The Railway Man and His Children

by Mrs. Oliphant

“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 afternoon 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 flattered 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 sort 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 averse 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 dismissed, 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 packed—since you will go? 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 view 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 you 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, I suppose, before the beginning of the earth, that so it was to be.”