect startled everybody. He seemed, he who was so easy- 
 minded, to be troubled by some doubt, and unable to make up 
 his mind what he ought to do. A dozen times during the after- 
 noon he was seen to cross the hall towards the library, where 
 Rowland had shut himself up. But his courage failed him by 
 the time he reached the door. Marion, who kept her eyes upon 
 his movements, knew, she nattered herself, perfectly what Eddy 
 meant. He wanted to lay his hopes before her father, to find 
 out whether his consent was possible, to lay a port of embargo 
 upon herself before she was even seen in society, or had her 
 chance. Marion had quite made up her mind what to say in 
 case she should be called in to the library and questioned on 
 the subject. She would say that she was not a person adverse 
 to a little fun when it presented itself. But that as for serious 
 meaning, she never had thought there was anything in it. 
 Marion did not at all dislike the idea of being called in, and 
 having to say this ; and she was not angry with Eddy for the 
 supposed appeal against her cruelty, which she believed him 
 about to make. She did not want him to be permanently dis- 
 missed, either, nor was she unwilling that her father should be 
 warned as to future contingencies, for, after all, there was no 
 telling how things might turn out. 
 
 The question was solved so far as Eddy was concerned by the 
 sudden exit of Rowland from his room, just as the young man 
 was summing up all his courage to enter it. 
 
 "Are you ready, my boy?" Rowland said; "your things 
 
310 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 packed — since you Vvill go 1 for the steamboat, you know, will 
 wait for no man. Come out, and take a turn with me." 
 
 They walked together across the lawn to the spot where the 
 trees opened and the Clyde below the bank weltered, gray in 
 the afternoon light — a composition of neutral tones. Rowland 
 said nothing for a minute. He stood looking at his favourite 
 view, and then he gave vent to a long and deep sigh. 
 
 " Here's a lesson for you, Eddy, my man," he said. " For as 
 many years as you've been in being I've coveted this bonnie 
 house, and that A 7 iew among the trees. And a proud man I was 
 when I got them — proud ; and everybody ready to take up my 
 parable and say, ' See what a man's exertions, when he has set 
 his heart upon a thing, will do.' Oh, laddie, the vanity of 
 riches ! I have not had them half a year nor near it. And now 
 I would give the half of my substance I had never come nigh 
 the place or heard its name." 
 
 "I am very sorry," said Eddy ; "but had the place anything 
 to do with it? Would things have gone better if 3 r ou had not 
 been here ? " 
 
 Rowland gave him a quick look, and stopped in what he 
 seemed about to say. Then he resumed after a moment. 
 
 " That's true too ; you are right in what you say. It has 
 nothing to do with the place, or any place. It was fixed, 1 
 suppose, before the beginning of the earth, that so it was 
 to be." 
 
 " Mr. Rowland," said Eddy, " I've been wanting to say some- 
 thing, and I have never had the chance — that is, I am frightened 
 to say it in case you should think it impudent or — presuming. 
 When Archie refused the money to that poor beggar, I ought 
 to have spoken : I was a wretched coward ; it was because he 
 had given all his money — to me." 
 
 u Ah!" cried the father, with a slight start; "he had given 
 his money — to you 1 " He had almost forgot, in the strain and 
 stress of the other question, which was so much more important, 
 what this meant about the poor beggar whom Archie had 
 refused. 
 
 "Every penny," said Eddy, with considerable emotion. If 
 that avowal would only do, it would be enough without any 
 other ! " He found me down on my luck about some bets and 
 tilings, and he immediately offered to help me. I had not the 
 courage to tell you when you spoke to him — that night ; and 
 he, like the fine fellow he is " 
 
 "Ah ! " said Rowland again ; and then he gripped Eddy's slight 
 hand, and wrung it till the lad thought the blood must come. 
 "And you're a fine fellow," he said, "to stand up for him you 
 think your friend." 
 
 A cold dew came out on Eddy's brow : oh how miserable, what 
 a caitiff he felt — a fine fellow — he ! If the man only knew ! 
 
 "But," said Rowland, "if that had been all ! 1 had forgotten 
 that offence. Thank you, though, for speaking. If I can find 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 311 
 
 any ground for a more favourable judgment, I'll remember 
 what you have said. Let's think of your own affairs : if you 
 will allow me to speak — so recent a friend ; but my wife knew 
 you before you were born." He stopped to laugh at this jest, 
 but in reality to recover a little from his embarrassment. " My 
 lad, you spoke of bets. You shouldn't bet, a young fellow of 
 your age." 
 
 A gleam of mischievous light shot from Eddy's eyes. 
 
 "I am aware of that, sir," he said, with much humility : "and 
 if you knew all the good resolutions I have made " 
 
 "Xever mind making them : you can't keep them. Just do 
 it, and don't amuse yourself with saying you will do it. From 
 all I can learn, your family is not rich, and you will have a 
 place to keep up. Mind, that's a great responsibility. You 
 must eschew betting as you would eschew the devil." 
 
 "I'll try, sir, to get the better of them both," said Eddy, much 
 relieved by this change of subject. 
 
 " I hope you'll continue in that mind : and recollect this : 
 you have been very friendly and pleasant in this house at a 
 time when I was scarcely my own man, and took the entertain- 
 ment on your shoulders, and were just the life and soul If I 
 
 can give you a day in harvest, as the country folks say, another 
 
 time " He smote Eddy on the shoulders a genial blow, but it 
 
 made his slight tigure quiver. "You may not understand that 
 homely form of speech ; but if I can serve you, my boy, at a 
 
 pinch 1 never grudge anything I can do for a man that's 
 
 served me in time of need. What's the matter witli you, boy ] 
 are you ill '] " 
 
 k, Xo," said Eddy, after a pause. "No— Fm not ill; it was 
 only something in my throat. You're too good, sir. I can't 
 look you in the face when I think " 
 
 " Well, well," said Rowland. It pleases a man to make an 
 impression — to bring repentance to a careless soul. "You must 
 just never do it again, as the children say. It's a bad thing 
 from beginning to end : even gambling in business I never could 
 agree with. Honest work, that's the only salvation — in this 
 world. Don't forget what I've said. And now we'll go in to 
 the ladies, who are waiting to give you your tea, and purr over 
 you. For the steamboat will wait for no man, and you should 
 leave here when we see her starting from the head of the loch." 
 
 They went in together with a wonderful look of friendship, 
 and there were curious signs of emotion in Eddy's face. Had 
 he spoken to papa \ Marion asked herself. If he had done 
 so, it was clear that the answer had not been unfavourable : 
 but in that case, why was Eddy in so dreadful a hurry to get 
 away ? 
 
312 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 Eddy had gone, and a silence, that seemed to radiate round 
 the house like a special atmosphere, fell upon Rosmore. .Winter, 
 which had been only threatening, dropped all at once in torrents 
 of sweeping rain and wild winds that shook the house. It 
 requires a lively spirit at any time to stand up against the pale 
 downpour which falls in sheets from the colourless sky between 
 the large dull windows and the cowering trees, and shuts out 
 every other prospect : but when there is misery within, the 
 climax afforded by that dismal monotony without is appalling. 
 The two girls scarcely knew what it was ; it was the reaction 
 after the ball, which had been such a great thing to look forward 
 to, and now was over, and everything connected with it : no 
 more preparations or consultations — every tiling swept away 
 and ended. It was the departure of everybody, even "the 
 boys," as Marion called them, Archie and Eddy, who had been 
 the constant companions of " the girls " in all their walks and 
 talks : quite enough to account for the dismal dullness which 
 fell over these two unfortunate young women like a pall. Rosa- 
 mond had not gone with her brother, partly because she was under 
 her father's orders to remain, and partly because a great fear of 
 some discovery, she did not know what, which might be made 
 after Eddy was gone, and for which he would need an advocate 
 and champion on the spot, was in her mind. Eddy had so often 
 wanted a defender ; there had been so often discoveries made 
 after he had got himself out of reach of censure ; and it was so 
 much more likely in this particular matter, which was disturb- 
 ing the house, whatever it might be, that it was Eddy and not 
 Archie who was to blame. Rosamond thought, with a little 
 contempt of Archie, that it was so little likely he would be to 
 blame. He had not spirit enough to go wrong. He was so 
 tame, so unaccustomed to do anything — and to do something, 
 even if it were wrong, seemed so much better than the nullity 
 of such a limited life. It seemed to Rosamond that Eddy, who 
 was always in scrapes, always doing something, and mostly 
 wrong things, was twenty times more interesting than the 
 other, but far more likely to be the author of this trouble 
 which hung so heavy on the house than Archie was. It seemed 
 to the experienced sister that something was sure to happen in 
 a day or two to prove this ; to bring back Archie and place her 
 in her accustomed position as her brother's defender. That 
 anticipation, and a deep knowledge of the dreariness of the 
 London house, all shut up and dusty, with the dreadful minis- 
 trations of the charwoman, and the gloom of the closed rooms 
 from which she could not escape to any cheerfulness of a club, 
 kept her in Rosmore, though she was exceedingly tired of it 
 and of the society of Marion, now her chief companion. They 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 313 
 
 were as unlike each other as girls could be. Rosamond's aspira- 
 tions were not perhaps very lofty, but that hope of departing 
 from all the conventionality (as she thought) of life, and setting 
 up with Mabel Leighton in lodgings like two young men, o 
 work together at whatever fantasy might be uppermost, was an 
 opening at least to the imagination which Marion's limited 
 commonplace had no conception of. Marion thought of the 
 glories of the coming spring, of going to Court and the dress 
 she should wear, and the suitors who would come to her feet. 
 That duke !— she had not made acquaintance with any dukes, 
 and wondered whether there was one young enough and free, 
 so as to realize Eddy's prophec}\ She did not even know that 
 all that information could be acquired from Bebrett, nor was 
 there a Debrdt in the house, had she been aware of its qualities. 
 The duke was a sort of Prince Charming, — always possible. If 
 it could only come about by any combination of fortune that 
 Eddy should turn out to be one ! but that was a contingency 
 which Marion knew to be impossible, and upon which she did 
 not suffer herself to dwell. 
 
 It was in reality a sign of her simplicity and unsophisticated 
 mind that she gave herself up so unhesitatingly to this dream. 
 Rosamond knew a great deal better : she knew for one thing 
 that there was no duke in the market — a fact hidden from 
 poor Marion — and that suitors do not precipitate themselves 
 at the feet even of a rich young woman in society, unless 
 she is a fabulously rich young woman. Rosamond was also 
 much too experienced to imagine for a moment, as the simple 
 Marion did, that whatever Archie had done he would be sum- 
 marily disinherited and all his advantages handed over to his 
 sister. There had been a row, Rosamond was aware, but it 
 would pass over as rows did in families, and the son would have 
 his natural place, and May would but be a prettyish underbred 
 girl the more, with a good deal of money, but not that fabulous 
 fortune which alone works miracles. Rosamond did not think 
 very highly of Marion's chances ; and all that she thought about 
 Archie was a hope that her father might not see him and build 
 any plans upon him in respect to herself. 
 
 While, however, the girls, in waterproofs, took occasional 
 walks together, not knowing how to make conversation, two 
 creatures speaking different languages, and found time hang 
 very heavy on their hands — indoors the elder pair also passed 
 the days heavily, with an absence of all meaning and motive 
 in their life, such as aggravates every trouble. It is always a 
 difficult matter for a man who has led a busy life, full of work 
 and its excitements, to settle down in the country, especially if 
 he has no estate to manage, — nothing to do, as people say, but 
 enjoy himself. And no doubt this first setting in of winter and 
 the virtual separation from the world caused by the persistent 
 bad weather, would have been, under any circumstances, a trial 
 of James Rowland's cheerfulness and patience. But enhanced 
 
314 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 as this was by the horror and shame of such a discovery — one 
 that turned the waving balance of disappointment and hope, 
 sometimes swaying to one side and sometimes to the other, into 
 an immovable bar of sharp despair and bitter rage against his 
 only son, the unworthy and shameless boy who had left him so 
 little in doubt as to his character and qualities — the effect was 
 terrible. Sometimes Evelyn persuaded him to go out with her 
 down the glistening gravel paths towards the woods, or even to 
 the Manse and the village: for he now loathed "the view'' 
 which he had loved, and avoided that favourite peep of Clyde, 
 as if it had a voice to taunt him with the disappointment of 
 his hopes. The minister and his wife received them indeed with 
 open arms, with the cordial "Come away in' of Scotch hospi- 
 tality, and brewed, or rather " masked " (or perhaps Mrs. Dean, 
 an advanced person, " infused r ') the genial tea, and spread the 
 steaming scones, which are a simple (and inexpensive) substi- 
 tute for the fatted calf, gone out of fashion, for those rare guests. 
 " Indeed, I thought we were never to see you again," said the 
 minister's wife, not without a touch of offence. And when 
 Evelyn put forward a hesitating excuse as to the bad weather, 
 the west-country lady took her up a little sharply. " Lady Jean 
 used never to mind. We are well used to the rain here, and it 
 does no harm. You just put on a waterproof and you are quite 
 safe. Indeed, I have heard people from the South say that 
 though we have a great deal of rain, it's very rare to find a day 
 that you can't go out sooner or later." 
 
 "Mrs. Rowland will think, my dear," said the minister, "that 
 you are less glad to see her now than to upbraid her with not 
 coming before." 
 
 "That means that I am interfering with his department," said 
 Mrs. Dean. " I will not do that ; and indeed, I have not seen 
 you since the ball. Such a success as it was ! I have seen very 
 grand doings in the old times, when Lord Clydesdale had more 
 heart to make a stir." 
 
 " What was it that took away his heart 1 " said Rowland ; 
 " the old reason — want of money, I suppose 1 " It revived a 
 little spirit in him, and the impulse of wealth to plume itself on 
 its own advantages when he heard of this. It pleased him to 
 think that he could do so easily without feeling it at all, what 
 had cost Lord Clydesdale an effort which he no longer cared to 
 take. 
 
 The Deans, husband and wife, regarded the other pair before 
 them with that mild disdain which people in society feel for 
 those who do not know everything that everybody knows about 
 the families and persons who form the " world." They were not 
 perhaps exactly in society themselves, but they did know at 
 least about the Clydesdale family and all that had happened to 
 them. " It was not precisely want of money," Mr. Dean said 
 cautiously, " though we all know, more's the pity, that they are 
 not rich." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 315 
 
 " Oli ! nonsense, Alexander,*' said his wife, " as if everybody 
 didn't know the whole story ! It might be a struggle, but they 
 always held up their heads, and never made a poor mouth. 
 What it was that took the heart out of the Earl was a great 
 disappointment in his family. Young Lord Gourock was a very 
 fine boy : you would never have thought it of him, but he just 
 fell into the hands of some woman. That's the great danger 
 with young lads of family. You must surely have heard of 
 it?"J 
 
 " You forget that we have been in India, both of us, for 
 years," Evelyn said quickly. 
 
 " Ah ! that would account for it : but even in India these 
 
 things are known, among " Mrs. Dean was about to say 
 
 the right kind of people — but she remembered to have heard 
 that Mrs. Rowland was a lady — one of the Somethings of 
 Northamptonshire— and forbore. " At all events," she said, "it 
 was well known here. I wonder you have not heard the whole 
 story from Miss Eliza. She is a very clever person at finding- 
 out, and she always knows every detail, but all in the kindest 
 spirit. I have always had a warm heart for poor young Gourock 
 myself. He was such a nice boy ! I believe his father and Lady 
 Jean don't even know where he is," she added in a lower voice. 
 
 " Oh," said the minister, " they will easily find out where he 
 is when he is wanted. You can always trace a man with a handle 
 to his name." 
 
 "When he has to come to take u\~) the succession — which will 
 be great comfort to his poor father ! " said Mrs. Dean scornfully. 
 "But this," she added, "is but a melancholy kind of con versa- 
 tion : and your ball was just beyond everything — such luxury — 
 and the decorations — and the band — and " 
 
 Even Evelyn could scarcely bear any more, and Rowland did 
 not even pretend to pay any attention ; he put away the scones 
 (though they were excellent) with a gesture that looked like dis- 
 gust, and listened most impatiently to something the minister 
 had to say about the Teinds, and the earnest need of an aug- 
 mentation, and the objections of the heritors to do anything. 
 He had a vague sense that money was wanted, and that he him- 
 self might get free if he made a large offer. "If there is anything 
 I can do, command me," he said. " I may not be of much use in 
 
 other ways, but so far as money goes Evelyn, don't you 
 
 think we should go before the rain comes on 1 " 
 
 " But you have had no tea ! " said the minister's wife, " and 
 the sky is clearing beautifully over the hills, which is just the 
 quarter the rain comes from. Let Mrs. Rowland finish her 
 tea." 
 
 " We must be going," said Rowland, and he went out first, 
 leaving his wife to follow. He said nothing till they had walked 
 far along the edge of the bay, and were once more in Rosmore 
 woods, in a path overhung with low trees, from which occasion- 
 ally came a big cold drop on their faces or on their shoulders. 
 
316 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 He had put his arm within his wife's according to his usual 
 fashion, and half-pushed her before him in the preoccupation of 
 his thoughts. At last he spoke. He had made little or no reply 
 to her remarks, scarcely wishing, it seemed, to hear them as they 
 came along. 
 
 ' ; It will just be some vile woman that has got possession of 
 him," he said abruptly, "like yon young lord." 
 
 " Oh, James, we know nothing. I don't believe that he is 
 guilty at all." 
 
 "Some vile woman," he repeated, "just like yon young lord." 
 It seemed to give him a sort of comfort that it was like the 
 young lord. Is it not indeed a kind of terrible comfort always 
 to hear of other cases worse than our own 1 
 
 " I won't repeat what I said," said Evelyn, " but you know 
 what I think." 
 
 " Think ! — think ! " he said impatiently, " of what use is 
 thinking ? The thing's done : it was not done without hands. 
 It will perhaps be something in the house." 
 
 " Something in the house ! " 
 
 "Well !" he said querulously, "you need not repeat what I 
 say. I have heard of a curse upon a house, and that nothing 
 throve that ever was in it." He paused with an effort, and then 
 said with his hard laugh, " I am speaking like a fool, but people 
 used to believe in that in the old times. What's that fellow 
 wanting ? " lie added angrily, "a man from the stables 1 What 
 right has he to speak to j t ou 1 " 
 
 It was Sandy the groom, who touched his cap, and stood on 
 the edge of the path, desiring an audience. Sandy had no fear 
 of being supposed impertinent. He had spoken to Lady Jean, 
 whenever he met her, with the familiarity of a respect which 
 required no proof, and lie regarded Mrs. Rowland, who had 
 shown claims to a similar treatment, with much of the same 
 confident and friendly feeling. Accordingly, he paid no atten- 
 tion to his master's threatening looks (" The auld man was in a 
 very ill key : he was giving it to her, het and strong, puir 
 leddy," was his after comment). "It's just auld Rankin, mem," 
 said Sandy, who spoko a little thick, turning over his words like 
 a sweet morsel under his tongue, as the minister said in his 
 prayer, " he's awfu' anxious just to have a word wi' your 
 leddyship." 
 
 " Old Rankin ! " said Evelyn surprised, " a word with me V 
 
 " What do you want with Mrs. Rowland % " cried Rowland 
 angrily ; " do you think she has time to go after every fool in the 
 place ? You can tell your wants to me." 
 
 " Oh, ay, sir, I could do that," said Sandy, " but it's no you 
 he's wanting, it's the leddy — he's terrible keen to see the leddy. 
 We wad be nae satisfaction to him, neither you nor me." 
 
 " Tell him I'll come and see him," said Evelyn hurriedly. 
 "You know he is a very uncommon person, James. I will just 
 walk with you as far as the house, and then I will come back." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 317 
 
 " You had better go now,'' he said, loosing his arm. " You are 
 getting like all the other Rosmore people, taking every crow 
 for a dove. I can go home very well by myself." 
 
 " But, James ! " 
 
 He waved his hand to her, walking quickly away. Her com- 
 pany was a consolation ; and then to be without her company 
 was a relief. He had got to that restless stage. 
 
 " It's just the gospel truth," said Sandy, " the maister would 
 have been nae comfort to the auld man. It's just the leddy, the 
 leddy, he's been cleaving us a' with the haill day. ' 
 " Is he ill, Sandy 1 " 
 
 "Na, nae waur than usual. He's very frail, but nae waur nor 
 usual. Hey, Janet, here's the leddy. She's just coming, and I 
 had nae trouble with her ava." 
 
 The cold drops on the trees came in a little deluge over Evelyn 
 as she crossed the little glen under the ash tree : she was half 
 amused in the midst of her trouble by the summons, thinking 
 it might be a demand for some comfort, or a complaint of some 
 inconvenience which was about to be made to her, things to 
 which she had been accustomed in the country life of old. 
 Rankin lay as usual with his picturesque head and beard rising 
 from the mass of covering. He held out the large hand with 
 which he fished in the nest beside him for puppies, and gave it 
 to Evelyn to shake. 
 
 "I am sorry to hear you are not well," she said. 
 " Oh, I'm just in my ordinar'," said Rankin, " naething to brag 
 of, but naething to find fault with either— just warstling on as 
 pleases the Lord, and I dinna complain. Give the leddy a chair, 
 Janet woman, and just go ben the house yoursel, and bring me 
 particular word what the thermometer was last night. You can 
 take a pencil and a bit of paper and write it down, for I'm very 
 particular to have the figures exact." ^ n 
 
 " Oh, you needna make any of your fuil's errands for me,' 
 said Janet. "I ken what you mean weel enough," and the 
 brisk little wife went away, carefully shutting the door behind 
 her. ^Yhat did he mean % Evelyn grew a little alarmed in spite 
 of herself. 
 
 "I hear, mem," said Rankin, confidentially leaning towards 
 her out of his bed, "that you're in some trouble at the 
 Hoose?" . , . 
 
 " You hear— that we're in trouble ! " cried Evelyn m the last 
 astonishment. " If we are," she said, " which I don't allow, you 
 would not expect me to come and speak of it to you." 
 
 '• Wherefore no % " said Rankin. " Do you think, madam, that 
 because I'm held fast here, I'm no a man with sympathies, and 
 a heart to feel for my neebors % You'll maybe think I'm taking 
 too mucli upon me, calling the like of you my neebors. But 
 it was One greater than any of us that did that. W e re a' neebors 
 in the sis:ht of God." 
 
 " That is quite true, no doubt," said Evelyn, with a gleam ot 
 
318 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 faint amusement in the midst of her trouble, "but I don't 
 know " 
 
 " Madam,'' said Rankin, " I would take it very ill if ye kent 
 something to my advantage or that would maybe save a heart- 
 break, and keepit it to yoursel'." 
 
 "I hope I would not do so in any circumstances," said 
 Evelyn. 
 
 " I think you wad not, and therefore I'm fain to speak. I'm 
 a real observant person, and given to muckle study of my fellow- 
 creatures. I've taken a great notion of you, Mistress Rowland. 
 My^ opinion is that you're no the step-mother familiar to us in 
 fiction, but a person with a real good meaning towards your good 
 gentleman and all belonging to him." 
 
 " I hope so," said Evelyn, half-amused, half-disturbed, by this 
 strange address. 
 
 "And we've heard you're in trouble up bye, and Mr. Archie, a 
 fine quiet lad, sent out o' the house in disgrace." 
 
 "Mr. Rankin," said Evelyn, "you really must excuse me for 
 saying that any gossip about my house — — " 
 
 He held up his hand, bidding her to silence, and made a ges- 
 ture as of putting her back in her chair. " Whisht," he said, 
 " never mind that ; " then bending forward, in a tone so low as 
 to be almost a whisper : " It's a' lees," he said, " it's not true ; 
 it's just a' a parcel of lees." 
 
 " What do you know about it ? " cried Evelyn, greatly excited. 
 "For God's sake, if you know anything, tell me," she added, 
 forgetting her precautions in the shock. What use was there 
 in pretending that his information was not correct 1 He did not 
 ask anything : he knew. 
 
 " I will do that," said Rankin. " There is a young gentleman 
 at the house that is called Mr. Sawmaries, a very queer name." 
 
 " Saumarez — yes — but he is gone." 
 
 " Oh, he is gone ? to rejoin the ither no doubt. I might have 
 expected that." 
 
 "What other ?" cried Evelyn, in great excitement. 
 
 " There was another," said Rankin, " but not at the house ; 
 not a person, maadam, to be presented to you — though I was 
 muckle astonished to hear of him at the. ball : but nae doubt he 
 just slippit in, favoured by yon lad, when nobody was looking. 
 Well, as _ I was saying, there was another, a shabby creature, 
 just a bit little disreputable Jew, or something of that kind. 
 What gave me a kind of insight into the Saumarez lad (that was 
 a clever laddie and no an ill callant, but ill guided) was his try- 
 ing to foist off this creature upon me as Maister Johnson of St. 
 Chad's — a mistaken man and very confused in his philology, but 
 still, I have nae reason to doubt, a gentleman, and maybe a kind 
 of scholar too, in his way." 
 
 " Johnson ! yes : but I have seen him ; he was asked to the 
 ball : I never doubted " 
 
 "Na, mem," said Rankin, "I could swear ye doubted; but 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 319 
 
 being a real lady, and no suspicious as the like of me is always, 
 you couldna believe he was cheating. He might mean it only 
 as a kind of a joke, ye never can tell with these callants. But, 
 maadam, this is all very indifferent and not to the purpose ; 
 what I'm wanting to tell is, that there was something going on 
 that was no building kirks between these young men." 
 
 Evelyn was not acquainted with the figurative language of 
 the humble Scot, but she divined what he meant. She made a 
 hurried gesture of entreaty that he would go on. " Well ! that's 
 just about all I know ; there was something the one wanted 
 and the other was loathe to give. The shabby body was just 
 full of threats, and no blate about saying them before me, a 
 stranger ; and young Saumarez, he was holding off, trying^ his 
 jokes, and to take his attention with the clowgs and various 
 devices. And syne they went out of my house in close colloquy. 
 The wife is not a woman of much book-learning, but she has 
 a wonderful judgment. She said to me, when she came in 
 from showing them to the door, 'Take you my word, John 
 Rankin,' says she, ' if there's ony mischief comes to pass, thae 
 twa will have the wyte of it,' which agreed entirely with my 
 ain precognition. I wouldna say but we thought of mair 
 vulgar crimes, being of the practical order ourselves. And 
 I hear the trouble's about a cheque, whether stolen or what I 
 cannot tell. But my advice to you, maadam, as one educated 
 person with another, is— just look for it there." 
 
 "Eddy!" Evelyn said below her breath, "Eddy!;" Long 
 before Rankin's speech had come to an end, her quick mind 
 had realized the shock, felt it to the bottom of her heart, 
 staggered out of the course of her thoughts for a moment in 
 sheer dismay and horror ; then, with a sudden spring of intel- 
 lectual power quickened by pain, had returned to the simple 
 question. Eddy! Eddy! who had been so sympathetic, so 
 affectionate, such true feeling in his eyes, such real zeal for the 
 house, so good to James, so generous about Archie. Ah ! 
 generous ! then she began to think and remember. If Rankin 
 was right, lie had introduced that man on a false pretence to 
 her house, and it had been difficult to her to realize that Eddy 
 was really so sympathetic. And surely there were things he 
 had said ! Her head began to buzz and ache with the rapid 
 throng of thoughts, thoughts half understood, half seen only 
 in the hurry and rush of bewildering and confusing suggestion. 
 The old gamekeeper went on talking, but she did not hear him, 
 and he perceived what processes he had set in motion, and for 
 a moment was silent too. 
 
 "There is just one thing, mem," he said, "before you go," — 
 when Evelyn rose, still bewildered, wading through the chaos 
 of her own thoughts. " The night o' the ball— there's aye een 
 on the watch in a house like yours— the body Johnson disap- 
 peared as soon as the gentleman arrived that came from the 
 bank, him that arrived in a coach all the way round the land 
 
320 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 road. There was one that saw him leave go of the leddy that 
 was dancing with him — the nasty toad to elaur to ask a leddy 
 to dance ! — and jump out of the window behind the curtain, 
 and was never seen more. And Mr. Archie to get the wyte of 
 it, a fine, ceevil, well-spoken young man ! Na, na, we will not 
 bide that. Just you look in that direction, Mistress Rowland, 
 for there the true culprit's to be found." 
 
 " I will — I will think of what you say," cried Evelyn, falter- 
 ing. " It is a dreadful light, but if it is a light — You are proud 
 people, you Scotch, you don't like your own secrets to be ex- 
 posed to all the world. And you don't know all the story, 
 Eankin, only a bit of it. Stop these people talking ! you can 
 surely do it, you who are so clever ; think how you would like 
 it. And my husband, my poor husband ! " 
 
 " I feel for Maister Rowland," said Rankin, :c but a house with 
 a score of servants a' on the watch, how are ye to keep a thing 
 secret 1 There are nae secrets in this world. If there's a thing 
 ye wish to keep quiet, that's just the thing the haill country- 
 side will jabber about. I'll do what I can. I'll do what I can," 
 he added hurriedly, " but the only thing to stop it is to bring the 
 lad hame." 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 When Evelyn returned to the house she found her husband 
 engaged with a visitor — no less a person than Sir John March- 
 banks — who had some works going on near Kilrossie, drainages 
 and such like, on which he was very anxious to have Mr. Row- 
 land's opinion. And Rowland, recalled to himself by a touch 
 of the practical, had recovered his spirits and energy for the 
 moment at least. He agreed to go and inspect the work, and 
 to add to that kindness, as Sir John said, with a little pompous 
 politeness, by staying to dinner afterwards, as country neigh- 
 bours use. Evelyn had therefore no means of confiding Ran- 
 kin's revelation to her husband, even had she wished ; and she 
 was not sure that she wished to do so. The whole matter 
 wanted more thinking over than she could give it in the 
 agitated walk home and the hurried interval before he left 
 with his visitor to walk to Kilrossie and see the works. "I 
 warn you, Mrs. Rowland, that I will keep him as long as I can," 
 said Sir John. " We have great schemes of public work before 
 us in the peninsula, and there is nobody here whose opinion is 
 worth a button in comparison with his." 
 
 " I shall make no objection ; it will do him good," said 
 Evelyn : but she followed her husband into the library, where 
 he went for a moment to fetch some papers. "James," she 
 said, with a little timidity, " may I send for Archie home 1 " 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 321 
 
 " A [ay you send for — the devil ! " said James Rowland. " What 
 do you mean % What's the boy to you 1 " 
 
 " He is Mary's son " 
 
 " You seem to think more of that," he said with his angry 
 laugh, "than that lie's mine — and lias brought shame on my 
 name." 
 
 " We don't know that ; you cannot prove that. It is being 
 talked of among the servants. Let me send for him. If he 
 comes while you are away, it will be easier. Even if it were 
 true,** cried Evelyn, "you would have to forgive him sometime, 
 James."' 
 
 " I am not so sure of that," said her husband, grimly. "Any- 
 how, he is gone, and there's an end " 
 
 " There can never be an end. Let me write ; let me send : 
 
 "And do you think, you simple woman," said Eowland, 
 "that a dour fellow like that, a lad that swore at me, and flew 
 in my very face from the first, will come back for the holding 
 up of your little finger?" He took her hand in his, with 
 admiring affection there was something like a gleam of 
 moisture in his eyes. " " It is a bonnie little finger," he said, " and 
 a kind — and I would follow it over the world : but you must 
 not think to triumph over a young brute like yon, as you do 
 over me." 
 
 " Oh, James, you are mistaken ; he is not, he is not- — " 
 
 "What is he not ? I wish he was not a son of mine," said the 
 father, with darkening brow. 
 
