WhenArchie left his father’s house on the morning after the ball, unrefreshed by sleep, half mad with excitement, bewildered by that last interview with Mrs. Rowland, and the sensation of something supernatural which had come over him, in the half-lighted hall, with the chill of the desolate new day coming in, he was perhaps in as wretched plight as ever a boy of twenty ever found himself in: and that is saying much, for, but for the inalienable power of recovery in youth, how sharp would be the pang of many a scene, in which the boy, guilty or not guilty, has started up against parental wrath or reproof, and shaken the dust from off his feet and gone forth, perhaps to dismay andruin, perhaps to new life and work. The sensation of turning the back upon home, in such circumstances, is not very rare in human consciousness, and must have left in many memories a poignant recollection, terrible, yet perhaps not altogether painful to realise, in the long series of good or evil fortune which has followed it. Archie, for the first hour or two, as he sped up the side of the loch, like an arrow from a bow, walking five miles an hour in his excitement, scarcely feeling the fatigue of his condition, or any physical circumstances whatever, did not even know where he was going, or what he would do. The home of his childhood, the kind nurse and ruler of his docile youth, were not far off, it is true, and in that he was better off than most of the young prodigals among whom this guiltless boy found himself suddenly classed. But his aunt had been prepossessed against him, she had all but forbidden him to return the last time he left her door, and his heart was sore with injured pride and innocence, misconstrued in that quarter as well as every other. He had gone wildly out in the early grey of the morning, and pursued the straight road before him rather because it was the straight road than from any other circumstance, unable to form any decision, or for a long time even to think of any conclusion to this forlorn walk out into the world. It was, of course, hours too early for the early boat, and had it not been so, Archie would not have exposed himself to question or remark as to his departure, from the people who knew him. The cottagers on the roadside who had noted with some surprise, on the previous night, the carriage from Maryport, far on the other side of the loch, which had driven rapidly by, coming and going, carrying the messenger from the bank, might have found themselves—had they divined who the pedestrian was who passed by their doors in the early morning, treading the same long way—spectators of one of those human dramas which take place in our midst every day, though we are seldom the wiser. At the smithy at Lochhead, one man did indeed ask the other, “Was that no young Rowland from Rosmore?” as Archie went by. But the powerful reply of the other, “Man, it’s impossible!” quenched that one suspicion. He had tied his old comforter, of Aunt Jane’s knitting, round his throat, as much for a disguise as for the warmth. He had put on his old clothes, with which he had first come to Rosmore, garments of which he only now knew the unloveliness—and was as unlike in appearance as in feeling to the millionaire’s only son, the young master of everything in his father’s luxurious house. Archie had never indeed felt his elevation very real: he scarcely ventured to accept and act upon it as if he were himself a person of importance; he, to his own consciousness, always Archie Rowland of the Westpark Football Club, and the Philosophers’ Debating Society, and of Sauchiehall Road. It was true that already Sauchiehall Road had sustained the shock of disenchantment, and he had a shamed and subdued feeling of having somehow gone beyond the circle to which he had once been so pleased to belong, and being no longer at home in it. But still less was he really at home on the moors with his unaccustomed gun, or in the drawing-room with allits unfamiliar necessities. He was now more a nobody than ever, belonging neither to one life nor the other, cast out of both; and he walked along dreamily as the morning broadened into the day, and all the world awoke, and the family fires were lighted, and the family tables spread. He walked on, and on getting beyond the range in which young Mr. Rowland of Rosmore was known, faint, tired, without food or rest, an outcast who belonged to nobody, till his progress began to be almost mechanical, his limbs moving like those of an automaton, all volition gone, nothing possible but to put one foot beyond the other in sheer monotony of movement, like the wheels of a machine. He did not pause, because he felt that if the machine were stopped, being human, it might not be able to go on again. Wheels that are made of wood and iron have this great advantage over flesh and blood.
At last he got to the railway, and stumbled into a carriage, and felt the comparative well-being of rest, when he was able to begin to think a little what he ought to do. And then it came back to Archie that he had bound himself to a certain course of action. He had flung the intimation at his father in the height of their passionate encounter, that there should be no difficulty in finding him, that he would go to the old home and wait there to be arrested, to stand his trial. It brought the most curious quickening of feeling to remember that he had said that. To be arrested, to be brought to trial!—he seemed to see the scene, himself standing at the bar, his father giving evidence in the box, the forged cheque handed round, and all the wiseheads bent over it, all finding signs to prove that he had done it—he that scorned it, that cared nothing for money, that would have flung it all into the sea rather than take a pin unjustly from any man. The fire blazed up in his dim eyes, so dim with want of rest and excess of emotion. He accused of such a crime! He laughed within himself at the futility of it, the foolishness! Had it been anything else of which they had accused him—of murdering somebody, for instance. Archie knew that he had a high temper (he who had always been so docile and so gentle), and he thought it possible that, if much irritated and provoked, he might have lifted his hand and given a sudden blow. There would have been in that a possibility, a chance, that he might have done it: but to forge a man’s name, for the sake of money—money! The scorn with which he said the word over to himself in the noise of the railway, nobody hearing, was tremendous. He laughed aloud at the thought. But it decided him on one point, that there must be no question as to where he went. It must be to his aunt’s house; the policeman could come to arrest him there, and therefore there he must go. It was true that it might be bringing shame upon her, innocent; but at all events he must go there first, tell her the whole, and if she desired that he should find another address, at least acquaint her with it, that she might give it to the policemen when they came. This did him good, as it settled the question, and brought him out of all uncertainty. It fortified him even against Aunt Jane’s possibly grim reception of him. He wouldgo there, not for anything he wanted from her, but to answer the claim of honour, which was the first necessity of all.
