The Railway Man and His Children

by Mrs. Oliphant

“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 Jane, 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 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 uncommon 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 opportunity 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,” he said. “She writes a little pretty hand, like a lady. She could not do it, even if she were capable of a thing which is a crime.”

“I tell you,” said Jane, “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. What was it? some witchcraft of hers, or a sign from heaven, as he had thought it for a moment? 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 he should see, perhaps, his mother looking at him through the darkness—his mother, so long dead, whom he 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 College. He would not go to the room where the Philosophers met. Had he become so low, so mean, he asked himself sometimes, that for a little want of refinement, a difference of clothes, he should shrink from his old friends? A want of refinement—as if 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. He 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? did she mean something quite the reverse? 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 house-full of 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 acquaintance with the world, was almost the most astonishing of all; and Eddy, who was always so bright, always full of spirits, so 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 Jane! 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? 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 he 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 policeman go past daily with his heavy tread, with a trembling certainty that he was coming to arrest her boy: and still more at midnight, when she heard his 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 respectable women of her class, was half disappointed when day after day passed, and no attempt at an arrest was ever made.