 And he said nothing more, neither to forbid nor to permit 
 Perhaps there was an undercurrent in his heart of hope that 
 she would try what that signal made with her little finger 
 would do. He did not forbid it. His heart gave a heavy 
 thump in his bosom at the proposal. She could do for them 
 both what neither could do for himself— and if she might be 
 right ! Women, they say, have intuitions ; perhaps she might 
 be right ! and the thundercloud might pass over, and he might 
 yet live to believe, in time, that nothing had happened. But 
 he shook his head as he went away. Anyhow, the little absence 
 would be a good thing. It would break the spell of misery ; he 
 might be better able to think, to settle something that could be 
 done, when he was away. 
 
 When the master of the house goes away, there is often a 
 little sense of relief among the women, however beloved and 
 prized he may be. It leaves them a great deal of freedom- 
 freedom from the control of hours and seasons which, it is a law 
 of the Medes and Persians, can never be infringed when he 
 is at home. He may be no more punctual than the rest, but 
 punctuality is imposed while he is there ; and he may be as 
 irregular as he pleases in his way, but the strictest regularity 
 is enforced upon everybody else, out of respect to papa. When 
 he goes away there is a little slackening all round. Perhaps 
 the mistress lingers in her room in the morning, does not come 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 down to breakfast — and luncheon shades off into puddings and 
 fruit instead of the copious meal of ordinary custom, or else is 
 abolished altogether, the girls staying out, without warning, at 
 some friendly neighbouring house. This was what happened 
 at Eosmore on the morning after James Rowland's departure. 
 His wife did not come down-stairs till it was late, feeling herself 
 more safe to carry on her own thoughts in the seclusion of her 
 own room, and when she appeared at lunch, Marion's chair was 
 empty, and Rosamond, alone, appeared to share that meal. The 
 conversation languished between the two ladies, each of whom 
 had questions to ask, which could not be put as long as Saunders 
 and his satellite were in the room. 
 
 "I hope you have heard from Eddy," Mrs. Rowland said. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have heard from him. He lias got back all right," 
 said Rosamond. 
 
 And then there was a silence, broken only by Evelyn's 
 recommendation of the pudding, which was one of Mrs. Wright's 
 best. 
 
 "Is your brother — very lonely, with nobody at home?" at 
 length she said again. 
 
 " Eddy is never lonely, lie has such heaps of friends ; when 
 one set is not in town, he falls back on another. When there's 
 no opera, there's a music-hall — that sort of thing," said 
 Rosamond. 
 
 " I am afraid that means he is not very particular." 
 
 " Xot particular at all, so long as he is amused." 
 
 " But that, unfortunately, my dear, is not the best rule in 
 life." 
 
 " Oh, I never thought it was a rule at all," said Rosamond. 
 " If it were, Eddy would detest it, you may be sure. He likes 
 to do — what no one else does, or what he has never done 
 before." 
 
 " Did you know this Mr. Johnson — or some such name — 
 Rosamond, whom he brought here?" 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Rowland," cried the girl, " I hope you will forgive 
 him ! He is such a little wretch for that. It must have been 
 one of his silly practical jokes to bring that man here." 
 
 "It is not the sort of practical joke which will get him 
 friends," said Evelyn seriously ; the man was gone, and the 
 embargo was removed. " He ought not to have brought him 
 here. And did you know him, Rosamond ? " 
 
 "/ know him ! but I know this, that Eddy told me not to 
 dance with him ; and I will say this much for Eddy," said 
 Rosamond, with a hot blush, " that he warned Marion too." 
 
 " But both of you " 
 
 " Yes, it is true. I did — that nobody might say I left my 
 brother in the lurch— offered to dance when I saw him standing 
 there, Eddy taking no notice. Even a — beast— like that, if 
 you get him asked, you ought to be civil to him." Rosamond's 
 cheeks were flushed, and she held her head very high. " But 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN" 323 
 
 Marion did it out of contradiction, because lie had told her 
 not " 
 
 " There is not much to commend in the whole matter,'"' said 
 Evelyn, with a sigh. "But I think, on the whole, you were the 
 least wrong. And has he dealings with people like these ? 
 Would that man have been likely to get your brother — under 
 his power ] " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean, Mrs. Rowland," said Rosamond, 
 with a glow on her cheeks. 
 
 "And yet it is plain enough, my dear. Is it possible that — 
 about money or betting or anything of the kind, Eddy might 
 have got under that man's influence — in his power ? " 
 
 Rosamond held her head higher than words could describe. 
 " If you mean that he took money to introduce him into 
 society " 
 
 " I did not mean that," said Evelyn in a parenthesis, but 
 Rosamond did not pause to hear. 
 
 " as some people do," the girl went on. " Oh, the men 
 
 one knows ! There was Algy Holt, went about with an American, 
 getting him asked out to places. Everybody knew it, and no 
 one was so very severe ! But if you think Eddy would do that, 
 Mrs. Rowland ! he may be silly — oh, I know he is ! and spends 
 money when he has not got it, and has to do all kinds of 
 dreadful things to pay up ; — but if you think he would do 
 that " 
 
 " My dear Rosamond, if you prefer to think it was a practical 
 joke — but I don't wish to be severe — I should like to know, if 
 you know, what dreadful things he has to do to pay up, as you 
 say?" 
 
 " Oh ! he has to buy carriage-wheels, and cigar-holders, and 
 pictures, and one time he had a lot of paving-stones ' 
 
 Evelyn, who was very much wound up by this time, expecting 
 terrible revelations without thinking how very unlikely it was 
 that Rosamond would be the confidant of any guilty practices — 
 here burst into a lit of unsteady laughter. 
 
 " There is nothing very dreadful in all that : though it is very 
 ridiculous, and, I dare say, a horrid imposition," she said. 
 
 " It is enough to break one's heart ! " cried Rosamond, striking 
 her hands together : ''he borrows a certain sum and he gets the 
 half of it or less, and that — and then he has to pay back the 
 
 whole Oh, how awful it is to be poor ! for there is no end 
 
 to it — it is going on for ever. And when he gets Gilston, he 
 will have to sell it, and where will he be then 1 He sees it as 
 well as I, but what can he do ? Of course," added Rosamond, 
 drying her eyes, which were shining with fierce tears, ''if he 
 could marry somebody with a great deal of money, it might all 
 come right." 
 
 This was all that she got from Rosamond, with much sense of 
 guilt in thus endeavouring to persuade the sister into betrayal 
 of the brother's secrets. And presently Marion returned, who 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 had been amusing herself at Miss Eliza's house with the young 
 people there, and came back escorted by a large party, for whom 
 it was necessary to provide tea and amusement till the early 
 darkness had fallen. Evelyn, who could not rest, and who felt 
 that the two or three days of her husband's absence was all the 
 time she had at her disposal to solve this problem in, threw a 
 shawl over her head and followed the merry party down the 
 avenue, when Marion re-escorted them to the first gate. She 
 could not have told what help she expected to get from Marion, 
 and yet it was possible that some spark might fall from the 
 girl's careless discourse. She met her coming quickly back, her 
 white and pink cheeks glowing with the cold and the fun, echoes 
 of which had scarcely yet died on the frosty air. It was almost 
 dark, though a gray light still lingered in the sky, and the lamps 
 were shining on the other side of the water in the villages and 
 scattered houses along the opposite shore. 
 
 " Mamma ! " cried Marion, — a flush of anxiety came upon her 
 face, though it was scarcely A 7 isible — " did you hear how they 
 were going on ? But you must not think it was my fault." 
 
 " I heard nothing," said Evelyn, to Marion's evident relief ; 
 " but I came out — to speak to you. — Have you heard anything 
 of — your brother?" 
 
 " Archie ? — oh, no," said the girl. " He would not write to me, 
 for he would know I could not approve of him, when he has 
 gone like that and affronted papa." 
 
 " Like what 1 " said Mrs. Rowland anxiously. 
 
 "Oh ! " said Marion, with a pause for reflection, — "well, just 
 like that ! The servants have got a story that it's about money, 
 but Archie is not a spender, and I don't know how it could be 
 about money. But if papa has turned him out of the house, it 
 could not be without reason, and that is enough for me." 
 
 This was true enougli and yet was not true, for Marion secretly 
 had made a great many more investigations about Archie than 
 anybody knew ; and was quite aware where he was, and that 
 Aunt Jean was profoundly indignant, and considered, as was 
 not unnatural, that the whole matter was the stepmother's 
 doing from beginning to end. 
 
 "I have written to him," said Evelyn, " but he has not replied. 
 My dear, you are his only sister ; you ought to help to make it 
 up. Will you write to him and beg him to come home 1 ?" 
 
 " But I would maybe be flying in papa's face if I did that." 
 
 "Your father would not blame you. Don't you see he is very 
 unhappy ? — his only son ! May, you are prejudiced against me, 
 both of you. It is perhaps not unnatural ; never mind that ; 
 but try and help me with Archie, to bring him back — to bring 
 him home." 
 
 "And how am I to know," said Marion, "that it is not just to 
 ruin me too with papa, and get me sent away as well, that you 
 are giving me that advice '? " 
 
 Evelyn had derived much temporal advantage from her union 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 325 
 
 with James Rowland. She had been made the mistress of a 
 great house, with much authority and surrounded with honour, 
 instead of a poor dependent woman ; but she paid for it dearly 
 in this moment, while the girl stood with her little impertinent 
 head lifted, discharging* this little poisoned arrow straight into 
 Mrs. Rowland's heart. 
 
 There was a moment of intense silence, to which all the dulling 
 influences of nature — the night, the frost, the darkness— gave 
 additional effect. The panting of Evelyn's breath, which she 
 could not conceal, was the only sound. Marion was cool as the 
 air and entirely self-possessed, waiting to see how her missile 
 told, and noting with triumph that quickened breath. 
 
 " Of course after these words I can ask nothing more of you," 
 said Mrs. Rowland when she had attained the command of her 
 own voice. 
 
 "Oh, I was not meaning to be disagreeable," said Marion 
 lightly ; "but as I have nobody to take care of me, I am just 
 obliged to take care of myself. In an ordinary way I will just 
 do whatever you bid me, mamma : but when it's to commit 
 myself with papa, that is different. He might get the idea that 
 both his children were turning upon him. And I will not do 
 that, not for Archie or any person. Every herring," said Marion 
 sententiously, with a recollection of her Aunt Jean's wise 
 sentiments, "must just hang by its own head/ - ' 
 
 " It is time to go in, I think," said Mrs. Rowland shivering ; 
 her cold, however, was moral rather than physical. This cau- 
 tious, much regarding young person of nineteen bewildered all 
 her elder ideas. Was it pure selfishness, or was it some recondite 
 covering of affection to scare the unfamiliar gazer? _ Evelyn 
 made a movement aside to let the uncomprehended being pass 
 before her into the house. 
 
 And it may be supposed that the evening circle formed by 
 these three was not very sympathetic. Mrs. Rowland was full 
 of the most painful uncertainty as to what she should do : or 
 rather what could she do? she asked herself. Nothing but 
 proof would content or in any way move her husband : and 
 how was proof to be had, and what would move Archie, who 
 would probably resent the very evidence which exculpated him, 
 feeling it almost an additional grievance ? What was she to do 
 among all these conflicting objects ? The natural thing, as it 
 would have appeared to most women in her circumstances, 
 would have been to sit still and wait, and do nothing. Xo one 
 desired her interposition, not even her husband, who had 
 laughed over the impotence of that little finger which she 
 thought Archie would have obeyed. A reasonable woman does 
 not like to be told, however tenderly, that she thinks she can 
 move the world by the signal of her little finger. Would it not, 
 she asked herself, be more dignified, more seemly to keep silence, 
 and be patient and wait? But then, on the other hand, there 
 was the possibility that the crime would sink into the pit of the 
 
326 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 undiscovered and never be found out. It had not even the 
 chance of being found out which thorough examination and 
 search after the criminal would give. Rowland had adopted it, 
 homologated it, as the Scotch lawyers say, accepted the false 
 cheque as his own to save his son : so that no questions could 
 be asked at the bank to throw light upon the manner in which 
 it was drawn, or the person from whom it came. If she only 
 dared to go there herself to find out ! if she only might venture 
 to make certain inquiries ! — but it was impossible. Archie was 
 not to be appealed to, for he would not stir a step to clear 
 himself. What then could she do 1 she who alone possessed 
 a clue. And then what a clue was that, the supposition of a 
 servant, the inferences of a half -instructed person, half- 
 acquainted with the story ! She sat through the long evening, 
 pretending to read, in the great drawing-room, which was full 
 of ruddy firelight and lamplight, the most sheltered and warm 
 and cheerful place, while the wind blew fierce outside. In the 
 inner room, Kosamond was playing chords upon the piano in a 
 kind of grand but simple symphony, while Marion, by the table, 
 in the light of the lamp, in a white dress, with a face not unlike 
 a flower, insignificant but pretty, a little thing, innocent and 
 simple, to all external appearances, the ideal of guileless youth 
 — sat working at a piece of bright coloured "fancy work," as 
 she called it. Who could have dreamt that so dark a problem 
 lay between them, and that the question, what to do in so 
 complex a matter, involving so much, should be rending in 
 sunder the heart of the dignified and graceful mistress of the 
 house ? 
 
 " Mamma ! " said Marion softly. It may be supposed that 
 Mrs. Rowland was not particularly disposed at this moment to 
 hear any such appeal, and silence fell again on the party, 
 broken only by the low but splendid rumble of the long-drawn 
 notes. 
 
 " Mamma ! " said Marion again. She edged her chair a little 
 closer, and gave a look over her shoulder towards the piano, 
 where Rosamond sat unseen. "Did you ever think of asking 
 Mr. , her brother, about that cheque ? " 
 
 "What cheque?" said Mrs. Rowland coldly. 
 
 "Oh," said Marion, "it is all over the parish that it was a 
 cheque, and the servants all know. If I were you, as you take 
 so great an interest, I would just ask Eddy. He knows a lot of 
 things." 
 
 "I do not see how lie could know what is your father's 
 business." 
 
 " Hush, you needn't speak so loud ! he knows a lot of things," 
 said Marion, with a little sigh. " He is far, far cleverer than 
 Archie. He might find out. If it were me, I would ask him," 
 the girl said. 
 
 "Your brother's interests," said Evelyn quietly, "are surely 
 your business as much as mine." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 327 
 
 "I am not saying," said Marion, "one way or another : but 
 just it is him that I would ask if it were me." 
 
 "About what— about what?" cried Evelyn, pressing her 
 hands together. "If you know anything, tell me at least, 
 
 what he has to do with it ] What can I find out from him I 
 what 
 
 '• She has stopped playing," said Marion, and she added with a 
 little severity. " You will see, if you think, that whether or no 
 it's best she should not hear.*' 
 
 They said good-night to her shortly after, kissing her both of 
 th^m, "according to the formula which girls are trained to go 
 through : and went up-stairs, one after the other, slim girlish 
 creatures, innocent neophytes in life, as one would have thought, 
 devoid of its saddening knowledge, its disenchanting experiences 
 — leaving behind them a woman who had seen much sorrow and 
 trouble, yet who was less acquainted than either of them, it 
 seemed, with certain mysteries and problems. 
 
 May left her in a state of agitation and excitement, such as 
 Evelvn had not yet known in the trials of her own life % She 
 felt that Archie's' future was in her hands, though he rejected 
 her interposition so bitterly ; and what was more, her husbancVs 
 future, the happiness of the good man who had so much trust in 
 her. If she could restore his son to him and did not, because of 
 any reluctance of hers, any shrinking from exertion, and mean 
 or "secondary feeling, as for instance, that no one would be 
 grateful to her for what she did, how unworthy would that be. 
 Gratitude! what is o Ta titude but a repayment, the return for 
 which no generous spirit looks. It is as mercenary to insist 
 upon gratitude as upon money or any other recompense. "V\ hat 
 would it matter if no one ever knew, if no one ever said. " Thank 
 you 1 " "What was that when Archie's young life, and still closer 
 and dearer, her good husbands happiness, were at stake ? 
 
 Evelvn walked about the drawing-room for a long time with 
 her hands clasped, and her head bent, and thoughts pursuing 
 thoughts, a host of quickly succeeding and often conflicting 
 resolutions and questionings, hurrying through her mind. The 
 butler, weary of waiting, peeped in by a half-open door, and 
 retreated again, overawed by her absorption, which neither saw 
 nor heard. "Her maid up-stairs yawned and waited, astonished 
 and indignant. She was not in the habit of keeping the house- 
 hold out of bed by any caprice of hers, and all the less could 
 they excuse her for her forgetfulness now. It was almost mid- 
 night before she was roused with a start by the chiming of the 
 clock, and hurrying out, found Saunders respectful, but dis- 
 pleased outside." to whom she proffered a hasty apology, which 
 had to be repeated when her maid confronted her half asleep 
 yet wholly indignant. Tor a ball, which the servants enjoy as 
 much as their master, allowance may be made ; but on a night 
 when nothing was happening, when the master was away, and 
 the ladies expected to be more easy to serve, less exacting, 
 
328 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 keeping earlier hours than usual ! And next clay consternation 
 still more deep struck the house : for Mrs. Rowland went away, 
 taking only a bag with her, and explaining briefly that she had 
 business in London, but would be back on the third day. 
 Rosamond proposed to go with her, and so did Marion. She 
 only smiled at them both, and declared that she would be back 
 again before they had packed their things. She did not even 
 take her maid ! which was a sort of insult to the house. A 
 mistress who can " do " for herself, who can travel unattached, 
 and dress her own hair, etc., is a disappointment in a house like 
 Rosmore. 
 
 She went away on Tuesday, and late on Wednesday night 
 James Rowland came home, a day or two earlier than* he had 
 been expected. To describe his astonishment and disappoint- 
 ment when he arrived, and found her gone, is more than words 
 are capable of. He had almost turned back from his own door 
 and disappeared again into the darkness, from which he had 
 looked out with such a rising of comfort and happiness in his 
 home-coming, and of hope for what might have happened while 
 he was away. " Mrs. Rowland not at home ! " he said, stumbling 
 across his own threshold as though the place was strange to 
 him: "why, you must be dreaming," but Saunders would not 
 be driven from his explanation. The mistress had received 
 news that she had to act upon at once, and the master being 
 away, she had gone up to London instead of him, Saunders 
 supposed. She expected to be home on Friday at the latest, 
 which was the day on which he too was expected home. 
 Rowland appeared at the dinner-table, to the great astonishment 
 of the girls, and with a countenance of disgust and imjDatience 
 difficult to describe. " So she has left you planted," he said with 
 a sharp laugh. It was impossible, indeed, that a man could 
 return home much wanting his wife, calculating upon her, and 
 find her gone, without feeling himself an injured man. He 
 called Marion into the library after and questioned her. 
 " Where has she gone ? What has come over her ? There is not 
 a line, not a word to explain." 
 
 " She was going to London on business — whatever that may 
 mean," said Marion. " She did not open her lips to me." 
 
 " But at least you know where she is gone ? " 
 
 "Papa," said Marion, "you can have observed very little if 
 you have not observed that mamma does not give her confidence 
 to me." 
 
 "Oh, confound your confidence. Where is my wife?" 
 Rowland cried. 
 
 "I do not know," said Marion primly. She added after a 
 moment, staccato—" But I might give a guess : she was awfully 
 taken up — about Archie, papa." 
 
 He uttered a sort of groan, looking fiercely at her, not missing 
 a shade of meaning in Marion's face. 
 
 "And she wanted me to interfere : but I just said that what 
 
AKD HIS CHILDREN 329 
 
 papa decided must be right, and I would have nothing to do 
 with it — against you. And then she was in great thought — Did 
 you ever hear, papa, that before she was married, mamma and 
 Mr. Saumarez, their father, were great friends?" 
 
 '" What has that to do with it ? " he cried angrily. 
 
 " Well — there was some story, Eddy always said, and he used 
 to laugh ; but he never would tell me right out : and he said 
 he could make her do whatever he liked on that account. And 
 last night she asked Rosamond a great many questions about 
 when he was coming home and so forth, and I heard her say 
 something about 'your father's advice.'" 
 
 James Rowland sprang to his feet with the suppressed roar of 
 feeling, which in men of his kind does duty for the sigh or out- 
 cry of milder natures. There was something of the wild beast 
 in it, — an impulse of rage, almost frenzy. Advice with that 
 man on his affairs ! take that vile cynic, that false traitor, that 
 diseased atomy into her confidence on her husband's decent 
 concerns ! His looks terrified his daughter ; and as he paced 
 about the room up and down, Marion took advantage of the 
 first occasion on which he turned his back to her to escape. 
 But Rowland did not even remark that she was gone. Oh, 
 Evelyn ! Evelyn ! whom he trusted to the bottom of his heart, 
 had she gone to expose the secrets of his house, his shame, and 
 the breaking of his heart to that man ! This shaft went to his 
 very soul. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 Evelyn arrived in London on a dark morning of early 
 November, having travelled all night ; but she scarcely so much 
 as thought of her fatigue and still less of the heavy yellow 
 atmosphere, as she drove to the hotel where she had lived with 
 her husband on their first arrival in England, when she knew 
 nothing of the difficulties that were to rise like lions in her way. 
 It had "been June then, and eve^thing was fresh and fair. And 
 though even then she had thought with apprehension of the 
 children, wondering whether they would receive her with pre- 
 judice, or what she could do to disarm opposition, no thought of 
 anything more serious than the little contrarieties of household 
 intercourse had ever come into her mind. What floods of expe- 
 rience, unthought of, unexpected, had come upon her since that 
 time. Now she had learned to know herself and others, to 
 realize a hundred dangers and difficulties which never had 
 appeared upon her horizon before. Nothing that had happened 
 in her previous life could have made it seem possible to her that 
 she should come back again alone to London, on a sort of detec- 
 tive enterprise in the interests of her husband's son — who did 
 not love, but distrusted and feared her, though she had thus 
 
330 THE RAILWAY MAN" 
 
 dared the very real dangers of her husband's displeasure and 
 her own uneasy sense of unfitness and incapacity, on his behalf. 
 She had thought and thought during the long sleepless night, 
 turning the matter over in every possible view ; sometimes 
 appalled at her own hardihood in making such a venture ; some- 
 times feeling that it was the only course she could have pursued ; 
 sometimes with a cold shade of self -distrust, asking herself how 
 she could have undertaken it at all, how she could hope to carry 
 it out. And, unfortunately, the more Evelyn thought, the 
 stronger became this latter sentiment : how she was to find 
 Eddy ; how she was to begin such an inquiry ; how she could 
 put it to him in so many words that it was he who was guilty 
 and not Archie. She had not entered with herself into these 
 details Until she had committed herself to this attempt. The 
 question before had been, should she do it ? should she take this 
 chance of enlightenment ? should she try at least what seemed 
 the only way of attaining any certainty 1 It had seemed to her 
 before she started that she had but to be brought face to face 
 with Eddy, to appeal to him and his better impulses in order to 
 know. " If you can throw any light upon it," she had meant 
 to say ; " if you know anything ! " And it did not occur to her 
 that he would hesitate to reply. He was lazy, light, unsettled, 
 uncertain— badly trained, poor boy, without much moral sense, 
 not careful to discriminate between right and wrong ; but yet 
 at the bottom of all a gentleman, with an instinctive sense of 
 loyalty and truth. The difficulty at first was merely that of 
 going, finding him, venturing upon the solitary journey, acting 
 in her husband's absence, without his knowledge : all of them 
 very appalling things — for she had never been accustomed to act 
 for herse;lf in any practical emergency, although well enough 
 accustomed to passive endurance of things she could not mend. 
 The sudden sense that here was a thing which perhaps she could 
 mend by sudden action had at first taken away her breath. It 
 had seemed to her inexperience a mighty thing to do, to start 
 off to London all by herself in James's absence, as if she were 
 running away. It looked like waiting till he was gone, and 
 then taking advantage ! She laughed at the suggestion, yet 
 held her breath at the strange risk. He might think — and yet 
 more, the servants might think, who were so apt to find out 
 everything, and a great deal more than there was to find out. 
 These conflicting thoughts had kept her mind in a ferment of 
 anxiety, until she had actually taken that great step and started. 
 And then they had dropped suddenly and given place to a new 
 kind of trouble. 
 
 How was she to bring Eddy Saumarez to the bar, to put him 
 to the question, to ask him to incriminate himself or his friends, 
 to demand — What do you know % This new side of the matter 
 rose up as soon as she had fairly begun her journey, and caught 
 her by the throat. The face of Eddy rose before her in the 
 partial darkness behind the veiled lamp of the compartment in 
 
AND HIS CHILDREX 331 
 
 which she travelled alone. Oh, not an easy face to confront, to 
 over-awe, to reach the meaning of ! A face that could pucker 
 into humorous lines, that could put on veils of assumed incom- 
 prehension, that could look satirically amused, or innocently 
 unconscious, or wildly merry, as it pleased ! " What could make 
 you think, dear Mrs. Rowland, that I knew anything I " he would 
 say ; or, " It is too delightful that you should have such an 
 opinion of my insight ; " or, perhaps, " You know I never learned 
 the very alphabet of Archie, and how can I tell what he would 
 do 1 " Such expressions she had heard from him often on other 
 subjects, upon which he could baffle her smilingly, looking in 
 her face all the time. And how could she hope to keep him to 
 the point now, to bring him to a serious answer, to convince 
 him of the importance of the position and the need there was 
 that he should speak % In the middle of the journey her courage 
 had so evaporated that she had almost determined to return 
 again without making this unhopeful attempt. But there are 
 always as many, or perhaps more, difficulties in the way of going 
 back than there are in going forward, and Evelyn felt that she 
 had committed herself too much to make it possible that she 
 should go back. She drove to the hotel, and had her bath and 
 changed her dress, and swallowed hurriedly that cup of tea which 
 is the only sustenance possible in a moment of anxiety to so 
 many women. And then she walked from the hotel to the 
 insignificant fashionable street in which the house of Mr. Sau- 
 marez was. It was a small house, though the locality was 
 irreproachable, and the blinds of the first floor were all carefully 
 drawn down, though there were indications of life in the other 
 parts. Evelyn's knock was answered after a considerable interval 
 by the old woman, caretaker or charwoman, who was left in 
 charge when " the family " were absent. " Mr. Edward 2 " she 
 said ; " Mr. Eddy ? — yes'm, he's at 'ome ; but he's not up yet, and 
 won't be this three or four hours." 
 
 " Oh ! " Evelyn was so startled in her breathless expectancy 
 that she could scarcely answer this, which was half a dis- 
 appointment and more than half a relief. There are moments 
 when a brief postponement, even of the thing we most desire, 
 is a certain ease to the strained faculties. She asked at what 
 time Eddy would be visible and went away, turning towards 
 Kensington Gardens, where she thought she might be able 
 to spend the time until she must return. The park, of course, 
 was empty, and though Kensington Gardens had still that 
 cheerful number of comers and goers, which marks the vicinity 
 of a district in which people live the whole year round, it 
 was not otherwise than a place of " retired leisure " as it gener- 
 ally is. She walked up and down under the tall, bare trees, 
 which stood about like ghosts in the yellow atmosphere, and 
 sat down here and there and waited, looking at her watch 
 from time to time, looking at the groups of children, and the old 
 people and young girls who were taking their morning walk. 
 
332 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 and who looked at her with not much less curiosity than a 
 stranger unknown calls forth in a village. She was not one of 
 the habitues, and perhaps, she thought, some sense of the tumult 
 in her soul might have stolen into the calm foggy air around 
 her, and startled the quiet promenaders with a consciousness of 
 an uneasy spirit in their midst. She would not have been 
 remarked in the adjoining park, where uneasy spirits abound, 
 and all kinds of strange meetings, interviews, and revolutions 
 take place. When she had waited as she thought long enough, 
 she went back again to Blank Street. " Oh, it's you again, Miss," 
 said the old woman. " Master Edward's gone — I forgot to tell 
 him as some one had been here ; and he went out in a hurry, for 
 he was going out to 'is breakfast. I'm sure, Miss, I'm very sorry 
 I forgot ; but he wouldn't have paid no attention, he was in such 
 a hurry to get away." 
 
 Evelyn pressed her hands tightly together, as if she had been 
 pressing her heart between them. She ceased to feel the relief : 
 the sickening suspense and delay made the light for a moment 
 swim in her eyes. 
 
 " I am very anxious to see him," she said. " At what time will 
 he return 1 
 
 "Oh, Miss, I can't tell," said the old woman. "Sometimes 
 he'll come in to dress for dinner, sometimes not. I does for 
 them in other ways, but not cooking, except just a cup of tea." 
 
 "At what time," said Evelyn ; " six or seven ? tell me ! I am 
 very anxious to see him." 
 
 " Well, Miss, it's just a chance," the caretaker said. 
 
 And with this she was dismissed to wait the livelong day, 
 with nothing to do, in that forced inaction which is the most 
 miserable of all things. I do not know a more dreadful ordeal 
 to go through than to go to a strange place upon one special 
 mission, which is your only errand there, and not to be able to 
 accomplish it, and to have a whole dreary day to get over in 
 forced patience, until you can try again. Mrs. Rowland went 
 back to the hotel, and spent the greater part of the day staring 
 through the window, with some sort of hope that she might see 
 Eddy's face, and be able to rush after him, and stop him in the 
 midst of the crowd. At six o'clock she went back, and at seven, 
 and at eight, walking about and about in the intervals, so as to 
 keep the door in sight : but nobody came. It was not any 
 attempt on Eddy's part to elude her, for he did not know any- 
 thing about her. He did not come home on that evening to 
 dine, that was all. The next day she waited until a later hour 
 before she went. Alas ! he had gone out earlier on that 
 particular morning ! The old woman had said that a lady from 
 Scotland had been inquiring for him ; but he had flung away 
 with a contemptuous outcry, " Confound all ladies from Scot- 
 land ! " which Mrs. Jones was too polite to repeat. In the 
 evening Evelyn had no better luck ; but she left her card with 
 an entreaty pencilled upon it that he would come to see her in 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 333 
 
 her hotel, and sat through the evening watching for every step. 
 But no one came. The third day was the day on which she 
 ought to have gone home ; but it was impossible to go away 
 now leaving this quest unaccomplished, whatever might happen. 
 She wrote a hurried letter to her husband explaining something, 
 though not all, and with a determined resolve that this day 
 should not pass in the same inactivity, went out again. The old 
 woman received her like an old acquaintance. " He's in, Miss, 
 but he's in bed," she said. Evelyn stepped quickly into the 
 house. "I must see him/' she said. "Lawks, Miss!" said the 
 woman, "you won't go up to a young gentleman in his bed- 
 room." Evelyn only repeated " I must see him." She did not 
 perceive an air of greater bustle and movement about the 
 house. What was it to her who was there, if she could but see 
 Eddy? 
 
 " My good woman," she said, " my business is very important. 
 Mr. Saumarez has just left my house in the country, and some- 
 thing has happened that may hurt him — that may most seriously 
 hurt him. Show me where his room is: I will take the responsi- 
 bility on myself." 
 
 " Oh, Miss, it isn't my place to show in a lady. I couldn't do 
 it ; I daren't do it : and you're too nice and too respectable for 
 such a thing — oh, lady ! " cried the old woman, as the visitor 
 went on passing her. Evelyn met a man-servant on the stairs 
 with a cup of soup in his hand. Except that he was a servant, 
 and in a dark livery, she made no other note in respect to him. 
 She said in the calm of the excitement which had now taken 
 hold of her like a giant. "Tell me which is Mr. Edward's room." 
 
 " Mr. Edward's room 1 — he is not up, madam," said the man. 
 
 " It does not matter ; I must see him — which is his room ? " 
 
 She was so determined that she pushed past him, quite pale, 
 and with a desperation which the man, more experienced than 
 the old charwoman, recognized. He followed her up-stairs, and 
 opened a door. " If you will go in there, I will send him to 
 you." It was a small sitting-room, Eddy's no doubt, from the 
 pipes and foils and riding-whips and other mannish boyish 
 articles that hung on the walls. Evelyn would have turned 
 back when she saw that he was not there. " I am not to be 
 foiled," she said; "I must see him; take me to his room, or else 
 I will find it for myself ! " 
 
 "Ma'am," said the man, "I know you're a lady and a friend 
 of the family. I have seen you before. I give you my word I'll 
 bring him to you, if you'll wait here." 
 