Mrs. Brown saw him from her window when he came, sick and weary, up the little path under the shadow of the elderberry tree, and ran and opened the door to him with a cry of, “Archie! eh, my man, but you’re welcome to me,” which thawed his heart a little. He threw himself down wearily in the familiar parlour, on one of the chairs, where he was always forbidden to sit lest he should discompose the antimacassar extended on its back. He remembered this as he sat down with a dreary laugh.
“This is one of the chairs I was never to sit upon,” he said.
“Oh, my bonny man,” cried Mrs. Brown, “sit where ye please; dight your feet upon the sofa, if you please; do anything you like! but eh, whatever you do, dinna leave me to one side and cast me off as if I did not belong to you: for that is what I canna bear.”
“I will not do that,” said Archie; “far from that: for I am come to ask you to take me back, aunty, as if I had never been away.”
Mrs. Brown gave a shriek of dismay. “Oh, dinna say that, dinna say that! for it looks as if things were going ill at the house at home.”
“Things are going as ill as they can: at their very worst,” he said. “I’ve come home, Aunt Jane, because it’s a well-known place, where I’ve lived all my life, so that if the policemen should be sent after me——”
She interrupted him with another shriek. “The pollisman!” she cried.
“That is what it has come to,” he answered, “in four months’ time, no more. I was to be a gentleman, never to want, Mr. Rowland’s son, the great man that everybody knows: and now I’m cast out, charged with a crime, with the thing flung in my face as if it were beyond doubt; and I’m to be brought up before the judges, and tried—and hanged, for anything I know. I promised,” said Archie, throwing back his tired head, “that I would wait upon him here, that I would not stir a step but bide—the worst that he or any man could do. But, Aunty Jane, to shame you, an honest, upright woman, with policemen coming to your door, is what I will not do. So, what I want is, that you should find a lodging for me, any kind of a place, a little hole, what does it matter.”
“To hide you; oh, to hide you, Archie?” cried Mrs. Brown, wringing her hands.
“To hide me!” he cried, with scorn; “it would be easy enough to do that.”
“Oh, my laddie,” cried Aunty Jane, “do you think I would let anybody but me do that? They shall never come at you, but o’er my body; they shall never touch a hair of your head, if it was to cost me my last drop of blood. Oh, Archie! it’s me that will hide you, my bonny man. There’s little means in this house, but I’ll find a way. If it comes to heart’s love and a woman’s wit against your muckle pollisman——”
“Aunty!” cried Archie, rising to his feet.
“Oh, whisht, whisht, my bairn! Come up the stairan’ we’ll settle it a’. Ye’ll have the air of going away when the evening comes: and you’ll just creep back, and I’ll make ye a hidin’ hole, where a’ the pollismen in Glesgow shall not find ye. Whisht, we’ll have to take Bell into our counsel; but she’s just an excellent lass, baith true and sure.”
“Aunty!” cried the young man; the tears bursting from his eyes, “Do you think I’m guilty, then: you! you think I did it—you! Oh, Lord! who will believe me, then?” he cried, stretching out despairing hands.
“Me?” cried Mrs. Brown; “me think ye did it, or any ill thing! I would as soon, oh, far sooner, believe it of mysel!”
He burst into a low fit of hysterical laughter. “Then why should ye hide me?” he said.
The good woman was taken aback for a moment. “What were ye meaning, then, Archie, about the pollisman? and you to bide till he came? Ye shall bide as lang as you please, my bonny boy; and everything we can do to make you comfortable, Bell and me. Bless me! I’m speaking to my ain lad as if he was a strange gentleman, and didna ken. What ails ye, Archie? you are just as white as a sheet, and laughing and greeting like a lassie.”
“I have had no breakfast,” he said, “and I’ve walked——”
But here he was interrupted by another shout from Mrs. Brown, who rushed away to the kitchen, appearing again in a moment or two with a tray, upon which was piled everything she could think of, from cold beef to strawberry jam. He was not hungry: any suchfeeling had abandoned him some time ago, but he was faint from want of food. And it was only when he had eaten and rested, in the quiet of the afternoon, that he was able to tell his tale coherently, and that she was sufficiently composed to hear.
The exclamations with which that tale was accompanied and interrupted, her dismay, her wrath—her triumph in Archie’s defiance of his father and resolution to shake the dust of Rosmore from off his feet, were endless; but when he came to his interview with Mrs. Rowland, Jane began to shake her head.
“It would be her wyte all through,” she said. “Eh, I would not have you lippen to her! It is just her that has been at the bottom of it a’ through.”
Archie’s momentary softness towards his stepmother was gone. He had begun to remember his griefs, real or imaginary, against her, and to persuade himself that her pity had been fictitious and theatrical. But he made a protest against this view.
“She could not have forged the cheque, in order to get me into trouble,” he said.
“Oh how do we ken what the like of her would do?” said Mrs. Brown; “a woman that makes a marriage like yon, is just set upon everything she can get out of the man. If he were to die, what would become of her? Oh, he would aye leave her something, enough to keep her; but there would be an awfu’ difference between that and Rosmore, and a’ her grand company and her horses and carriages. They,” said Aunty Jane, cleverly changing her ground, so that it was not Mrs. Rowland alone whom she could be supposed to referto, “will just do anything to get a little more siller to lay up for that time. And if they can persuade the poor man that his bairns, that are his natural kin, are no what he thinks them—eh, Archie, the objeck’s just ower evident.”
“She was very kind to me,” he said. “She said she believed me.”
“Oh ay; it’s very easy to be kind when the harm’s done. After she had got your father set against ye, and your life in her power, then was her time to speak ye fair, my poor laddie, and make him think her the kindest in the world. I’ve seen all that afore now,” said Mrs. Brown. “It’s no half so uncommon as ye think. Just the invention of the deevil to make their father think ill o’ them, and then a purrin’ and a phrasin’ to pretend that she’s on their side: that’s just what I’ve seen a score o’ times before.”
