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The English Library

No. 77

THE RAILWAY MAN AND HIS CHILDREN

BY MRS. OLIPHANT

The English Library

THE MARRIAGE OF ELINOR 2 Vols.

THE RAILWAY MAN AND HIS CHILDREN

MRS. OLIPHANT

THE RAILWAY MAN

AND HIS CHILDREN

"Oh come, Maria, come!" cried her husband, "you are glad enough of the P.W.D. when you have no bigger fish on hand."

"Rowland," he said, "is one of the best fellows in the world. He does not shine perhaps among ladies, but he's good fun when he likes, and a capital companion."

"And Miss Ferrars, dear," said one of the ladies soothingly, "is not like my Ethel or your Dorothy. Poor thing, it is just as well, for she has nobody to look after her: she is, to say the least, old enough to manage matters for herself."

"And to know that such a chance would never come again," said one of the men with a laugh--which is a kind of speech that jars upon women, though they may perhaps say something very like it themselves. But to think of Miss Ferrars making a last clutch of desperation at James Rowland the engineer, as at a chance which might never occur again, was too much even for an afternoon company making a social meal upon a victim, and there was a feeling of compunction and something like guilt when some one whispered almost with awe, "Look! there they are."

The party in question were seated in a verandah in the cool of the day when the sun was out of sight. They had all been gasping in semi-darkness through the heat, and now had come to life again to enjoy a little gossip, before entering upon the real business of dining and the amusements of the evening. The ladies sat up in their chairs, and the men put themselves at least in a moral attitude of attention as the two figures went slowly across the square. One feels a little "caught" in spite of oneself by the sudden appearance of a person who has been under discussion at the moment he or she appears. There is a guilty sense that walls have ears, and that a bird of the air may carry the matter. It was a relief to everybody when the pair had passed and were seen no more. They went slowly, for the lady had a couple of little children clinging to her hands.

Miss Ferrars was of an appearance not to be passed over, even though she was quite old enough, as her critic said, to manage matters for herself--so old as to have no prospect of another chance did she reject the one unexpectedly offered to her at present. She was a woman a little more than the ordinary height, and a little less than the ordinary breadth--a slim, tall woman, with a very pliant figure, which when she was young had lent itself to all kinds of poetical similes. But she was no longer young. She must have been forty at the least, and she was not without the disadvantages that belong to that age. She did not look younger than she was. Her complexion had faded, and her hair had been touched, not to that premature whiteness which softens and beautifies, but to an iron grey, which is apt to give a certain sternness to the face. That there was no sternness about her, it was only necessary to see her attitude with the children, who clung to her and swayed her about, now to one side now to the other, with the restless tyranny peculiar to their age, while still she endeavoured to give her attention and a smile to the middle-aged person by her side, who, truth to tell, was by no means so patient of the children's presence as she was. It was the little boy, who was next to Mr. Rowland, and who kicked his legs and got in the way of his footsteps, that brought that colour of anger to his face, and many exclamations which had to be repressed to his lips. Those dreadful little Stanhopes! Miss Ferrars had been by way of paying a visit to the friend of her childhood, and it was very kind, everybody said, of Mrs. Stanhope to stretch such a point for a friend, and to keep her so long. But there were many who knew very well what Evelyn Ferrars had not said even to herself, that she was the most useful member of the Stanhope household, doing everything for the children, though not a word was said of any such duties as those which had insensibly been thrown upon her. Nobody breathed such a word as governess in respect to Mrs. Stanhope's friend: but people have eyes, and uncommonly sharp ones sometimes at an Indian station, and everybody knew perfectly to what that long visit had come.

Mr. Rowland was a man of another order altogether. He was not tall, and he was rather broad--a ruddy weatherbeaten man, much shone upon by the sun, and blown about by all the winds. It was not difficult to see at a glance the difference between the two, which the critics in Colonel Mitchell's verandah had pointed out so fully. He was dressed as well as the gentlemen of the station, and had an air of prosperity and wealth which was not often to be seen in the lean countenances of the soldiers; but he was not like them. He was respectable beyond words, well off, a sensible, responsible man: but he was not what is called a gentleman in common parlance. You may say that he was much better, being a good and upright and honest man; but after all that is but a begging of the question, for he might have been all these things and yet a gentleman, and this would have been in every way of the greatest advantage to him. It would have done him good with the young men under him, and even with the overseers and foremen of his works, as well as with the handful of people who made society in the station. Fortunately, however, he was not himself conscious of this deficiency, or if he was, accepted it as a matter of fact that did no real harm. He did not, as Mrs. Mitchell said, even pretend to be a gentleman. As he walked along by the side of the lady who had accepted him as her future husband, a great satisfaction betrayed itself in every look and movement. His face was lighted up with a sort of illumination as he turned it towards her--not the transport of a young man, or the radiance of that love-look which makes the most homely countenance almost beautiful, for he was perhaps beyond the age for such exaltation of sentiment; but a profound satisfaction and content which seemed to breathe out from him, surrounding him with an atmosphere of his own. Perhaps there was not the same expression upon the face of his betrothed. It is true that she was disturbed by the children, who hung upon her, dragging her now in one direction now in another; but at least her face was quietly serene, untroubled--peaceful if not glad.