 She sat down and waited close by the open door. She was 
 determined that he should not escape her, whatever his desire 
 might be. The man, after a vain attemjDt to close the door upon 
 her, opened the next door and went in. She heard the blinds 
 drawn up, something said softly, then an astonished cry. At all 
 events, whatever might come of it, she had at least secured her 
 opportunity at last. 
 
334 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 It was half an hour, however, before, after many movements 
 and commotion in the next room, Eddy came forth hurried and 
 breathless, with a face that looked old and wan in the light of 
 the morning, a light he was not much accustomed to face. Poor 
 little pale, old-young face, something between the shrivelled 
 countenance of an old man and that of a pinched, unwholesome 
 child ! to think that he should not yet be of age, and yet wear 
 that look: but Mrs. Rowland had no time for such reflections. 
 She rose up quickly, just within the open door, and put out an 
 eager hand. He might even now have escaped her, she felt, had 
 she not been standing there, where he was obliged to pass ; and 
 his tremor and anxiety at the sight of her were evident. He 
 cried, " Mrs. Rowland ! " letting fall a book which was in his 
 hand. 
 
 " Yes ; I have come down direct from Scotland to speak to 
 you. I have been three days trying to see you." She had 
 scarcely breath enough to say so many words. 
 
 "The old woman," said Eddy, "told me something about a 
 lady from Scotland ; but I thought it bosh ; she is such an old 
 fool. I did not Hatter myself there was any lady in Scotland 
 who would take the trouble to come after me ; and you, Mrs. 
 Rowland ■" 
 
 " Y^ou did not think of seeing me ? Can you imagine no reason 
 why I should come ? " she said. 
 
 To Evelyn's astonishment — for her enigmatical question had 
 really been put at pure hazard — Eddy's sallow and careworn 
 face flushed over with a violent red, and then became more 
 than sallow, cadaverous, and a cold moisture came out upon his 
 forehead. 
 
 " Let me shut the door," he said, " it's cold ; and can I order 
 you anything: a cup of tea — breakfast? All I " he said with a 
 laugh, " of course you've breakfasted hours ago ; but I'm sure 
 you will not mind if I order my tea : one wants it in a morning 
 when one has been late over-night." 
 
 "You look — as if you had been very late over-night, Eddy." 
 
 " Oh, I acknowledge I was ; who denies it ? " said Eddy, with 
 again an attempt at a laugh. "It's the nature of the beast: one 
 minds one's manners, at a place like Rosmore ; but in town one 
 can't help one's self, not even when town's out of town, and it's 
 only the debris that are left." 
 
 " You would have done better to stay at Rosmore," she said 
 gently; "you do not look the same person." 
 
 " I am not the same person. Who would not be better there ? " 
 he said. And here he burst into an uneasy laugh. " You have 
 not come at this hour in the morning, and dragged an unlucky 
 wretch out of bed, only that we should exchange compliments 
 about Rosmore ?" 
 
 " No, indeed. I have a little history to give you, Eddy, and 
 an appeal to make. You know, or you divined, I cannot tell 
 which, something of what happened before you left?" 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 335 
 
 -The night of the ball \ — oh, I divined : that is to say, I saw. 
 A man does not arrive in hot haste at early midnight, when a 
 ball is going on, and demand the master of the house ; and the 
 master of the house does not send in equal haste for his son, 
 who is closeted with him for a long time, then comes out look- 
 ing conscious and distracted, and finally disappears, without 
 the instructed spectator forming an idea that something must 
 have happened. I am a very instructed spectator, Mrs. Rowland. 
 I have seen various things of the kind. The sons have dis- 
 appeared for shorter or longer times, and the fathers have 
 remained masters of the field. Here, Eogers, put it on this 
 little table, and take away those things to eat. I want nothing 
 but some tea." 
 
 There was a moment's pause, during which the little table 
 was covered witli a shining white polished cloth, which reflected 
 the fire in a surface made semi-transparent by starch and borax 
 and a glittering silver tea-pot placed upon it ; which made a 
 still warmer reflection in the foggy yellow of the morning air. 
 Eddy poured himself out his tea with his usual air of easy com- 
 posure, a little overdone. But this Mrs. Rowland was not 
 herself of a sufficiently easy mind to see. 
 
 " Eddy," she said, "I have been told— I don't know how to 
 say it to you." It had never till this moment occurred to her 
 how difficult it would be to say, nor did she even know what 
 she meant to imply, or how he could be connected with the 
 matter. " I have been told,'' she repeated rather breathlessly, 
 "that you, perhaps, might know something of— that in the 
 
 dreadful position of affairs I might ask— you " 
 
 ••Ask me— what?" he said with a smile. The corners of his 
 mouth trembled a little. He spilt the cream which lie was 
 pouring into his tea, but she did not observe these incidents, 
 and indeed what could they have had to do with the question- 
 but it was no question— which she asked ? " Of course, if I can 
 tell you anything, Mrs. Rowland, or throw any light— But tell 
 me first. Ask me — what ? " 
 
 She gazed at him a moment, and then poor Evelyn acknow- 
 led^ed'her own impotence by a sudden burst of tears. " I have 
 come down from Scotland," she said, " without my husband's 
 knowledge. I have wandered to and fro — this is now the third 
 clay— trying to. see you, Eddy. I am worn out, and my nerves 
 have gone all wrong. I can't be sure of the step I am taking, if 
 I am mistaken or not. The only thing I can do is to ask you 
 simply— do you know anything about it ? I don't know what. 
 I have nothing clear in my head, only a sort of despair of making 
 anything of it, ever. I was told that you might know something 
 — that you might help me. If you can, for God's sake do it, 
 Eddy ! I will be grateful to you all my life." 
 
 He spilt a little of his tea as he carried it to his lips. After 
 all, though nothing can be so hardened as youth, nothing is at 
 the same time so soft. Eddy was not invulnerable, as some 
 
336 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 people of his age, as Marion, for instance, appeared to be. He 
 had never in his life been subjected to this sort of appeal. A 
 young man who has a mother and other anxious friends is, 
 perhaps, subjected to it over much, and at last comes to regard 
 the appeal to his emotional nature — the argument against going 
 wrong, that it will break some one else's heart — as a bore rather 
 than a touching plea. But Eddy, who had never had any 
 mother, and to whom no one had ever appealed thus, was moved 
 — more than he could have imagined it possible that he should 
 be moved. He put down his tea-cup with a trembling hand. .He 
 could not look in the face of the woman who had been so kind 
 to him, and who looked at him with the utmost eloquence of 
 which eyes were capable, eyes full of emotion and of tears, to 
 back up her words. He did not know what reply to make to her. 
 He had been already mightily shaken by the success of that 
 great coup of his. When an error or crime is a failure, the con- 
 science is quiet : we do not take upon ourselves the guilt of a 
 thing by which we have gained nothing ; but when, as in the 
 present case, it succeeds perfectly, then the inexperienced spirit 
 trembles. Eddy was only at this stage. He had received his 
 proportion of the money, and he had still the remains^ of 
 the hundred and fifty pounds which Archie had given him. 
 Never had he known what it was to have so much in his 
 pockets. He had been throwing it away in handfuls, as was 
 natural, and as the excitement lessened, the compunction grew. 
 It was not so much compunction, as it was a horrible sense of 
 the insignificant value of a thing for which he had risked so 
 much. He had, indeed, freed himself from the money-lender's 
 hands, and was no longer in his power ; yet never in his life 
 would he be sure that he was not in somebody's power. And 
 presently the money, the curse and the payment of his act, 
 would be exhausted, and he no better, how much worse than 
 before ! These thoughts had been in Eddy's mind before this 
 appeal was made to him. He had banished them, but they 
 w r ere ever waiting at his door, ready to catch him at an un- 
 guarded moment. And now here was this lady, this dear woman 
 who had been kind to him ! He could not swallow that tea, 
 much as he wanted it or some restorative. He set it down again 
 with a trembling hand. That had happened to Eddy, which 
 some of the old Puritans meant when they described Satan as 
 flinging so big a stone at the head of his victim, that it recoiled 
 upon himself. 
 
 " Mrs. Rowland," he said, " we are speaking parables, and 
 though we both know something, we don't understand what we 
 each" know. Will you tell me simply what has happened to 
 Archie, and why % I guessed at it. I might not be right in my 
 guess. Tell me as if I had never heard anything of it, and did 
 not know." 
 
 Evelyn dried her eyes, and recovered her calm. She obeyed 
 him liberally without a word of preface. " On the night of the 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 337 
 
 ball a messenger arrived from the bank, bringing- with him a 
 cheque, purporting to be my husband's, for a thousand pounds, 
 It was a forged cheque." 
 
 Eddy, in spite of himself, shivered as if with a sudden chill. 
 He put his hands up to his eyes. It might have been merely a 
 gesture of wonder and dismay. 
 
 " Mr. Rowland, I think wrongly, had been suspicious and 
 uneasy about Archie before. He sent for him, and lie was the 
 more angry that Archie could not come till all the guests were 
 gone. He held out the cheque to his son, and accused him of 
 having done it." 
 
 Eddy withdrew his hands from his face and looked up. 
 "Which lie did not, which he never did, which he was not 
 capable of," he cried quickly. 
 
 " Oh, Eddy, God bless you ! I knew you would say so. And 
 so did I — from the bottom of my heart."' 
 
 " He was not," cried Eddy, with a sort of hysterical laugh, 
 " clever enough — not half ! he had not got it in him — nor bold 
 enough — a fellow like that ! He could not have done it if he 
 had tried." 
 
 " Oh, Eddy ! but that was not my husband's view. Archie 
 was so astonished at first that he thought it something to laugh 
 at. And then he was angry, furious, as passionate as his father. 
 And then — he shook the dust from off his feet, as the Bible 
 says, and left the house. And God knows if he will ever come 
 back. Never, I think, till his innocence is proved. And his 
 father — he is inexorable, he thinks, but he is very unhappy. 
 Eddy ! " 
 
 The tone of appeal in that last word was indescribable. She 
 raised her voice a little and her eyes, and looked at him. 
 And Eddy, unaccustomed, could not bear the look in those 
 
 "You speak of proving his innocence," he said ; "was there 
 any proof of his guilt 1 " 
 
 " Nothing : but that his handwriting is like his father's.' 5 
 
 "And do you know," said Eddy, looking away, "have you 
 found out to whom, for instance, it was paid .' " 
 
 " My husband," said Evelyn, "is a very proud man. His 
 honour is his life. He accepted the cheque, though he knew at 
 once what it was. He would allow no questions. Therefore, it 
 is impossible to inquire, to get any particulars. And the plan 
 he devised to serve Archie will be his ruin. Imagine such a 
 thing ! We dare not ask lest he should be susjDected ; and so 
 he must lie under suspicion all his life ! " 
 
 "Oh, not so bad as that— fathers are not so bad as that : he 
 will forgive him.'' 
 
 " But he will never ask to be forgiven — nor accept forgiveness; 
 how should he, being innocent ? " said Evelyn. 
 
 "I should not be so particular." said Eddy, with a momentary 
 gleam of humour in his eyes. He could not be serious for long 
 
 z 
 
338 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 together without some such relief. "And so Mr. Rowland has 
 got the cheque," he said ; then, after a pause, "And may I ask, 
 dear Mrs. Rowland, who was so kind as to suggest that you 
 should ask me 1 " 
 
 "Marion for one : I can't tell why," Evelyn said. 
 
 (" Oh," Eddy said within himself, with another twinkle in his 
 eyes, " I owe you one for that, my little May.") 
 
 "And a very different person — a man whom perhaps you 
 scarcely know, who suggested that your friend Johnson " 
 
 " Oh, my friend Johnson ! the beast — to call that fellow my 
 friend ! " cried Eddy in a more audible parenthesis. 
 
 " Eddy," said Evelyn gravely, " in that respect you were very 
 much to blame." 
 
 " Oh, in every respect I am much to blame ! " cried the young 
 man, springing from his chair. The vehemence of his motion 
 was such that Evelyn had to put up her hand to save the table, 
 against which he kicked in his rapid movement. He went across 
 the room, and stood with his back to her, his shoulders up to his 
 ears, his hands in his pockets, absorbed in his thoughts. And 
 they were not pleasant thoughts : and they ranged over the 
 widest space, the whole course of the future through which that 
 cloud might ever be ready to fall : the horror of the consequences 
 should they overtake him, the ruin of name and fame, the scandal 
 and the catastrophe. It was not a thing which could be lived 
 down, or which people could forget. All those arguments which 
 are of so little use in the face of temptation, are of tremendous 
 force when the deed is done, and nothing remains but the penalty 
 to pay. His lively, quick intelligence, roused to rapid action, 
 made its calculations with lightning speed : not unmoved by the 
 thought of Archie in the strange jumble of selhsli and unselfish 
 motives — not untouched by the misery which had been produced 
 on all sides. 
 
 He turned round again at the end of a few minutes, which 
 seemed to Evelyn like so many years. 
 
 " Mr. Rowland has the cheque ? " he said. " Would he give it 
 to you, and could you burn it 1 " 
 
 "Eddy!" 
 
 " Do you think I am going out of my senses 1 But I am not. 
 If he will give you the cheque and let you burn it, I will — clear 
 it all up," said Eddy with a gasp ; " and make Archie's innocence 
 as clear as the day." 
 
 "Eddy! Eddy!" 
 
 " Ah, you speak to me in a different tone now : your voice 
 sounds like a blessing. But wait till you know, Mrs. Rowland ; 
 perhaps it will change again. I will not take your kind hand 
 till after. I am not going to cheat you out of your sympathy. 
 Look here," he said, standing by her, " this is what you must do. 
 Telegraph at once, ' If you will give me cheque to destroy, full 
 information will be given from quite different quarter.' There," 
 he said, "that's as concise as it can be made. I will come to 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 339 
 
 your hotel at five, when you will have your answer, and bring — 
 
 all that you want." 
 
 "The proof," she said, " that it was not Archie ?" 
 
 "The proof," he replied with a long-drawn breath, "who it 
 
 was." 
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 Evelyn left the little sitting-room and went down-stairs with 
 a quickly-beating heart. She did not quite see the meaning of 
 what she was bidden to do. It was like the formula of a doctor's 
 prescription, obscure yet authoritative, and to be obeyed with- 
 out doubt or delay. Her heart was beating high, and her brain 
 throbbing in sympathy. She had no thought but to get as 
 quickly as possible to the nearest telegraph office ; the only 
 thing that restrained her was the thought that she was not quite 
 sure where her husband was. It had been settled that he should 
 return home that day, on which she had determined to return 
 too so as to meet him. That part of her intention she evidently 
 could not carry out, but in her absorption she did not reflect 
 that, if he had arrived, it would be to the disappointment and 
 surprise of finding her gone, without any explanation ; that he 
 would probably be annoyed and displeased, and not in a mood 
 to receive her laconic and unexplained question graciously. This 
 did not enter into Evelyn's mind at all. She was given up to 
 one thought. That Rowland should be harsh to her or misunder- 
 stand her did not occur to her as possible. 
 
 She hurried down-stairs to fulfil her mission, bidding Eddy 
 remain and take his breakfast. " You look as if you wanted it, 
 my poor boy," she said, patting him on the shoulder. 
 
 "Oh, I want it — and something stronger !" he said, with a 
 laugh. 
 
 "No, my dear ; oh, no, my dear," she said anxiously. She 
 even came back from the door, hurried and eager as she was, to 
 deliver, like a true woman, a few very broken words on this 
 subject. " Be content with the tea, dear Eddy," she said. A 
 great tenderness for the boy had risen in her breast. He had 
 never known his mother ; how much there was to be excused in 
 him ! And he might have been her own son ! though she thanked 
 God that it was not so, and reflected with horror what her life 
 would have been, had her youthful hopes been fulfilled, with 
 such a man as Edward Saumarez had turned out to be, and with 
 such a son : yet the very thought that she might have been the 
 boy's mother always softened Evelyn. He was such a boy, too, 
 still ! though he had run the course of so many unknown ills — ■ 
 young enough to be taken into his mothers arms, if he had one, 
 and coaxed and persuaded back to innocence. Eddy had no 
 such feeling in the roused and excited state of his mind \ he 
 
 z 2 
 
340 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 would not laugh as she left him so as she could hear, but waited 
 till, as he thought, she had left the house before he allowed 
 that unsteady peal to burst forth. " Be content with the tea ! 
 Oh, the natural preacher, the all-advising woman I" but with 
 the sound of that " dear Eddy ! " in his ears the young man 
 laughed till he cried — only because it was so good a joke, he 
 said to himself : but in this there was a certain self-deception 
 too. 
 
 Evelyn was hurrying out, waiting for no one to open the door 
 for her, when she was suddenly stopped by Rogers, the servant 
 who, she now recollected suddenly, was the personal attendant 
 of Saumarez himself. She had not attempted to account for his 
 presence, nor indeed thought of him in the hurry of her thoughts. 
 But it now flashed upon her, with sudden surprise and vexation, 
 in the enlightenment of his words — " My master, ma'am," he said, 
 "would like to see you before you go." 
 
 " Your master ! " It was with a gasp of alarm that Evelyn 
 replied. " I did not know," she said, " that Mr. Saumarez was 
 here/' 
 
 " We came home — sudden," said the man, " yesterday. My 
 master will often take a fancy like that. And he hopes, ma'am, 
 that you will not go out of the house without giving him the 
 pleasure of seeing you." 
 
 " I am in great haste," Mrs. Rowland said. " I came to Mr. 
 Edward entirely on business. I am very sorry Mr. Saumarez 
 was told that I was here : for indeed I have no time " 
 
 " Mr. Saumarez bade me say, ma'am, that as you knew he wt.s 
 unable to come to you, he hoped as you would overlook the 
 liberty and come to him." Rogers stood respectfully but firmly 
 between Evelyn and the door. Not, of course, to prevent her 
 going, which was an impossibility, but with a moral impulse 
 that she felt incapable of resisting. " He has been in a deal of 
 suffering, and it will cheer him up, ma'am," the man said. 
 
 "With a pang of disappointment she yielded to the delay. It 
 could only be for a few minutes, after all. She was exceedingly 
 unwilling not only to be delayed, but to encounter Eddy's father 
 under any circumstances, and above all in his own house. She 
 followed the attendant with great suppressed impatience and 
 reluctance. The sitting-room occupied by Saumarez was close 
 to the door, with a window upon the street. It was the dining- 
 room of the little London house, the back part, which was separ- 
 ated from the front by folding-doors, half -covered with curtains, 
 being Saumarez's bedroom. He was seated in his invalid-chair 
 between the fire and the window, and though the foggy morning 
 had very little light in it, a blind of much the same colour as the 
 fog, yellowish and grimy, was drawn down half over the window. 
 Out of this obscurity, upon which the red light of the fire shed 
 at one side an illumination which looked smoky in the atmo- 
 sphere of the fog, the long thin countenance, peaked beard, and 
 gleaming eyes of the invalid were visible with the most striking 
 
AXD HIS CHILDEEN 341 
 
 Rembrandt effect. He held out to Evelyn a very thin, very 
 white hand. 
 
 "Thanks, dear lady,'"' he said, "for this gracious visit. I 
 scarcely hoped for anything so good. In London, at this time 
 of the year, a fair visitor of any kind is a rarity ; but you ! — I 
 believed you to be dispensing hospitality in marble halls," he 
 added, with a little laugh of the veiled satire which implied to 
 Evelyn all that scorn of her late marriage, and parvenu hus- 
 band, and vulgar wealth, which he did not put into words. 
 
 " You wonder, perhaps, what I have done with Rosamond,'' 
 she said ; " but she is perfectly well and perfectly safe. My 
 own absence from home is one of three days only. I return 
 to-night." 
 
 " Ah, Rosamond," he said ; " poor child ! To tell the truth I 
 did not think of Rosamond. She is quite safe, I have no doubt. 
 But you 1 What is my friend Rowland about that he allows his 
 beautiful wife to come up to London, even in the dead season, 
 on business, by herself ? " 
 
 " The business," she said hurriedly, " was my own, and lie 
 could not have done it for me. I hope you are better, and that 
 the waters " 
 
 " The waters," he said, with a smile, li are good to amuse people 
 with an idea that something is being done for them. That is 
 the best of medical science nowadays. It does amuse one some- 
 how, however vain one knows it to be, to think that something 
 is being done. And so your business, my dear lady, concerned 
 my son 1 Happy Eddy to be mixed up in the affairs of such a 
 woman as you." 
 
 " There was a question I had to ask him," said Evelyn, 
 faltering. 
 
 " Of so much importance that you have tried to find him 
 vainly for two days. I say again, happy Eddy ! I wish these 
 were questions which his father could answer : but alas ! all that 
 is over with me." 
 
 " The question did not personally concern either him or me," 
 said Evelyn, " but the well-being of a third person, for whom I 
 am very closely concerned." 
 
 " Happy third person ! " said the invalid, with a gleam of those 
 wolfish, eager eyes out of the partial gloom. " I would I were 
 one of those third persons. And Rowland, my good friend, does 
 he know all about it, and of a necessity so strong that a lovely 
 lady had almost forced her way into Eddy's room 2 " 
 
 " Mr. Saumarez," said Evelyn, feeling her checks burn, " my 
 husband knows, or will know, exactly in every particular what 
 I have done, and will approve it. You know what a boy of 
 Eddy's age, and lately a visitor in my own house, the companion 
 of my husband's son, must be to me." 
 
 "Age is very deceitful," said Saumarez with a laugh, "especi- 
 ally in Eddy's case, if you will permit me to say it. He is not a 
 boy, as you will call him, to be judged by mere numerals. Eddy 
 
342 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 is one of the sons occasionally to be met with in highly-civilized 
 life, who are older than their fathers. Even a husband's son, 
 dear lady, has been known to be not over-safe," he added, with 
 again that mocking laugh. 
 
 " There is no question of safety," said Evelyn. She felt the 
 blaze of shame to be so addressed, enveloping her from head to 
 foot like a fire. " You must pardon me if I say that this is a 
 kind of conversation very unpleasing to me," she said with 
 spirit, "and most uncalled for." His laugh sounded like the 
 laugh of a devil in her ears. 
 
 "Nay," he said, "you must not let my precious balms break 
 vour head. I speak as a friend, and in vour best interests, 
 Evelyn." 
 
 " My name is Mrs. Rowland, Mr. Saumarez." 
 
 " Oh ! if I could ever forget the time when you were not Mrs. 
 Eowland, but my Evelyn ! But that, of course, is not to the 
 purpose," he added with a sigh, at which he presently laughed. 
 " We get sentimental. Dear lady, if you will let me say it, your 
 age is precisely the one which is most dangerous, and in which 
 a taste for youth has been often shown, in various conspicuous 
 examples." 
 
 Evelyn rose to her feet with a start of offence and shame. 
 She had not known it was in her to be so wildly, almost fiercely 
 angry. " Not another word ! " she said. " You abuse your 
 privileges as a sick man. I will not hear another word." 
 
 "And what," he said in a low voice, stretching out his hand 
 to detain her, "if I — or Rogers — were to let my good friend 
 Rowland know that he had difficult} 7- in preventing the trusted 
 and honoured wife from making a forcible entrance into a 
 young man's room % " 
 
 If Evelyn had been a weak or unreasoning woman, had she 
 been without trust in her husband or herself, had she been apt 
 to concealment, or to believe, as so many do, that an evil motive 
 is always the most readily believed in, it is possible that she 
 might at tins odious moment — a moment she could never bear to 
 think of after — have been lost one way or other, bound as a 
 miserable thrall under this man's power, whose malignant mouth 
 could have done her such vile and frightful injury. But fortun- 
 ately she was none of these things. It had not even once occurred 
 to her that her determination to see Eddy, wherever she might 
 find him, would have been made the subject of any remark. 
 And if she now perceived that it was a foolish and imprudent 
 thing, the discovery was made in a moment of such extreme 
 excitement that it had no effect upon her. She stood by him 
 for a second, towering over him in a wrath which possessed and 
 inspired her. " Do so," she said, " at once : or rather let Rogers 
 do so, Mr. Saumarez. It will not be so degrading to him, a man 
 without instruction, possibly knowing no better, as it would be 
 to you. And besides, he could speak from personal knowledge. 
 His letter will find my husband at Rosmore. Good-bye." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 343 
 
 "And do you think you are to silence the world in this way 1 n 
 said Saumarez. " Myself, or Rogers perhaps, and your husband 
 if he is such a fool — but " 
 
 " Good-bye," she said once more. 
 
 "Evelyn! "he cried. 
 
 "Good-bye." Mrs. Rowland went out of the house like an 
 arrow from a bow, drawing the door behind her, with a sound 
 that rang through the sleepy street. She came so quickly that 
 she almost discovered a watcher on the other side, intent upon 
 all her movements ; that is, she gave him the shock of a possible 
 discovery : for, as for Evelyn, she saw nothing. Her eyes were 
 dim and misty with the heat of indignation that seemed to rise 
 up from her flushed cheeks and panting breath to blind her. 
 She walked away with the impulse of that wrath, at B pace that 
 would have been impossible under other circumstances, walking 
 far and fast, incapable of thinking even where it was that she 
 wanted to go. 
 
 The pure air, however, and the rapid movement, soon brought 
 Mrs. Rowland to herself, and she turned back upon her rapid 
 course so suddenly that again — But she did not observe any 
 one, or anything in the road, which, even in this dead season, 
 was sufficiently full to confuse an unaccustomed visitor. She 
 went at once to the telegraph office and sent off the message, 
 as a matter of precaution, sending it to Eosmore, and in dupli- 
 cate to the house of Sir John Marchbanks, where it was possible 
 Rowland might still be. She added a word of explanation to 
 the message dictated by Eddy. v ' Don't be surprised to hear 
 from me, from London," she wrote, without any recollection of 
 the concise style necessary to a telegram ; "all explanations 
 when we meet, and I know you will approve." When she had 
 sent this off, Evelyn was solaced and more or less restored to 
 herself. She walked back more calmly to the hotel, beginning 
 to feel a little the effect of the morning's exertions and excite- 
 ment. But when she reached the shelter of her room, and felt 
 herself alone, and under no restraint from other people's looks, 
 she was incapable of keeping up any longer. A long fit of crying 
 gave vent to the pent-up trouble in her breast. She bent down 
 her head upon her hands and wept like a child, helplessly. 
 When one has been outraged, insulted, hurt in every fibre, and 
 with no power to vindicate or avenge, which are momentary 
 modes of relief — the mingled pain and shame and rage, quite 
 justifiable, yet making up a passion which hurts almost as much 
 as the cause which produced it, lay all one's defences low. Men 
 even are wrought to tears by such means, how much more a 
 woman, to whom that expression of suffering is always so 
 painfully and inconveniently near. 
 
 When Evelyn had overcome this weakness and recovered her 
 confusion, I cannot assert that her mind was easy or her thoughts 
 comfortable. Was she so sure that her husband would approve ? 
 Had she not been inrprudent and unguarded in what she had 
 
344 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 done ? The thought had not entered her mind before, but the 
 light of a vile suggestion is one that makes the whitest innocence 
 
 pause and shudder. Could any one else for a moment think 1 
 
 She said to herself. No, no ! with a high head and expanded 
 nostril. But it made her unhappy in spite of herself. It was 
 as if something filthy and festering had been thrown into her 
 mind. She could not forget it, could not throw it forth again, 
 felt its unutterable foulness like a burn or a wound. Rogers, 
 perhaps the servants, might have thought — for servants have 
 dreadful ways of thinking, dreadful back-stair ways, the ideas 
 of minds which peep and watch, and hope to detect. He might 
 have thought — and in that mysterious way in which such 
 whispers fly, it might be communicated to some other privileged 
 attendant, and so go forth upon the air, an evil breath. Was 
 it possible 1 was it possible 1 Evelyn seemed to feel already the 
 confusion, the bewilderment, the restless horror of a whispered 
 scandal, an accusation that never could be met, because never 
 openly made, one of those vile breathings which go through 
 society. It is so strange to think that one may ones self Toe 
 subject to such an insinuated wrong. Herself ! the last person, 
 the most unlikely, the most impossible ! It was already a wrong 
 to her that the vile idea should be put within the furthest range 
 of things thought of. And thus Mrs. Rowland spent a very 
 restless and miserable afternoon. She could neither eat nor 
 rest. She put up her " things/' the few necessaries she had 
 brought with her, to be ready for the night train, and tried to 
 still herself, to keep quiet, to read, but without effect. There 
 is nothing so difficult to get through as a day spent in waiting, 
 and it was scarcely past twelve o'clock when, after all she had 
 gone through, she returned to the solitary empty hotel room, 
 with its big stone balustrade against the window, and the crowd 
 sweeping along below. She went out upon the balcony and 
 watched for the coming of the telegraph boy with an answer to 
 her message. There were dozens of telegraph boys coming and 
 going, and at intervals she could see one below, mounting the 
 very steps of the hotel. But hour after hour passed, and nothing 
 came for her. On two or three occasions she ran to the door 
 of her room, as if that could quicken the steps of the tardy 
 messenger ; but among the many people who passed up and 
 down the stairs and looked at her curiously, there was no one 
 bringing the reply upon which all the success of this painful 
 mission hung. 
 
 And then it was five o'clock : but not soon, not till months of 
 weary waiting seemed to have passed ; and then ensued, to 
 Evelyn perhaps the worst of all, a half-hour of excitement and 
 expectation almost beyond bearing. Would Eddy come ? Would 
 he stand by his bargain, though she was not able to do so with 
 hers ? It was nothing that he did not appear at the hour. He 
 had never been punctual. He was one of those who do not 
 know the value of time, nor what it is to others to keep to an 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 345 
 
 hour. Nothing would ever convince Eddy that the rest of the 
 world were not as easy in respect to time, as little bound by 
 occupation as himself. He had no understanding of those who 
 do a certain thing at a certain time every day of their lives. 
 The waiter appeared bringing lights, uncalled for, for Evelyn, 
 sitting in the partial dark, looking out upon the lamps outside, 
 felt her heart beating too quick and fast to give her leisure to 
 think of what was required or the hour demanded. He brought 
 lights, he brought tea ; he made an attempt, which she prevented, 
 to draw the curtains, and shut out the gleaming world outside, 
 the lights and sounds which still seemed to link her with the 
 distance, and made it possible that some intelligence might still 
 come, some answer to her prayer. And then suddenly, all at 
 once, in the hush after the waiter had gone from the room, 
 Eddy opened the door. Mrs. Eowland sprang from her seat as 
 if she had not expected him at all, and his coming was the 
 greatest surprise in the world. 
 
 "Eddy! you!" 
 
 " Did you not expect me 1 " he said, astonished. 
 
 She drew a chair near her, and made him sit down. " I feel 
 as if I had brought you here on false pretences. I have got no 
 answer to the telegram." 
 
 Eddy had taken a small pocket-book out of his breast pocket, 
 and held it in his hand. He stopped suddenly, and looked at 
 it, then at Mrs. Rowland. He was excited and pale, but yet 
 his usual humorous look broke over his face. " No answer % " he 
 said. 
 
 "Did I tell you my husband was from home? he ought to 
 have returned to-day ; but perhaps he has not done so. I ought 
 also to have returned to-day. It means nothing but that he has 
 not got home." 
 
 "There is no answer," Eddy said, as if explaining mattersto 
 himself, "and I will be giving myself away and no security 
 acquired. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound," he said. " I 
 have got it all here, Mrs. Eowland ; but you ought to give me 
 your word that I shall not be the worse for it." 
 