Archie was only half convinced, but he allowed himself to be silenced at least. “Somebody must have done it,” he said. “I have thought of it a great deal since—somebody that knew my father’s writing, and could get a cheque, and had the opportunity of getting the money, without suspicion.”
Mrs. Brown nodded her head at each detail, and said “Just that, just that.”
“You are making a mistake,” he said. “She writes a little pretty hand, like a lady. She could not do it, even if she were capable of a thing which is a crime.”
“I tell you,” said Jane, “they are just capable of everything, to get them that’s in their way out o’ their way. And what about the writing? If they canna doa thing themselves, there’s aye others they can get to do it. An ill person never missed an ill deed yet for want of a tool.”
“You speak nonsense!” he cried angrily; but he could not argue with a woman strong in the panoply of ignorance and obstinacy. And by the oft repetition of such arguments, Archie came, if not to believe, at least to acquiesce, in that decision that Mrs. Rowland, somehow, was at the bottom of it all; that it was contrary to her interests that a good understanding should exist between Archie and his father, and that, whoever had actually done this thing, the conception and execution of it were in her hands. Sometimes he had a compunction, remembering her look, her tears, her blessing. Was she such a hypocrite that she could bid God bless him and not mean it—mean, indeed, the very reverse? And then that thrill which he could never forget, that touch which came from no visible hand. What was it? some witchcraft of hers, or a sign from heaven, as he had thought it for a moment? He said nothing to Mrs. Brown of this, and he tried himself not to think of it. The recollection brought with it a pang of terror: he did not like to think of it at night when he was alone. If it should come again, if he should see, perhaps, his mother looking at him through the darkness—his mother, so long dead, whom he did not remember! He had not courage to desire such a visitor, and he tried to put this strange and wonderful sensation out of his mind.
But Archie did not spend happy days in his old home. He found it so changed, so unlike what it hadonce been: or was it only he who was changed? He had no heart to return to the old football team, to renew his acquaintance with the students, who were now returning daily to resume their work at the College. He would not go to the room where the Philosophers met. Had he become so low, so mean, he asked himself sometimes, that for a little want of refinement, a difference of clothes, he should shrink from his old friends? A want of refinement—as if he had any refinement, or ever would have; he, to whom Miss Saumarez had spoken so plainly, whom she had bidden not to be—such an ill-bred, low-bred fellow! That was what she had meant, though the words she used had been different. He never saw any one like Rosamond Saumarez now. There were many nice good girls in the Sauchiehall Road, girls who looked up to him, no one who would take him to task and show him how inferior he was: there was none like her, none. And he never would meet any one like her again. He never would see her as he remembered her so well, sitting at the piano in the dim background of the great room, scarcely visible, playing music which he did not understand, which overawed him, and irritated and worried him, but never lost its spell—not that it had any spell, except in the hands that called it forth. And then suddenly the picture would change, and he would see her walk out of the gloom in her white dress, tall and slim, coming up to him, the fool, in his inaction, laying a hand upon his arm, like the dropping of a rose leaf, carrying him off always in her composed, proud way, with her head high, afterEddy and Marion. These two were full of fun; they enjoyed it, as boys and girls enjoy dancing all the world over. But Archie did not enjoy it. It was far more than fun to him, it was as if some one lifted a curtain to him to reveal a new world. He never got beyond the threshold, but hovered there, looking in. Had the curtain fallen, and was the door closed now, for ever? Should he never see Rosamond again? Never, never, some echo seemed to say. All that was over. Rosmore had closed its doors, never to open them again. No, it had not closed its doors. The door was still open when he turned his back upon his father’s house—open, and with his father’s wife standing in the doorway, crying, and bidding God bless him. Did she not mean that? did she mean something quite the reverse? Was it she who had really turned him forth, instead of doing her best to keep him there, as had appeared? Archie never said a word of all this to his aunt. He had never mentioned Rosamond to her. Sometimes she asked him about Mr. Adie, the gentleman whom he had brought to see her, who seemed a fine lad, though not much to look at, and would not he do something to set things right. He of all people in the world! Eddy! who had accepted his money, and had stood by and seen him suffer for that, and had not even uttered a word of sympathy. He laughed when his aunt suggested this, and told her Mr. Adie was not a man who would do anything. But of Rosamond he never said a word.
And the days were more heavy than words could say. To have no companions but Mrs. Brown afterthat house-full of people, all of them more or less original and full of character—his father, who had so many experiences which came into his daily talk; Mrs. Rowland, one of the most wonderful of beings to an uneducated young man, with her easy knowledge of so many things which, to him, were a study and labour to know; and Rosamond, whose knowledge was of so different a kind, yet who, in her self-possession and youthful, grave acquaintance with the world, was almost the most astonishing of all; and Eddy, who was always so bright, always full of spirits, so perfectly aware of his own deficiencies, that they became qualities, and pleased the people about him more than if he had been ever so clever and instructed. To leave all these, and all the people who came and went, and talked and filled the world with variety of life, even old Rankin in his cottage and Roderick on the hill, and to have no companion but Aunty Jane! She was more kind than words could say, but had so narrow a little round of being, and was so inveterate, so determined in those certainties which he was almost brought to believe, by dint of much talking, but which his spirit rebelled against all the same. When he received Evelyn’s letters he carried them off to his room to read them, and would not expose them to her scrutiny: but he was too much influenced by her opinions and by the tacit agreement in them, to which, in his sore and wounded condition he had been brought, to reply. It would have been a certain disloyalty if, in Mrs. Brown’s house, he had answered the appeal of the stepmother who, he had agreed, or almost agreed, withhis aunt, must be at the bottom of it all. And what could he have replied? He had said that he would abide whatever they chose to do to him—arrest, trial, whatever they pleased. He had represented to himself and to his aunt that he expected the policemen, and that from day to day they might come to take him. He had, in fact, so simple was he, felt a tremor in his heart, when he saw in the road, as happened every day, the honest sturdy form of the policeman passing by. It was always possible that this simple functionary might be coming, armed with all the majesty of the law, to take him, though Archie had an internal conviction that, if it was to be done, it would be done more quietly than this, with more precaution than if he had been a housebreaker or stolen a watch. But such delicacies did not enter into Mrs. Brown’s mind. She watched the policeman go past daily with his heavy tread, with a trembling certainty that he was coming to arrest her boy: and still more at midnight, when she heard his heavy tread, did she hold her breath, thinking that now the dreaded moment must have come, and on tiptoe of apprehension and anxiety waiting for the sound of his nearer approach, ready to thrust Archie into her bed or under, to conceal him till the danger was over. Mrs. Brown, though she had all the horror of the police common to respectable women of her class, was half disappointed when day after day passed, and no attempt at an arrest was ever made.