This was the story of their wooing. Mr. Rowland, though he was not looked upon by the Society of the station as quite their equal, was yet invited everywhere, dining with everybody: and was treated with the utmost hospitality, so that no one could have suspected that any suspicion as to his worthiness was in the minds of these friendly people whom such a sudden event as this threatened marriage had moved to discussion of the claim to be one of them, which indeed he had never made, but which they had all awarded in that ease of social arrangement which herds together a little masterful alien community in the midst of that vast continent peopled by races so different. To be an Englishman is of itself in India a social grade, and thus Mr. Rowland the engineer had many opportunities of seeing Mrs. Stanhope's friend, both in Mrs. Stanhope's house and the houses of the other magnates of the station. He had met her at all the entertainments given, and they were many, and he had almost immediately singled her out, not because of her beauty nor of the dependent position which touches the heart of some men, nor indeed for any reason in particular, except that he did single her out. Such an attraction is its own sole reason and explanation. It was not even choice, but simple destiny, which made him feel that here, by God's grace, was the one woman for him. I do not deny that when this middle-aged and perfectly honest and straightforward man asked her to marry him, Evelyn Ferrars was taken very much by surprise. She opened wide a pair of brown eyes which had not been without note in their day, but which had long ceased to expect any homage, and looked at him as if for the moment she thought him out of his senses. Did he know what he was saying--did he by any strange chance mean it? She looked at him with scarcely a blush, so great was her surprise, making these inquiries with her startled eyes; and there can be no doubt that her first impulse was to say no. But before she said it a sudden train of thought darted out from her mind, one crowding after the other an endless succession of ideas and reflections, presented to her in the twinkling of an eye, as if they had been a line of soldiers on the march. And she paused. He was scarcely aware of the hesitation, and resumed again after that moment of silence, pleading his own cause, very modestly yet very earnestly, with a seriousness and soberness which were much more effectual than greater enthusiasm would have been. But by this time she was scarcely aware what he said; it was her own mind that had come into action, saying to her a hundred things more potent than what he was saying, and changing in a moment all the tenor of her thoughts. Evelyn was not perhaps much more of a free agent than Rowland was in this moment of fate. She felt afterwards that she had been stopped and her attention attracted as by the flash of one of those sun-signals of which she had been hearing. She was altogether in a military atmosphere in the Stanhopes' house, and everybody had been explaining that process by which the sun's rays are made to communicate messages from one distant army to another. She was stopped with the no on her lips by the flash and radiation through the air of that message. She had not any code of interpretation to note in a moment what it meant. But she paused, almost to her own astonishment; and when she found her voice, it was to ask for a little time to think before she gave her final reply.

When a woman does this, it is almost invariably the case that she decides for the suitor, even the doubt being, I suppose, a point in his favour, and increasing a disposition--a bias towards him rather than away from him. Evelyn had, like most other Englishwomen, a lively and wholesome feeling that love alone justified marriage, and that any less motive was a desecration of that tremendous tie. It is an excellent thing for a race that this superstition should exist, and I am far from desiring to see any lower ground accepted as the basis of a connection upon which the purity and character of all other affections depend. But yet when reason is allowed time to speak, there are many other things which may be permitted to have a voice, and a woman may at least be allowed to take into consideration at forty, arguments which at twenty would be indignantly refused a hearing. What Evelyn Ferrars felt as she retired from that interview which had opened to her so many and such extraordinary new suggestions for thought, it is difficult to describe. She had become all at once a sort of battlefield--to keep up the military simile--in which that "No," which had been her first conception of the situation, stood like a force entrenched and on the defensive, somewhat sullen, holding fast upon the mere fact of its existence, emitting a dull roar of artillery now and then, while the attacking forces scoured the plain in endless evolution, pressing on and on. The first flash of the sun-signal, which she had not been at first able to interpret, turned out to mean a rapid identification of her own position, which was a thing she had not allowed herself to think of, while it was without remedy. It was not what she had anticipated when she ventured in her loneliness to come up country in answer to her friend's warm invitation. She had come out to Calcutta with her brother, the last survivor of her family after the breaking up of home at her father's death; and when he too died soon after, cut off by the sudden stroke which ends so many promising careers in India, the despair of the solitary woman left in a strange place with few friends and little money, and nobody to come to her help, had been almost without a gleam of light. And in that emergency the Stanhopes had been very kind. The wife had written imploring her heart-broken friend to come to her, offering her all that the affection of a sister could do to supply her loss; the husband had come, what was even more kind, to do what he could for her, and to take her, if she consented, home. They had been more than kind. There had been no alloy of interested motives in that first impulse of generous compassion. It was good to think how frank, how full, how affectionate it had been.