 She sat gazing at him with such uncomprehension, that ho 
 laughed aloud. 
 
 u She doesn't understand me," he said, "not a bit : it is not in 
 her to understand ; she has not an idea how serious it is." 
 
 Eddy's hands were unsteady, his little gray eyes were sparkling 
 with a feverish fire. From his foot, which he kept shaking in 
 nervous commotion, as he sat on the table with one leg suspended, 
 to the mobile eyebrows, which quivered and twisted over his 
 forehead, there was nothing still about him. He took a piece 
 of paper on which something was written out of his pocket- 
 book, and looked at it, holding it in his hand. 
 
 "Here it is," he said, and his voice shook a little, though its 
 tone was light enough. "The guilty witness. When you put 
 this into your husbands hands, Mrs. Rowland, he will know 
 
346 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 who forged his name. Have you a safe place to put it in, a 
 purse or something? For, remember, I am placing my life in 
 your hands." 
 
 " Eddy, Eddy, you frighten me ! I can't imagine what you 
 mean." 
 
 " No, I know you can't ; perhaps not even when you see it 
 will you know. But give him that, Mrs. Rowland, and he will 
 understand." 
 
 He held the paper a moment more, and then gave it to her. 
 There was not a particle of colour in his sallow, small face. He 
 sat on the corner of the table, swinging one leg, at first not 
 looking at her, a smile on his face, which grew every moment 
 more gray. 
 
 Evelyn took the paper almost with alarm. She gazed at it 
 with a look at first of intense surprise and disappointment. 
 What did it mean? her husband's signature written two or 
 three times on a piece of paper, as if he had been trying a pen. 
 " James— James," twice or thrice repeated; then "Rowland." 
 Then in full, "James Rowland," with a characteristic flourish 
 at the end. She looked at the paper and then at Eddy, and 
 then 
 
 It was his look that forced conviction on her mind, not the 
 guilty witness in her hand. She gave a great cry, "Eddy ! " and 
 put her hand over her eyes, as if to shut out some unwelcome 
 sight. 
 
 "Yes," he said, swinging his foot, his head sunk upon his 
 breast; "that is just about what it is : and I am a — a — every- 
 thing that is bad. But not such a cad as to let another man be 
 ruined instead of me," he cried. 
 
 Evelyn got up to her feet, stumbling, not seeing where she 
 went, her eyes blinded with tears. " Oh, my poor boy, my poor 
 boy ! " she cried, putting her arms round him, drawing him to 
 her. 
 
 "Is that how you take it?" he said with a sob. "I did not 
 expect you to take it like that." 
 
 " Oh, Eddy ! " she said 5 not able to find other words ; " oh, my 
 poor boy ! " 
 
 He drew himself away from her a little, dashing off the tears 
 that were in his eyes. " You know what that means, Mrs. Row- 
 land," he said, "though you may be sorry for me, and he may 
 forgive me for your sake; but it is separation for ever. I mustn't 
 presume to let you be kind to me." He took her back to her 
 chair and placed her in it, and kissed her hand. And then he 
 took up his hat. " It could mean nothing else, and I should be 
 too thankful that he takes no step. Of course, I shall never see 
 any of you again." Then he suddenly laughed out, the colour 
 coming back to his face. "And I was fond of that little Marion," 
 he said; "I was, though you might not think it, and she did not 
 deserve it any more than I do. I was — but all that's at an end 
 now." 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 317 
 
 CHAPTER XLTII 
 
 These movements of Evelyn's were watched, although she did 
 not know it, and in the strangest way. Rowland left home 
 leaving no address, nor any other indication of what he meant 
 to do, the evening after his return to Rosmore. He came hack 
 on the Wednesday, and on Friday morning he arrived in London, 
 and followed his wife's steps to the hotel, where he felt sure she 
 would go. When he arrived he was told that Mrs. Rowland was 
 indeed there, but had just gone out. "She cannot be out of 
 sight yet," the porter said, pointing the direction she had taken, 
 and Rowland, without a word, followed his wife, lie had no 
 intention when he did so, no plan but to overtake her, to join 
 her, to ask for an explanation of her conduct : but he had 
 scarcely caught sight of the well-known figure walking before 
 him along the thronged pavement before another idea struck 
 him. He would not make himself known, he would watch what 
 she was doing, and leave his eventual conduct to the guidance 
 of the moment. One great motive which induced him to come 
 to this resolution was that the moment he caught sight of her, 
 James Rowland, who had left home breathing flame and fire, 
 shrank into himself, and felt that lie no more dared approach 
 his wife with an air of suspicion and demand an explanation of 
 her conduct than he dared invade the retirement of the Queen. 
 The one thing was about as possible as the other. All his old 
 reverence for his lady-wife, all his conviction of her absolute 
 superiority to everybody he had ever known, came back upon 
 him like a flood. Who" was he to demand an explanation from 
 her % Was it likely that he could know better what was seemly 
 and becoming than she did \ Was it possible that she, the 
 crowning glory of his life, could do anything against his honour, 
 could commit or compromise him in any way % A hush fell upon 
 his troubled tempestuous mind the moment he perceived her 
 before him, walking along with quiet dignity, unpretending, yet 
 not, he said to himself in his pride, tobe overlooked anywhere, 
 moving among the common crowd as if she were in a presence- 
 chamber. He held his breath with a sort of horror at the 
 thought that he might have been capable of going up to her, in 
 his passion, asking her what she did there, whom she wanted, 
 commanding her to return home at once. The sight of ^ the sweep 
 of her dark skirt, the carriage of her head, arrested him, temper 
 and irritation and all, in a moment. He fell back a step or 
 two, with a vague inclination to turn tail altogether, turn back 
 homewards and humbly await her coming, which should be in 
 her own time. But his heart was so sore that he could not do 
 that. He followed her mechanically till she turned off the great 
 thoroughfare to the smaller street, where he still followed, 
 taking some precaution to keep himself out of her sight. He 
 
348 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 might have saved himself the trouble, for Evelyn saw nothing 
 save the great object she had in view — the interview which was 
 before her. 
 
 He watched her into Saumarez's house, divining whose house 
 it was, with a pang at his heart. There was a convenient door- 
 way opposite in which lie could stand and wait for her return • 
 and there he placed himself, with the most curious shame of 
 himself and his unwonted unnatural position. Watching his 
 wife ! which was only less intolerable than accusing her, dis- 
 closing to her that he was capable of suspecting her spotless 
 meaning, whatever it might be. No one who has not tried that 
 undignified metier can have any idea how the watcher can divine 
 what is going on inside a mouse from the minute signs which 
 show outside. He saw a certain commotion in the upper story, 
 a vague vision of her figure at the window, the blinds quickly 
 drawn up in the next room, enough to make him, all his senses 
 quickened with anxiety and eagerness, divine, more or less, what 
 was taking place. He saw a man come to the window, looking 
 moodily out as if in thought, turning round to speak to some 
 one behind. Whoever it was, it was not the crippled Saumarez, 
 who, it had been so intolerable to him to think, was to be con- 
 sulted on his affairs. Then lie seemed to perceive by other 
 movements below that the visitor was received in the lower 
 room; and then she came hurriedly out, taking him by surprise, 
 with no decorous attendance to the door, rushing forth almost 
 as if escaping. He had to hurry after to keep up with her hasty 
 excited steps. And then he followed her to the telegraph office, 
 and then back to the hotel. He had got without difficulty a 
 room close by, being anxious above measure not to betray to 
 any one that he was not with her, that there was any separation 
 between them — only not quite so anxious for that as that she 
 should not see him, or divine that he had followed her. He sat 
 with his door ajar all the afternoon, in the greatest excitement, 
 watching her, making sure that she expected some one, listen- 
 ing to her inquiries at the servants if no telegram had come. 
 She expected, then, a reply ; was it from himself at home ? 
 Finally, Rowland saw Eddy, to his infinite surprise, arrive in 
 the evening, and heard from where lie watched the sound of a 
 conversation, not without audible risings and fallings of tone, 
 which marked some gamut of emotion in it. Eddy ! what could 
 his wife have to do with Eddy ? Was it on that boy's business, 
 in answer to any appeal from him, that she had come? Was it 
 perhaps to ask help for Eddy that she had sent that useless 
 telegram 1 James Rowland had been deeply offended by the 
 idea that his wife had come to consult another man upon his 
 affairs ; but it stung him again into even hotter momentary 
 passion now, when the conviction came upon him that it was 
 not his affairs, but something altogether unconnected with him, 
 that had brought her so suddenly to London away from her 
 home. The first would have been an error of judgment almost 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 340 
 
 unpardonable. The second was — it was a tiling that could not 
 bear thinking of. His wife, consecrated to the sharing of all his 
 sorrows, and who had shown every appearance of taking them 
 up as her own, to leave her home and her husband in his trouble, 
 and come here all this way in so strange and clandestine a 
 manner at the call of Eddy — Eddy ! He had himself been very 
 favourable to Eddy, better than the boy deserved, who, how- 
 ever, had been generous about Archie, seeking an opportunity 
 of making his obligations known : but that she, who had pre- 
 tended to such interest in Archie, should suddenly be found to 
 be thinking not of him but of another boy ! 
 
 Rowland had scarcely gone through such a time of self- 
 contention in all his life as during the hour or two that elapsed 
 between Eddy's departure and the time of the train. Eddy 
 went away with a sort of faux air of satisfaction, which imposed 
 upon the unaccustomed, inexperienced detective. He at least 
 seemed to be satisfied, whoever was distressed. He had his hat 
 over Ids brows, but lie swung his stick lightly in his hand, and 
 began to hum an opera air as he went down the stairs. She 
 must have liberated him from some scrape, settled his affairs for 
 him somehow — the young reprobate, who was always in trouble ! 
 Rowland would not have refused to help the boy himself :_ he 
 would have treated Eddy very gently had he appealed to him ; 
 but that his wife should put herself so much out of the way for 
 Eddy, was intolerable to him. He sat there within his half-open 
 door, angry, miserable, and heard her give her orders about her 
 departure. She was going by the night train, and wanted some- 
 tea, and her bill and her cab got for her in time. _ " It is only 
 six now," he heard her say with a sigh, as the waiter stood at 
 the open door. She was longing ,to get home, was she?_ glad to 
 be done with it, though she had come all this way to do it, what- 
 ever it was. He went down-stairs then and got some dinner for 
 himself, and arranged his own departure at the same hour. It 
 was the strangest journey. She in one carriage, altogether 
 unconscious of~nis vicinity, he in another, so deeply conscious 
 of hers. He sprang out of his compartment at every station, to 
 steal past the window of the other, to catch a passing glimpse 
 of her. There was another lady in the corner nearest the door, 
 but in the depths of the carriage he could see her profile, pale 
 against the dark cushions, her eyes sometimes shut, and weari- 
 ness and lassitude in every line of her figure and attitude as 
 she lay back in her corner. He did not think she was asleep. 
 She would be thinking over what she had done for Eddy ; 
 thinking not of her husband and his trouble, but of that other 
 — the other man's boy. And bitter and sore were Rowland's 
 thoughts. The fury witli which he had started was not so heavy 
 as tins ; for then he had thought that she was fully occupied 
 with his troubles, though so unwise, so little judicious as to 
 confide them to the last man in the world whose sympathy he 
 could have desired. But now to think that it was not his- 
 
350 THE RAILWAY MAN" 
 
 trouble at all that liacl occupied his wife, nothing about him, 
 though, heaven knew, he had enough to bear — but the well- 
 deserved discomfort of another, the needs of the trifling boy, 
 ill-behaved and untrustworthy, for whom his own father had 
 little to say. Less and less did James Rowland feel himself able 
 to make himself known to his wife, to upbraid or reproach her. 
 Why should he 1 he had no reason. She was spotless, if ever 
 woman was. She had not even offended against him in the way 
 he had feared. She had left home only to do a good action ; to 
 be kind. He was well aware of this ; and to assail her, to take 
 her to task, to accuse her even of carelessness towards him, was 
 more than he could permit himself to do : it was impossible. 
 But still it seemed to Rowland, as he travelled home, with 
 unspeakable, sujopressed anger and pain, that this was the most 
 unsupportable of all, and that Eddy's shuffling, inconsiderable 
 figure would stand between them now for ever and ever. Not 
 that he was jealous of Eddy : it was disappointment, dis- 
 enchantment, the failure of his trust in her. To leave the boy, 
 in whom she had professed so much interest, and whose well- 
 being, greatly as he had sinned, involved his father's, without 
 lifting a hand to help him, though she led her husband to believe 
 that she would do something, work a miracle, bring him back ; 
 and go off to the end of the earth, secretly, without telling 
 anybody, to the succour of Eddy ! It was intolerable, though 
 there might not be a word to say. 
 
 Then came the arrival, jaded and chilled, at Glasgow, in the 
 cold gray of the morning, scarcely light. He kept about and 
 watched what she would do, nothing doubting that her next 
 step would be to the other railway which would take her to the 
 banks of the loch, in time for the early boat to Rosmore. But 
 Evelyn did not carry out this part of the programme, to his 
 great surprise. She lingered at the station, performing sucli a 
 toilet as was possible ; waiting, it appeared, until the morning 
 was a little more advanced. It was more and more difficult to 
 keep out of her sight, yet keep her in sight in this familiar place 
 where everybody knew him. He pulled up his greatcoat to his 
 ears, his travelling-cap down upon his forehead. He could not 
 even copy her and add to his comfort by a wash, lest in that 
 moment she should disappear. He could not even get a cup of 
 coffee, and his outer man stood more in need of restoratives and 
 support than hers, and could ill bear the want of them. But at 
 length the morning became sufficiently advanced, as it seemed, 
 for her purpose, and she got into a cab with her small bag, which 
 was all her baggage. He could not tell what orders she gave to 
 the driver, but he ordered the man, into whose cab he jumped 
 without more delay than he could help, to follow that in which 
 Evelyn was. At this moment all the excitement of those 
 bewildering twenty-four hours culminated. He felt as though 
 he could scarcely breathe : he could not bear his travelling-cap 
 on his head, though it was light enough, or his coat across his 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 351 
 
 chest, though it was a cold morning to ordinary persons, people 
 who felt cold and heat, and had no fiery furnace within them. 
 He kept his uncovered head out of the window of his cab 
 watching the slow progress of the one before him. How slow it 
 was, creeping along the dark streets as if she had told the man 
 to go slowly to postpone some crisis, some climax of excitement 
 to which she was bound ! Rowlands heart thumped like a 
 steam-engine against his labouring breast, Where was she 
 going ? Who could there be in Glasgow to whom it was of the 
 slightest consequence what happened to Eddy Saumarez, who 
 would even know of his existence ? She must be deep in the 
 boy's secrets indeed, he said to himself, with scornful wrath, to 
 know in all this strange town who could have anything to' do 
 with him. He seemed to recognize the turns she w*s taking 
 with a bewildered perception of the unsuspected, of something 
 that might be coming quite different to anything he had 
 thought. Where was she going ? The dingy streets are like each 
 other everywhere, few features of difference to distinguish them, 
 and yet he seemed to be going over ground he knew. That shop 
 at the corner he had surely seen before— of course he must have 
 seen it before ! Where could a stranger go in Glasgow that he 
 had not been before, he who was to the manner born, who had 
 spent his childhood^ in Glasgow, and gone to his daily work by 
 these very ways % Yes, of course, he knew it all very well, every 
 turn, not only from the old times of his youth, but— Where was 
 she going ? His heart beat louder than ever, the veins on his 
 temples set up independent pulses, something fluttered in his 
 bosom like a bird, making him sick with wonder and expectancy. 
 AVhere was she going 1 What, what could she mean 1 What 
 did she want here ? 
 
 The Sauchiehall Eoad — full of the grayness of the November 
 morning: children playing on the pavement, women going 
 about with their baskets to get their provisions, a lumbering 
 costermonger's cart trundling along noisily over the stones, with 
 a man crying " caller codfish prime ; caller haddies ! " all incised 
 into this man's beating brain as if done with a knife. He stopped 
 his cab hurriedly, jumped out, dismissed it, and walked slowly 
 along, with his eyes upon the other lumbering vehicle in front. 
 The buzzing in his brain was so wild that everything was con- 
 fused, both sound and sights, and he stumbled over the children 
 on the pavement as he went along, not seeing where he went. 
 At last it stopped, and his heart stopped too with one sudden 
 great thump like a sledge-hammer. A flash of sudden light 
 seemed to come from something, he knew not what, whether in 
 his eyes or outside of them, showing like a gleam from a lantern 
 the well-known house, the big elderberry bush, with its dusty, 
 black clusters of fruit. And she came out of her cab and went 
 quickly up to the door. 
 
 Eowland stood quite still in the midst of the passengers on 
 the pavement, the children knocking against him as they hopped 
 
352 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 about on one foot, propelling the round piece of marble, -with 
 which they were playing, from one chalked compartment to 
 another. It hit him on the shin, but did not startle him from 
 his amazement, from his pause of wonder, and the blank of 
 incapacity to understand. What was she doing here of all places 
 in the world 1 What did she want there ? What had that house 
 to do with Eddy Saumarez 1 Eddy Saumarez — Eddy ! It got 
 into a sort of rhyme in his brain. What had that house to do 
 with it 1 What did she want there ? What — what was the 
 meaning of it all 1 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 When Archie left his father's house on the morning after the 
 ball, imrefreshed by sleep, half mad with excitement, bewildered 
 by that last interview with Mrs. Rowland, and the sensation of 
 something supernatural which had come over him, in the half- 
 lighted hall, with the chill of the desolate new day coming in, 
 he was perhaps in as wretched plight as ever a boy of twenty 
 ever found himself in : and that is saying much, for, but for the 
 inalienable power of recovery in youth, how sharp would be the 
 pang of many a scene, in which the boy, guilty or not guilty, has 
 started up against parental wrath or reproof, and shaken the 
 dust from off his feet and gone forth, perhaps to dismay and 
 ruin, perhaps to new life and work. The sensation of turning 
 the back upon home, in such circumstances, is not veiy rare in 
 human consciousness, and must have left in many memories a 
 poignant recollection, terrible, yet perhaps not altogether painful 
 to realize, in the long series of good or evil fortune which has 
 followed it. Archie, for the first hour or two, as he sped up 
 the side of the loch, like an arrow from a bow, walking five 
 miles an hour in his excitement, scarcely feeling the fatigue of 
 his condition, or any physical circumstances whatever, did not 
 even know where he was going, or what he would do. The home 
 of his childhood, the kind nurse and ruler of his docile youth, 
 were not far off, it is true, and in that he was better off than 
 most of the young prodigals among whom this guiltless boy 
 found himself suddenly classed. But his aunt had been pre- 
 possessed against him, she had all but forbidden him to return 
 the last time he left her door, and his heart was sore with 
 injured pride and innocence, misconstrued in that quarter as 
 well as every other. He had gone wildly out in the early gray 
 of the morning, and pursued the straight road before liim rather 
 because it was the straight road than from any other circum- 
 stance, unable to form any decision, or for a long time even to 
 think of any conclusion to this forlorn walk out into the world. 
 It was, of course, hours too early for the early boat, and had it 
 not been so, Archie would not have exposed himself to question 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 353 
 
 or remark as to his departure, from the people who knew him. 
 The cottagers on the roadside who had noted with some sur- 
 prise, on the previous night, the carriage from Maryport, far on 
 the other side of the loch, which had driven rapidly by, coming 
 and going, carrying the messenger from the bank, might have 
 found themselves— had they divined who the pedestrian was 
 who passed by their doors in the early morning, treading the 
 same long way — spectators of one of those human dramas which 
 take place in our midst every day, though we are seldom the 
 wiser. At the smithy at Lochhead, one man did indeed ask the 
 other, "Was that no young Rowland from Rosmore?"' as Archie 
 went by. But the powerful reply of the other, "Man, its 
 impoossible ! " quenched that one suspicion. He had tied his 
 old comforter, of Aunt Jean's knitting, round his throat, as 
 much for a disguise as for the warmth. He had put on his old 
 clothes, with which he had first come to Rosmore, garments of 
 which he only now knew the unloveliness— and was as unlike in 
 appearance as in feeling to the millionaire's only son, the young 
 master of everything in his father's luxurious house. Archie 
 had never indeed felt his elevation very real : he scarcely ven- 
 tured to accept and act upon it as if he were himself a person 
 of importance ; he, to his own consciousness, always Archie 
 Rowland of the Westpark Football Club, and the Philosophers' 
 Debating Society, and of Sauchiehall Road. It was true that 
 already Sauchiehall Road had sustained the shock of disenchant- 
 ment, and he had a shamed and subdued feeling of having 
 somehow gone beyond the circle to which he had once been so 
 pleased to belong, and being no longer at home in it. But still 
 less was he really at home on the moors with his unaccustomed 
 gun, or in the drawing-room with all its unfamiliar necessities. 
 He was now more a nobody than ever, belonging neither to 
 one life nor the other, cast out of both ; and he walked along 
 dreamily as the morning broadened into the day, and all the 
 world awoke, and the family tires were lighted, and the family 
 tables spread. He walked on, and on getting beyond the range 
 in which young Mr. Rowland of Rosmore was known, faint, 
 tired, without food or rest, an outcast who belonged to nobody, 
 till his progress began to be almost mechanical, his limbs moving 
 like those of an automaton, all volition gone, nothing possible 
 but to put one foot beyond the other in sheer monotony of 
 movement, like the wheels of a machine. He did not pause, 
 because he felt that if the machine were stopped, being human, 
 it might not be able to go on again. Wheels that are made of 
 wood and iron have this great advantage over flesh and blood. 
 
 At last he got to the railway, and stumbled into a carriage, 
 and felt the comparative well-being of rest, when he was able to 
 begin to think a little what he ought to do. And then it came 
 back to Archie that he had bound himself to a certain course of 
 action. He had flung the intimation at his father in the height 
 of their passionate encounter, that there should be no difficulty 
 
 A A 
 
354 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 in finding him, that he would go to the old home and wait there 
 to be arrested, to stand his trial. It brought the most curious 
 quickening of feeling to remember that he had said that. To 
 be arrested, to be brought to trial ! — lie seemed to see the scene, 
 himself standing at the bar, his father giving evidence in the 
 box, the forged cheque handed round, and all the wise heads 
 bent over it, all finding signs to prove that he had done it — he 
 that scorned it, that cared nothing for money, that would have 
 flung it all into the sea rather than take a pin unjustly from 
 any man. The fire blazed up in his dim eyes, so dim with want 
 of rest and excess of emotion. He accused of such a crime ! 
 He laughed within himself at the futility of it, the foolishness ! 
 Had it been anything else of which they had accused him — of 
 murdering somebody, for instance. Archie knew that he had a 
 high temper (he who had always been so docile and so gentle), 
 and he thought it possible that, if much irritated and provoked, 
 he might have lifted his hand and given a sudden blow. There 
 would have been in that a possibility, a chance, that he might 
 have done it : but to forge a man's name, for the sake of money 
 — money ! The scorn with which he said the word over to him- 
 self in the noise of the railway, nobody hearing, was tremendous. 
 He laughed aloud at the thought. But it decided him on one 
 point, that there must be no question as to where he went. It 
 must be to his aunt's house ; the policeman could come to arrest 
 him there, and therefore there he must go. It was true that it 
 might be bringing shame upon her, innocent ; but at all events 
 he must go there first, tell her the whole, and if she desired that 
 he should find another address, at least acquaint her with it, 
 that she might give it to the policemen when they came. This 
 did him good, as it settled the question, and brought him out of 
 all uncertainty. It fortified him even against Aunt Jean's 
 possibly grim reception of him. He would go there, not for 
 anything lie wanted from her, but to answer the claim of honour, 
 which was the first necessity of all. 
 
 Mrs. Brown saw him from her window when he came, sick 
 and weary, up the little path under the shadow of the elder- 
 berry tree, and ran and opened the door to him with a cry of, 
 "Archie ! eh, my man, but you're welcome to me," which thawed 
 his heart a little. He threw himself down wearily in the fami- 
 liar parlour, on one of the chairs, where he was always forbidden 
 to sit lest he should discompose the antimacassar extended on 
 its back. He remembered this as he sat down with a dreary 
 laugh. 
 
 ' This is one of the chairs I was never to sit upon," he said. 
 
 " Oh, my bonnie man," cried Mrs. Brown, " sit where ye please ; 
 dight your feet upon the sofa, if you please ; do anything you 
 like ! but eh, whatever you do, dinna leave me to one side and 
 cast me off as if I did not belong to you : for that is what I 
 canna bear." 
 
 " I will not do that," said Archie ; " far from that : for I am 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 355 
 
 come to ask you to take me back, aunty, as if I had never been 
 away." 
 
 Mrs Brown gave a shriek of dismay. "Oh, dinna say that, 
 dinna say that ! for it looks as if things were going ill at the 
 house at home." 
 
 "Things are going as ill as they can : at their very worst," he 
 said. "I've come home, Aunt Jean, because it's a well-known 
 place, where I've lived all my life, so that if the policemen 
 should be sent after me " 
 
 She interrupted him with another shriek. " The pollisman ! " 
 she cried. 
 
 " That is what it has come to," he answered, "in four months' 
 time, no more. I was to be a gentleman, never to want, Mr. 
 Rowland's son, the great man that everybody knows : and now 
 I'm cast out, charged with a crime, with the thing flung in my 
 face as if it were beyond doubt ; and I'm to be brought up 
 before the judges, and tried — and hanged, for anything I know. 
 I promised," said Archie, throwing back his tired head, "that I 
 would wait upon him here, that I would not stir a step but bide 
 — the worst that he or any man could do. But, Aunty Jean, to 
 shame you, an honest, upright woman, with policemen coming 
 to your door, is what I will not do. So, what I want is, that 
 you should find a lodging for me, any kind of place, a little hole, 
 what does it matter." 
 
 " To hide you ; oh, to hide you, Archie ? " cried Mrs. Brown, 
 wringing her hands. 
 
 "To hide me!" he cried, with scorn; "it would be easy 
 enough to do that." 
 
 " Oh, my laddie," cried Aunty Jean, "do you think I would 
 let anybody but me do that? They shall never come at you, 
 but o'er my body ; they shall never touch a hair of your head, 
 if it was to cost me my last drop of blood. Oh, Archie ! it's me 
 that will hide you, my bonnie man. There's little means in this 
 house, but I'll find a way. If it comes to heart's love and a 
 woman's wit against your muckle pollisman " 
 
 "Aunty ! " cried Archie, rising to his feet. 
 
 " Oh, whisht, whisht, my bairn ! Come up the stair an' we'll 
 settle it a'. Ye'll have the air of going away when the evening 
 comes : and you'll just creep back, and I'll make ye a hidin' 
 hole, where a' the pollismen in Glesgow shall not find ye. 
 Whisht, we'll have to take Bell into our counsel ; but she's just 
 an excellent lass, baith true and sure." 
 
 "Aunty ! " cried the young man, the tears bursting from his 
 eyes, "do you think I'm guilty, then: you! you think I did 
 it — you! Oh, Lord! who will believe me, then 1 ?" he cried, 
 stretching out despairing hands. 
 
 "Me?" cried Mrs. Brown; "me think ye did it, or any ill 
 thing ! I would as soon, oh, far sooner, believe it of mysel' ! " 
 
 He burst into a low fit of hysterical laughter. " Then why 
 should ye hide me ? " he said. 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 The good woman was taken aback for a moment. "What 
 were ye meaning, then, Archie, about the pollisman ? and you 
 to bide till he came ? Ye shall bide as lang as you please, my 
 bonnie boy ; and everything we can do to make you comfort- 
 able, Bell and me. Bless me ! I'm speaking to my am lad as if 
 he was a strange gentleman, and didna ken. What ails ye, 
 Archie? you are just as white as a sheet, and laughing and 
 greeting like a lassie." 
 
 " I have had no breakfast," he said, " and I've walked " 
 
 But here he was interrupted by another shout from Mrs. 
 Brown, who rushed away to the kitchen, appearing again in 
 a moment or two with a tray, upon which was piled everything 
 she could think of, from cold beef to strawberry jam. He was 
 not hungry : any such feeling had abandoned him some time 
 ago, but he was faint from want of food. And it was only 
 when he had eaten and rested, in the quiet of the afternoon, 
 that he was able to tell his tale coherently, and that she was 
 sufficiently composed to hear. 
 
 The exclamations with which that tale was accompanied and 
 interrupted, her dismay, her wrath — her triumph in Archie's 
 defiance of his father and resolution to shake the dust of Ros- 
 more from off his feet, were endless ; but when he came to his 
 interview with Mrs. Rowland, Jean began to shake her head. 
 
 "It would be her wyte all through," she said. "Eh, I would 
 not have you lippen to her ! It is just her that has been at the 
 bottom of it a' through." 
 
 Archie's momentary softness towards his stepmother was 
 gone. He had begun to remember his griefs, real or imaginary, 
 against her, and to persuade himself that her pity had been 
 fictitious and theatrical. But he made a protest against this 
 view. 
 
 " She could not have forged the cheque, in order to get me 
 into trouble," he said. 
 
 "Oh, how do we ken what the like of her would do?" said 
 Mrs. Brown ; " a woman that makes a marriage like yon, is 
 just set upon everything she can get out of the man. If he 
 were to die, what would become of her? Oh, he would aye 
 leave her something, enough to keep her ; but there would be 
 an awfu' difference between that and Rosmore, and a' her grand 
 company and her horses and carriages. They," said Aunty 
 Jean, cleverly changing her ground, so that it was not Mrs. 
 Rowland alone whom she could be supposed to refer to, 
 " will just do anything to get a little more siller to lay up for 
 that time. And if they can persuade the poor man that his 
 bairns, that are his natural kin, are no what he thinks them — 
 eh, Archie, the objeck's just ower evident." 
 
 " She was very kind to me," he said. " She said she believed 
 me." 
 
 " Oh ay ; it's very easy to be kind when the harm's done. 
 After she had got your father set against ye, and your life in 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 357 
 
 her power, then was her time to speak ye fair, my poor laddie, 
 and make him think her the kindest in the world. I've seen 
 all that afore now," said Mrs. Brown. "It's no half so un- 
 common as ye think. Just the invention of the deevil to 
 make their father think ill o' them, and then a purrin' and 
 a phrasin' to pretend that she's on their side : that's just what 
 I've seen a score o' times before." 
 
 Archie was only half convinced, but he allowed himself to be 
 silenced at least. " (Somebody must have done it," he said. " I 
 have thought of it a great deal since — somebody that knew my 
 father's writing, and could get a cheque, and had the oppor- 
 tunity of getting the money, without suspicion." 
 
 Mrs. Brown nodded her head at each detail, and said, "Just 
 that, just that." 
 
 "You are making a mistake," ho said. "She writes a little 
 pretty hand, like a lady. She could not do it, even if she were 
 capable of a tiling which is a crime." 
 
 "I tell you," said Jean, " they are just capable of everything, 
 to get them that's in their way out o' their way. And what 
 about the writing? If they canna do a thing themselves, there's 
 aye others they can get to do it. An ill person never missed an 
 ill deed yet for want of a tool." 
 
 " You speak nonsense ! " he cried angrily ; but he could not 
 argue with a woman strong in the panoply of ignorance and 
 obstinacy. And by the oft repetition of such arguments, Archie 
 came, if not to believe, at least to acquiesce, in that decision 
 that Mrs. Rowland, somehow, was at the bottom of it all ; that 
 it was contrary to her interests that a good understanding 
 should exist between Archie and his father, and that, whoever 
 had actually done this thing, the conception and execution of 
 it were in her hands. Sometimes he had a compunction, 
 remembering her look, her tears, her blessing. Was she such a 
 hypocrite that she could bid God bless him and not mean it — 
 mean, indeed, the very reverse? And then that thrill which he 
 could never forget, that touch which came from no visible hand. 
 AVhat was if? some witchcraft of hers, or a sign from heaven, 
 as he had thought it for a moment 1 He said nothing to Mrs. 
 Brown of this, and he tried himself not to think of it. The 
 recollection brought with it a pang of terror : he did not like 
 to think of it at night when he was alone. If it should come 
 again, if lie should see, perhaps, his mother looking at him 
 through the darkness — his mother, so long dead, whom lie did 
 not remember ! He had not courage to desire such a visitor, 
 and he tried to put this strange and wonderful sensation out 
 of his mind. 
 