“They will have found nae proof,” she said, “as how could they have found any proof, there being nane. And they will just be in a puzzle what to do—and yon leddy will either be concocting something, or else she will be working upon your father, poor misguided man. Eh, when I think what James Rowland might have been, with his bonnie dochter to sit at the head of his table, and his son to stand for him before the world, and everything just good nature and peace. But he had to have a grand leddy to scare us a’ with her grand ways, and that was thinking of nothing but how to get as much as she could out o’ him, and his ain that were the right heirs, out of the way. Ye’ll see the next thing will be trouble to Mey. She will not put up with Mey: now she’s gotten you banished, the next thing in her head will be something against your sister, till baith the ane and the ither o’ you is on the street. And just let her do her worst,” said Mrs. Brown with a flush of war, “there will be aye room here. I’m no wanting to see her fall into worse and worse sin, but the sooner she lets out her plans the better for us. And we’ll just have Mey back in her bonnie little room, and everything as it was before.”
Would everything be as it was before? Alas, Archie feared not. They were not as they had been before. For himself everything was changed. It was vain to think of returning to his old existence as it had been, when they were all so cheerful together in Sauchiehall Road. He thought of the old suppers, when he would bring in with him two or three of his Philosophers, whom Mrs. Brown would receive with a “Come away ben, come in to the fire. I’m just very glad to see you,” and Marion would set herself to tease and provoke: and who would be delighted to reply to both the ladies, to meet Mrs. Brown with compliments upon her supper, and to laugh with Marion to her heart’s content. These little parties had been very pleasant. They had appeared to him sometimes, when anything had gone wrong at Rosmore, as happy examples of natural ease and enjoyment. But now he had ceased to have any taste for these gatherings. And Marion: perhaps Marion would be more at home than he was: for at Rosmore her social performances had been still a little in the same kind, personal encounters of laughter and sharp speeches, what Eddy called “chaff,” and in which style he was himself a master. Perhaps she could still have made herself happy with the Philosophers. But Archie’s day for that was over. The old home could never be what it had been before. He scorned himself for seeing all its little defects, and for feeling the disenchantment, even for the consciousness that Aunt Jane, who was so kind, was scarcely a companion who could make life sweet. She was as his mother. He had never known other care than her’s. In the old days he had perhaps wished sometimes that she had not spoken the language of Glasgow in quite so broad a tone. But this was so small a defect; how he hated himself for perceiving much more than the broad Glasgow speech which jarred upon him! But it is a very hard ordeal for an old woman in any rank when she has to be the sole companion of a young man; especially when long knowledge makes him acquainted with every tale she has to tell, and all the experiences which might be interesting to another, but have been familiarto him since ever he began to listen and to understand.
The only relief which Archie had was in attempts, not carried out with any energy, to get a situation in which he could earn his own living. Nothing could have been more false than his present position. He had scarcely any money left, and he had abandoned his father’s house for ever. Yet he was supported by his aunt, who received her living from his father, and so it was still by James Rowland’s money that his son was nourished, though that son had totally rebelled against him. What if he might cut short or take away altogether Jane Brown’s allowance, on account of the rebel she was harbouring? What if he understood with contempt that his son was thus living upon him still? Sometimes at night these thoughts would so sting and madden Archie that he would jump out of bed in the morning, resolved before night came again to have got work, whatever it was, and to have made himself independent. But this was so much easier said and thought than done. One man to whom he applied, laughed in his face when he confessed that he was the son of the great Rowland, the Indian Railway Man. “No, no, Mr. Rowland,” he said, “the like of you in my office would revolutionise everything. You have too much money to spend, you rich men’s sons. You lead away the poor lads that cannot play fast and loose with life like you. Eh! you have no money? Well, then, I suppose you have had a tiff with your father and mean to be independent. That’s just as bad. You will be diligent for a while and then you will go off like afirework. I have known the sort of thing before. No, no, my young gentleman, the like of you is not for an office like mine.” Then poor Archie tried the plan of giving no account of himself at all, except that he was in want of a situation, and could do a little bookkeeping, and was acquainted with the axiom that two and two make four. And in this case he was asked for his testimonials, but had no testimonials to offer, no previous character or evidence as to what he could do. And again, but more roughly, he was re-conducted, as the French say, to the simplest door, and his hopes in that instance were over. He then began, as how many a much disappointed man has done, to study the advertisements in the newspapers, and to answer them sometimes half a dozen in the day. But the sprawling large hand-writing which was so fatally like his father’s, did not find favour in the eyes of men who advertised for clerks. It was admired in Mr. Rowland, the great railway man, and said to mean originality, daring, and a strong will, but in the young would-be clerk it was sharply set down as a bad hand, and he was rejected on that and other reasons again and again. This dismal play went on from day to day. Perhaps he was not very earnest in it, perhaps he felt that in no combination of circumstances could it be a matter of life and death. If he was not arrested and brought to trial, he would be provided for. The question was whether he would submit his pride to being supported by the man who had flung that cheque in his face. When he asked himself such a question, or rather, when it fluttered across his path,Archie would spring to his feet again with an emphatic “No!” and redouble his exertions.