And here suddenly was the opening of a door which made all things possible. When that mental heliograph flashed in her face, and she became aware of what it meant, Evelyn, for almost the first time, retired into her room and locked her door, and for a whole hour turned a deaf ear to the demands made upon her. The children came and called in every tone of impatience, Edith, the eldest, tap-tapping upon the closed door for ten minutes continuously, and little Bobby kicking, to the great derangement of the thoughts going on within; but for the first and only time Evelyn held fast. She had plenty to do in that house, more than ever she had done before in her life. In the previous crises of that existence it had been other people who had done the thinking, and there had been little left for her but to submit. Now, however, the matter was in her hands, and no one else could help her. It was hard work getting her head clear enough to put this and that together; for the mere idea of marriage was very startling and indeed terrifying to the middle-aged woman who had put it out of all her calculations years ago, and who had retained merely the old youthful superstition that its only warrant was love. But was that really so? After all it was not so simple a thing that it could be thus dismissed and classified. It was a very complicated thing and involved many duties. It was not merely an emotional matter, but one full of practical necessities and exertions. To be a true and helpful companion through all the chances of life: to govern a household: to secure comfort and peace of mind and consolation in all circumstances and occurrences for the partner of life: to care for him and his interests as nobody else could do: to adopt his obligations and help him to serve God and to serve men--Evelyn Ferrars felt that she was capable of all that. It was a worthy office to fulfil, and it was surely the chief part. As for the other side it was undeniable that she shrank from it a little. But he was not young any more than herself. The hour was scarcely over when Mrs. Stanhope herself appeared at the door, half with the air of a mistress who has a right to all her retainer's time, and half with that of a friend anxious to know what was the matter.

"The children tell me they cannot make you hear," she said. "I came myself to see if you were ill, or if anything is wrong."

"You have come just when I wanted you," said Evelyn, "if I may shut the door on the children for ten minutes more. Helen, something very wonderful has happened, and I have been trying to think what I must do."

"What has happened?" said Mrs. Stanhope in alarm.

"Mr. Rowland has asked me to--to marry him," said Evelyn. She did not blush as women do, even when their feelings are but little stirred. She was too anxious to learn what her friend's verdict would be.

Mrs. Stanhope uttered a cry, and rising up hastily, caught Evelyn in her arms. "Oh," she said, "I shall lose you, Eve!" The words and the embrace were full of compunction, of kindness, and remorse; but Evelyn felt the relief, the thankfulness, that suddenly flooded her friend's breast, and her decision was no longer in any doubt.

"Mr. Rowland," said Evelyn with a little tremor, "the first thing I would like to say to you is that we are neither of us very young."

"Miss Ferrars," said the engineer, "you are just as young as it is best and most beautiful to be."

There came a light like the reflection of a sudden flame over a face which she at least thought to be a faded face. She had never at her youngest and fairest received such a compliment, and how it could have come from a plain man who had so little appearance of any poetry about him was bewildering. It was indeed difficult to resume the middle-aged matter-of-fact tone after such an unexpected break.

"I am forty-two," she said, "and I have not been without experiences in my life. I want you to know what my past has been, before--"

"Whatever you please to tell me," he said with an air of deep respect--"but I must say it is not necessary. I am quite satisfied; your experiences may have been painful--the world isn't over good to people like you. If you will give me your companionship for the rest of our lives, that is enough for me, and far more than I can ever deserve. I have had my experiences too--"

"I must tell you, however, my story," she said. Women, especially those who have lived in the virginal age for so long, are very conscientious in these matters. They have a much greater respect for love than ordinary people, and think it dishonourable to keep back the knowledge from a future husband of how they have been affected in this way during their past. The love that may have touched them years before they had even heard his name, seems to their over delicacy as if it must be a drawback to them in his eyes--a really guilty secret of which a clean breast must be made before the new and real history is allowed to begin.