 But Archie did not spend happy days in his old home. He 
 found it so changed, so unlike what it had once been : or was it 
 only he who was changed? He had no heart to return to the 
 old football team, to renew his acquaintance with the students, 
 who were now returning daily to resume their work at the 
 
358 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 College. He would not go to the room where the Philosophers 
 met. Had he become so low, so mean, he asked himself some- 
 times, that for a little want of refinement, a difference of clothes, 
 he should shrink from his old friends 1 A want of refinement — 
 asif he had any refinement, or ever would have ; he, to whom 
 Miss Saumarez had spoken so plainly, whom she had bidden not 
 to be— such an ill-bred, low-bred fellow ! That was what she 
 had meant, though the words she used had been different. \\v 
 never saw any one like Rosamond Saumarez now. There were 
 many nice good girls in the Sauchiehall Road, girls who looked 
 up to him, no one who would take him to task and show him 
 how inferior he was : there was none like her, none. And he 
 never would meet any one like her again. He never would see 
 her as he remembered her so well, sitting at the piano in the 
 dim background of the great room, scarcely visible, playing 
 music which he did not understand, which overawed him, and 
 irritated and worried him, but never lost its spell — not that it 
 had any spell, except in the hands that called it forth. And 
 then suddenly the picture would change, and he would see her 
 walk out of the gloom in her white dress, tall and slim, coming 
 up to him, the fool, in his inaction, laying a hand upon his arm, 
 like the dropping of a rose leaf, carrying him off always in her 
 composed, proud way, with her head high, after Eddy and 
 Marion. These two were full of fun ; they enjoyed it, as boys 
 and girls enjoy dancing all the world over. But Archie did not 
 enjoy it. It was far more than fun to him, it was as if some 
 one lifted a curtain to him to reveal a new world. He never 
 got beyond the threshold, but hovered there, looking in. Had 
 the curtain fallen, and was the door closed now, for ever? 
 Should he never see Rosamond again ? Never, never, some 
 echo seemed to say. All that was over. Rosmore had closed 
 its doors, never to open them again. No, it had not closed its 
 doors. The door was still open when he turned his back upon 
 his father's house — open, and with his father's wife standing in 
 the doorway, crying, and bidding God bless him. Did she not 
 mean that 1 did she mean something quite the reverse 1 Was it 
 she who had really turned him forth, instead of doing her best 
 to keep him there, as had appeared ? Archie never said a word 
 of all this to his aunt. He had never mentioned Rosamond to 
 her. Sometimes she asked him about Mr. Adie, the gentleman 
 whom he had brought to see her, who seemed a fine lad, though 
 not much to look at, and would not he do something to set 
 things right. He of all people in the world ! Eddy ! who had 
 accepted his money, and had stood by and seen him suffer for 
 that, and had not even uttered a word of sympathy. He laughed 
 when his aunt suggested this, and told her Mr. Adie was not a 
 man who would do anything. But of Rosamond he never said 
 a word. 
 
 And the days were more heavy than words could say. To 
 have no companions but Mrs. Brown after that houseful of 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 359 
 
 people, all of them more or less original and full of character— 
 his father, who had so many experiences which came into his 
 daily talk ; Mrs. Rowland, one of the most wonderful of beings 
 to an uneducated young man, with her easy knowledge of so 
 many things which, to him, were a study and labour to know ; 
 and Rosamond, whose knowledge was of so different a kind, 
 yet who, in her self-possession and youthful, grave acquaint- 
 ance with the world, was almost the most astonishing of all ; 
 and Eddy, who was always so bright, always full of spirits, 
 :o perfectly aware of his own deficiencies, that they became 
 qualities, and pleased the people about him more than if he had 
 been ever so clever and instructed. To leave all these, and all 
 the people who came and went, and talked and filled the world 
 with variety of life, even old Rankin in his cottage and Roderick 
 on the hill, and to have no companion but Aunty Jean ! She 
 was more kind than words could say, but had so narrow a little 
 round of being, and was so inveterate, so determined in those 
 certainties which he was almost brought to believe, by dint of 
 much talking, but which his spirit rebelled against all the same. 
 When he received Evelyn's letters he carried them off to his 
 room to read them, and would not expose them to her scrutiny : 
 but he was too much influenced by her opinions and by the tacit 
 agreement in them, to which, in his sore and wounded condition 
 he had been brought, to reply. It would have been a certain 
 disloyalty if, in Mrs. Brown's house, he had answered the appeal 
 of the stepmother who, he had agreed, or almost agreed, with 
 his aunt, must be at the bottom of it all. And what could he 
 have replied I He had said that he would abide whatever they 
 chose to do to him— arrest, trial, whatever they pleased. He 
 had represented to himself and to his aunt that he expected the 
 policemen, and that from day to day they might come to take 
 him. He had, in fact, so simple was he, felt a tremor in his 
 heart, when lie saw in the road, as happened every day, the 
 honest sturdy form of the policeman passing by. It was always 
 possible that this simple functionary might be coming, armed 
 with all the majesty of the law, to take him, though Archie had 
 an internal conviction that, if it was to be done, it would be 
 done more quietly than this, with more precaution than if he 
 had been a housebreaker or stolen a watch. But such delicacies 
 did not enter into Mrs. Brown's mind. She watched the police- 
 man go past daily with his heavy tread, with a trembling cer- 
 tainty that he was coming to arrest her boy : and still more at 
 midnight, when she heard Ins heavy tread, did she hold her 
 breath, thinking that now the dreaded moment must have come, 
 and on tiptoe of apprehension and anxiety waiting for the sound 
 of his nearer approach, ready to thrust Archie into her bed or 
 under, to conceal him till the danger was over. Mrs. Brown, 
 though she had all the horror of the police common to respect- 
 able women of her class, was half disappointed when day after 
 day passed, and no attempt at an arrest was ever made. 
 
360 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " They will have found nae proof," she said, " as how could 
 they have found any proof, there being nane. And they will 
 just be in a puzzle what to do — and yon leddy will either be 
 concocting something, or else she will be working upon your 
 father, poor misguided man. Eh, when I think what James 
 Rowland might have been, with his bonnie doc] iter to sit at the 
 head of his table, and his son to stand for him before the world, 
 and everything just good nature and peace ! But lie had to 
 have a grand leddy to scare us a' with her grand ways, and that 
 was thinking of nothing but how to get as much as she could 
 out o' him, and his ain that were the right heirs, out of the way. 
 Ye'll see the next thing will be trouble to Mey. She will not 
 put up with Mey : now she's gotten you banished, the next 
 thing in her head will be something against your sister, till baith 
 the ane and the ither o' you is on the street. And just let her 
 do her worst," said Mrs. Brown with a flush of war, " there will 
 be aye room here. I'm no wanting to see her fall into worse 
 and worse sin, but the sooner she lets out her plans the better 
 for us. And we'll just have Mey back in her bonnie little room, 
 and everything as it was before." 
 
 Would everything be as it was before? Alas, Archie feared 
 not. They were not as they had been before. For himself 
 everything was changed. It was in vain to think of returning 
 to his old existence as it had been, when they were all so cheer- 
 ful together in Sauchiehall Road. He thought of the old suppers, 
 when he would bring in with him two or three of his Philoso- 
 phers, whom Mrs. Brown would receive with a " Come away 
 ben, come in to the fire. I'm just very glad to see you," and 
 Marion would set herself to tease and provoke : and who would 
 be delighted to reply to both the ladies, to meet Mrs. Brown 
 with compliments upon her supper, and to laugh with Marion 
 to her heart's content. These little parties had been very plea- 
 sant. They had appeared to him sometimes, when anything had 
 gone wrong at Rosmore, as happy examples of natural ease and 
 enjoyment. But now he had ceased to have any taste for these 
 gatherings. And Marion : perhaps Marion would be more at 
 home than he was : for at Rosmore her social performances had 
 been still a little in the same kind, personal encounters of 
 laughter and sharp speeches, what Eddy called " chaff," and in 
 which style he was himself a master. Perhaps she could still 
 have made herself happy with the Philosophers. But Archie's 
 day for that was over. The old home could never be what it 
 had been before. He scorned himself for seeing all its little 
 defects, and for feeling the disenchantment, even for the con- 
 sciousness that Aunt Jean, who was so kind, was scarcely a com- 
 panion who could make life sweet. She was as his mother. He 
 had never known other care than hers. In the old clays he had 
 perhaps wished sometimes that she had not spoken the language 
 of Glasgow in quite so broad a tone. But this was so small a 
 defect ; how he hated himself for perceiving much more than 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 361 
 
 the broad Glasgow speech which jarred upon him ! But it is a 
 very hard ordeal for an old woman in any rank when she lias 
 to be the sole companion of a young man ; especially when long 
 knowledge makes him acquainted with every tale she has to 
 tell, and all the experiences which might be interesting to 
 another, but have been familiar to him since ever he began to 
 listen and to understand. 
 
 The only relief which Archie had was in attempts, not carried 
 out with any energy, to get a situation in which he could earn 
 his own living. Nothing could have been more false than his 
 present position. He had scarcely any money left, and lie had 
 abandoned his father's house for ever. Yet he was supported by 
 his aunt, who received her living from his father, and so it was 
 still by James Rowland's money that his son wag nourished, 
 though that son had totally rebelled against him. What if he 
 might cut short or take away altogether Jean Brown's allow- 
 ance, on account of the rebel she was harbouring 1 What if he 
 understood with contempt that his son was thus living upon him 
 still ? Sometimes at night these thoughts would so sting and 
 madden Archie that he would jump out of bed in the morning, 
 resolved before night came again to have got w^ork, whatever it 
 was, and to have made himself independent. But this was so 
 much easier said and thought than done. One man to whom he 
 applied, laughed in his face when he confessed that he was the 
 son of the great Rowland, the Indian Railway Man. "No, no, 
 Mr. Rowland," he said, " the like of you in my office would revolu- 
 tionize everything. You have too much money to spend, you 
 rich men's sons. You lead away the poor lads that cannot play 
 fast and loose with life like you. Eh ! you have no money ? 
 Well, then, I suppose you have had a tiff with your father and 
 mean to be independent. That's just as bad. You will be dili- 
 gent for a while and then you will go off like a firework. I have 
 known the sort of thing before. No, no, my young gentleman, 
 the like of you is not for an office like mine." Then poor Archie 
 tried the plan of giving no account of himself at all, except that 
 he was in want of a situation, and could do a little book-keeping, 
 and was acquainted with the axiom that two and two make four. 
 And in this case he was asked for his testimonials^ but had no 
 testimonials to offer, no previous character or evidence as to 
 what lie could do. And again, but more roughly, he was re-con- 
 ducted, as the French say, to the simplest door, and his hopes in 
 that instance were over. He then began, as how many a much- 
 disappointed man has done, to study the advertisements in the 
 newspapers, and to answer them sometimes half a dozen in the 
 day. But the sprawling large handwriting which was so fatally 
 like his fathers did not find favour in the eyes of men who 
 advertised for clerks. It was admired in Mr. Rowland, the great 
 railway man, and said to mean originality, daring, and a strong 
 will, but in the young would-be clerk it was sharply set down 
 as a bad hand, and he was rejected on that and other reasons 
 
362 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 again and again. This dismal play went on from day to day. 
 Perhaps he was not very earnest in it, perhaps he felt that in no 
 combination of circumstances could it be a matter of life and 
 death. If he was not arrested and brought to trial, he would be 
 provided for. The question was whether he would submit his 
 pride to being supported by the man who had flung that cheque in 
 his face. When he asked himself such a question, or rather, when 
 it fluttered across his path, Archie would spring to his feet again 
 with an emphatic " No ! " and redouble his exertions. 
 
 But he was in a false position, crippled all round by dis- 
 abilities. Mrs. Brown advised that he should go to the minister, 
 who had known him so long, and could speak for him ; but 
 Archie knew what the minister would say : he would remind 
 him of his duty to his father, and that to leave his father's house 
 and bury himself in a position unbecoming Mr. Rowland's son, 
 was ungrateful and unkind. And if he told all his story, and that 
 of the forged cheque, what would the minister say ? He would 
 shake his head, he would grow grave, a cloud would gather over 
 his face, he would make haste to end the interview. It would 
 be impossible to believe that Mr. Rowland would make such an 
 accusation without certain proof. Archie knew this was how it 
 would happen, and he could not face such a reception. 
 
 Mrs. Brown went herself privately to the foundry, where her 
 own connection with it as the widow of a foreman, and still 
 more, her connection with Piowland, who had risen from it to 
 such unexampled heights, made her still a person of considera- 
 tion, to speak to the manager. But the manager of the foundry 
 was still more decided. 
 
 " If he really wants to learn the work, and his father will say 
 a single word, it will be easily managed." 
 
 "But oh, Mr. Blyth, ye must not ask that; for it's just in 
 consequence of two-three unlucky words with his father that 
 he's tl linking of taking a situation." 
 
 "Then, Mrs. Brown, you should give the young man good 
 advice. What does lie think he'll gain by quarrelling with his 
 father 1 He may be sure his father is twice the man that he is, 
 however clever he may be." 
 
 " I was not saying he was very clever," said Mrs. Brown ; 
 "but ye sec he has a stepmother, and that explains everything : 
 for she just turns the father against them, as is a common 
 occurrence." 
 
 "Well," said the manager, "all the same, the best thing he 
 can do is to make it up with his father. Stepmothers are ill 
 things, but they're not always as black as they're painted ; 
 and those that are subject to them must just put up with them." 
 
 This was all the comfort that Jean got, though she kept part 
 of the report from her nephew. 
 
 " He says you will just have to make it up with your papaw : 
 and then the foundry will be open to you, and everything you 
 please." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 363 
 
 " That means," said Archie, " that when you don't want a 
 thing you can always have it." 
 
 "It's just something like that," Mrs. Brown said. 
 
 And thus it appeared there was nothing at all to be done. 
 He went on reading the advertisements, answering sometimes 
 two or three in a day, but never getting any further on. Now 
 and then he would have a letter asking for testimonials, but 
 what testimonials could he obtain? Neither as his father's 
 son, nor as nobody's son, could he make any advance. His 
 father, in like circumstances, would have somehow forced the 
 hand of fate, and made it serve him. He would not have been 
 kept by the want of certificates, nothing would have stopped 
 him in his career. But Archie was not like his father. He was 
 proud, and timid, and sensitive, and easily discouraged ; he was 
 even indolent, poor boy — the worst of drawbacks— indolent in 
 mind, though not in body, afraid of any great resolution, hesi- 
 tating, and unable to resist the course of events. Such a spirit 
 goes down in the struggle for life. He might have been the 
 most steady, careful, punctual of workmen, happy in the sup- 
 port of routine, fixed hours, and a certain understood something 
 to do : but had it been he who had started in the foundry, 
 instead of his father, then Archie would have ended a good man, 
 much respected, but with only a few more shillings a week at 
 the end of his life than at the beginning. And, as was natural, 
 his training had, fostered all the weakness in him and none of 
 the strength. 
 
 It was strange and ludicrous, yet heart-breaking, to remember 
 that he had been invited by Lady Jean to the Castle, and urged 
 by the Marchbanks, who were ambitious people, and thought 
 Air. Rowland's money might do very well to increase their own 
 importance in the district, to go over to their grand new man- 
 sion, which was much more splendid than Lord Clydesdales 
 shabby old Castle. "Would any of them recognize him, if they 
 could see the shabby young man in search of a situation, who 
 went up and down the Sauchiehall Road ? Archie sometimes 
 wondered what he should do if he met Lady Jean. He was 
 more sure that she would see him and stop to speak to him, 
 than he was of any of the others. And she would, no doubt, 
 try to interfere and reconcile him with his father. He used to 
 con little speeches in his mind to make to her, or any other 
 benevolent meddler who might attempt this. He would say, 
 " Xo ; he has accused me of a dreadful thing, without hearing 
 me, without a doubt in his mind but that I did it. I will never 
 make a step, nor hold out a finger to him!" Sometimes the 
 words he put together were even stronger than this. "My 
 father and I are parted for ever. He never cared a penny- 
 piece that he had a son. He took no thought of us when we 
 were children, and he has always been unjust to me. It is 
 better that I should be no trouble to him ; and I mean to be 
 no more trouble to him, whatever happens," Archie would say. 
 
364 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Sometimes, on the other hand, he thought that it was more 
 dignified to make no complaint, and a finer thing altogether to 
 say nothing that could injure Rowland in anybody's opinion. 
 And then he would say, with a magnanimity which was a little 
 hurtful to his self-esteem, poor boy, "The life was not one that 
 suited me. I was brought up to think a great deal of work, and 
 I have come back here to do something for myself, as every man 
 should. My father made his own way, and so shall I." Alas, it 
 was very faltering, this proud declaration of independence : he 
 had no heart in it" He was not one of the strenuous souls who 
 make a gospel of work ; on the contrary, Mrs. Brown's gospel 
 had been all the other way, that to do nothing was far the finer 
 thing, and marked the gentleman all the world over. But 
 Archie had touched shoulders with the gentlefolks long enough 
 to be aware that this profession of independence, though it 
 depressed and disappointed Mrs. Brown, was the kind of thing 
 approved in higher circles, and it was the only way in which he 
 could exempt his father from blame. 
 
 He had got up very sad upon that November morning. It was 
 not yellow as in London, but gray with a leaden paleness, the 
 houses and pavements and looks of the people all gray, and to 
 a spirit already depressed and miserable, no spring or elasticity 
 anywhere in the dim prospect within, externally, or in the 
 troubled mind. Had life come to an end altogether? he asked 
 himself ; was there to be nothing in it more than this impatient 
 dulness, producing nothing ? He was a little later for break- 
 fast, as usually happened, Mrs. Brown indulging him in every 
 inclination or disinclination, without the slightest sense of 
 morality, or her old fear that over-indulgence was not good for 
 him. ?oor Jean had no longer any thought of that. He was 
 in trouble, poor fellow, and if he was more easy in his mind in 
 the morning before he got up, why disturb him ? or if he took a 
 little comfort in reading a book at night, why urge him to go to 
 bed ? If he was unpunctual for his meals, what did it matter ? 
 "There's naebody but me," Mrs. Brown said, "and if I get my 
 dinner at one o'clock or at three, wha's minding?" She had 
 not shown this complacence in the old days, when their good 
 training and manners and desire to give little trouble were her 
 pride. Archie was dressing languidly, looking at the shabby 
 clothes about the room with a sort of disgust, the outcome of 
 the gray and miserable morning, and of his own heavy and 
 troubled thoughts. How shabby they were ! and yet not so 
 shabby as common— just fit for a denizen of Sauchiehall Road, 
 as he was. But he was a shabby denizen even for Sauchiehall 
 Road, not up early and out to his cheerful work as was natural 
 there, but coming" clown late with the habits that might not be 
 amiss in the faultlessly-clothed Eddy, the young man of society, 
 but were disreputable, wretched in him, the Glasgow clerk— not 
 even that— the poor friendless lad, trying to be a Glasgow clerk. 
 Poor Archie had come to a depth in which all that was fantastic 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 365 
 
 in wretchedness was to be found. There seemed to be nothing 
 good left in him. To be going down to breakfast at ten o'clock 
 was as bad, almost worse than the crime with which he had been 
 charged. 
 
 He did not notice the cab which had stopped at the door, 
 though Mrs. Brown did with an immense impulse of excite- 
 ment ; but Archie did hear quite suddenly, so that he felt as if 
 in a dream, the sound of a soft voice— such a voice as was seldom 
 heard in that locality— so clearly toned, so correct in enuncia- 
 tion, so perfectly at the speaker's command— perhaps, however, 
 not that so much as the rest, for there was a tremor in it. He 
 had just opened his door to go down, and his room was exactly 
 at the head of the staircase. He did not at first recognize this 
 voice in the shock of hearing, without preparation, such an 
 organ at all. It said all at once out of the silence, as Archie 
 opened the door— but not to him, to some one down-stairs, " Is 
 Mr. Archibald Rowland here % May I come in 1 I think—" and 
 here there seemed a pause, " you must be Mrs. Brown." 
 
 "And wha may ye be?" said Jean's harsh, rough, uncultured 
 voice. 
 
 Oh !— it could be as gentle as a dove, that rude voice— there 
 were tones in it sometimes of love and tenderness that music 
 could not equal. Let us do the poor woman no injustice. But 
 when she answered Evelyn's question, no coal-heaver ever spoke 
 in tones more forbidding. Mrs. Brown divined, as she stood 
 there with the door in her hand, who her visitor was, and all 
 the worst side of her nature turned to meet this interloper, this 
 stepmother, the woman who had secured James Rowland's love, 
 and his money, and was the enemy of his children. " She shall 
 hear the truth from me if she never heard it in her life before, 
 Jean said to herself. And the torrent of her wrath rose up m 
 a moment like the waterspout of Eastern seas. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 
 Archie made, as he thought, but one step down the stairs : 
 he fell into the little passage, which led to the parlour like a 
 thunderbolt, " Aunt Jean, it is Mrs. Rowland ! " he cried. 
 
 " And if it is Mrs. Rowland," said Jean, " who is she to come 
 here as if the place belonged to her 1 which it dis not, nor ever 
 will, were she the queen o' the whole land." 
 
 "Archie," said the voice of Evelyn from beyond the stout, full 
 form that stood like a solid barrier between him and his fathers 
 wife ; " ask vour aunt kindly to let me in. I have been travel- 
 ling all night, and I bring you good news ; but I am very tired. 
 Please to let me in." 
 
 Mrs. Brown was rent by conflicting sentiments. To resist such 
 an entreaty is as hard for a Scotswoman of her class as for an 
 
366 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 Arab in the desert. The claims of hospitality are as urgent 
 with one as with the other. She did not know how to refuse, to 
 keep a tired woman, appealing to her, at arm's length. Further, 
 thoughts of fresh tea to be masked, and eggs to be boiled, flashed 
 into her mind across the sullen background of enmity which 
 made her stand fast in stubborn resistance. It was a sin against 
 her house to close the door, to oppose the entrance of the stranger. 
 She had never done such a thing, scarcely even to the gangrel 
 body who was not to be trusted in the neighbourhood of a silver 
 spoon, before, and the necessity hurt her. But to let in this hue 
 lady, tins proud woman, this stranger and alien person, who had 
 
 (presumably) hunted Archie from his father's house Oh, 
 
 no, no 1 
 
 " There are plenty hotels in Glasgow where the leddy can go," 
 she said, standing firm. "Ye can go with her, ye fool that ye 
 are, and be beguiled by her flattering tongue, for anything I 
 care." 
 
 " May not I come in ? " said Evelyn, with great surprise. " I 
 have been hoping all night for a little rest and a welcome. You 
 surely will not refuse me half an hour's rest, if I promise to go 
 away in half an hour ? " She smiled and looked at Archie, whose 
 anxious face appeared over Mrs. Brown's shoulder. "I did not 
 know," she said, " that your aunt had any objection to me." 
 
 "Ainy objection!" cried Mrs. Brown, "when you have just 
 made his life a burden to him, and ruined all his prospects, jDOor 
 lad, and closed the doors o' his father's house ! " 
 
 "But I have not done that," said Mrs. .Rowland, surprised. 
 "You are making a great mistake, surely. His prospects are 
 not rained, nor are his father's doors closed against him, as he 
 knows. But now," she said, tears of weakness coming into her 
 eyes, " they are thrown open as if with the sound of a trumpet. 
 Archie, thank God that it is all cleared up and found out. Will 
 you not let me in to tell him how it has been discovered and his 
 honour cleared 1 Don't you care for his honour and good name, 
 you who have been a mother to him — more than for anything 
 else in the world 1 " 
 
 " I never doubted either one or the other," said Mrs. Brown ; 
 "it will be nae discovery to me." 
 
 " Nor to me either," said Evelyn, " as he knows : but proofs 
 are good things. If you will not let me in," she added, with a 
 smile, which was very near the other manifestation of feeling — 
 tears, "I must sit down on the steps, and he can hear my story 
 here/' 
 
 " You can come in," said Mrs. Brown, opening the door wide. 
 " I will have nae play-acting on my doorsteps. Archie, ye can 
 take this leddy into the parlour. It's easy for the like of such 
 a woman to get over a laddie like you. Ye ken nothing of their 
 wiles ; how should ye 1 " She followed as she spoke into the 
 parlour, where she pulled forward an easy-chair violently, talking 
 all the time. "They just get ye back under their thumb when 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 367 
 
 it pleases them, until the time comes when your downfa's doomed. 
 Here's a footstool till ye. It'll no doubt be a great satisfaction 
 to feel that Jean Brown's house is but a poor place, no a chair 
 good enough for the like of you to sit down " 
 
 " Indeed, it is very comfortable, and a great ease to sit down 
 and be quiet for a moment. Thank you kindly, 1 ' said Evelyn. 
 " I have been travelling, I may say, for four days. On Tuesday 
 night I went up to town — to London, I mean — and there I have 
 been to and fro all the time, and came up again here during the 
 night. So I have an excuse for being very tired." 
 
 ''Lord bless us," said Mrs. Brown, with wide-open eyes, "and 
 what was the need of that ? I'm thinking with Jims Rowland's 
 money in your pouch ye have little need to weary yourself in 
 ainy way." 
 
 Going down to the Kyles of Bute for a day's holiday was the 
 most exhausting experience Mrs. Brown had ever had, and she 
 had not got the better of that fatigue for several days. She 
 was a little overawed by this description, as indeed Evelyn, 
 with pardonable guile, had intended her to be. 
 
 She darted out of the room as she spoke, perhaps that she 
 might not yield more to the influence of this soft-spoken woman 
 (" but they can speak soft enough, and sweet enough, when it's 
 for their ain ends," she said to herself), leaving Evelyn alone 
 with Archie. She held out her hand to him with a smile. " I 
 am so tired," she said, "that I am scarcely capable of telling 
 you my story. I feel the wheels going in my head, and a sort 
 of perpetual movement. Now, some people travel by night 
 constantly, and are never the worse." 
 
 She spoke thus, partly because she was indeed very tired, 
 and partly to accustom Archie to the shock of seeing her, 
 speaking with her, being thus brought back to all the stormy 
 emotions of that last eventful night. She half understood 
 him and the reluctance with which, now that his aunt's violent 
 opposition was taken away, he touched her hand, and accepted 
 her confidence. Archie was not amiable though he might be 
 weak. At the sight of her seated there, and no longer held 
 at bay, all the hard things that had been said, and which he 
 himself had united in saying, against her and her power 
 over his father, surged up into his mind. For anything lie 
 knew she might be the malign influence that Jean Brown 
 believed her to be. She might be, for some occult reason of her 
 own, trying to draw him again within her power, to represent 
 herself as his benefactress, only that she might more fully and 
 completely ruin him the next time. This had been suggested 
 to him so often that he almost believed it : and it came back 
 with all that force of hostility which replaces remorse, in the 
 reaction from a momentary softness, which is in itself a reaction 
 too. He had been ready to pluck his aunt away— to bid her 
 stand aside for shame, while she held this woman at bay : but 
 now that the woman was there enthroned, without opposition, 
 
368 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 holding out her hand to him, with that grace of profoundest, 
 unapproachable superiority, all his rebellious feelings started 
 forth again. He felt no curiosity to know what she had been 
 doing, or what was the result of which she seemed so proud. 
 How could it affect him ? He represented to himself that even 
 to speak to him of being cleared was an insult, and her brag of 
 her fatigue and exertions revolted him. What did it matter to 
 him if she was tired or not 1 What did he care if the wheels 
 were going in her head 1 He touched her hand because it would 
 be uncivil, and show his bad breeding, if he refused it— and 
 then he turned his back and stood looking out of the window. 
 It was the same attitude as Eddy had assumed, though for a 
 different reason, and Evelyn, in her exhaustion, smiled over 
 the resemblance. She said to herself that boys of that age 
 were very much alike, though so different, and that after all the 
 most accomplished young man of the world had only the same 
 ways of showing emotion as were patent to the simplest of his 
 kind. She said after a moment : " You don't seem to have much 
 curiosity as to what I have been doing, Archie ? " 
 
 " No," he said curtly ; " why should I ? You were so polite as 
 to say it had something to do with me : but I don't see what you 
 could have to do with me." 
 
 " Come," she said, " you must not be cross, Archie. Your aunt 
 
 is, but I excuse her— for she does not know, and perhaps may 
 
 even think I don't know— that there is no virtue in being uncivil." 
 
 "She is not uncivil," he said, rudely. "She is the kindest 
 
 woman in the world." 
 
 " The one, unfortunately, does not always make the other im- 
 possible," she said softly, and then she sighed. " Is it necessary 
 to begin all over again? Archie," she said, "I thought we had 
 passed the preliminary stage." 
 
 " I don't know what you call the preliminary stage." 
 " Well, well," she said with an impatient sigh. 
 And then it occurred to Archie that there was something 
 ludicrous in the position, in his sullen stand in front of the 
 window, while she sat, shut out from the light by his shadow, 
 endeavouring to bring him to reason, behind. He felt, too, that 
 the reason was on her side, and the obstinacy and folly on his, 
 which did not make him more amiable, nor help to free him 
 from his angry resistance. What roused him was the jar of a 
 rush against the door, which presently was flung open, striking 
 against the wall, by the rapid entrance of a tray, borne by Mrs. 
 Brown herself in front of her, covered with a white cloth, and 
 bearing all the materials of an excellent breakfast. Jean set it 
 down with a dash upon the table, pushing aside the carefully 
 arranged books, and almost breaking, in her vehemence, the 
 shade which covered a group of wax water-lilies which filled the 
 place of honour. " Lift oft' the flowers and the books, Archie," 
 she cried; "you maunna let even your worst enemy hunger and 
 thirst when ye bring him in to your house." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 369 
 
 "Thank you for your kindness," said Evelyn, with a faint 
 laugh. " But why am I to be supposed his enemy ? It is a little 
 cruel, don't you think, without any proof." 
 
 " What maitters that as long as ye get what you want ? " said 
 Jean; "and I'll allow that you want a cup of tea after your 
 journey, whatever is your objeck, maudam. And ye had better 
 go ben and get your breakfast, Archie. I will see that the leddy 
 gets everything she wants." 
 
 "You treat me," said Evelyn, put on her mettle, "a little as 
 Jael did her enemy. Butter in a lordly dish, but the nail and 
 the hammer ready for use behind." 
 
 "There's neither nail nor hammer in my hands," said Mrs. 
 Brown. "And I never liked the woman. It's true that she was 
 commended by the jDrophetess, but I often thought y-n was a 
 slip o' the tongue in Deborah, carried away by her feelin's, as 
 is rale common with women, and no thinking what she was 
 saying. Xa, I am nae Jael. Besides he was weel kent for an 
 enemy to Israel, and that's mair than ony individual. I hope 
 ye find the tea to your taste ; there is no pushon in it : and the 
 eggs are our ain laying, for I've aye kept a wheen poultry. It 
 was good for the bairns to have them caller and good — when I 
 had the bairns with me." , 
 
 "I have often thought of you," said Evelyn, "and of how you 
 must have missed them. It was too abrupt at last. If you had 
 but come with them to Rosmore " 
 
 v> Xa na, none o' that. And ye may spare me your peety, 
 Mrs. Rowland : I'm no a woman that is fond o' peety. It was 
 just done, and the thing is over, and there is no more to be said : 
 if ye had kept them happy when ye had them ! " 
 
 "That is always the hardest thing to do." 
 