But he was in a false position, crippled all round by disabilities. Mrs. Brown advised that he should go to the minister, who had known him so long, and could speak for him; but Archie knew what the minister would say: he would remind him of his duty to his father, and that to leave his father’s house and bury himself in a position unbecoming Mr. Rowland’s son, was ungrateful and unkind. And if he told all his story, and that of the forged cheque, what would the minister say? He would shake his head, he would grow grave, a cloud would gather over his face, he would make haste to end the interview. It would be impossible to believe that Mr. Rowland would make such an accusation without certain proof. Archie knew this was how it would happen, and he could not face such a reception.
Mrs. Brown went herself privately to the foundry, where her own connection with it as the widow of a foreman, and still more, her connection with Rowland, who had risen from it to such unexampled heights, made her still a person of consideration—to speak to the manager. But the manager of the foundry was still more decided.
“If he really wants to learn the work, and his father will say a single word, it will be easily managed.”
“But oh, Mr. Blyth, ye must not ask that; for it’s just in consequence of two-three unlucky words with his father that he’s thinking of taking a situation.”
“Then, Mrs. Brown, you should give the young man good advice. What does he think he’ll gain by quarrelling with his father? He may be sure his father is twice the man that he is, however clever he may be.”
“I was not saying he was very clever,” said Mrs. Brown; “but ye see he has a stepmother, and that explains everything: for she just turns the father against them, as is a common occurrence.”
“Well,” said the manager, “all the same, the best thing he can do is to make it up with his father. Stepmothers are ill things, but they’re not always as black as they’re painted; and those that are subject to them must just put up with them.”
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, nothingwould 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. Heused 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! andyet 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.
Archiemade, as he thought, but one step down the stairs: he fell into the little passage, which led to the parlour, like a thunderbolt. “Aunt Jane, it is Mrs. Rowland,” he cried.
“And if it is Mrs. Rowland,” said Jane, “who is she to come here as if the place belonged to her? which it dis not, nor ever will, were she the queen o’ the whole land.”
“Archie,” said the voice of Evelyn from beyond the stout, full form that stood like a solid barrier between him and his father’s wife; “ask your auntkindly to let me in. I have been travelling all night, and I bring you good news; but I am very tired. Please to let me in.”
Mrs. Brown was rent by conflicting sentiments. To resist such an entreaty is as hard for a Scotswoman of her class as for an Arab in the desert. The claims of hospitality are as urgent with one as with the other. She did not know how to refuse, to keep a tired woman, appealing to her, at arm’s length. Further, thoughts of fresh tea to be masked, and eggs to be boiled, flashed into her mind across the sullen background of enmity which made her stand fast in stubborn resistance. It was a sin against her house to close the door, to oppose the entrance of the stranger. She had never done such a thing, scarcely even to the gangrel body who was not to be trusted in the neighbourhood of a silver spoon, before, and the necessity hurt her. But to let in this fine lady, this proud woman, this stranger and alien person, who had (presumably) hunted Archie from his father’s house—— Oh, no, no!
“There are plenty hotels in Glasgow where the leddy can go,” she said, standing firm. “Ye can go with her, ye fool that ye are, and be beguiled by her flattering tongue, for anything I care.”
“May not I come in?” said Evelyn, with great surprise. “I have been hoping all night for a little rest and a welcome. You surely will not refuse me half-an-hour’s rest, if I promise to go away in half-an-hour?” She smiled and looked at Archie, whose anxious face appeared over Mrs. Brown’s shoulder. “I did not know,” she said, “that your aunt had any objection to me.”
“Ainy objection!” cried Mrs. Brown, “when you have just made his life a burden to him, and ruined all his prospects, poor lad, and closed the doors o’ his father’s house!”
“But I have not done that,” said Mrs. Rowland, surprised. “You are making a great mistake, surely. His prospects are not ruined, nor are his father’s doors closed against him, as he knows. But now,” she said, tears of weakness coming into her eyes, “they are thrown open as if with the sound of a trumpet. Archie, thank God that it is all cleared up and found out. Will you not let me in to tell him how it has been discovered and his honour cleared? Don’t you care for his honour and good name, you who have been a mother to him—more than for anything else in the world?”
“I never doubted either one or the other,” said Mrs. Brown; “it will be nae discovery to me.”
“Nor to me either,” said Evelyn, “as he knows: but proofs are good things. If you will not let me in,” she added, with a smile, which was very near the other manifestation of feeling—tears, “I must sit down on the steps, and he can hear my story here.”
“You can come in,” said Mrs. Brown, opening the door wide. “I will have nae play-acting on my doorsteps. Archie, ye can take this leddy into the parlour. It’s easy for the like of such a woman to get over a laddie like you. Ye ken nothing of their wiles; how should ye?” She followed as she spoke into the parlour, where she pulled forward an easy-chair violently, talking all the time. “They just get ye back undertheir thumb when it pleases them, until the time comes when your downfa’s doomed. Here’s a footstool till ye. It’ll no doubt be a great satisfaction to feel that Jane Brown’s house is but a poor place, no a chair good enough for the like of you to sit down——”
“Indeed, it is very comfortable, and a great ease to sit down and be quiet for a moment. Thank you kindly,” said Evelyn. “I have been travelling, I may say, for four days. On Tuesday night I went up to town—to London, I mean—and there I have been to and fro all the time, and came up again here during the night. So I have an excuse for being very tired.”
