Read Ebook: The Railway Man and His Children by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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Ebook has 2435 lines and 208934 words, and 49 pages

"Yes--I heard it--"

"That's all right then; you did not get to know me under false pretences. But you must know that I wasn't always what I am now. I am not very much to brag of, you will say now--but I'm a gentleman to what I was," he said, with a little harsh emotional laugh.

"Don't please talk in that way, you offend me," she said; "you must always have been a gentleman, Mr. Rowland, in your heart."

"Do you think you could say Rowland plain out? No? Well after all it would not be suitable for a lady like you--it's more for men."

"I will say 'James,' if you prefer it," she said with a moment's hesitation.

She had a feeling half of shocked amazement at his lightness: and yet it was so natural. Such a long time ago: a picture in the distance: a story he had read: the little fair curls on her forehead and the clean fireside and the first baby. He was by no means sure that it had all happened to himself, that he was the man coming in with his fustian suit all grimy, and his week's wages to give to his wife. It was impossible not to smile at that strange condition of affairs with a sort of affectionate spectatorship. Mr. Rowland seemed to remember the young fellow too, who had a curly shock of hair as well, and, when he had washed himself, was a well looking lad. With what a will he had hewed down the loaf, and eaten the bacon and consumed his tea--very comfortable, more comfortable perhaps than the well known engineer ever was at a great dinner. He had his books in a corner, and after Mary had cleared the table, got them out and worked at diagrams and calculations all the evening to the great admiration of his wife. He half wondered, as he told the story, what had become of that promising young man.

Evelyn was a little confused what to say. She was very much interested in his picture of his past life, but a little disturbed that he too should seem no more than interested, telling it so calmly as if it were the story of another: and she had not the faculty of making pretty speeches or saying that a working man was her deal and the noblest work of God. So she, on her side, pressed his hand a little to call him out of his dream. "You said--the first baby?"

"Oh yes, I should have said that at once. There are two of them, poor little things. Oh they have been very well looked after. I left them with her sister, a good sort of woman, who treats them exactly like her own--which has been a great thing both for them and for me. I was very heart-broken, I assure you, when she died, poor thing. I had always been a dreadful fellow for my books, and the firm saw I suppose that I was worth my salt, and made a proposal to me to come out here. There was no Cooper's Hill College or that sort of thing then. We came out, and we pushed our way as we could. It comes gradually that sort of thing--and I got accustomed to what you call society by degrees, just as I came to the responsibility of these railroads. I could not have ventured to take that upon me once, any more than to have dined at mess. I do both now and never mind. The railroad is an affair of calculation and of keeping your wits about you. So is the other. You just do as other men do, and all goes well."

"But," she said, pressing the question, "I want you to tell me about the children."

"To be sure! there are two of them, a boy and a girl. I have got their photographs somewhere, the boy is the eldest. I'll look them up and show them to you: poor little things! Poor May was very proud of them. But you must make allowance for me. I have been a very busy man, and beyond knowing that they were well, and providing for them liberally, I have not paid as much attention as perhaps I ought to have done. You see, I was full of distress about her when I left England; and out here a man is out of the way of thinking of that sort of thing, and forgets: well no, I don't mean forgets--"

"I am sure you do not," she said, "but are you not afraid they may have been brought up differently from what you would wish?"

"Oh, dear no," he said cheerfully, "they have been brought up by her sister, poor thing, a very good sort of woman. I am sure their mother herself could not have done better for them than Jane."

"But," said Miss Ferrars, "you are yourself so different, as you were saying, from what you were when you came to India first?"

"Different," he said with a laugh. "I should think so, indeed--oh, very different! things I never should have dreamt of aspiring to then, seem quite natural to me now. You may say different. When I look at you--"

She did not wish him to look at her, at least from this point of view, and it was very difficult to secure his attention to any other subject; which, perhaps, was natural enough. The only thing she could do without too much pertinacity was to ask, which was an innocent question, how long it was since he had come to India first.

"Then your son?" she said, with a little hesitation.

"The little fellow? Well, and what of him?"

"He must be nearly twenty now."

He looked at her with an astonished stare for a moment. "Twenty!" he said, as if the idea was beyond his comprehension. Then he repeated with a puzzled countenance, "Twenty! you don't say so! Now that you put it in that light, I suppose he is."

