Not Like Other Girls

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

Archie had been persuaded to remain until the following evening, and to take the night mail up to London. “You know you always sleep so soundly in a railway-carriage,” his mother had said, with her eyes full of pleading.

“Perhaps so; but all the same it is dreary work to be shunted on to a platform in the middle of the night, and to have to find your way across London to catch a Sussex train.” But, in spite of his grumbling he had remained. For once it was difficult to tear himself away from that happy family party.

But all through that night he scarcely closed his eyes, but sat staring at the swinging-lamp and his drowsy fellow-passengers, or out into the blank wall of darkness, too wide awake and full of thought to lose himself in his usual placid slumbers. The fortunes of the Drummond family seemed rising a little, he thought, with pleasure. How alert and full of energy his father had seemed when he had parted from him at the station! he had lost that subdued despondent look that had grown on him of late. Even his shoulders were a little less bowed, as though the burden did not press quite so heavily.

“All this makes a great difference to me, Archie,” he had said, as they had walked to and fro on the platform. “Two such wealthy sons-in-law ought to satisfy any father’s ambition. I can hardly believe yet that my little Mattie—whom her sisters always called ‘the old maid’—should have secured such a prize. If it had been Grace, now, one need not have wondered so much.”

“You may leave Grace out of your reckoning,” returned Archie, smiling assent to this, “and consider you have three out of your seven daughters provided for, for Grace will always 363 be my care. Whatever happens in the future, I think I can promise as much as that.”

“Ay, ay! I remember when she was a little thing she always called herself Archie’s wife. Well, well, the mother must bring on Clara now: it would be a shame to separate you two. Look, there is your train, my boy! Jump in, and God bless you! You will come down to the wedding of course, and bring Grace.”

“Archie’s wife.” It was these two words that were keeping him so wide awake in the rushing darkness. A dusky flush mounted to the young man’s forehead as he pondered over them.

He knew himself better now. Only a few weeks, scarcely more than a fortnight, had passed since Grace had given him that hint; but each day since then had done the work of years. Caught at the rebound indeed, and that so securely and strongly that the man’s heart could never waver from its fixed purpose again.

Now it was that he wondered at his blindness; that he began to question with a perfect anguish of doubt whether he should be too late; whether his vacillation and that useless dream of his would hinder the fulfilment of what was now his dearest hope.

Would he ever bring her to believe that he had never really loved before,—not, at least, as he could love now? Would he ever dare to tell her so, when she had known and understood that first stray fancy of his for Nan’s sweet face?