The Railway Man and His Children

by Mrs. Oliphant

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 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 conscience 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 were ever waiting at his door, ready to catch him at an unguarded 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 literally without a word of preface. “On the night of the 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 he 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 he 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 eyes.