The Railway Man and His Children

by Mrs. Oliphant

Next morning James Rowland woke with the churning of the waves under the little Clyde steamboat in his ears, as if he were again on the deck waiting for the opening in the trees, and the sight of the white colonnade on the summit of its knoll, which brought with it the dazzle of the sunshine, the purity of the sweet fresh air, the twitter of the birds. How pleasant to have such a vision at waking, to realise with delight that all those pleasant things were henceforth to be the everyday circumstances of his life! But the next moment a cloud came over his face, for he recollected what it was that must be his occupation to-day. No shirking it any longer—no possibility of persuading himself that something else ought to be done first. That had been possible the first day: to see that their future home was comfortable—to make sure that it would be ready for them, surely that was a duty? But now he had accomplished it, and knew all about the house, there was nothing further to keep him back. I hope the reader will not think this perplexed father unnatural or unkind. As a matter of fact, he would have been, and probably would be, after this first obstacle was got over the kindest, the most fond of fathers. It was the consciousness of the great gulf between what, when he last saw his children, would have been right and natural for them, and what would be suitable and indeed necessary now—between what he himself was then, and what he was now, that overwhelmed him. They might be, in their hearts, everything the prudent father could desire, and yet be quite out of place at Rosmore, where he himself, if a little unpolished, would nevertheless be quite in his proper place. If they had been but the little children he remembered, who could have been trained into anything! Alas, these possibilities were all over. He dressed himself slowly, sighing from time to time, with an oppression on his heart that he could not account for, wishing now, after all, that Evelyn had been with him, who perhaps would have known better how to deal with the emergency. And he breakfasted very slowly, reading the Herald in detail, and brooding over the paragraphs of local news which he did not understand after so many years of separation from Glasgow and its interests. At last the moment came when he could delay no longer. He had read the papers; he had finished his breakfast: he rose with a sigh and took his hat.

There is a street in Glasgow which I remember long ago, and which was then called the Sauchiehall Road. Something picturesque in the name has kept a place in the recollection of a child, over—let us not imagine how many years; but it may be that a recollection so far off has confused the outlines of the street, or that in this age of change it may be completely altered, perhaps overrun with tall tenements, perhaps fallen into irremediable decay. In like manner I am not sure that it was the Sauchiehall Road in which the young Rowlands lived with their aunt, though I think it was; and the reader may here excuse the possibility of topographical error. It was a street in which there were many, according to a description exclusively and characteristically Scotch, “self-contained” houses of a small description, such as are not very usual in Scotland. So far as I remember, they were of a generally grimy kind, built in that dark complexioned stone which adds so much gloom to the often cloudy skies and damp atmosphere of the western city. These houses presented an aspect of faded gentility, and of having seen better days. But they were at the same time very attractive to people without any pretence at gentility, to whom the dignity of a front door and a house self-contained, in distinction to the more usual circumstances of a flat, was very tempting.

It was in one of these houses that Mrs. Brown, who was Rowland’s sister-in-law, had established herself with her charges. It was one that was supposed to be among the best of the long row. It had a yard or two of what was called garden in front, almost filled with an elderberry tree, on which there were some dusty indications of coming blossom; and as the house had been recently painted, and had a bank of flowers in the parlour window, it was easily distinguishable from its neighbours, which were generally faded and dingy in appearance. To describe the beating of the heart with which Mr. Rowland knocked at that freshly painted green door would be almost more than words are equal to: a lover at the crisis of hope and fear, not knowing what was to be the answer to his suit, could not have been more agitated than this sober-minded, middle-aged man. It occurred to him at the last moment not to give his name, but to trust to his sister-in-law’s recognition of him, and thus have his first view of his children entirely without any warning. He had scarcely done this, however, before he began to think that to have given them the fullest warning would have been better, so that his first impressions should have been of their very best aspect prepared to please him. But this was only after it was too late to change.

“Wha’ll I say?” said the servant girl, so decidedly bearing that aspect that she could not have been called the maid, or the servant, or anything but the girl. She was wiping her hands with her apron to be ready to take a card, and a cap had been stuck on rather at random upon a mass of curly and not very well-tended hair.

“You can say it’s a gentleman to speak to Mrs. Brown,” said Rowland, stepping into the parlour, which was rather dark with its flowers banked up against the window, though the flowers themselves seemed to flourish luxuriantly. There was something horribly familiar to him in the aspect of the room. He had seen nothing like it for many years, and yet he recognised it in a moment. It was the best room of the respectable mechanic—the parlour in which his wife put all her pride. There was a round stand, covered with a glass shade, of wax flowers in the centre of the table, and it stood upon a still larger mat surrounded with raised flowers worked in crochet in coloured wools standing primly up around. There were a few books laid round like the rays of a star: the Course of Time and other grimly orthodox productions of that character. The chairs and sofa were covered with long “antimacassars,” also worked in wool in stripes of different colours; the mantelpiece was loaded with small pieces of china—girls with lambs, jugs with little pictures upon them, and other such impressive articles, and photographs. Hung over it in the place of honour, Mr. Rowland shivered to see his own portrait, flanked on one side by the picture of a bungalow in which he had once lived, and on the other by a group of football players, with names written underneath, one of them being conspicuously marked as “Archie.” Rowland, however, was breathing too quickly to allow him to go up to it, and prepare himself for the appearance of his son. He felt more like running away, and keeping up a fiction of being in India still.

While he was looking round him in consternation and alarm, he was suddenly aware that the door had opened, and a little bright figure in coloured muslin and many floating ribbons had come in. She twisted herself as she walked, with a swaying and movement of all the bright-coloured ribbons, and came forward with an apparent intention of shaking hands with the stranger. But stopping at the distance of a step or two, said with another twist, “Oh, I thought I knew you! Was there anything you might be wanting that I could do?”

“I am waiting to see Mrs. Brown,” he said.

“Oh! that’s aunty,” said the girl. She looked at the elderly visitor with a slight air of contempt, as if a man who could prefer to see aunty instead of herself was a most curious specimen of humanity. And then she laid down upon the table a parasol she had been carrying, and her gloves, and a small basket of flowers. “I’ve just been out to the nursery garden to get a flower,” she said, “I’m awfully fond of flowers. D’ye like them?—Will I give you one for your buttonhole—if you’re one of aunty’s friends?”

“You are very kind,” said the tremulous father, “but had you not better wait till you see if aunty recognises me for one of her friends?”

“Oh, it’s no matter,” said the girl, “a flower is neither here nor there—and she’ll not be fit to see a gentleman for a good while. She likes to put on her best gown, and her cap with the red ribbons, like the lady in the ‘Laird of Cockpen’—D’ye know the song?”