The Railway Man and His Children

by Mrs. Oliphant

“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—”

“Not 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.”

“Oh, poor little doggie,” said Evelyn, seeing it inexpedient to continue this subject, and then she added more lightly, “What are they to be called then, Archie? Roy and Dhu?”

“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 he 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 five 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 was better than his. But he clung to his old suit all the same.

The shooting which Mr. Rowland had taken along with Rosmore 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 perturbation, 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 gamekeeper, 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? But the lad durst no more express this sentiment 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 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 nae 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.