"I was," she said with a little hesitation, "engaged to be married at the usual age. It is a long time ago. My father had not met with any misfortunes then. We were living at home. That makes so great a difference in every way. We were of course well known people, friendly with everybody; everything about us was well known. You know in a county people are acquainted with everything about each other--you can't conceal it when anything happens to you, even if you wished to conceal it."

"I never had anything to do with a county," he said, with a sort of respectful acquiescence, interested but not curious--"but I can understand what you mean."

"Well: when my father speculated and was so unfortunate it became impossible to carry my engagement out. The gentleman I was engaged to, was not very well off then. We had to think what was best for both of us. We agreed that it would be best to break it off. I should only have been a sort of millstone round his neck. People might have expected him to help papa. And his own means were quite limited then. He had not been supposed a good match for me in my wealthy days--and when the tables were turned in this way, we both thought it was better to part."

"And did the fellow let you go--did he give you up? The wretched cad!" cried James Rowland, adding this violent expression of opinion under his breath.

"You must not speak so, Mr. Rowland; it was a mutual agreement. We both, I need hardly say, felt it very much. I--for a long time. Indeed, it has had an influence upon all my life. Don't think I have regretted it," she said eagerly, "for if we had not done it by mutual agreement as we did, with a sense of the necessity--we should have been forced to do it. For as it turned out, I could not have left my father. He was very much shattered. It cost him a great deal to give up his home. He had been born there, and all his people before him."

"And you, I suppose, were born there too, and all your people before you?"

"I? Oh! that was nothing! Wherever one is with one's own belongings, there is home. It doesn't matter for anything else. But it was more sad than words can say for poor papa. He had to move into the village to a little house. He bore it like a hero, thinking that it was best not to hide himself as if he had done any wrong. Misfortune and loss are not wrong. I want you," she said, gently, having raised her head for that one profession of faith, but dropping into the usual quiet tone again, "to know exactly all about us before--"

"And did you ever see that--man again?"

The adjectives that were implied in the pause James Rowland made before he brought out the word "man" were lost upon Evelyn, who probably could not have imagined anything so forcible, not to say profane.

"Yes," she said quietly, "often. We could not help it, to go anywhere he had to go through our village. He removed very soon, which was the kindest thing he could have done."

"The vile cad!" said James Rowland between his teeth.

"What did you say?" she asked with a startled look: but the engineer did not repeat those words.

"I am sure I for one am very much obliged to him," he said, getting up and walking about the room. "I'm not the man to object. He did the best thing he could have done for me. And you nursed your poor father till he died; and then you came from one trouble to another."

"Oh, do not speak of that! My poor Harry--my darling brother! to lose his home and his inheritance, and to be banished away from all he loved; and then just when life was beginning to smile a little, to die! I cannot speak of that!"

Mr. Rowland walked about the room more quickly than ever. She had covered her face with her hands, and the hot heavy tears were falling upon her dress like rain. After many hesitations he came up to her, and put his hand on her shoulder. "Is that so bad," he said, "if we really believe that the other life is the better life? We say so, don't we? and no doubt he's got something better to do there than railroads, and likes it better, now he's there."

She looked up at him startled, though the sentiment was common enough. It is a fine thing to be matter of fact on such a subject, and gives faith a solid reality which is denied to a more poetical view.

"I'm not sorry for him," said Rowland. "I'll hope to know him some day. I've always heard he was a fine fellow, incapable of anything that was--shoddy." Our engineer used very good English often, but now and then he knew nothing so forcible as the jargon which has got so much into all talk now-a-days, and is a pitfall for a partially educated man. "But," he said, pressing his hand upon her shoulder, in a way which perhaps a finer gentleman would not have used to call her attention, "There is this to be said, my dear lady. You've had a great deal of trouble, but if I live you shall have no more. No more if I can help it! As long as James Rowland is to the fore nothing shall get at you, my dear, but over his body."

He said it with fervour and with a momentary gleam as of moisture in his eyes; and she, looking up to him with a certain surprise in hers in which the tears were not dry, held out her hand. And thus their bargain was made: with as true emotion, perhaps, as if they had been lovers of twenty rushing into each other's arms. No trouble to get at her but over his body! it was a curious touch of romance and hyperbole in the midst of the matter of fact. And how true it turned out! and how untrue!--as if any one living creature could ever come between another and that fate to which we are born as the sparks fly upwards. But the idea of being thus taken care of, and of some one interposing his body between her and every assailant, was so new to Evelyn that she could not but smile. She was the one that had taken care of everybody and interposed her delicate body between them and fate.

"Yes--I heard it--"

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