"And your daughter--"

"My little girl--" he rubbed his head in a bewildered way. "You are very particular in your questions. Are you afraid of them? You may be sure I will never let them be a subject of annoyance to you."

"Indeed, you mistake me altogether," said Evelyn. "It will be anything but annoyance. It will be one of the pleasures of my life." She was very sincere by nature, and she did pause a moment before she said pleasures. She was not so sure of that. They had suddenly become her duty, her future occupation, but as to pleasures she was far from certain. Children brought up without any knowledge of their father, in the sphere which he had left so long ago, and which he was so conscious was different, very different from all he was familiar with now. It was curious to hear him enlarge upon the difference, and yet take so little thought of it in this most important particular. Her seriousness moved him at last.

"I see," he said regretfully, "that you think I have been very indifferent to them, very negligent. But what could a man do? I could not have them here, to leave them in the charge of servants. I could not drag them about with me from one province to another. What could I have done? And I knew they were happy at home."

"You must not think I am blaming you. I see all the difficulty, but now--now you will have them with you, will you not, and take them back into your life?"

He looked at her with eyes full of admiration and content. "Is that the first thing you want me to do," he said, "the first thing you have at heart?"

"Yes," she said simply, "and the most natural thing. Your children. What could they be but my first interest? They are old enough--that is one good thing--to come to India without pause."

He rose from her side again and returned to his habitual action of walking about the room. "I knew," he said, "from the first moment, that I was a lucky man, indeed, to meet with you. I have always been a lucky man; but never so much as when you made up your mind to have me, little as I deserve a woman like you. I've that good in me that I know it when I see it: a good woman from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot. There's nothing in the world so good as that. Now, I'll tell you something, and I hope it will please you, for it's chiefly meant to please you. I am very well off. I can settle something very comfortable on you, and I can provide for the young ones. If it pleases you, my dear, we'll turn our backs on this blazing India altogether, and go home."

"Go home!" she said, with startled eyes.

"You'd like it? A country place in England or Scotland--better still, a house that would be your own--that you could settle in your own way, with all the things that please ladies now-a-days. I'll bring you home a cartload of curiosities that will set you up in that way. And then you could have the children, and put them through their facings. Eh, my lady dear? You'd like that? Well, I can afford it," he said with subdued exultation, with his hands in those pockets which metaphorically contained all that heart of man could desire. His eyes glowed with pleasure, with triumph, with a consciousness that he was making her happy. Yes! this was what every English lady banished in India must desire. A house in her own country, with every kind of greenness round, and every comfort within--with beautiful Indian stuffs and carpets, and curious things--and the children to pet and guide as she pleased. He was again the spectator, so to speak, of a picture of life, which rose before him, more beautiful than that of old--himself, indeed, the least lovely part of it, yet not so much amiss for an old fellow who had made all the money, and who could give her everything that could please her, everything her heart could wish for. His eyes, though they were not in themselves remarkable, grew liquid and lustrous in the pleasure of that thought.

As for Evelyn, she sat startled holding her hands clasped in her lap, with many things beyond the satisfaction he imagined in her eyes. Home in England meant something to her which could never be again. She said somewhat faintly--"In Scotland, if you would please me most of all." At which words, for Rowland was a Scotsman, he came to her in a glow of pleasure and took both her hands and ventured, for the first time, to touch her forehead with his lips. The touch gave this elderly pair a little shock, a surprise, which startled her still more.

Those two people had both a good deal to think about when they parted.