 " Eh, woman," said Mrs. Brown, " if ye had been a woman like 
 the women in the books ! There's such arises from time to 
 time — that does her duty to the man's bairns and puts her 
 feelin's in her pocket, if she doesna like them ; though how it 
 was possible no to like them is mair than I can tell. She should 
 have been up and tellt him, when there was suspicion thrown 
 upon that lad, that it wasna true. If they had threepit it till 
 they were black in the face, she would have said she didna 
 believe a word. She would have cried out, ' Look at the lad J " (a 
 more sullen, hangdog countenance than Archie's at this moment 
 could scarcely have been conceived), "'and hear his ain saying 
 aboon a' the world ! ' " 
 
 There was a little stir at the window, and a harsh voice broke 
 out suddenly where Archie stood : "That's just what she did,'" 
 he said. 
 
 " If it had been me," cried Jean, inspired with her theme, and 
 noting no interruption, "though I'm nae pattern, I would have 
 cried out, ' Oh, get away from me, ye ill-thinking man ! will ye 
 daur to say there's a lie in that laddie's bonny broo ! I'm no his 
 parent, like you (I would have said), but a woman with e'en in 
 
 B B 
 
370 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 my head, and I ken the truth when I see it. My word for his ! 
 (I would have cried) yon's the truth and a' the rest is lies ! ' 
 Woman ! oh, woman ! I'm no a pattern ; I'm no a grand and 
 bonny leddy like you ; but that's what I would have done — 
 plain Jean Brown, standing here before ye — if it had been me ! " 
 
 Jean plumped down into a seat at the end of this tirade, and 
 burst, as was natural, into hot torrents of tears, to which she 
 gave vent freely, rocking herself to and fro with the primitive 
 usage of passion. Evelyn had not said a word. She had followed 
 the wild eloquence of the other with a tremulous smile and 
 tears in her eyes. She did not even look at Archie, to remind 
 him. He, for his part, had not known how to contain himself 
 while the scene went on. He caught at his aunt's arm, which 
 she used in the free gesture of her class to emphasize her words, 
 and at her dress: but it was not till Mrs. Brown's sobs began to 
 grow less that the lad spoke. 
 
 "Aunt Jean," he said, "it is you at the end that has put all 
 the clouds away. We've been slanderers, and evil speakers, you 
 and me. W 7 e have just done our utmost, and all failed. We 
 have wanted to lay the blame of it on her, and to think that it 
 was her doing. But you've cleared up all that. Aunt Jean," he 
 said, with a quick touch of his hand upon her shoulder, " every- 
 thing you said you would have done, she did. Do you hear me ? 
 — all you said, she said. She has just done that and more. My 
 father, if he were here, would tell you. You've shown me the 
 truth anyway, whether you will see it yourself or not. She has 
 done all that — and more ! " 
 
 Archie turned away and made a round of the room like a 
 blind man, and then he went up to Evelyn on the other side. 
 "I humbly beg your pardon with all my heart and soul," he 
 said. "I'll maybe never enter my father's doors. I'll maybe 
 never come to anything as long as I live. And what you have 
 come to tell me is just like Hebrew and Greek to me, and I'm 
 not caring what it is ; but she's cleared my eyes, and I just beg 
 your pardon with all my heart and soul." 
 
 "Hush, Archie, hush," said Mrs. Rowland, giving him her 
 hand (which he shook awkwardly and dropped, poor boy, having 
 no graceful suggestions in him, not knowing what to do with a 
 lady's hand in such circumstances, as Eddy did) ; "there is no 
 pardon needed : and Mrs. Brown, shake hands with me, for we 
 understand each other fully, and I agree in every word you say. 
 If James did not do so, it was perhaps because he was a man, 
 as you say, and wanted proof ; and because, also, oh believe it, 
 Archie ! you are dearer to your father than to any one, and to 
 doubt you is more than he can bear." 
 
 "There is somebody at the door," cried Mrs. Brown, hastily 
 drying her tears; "and we are all begritten, and will do nothing 
 but expose ourselves. I'm no quick enough to follow a' you've 
 said. And I canna tell what I've said to put ye baith in such 
 a commotion ; nothing but what was very simple, for I'm not 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 371 
 
 a person of edication, like you. But if Archie's pleased, I'm 
 pleased: and you're a bonny woman, Mrs. Rowland, and I canna 
 resist ye. If yell take it, I'll gi'e ye my hand. And Archie, lad, 
 go out to the door, and see that no strange person is let in 
 here." 
 
 Archie opened the door, and fell back with a cry of astonish- 
 ment, and Rowland came in, looking round him upon all the 
 signs of emotion which still were very apparent, with wonder- 
 ing eyes. He tried to veil his surprise in the sternness of aspect 
 which was natural to a man whom all the persons present had 
 bitterly offended. He was among a company, indeed, of offenders; 
 all of them had sinned against him ; and, perhaps, in present 
 circumstances, his wife the most of all. He was still utterly 
 perplexed as to the cause of her flight to London : and what 
 connection there could be between that and her presence here, 
 it was impossible to divine. He looked round upon them sternly, 
 trying to suppress other sentiments. It was very strange to 
 Evelyn to meet, for the first time in their life together, a look of 
 disapproval in her husband's eyes. After the first shock and 
 surprise of his appearance, she had sunk again into her chair, 
 holding out her hand : but he made no response, either to the 
 smile or to the stretched-out hand. 
 
 " I saw my wife," he said to Mrs. Brown briefly, with whom 
 he had exchanged a silent greeting ; " I saw my wife in the 
 street, and followed her here. I know no business she could 
 have here. I should apologize for the intrusion." He took no 
 notice of his son, who had instinctively drawn aside. "It 
 surprises me very greatly, Evelyn, to see you here." 
 
 " Oh, Jims ! sae did it me ; but your bonny leddy has none 
 but a good motive for coming : I can see that noo." 
 
 " I do not wonder," said Evelyn calmly: she was not afraid 
 of her husband; "but you will soon understand. I am surprised 
 also to see you. Did you get my telegram, James ?" 
 
 "I got no telegram," he cried angrily, "and I thought I had 
 forbidden any intercourse with— with— " 
 
 "Oh, no," she said, "you could not have done that: first 
 because you have too much respect for your wife to give her an 
 order which was unworthy: and because you could not interfere 
 with my own judgment. On the contrary, I came here— to 
 bring our boy home." 
 
 "I gave no authority for any such mission," Rowland cried, 
 " and I will not have it! I will not have it ! " He was trembling 
 behind his anger, which was like a veil thrown on to 5lisgui.se 
 the strange movements and agitations in his mind. What did 
 she mean! She had not disturbed herself, except for a moment, 
 and still lay back in the big chair pale with weariness, yet 
 smiling in his face the more dark lie looked. What had she in 
 her mind to make her smile so 1 Why did she say she had come 
 to bring the boy? She said our boy. What, oh what was the 
 meaning of it all 1 xlrchie stood dark as a thundercloud, dumb, 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 taking no more note of his father than his father did of him. 
 (They both saw every movement of each other, every change of 
 countenance, every turn, had it been of a finger.) And Jean 
 had evidently been crying, and was ready to burst out again at 
 any moment. It was she that interposed now. 
 
 "Jims," she said, "your bonny leddy is just aff a journey; 
 she's been travelling all night. I can't tell where ye have been 
 yoursel', but you look very wearit too. You can see her cup o' 
 tea standing by her that she hasna touched. I poured it out, 
 but I hadna the grace to hold my tongue, and just was mad at 
 her, and abused her sae that the darlin' creature, as she is, never 
 swallowed a drop, and her faintin' for want. But I've been 
 convicted out of my ain very mouth," cried Jean, " every word 
 that I spoke has come back upon me : for I threepit up against 
 her that I would have done this and that. Me ! a bonny person 
 to set up for a pattern ! and it turned out that everything I 
 said she had done, and mair. And now you come bursting in, 
 just as unreasonable. Say out, man, what ye would have her 
 to do, and you'll find she has done it — and mair ! But for ainy 
 sake," cried Jean, sobbing, with her apron to her eyes, " let 
 the bonny leddy get a moment's peace, and tak' her cup o" tea." 
 
 "Dear Mrs. Brown," cried Evelyn, between laughing and 
 crying, " you're a good friend ! and I do want a little tea. And 
 I am not afraid of him nor any of you. If you have not been 
 home, nor got my telegram, you will want a full account of me, 
 James, for I have been in London by myself, ever since you 
 went away. Yes, it is true, I took advantage of your absence 
 to go away. A wicked woman could not have done more. As 
 soon as you had gone I set out. It would not be wonderful if 
 you suspected me. But I do not know of what," she added, 
 with a low laugh. There was something in her laugh that over- 
 came altogether her middle-aged angry husband. He was not 
 angry : all that was a pretence ; nor did he know what he 
 suspected her of. At this moment he suspected her justly of 
 what she had done, of having found some way, he could not tell 
 how, of making an end of the trouble which was growing at his 
 heart. When he had left Bosmore there was something in her 
 eye that had made him believe she would do this. He had given 
 her no permission, yet he had a confidence that she would act 
 somehow — he could not tell how — and clear everything up. It 
 had been a horrible disappointment to him, coming back with 
 that confidence in his mind, to find that she was absent, to be 
 told that she had gone to ask advice — on his affairs. And here 
 he had been utterly perplexed, and had not known what to 
 think. That was the history of his many changes. Suspect 
 her 1 ISTo, he did not know, any more than she did, of what. 
 He had never suspected her — unless it was of failing to fulfil 
 that wild hope of his suffering heart. But something told him 
 now that she had not failed. He stood by as grave as a whole 
 bench of judges, and watched with a solemn countenance while 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN" 373 
 
 she took her tea. There had been a little struggle with Mrs. 
 Brown, who protested that it must be cold, and that she must 
 make more. But Evelyn had been triumphant in this, and now 
 sat eating and drinking before them all, while they looked on 
 with solemnity. There was something of the highest comic 
 absurdity in the aspect of the father and son, one more serious 
 than the other, standing watching her at her simple meal. Mrs. 
 Brown hovered about her, imploring her to take this and that — 
 an egg, some scones, a chop that could be got in an instant, 
 marmalade, that was considered very good, of her own making 
 ■ — and many things beside. But the two men stood in portentous 
 silence, never moving a muscle, as grave as if her little piece of 
 toast was a matter of life and death. Archie was agitated 
 vaguely, he knew not how : but his father's mind was like a 
 great flowing river, held by a thread, of ice, which the first ray 
 of sunshine would clear away. He bore the aspect of anger 
 still ; the cloud hung upon his brow ; but all restraint was ready 
 to be swept away, and the full tide to flow forth. He stood, 
 however, black as night, and watched his wife at her breakfast. 
 The strangest, humorous, nay comic sight. 
 
 And Evelyn was worn out with all her exertions. She was 
 so weak, with her nerves all so relaxed after their long tension, 
 that they were able to resist no temptation. She watched her 
 husband and his son with a growing sense of the ludicrous. 
 They were so solemn, watching her like doctors over a case, as 
 if the manner in which she set down her tea-cup, or put her 
 morsel of bread into her mouth, were symptoms of the gravest 
 kind. She watched them as long as nature would hold out. It 
 was not until she had finished her cup of tea, and ate her last 
 morsel. She put her plate away with her hand, and they both 
 moved slightly with the touch, as if it were the signal for some 
 revelation. And this in her weak condition was too much for 
 Evelyn. She burst out with a laugh of such hilarity that all 
 the silent room echoed. She laughed till the tears flowed down 
 her cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, James, forgive me," she cried, "you are like an owl, 
 serious as midnight and the dark : and Archie is just like you, 
 as like you as — what is the word '? two peas. Archie, come here 
 and give me your hand. Do you remember that I once told you 
 I believed every word you said ? " 
 
 A murmur came from Archie's throat. He was half affronted, 
 half angry, offended by that laugh which had startled him in his 
 unexpressed excitement. But yet he went and stood by her as 
 she said. 
 
 " I was wrong to laugh," said Evelyn, " but I could not help 
 it. If you had seen yourselves, you would have laughed too. 
 James, I got a clue just before you left home, but I could not 
 tell you of it, because of Sir John : and then you went away with 
 him. I don't know that I should have told you : and I was glad 
 you went away. It was the opportunity I wanted. I went up 
 
374 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 to town, and I saw the man who — James ! — what is the matter 1 
 Do you know ? " 
 
 He had lifted up his hands with a great exclamation of dismay. 
 " Him ! " he cried, and no more. 
 
 "I think," said Evelyn with sudden gravity, "your father 
 knows — independent of me. Archie, go and get ready to come 
 home. It is a very sad story. Your father has the best heart, 
 he is more sorry for him that has sinned than glad for him that 
 is saved. I repent of my silly laugh. For though you have not 
 done it, another poor boy has done it. James ! God bless you, 
 you have the best heart of us all." 
 
 CHAPTER XL VI 
 
 It was a very curious breakfast party : for this of course 
 was what had to follow, neither father nor son having yet had 
 any breakfast, notwithstanding all the agitations of the morn- 
 ing. And Mr. Rowland and his son, their minds being relieved, 
 had a very different idea of what was implied in the word 
 breakfast from that entertained by Evelyn, whose cup of tea 
 and morsel of "bap" had satisfied all her needs. They meant 
 other things, and their meaning was more promptly understood 
 by Mrs. Brown than anything that had gone before. It had 
 gone to her heart to see the eggs, the marmalade, and the 
 scones, all neglected upon the tray which she had brought for 
 Mrs. Rowland with the hospitality of a savage woman to her 
 enemy : but now the opportunity was within reach of dis- 
 tinguishing herself in the most lavish way. She was con- 
 tinually on the road between the kitchen and parlour, hurrying, 
 with one dish after another, eggs, finnan haddocks, fried ham, 
 everything that her substantial system of cooking understood. 
 It was Evelyn's turn to sit and watch the progress of a meal 
 which was so very different from her own, which she did with 
 mingled amusement and amazement, and something of that 
 feminine mixture of pleasure and laughing disdain for the men 
 whose appetites are not interfered with by emotion, which is 
 so common. She liked to see them eat with a certain maternal 
 satisfaction in their well-being, though not so marked as that 
 of Mrs. Brown, who ran to and fro supplying them, with tears 
 of delight in her eyes — but with little jibes and jests at the 
 ease of the transition from all their excitement to that excellent 
 meal, which Archie, always afraid of being laughed at, was 
 uncertain how to accept, though satisfied by seeing that they 
 did not affect his father's equanimity. Presently, however, 
 these little jests began to slacken, the tone of her voice changed, 
 and when, after a moment or two of silence, Rowland looked 
 up to say something, he perceived, with the most unexpected 
 sudden rush of emotion to his own eyes, and feeling to his 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 375 
 
 heart, that his wife had fallen asleep. He had not understood 
 Jean's signals, who stood by with her finger on her lip, and 
 who was drying her eyes with the big white apron which she 
 had slipj^ed on to save her gown, as she ran to and fro with 
 the dishes which Bell in the kitchen was fully occupied in 
 preparing. 
 
 "She's just wearit to death," Jean whispered with a small 
 sob, "and vexed wi' the contradictions o' sinners, after a' she's 
 done for you. Just hold your tongues now, and let her get a 
 little peace, ye twa greedy men." The elaborate pantomime in 
 which the rest of the meal was carried on ; the care of both to 
 subdue the sound of their knives and forks, and suppress the 
 little jar of the cups and saucers ; and the super-careful clearing 
 away, performed on tiptoe by Bell, as being less heavy in her 
 movements than her mistress, aided by Archie, woulJ have been 
 very amusing to Evelyn could she have seen through her closed 
 eyelids what was going on : but her sleep was very sincere, the 
 involuntary and profound slumber of exhaustion, from which 
 relief of mind, and the delightful ease of success, took every 
 sting. When she came to herself it was in the quiet of a room 
 given up to her repose, the blind drawn down, every sound 
 hushed, and a large shawl — Mrs. Brown's best, a real Indian 
 shawl sent by Rowland in former days, of which the good 
 woman was more proud than of anything she possessed — care- 
 fully arranged over her. Her husband sat near, not moving a 
 linger, watching over her repose. Evelyn woke with a slight 
 start, and it was a minute or two before she realized that she 
 was not in the corner of a railway carriage nor the forlorn 
 solitude of the London hotel, but that her mission was accom- 
 plished, and all hostilities vanquished. It was perhaps Jean's 
 shawl that made this most clearly apparent to her. It was a 
 beautiful shawl, the colours like nothing but those fine tints of 
 Cashmere with which her Indian experiences had made her 
 fully acquainted, the texture so soft, the work so delicate. The 
 first intimation that Rowland had of his wife's waking, were 
 the words, said to herself with a little sigh of jDleasure, "He 
 must have sent her this." 
 
 ''What did you say, my darling?" he said, getting up 
 quickly. 
 
 " Oh, you are there, James ! I said you must have sent it to 
 her, and I meant she must approve of me at last, or she would 
 not have covered me with her beautiful shawl." 
 
 " Do you care for her approval, Evelyn 1 " 
 
 " Care ! " she said, " of course I care," then added with a laugh, 
 ■• A woman can never bear to be disapproved of. I suppose I 
 must have been asleep." 
 
 "Like a baby," said her husband, with his laugh of emotion, 
 "and very nice you looked, my dear, but utterly tired 
 out." 
 
 "Yes. I was very tired," she acknowledged. "I have done 
 
376 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 nothing but run about, and then wait, which was still worse. 
 
 And then " She sat up suddenly throwing off her coverings. 
 
 " James ! you know — how did you know 1 " 
 
 " Tell me first," he said. " It is very little I know — and then 
 I will tell you." 
 
 " That is a bargain," she answered smiling, and then with 
 many interruptions of remark and commentary, she told him 
 her story : Rankin's hint, and Marion's first of all. 
 
 " Marion ! Marion told you that ? " he cried in amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 " She told me nothing. I do not for a moment suppose that 
 she knew anything," cried Evelyn, scenting another danger, 
 " but she is very keen-witted, and must have felt that if there 
 was a mystery " 
 
 " A great deal too keen-witted,* the little " The substantive 
 
 intended to come in here was a profane one, and Rowland felt 
 on his side a danger too. 
 
 "And then I had all the trouble in the world to see him. I 
 almost forced an entrance at last, and by the threat of invading 
 him in his own room — indeed," said Evelyn, "it was not a threat 
 only, I should have gone to his room, as I could find him no other 
 where. But the threat sufficed and he came. James ! the boy 
 has committed a great crime, but oh, my heart is sore for Eddy. 
 He has no mother." 
 
 "You think you might have been his mother, Evelyn ?" 
 
 " I don't know how you should have divined it — but I do : 
 thank God that I am not ; but sometimes I cannot help think- 
 ing what a terrible fate I might have had, but for the goodness 
 of God——" 
 
 "Working through the wickedness of man." 
 
 "Don't raise such questions, James ! Don't make me think 
 of it at all. I have been spared that fate, thank God, and saved 
 for a very different one. It is very fantastic, but it gives me a 
 feeling to the children " 
 
 She had put out her hand to him, and he held it in his own. 
 He gave it a grip, now, more loving than tender. " It gives me," 
 he said, "a feeling too." 
 
 " Not of— dislike— not of " 
 
 , " What do you take me for, Evelyn 1 A man like me is often 
 very fantastic, I allow, though nobody would think it. I am so 
 touched by the thought that they might have been your children, 
 and so glad of the escape we have had that they aren't ; and so 
 sorry for them, poor things, for losing the best chance they could 
 have had." 
 
 At this curiously mixed statement of what was so real and 
 true to the speakers, Evelyn laughed, with tears in her voice, 
 pressing her husband's hand. And then she said, " Now tell me, 
 James, how you know ? " 
 
 This was not so easy as her task. The middle-aged man of 
 business blushed as youths and maidens are alone considered 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 377 
 
 capable of doing. " Is it not enough that I might have guessed 
 like Marion, or that Marion might have communicated her guess 
 tome?" 
 
 " Anything is enough that you tell me," she said. 
 
 " That drives all fiction out of my mouth. The reason I knew, 
 Evelyn, was that I was there/' 
 
 " There ! " she cried in amazement, raising herself upright. 
 
 " There ! more or less. I thought you must have seen me 
 when you came out as you did, with a bounce, not like you. I 
 was, I am ashamed to tell you, like a wretched spy, on the other 
 side of the road, watching where you had gone." 
 
 She turned her face to him with such a look of wide-eyed 
 astonishment that his countenance fell. i; I have to beg your 
 pardon, Evelyn. Hear my story first, and then you can say 
 what you please. I was just wild with disappointment and 
 misery when I found you gone. Then — it was on a hint — I 
 guessed where you were. I got up to London on Friday morn- 
 ing — was it only yesterday ?— and they told me at the hotel you 
 had just gone out, that if I followed you — I did follow you, 
 and came up to you. But I couldn't speak to you. How could 
 I ask an account from my wife of where she was going, or tell 
 her I had followed her 1 I just followed still, and then I saw 
 that you went in, and guessed that you had an interview up- 
 stairs, and then an interview down-stairs. And then— Well, 
 when we both got back to the hotel I w T as more certain than 
 ever that I could not show that I was spying upon you, Evelyn, 
 and was ashamed even to say that I wondered what you were 
 doing. I knew whose house it was, by instinct, I suppose._ And 
 then, Eddy came to you in the afternoon. And I could think of 
 nothing else but that— when I thought you had been occupied 
 about my boy, it was this other boy that was filling your mind. 
 And then you came back, and I with you in the next carriage, 
 though you never saw me. And then to my wonder and astonish- 
 ment I watched you come here. So that when you said you had 
 seen the man who— committed that forgery— I knew at once 
 who it was." 
 
 Rowland concluded his narrative with his head bent down, 
 the words coming slowly from his lips. He did not meet the 
 eyes which he felt sure must be full of wrath, and every moment 
 he feared that the hand which held his (his own had become too 
 limp with alarm to hold anything) should drop it, or fling it 
 away in indignation. Evelyn held it tight, giving it a fierce 
 little pressuref rom time to time. No doubt presently she would 
 fling it from her. And there was a silence which was awful to 
 the penitent. 
 
 " I never," she said at last, " could have recognized you in the 
 role of a detective, James." 
 
 " Xo," he said with a furtive glance at her, slightly encour- 
 aged by the sound of her voice, though doubtful that the tight- 
 ness with which she held his hand was preliminary to the sudden 
 
378 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 tossing away from her, which he expected and feared. " No, it 
 is not exactly my kind of way." 
 
 " But I recognize you," she said, " very well, when you were 
 not able to say to your wife that you suspected her, when you 
 were ashamed to let me know that you wondered what I was 
 doing. Of what did you suspect me, James 1 " 
 
 She did not loose his hand, but he freed it unconsciously, rising 
 to his feet in overwhelming agitation at this question. Of what 
 did he suspect her 1 Good heavens ! Rowland's forehead grew 
 cold and wet, his eyes rose, troubled, to meet those with which 
 she was regarding him — large, clear, wide-open. It was cruel of 
 Evelyn : the man was so intimidated that he could scarcely 
 reply, though indeed he had been all the time dans son droit. 
 
 "I — did not suspect you of anything. Tut ! " he said recover- 
 ing himself, "why shouldn't I say the worst 1 ? I suspected you 
 of going to consult that man about your husband's affairs." 
 
 " Did you indeed, James 1 You supposed I was going to con- 
 sult a man — of whom I have a right to think everything that is 
 worst in a woman's eyes, whom I neither trust, nor esteem, nor 
 believe a word that he says — upon the concerns of my honour- 
 able husband, which are my concerns, and more than mine, just 
 so much more than mine that I am trusted with them ? You 
 could suppose that, James 1 " 
 
 " No," said the unfortunate man, moving from one leg to the 
 other in the extremity of his perplexity and distress. "No, 
 you're right, Evelyn, I didn't. I suspected nothing. I was 
 ashamed, bitterly ashamed of the whole affair. It was nothing 
 but the suggestion of that little — I mean it was the madness of 
 my disappointment at finding you not there. What I meant to 
 say," he added, taking a little courage, " was that perhaps if it 
 had been anybody else but you " 
 
 " No," she said. " No sophistry, James : whoever it had been, 
 it would have been the same thing. You would have been 
 ashamed to ask an honest woman any such question. You are 
 not the kind of man to believe in any shameful tiling. Most 
 men believe in every shameful thing — that man, for instance, 
 whom you thought I was going to consult." 
 
 He hung his head a little under this taunt, but then he said 
 in a certain self-justificatory tone, "You saw him after all." 
 
 " I saw him," she said, a slight flush for the first time rising 
 on her face, "against my will. I was not aware he was there. 
 I had heard from Rosamond that he was still abroad : not that 
 I mean you to think," she added at once, " that it would have 
 made the least difference had I known he was there. I should 
 have gone — to throw light upon this trouble — anywhere in the 
 world — had the devil himself and not Edward Saumarez been 
 there. I don't know what is the worst," she said impulsively. 
 " I think the other one's perhaps belied, but not he." 
 
 Evelyn's strong speech made her falter for a moment and be 
 silent, which encouraged Rowland to say, putting out his hand 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 379 
 
 again, " Devil lie may be, but I'm cutting a poor enough figure. 
 Do you think you will be able to forgive me, Evelyn 1 I will 
 never do it again." 
 
 The rueful humility of the tone restored Mrs. Rowland to 
 herself. She laughed, putting her hand in his. "Yes, do it 
 again," she said, "for there never was anything so delightful in 
 the world as a man who follows his wife off to London, where 
 she is perhaps going astray, and is ashamed to ask her what she 
 is doing when he finds her there. You make me proud of my 
 Othello : for he is quite a new one, better than Shakespeare's. 
 Oh, James ! what a difference, what a difference ! To think you 
 should both be men of the same race, that hideous satyr, and 
 
 you I ;; 
 
 To say that good James Rowland had any very lear idea 
 
 what she was raving about would be untrue. He knew no resem- 
 blance he could possibly have to Othello, nor what Shakespeare 
 had to do with it. Neither was he clear who was the hideous 
 satyr. But he knew that this trust on Evelyn's part was to his 
 own credit and praise, and he was pleased, as the best of men 
 may be. 
 
 " Well," he said, recovering himself entirely, " we will consider 
 that incident over, Evelyn, and me the most happy man in 
 Scotland, be the other who he may. I owe Archie some amends 
 for suspecting him, but you will allow " 
 
 " I will allow nothing," said Evelyn. " Had you treated him 
 as you treat me, and been ashamed to suggest such a thing to 
 your son as you own you were to your wife, we might all have 
 been spared a great deal of pain. But now it's all over, thank 
 God, and you will know better another time." 
 
 "Don't fall upon me and slay me on another ground after 
 you"ve forgiven me on your own," he said. And then lie grew 
 suddenly grave and asked, " Did he give you any details— did 
 he tell you why he did it, the unhappy boy V 1 
 
 " He asked me only that the cheque might be destroyed. 1 
 thought you would think Archie's exculpation cheaply purchased 
 at that cost." 
 
 " Of course, of course," he said, with a wave, of his hand. 
 
 "And gave me this, which he said would to you be proof 
 enough." 
 
 Mr. Rowland took the scrap of paper, with his own name 
 written upon it, in different degrees of perfection. He looked 
 at it intently for a minute, then threw it into the smouldering 
 fire, where it made a momentary blaze and nickered away. 
 
 "If the thing could be destroyed like that !" he said. Then 
 after a pause, " The question is, what is to be done with that 
 unhappy boy." 
 
 " James ! I promised him exemption, safety. He was never 
 
 to hear of it again." 
 
 "Tut, tut!" he said. "It's you now, Evelyn, that shows a 
 want of understanding. Do you think anything in the world 
 
380 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 would make me bring to disgrace and ruin that boy ! The 
 creature's not of age," he cried. " What are we to do with him, 
 to make it still possible that he should live his life ?" 
 
 " James," cried Evelyn, after a pause, " I must tell you. There 
 are such curious difFerences. I don't think that Eddy is — very 
 unhappy. He has his moments of seriousness, but generally he 
 takes it lightly enough." 
 
 "I don't see that that makes it any better. Are we to leave 
 him among his debts and his follies, to be tempted to do such a 
 thing again? He should be separated from that horrible, — 
 what do you call it — society life of his, and set to work." 
 
 " I don't think you would ever get him to work, James ! " 
 
 " He should be taken, anyhow, out of that whirl of wretched 
 life." 
 
 " He could not live out of it, James ! " 
 
 " Yet he managed to exist for a whole month at Rosmore." 
 
 " Oil, my dear James, he was born in it, and he will die in 
 it. He could not manage to exist out of that atmosphere of 
 society." 
 
 " I have a great mind to try," Rowland said, walking about 
 the room. " What is the good of saving a man from drowning 
 with one hand, if ye pitch him back into the water with the 
 other ? I like radical measures. I would send him right away 
 to some sort of work." 
 
 She said nothing, but shook her head. 
 
 "By George, I will try ! " cried her husband, "if you were to 
 shake your head off, my dear. I won't let the laddie perish 
 without a try to save him. He's saved me, and the peace of my 
 house. You may say he put it in jeopardy first : but it took 
 some pluck, Evelyn, to put that, and his life, so to speak, in 
 your hands. He must have good meanings in him. I will send 
 for the lad— I will " 
 
 " I must tell you something first, James, and then you shall 
 act as you please. He said to me, ' This means that I shall never 
 see any of you again. And I was fond of little Marion — though 
 she doesn't deserve it any more than I do.' It was a curious 
 thing to say." 
 
 Rowland gave a long whistle, and a twinkle of fun arose in 
 his eye. " fShe doesn't deserve it any more than he does ! " he 
 said. The speech did not make him angry, as Evelyn had feared. 
 It made him laugh, and his laugh was not ungenial. "By 
 Jove ! " he said to himself : but he did not explain to Evelyn 
 the idea which was veiled by that exclamation. There was, 
 indeed, no need that there should be any meaning at all. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 381 
 
 CHAPTER XLYII 
 
 The return of the united family to Rosmore was, it is scarcely 
 necessary to say, scrutinized by many keen and eager eyes, all 
 aware that there had been something wrong, all, or almost all, 
 glad to see that the something had so soon come to nothing. 
 Except that Archie was exceptionally shabby in his old clothes, 
 and that he was deeply conscious of this fact, and accordingly 
 kept as much as possible in the background, there was nothing 
 to show that the party was anything more than the most 
 ordinary party returning from some joint expedition. The 
 people in the steamboat, however, allowed their knowledge to 
 be revealed by effusive and unnecessary expressions of satis- 
 faction in the return of Mr. Rowland and his wife and son, 
 which were quite uncalled for, in view of the fact that neither 
 of the former had been gone for more than a few days. " I can 
 scarcely express to you the satisfaction I feel in seeing you 
 back," the minister said, with a significant grip of his wealthy 
 parishioner's hand ; and Miss Eliza, who happened to be coming 
 by the same boat, fell upon Evelyn with a shriek of joy. "I've 
 not seen so delightful a sight for years as the sight of your 
 bonny face, with all your belongings round you," Miss Eliza 
 said, holding out her left hand and a beaming smile to Archie. 
 These signs of popular satisfaction were received by Mrs. Row- 
 land not exactly with offence, but a little coldly, in view of the 
 fact that nobody had anj T right, even by inference, to remark 
 upon what was so entirely a family matter. But her husband, 
 who was in great spirits, and inclined to make friends with 
 all the world, received these effusive salutations with pleasure, 
 and without inquiring how much they knew of the circum- 
 stances which made this home-coming remarkable. He was 
 perhaps more used to the warmth of Scotch neighbours, and 
 understood it better. At the pier the two girls were waiting, 
 both of them curious and a little excited. Marion's eyes were 
 glittering like beads with a desire to know, and Rosamond, 
 though she held up her head with her accustomed calm, and 
 repressed all consciousness of anything unusual, betrayed in a 
 slight dilation of her nostril, and momentary quiver of her lip, 
 her share of the general excitement. She slipped aside from 
 the carriage in order to leave the family undisturbed in their 
 reunion, which was indeed a thing very little desired by any of 
 its members : but was joined by Archie before she had gone far. 
 He was too glad to escape from the sensation of the prodigal's 
 return, although more and more conscious of what he felt to be 
 the chief feature about him — his exceedingly shabby coat. 
 