“Lord bless us,” said Mrs. Brown, with wide open eyes, “and what was the need of that? I’m thinking with Jim Rowland’s money in your pouch ye have little need to weary yourself in ainy way.”
Going down to the Kyles of Bute for a day’s holiday was the most exhausting experience Mrs. Brown had ever had, and she had not got the better of that fatigue for several days. She was a little overawed by this description, as indeed Evelyn, with pardonable guile, had intended her to be.
She darted out of the room as she spoke, perhaps that she might not yield more to the influence of this soft-spoken woman (“but they can speak soft enough, and sweet enough, when it’s for their ain ends,” she said to herself) leaving Evelyn alone with Archie. She held out her hand to him with a smile. “I am so tired,” she said, “that I am scarcely capable of telling you my story. I feel the wheels going in my head,and a sort of perpetual movement. Now, some people travel by night constantly, and are never the worse.”
She spoke thus, partly because she was indeed very tired, and partly to accustom Archie to the shock of seeing her, speaking with her, being thus brought back to all the stormy emotions of that last eventful night. She half understood him and the reluctance with which, now that his aunt’s violent opposition was taken away, he touched her hand, and accepted her confidence. Archie was not amiable though he might be weak. At the sight of her seated there, and no longer held at bay, all the hard things that had been said, and which he himself had united in saying, against her and her power over his father, surged up into his mind. For anything he knew she might be the malign influence that Jane Brown believed her to be. She might be, for some occult reason of her own, trying to draw him again within her power, to represent herself as his benefactress, only that she might more fully and completely ruin him the next time. This had been suggested to him so often that he almost believed it: and it came back with all that force of hostility which replaces remorse, in the reaction from a momentary softness, which is in itself a reaction too. He had been ready to pluck his aunt away—to bid her stand aside for shame, while she held this woman at bay: but now that the woman was there enthroned, without opposition, holding out her hand to him, with that grace of profoundest, unapproachable superiority, all his rebellious feelings started forth again. He felt no curiosity to know what she had been doing, or what was the resultof which she seemed so proud. How could it affect him? He represented to himself that even to speak to him of being cleared was an insult, and her brag of her fatigue and exertions revolted him. What did it matter to him if she was tired or not? What did he care if the wheels were going in her head? He touched her hand because it would be uncivil, and show his bad breeding, if he refused it—and then he turned his back and stood looking out of the window. It was the same attitude as Eddy had assumed, though for a different reason, and Evelyn, in her exhaustion, smiled over the resemblance. She said to herself that boys of that age were very much alike, though so different, and that after all the most accomplished young man of the world had only the same ways of showing emotion as were patent to the simplest of his kind. She said after a moment: “You don’t seem to have much curiosity as to what I have been doing, Archie?”
“No,” he said curtly; “why should I? You were so polite as to say it had something to do with me: but I don’t see what you could have to do with me?”
“Come,” she said, “you must not be cross, Archie. Your aunt is, but I excuse her—for she does not know, and perhaps may even think I don’t know—that there is no virtue in being uncivil.”
“She is not uncivil,” he said, rudely. “She is the kindest woman in the world.”
“The one, unfortunately, does not always make the other impossible,” she said softly, and then she sighed. “Is it necessary to begin all over again? Archie,” she said, “I thought we had passed the preliminary stage?”
“I don’t know what you call the preliminary stage.”
“Well, well,” she said with an impatient sigh.
And then it occurred to Archie that there was something ludicrous in the position, in his sullen stand in front of the window, while she sat, shut out from the light by his shadow, endeavouring to bring him to reason, behind. He felt, too, that the reason was on her side, and the obstinacy and folly on his, which did not make him more amiable, nor help to free him from his angry resistance. What roused him was the jar of a rush against the door, which presently was flung open, striking against the wall, by the rapid entrance of a tray, borne by Mrs. Brown herself in front of her, covered with a white cloth, and bearing all the materials of an excellent breakfast. Jane set it down with a dash upon the table, pushing aside the carefully arranged books, and almost breaking, in her vehemence, the shade which covered a group of wax water-lilies which filled the place of honour. “Lift off the flowers and the books, Archie,” she cried; “you maunna let even your worst enemy hunger and thirst when ye bring him in to your house.”
“Thank you for your kindness,” said Evelyn, with a faint laugh. “But why am I to be supposed his enemy? It is a little cruel, don’t you think, without any proof.”
“What maitters that as long as ye get what you want?” said Jane, “and I’ll allow that you want a cup of tea after your journey, whatever is your objeck, maudam. And ye had better go ben and get yourbreakfast, Archie. I will see that the leddy gets everything she wants.”
“You treat me,” said Evelyn, put on her mettle, “a little as Jael did her enemy. Butter in a lordly dish, but the nail and the hammer ready for use behind.”
“There’s neither nail nor hammer in my hands,” said Mrs. Brown. “And I never liked the woman. It’s true that she was commended by the prophetess, but I often thought yon was a slip o’ the tongue in Deborah, carried away by her feelin’s, as is rale common with women, and no thinking what she was saying. Na, I am nae Jael. Besides he was weel kent for an enemy to Israel, and that’s mair than ony individual. I hope ye find the tea to your taste; there is no pushon in it: and the eggs are our ain laying, for I’ve aye kept a wheen poultry. It was good for the bairns to have them caller and good—when I had the bairns with me.”
“I have often thought of you,” said Evelyn, “and of how you must have missed them. It was too abrupt at last. If you had but come with them to Rosmore—”
“Na na, none o’ that. And ye may spare me your peety, Mrs. Rowland: I’m no a woman that is fond o’ peety. It was just done, and the thing is over, and there is no more to be said: if ye had kept them happy when ye had them!”
