The Railway Man and His Children

by Mrs. Oliphant

This was all the comfort that Jane 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.”

“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, hesitating, 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 support 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 Mr. Rowland’s money might do very well to increase their own importance in the district, to go over to their grand new mansion, which was much more splendid than Lord Clydesdale’s 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 “No; 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. 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 gentle folks 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 grey with a leaden paleness, the houses and pavements and looks of the people all grey, 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 dullness, producing nothing? He was a little later for breakfast, 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. Poor Jane 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 grey 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 down 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 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 excitement; 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 enunciation, 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 recognise 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 downstairs, “Is Mr. Archibald Rowland here? May I come in? I think—” and here there seemed a pause, “you must be Mrs. Brown.”

“And wha may ye be?” said Jane’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,” Jane said to herself! And the torrent of her wrath rose up in a moment like the waterspout of eastern seas.