 "I am glad you have come home," said Rosamond. 
 
 " So am I, more or less," said Archie. 
 
 "I suppose you like the freedom of being away. But the 
 
382 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 more you are free to go, the more endurable the dullness should 
 be. When one knows one can get quit of it at any moment, 
 one does not mind." 
 
 " I was not thinking of the dullness," said Archie ; " it has 
 been the other way round with me. I suppose it's contradic- 
 tion. When you are shut out from your home, you take a long- 
 ing for it. It's through your brother somehow, I can't tell how, 
 that I've come back now." 
 
 "Through Eddy!" 
 
 " I don't know how ; he has cleared up something. It is 
 queer, isn't it," said Archie, with a laugh, " that a little beggar 
 like that — I beg your pardon, Miss Saumarez, I forgot for the 
 moment "' 
 
 "It is true enough," said Rosamond gravely. " He must look 
 a little beggar to you. I beg to remark, however, Mr. Rowland, 
 that you are not yourself very tall, nor perhaps of a command- 
 ing aspect, by nature." 
 
 Archie could not accept this jibe as Eddy would have done. 
 He grew graver still than Rosamond and became crimson. 
 "It's just a silly phrase," he said, "that means nothing. Eddy's 
 far more commanding, as you say, than I am. I know the 
 difference well enough : but it's a little hard all the same to 
 think that a man's own father should take the word of a 
 strange rather than " 
 
 " Oh, do you think there's anything in that 1 " said Rosamond. 
 " I don't : in the first place, if you must speak for yourself, 
 you're a prejudiced witness, that's what they say. And again, 
 you know a man's father — or a woman's father either, for that 
 matter — does always believe other people sooner than you. It 
 has something to do with the constitution of human nature, I 
 suppose," she added witli philosophical calm. "And then, perhaps, 
 if you will allow me to say it, Eddy might know more than you." 
 
 " About myself ? " said Archie. 
 
 " About other people. Eddy knows a great deal about some 
 kinds of life. I don't say it is the best kinds. He knows the 
 ways of a bad set. So that if it was anything wrong, he might 
 be able to throw a light — It is a pity, but that is the turn he 
 has taken," said Rosamond. " He seems to find scamps more 
 amusing than others. Perhaps they are, for anything I know. 
 I have thought myself, that if you didn't mind about being 
 respectable and that sort of thing, which of course a girl must 
 mind, that it might be perhaps more amusing. One never 
 knows. Certainly society men are not amusing at all." 
 
 "I should have thought," said Archie, "you would have liked 
 them best." 
 
 "No," said Rosamond dubiously, "the worst is, people are so 
 hideously like each other. That's why one longs after what's 
 disreputable or— anything out of the way. One hopes to light 
 upon a new species somewhere. So far as I can see, however," 
 she added, "Eddy's people are just as dull as the rest." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 383 
 
 Archie was quite unable to keep up the ball of this conversa- 
 tion. It flustered and made him uncomfortable. He was very 
 certain that whatever could be said for himself (and he did not 
 think that much could be said for him), nobody would venture 
 to assert that he was amusing. 
 
 " I should have thought," he said hesitating, " that a fellow 
 you could trust to, that was of the kind that would never fail you 
 whatever 3*011 wanted, and thought more of you a great deal 
 than of himself, however awkward he might be, or uncouth, or 
 that ■*' 
 
 " Oh," said Rosamond, " if it's moral qualities you are think- 
 ing of, the best thing perhaps to do would be to pick up the 
 nearest curate and make a model of him." Which perplexed 
 Archie more and more : for though he knew little of curates, 
 he had been brought up with a wholesome respect for the 
 minister, yet did not perhaps think that dignitary exactly the 
 person "to please a damsel's eye." He expressed the difficulty 
 he had in carrying on the conversation by a hesitating and 
 puzzled " O-oh ! " but said little more. And those young 
 persons walked the rest of the way to Rosmore in partial 
 silence, broken by an occasional monologue from Rosamond, 
 who did not dislike a good listener. And there is no doubt that 
 Archie was admirable in this way. 
 
 The rest of the party were less happy, for it must be said, 
 that though the conversation did not flourish, there was to 
 Archie, and possibly also, more or less sympathetically, to Rosa- 
 mond, a sort of vague pleasure in moving along by the side of 
 a person so interesting, which, though quite vague, was wonder- 
 fully seductive, and made the woodland roads into enchanted 
 ways, and gave every moment wings. The lad found himself 
 in a charmed atmosphere when he was by her side. During 
 the tremendous internal conflict through which he had passed, 
 he had thought of Rosamond, not according to her own formula, 
 as amusing, but as the opposite extreme to that lowest kind of 
 existence, the highest point of interest, variety and stimulation, 
 which life contained. And now he had stepped at once from 
 the depths to the height. He did not mind what it was she 
 was saying, nor even that he could not reply to her. As he 
 walked along by her side, Archie was buoyed up as by heavenly 
 airs. He trod not on common earth, but on something elastic 
 and inspiring that made every step light. And though Rosa- 
 mond would have been greatly surprised had she been accused 
 of any such feeling for Archie, yet perhaps the sympathy of 
 the exquisite elation in his being affected her more than she 
 knew. But, as has been said, the rest of the party were less 
 happy. Marion sat with her back to the horses, partly from 
 choice, in order to have the others more at her mercy, and 
 partly in supposed deference to Rowland, who liked to have his 
 face turned in the direction in which he was going, like many 
 other energetic persons. She surveyed her father and his wife 
 
384 THE RAILWAY MAX 
 
 as from an eminence, commanding every look and movement. 
 There is not a better point of vantage than the front seat of a 
 carriage when you mean to cross-examine and reduce to help- 
 lessness the people opposite to you, who cannot escape. 
 
 "I am very glad, papa," said Marion, "that you have got 
 over your little tiff, and all come so nice and friendly home. I 
 knew quite well that you and mamma would very soon make it 
 up, but I was very anxious about Archie, who is a different 
 question. And have you got any light about that cheque, or 
 is it just the father falling on his neck, and the prodigal coming 
 home?" 
 
 " The cheque ? " said Rowland, in a low tone of astonishment, 
 with an anxious glance at his wife. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Marion, in her clear notes, " you need not 
 speak low, papa, as if that would do any good : for everybody 
 knows just quite well what it all was about." 
 
 " You seem to know more than I do, Marion," said Rowland ; 
 " therefore, perhaps, you will be good enough to expound the 
 matter to those, who have given you the information, in your 
 own way." 
 
 "Yes, papa," said Marion, with charming docility: "but I 
 could do that better," she added, "if you would answer my 
 question : for if it's just your kindness, like the man in the 
 parable, that's one thing : but if it's cleared up, that's another 
 — and I would like to know." 
 
 " I am sure it will please Marion, James," said Mrs. Rowland, 
 "to be assured that it has been cleared up, and that both her 
 hints to me and to you have been of use. I am not sure," she 
 said, with a laugh, " that Eddy was very grateful to you for 
 suggesting that he would know." 
 
 " Oh, you told him it was me ! " said Marion. Her eyes, which 
 were dancing in their sockets with curiosity and excitement, 
 were clouded for a moment. " Well ! " she said after a pause, 
 " I'm not minding. It was quite true." She put her hand on 
 Mrs. Rowland's knee, and leant forward eagerly. " Was it yon 
 man ? " she asked. 
 
 "What have you to do with it," cried her father, "you 
 
 little ? Y'ou never lifted a finger for your brother, so far 
 
 as I know." 
 
 " It would not have been becoming," said Marion, with dignity, 
 "if I had put myself forward. And how did I know that you 
 would have liked it, papa % I just was determined that I would 
 not commit myself : for if he had never come back it would 
 always have been a comfort to you that you had one that made 
 no fuss. But svhen mamma consulted me, I gave her the best 
 advice I could, and when you consulted me, I just told you 
 what I thought. And it appears," said Marion, taking them in 
 with an expressive glance, "that it has all been for the best." 
 
 "It has been entirely for the best," said Evelyn, "and you 
 could not have done better for us if you had meant it." Mrs. 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 3S5 
 
 Rowland was but a woman, and she did not forgive her step- 
 daughter for the suggestion which had caused her husband 
 so many troubled hours. They drew up to the door at this 
 moment to the general relief, but Evelyn could not refrain 
 from a linal arrow. "You will be glad to know that nobody 
 has come to any harm," she said. 
 
 But Marion was not sensitive to that amiable dart. She 
 clutched her stepmother's dress to hold her back. " Was it yon 
 man % " she said, " and did he get clear away after all % " 
 
 Evelyn stepped quickly out of the carriage and made no 
 reply ; but, as it happened, Marion's unanswered question was 
 of the greatest importance and advantage to the anxious house- 
 hold -and deeply-interested country-side. For, dropping into 
 Saunders' thirsty ears, like the proverbial water in the desert, 
 it was by him shaped into the most satisfactory of conclusions 
 to the much-debated story. " It was that fellow in the bad 
 coat," he said, in the housekeeper's room as soon as he had 
 superintended the taking in of tea. "I knew yon was the 
 man." Saunders was a little breathless, being a portly person, 
 and having hurried in at the top of his speed to convey the 
 news. " I must say Miss Marion has a great consideration for 
 us in the other part of the house," he added. " She asked the 
 question just as I stood there, though I make no doubt she had 
 'ad it all out afore that." Mr. Saunders was a Scotsman by 
 birth, but he had been in the best families, and slipped an h 
 now and then just to show that he knew as well as any one 
 how fine English was spoke. 
 
 And the news ran far and wide — to Rankin's cottage, and to 
 the Manse, and up the loch to the innumerable neighbours who 
 had taken the profoundest interest in the story. A great many 
 people, it turned out, had seen "yon man." He had been 
 observed on the loch-side walking back with an ulster that was 
 much too big for him, covering his badly-made evening coat. 
 And all the inhabitants of the little cluster of cottages in one 
 of which he had lived, had given Johnson up as the malefactor 
 long ago — for had he not come in from the ball in the middle of 
 the night, and thrown his things into his bag, and struggled off 
 again in the ulster which was not his, over the hill to Kilrossie 
 before it was light? At the head of the loch there was the 
 most unfeigned satisfaction that it had proved to be k * yon man." 
 And Archie was the subject of one prolonged ovation wherever 
 lie appeared. " I am as glad to see you back as if I had gotten 
 a legacy," Miss Eliza said, patting him on the back. "When I 
 thought of the noise we were all making that night of the ball, 
 and you, poor lad, with such trouble hanging over you, and 
 nobody to know ! But it's all blown over now, and justice done, 
 the Lord be praised." The reader, better informed, knows that 
 poor Johnson had met with anything but justice, but the opinion 
 of the loch had happily no effect upon his equanimity, and in- 
 deed, if it could have been supposed to have had any effect, no 
 
 c c 
 
3S6 THE EAILWAY MAN 
 
 doubt he deserved all the obloquy for something else, if not for 
 that. 
 
 And it surprised nobody when Eddy Saumarez arrived one 
 evening to iinish his visit, as was said — that visit having been 
 painfully cut short by the family trouble and false accusation 
 of Archie, which his friend had been too sensitive to bear. 
 Eddy had been a general favourite, and everybody was glad to 
 see him, even Rankin, who received him very graciously, though 
 with a flush upon his face, probably caused by too hot a fire. 
 " I could accommodate you now with a puppy, if you were still 
 in want of one," Rankin said, fishing up a sprawling specimen 
 of the Roy section from that nest in which he kept his nurslings 
 warm ; and he added, " I'm real glad to see you without yon 
 spark. Ye'll larn anither time not to try to get your fun out o' 
 me with a ficteetious philosopher : for I wadna be worth my 
 salt as a philologist, not to say an observer o' human nature, if 
 I didna see through an ill-spoken ignoramus like yon." 
 
 "Everybody is not like you, Rankin," said Eddy; "all the 
 rest swallowed him like gospel." 
 
 "It is true," said Rankin, "that everybody is no like me. I 
 have maybe had advantages that are not of a common kind ; but 
 ye shouldna abuse the confidence o' the weaker vessels. And 
 ye never can tell at what corner ye may fall in with a man that 
 is enlightened and that will see through your devices — at least 
 in this country. I'm tauld there's far less advanced intelligence 
 in Southland pairts. Ay, that's a fine little beast. I havena 
 had a better since the one that went to the Princess, ye will 
 maybe have heard o' that — a real beauty, but he wasna appre- 
 ciated. I hope you have mair sense than ever to have such a 
 thing said of you." 
 
 _ Thus Eddy's absolution was sealed by his very accuser, and. 
 his reputation vindicated. 
 
 The scene in Rowland's study was perhaps more difficult to 
 get through. It was in answer to a telegram sent from Glasgow 
 that Eddy, with some excitement, made up his mind to return 
 to Rosmore. "Come and finish visit. Have much to say ta 
 you," was Rowland's message, which set Eddy's pulses beating. 
 For a moment a horrible thought gleamed through his mind 
 that his confession was to be used against him, but this he soon 
 dismissed as impossible. It was bad enough without that, and 
 demanded an amount of courage which Eddy, though full of 
 that quality, scarcely felt that he possessed. He was dumb 
 when he found himself at last in the dreaded room where Archie 
 had suffered for his fault. Eddy was a trifler born, and had the 
 habit of taking everything lightly ; his most tragic moment 
 came between two jests — he could not have been serious for five 
 minutes to save his life. But when he was ushered into Row- 
 land's room, and found himself face to face with the man whose 
 name he had forged, whose money he had appropriated, whose 
 heart, tough and middle-aged as it was, he had nearly broken, 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 387 
 
 Eddy had not a word to say. He stood dumb before the judge 
 who had voluntarily laid aside all power to punish him. Some- 
 thing rose in his throat which took away his voice. He could 
 not have spoken had all the hopes of his life depended upon it. 
 Happily this inability to articulate had more effect upon Row- 
 land than the most voluble excuses could have had. 
 
 ''Eddy,'"' he said, "I've sent for you, thinking I had a right. 
 I have a grievance against you, and then, again, I have received 
 a favour at your hands."'' 
 
 Eddy made a gesture of deprecation, and tried to utter some- 
 thing, but could not. 
 
 " Yes," said Rowland, gravely ; "I'm not a man to make little 
 of what you did. But when you put your life in my wife's 
 hands to save my son, you did me a greater service chan any 
 other man on earth could do : and you did in the circumstances 
 all that a man could do."' 
 
 " It's not capital now, sir,"' said Eddy, finding his voice as his 
 spirit began to come back to him. 
 
 " So, it's not hauging," said Rowland, with a slight smile ; 
 "but it's ruin all the same. Xow, look here." He took the 
 cheque from the envelope in which he had put it away. " Put 
 that in the lire, and destroy it, and then we can talk.'"' 
 
 Eddy did what he was told with what scrupulous care it is 
 unnecessary to describe, and poked the very films of the burned 
 paper into the bottom of the lire. Then he turned to Mr. Row- 
 land, his face reddened with the blaze, his eyes hot and scorched, 
 his features working. He took the rich man's hand and held it 
 fast between his. "Tell me to do anything in the world,'' he 
 said, "whatever you please, and I'll do it. I am your bond- 
 slave, and will not call my soul my own unless you say I may."' 
 
 "Sit down, boy, and don't talk nonsense." said Rowland, 
 himself considerably moved. "I am going to tell you to do 
 several things, and I hope you will obey. But first, Eddy, if 
 you were in such a terrible scrape, why were you such a little 
 fool, when you had a man like me close at hand, not to come 
 and ask for it ? Would not that have been the wise way /" 
 
 "It would have been a very cheeky thing to do to come and 
 ask a man, because he's been kind to you, to give you a th — 
 though, of course,"' Eddy interrupted himself, in a low voice, 
 "less might have done then." 
 
 "A cheeky thing is better than a bad thing," said Rowland, 
 sententiously. " Perhaps I might have been surprised : but 
 now, my lad, let us get to the bottom of all this. If I take you 
 in hand, I'll have no half measures. How much do you want to 
 clear you altogether, so that you shall be your own master when 
 you come into your estate ■ '" 
 
 "To clear me?" Eddy's eyebrows went up altogether into his 
 hair. "Well, sir," he said, "that is a confusing question, for, 
 you see, unlimited tick, that is to say, credit " 
 
 " Don't be a humbug, Eddy ! " 
 
 \'C2 
 
388 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 "Well, I suppose you know what tick means," the young man 
 said, with a laugh, "not unlimited, by any means ; though, to 
 tell the truth, except for — I'm very nearly cleared." 
 
 " Very nearly won't do for me, neither will I have any excep- 
 tions ; put them all down, every one, without any exceptions, 
 and bring them to me. I'll see you cleared : and now for what 
 I want you to do." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Eddy, putting his hands by his side with the 
 air of a docile little school-boy eager to obey. 
 
 It was all Rowland could do not to laugh, but he was scan- 
 dalized at himself for his levity, and forbore. 
 
 "There is a choice of two or three things," said Howland. 
 " You might go out to my overseer in India, and try what you 
 can do on the railways. There is nothing succeeds so well there 
 as a man who knows how to manage men." 
 
 Eddy produced a little sickly smile, but he did not make any 
 response. 
 
 " Or you might try ranching out in Canada or the Wild West : 
 or the same kind of thing, though they only call it stock-keeping, 
 
 in Australia : or It really does not matter what it is, if it's 
 
 good hard work. I make a stand upon that. Good, hard work," 
 said Mr. Rowland ; "it's the way of salvation for you spend- 
 thrift young men." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Eddy again, with his school-boy air, but in 
 rueful tones. 
 
 " Man alive ! " cried Rowland, " can't you see what a grand 
 thing it would be for you ? your thoughts taken off all your 
 follies and vanities, your hands full of something wholesome 
 to do, yourself removed out of the way of temptation. What 
 could you desire more?" 
 
 "Ah !" said Eddy, "I'm afraid I'd desire a different body and 
 a different soul, only such trifles as these. I'm a product of 
 corrupt civilization, I am not the thing that lives and thrives 
 that way. Probably out there I should gravitate to a gambling 
 saloon or a drinking bar." 
 
 "You don't drink, Eddy?" cried Rowland, with an alarmed 
 countenance. 
 
 " No, I don't drink — not now," said Eddy, with sudden gravity; 
 " but what I might do after six months of a cowboy's life I don't 
 know." 
 
 Rowland looked at him for some time with a baffled air. 
 Then he tried his last coup. "My wife told me," he said — "I 
 hope she did not betray your confidence — that there was some- 
 thing about Marion." 
 
 A sudden flush of colour went over Eddy's face, and he began 
 to move his foot nervously, as he did when he was excited. 
 
 "And that you had," Rowland said, with an inflection of 
 laughter in his voice not to be concealed, "a very just appre- 
 ciation of her. Now, my man, without some such probation 
 there could be no thought of my daughter, you must know." 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 389 
 
 Eddy sat with his head bent, swinging his foot, and for a 
 moment made no reply. At last he said, " How long, sir, do 
 you mean the probation to last 1 " 
 
 " Let us say at a venture three years." 
 
 " Three years ! " said Eddy, with comic despair. " Mr. Row- 
 land, I am very fond of Marion, though — and I shouldn't 
 wonder if she could fancy me. She has a poor opinion of me, 
 but that needn't matter. "We could always get on together. 
 But do you think, from what you know, that if somebody with 
 a handle to his name turned up after the Drawing-room, that 
 Marion would wait for me out ranching in California for three 
 years % " 
 
 In spite of himself, Rowland laughed. " I never could take 
 upon myself to say, Eddy, what love might do." 
 
 "No V said Eddy, with his head on one side, and a look of 
 interrogation. " I think I could take it upon myself," he added. 
 " We might be very fond of each other : and I, of course, would 
 be out of the way of temptation out there ; besides, I'm not the 
 kind of man that falls much in love. But Marion : excuse me 
 for talking so freely, sir, but you've put it to me. I should find 
 Marion Lady Something-or-other, when I came back at the end 
 of my three years." 
 
 "Then you don't think it worth your while?" Rowland 
 said. 
 
 " I did not say that : whatever you say is worth the while. 
 I'll go if you press it ; and if I don't come back at all, it will be 
 the less matter. But if you ask me, sir, frankly, I don't think 
 it's good enough so far as Marion is concerned. She would never 
 wait for a fellow out ranching. I don't see why she should, for 
 my part." 
 
 "You are a cool loon," said Rowland, half offended. "Perhaps 
 you do not wish she should." 
 
 '" Well, she wouldn't like it," said Eddy. " I can't help think- 
 ing of her as well as of myself. She'd take the young Duke, if 
 lie turned up, in any case. There isn't an eligible young Duke, 
 I believe, now," he said thoughtfully, "but the next best. And 
 she wouldn't wait three years for me, oh no, though she might 
 like me well enough. The three years' system would make an 
 end of that. I am very much obliged to you for holding out 
 the chance : and I'll take your advice for myself, Mr. Row- 
 land, and go — wherever you decide. But we're bound to think 
 what's best for her first, don't you see. And I couldn't give 
 my consent to asking her to wait for three years. Dear me, no ! 
 not for me, as if I were a great catch or good for anything. It 
 would scarcely be worth her while to stoop and pick me up if 
 I were lying in her road. Why should she wait three years 
 for me ? " 
 
 "Eddy, you are a very queer fellow," said Rowland ; "I don't 
 know what to make of you. Tell me, now, if you were left en- 
 tirely to yourself, what would you like to do ? " 
 
390 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " I ! " he said. Eddy swung his foot more and more, and sat 
 reflecting for a minute or two. Then he burst into a laugh. " I 
 suppose she enjoys her life as much as we do," he said, " poor old 
 soul ! I was going to say there's an old aunt of the governor's, 
 that must die some time. If she would be so obliging as to do it 
 now, and leave me her money, as she says she means to ! — Then 
 the governor would hand me over Gilston, which he hates, and 
 
 Marion and I But it's all absurdity and a dream. The old 
 
 aunt won't die, why should she 1 and we — why there's no we, 
 that's the best of it ! and we are discussing a thing that will 
 never be." 
 
 Rowland walked about the room from end to end, as he some- 
 times did when he was forming a resolution. "So you think 
 there's nothing but Gilston for you, Eddy 1 " he said. 
 
 " I should be out of harm's way," said the lad, " and a place 
 to fill — it might answer, but again it might not. But why 
 should my old aunt die to please me ? or Marion give up her 
 Duke — or you take all this trouble ? — I am not worth it," Eddy 
 said. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
 " You put Mrs. Rowland on my traces," said Eddy ; " why did 
 you do so, you little witch ? Wait till I find out some bad trick 
 I can play you." 
 
 " It has all turned out very well," said Marion sedately. " I 
 am not at all sorry I did it. 1 knew that man was about some- 
 thing wrong. And you should not know such people, Mr. 
 Saumarez. I was bound to tell them anything I knew." 
 
 " Miss Rowland," said Eddy, " your father is going to pay all 
 my debts, and send me out to California, or somewhere, to a 
 ranch, to expiate all my sins ; and when I come back in three 
 years or so, as a reward, if you are not the Duchess of So-and-so, 
 we may, if we please, marry." 
 
 " Who may marry 1 " said Marion astonished. 
 
 " The only people whom I know who really suit each other," 
 said Eddy calmly. "You and I." 
 
 " You and — me," cried Marion in great wrath. " You are just 
 very impudent to say so. Me marry you ! — without ever being 
 asked — without a word ! In three years or so ! I just tell you 
 I will do nothing of the kind." 
 
 " That is exactly what I said. I said, if you think Marion will 
 wait three years for me ! She will take the first Duke that 
 offers, and she will be one of the ornaments of Queen Victoria's 
 court long before I come home." 
 
 "I was not saying exactly that," said Marion. "Where 
 am I to get the Duke ? There are none but old bald-headed 
 men" 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 391 
 
 "An earl then," said Eddy. " There are always lively young 
 Earls or Mseounts in hand, more to be counted on than plain 
 Eddy Saumarez, who is nobody. That's what I said to your 
 father, Miss May. Why should you wait for me ? I told him I 
 saw no reason." 
 
 " Especially when I was never asked," Marion said. 
 
 "Yes," said Eddy. " You see how good I am at bottom, after 
 all that has happened. I said I would play you a nasty trick if 
 I could find one, but I haven't. You should be grateful to me. 
 I haven't asked you — so far as words go." 
 
 " I don't know," said Marion, with a little quiver in her lip, 
 " how a person can be asked except in words." 
 
 " Don't you ? " he said, and then they gave each other a look, 
 and burst into mutual laughter, of the emotional kind. 
 
 They were walking down the slope of the bank towards the 
 Clyde, under trees now bare with the surly winds of winter. It 
 was a dull Xovember afternoon, and everything was done in 
 tints of gray ; the skies in long bands, here darker, there lighter, 
 as the vapours were more or less heavy, the opposite shore a 
 tinge more solid than the long weltering line of the water 
 which had the ghost of a reflection in it, the points standing 
 out like black specks upon the gray, the wreaths of smoke half- 
 suspended in the still air over the town of Clydeside, putting 
 in an intermediate tone ' between the two. The edge of the 
 great stream grew a little lighter as it crept to their feet over 
 the shallows, and broke on the beach with a faint white line of 
 foam. 
 
 " I will always maintain," said Eddy, " that there never were 
 two people so fit to go together as you and I. We haven't 
 any wild admiration of each other ; we know each other's defi- 
 ciencies exactly ; we don't go in for perfection, do we 1 But 
 we suit, my little May, we suit down to the ground. You would 
 know what you had to expect in me, and I could keep you in 
 order." 
 
 "You are just very impudent," she said. "I never gave you 
 any encouragement, Mr. Saumarez, to think that I was willing 
 to be — to do — I mean anything of that kind." 
 
 "Ah, Marion," he said, "you may be as stern as you like, but 
 I know I would suit you better than that duke. You would 
 get dreadfully tired of being called your grace, and having him, 
 a stupid fellow, always stuck there opposite to you ; but you 
 would not get tired of me." 
 
 " How do you know that 1 I am often just very tired of you," 
 said Marion. " You think too much of yourself. We would not 
 agree, not for two days without a fight." 
 
 " That is just what I say. There would be no gene between 
 us, we know each other so well. Don't you think, after all, you 
 would perhaps wait for me, Marion, supposing the duke did not 
 come ? I never could pretend to stand against him. Say you 
 will, and I'll do what your father says, and go ranching : though 
 
392 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 most likely I shall break my neck the first year, and then you 
 will be free of your promise, May." 
 
 " Why should you go ranching, as you call it, and what does it 
 mean ? " 
 
 " That's what I don't know. It means riding about after 
 cows, but why I can't tell you. I know nothing in the world 
 about cows. I scarcely know one when I see it, but your father 
 thinks it's the right thing. Ill go if you'll wait for me, May." 
 
 "And what would you do, Eddy," she said, stealing a little 
 closer to him, " if you didn't go ? " 
 
 " That's more than I can tell you. But I'll tell you what I'd 
 do, May, if old Aunt Sarah would only die. I'd settle with the 
 governor about Gilston, and we'd furbish it up and live there. 
 In the spring we'd have a little turn in town, and in winter we'd 
 hunt, and have the house full. We should be as jolly as the 
 day^s long, and nobody to interfere with us. And I promise you, 
 you'd go out of the room before Mrs. James Eowland, though he 
 is the great railway man. I could do that for you, Marion, 
 though I couldn't make you Her Grace, you know." 
 
 "Oh, be quiet, Eddy ! and if your Aunt Sarah doesn't die?" 
 "Ah, there you pose me, May. I must either go back where 
 the bad boys go, to town, and sink or swim as I can, and fare- 
 well to my pretty Marion ; or else I must go and ranch, or 
 whatever you call it, as your father says." 
 
 " It is strange," said Marion very seriously, " that old people 
 should make such a point of going on living, when there are 
 young ones that want their money so very much— and when 
 they know they have had their day." 
 
 " One may say it is inconsiderate," said Eddy with a twinkle 
 in his eye, "but then the thing is, why should she take all that 
 trouble for us ? I am sure we would take none for her : and 
 here we are just back again, Marion, where the four roads meet 
 — Gilston or California, the ranch or the — devil : that's about 
 what it is." 
 
 " You had, perhaps, better go to the ranch, Eddy." 
 "And you'll wait for me, May ! " 
 
 " Perhaps," said the girl, with tears which were honest enough, 
 in her eyes. " If I don't see somebody I like better," she added 
 with a laugh. 
 
 " Most likely," said Eddy philosophically, " I shall break my 
 neck the first year — and then you need not hold to your promise. 
 But don't marry any one under the rank of a marquis, for my 
 credit, if you love me, May." 
 
 " Oh, we'll see about that," Marion said. 
 
 It was after she had come in from this conversation, and had 
 thought it all over in her own room, and made several calcula- 
 tions, that Marion walked very sedately down-stairs, and knocked 
 at her father's door. She was slightly disconcerted when she 
 saw that Mrs. Rowland was with him, but, having quite dis- 
 tinctly made up her mind what she was going to do, her con- 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 393 
 
 fusion was slight and soon passed away. She did not sit down, 
 but stood by the writing-table at which he was seated, leaning 
 her hand upon it, which was a token that she meant business, 
 and did not intend to waste words. 
 
 " Can I speak a word to you, papa 1 " 
 
 "As many as you please," said Rowland. "Sit down, May ; 
 " but if you are coming to ask explanations " 
 
 " Explanations 1 " she said with some surprise. " Oh, you will 
 perhaps be meaning about Archie 1 There is no occasion. I 
 was always very clear about that ; and it was me that gave 
 mamma the first hint, as she will perhaps mind. I was coming 
 to speak to you, papa, about what may perhaps be my own 
 affairs." 
 
 "Shall I go away, Marion, and leave you alone with your 
 
 father 1 " 
 
 " Oh, no, there is no need. You will be better here : for some- 
 times there are times when a woman has more sense — I will not 
 beat about the bush. Why is it, papa, that Mr. Saumarez has 
 to go away ? " 
 
 " Oh, he has been telling you, has he ? And do you mean to 
 wait for him, Marion 1 " said her father. 
 
 " That is a different question," said Marion, with a toss of her 
 head, which was perhaps intended to toss away a little heat that 
 had come to her cheeks. " I would like to know, in the first place 
 just as his friend, papa, what end is going to be served by sending 
 
 him away 1 ?'' . -j •** 
 
 "And what would your wisdom suggest instead J said Mr. 
 Rowland. " The end to be served is to take him away from ill 
 friends and connections, and make him work — which is the best 
 
 thing I know " 
 
 "Work! "said Marion with a certain contempt: and how 
 would Eddy work that does not know the way 1 Work is maybe 
 very grand, and I am not sure but I could do it myself if there 
 was any need. And Archie might maybe do it. And perhaps 
 it would do him good. But not Eddy ; I've read in books about 
 that : if the half of the men out there work, the other half just 
 go all wrong. Boys are not all alike," said Marion, with a little 
 wave of her hand, as if delivering a lecture on the subject ; "the 
 boys at the Burn have that in them that they can just never be 
 q U i e t_they're on the hill or out in the boat, or wrestling and 
 throwing things at each other, if there's nothing else to do. But 
 Eddy is not of that kind. He would no more work out there 
 than he would work here. He will go if you make him, though 
 I can not tell why he should do what you say. But he^ will go 
 just helpless, with no use of his hands, and he will fall into the 
 first net that's spread for him. Oh, he's clever enough !'' cried 
 the girl, some angry moisture springing to her eyes ; " he will 
 see it is a net : but he will go into it all the same : for what is 
 he to do 1 He has just about as much work in him as Roy and 
 Dhu." 
 