“That is always the hardest thing to do.”
“Eh, woman,” said Mrs. Brown, “if ye had been a woman like the women in the books! There’s such arises from time to time—that does her duty to theman’s bairns and puts her feelin’s in her pocket, if she doesna like them; though how it was possible no to like them is mair than I can tell. She should have been up and tellt him, when there was suspicion thrown upon that lad, that it wasna true. If they had threepit it till they were black in the face, she would have said she didna believe a word. She would have cried out, ‘Look at the lad,’ (a more sullen, hangdog countenance than Archie’s at this moment could scarcely have been conceived) ‘and hear his ain saying aboon a’ the world!’”
There was a little stir at the window, and a harsh voice broke out suddenly where Archie stood: “That’s just what she did,” he said.
“If it had been me,” cried Jane, inspired with her theme, and noting no interruption, “though I’m nae pattern, I would have cried out, ‘Oh, get away from me, ye ill-thinking man! will ye daur to say there’s a lie in that laddie’s bonny broo! I’m no his parent, like you (I would have said), but a woman with e’en in my head, and I ken the truth when I see it. My word for his! (I would have cried) yon’s the truth and a’ the rest is lies!’ Woman! oh woman! I’m no a pattern; I’m no a grand and bonny leddy like you; but that’s what I would have done—plain Jane Brown, standing here before ye—if it had been me!”
Jane plumped down into a seat at the end of this tirade, and burst, as was natural, into hot torrents of tears, to which she gave vent freely, rocking herself to and fro with the primitive usage of passion. Evelyn had not said a word. She had followed the wild eloquence of the other with a tremulous smile and tears in her eyes. She did not even look at Archie, to remind him. He, for his part, had not known how to contain himself while the scene went on. He caught at his aunt’s arm, which she used in the free gesture of her class to emphasize her words, and at her dress: but it was not till Mrs. Brown’s sobs began to grow less that the lad spoke.
“Aunt Jane,” he said, “it is you at the end that has put all the clouds away. We’ve been slanderers, and evil speakers, you and me. We have just done our utmost, and all failed. We have wanted to lay the blame of it on her, and to think that it was her doing. But you’ve cleared up all that Aunt Jane,” he said, with a quick touch of his hand upon her shoulder, “everything you said you would have done, she did. Do you hear me?—all you said, she said. She has just done that and more. My father, if he were here, would tell you. You’ve shown me the truth anyway, whether you will see it yourself or not. She has done all that—and more!”
Archie turned away and made a round of the room like a blind man, and then he went up to Evelyn on the other side. “I humbly beg your pardon with all my heart and soul,” he said. “I’ll maybe never enter my father’s doors. I’ll maybe never come to anything as long as I live. And what you have come to tell me is just like Hebrew and Greek to me, and I’m not caring what it is; but she’s cleared my eyes, and I just beg your pardon with all my heart and soul.”
“Hush, Archie, hush,” said Mrs. Rowland, givinghim her hand (which he shook awkwardly and dropped, poor boy, having no graceful suggestions in him, not knowing what to do with a lady’s hand in such circumstances, as Eddy did); “there is no pardon needed: and Mrs. Brown, shake hands with me, for we understand each other fully, and I agree in every word you say. If James did not do so, it was perhaps because he was a man, as you say, and wanted proof; and because, also, oh believe it, Archie! you are dearer to your father than to any one, and to doubt you is more than he can bear.”
“There is somebody at the door,” cried Mrs. Brown, hastily drying her tears; “and we are all begritten, and will do nothing but expose ourselves. I’m no quick enough to follow a’ you’ve said. And I canna tell what I’ve said to put ye baith in such a commotion; nothing but what was very simple, for I’m not a person of edication, like you. But if Archie’s pleased, I’m pleased: and you’re a bonny woman, Mrs. Rowland, and I canna resist ye. If ye’ll take it, I’ll gi’e ye my hand. And Archie, lad, go out to the door, and see that no strange person is let in here.”
Archie opened the door, and fell back with a cry of astonishment, and Rowland came in, looking round him upon all the signs of emotion which still were very apparent, with wondering eyes. He tried to veil his surprise in the sternness of aspect which was natural to a man whom all the persons present had bitterly offended. He was among a company, indeed, of offenders; all of them had sinned against him; and, perhaps, in present circumstances, his wife the most ofall. He was still utterly perplexed as to the cause of her flight to London: and what connection there could be between that and her presence here, it was impossible to divine. He looked round upon them sternly, trying to suppress other sentiments. It was very strange to Evelyn to meet, for the first time in their life together, a look of disapproval in her husband’s eyes. After the first shock and surprise of his appearance, she had sunk again into her chair, holding out her hand: but he made no response, either to the smile or to the stretched-out hand.
“I saw my wife,” he said to Mrs. Brown briefly, with whom he had exchanged a silent greeting; “I saw my wife in the street, and followed her here. I know no business she could have here. I should apologise for the intrusion.” He took no notice of his son, who had instinctively drawn aside. “It surprises me very greatly, Evelyn, to see you here.”
“Oh Jims! sae did it me; but your bonny leddy has none but a good motive for coming: I can see that noo.”
“I do not wonder,” said Evelyn calmly: she was not afraid of her husband; “but you will soon understand. I am surprised also to see you. Did you get my telegram, James?”
“I got no telegram,” he cried angrily, “and I thought I had forbidden any intercourse with—with—”
“Oh, no,” she said, “you could not have done that: first because you have too much respect for your wife to give her an order which was unworthy: and because you could not interfere with my own judgment. On the contrary, I came here—to bring our boy home.”