As for Evelyn the agitation of telling her own story and the extraordinary commotion which had been produced in her mind by the suggestion of going home, affected her like an illness. As she escaped from the inroad of the Stanhope children, all much surprised and indignant at being kept out, a thing which had never happened in their experience before, and made her way almost like a fugitive to the seclusion of her own room, she felt all the languor and exhaustion of a patient who had gone through a severe bodily crisis. It was over and she felt no pain--on the contrary that sensation of relief which is one of the most beatific in nature, had stolen through her relaxed limbs and faintly throbbing head. The ordeal was over, and it had been less terrible than she had feared. The man whom she had consented to marry, and with whose life her own would henceforward be identified, had not disappointed her, as it was possible he might have done. He was not a perfect man. He had been careless, very careless of those children who ought to have been his first care. But otherwise he was true. There was no fictitious show about him, no pretension. He had been, she felt sure, as good a husband to that poor young creature who was dead as any man could be. Poor Mary! her story was so simple, so pretty and full of tenderness as he told it. Evelyn had liked him better for every word. Had she lived!--ah, had she lived! That would have been a different matter altogether. In that case James Rowland would probably have become foreman at the foundry, and remained a highly respectable working man all his life, bringing up his children in the natural way to follow his own footsteps. Would it have been perhaps better so? It would have been more natural, far more free of complications, without any of the difficulties which she could not help foreseeing. These difficulties would be neither few nor small. Two children brought up by their aunt Jane, in an atmosphere strongly shadowed by the foundry, to be suddenly transplanted to a large country house full of luxury and leisure, and the habits of an altogether different life--and not children either but grown up, eighteen and twenty! She drew a long breath, and put her hands together with an involuntary drawing together of her forces. Here was a thing to look forward to! But as for Rowland himself he had come through that ordeal, which was in one sense a trial of his real mettle, carried on before the most clear-sighted tribunal, before a judge whose look went through and through him, though not a word was said to put him on his guard, most satisfactorily, a sound man and true, with his heart in the right place and no falseness about him. It was true that in one respect he was very wrong. He had neglected the children: on this subject there could be no doubt. He had no right to forget that they were growing up, that their homely aunt, who was as good to them as if they were her own, was not all they wanted, though it might have been sufficient when they were little children. Miss Ferrars did not excuse him for this, but she forgave him, which was perhaps better.

Mr. Rowland himself went away from this interview with feelings which were almost in a greater commotion than those of Evelyn. He was excited by going back upon the old life which had died out of his practical mind so completely, and which was to him as a tale that is told--yet which lay there, all the same, an innocent sweet memory deprived of all pain, a story of a young man and a young woman, both of whom had disappeared under the waves and billows of life--the young man, a well-looking fellow in his way, just as much as the young woman who had died. Mr. Rowland, the great engineer, was not even much like him, that hardheaded young fellow with his books, working out his diagrams on the clean kitchen table, and studying and toiling over his figures. How that fellow pegged away! James Rowland at forty-eight never opened a book. His calculations for practical work came to him as easy as a. b. c. He read his paper and the magazines when he saw them, but as for scientific works, never opened one, and did not think much of theoretical problems. And then the little house that was not far from the foundry, and the little clean bright pretty wife always ready and looking out for her husband, and the baby crying, and the young man coming in in his grimy fustian--it was a pretty picture, a charming story such as brings the tears to the eyes. She died, poor thing--they always have a sad end these little tales of real life. This was how he could not help looking at that story which he had just told though it was the story of his own life. Now that he thought of it he could have given a great many more details, although he had also forgotten many. It was a pretty story. There were a great many such stories in the world, and when the wife died and the little house fell to pieces, it was not at all unusual that the poor young fellow went to the bad. It was a good thing he had not done so in this case.

After all this record of thinkings it will be a relief to do something: which is generally the very best way, if not to settle a problem, at least to distract the attention from it. Mr. Rowland could not now do anything to alter the fact, that he had allowed his children to grow up in a different sphere from that which he intended them to occupy, and that probably the first meeting with them would contain many disenchantments and disappointments. No amount of thinking could now alter this fact, and dwelling upon it was not a way of making himself happier or adding in any way to the advantages of the moment. Like most men who have a great deal to do, and who must keep their brains clear for inevitable work, he had the power of putting disagreeable things away and declining to look at them. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," is always the maxim of philosophy, whether we take it in its highest meaning or in a lower sense; and it appeared to Mr. Rowland that the best thing he could do was to carry out his marriage with all the speed that was practicable, and to wind up his affairs so that his return home might be accomplished as soon, and with as much pleasure to everybody concerned, as possible. As he was a very direct man, used to acting in the most straightforward way, his first step was to call on Mrs. Stanhope, who stood in the place of Evelyn's relations, in order to settle with her the arrangements he wished to make.

"I should like, with Miss Ferrars' consent--which I have not asked till I should have talked over the matter with you--that the marriage should take place as soon as possible. I can trust to her excellent sense to perceive that we can have no possible reason to wait."