394 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 " Then he'd better disappear oft' the face of the earth ! " cried 
 Rowland angrily, "with other cumberers of the soil. A man 
 like that has no right to live." 
 
 " His Maker would maybe know that best," retorted Marion 
 "undismayed ; " and me, I'm willing to take him as he is. But 
 I will not be a consenting party," the girl cried, raising her 
 voice, " to sending any person away to his ruin. You think one 
 way is just good for everybody all the same, as if we were not 
 made dark and fair, and big and little, to show the difference ! 
 And I will not say I will wait for him, papa," Marion added 
 more calmly, after a pause for breath. '"For I might miss a 
 very good match in the time, and never get such a chance again ; 
 and he might never come back, as I think most likely, and I 
 would have nobody at all. So I will not promise, for it would 
 be bad for us both, — both him and me." 
 
 " You little calculating cutty," cried her father ; " is this what 
 you call being in love with a man 1 " 
 
 " I never said a word on that subject," said Marion. " I said 
 I was willing to take him as he is. And I suppose," she said, 
 coming down suddenly from her oratorical platform to the calm 
 tone of ordinary affairs, " I suppose you will be meaning to give 
 me some kind of a fortune, more or less, when I'm married and 
 go away." 
 
 "I suppose so — to get rid of you," said her father with a 
 laugh. 
 
 "That was just what I meant," said Marion seriously ; "then 
 what would ail you, papa, to settle about Gilston, and just let 
 him take up the way of nature there 1 He could do what was 
 wanted there." 
 
 Rowland sprang from his seat in wrath and high indignation. 
 " Preserve the game and shoot it in the season, and play your 
 
 idiotic games all the summer " 
 
 (" No, papa," said Marion demurely, " we would be May and 
 June in town.") 
 
 "And hunt in the winter, and play the fool all the year round 
 — on my money, that I've worked hard for, every penny ! I will 
 see him — and you — far enough first ! " 
 
 " Papa," said Marion, " I have been talking to Rosamond upon 
 that subject, and she thinks that men like you are under a great 
 delusion. For she says you are not an old man now, but just in 
 your prime, and you're neither worn out nor a bit the worse. 
 And she says she knows men that have worked far far harder 
 and actually have worn themselves out, and never made any 
 money at all. So that it's not hard work, as you suppose, but 
 just that you're awfully clever, and have had tremendous luck. 
 Oh, you can ask Rosamond what she means. It is not me ; but 
 that's my opinion too." 
 
 To imagine a man more bewildered than Rowland — thus 
 assailed in his very stronghold by two " brats of girls," as he 
 himself said, who could know nothing about the matter : yet 
 
AND HIS CHILDREN 395 
 
 subtly nattered all the same by the statement that he was still 
 in his prime and awfully clever, things which no man, especially 
 when he is sur le retour, objects to hear — would have been im- 
 possible. He glared upon his little daughter, standing dauntless, 
 purling forth her iconoclastic remarks, and then he gave a short 
 laugh, or snort of angry contempt, and smote her lightly (yet 
 enough to make her shake from head to foot) on the shoulder, 
 and bade her stick to her own plea and her lad's, and let other 
 people speak for themselves. 
 
 ••Well,*' said Marion, "I will just call her in, for she is in the 
 hall, and she will tell you herself : for I have said my say ; and 
 I hope you will think k over, and come to a better judgment, 
 papa."' 
 
 All this time Evelyn had been sitting silent by, supporting 
 her head on her hand. But, truth to tell, it was nut the self- 
 denial of a supporter leaving her principal to fight^for himself, 
 but simple incompetence which silenced Evelyn. "With her head 
 bent down, she had been doing her best to master and conceal 
 the lauditer which was almost too much for her. Mrs. Rowland 
 was foronce on Marion's side ; and the composure of the little 
 girl's attack, and its radical character, startled the elder woman. 
 When Rowland sat down again by her side, with that snort of 
 dissipating and modified fury, she put her hand upon his arm, 
 and raised her face to him for a moment. And the good man 
 was more bewildered than ever to see the fun that was dancing 
 in his wife's eves. 
 
 " James 1 " said Evelyn, her laugh bursting torth m spite ot 
 her ; " she had you there." 
 
 " The little witch ! " cried the bewildered man. He began to 
 laugh too, though he could scarcely have told why. And then 
 Rowland raised his head to find quite a different figure stand- 
 ing in front of him in the same position which Marion had 
 occupied a moment before, but half as tall again as Marion, 
 with head held high, and a slim, long hand leant upon his table. 
 She stood like Portia about to make her speech, a simile which, 
 it need not be said, did not occur to Rowland, but to Evelyn by 
 his side. 
 
 "You called me, Mr. Rowland," Rosamond said. 
 
 '•You are to tell him," said Marion's voice behind, "what you 
 said about work, Rosamond: for I'm only his own daughter, and 
 he will not listen to it from me." 
 
 "Yon little cutty ! " Rowland said again, under his breath. 
 
 " What did I sav about work 1 it is the thing I wish for 
 most," said Rosamond. " As soon as ever I am of age I am going 
 in for it. My father and people won't let me now. I do not 
 think thev have any right to interfere, but they do. Mabel 
 Leighton, who is my dearest friend, is going in for medicine ; 
 but I have no distinct turn, I am sorry to say. But we think 
 that something is certain to turn up." 
 
 " So you are wanting to work, are you, Miss Rosamond ; It 
 
396 THE RAILWAY MAN 
 
 it bad been your brother, it would have been more to the 
 purpose : for women's work is but poorly paid. I never heard 
 yet of one that made a fortune by her own exertions," Rowland 
 said. 
 
 "A fortune?" said Rosamond. "No, we never thought of 
 that. We thought we could live on very little, two girls 
 together. And Mabel has something of her own, and we hoped 
 that grandmamma, as she is all for work, might make me a 
 small allowance if she saw that I was in earnest. Lodgings are 
 not dear, if you don't insist upon a fashionable quarter, and as 
 we shouldn't care for meat, or anything expensive in the way of 
 living " 
 
 "Eh ?" said Rowland surprised. "And do you think, my dear, 
 you could make money by saving off your meat 1 " 
 
 " Money ! oh, we never thought of money, so long as we could 
 get on, and work." 
 
 "And what would you work for, if I may inquire, if you had 
 no thought of money 1 " Rowland asked, almost dumb in face of 
 this enigma, which was beyond all his powers. 
 
 " I have said," she exclaimed with a little impatience, " that 
 unfortunately I have no distinct vocation. Mabel is medical, 
 luckily for her. She has no difficulty. But there is always as 
 much work as one can set one's face to in the East End." 
 
 " But for what, for what ? Give me an answer." 
 
 "I allow," said Rosamond, faltering slightly, "that it is a 
 difficult question. To be of a little use, we hope : though 
 
 people say that the results are not always so satisfactory as 
 
 But at all events," she added, more cheerfully, "it is Work. 
 And that must always be the best thing, whatever one may 
 do." 
 
 Rowland sat listening to all this, aghast. The lines of his 
 ruddy countenance grew limp, his lips fell a little apart. " I 
 thought I was a great one for work," he said. But the words 
 fell in a sort of apologetic manner from his lips, and he did not 
 add anything about a change of opinion, which might have been 
 supposed to be implied. 
 
 "Ah !" said Rosamond, "I know ! in a different way : which 
 chiefly means, I believe, getting other people to work for you, 
 and directing them, and planning everything, and making 
 money — like you, Mr. Rowland ! who, in a few years, without 
 hurting yourself in the least, have got so much money that you 
 don't know what to do with it. One sees that in the world. I 
 have heard of men — not like you, who are a great engineer and 
 a genius, everybody says — but mere nobodies, with shops and 
 
 things, people one would not like to touch " Rosamond made 
 
 a slight gesture of disgust, as if she had drawn the folds of her 
 dress away from contact with some millionaire. "But that 
 is not Work," said the girl, throwing back her head. " I know 
 people in society — well, perhaps not quite in society — who have 
 gone on working for a whole lifetime, gentlemen, yes, and 
 
AXD HIS CHILDREN 397 
 
 women too, working from morning to night, and even have 
 been successful, yet have never made money. So it is clear 
 that work is not the thing to make a fortune by. But I am of 
 opinion that it is the first thing in the world." 
 
 Rowland once more blew forth with a snort from his nostrils 
 the angry breath. He felt sure there were arguments some- 
 where with which he could confound this silly girl, and show 
 her that to work was to rise in the world, and make a fortune, 
 and surround yourself with luxury, with the certainty of a 
 mathematical axiom. But he could not find them : and he 
 found himself instead saying in his mind, " If you have ordinary 
 luck, if you don't play the fool," 7 and so forth, evidently adding 
 the conditional case from his own point of view. And the 
 result was that he contented himself with that snort and a 
 strong expression of his opinion that girls should marry, and 
 look after their men's houses, and not trouble their heads about 
 what was never intended for them. 
 
 He broke up the discussion after this, and led his wife forth 
 by the arm, taking her off to look at the view — Clyde coming 
 in softly on the beach, and all the world clad in those sober 
 coats of gray. And standing there an hour after, when the 
 talk might have been supposed to have evaporated, and the 
 day was dying off into evening, he cried suddenly. " Where 
 would I have been without work ? Xot here with my lady- wife 
 upon the terrace at Rosmore ! " 
 
 Evelyn did not say, what perhaps rose to her mind, "You 
 might have been, with a great deal harder work, a respectable 
 foreman in the foundry, as good a man, and as admirable an 
 example of what labour and honest zeal can do." She did not 
 say it. but her historian does for her. Mrs. Rowland only 
 pressed her husband's arm, and said, " The young ones, perhaps, 
 are not without reason too." 
 
 At all events, Mr. Rowland said no more of the ranch for 
 Eddy, and in due time, when the young pair were old enough, 
 they married, and settled at Gilston, which was relieved and 
 rescued by Marion's money, and restored to its dignity as 
 one of the finest places in the county, where, if they did not 
 perhaps live happy ever after, they were at least a great deal 
 better off than they deserved, and fulfilled all their own pro- 
 phecies, and suited each other — down to the ground, as Eddy 
 saicL Old Aunt Sarah died in the course of time, and com- 
 pleted their prosperity. And there was not a livelier house in 
 England, nor a couple who enjoyed their life more. 
 
 As for Archie, his complete development into a man, on a 
 different level from his father, witli other aims, and an ambition 
 which grew slowly with his powers, cannot be here entered 
 into. It would exceed the limits permitted in these pages, and 
 might touch upon graver problems than are open to the historian 
 of domestic life. 
 
 Rosamond has not vet married any more than he. and has 
 
398 THE RAILWAY MAH 
 
 result^ SRS 6 ^^ ° f *f ting the P ° Wer 0f Work and its 
 results. Mabel Leighton of course, was soon drawn off from 
 
 that eccentric career, and is now a mother of children, much 
 
 hke what her own mother was before her. But the further 
 
 history of those two, if it is ever written, will demand a new 
 
 beginning and an extended page. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 The Publishers have been fortunate in securing the services of 
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 List of the Series. 
 
 VOL. 
 
 1. Vanity Fair. With 190 Illustrations. 
 
 2. The History of Pendennis. With 180 
 
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 3. The Newcomes. With 167 Illustrations. 
 
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 Jeames's Diary : The Great Hoggarty Diamond : Etc. 
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 14. Lovel the Widower, and other Stories. 
 
 With 40 Illustrations. 
 
 15. The Fitz-Boodle Papers (including 
 
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 17. Travels in London : Letters to a Young 
 
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 (1845 — 1850). With 73 Illustrations. 
 
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 20. Roundabout Papers and Denis Duval. 
 
 With Illustrations. 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 5 
 
 MACMILLAN'S 
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 SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
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 THE 
 
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 2. OLIVER TWIST. With 27 Illustrations. 
 
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 ITALY. With 4 Illustrations. 
 
 12. THE LETTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 13. BLEAK HOUSE. With 43 Illustrations. 
 
 14. LITTLE DORRIT. With 40 Illustrations. 
 
 15. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. With 15 Illustra- 
 
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 TIMES. 
 
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Three-and-Sixpenny Library 
 
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8 Macmillan and Co.'s 
 
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 THE LARGE TYPE 
 BORDER EDITION OF THE 
 
 WAVERLEY NOVELS 
 
 EDITED WITH 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 Supplementing those of the Author. 
 
 With Two Hundred and Fifty New and Original Illustrations by 
 Eminent Artists. 
 
 BY the kind permission of the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott, 
 of Abbotsford, the great-granddaughter of Sir Walter, 
 the MSS. and other material at Abbotsford were examined by 
 Mr. A.ndrew Lang during the preparation of his Introductory 
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 may be said to contain all the results of the latest researches 
 as to the composition of the Waverley Novels. 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 
 
 The Border Waverley 
 
 1. WAVERLEY. With 12 Illustrations by Sir H. Rae- 
 
 burn, R.A., R. W. Macbeth, A.R.A., John Pettie, R.A., 
 H. Macbeth-Raeburn, D. Herdman, W. J. Leitch, 
 Robert Herdman, R.S.A., and J. Eckford Lauder. 
 
 2. Guy Mannering. With 10 Illustrations by J. 
 
 MacWhirter, A.R.A., R. W. Macbeth, A.R.A., C. O. 
 Murray, Clark Stanton, R.S.A., Gourlay Steell, 
 R.S.A., F. S. Walker, R. Herdman, R.S.A., and J. B. 
 Macdonald, A.R.S.A. 
 
 3. The Antiquary. With 10 Illustrations by J. 
 
 MacWhirter, A.R.A., Sam Bough, R.S.A., R. Herd- 
 man, R.S.A., W. M'Taggart, A.R.S.A., J. B. Mac- 
 donald, A.R.S.A., and A. H. Tourrier. 
 
 4 ROB Roy. With 10 Illustrations by R. W. MACBETH, 
 A.R.A., and Sam Bough. R.S.A. 
 
 5. OLD MORTALITY. With 10 Illustrations by J. Mac- 
 
 Whirter, A.R.A., R. Herdman, R.S.A., Sam Bough, 
 R.S.A., M. L. Gow, D. Y. Cameron, Lockhart Bogle, 
 and Alfred Hartley. 
 
 6. The Heart of Midlothian. With 10 Illustra- 
 
 tions by Sir J. E. Millais, Bart., Hugh Cameron, R.S.A., 
 Sam Bough, R.S.A., R. Herdman, R.S.A., and Wal. 
 Paget. 
 
 7. A Legend of Montrose and The Black Dwarf. 
 
 With 7 Illustrations by Sir GEORGE Reid, P.R.S.A., 
 George Hay, R.S.A., Horatio MacCulloch, R.S.A. 
 W. E. Lockhart, R.S.A., H. Macbeth-Raeburn, and 
 T. Scott. 
 
 8. The Bride of Lammermoor. With 8 Illustrations 
 
 by Sir J. E. Millais, Bart., John Smart, R.S.A., Sam 
 Bough, R.S.A., George Hay, R.S.A., and H. Macbeth- 
 Raeburn. 
 
 9. IVANHOE. With 12 Illustrations by Ad. Lalauze. 
 
 10. The Monastery. With 10 Illustrations by Gor- 
 
 don Browne. 
 
 11. The Abbot. With 10 Illustrations by Gordon 
 
 Browne. 
 
io Macmillan and Co.'s 
 
 The Border Waverley 
 
 12. KENILWORTH. With 12 Illustrations by Ad. 
 
 Lalauze. 
 
 13. The Pirate. With 10 Illustrations by W. E. 
 
 Lockhart, R.S.A., Sam Bough, R.S.A., Herbert 
 Dicksee, W. Strang, Lockhart Bogle, C. J. Holmes, 
 and F. S. Walker. 
 
 14. The Fortunes of Nigel. With 10 Illustrations 
 
 by John Pettie, R.A., and R. W. Macbeth, A.R.A. 
 
 15. Peveril of the Peak. With 15 Illustrations by 
 
 W. Q. Orchardson, R.A. John Pettie, R.A., F. Dadd, 
 R.I., Arthur Hopkins, A.R.W.S., and S. L. Wood. 
 
 16. QUENTIN DURWARD. With 12 Illustrations by 
 
 Ad. Lalauze. 
 
 17. St. Ronan's Well. With io Illustrations by Sir 
 
 G. Reid, P.R.S.A., R. W. Macbeth, A.R.A., W. Hole, 
 R.S.A., and A. Forestier. 
 
 18. Redgauntlet. With 12 Illustrations by Sir James 
 
 D. Linton, P.R.I., James Orrock, R.I., Sam Bough, 
 R.S.A., W. Hole, R.S.A., G. Hay, R.S.A., T. Scott, 
 A.R.S.A., \V. Boucher, and Frank Short. 
 
 19. The Betrothed and The Talisman. With io 
 
 Illustrations by Herbert Dicksee, Wal. Paget, and 
 J. Le Blant. 
 
 20. WOODSTOCK. W T ith io Illustrations by W. HOLE. 
 
 R.S.A. 
 
 21. The Fair Maid of Perth. With io Illustrations 
 
 by Sir G. Reid, P.R.S.A., John Petite, R.A., R. W. 
 Macbeth, A.R.A., and Robert Herdman, R.S.A. 
 
 22. Anne of Geierstein. With io Illustrations by 
 
 R. de Los Rios. 
 
 23. Count Robert of Paris and The Surgeon's 
 
 Daughter. With 10 Illustrations by W. Hatherell, 
 R.I., and W. B. Wollen, R.L 
 
 24. Castle Dangerous, Chronicles of the Canon- 
 
 gate, etc. With 10 Illustrations by H. Macbeth-Rae- 
 burn and G. D. Armour 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 1 1 
 
 The Border Waverley 
 
 SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 TIMES. — "It would be difficult to find in these days a more com* 
 petent and sympathetic editor of Scott than his countryman, the brilliant 
 and versatile man of letters who has undertaken the task, and if any proof 
 were wanted either of his qualifications or of his skill and discretion in 
 displaying them, Mr. Lang has furnished it abundantly in his charming 
 Introduction to 'Waverley.' The editor's own notes are judiciously sparing, 
 but conspicuously to the point, and they are very discreetly separated from 
 those of the author, Mr. Lang's laudable purpose being to illustrate and 
 explain Scott, not to make the notes a pretext for displaying his own 
 critical facuky and literary erudition. The illustrations by various competent 
 hands are beautiful in themselves and beautifully executed, and, altogether, 
 the ' Border Edition ' of the Waverley Novels bids fair to become the 
 classical edition of the great Scottish classic." 
 
 SPECTATOR. — "We trust that this fine edition of our greatest and 
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 popularity it deserves. To all Scott's lovers it is a pleasure to know that, 
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 works is said by the booksellers to rank next below Tennyson's in poetry, 
 and above that of everybody else in prose." 
 
 A 7 HEN ALUM. — " The handsome ' Border Edition' has been brought 
 lo a successful conclusion. The publisher deserves to be complimented 
 on the manner in which the edition has been printed and illustrated, and 
 Mr, Lang on the way in which he has performed his portion of the work. 
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 means overburdened the volumes with notes." 
 
 NOTES AND QUERIES. — "This spirited and ambitious enterprise 
 has been conducted to a safe termination, and the most ideal edition of the 
 Waverley Novels in existence is now completed." 
 
 SATURDAY REVIEW.— "Of all the many collections of the 
 Waverley Novels, the ' Border Edition' is incomparably the most handsome 
 and the most desirable. . . . Type, paper, illustrations, are altogether 
 admirable." 
 
 MAGAZIiVE OF ART. — "Size, type, paper, and printing, to say 
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12 Macmillan and Co.'s 
 
 THE WORKS OF 
 
 THOMAS HARDY 
 
 Collected Edition 
 i. TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES. 
 
 2. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. 
 
 3. THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE. 
 
 4. A PAIR OF BLUE EYES. 
 
 5. TWO ON A TOWER. 
 
 6. THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. 
 
 7. THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 8. JUDE THE OBSCURE. 
 
 9. THE TRUMPET-MAJOR. 
 
 10. THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA. 
 
 11. A LAODICEAN. 
 
 12. DESPERATE REMEDIES. 
 
 13. WESSEX TALES. 
 
 14. LIFE'S LITTLE IRONIES. 
 
 15. A GROUP OF NOBLE DAMES. 
 
 16. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 
 
 17. THE WELL-BELOVED. 
 
 18. WESSEX POEMS, and other Verses. 
 
 19. POEMS OF THE PAST and.THE PRESENT. 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 13 
 THE WORKS OF 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 
 WESTWARD HO ! 
 
 HYP ATI A; or, New Foes with an old Face. 
 
 TWO YEARS AGO. 
 
 ALTON LOCKE, Tailor and Poet. An Autobiography. 
 
 HEREWARD THE WAKE, "Last of the English." 
 
 YEAST : A Problem. 
 
 POEMS : including The Saint's Tragedy, Andromeda, Songs 
 Ballads, etc. 
 
 THE WATER-BABIES : A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. With 
 Illustrations by Linley Sambourne. 
 
 THE HEROES ; or, Greek Fairy Tales for my Children. With 
 
 Illustrations by the Author. 
 
 GLAUCUS ; or, The Wonders of the Shore. With Illustrations. 
 
 MADAM HOW AND LADY WHY; or, First Lessons in 
 Earth Lore for Children. With Illustrations. 
 
 AT LAST, A Christmas in the West Indies. With Illustrations. 
 
 THE HERMITS. 
 
 HISTORICAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 PLAYS AND PURITANS, and other Historical Essays. 
 
 THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON. 
 
 PROSE IDYLLS, New and Old. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 SANITARY AND SOCIAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 LITERARY AND GENERAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 ALL SAINTS' DAY : and other Sermons. 
 
 DISCIPLINE : and other Sermons. 
 
 THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD. Sermons. 
 
 GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 SERMONS FOR THE TIMES. 
 
 VILLAGE SERMONS, AND TOWN AND COUNTRY 
 SERMONS. 
 
 THE WATER OF LIFE : and other Sermons. 
 
 WESTMINSTER SERMONS. 
 
14 Macmillan and Co.'s 
 
 THE NOVELS 
 
 OF 
 
 F. MARION CRAWFORD 
 
 i. MR. ISAACS : A Tale of Modern India. 
 
 2. DOCTOR CLAUDIUS : A True Story. 
 
 3. A ROMAN SINGER. 
 
 4. ZOROASTER. 
 
 5. MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX. 
 
 6. A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH. 
 
 7. PAUL PATOFF. 
 
 8. WITH THE IMMORTALS. 
 
 9. GREIFENSTEIN. . 
 
 10. TAQUISARA: A Novel. 
 
 11. A ROSE OF YESTERDAY. 
 
 12. SANT ILARIO. 
 
 13. A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE. 
 
 14. KHALED : A Tale of Arabia. 
 
 15. THE THREE FATES. 
 
 16. THE WITCH OF PRAGUE 
 
 17. MARION DARCHE: A Story without Comment. 
 
 18. KATHARINE LAUDERDALE. 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 15 
 
 THE NOVELS 
 
 OF 
 
 F. iMARION CRAWFORD 
 
 19. THE CHILDREN OF THE KING. 
 
 20. PIETRO GHISLERI. 
 
 21. DON ORSINO. 
 
 22. CASA BRACCIO. 
 
 23. ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON. 
 
 24. THE RALSTONS. 
 
 25. CORLEONE : A Tale of Sicily. 
 
 26. VIA CRUCIS : A Romance of the Second Crusade. 
 
 27. IN THE PALACE OF THE KING: A Love 
 
 Story of Old Madrid. 
 
 28. CECILIA : A Story of Modern Rome. 
 
 29. MARIETTA : A Maid of Venice. 
 
 30. THE HEART OF ROME. 
 
 31. SOPRANO: A Portrait. 
 
 32. "WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND » 
 
 33. A LADY OF ROME. 
 
 34. ARETHUSA. 
 
1 6 Macmillan and Co.'s 
 
 THE NOVELS 
 
 OF 
 
 ROLF BOLDREWOOD 
 
 i. ROBBERY UNDER ARMS: A Story|of Life 
 and Adventure in the Bush and in the Gold- 
 fields of Australia. 
 
 2. A MODERN BUCCANEER. 
 
 3. THE MINER'S RIGHT: A Tale of the Aus- 
 
 tralian Gold-fields. 
 
 4. THE SQUATTER'S DREAM. 
 
 5. A SYDNEY-SIDE SAXON. 
 
 6. A COLONIAL REFORMER. 
 
 7. NEVERMORE. 
 
 8. PLAIN LIVING: A Bush Idyll. 
 
 9. MY RUN HOME. 
 
 10. THE SEALSKIN CLOAK. 
 
 11. THE CROOKED STICK; or, Pollie's Probation. 
 
 12. OLD MELBOURNE MEMORIES. 
 
 13. A ROMANCE OF CANVAS TOWN, and 
 
 other Stories. 
 
 14. WAR TO THE KNIFE ; or, Tangata Maori. 
 
 15. BABES IN THE BUSH. 
 
 16. IN BAD COMPANY, and other Stories. 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 17 
 
 By H. G. WELLS 
 
 THE PLATTNER STORY : and others. 
 TALES OF SPACE AND TIME. 
 THE STOLEN BACILLUS : and other Incidents. 
 THE INVISIBLE MAN. A Grotesque Romance. 
 
 LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM. A Story of a very 
 
 Young Couple. 
 WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES. 
 THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. 
 TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM. 
 
 THE FOOD OF THE GODS AND HOW IT 
 
 Came to Earth. 
 KIPPS : The Story of a Simple Soul. 
 
 By A. E. W. MASON 
 THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER. 
 THE PHILANDERERS. 
 MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY. 
 
 By EGERTON CASTLE 
 
 " LA BELLA " : and others. | " YOUNG APRIL." 
 MARSHFIELD THE OBSERVER. 
 
 By AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE 
 THE BATH COMEDY. 
 
 THE PRIDE OF JENNICO. Being a Memoir of 
 
 Captain Basil Jennico. 
 THE SECRET ORCHARD. 
 
 By MAARTEN MAARTENS 
 THE GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life. 
 MY LADY NOBODY. A Novel. 
 GOD'S FOOL. A Koopstad Story. 
 THE SIN OF JOOST AVELINGH. A Dutch Story. 
 HER MEMORY. I AN OLD MAID'S LOVE. 
 
18 Macmillan and Co.'s 
 
 THE NOVELS OF 
 
 ROSA N. CAREY 
 
 WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.— 1 ' A clever delineator of character, possessed of a 
 reserve of strength in a quiet, easy, flowing style, Miss Carey never fails to please a large 
 class of readers." 
 
 STANDARD. —"Miss Carey has the gift of writing naturally and simply, her pathos 
 is true and unforced, and her conversations are sprightly and sharp." 
 
 LADY. — Miss Carey's novels are always welcome ; they are out of the common run- 
 immaculately pure, and very high in tone." 
 
 OYer 700,000 of these works have been printed. 
 
 i. NELLIE'S MEMORIES. 52nd Thousand. 
 
 2. WEE WIFIE. 38th Thousand. 
 
 3. BARBARA HEATHCOTE'S TRIAL. 35th 
 
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 9. MARY ST. JOHN. 27th Thousand. 
 
 10. FOR LILIAS. 26th Thousand. 
 
 11. UNCLE MAX. 34th Thousand. 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 19 
 THE NOVELS OF 
 
 ROSA N. CAREY 
 
 Over 700,000 of these works have been printed. 
 
 12. RUE WITH A DIFFERENCE. 24th Thou- 
 
 sand. 
 
 13. THE HIGHWAY OF FATE. 23rd Thousand. 
 
 14. ONLY THE GOVERNESS. 37th Thousand. 
 
 15. LOVER OR FRIEND? 27th Thousand. 
 
 16. BASIL LYNDHURST. 24th Thousand. 
 
 17. SIR GODFREY'S GRAND-DAUGHTERS. 
 
 25th Thousand. 
 
 18. THE OLD, OLD STORY. 27th Thousand. 
 
 19. THE MISTRESS OF BRAE FARM. 30th 
 
 Thousand. 
 
 20. MRS. ROMNEY and "BUT MEN MUST 
 
 WORK." 14th Thousand. 
 
 21. OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES. 5th Thousand. 
 
 22. HERB OF GRACE. 25th Thousand. 
 
 23. A PASSAGE PERILOUS. 22nd Thousand. 
 
 24. AT THE MOORINGS. 21st Thousand. 
 
 25. THE HOUSEHOLD OF PETER. 21st Thou- 
 
 sand. 
 
 26. NO FRIEND LIKE A SISTER. 18th Thou- 
 
 sand. 
 
 27. THE ANGEL OF FORGIVENESS. 17th 
 
 Thousand. 
 
20 Macmillan and Co.'s 
 
 THE NOVELS AND TALES OF 
 
 CHARLOTTE M. YONGE 
 
 THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. With Illustrations by Kate 
 Greenaway. 
 
 HEARTSEASE ; or, the Brother's Wife. New Edition. With 
 Illustrations by Kate Greenaway. 
 
 HOPES AND FEARS ; or, Scenes from the Life of a Spinster. 
 With Illustrations by Herbert Gandy. 
 
 DYNEVOR TERRACE ; or, the Clue of Life. With Illustrations 
 by Adrian Stokes. 
 
 THE DAISY CHAIN ; or, Aspirations. A Family Chronicle 
 With Illustrations by J. P. Atkinson. 
 
 THE TRIAL : Mere Links of the Daisy Chain. With Illustra- 
 tions by J. P. Atkinson. 
 
 THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE ; or, Under Wode, under 
 Rode. Two Vols. With Illustrations by Herbert Gandy. 
 
 THE YOUNG STEPMOTHER ; or, a Chronicle of Mistakes. 
 With Illustrations by Marian Huxley. 
 
 THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY. With Illustra- 
 tions by Adrian Stokes. 
 
 THE THREE BRIDES. With Illustrations by Adrian Stokes. 
 
 MY YOUNG ALCIDES : A Faded Photograph. With Illustra- 
 tions by Adrian Stokes. 
 
 THE CAGED LION. With Illustrations by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST. With Illustrations 
 by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS; or, the White and Black 
 Ribaumont With Illustrations by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 LADY HESTER ; or, Ursula's Narrative ; and THE DANVERS 
 PAPERS. With Illustrations by Jane E. Cook. 
 
 MAGNUM BONUM ; or, Mother Carey's Brood. With Illustra- 
 tions by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 LOVE AND LIFE : an Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume. 
 With Illustrations by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 UNKNOWN TO HISTORY. A Story of the Captivity of Mary 
 of Scotland. With Illustrations by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 STRAY PEARLS. Memoirs of Margaret de Ribaumont, Vis- 
 countess of Bellaise. With Illustrations by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
Three-and-Sixpenny Library 21 
 THE NOVELS AND TALES OF 
 
 CHARLOTTE M. YONGE 
 
 THE ARMOURER'S 'PRENTICES. With Illustrations by 
 W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 SCENES AND CHARACTERS ; or, Eighteen Months at 
 Beechcroft. With Illustrations by W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 CHANTRY HOUSE. With Illustrations bv W. J. Hennessy. 
 
 A MODERN TELEMACHUS. With Illustrations by W. J, 
 Hennessy. 
 
 BYWORDS. A collection of Tales new and old. 
 
 BEECHCROFT AT ROCKSTONE. 
 
 MORE BYWORDS. 
 
 A REPUTED CHANGELING ; or, Three Seventh Years Two 
 Centuries Ago. 
 
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