“I gave no authority for any such mission,” Rowland cried, “and I will not have it! I will not have it!” He was trembling behind his anger, which was like a veil thrown on to disguise the strange movements and agitations in his mind. What did she mean? She had not disturbed herself, except for a moment, and still lay back in the big chair pale with weariness, yet smiling in his face the more dark he looked. What had she in her mind to make her smile so? Why did she say she had come to bring the boy? She said our boy. What, oh what was the meaning of it all? Archie stood dark as a thundercloud, dumb, taking no more note of his father than his father did of him. (They both saw every movement of each other, every change of countenance, every turn, had it been of a finger.) And Jane had evidently been crying, and was ready to burst out again at any moment. It was she that interposed now.
“Jims,” she said, “your bonny leddy is just aff a journey; she’s been travelling all night. I can’t tell where ye have been yoursel’, but you look very wearit too. You can see her cup o’ tea standing by her that she hasna touched. I poured it out, but I hadna the grace to hold my tongue, and just was mad at her, and abused her sae that the darlin’ creature, as she is, never swallowed a drop, and her faintin’ for want. But I’ve been convicted out of my ain very mouth,” cried Jane, “every word that I spoke has come back upon me: for I threepit up against her that I would havedone this and that. Me! a bonnie person to set up for a pattern! and it turned out that everything I said she had done, and mair. And now you come bursting in, just as unreasonable. Say out, man, what ye would have her to do, and you’ll find she has done it—and mair! But for ainy sake,” cried Jane, sobbing, with her apron to her eyes, “Let the bonny leddy get a moment’s peace, and tak’ her cup o’ tea.”
“Dear Mrs. Brown,” cried Evelyn, between laughing and crying, “you’re a good friend! and I do want a little tea. And I am not afraid of him nor any of you. If you have not been home, nor got my telegram, you will want a full account of me, James, for I have been in London by myself, ever since you went away. Yes, it is true, I took advantage of your absence to go away. A wicked woman could not have done more. As soon as you had gone I set out. It would not be wonderful if you suspected me. But I do not know of what,” she added, with a low laugh. There was something in her laugh that overcame altogether her middle-aged angry husband. He was not angry: all that was a pretence; nor did he know what he suspected her of. At this moment he suspected her justly of what she had done, of having found some way, he could not tell how, of making an end of the trouble which was growing at his heart. When he had left Rosmore there was something in her eye that had made him believe she would do this. He had given her no permission, yet he had a confidence that she would act somehow—he could not tell how—and clear everything up. It had been a horrible disappointmentto him coming back with that confidence in his mind, to find that she was absent, to be told that she had gone to ask advice—on his affairs. And here he had been utterly perplexed, and had not known what to think. That was the history of his many changes. Suspect her? No, he did not know, any more than she did, of what. He had never suspected her—unless it was of failing to fulfil that wild hope of his suffering heart. But something told him now that she had not failed. He stood by as grave as a whole bench of judges, and watched with a solemn countenance while she took her tea. There had been a little struggle with Mrs. Brown, who protested that it must be cold, and that she must make more. But Evelyn had been triumphant in this, and now sat eating and drinking before them all, while they looked on with solemnity. There was something of the highest comic absurdity in the aspect of the father and son, one more serious than the other, standing watching her at her simple meal. Mrs. Brown hovered about her, imploring her to take this and that—an egg, some scones, a chop that could be got in an instant, marmalade, that was considered very good, of her own making—and many things beside. But the two men stood in portentous silence, never moving a muscle, as grave as if her little piece of toast was a matter of life and death. Archie was agitated vaguely, he knew not how: but his father’s mind was like a great flowing river, held by a thread of ice, which the first ray of sunshine would clear away. He bore the aspect of anger still; the cloud hung upon his brow; but all restraint was ready to beswept away, and the full tide to flow forth. He stood, however, black as night, and watched his wife at her breakfast. The strangest, humorous, nay comic sight.
And Evelyn was worn out with all her exertions. She was so weak, with her nerves all so relaxed after their long tension, that they were able to resist no temptation. She watched her husband and his son with a growing sense of the ludicrous. They were so solemn, watching her like doctors over a case, as if the manner in which she set down her tea-cup, or put her morsel of bread into her mouth, were symptoms of the gravest kind. She watched them as long as nature would hold out. It was not until she had finished her cup of tea, and ate her last morsel. She put her plate away with her hand, and they both moved slightly with the touch, as if this were the signal for some revelation. And this in her weak condition was too much for Evelyn. She burst out with a laugh of such hilarity that all the silent room echoed. She laughed till the tears flowed down her cheeks.
“Oh James, forgive me,” she cried, “you are like an owl, serious as midnight and the dark: and Archie is just like you, as like you as—what is the word? two peas. Archie, come here and give me your hand. Do you remember that I once told you I believed every word you said?”
A murmur came from Archie’s throat. He was half affronted, half angry, offended by that laugh which had startled him in his unexpressed excitement. But yet he went and stood by her as she said.
“I was wrong to laugh,” said Evelyn, “but I couldnot help it. If you had seen yourselves, you would have laughed too. James, I got a clue just before you left home, but I could not tell you of it, because of Sir John: and then you went away with him. I don’t know that I should have told you: and I was glad you went away. It was the opportunity I wanted. I went up to town, and I saw the man who—James!—what is the matter. Do you know?”
He had lifted up his hands with a great exclamation of dismay. “Him!” he cried, and no more.
“I think,” said Evelyn with sudden gravity, “your father knows—independent of me. Archie, go and get ready to come home. It is a very sad story. Your father has the best heart, he is more sorry for him that has sinned than glad for him that is saved. I repent of my silly laugh. For though you have not done it, another poor boy has done it. James! God bless you, you have the best heart of us all.”