"Oh, Mr. Rowland!" said Mrs. Stanhope. "Of course it is quite reasonable on your part: but I don't think that Evelyn would like it to be hurried. It is not as if you might be ordered off at a moment's notice, like us poor military people. There is no reason to wait of course; but you can afford to take your time." She said this more from the natural feminine impulse of holding back in such matters, and not allowing her friend to be held cheap, than from any other reason.

"Mr. Rowland!" said Mrs. Stanhope again, this time with great indignation, "what do you mean by Miss Ferrars' place? I have known Evelyn all my life, and she is my dearest friend. Do you think I could fill up her place if I were to try?--and I certainly don't mean to try."

"I meant, of course, in respect to your children," said Mr. Rowland dryly. "You may do without your dearest friend by making an effort; but you can't do without a governess. Excuse me, I am a plain man, and call a spade, a spade."

This brutality of expression reduced Mrs. Stanhope to tears. "I have never treated her like a governess," she said. "If Evelyn's good heart made her help me with the children, it was not my asking, it was her own idea. She did it because she liked it. I implored her not to take them out, feeling that you might imagine something of that sort. Men like you, Mr. Rowland, who have made a great deal of money, always, if you will excuse me, impute interested motives. I foresaw as much as that."

"Yes," he said cheerfully, "we are given to think of the money value of things. Not of friendship, you know, and all that, but of time and work, and so forth. We needn't enter into that question, for I'm sure we understand each other. And I don't want to put you to inconvenience. How much time will it take you to fill Miss Ferrars' place?"

Mrs. Stanhope was a clever little woman. She thought for a moment, in natural exasperation, of dismissing him summarily, and refusing to have anything to say to a man who had treated her so; and then she thought she would not do that. He was rich--he might be useful some time or other to the children; it would be foolish to make a breach with a friend who would remember nothing but the best of her , and who would be kind to the children when they went home, and invite them for their holidays. So she subdued the natural anger that was almost on her lips, and gave vent to a harsh little laugh instead.

"You do always take such a prosaic view, and reduce everything to matter of fact," she said. "I can't afford to have any one in Evelyn's place, if you desire to speak of it so. Evelyn has helped me with the children for love--I must do the best I can for them by myself when you take her away."

"Ah well," said Mr. Rowland, "then it is a real sacrifice, and you will suffer. I dare say you have a great deal to do. Would not little Molly Price be a help to you? She is a nice little girl, and she has nobody belonging to her, and I don't know what the poor little thing is to do."

Mrs. Stanhope made a pause before she replied, looking all the time keenly in the engineer's face as if she would have read his meaning in that way. But he was impassible as a wooden image. "Molly Price is a very nice little girl," she said slowly, trying all the time to make out what he meant, "and she would be of use, though far different from Evelyn. But how could I take up a girl like that, without any means of providing for her. I had thought of it," Mrs. Stanhope admitted, "but to take up her time just when she might be doing better for herself, and to give her false expectations as to what I could do for her--when it only can be for a few years, till we send the children home."

"I see," said Mr. Rowland; "but the fact is that Molly has a little income of her own, and all she wants is a home."

"A little income of her own!"

"Yes," he said, meeting with the most impenetrable look the lady's eager scrutiny. "Did you not know? enough to pay for her board if necessary. She only wants a home."

"I don't know what you can think of me," said Mrs. Stanhope with a little haste. "I should never ask her for any board. She would have her share of whatever was going; and of course if she liked to help me with the children's lessons--"

"You would allow her to do it, without any compensation? Don't explain, my dear lady--I know the situation perfectly. And in return for that little arrangement you will help me in getting Evelyn to consent to a speedy marriage. As soon as we understand each other, everything will be perfectly straight."

"You are such a dreadful man of business. I am not accustomed to such summary ways," said Mrs. Stanhope, with again a half hysterical laugh. She was very much afraid of him after this experience. No doubt everybody in the station had seen through her actions so far as Evelyn Ferrars was concerned, attributing design and motive where none had existed, and not making any allowances for the unconscious, or only half conscious way in which she was led into taking an advantage of her friend. But nobody had ever ventured to put it into words. She was overawed by clear sight and the courage, and also a little by the practical help of this downright man.

"Yes," he said, "I'm nothing if not a man of business. Well now, there is another matter. I want it to be a very grand affair."

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